Under Lock & Key

12 January 1865: During the Civil War 20 New Afrikan leaders meet with General Sherman of the Union. 19 of the 20 state that they prefer to live separate from the United $tates. Initially land in the south was given to New Afrikans with the Union victory, but when President Andrew Johnson came to power ey re-established Euro-Amerikan rule in the south.

1914: Marcus Garvey founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), a pan-Afrikan, pro-capitalist movement that recognized Euro-Amerikans would never live with New Afrikans as equals. UNIA organized 5 million followers in a movement to return to Afrika and built a number of successful businesses before Garvey was arrested in 1925 and deported to Jamaica.

1917: The African Black Brotherhood (ABB) for African Liberation and Redemption formed as the first Marxist Revolutionary Black nationalist organization in the United $tates, at a time when a free New Afrikan proletariat was migrating from the south to urban centers. The ABB merges into the American Communist Party in the late 1920s.

1952: Malcolm X, a son of Garveyite parents, is paroled from prison and immediately begins organizing with the Nation of Islam, quickly becoming its most influential leader, until ey is expelled in 1964.

1962: Huey P. Newton meets Bobby Seale at a rally at Merritt College opposing the blockade of Cuba. The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) is founded by “revolutionary Black nationalists” (including Max Stanford) seeking to organize an armed struggle to win national liberation for the “colonized Black nation” based in Marxism-Leninism and inspired by Mao Zedong and Malcolm X.

1963: RAM goes underground. Mao Zedong puts out an essay calling on support for Black Liberation Struggle at the behest of Robert F. Williams who was in China in exile after first going to Cuba in 1961 to avoid legal attacks by the U.$. imperialists.

1964: RAM develops armed self-defense units with Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Mississippi delta region. Malcolm X becomes a RAM officer and travels through Africa building support.

28 June 1964: Malcolm X (now el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) returns from Africa and forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) with John Henrik Clarke, the OAAU was to be the broad front organization for the now underground Marxist cadre organization RAM.

21 February 1965: Malcolm X is assassinated. Bobby Seale swears to “make his own self into a motherfucking Malcolm X.”

August 1965: Watts rebellion breaks out in Watts, California, after two New Afrikan stepbrothers and their mother are subject to violence from a white pig. Both cops and white citizens of Watts are beaten by New Afrikans, riots break out throughout the city, and the National Guard are sent in.

1966: Seale leaves RAM, to work with Newton, over lack of material support against police brutality and “inability to organize brothers on the block.” Seale disagrees with RAM’s insistence on the revolutionary vanguard being clandestine. This is later addressed by Newton in the essay, “The Correct Handling of a Revolution” (1967).

1966-67: Newton and Seale adopt the imagery of a black panther, sell Little Red Books to fund handguns, and rent an office for the first chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, at the time an armed group in confrontation with police.

21 February 1967: Eldridge Cleaver and the RAM-affiliated Black Panther Party of Northern California hold a memorial for Malcolm X. Seale, Newton, and other Panthers provide an armed security detail for Betty Shabazz, his widow. Newton says their ability to stand up to police at the event finally convinced Cleaver to join the BPP.

April 1967: The Panthers begin organizing in North Richmond, holding two armed rallies and distributing newspapers informing about the murder of Denzil Dowell by the pigs and the need for armed self-defense.

2 May 1967: A delegation of thirty Panthers go to Sacramento to challenge the passing of a new bill prohibiting carrying arms in public. Twenty-four New Afrikans are accosted and arrested on the way home – 22 armed Panthers, as well as unarmed Eldridge Cleaver and an unarmed, unaffiliated New Afrikan passerby.

May 1967: The Black Panthers publish their Ten Point Program, laying out what they believe and what their demands for New Afrika are.

12 July 1967: Rioting breaks out in Newark, NJ, a majority-New Afrikan city under oppressor-nation control, after a New Afrikan cab driver is beaten too badly to walk. Molotov cocktails are thrown and businesses are looted as the rebellion grows. Twenty-one New Afrikans are murdered by police.

23 July 1967: Urban rebellion breaks out in Detroit, MI, going beyond looting to tactics such as arson and sniping. 33 New Afrikans are killed, as well as ten whites, many of them government officials.

27 October 1967: Newton shoots notorious racist pig John Frey, killing him; Frey shoots Newton in the stomach. Newton’s trial for the murder of Officer Frey sparks the “Free Huey!” movement, wherein Newton is presented as resisting the perpetration of violence against New Afrikans by the occupying-force pigs.

17 October 1967: White youth radicals protest the draft in Oakland, attempting to shut down the induction center, and are met with violent repression. Further rallies and riots against the draft eventually merge with the “Free Huey!” campaign, among both the white and New Afrikan left.

1968: RAM disbands and decides to coordinate through other groups such as the Black Liberation Party, African Peoples’ Party and House of Umoja. BPP rules state: “no party member can join any army force other than the Black Liberation Army.”

28 January 1968: Seale gives a speech at a UC Berkeley rally linking the struggles of anti-draft protestors with police brutality against New Afrikans.

31 March 1968: Malcolm X Society hosts 500 New Afrikan nationalists for the Black Government Conference in Detroit; they initiate the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afika (PG-RNA) to be composed of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

4 April 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is martyred in Memphis, Tennessee. Rebellion erupts in Memphis, and then sweeps New Afrikan neighborhoods. The Panthers play a role in quelling riots in many cities to encourage more organized rebellion.

6 April 1968: Lil’ Bobby Hutton, a 17-year-old Black Panther, is martyred by police in West Oakland while doing armed pig patrols with Eldridge Cleaver.

8 September 1968: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover designates the BPP as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

Fall 1968: Cleaver goes into exile in Cuba.

17 January 1969: Los Angeles chapter leaders Bunchy Carter and John Huggins shot and killed by US organization members on UCLA campus, provoked by FBI interference. BPP leadership had institutes a policy to expel those in clandestine military formations. Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, with eir experience in the U.$. military, takes Carter’s position as Southern California Minister of Defense and begins building chapters across the south while developing underground cadre units as well

July 1969: BPP hosts Revolutionary Conference for a United Front Against Fascism conference in response to others looking to them for leadership, bringing together 4,000 activists, majority Euro-Amerikan. Bobby Seale stresses class struggle and condemns Black racism. The conference creates National Committees to Combat Fascism across the country under BPP leadership that focus on control of the police and freeing political prisoners. Cleaver appears publicly in Algiers, Algeria where ey will establish the BPP international office.

5 November 1969: Seale sentenced to four years in prison for sixteen counts of contempt, because of his outbursts during the trial. Originally being tried as part of the Chicago 8 for “inciting a riot” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, ey was bound and gagged during the trial. Seale was released in 1972.

4 December 1969: Fred Hampton, leader of the Chicago chapter, is assassinated by Chicago police and FBI. The pigs killed Hampton as ey was successfully uniting lumpen organizations in Chicago of different nationalities in the original Rainbow Coalition. The BPP was also in the process of expanding the Central Committee beyond the trusted founders in Oakland to include leaders like Hampton before this happened. This never happened and contributed to the splitting of the party over regional differences.

1969: Los Angeles pioneers the first-ever Special Weapon Assault Team, or SWAT, against BPP office building in L.A.

July-August 1970: Eldridge Cleaver and Elaine Brown join a delegation of people from the U.$. visiting North Vietnam, North Korea and China.

5 August 1970: Huey P. Newton is acquitted and released from prison, taking control of the underground military operation that was built while ey was incarcerated.

7 August 1970: Jonathan Jackson is killed at the Marin County Courthouse attempting to free eir brother George Jackson.

August 1970: Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt goes underground to develop BLA and establish guerrilla bases, with support of the party.

October 1970: People’s Republic of China Premier Zhou Enlai hosts Newton, Elaine Brown and other Panthers. Tens of thousands gather in Tiananmen Square to honor their visit They also visit Jiang Qing.

December 1970: Newton and Elaine Brown send Melvin “Cotton” Smith, a secret police informant, to Dallas to meet with Pratt.

8 December 1970: Pratt, Will Stanford, Will “Crutch” Holiday, and George Lloyd arrested in Dallas; Cotton is arrested shortly after as well.

1971: The BPP splits.

January 1971: Newton and Brown publicly denounces Pratt and others arrested in Dallas for counter-revolutionary behavior. Panther 21 (NYC) issue statement from prison supporting Weather Underground, condemning BPP for ignoring Panther 21 and Weather.

23 January 1971: Newton publishes his theory of “intercommunalism” arguing that nations and national liberation were no longer relevant in global capitalism, which ey introduced at a speech at Boston College in November 1970 following release from prison.

28 January 1971: FBI offices in Boston, NY, LA and San Francisco receive memo to capitalize on the rift over armed struggle within BPP.

13 February 1971: NY Panthers Michael Tabor, Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Connie Matthews were expelled after they went underground.

26 February 1971: Newton and Cleaver (in Algiers) have a phone conversation on live TV that ends with Cleaver calling for the reinstatement of expelled members from NYC and LA and the resignation of David Hilliard as Chief of Staff. Newton follows up by calling Algiers and expelling all Panthers at the BPP International office. Elaine Brown replaces Eldridge Cleaver on the Central Committee of the BPP.

3 April 1971: Cleaver faction begins publishing own newspaper Right On! calling for insurrection as The Black Panther newspaper moves away from calling for “revolution now.”

17 April 1971: Newton puts out statement “On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver…” stating the “We will never run for political office…”

19 May 1971: On the 46th birthday of Malcolm X the BLA shoots two cops protecting the house of the NY District Attorney in charge of prosecuting the Panther 21.

18 August 1971: FBI and police raid headquarters of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika in Mississippi.

21 August 1971: Field Marshall George Jackson is killed by guards at San Quentin State Prison in California. BLA carries out multiple retaliatory attacks on police in San Francisco, and ends support for clandestine military action in Oakland.

1971-1973: 2 years following split the FBI would attribute 20 police deaths to the BLA, while claiming police killed 7 BLA members and imprisoned 18 key members. In 1971 the BLA calls for a strategic retreat, but it is too late for many and the organization is too decentralized to pull back.

1972: Bobby Seale released from prison, but at by this time the BPP was becoming little more than a local community organization in Oakland. “Afro-American Liberation Army” used in place of BLA in Humanity Freedom Peace in 1972 – reprinting essays by Geronimo Pratt. AALA claims action in Los Angeles.

1973: Elaine Brown runs for Oakland City Council.

1973: In the two years after the BPP split, the U.$. government attributed the deaths of 20 police officers to the BLA.

14 November 1973: Police kill Twyman Meyers in an ambush in the Bronx, after which they declared they had “broken the back” of the BLA.

1974: Huey Newton flees to Cuba to avoid criminal charges and Brown takes over as chair of the BPP securing federal and foundation funding for its programs.

1975: Between 1973 and 1975, the FBI claims responsibility for 7 assassinations and the capture of 18 other BLA members.

1975: Imprisoned BLA members sum up last four years in report “Message to the Black Movement” that says, “we lacked a strong ideological base and political base,” and initiated the BLA – Coordinating Committee (BLA-CC), publishing a newsletter circulated in prisons. By this time, BPP chapters with links to the BLA have no above-ground presence.

1977: Newton returns from Cuba, Brown resigns from the BPP after an incident where Newton supported male members of the party who assaulted a womyn in the party in retaliation for the womyn reprimanding a male member for lack of discipline.

2 November 1979: BLA members successfully break Assata Shakur out of prison.

1980: NYPD and FBI form the Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) to coordinate search for Assata and to smash the BLA.

1981: Brinks truck holdup with BLA and Weather members involved led to other militants getting targeted, proving that BLA still had strong membership years after big raids. The Join Terrorist Task Force would go on to conclude that the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (including Weather and BLA members) had conducted many robberies throughout the late 1970s.

December 1981: Last known action of the BLA according to the JTTF.

June 1982: Black Panther Party closes its last office.

November 1993: Former BLA members issue public call to form a New Afrikan Liberation Front.

March 1998: the NALF and PGRNA-Sponsored Jericho ’98 mobilized at least 5000 people around the country for political freedom for nationalist-related prisoner organizing.

Sources: * Triumphant, Black August 2022, Power to New Afrika, MIM Distributors. * Akinyele Umoja, June 1999, “Repression breeds resistance: The black liberation army and the radical legacy of the black panther party, New Political Science. * Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., 2013, Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, UC Press, Berkeley.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We’ve published a paper by the Dawnland Group discussing the organizations that were behind the now defunct magazine Kites. As summarized in that essay, these organizations reject the labor aristocracy thesis and the importance of national liberation struggles (see What is MIM(Prisons)? for more on our positions).

In addition, this month we are publishing on our website the final version of our paper, “Why the International Communist Movement (ICM) Must Break with the Legacy of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM).” This paper is a critique of the RCP-U$A, and the RIM that it helped lead, on the grounds that they put First Worldist and revisionist ideology at the forefront of the ICM. This paper was inspired in part by the work of the OCR and the ideas and papers (by Bob Avakian) that they promote. Part 2 of this review by ROA addresses the section of Kites #8 on the RCP-U$A.]

In this piece put out by the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (OCR) they attempt to shed light on two organizations – the Communist Party-USA (CP) and the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCP-USA). This paper further delves into the 1960’s and the communist movement in general, particularly within these false U.$. borders.

As the writers point out little has been written about the RCP-USA so not much is known for the newer generation of revolutionaries. Some of the members of our organization however have experience with the RCP-USA and have debated and struggled with them for a couple of decades over their neo-colonial line toward Aztlán to no avail. Their failure to recognize the existence of the Chican@ Nation has led us to label them as a revisionist party to say the least. So this paper was welcoming and a way for our comrades to sum up this relic of a distorted past called the RCP-USA.

The writers list the Socialist Party of America (SP) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the forerunners to communist organization in the United $tates. It should also be noted that white supremacy and language barriers hindered the recruitment of Chican@s, or other raza, into these organizations. It is interesting that 100 years later white supremacy continues to affect the line of many multi-national organizations like the IWW, especially when they attempt to put our national interests on the back burner while accusing us of wanting to put our nation first. It is not that we simply want to put the national struggle to the forefront for some subjective reward, we do so as revolutionary nationalists because we have determined that the principle contradiction is between the oppressed nations and the oppressor nation. A people cannot be free to determine their future if they are suffering from oppression.

As noted in this paper, the early days of the communist movement in the United $tates had a proletariat that was “substantially immigrant”, today we see the same with the proletariat being mainly migrant workers, particularly those from Mexico. This seems to make the vanguard’s job easier organizationally. Back then there was a proletariat of various migrants from various countries, including many from Europe, so a communist vanguard role would have been to create agit/prop material in these various languages in an attempt to raise consciousness in these populations. We see the Chican@ nations role as key in today’s environment where the proletariat is largely Mexican@ and from Central and South America making Aztlán’s job of uniting the Brown exploited workers under the Chican@ leadership much easier than any other national organization. The trail of liberation on these shores is Brown.

At one point the issue of Black oppression was addressed in this paper, noting that the communist movement of this time essentially dropped the ball and:

“Subjectively, the failure of US communists to prioritize making an analysis of the Black national question – the oppression of Black People and how that oppression can be ended through communist revolution and begin making political interventions in struggles over the oppression of Black people was a serious, strategic blunder that only compounded the objective problem.”(1)

Another “strategic blunder” of the time was in not prioritizing an analysis of Chican@ national oppression – not only back in the early 1900’s but the continued blundering of today when many political organizations within these false U.$. borders continue to ignore the very essential Chican@ struggle in their analysis. This also highlights the continued necessity of single-nation building for Aztlán. After all if the Chicano nation does not organize for the liberation of Aztlán who will?

The early 1900’s was prime time for the Chican@ nation in terms of rebellion, it was just about 50 years since colonization at the hands of U.$. imperialism but it was also a time of the Plan de San Diego. As our Chicano Red Book put it:

“During the first decade of the 1900’s a group of unidentified Mexican@s or Chican@s put out a document calling for armed resistance by Chican@s. The Plan de San Diego called for Armed Struggle against Amerika and proclaimed that upon victory the”South West United States” would become a Chican@ state, New Afrikans would form their own state and First Nations their own state. This was the first united front of the oppressed nations on these shores that sought independence for all oppressed nations upon victory: the Plan demonstrated true internationalism.”(2)

So although Chican@s have been resisting and organizing for independence even before U.$. communists began to organize in the SP, IWW, CP or Communist Labor Party (CLP), none of these so-called revolutionary orgs developed an analysis on raza or our colonization during the early 20th century. The RCP-USA still has not supported Chican@ independence. Marxism taught us historical materialism which we use to learn from hystory. Hystory has taught us that anytime we have lifted the boot of the white oppressor nation off our necks it has been by Chicanos coming together and struggling. Whether it was against white terror that las Goras Blancas (the white caps) fought or against Amerikkka which compelled the Plan de San Diego to develop, we have, as a people, always struggled against national oppression from the factories to the field. The most significant labor strike in U.$. hystory, which was a Chican@ strike but which white labor has hijacked and renamed “The Ludlow Massacre”.

During the time that the SP, CP, IWW and CLP were committing the blunder on the Black nation, they likewise committed a great blunder on the Chican@ nation who was also struggling against national oppression. Because of this hystory we set out to create the Republic of Aztlán, the government in waiting for the Chican@ nation. The writers note the CP’s “foreign language workers clubs” and their role in organizing non-English speakers. Taking into account the almost non-existent analysis of the Chican@ struggle by the movement in U.$. borders, it highlights the need for Raza workers org’s and clubs to help organize and develop immigrants who suffer from exploitation.

This piece sums up the trials and tribulations of the CP. Their factionalism and devotion to the unions seemed to drown out the suffering of the internal semi-colonies of the time. The Comintern and, in particular, Stalin’s guidance, led the CP to finally give the Black nation and their struggles against national oppression some attention. Aztlán was ripe for development during this time when white labor denied Chican@s as well as many other oppressed at the time.

An interesting mention in this piece was on the development of a “guerilla military force.” In discussing the communist activities of the 1920’s the writers state:

“There is a question of whether Communists could have developed some type of guerrilla military force to supplement the mass labor struggles that erupted and to contend with the repression by way of organized armed defense of strikers where appropriate (some of that happened spontaneously) and selective assassinations of agents of repression!!” (3)

Although we do not promote People’s War today, the fact remains that a vanguard’s role is to be prepared to defend the people, especially when the capitalist state unleashes the most vile forms of repression. One has to be prepared for the inevitable, this includes the understanding that a strike force is a very necessary vehicle for defense of an oppressed peoples. No nation will ever acquire liberation without such a mechanism in place. Cadre should grasp this, teach this and prepare for the time when such a force is necessary. Fanon was clear in that colonial violence can only be overcome by a greater violence, the oppressor nation understands no other language. At the same time, the cadre should accept that such a dialogue is a great sacrifice of the highest form. Indeed, we cannot study revolution without studying what such warfare would deliver society to such a transformation. The Black Liberation Army sliced to the heart of it when they said:

“Bombings, kidnappings, sniping, revolutionary executions, surprise raids, bank robbery: all of these are rightfully weapons of urban guerrilla warfare. As we use them we must take care to maintain high principles and keep in mind that power to the people is more than just”campaign rhetoric”.” (4)

Although campaign rhetoric may be leading much of the public discourse, a realistic view of national liberation leads us to develop plans of attack and self defense even if the plans do not become operational until after our demise. The future of any socialist revolution demands this.

Subjectively, the part of this writing that hit the hardest to those of us who organize within the U.$. concentration kamps was the portion describing the story of the young womyn named Marian Morna, the 18 year old member of the CP’s Young Communist League who describes integrating with the masses to organize strikes in the fields of California’s Imperial Valley. Her description was incredibly moving, in her words:

“The years with the fruit pickers became a world within the world, a microcosm of feelings that never left me, not even when I left them. I lived with the pickers, ate, slept, and got drunk with them. I helped bury their men and deliver their babies. We laughed, cried, and talked endlessly into the night together. And, slowly, some extraordinary interchange began to take place between us. I taught them how to read, and they taught me how to think. I taught them how to organize, and they taught me how to lead. I saw things happening to people I’d never seen before. I saw them becoming as they never dreamed they could become. Day by day people were developing, transforming, communicating inarticulate dreams, discovering a force of being in themselves. Desires, skills, capacities they didn’t know they had blossomed under the pressure of active struggle. And the sweetness, the generosity, the pure comradeship that came flowing out of them as they began to feel themselves! They were—there’s no other word for it—noble. Powerful in struggle, no longer sluggish with depression, they became inventive, alive, democratic, filled with an instinctive sense of responsibility for each other. And we were all like that, all of us, the spirit touched all of us. It was my dream of socialism come to life. I saw then what I could be like, what people could always be like, how good the earth and all things upon it could be, how sweet to be alive and to feel yourself in everyone else.”

If one were to replace the words “fruit pickers” with “lumpen” or “prisoners” it would be spot on to an organizer’s experiences in the concentration kamps. I feel it. The connections that develop with the masses in any environment cannot be manufactured insincerely. Oppressed people, wherever they may be struggling against an oppressor, at some point develop relations that give us a glimmer of what social interaction and struggle will feel like as society transforms to a higher level, we taste it and this sampler compels us forward for more.

Another glimmer of hope we learn about in this piece was in the lesson of the Yokinen Show trial in 1931. August Yokinen was a member of the CP who refused to allow Black folks to enter the Finnish Workers Club in Harlem and went on to say their place was in Black Harlem. The reaction to this was the CP having a show trial charging Yokinen with white chauvinism. It was public and even got coverage in the bourgeois press with The New York Times putting it on the front page. The trial provided good agit prop for the masses and highlighted the inability of the capitalist state to address white supremacy and hold white chauvinism accountable and the CP did. This educated the masses and put Amerika on blast. This reminded me of our org’s action around a gun buy-back program by the pigs. We had a comrade announce on the radio live that there was going to be a gun buy back, where the pigs can turn in the stolen “hot” guns they had in their trunks that they regularly planted on people. We announced they can remain anonymous and that we will not ask for a badge number. Our goal was simply to keep our streets safe from pig terror. We did this to raise consciousness and, although in our case we did not get coverage in the bourgeois press, we addressed a real form of repression in a very audacious way which, to our knowledge, had not been previously done.

Raising consciousness is our job as communists however because of the brainwashing that the state does on a mass scale we have to be bold, creative and audacious in our efforts, all without crossing the line where the state has ammunition to lock us up. In the end sometimes they’ll make shit up and lock us up anyways. The Republic of Aztlán has taken up its responsibility to serve the people by all means necessary and we overstand the dangers that come with this role!

This piece has many lessons within it, too many to address in our writing here. The case of the Scottsboro boys is worth a mention though. It was of course a sad case of injustice and imprisonment but the lesson was definitely on how communists of the time responded and struggled with bourgeois liberals on which way that struggle developed. This struggle reminded me in a small way to the prisoner hunger strike of 2011/2013 in Califas and how a variety of orgs entered the arena of coalition.

It is always a struggle to at once unite with the masses in struggle while resisting the pull towards reformism which often engulfs mass struggles. This first part of our review framed the CP and its good and bad characteristics that we can learn from today. Soviet revisionism ultimately sank the CP ship. Despite all of its efforts, it continues to be anchored in the graveyard of bourgeois elections today. This first part of the review was successful in “burying” the CP for our organization.

<sup>Notes:
1. “The CP, the Sixties, the RCP and the Crying Need for a Communist Vanguard Party today: Summing up a century of Communist leadership , organization, strategy and practice in the United States so that we can rise to the challenges before us.” By Organization of Communist Revolutionaries
2. Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán by a MIM Prisons Study Group, 2nd Edition 2021, Aztlán Press, Page 40.
3. Organization of Communist Revolutionaries IBID.
4. Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army, Rookery Press, Page 92.</sup>

Bilal Sunni-Ali (13 July 1948 – 30 December 2024) was a revolutionary and dedicated citizen of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). That dedication took various forms, from eir clandestine organizing to eir contributions to revolutionary culture via eir jazz, blues, and spoken word performances aimed at challenging the status quo and building up a revolutionary nationalist consciousness among the people.

From eir youth, Bilal partook in pro-people activities from eir time as a musician in the Youth Division of the North East Bronx NAACP, to eir later activities as a founding member of the New York City Black Panther Party fighting housing issues, police brutality, and recruiting street L.O.s into the movement. Dedicated to the self-determination of New Afrika, Bilal Sunni-Ali went underground in 1968 with the Black Liberation Army. In 1982, ey would be charged and acquitted in RICO charges related to the freeing of Assata Shakur and a bank robbery by the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (RATF) for which Sekou Odinga (who died 12 January 2024) and Silvia Baraldini were convicted. Bilal was successfully defended by the late Chokwe Lumumba in the politically charged trial, where they charged the U.$. government with conspiracy on behalf of the RNA. The RATF is described in detail in the book False Nationalism, False Internationalism as the last attempt at the radical militancy of the 1960s by members of the RNA and the Euro-Amerikan May 19th Communist Organization. Prior to this, Bilal was locked up in Soledad prison from 1970-1972, where ey struggled to develop both the general and political education of prisoners. Bilal’s support for prisoners continued throughout eir life, as before eir recent death, ey was involved in the Jericho Movement and the Imam Jamil Action Network – organizations dedicated to the struggle of political prisoners.

Bilal was a devout Muslim who truly lived in accordance to eir faith – not only by embodying the Islamic practice of standing up for the oppressed, but by raising their consciousness at the same time; drawing the connections between imperialism and white supremacy to the oppressed youth.

Sifting through Bilal’s tenor saxophone performances online, one will come across em performing at many events centered around prisoners. The usual song of choice that ey perform is entitled “Look For Me In The Whirlwind” (a title inspired by Marcus Garvey). The lyrics are as follows:

It is said that Bilal also went by the name “Spirit” and I believe that to be an apt name for an individual who epitomizes the spirit of eir people in all that ey do.

Rest in Power Bilal Sunni-Ali!

Long Live the Republic of New Afrika!

28 September 2024 – Protestors gathered across the world to mourn the killing of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a founding member and leader for 32 years of Hezbollah (the Party of God) in Lebanon.(1) We know some readers in U.$. prisons will be mourning as well. Nasrallah was the strongest anti-imperialist voice among world leaders for a generation. And the recent killings of Lebanese and Palestinian political leaders have been significant victories for I$rael, at least in the short-term.

Over 1,000 people have been killed, including Hezbollah’s top leaders, and 6,000 injured by a series of attacks by I$rael on Lebanon in the last couple weeks. These included exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, as well as massive bombing strikes. Amidst these attacks, the Communist Party of Lebanon has called for national unity to focus on fighting I$rael, at a time when Lebanon faces its own crisis in government. They pledged to not let I$rael (and the United $tates, we’d add) separate the struggle of Lebanon in support of the Palestinian struggle.(2)

Hezbollah, however, has been the lead party defending Lebanon and Palestinians from I$rael for decades. They have proven there is still a progressive role for bourgeois forces to play today, even in our highly-developed imperialist world.

Nasrallah had a clear analysis of U.$. imperialism:

“America itself is the decision maker. In America, you have the major corporations; you have a trinity of the oil corporations, the weapons manufacturers and the so-called ‘Christian Zionism.’ The decision making is in the hands of this alliance. ‘Israel’ used to be a tool in the hands of the British, and now it is a tool in the hands of America.”

The Samidoun Palestinian prisoner solidarity network commented on Hezbollah’s role in the liberation of political prisoners of I$rael:

“Sayyed Nasrallah’s leadership and struggle was also directly connected to the prisoners’ movement and the liberation of the prisoners of the Zionist regime. From the liberation of Khiam prison by the victorious Lebanese resistance in 2000, liberating the torture dens of the occupiers and their collaborators and turning it into a museum of honour for those who struggled and sacrificed there, to the repeated prisoner exchanges achieved by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Resistance, including the 2004 prisoner exchange, which liberated 400 Palestinian prisoners as well as 23 Lebanese, five Syrians, three Moroccans, three Sudanese, one Libyan and one German-British prisoner jailed by the Zionist regime. These exchanges, in which Sayyed Nasrallah himself played a major role, illustrated once again that the only viable mechanism available to liberate the prisoners in occupation jails is to liberate the land and to achieve an exchange.”(3)

Hezbollah arose from the 1982 I$raeli occupation of Beirut. MIM founders organized to oppose that 1982 occupation at a time when MIM was just emerging.(4) The war in 1982 also forged the Joint Leadership, in which the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine joined forces and attempted to further unite the Palestinian liberation movement away from conciliation.(5) During the 2006 war between Lebanon and I$rael, MIM condemned RCP=U$A, various alt media, and the U.$. state department for attacking Iran and Hezbollah using gender.(6) In 2024, the imperialists are circulating clips of Nasrallah making comments calling for punishment for adultery and homosexuality. We salute the “Queers for Palestine” in the United $tates who recognize the children being bombed in Gaza and now Lebanon are a lot more gender oppressed than any of us are here in the belly of the beast.

The history of the anti-imperialist united front in the region is beyond the scope of this article. But the region has certainly demonstrated the expediency of uniting classes on the basis of national liberation to fight imperialist occupiers. Hezbollah has remarked in the past that their alliances are closer to some Marxist groups than certain Islamist groups. This shows the emptiness of those in the imperialist countries who want to pit Marxism against Islam on principle. Nasrallah also wrote that Muslims have the duty to provide charity support to any Palestinian taking up armed struggle – Marxist, nationalist or any other shade.(7)

A Hamas spokespersyn responded to the death of Nasrallah saying that it will not make I$rael any safer:

“Is Israel’s problem with armed groups with limited agendas that can be eliminated by killing their leaders, or with peoples who have rights that they have been striving to achieve for decades and have not stopped or surrendered despite the killing of many leaders? Has any resistance group disappeared after the assassination of the leaders?”(8)

Despite these recent losses by the oppressed nations in the Middle East, Hezbollah won the war with I$rael in 2006, killing as many soldiers as I$rael did without all the civilian deaths caused by I$rael in Lebanon. Just as the war on Gaza, one year out, has not been an easy victory for I$rael, further escalations into Lebanon will certainly not be either. Hezbollah and Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) in Yemen continue to be the front line of the struggle against genocide in Palestine and against U.$. imperialism in general.

You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution!

<sup>Notes:
1. The New York Times, 28 September 2024, Protestors Mourn Nasrallah’s Death Around the World.
2. Omar Deeb, 25 September 2024, Transcript of interview on SSawt al-Shaab Radio.
3. Samidoun, 28 September 2024, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: The martyrdom of a great international revolutionary leader of our era.
4. MIM, 2007, Substantial Hezbollah book appears finally.
5. Interview of Habash and Hawatmeh on the Joint Leadership and PLO (Draft Translation)
6. MIM, 2006, Six percent of Amerikans support Hezbollah’s side in Lebanon
7. Nicholas Noe ed., 2007, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, London: Verso, p. 269
8. Tom O’Connor, 27 September 2024, Hamas Warns Killing Hezbollah’s Nasrallah Will Not Make Israel Safer, Newsweek.</sup>

There are 65 organizations who have signed on to the 2024 Prison Banned Books Week campaign. What unites us is a belief that there is good in lifting the restrictions on literature that U.$. prisoners have access to. Without having asked all of the participants, we’d wager that we all agree that by understanding the past and understanding the ideas of others, that people can better understand our present and act on it in a way that benefits humynity overall. There are certain ideas that we may take from the Age of the Enlightenment that we all share.

Finding Truth in Books

Where many of the organizations in this campaign probably disagree with us is in seeing that each piece of literature has a class character to it. As part of our world view as Marxists, we recognize that, in a class society, there is class character in everything humyns create..

There is an adage that the truth is hidden in books. But as we’ve discussed before, not all books are true or based in materialist science.(1) In a sense, we go to the library and read books to bury the lies within books and all around us. We must understand different arguments and ways of thinking in order to see their accuracy or fallacy.

Rather than think of the “marketplace of ideas” where a bunch of people bring their individual thoughts to compete with others (the individualist view), we see a war between two main class positions in the realm of ideas (and elsewhere) – that of the bourgeoisie vs. that of the proletariat. There is a reason why prisoners are the most restricted readers in this country, and why New Afrikan, Indigenous and Chican@ literature are targeted as “Security Threat Group” material.

Cultural Revolution

If there is one phenomenon that defines Maoism, it is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China (1966-1976) and the lessons learned from it. But wait, didn’t they like burn books and punish academics during the GPCR?

In essence, the GPCR was an unleashing of almost a billion people to participate in the war between the proletarian and the bourgeois lines in politics and production. Not only that, this was a people that were more than 90% illiterate before the liberation of China by the Communist Party in 1949.

“My conclusion… was that China had made greater progress in liberating masses of people from illiteracy and bringing millions some knowledge of scientific and industrial technique than any nation had ever done in so short a time.

“…By 1960… about $2,600,000,000) was devoted to education and science, or fifty percent more than the direct budgetary military expenditure….

“In 1960 United States expenditure on education at all levels was less than four percent of the national income, or slightly less than the $18,000,000,000 Americans spent for alcoholic beverages and tobacco.

“In 1957 Premier Chou En-lai had estimated illiteracy over the whole country at seventy percent. Mr Tsui said that by 1960 the percentage had been reduced… to about sixty-six percent for the rural areas and twenty-four percent in the cities.”(2)

By 1979, three years after the GPCR, illiteracy was down to 30%.(3) Yet the GPCR is known in the United $tates for shutting down schools and attacking professors. These things were central to the student struggles on campuses across China. And in these struggles there were Red Guard factions taking up different positions and political lines, fighting against each other. Students were challenging the hierarchical roles in the university and the traditional methods of study, without always having the answers. There are even documented cases of Red Guards burning religious books as a means of attacking reactionary ideas. But this was not a coordinated effort by the state as is happening in prisons and schools across the United $tates today, the so-called “land of the free”. We can see parallels to the critiques of the Chinese student movement in the United $tates today where “right to an education” is being used to silence protests against U.$. arms being used for a genocide in Palestine.

Interestingly, after praising Chinese literacy in the quote above, Edgar Snow quotes a U.$. Library of Congress staffer stating that the Chinese concept of education “is not distinguishable from indoctrination, propaganda and agitation.”(2) This is where we would again stress the class perspective, and how propaganda is in the eye of the beholder:

“Westerners perceive Chinese education under Mao as”propaganda,” because it encourages values and goals which contradict the goals of capitalism. These values and goals taught in China during the Cultural Revolution were consistent with the building of socialism. Education in Western nations is not perceived as “propaganda” by those who, consciously or not, agree with the goals of capitalism/imperialism and patriarchy. Similarly, advertising for capitalist products, while recognized as very influential on people’s opinions and actions, is not perceived as “brain-washing” by those who benefit from capitalism and have therefore decided to tolerate it.”(4)

The totalitarian control of corporations like Global Tel*Link, JPay, and Securus over what prisoners read, write, listen to and communicate with people outside is a good example of what our society accepts.

Allyn and Adele Ricket wrote about their experience as prisoners in China for providing intelligence to the United $tates Government. This is one of the best accounts of the Chinese socialist approach to education/re-education. They were imprisoned during the early years of the revolution and witnessed the change in approach, partially due to changing conditions (the new government had been established and prisoners were less rebellious) and partially due to lessons learned. “By 1953… the authorities acknowledged that their former overemphasis on suppression had been a mistake.”(5)

Their description of staff at their prison sounds unbelievable to a U.$. prisoner:

“he always seemed to have time to listen to the troubles of one or another of the prisoners or to do countless little things which showed how serious he was in looking out for the welfare of his charges.”

At first Allyn Rickett thought this was a bit of a propaganda show, but this incident changed eir mind:

“I looked through the crack in the palisade built around our cell window to obstruct the view. There was Supervisor Shen patiently going along the line turning every article of the prisoners’ clothing to make certain they would be dry by the time we were to take them in after supper.”(6)

Regarding censorship, the Ricketts also compare the news in China over time and to the Amerikan press:

“Publication of news is determined by its usefulness in increasing the people’s social consciousness and morality and furthering the Communist Party’s program for the development of the country. Therefore the content of the news is limited to what the authorities feel will serve these ends.

“To our mind, no matter how sincere in their purpose the authorities may be, in violating the principle of the right to know they are taking a dangerous step. …One of the most encouraging recent developments in China has been a liberalization of this concept of a controlled press. [written in 1957]

“…Our experience in living in and reading the press of both countries has led us to the conclusion that the Chinese today are still receiving a clearer picture of what is happening here than the American people are of what is taking place in China.”(7)

Ten years later the GPCR will begin and “big character posters” were promoted as a way for the masses to express their grievances against Party officials, or other issues they faced. The Chinese experiment in socialism was unique in how it regularly attempted to open up mass participation in ideological struggle and in organizing society as far as could be tolerated without creating chaos. And even then there was some chaos, which is what the GPCR is usually criticized for.

The press is a battleground for class struggle. In a condition where all the books were bourgeois, the socialist government had a lot of work to do to catch up. And this was done largely in face-to-face study groups, whether on campuses, on farms or in prisons.

The ideas of the old system must be surpassed, but not erased. Marx showed how different economic systems gave birth to subsequent systems, and how the ideas evolved to reflect those new systems. This is all important to the understanding of humyn history and to the development and continued advancement of humyn knowledge.

<sup>Notes: 1. Melo X, August 2022, Are Ideas in a Book Materialist?, Under Lock & Key 79.
2. Snow, Edgar, 1970, Red China Today, Random House: New York, pp.229-231.
3. MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT POSITION PAPER ON VIOLENCE, PART II, 26 August 1992
4. MC5, November 1999, Myths About Maoism.
5. Ricket, Allyn & Adele, 1973, Anchor Books: New York, p.235.
6. Ibid., p.236-7
7. Ibid., p.331</sup>

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

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

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

Our Books Program

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The aim of this article is to provide a brief summation of what Hamas is as a movement. It will expand on the history of Palestine written by a comrade in ULK 84. Both imperialist media and revisionist propaganda create false narratives around Hamas, oftentimes mistaking basic facts to suit their interests. It is important to understand that Hamas is a movement and that over the course of history has changed, likely changing as We speak. The primary aim of this article is not to formulate an opinion on how communists should approach Hamas or to speak over Palestinian and Arab analyses of Hamas. Rather it is to point out the fundamental, but often obscured, facts and history of the origins of Hamas and what it represents.

The Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions brings the resistance together to coordinate a counter-attack against I$raeli colonization on 7 October 2023. Ayman Nofal, senior commander in Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant arm of Hamas. was a main leader in unifying resistance for this counter-attack who died in 2023 soon after the counter-attack.(1) The current war is not just between Hamas and I$rael, but one between the entirety of Palestinian resistance against I$rael for the national liberation of Palestine. Hamas is the largest faction of the Palestinian resistance so an understanding of the movement and its history is crucial for understanding the ongoing struggle.

The origins, emergence and development of Hamas

Hamas is an Arabic abbreviation for Islamic Resistance Movement(Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya). The movement was founded in December 1987 at the beginning of the First Palestinian Intifada. Before Hamas there was the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which had a branch in Gaza since 25 November 1946(founded this year to coincide with year 1366 of the Islamic calendar). The Muslim Brotherhood was non-confrontational with I$rael, which led to criticism and division internally during the 1970s-1980s. Hamas was formed as a way to join the First Palestinian Intifada(Uprising) without endangering the position of the Muslim Brotherhood. Under the defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, the I$raeli military adopted the so-called “iron fist” policy of violent repression: it used live ammunition against unarmed protestors, jailed demonstrators, and imposed punitive curfews and closures. This only added fuel to the fire, escalating into a full scale intifada.(2) The participation of Hamas in the First Palestinian Intifada was a major success, leading it to become more than just an associated organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.(3)

The origins of Hamas lie within the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Centre(Al-Mujamma’ al-Islami). The Islamic Centre was established on 7 September 1973, by the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin(Ahmed Yassin). It emerged out of the Muslim Brotherhood, with it’s stated goals of being the independence of Muslim lands from foreign occupation and establishment of an Islamic sociopolitical system.(4) The rise of the Islamic movements in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, only really took off after the First Intifada. This started on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an I$raeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers. Palestinian resistance emerged in response, being met with 80,000 I$raeli soldiers being deployed to crush it. Hamas emerged specifically for the Muslim Brotherhood to engage in the First Palestinian Intifada, beforehand militant struggle against I$rael by Islamic movements in Palestine were scarce.

Palestinian fedayeen(freedom fighters) network was primarily united under the Palestinian Liberation Organization(PLO) after the Six-Day War, a war between I$rael and a coalition of Arab nations in 1967 which led to I$rael attaining West Bank, Jerusalem, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip. The resistance was primarily led by the Palestinian Liberation Front(PLF), Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah), and Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine(PFLP). In the end, it was harshly repressed by I$rael with the death of Muhammad al-Aswad, known as “Gaza’s Guevara,” on 9 March 1973, marking the end of the military struggle. The failure of the Palestinian national movement marked a major turning point in Palestine.(5)

The Muslim Brotherhood was spared this harsh repression and Ahmed Yassin during this time led a variety of political activities and creation of various social institutions. These were under the name of the Islamic Centre, being recognized more formally on 7 September 1973, when the I$raeli governor attended the Jawrat al-Shams mosque inauguration. Later on, the Islamic University of Gaza, one of the first universities in Gaza, was founded by the Islamic Centre. The institutions and activities of the Islamic Centre played a major role in its establishment, with the university becoming a major site of recruitment for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Centre was officially recognized as a charity in September 1979 by the I$raeli occupation. The reason for I$rael’s benevolent tolerance toward the Islamic Centre was to weaken the Palestinian national movement in exchange for a more conciliatory Islamic alternative.

The Palestinian national movement was even further divided with the PLO adopting the 10 Point Program which was the basis for the two-state solution and drafting of peace with I$rael. The Front of the Palestinian Forces Rejecting Solutions of Surrender was established in 1974 by a coalition of communist and progressive nationalist organizations who wanted to continue armed struggle. The PLO became more conciliatory towards I$rael, and today it rules over the now I$raeli puppet government called the Palestinian Authority. The 10 point program in its content may have had some progressive demands, such as right for displaced Palestinians to return and take back their homes. However, its calls for peace with I$rael and usage in justifying and end to resistance led to collaboration as we see today in the West Bank.(6)

In regard to social institutions, the main competition to the Islamic Centre was the Palestine Red Crescent Society under Haidar Abdel-Shafi, who was close with the PFLP. Specifically, Haidar was part of the Arab Nationalist Movement which was started by one of the founders of the PFLP, George Habash. The PFLP emerged directly out of the Arab Nationalist Movement after the Six Day War in July 1967. The executive committee of the Arab Nationalist Movement decided that the Palestine Section should move toward armed struggle. Three commando groups merged, the Revenge Youth, Heroes of Return, and the Palestine Liberation Front(PLF) to announce the founding of the PFLP on December 11th, 1967. Haidar Abdel-Shafi was both the founder and director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which served as a bastion of Palestinian nationalism in 1972.(7)

The PLO, Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre were dominated by different sections of petty-bourgeois, national bourgeois and even comprador elements. As a result, the PFLP was a major threat to the projects of both groups given the revolutionary nationalist outlook that the front upheld, rooted in the proletariat. The PFLP took heavily from the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionaries both in political and strategic developments.(8) Also, the the front correctly identified the enemies of Palestinian revolution as “Israel, the world Zionist Movement, global imperialism and Arab reactionaries.” In contrast to the other factions within Palestine, the front adopted a firmly dialectical materialist outlook, one based in scientific analysis of material reality with all its developments and changes.(9) This is what led to an allied struggle against communism by the other factions, as the PFLP presented a major threat to the PLO and Islamic movements. To note, the PLO refers to the mainstream conciliatory section, as the PFLP was still part of the PLO.

The co-founder of Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah), Assad Saftawi, was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was crucial in negotiations between the Islamic movement and Fatah in Palestine. He was the pioneer of an anti-communist strategy and alliance between the factions, running against Haidar Abdel-Shafi for leadership of the Red Crescent Society with the support of the Islamic Centre. After an overwhelming defeat, hundreds of protestors supportive of the Islamic movements ransacked Red Crescent offices on 7 January 1980. The protestors continued to attack cafés, cinemas, and drinking establishments in the town center. The I$raeli authorities did not intervene in response to the violent attacks against the Palestine Red Crescent Society intentionally.(10)

Coming back to the Islamic University of Gaza, in 1981 there were protests over the Islamic movement’s monopoly over the policies in the university. The Islamic Centre decided to turn against its former allies, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. The I$raeli authorities and the Islamic movement formed a strange coalition to end the secular nationalist opposition in the university. The Islamic Bloc, an offshoot of the Islamic Centre, won 51% of the votes in student elections and were able to impose Islamic policies; from separate entrances for women and men to the way in which certain ideas and courses were taught.(11) It was reported in 1983 that the Islamic Centre hired armed gangs to attack striking students and teachers. Later on, certain Islamic dress standards among students were encouraged, with women who refused to wear Hijabs being attacked for it. A further bolstering of the Islamic movements against the national movements in Palestine had ensued with the Islamic University of Gaza becoming a bastion for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre.(12)

On June 1984, sixty pistols and sub-machine guns hidden in Ahmed Yasin’s mosque led to his arrest and sentencing to thirteen years in prison. Even if the arms were primarily intended to intimidate other Palestinian factions.(13) Yasin’s incarceration allowed his supporters to wash him of all suspicions of collaboration with I$rael. The leader was freed in May 1985 within the framework of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the PFLP–General Command, a faction that emerged in opposition to the PLO after it created it’s 10 Point Program, based in Damascus. The Muslim Brotherhood remained non-confrontational despite the repression against it and built up the Islamic Centre, with the number of mosques doubling from 77 in 1967 to 150 in 1986. This non-confrontational and passive stance was opposed by Fathi Shikaki, who split off to form the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, inspired by the Iranian Revolution. In response to the Islamic Jihad multiplying attacks against I$rael, the Islamic center formed the Majd. It performed the function of protecting the Islamic network from attacks and in suppression of what was seen as social ills.(14) The priority remained in combating oppositional factions within Palestine rather than I$rael.

On 9 December 1987, the First Palestinian Intifada began in the Gaza Strip and quickly spread to the West Bank. The growing popularity of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad led to an agreement within the Muslim Brotherhood between the conservative old guard, supportive of a non-confrontational approach to I$rael, made up mainly of urban merchants petty-bourgeoisie and general upper petty-bourgeoisie, and the younger generation of new activist cadres, pro-resistance, made up mostly of lower petty-bourgeoisie and refugee camp petty-bourgeois students. Hamas was created in December 1987 as a separate but affiliated organization which joined the First Palestinian Intifada. It was largely successful and began to attract a lot of sympathizers. The post-1973 oil boom allowed for many neighboring Arab nations to back Islamic movements across the region, including Hamas and the Islamic Centre.(15)

The Second Palestinian Intifada and liberation of Gaza

The PLO suffered major setbacks abroad, with the Black September in Jordan, a period of major repression of the PLO there. It led them to be deported and transferred to Lebanon. Later in 1982, the PLO was expelled from Beirut to Tunisia. All of this led to the PLO, led by Fatah, to seek out a diplomatic solution rather than pursuing armed struggle. The Oslo Accords were signed later on in 1991 between I$rael and the PLO, leading to the Palestinian Authority ruling over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Military collaboration between the Palestinian Authority and I$rael had increased against the Islamic movement. The Palestinian Authority allowed continued colonization and occupation.

On 28 September 2000, Ariel Sharon, a Likud party candidate for I$rael, visited the Temple Mount, also known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif, an area sacred to both Jews and Muslims, accompanied by over a thousand security guards. He stated on that day, “the Temple Mount is in our hands and will remain in our hands. It is the holiest site in Judaism and it is the right of every Jew to visit the Temple Mount.” This led to the start of the Second Palestinian Intifada, with Palestinian resistance being carried out by the PLO, Hamas, and other factions. It led to I$raeli settlement and occupation forces withdrawing from the region after being ousted by the resistance in 2005.(15)

In January 2006, Hamas had won the elections in the Gaza Strip, winning 72 out of 132 seats with 42.9% of the vote. I$rael and I$rael’s imperialist backers enforced sanctions on the Hamas-led government soon after. Just a year later, tensions rose between Fatah and Hamas, with Hamas reigning victorious and expelling Fatah from Gaza in 2007 after the Battle of Gaza. The government faced major issues, with the poverty rate sharply rising to 65% by the end of 2006.(16)

The I$raeli blockade banned importation of raw industrial materials and put a siege on Palestinian banks to create an artificial financial crisis. Despite this and the rapidly deteriorating conditions, the oppressor classes enjoyed great luxuries and had high levels of consumption. This was especially the case of private tunnel dealers who controlled a monopoly on prices. A large portion of workers in Palestine found themselves in extreme poverty. There are two aspects to this, internal and external, and the external blockade by I$rael was only the external cause behind this.(17)

The origins of the tunnels were historically havens for both smugglers and outlaws but also for freedom fighters. Before the Second Palestinian Intifada the tunnels were primarily used for drug and gold trafficking for high profits. Near the end of the year 2000 they became primarily used for smuggling arms for the resistance factions.(18) After the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the regeneration and construction of tunnels ensued in response to the siege. During this period, the main lifeline for those in Gaza became these tunnels with an economy centering around it. This led to a regression and neglect of the development of a productive economy or sustainable development. It is possible that during this time the primary class within Gaza was the lumpen-proletariat and perhaps still is.

The number of tunnels increased from 20 in mid-2007 to up to 500 by November 2008.(19) Some estimates by a variety of sources, from the Hamas-led government, Egypt, and others, estimate higher. Regardless, most of the tunnels belonged either to Hamas or its sympathizers. The risks that workers face in the tunnels are immense and there is a popular saying about the tunnels:

hundreds of tunnels deployed on the border, hundreds of young men waiting to get involved in the game … write your will, you are facing the unknown, but this is the land that you loved, roll up your shirt sleeves, and be a man, you are now at a depth of 20 meters in the land of Gaza, trust in God and finish your shift … 12 hours in hell, but remember that hungry mouths awaiting you. Here, death is merciful and quick … No pain… No white phosphorus … nor Israeli soldiers who might use you as a human shield, it’s neither a prison here nor jail; here is God and the darkness of the tunnel and breathing slowly till you die(20)

Hamas is heavily dependent on the tunnel economy, estimated to make more than $700 million annually. This economy is ultimately unproductive and heavily dependent on exploitation, creating a class of private tunnel owners and merchants who make up the leadership of Hamas today. Ismail Haniyeh, the current leader of Hamas, is a millionaire from the money made from his ownership and respective taxation on trade through tunnels. The specific class relations will not be commented on here, but this inquiry into the tunnel economy is done specifically to point out its importance to Hamas. The large national bourgeoisie who own these tunnels and the petty-bourgeoisie merchants who conduct trade within them make up the class basis of Hamas today. This leads to an interest in opposing imperialism and I$raeli occupation while maintaining the exploitation of the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat.

The Hamas charter frames the struggle as a Jihad(holy struggle) against Zionism. In its first charter in 1988, it was openly anti-Semitic, claiming that both liberal and communist revolutions were carried out because of the Jews.(21) The first charter also employs idealism to obscure the internal class struggle and only emphasizes the external one in an idealist manner. This was possibly put in due to the opposition to Hamas by elements of the PLO and PFLP. Later on, this was removed completely possibly in part due to the downfall of both of these factions. As we can see, the ideology of Hamas changes as a result of its class character and relationships with different factions. For that reason, we see that Hamas broke with the Muslim Brotherhood officially in the second charter in 2014 for being too passive. It also shifted toward a more materialist conception of struggle against Zionism, settler-colonialism/colonialism, and imperialism here rather than against Jews and Judaism. In a recent document by Hamas, the organization states this more clearly:

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.(22)

This shift in position is important to note. The specific reason why this occurred is hard to track down but the downfall of elements of the PLO and PFLP is likely an important factor. So is the Second Intifada and liberation of Gaza from I$raeli occupation and imperialism. As we see, resistance to occupation forced Hamas to adopt more correct and materialist political positions in regard to I$rael. It still obscures internal class relations for its own benefit, but given the primary ongoing struggle is against occupation, Hamas is able to maintain majority support. A wartime poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank showed a vast majority supported: the Al Qassam Brigades(Hamas brigades) at 89%, Palestinian Islamic Jihad at 85%, Al Aqsa Brigades(Fatah brigades) at 80%, and Hamas at 76%.(23) Smaller organizations like the PFLP were not included in the survey. So despite the exploitation internally which Hamas is responsible for, its recent practice of being one of the largest groups in the counter-attack against I$rael leads it to win the sympathy of the masses.

Conclusion, Reflections and Future Analysis

As we can see, the Islamic movements in Palestine are not a monolith and have changed overtime. The formation of Hamas and its class basis is important to have clarity on, but this article is by no means an extensive analysis of such. It hopefully has helped in clearing up common myths and confusions around Hamas, with imperialist media constantly making frivolous claims. They range from Hamas having spawned out of the I$raeli far-right funding to Hamas being a terrorist group which kills Palestinians and I$raelis. This article hopefully provided both facts and summarized analyses of why both of these common narratives are false. However, there are major issues left unaddressed and a few will be listed here. The political economy of the Levant and the Palestinian clans/tribes are a crucial factor that has not even been mentioned. The displacement by I$raeli settler-colonialism and imperialism has not been analyzed enough in detail. The Muslim Brotherhood and its relationship to Hamas was glossed over as well. As an analysis and presentation of facts from a foreign perspective, many crucial elements are likely missed that are not known about.

Some of these shortcomings may be addressed in future articles. Specifically, an article about Fanon’s writings on the lumpen-proletariat leading a revolution in Algeria will be pursued. The underground national bourgeoisie of oppressed nations in the United $tates are quite similar to Hamas in current times. The displacement of Palestinians by I$raeli settler-colonialism and imperialism mirrors the conditions of oppressed nations and oppressed national minorities at the hands of Amerika. A greater understanding of how revolutionary struggle can be conducted in conditions of settler-colonial displacement by the participation of the lumpen-proletariat and First World lumpen will be important.

Before ending this article, i would like to make a general acknowledgement. This article was written with the direct help of a variety of MIM(Prisons) and AIPS members along with a variety of comrades not affiliated with MIM(Prisons). The work of Arabic and Palestinian documentation and analysis played a major role in being able to answer this question here in more detail. These sources are worth checking out and have been cited below for readers to read into themselves if they wish. This is not meant to advocate for communists in the Third World to pursue a certain policy toward Hamas, but to provide the facts about and a brief analysis of Hamas to give a deeper perspective of what the movement is and represents.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر

<sup>Notes:
1. Joint Room and ‘Unity of the Squares’: What Will the Next Israeli War on Gaza Look Like by Palestine Chronicle Staff, June 12, 2023
2. The First Intifada, 1987-1993 | Exhilaration of Revolt, Promise of Freedom by Roger Heacock
3. Hamas: its history, development, and critical point of view by Joseph Daher, March 7, 2024 | حماس: تاريخها، تطورها، وجهة نظر نقدية بقلم: جوزيف ظاهر
4. HASAN AL-BANNA AND HIS POLITICAL THOUGHT OF ISLAMIC BROTHERHOOD by The Muslim Brotherhood, May 13, 2008
5. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 by Yezid Sayigh, 1997
6. 10 Point Program of the PLO (1974)
7. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996
8. Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine PFLP by the PFLP, 1969
9. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – PFLP by Maher Charif
10. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996, pp. 106–107
11. The Palestinian Hamas : vision, violence, and coexistence by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, 2018
12. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996
13. The Origins of Hamas: Militant Legacy or Israeli Tool? by Jean-Pierre Filiu, 2012
14. The Palestinian Hamas : vision, violence, and coexistence by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, 2018, pg. 34
15. The Second Intifada, 2000-2005 | Mounting Confrontation, Shattered Aspirations by Roger Heacock
16. Samir Abu Mdallaleh, Poverty and Human Rights, a paper presented to the Independent Commission for Human Rights, Gaza, 2008
17. The Tunnel Economy in the Gaza Strip: A Catholic Marriage by Sameer Abumdallal, 2014
18. Ghazi al-Sourani, Rafah’s Tunnels and their Economic, Social and Political Impacts, Modern Discussion, Issue no” 2495, 14-02-2008, p. 1
19. Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), 25-11-2008<BR. 20. Atta Manna’, The Memoire of a corrupted person-tunnels-2nd paper, Tuesday, 01-12-2009
21. Hamas Covenant 1988 (WARNING: The viewership of article specifically will almost definitely be tracked by the feds, Tor is highly recommended)
22. Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas Media Office, January 21, 2024 (WARNING: The viewership of article specifically will almost definitely be tracked by the feds, Tor is highly recommended)
23. Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD), Wartime Poll: Results of an Opinion Poll Among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Data collected between 31 October and 07 November 2023</sup>

Related Articles:

• The Significance of the Palestinian Liberation Struggle

• Hamas liberates Gaza Strip

• End Colonialism, Free Palestine

What is to be done? That’s the most important question for a revolutionary. “How can it be done?” is as important. Theory and practice are of equal importance when it comes to revolution. Theory without practice, ideas without action, are useless. Practice without theory leads to failure. That’s why Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels decided that scientific socialism will accomplish what utopian socialism could only dream of. An event such as the Great October Revolution of 1917 required a leader such as Lenin, a philosopher. Now, a revolution is for the people. That’s why we need to educate the people, and to do that we should educate ourselves. Study politics, history, science, psychology, philosophy, but most importantly study revolutionary history and the writings of past and present revolutionaries. It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance. We need well-educated revolutionaries.

The Black Panther Party was committed to educate the people and they required their members to study. They studied Mao, Lenin, Marx, and the works of Black radicals. The Black Panther newspaper was meant “to educate the oppressed”. That was its primary purpose. Che Guevara was a brilliant man who educated people through his speeches in a clear manner. Mao, Lenin, Marx, Engels, they all wrote extensively in order to guide their readers before, during, and after a revolution. Why wouldn’t we take advantage of all that wisdom?

Karl Marx was a philosopher, sociologist, economist and a voracious reader. Lenin too. And they studied the works of different types of radical thinkers. They studied, and admired, the French Revolution. Lenin was a fan of Peter Kropotkin’s history of the French Revolution. Karl Marx admired Charles Darwin’s work, and noticed how Darwin was influenced by Thomas R. Malthus. How can we claim to support scientific forms of socialism and never actually read any science, or economics at least?

I recommend the following: “Quotations From Chairman Mao Zedong” edited by Lin Biao, “Essential Works of Lenin” edited by Henry Christman, “Theories of Surplus Value”, “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”, and “The Poverty of Philosophy” by Karl Marx, “The Black Panthers Speak” edited by Philip Foner, and any other books on radical politics, history, science and philosophy.

And remember, comrades: “Hasta la victoria siempre!” -Che Guevara

MIM(Prisons) responds: We welcome this statement from the study group of the Iron Lung Collective, and we support its sentiments. Through our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program, comrades inside can receive any of the books Modern Cassius recommends, with the exception of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong or “The Little Red Book.” We believe all of the historical texts of revolutionaries must be studied and understood in their historical context. The mish-mash of quotes from different periods of the Chinese revolution in “The Little Red Book” make it very difficult to do so.

As we work to re-ignite the prison movement, regular, local study groups are the base of our efforts to re-build. We have a guide for starting a local study group, and a decent stock of revolutionary and historical literature you can find on our literature list. Please see page 2 of ULK for more details on how to participate in the Free Political Books to Prisoners Program.

“What makes you think you DESERVE to celebrate Black History Month”- SIS Officer at USP Tucson

These were the words that were spoken to me a few years ago, here at United States Penitentiary - Tucson, shortly before I was illegally put in the SHU (Special Housing Unit) for 40 days.

Before this incident, i was the Secretary of the Black History Month Committee here for three consecutive years, and had more experience in the committee than anyone else over the last five years. But on this particular year, as I reflect back on this, the Education Department did absolutely nothing for us in preparing for Black History Month. We were promised the resources, but as we worked from November of the previous year to February of that next year, we found that when it was time to promote Black History Month, there was nothing set aside for us to carry out any of the activities promised.

We had nothing.

I am writing this now, in February 2024, and I am again at the realization that USP Tucson, from the Warden on down, refuses to allow us to celebrate our history. Not one memo, not one event, nothing is scheduled to celebrate our history, and I can’t help but reflect back to that day where a Caucasian SIS officer (Special Investigative Services) had the audacity to tell me, to my face, “What makes you think you DESERVE to celebrate Black History Month”?

What we are seeing is a stripping not only of Black History, but of identity as well. Prisons are mandated to help rehabilitate people, and one way to do that is to reinforce their identity. There is a certain level of pride that each individual gets when he or she knows that they are part of a greater group of people. I speak as an African American, but this also applies to every other nationality, from Native Americans to Mexican Americans to even Caucasians. When prisons strip us of an identity, it makes them similar to how slaves were treated in our American history.

The slaves brought to America came with nothing, and were systematically stripped of everything they once were, and degraded to a level of inhumanity that surely is an abomination to God. Has much changed in 2024, when prisons continue to practice slave tactics?

In that year we didn’t have Black History Month, I was upset at this, and began to do what I always do… write. I wrote essays about how staff deliberately sabotaged Black History Month, and intended to mail them to the outside world.

But a Caucasian staff member in Education read my works, and refused to allow me to have them back, after I had printed them. She called them “inappropriate.” I questioned her as to why I cannot have my works, which actually I have a right to have.

Her first answer was, “Well, I was with (the staff member), and you don’t know what you’re talking about”-

Wait! I am the SECRETARY of the Black History Month Committee!! I keep ALL the notes! How is this Caucasian woman going to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about?? At this point, I was already getting angry at how I am being challenged of my First Amendment right about MY history.

Her second excuse was that I can’t have it back because I made multiple copies. This too, was bogus, because even though the general body of the letter was the same, it was very clear at the top of each copy who I was sending it to. Her argument was based on that you could not make exact, identical copies at the same time – I had every right to make three copies if they are going to three different entities.

Her third argument was, “If you want to write a grievance, you can get a BP”. This also was a lie, and what she now was doing was curbing my right to the First Amendment, shifting me to use a VERY flawed grievance procedure. What she was doing was quite illegal.

So, upset, I went back and wrote a new essay, “Is (staff member) Breaking The Law?”. I used Federal Bureau of Prisons policies, legal cases and other resources to prove, without a doubt, that this Caucasian officer was intentionally blocking me from sending these letters out.

When she read my essay, she called for backup, and the SIS officer came, took me out to the hallway and threatened to put me in the SHU (Special Housing Unit). He said, “I know how to play this game”, and then, as I tried to make my case, he said the quote I started this essay with.

My answer to this Caucasian man… “I don’t think a white man can tell a Black man, who has been the Secretary of the Black History Month Committee the last three years anything about his history”.

To this man, and to many Caucasian officers here at USP Tucson, we don’t “deserve” to celebrate our history; we don’t “deserve” to have an identity. Yet, they are quick to take vacation on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday.

The last several years here at USP Tucson, the Warden has blocked attempts for us to celebrate our history. Even now, as we came off a malicious and retaliatory 36-day lockdown, after refusing to give us stamps to mail our loved ones, after filthy showers, after feeding us spoiled peanut butter, after limiting our phone calls to a single five minute call a day, after at least three deaths due to medical neglect, and as many homicides – staff here at USP Tucson will not relent in their treatment of human beings in this prison.

It’s not just Black History they are stripping from us . . . it’s humanity they are stripping from everyone. When prisons refuse to acknowledge the captives as human beings, when they ignore the simple basics of human kindness, when they condone illegal acts done by staff, and do nothing about it, they have transported the entire environment backwards two hundred years.

It’s funny, that incident with the Caucasian officer in Education and the SIS officer happened, as I write this, about 5 years ago… those officers still work here. They were never punished in any shape or form for their prejudiced views. I however, was put in the SHU for 40 days, then found guilty of a bogus charge. It took me at least six months to appeal to eventually have that charge expunged, based off simple information that, if the Caucasian Disciplinary Officer had read, she would have thrown the charge out. But after my appeal to her during my hearing, she said to me:

“I just don’t believe she would lie to me”.

So, because I’m Black, and a prisoner, I lose the argument simply because my opponent is a Caucasian female that is a staff member. My level of equality as a human being is stripped, because my status as an prisoner is inferior.

We won’t celebrate Black History Month here at USP Tucson, because staff apparently don’t believe we “deserve” it. So, I’ll celebrate it for everyone here, and refuse to let this prison strip me of my humanity. That makes them less of a human than me.

MIM(Prisons) responds:Understanding history is about understanding where we came from and where we are going. This is the real power of history that the oppressor has tried to keep from the oppressed for hundreds of years. The system is happy to promote an identity for prisoners – one of people who are not deserving, of people with less rights, of people who are less intelligent. There are many identities we can take on, positive and negative. We do not promote a “white identity” because that is the identity of an oppressor. As communists we identify with the Third World proletariat – that is the revolutionary class of people under imperialism that offers solutions and a path from oppression.

In Under Lock & Key 83, my article Ruchell Magee was published with the line:

“He would later impregnate her before his demise, with a son his mother would deny. A son that would grow into a polar opposite of George Jackson.”

This was a mistake as i intended to write that Jonathan Jackson’s son looks like a polarized version of George Jackson. This was merely a reference to the son’s appearance.