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.
The Butler portrays the life of Cecil Gaines, a butler in the
White House for 34 years, starting in 1957. The movie is a fictionalized
version of the story of Gene Allen’s life. MIM(Prisons) sums up this
movie as propaganda to quell the just anger of the oppressed nation
masses, encouraging them to work within the system for small changes.
The focus of the movie is on the oppression of New Afrikans from the
1950s to the year 2008, dividing its focus between the White House and
the successive Presidents, and the activists in the streets. In the
streets the movie gives special focus to the Freedom Riders and Martin
Luther King Jr. The movie derides the most important political leaders
of the time, barely mentioning Malcolm X, and attempting to portray the
Black Panther Party (BPP) as a brutally violent movement out to kill
whites, just using the community service programs like free breakfast
for school children as a cover.
The heroes of the movie include Gaines’s son, Louis, who participates in
the civil rights and activist movements over the years and eventually
“learns” that the best way forward is to push for change from within,
and runs for Congress. We see his dedication as a Freedom Rider, and
fierce commitment to freedom and justice, as Louis literally puts his
life on the line, enduring brutal beatings, repeated imprisonments, and
constant threat of death. Louis moves on to work with Martin Luther King
Jr. in a highly praised non-violent movement, and then joins the BPP
after King is killed. Louis turns from an articulate and brave youth
into a kid spouting revolutionary platitudes that he doesn’t seem to
understand, making the BPP into a mockery of what it really represented.
The other heroes of the movie are the U.$. Presidents. With the
exception of Nixon, who is portrayed as a drunk, all the other
Presidents are humanized and made to appear appropriately sympathetic
with the civil rights movement. While they all are shown saying things
clearly offensive, racist, and in favor of national oppression, each
President has a moment of redemption. John F. Kennedy tells Gaines that
it is Gaines’s persynal history and the story of his son’s activism that
changed his mind on the need for the civil rights movement. Even Ronald
Reagan is shown secretly sending cash to people who write to him about
their financial problems, and telling Gaines that he’s sometimes worried
that he’s on the wrong side of the civil rights movement. On a positive
note, all of the Presidents were shown as reticent to take any positive
action towards change until the popular movement forced them to act.
This is the reality of any oppressor class.
Gaines does, in the end, come to the realization that real change was
not going to come from the White House, and quits his job to join his
son in activism in the streets. But this action is played up to be as
much an attempt to reconcile his relationship with his son, as a
dedication to activism itself. And the activism seems to end with just
one protest. In the end, both Cecil and Louis celebrate the “victory” of
Obama in the 2008 election as a sign that their battle is finally over.
The Butler does a good job of portraying the Civil Rights
movement of the 1950s and 60s, but only as a minor part of the plot. And
it ultimately suggests that New Afrikans should be satisfied with an
imperialist lackey in the White House as a representation of their
success and equality with whites. It fits into a group of recent movies
that Hollywood has produced, such as Lincoln and
12
Years a Slave, to rewrite Amerikan history to quell the
contradiction between the oppressor nation and the New Afrikan internal
semi-colony.
Tacloban, the Philippines, an island devastated by a recent typhoon,
shows the contrasts between wealth and poverty, and underscores the
reality that “natural” disasters are not natural at all. People in First
World countries have the infrastructure, resources and response systems
in place to save lives that are lost in the Third World when the same
disasters hit.
Overall the Philippines is a poor country; in 2012 there were 15
provinces with over 40% of the population below the poverty
threshold.(1) While not in one of these 15 provinces, the government
reports 32% of people in Leyte (Tacloban’s province) are below the
poverty line.(2) These people, living below the poverty line, had an
income of less than $179/month for a family of five. A third of
Tacloban’s houses have wooden exterior walls and one in seven have grass
roofs.(3) In these conditions, it is no surprise that a typhoon could
wreak such havoc in Tacloban.
Bodies of the dead are rotting in the streets as aid fails to reach
those devastated by the storm. There is no clean water and little food.
Yet the Philippines is a country frequently hit by severe storms, with
about 20 typhoons a year, and this storm was identified well in advance.
Both these conditions should engender preparedness on the part of the
government. However, in the Philippines disaster preparation and relief
are delegated to local governors without a strong central leadership.
Some services are more effectively delivered on a large scale. This is
one area where we can show obviously that communism has a better
solution than the individualism of capitalism. Where central control
will lead to more efficient solutions, a communist-led government would
not hesitate to take that control. But capitalism is not focused on
serving the people, it is focused on maximizing profits and power for
the few. And these profits result in deaths from malnutrition, military
aggression, lack of health care, and “natural” disasters. As long as the
imperialists retain their power and wealth, they don’t mind tens of
millions of preventable deaths a year.
In an interesting historical connection, Imelda Marcos, wife of the
former president of the Philippines, is from Tacloban. The family of
Imelda Marcos dominated local politics for years; she herself held a
congressional seat in the 1990s. Imelda’s husband, Ferdinand Marcos, who
ruled in the Philippines from 1965-1986 with the support of the U.$.
government, embezzled billions of dollars in public funds while in
power. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) waged revolutionary
armed struggle against the Marcos regime, growing in strength during the
Marcos dictatorship. In the end, when Marcos’s demise was inevitable,
the United $tates stepped in to have a role in the change of government,
turning on Marcos and backing Corazon Aquino. Her family legacy lives on
today as her son Benigno Aquino holds the President’s office.
Unfortunately, the popular movement that forced Marcos out did not go
further than installing another imperialist puppet. While the communist
movement was strong, it was not yet strong enough to lead the people to
force the U.$. imperialists out, leaving them to play a dominating role
in the country’s politics and economics to this day.(4)
This is the backdrop for the reported six warships the Amerikans sent to
the Philippines last week, with more than 80 fighter jets and 5,000 navy
soldiers.(5) Today the United $tates is taking advantage of the disaster
in the Philippines to increase military presence, while playing the
hero. As reported in a CPP press release:
“The US government is militarizing disaster response in the Philippines,
in much the same way that the US militarized disaster response in Haiti
in the 2010 earthquake,” said the CPP. The high-handed presence of US
armed troops in Haiti has been widely renounced. The US government has
since maintained its presence in Haiti…
“What the disaster victims need urgently are food, water and medical
attention, not US warships bringing in emergency rations to justifty
their armed presence in Philippine sovereign waters,” pointed out the
CPP. “If the US government were really interested in providing
assistance to countries who have suffered from calamities, then it
should increase its funds to civilian agencies that deal in disaster
response and emergency relief, not in fattening its international
military forces and taking advantage of the people’s miseries to justify
their presence,” added the CPP.(5)
Much of the press is quiet about the ongoing war in the Philippines
between the U.$. puppet regime and the CPP-led New People’s Army (NPA),
as well as other liberation forces in different regions of the islands.
But it has been brought up in the Filipino press to spread propaganda
about NPA soldiers attacking government relief efforts. The Communist
Party of the Philippines (CPP) have denounced these lies pointing out
that the location of the attack was not in an area where relief efforts
were needed. The CPP reiterated that “NPA units in areas ravaged by the
recent super typhoon Yolanda are currently engaged in relief and
rehabilitation efforts assisting local Party branches and revolutionary
mass organizations in mobilizing emergency supply for disaster victims.”
Shortly thereafter a ceasefire was declared on behalf of the NPA in
order to focus on relief efforts.
The liberation struggle has long been connected to the protection of the
natural resources of the islands that the imperialist countries continue
to extract for great profits off the backs of the Filipino proletariat.
The storm has also received a lot of attention at a climate change
summit in Poland where Filipino officials have begun a hunger strike to
attempt to force “meaningful” change in relation to energy consumption.
Climate change has been predicted to cause more extreme weather
conditions, and this recent massive typhoon is just another possible
indicator that that is happening. Yet, as international summits
continue, little change is made in the over-consumption of the
imperialist nations driving this disaster.
As many in the Filipino countryside have already recognized, the only
solution to environmental destruction and disasters is an end to
capitalism. With a rational system that puts the needs of the people
over the goal of profits, we can build infrastructure suited to the
environmental conditions, set up emergency response systems that provide
fast and effective support, and plan consumption in a way that does not
undercut the very natural systems that we live in and depend on.
The African continent has long been a symbol of Black nationalism in
the United $tates. However, New Afrika is named such because it is a
new nation with its own territory within the United $tates. We must
combat cultural nationalism, which does not address the need to
liberate this new nation here and now.
MIM(Prisons) took up the debate over the use of the term “New Afrikan”
at our January congress this year. We have historically used the term
“Black” interchangeably with “New Afrikan,” but had received a proposal
from a comrade to use the term “New Afrikan” to the exclusion of
“Black,” only using “Black” like we would “Hispanic,” when context
requires.
MIM took up this question of the terms “Black” and “New African” back in
2001 in
MIM
Theory 14 when it published a letter from a RAIL comrade (RC)
proposing use of “New African.” In that letter, the RC proposed that
“Use of the term New African is waging ideological struggle to establish
a national identity.” S/he goes on to explain that “New African implies
the identity of a national territory - the Republic of New Africa” while
the term “Black” “cannot and will not be distinguished from
integrationist, assimilationist, and other petty bourgeois reactionary
agendas.” MIM responded to this pointing out that the term
“African-American” has emerged to distinguish the petty bourgeois
integrationists. MIM’s main complaint with the term “New African” was
cultural nationalism:
“What makes including the word ‘African’ in the term relevant? Culture.
That is, it is not the land in Africa that makes Blacks in North America
a nation, nor the economy, language, and so on. It is the cultural
history that survived the genocidal purges of the Middle Passage and
slavery that links Blacks to a historical African culture. This is
completely true, and this connection is obviously important. However,
for the definition of the nation it plays into cultural nationalism to
give this aspect too prominent a role. In fact, as MIM has argued, this
term has been used most often by people with cultural nationalist
tendencies. All the arguments for stressing the African link are
cultural, and therefore the tendency of this term is toward cultural
nationalism, which is a serious danger from the petty bourgeoisie and
comprador bourgeoisie as well.”(2)
MIM(Prisons) has researched the use of the term “New Afrikan” and
concluded that while there may be cultural nationalism associated
historically with some who use the term, overall today it is being used
by the most progressive elements of the revolutionary nationalist
movement within the United $tates. While we have some reservations about
the ties to Africa promoted by some, we have concluded that “New
Afrikan” is a better term to represent the Black nation than “Black,”
which has strong racial connotations and is generally not associated
with a nation. “New Afrikan” is a term specific to the historical
context of African-descended people in North America and so better
represents our line on this oppressed nation within U.$. borders.
Black
Order Revolutionary Organization (BORO), New Afrikan Maoist Party
(NAMP), New Afrikan Black Panther Party (NABPP), New Afrikan Collective
Think Tank (NCTT) and the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) all
use the term “New Afrikan.” Except for NAIM, these are all prison-based
organizations. NAIM was the progenitor of the term “New Afrikan.”
NAIM has written: “to call oneself New Afrikan, at this early stage, is
to be, by and large, about what We in the NAIM are about: Land,
Independence and Socialism.” They lay claim to the term: “We are the
ones who led the ideological struggle for the usage of New Afrikan as
our national identity (nationality) over ‘black’ as a racial
identity.”(1)
One argument NAIM uses for the term New Afrikan is: “…colonized
Afrikans, who evolved into New Afrikans here, were stolen to be used as
a permanent proletariat. The New Afrikan nation was born as a
working-class nation of permanent proletarians. The fact that We weren’t
paid does not preclude the fact that We were workers. What do they think
so-called ‘slavery’ (colonialism) entails if not work?”(1)
On this last point, MIM(Prisons) disagrees that New Afrikans are a
permanent proletariat. As MIM laid out and we continue to expand on, the
vast majority of U.$. citizens are part of the labor aristocracy, not
the proletariat. This does not necessarily negate the use of the term
“New Afrikan,” but we want to be clear where we differ with NAIM on the
class makeup of the nation today.
The NABPP promotes Pan-Afrikanism, promoting the common interests of the
various oppressed nations of Africa and extending it to the so-called
African diaspora of New Afrikans in the United $tates and other
imperialist countries. This is one of the pitfalls of the term New
Afrikan: it can lead people to associate imperialist-country Blacks with
the oppressed nations of Africa. While most Blacks were originally
brought over as slaves and certainly were strongly connected to their
home continent at first, we see a very distinct oppressed nation that
has developed within U.$. borders in the hundreds of years since the
slaves were first forced to North America.
We do not use the term “New Afrikan” to promote pan-Africanism among
U.$.-resident peoples. New Afrikans have historical ties to Africa, but
today New Afrikans have far more in common with, and are more strongly
connected to, other nations within U.$. borders. New Afrikans are closer
to Amerikans in economic interests and national identity than they are
to Egyptians or Somalis, and will certainly lead any pan-African
movement astray and likely sell out the African oppressed nations.
We have not seen a clear rationale for the distinction between “New
African” and “New Afrikan,” but some use the letter “k” in “Afrika” to
distinguish themselves from the colonial spelling. According to a writer
in MIM Theory 14, the term “New Afrikan” originated in 1968
when the First New Afrikan government conference was held by the PGRNA
(Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika).(3) We have
adopted this spelling, as it is used by the progressive elements of the
nation, but welcome input on the relevance of this spelling distinction.
The battle against torture in California prisons is heading for a
breaking point with unity running high among prisoners and resistance to
change stiffening within the state. Since the third round of strikes
ended in early September the promised state legislature hearing around
the Security Housing Units (SHU) occurred and Pelican Bay SHU
representatives met with California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials. Yet the actions taken by the state in
response to the protests have been the same old political repression
that the SHU was created to enforce, not ending conditions of torture.
One comrade from Corcoran reports:
I read in your latest publication that you guys hadn’t had any news of
the concessions Corcoran SHU made in order to bring our hunger strike to
an end. For the most part, the demands made here are not even worth
articulating, as they don’t incorporate, in any way, the push towards
shutting these human warehouses down completely.
The demands put forth here are simple creature comforts, which have not
even been met by the administration, to pacify those who seem to have
accepted these conditions of confinement.
Worse than the petty reforms, is the blatant political repression of
strikers just as the world’s attention is on them. The state knows that
if it can get away with that now, then it has nothing to worry about. As
another comrade from Corcoran SHU reports:
I stopped eating state food on 8 July 2013 and as a retaliatory measure
I and a bunch of other prisoners were transferred from the Corcoran SHU
to the Pelican Bay SHU. Only the thing is, when we got to Pelican Bay on
17 July 2013 we were placed in the ASU instead of the SHU, which made it
so that we would have a lot less privileges and we couldn’t even get a
book to read. So we were just staring at the wall. On 5 August 2013
others and myself were moved to the SHU where we were again just staring
at the wall. On 7 September 2013 we were again moved back to the ASU to
sit there with nothing. On 24 September 2013 I was moved back to the SHU
and I just received all my property last week.
So we were moved around and denied our property for 3 months or more.
But that seems to be it right now and I can finally settle in. But I’m
telling you that was a long 3 months. Other than that no new changes or
anything else has happened around here. I did, however, receive a 115
rules violation report for the hunger strike, along with everyone else
who participated, and in it it charges that I hunger striked as part of
some gang stuff so it was gang activity. This is ironic since the hunger
strike was about the CDCR misusing the validation process and what is
considered gang activity. So now that 115 can and will be used as a
source item of gang activity to keep me in the SHU longer.
While that comrade was sent to Pelican Bay, our comrade below is being
“lost” in Enhanced Outpatient Program (EOP). Organizing in California
has gotten so advanced that the CDCR is moving people out of Administrative
Segregation to isolate them. But with a third of the people actively
participating in protests, there is no way for them to brush this
movement under the rug.
I am writing to say that it’s been over 5 weeks since our peaceful
protest was suspended. I am a petitioner in the Corcoran Administrative
Segregation Unit 2011 strike and am a participant and a petitioner in
this 8 July 2013 one. I have been moved around and retaliated against. I
went from ASU-1 to Cor 3B02 on 24 July 2013. I was moved back to ASU-1
on 16 August 2013 and then on 19 August 2013 I was moved to where I am
currently housed in isolation with no access to anything although I am
not “EOP.” I am being housed against my will and the correctional
officers here tell me I don’t belong here but that they can’t do
anything because it’s above their pay level. No one seems to know
anything about why I am being housed here but all come to the same
conclusion: that someone above them has me housed here. I’d like to know
if there is anyone out there that you may have heard of that find
themselves in similar situations or am I the only one?
We haven’t heard anything yet. But don’t let their games get to you
comrade.
Another indication of the strength of change in California comes from a
story being circulated by representatives of the Pelican Bay Short
Corridor Collective. Multiple versions have been circulating about a
historic bus ride where these “worst of the worst” from “rival gangs”
were left unshackled for an overnight bus ride. It was reported that not
one of the O.G.’s slept a wink that night, but neither did any conflicts
occur. At least some of these men self-admittedly would have killed each
other on sight in years past.(1) This amazing event symbolizes the
extent to which this has become about the imprisoned lumpen as a whole,
and not about criminal interests.
The CDCR keeps telling the public that they are instituting reforms,
while in reality they are torturing people for being “gang members” for
reasons such as protesting torture. Outside supporters can up the
pressure to end this system of repression by letting them know that we
know what they’re doing, that their words mean nothing, and that going
on hunger strike is not a crime. There is a campaign to call the CDCR
out on their hypocrisy by contacting:
M.D. Stainer, Director Division of Adult Institutions Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation P.O. Box 942883 Sacramento CA.
94283 (916) 445-7688 Michael.Stainer@cdcr.ca.gov
As we reiterated last issue, it is prisoners who determine the fate of
the prison movement. And the only way prisoners can actually win is by
building independent power. As long as this is a campaign for certain
reforms, the state will go back to business as usual as soon as the
outside attention fades. Torture cannot be reformed, and neither can an
exploitative economic system that demands it. Of course prisoners can’t
end imperialism alone, but wherever we are we must focus on building
cadre level organizations that can support independent institutions of
the oppressed.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has held that the Constitution
of the United States only requires a state to provide its inmates with
access to a law library or access to persons trained
in the law. Bounds v.
Smith, 40 U.S. 817, 97, S. Ct. 1491, 52 L. Ed. 2d 72
(1977). The choice of which alternative to provide lies with
the state, not with the inmate. Connecticut has chosen to rely on access
to persons trained in the law in order to comply with the requirements
of Bounds.” - CT DOC
form letter
One of the services that the Connecticut Department of Corrections
offers to prisoners is the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services at Yale
University. In a letter dated 17 November 2012 that organization
responded to a comrade stating:
We received your letter requesting assistance. Unfortunately, this
office no longer has the resources to provide information or
representation to such requests.
This is similar to the situation in North Carolina where the state
contracts with the completely useless
North
Carolina Prisoner Legal Service, Inc. But, as we know, in other
states where law libraries are provided, the resources in those
libraries are also grossly inadequate. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton’s
Prisoners Litigation Reform Act seriously hampered the ability of
prisoners to get their grievances heard in U.$. courts. For those
interested in this law we recommend
Mumia
Abu Jamal’s book Jailhouse Lawyers.
Our response to all of this is two-pronged. The main lesson is that
legal battles cannot win prisoner rights under imperialism. As Mumia
exposes in his book, the belief that they can leads hard-working
jailhouse lawyers to literally go crazy. To win, we must organize
oppressed people to establish a joint dictatorship of the proletariat of
the oppressed nations over the former oppressors. Under proletarian
leadership, exploitation and oppression will become the biggest crimes,
and prisons will become places for education and re-socialization rather
than torture and isolation.
Our second prong is our Serve the People Prisoners’ Legal Clinic. This
is our short-term strategy. We know that legal information is difficult
to obtain in the current system, and that providing access to this
information in a useful way helps oppressed people in prison to survive
this system. Just be careful that our legal work does not help prop up
the very system that oppresses us, as Mumia warns. If you want to help
prepare and share legal guides for anti-imperialist jailhouse lawyers
write in and ask to work with the Prisoners’ Legal Clinic.
In a joint U.$. and UK spying operation, agencies hacked into links to
Yahoo and Google data centers, allowing them to freely collect
information from user accounts on those systems. This data collection
project, called MUSCULAR, is a joint operation between the U.$. National
Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ). Documents released by former National Security
Agency (NSA) contractor, Edward Snowden and “interviews with
knowledgeable officials” are the sources for this news that was broken
by The Washington Post on October 30, 2013. Google was
“outraged” at this revelation, and many Amerikans were shocked to learn
of the violation of their privacy by their own government.
Of course, for those of us serious about security in our political
organizing work, this is not breaking news. It is just further
confirmation of what we’ve been saying for a long time: email is not
secure, especially email on the major service providers like Google and
Yahoo. Back in August
MIM(Prisons)
had our email account shut down when the U.$. government demanded
that our email server, lavabit.com, turn over information on the
accounts it provided. Lavabit decided it would rather stop providing
services at all than comply with the government’s demand. We can only
assume that any email service still in operation is supplying
information to the U.$. government.
What is interesting about this story is not that the NSA is caught red
handed snooping on people’s email, but that they would even need to do
this in the first place, when major companies are freely providing
backdoor access to the U.$. government. A court-approved process
provides the NSA with access to Yahoo and Google user accounts, through
a program known as PRISM. Through PRISM, the NSA can demand online
communications records that match specific search terms. Apparently this
restriction to court approved search terms was too limiting for the NSA,
who has been siphoning off vast portions of the data held in Google and
Yahoo data centers, for analysis and more targeted snooping.
MUSCULAR gets around the already lax U.$. government policies on spying
on Americans by exploiting links between data centers holding
information outside of the U.$. where intelligence gathering falls under
presidential authority and has little oversight or restriction.
As we pointed out in the article
Self-Defense
and Secure Communications: “Currently, we do not have the ability to
defend the movement militarily, but we do have the ability to defend it
with a well-informed electronic self-defense strategy. And just as
computer technology, and the internet in particular, was a victory for
free speech, it has played a role in leveling the battlefield to the
point that the imperialists recognize computer warfare as a material
vulnerability to their hegemony.” In that article we provided some basic
suggestions for communications self-defense, most of which are only
possible for people outside of prisons.
As more information comes out on the vast resources invested in
electronic surveillance it is clearer that improving our technology is a
form of offensive work as well, even if we aren’t launching attacks. The
imperialists are spending a lot of resources trying to defeat the tools
we mention in our last article. In using these tools in our day-to-day
work we tie up those resources that could be used to fight other battles
against the oppressed elsewhere. This should be stressed to those who
think security is taking time away from “real work.”
Some will not organize until they’ve read all of Marx’s writings to
ensure they understand Marxism. This is a mistake, just like waiting to
get the perfect electronic security before doing any organizing work.
But you should assume that all of our communications are being
intercepted. Take whatever precautions you can to ensure your
information cannot be accessed, or if it can, that it cannot be used
against you or others. Security is like theory and any organizing skill;
it should be constantly improved upon, but it should not paralyze your
work.
October 18 - The Utah Supreme Court overturned an injunction that had
barred almost 500 people that Weber County claims are members of a
lumpen organization known as the Ogden Trece from associating with each
other. Members were banned from driving, standing, walking, sitting,
gathering or in any way appearing together anywhere in a 25-square-mile
area that covered most of the city of Ogden. It also imposed a curfew
between 11pm and 5am for these folks. This ban has been in place since
2010.
The Supreme Court threw out the injunction on a legal technicality,
because the county failed to properly serve summons to members of the
organization. The county posted notices on a Utah legal notices website
and in the Ogden Standard Examiner, a local newspaper. The court found
this to be insufficient notice. Members of the organization also
challenged the constitutionality of the injunction in denying their
right to associate, but the Court did not rule on this challenge.
The Deputy Attorney for Weber County made a case for the injunction:
“Case loads on average going from 16 per month on something like
graffiti down to four. So we can show a 75 percent drop in criminal
street gang activity.” This is an interesting definition of “criminal
street gang activity”: acts of graffiti.(1) Clearly the police and
courts are determined to go after this lumpen organization, which they
call a “public nuisance,” civil liberties and rights be damned.
We see a lot of parallels between validation in prison and
identification as a member of a street organization in Ogden. According
to the Ogden Gang Detective Anthony Powers, the police keep a “gang
database” to document who belongs to a street organization. There are
eight possible criteria, and anyone meeting two of them is entered in
the database. A musician in a group that includes people believed to be
Ogden Trece members was included in the injunction because he has been
seen around with these folks.(2)
We only have news of this from the mainstream press, but we regularly
see this same repression of oppressed nations both in prisons and on the
streets. The trick of labeling someone a member of a lumpen organization
is used to lock prisoners in solitary confinement and keep them from
having contact with other prisoners. It’s often used to target
politically active prisoners. On the streets, whether in Utah or any
other state, we are seeing that Amerikans, who are often willing to
suspend constitutional rights for prisoners, are similarly unconcerned
about this same practice on the streets.
We know that street organizations, just like prison organizations, are a
natural result of imperialist society in the United $tates. The
oppressed nations are going to come together in self-defense, and in the
absence of revolutionary leadership they will join whatever group meets
their needs. While lumpen organizations are fighting one another and
targeting their people for street crime they are helping the
imperialists. This is why we work so hard to build a United Front and
bring these groups together for the betterment of all oppressed people.
Click to download a PDF of the North Carolina grievance petition
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.
Secretary, Division of Prisons 4201 Mail Service Center Raleigh,
NC 27699-4201
Director of Prisons 831 West Morgan Street Raleigh, NC 27626
ACLU of NC PO Box 28004 Raleigh, NC 27611
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Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
Jennie Lancaster, Deputy Secretary of DOC 4201 Mail Service
Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4201
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MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
PDF updated May 2012, July 2012, January 2013, and October 2013
Herman Wallace earlier this year, before his release from prison
We honor Black Panther Herman Wallace, who died on October 4, 2013 after
spending 41 years in solitary confinement in a Louisiana prison for
allegedly killing a prison guard. These charges were always suspect, and
on October 1 a U.S. District Chief Judge agreed and overturned his
conviction, ordering his immediate release. Despite the State of
Louisiana’s attempt to block the release, Wallace was able to spend the
last two and half days of his life out of prison with family and
friends.
The fact that Wallace had only days to live was well-known and likely
played into his release. On the same day of the decision, his close
comrades, Robert King (released in 2001) and Albert Woodfox (still in
solitary confinement) were able to visit him due to his dire
condition.(1) Together they made up the Angola 3, three of the longest
to spend time in solitary confinement. Woodfox is in his 41st year in a
control unit and is still locked up.
On 7 October 2013, the U.N. special rapporteur Juan E. Mendez called for
the release of Albert Woodfox from solitary confinement, saying his
isolation amounts to torture. Once again, the U.N. went on record
stating that “the use of solitary confinement in the U.S. penitentiary
system goes far beyond what is acceptable under international human
rights law.”(2)
The movement to free the Angola 3 has been championed by a dedicated
group and echoed by supporters of political prisoners for decades. And
the three, who formed a strong prison chapter of the
Black
Panther Party before being put in isolation, have continued to stay
politically sharp and struggle for the rights of oppressed people.
Robert King has been dedicated to not just supporting his two close
friends, but opposing the Amerikan criminal injustice system.
While we recognize their indominable spirits, and the pleasure Wallace
must have felt in his last few days, the tragedy of wasted lives in U.$.
torture chambers remains unacceptable. These men, who became dedicated
revolutionaries because of the adversities they faced, were prevented
from fully acting on those aims by a system that intentionally framed
and isolated them for political reasons. The state wants to brand
activists like the Angola 3 as “cop killers” when in reality they were
dedicated to a life of serving the people. They were individuals who
could have transformed the destiny of New Afrika, and supported the
liberation of all oppressed people from imperialism. Instead, Wallace
was tortured by Amerika for four decades, until he was within days of
death.
The case of Herman Wallace epitomizes the politics behind the United
$tates’s sanitized version of torture, in what is the largest mass
incarceration experiment in the history of humynkind. And while it may
be easier for some to support a Black Panther framed for killing a cop
than to support a Crip accused of being a “shot caller,” we must
recognize the continuity between them. Otherwise we only spend our time
on the individual cases, without addressing the system. We respect the
work of the Angola 3 Coalition and groups like it. On the other hand, we
should not be satisfied with victories like the release of Herman
Wallace 2.5 days before he dies. We celebrate the organizing that has
reached international attention in California in recent years, where
prisoners of all backgrounds in long-term isolation have stood together
to attack its very existence. While even that is just one piece of the
system that must be addressed, we can best pose a real challenge to this
systematic use of torture that is used by the Amerikan oppressor to
control those who might challenge their hegemony over the world by
organizing all those affected by it.
Humyn health is perhaps the most basic measure of oppression that we
have. More than economic exploitation, humyn health measures the degree
to which the basic survival needs of people are being met. Looking at
the conditions of health in U.$. prisons, as well as reservations,
barrios and ghettos across the United $tates, does not paint a favorable
picture of imperialism and its ability to provide for humyn needs, not
to mention even worse conditions across the Third World. Given this,
health becomes an issue that we can rally the oppressed around to both
serve the people and oppose imperialism.
We’ve been pushing this very issue in United Struggle from Within (USW)
circles in California for some months, in some cases leading to state
repression. With the recently suspended mass hunger strike in that
state, a rash of deaths in Texas and the usual array of abuses across
U.$. prisons, we thought this was an opportune time to focus an issue of
ULK on health struggles.
Health was a central theme in the California hunger strike where
prisoners began to pass out from lack of food and other complications.
Bill “Guero” Sell died after a approximately two weeks on hunger strike.
The state says it was suicide, but however he died, the SHU was the
cause of death. One San Quentin prisoner’s kidneys shut down, and many
complained of the lack of medical monitoring and the aloofness of
medical staff. We have been sending regular updates to comrades in
California about what has been going on over the last two months. For
those who want to see more reporting in ULK, send in your
donations to help reach the goal of $250 to add 4 pages to a future
issue.
In at least two Texas prisons we have comrades organizing around the
murders of prisoners by staff abuse and neglect, the most basic health
campaign. In Texas we also have positive examples of organizing sports
as a way to bring people together and improve health. Meanwhile comrades
in more restrictive conditions in one California prison were punished
for organizing group exercise, calling it “Security Threat Group
activity.”
The manipulation of people through chemical substances is another common
health theme. Many comrades are being denied medications they depend on
and facing life-threatening conditions. At the same time oppressed
communities fight the use of recreational drugs to oppress their people
as seen in the struggle of the Oglala Lakotah. The exposure of this form
of low-intensity chemical warfare right here in North America is
particularly relevant at a time when the blood-thirsty imperialists have
been ramping up for an invasion of Syria based on unsubstantiated claims
of chemical weapons use by the government there.
From rotten potatoes in Massachussetts, to inadequate servings in Nevada
and people forced to rely on vending machines in Florida, basic
nutrition is denied to people in a country where 40% of food is wasted.
Recently, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported that
greenhouse gases from global food waste is more than the emissions of
any single country except China or the United $tates.(1) Water, another
vital resource, is also used to produce all this wasted food. From U.$.
prisoners, to the global countryside where malnutrition leads to
thousands of deaths daily, to the environmental services that all of
humynity depend on, the capitalist profit system has failed to serve
humyn need.
We can look to the barefoot doctors in revolutionary China, or the
mobile health units of the
Black
Panther Party or the Young Lords Party as examples of serving the
people’s basic health needs in a revolutionary context. The Chinese also
took a completely different approach to mental illness, which bourgeois
society does more to cause than to remedy. Materially, the capitalist
economic system can produce enough for everyone, but cannot provide it
to them. It’s a system that uses the denial of basic health as a form of
social control, because if it did not the system would be overthrown.
Rather than begging the oppressor for a little relief, let’s implement
real solutions to these problems.
