MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Communists among demonstrators protesting the murder of Nasrallah by
I$rael in Sidon, in southern Lebanon
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.$. imperialism in general.
You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the
revolution!
There are 65 organizations who have signed on to the 2024 Prison Banned Books Week
campaign. What unites us is a belief that there is good in lifting
the restrictions on literature that U.$. 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.
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.
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$rael leads it to win the sympathy of the masses.
Conclusion,
Reflections and Future Analysis
Palestinian resistance factions following a press conference in Beiruit,
Lebanon. Pictured are Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Democratic Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine — General Command (PFLP-GC).
As we can see, the Islamic movements in Palestine are not a monolith
and have changed overtime. The formation of Hamas and its class basis is
important to have clarity on, but this article is by no means an
extensive analysis of such. It hopefully has helped in clearing up
common myths and confusions around Hamas, with imperialist media
constantly making frivolous claims. They range from Hamas having spawned
out of the I$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!
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.
Tip of the Spear Black Radicalism, Prison
Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt
Orisanmi Burton (Author)
University of California Press
October 2023
“without understanding carceral spaces as zones of undeclared
domestic war, zones that are inextricably linked to imperial and
officially acknowledged wars abroad, we cannot fully understand how and
why the U.S. became the global leader of incarceration that it is
today.” (1)
Tip of the Spear is the story of the organization and flourishing of
resistance to American imperialism as it developed in the New York state
prison system in the 1960s and 1970s, including the time well before the
four days of Attica in 1971. Professor of anthropology Orisanmi Burton
does many things in this book, a lot of which we’ll only be able to
mention briefly or not at all, but MIM(Prisons) has already sent out
many copies of this book and is prepared to send out many more to enable
further study and discussion of Burton’s very worthy research and
ideas.
We are asking our readers to send their own feedback on this book, to
write up their own local histories or stories applying the framework
below, and to popularize this understanding of U.$. prisons as part of
the imperialist war on the oppressed peoples of the world that we must
unite against.
Prisons are War
Burton begins his investigation with George Jackson’s observation
that Black people “were defeated in a war and are now captives, slaves
or actually that we inherited a neoslave existence.” (2) Prison
conditions don’t originate in the law or in ideas but in the historical
fact of defeat in a war that still continues.
But what kind of war is it? One side surrounds the other and forces
it to submit daily, the way that an army laying siege to a city tries to
wear down the resistance of the population. These sieges include not
just starving prisoners of food but of social life, education, and
culture. In maintaining its rule the state uses the tools of
counterinsurgency to split the revolutionary ranks, co-opt the cause and
re-establish its rule on a more secure level. On the other side, the
prisoners have themselves, their ability to unite and organize in
secret, and their willingness to sacrifice for the cause – the
attributes of a guerrilla army. (3)
Burton spends an entire chapter, “Hidden War,” laying out the
strategies the state pursued when its naked brutality failed to prevent
prisoner organization and rebellion. After the smoke cleared at Attica
and wardens, politicians and prison academics had a chance to catch
their breath, they settled on four strategies to prevent another Attica
from happening: (4)
One, prisons were expanded across the state, so that
density was reduced and prisoner organizing could be more effectively
disrupted. If a prisoner emerged as a leader, they could be sent to any
number of hellholes upstate surrounded by new people and have to start
the process all over again. The longer and more intense the game of
Solitaire the state played with them, the better. We see this strategy
being applied to USW comrades across the country to this day.
Prisons were also superficially humanized, the
introduction of small, contingent privileges to encourage division and
hierarchy among prisoners, dull the painful edge of incarceration
somewhat, and dangle hope. Many prisoners saw through it, and Burton
makes the point that the brief periods of rebellion had provided the
only real human moments most prisoners had experienced during their time
inside. For example, Attica survivor, John “Dacajeweiah” Hill described
meeting a weeping prisoner in D yard during the rebellion who was
looking up at the stars for the first time in 23 years. (5) Burton sums
this up: “the autonomous zones created by militant action… had thus far
proven the only means by which Attica’s oppressive atmosphere was
substantially ameliorated.”
Diversification went hand in hand with expansion,
where a wide range of prison experiences were created across the system.
Prisons like Green Haven allowed prisoners to smoke weed and bring food
back to their cells, and permitted activities like radical lectures from
outsiders. At the same time, other prisons were going on permanent
lockdowns and control units were in development.
And finally, programmification presented a way for
prisoners to be kept busy, for outsiders (maybe even former critics of
the prison system) to be co-opted and brought into agreement with prison
officials, and provide free labor to keep the system stable by giving
prisoners another small privilege to look forward to. To this day, New
York, as well as California and other states, require prisoners who are
not in a control unit to program.
All of this was occurring in the shadow of the fact that the state
had demonstrated it would deploy indiscriminate violence, even
sacrificing its own employees as it had at Attica, to restore order. The
classic carrot-and-stick dynamic of counterinsurgency was operating at
full force.
Before Attica: Tombs,
Branch Queens, Auburn
Burton discusses Attica, but doesn’t make it the exclusive focus of
his book, as it has already been written about and discussed elsewhere.
He brings into the discussion prison rebellions prior to Attica that
laid the groundwork, involved many of the same people, and demonstrated
the character of the rebellions overall.
The first was at Tombs, or the Manhattan House of Detention, where
prisoners took hostages and issued demands in the New York Times,
denouncing pretrial detention that kept men in limbo for months or
years, overcrowding, and racist brutality from guards. Once the demands
were published, the hostages were released. Eighty corrections officers
stormed the facility with blunt weapons and body armor and restored
order, and after the rebellion two thirds of the prisoners were
transferred elsewhere to break up organizations, like the Inmate
Liberation Front, that had grown out of Tombs and supported its
resistance. (6) Afterwards, the warden made improvements and took credit
for them. This combination of furious outburst, violent response and
conciliatory reform would repeat itself.
Next Branch Queens erupted, where the Panther 21 had recently been
incarcerated. Prisoners freed them, hung a Pan-Afrikan flag out of a
window, took hostages and demanded fair bail hearings be held in the
prison yard or the hostages would be executed. The bail hearing actually
happened and some of the prisoners who had been in prison for a year for
possibly stealing something were able to walk out. The state won the
battle here by promising clemency if the hostages were released, which
split the prisoners and led to the end of the rebellion. Kuwasi
Balagoon, who would later join the Black Liberation Army, was active in
the organization of the rebellion and learned a lot from his experiences
seeing the rebellion and the repression that followed after the state
promised clemency. (7)
At Auburn Correctional Facility on November 4th, Black prisoners
rebelled and seized hostages for eight hours. Earlier, fifteen Black
prisoners had been punished and moved to solitary for calling for a day
off work to celebrate Black Solidarity Day. After the restoration of
order, more prisoners were shipped away and the remainder were subject
to reprisals from the guards.
In each case, prisoners formed their own organizations, took control,
made demands and also started building new structures to run the prison
for their own benefit – even in rebellions that lasted only a few hours.
After order was restored, the state took every opportunity to crush the
spirits and bodies of those who had participated. All of this would
repeat on a much larger scale at Attica.
Attica and Paris: Two
Communes
Burton acknowledges throughout the book a tension that is familiar to
many of ULK’s readers: reform versus revolution. He sees both
in the prison movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York, with some
prisoners demanding bail reform and better food and others demanding an
end to the system that creates prisons in the first place. But in
telling the story of Attica and the revolts that preceded it he
emphasizes two things: the ways reforms were demanded (not by petitions
but by organized force) and the existence of demands that would have led
to the end of prisons as we know them. On Attica itself, he writes that
the rebellion demanded not just better food and less crowded cells but
the “emergence of new modes of social life not predicated on enclosure,
extraction, domination or dehumanization.” (8) In these new modes of
social life, Burton identifies sexual freedom and care among prisoners
emerging as a nascent challenge to traditional prison masculinity.
Attica began as a spontaneous attack on a particularly racist and
brutal guard, and led to a riot all over the facility that led to the
state completely losing control for four days starting on September 9th,
1971. Hostages were again taken, and demands ranging from better food to
the right to learn a trade and join a union issued to the press.
Prisoners began self-organizing rapidly, based on the past experiences
of many Attica prisoners in previous rebellions. Roger Champen, who
reluctantly became one of the rebellion’s organizers, got up on a picnic
table with a seized megaphone and said “the wall surrounds us all.”
Following this, the prisoners turned D Yard into an impromptu city and
organized their own care and self-defense. A N.Y. State trooper watching
the yard through binoculars said in disbelief “they seem to be building
as much as they’re destroying.” I think we’d agree with the state
trooper, at least on this. (9)
Burton’s point in this chapter is that the rebellion wasn’t an
attempt (or wasn’t only an attempt) to get the state to reform
itself, to grant rights to its pleading subjects, but an attempt,
however short-lived, to turn the prisons into something that would be
useful for human liberation: a self-governing commune built on
principles of democracy and solidarity. Some of the rebels demanded
transport to Africa to fight the Portuguese in the then-raging colonial
wars in Mozambique and Angola, decisions were made by votes and
consensus, and the social life of the commune was self-regulated without
beatings, gassings and starvation.
Abolition and the
Concentric Prison
Burton is a prison abolitionist, and he sees the aspirations of the
Attica rebels at their best as abolitionist well before the term became
popular. But he doesn’t ignore the contradictions that Attica and other
prison rebellions had to work through, and acknowledges the diverse
opinions of prisoners at the time, some of whom wanted to abolish
prisons and some of whom wanted to see the Nixons and Rockefellers
thrown into them instead. (10)
The Attica Commune of D Yard had to defend itself, and when the
rebelling prisoners suspected that some prisoners were secretly working
for the state, they were confined in a prison within a commune within a
prison, and later killed as the state came in shooting on the 13th.
There was fighting and instances of rape among the prisoners that freed
themselves, and there were prisoners who didn’t want to be a part of the
rebellion who were forced to. And the initial taking of the guards
constitutes a use of violence and imprisonment in itself, even if the
guards were treated better than they’d ever treated the prisoners.
Burton acknowledges this but doesn’t offer a tidy answer. He sees the
use of violence in gaining freedom, like Fanon, to be a necessary evil
which is essential to begin the process but unable to come close to
finishing it. Attica, even though it barely began, provides an example
of this. While violence is a necessary tool in war, it is the people
organized behind the correct political line in the form of a vanguard
party that ultimately is necessary to complete the transformation of
class society to one without oppression.
Counter-intelligence,
Reform, and Control
The final part of the book, “The War on Black Revolutionary Minds,”
chronicles the attempts by the state to destroy prison revolutionaries
by a variety of methods, some more successful than others, all deeply
disturbing and immoral.
Some of the early methods involved direct psychological
experimentation, the use of drugs, and calibrated isolation. These fell
flat, because the attempts were based on “the flawed theory that people
could be disassembled, tinkered with, and reprogrammed like computers.”
(11) Eventually the state gave up trying to engineer radical ideas out
of individual minds and settled for the solution many of our readers are
familiar with: long-term isolation in control units, and a dramatically
expanding prison population.
There is a lot else in this book, including many moving stories from
Attica and other prison rebellion veterans that Burton interviewed, and
who he openly acknowledges as the pioneering theorists and equal
collaborators in his writing. Burton engages in lengthy investigations
of prisoner correspondence, outside solidarity groups, twisted
psychological experiments, and many other things I haven’t had the space
to mention. We have received a couple responses to the book from some of
you already, which the author appreciates greatly, and we’d like to
facilitate more.
^Notes: 1. Burton, Orisanmi Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism,
Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt p. 19 All citations will
be of this book unless otherwise specified. 2. Jackson, Soledad
Brother, 111–12 cited in Burton p. 10 3. p. 3 4. pp. 152-180
5. Hill and Ekanawetak, Splitting the Sky, p. 20. cited in Burton,
p. 107 6. p. 29 7. p. 48 8. p. 5 9. pp. 88-91 10.
p. 95 11. p. 205^
[The following statement was circulated by email from
spiritofmandela.org]
Sekou Odinga is celebrated & admired by freedom & justice
movements worldwide for his persistence, courage, & principled
adherence to freedom struggle.
Baba Sekou Transitioned on January 12, 2024.
Sekou Odinga was a globally recognized Black liberation activist,
member of Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity, founding
member of both the New York City chapter and the International Section
of the Black Panther Party, and former US political prisoner who
survived 33 years of state captivity before his release in 2014.
Prosecuted as one of the “Panther 21” in New York City, Odinga was a
prominent historical figure, having been featured on Democracy Now! and
in numerous documentaries, concerts, mass public events, and major news
outlets.
In addition to being featured in the widely circulated social
movement texts Can’t Jail the Spirit (2002) and Hauling Up
the Morning: Writings & Art by Political Prisoners & Prisoners
of War in the U.S. (1990), Odinga published his writing in Look
for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st-Century
Revolutions (PM Press, 2017) and Black Power Afterlives: The
Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party (Haymarket Books,
2020).
A survivor of state torture and the FBI’s notorious
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), Sekou Odinga is both
celebrated and admired by freedom and justice movements worldwide,
exemplifying persistence, courage, and principled adherence to freedom
struggle under the most repressive circumstances imaginable.
As I embark upon this mission to impose my spirit within your world,
I ask that you be patient with me. I do not wish to cause you any
discomfort but, I do mean to cause you to become “ANGRY” at the
injustices that have been committed against every man, woman, and child,
living within this capitalistic KKKountry called Amerikkka! Only when WE
become “ANGRY” about a situation, a circumstance, a problem, do WE wish
to do something about it. Therefore, as you read word by word, line by
line, I hope that you become ANGRY!
As WE all know, the month before us is the month in which WE
celebrate “Black History.” The “History” that so many wish, hope to, and
try to keep away from US, Our children, and the people, will be told
within the schools that so many Black, Brown and Red children attend.
However, the teachings will be “whitewashed”, “diluted”, and “carefully
told”, by those that do not want Afrikan History to be taught here in
Amerikkka! Our history is their history! So, WE must tell Our stories to
the people. Impose Our own history upon Our children. Let the people
know that “Without Us” this so called “New World” would be nothing. WE
must tell Our children the true history of Queen Harriet Tubman. WE must
tell them about Nat Turner, Geronimo Pratt, George Jackson, Yogi Bear,
Assata Shukar, Angela Davis, and those that played a part in the Afrikan
Liberation movement. All those that lost their lives fighting for the
freedom of “THIS” generation of men, women, and children. Souljahs,
well, organized for revolutionary determination! Revolutionary Organized
Sistas of the Earth!
We must tell them how those within power crushed our babies’ heads
and attempted to raid our homes with guns blazing only to suffer their
own casualties. We must tell them about the Black Liberation Army, the
Black Ridahs Liberation Party, the Black Panther Party, and all those
that do not get mentioned within those schools of hindrance.
With that being said, I end this with,
Vita Wa Watu
MIM(Prisons) adds: Black History Month is an attempt to
appease the oppressed and control the narrative of revolutionary history
as this comrade points out. It is only by sharing, learning from, and
applying the lessons of our true revolutionary history that we can meet
the needs of the oppressed. That is why we must build our own study
programs, study groups, and organizing networks.
