It is a sincere pleasure to receive the open letter detailing the
progressive actions you all have been taking. As we see with Obama, it
is not enough for us to continue down the line of just using titles such
as capitalism, racism, imperialism, fascism, colonialism, classism, and
oppression. We must call them out one by one. For example: when
capitalist/fascist Dianne Feinstein presents legislation that further
targets the lumpen/proletarian class, we must send out operatives in the
area to challenge her by contradicting the very policies she’s
introducing. We have enough public record information to use against
these politicians who continue to draw up policies that line their
pockets with corporate profits at the expense of humanity.
We have New African politicians such as the Congressional Black Caucus
who are affected by the fraud and control. They must be sought out and
called out on the very oppressive policies that they support like when
Rep. Maxine Waters was in support of legislation that authorized a one
million dollar bounty on Assata Shakur, who is in exile in Cuba after
escaping from the imperialist state that sought to murder her. When she
was called on it she said that she didn’t know her by that name!
We are dealing with spineless individuals who not only support all these
draconian laws but don’t inform their constituents of what these racist
policies will do to them, like when Bill Clinton was made to be seen as
the first Black President. He is responsible for passing the Prison
Litigation Reform Act which is an extremely anti-prisoner policy.
Lawyers’ incentives were taken away which had encouraged lawyers to take
prisoners cases. He was also responsible for the Death Penalty/Terrorist
Act in 1996 sealing the fate of thousands of poor disenfranchised New
Afrikans, Latinos and poor whites to life in prison. This made it next
to impossible to challenge criminal cases in the courts after one year.
We must challenge each and every one of these sell-out politicians when
they support policies that are anti-human in nature. We must hold them
accountable by voting them out of office.
Most of my life I’ve been incarcerated. I had a reputation as one of the
“leading Bloods” in the prison system. My fate was sealed until my
mother was killed in a car accident in 1996 and it was a letter she
wrote to me that I received about 3 days after finding out she was
killed. This letter was ironically a brief biography of her life that
revealed to me all these things I didn’t know about her, like she was a
Sgt. of arms in the
Black
Panther Party, and that she was responsible for introducing the
Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program. She assisted in the escape of
Angela Davis. It was an honorable surprise because it explained why our
childhood was so radical for my brothers and I, where the FBI kicked in
our doors routinely and we moved constantly. Therefore my disdain for
authority that abuses its position is strong.
I was already questioning my past actions because even as a misguided
youth I tried to be rooted in a moral sense where I would justify my
actions by saying that those individuals who I wronged were wrong. Yet
looking back, I never liked what I saw and it’s really crazy because I
found out my mother was a revolutionary when I always thought she was a
gangster of some sort because of what I saw with the FBI and others
constantly harassing her and my step-father when I was a child.
I learned that law enforcement does’t just go after bad guys, but also
good ones. This led me to redirect my energy toward the interests of my
people. If you could see my past history in the penal system, where I
was extremely destructive from 1976 to 1996, it wasn’t until I became
productive/constructive from 1996 until now that I became a threat. All
the stabbings, assaults on prisoners, and a couple of staff, didn’t seal
my fate in these gulags. It wasn’t until I became a progressive in
organizing prisoners towards their own interests that I was validated as
a prison gang member and placed in SHU indefinitely in 2000.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This letter is yet another
excellent illustration of why we say that revolutionaries are the real
advocates of peace while the criminal injustice system punishes those
who oppose violence. We also agree with this prisoner that it’s
important to point out the bad policies enacted by politicians, but we
disagree with his suggestion that we vote these politicians out of
office. Voting won’t change anything, because the only people who can
get elected are those who serve the interests of the system. Changing
the face of the oppressor will not put an end to oppression. Only the
overthrow of the oppressive imperialist system will truly bring peace to
the majority of the world’s people.