MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
5 June 2024 – We are no longer active on Reddit.com. Last month
Reddit began preventing anonymous logins by blocking Tor, requiring
Google and other things that have prevented us from logging into our
account (which was /u/mimprisons). Anything posted to that account after
May 2024 is not from us, and even old posts may be altered. If you try
to contact us via Reddit we will not receive your message. For over 11
years Reddit served as a popular site for anonymous discussion of
communism. These restrictions will hamper our online recruitment, and
will force us to put energies elsewhere. We appreciate those that share
our website with others on reddit or elsewhere.
This also means that /r/mao_internationalist is now abandoned, and
/r/maoism101 may or may not continue on without us. By Reddit’s new
policies, inactive subreddits will be regularly purged from the
site.
After our
first suspension from Reddit six years ago, we discussed the pluses
and minuses of reddit as a centralized platform. As many have noted,
they are becoming a publicly listed corporation, which means they want
to clean up house and make thinks more monetizeable for shareholders.
Far from the vision of some of Reddit’s founders.
Since that statement 6 years ago, we have established numerous other
means of communication that are encrypted and decentralized. While none
are public, we may make other accounts public in the future, especially
if there are issues
with email again.
I$rael’s war on Palestine is without a doubt a genocide.
There has been a groundswell of support from people around the world
that conclude that the settler state of I$rael needs to be brought to
justice and that Amerika has given the “greenlight” for the genocide to
ensue.
At a recent protest over I$rael bombing an Iranian consulate in
Syria, killing several Iranian military intelligence personnel, Hamas
responded with a statement saying among other things that Amerika has
given the green light for this bombing by not denouncing it. We would
agree and go further by stating that Amerika has green-lit genocide
since it first arrived here in Turtle Island over 500 years ago.
It strikes us that the world would be shocked that Amerika would
stand by in the face of the genocide happening to Palestine when
Chican@s, First Nations and New Afrikans know first hand that the United
$tates is not only a client but a pathfinder in the realm of genocidal
settlerism. We should remember it was Amerika who inspired the likes of
Hitler in honing his genocidal craft, an evaluation of evidence supports
our point.
In the mire of the oppression being rained down on Palestine,
especially with I$rael assassinating those it has targeted even in other
countries – or in embassies! – we just glean what lessons are available
as the world gets a bold example of what colonization looks like
today.
If we are in fact at the conclusion that Amerika – who aids I$rael in
billions of aid each year – is giving a wink and a nod to assassinating
government officials of sovereign countries, it poses the question: how
might revolutionaries here in the imperialist center of the world
prepare and respond?
We should start by understanding that in today’s world genocide
arrives via stages of development by the imperialist agencies. These
stages are 1) Intelligence. 2) Analysis. 3) Logistics and 4) Operations.
What we are seeing happen is war plans, whether we are talking about the
streets of Gaza or the barrios of Califaztlan it all starts with
intel.
The oppressor nation identifies its threats and its assets – on the
ground or online. Because we are in the stage of building public opinion
here in the United $tates we can be vulnerable to data mining that is
employed by agencies globally. Search bots that are known as “spiders”
search the internet 24/7 mining through open source material and all
public records to find any links to revolutionary data, i.e. people,
groups or theory. They snatch everything: Facebook posts, chat rooms,
blogs, news stories, financial records, visa applications, etc… which
can all be harvested quickly on a daily basis, programs like starlight
or spire can then sift, cross reference and separate non-essential
material while then targeting links that lead back to intended targeted
people or groups within the movement. In this way the state is able to
closely monitor not only a movement’s vanguard but anything that
metastasizes out of the movement as well, that is everything in its
realm of influence. Once data is comprised. with the help of programs
like Analyst Notebook, it reveals the internal structure of an
organization and its international links as well. All of this intel
helps the oppressor nation develop its genocidal programs which not only
furthers its own interests but the interests of its allies like the
settler state of I$rael.
Here in the occupied territories that some call Amerika, the internal
semi-colonies have long known about Amerika’s stance on genocide.
Chican@s and other oppressed nations who languish in the prisons, in the
control units, and on Death Row overstand that Amerika green-lights
genocide. The Brown and Black people, gunned down every day by Amerikan
police know this as well. The Chican@ nation and other oppressed know
because our land and resources are occupied and controlled by the
capitalists who neutralize us when we threaten the occupation.
The methods employed by the U.$. government that are directed at the
internal semi-colonies are vast. Although counter insurgency is a
practice taken up by many oppressor nations globally, it is unique
within the U.$. empire because of the magnitude of national oppression
in the form of mass imprisonment of the internal nations and the fact
that the carceral state has in fact created the very conditions that
uphold and nurture insurgency from its very bowels. U.$. counter
insurgency has had a program in place which changes names but stays
consistent in targeting its enemies within the prison system in general
and those within the prison movement in particular. Methods employed
today within U.$. prisons and especially prisons within Aztlán (the
so-called “U.S. Southwest”) are meant to declaw our young Jaguars and to
seduce the nation into a role that is at war without shield nor
spear.
It is this clear persynal experience in being a target of COINTERLPRO
which led to the culmination of this paper. Our party sees the need to
begin this conversation in the nations so that not just Aztlán but all
who fight colonization and the hyper-policing, frame ups,
state-sponsored terror, and assassination can begin the hard work of
guarding against counter insurgency in an era that demands our boots on
the ground to stomp out the rising tide of repression.
Revolutionaries are organizing daily in the occupied territories to
raise consciousness and heighten the contradictions whenever they arise
through agitation and political education. The state and its apparatus
is also working hard daily to subdue our efforts and seduce our young
jaguars into the temptation of empire and all the trappings of U.$.
imperialism.
Chican@ units and organizations that influence the nation to
challenge the state and set out on the path of liberation and
independence are targeted. The imperialist state will do everything in
its power to prevent socialist revolution from developing in Aztlán and
beyond. Our role as Chican@ revolutionaries should be to hold workshops
in every barrio of Aztlán where the ideas of socialist revolution are
realized and embraced, it is the duty of Chican@ communists to respond
to U.$. counter insurgency in this manner. Only by mobilizing the entire
community, the entire barrio in this way, will we ever finally get over
the obstacle of U.$. counter insurgency.
Political Line Is Decisive
In our analysis we uphold the idea that ideology is key in how we
move. Political line helps guide us in our political endeavors and we
must constantly make adjustments and test our theory in order to
maneuver in ways which push not just the Chican@ movement forward but
the whole International Communist Movement (ICM) forward as well. We
realize that the trappings of living in the imperial core among the
world’s labor aristocracy pushes many to believe that revolutionary
organizing is not a life-or-death choice. The Communist Party of Aztlán
(CPA) feels otherwise. Indeed we see that – even here in the First World
where most “workers” are bought off by blood stolen from the Third World
– revolutionary organizing is a matter of life or death to the Chican@
nation. If we do not set out on the task of organizing Aztlán and
revolutionize our nation it will succumb to capitalist roaders. For this
reason this paper serves not just as a study guide for oppressed nations
but also as a cri de coeur (cry of the heart) for the raza to grasp the
urgency that we see in the great task ahead or our nation may die.
Although we have a huge responsibility positioned here in the heart
of imperialism, as we combat counterinsurgency and mobilize the people
we have no confusion about the fact that the Third World leads the ICM
and our efforts here in the First World merely compliment them. Maoism
as an ideology is clear on this despite the eye rolls from the trots,
who have never led a single successful revolution.
It is crucial that Aztlán comes to grasp the reality of the class
structure in the United $nakes – as well as in Aztlán – as being made up
of petty-bourgeois class forces. The exploitation of workers does not
exist on the scale that it did in Lenin’s Russia, on the contrary, what
exists today in the occupied territories for the most part is a labor
aristocracy whose life support remains connected to the value extraction
from the Third World. We need to move from this perspective and
understanding. Aztlán’s future demands that we grasp this. Political
line must be decisive in order for our tactics and strategies to be
effective in our struggle for national liberation in the midst of the
counterinsurgency offensive. Ideology allows us to identify our friends
and separate them from our enemies. This does not mean we will not take
losses to state repression. it simply means that we will be better
equipped to continue in this beautiful struggle against oppression.
As Maoists we realize that being triumphant over U.$.
counterinsurgency efforts and the occupation of our homeland will only
happen when the U.$. government has been completely overthrown and a
complete revolution on these shores has occurred. Anything short of that
will prevent real liberation from being realized for Aztlán.
As a party for the Chican@ nation we believe the Maoist concept of
mass line is the way forward. It is the Chican@ masses who define the
path by their ideas which are synthesized by our party. The raza will
make hystory. Ultimately, our job is to engage the people into realizing
their power.
The U.$. government is at war with Aztlán, yet the tactic of low
intensity warfare pulls the wool over our eyes and clouds our social
reality from being realized except for the more politically conscious.
Even among conscious raza in general, and communist raza in particular,
one of the things which separates revolutionaries is the understanding,
which Mao pointed out, of class struggle continuing not just under a
socialist government but even within the party itself as a bourgeoisie
develops within. Understanding this Maoist doctrine in pre-revolutionary
times is perhaps more crucial than even picking up the gun in
revolution. Even in our current battle of raising public opinion and
evading counterinsurgency tactics by the state, grasping this doctrine
helps anchor us on the path to liberation rather than the capitalist
road.
Raza of all political stripes may be targets of the imperial
counterinsurgency campaign. Many may even be successful in evading state
repression, yet evasion per se is not the objective, our aim of course
is national liberation. As a semi-colony existing in the world’s
imperialist center Aztlán’s primary objective is national liberation. We
cannot help free other nations if we are not yet free. At the same time
we should also identify that in order to win a war for national
liberation we need a Raza Army, a Raza Army that is led by the CPA.
U.$. Counterinsurgency
Counter-insurgency is a military concept meant to partake in certain
actions that neutralize insurgents. The United $nakes target and
identifies politically conscious and revolutionary folks within the
occupied territories as insurgents and has designed a program that aims
to destroy us and our efforts. This program attempts to neutralize us
“legally” according to its own illegitimate “laws”, but will resort to
cold-blooded murder if necessary.
Most of those targeted come from the oppressed nations. This is not
to say that most anti-imperialists or revolutionaries are from the
oppressed nations, but that the U.$. knows that it will ultimately be
the internal nations that tip the scale in our favor come civil war.
AmeriKKKa has worked hard to brainwash the oppressed and although they
have managed to ward off the seizure of power by the oppressed they
truly never gained real legitimacy in the eyes of the raza. At the same
time the imperialist center has not held on to the internal colonies and
its global influence for nothing, indeed they pour billions each year in
its various agencies in order to hold onto white power.
Communists often say we are “professional revolutionaries” because we
take our role seriously and understand that many times our very lives
are at risk as we organize here in the Snakes. We should also grasp that
the imperialist state also sees itself as professional oppressors
because it is their lives that are in peril should revolution
succeed.
The oppressor’s counterinsurgency methods rely largely on intel.
Information about the intended target is essential. Knowing everything
about a target is vital to take that target down cleanly. The state
agents are like hunters at this stage of struggle, one of their roles is
to stalk their prey, find its habits and activities so that when it’s
time to hunt they’ll know whether to use a bullet, crossbow, knife or
simply poison the water hole. We give them this intel wittingly or not
because they can only find a trail that we ourselves leave.
In the year 2023 our party took some hits by the state. It’s
interesting that in the California prison system the number 23 is a
known symbol of white power so in some sense we anticipated the white
power structure to strike in some way. But 2023 was also a year of
growth and development for the CPA. We were able to learn a lot from the
repression that was rained down on us when our Chairman was
kidnapped.
National oppression in the form of imprisonment is one of the weapons
the state uses in its counterinsurgency campaign. When targeting
revolutionaries the state will often raid a cell or do a round up sweep
but allow one or two to “get away”. This tactic is meant to study the
regrouping method and allow the one or two “lucky ones” to lead them to
the others. It reminds me of an ancient Chinese tactic, where Chinese
families for thousands of years have caught cormorant birds on Weishan
Lake and tied string around their throats, letting them dive in lakes
for fish while being unable to swallow, in this way recruiting a fleet
of slaves for the master fisher. This is also akin to
probation/parole.
The state also employs agents of various stripes who do in fact
infiltrate revolutionary groups and cells. Counterinsurgency aims to
neutralize insurgents. The state identifies those who take up agitation
and/or organizing in order to reach our goal of national liberation.
Once identified these individuals, groups, or organizations become the
state’s target. Various methods are used in surveillance, but of course
human intel is always preferred by the state. Plants who give the state
the ins and outs of a target’s daily functions as well as goals and
objectives or war plans are golden.
The FBI and CIA both utilize various assets for COINTELPRO – like
operations which spawn various counterinsurgency actions. Their assets
may be a partisan, prisoner, or paralegal. Most people can be utilized
so nothing should be a surprise and people should be on a need-to-know
basis from a comrade to a lover. We should also understand that the
$tates’ wet dream is to in fact have the comrade or lover of a target as
an asset, it is the golden egg in the realm of counter-insurgency.
Assets
Assets come in many forms as has been stated. The state may employ a
deep cover asset which would provide undercover intelligence and assist
the state in gauging the threat. By alerting her/his controllers to an
impending “crime” which can be real or imagined, for example the deep
cover asset may report that a target has an arsenal of firearms at their
residence which may not even be true, the controllers will either obtain
probable cause for a search warrant or will send in an undercover
informant within the scenario who can then corroborate the asset’s
intelligence. An informant’s job will be to record conversations (wear a
wire or plant bugs) and to get up on the stand in open court to swear on
their undercover “evidence”. With regard to revolutionaries, this
“evidence” is usually the most outlandish story imaginable so long as it
neutralizes the target. An informational informant would be one whose
only role is to gather intel to feed to the agents but would never
reveal themselves nor get on the stand in open court. Such informants
usually work for years in this way and almost always join the movement
in some way, in an organization, as an occasional protester or in
today’s world as some sort of online activist . . . the point is they
will attempt to stay familiar to revolutionaries and to gain the raza’s
trust in some way.
COINTELPRO
We can never hear too much about COINTELPRO, (counter intelligence
program) which the U.$. government unleashed on the people in the
1950’s. Initially COINTELPRO was used during the “Red Scare” when
communists in these false U.$. borders were targeted and terrorized. The
state would infiltrate communist organizations and even study groups
gathering intel in order to strike. In the 1960’s the repression
continued this time on the oppressed nations.
AmeriKKKa trembles at the thought of a Leninist cadre organization
developing on its shores, its stomach turns when professional
revolutionaries are conceived in its putrid womb. Our existence can only
be realized if security measures are upheld to guard against COINTELPRO
attacks.
The state employs COINTELPRO tactics to entrap or even assassinate
our leaders. It develops moles of all types and agent provocateurs to
get our cadre killed or captured. It slanders our brightest and most
dedicated and frames those who can’t be neutralized any other way. The
imperialist state does the unthinkable in order to keep the slaves
holding their own blinders and covering their own ears. Just as the
unjust cruelty is unleashed on the Third World, our most cherished acts
and ideas are thoroughly violated in order to inflict the most damage to
the movement. Not only are emotions like love defiled, in some cases
they are weaponized to serve the imperialist masters.
Today we have the memory of COINTELPRO and even of the pigs that have
been mostly etched out for us from seasoned revolutionaries or from the
dusty pages of library shelves. But we define a pig as the MIM defined
it in their pamphlet “What’s Your Line?”:
“A pig is a police officer or other representative of the
government’s repressive apparatus, especially one who breaks down
people’s doors or quietly infiltrates a movement.”
We often think of a pig as a uniformed badge-wearing slave hunter
but, according to the above definition, how many pigs are really out
there?
Our party has enacted security precautions because of COINTELPRO
attacks that we suffered in 2023. We do not name members of our party.
How can organizations that are seeking to seize power identify
themselves to the enemy who will come to kill them when the
revolutionary war arrives? Why would we arm the state with a list of
those it should round up? Why would we hand them the thread to pull
apart the fabric of our party?
Those who scoff at the warnings of COINTELPRO are those who
consciously or not believe in the fantasy of U.$. “democracy”. They have
a disdain for those who attempt to raise the alarm of COINTELPRO and who
raise consciousness around these matters. These Ti@ Tacos usually embed
themselves in progressive orgs and wallow in cultural nationalism if
they are raza. They essentially feel safe in the United $nakes. We
should identify these Toms and learn to never feel safe among them or
their kind.
Most recently it was reported in the corporate U.$. news that the
settler state of I$rael assassinated the leader of the Palestinian
resistance in its current war on Palestine. We hear these selective
strikes happen all the time yet many are still oblivious to the fact
that the oppressor nation and its agencies always keep lists of
revolutionaries. Their flow charts list leaders of the movement it has
identified and will strike at will. We should move like we know
this.
Hystorical materialism teaches us to learn from hystory in order to
transform the future, and COINTELPRO in the 1960’s taught us lessons
when it came to the Black Panthers. For example, the FBI sent in
informants and agents who identified what groups the Panthers were
funking with, and one such group was the black nationalist organization
United Slaves. The feds ordered their agents to foment conflict and
heighten tension. Within the Chican@ movement today we see this play out
in various forms. In order to guard against this we need a no tolerance
policy in this area.
Tactics
AmeriKKKa has been very creative in its efforts which have helped to
stunt the growth of any real rebellion that confronts U.$. imperialism.
Since colonization the state has employed various tactics to the
oppressed nations, often utilizing others among the oppressed to do the
$tates’ bidding. An early record from the U.$. army from
Geronimo touches on this:
“Reliable Indians will be used as auxiliary to discover any signs of
hostile Indians, and as trailers. This is the fifth time within three
months in which the Indians have been surprised by the troops . . .
given them a feeling of insecurity”
The above gets into the mindset of the imperialist state. It tells us
that – despite many among the oppressed internal nations feeling as if
they are mere fingerlings in the geo-political landscape – the state
sees us as extreme threats. The U.$. government wants to know who the
hostile people are, who the rebels are, the anti-imperialists, the
revolutionary nationalists, and all the enemies of the state. The state
also wants to psychologically harass and confuse us, at one time this
was accomplished by horseback and today it is via the internet.
Prisons are also a target. The state knows very well that when
revolutionaries are captured they continue with their duty to raise
consciousness and to politicize the very concentration kamps they are
held in. La lucha don’t stop in any sense of the word, if anything the
struggle accelerates because of the uncut repression that prisons and
prisoners experience.
The FBI actually created a prison activists surveillance program
(PRISACTS) in 1970. This was meant to crush the prison movement. The
methods used were military tactics which Orisanmi Burton calls “carceral
spaces as zones of counter-revolutionary warfare” in Targeting
Revolutionaries. This government project displays the lengths to
which the state is willing to go to neutralize revolutionaries even when
they are imprisoned. We take these methods serious as all people should
as we all have comrades who have been captured if we are truly fighting
imperialism.
Outro
The state ultimately works to seduce our raza with financial
incentive, integration, or intimidation. We need to build a stronger
security culture which strengthens our efforts in the anti-imperialist
movement. Counterinsurgency efforts by the state are real. Our role in
the empire is real.
We need to build stronger networks that nurture and support our
imprisoned and captured comrades. We cannot forget about those who
sacrificed their lives by being on the front lines. The front is
wherever we find ourselves, even behind the razor wire and in the
concentration kamps. All Power To The People!
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 theme of this issue of Under Lock & Key was inspired by recent essays and interviews by Orisanmi Burton, previewing material from eir upcoming book: Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Comrades in MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle from Within (USW) have been studying Burton’s work. Though we have not had the opportunity to read the book yet, which comes out end of October 2023, we like a lot of the ideas ey has presented so far and the overall thesis that prisons are war.
As we go to press the genocidal war on Palestine is heating up. We have reports inside on Congo, El Salvador, Ukraine and Niger; and we don’t even touch on Guatemala or Haiti. History has shown that as war heightens internationally, war often heightens against the oppressed nations within the empire as well.
In this issue we have reports of political repression as war in U.$. prisons. We also feature articles from comrades who organized around, and reflected on the Attica rebellion and Black August. This is the history that Burton analyzes in eir work, exposing the state’s efforts to suppress the prison movement and how both sides were operating on a war footing. For over a decade readers of ULK have commemorated the beginning of Attica on September 9th with a Day of Peace and Solidarity, as part of the campaign to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons. But how do we get to peace when we find ourselves the targets of the oppressor’s war?
Burton pushes back against some Liberal/reformist lines that have been advanced onto the prison movement to oppose the line of liberation. Burton’s ideas harken back to V.I. Lenin, recognizing prisons as a repressive arm of the state, and the state being a tool of oppression and warfare by one class over another. War is one form of political struggle, and a very important one at that.
It is this framework that we have used to push back against “abolitionism.” Our organization emerged from the struggle to abolish control units, a form of prisons that is torture and inhumane. We see the abolition of control units as a winnable, if difficult, battle under bourgeois rule. In a socialist state, where the proletariat rules over the former bourgeoisie, we certainly won’t have such torture cells anymore; but the abolition of prisons altogether is a vision for the distant future. We find it questionable that Burton frames revolutionary communist martyrs like George Jackson as an “abolitionist”.
Where we have more unity is when Burton takes issue with building the prison movement around the legalist struggle to amend the 13th Amendment of the U.$. Constitution that abolishes slavery except for the convicted felon. Burton points out the history of Liberal thought in justifying enslavement of those captured in just wars. As most in this country see the United $tates as a valid project, it could follow logically that it is just to enslave the conquered indigenous and New Afrikan nations, as well as nations outside the United $tates borders. We see how settlers in Amerika and I$rael are now justifying all sorts of genocidal atrocities against Palestine.
The challenge we have repeatedly made to the campaign to amend the 13th Ammendment is how this contributes to liberating oppressed people? How does it build power for oppressed people?
In one essay Burton draws connections to how the state was handling the war against the Vietnamese people at the same time as the war against New Afrika at home.(1) We have a draft paper out on the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement that discusses the counter-insurgency in Peru, and how the fascist U.$.-Fujimori regime locked communist leader Comrade Gonzalo in an underground isolation cell and then used confusion around political line to crush the People’s War in that country. In Under Lock & Key 47, we reprinted an in-depth analysis of the use of long-term solitary confinement against the revolutionary movement in Turkey and the use of hunger strikes to struggle against it from 2000-2007. All of these historical examples, including to some extent New Afrika in the 1970s, involved an armed conflict on both sides. Today, in the United $tates, we do not have those conditions. However, we can look to the national liberation struggle in Palestine, and the connection to the prison movement there as a modern-day example.
Burton spends time exposing the politics of the federal counter-insurgency program PRISACTS. And one of the things we learn is that PRISACTS is officially short-lived as the counter-insurgency intelligence role is taught to and passed on to the state institutions. We see this today, especially in the handling of censorship of letters and reading materials we send to and receive from prisoners. We see the intentional targeting of these materials for their political content, and not for any promotion of violence or illegal activity. Our comrades inside face more serious consequences of brutality, isolation and torture in retaliation for attempts to organize others for basic issues of living conditions and law violations.
The arrest of Duane “Keffe D” Davis for involvement in the murder of Tupac Shakur has also been in the news this month. Keffe D is a known informant who confessed to driving his nephew to murder Tupac years ago in exchange for the dropping of a life sentence for an unrelated charge. Author John Potash notes that there were many attempted assassinations of Tupac prior to his death, at least one that involved the NYPD Street Crimes Unit. This unit was launched following the supposed “end” of COINTELPRO.(2) This directly parallels what we see with the “end” of PRISACTS and the passing of intelligence operations on to state pigs.
As we’ve discussed in drawing lessons from the repression of Stop Cop City, we need to take serious strategic precautions in how we organize. We must recognize the war being waged on us. If we treat this as something that can be fixed once people see what’s going on, or once we get the right courts or authorities to get involved, we will never accomplish anything. And as always we must put politics in command. There is an active intelligence counter-insurgency being waged against USW and the prison movement in general, and the best weapon we have is grasping, implementing and judging political line.
Prison is War is not just a topic for ULK, it is a political line and analysis. We welcome your future reports, articles and artwork exposing the ways this war is happening in prisons today.
Notes: 1. Burton, Orisanmi (2023).“Targeting Revolutionaries: The Birth of the Carceral Warfare Project, 1970-1978.” Radical History Review. Vol. 146. 2. John Potash on I Mix What I Like, 16 October 2023. (author of “The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders”)
Every sista & brotha ain’t really a sister & brotha, because some who pose as a comrade are really under cover police!!! “Loyalty is a life style.”
A prisoner of war, is a revolutionary who has engaged in acts of armed struggle, who has been captured by government agents in armed struggle against an oppressive state. A political prisoner, is an individual who has been jailed for eir beliefs, eir speech, or for eir political ideas & concepts.
Prisons have perfected their use of psychological warfare techniques by the use of divide and conquer! S.N.Y./P.C. yards serve as a mechanism for the entire prison system, a penal cesspool where other institutions discard their waste matter. They work to remove the supports to the old life style and attitudes, by proving to em that those whom ey respects aren’t worthy of it and should be actively mistrusted. Their tactics include: use of compromised and cooperative inmates as leaders, exploitation of rats, snitches, and informants, treating those who are willing to “collaborate,” in far more lenient ways than those who are not, rewarding of total submission and subserviency to the guards & administration. The administration is known for collecting large amounts of information on prisoners. As the loud speakers are also receivers, and pick up loose talk & conversations in the day rooms, hallways, & cells. Sometimes a prisoner is confronted with the information in order to create distrust about the people ey has talked with. At other times the information is kept a secret among officials and “traps” are set.
Most sacred of all is a man’s ideas: and there is a standing rule with convicts to never let the enemy know what you are thinking!
There is an elite group of “inmate slaves,” that is looked upon by the guards with great favor because they share the same basic ideals with the administration.
The prisons exploit the weaknesses, especially those weaknesses produced by an alienating society. Their weakness is transmuted into “submission and subserviency,” the type of behavior conducive to guards goal of total control and manipulation.
The “inmate slave,” will not resist or complain, nor will ey go on a strike to support a political prisoners grievances. They are totally alienated from their environment, and their psychological and emotional inter-dependency with the guards welds and insulates them into a crippled world of the weak preying upon the weak. All is truly well.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with the overall picture painted by this comrade. However, as we’ve covered in much depth before, SNY in California is now a large portion of the imprisoned lumpen who suffer the same oppressive conditions. We cannot just treat anyone who is in SNY as an “inmate slave.” If only it were so easy that the state told us who is working with them! Their methods are much more advanced, making us second-guess our own comrades.
Second, we also say all prisoners are political. War is politics and prisons are war. While some enter prison politicized, many more are politicized inside in our current conditions. So drawing common interests among the imprisoned lumpen is the approach we must take.
Triple Cross: How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the
Green Berets, and the FBI By Peter Lance Harper-Collins
Publishers, 2006 608 pages
<
I had briefly heard the story of Ali Muhammid, the Al Qaeda operative
who infiltrated various U.$. agencies, but nothing in depth. This book
answered lots of unanswered questions. Many of the assumptions I had
surrounding the 9/11 attacks were confirmed in this book and still other
questions arose.
It’s important to understand one’s enemy. The U.$. government has an
immense amount of operatives going at once and is instilling terror
globally on a massive scale. The author, Peter Lance, reveals some of
this here and calls out the FBI on its actions and to a lesser extent
the CIA.
This book shows the vulnerabilities of the empire. Much of the state
apparatus is as Mao rightly identified a paper tiger. The 9/11
Commission is a perfect example. The 9/11 Commission was created to
investigate the attacks on 9/11. The “findings” resulted in a huge book
titled The 9/11 Commission. Peter Lance was himself interviewed
by the commission and explained how upon being interviewed he found out
that half of the “9/11 commission” was made up of former FBI – the very
agency that Lance states failed to stop the attacks on 9/11! Thus such a
commission was bound to fail from the start. An utter failure.
Peter Lance lays out the idea that years before 9/11 attacks the FBI
had intel that could have prevented the attacks and dropped the ball.
It’s interesting to hear the FBI’s vulnerabilities because the state
works hard to maintain this facade that the FBI is this all knowing
behemoth when in reality they are prone to humyn fallacy just like any
other, paper tigers.
This book mentions that one of the reasons the author feels that the
FBI dropped some of its leads into the Al Qaeda cell responsible for
9/11 was that a Senior Supervisory Special Agent of the FBI Roy Lindley
DeVechio was alleged to be leaking information to a member of the
Colombo Crime Family: Greg Scarpa Senior. So to save the Feds the
embarrassment and jeopardize dozens of members of the Colombo family’s
cases the intel was swept under the rug. The FBI has been known
throughout its hystory to commit every crime we can think of in its
repression on the people. Some agents have even been known to have
intimate relationships, even falling in love with their intended
target.
It’s clear after reading this book that when we look at the Al Qaeda
network and all of its figures, Ali Mohammid stands out as the most
audacious and one of the most important figures in that organization.
The fact that while being trained at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare
Center at Fort Bragg he was simultaneously training the Al Qaeda cell
that blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 is amazing. His photographs
were also used by Osama Bin Laden in bombing the U.$. embassy in Kenya
that killed 224 people in 1998.(1)
As communists we do not condone terrorizing the populace by targeting
civilians. Nor do we support the notion of taking actions based in
supernatural superstitions of any sort, but this does not take away the
blow to U.$. Intelligence Agencies that Ali Mohammed was able to execute
by toying with them and basically working them all like a handler. He
was an Al Qaeda sleeper, a deep penetration triple agent who played
Amerikkka at its own game. The only reason this story is not on the
front page of every newspaper and at movie theaters is it is a huge
embarrassment to U.$. intelligence.
The FBI, like Amerikkka, has a long hystory of breaking their own
laws while claiming to enforce their laws. During the Red Scare of the
1950s, the Feds would routinely employ “Black Bag Jobs”: breaking into
homes, stealing property, planting evidence or disappearing targets that
were political and often communist. Years later COINTELPRO taught us
that murder was not off the FBI’s table nor was imprisonment of
dissidents. The integrity of the FBI from the perspective of
revolutionary folks is shot and Lance gets at this a little on page six
when discussing how Ali Mohammed is the one who took the very
photographs Bin Laden used to target the U.$. Embassy in Nairobi in
1994:
“As the man who had sat in a room with the ‘terror prince,’ while Bin
Laden personally targeted the Nairobi embassy back in 1994, Mohammed
should have been the star witness in the embassy bombing trial, which
was just months away. Yet Patrick Fitzgerald, the lead prosecutor, never
called him.”
For prisoners it’s bewildering to hear a D.A., in this case Patrick
Fitzgerald, did not call a witness who is alleged to have started the
chain of events to which people were killed. Anyone who has been to a
couple of court proceedings or who has watched a crime show on
television has a basic understanding that anyone involved in some way
would be subpoenaed if not charged. And yet Mohammid was not called as a
witness. It’s pretty apparent that the FBI was avoiding further
embarrassment and possible culpability in crimes much more grisly than
anything they were dealing with in the Nairobi Embassy bombing of 1994.
The hystory of the FBI is pretty grisly, indeed. During the 1960s and
70s many freedom fighters from the Chican@ movement and the Black
movement were disappeared or murdered in COINTELPRO operations. For most
revolutionary minded folks FBI and crime are synonymous in the United
Snakes. Even in non-revolutionary circles many understand that when
discussing the FBI it is not the local 4-H club by any means. An FBI
cover-up is quite understandable as such revelations naturally nudge the
people to then unravel U.$. agencies and naturally to examine the
legality of the United Snakes.
This book was a good exposé on how the FBI can go to such lengths as
covering up a mass murder plot to preserve its reputation within the
empire. For the oppressed nations we know how U.$. agencies have been
nothing more than arms of the State who uphold repression, but to so
many who are not conscious this book is a rough-hewn example of an
entity like the FBI which can hunt and murder unarmed freedom fighters,
free thinkers, and communist theorists but let it face folks arriving
with bombs, hijacked planes, and suicide vests and they trip over
themselves trying to flee to safety. We don’t promote armed struggle
today, but it was still subjectively nice to read how the FBI got
duped.
United States v. Ali Muhammid, 5(7) 98 Cr. 1023 (LBS) Sealed
Complaint, September 1998, affidavit of David Coleman, FBI
I was reading ULK 81 when I came across a conversation on whether or not to ally with sex offenders and I feel that I have a fresh perspective to contribute to this conversation. FCI Seagoville, for those unaware, is a low-security federal prison with a majority sex-offender population. I have made friends with and enemies of pedophiles, and as such I have experience working with them. It would be almost impossible for me to organize in here without interacting with sex offenders. For example, I am the only member of my 7 man Narcotics Anonymous group who is not a sex offender.
The two main federal S.O. charges are pictures and enticement. An emblematic picture case is that of a friend of mine, who became addicted to opioids during the crisis and enjoyed the rush of getting away with all kinds of criminal behavior while high. He expropriated his neighbors’ lawn furniture and dumped it all in a business parking lot. He also surfed the internet while high and looked up child porn. He became dependent upon the feeling of getting away with things he knew were wrong, and the pursuit of that anti-social feeling led him to federal prison.
The vast majority of enticement cases are sting operations. A non-S.O. comrade of mine, J, contends that sting enticement cases should be judged not by the fact that they were stings, but rather by the ill intentions of the one being entrapped. The sting usually goes like this: an agent poses as a young person on a dating site. They are matched with someone, engage them in conversation for a few days, and then reveal that they are under-aged. If the person messages back saying that they want to continue the relationship, an investigation is opened into them. This gets at the wider issue of us prisoners using the oppression of the state as a justification for and personal forgiveness of our immoral actions. When I talk about immoral actions, I mean actions that would require self-reflection and self-criticism under a proletarian system of justice. Many of the enticement cases claim that their actions hurt no one, that the government set them up, and that the government is the largest distributor of child pornography. None of these claims are untrue, yet all of them serve to minimize the S.O.’s role in their own offense.
These minimizations on the part of the S.O.’s belie a genuine understanding of the severity of their actions. S.O.’s were exposed to just as much fear mongering propaganda about pedophiles as the rest of us. To associate that propaganda with yourself often leads to a searing self-hatred. To my understanding, the prison system seeks to imprison each of us with shame and guilt over our crimes, in our own heads. The fear mongering media propaganda apparatus plays an active role in priming us for a mental imprisonment alongside our physical imprisonment. Nowhere is this method of mental domination more apparent than in the case of sex offenders.
Comrade J states: “S.O.’s are no different than ‘normal’ people when it comes to reliability or revolutionary potential. It is rather that their status as sex offenders, if known, may be weaponized against the movement.” As to the question of whether to ally with sex offenders, I have this to add: my closest, most reliable comrade is a sex offender. He gave me the copy of ULK 81 that inspired this response. I can offer no better proof of the reliability of S.O.’s as allies and comrades than this, the existence of my contribution.
Recently a comrade wrote us upset that someone else “got credit” for
an article ey identified as eir own. This confusion came from our
assigning this comrade a USW# alias, as we do for authors who are
members of USW and have not chosen their own alias. This comrade signed
the article with a known alias within eir lumpen
organization/association. Such aliases are well-known by the pigs and
are the equivalent of printing government names. If you wish to go by a
specific, anonymous, USW alias, let us know. If you disagree with
MIM(Prisons)’s 6 points or do not wish to be a part of USW, please let
us know that as well. Otherwise, regular authors will be assigned a
random USW byline.
Printing bylines is a form of accountability, to track where ideas
are coming from in an anonymous fashion. There is no “credit” to be had.
All work submitted to and printed by MIM(Prisons) belongs to the
movement. We do require people to cite us if they are going to reprint
articles from our website/newsletter/publications. Again this is about
political accountability. There are no individuals that can gain fame or
fortune by claiming to own the content of our proletarian media outlets.
Anyone who does is not a member of MIM(Prisons) or the organizations it
leads.
Another reader recently rejoined our mailing list with an article
submission, and responded by writing,
“As for MIM(Prisons) policy of not publishing authors names or known
aliases, that should be a decision made by the individual. I’m sure this
policy has been implemented to protect us, nonetheless I can relate to
the honorable George Jackson,”I”m in a unique political position. I have
a very nearly closed fortune, and since I have always been inclined to
get disturbed over organized injustice or terrorist practice against the
innocents – wherever – I can now say just about what I want, without the
fear of self-exposure.” So with that being said I ask that any of the
writing I submit be published under [my alias]. Why is this of
importance to me? When the less politicized prisoner see another
prisoner he knows having his writings published, it engenders a belief
that they can do it as well.”
We respect the rights of prisoner to publicize their cases and their
works under their own name. There are benefits
towards self-preservation of having an outside support base, we do
not deny this.(1) But we do not agree that there are political benefits
to publishing authors’ names.
As far as reaching and inspiring those around you, if you are
reporting on actual organizing in your location, then the masses around
you will recognize that. Our comrade in Maryland who has been reporting
on the mass campaign
around conditions at ECI is no doubt known to the masses there who
are reading ULK and encouraged by eir reporting even though we
print eir articles without even an alias.(2)
We have seen the self-appointed leaders of the so-called “panther”
movement within U.$. prisons build cults of persynality around
themselves seemingly as a rule. One such persyn we reported on proved
to be an informant according to the SF Bayview.(3) This is not
surprising to us as persynality cults are bourgeois tactics, and that
persyn’s opportunist political line and self-promotion identified em as
a confused mis-leader at best to MIM(Prisons) long ago. Another leader
of that “party” was expelled, leading to the formation of a new party
after allegedly utilizing movement events and funds for eir persynal
benefit. Perhaps we are seeing a pattern?
We have a comrade who is locked back up, in no small part because of
an organizing approach that was very public and social media-based. This
comrade has also benefited from public support in the past. As ey sits
in a jail cell with future unknown, we must double down on our assertion
that public personas and revolution don’t mix.
Yes, our policy is about protecting imprisoned comrades’ identities.
It’s also about not letting the pigs put poison information out through
our media. It’s also about not letting people use proletarian media for
self-promotion. It’s also about setting a good example of effective
organizing practices and good security. It’s about building a resilient
movement. It’s about trying to win for the proletariat as a whole.
For those who need to build up their persynal support base, there are
other news outlets aimed at prisoners that do not have proletarian
politics and will happily print your names. Bourgeois media loves
stories that highlight an individual’s story, “their truth”, some
photos, descriptions of persynal characteristics – that’s why we tell
our comrades on the streets not to talk to bourgeois media. Under
Lock & Key is a place to put proletarian politics in command
and we welcome your submissions that share that mission.
Notes: 1. A Virginia prisoner explains the importance of
outside supporters in the campaign for eir clemency in the June 2023
article “Proven Strategies for Waging an Effective Campaign for Clemency
in Virginia”. 2. A Maryland Prisoner, April 2023, Support
Incarcerated Citizens of ECI Mobilizing to Improve Conditions, Under
Lock & Key 81. 3. MIM(Prisons), December 2021, Keeping
Opportunism and Self-Interest at Arms Length, Lessons from a Recent
Betrayal, Under Lock & Key 76.
The state has once again kidnapped the comrade Jose Villarreal (JV) on trumped up charges. After over a decade in the deepest dungeons of Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit, JV was released to the streets in January 2017 following the historic California hunger strikes and the Agreement to End Hostilities (AEH) between the largest lumpen organizations in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) at the time. This is the second time JV has been arrested since eir release. In addition, ey has faced armed raids by the pigs at eir place of residence.
The first arrest following eir release from Pelican Bay was on 2 August 2020 from an incident where JV may have saved someone’s life, but was charged as an accomplice instead. Eir arrest this winter was almost completely fabricated, with no basis in reality. And due to having been a certified member of a “Security Threat Group” (STG) in Pelican Bay ey faces gang enhancements on both sets of charges. Gang enhancements are a way to punish the oppressed for free association with others in their nation.
While the circumstances of the 2020 arrest are suspect, as are any when a revolutionary leader is targeted, the 2022 arrest is based on fabricated testimony rather than an actual incident. This testimony is coming from someone who presented emself as a revolutionary Chican@ nationalist. If the 2020 incident was a setup, then JV diffused it by eir righteous actions in a dangerous situation. Perhaps the state learned its lesson and decided it must fabricate charges in a he-said/she-said case.
In the six years since eir release from CDCR, JV has become most well known for eir radio program Free Aztlán on Poor News Network’s KEXU 96.1 FM in Oakland, California. Over the years JV featured Chican@ authors, researchers, artists and activists of many stripes. They advocated for the “kids in kages”, the migrant field workers, prisoners, and even did a series on the abuse of young people in spiritual movements targetting Chican@ nationalists. Ey was a regular promoter of the book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán and the struggles for national liberation around the globe. JV also was apart of Aztlán Press, which published the second edition of Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán. Listen to the CPA(MLM) announcement (starting at 8:00)
On the last episode of Free Aztlán before eir recent arrest, JV hosted the public announcement of the founding of the Communist Party of Aztlán (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). Eir track record of advocating for national liberation, and eir support of the foundation of the Party in particular, is clearly behind the state’s machinations to imprison JV once again on trumped-up charges.
While MIM(Prisons) recognizes CPA(MLM) as a fraternal organization, it is no secret that we promote a cell structure strategy of organization. We’ve received push back on this in the form of calls for a centralized organization, a movement that spans the country, and a center for training and developing scientific leadership. These are some of the things the CPA(MLM) felt that Aztlán needed. They felt a party was needed to combat/compete with the parties that now mislead the masses under bourgeois political lines.
JV’s connections to various projects, and the connections between different chapters of the Republic of Aztlán are public record on the internet. We do not promote this form of organization. We see the hybrid of online and irl (real life) organizing to favor the strengths of the state over the weaknesses of the masses.
Lest we need reminding, the repeated targeting of JV exposes the lengths to which the state will go to suppress even a young emerging movement like CPA(MLM). JV has been tireless in eir work in the Chican@ community to promote positive change. No proletarian court would convict em of a crime. A socialist justice system would uphold JV as the best-case example of what someone can make of emselves after decades in an oppressive, abusive, torturous prison system.