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.
A month ago we sent out a batch of mail to participants in the
MIM(Prisons) introductory study group. It was the first mailing of the
new session and included a reading assignment and some study questions.
We got a lot of denials of this mail from Florida prisons, in particular
at Hamilton Correctional Institution where all new participants had
their mail returned with an Unauthorized Mail Return Receipt citing
reasons that included: “Threat to security, order or rehab objectives,
or to safety of any person. Depicts, describes or encourages activities
which may lead to the use of physical violence or group disruption.
Encourages commission of criminal acts.” In fact one of these people was
also sent an Unconfirmed Mail Form that just listed the letters we had
sent em recently, and this letter was also sent back to us, citing these
same reasons! Clearly the mail room at Hamilton CI isn’t even bothering
to read the letters from MIM(Prisons) before returning them to us.
In response to this censorship we sent all these folks a copy of our six
page guide to fighting
censorship. This document contains legal and administrative tips for
appealing unjust denial of mail. Immediately 17 envelopes were returned
to us (we anticipate the remainder will be returned soon), with another
“Unauthorized Mail Return Receipt” from the mailroom staff indicating
this letter was denied because:
“Otherwise presents a threat to the security, order, or rehabilitative
objectives of the Correctional system, or to the safety of any person”
“Depicts, describes or encourages activities which may lead to the use
of physical violence or group disruption”
“Encourages or instructs in the commission of criminal activity”
The letter in question contains legal citations and administrative
policy appeal guidelines. This subject matter is clearly not related to
violence, security or safety of a prison. There is nothing in this
letter that could remotely be construed to depict or encourage violence
or group disruption. And it certainly has nothing encouraging or
instructing commission of crimes. We have sent an appeal to the Warden
of Hamilton but aren’t optimistic as similar incidents in Florida have
just run into brick walls of silence or denials of our claims without
reason.
We need a lawyer to help take on this fight in Florida, but so far no
law firms have been willing to take up this important case. We do have
some comrades who are very savvy with the law fighting this censorship,
but it’s very difficult to coordinate our work when none of our mail can
even get in to these activists.
Cases like this should outrage even those who believe in Amerika as a
just society. It is obvious that there is no justice in the denial of
educational material and legal resources to prisoners. And this sort of
action exposes clearly the lie of rehabilitation that the system
pretends to support. People with access to the internet can browse these
and other censorship cases on our website at
www.prisoncensorship.info/data
Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead Kersplebedeb,
2015
Available for $20 + shipping/handling from: kersplebedeb
CP 63560, CCCP Van Horne Montreal, Quebec Canada H3W 3H8
As anti-imperialists and prison activists, we can recommend Ed Mead’s
recent autobiography as a useful read. There are a couple
inconsistencies with the form and the line promoted in the book,
however. While Mead critiques anarchism and reformism in the book, at
the end is a list of a number of organizations that struggle for
prisoners’ rights, and they are all reformist/mass organizations with a
couple anarchist groups thrown in. Mead stresses that he does not
believe communists should hide their beliefs. Yet it is odd that he
finds no communist prison support groups to be worthy of mention.
Moreso, it seems that for much of Mead’s life ey couldn’t find a
communist organization to be a part of and support.
We also must question the form of an autobiography. Our culture promotes
the idea of writing one’s own story. While this author has been told to
write an autobiography multiple times, having lived much less of my life
than Ed Mead, i don’t plan to ever do so. I hope that if i do live as
long as Mead i’m too busy fulfilling my tasks in a communist cadre org
(or hopefully state by then) to spend a bunch of time writing about
myself. Certainly there is some value in terms of the building of humyn
knowledge of documenting the conditions of the time and places that Mead
experienced. But it does not seem a high priority for communists. It was
probably for this reason that i found the first chapters of the book
tiring to read. I didn’t really need to know all about Mead’s family
growing up to learn some lessons about how to organize with prisoners
effectively. But perhaps that was my own problem as that was never a
stated purpose of this book.
The foremost stated purpose of the book by Mead is to “extend an
invitation to sections of the lumpenproletariat to join the
international working class.” While not a bad goal, it does hint at
differences we have with Mead and other communists within California
Prison Focus (CPF) regarding whether nation or class is the principal
contradiction. This has led to divisions in our work to shut down
Security Housing Units in California. In the 2000s, MIM was part of the
United
Front to Abolish the SHU, which was dominated by parties and
organizations struggling for national liberation. While CPF was
nominally a member, their difference on this issue led to a lack of
working together. This was despite the fact that the United Front
explicitly allowed for organizational independence in terms of political
line outside of our agreement on shutting down the SHU. In the 2010s,
CPF was part of the leadership that created the Prisoner Hunger Strike
Solidarity coalition. Mead was perhaps the only one who tried to include
MIM(Prisons) in that effort. But the coalition structure forced us to
the outside this time as MIM(Prisons) refused to subsume our politics to
the coalition.
While recognizing whites as obviously having advantages over others,
Mead does believe there is a significant white nation working class in
this country. While citing Mao favorably multiple times, Mead points out
Mao’s failure to put class first as a point of disagreement.(p. 164)
Mead’s line is also reflected in an off-hand comment saying Stalin was
wrong to condemn the German social-democrats as social-fascists. We
think Stalin and the Comintern correctly saw the class nature and
interest of the social democrats as being labor aristocracy and petty
bourgeois, who wavered towards fascism, paving its way to power.(1)
Mead talks about “white skin privilege” and uses it as an agitational
point to push people to join the class war while discussing eir
participation in the militant George Jackson Brigade. Mead admits that
eir decision to use revolutionary violence was a direct result of the
lack of mass support for abused prisoners.(p. 181) At the same time ey
mentions other groups at the time doing similar things and believing
that small bands carrying out armed struggle would spread across the
country. Mead does not conclude anywhere in the book that it was a
mistake to take up this line even though comrades died, while the rest
spent the prime of their lives in prison. As we discussed in a recent
article on the Black
Panthers, it was both common and understandable to conclude that
armed struggle would become a reality in the United $tates at that
time.(2) Yet, not only are conditions less advanced today, history also
proved that armed struggle in the United $tates was premature in the
conditions of 1966-72.
From what we know about Mead in real life and from reading the book, it
is clear that ey was good at and focused on uniting all who could be
united. And while we say it is better for communists to work within
cadre organizations than mass organizations, as Mead did much of eir
life, ey certainly did so in a principled way according to the book. And
most of those principles are ones that we too support.
As mentioned, i came to this book in search of some lessons on
anti-imperialist organizing in prisons. And while some of the stories
are very abbreviated, the book is not short on examples of Mead’s
efforts, pitfalls and successes. Mead talks about the importance of
determining the principal contradiction at each prison ey organized in.
While in most cases ey sait it was related to nation, ey said it was
related to sexism in Walla Walla, which led to the formation of
Men
Against Sexism.(3) Interestingly, Mead takes the position that while
nation is principal inside prisons, it does not make sense to build a
Black-only prison movement (at least on a large scale).(p. 280) We are
sympathetic to this view and spend a lot of time calling for unity
between nationalities in prison, while promoting national liberation as
a strategy for the oppressed nations overall. A couple of good lessons
are well-put in Mead’s own words:
“…if the immediate demands address prisoners’ rights and living
conditions, then the backwards elements will either be won over or
neutralized by the growing consciousness of the rest of the
population.”(p. 305) This was one of the most inspiring parts of Mead’s
story. In a situation where the prison system was dominated by one
lumpen organization (LO) that was guided by self-interest, Mead had the
revolutionary fearlessness to organize those victimized by the LO to
build a mass movement that the whole population came to identify with.
“An organization that depends upon one person for direction is doomed to
fail; each level of cadre should be able to take the place of a fallen
or transferred comrade, even if that person occupies a leadership
position.”(p. 306) Mead learned this from experience, both in situations
where ey was that sole leader and others where ey was surrounded by a
dedicated cadre. Inspiring stories include the first strike ever at
McNeil Island, which had 100% participation.(p. 139) While many of the
challenges of prison organizing are still the same decades later, you’ll
find many other inspiring stories in this book as well. It demonstrates
both the importance of the prison movement as part of the overall
movement for liberation and against imperialism, while showing the
limitations of a prison movement that is not complemented by strong
movements on the outside. As the current struggle focused on police
murders continues to ferment, we work to build a prison movement, and
they will feed each other as we move towards the next revolutionary
period in history.
Recently an exposé of the private prison Winn Correctional Center in
Winnfield, Lousiana, run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA),
was published in Mother Jones.(1) The article explains conditions
which are completely inhumane, and many of the atrocities are linked to
the CCA’s drive for profit.
In the section about the mailroom, the author Shane Bauer mentions
Under Lock & Key:
“Around the mail room, there are bulletins posted of things to look out
for: an anti-imperialist newsletter called Under Lock and Key, an
issue of Forbes that comes with a miniature wireless internet
router, a CD from a Chicano gangster rapper with a track titled ‘Death
on a CO.’”
Curiously, Winn mailroom staff consider political education just as
dangerous to the prison environment as electronics and death threats.
This blatant censorship is not unique to this facility, and is not
unique to private prisons. There are many state-run facilities all
across the country where we know our mail is censored in a similar
manner. Unfortunately we don’t have an investigative reporter inside,
and, only being able to communicate with our comrades through the mail,
we are not able to combat this censorship or expose it. We post known
censorship incidents on
our website, but the reality is that we will never know what happens
to approximately two-thirds of the mail we send in.
In reading the exposé, one might start to believe this private prison is
different from public prisons. That’s one of the major downsides of this
piece: it leaves the reader wondering, assuming that state-run
facilities are inherently better. Yet we post many articles from our
correspondents inside showing that state-run facilities can be just as
bad as Winn Correctional Center: lack of appropriate medical care
leading to long-term health problems, lack of programming, arbitrary
lockdowns, excessive use of force, lack of discretion in hiring
personnel, and the list goes on.
To campaign against private prisons is to assert that state-run prisons
are acceptable. It legitimizes the United $tates government as an
impartial arbiter. It says that it isn’t the prison that’s bad, but
instead just the aspect of private ownership. Yet MIM(Prisons) sees the
prison struggle in the United $tates as one against social control
generally – whether private or state-run.
We thank Shane Bauer for writing this horrific piece for the benefit of
our fight against inhumane prison conditions. And we must look at the
bigger picture, how state-run facilities fit in, and how the prison
reform movement interacts with the struggle for self-determination of
the internal semi-colonies and the liberation of the Third World from
imperialism’s death grip. Certainly imprisonment for profit must be
abolished. But this phenomena could only develop inside a capitalist
economy. If not this atrocity of capitalism, then there will be another
one, and there certainly are. If our struggle is limited to simply
abolishing private ownership of prisons, we will have wasted much time
and energy that could have been spent on a broader struggle.(2)
This week U.$. military officials announced that transgender people are
welcome to serve openly as warriors for imperialism and Amerikkkan world
domination. They made a plan that will roll out over the next year,
including financial support for medical treatment such as surgeries,
therapy, and hormones.
Some trans activists, who recognize why this announcement is
“problematic” for people in the oppressed nations, will assert that
“they’ll co-opt anything.” Which is true, to an extent. The U.$.
government in all its forms will try to control any aspect of our
society that can be controlled. Which underlines the point that identity
politics is not threatening to U.$. militarism and world
domination, because it can be controlled just by mere acceptance.
Does the struggle for transgender acceptance (or any gender struggle),
distinct from revolutionary organizing, undermine capitalism itself?
No. And this announcement proves it.
The U.$. government can’t co-opt genuine anti-imperialist organizing,
try as it might with front organizations and rewriting of history. It
can’t actually integrate the self-determination of nations into
colonialism, because they are opposite aspects of a worldwide
contradiction. They can’t resolve the oppression and desperation of
people in the Third World, because they depend on that oppression for
its base function of exploitation, to keep people in the United $tates
wealthy and happy.
If your struggle can be integrated into the U.$. military, then it shows
which side your struggle is truly on. Are you a revolutionary
internationalist? Or just hoping for a better life here in Amerikkka?
Everyone who opposes gender oppression, militarism, and genocide, should
do everything in their power to organize against the U.$.
military, and against capitalism, as that’s the only way we’re going to
get to a world without gender oppression for everyone.
Prisoners in Wisconsin have been on hunger strike since 10 June 2016 to
protest long-term confinement in control units in that state.
As
we reported in April, the Wisconsin DOC has been playing games with
their policies that determine the length of solitary confinement
sentences, but no real change has been enacted and prisoners in
Wisconsin continue to be locked away for months and even years in
isolation conditions that amount to torture.(1) The protesters are
demanding changes to the segregation policies of the WI DOC.
Reports suggest that the administration came down hard on suspected
participants in the hunger strike, prior to June 10. In spite of this
repression a number of protesters remained strong and undertook the
strike. After seven days the prison began force feeding the activists, a
clear attempt to torture them out of their resolve, because a seven day
fast is not enough to seriously endanger most humyns. Further, force
feeding comes with some serious health risks and we know the DOC medical
services are already not working in the interests of the prisoners. As
of June 29 six people were still refusing food.
A USW comrade reported June 27:
“As of now they started force feeding us and using it as an instrument
of torture and punishment. However, because I refuse to let them abuse
me and torture me like that without fighting back, I’ve suspended mine
until I can get a restraining order to prevent such. I let them do it
one time and they forced it up my nose so hard that when the membrane of
the nasal seal popped it sent a bubble through my head and my head still
hurts. I can’t let the pigs beat me for free like that, but the comrades
in Waupun are enduring it and a few plan to join next month.”
We continue to stand with the protesters risking their lives to force
the WI DOC to end their long-term solitary confinement system. These
courageous activists are fighting against a system that has nothing to
do with security and is only used for social control. People who
peacefully protest, such as these hunger strikers, are the most likely
to end up spending years in isolation, conditions that are known to
cause serious physical and mental health problems. The use of control
units in so many Amerikkkan prisons across the country is just further
demonstration that the criminal injustice system is not designed for
rehabilitation; its purpose is to control society.
The strikers have asked people on the outside for help:
Call Governor Scott Walker’s office and tell em to reform the long-term
solitary confinement units in the Wisconsin DOC and to stop the secret
Asklepieion program at once. The number to call is 608-266-1212.
Call the WI DOC central office and demand that all 6 humanitarian
demands for this hunger strike be met and demand an explanation as to
why they are operating a torture program. The number to call is
608-240-5000.
Call any media outlets and demand that they do an independent
investigation on the secret Asklepieion program operating at Columbia
Correctional Institution (CCI), and report on the hunger strike.
Call the FBI building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and demand that they
investigate the secret Asklepieion torture program being run at CCI. The
phone number to call is 414-276-4684.
Call Columbia Correctional Institution and tell them you are aware of
their secret torture program. Harass them! 608-742-9100.
Join in on the hunger strike and post it on the net. Convince others to
join as well.
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies
to share! For more info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Commissioner of Corrections MDOC Central Office 633 North State
Street Jackson, MS 39202-3097
Corrections Investigation Division 633 N. State st Jackson, MS
39202
USDOJ Civil Rights Division 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20530
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Uhuru of the Black Riders Liberation Party - Prison Chapter: 2016
marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the original Black Panther
Party for Self-Defense (BPP) by Dr. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. This
year also marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Black Riders
Liberation Party, the New Generation Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense, under the leadership of General T.A.C.O. (Taking All
Capitalists Out).
The original BPP arose out of an immediate need to organize and defend
the New Afrikan (Black) nation against vicious pig brutality that was
taking place during the 1960s and 70s; while at the same time teaching
and showing us through practice how to liberate ourselves from the death
grip of Amerikkkan-style oppression, colonialism and genocide through
its various Serve the People programs.
The Black Riders Liberation Party (BRLP) came about in 1996 when former
Bloods and Crips came together in peace and unity while at the Youth
Training School (a youth gang prison) in Los Angeles. The BRLP, which
follows the historic example set by the original BPP, is a true United
Lumpen Front against pig brutality, capitalism, and all its systems of
oppression.
The political line of the BRLP, as taught by our General, is
Revolutionary Afrikan Inter-communalism, which is an upgraded version of
Huey’s Revolutionary Intercommunalism developed later in the party.
Revolutionary Afrikan Intercommunalism is a form of Pan-Afrikanism and
socialism. This line allows us to link the struggles of New Afrikans
here in the Empire with Afrikans on the continent and in the diaspora.
Thus Revolutionary Afrikan Intercommunalism is, in essence,
revolutionary internationalism as it guides us towards building a United
Front with Afrikan people abroad to overthrow capitalist oppression here
in the United $tates and imperialism around the globe.
Our Black Commune Program is an upgraded version of the original BPP’s
Ten-Point Platform and Program, which includes the demand for treatment
for AIDS victims and an end to white capitalists smuggling drugs into
our communities. [The Black Commune Program also adds a point on
ecological destruction as it relates to the oppressed. -MIM(Prisons)]
Mao recognized, as did Che, that every revolutionary organization should
have its own political organ – a newspaper – to counter the
psychological warfare campaign waged by the enemy through corporate
media, and to inform, educate and organize the people. Like the original
BPP newspaper, The Black Panther, the BRLP established its own
political organ, The Afrikan Intercommunal News Service, and took
it a step further by creating the “Panther Power Radio” station to
“discuss topics relative to armed self-defense against pig police
terrorism and the corrupt prison-industrial complex,” among other
topics.
Like the original BPP, the BRLP have actual Serve the People programs.
When Huey would come across other Black radical (mostly cultural
nationalist) organizations, he would often ask them what kind of
programs they had to serve the needs of the people because he understood
that revolution is not an act, but a process, and that most oppressed
people learn from seeing and doing (actual experience). The BRLP’s
programs consist of our Watch-A-Pig Program, Kourt Watch Program, George
Jackson Freedom After-school Program, Squeeze the Slumlord project, BOSS
Black-on-Black violence prevention and intervention program, gang truce
football games, and Health Organizing Project, to name just a few. These
lumpen tribal elements consciously eschew lumpen-on-lumpen reactionary
violence and become revolutionaries and true servants of the people!
Finally, the BRLP continues the example set by the original BPP by
actively building alliances and coalitions with other
radical/revolutionary organizations. George Jackson stated that “unitary
conduct implies a ‘search’ for those elements in our present situation
which can become the basis for joint action.” (1) In keeping with this
view and the BPP vision of a United Front Against Fascism, in 2012 the
BRLP launched the Intercommunal Solidarity Committee as a mechanism for
building a United Front across ideological, religious, national and
ethnic/racial lines.
While I recognize that the white/euro-Amerikkkan nation in the United
$tates is not an oppressed nation, but in fact represents a “privileged”
class that benefits from the oppression and exploitation of the urban
lumpen class here in the United $tates and Third World people, there
exist a “dynamic sector” of radical, anti-racist, anti-imperialist white
allies willing to commit “class suicide” and aid oppressed and exploited
people in our national liberation struggles. And on that note I say
“Black Power” and “All Power to the People.”
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: For this issue of Under
Lock & Key we received letters attempting to feature the BRLP
(like this one) as well as to critique them. For years, MIM(Prisons) and
the readers of ULK have been watching this group with interest.
We made a few attempts to dialogue directly with them, but the most
concerted effort happened to coincide with the release of
an
attack on us by Turning the Tide, a newsletter that has done
a lot to popularize the work of the BRLP. No direct dialogue occurred.
We thank this BRLP comrade for the article above. The following is a
response not directly to the above, but to the many statements that we
have come across by the BRLP and what we’ve seen of their work on the
streets.
On the surface the BRLP does have a lot similarities to the original
BPP. It models its platform after the BPPs 10 point platform, which was
modeled after Malcolm X’s. The BRLP members don all black as they
confront the police and other state actors and racist forces. They speak
to the poor inner-city youth and came out of lumpen street
organizations. They have worked to build a number of Serve the People
programs. And they have inspired a cadre of young New Afrikans across
the gender line. In order to see the differences between MIM, the BRLP,
and other organizations claiming the Panther legacy today, we need to
look more deeply at the different phases of the Black Panther Party and
how their political line changed.
APSP, AAPRP, NBPP
The BRLP regularly presents itself with the tagline, “the New Generation
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.” And it is not the first, or the
only organization, to claim this mantel. The African Peoples’ Socialist
Party (APSP) was perhaps the first, having worked with Huey P. Newton
himself at the end of his life. That is why in discussing the Panther
legacy, we need to specify exactly what legacy that is. For MIM, the
period of 1966 to 1969 represented the Maoist phase of the BPP, and
therefore the period we hold up as an example to follow and build on.
Since the time that Huey was alive, the APSP has shifted focus into
building an African Socialist International in the Third World. We see
this as paralleling some of the incipient errors in the BRLP and the
NABPP that we discuss below.
While the APSP goes back to the 1980s, we can trace another contemporary
organization, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, to the
1960s.(1) The brain-child of Ghanan President Kwame Nkrumah, the AAPRP
in the United $tates was led by Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely
Carmichael. The AAPRP came to embody much of the cultural and spiritual
tendencies that the Panthers rejected. The BPP built on the Black Power
and draft resistance movements that Carmichael was key in developing
while leading the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).(2)
Carmichael left SNCC, joining the BPP for a time, and tried to unite the
two groups. But the Panthers later split with SNCC because of SNCC’s
rejection of alliances with white revolutionaries, their promotion of
pan-Afrikanism and Black capitalism. Carmichael’s allies were purged
from the BPP for being a “bunch of cultural nationalist fools” trying
“to undermine the people’s revolution…” “talking about some madness he
called Pan-Africanism.”(3)
In the 1990s, we saw a surge in Black Panther revivalism. MIM played a
role in this, being the first to digitize many articles from The
Black Panther newspaper for the internet and promoting their legacy
in fliers and public events. MIM did not seem to have any awareness of
the Black Riders Liberation Party at this time. There was a short-lived
Ghetto Liberation Party within MIM that attempted to follow in Panther
footsteps. Then the New Black Panther Party began to display Panther
regalia at public rallies in different cities. While initially
optimistic, MIM later printed a critique of the NBPP for its promotion
of Black capitalism and mysticism, via its close connection to the
Nation of Islam.(4) Later the NBPP became a darling of Fox News, helping
them to distort the true legacy of the BPP. Last year the NBPP further
alienated themselves by brutalizing former Black Panther Dhoruba bin
Wahad and others from the Nation of Gods and Earths and the Free the
People Movement. While there is little doubt that the NBPP continues to
recruit well-intentioned New Afrikans who want to build a vanguard for
the nation, it is evident that the leadership was encapsulated by the
state long ago.
Huey’s Intercommunalism
Readers of Under Lock & Key will certainly be familiar with
the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, which was originally an independent
prison chapter of the NBPP. Their promotion of Maoism and New Afrikan
nationalism was refreshing, but they quickly sided with Mao and the
Progressive Labor Party against the BPP and more extreme SNCC lines on
the white oppressor nation of Amerikkka. They went on to reject the
nationalist goals of the BPP, embracing Huey’s theory of
intercommunalism. The NABPP and the BRLP both embrace forms of
“intercommunalism” as leading concepts in their ideological foundations.
And while we disagree with both of them, there are many differences
between them as well. This is not too surprising as the theory was never
very coherent and really marked Newton’s departure from the original
Maoist line of the Party. As a student of David Hilliard, former BPP
Chief of Staff, pointed out around 2005, Hilliard used intercommunalism
as a way to avoid ever mentioning communism in a semester-long class on
the BPP.(5) In the early 1970s, Huey seemed to be using
“intercommunalism” in an attempt to address changing conditions in the
United $tates and confusion caused by the failure of international
forces to combat revisionism in many cases.(6)
Probably the most important implication of Huey’s new line was that he
rejected the idea that nations could liberate themselves under
imperialism. In other words he said Stalin’s promotion of building
socialism in one country was no longer valid, and Trotsky’s theory of
permanent revolution was now true. This was in 1970, when China had just
developed socialism to the highest form we’ve seen to date through the
struggles of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which also began
50 years ago this year. Huey P. Newton’s visit to China in 1971 was
sandwiched by visits from war criminal Henry Kissinger and U.$.
President Richard Nixon. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, who would go on to
foster normalized relations with the U.$. imperialists, stated that
China was ready to negotiate or fight the United $tates in 1971.(7) The
Panther visit was a signal of their development of the second option.
But after 1971, Chinese support for the Panthers dissipated as
negotiations with the imperialists developed.
A bigger problem with Huey’s intercommunalism was how do we address the
Amerikkkan oppressor nation when ey claims there are no more states,
there are no more nations? In eir “speech at Boston College” in 1970 ey
specifically refers to Eldridge Cleaver’s
“On
the Ideology of the Black Panther Party” in order to depart from it.
Newton rejects the analysis of the Black nation as a colony of Amerikkka
that must be liberated. That Cleaver essay from 1969 has great unity
with MIM line and is where we depart with the NABPP and BRLP who uphold
the 1970-1 intercommunalism line of Huey’s.(8)
Black Riders and NABPP Interpret Intercommunalism
To take a closer look at the BRLP itself, let us start with General
T.A.C.O.’s essay “African Intercommunalism I.” Tom Big Warrior of the
NABPP camp has already written a review of it, which makes a number of
critiques that we agree with. He calls out the BRLP for accepting “race”
as a real framework to analyze society, yet the NABPP line also rejects
nation based on Huey’s intercommunalism. At times, the NABPP and BRLP
still use the term nation and colony to refer to New Afrika. This seems
contradictory in both cases. Tom Big Warrior is also very critical of
the BRLP’s claim to update Huey’s theory by adding African cultural and
spiritual elements to it. This is something the Panthers very adamantly
fought against, learning from Fanon who wrote in Wretched of the
Earth, one of the Panthers’ favorite books: “The desire to attach
oneself to tradition or bring abandoned traditions to life again does
not only mean going against the current of history but also opposing
one’s own people”.(9) This revision of intercommunalism is one sign of
the BRLPs conservatism relative to the original BPP who worked to create
the new man/womyn, new revolutionary culture and ultimately a new
society in the spirit of Mao and Che.
The NABPP is really the more consistent proponent of “revolutionary
intercommunalism.” In their analysis a worldwide revolution must occur
to overthrow U.$. imperialism. This differs from the MIM view in that we
see the periphery peeling off from imperialism little-by-little,
weakening the imperialist countries, until the oppressed are strong
enough to impose some kind of international dictatorship of the
proletariat of the oppressed nations over the oppressor nations. The
NABPP says we “must cast off nationalism and embrace a globalized
revolutionary proletarian world view.”(10) They propose “building a
global United Panther Movement.” These are not really new ideas,
reflecting a new reality as they present it. These are the ideas of
Trotsky, and at times of most of the Bolsheviks leading up to the
Russian revolution.
Even stranger is the BRLP suggestion that, “once we overthrow the
Amerikkkan ruling class, there will be a critical need to still liberate
Africa.”(11) The idea that the imperialists would somehow be overthrown
before the neo-colonial puppets of the Third World is completely
backwards. Like the APSP, the NABPP and the BRLP seem to echo this idea
of a New Afrikan vanguard of the African or World revolution.
MIM(Prisons) disagrees with all these parties in that we see New Afrika
as being closer to Amerika in its relation to the Third World, despite
its position as a semi-colony within the United $tates.(12)
The NABPP claims that “Huey was right! Not a single national liberation
struggle produced a free and independent state.”(13) And they use this
“fact” to justify support for “Revolutionary Intercommunalism.” Yet this
new theory has not proven effective in any real world revolutions,
whereas the national liberation struggle in China succeeded in building
the most advanced socialist system known to history. Even the Panthers
saw steep declines in their own success after the shift towards
intercommunalism. So where is the practice to back up this theory?
We also warn our readers that both the NABPP and BRLP make some
outlandishly false statistical claims in order to back up their
positions. For example, the NABPP tries to validate Huey’s predictions
by stating, “rapid advances in technology and automation over the past
several decades have caused the ranks of the unemployed to grow
exponentially.”(13) It is not clear if they are speaking globally or
within the United $tates. But neither have consistent upward trends in
unemployment, and certainly not exponential trends! Meanwhile, in an
essay on the crisis of generational divides and tribal warfare in New
Afrika the BRLP claims that the latter “has caused more deaths in just
Los Angeles than all the casualties in the Yankee imperialist Vietnam
war combined!!!”(14) There were somewhere between 1 million and 3
million deaths in the U.$. war against Vietnamese self-determination.
[EDIT: Nick Turse cites Vietnam official statistics closer to 4
million] Los Angeles sees hundreds of deaths from gang shootings in a
year. We must see things as they are, and not distort facts to fit our
propaganda purposes if we hope to be effective in changing the world.
Black Riders
We will conclude with our assessment of the BRLP based on what we have
read and seen from them. While we dissect our disagreements with some of
their higher level analysis above, many of their articles and statements
are quite agreeable, echoing our own analysis. And we are inspired by
their activity focusing on serving and organizing the New Afrikan lumpen
on the streets. In a time when New Afrikan youth are mobilizing against
police brutality in large numbers again, the BRLP is a more radical
force at the forefront of that struggle. Again, much of this work echoes
that of the original BPP, but some of the bigger picture analysis is
missing.
In our interactions with BRLP members we’ve seen them promote anarchism
and the 99% line, saying that most white Amerikkkans are exploited by
capitalism. BRLP, in line with cultural nationalism, stresses the
importance of “race,” disagreeing with Newton who, even in 1972, was
correctly criticizing in the face of rampant neo-colonialism: “If we
define the prime character of the oppression of blacks as racial, then
the situation of economic exploitation of human beings by human being
can be continued if performed by blacks against blacks or blacks against
whites.”(15) Newton says we must unite the oppressed “in eliminating
exploitation and oppression” not fight “racism” as the BRLP and their
comrades in People Against Racist Terror focus on.
This leads us to a difference with the BRLP in the realm of strategy. It
is true that the original BPP got into the limelight with armed
confrontations with the pigs. More importantly, it was serving the
people in doing so. So it is hard to say that the BPP was wrong to do
this. While Huey concluded that it got ahead of the people and alienated
itself from the people, the BRLP seems to disagree by taking on an even
more aggressive front. This has seemingly succeeded in attracting the
ultra-left, some of whom are dedicated warriors, but has already
alienated potential allies. While BRLP’s analysis of the BPPs failure to
separate the underground from the aboveground is valuable, it seems to
imply a need for an underground insurgency at this time. In contrast,
MIM line agrees with Mao that the stage of struggle in the imperialist
countries is one of long legal battles until the imperialists become so
overextended by armed struggles in the periphery that the state begins
to weaken. It is harder to condemn Huey Newton for seeing that as the
situation in the early years of the Panthers, but it is clearly not the
situation today. In that context, engaging in street confrontations with
racists seems to offer more risk than reward in terms of changing the
system.
While the BRLP doesn’t really tackle how these strategic issues may have
affected the success and/or demise of the BPP, it also does not make any
case for how a lack of cultural and spiritual nationalism were a
shortcoming that set back the Panthers. BRLP also spends an inordinate
amount of their limited number of articles building a cult of
persynality around General T.A.C.O. So despite its claims of learning
from the past, we see its analysis of the BPP legacy lacking in both its
critiques and emulations of BPP practices.
While physical training is good, and hand-to-hand combat is a
potentially useful skill for anyone who might get in difficult
situations, there should be no illusions about such things being
strategic questions for the success of revolutionary organizations in
the United $tates today. When your people can all clean their rifle
blind-folded but they don’t even know how to encrypt their email, you’ve
already lost the battle before it’s started.
Finally, the BRLP has tackled the youth vs. adult contradiction head on.
Its analysis of how that plays out in oppressed nations today parallels
our own. And among the O.G. Panthers themselves they have been very
critical as well, and with good cause. It is clear that we will need a
new generation Black Panthers that is formed of and led by the New
Afrikan youth of today. But Huey was known to quote Mao that with the
correct political line will come support and weapons, and as conditions
remain much less revolutionary than the late 1960s, consolidation of
cadre around correct and clear political lines is important preparatory
work for building a new vanguard party in the future.
On the 50th anniversary of the launching of the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution (GPCR) by Mao Zedong, a commemorative concert was
held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It featured music, art and slogans
from the GPCR. A propaganda poster with the slogan, “People of the world
unite to defeat American invaders and their running dogs!” was displayed
on a giant screen. A large choir sang the Sailing the Seas Depends on
the Helmsman as a poster of Mao as the sun was projected on the
screen. Thousands clapped. The lyrics are:
“Sailing seas depends on the helmsman,
Life and growth depends on the sun.
Rain and dew nourish the crops,
Making revolution depends on Mao Zedong Thought. Fish can’t leave
the water, Nor melons leave the vines. The revolutionary
masses can’t do without the Communist party. Mao Zedong Thought is
the sun that forever shines.”
We are under no illusions about the current state capitalist government
in China: they will only hold up Maoism when it serves their political
purposes, which are definitely not serving the people. But this
celebration serves to remind us that the GPCR plays a much more complex
and subtle role in modern Chinese society, compared to the West where it
is merely a symbol of communist extremism that is almost universally
condemned. In China there are also those who condemn “extreme leftist
ideology making waves again,” but there are many who still recognize the
rise of Deng Xiaoping as the end of a great time in China when the
interests of the people guided the government of the largest country on
Earth.
In the United $tates, reverence for the GPCR and support for the battle
against the revisionism that had taken over the Soviet Union after
Stalin’s death was not relegated to a tiny minority of people in the
late 1960s, as it is today. In January 1969, The Black Panther
newspaper reprinted an article from India condemning the revisionism of
the Soviet Union, and it’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. In March 1969,
The Black Panther featured a longer article on the collaboration
between “U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism, the two most ferocious
enemies of the revolutionary people of the world…” In April 1969 the
newspaper said, “China stands as a beacon to all revolutionaries around
the world: the guiding light showing the path to freedom to all of our
brothers in Africa and Asia.” Fifty years later, the GPCR still serves
as that beacon of what is possible when the masses of an oppressed
country are unleashed to guide their destiny and self-determination.
It is no coincidence that the Black Panther Party emerged the same year
as the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China.
1966-1969 was a high tide of revolutionary fervor across the globe. It
may take that kind of tide to raise the revolutionary spirit in the
United $tates again. MIM(Prisons) believes that New Afrikans will once
again play an important role the next time it does, and that it is the
duty of communists today to prepare for that time by continuing the
fight against revisionism, and developming the most correct line among
communist cadre in the internal semi-colonies.
This is a belated final report on the United Struggle from Within(USW)
campaign to
“Reject
the I$raeli Settler State, Support the People of Palestine.” The
initial push was only among a small group of USW leaders, but as word
spread others requested the petition and used it to build public opinion
in their prisons in support of national liberation for Palestine. While
our
initial
summary had only tallied 60 signatures, this was based on the
specificity of the petition to current events at that time. Of course,
the broader campaign is one that has been carried out for decades. One
year after the initialization of this USW petition, comrades in 16
prisons had gathered at least 189 signatures.
A criticism often made of the Black Panther Party (BPP) lies in errors
it made around addressing the patriarchy. Most of these criticisms are
attempts at subreformism, which is the approach of resolving conflict on
an individual or interpersynal level in an attempt to resolve social
problems. But the patriarchy is a system of oppression. It manifests in
interpersynal interactions, but can’t be stopped without addressing the
system of oppression itself. Just by the very fact that the BPP was
organizing for national liberation under a Maoist banner, it was making
more advances toward a world without gender oppression than all of their
pseudo-feminist critics combined.
George Jackson did have some bad gender line in Soledad Brother: The
Prison Letters of George Jackson, which covers the years 1964-1970.
To wimmin searching for their place in an anti-imperialist prison
struggle, the most alienating examples are where Jackson says wimmin
should just “sit, listen to us, and attempt to understand. It is for
them to obey and aid us, not to attempt to think.”(p. 101) Later in the
book after Jackson encounters some revolutionary Black wimmin, ey can’t
help but to sexualize their politics. Much like in our everyday society,
Soledad Brother tells wimmin their role in this struggle is to
shut up or be sexualized. These were not consciously worked out analyses
of gender but instead Jackson’s subjective responses to frustration and
excitement.
A challenge to all revolutionaries is to take an objective approach to
our scientific analysis. This is very difficult. To wimmin struggling
within the national liberation movements, looking at the social and
historical context of these remarks is imperative to overcoming this
alienation from sexist brothers in struggle. Jackson was reared in the
United $tates in the 1940s and 50s, with time spent in youth detention
facilities. Ey entered the hyper-masculine prison environment at the age
of 20. Jackson’s social context was our fucked up patriarchal society,
and is similar to many of our contributors whose scope of perspective is
limited by the conditions of their confinement. Where our sisters need
to not split over subreformism, our brothers also need to work to
overcome their empiricism and subjectivism in how they approach uniting
with wimmin against imperialism and patriarchy.
It was after the publishing of Soledad Brother that Jackson
advanced to be a general and field marshal of the People’s Revolutionary
Army of the Black Panther Party. While Soledad Brother gives more
of a look into the prison experience, in eir later work, Blood In My
Eye (which was published by the BPP posthumously), Jackson lays out
eir most advanced political analysis shortly before ey was murdered by
the state on 21 August 1971. More than an author, Jackson was a great
organizer. Panther and life-long revolutionary Kiilu Nyasha is a
testimony to Jackson’s abilities, indicating that subjectivity around
gender did not prevent him from organizing seriously with wimmin.(1) Of
course, Jackson’s biggest legacy was organizing men in prison. Eir
ability to organize strikes with 100% participation in eir unit serves
as an counterexample to those in California today who say we cannot
unite across “racial” lines. It’s impressive all that Jackson
accomplished in developing eir politics and internationalism, and
organizing prisoners, considering all the barriers Amerikkka put in the
way.
Jackson was a good representative of the BPP’s mass base, and the BPP
was correct in organizing with Jackson and others with backward gender
lines. If the Party hadn’t been dissolved by COINTELPRO we can only
guess at what advances it could have made toward resolving gender
oppression by now. One thing is certain, it would have done a lot more
to combat the patriarchy for the majority of the world’s
inhabitants than First World pseudo-feminism ever has or ever will.