MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
This issue of Under Lock & Key is devoted to exploring
tactics in organizing behind bars. We often hear how hard it is to get
people interested in politics, how so many are just doing their time, or
worse, getting high, collaborating with the COs, or promoting division
among prisoners. But we also hear from comrades about organizing
successes. We can all learn from our own failures and successes and also
from other people’s failures and successes.
This scientific process of learning from practice, and using those
lessons to improve our practice, is key to moving our organizing work
forward. Marxism is based in this science that we call dialectics. Often
people talk about it in the context of deep political line. But
political line is only useful if it can direct a successful political
practice. And so, as we spread revolutionary ideas and organize against
the criminal injustice system, we need to pay attention to what works
and what doesn’t, both for us and for others. And then apply these
lessons to improving our own work. Without dialectics the revolutionary
movement will stagnate; with dialectics we will continue to learn and
grow.
In a few articles in this issue we highlight the work of a psychologist,
Angela Duckworth, who has conducted and compiled studies of how to
engage and inspire people in work and how to build expertise. Although
ey writes about this subject from the perspective of mastering bourgeois
work or hobbies, we find some of the techniques and information
presented to be directly applicable to revolutionary organizing. We
learn from scientific studies like those presented by Duckworth, along
with our own practice, to grow and improve our work.
Duckworth is an interesting psychologist because eir work focuses on
measuring what ey calls “personal qualities” or traits, but eir work
also demonstrates that these traits of a persyn can and do change over
time. And individuals and society can have an impact on developing
desired qualities. We agree with Duckworth on this assessment of the
ability of people to change and grow through both their own work and
external forces. In eir more recent works, Duckworth clearly agrees with
us that these “traits” are more a product of education and training than
inherent in one’s persynality. Duckworth’s writing is instructive as we
look for ways to improve our own dedication and effectiveness, and ways
to better inspire others.
MIM(Prisons), like MIM before it, has long maintained that the field of
psychology under imperialism is generally used to help people adjust to
their oppression and adapt to the horrible culture of imperialist
patriarchy. It is a counter-revolutionary weapon when used in this way.
Further, bourgeois psychology often attributes behaviors to inherent
traits instead of material circumstances and conditions, suggesting that
humyns can’t change. We don’t have the ability to run truly scientific
experiments on humyn nature, but we have a lot of evidence from
revolutionary societies like the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin,
and Communist China under Mao to suggest that humyns have a tremendous
capacity to learn and grow and overcome selfish individualism.
Instead of seeing the selfishness and individualism in capitalist
culture as reasons that humynity will “always” have oppression and
suffering, we see it as evidence of the importance of a Cultural
Revolution under socialism. This concept was executed on a mass scale in
China under Mao. The Cultural Revolution recognizes the need for the
people to vigilently fight against reactionary culture and capitalist
ideas, even after the proletariat controls the government, because
capitalist culture and individualism will not disappear overnight.
Of course in the end individualism and self-interest won out in those
countries when capitalism was restored. But this doesn’t negate the very
real changes that so many people made in revolutionary societies. We
look to these examples as hopeful evidence, while studying them for
improvements needed for better success in the future.
There are people in the fields of psychiatry (medical doctors) and
psychology (not medical doctors) who have taken their study of humyns in
a revolutionary direction, contributing to the anti-imperialist
movement. Frantz Fanon is an excellent example of a revolutionary
psychiatrist. Among eir revolutionary work, Fanon’s scientific studies
contributed greatly to our understanding of the effects of colonial
subjugation on the oppressed, and a broader study of the lumpen.
Duckworth is not revolutionary, or anti-capitalist, or anti-Amerikan,
and ey is still mired in some of the pitfalls of the field of capitalist
psychology. But eir research presents some useful concepts and
techniques for revolutionary organizing work. In this spirit of
scientific learning we touch on Duckworth’s work in this issue of
ULK.
U.$. imperialist leaders and their labor aristocracy supporters like to
criticize other countries for their tight control of the media and other
avenues of speech. For instance, many have heard the myths about
communist China forcing everyone to think and speak alike. In reality,
these stories are a form of censorship of the truth in the United
$tates. In China under Mao the government encouraged people to put up
posters debating every aspect of life, to criticize their leaders, and
to engage in debate at work and at home. This was an important part of
the Cultural Revolution in China. There are a number of books available
that give a truthful account, but far more money is put into
anti-communist propaganda. Here, free speech is reserved for those with
money and power.
In prisons in particular we see so much censorship, especially targeting
those who are politically conscious and fighting for their rights.
Fighting for our First Amendment right to free speech is a battle that
MIM(Prisons) and many of our subscribers spend a lot of time and money
on. For us this is perhaps the most fundamental of requirements for our
organizing work. There are prisoners, and some entire facilities (and
sometimes entire states) that are denied all mail from MIM(Prisons).
This means we can’t send in our newsletter, or study materials, or even
a guide to fighting censorship. Many prisons regularly censor ULK
claiming that the news and information printed within is a “threat to
security.” For them, printing the truth about what goes on behind bars
is dangerous. But if we had the resources to take these cases to court
we believe we could win in many instances.
Denying prisoners mail is condemning some people to no contact with the
outside world. To highlight this, and the ridiculous and illegal reasons
that prisons use to justify this censorship, we will periodically print
a summary of some recent censorship incidents in ULK.
We hope that lawyers, paralegals, and those with some legal knowledge
will be inspired to get involved and help with these censorship battles,
both behind bars and on the streets. For the full list of censorship
incidents, along with copies of appeals and letters from the prison,
check out our
censorship reporting
webpage.
Florida State Prison
On March 30, censored an invitation to the MIM(Prisons) mail-based study
group because it “Contains prominent or prevalent advertising for
three-way calling services, pen pal services, or the purchase of
products or services with postage stamps.” This is most definitely not
true.
Michigan – Macomb Correctional Facility
ULK 61 was censored because it is “mail with stamps, stickers,
labels, or anything affixed to the paper with an adhesive”.
Wisconsin - New Lisbon Correctional Facility
Censored ULK 61 because “item contains contraband”.
Pennsylvania DOC
The PA DOC sent MIM(Prisons) a letter regarding ULK 61 that read:
“This is to notify you that the publicaiton in issue advocates and
encourages prison solidarity. As such, it violates Department policy for
the reason previously stated.”
Pennsylvania - SCI Benner
We heard from a prisoner at SCI Benner “My Under lock & Key No.61
March/April 2018 was banned/taken stating DC-ADM 803 Incoming Mail and
Incoming Publications. My Jan/Feb issue got to me no problem. Studying
the Inmate Handbook it’s unclear as to the specific penological interest
this publication violates?
Pennsylvania - SCI Pine Grove
A prisoner forwarded us a copy of the Notice of Incoming Publication
Denial for ULK 60. The reason given was “Bondage of little girl,
Depicts female officers in negative manner.” Clearly the PA DOC didn’t
like our article criticizing an advertisement using an image of a little
girl in bondage (not shown), or our criticism of gender oppression in
prison.
Virginia - Middle River Regional Jail
ULK 60 and 61 were both denied with the reason given “DOC
disapproved Under Lock & Key”.
Illinois - Stateville Correctional Center
A prisoner wrote: “I have received notice from the repressors here, on
more than one occasion that you sent me a copy of your pub Under Lock
& Key, and each time that you did, i was told that this pub is
on the ‘censored’ list and any other literature from ‘MIM Distributors’
because it promotes: leadership and organizing of inmates against the
prison staff - administration, and that this is a threat to the safety
and security of the prison, therefore inmates are not allowed to have
any of your pubs.”
MIM(Prisons) received a notification of censorship of ULK 61 sent
to this same persyn in Stateville. The reasons given: “Promotes
leadership & organization, instructs offenders to organize. content
may be detrimental to the safety & security of the institution.”
Indiana - Pendleton Correctional Facility
A prisoner had eir ULK 61 confiscated and the response to eir
grievance was “the newspaper is not allowed in the facility due to
offender to offender correspondence.”
Arizona
We received a notification from the AZ DOC notifying us:
The Arizona Department of Corrections has determined that your
publication described below contains unauthorized content as defined in
Department Order 914.07 and, as a result, may be released in part or
excluded in whole for the specific reason(s) given below.
DO 914.07 - 1.1 Detrimental to the Safe, Secure, and Orderly Operation
of the Facility DO 914.07 - 1.2.12 Methods of Escape and/or Eluding
Capture DO 914.07 - 1.2.20 Safe, Secure, and Orderly Operation of
the Institution
While many euro-Amerikans languish and suffer in U.$. prisons, it is
those whose land the Amerikans seized and occupy, and those the
Amerikans enslaved and exploited, who disproportionately rot here. The
First World lumpen are an excess population, that imperialism has
limited use for.
One solution to this problem has been using the lumpen to distribute
and consume narcotics.
Narcotics,
and the drug game itself pacify the lowest classes of the internal
semi-colonies, by providing income and distracting drama, while
circulating capital.(1) Of course, rich Amerikans play a much larger
role in propping up drug sales.
Another solution to the excess population has been mass incarceration.
Prisons serve as a tool of social control; a place to put the rebellious
populations that once spawned organizations like the Black Panther Party
and Young Lords Party. Meanwhile,
imprisonment
serves to drain the resources of the internal semi-colonies in
numerous ways.(2) This reinforces their colonial states in relation to
the Amerikan empire. As an institution, mass incarceration serves as an
outlet at home for the racist ideology that imperialism requires from
its populace for operations abroad. The criminal injustice system
sanitizes national oppression under the banner of “law and order,”
reducing the more open manifestations of the national contradiction
within the metropole that brought about the recognition of the need for
national liberation in the 1960s and 1970s.(3)
The following are excerpts from a Minnesota comrade’s response to
“MIM(Prisons)
on U.$. Prison Economy”, originally published in
ULK 8
currently available in the “13th Amendment Study Pack”(updated
8/10/2017).
“In as much as I agree with MIM’s positions in this study pack, I find
it beyond the pale of relevance in arguing over whether the conditions
We now exist under are in fact slavery or exploitation or rather
oppression that revolves around laws devised to ensure that the first
class’s social, political and economic control is maintained. Mass
incarceration might be all of those above or none at all, to those of Us
in the struggle. What we all can agree on is that mass incarceration is
a machine being used to exterminate, as the imperialists see us, the
undesirable sub-underclass.
“…Prisons are being used to remove black and brown males at their prime
ages of producing children, going to college, and gaining meaningful
vocational training. This loss of virulent males in Our communities does
more than weaken them. It removes from the female an eligible male and
acts no different than sterilization. Instead of incinerators or gas
chambers, We are being nurtured, domesticated, doped, and fed
carcinogens. Moreover, prisons have provided us with disease-ridden
environments, and poor diets, minimum ambulatory exercise, poor air and
water. Lastly, the removal of cognitive social stimuli necessary for the
maturation of social skills has created an underdeveloped antisocial
human being lacking in compassion and individuality.
“…the reason that the slavery or exploitation argument doesn’t resonate
for those of Us who are on the front line, I think, is because it’s
muted by the point that incarceration is an institution created by the
oppressor. It will have vestiges of slavery, exploitation, and social
control within it. To what degree? is arguable.”
So far we have no disagreements with this comrade. And while we have
long upheld this point to be important for our understanding of mass
incarceration in the United $tates and how to fight it, we do recognize
that the slavery analogy will resonate with the masses on an emotional
level. The comrade later goes on to reinforce our position:
“Eradication is where slavery and mass incarceration split. Although
slaves were punished and victims of social control, they had value and
were not eradicated.”
A crass example of this was exposed last month when Kern County pigs
turned on one of their own and released a video of Chief Pig Donny
Youngblood stating that it’s cheaper to kill someone being held by the
state than to wound them. These are state bureaucracies, with pressure
to cut budgets. While keeping prison beds full is in the interest of the
unions, it is not in the immediate financial interest to the state
overall.
Whereas we agree with this comrade when ey discusses the role of convict
leasing in funding southern economies shortly after the creation of the
13th Amendment, we disagree with the analogy to funding rural white
communities today.
“The slave, instead of producing crops and performing other trades on
the plantation is now a source of work… So to insist states aren’t
benefactors of mass incarceration is incredulous. Labor aristocrats and
the imperialist first class, who are majority Caucasian males, have
disproportionately benefited.”
The difference is a key point in Marxism, and understanding the
imperialist economy today. That the existence of millions of prisoners
in the United $tates creates jobs for labor aristocrats is very
different from being a slave, whose labor is exploited. And the
difference is that the wealth to pay the white (or otherwise) prison
staff is coming from the exploitation of the Third World proletariat.
And the economy around incarceration is just one way that the state
moves those superprofits around and into the pockets of the everyday
Amerikan. The “prisoner-as-slave” narrative risks erasing the important
role of this imperialist exploitation.
Another reason why we must be precise in our explanation is the history
of white labor unions in this country in undermining the liberation
struggles of the internal semi-colonies. Hitching the struggle of
prisoners to that of the Amerikan labor movement is not a way to boost
the cause. It is a way to subordinate it to an enemy cause – that of
Amerikan labor.
There is a cabal of Amerikan labor organizers on the outside that are
pushing their agenda to the forefront of the prison movement. Their
involvement in this issue goes back well over a century and their
position has not changed. It is a battle between the Amerikan labor
aristocracy and the Amerikan bourgeoisie over super-profits extracted
from the Third World. In this case the labor aristocracy sees that
prisoners working for little to no wages could cut into the jobs
available to their class that offer the benefit of surplus value
extraction from other nations. Generally the labor aristocracy position
has won out, keeping the opportunities for real profiteering from prison
labor very limited in this country. But that is not to say that
exploitation of prison labor could not arise, particularly in a severe
economic crisis as Third World countries delink from the empire forcing
it to look inward to keep profits cycling.
While our previous attempt to tackle this subject may have come across
as academic Marxist analysis, we hope to do better moving forward to
push the line that the prison movement needs to be tied to the
anti-colonial, national liberation struggles both inside and outside the
United $tates. And that these struggles aim to liberate whole nations
from the United $tates, and ultimately put an end to Amerikanism.
Selling those struggles out to the interests of the Amerikan labor
movement will not serve the interests of the First World lumpen.
The Western press often aims the disparaging term “labor camps” at Asia
and the former socialist countries of the world. Yet, with the largest
prison population in the world, it should not be surprising that it is
the Amerikans who have more prisoners working for them than any other
nation. And their labor subsidizes the cost for Amerikans to maintain a
highly structured and institutionalized system of national oppression in
this country.
While prisons do “cost” taxpayers money, Amerikans benefit directly,
indirectly and psychologically from the criminal injustice system. There
is a lot of money being made off the system, not by exploiting prisoner
labor, but in the form of public employee salaries. In Pennsylvania, for
instance, prison guards are among the state’s highest paid employees.(1)
And in many states these jobs are so important, the guard unions will
successfully fight against any prison closures, even when there aren’t
enough prisoners to fill the cells. Meanwhile, prisoners are doing much
of the maintenance work in these institutions, for little or no pay. In
the vast majority of U.$. prisons, the state would need to hire more
people if they couldn’t use prisoners to help with prison operations.
In this article we will look at the relationship between prisoner labor
and the cost of running prisons. Our goal is to understand what work
prisoners are doing, what they are being paid, what the impact of that
work is, and how battles around prisoner labor can be a progressive part
of the fight against the imperialist criminal injustice system.
This winter MIM(Prisons) conducted a survey of ULK readers
regarding prison labor, in part in response to many organizations’
recent focus on this topic. The results are what we believe to be the
most comprehensive dataset on prison labor in the United $tates.
In our 2009 issue
on this topic, we reported on prison labor in 11 states and the Federal
system, representing over half the country’s prison population. In 2018,
we received reports from 20 state systems and the Federal Bureau of
Prisons. This survey far exceeds our 2009 survey in content and
consistency. This article will present our preliminary results, with the
full report to come in a later, more in-depth publication on the
economics of the U.$. prison system.
How many prisoners have jobs?
Overall, 44% of prisoners have a job assignment, which includes school
and other programming in some states. This varied greatly between
prisons, from less than 1% to a maximum of 100% where working is
mandatory. Of those who do work, most are engaged in work related to
maintaining the prison itself.
What do prisoners do?
The chart below shows results from our survey showing at least 63% of
prisoners engaged in prison maintenance. There is a significant “Other”
category that may or may not fall into prison maintenance. While our
survey results so far show 25% of prisoners working in agriculture or
industry, this does not correspond with other information available.
UNICOR, the state-run industries for the Federal Bureau of Prisons
(BOP), accounts for less than 7% of those held by the BOP. Yet UNICOR is
the biggest user of prisoners in the country, with half the revenue of
all other state-run industries combined.
While our results confirmed a majority working in maintenance of
prisons, we believe this to be greatly underestimated and will work to
refine our figures. Meanwhile the three biggest prison states only use
2-6% of their prison population in their state-run industries.
How much are prisoners paid?
Working prisoners mostly fall into two categories: prison maintenance
and state-owned industries. The latter generally offers higher wages.
Below are averages for all U.$. prisons from a Prison Policy Initiative
survey of state agencies(2):
maintenance
industries
low
high
low
high
0.14
0.63
0.33
1.41
Our statistical analysis of low and high wages by state matched up quite
closely with the Prison Policy Initiative survey, with many states being
right on. This helped us confirm the numbers reported by our readers,
and substantiates the Prison Policy Initiative data set, which covers
every state and comes from state sources.
From our data we can say that almost half of prisoners who work in the
United $tates make $0.00. Generally in lieu of pay, 43% of jobs in our
survey offer credits of some sort (usually promising time off their
sentence). Though states like Texas are notorious for these credits
being meaningless or not applied. About 11% of prisoners who work do so
for neither pay nor even the promise of credits, according to our
preliminary results.
Who do prisoners work for?
The state.
The portion of prisoners working for private industries is very small.
We’ve long been frustrated with the outdated, self-referential, or
complete lack of citations used by most when writing about private
companies using prison labor.(3) Our initial results only returned 4.3%
of prison jobs being attributed to a private company, and of those who
produce a product, 1.8% being sold to private companies. While we will
continue to tally and interpret our results, these are in the ball park
of what we can infer from a literature search of what is going on in
prisons across the United $tates.
As John Pfaff pointed out in eir book
Locked
In, “Public revenue and public-sector union lobbying are far more
important [financial and political engines behind prison growth].” These
state prison industries are becoming sources of revenue for state
budgets. This could be worse than private corporations lobbying for more
imprisonment. It’s the very state that decides policy that is directly
benefiting financially.
A U.$. Proletariat?
Of all the so-called “workers” in the United $tates, prisoners, along
with non-citizen migrants, are some of the only people who face working
conditions comparable to the Third World. OSHA has no real ability to
enforce in prisons, and in some cases prisoners do hazardous jobs like
recycling electronics or the tough field work, that many migrants
perform. A recent expose of a “Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in
Recovery (CAAIR)” program in Oklahoma documented that prisoners were
promised drug treatment but when they joined the program were forced to
work in chicken processing plants. The prisoners suffered gnarled hands,
acid burns, injuries from machines and serious bacterial infections.(4)
While this is only a tiny minority of prisoners, the fact that they are
susceptible to such conditions does speak to the closeness this class of
people is to the Third World proletariat.
While at first glance the pay rates above clearly put U.$. prisoners
with full time jobs in the exploited classes, we must consider that by
default prisoners’ material needs are covered by the state. However,
there are still some basic needs that are not covered in many prisons.
Many prisoners face conditions with insufficient food, exorbitant
co-pays for medical care, and a requirement to purchase hygiene items,
educational materials and other basic necessities. And for the lumpen
who don’t have money in the bank or families who can cover these needs,
pay for work in prison is essential.
Labor Subsidizes State Budgets
But even where prisoners are expected to pay for these basic necessities
and are not paid enough to cover the costs, we don’t find net profit for
the state. In spite of prisoners’ work, facilities are still run at a
huge financial loss to the state, and profits from prisoner labor are
going to subsize the state budget. Sure lots of individual guards and
other prison staff are making good money, and corporations are also
cashing in by selling products to the prison and to prisoners. But none
of this is coming from prisoner labor. Prisoner labor is just helping to
cut the costs a bit for the state. Below we lay out our calculations on
this question.
Ultimately, we’re talking about a criminal injustice system that costs
$80 billion a year. There are profits from the 4.3% of prisoners who
work for private industries. But most of the revenue comes from
state-run prison industries. These state-run industries bring in a
revenue of $1.5 billion a year.(5) At a generous profit rate of 10%,
that would be $150 million in net gain, or 0.2% of costs. Because so
many prisoners aren’t paid or are paid very low wages we could even
double that profit rate and still have a very small gain relative to the
cost of prisons.
Another way to look at this calculation is to consider the costs to
house one prisoner compared to the potential revenue they generate when
working full time. It costs about $29k/yr to house a Federal prisoner.
If these prisoners are leased out to private companies for $10/hr and
the state keeps all the money, the state only makes about $20k, still
losing money on the deal. Obviously, when the state undercharges for
labor, private companies can make a profit. But that profit is
subsidized by the state, which has to pay for prisoners housing and
food, with the greatest expense being in how to actually keep people
locked inside.
We can also calculate savings to the state from prisoner labor using our
survey numbers. We chose $10 per hour below as a rough compromise
between the Federal minimum wage, and a typical CO’s hourly wage. In
reality, no U.$. citizen would work maintaining prisons for minimum
wage. And a negligible number of COs would bring themselves to do
something “for” prisoners, such as cleaning their showers. If
non-prisoners were needed to maintain prison facilities, we suspect only
migrant workers would be up for this task.
Another consideration is that jobs in prison are mostly used to keep
people busy (i.e. keep people not reading, and not organizing). If
paying “freeworld” people to do these jobs, they would certainly hire
many fewer employees than they have prisoners doing the same tasks.
These calculations are primarily to demonstrate magnitude, not actual
budget projections.
62% of 800 thousand prisoners (percentage with state-run jobs) = 496
thousand prisoner workers
150 hours/mo work on average * 12 months of work = 1,800 hours of
work
So we estimate that hiring non-prisoners to do the work that prisoners
do would cost about $8.9 billion, which adds up to an additional 10% of
the overall costs of running prisons. That’s a sizeable increase in
costs, but prisons are still far from profitable. We can add the two
numbers above together to estimate the total earnings + savings to the
state from using prisoner labor. That total is still less than $10
billion. Bottom line: the state is still losing $80 billion a year,
they’re just saving at most $9 billion by having prisoners work and
earning back another $150 million or so of that $80 billion, through
exploitation.
Those arguing that a massive prison labor strike will shut down the
prisons may be correct in the short term, to the extent that some
prisons which rely heavily on prison labor will not be able to
immediately respond. But that certainly doesn’t mean prisoners being
released. More likely it means a complete lockdown and round the clock
johnnies. And historically states have been quite willing to pour money
into the criminal injustice system, so a 10% increase in costs is not
that far-fetched. On the other hand, states are even more willing to cut
services to prisoners to save money. So the requirement to hire outside
staff instead of using prisoner labor could just as likely lead to even
further cuts in services to prisoners.
History of Prison Labor in U.$.
In 1880, more than 10,000 New Afrikans worked in mines, fields and work
camps as part of the convict lease system in the South. This was shortly
after the creation of the 13th Amendment, and eased the transition for
many industries which made use of this prison labor. In the North prison
industries were experimented with around this time, but imprisonment
costs prevented them from being profitable. And in response labor unions
began opposing the use of prison labor more and more. By the Great
Depression, opposition was stronger and the government banned the use of
prison labor for public works projects.(5)
In 1934, the Federal Prison Industries, or UNICOR, was formed as a way
to utilize prison labor for rehabilitation and state interests without
competing with private industry. This protection for private industry
was ensured with strict restrictions on UNICOR including limiting them
to selling only to the states. This has maintained the primary form of
what might be considered productive labor in U.$. prisons. UNICOR does
function as a corporation aiming to increase profits, despite its tight
relationship to the state. While state agencies used to have to buy from
UNICOR, this is no longer the case, making it fit better into Marx’s
definition of productive labor. Those running the prisons for the state,
whether public employees or prisoners preparing meals, would not fall
into what Marx called productive labor because neither are employed by
capital.
Starting in the 1970s, there has been legislation to loosen restrictions
on prison labor use by private industry.(5) (see Alaska House Bill 171
this year) However, we could not find in our research or our survey any
substantiation to claims of a vast, or growing, private employment of
prisoners in the United $tates.
The Future of Prison Labor
The key to all of these battles is keeping a focus on the national
liberation struggles that must be at the forefront of any revolutionary
movement today. There are Amerikan labor organizers who would like to
use the prisoner labor movement to demand even higher wages for the
labor aristocracy. These organizers don’t want low-paid prisoners to
replace high-paid petty bourgeois workers. This might seem like a great
opportunity for an alliance, but the interests of the labor aristocracy
is very much counter to national liberation. They are the mass base
behind the prison craze. They would be happy to see prisoners rot in
their cells. It’s not higher pay for prisoners that they want, it’s
higher pay for their class that the labor aristocracy wants. On the
other hand, the prison movement is intricately tied up in the
anti-colonial battle, by the very nature of prisons. And to move the
needle towards real progress for humynity, we must reinforce this tie in
all of our work. This means we can’t allow the labor aristocracy to
co-opt battles for prisoner workers’ rights and wages.
While U.$. caselaw does not recognize prisoners as employees, there
continue to be new lawsuits and arguments being made to challenge prison
labor in various ways.(6) We see these challenges to certain aspects of
the law on unpaid labor as reformist battles, unlikely to have much
bearing on the future of the prison movement. It is unlikely the courts
will see prison maintenance as labor requiring minimum wage protection.
So if changes are made in the law, we expect them to be very marginal in
scope, or to actually encourage more private employment. In contrast,
the
mass
mobilizations that have focused on pay, among other issues, are
advancing the struggle for prisoner humyn rights by organizing the
masses in collective action.(7)
While half of prisoners work in some form, about half of them aren’t
paid. And this is because an income from work is not a condition of
survival when food, clothes and shelter are provided by the state.
However, we have noticed a trend (at least anecdotally) towards charging
people for different aspects of their own incarceration. The
narrowly-focused movement to amend the 13th Amendment could have the
consequence of expanding such charges, and actually making it affordable
for the state to imprison more people because they are paying for their
own needs. While we concluded in ULK 60 that there
has
not been a strong decrease in imprisonment in response to the 2008
financial crisis, the rates have certainly stagnated, indicating
that we may be bumping up against financial limitations.(8) A scenario
like the above could undermine these financial limitations, unless they
are accompanied by laws prohibiting the garnishing of prisoner wages.
The delinking of Third World countries from the U.$. empire will create
more economic crisis as wealth flow from those countries to this one
will decrease. This would create more incentive for forced labor in
prisons that is productive, providing value for the rest of Amerikans.
This is what occurred in Nazi Germany, and could occur in a future
fascist scenario here. While we can definitively say the last prison
surge was not driven by profits, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
And if it did, it would be a very dangerous thing. On that we agree with
the mass sentiment opposed to prison labor. But to date, in this
country, it’s been more expedient to exploit value from elsewhere. Even
the convict leasing of the late 1800s was the vestiges of an out-dated
system of exploitation that was eventually abandoned.
Very few prisoners in the United $tates are close to the means of
production. Therefore it is not the role of the prison movement to seize
the means of production, as it is for the proletariat. It is
our role to build independent institutions of the oppressed. And this
has often meant seizing institutions like churches, schools and even
prisons in the examples of Attica and Walpole. Ultimately, such acts
must build support for larger movements for national liberation.
Prisoners have an important role to play in these movements because they
are one of the most oppressed segments of the internal semi-colonies.
But they cannot achieve liberation alone.
This issue of ULK is refocusing on an ongoing debate we’ve held
in these pages of the role “sex offenders” can, or can’t, play in our
revolutionary organizing. Many of our subscribers see “sex offenders” as
pariahs just by definition of their conviction, yet we also receive
letters from “sex offenders” with plenty of interest in revolutionary
organizing. How/can we reconcile this contradiction? This is what this
issue of ULK explores.
As you read through subscribers’ article submissions and our responses
on this topic, you’ll see some common themes, some of which have been
summarized below. This article also is an attempt to provide a snapshot
of where we are now on this question, and suggest some aspects of our
organizing that need to be developed more deeply.
The “Sex Offender” Label
There are three groups that are discussed throughout this issue that
need to be distinguished.
People who have committed crimes by proletarian standards, but have not
been convicted of them (i.e. Donald Trump, people whose sexual assaults
go unreported, prisoner bullies, etc.). These people are not called “sex
offenders” according to the state’s definition.
People convicted of being “sex offenders” who didn’t commit a crime by
proletarian standards (i.e. people labeled as “sex offenders” for
pissing in public).
People who are convicted as “sex offenders” by the state, for behaviors
that would also be considered crimes by proletarian standards
(i.e. physical assault, pimping, etc.).
Throughout this issue the term “sex offender” is used to mean any one of
those categories, or all three. It’s muddled, and we should be more
clear on our terminology moving forward. By the state’s definition, the
term does include some benign behaviors such as pissing in public (group
2); crimes which are convicted in a targeted manner disproportionately
against members of oppressed nations. So we put the term “sex offender”
in quotes because it is the official term that the state uses, and it
includes people who have not committed anti-people (anti-proletarian)
sex-crimes. Under a system of revolutionary justice, people in group 2
would need no more rehabilitation than your average persyn on the
street.
We cannot trust the state to tell us what “crimes” someone has
committed, and this is true for sex offenses as much as anything else.
This country has a long history of locking up oppressed-nation men on
the false accusation of raping white wimmin, generally to put these men
“in their place.” We have printed many letters from people locked up for
“sex offenses” but who have not committed terrible acts against people.
Interestingly, most of our subscribers know there are many
falsely-convicted prisoners in all other categories of crime, and they
readily believe that many are innocent. But when the state labels
someone a “sex offender” that persyn becomes a pariah without question.
This is an important thing for us to challenge as it represents, to us,
a patriarchal way of thinking in prison culture. Usually it is paired
with rhetoric about the need to protect helpless wimmin and children and
is just a different expression of patriarchal norms: in this case the
non-“sex offender” playing protector-man by attacking anyone labeled
“sex offender.”
Why don’t we see this with people with murder convictions? Isn’t killing
someone also a horrifying act that should not be tolerated? And why is
sexual physical assault in prison allowed to proliferate? In the 1970s,
Men
Against Sexism was a group organizing in Washington state against
prison rape, and they effectively ended prison rape in that state.(1)
Statistics show that people “convicted of a sexual offense against a
minor”(2) are more likely to be sexually assaulted in prison. Are the
people who are “delivering justice” to these “sex offenders” then cast
out as pariahs? Why is the state’s label, and not people’s actual
behavior, given so much validity? These are questions United Struggle
from Within comrades need to dig into much deeper.
Anti-People Crimes
Anti-people crimes include many different behaviors, from complacency
with capitalism and imperialism, to extreme and deliberate acts of
reactionary violence. Anti-people crimes include manufacturing and
selling pornography, illegal drugs, and even alcohol and cigarettes,
much of which is legal or at least permissible in our Liberal capitalist
society. And it includes all sadistic physical assault, which would
include all forms of sexual assault.
From our perspective, this discussion has raised more clearly for us the
importance of not glorifying or fostering positive images of any types
of anti-people violence among prisoners. Sometimes folks from lumpen
organizations hold up their history of reactionary violence as a badge
of honor and we need to criticize that, just like we need to be critical
of any positive or even neutral discussion of sexual violence. But we
still can’t take the labels from the criminal injustice system as the
reason for this criticism. Those locked up on protective custody yards
for sexual assault convictions don’t merit this criticism merely for
their PC status. That gets into the realm of “no investigation, no right
to speak” because we can’t take the injustice system’s labels as
sufficient evidence.
Anti-people behavior of all kinds is unacceptable both within and around
the revolutionary movement. Our challenge is in the fact that we are not
currently in a position to investigate individuals’ crimes. In truth the
change needed from all of us is impossibly difficult without a
revolutionary government and culture to back it up. As revolutionaries,
we all do the best we can to fight external influences and keep our
lives on a positive track so we can be contributing revolutionaries. But
there is a difference between people with class/nation/gender
backgrounds that will lead to counter-revolutionary thoughts and
actions, and those who commit anti-people crimes. Where to draw the line
between what we can deal with today and what we put off until after we
have a revolutionary government in power is not a clear and easy
question to answer.
In our current conditions, we have to ask ourselves, for instance, what
about the persyn who commits violence as a part of eir job (say selling
drugs) but then spends eir spare time building the revolutionary
movement? There’s a clear contradiction between these two practices. Do
we dismiss eir revolutionary work entirely as a result, or do we
consider em an ally while we struggle against eir reactionary violence?
The answer to this will come from the masses, and not from abstract
revolutionary principle.
In the real world, perhaps we don’t need to make this comparison. If
someone in a revolutionary organization engaged in some sort of
non-sexual extreme anti-people violence the organization would need to
address this directly. The intervention would at least include
independent investigation and calls for self-criticism, and if an
individual doesn’t recognize their error and take serious steps to
correct their line and practice they could be ejected from the
organization. It could also include other interventions, based on the
organization’s needs, skills, and resources.
Any anti-people violence is going to harm the movement, and of course
the people it is directed against, and so perpetrators of these actions
should not be a part of our revolutionary organizations. We will still
struggle with those who have class and/or national interests aligned
with the revolutionary movement but who are acting out extreme
anti-people violence. But until they understand why what they did/do is
wrong and demonstrate change in their practice, they should not be
admitted into revolutionary organizations.
Sex-Crimes vs. Other Crimes
One argument for why sexual violence should be distinguished from
non-sexual violence could be that gender is the principal contradiction
within any revolutionary movement that admits people of all genders, and
we need to deal with it differently within our organizations. For
example, we have contemplated the value of separate-gender organizations
because of this contradiction, though to date we have not advocated this
solution.
Another argument could be that victims of sexual violence in imperialist
countries are more likely to take up revolutionary politics, fueled by
their experience of gender oppression. And because of the pervasiveness
of sexual assault in imperialist countries, we will end up with a lot of
revolutionaries, mostly bio-females, who have experienced sexual
violence.
This could again raise gender to a principal contradiction within
imperialist-country movements because of the traumatic background of so
many members. It becomes a contradiction the movement has to deal with
(when any patriarchal violence arises within the movement), and one of
the greatest propellants forward on gender questions.
Neither of these principal contradiction arguments make a case for a
significant distinction between sexual and non-sexual anti-people
violence in the abstract. Rather they are relevant in terms of of how
our organizations need to deal with the problems. And in both cases it
has to do with the people within the movement’s perception of these
types of violence.
Applying this same concept to organizing in the hyper-masculine prison
environment, it may make sense to exclude “sex offenders” from our
projects because of the pervasive anti-“sex offender” attitude among
prisoners. However, we already discussed above that we’re not using the
state’s definitions of crime. If revolutionary prisoners determine a
need to exclude people who have specifically committed sexually violent
anti-people crimes from their organization, to maintain organizational
strength, they should do this. But of course this is different from
excluding “sex offenders.” (group 2)
Sex-Crimes Accusations
In dealing with sex-crimes accusations, the primary difference between
organizing people on the streets and organizing in prisons is the
presence of an accuser. With prisoners, we don’t generally interact with
an accuser, we just have a label from the criminal injustice system.
Though certainly prison-based organizations will have to deal with
accusers in the case of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults. This prison-based
situation is more similar to the situation in organizations on the
streets where a member brings up an accusation against another member.
And in the case of prisoners, like the Central Park 5, some “sex
offenders” did not even have an accuser on the street. The survivor of
the assault had no recollection of the event. The state picked out these
5 young New Afrikan men to target, to set an example and vilify New
Afrikans in the media. They were later all acquitted.
Whereas on the streets, or when organizing inside with non-“sex
offender” prisoners who have survived sexual violence, we are almost
always going to be directly interfacing with the survivors.
While we are here minimizing the state’s definition of “sex
offender,” we in no way mean to minimize the accusations of victims of
sexual violence. In general society, false accusations are statistically
rare, and the best practice is to put substantial weight on the validity
of accusations of sex-crimes.(3)
Anecdotally, we’ve seen a high prevalence of sexual violence survivors
attracted to revolutionary work. It’s easy to see why people who have
experienced the ugliest gender oppression in our society would be drawn
to revolutionary organizing. Suffering often breeds resistance.
Within revolutionary movements, the rate of false accusations is in all
likelihood more common than in the general population. This is because
the state will use any method imaginable to tear us down,
especially from the inside out. Many comrades have been taken down from
false sex-crime accusations from the state or agent provocateurs. We
need to build structures in to our organizations that protect against
state attacks, and simultaneously hold the claims of victims in high
regard, not just of sex-crimes but of any anti-people behavior that
could come up internally. This process will vary
organization-to-organization, but our internal strength comes in
preparation. Not only by creating a process to follow in case something
does come up, but also in creating a culture, and even including
membership policies, that prevent it from even happening in the first
place.
These principles and processes need development and input from
organizations that already have them in place and have used them. This
is definitely not a new concept to revolutionary organizations and
radical circles, and even with all that practice under our belt there
are still many unanswered questions. Some basic practices might include:
un-muddling the relationships between comrades (i.e. no dating within
the org) and establishing and practicing communication methods and
skills to create cultural norms for preventing chauvinistic behaviors
and addressing these behaviors when they do arise.
How we handle this process now in our cell structure will be different
if a cell has 2 members versus 2,000 members. The process will need to
be adapted for different stages of the struggle as well, such as when we
have dual power, and then again when the Joint Dictatorship of the
Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations has power. And on and on, adapting
our methods into a stateless communism.
Even with policies in place, we have limited means of combating
chauvinism, assault allegations and other unforeseen organizational
problems endemic to the left. Rather than wave off these contradictions,
or put them out of sight (or cover them up, like so many First
World-based parties and organizations have done), we need to build
institutions that protect those who are oppressed by gender violence.
Potential for Punishment
We do not yet have the means at our disposal to deal with crimes against
the people as thoroughly as we would like. To do that, we would indeed
need institutions tantamount to state power. If found guilty, the most
we can do is issue expulsions, orders of isolation, and disseminate
warnings privately to anyone in the movement who might be endangered by
the offender. The principle of these measures is the isolation and
(hopefully) separation from the anti-imperialist movement of
personalities that not only put comrades in physical danger, but through
their violent and narcissistic habits (seeking validation, circumventing
investigations, denying rectification) leave the movement open to plants
and pigs who have never passed up the opportunity to use such unstable
personalities as entry points. The individuals we are most interested in
excluding are those who have not only committed anti-people acts, but
who continue to pose active physical risks to the movement and
individual comrades. In all cases which can be addressed without
expulsion, we certainly encourage thorough and continual self-criticism
and rectification.
Regardless of the crime though, there is almost no way MIM(Prisons)
could investigate any of the crimes committed by people behind bars. We
have had subscribers write to us to tell us another of our subscribers
is a rat or sexual predator, and we’ve had people write to us who do say
their conviction is true. One could make an argument that we need to ask
prisoners to make a self-criticism that demonstrates that they now
understand what they did was wrong, and we should do more to encourage
this. But if someone doesn’t admit to the crime ey is accused of, then
we are at a loss.
In organizing through the mail, the most we can do is note an accusation
as something to potentially be aware of for the future. If we saw this
manifest in the accused subscriber’s actions interacting with
MIM(Prisons), or other prisoners, then we would consider cutting off
contact or taking other measures to exclude em from our organizing work.
The amount of resources required, and the risk of state meddling, to
conduct an investigation on guilt and enforce punishment, brings us back
to our line that practice must be principal in our recruiting. Comrades
demonstrate in practice their commitment to the movement and their
political line, and that is the best thing we have to judge them on from
the outside.
Potential for Rehabilitation
How should we handle people who have committed sex-crimes by proletarian
standards when they do want to continue to participate in revolutionary
organizing? Should they be banned from organizing with us (which is
basically how “sex offenders” are treated in prisons now)? Or relegated
to the role of “supporter” only, and not member? Should we avoid
organizing with them altogether, or can we work with them in united
front work? Or are people who have committed sex-crimes an exception to
our work building a United Front for Peace in Prisons?
Defining what we need to trust people to do (or not do) is a decent
starting point. Assessing whether these tasks can be trusted to someone
with a particular behavioral history is then possible. This would be
true of any crime. For example, if someone had laundered money from a
people’s support organization in the past, it would be difficult to
trust em as the treasurer of a revolutionary org. Many checks would need
to be built into place in order for this persyn to be trusted to do
bookkeeping, and probably it’s a better use of our limited time and
resources to just not have them doing the bookkeeping at all.
Whether we can actually build in these checks and balances for any crime
will depend a lot on the crime itself. For example, we organize with a
lot of former-gangbangers, who have a history of committing sexual
violence in the context of their lumpen-criminal activities. If this was
the only context in which someone engaged in sexual violence, and they
have very thoroughly engaged in a self-criticism process about eir time
banging, then it’s reasonable to expect that if ey’s not banging that ey
is most likely not committing sexual violence. On the other hand, if
someone committed sexual violence in the context of molesting people
simply because they are weaker than em, for sadistic pleasure or eir
twisted perspective of “love”, we may not have resources or expertise at
this time to reform these people before we destroy our current
patriarchal capitalist society.
In discussing rehabilitation of people who have committed anti-people
sex-crimes, we also find it useful to examine the social causes of why
people commit sex-crimes in the first place. MIM(Prisons)’s analysis is
that people commit these horrible acts because they are raised in our
horrible patriarchal, militaristic, power-hungry, individualistic,
capitalist society. Part of our challenge is we can’t remove people from
this society without first destroying the society. So can we expect
someone who is so deeply affected by our fucked up society to also
deeply heal to the point where we can trust em with whatever is needed
for our struggle? Any sadistic anti-people activity will require extreme
rehabilitation, which we may just not be in a position to assist with at
this time. We can and should encourage self-criticism for past errors
from those serious about revolution. But from a distance (through mail)
our ability to help and foster this self-criticism is greatly limited.
U.$. imperialist leaders and their labor aristocracy supporters like to
criticize other countries for their tight control of the media and other
avenues of speech. For instance, many have heard the myths about
communist China forcing everyone to think and speak alike. In reality,
these stories are a form of censorship of the truth in the United
$tates. In China under Mao the government encouraged people to put up
posters debating every aspect of political life, to criticize their
leaders, and to engage in debate at work and at home. This was an
important part of the Cultural Revolution in China. There are a number
of books available that give a truthful account, but far more money is
put into anti-communist propaganda. Here, free speech is reserved for
those with money and power.
In prisons in particular we see so much censorship, especially targeting
those who are politically conscious and fighting for their rights.
Fighting for our First Amendment right to free speech is a battle that
MIM(Prisons) and many of our subscribers waste a lot of time and money
on. For us this is perhaps the most fundamental of requirements for our
organizing work. There are prisoners, and some entire facilities (and
sometimes entire states) that are denied all mail from MIM(Prisons).
This means we can’t send in our newsletter, or study materials, or even
a guide to fighting censorship. Many prisons regularly censor ULK
claiming that the news and information printed within is a “threat to
security.” For them, printing the truth about what goes on behind bars
is dangerous. But if we had the resources to take these cases to court
we believe we could win in many cases.
Denying prisoners mail is condemning some people to no contact with the
outside world. To highlight this, and the ridiculous and illegal reasons
that prisons use to justify this censorship, we will periodically print
a summary of some recent censorship incidents in ULK.
We hope that lawyers, paralegals, and those with some legal knowledge
will be inspired to get involved and help with these censorship battles,
both behind bars and on the streets. For the full list of censorship
incidents, along with copies of appeals and letters from the prison,
check out our censorship reporting
webpage.
Florida - Blackwater River Correctional Facility
ULK 56 was rejected because “It otherwise presents a threat to
the security, good order, or discipline of the correctional system or
the safety of any person.”
Florida - New River Work Camp
ULK 59 was impounded because “It contains an advertisement
promoting any of the following where the advertisement is the focus of,
rather than being incidental to, the publication or the advertising is
prominent or prevalent throughout the publication: (1) Three-way calling
services; (2) Pen pal services; (3) The purchase of products or services
with postage stamps; or (4) Conducting a business or profession while
incarcerated.
“It otherwise presents a threat to the security, good order, or
discipline of the correctional system or the safety of any
person.
“PG2: stamp program advertisement”
Illinois - Pontiac Correctional Center
The publication review officer sent a long response to our appeal of
censorship which noted that no reasons were given for the
censorship:
Per the Publication Review Administrative Directive and the
associated Department of Corrections Publication Review Determination
and Course of Action form (DOC0212), any publication may be disapproved
based on a number of criteria. In this case, the issue in question
contains various articles that violate the following criteria:
Advocate or encourage violence, hatred, or group disruption or it
poses an intolerable risk of violence or disruption.
Below are specific articles and excerpts from those articles that are
provided as evidence to the appropriateness of this determination. All
examples are pulled from the above mention September/October 2017 issue
58 of Under Lock & Key.
Page 8 Article DPRK: White Supremacy’s Global Agenda
“The United States and all major countries of European descent have
done everything in their collective power to keep these (nuclear)
weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of nations, governments and
people of color or hue.” Encourage Racial Division -“These
global white supremacists have done everything they could to destabilize
nation’s governments that they could not control by creating borders on
foreign continents, setting up puppet governments (often dictators like
Saddam Hussein and Benjamin Netanyahu who use war as a distraction of
their individual greed)…” Encourages Racial Division -“Yet
the media is far more dangerous than any of the ones before mentioned,
due to its ability to influence the minds of those not fully conscious
of the reality of being controlled by the designers of the Global White
Supremacy Agenda.” Encourage Racial Division
Page 10
Article Organizing Requires Organization: Proposed Structures for
Success
Political workers to inform and agitate within the state by
promoting and organizing protest, phone calls and correspondence to
state law makers, DOC commissioners and prison wardens and
superintendents about complaints, proposed laws and policies to be
adopted by the state officials.”Promotes Unauthorized
Protests
Page 11 Article: Arbitrary Group Punishment
“MIM(Prisons) adds: In July 2013 prisoners at MDF staged a hunger
strike from Ad-Seg. We support these comrades just demands, which ally
with ongoing campaigns to end long-term isolation as well as to provide
proper avenues for having grievances heard.”Promotes Unauthorized
Protests
Page 12 Article: Defend LGBTQ from CO Attacks
“It’s hard to get 10 comrades to stand together as a whole so when a
member from the LGBTQ community got jumped on and 30 comrades refused to
leave the classrooms I was shocked.”
“MIM(Prisons) responds: This is a great example of people coming
together behind bars.” Promotes Unauthorized
Protests
Page 13 Article: September 9 - Day of Peace and Solidarity Initial
Reports
“9 September 2017 marked the sixth annual Day of Peace and
Solidarity in prisons across the United States. On this day we
commemorate the anniversary of the Attica uprising, drawing attention to
abuse of prisoners across the country through peaceful protests, unity
events, and educational work.” Article contains further examples
from 5 prisons in Arkansas, Texas, California, Nevada, and Arizona where
prisoners initiated hunger strikes and unauthorized protests. Promotes Unauthorized Protests
I believe the articles mentioned above provide enough evidence to
show that Issue 58 of Under Lock & Key “contains various articles
promoting racial division and unauthorized protest,” and therefore met
the criteria for being disapproved.
Additionally, after reviewing the issue a second time, I found this
article:
Page 14 article: A Contribution to Thoughts on Unity and Alliance
- “MIM(Prisons) espouses a valid conviction that here and now is not the
proper moment for a popular uprising (armed struggle.” - “How do we
succeed in armed confrontation?” - “MIM(Prisons) responds: Of course
we know that ultimately to overthrow imperialism armed struggle is
necessary.” Promotes Violent Uprising
MIM(Prisons) provides on page 3 of Issue 58 that they believe in
“Peace: We organize to end needless conflicts and violence within the
U.$. prison environment.” However, the implication of the page 14
article is that MIM(Prisons) believes that eventually an armed struggle
must be initiated to overthrow what they perceive as the imperialist
colonial government running the country and world. This is provided as
evidence that MIM(Prisons) has an ulterior motive in promoting unrest
and eventual violent protest within the prison system, which is another
example as to why this issue was disapproved.
C/O David Meredith, Publication Review Officer
Washington - Clallam Bay Correctional Facility
MIM(prisons) was sent rejection notifications for two prisoners denying
ULK 59 because it “Contains articles and information on drugs in
prisons and the cost comparison of inside and outside of prison as well
as movement of drugs.”
Victory in Washington - Stafford Creek Corrections Center
In response to our protest of the prison’s censorship of ULK 59
we received the following response from Roy Gonzalez, Correctional
Manager:
I’m in receipt of your two correspondences appealing the rejection of
the above two notices for inmates XXX and YYY dated January 21,
2018.
Per Washington State DOC policy 450.100 all publications rejected by any
DOC correctional facility will be reviewed by the Publication Review
Committee at DOC Headquarters. Mail Rejection Notice number 18346 was
reviewed on January 8, 2018 and was overturned by the committee. The
publication issue has since been forwarded to each offender. A copy of
the final decision notice should be forthcoming to you from Stafford
Creek Correctional Center (SCCC).
On 15 March 2018, MIM(Prisons) received dozens of emails from
corrlinks.com, a website used by some U.$. prison systems to provide
email access to prisoners. All were from the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
and read in part:
“This message informs you that you have been blocked from communicating
with the above-named federal prisoner because the Bureau has determined
that such communication is detrimental to the security, good order, or
discipline of the facility, or might facilitate criminal activity.”
It has long been established that it is legal for staff to open and read
mail sent into prisons, and to not allow such mail that might pose a
threat to safety like communicating information on plans to hurt someone
or commit a crime. Quite frequently,
publications and even
letters from MIM(Prisons) are censored by prison staff for being a
threat to security. Legally, this must be based on the content of that
mail or publication containing information that poses a direct threat.
In practice it often is not, and sometimes we can fight those battles
and win.
What the Federal Bureau of Prisons is trying to say here is that members
of MIM(Prisons) are not allowed to communicate or associate with
prisoners they hold captive, regardless of the content of those
communications. This is of course a violation of U.$. law and founding
principles. (for more background on related laws and court rulings see
our censorship
guide)
Such blanket bans have been attempted in the past. Sometimes openly like
this one, or like
the
ban in California, which ended after an out-of-court settlement with
Prison Legal News because, well, the CDCR knew what they were
doing was illegal. MIM(Prisons) is submitting appeals to this and will
update our readers. In the meantime our comrades in federal prisons
should continue to contact us via postal mail and keep us updated on
censorship on their end.
Electronic Communications
There have been some recent discussions around the use of electronic
communications and devices within U.$. prisons and how comrades should
approach them. While CorrLinks has been around for some time, more
recently prisoners in many prisons can purchase tablet computers for
persynal use. Just as we warn people in general about
how they use these
technologies, those warnings apply even more to prisoners. While the
internet provides opportunities for anonymity and free flow of
information, this is not really true for the services provided by the
state to prisoners. So there is little benefit, and much risk in terms
of surveillance and control over a persyn’s communications from within
prison when using these tools. Thanks to profiteering, we are not even
aware of any email services for prisoners that don’t charge ridiculous
rates.
In general, technology does offer solutions, that are at times better
than what we can achieve in real life interactions in terms of both
security and thinking more scientifically. To look at some principles of
communication that we can apply both online and off, we will look at
Briar (briarproject.org). Briar is still in Alpha, and only currently
available for Android OS, but has received promising security reviews so
far. Briar is an interesting example, because it addresses
decentralization, cryptography and anonymity.
One of the biggest problems with the internet today is the
centralization that a handful of multinational corporations have made of
the traffic on the internet by locking people into certain services.
When it comes to email, prisoners have little choice but to use the
CorrLinks, centralized service, and face potential bans like this one.
On the internet, centralization of activity on certain platforms allows
the corporations on those platforms to decide what a majority of the
population is seeing, who they are communicating with and when they are
no longer allowed to communicate. With Briar, in contrast, one does not
even need an internet connection to set up a network of communication
with your associates. And even with the internet, each client serves as
a node on a decentralized network, so that there is no one powerful
persyn who can decide to shut it down. This same principle is applied in
real world organizing, where an organization is decentralized to avoid
being paralyzed if an individual is removed or repressed.
On the internet, we also have a problem of information being available
everywhere to almost anyone. It is only recently, with many hacks and
data breeches, that people are beginning to realize that encryption is
necessary to protect even peoples’ basic information. Such information
has been used to falsely imprison people, to steal identities, and to
just target and harass people. In the real world, people know to talk
quietly about certain things, or talk about plans for building peace
when that C.O. who is always instigating fights isn’t around, etc. On
the internet there is the potential for all information to be available
for an indefinite period of time, to potentially anyone. So suddenly
everything needs to be said in a whisper, or in encrypted form as Briar
and other software does.
Related to encryption is anonymity. Whenever one goes online, one must
have an IP Address that tells the other machines on the network where
you are so they can send you responses. This IP address (typically) is
linked to a real world location and often to a specific machine.
Previously we have talked about
The
Onion Router(Tor), which works to hide your IP Address. When on the
internet, Briar operates through Tor, when connecting to others on the
network. This provides for anonymity. Anonymity does not have as strong
parallels in the real world, but might be like putting up fliers in the
middle of the night or marching in a protest with a mask on. This is an
advantage of the internet. If done properly, we can spread information
anonymously, and without fear of reprisal. In addition, anonymity on the
internet allows us to share information without the biases that we come
across in real world interactions. The internet can be a tool for people
to think more scientifically and judge ideas for their merit and not for
who is saying them.
As the above example shows, we cannot trust the U.$. government to
just obey its own laws and not repress people for their political
beliefs. We must continue to stand up to such political repression,
while building independent institutions of the oppressed that allow us
to continue to organize for a better tomorrow.
Locked In: the true causes of mass incarceration - and how to
achieve real reform by John F. Pfaff 2017 Basic
Books
With over 2 million people behind bars, Amerikkka locks up more people
per capita than any other nation in the world. But within this system of
mass imprisonment there is an even more striking story of national
oppression: New Afrikans locked up at 5 times the rate of whites, and
Chican@s and First Nations also locked up at disproportionately high
rates. We might hope that a book about the true causes of mass
incarceration (and how to achieve real reform!) would address this
discrepancy. But Pfaff, like all good bourgeois scholars, is focused on
how to make capitalism work better. And so ey sweeps this whole issue
under the rug in a book that offers some really good science and
statistics on imprisonment. Here we will pull out the useful facts and
frame them in a revolutionary context.
Overall Locked In does a good job of exposing some important
facts and statistics often ignored by prison researchers. Pfaff attacks
what ey calls the “Standard Story.” This is the name ey gives to the
common arguments anti-prison activists make, which ey believes are
counter-productive to their (and eir own) goals of prison reform. Ey
claims these arguments either over simplify, or are straight up wrong,
about why we have so many prisoners in the United $tates, and as a
result target the wrong solutions.
The big picture
Pfaff sometimes gets lost in the details and fails to look at the big
picture. For instance, ey argues that “we are a nation of either 50 or
3,144 distinct criminal justice systems” talking about the big
differences in how each state and even each county deals with
prosecution, sentencing and prisons.(p. 16) While it is true there are
significant differences, this thinking evades the importance of looking
at the big picture that it’s no coincidence that so many distinct
counties/states have such high rates of imprisonment in this country.
It’s a good idea to examine state and county level differences, and
learn lessons from this. But using this information in the interests of
the oppressed requires an understanding of the underlying role of the
Amerikkkan criminal injustice system in social control and national
oppression, the topic Pfaff studiously avoids.
In one of eir rare references to the role that nation plays in the
criminal injustice system in the United $tates, Pfaff bemoans that
“Obviously, effecting ‘cultural change’ is a very difficult
task.”(p. 228) Ey entirely misses the fundamental national oppression
going on in this country. To him it’s just about attitudes and cultural
change.
Pfaff does raise some good big picture questions that scientific
capitalists and communists alike need to consider. Discussing the
importance of balancing the cost of crime against the costs of
enforcement Pfaff asks “what the optimal level of crime should be.” “Why
is crime control inherently more important than education or medical
research or public health?” “What if a reduction in prison populations
would allow 100,000 children with at least one parent in prison to now
have both parents at home, but at a cost of a 5 percent rise in
aggravated assaults (or even some number of additional murders) – is
this a fair tradeoff, even assuming no other criminal justice benefits
(like lower future offending rates among these children)?” But Pfaff
notes that politicians in the United $tates are not able to talk about
these things. Even Bernie Sanders’s discussion of investing more in
schools and less in prisons was in the context of reducing crime more
efficiently. It’s just not okay to say education should be prioritized
over crime control.(p. 119) And so Pfaff concludes that we must work on
reforms that can be implemented within this severely restricted
political system. We see this as evidence that the system will never
allow significant change.
Another place where Pfaff frames the larger context in useful and
scientific ways is around the question of why people commit crimes.
While ey dances around the social causes of crime, Pfaff offers some
good analysis about how people age out of crime. And this analysis leads
to eir position that we shouldn’t be calling people “violent offenders”
but instead just saying they have committed violent crimes. Data shows
that most people commit crimes when young, and as they age they are far
less likely to do so again.
Crime rates and imprisonment rates
Pfaff is a professor of law at Fordham University, and like people
working within the capitalist system ey accepts the capitalist
definitions of crime. This means ey ignores the biggest criminals: those
conducting wars of aggression and plunder against other nations in the
interests of profit. For the purposes of this review we will use the
term crime as Pfaff does in eir book, to refer to
bourgeois-defined crime.
Crime rates in the U.$. grew in the 1970s and early 1980s. Pfaff
believes that “rising incarceration helped stem the rise in
crime.”(p. 10) Disappointingly ey doesn’t put much work in to proving
this thesis. But at least ey concedes that locking up more people may
not have been the best response to rising crime.(p. 10) And ey goes on
to note that crime rates continued to fall while prison populations also
fell in later years: “Between 2010 and 2014, state prison populations
dropped by 4 percent while crime rates declined by 10 percent – with
crime falling in almost every state that scaled back
incarceration.”(p. 12) So even if locking up people in the 70s and 80s
did curtail some crime, clearly there isn’t a direct correlation between
imprisonment rates and crime rates.
There was a drop in the number of prisoners in the United $tates between
2010 and 2014 (4%), but this was driven by California which made up 62%
of the national decline. Outside of California, total prison populations
fell by 1.9% during this same period. But at the same time total
admissions rose by 1.1%. Pfaff cites this statistic in particular to
point out a failure of prison reform efforts using the metric of total
prison population. If the goal is to reduce the prison population
overall, looking at the drop in people locked up will miss the fact that
the total number of prisoners is actually rising!(p. 69) This is an
important point as we know that prison has lasting effects on all who
are locked up, as well as on their community, even if they are only
serving short sentences.
War on Drugs is not driving prison growth
Disagreeing with the common argument that locking up low-level drug
offenders is driving up the prison population, Pfaff points out that
“only about 16 percent of state prisoners are serving time on drug
charges – and very few of them, perhaps only around 5 or 6 percent of
that group, are both low level and nonviolent. At the same time, more
than half of all people in state prisons have been convicted of a
violent crime.”(p. 5) So ey argues that targeting non-violent drug
offenders is focusing on too small a population to make a significant
impact.
Pfaff offers extensive data analysis to demonstrate that the number of
people serving time for drug convictions just aren’t enough to be a
major driver of state prison growth. Ey does concede that “the single
biggest driver of the decline in prison populations since 2010 has been
the decrease in the number of people in prison for drug crimes. But
focusing on drugs will only work in the short run. That it is working
now is certainly something to celebrate. But even setting every drug
offender free would cut our prison population by only 16
percent.”(p. 35)
From this analysis Pfaff concludes that it is essential that prison
reformers not avoid talking about violent crime. “From 1990 to 2009…
about 60 percent of all additional inmates had been convicted of a
violent offense.”(p. 187) “[T]here are almost as many people in prison
today just for murder and manslaughter as the total state prison
population in 1974: about 188,000 for murder or manslaughter today,
versus a total of 196,000 prisoners overall in 1974.”(p. 185) And due to
length of sentence, “Violent offenders take up a majority of all prison
beds, even if they do not represent a majority of all
admissions.”(p. 188) So those serious about cutting back prisons will
need to cut back on locking people up for violent crimes.
Length of sentence
Pfaff concludes that longer sentences are not the cause of rising
imprisonment rates. This is the opposite of the common anti-prison
activist position: “despite the nearly automatic assumption by so many
that prison growth is due to ever-longer sentences, the main driver of
growth, at least recently, has been steadily rising admissions for
fairly short terms.”(p. 74) “[M]ost people serve short stints in prison,
on the order of one to three years, and there’s not a lot of evidence
that the amount of time spent in prison has changed that much – not just
over the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, but quite possibly over almost the
entire prison boom.”(p. 6)
Pfaff does concede that official sentences, per statutes, have gotten
longer, but ey claims time served has changed much less. At most average
time served in state prisons increased by 36% between 1990 and 2009,
which ey calls a small increase that can’t explain most of the prison
growth over that time. (p. 58) Ey argues that tough sentencing laws are
all about politics and legislator image, trying to look tough on crime.
But they count on prosecutors not actually imposing the maximum
punishments.
Private prisons vs public employees
We agree with Pfaff that private prisons don’t play a very large role in
the current Amerikan criminal injustice system. “Private spending and
private lobbying … are not the real financial and political engines
behind prison growth. Public revenue and public-sector union lobbying
are far more important.”(p. 7) And ey correctly identifies “the real
political powers behind prison growth are the public officials who
benefit from large prisons: the politicians in districts with prisons,
along with the prison guards who staff them and the public-sector unions
who represent the guards.”(p. 7)
Pfaff makes a compelling point: public prisons will act the same way
private prisons act when facing the same contractual incentives. Ey goes
on to argue that it might actually be better to expand private prisons
but give them incentives for better performance, such as rewarding lack
of recidivism.
It is public prison employees who are the strongest opponents of private
prisons. This was seen in Florida where an attempt to privatize 27
prisons was killed after the public employees’ union got a bunch of
congresspeople to vote against the bill.(p. 87)
This strength of public prisons lobbying is also behind the fact that
closing public prisons doesn’t necessarily result in much savings
because the unions will aggressively oppose any lost jobs. In
Pennsylvania, the state closed two prisons in 2013 and laid off only
three guards. In New York the prison population dropped by 25% since
1999 but they have not closed any prisons.(p. 88)
Pfaff concludes: “In other words, reformers should not really be
concerned with the privateness of the PIC. They should worry that as
prisons grow, the supporting bureaucracies – private and public alike –
will grow as well, and they will fight against anything that jeopardizes
their power and pay.”(p. 91)
Pfaff is correct that private prisons are not driving incarceration
rates. Actually, public employee wages are playing a much larger role.
However, there are valid reasons to oppose privatization for reformers,
or anyone who subscribes to a sense of humynism. In our bourgeois
democracy, the law does provide for greater accountability of public
institutions. Therefore, public prisons will generally allow less
unnecessary suffering than private ones. Of course, neither
privatization, nor the public sector can eliminate the oppression of the
capitalist state that is meted out by the police and prisons. Yet,
privatization of the state-sanctioned use of force only creates more
problems for those working for progressive change.
Recidivism
Pfaff disagrees with the argument that a big driver behind the prison
population is recidivism, specifically that lots of people are being
sent back to prison for technical violations or small issues. Ey does
find that in most states the number of parole conditions has gone up,
from an average of 11 in 1982 to an average of 18 in 2008.(p. 62) But
digging into recidivism more deeply, Pfaff cites a study that found that
only about a third of people admitted to prison end up returning. And ey
correctly notes that if the commonly cited Bureau of Justice Statistics
claim of a 50% recidivism rate is wrong, this just means that even more
people are ending up in prisons at some time in their lives. This is
perhaps an even scarier story than the high recidivism rate because it
means that even more lives are being ruined by prison.
States vs counties
Pfaff points out that the $50 billion that states spend on prisons is
only about 3% of state spending. And as has been seen in examples above,
the savings from decarceration are not that great if states can’t
actually close prisons or lay off guards. Also, releasing individual
prisoners doesn’t result in much savings because prisons work on an
economy of scale. While we can calculate the average cost of
incarceration per persyn, we can’t translate that directly into savings
when one persyn is released, because the entire infrastructure is still
in place.(p. 99)
New York City actually did cut its prison population recently, along
with a few other urban counties in New York. However, rural counties
sent more people to prison so the overall impact was growth, not
decreasing numbers of prisoners in New York.(p. 76) Similarly, higher
crime rate areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco in California send
relatively fewer people to prison compared to more rural counties which
tend to be more conservative.(p. 77)
We touched on this urban vs. rural discrepancy in imprisonment rates in
a recent article on
national
oppression in prison, suggesting that this could be the primary
driver behind the (temporary?) drop in the discrepancy between
incarceration rates of oppressed nations and whites. Since more whites
are in the rural counties, statistically that’s who is getting locked up
if those counties are locking people up at a higher rate. Pfaff’s data
backs up our theory.
Prosecutors driving imprisonment
Pfaff argues compellingly that the primary driver behind the boom in
prisoners in the past few decades is prosecutorial toughness:
prosecutors are charging more people with more serious crimes.
Prosecutors have a tremendous amount of latitude. They can determine the
charges brought against people, which in turn drives the level of
seriousness of the crime and potential sentences. They can also decide
when to take a plea and what to offer in the plea.
To prove the impact of prosecutors, Pfaff cites data between 1991 and
2014 when crime rates were falling. During this period the arrest rates
by police matched crime rates, which means that as violent and property
crimes fell so did arrests for those offenses. In states Pfaff examined,
arrests fell 10% between 1994 and 2008. But at the same time the number
of felony cases rose steeply. Fewer people were entering the criminal
injustice system but more were facing felony charges. Pfaff calculated a
40% increase in felony cases. Ey found this was the only thing that
changed; felony charges resulted in imprisonment at the same rate as
before. So Pfaff concludes: “In short, between 1994 and 2008, the number
of people admitted to prison rose by about 40 percent, from 360,000 to
505,000, and almost all of that increase was due to prosecutors bringing
more and more felony cases against a diminishing pool of
arrestees.”(p. 72) The probability that a prosecutor would file felony
charges against an arrestee basically doubled during this time period.
Pfaff attributes this prosecutorial aggression to a few things. First,
the number of prosecutors trying cases has increased significantly over
the past forty years, unrelated to crime rates. Prosecutor discretion is
not new, but they seem to be using it more and more aggressively in
recent years. And it is the prosecutors who have complete control over
which cases get filed and which get dismissed. Prosecutors also have a
huge advantage over public defenders, whose budget is significantly less
than prosecutors and who don’t benefit from free investigative services
from law enforcement.(p. 137)
Overall Pfaff finds very little data available on prosecutors and so
finds it impossible to come to firm conclusions about why they are so
aggressively increasing prosecution rates. Ey spends a lot of the book
talking about potential prosecutoral reforms but also concludes that
mandatory data collection around prosecution is essential to get a
better handle on what’s going on.
While this data on the role of prosecutors in driving imprisonment rates
in recent years is interesting, revolutionaries have to ask how
important this is to our understanding of the system. Whether it’s more
cops on the streets driving more arrests, or more aggressive prosecutors
driving more sentences, the net result is the same. If we’re looking to
reform the system, Pfaff’s data is critical to effectively targeting the
most important part of the system. But for revolutionaries this
information is most useful in exposing the injustice behind the curtain
of the system. We want to know how it works but ultimately we know we
need to dismantle the whole system to effect real and lasting change.
Solutions
Even within eir general belief that prisons are necessary to stop crime,
Pfaff makes some good points: “To argue that prison growth contributed
to 25 percent of the drop in crime does not mean that it was an
efficient use of resources: perhaps we could have achieved an equally
large decline in a way that was less fiscally and socially
costly.”(p. 116) And ey goes on to note that studies suggest
rehabilitation programs outside of prison do a much better job reducing
crime.
Some of Pfaff’s solutions are things we can get behind, like adequately
funding public defenders. And most of them, if effective, would result
in fewer prisoners and better programs to help prisoners both while
locked up and once on the streets. But still these solutions are about
relatively small reforms: giving prosecutors more guidance, expanding
political oversight, expanding parole and providing more scientific
structure to parole decisions, appointing prosecutors rather than
electing them, setting up better contracts with private prisons paying
based on how prisoners performed upon release.
All of these reforms make sense if you believe the Amerikan prison
system has a primary goal of keeping society safe and reforming
criminals. This is where we deviate from Pfaff because we can see that
prisons are just a tool of a fundamentally corrupt system. And so
reforms will only be implemented with sufficient belief from those in
charge that the fundamental system won’t be threatened. And certainly
the Amerikan imperialists aren’t looking to “improve” or reform the
system; they will only react to significant social pressure, and only as
much as they need to to take pressure off.
As a Hollywood movie based on a Marvel comic book, Black Panther
stands out for overtly political themes and some honest discussion of
national oppression. It features a Wakandan society of supremely
advanced and peaceful Africans. A society that includes strong,
empowered wimmin in roles of defense, science and serving the oppressed.
The Wakandan society is completely hidden from the world and led by a
king, T’Challa, the movie’s hero. Its isolation is based in a legit fear
of the imperialist world which has a long history of oppression and
exploitation in Africa. The Wakandan solution was to hide, and focus on
building a strong and peaceful society internally. It was wildly
successful, surpassing the rest of the world in all realms of science.
And what’s more, the movie suggests that Wakanda built, on the wealth of
its natural resources, a society with no apparent exploitation or
oppression. But this isolationism does have a growing opposition from
within, from some who want to help the oppressed in the world.
We can compare Wakanda’s isolationism to revolutionary movements that
have taken power in one country, only to find themselves surrounded by
enemies. In places like north Korea, Cuba, and Albania, isolation was a
strategic move against outside interference, but ultimately was also a
great difficulty for these nations. Wakanda does not face similar
challenges due to its tremendous wealth of resources, but also because
no one knows about its advanced society, so there’s no severe drain of
resources being spent on national self-defense. The world thinks Wakanda
is just a Third World country full of farmers.
What we found most interesting about the movie was not the protagonists,
but the antagonist, Eric Killmonger, who came up in Oakland in the
1990s. Killmonger’s father (T’Challa’s uncle) was serving as a Wakandan
spy in Oakland when ey fell in love with the oppressed New Afrikan
people ey was living among, and decided ey needed to take Wakandan
resources to help liberate these people. For betraying Wakanda,
Killmonger’s father was killed by the king (eir own brother), which left
Killmonger abandoned in Oakland. The king kept this betrayal, death, and
Eric a secret all the way to the grave, so Killmonger’s appearance came
as a sudden surprise to those living an idyllic life in the capitol.
Eric Killmonger is a product of eir abandonment by Wakanda and eir
upbringing on the streets of Oakland. Killmonger saw the desperate
struggles of the New Afrikan nation in the United $tates and could not
forgive Wakanda for not helping these people. Killmonger wasn’t only
seeking persynal revenge for eir father’s death, ey was fighting to
continue eir father’s dream of helping the oppressed liberate
themselves. Killmonger’s education (at MIT) and training (in the U.$.
military) was purposeful, focused on getting em into a position to
control the Wakandan resources so that ey could use them to help the
oppressed. Killmonger cultivated the passion and perseverance to bring
em all the way to the hidden society of Wakanda and into a duel for the
throne.
Killmonger doesn’t hesitate to kill, even those ey seems to care about,
to achieve eir goal. But this is war, and the lives of millions around
the world are at stake. We respect Killmonger’s drive and focus. Nicely
asking the Wakandan king to hand over some weapons and technology to
help the oppressed wasn’t going to work. Even similar requests from
influential people within Wakandan society were denied. So Killmonger
reasonably believed that eir only option was to take what ey wanted by
force.
There were many different reactions to this contradiction between
peaceful isolationism vs. violent uprising, playing out in the battle
for the throne. A faction of Wakandans (the civil defense force)
enthusiastically joined Killmonger once ey explained eir plan to arm New
Afrikans in the United $tates and Wakandan spies all over the world.
Killmonger’s proposal also included ensuring the sun never set on the
Wakandan empire. Whether the civil defense force joined for altruistic
or power-hungry reasons is up to the viewer to decide.
The royal defense force begrudgingly remained loyal to the throne when
Killmonger took power, from an adherence to conservative traditionalism
more than anything else. The royal defense quickly switched sides when a
technical justification arose – the duel for the throne was not
complete, because T’Challa was still alive. This faction of the military
is made out to be heroes, but they were defending a king who upheld
isolationism against a king who wanted to help free the world’s
oppressed.
Yet another angle is represented by T’Challa’s love interest, Nakia, a
spy who worked among refugees and victims of humyn trafficking. Ey
stubbornly refused a chance to become queen, so ey could continue eir
important work helping people outside of Wakanda. While ideologically
Nakia had much in common with Killmonger, at least in opposing Wakanda’s
isolationism and wanting to liberate oppressed people globally, ey
remained loyal to T’Challa. Nakia, like many other Wakandans, was
primarily against Killmonger’s strategy of sending weapons and firepower
out all over the world, and persynal feelings for T’Challa were an
influencing factor.
There were many strategic problems with Killmonger’s solution to
imperialist oppression, including the lack of leadership or liberation
movements to take advantage of the military and technology resources ey
was offering. It’s hard to see how just delivering weapons to the
oppressed would lead to liberation. In fact those weapons could easily
have ended up in the hands of the imperialists, which – besides
tradition and “it’s not our way” – was a primary justification given by
T’Challa and others for keeping Wakanda hidden from the world.
In the end, the conservative king wins, but ey learns that ey does have
a duty to the world’s people. A big part of T’Challa’s change in
perspective comes when the pedestal ey has built for tradition and
blindly following eir father’s path is torn down by the discovery of the
family secret. The appearance of Killmonger is a huge turning point for
T’Challa. T’Challa comes to see Killmonger as a monster who was created
by eir own father’s hands. T’Challa sees how an adherence to tradition
and isolation actually alienates people, such as young Eric, who
T’Challa feels should otherwise be included in the Wakandan umbrella of
aid and help.
So T’Challa comes to finally agree with Nakia and Killmonger that
Wakanda has a moral obligation to share its expertise. Unfortunately, in
spite of all Wakanda’s international spies, King T’Challa still fails to
correctly assess the balance of forces, and the friends and enemies of
the oppressed. The last scene of the movie shows T’Challa making a
speech at the United Nations, announcing that Wakanda will begin sharing
its technology and knowledge with the world. Ey also buys a few
buildings in Oakland, California to open Wakanda’s first youth outreach
and education center.
If T’Challa really wanted to help the world’s oppressed, ey could use
Wakanda’s technology of being able to stay hidden in plain sight, and
its reputation as a nonthreatening farming nation, to build the strength
of an underground army, to soon fight the oppressors for dual power, and
then freedom, including an end of capitalism. Rather than going to the
UN and announcing “Hey! We’re organizing and doing cool shit that will
threaten your power! Watch us closely!” ey could do this discretely and
very successfully. It seems T’Challa moved from conservative to liberal,
and didn’t quite make the step to true revolutionary.
In recent months we’ve seen a huge number of people come forward with
accusations of sexual harassment or assault against men in the
entertainment industry, in politics, and well-known business leaders.
And in many cases the exposures have encouraged more people to come
forward, and the ending of careers. This has been integrated with a
#MeToo movement of wimmin stepping forward to say that these highly
publicized cases are not just isolated incidents. The point of #MeToo is
to show all wimmin experience unwanted sexual attention at some point in
their lives, often repeatedly. This movement has progressive aspects,
and here we will try to take readers to the logical conclusion of all
this exposure of sexual assault.
The Aziz Ansari sexual assault allegations perhaps most clearly
illustrate where the #MeToo movement must go if it is to really address
the root of these problems. Ansari is a famous actor, comedian and
filmmaker. In January, a womyn came forward anonymously with a detailed
account of her sexual encounter with Ansari. The womyn “Grace” described
a very awkward and unpleasant evening in which Ansari repeatedly made
sexual advances while “Grace” attempted to indicate her discomfort with
what she called “clear nonverbal cues.” When she finally said “no” to
one of his sexual propositions, Ansari backed off and suggested they
dress and just hang out.
Ansari claims he thought the encounter was entirely consensual. Grace
claims Ansari ignored all her attempts to put a stop to the sex. This
case has led to a useful debate over where to draw the line in terms of
what we call sexual assault. This case has led some (Grace supporters
and Grace opponents) to point out that calling her experience sexual
assault means we’ve all been sexually assaulted. Or maybe not everyone,
but most wimmin at the very least. Because most wimmin can point to a
situation where they were uncomfortable or unhappy but pressured by a
man to proceed with sex.
Ansari was oblivious to Grace’s lack of enjoyment, and her inability to
clearly verbally express this points to a power inequality. In a truly
equal relationship between two people, each would feel totally
comfortable walking away at any point. And each would be carefully
listening to what the other said (verbally and non-verbally). Whatever
it is that stopped Grace from walking away, whether it’s Ansari’s fame
or wealth, or just her training as a womyn to do what a man asks, it’s
undeniable that she was not able to just walk away.
This is the crux of the problem with attempting to reform away sexual
assault while we live in a patriarchal society. Rape is non-consensual
sex. And, as the Ansari case demonstrates, there are many situations in
which wimmin aren’t giving consent even though men think the encounter
is totally consensual. We call this non-consensual sex what it is: rape.
When there is a power difference in a relationship, the persyn with less
power is limited in their ability to consent. You can’t freely consent
when someone is holding a gun to your head. And similarly you can’t
freely consent when you fear economic consequences. Those are obvious
inequalities. Someone who says “yes, please” in those situations simply
can’t be freely consenting. The Ansari case gets at more subtle
inequalities, but ones that have a very real impact on people’s ability
to consent. In a society where inequality is inherent in every
interaction, we can’t expect people to have sexual relationships that
are equal and consensual. The problem isn’t that Ansari raped Grace. The
problem is that all sex under the patriarchy is non-consensual. Grace
just wrote about one of the more subtle cases of non-consensual sex.
All this sexual assault in Amerikan society isn’t the fault of the men
who are being called out. It’s the fault of the patriarchal society.
Grace proponents point out that it shouldn’t be wimmin’s responsibility
to help men learn how to read their discomfort. Grace opponents complain
that wimmin need to empower themselves and speak up and demand that
their consent (or lack of consent) be respected. This is a good debate,
and we actually agree with both sides. But it’s the wrong debate to be
having, because neither side can achieve their goal under patriarchy. A
lifetime of training to respect power (the power of men, the power of
money, the power of fame, the power of a teacher, the power of looks,
the power of skill) can’t be overcome with an assertiveness training
class. And educating people to ask for consent at every step of the way
won’t help when someone feels they have to say “yes” to their
teacher/priest/benefactor/mentor/idol.
Some might hope that other changes in Amerikan society will move us
towards abolishing the patriarchy. People fighting gender oppression
argue that having a womyn president who speaks out against sexual
harassment, and getting in judges who will prosecute people
aggressively, and the broad education and exposure of the #MeToo
campaign will eventually break down the gender power differential in
this society. But even this level of reform won’t change a fundamental
system that is based on power differentials. We don’t believe the
patriarchy can be abolished under a system that is set up to help the
rich profit off the exploitation of the Third World peoples.
The #MeToo movement is trying to show people how pervasive sexual
assault is. That’s important. We need to take that further and show the
link between power differentials in relationships and sexual assault.
And we must be clear that these power differences will always exist
under a capitalist patriarchy. We can’t reform our way to pure and equal
sex. Just as many wimmin are now dramatically calling out #MeToo, we
dramatically call out #AllSexIsRape. Sexual assault is everywhere;
revolutionary change is needed.