Under Lock & Key

A North Carolina prisoner writes: Dear comrades, I’ve enclosed a banned book/publications list put out by our prison.

I can’t get or make copies. Nobody can help me with copies. North Carolina prisons want all non-legal mail sent to Phoenix, MD for electronic scanning that takes up to two weeks to be done. Yet legal mail, books and newsletters are sent to the prisons themselves. Any idea what a burden that is? Our people got to remember two different addresses. Organizations have to mail us letter replies to one address and books to another.

This prison blocks almost all sexual mags, even non-nude, even though NC-DAC policy approves such books. Not Harnett Correctional Institution.

Notice the date? This is the banned book list I was given in June 2024. Any book past a year is supposed to be re-reviewed. They aren’t.

Analyzing NC Ban List

Some famous titles on the list include Where the Crawdads Sing and the often-censored in U.$. schools, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Other notable items include multiple self-help books, including ones specifically for prisoners preparing for release, and prisoner resource lists. There are multiple legal resources on the list, one our comrade mentions. And there are books like Gender Studies, Qigong and Tai Chi, and an astrology book that can’t possibly violate any rules. Clearly censored for its political content is Our Enemies in Blue, a critique of policing.

Under Lock & Key is the second most censored newspaper in North Carolina, after The Final Call, which appears 14 times on the list (it also comes out a lot more frequently than ULK). Both are clearly censored for political reasons.

The book list that this comrade received in June 2024 is dated 10/06/2023. Since October 2023, the following items have been rejected by NCDPS: Under Lock & Key 82 and ULK 84, and a comrade reported not receiving Under Lock & Key 85. A prisoner appealed ULK 82, was denied, and then MIM Distributors appealed and it was removed from the Master List of Disapproved Publications. Most states have a central administrative office that oversees the local mailroom decisions to censor, so it is always worth appealing to these offices. There are no rights that you don’t fight for. Years ago many comrades went further and engaged in lawsuits over the mail in North Carolina, which seems to have brought improvements in their practices in recent years.

By our count, at least 100 of the 480 items on the ban list contain sexual content, most of them containing pornographic photos. While this comrade points out that sexual content is not a reason for banning per the law, North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections policy Chapter D 0.0109(f)(11) does prohibit “Sexually explicit material which by its nature or content poses a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution, or facilitates criminal activity.” It is not clear how any of the materials in question fit this criteria. Curiously, right after the release of this ban list, Under Lock & Key 79 was censored for the reason “naked woman’s breast”, which just isn’t true at all, but should also not have been allowed by their own rules.

The only topic to rival pornography on the ban list was “street novels.” We counted at least 100 examples on this list (we did not look up every title so these are likely undercounted). Most likely these are censored for (f)(10) related to promoting “gang activity.”

The third most common topic on the ban list appeared to be tattoo-related, with at least 20 examples. Other themes that appeared more than a few times, in order of frequency, included: art, history of famous criminals, cars, guns, survival, hacker, legal, and martial arts. Unfortunately we have no real information on the literature that was not put on the ban list to compare to.

According to the PEN America Index of School Book Bans, there were 58 books banned in various school districts across North Carolina in 2023. While the news reports more on banned books in schools, we can see that banning literature is much more frequent in prisons. And while the titles on these two lists appear to have no overlap, the motivation behind most of the banned literature seems to be an effort to not expose people to books that depict things the censors don’t want them to do.

North Carolina’s Overall Rating

Overall, we have to give North Carolina a decent grade of C+ on their mail policies and practices.

It’s unacceptable that almost every issue of Under Lock & Key seems to either be censored, or at least not delivered to some subscribers in NCDAC. This includes the recent example where they censored ULK for art depicting actions that their department describes in their own rules. However, some subscribers in North Carolina have received every recent issue of Under Lock & Key. There has been a major improvement since 2012-2017 when censorship was so rampant in North Carolina that we couldn’t even get a letter in telling a prisoner what mail we’ve sent them.

And yes, the multiple addresses are a burden as our comrade says. Pennsylvania has three! You can see our list of mail censored in North Carolina prisons over the last couple years and see that even when newspapers and pamphlets were sent to the facility they were sometimes returned stating, “This facility DOES NOT accept friend and family mail directly.” And there were times where mail printed on 8.5”x11” paper was returned from TextBehind stating: Refused “TextBehind, INC does not process privileged/legal mail”. It is clear these systems are confusing to all involved.

Assuming those were honest mistakes, there hasn’t really been any censorship of books or pamphlets from MIM Distributors in recent years (just our newsletter), including some of our most censored literature in other states. And this would not likely be the case if it weren’t for the prisoners who fought censorship with appeals and lawsuits less than a decade ago.

Today is the first day of Prison Banned Books Week 2024 (PBBW). This year the campaign will be focusing on how companies selling tablet services to the state have exacerbated the problem of censorship in prisons. MIM(Prisons) is one of dozens of organizations participating in PBBW. You can view the full list at prisonbannedbooksweek.org, where you can send letters to your legislators and letters to the editor to call on prisons to allow donated books from organizations like ours, as well as free digital books through local libraries. Also look for #prisonbannedbooksweek on various social media platforms this week (you can now follow us on Mastodon).

Each day this week we will be publishing stories related to censorship in prisons, and we ask our supporters to share them with your networks using the hashtag #prisonbannedbooksweek. Censorship in prisons has been at the heart of what we do since day one and is a daily struggle for us and for our readers, as we must fight for our First Amendment rights in this country. We will give you an overview of what this looks like in this first installment for PBBW.

We hope this campaign encourages people to support our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program with donations, to engage in activism and legal advocacy in support of prisoners receiving a variety of reading materials, and that it spreads awareness about the growing control of information that these state/corporate partnerships are bringing to our lives.

Our Books Program

While the MIM Free Political Books to Prisoners Program actually began in 1988, our organization formed in late 2007, taking over the duties of the MIM Prison Ministry. This work involves publishing a regular newsletter for prisoners and corresponding with prisoners through the mail, in addition to sending other forms of literature.

As we celebrate 17 years of existence, we approach the 200,000 mark for the number of pieces of mail we have sent to prisoners over those years. For all that mail our overall confirmed censorship rate is only 6%. However, 73% of our mail is never confirmed received or censored. This is some combination of prisoners never writing us back, mail being illegally censored and mail just being lost. While the percentages of each are certainly in that order, we have no way of knowing what the actual breakdown is of the fate of that 73% of mail we send out. For the 27% of mail that we can confirm, 4 out of 5 items do make it to their recipients.

About 40,000 pieces of mail we’ve sent are letters to prisoners, while over 6000 are books and zines by other authors. The remaining almost 150,000 pieces of mail are literature that we publish, the majority of it being our newsletter Under Lock & Key, but this also includes many MIM Theory journals, Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán and various other pamphlets and study packs.

Interestingly it is the other books and zines that are censored at a higher rate (8.2%) than our own literature and letters (both less than 6%). The fact is that books and magazines do face a higher level of scrutiny than newspapers and letters, and are often censored for superficial reasons like the condition of the book or the publisher of the book not matching the sender, etc.

Anyone can browse through the incidents of censorship of our mail on our website. Numerically, Under Lock & Key accounts for most of our censorship, since that is most of the mail we send to prisoners. After ULK, you’ll see that some of our most censored pieces of literature in the last couple years are: Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton, Power to New Afrika by Triumphant, Revolutionary 12 Step Program by a USW comrade and our very own Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. You’ll note that most of the reasons given for these books are clearly politically motivated, claiming the literature will cause disruptions and riots, even the 12 Step Program, as we reported in ULK 78.

Another common appearance on the list is, ironically, our Guide to Fighting Censorship in Prisons, which we send to any prisoner facing censorship at their facility.

You’ll also see in the list of censorship the occasional overturned decision. This is due to the persistence of our comrades inside as well as our volunteers on the outside who appeal as much of the unreasonable censorship as they can. This is one of many tasks that we could use your help with.

Prison and jail systems across the country continue to move to digitize letters to read on tablets, and restrict books from more and more sources, under the guise of fighting drugs. While drugs have not decreased, our problems getting mail to prisoners have increased, as you’ll read in the series of articles we’ll be publishing this week.

Missouri now has the strictest paper literature policy ever implemented in a state prison system. People can ONLY obtain paper literature by purchasing it themselves, in consultation with their prison caseworker, with money drawn from their own commissary account from a small selection of “approved vendors.” We’re finding that many of our subscribers in Missouri cannot receive Under Lock & Key because they have not paid for it.

Missouri is now contracting with Securus to serve all mail digitally on tablets. Their contract includes a 1% administrative fee on “all payments received by the contractor for all products and services provided under the contract.” However, not all prisoners have tablets, and some are anxious to get the privilege of paying $0.25 to send emails to family.

Below are reports from Missouri prisoners in August 2024.

Censorship is real here at Crossroads Correctional Center. They are trying to find ways to stop Under Lock & Key newspapers from coming to Crossroads any way they can. Most of the time they have no real reason to stop it. It’s hit or miss. And me and the brothers really really need the info and good news that you bring knowing that the fight is still on.

They stop our catalogs, they stop our books. It’s hard with this K2 taking our young minds and no one really there to push the fight. Most of us find our fight to be few in numbers.

Here in the hole, they keep our tablets from us. Every prison except for Crossroads Correctional Center has tablets. They charge us $0.79 a stamp and really force us to buy them knowing that’s the only way to reach our families seeing that they won’t give us our tablets in Ad-Seg. Emails only cost $0.25 on tablets.

They won’t let us order reading books or magazines in Ad-Seg either, saying we have to be on the yard to order books/magazines.

MIM(Prisons) adds: It is criminally absurd that people being tortured in isolation are deprived of some of the few things that can keep them sane in such conditions like reading material.

A comrade at Jefferson City Correctional Center wrote: I’ve ordered books with donation checks to free services. At first they denied them in May due to “No free books.” I fought that and paid a donation. Then their excuse was “wrong order month.” They proceeded to deny (in March, July, November) the free book services with donation payments. Then I sent $400 to a bona fide vendor on the precise month of orders. Now they’re saying we can’t have books in Ad-Seg and that I have to send them home and my people won’t be able to send them back to me once I’m out of seg (if I ever get out).

They’re making up arbitrary rules on the premise of punishment and denying educational and recreational books to long-term segregation people.

I had the check approved per the Functioning Unit Manager, and approved with Business Office. Now I’m unable to get them cuz property denied them.

I’m on hunger strike now at 7 days, 21 meals. No medical has attempted to assess me, they’re denying legal access (property paperwork) and staff don’t do rounds. If possible, I need assistance with legal. I’m filing on medical for neglect/deliberate indifference. I’m working on the §1983 in the mail but if ya’ll can help or put me into contact or on a list of pro bono/after win lawyers it would be much appreciated.

Another Jefferson City prisoner wrote: This prison policy infringes on my right to receive free religious material, which is considered “special mail, and can never be censored.” Prison officials took the regular mail, now books, magazines, and newspapers that were free, saying that drugs are coming in through the mail! That is the worst lie I have ever heard. It is a fact that drugs are being brought in by the prison staff themselves, not the other way around. I am here to help fight this injustice, let me know what you need me to do.

MIM(Prisons) adds: Unfortunately, now that this new policy is already in place we will need a concerted campaign and likely a lawsuit to reverse course. As the comrade above says, if any lawyers want to get involved, we can help facilitate. It’s hard to give Missouri a grade until we get a clearer picture of how this new policy plays out, but we might have to give them an F.

We just wrapped up our Fourth of You-Lie annual fundraiser. The results so far aren’t great. We’ve only received about a third of the number of donations we got from comrades inside for all of 2023, and less than a third in the amount received. That means we need to get twice as many donations in the next 6 months as we got in the first 6 months of this year to maintain where we were. And ideally, we want to be increasing the percent of funding that comes from donations from prisoners. The amount of donations we receive from prisoners is one way we measure mass support for our work and whether we should keep doing it.

Our education programs continue to develop. We’ve mailed out the first group response to our University of Maoist Thought study group on the Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army. We’ve completed an update to our study guide for The Fundamentals of Political Economy, a must-read text. Comrades on the outside also completed a study of MIM Theory 14: United Front that is reflected in the content of this issue. We will likely continue this theme in ULK 87, looking at the united front in Palestine more and printing your reports on building united front for the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.

We are also entering Black August as this issue hits the cell blocks. And soon after that, the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity. Besides the Runaway Slaves Coalition statement on the United Front for Peace in Prisons, we did not get any submissions on these topics. But as always we have our September 9th Organizing Pack that prisoners can request to get more information on the history of this day, and countless books and pamphlets on the Black liberation struggle that you can get from our Free Books to Prisoners Program in exchange for political work.

The week of December 6-13 has been marked as a week of solidarity by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. Over the years comrades have suggested a boycott of any activities that financially benefit the prison system. This is the tactic being implemented in December, with the campaign focusing on ending prison slavery and overall abolition of prisons in general. Our next issue will be out in early November. So if you are organizing for this week of solidarity, send in art or articles to share for ULK 87.

This issue features content produced by United Struggle from Within comrades as part of our campaign to connect the prison struggle to the student movement for Palestine. Some of these materials were also used in a pamphlet put together and distributed on the streets, to get these messages into the hands of students and outside supporters.

As we finalize the content for this issue, reports are coming in of the disproportionate deaths of prisoners in the recent heat waves. Prisoners and prisons are being excluded from new worker protection laws dealing with heat. This June was the hottest on record. And yet the imperialists still aren’t getting serious about reducing CO2 emissions to slow global warming. We welcome your reports on heat and climate change, especially organizing efforts and how to build a united front around these campaigns, for the next issue of ULK.

Amerikan Elections

Finally, i thought we should say a few words on the upcoming U.$. presidential election. For those that don’t know, our slogan is, “Don’t Vote, Organize!” We aren’t too interested in who becomes president because there is no anti-imperialist option.

As has become the trend, the Democratic Party wing have been campaigning hard to “stop fascism”. Our line has not changed since 2016, when we argued that Trump was not instituting fascism as president then either. But that does not mean we should not be vigilantly looking for the emergence of fascism and opportunities to combat it.

Comrades in Texas have reported on lumpen gangs being used by the state as enforcers in Coffield Unit and Allred Unit. Another reader in Allred more recently reported that staff using drugs to bribe prisoners has continued:

“The prison administration here at Allred Unit have been getting away with killing prisoners for so long with the help of these so-called gang members that they fear not the possibility of accountability.”

The use of gangs to police prisoners is not new in Texas history. However, in the past this role was filled by the euro-Amerikan prisoners who enjoyed privileges in exchange for enforcing discipline on the oppressed nation prisoners.(see Robert T. Chase’s book We Are Not Slaves) While we have written extensively on the revolutionary potential of the First World lumpen, and even lumpen organizations, these organizations also have this reactionary potential, making them an unreliable ally of the proletariat.

In fact, it is quite damning that these L.O.s are consciously working for the imperialists to violently repress other oppressed nationals. We address this further in this issue with the ongoing campaign (and debate) around “Stop Collaborating!” Of course we see the same thing in Third World countries around the world where the imperialist have built death squads by bribing various lumpen and military men. And we do recognize such death squads as a form of exported fascism with no real base in the Third World itself.

Here in the heart of empire it is more typical to see the euro-Amerikan petty bourgeoisie play the role of fascist foot soldiers. We saw a glimpse of this in the attacks of bands of young white men on the UCLA encampment for Palestine as cops idly stood by. And we’ve seen it in various street clashes over the last decade with groups like the Proud Boys attacking radical left demonstrators or gender-non-conforming events.

But these remain fringe events. While Trump represents a certain heightening of contradictions in this country, the U.$. state is still very stable. No one can become president of the United $tates without support from the imperialists. The current support of the ultra-rich for another Trump presidency has been pinned largely on the possibility of Trump era tax cuts expiring if Biden wins a second term. So this is hardly a sign of the imperialists recognizing the need for a strong man to move this country into a more authoritarian direction. On the contrary, it is a sign of a further eating away at the stability of the United $tates by undercutting state funding through neo-Liberalism. Yes, the contradictions are heightening, no it is not time to join in united front with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever ends up being the more status quo option they give us in November.

Our movement sees the contradiction between internal semi-colonies (New Afrikan/Black Nation, First Nations, Chican@s, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiins) and the Amerikan oppressor nation as the principal contradiction in the United $tates. In practice that means if we want change, we need to push this contradiction to its conclusion. However, in the years that MIM(Prisons) has existed, we’ve seen that contradiction to be at a relatively low level, historically speaking.(1) Since we don’t have things like armed struggle today to assure us of this contradiction, a recent Pew Research study provides us with some reassurance that the national consciousness of New Afrika is alive and well.(2)

The survey showed that 74 out of 100 Black people in the United $tates believed the prison system was designed to hold Black people back. It asked this question for numerous state institutions, with slightly lower levels of agreement. Another question in the survey showed 69% of respondents feel that being Black is important to how they feel about themselves. The latter question demonstrates a level of national consciousness, even if most respondents would call it “race”. The distrust in the U.$. government places this national consciousness in conflict with Amerika and its institutions.

It’s worth noting that the results were pretty consistent along demographics of age, income, education, sex. The biggest predictor for not agreeing that the government is holding Black people back is being a Republican – but even then the majority agreed.

This survey got more attention in the press because it was originally framed as demonstrating that most “Black Americans” believe “racial conspiracy theories.” Pew Research responded by amending the language in the report, and they provide historical examples of the U.$. state using these institutions against Black people. To view such beliefs as conspiracy theories is obviously telling.

MIM(Prisons) of course upholds the belief that the U.$. prison system exists to hold back and repress the internal semi-colonies and control the population in general. It is part of the system of maintaining national, class and gender oppression. Interestingly the survey also showed 74% of Black people believing, “Black people are disproportionately incarcerated so prisons can make money.” This, as we’ve discussed extensively, is mostly a myth. It might be harsh to call it a conspiracy theory, since everything under capitalism is about money on some level. But we believe the question of whether people are imprisoned for profit, or for social control, is an important question for understanding the system and how to combat it.

The importance of surveys like this from Pew Research is scientifically investigating our conditions. Despite the fact that Pew went into this survey with some clear bias around the relationship of Black people to the United $tates, their resources allowed them to survey thousands of people across demographics to give them 95% confidence that their numbers are within plus or minus 2%. While MIM(Prisons) has done a number of surveys over the years, even our best did not have such tight confidence intervals. And to date our surveys have been limited to prisoners, who are also mostly male. Therefore bourgeois-funded surveys and government statistics are an important part of our scientific investigation of our conditions. Transforming this latent national consciousness in New Afrika into action is where revolutionary practice must come in and deepen our knowledge of our conditions.

<sup>Notes:
1. see MC5, March 1999, On the Internal Class Structures of the Internal Semi-Colonies for analysis of the modern relationship between the oppressed and oppressor nations in the United States.
2. Pew Research Center, June 2024, “Most Black Americans Believe U.S. Institutions Were Designed To Hold Black People Back”</sup>

Months after rebellions began in Kanaky (aka New Caledonia), fighting continues against the French militias and colonial forces. In New Caledonia, voting is restricted to families who have been living there since 1998.(1) This is in order to establish the dominance of the natives over the settlers in the voting system. On 2 April 2024, the French Senate voted for an amendment to the rule which would allow voting for anyone who has lived in New Caledonia for a continuous ten years, on a rolling basis.(2) This triggered the resistance of the people, as one Kanaky source recently reported:

“The toll of the riots since May 13 is very heavy: Nine people were killed and hundreds of others injured, 200 houses burned or looted and nearly 900 businesses closed. A first estimation raises the “damage” to 1.5 billion euros. More than 3,000 soldiers, gendarmes and police were deployed there by the colonial State. Great victory for the Kanak people: hundreds of French families made the decision to pack their bags and leave the colony for good.”(3)

However, the struggle over voting rights itself has cooled as parliamentary crisis struck France, and French President Macron announced on 12 June 2024 the suspension of the proposed changes in voting rights in New Caledonia. France is now focused on an emergency election at home to try to prevent a sharp rightward turn in the parliament and presidency.

[UPDATE: 7 July 2024 - Voters succeeded in preventing a victory of the anti-immigrant Le Pen, but results leave uncertainty in France as there was no clear majority.]

Background on Kanaky

For our readers to understand New Caledonia (home of the Kanak), we might use a shortcut of thinking about Puerto Rico (home of the Boricua). New Caledonia is an island near Australia and Aotearoa (aka New Zealand) claimed by France with a history of brutal colonization and imperialist domination. Europeans arrived in Kanaky in the late 18th century, beginning the colonial period in which the natives (Kanak people) were enslaved, sold, exposed to European disease, displaced from their land and placed on reservations. After France gained control of the area, nickel was discovered in the territory and the French government began sending prisoners to extract the resource and settle on the land. Ever since that time settlement has continued, though the Kanak people remain the largest group.(4) The Kanak people have been struggling for independence and liberation for generations, with recent events reflecting the latest upsurge of resistance. In recent years, the liberation movement has engaged in violent resistance to the sale of their nickel mines.

As mentioned above, New Caledonia hit news headlines after France proposed allowing all immigrants, including newer settlers, to vote in elections on the island. On 15 April, tens of thousands protested the bill, and on that same day the French National Assembly voted in favor of it, moving it one step further towards being passed. In May, violent protests of Kanak people were responded to with the arrest of hundreds and the French deploying their armed forces to suppress the movement. This deployment of forces starkly reveals the absurdity of a “free choice” to be independent. As MIM said about Puerto Rico in 1998:

“The Puerto Ricans have tried for decades”to persuade” the United States to leave, but only dictatorship (organized force) will settle the question. Without the freedom to keep the Yankees out, the elections only show what the Puerto Rican people will say with their arms twisted behind their backs.”(5)

One of the major arenas of struggle has been the independence referendum. There have been three of these in the past 4 years; in the first two the option to remain a territory of France narrowly won (56.6% and 53.2%), and nationality played a major role in the decision. Kanaks generally voted for independence while the other minorities generally voted for dependence. In the third, the independence movement boycotted the referendum, resulting in a 97% victory for dependence, but the turnout was only 43.9%, throwing its validity into question.(6) The protests and riots in May led to the declaration of a state of emergency (lifted after May 31) and the deployment of reinforcements from France. Barricades were set up by independence protesters and, in earlier reports, the clashes led to the death of two French Armed Forces personnel and injury of over 54 police officers.(7)

The struggle for an independent New Caledonia is a revolutionary struggle against imperialism. New Caledonians fight France, Palestinians fight I$rael, and the oppressed here in Occupied Turtle Island fight the United $tates, all in a united struggle against a common enemy. The struggle in Puerto Rico against the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló is no different. Puerto Rico was acquired by the United $tates in the bloody wars of its ascendancy into an imperialist power.

Imperialism is the number one enemy of the self-determination of nations, reaching its hands across the globe to squeeze every last drop of profit it can find. The struggle of the oppressed nations, wherever they are, is the number one weapon against this imperialist system, and that weapon is ever more powerful the more the oppressed nations ally with each other and fight imperialism as one. Puerto Rico has a history of independence movements being co-opted by leaders trying to get a slice of the imperialist pie. The movement for statehood represents this tendency, while the independence movement is the movement for national self-determination against imperialism. In both New Caledonia and Puerto Rico, the referendums have shown the majority of the population voting to remain a part of their imperialist occupiers in order to access certain benefits, whereas the independence movement represents the revolutionary opposition to national oppression and the upholding of self-determination.

Kanaky Will Be Free! Palestine Will Be Free! Puerto Rico Will Be Free!

<sup>Notes:
1. Giorgio Leali, 16 May 2024, Nickle, guns and foreign powers: How France’s New Caledonia reached the bring of ‘civil war’, Politico.
2. Explainer: What sparked New Caledonia’s Deadly civil unrest?, RNZ.
3. F.W. 20 June 2024, France: Kanaky (New Caledonia): The flame of revolt is not extinguished, CAuse du Peuple - tranlation by redherald.org
4. CIA World Fact Book, 2024
5. MC5, 22 March 1998, Puerto Rico’s relationship to U.$. imperialism and Puerto Rico’s class struggle, MIM Theory 14: United Front, 2001, Page 49.
6. AP, 13 December 2021, New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow victory that will only ratchet up tensions, The Conversation.
7. AP, 14 May 2024, France imposes curfew in New Caledonia to quell independence-driven unrest.</sup>

In a recent episode of the RevLeft podcast, a couple of student leaders reflected on their experiences so far in the student encampments demanding university divestment from I$rael. Here we will briefly summarize some of their lessons learned and connect them to similar experiences in the prison movement.

The biggest regret expressed by one of the students, and echoed as important by the other, was conceding to closed-door negotiations with the administration. A comrade once described a campaign that ended up with a large group of prisoners being in a room with administration. The administration expressed that they had heard their demands and would go deliberate on them and let them know their decision. The comrade correctly saw the risk of divide and conquer and kept everyone there until the admin would commit to how they would actually address their very reasonable requests. When making demands of the powers that be it is important to mobilize the masses as fully as possible to participate. Behind closed doors, individual negotiators, whether due to inexperience, opportunism, fear, etc, will not get the same outcome.

A related demand that the admins often made of the student encampments was to exclude community members from the struggle on campus. This similarly helped to isolate students, potentially from more experienced organizers in particular.

Another big critique one student made of eir group was too much hemming and hawing over escalation of building occupations to the point of losing the momentum they had.

The students discussed the varied interests of different parties involved, whether on campus or off-campus students, staff with tenure or not, income levels, etc. This is paralleled in prisons where people with different amounts of time often have very different attitudes towards things, and some groups are often granted privileges by staff in order to divide and conquer. Related to this is the fact that many of the students didn’t know each other at all, so there was a lack of trust and familiarity. This might be easier to overcome in prison, but speaks to the need for developing relationships with others and organization prior to events like this.

The students mentioned how they should have studied the history of how their institutions responded to similar events in the past more. We offer the pages of ULK to document the history of the prison struggle for others to study.

Finally, they self-criticized for succumbing to reformist language that was coming from the administration in their own outreach. They stressed the importance of going into a movement with established principles in order to stick to the goals and the messaging when things get hectic and confusing. They stressed how much language matters.

These are very universal lessons that we can all benefit from better understanding. We encourage our readers to write in with more examples of lessons learned from their experiences of fighting oppression so we can all get better at what we do.

^{NOTES: Revolutionary Left Radio, 5 June 2024, Student Encampments for Palestine: An Interview with Student Organizers.}

5 June 2024 – We are no longer active on Reddit.com. Last month Reddit began preventing anonymous logins by blocking Tor, requiring Google and other things that have prevented us from logging into our account (which was /u/mimprisons). Anything posted to that account after May 2024 is not from us, and even old posts may be altered. If you try to contact us via Reddit we will not receive your message. For over 11 years Reddit served as a popular site for anonymous discussion of communism. These restrictions will hamper our online recruitment, and will force us to put energies elsewhere. We appreciate those that share our website with others on reddit or elsewhere.

This also means that /r/mao_internationalist is now abandoned, and /r/maoism101 may or may not continue on without us. By Reddit’s new policies, inactive subreddits will be regularly purged from the site.

After our first suspension from Reddit six years ago, we discussed the pluses and minuses of reddit as a centralized platform. As many have noted, they are becoming a publicly listed corporation, which means they want to clean up house and make thinks more monetizeable for shareholders. Far from the vision of some of Reddit’s founders.

Since that statement 6 years ago, we have established numerous other means of communication that are encrypted and decentralized. While none are public, we may make other accounts public in the future, especially if there are issues with email again.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
10 May 2024
PG-13

Spoilers

A main theme throughout both series of Planet of the Apes movies is the question of whether Apes differ from so-called “humyn nature.” In the first series (produced 1968-1972) especially, humyn nature is blamed for the hubris of nuclear weapons that brings humyns’ downfall. In this latest movie of the new series (produced 2011-2024), apes have been setback in this search for truth, but perhaps this can be explained by the very existence of class struggle that they share with humyns.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), the fourth film in the modern Planet of the Apes film series, is the first to take us into the future a few generations after the events that led apes to become competitors with humyns for dominating planet Earth. In it we see glimpses of the emergence of class society, in the form of slavery. But it is a slave society that is shaped by a relationship to the formerly dominant humyns that still reflects a colonial relationship in many ways.

The Eagle Clan, who are the center of the film, live in a primitive clan society, with elders who set the laws that are taught to the young and passed down via tradition. Later in the film, we encounter a larger ape society that is a kingdom led by King Proximus, that has absorbed many clans and uses them as slaves. It is not clear that the slaves produce material wealth for the slavemaster class of the kingdom, as the film only shows them working to break into an old humyn military bunker to extract the technology. But someone must be producing the food, tools and weapons for the soldiers who run the kingdom.

Proximus claims to be the new Caesar. Caesar was the founder and leader of the apes in the first three movies, and was also a king figure. But Caesar was a benevolent leader who fought and worked alongside the others. A virus gave Caesar super-ape intelligence to lead the apes to liberation from humyn society.

Within 10 years of the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Caesar had already begun to learn that apes have the same tendencies as humyns as he had to ally with a humyn to combat a rogue ape attempting to usurp eir control of ape city to wage war on humyns.

We previously discussed the themes of integrationism in the newer series, in contrast to the older series that takes a more scientific approach to uniting humyns and apes through struggle and re-education. While the inability of apes to build a a lasting harmonious society may appear pessimistic, we’d say it is realistic; accurately reflecting the myth of humyn or ape nature despite the producers’ intentions.

The original series (produced 1968-1972) ends with a humyn ally remarking that the apes have finally become humyn after the first ape murder of another ape. This story line is framed more as a biblical original sin story than class struggle. But in both series the first ape-on-ape murder occurs because of the struggle between the apes who want to wage war to annihilate all humyns and those who do not. The question the producers seem to be asking is do apes have a war-like nature like humyns supposedly do. Despite the revolutionary themes of the first series, it largely reinforces this concept of humyn nature.

When we criticize the concept of humyn/ape nature, we are not criticizing the “natural” we are criticizing the metaphysical view of an unchanging phenomenon. In other words, “natural” itself is a myth in many ways, in other ways “natural” could be dialectical materialism and the scientific method that explains the world around us. As dialectical materialists we understand all things to be in a constant state of change motivated by the contradictions within that thing; the class struggle in society being the prime example of this in Marxist thought.

Observed by humyns in our reality, chimpanzees and gorillas have one leader who is a male silverback. While bonobos have an alpha male role as well, the alpha female plays the more determinate role. Interestingly, the king Proximus is a male bonobo. Meanwhile orangutans in real life tend to be more solitary, which is reflected in this film with Racka being a loner and no other orangutans being part of Proximus’s kingdom. As we know, and as Engels lays out in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, humyns have gone through various social structures; from more collective matriarchal societies to the more modern hierarchical patriarchal societies, and these structures have changed to adapt to changing modes of production.

In our world, we suspect humyn societies have changed more over the last ten thousand years than other great apes, because their relationship to the rest of the natural world has changed more through gaining knowledge and technology. Therefore in the new series of movies we would expect apes to go through a very similar evolution of hierarchies and class society as humyns did as they change their relationship to the production of their material needs. This is reflected in the kingdom that operates as a primitive system of slavery, the earliest class system of humyns as well.

However, the evolution of ape society is colored by the existence of a previous, advanced humyn society. Learning from humyn books and accessing humyn armories full of technology are ways that Proximus attempts to make a leap in ape knowledge and technology. As ey does this, Proximus maintains a line that humyns cannot be trusted, and apes must work together, even though this is applied cynically as ey is shown to happily sacrifice the lives of many apes in eir own attempts at power through humyn technology.

The main character in Kingdom is Noa, a member of the Eagle Clan, whose father was a master of training eagles. Noa learns about Caesar for the first time from the last true follower of Caesar after the rest of the Eagle Clan has been captured by Proximus. Before this, Noa had no knowledge of the history of humyns or apes; perhaps because of eir age. But Noa also states that eir elders did not want to know such things and remained ignorant on purpose through isolation.

The major transformation that Noa makes is to reject the idea that law is handed down from some higher power. Ey does this overtly by rejecting the laws of the king, and more subtly by pursuing knowledge eir elders forbid. This is the transformation of thought that humyn society went through during its transition to capitalism, when liberalism, plurality, democracy and the pursuit of scientific knowledge rose to replace ways of thought that were more stagnant, based more in idealism and following a god-king. So we see Noa make a shift towards materialism, that we expect will transform the Eagle Clan as it rebuilds its village. But Noa’s understanding of ape nature at the end of the movie still seems behind that of Caesar’s, generations ago. We see this type of pre-scientific thinking among our comrades today who believe the white man is literally the devil and the Black man/humyn is god. Like Noa, they’re on the right side, but are guided by idealist thinking that can easily lead them astray. Of course, we all struggle with idealism and subjectivism, which might be considered part of the “nature” of beings that can reason with limited knowledge and perspective. Part of the power of the vanguard party, as layed out by Lenin, is its ability to produce a more scientific approach to social change by pooling experience and knowledge production at group level for a whole class.

In our review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) we compare the Caesar loyalists to the Gang of Four in China, who were those in the leadership who both understood and represented the Maoist line after Mao’s death. The Orangutan, Raka, would be like a young persyn in China today who has deeply studied Mao and Chinese history but has no real experience in building socialism and no one to help em put it into practice. Proximus might be compared to the revisionists in power in China, exploiting the people while trying to strengthen China against the U.$. imperialists all in the name of “Marxism” (or “Caesar”).

The problem that Noa faces in determining what the right path is, and what Caesar was really about, becomes a question of trust and judging what is morally right. In contrast, we can judge the correct Maoist path by studying history, and putting science into practice. While Noa’s path in this movie echoes Caesar’s in the previous one, this is only because they both tried to help their own people. While serving the people is part of the communist road, we must be more than do-gooders to end oppression, we must have a scientific understanding of society, what forces are at play within it, how it is changing and how we can shape that change.

In practice it seems that Noa may have acted against the interests of Apes overall by eir alliance with the humyn, Mae. Another sequel will probably reveal this. This is where the colonial parallels come in. Mae is part of a humyn society that is no longer dominant, but still possesses historical knowledge and technology that gives them a great advantage. The Eagle Clan parallels many primitive groups in humyn history that have encountered colonialists and allied with them against other known enemies, perhaps seeing the colonialists as friends and allies, before being subjugated by them in turn. In this way Proximus proves more correct in eir distrust of the humyns and calls for ape unity, despite coming from an exploiter class perspective.

This is why in a United Front the proletariat needs its own party to represent our class, and to act independently of other classes. It must be a party based on science, that can see all sides of the situation. At this slave stage of ape society there is no such leadership available and therefore no basis for forming principled alliances with either the humyns or the exploiter class of apes.

The movie ends with Noa asking Mae if humyns and apes can ever live together in trust. The ending hints that such a future is far off to say the least. A theme that was more prominent in the original series is the political question of if the oppressed rise up against white Amerika, will they wipe out white Amerika or live harmoniously side-by-side. In the original series, we see many years after the ape revolution that such a reality is still in the works. There is still distrust, as some war-mongering humyns still exist in the city, and many apes remember the past oppression by humyns. While we draw some analogies above about the latest movie, there are no real revolutionary story lines like the original series, which showed the joint dictatorship of other great apes over humyns and discussed the need for a long period of transforming society and its citizens to build the trust necessary for peaceful coexistence. Of course, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not just about trust building, it is about continuing the class struggle to eliminate all class differences – the internal contradictions of society that lead to oppressive relationships between groups. That is the only basis upon which a true communist society can be built. Something none of the Planet of the Apes movies have brought us to yet.

<sup>Notes:
1. Wiawimawo, August 2011, Prison Themes Central to New Planet of the Apes Story, Under Lock & Key Issue 23.
2. Wiawimawo, July 2014, Maoist Movie Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Under Lock & Key Issue 40.
3. Wiawimawo, July 2017, War for All of Apekind Trumps Revenge, Under Lock & Key Issue 58</sup>