MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has held that the Constitution
of the United States only requires a state to provide its inmates with
access to a law library or access to persons trained
in the law. Bounds v.
Smith, 40 U.S. 817, 97, S. Ct. 1491, 52 L. Ed. 2d 72
(1977). The choice of which alternative to provide lies with
the state, not with the inmate. Connecticut has chosen to rely on access
to persons trained in the law in order to comply with the requirements
of Bounds.” - CT DOC
form letter
One of the services that the Connecticut Department of Corrections
offers to prisoners is the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services at Yale
University. In a letter dated 17 November 2012 that organization
responded to a comrade stating:
We received your letter requesting assistance. Unfortunately, this
office no longer has the resources to provide information or
representation to such requests.
This is similar to the situation in North Carolina where the state
contracts with the completely useless
North
Carolina Prisoner Legal Service, Inc. But, as we know, in other
states where law libraries are provided, the resources in those
libraries are also grossly inadequate. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton’s
Prisoners Litigation Reform Act seriously hampered the ability of
prisoners to get their grievances heard in U.$. 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
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
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
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
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.
As a mail-based prisoner support organization, the ability to get our
mail in to our comrades and subscribers is an essential part of our
ability to organize. If we can’t get mail in, we can’t help lead the
anti-imperialist struggle behind bars. We are under no illusion that
we’ll ever be free from censorship; if our enemy hates us, we’re
probably doing something right! But the U.$. Constitution and our
humynist morality support our insistence on fighting censorship as much
as possible so that we can have as big of an impact on the international
revolutionary movement as we can.
Often times our subscribers don’t even know how much censorship they
persynally are experiencing, let alone what’s going on around the
country. Our annual censorship report gives our subscribers an idea of
how much political repression we’re facing overall.
This year we started recording our mail in more detail, and removed a
lot of flaws in how the data is aggregated (although it’s not perfect!).
At the bottom of the chart, “% Unconfirmed” tells you how accurate the
snapshot is for that reporting year; the lower number the better,
because a lower percent of unconfirmed mail means we actually know what
happened to more of the mail we’ve sent in. Unconfirmed mail not only
covers up censorship in cases where the prisoner never got the mail but
we haven’t been made aware of it; it also may exaggerate the level of
censorship we’re actually facing in a particular facility or state where
our mail is actually getting in to some people but they haven’t told us.
Of course we know the content of our literature is not held in high
regard by most prison staff, so assuming we’re being censored when we
aren’t sure what is going on is probably more accurate than not.
A facility is considered to be banning our literature for that reporting
year if they have censored two or more items, and no items have been
confirmed as received. An entire state is considered to be banning our
literature if they have censored any mail, and no mail has been reported
as received. Another note on the chart: it is only a snapshot of what is
going on with our mail. A facility might be banning us in the same state
where we also had victories, or a complete statewide ban may only
actually affect a few subscribers (plus the potential new subscribers we
might gain if our lit wasn’t censored).
To improve our data on the level of censorship we’re experiencing, you
may receive a list from us of mail we’ve sent you, asking you to confirm
receipt or censorship of each item. This list is called an Unconfirmed
Mail Form (UMF). We recommend everyone keep a log of all your mail,
incoming and outgoing, with dates received/sent, from/to who, and
contents. That way if your mail with us, or anyone, is tampered with,
you are one step ahead of the game. And if you get a UMF, you will be
able to fill it out accurately rather than guessing. But do not wait to
receive a UMF to tell us what you’ve gotten! When you write to us, you
should always tell us what you’ve gotten from us since the last time you
wrote. That will save time and money so we can send in more books and
literature.
Facilities banning all our mail in the last reporting year:
Colorado - Arkansas Valley State Prison
Connecticut - Northern Correctional Institution and Northern Supermax
this is the second consecutive year in Northern Supermax
Florida - Suwanee Annex
Illinois - Menard Correctional Center (two years in a row)
Michigan - Gus Harrison Correctional Facility
South Carolina - Leiber Correctional Institution
Utah - Central Utah Correctional Facility
Virginia - Hampton Roads Regional Jail (two years in a row)
Wisconsin - Green Bay Correctional Institution and Kettle Moraine
Correctional Institution
Facilities banning ULK in the last reporting year:
Connecticut - MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution Reason:
“Rejected publication per the Media Review Board”
Florida - Franklin Correctional Institution Reason: MIM investigated
as Security Threat Group
Florida - Jackson Correctional Institution No reason given
Illinois - Menard Correctional Center Reasons: “Threat to safety and
security”
Michigan - G Robert Correctional Facility No reason given
New York - Riverview Correctional Facility Reasons: “Incites
disobedience, describes gang activity”
North Carolina - Marion Correctional Institution Reasons: “MIM
Distributors on disapproved publication list,” “encourages
insurrection”
North Carolina - Warren Correctional Institution Reason: “On ban
list”
Pennsylvania - State Correctional Institution Waymart Reasons:
“Unauthorized enclosure” and no reason given
Wisconsin - Wisconsin Secure Program Facility No reason given
Florida is also attempting to classify Under Lock & Key as
a “Security Threat Group,” which would likely make all mail from MIM
Distributors banned as gang-related, and subject anyone in possession of
mail from us to disciplinary action. We have not received an update on
this process since
April.
We do know that for a couple years Florida was a booming United Struggle
from Within state, and some of our more active comrades have recently
asked to be removed from our mailing list for fear of repression. We
aren’t sure whether the administration is threatening parole eligibility
or physical abuse, or other forms of torture such as solitary
confinement; or if they’ve already gone ahead and beaten the shit out of
these comrades to get them to stop talking to us. Yet we’ve seen this
enough times to know that something like that is going on. It’s
incredible the lengths Amerikans will go to to keep someone who’s
already locked up in prison from doing something as innocuous as reading
a newsletter, participating in a study group, and talking to other humyn
beings.
A popular reason for citing censorship in Nevada has been “Per AR 750…
Address labels are unauthorized.” Our guess is that this policy of the
Nevada Department of Corrections would not hold up in court as being
reasonably related to penological interests and the safety of the
institution. A subscriber in Nevada who has been missing mail due to
this rule should take on this struggle in a lawsuit! Another comrade in
that state reported that prison officials have admitted ULK is
not banned, but now they are resorting to “unofficial censorship” by
simply throwing out incoming and outgoing mail. This is another reason
why it’s important to track your correspondence.
Victories and Struggles
Appealing censorship and filing grievances can lead to small but
significant victories. The victories in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and on
the Federal level are attributed solely to prisoners filing appeals of
the censorship, without any supporting letters from MIM Distributors. Of
course not all appeals will be granted, and we don’t expect to ever be
completely free of censorship from the state. But we encourage everyone
to at least attempt to appeal all censorship of their mail. Send us
copies of your documents and we can publicize and track them on our
website
www.prisoncensorship.info.
In the last year we’ve focused much energy on fighting censorship in
Missouri and North Carolina. In Missouri we’ve met some success with
letter writing, but in North Carolina it has been a different story.
After a surge in USW activity in North Carolina, every issue of
Under Lock & Key has been placed on their ban list for over
3 years straight. Upon appeal, not only do North Carolina prisoncrats
tend to simply uphold the decision of the lower level with no
explanation, but when asked to explain how their “independent” review
process works, we are given no response. When we filed a public records
request with the state, the only documents they had to demonstrate that
the independent review process existed was a stack of the original
censorship notifications, further putting into question the existence of
the “review process.” We have comrades working on this case in North
Carolina who could benefit greatly from some additional legal
assistance.
Multiple
subscribers
in Illinois have volunteered to assist MIM(Prisons) in fighting
censorship in that state, and one has two lawsuits pending on this
issue. While ULK is not getting in at all in some facilities in
the state, some of our subscriber-volunteers are able to receive
ULK and copies of the censor documentation. Also they are
intimately familiar with the mail rules and appeal procedures in their
state. Although it is a slower process for volunteers on theinside
working via mail, this has been a very beneficial campaign, and one that
anyone with legal knowledge can contribute to in their own state.
MIM(Prisons) facilitates a Prisoners’ Legal Clinic (PLC) to help
jailhouse lawyers plug into projects that will push forward the
collective legal knowledge and experience of the anti-imperialist
movement behind bars. Write in to get involved! Any lawyer or law
student who is interested in helping prisoners push forward these
anti-censorship lawsuits should
contact us.
According to the Collective’s statement, they have suspended their
strike in response to a pledge by state legislators Tom Ammiano, Loni
Hancock and Tom Hayden to hold a legislative hearing into conditions in
the Security Housing Units (SHU) and the debriefing process.
MIM(Prisons) is not optimistic of the outcome of such hearings. Ammiano
held a hearing in August 2011 in response to the first of three mass
hunger strikes around this struggle, and nothing changed, leading to the
second hunger strike that October. Back in 2003, our comrades as part of
the United Front to Abolish the SHU attended a legislative hearing on
the conditions in the California SHU and the validation process. They
published an article entitled,
“CA
senate hearings on the SHU: we can’t reform torture.” Ten years
later, little has changed. These hearings keep happening, but they are
little more than pacifying talks by those in power. The facts have been
out there, the state has known what is going on in these torture cells.
So what is the difference now? And how can we actually change things?
CDCR Done Addressing Problems
Before we look at how we can change things, let’s further dispel any
illusions that the CDCR or the state of California is going to be the
source of this change. In the latest iteration of the strike, an
additional 40 demands were drafted around smaller issues and widely
circulated to supplement the
5
core demands. On 26 August 2013, the CDCR released a
point-by-point
response to the demands of those who have been on hunger strike since
July 8. The announcement by the CDCR cites a 5 June 2013 memo that
allegedly addresses many of these supplemental demands. Others are
listed as being non-issues or non-negotiable.
This CDCR announcement implies that we should not have hopes for
negotiations or actions towards real change from CDCR. The Criminal
Injustice System will not reform itself; we must force this change.
The Struggle Against Torture Continues
At first glance, the fact that this struggle has been waging for decades
with little headway (especially in California) can be discouraging.
However, our assessment of conditions in the imperialist countries
teaches us that right now struggle against oppression must take the form
of long legal battles, despite claims by the censors that we promote
lawlessness. Sporadic rebellions with lots of energy, but little
planning or longevity, do not usually create change and the conditions
for armed struggle do not exist in the United $tates. We are therefore
in strategic unity with the leaders who have emerged to sue the state,
while unleashing wave after wave of peaceful demonstrations of ever
increasing intensity. All of us involved have focused on agitation to
shape public opinion and promote peace and unity among prisoners, and
then using those successes to apply pressure to the representatives of
the state. These are all examples of legal forms of struggle that can be
applied within a revolutionary framework. Lawyers and reformists who can
apply constant pressure in state-run forums play a helpful role. But
make no mistake, prisoners play the decisive role, as the strikes are
demonstrating.
Control units came to be and rose to prominence in the same period that
incarceration boomed in this country. As a result, in the last few
decades the imprisoned lumpen have been a rising force in the United
$tates. Within the class we call the First World lumpen, it is in
prisons where we see the most stark evidence of this emerging and
growing class, as well as the most brutal responses from Amerikans and
the state to oppose that class.
In California prisons in the last three years we’ve seen that with each
successive hunger strike, participation has more than doubled. Just
think what the next phase will look like when the CDCR fails to end
torture once again! And as a product of this rising force in prisons,
support on the outside has rallied bigger each time as well. As we said,
this outside support is important, but secondary to the rising
imprisoned lumpen.
Over 30,000 prisoners, one-fifth of the population in California,
participated in this latest demonstration against torture. Many who
didn’t strike the whole time wrote to us that they, and those with them,
were on stand-by to start up again. These grouplets standing by should
be the basis for developing cadre. The 30,000 plus prisoners should be
the mass base, and should expand with further struggle and education.
If you’re reading this and still wondering, “what is it that
MIM(Prisons) thinks we should do exactly?” – it’s the same things we’ve
been promoting for years. Focus on educating and organizing, while
taking on winnable battles against the injustice system. Fighting to
shut down the control units is important, but it is only one battle in a
much larger struggle that requires a strong and organized
anti-imperialist movement. We run our own study programs and support
prisoner-run study groups on the inside. We provide Under Lock &
Key as a forum for agitating and organizing among the imprisoned
lumpen country-wide. We have study materials on building cadre
organizations, concepts of line, strategy and tactics and the basics of
historical and dialectical materialism. Each of these topics are key for
leaders to understand.
Organizing means working and studying every day. In addition to the
topics above, you can study more practical skills that can be used to
serve the people such as legal skills, healthy living skills and how to
better communicate through writing and the spoken word. Prisoners are
surrounded by potential comrades who can’t even read! We need Serve the
People literacy programs. Combining these practical trainings with the
political study and trainings promoted above will allow leaders to both
attract new people with things they can relate to, while providing
guidance that illuminates the reality of our greater society.
Principled organizing builds trust and dedication, which are two thing
that comrades often report being in short supply in U.$. prisons.
Principled organizing is how we can overcome these shortcomings. It is
not an easy, nor a quick solution. The opponent we face is strong, so
only by studying it closely and battling strategically will we be able
to overcome it.
Whatever other tactics comrades on the inside decide to take to continue
this struggle against torture, the need for building, organizing, and
educating is constant and at the strategic level. Without that the
movement does not strengthen or advance. If you’re taking up this work,
we want to hear from you and we want to support you in your efforts.
The Minister of Defense of the
New Afrikan Black
Panther Party (Prison Chapter) recently
stepped in(1) to defend
Turning
the Tide against our USW comrade’s critiques.(2) We can appreciate
the greater clarity and honesty in Rashid’s piece compared to
Michael
Novick’s, but still cannot forgive him for getting the first
question of importance to communists wrong: who are our friends and who
are our enemies? Like
Jose
Maria Sison and
Bob
Avakian, Rashid has long been exposed to MIM line and writing, and
many attempts to struggle with him have been made. It does great damage
to the International Communist Movement when these people become icons
of “Maoism” in many peoples’ eyes, while promoting chauvinistic lines on
the role of the oppressor nations under imperialism.
Rashid opens his piece with the most common strawpersyn argument of the
revisionists, that the MIM line is wrong because Marx and Lenin never
abandoned organizing among Europeans and Amerikans. Rashid needs to be
more specific if he’s claiming there are groups that are refusing to
work with white people or moving to the Third World to organize. While
our work mostly targets prisoners, we target prisoners of all
nationalities, and similarly our street work is not very
nation-specific. The question we would ask instead of “should we
organize Amerikans?”, is, “what is going to achieve communism faster,
organizing rich people around demands for more money, or organizing them
around ideas of collective responsibility for equal distribution of
humyn needs and ecological sustainability?”
Rashid’s third paragraph includes some numbers and math and at first
glance i thought it might have some concrete analysis. But alas, the
numbers appear just for show as they are a) made up numbers, and b)
reflecting the most simple calculation that Marx teaches us to define
surplus value. To counter Rashid’s empty numbers, let us repeat our most
basic math example here. If Amerikans are exploited, then to end
exploitation would mean they need to get paid more money. Dividing the
global GDP by the number of full-time laborers gives an
equitable
distribution of income of around $10,000 per persyn per year.(3) To
be fair, in Rashid’s article he addresses this and quotes Marx to say
that we cannot have an equitable distribution of income. In that quote
from Wages, Price and Profit Marx was writing about capitalism,
which is inherently exploitative. Our goal is communism, or “from each
according to her ability, to each according to her need.” But we’re not
there yet, Rashid might argue. OK fine, let’s take Rashid’s hypothetical
McDonald’s worker making $58 per 8 hour workday. If we assume 5 days a
week and 50 weeks a year we get $14,500 per year. According to the World
Bank, half of the world’s people make less than $1,225 per year.(4) That
report also showed that about 10% of Amerikans are in the world’s
richest 1% and that almost half of the richest 1% are Amerikans. So
Rashid wants to argue that under capitalism it is just that the lowest
paid Amerikans earn over 10 times more than half of the world’s
population because their labor is worth that much more? How is that?
What Marx was talking about in Wages, Price and Profit was
scientific: a strong persyn might be twice as productive as a weak one,
or a specially trained persyn might add more value than an unskilled
persyn. So Rashid wants to use this to justify paying anyone who was
birthed as a U.$. citizen 10 to 25 times, or more, the average global
rate of pay? We have no idea how Rashid justifies this disparity except
through crass Amerikan chauvinism.
This empty rhetoric is not Marxism. It is ironic how today people will
use this basic formulation for surplus value from Marx to claim people
of such vastly different living conditions are in the same class. No one
else in the world looks at the conditions in the United $tates and Haiti
and thinks, “these countries should really unite to address their common
plight.” It is only pseudo-Marxists and anarchists who read a little
Marx who can come up with such crap.
Rashid later establishes commonality across nations with the definition,
“The proletariat simply is one who must sell her labor power to survive,
which is as true for the Amerikan worker as it is for one in Haiti.” We
prefer Marx’s definition that the proletariat are those who have nothing
to lose but their chains. According to Rashid, we should determine
whether someone is exploited based on different measuring sticks
depending on what country they live in. Apparently, in the United $tates
you must have a $20,000 car, a $200,000 home and hand-held computers for
every family member over 5 in order “to survive.” Whereas in other
countries electricity and clean water are optional. More chauvinism.
Rashid continues discussing class definitions,
“For instance, if there’s no [Euro-Amerikan] (‘white’) proletariat in
the US, then there’s also no New Afrikan/Black one. If a EA working in
McDonalds isn’t a proletarian, then neither is one of color. If there’s
no New Afrikan proletariat, then there’s no New Afrikan lumpen
proletariat either (”lumpen” literally means “broken”–if they were never
of the proletariat, they could not become a ‘broken’ proletariat).”
Lumpen is usually translated as “rag.” Even in the United
$tates we have a population of people who live in rags, who have very
little to lose. However, we completely agree with Rashid’s logic here.
And that is why MIM(Prisons) started using the term “First World lumpen”
to distinguish from “lumpenproletariat.” There is little connection
between the lumpen in this country and a real proletariat, with the
exceptions being within migrant populations and some second generation
youth who form a bridge between Third World proletariat, First World
semi-proletariat and First World lumpen classes. Rashid continues,
“Yet the VLA [vulgar labor aristocracy] proponents recognize New Afrikan
prisoners as ‘lumpen’ who are potentially revolutionary. Which begs the
question, why aren’t they doing work within the oppressed New Afrikan
communities where they’re less apt to be censored, if indeed they
compose a lumpen sector?”
This is directed at us, so we will answer: historical experience and
limited resources. As our readers should know, we struggle to do the
things we do to support prisoner education programs and organizing work.
We do not have the resources right now to do any serious organizing
outside of prisons. And we made the conscious decision of how we can
best use our resources in no small part due to historical experience of
our movement. In other words we go where there is interest in
revolutionary politics. The margins, the weakest links in the system,
that is where you focus your energy. Within the lumpen class, the
imprisoned lumpen have a unique relationship to the system that results
in a strong contradiction with that system. The imprisoned population
could also be considered 100% lumpen, whereas less than 20% of the New
Afrikan nation is lumpen, the rest being among various bourgeois
classes, including the labor aristocracy.
“And if the lumpen can be redeemed, why not EA [Euro-Amerikan] workers?”
Again, look at history. Read
J.
Sakai’s Settlers and read about the
Black
Panther Party. Today, look at the growing prison system and the
regular murder of New Afrikan and other oppressed nation youth by the
pigs. Look at where the contradictions and oppression are.
The only really interesting thing about this piece is that Rashid has
further drawn a line between the MIM camp and the slew of anarchist and
crypto-Trotskyist organizations who are still confused about where
wealth comes from. They think people sitting at computers typing keys
are exploited, and Rashid accuses our line of requiring “surplus value
falling from the sky!” We already told you where the high wages in the
imperialist countries came from, Rashid, the Third World proletariat!
That is why the average Amerikan makes 25 times the average humyn, and
why all Amerikans are in the top 13% in income globally. As the
revisionists like to remind us, wealth disparity just keeps getting
greater and greater under capitalism. The labor aristocracy today is
like nothing that V.I. Lenin ever could have witnessed. We must learn
from the methods of Marx and Lenin, not dogmatically repeat their
analysis from previous eras to appease Amerikans.
19 August 2013 - Today, a federal court approved the force-feeding of
people who are on hunger strike in California prisons to protest torture
in the form of long-term isolation and group punishment. The
force-feeding itself is considered torture by many, including those who
have been on hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay since February and have
been suffering through force-feeding for months.
For those interested in why it is considered torture, Yasiin Bey bravely
provided the world with a video of what that is like (click picture).
The decision in California came shortly after we posted a report from a
comrade who was
denied
liquid supplements and collapsed on July 21 in Corcoran State
Prison. Many others have collapsed since then, and the state’s
behavior has made it clear that the health of prisoners has not been a
concern of theirs. They apply very strict rules to how they count people
as being on “hunger strike,” knowing that strikers depend on the state
to report their numbers to the public, forcing them to abide by these
rules that don’t allow for any electrolytes.
The state has consistently used health care as a weapon to manipulate
prisoners into submission, rather than act as the custodians of health
and safety that they claim to be. Now that strikers are approaching
life-threatening conditions, the CDCR is acting to prevent them from
exercising one of the strongest forms of protest that they have from
within these isolation cells. The attention given to the situation
inside California prisons right now is already unprecedented and they
fear that if more prisoners die they may lose their power to torture
prisoners in the future. The torture is important to them because it is
what they believe to be their best tool to prevent the oppressed from
fighting their oppression (the injustice system’s true purpose). The
ongoing hunger strike, decades in the making, has begun to turn the
tables on that idea though.
This recent report asserts that 70 of 130 prisoners currently on hunger
strike have been going since July 8, 2013. There are a number of groups
of prisoners in California who are ready to restart hunger strike in
support of the 70 (or more) who are in it for the long haul as the
struggle heightens.
In the months leading up to July 8, there was some debate about the
return to the hunger strike tactic, particularly as previous attempts
were aborted prematurely without any changes from the state. But those
first two strikes resonated among the oppressed across the country, and
particularly in California where 30,000 prisoners stood up against
long-term isolation on July 8, 2013. As we approach 50 days on strike,
and repeated assertions from participants that they will not stop for
mere promises this time, this struggle is approaching a crucial point.
To date, control units have been a fairly effective tool of repression.
But if oppression breeds resistance, then even these tools of total
control can be overcome. At no other point have we been closer to that
goal than we are right now. Those who have and will give their lives for
this struggle must not die in vain. Those 30,000 plus prisoners who
supported this campaign must take every opportunity over the coming
months to build, educate and organize to prepare for the next phase of
this struggle. A failure to seize this moment in the prison movement
will mean much more suffering for the imprisoned lumpen in the decades
to come.
