Under Lock & Key

i want to begin with a sort of disclaimer or qualifier, due to the fact that many speak on the realities of the lumpen, particularly the street gang elements, who’re not cut from that cloth, if you will.

Although i am now a committed New Afrikan Freedom Fighter, i was initiated into what is now the Forum Park Crips, in Houston, Texas, when i was in my early teens. My life in the streets was one of tribal animosities and strife, territorial beefs, and a survivalist level of hustling and scheming. i did everything one does in the street life from selling narcotics, to thievery, burglary, armed robberies, pimping, and of course ‘sliding’, as they say nowadays.

As a result of this lifestyle and my social ignorance, and lack of firm identity, purpose and direction, by age nineteen i found myself wanted for capital murder, and by twenty-one sentenced to life without parole for said murder, while holding strong to the key principle one was taught in the lumpen sub-culture, ‘No Snitching’!

Prior and during my prison stint i operated as a makeshift hystorian, and due to my persynal background i’ve paid much attention to the historical development of the lumpen in North amerikkka in general, New Afrika in particular, and the lumpen-organizational development specifically. This along with my adherence to historical dialectical materialist philosophy, i believe, qualify me to speak with a certain level of knowledge, wisdom and understanding on the subject.

The Foundation

At the moment in time of the founding of the original Crips, one of its co-founders, Tookie Williams(Ajami Kiamke Kamara) states plainly, “The crips mythology has many romanticized, bogus accounts.” i believe We in revolutionary movements take these and other similar ones too literally and therefore misrepresent the origins and hystorical functions of the Crips and others within the class and national liberation struggles. In this realm we often promote an idealized, non-materialist perspective.

Mr. Kamara(Williams) continues,

“Another version[ of Crip mythology] incorrectly documents the Crips as an offshoot of the Black Panther Party (BPP). No Panther Party member has ever mentioned the Crips(or Cribs) as being a spin-off of the Panthers. It is also fiction that the Crips functioned under the acronym C.R.I.P, for Community Resources Inner-City Project or Community Revolutionary Inner City Project.(words like ‘revolutionary agenda’ were alien to our thuggish, uninformed teenage consciousness.) We did not unite to protect the Community; our motive was to protect ourselves and our families.”

i’ve begun this ‘Foundational’ part of this piece within these words from the late Mr. Kamara, because We too often, and too easily romanticize the beginnings of the urban amerikkkan street organizations. Now that i’ve clarified that the Crips weren’t exactly founded with a revolutionary or progressive intent it makes it clearer why the Crips have largely stagnated in their operations for so long now.

The late Malcolm X once said that ‘prison is the poor man’s university’, and proving his maxim true, it was many of the first generation of Crips who populated the prisons in California, being influenced by the politicized culture in the prison established by those who came before them, who began an effort(s) to improve the imagery, and provide meaning to what Mr. Kamara himself even called, ‘a causeless cause’.

When the imprisoned Crips began to become more culturally aware in the 80’s and onward they sought to stir the crip force in another direction by establishing a constitution, which was largely influenced by the BGF constitution, they functioned under acronyms like C.R.I.P, for Community Revolution In Progress, and other similar ones, brothers began becoming Afro-centric and instituted speaking ki-swahili. Also, many around those times became radical and politicized. Some formed orgs like the Black Riders Liberation Party, a new generation Black Panther Party that was formed in the 90’s by former Crips and Bloods. Others formed more groups like the C.C.O.(Consolidated Crips Organization) which was to be de-tribalized, more centralized and politicized version of the Crips street gang. Many of these brothers had intentions of changing the various communities and ‘Crip turfs’ they represented upon their release from prison. More often than not their efforts were not effective enough to curtail or re-focus the self-destructive culture that had by then turned southern California upside down.

Simultaneously the Crips and other similar groups were spreading throughout the north amerikkkan continent, what wasn’t spreading however was the more refined and socially aware sectors or versions of the Crips entity. So instead of ’hoods across amerikkka emulating a Conscious Crip, they were emulating cats who were Crip Crazy, and this subsequently intensified elements of self-destruction among the New Afrikan nation in amerikkka.

Building On The Foundation

As the 21st century came and settled in, the spread of the Crips to every corner of the kkkountry resulted in different locales placing their own unique cultural traits and adding on to the hystory of the original formation Mr. Kamara and Raymond Washington founded along with Mac Thomas. Therefore, many people, and groups Built of the Foundation.

i’ll preface the following by stating that lumpen organizations have repeatedly showcased the capacity to turn away from basic parasitic criminality. However, they’ve done this in two similar but unique ways. One way is progressive in terms of its break from basic criminality, yet it is reactionary in terms of its benefit to the revolution. The other way is progressive in that it provides the break from the criminal mentality, and is also revolutionary in that it seeks to join the revolutionary forces in collective war against the state and its enemy institutions.

We’ve seen examples of the first way numerous of times. One which may be familiar to some is the 1966 arranged truce between the then Blackstone rangers and the East Side Disciples, which was instigated by the promise of the $930,000 in grant money from the federal government through the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). The grant was based on a deal that the two street organizations would cease their beef and come together to prevent uprisings, which had become common throughout heavily populated New Afrikan enclaves throughout the kkkountry.

Local politicians in the Chicago Democratic Party and the Southern Democrats in Congress did not approve of these particular elements being provided with Grant money from the government, and the grant was cancelled a year later(1967). In 1968 the Chicago BPP was founded and these same lumpen orgs were enlisted or attempted to be enlisted by the federal government to prevent the rise in influence of the BPP and its revolutionary line. The Rangers and the Conservative Vice Lords opted for the former way, and were showered with grant money from the bourgeoisie(Clement Stone of Combined Insurance of America; Sears; First National Bank of Chicago, among others). These lumpen moved toward Black Capitalism, and filled the vacuum in what was then a new non-profit sector instituted to remove the teeth from the revolution and the revolutionary potential of the lumpen particularly.

On the other hand, the East Side Disciples changed their name to the Black Disciples (identifying as Black instead of negro was a culturally progressive action at the time) and formed an alliance with the Chicago BPP.

So as this hystorical account illustrates, the lumpen are a vacillating class. We can flow whichever way the wind blows, but Our life experience under monopoly capitalism and imperialism, suggested that absent a form of ‘class-suicide’, We will do like the Rangers and take the capitalist road, which will have us cozied up with the bourgeoisie, making love with our enemies and murdering our friends.

Within the Forum Park Crip experience there has been an evolution and a certain level of class struggle, and ideological struggle (which is one in the same thing). To quote Malcolm X, again, ‘Prisons are the poor man’s university’. One member of the Forum Park Crips (FPC) spent time incarcerated and chose to apply himself.

He learned somethings from the cats like myself who have been politicized while in captivity and he began to develop a New Vision for our street tribe. Upon release, he began to institute the New Vision. See everyone and every entity has a basic Identity, Purpose and Direction, and as evolution takes place it takes place within the nature of these three elements of the entity in question. So upon release the first step was to apply a New Vision to what the Identity of a FPC was/is.

Like the brothers in California decades ago with their C.R.I.P.(Community Revolution In Progress), the homie strove to fine tune the image, by establishing Forever Protecting the Community(FPC) as an official community organization dedicated to mentoring youth, minimizing gang violence, and empowering the community.

Because of the numerous influences, and illegitimate capitalism being foremost among them, FPC in its beginning stages turned down a similar road as Jeff Fort’s Rangers in 1960’s Chicago. FPC received grants from the city and used them along with other similar formations to fund a purchasing of acreage to start community gardens, promoting food sovereignty, a memorial tribute to victims of police and gun violence. Prior to the grants FPC provided school supplies and thousands of backpacks, sponsored summer kids’ festivals, and mentoring school children by doing speaking engagements at local schools.

As i’ve pointed out, these efforts are progressive in the sense they’re a long way from the parasitic criminality the homies had been involved with prior. However, it can be reactionary in the sense that absent any sense of revolutionary orientation, this amounts to nothing more than mere community service, and never did at the root of the systematic problems that cause the surface level expression of the oppressive social contract.

After discussing this somewhat with some of the guys plans have come to fruition to establish a campaign that attacks a particular vestige of genocidal culture in the Forum Park area. This being the out of control open-air sex trafficking that de-values our community and makes it uncomfortable and unsafe for elements in Our community. The campaign will create a class struggle for unity both within the community and the organization, and will make the bond between the org and the people. Moreso, it will begin to establish what will hopefully become a distinct line of demarcation between the local government, and the rest of the non-profit sector, who’ve become entranced with utilizing the plights of the people as a stepping stool to gain economic upliftment. As FPC and other similar formations move out of that mode of operations, and begin to call others out on it and for their deceitful service to the people, it will create unity within classes apart of the local class struggle.

In closing, i’ve found the observation of comrade Jalil Abdul Muntaqim to be true,

“Beneath the Black working class are the subculture lumpen-proletariat, the unskilled and menial laborers whose primary means of subsistence is based on hustling(stealing, selling drugs, prostitution etc), marginal employment, and welfare. For the most part the socioeconomic provision within the subculture are maintained by the ‘illegitimate capitalist’ activity of the lumpen-proletariat. In accordance with their aspirations to fulfill the social values of the bourgeoisie, they employ business acumen in criminal activity for subsistence and profit. As they seek material wealth and social status of the bourgeoisie within the confines of the subculture, they are in many ways politically reactionary, unconcerned with anything other than personal survival and individual gain. It is only when the lumpen-proletariat are educated and become politically aware of their socioeconomic condition, that the possibility exists for them to become staunch supporters of the revolution, recognizing their dire standard of living is based wholly on the system of oppression they are desperately trying to emulate…”

As has been routinely stated, the revolutionary forces must ingratiate themselves within the activities of the lumpen organization. Specifically once they’ve already reached a certain level of collective social awareness and activity. And then, influence the development of their social awareness and activity by providing political education, by conceptualizing programs that are pertinent to the particular lumpen community one is seeking to organize. The lumpen is a vacillating class, that can and often does see-saw between revolutionary and reactionary activities. There are some socially aware and nationalistic elements, particularly among the oppressed nations of north amerikka, who can be coached towards full support of the revolution, the choice between serving the people heart and soul, and the reactionary road are ultimately up to the lumpen themselves. i’ll leave with a word from Comrade George:

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of the situation, understand that fascism is already here. That people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your life in revolution. Pass on the torch, join us, give up your life for the people.” - George L. Jackson

<sup>SOURCES:
1. Blue Rage Black Redemption, Stanley Tookie Williams
2. Ibid.
3. Vita Wa Watu #11, Spears & Shield Publications
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. We Are Our Own Liberators, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, ‘National Strategy of FROLINAN’
7. Blood In My Eye, George L. Jackson</sup>

Intensify The Struggle for Class Unity

They say the best way to hide something is to put it in plain sight. Student-led activism in the majority New Afrikan populated area of South Baltimore has rendered this old saying no longer true. For about ninety years corporate coal companies and the city government have allowed and perpetuated landfills, and literal mountains of coal being piled up in plain sight in residential areas, and even directly behind rec centers with playgrounds and children.

For the last 100 years, coal has been brought into the port city of Baltimore by the freight transportation company CSX. In data derived from 2021, it was found that CSX transported more than 8 million tons of coal into South Baltimore, where the coal is then transported all over the world. Freight trains coming through the Baltimore transport terminal with coal on them spill black coal dust throughout South Baltimore and pollute the air.

Pollution is so outrageous in this predominately New Afrikan community that the number one cause of death is respiratory related issues. The death rate from respiratory disease in South Baltimore is more than twice the rate for Baltimore as a whole. Respiratory disease is killing more people in this section of the city than diabetes, drugs, or gun violence. A staggering 90% of youth from the area suffer from different degrees of asthma, which has been causing chronic death.

What is by now very obvious to anyone is that coal and other pollutants should not be in residential areas, but the fact that they are and have been so carelessly handled for generations now, in a predominately New Afrikan section of a predominantly New Afrikan city, illustrates major contradictions of the national oppression of so-called Black people, and Our neo-colonial relationship to the empire and certain classes within Our collective body-politic.

It is under this back drop that a youth organization was founded in 2011 at the local Benjamin Franklin High School, called Free Your Voice. In 2011 the Free Your Voice student-activists were fighting, and eventually defeated an effort to build a waste incinerator in South Baltimore. The incinerator would’ve burned tons of trash and waste, and released pollution, as well as converted electricity from the burned waste.

Today, Free Your Voice is still active and continues to replenish its pool of student-activists. Now however, the struggle with CSX and city and state officials is much more daunting. Free Your Voice and supporters from the community and local colleges have set out to get the state’s environmental regulators to deny CSX’s operations permit on the transport terminal and pay residents of South Baltimore reparations for generations of ‘environmental racism’ (Genocide).

These efforts have been hampered by what some deem as betrayal by the first ‘Black’ top environmental regulator in Maryland and her declaration that she and her agency know its coal and coal dust found on streets and public areas but can not act without actual proof of the identity of the substance.

Laws against air pollution are written so that oppressed and vulnerable masses of people are at severe disadvantage and would in most circumstances be dependent upon state agencies who are in cahoots with big industrialists, to gather and test substances in question. People have to prove they’ve been or are being poisoned by specific substances before regulators can take action.

Students from Free Your Voice along with local college volunteers spent the summer of 2023 collecting and testing particles of dust found in the S. B-More area. They have and continue to go door-to-door spreading the findings of their research with the general community. Thus far, although the terminal has not been shut down and the mountains of coal still reside behind rec centers and playgrounds, Free Your Voice has achieved quantitative victories.

The student-activists’ work thus far has:

1. Made it harder for city officials, state politicians, and local residents to ignore their oppression;

2. They’ve won over neighbors to their work, elevated consciousness around air pollution and the complicity of the occupying government in environmental destruction;

3. They’ve garnered meetings with state regulators, and the fact that the head of environmental regulation agency in Maryland is a ‘Black’ female, has elevated the class consciousness and the reality of the New Afrikan National neo-colonial status;

4. The aspirations of their movement have rose. From slight reforms like covering or pouring water on coal mountains in the ghetto, to now, aspiring to remove or shut down the train terminal.

The continuing work of Our young people is not only there to be acknowledged and supported, but more importantly in the long run there are lessons to be learned from this particular student movement. I’ll touch on some of them briefly here.

For one, while it is widely known that almost all previous moments in the generational struggle of New Afrikan people the student movement was the brain trust, and the heart of the struggle, We often fail to make the connection that these previous students were so successful in galvanizing people and nationalizing their structures because they championed causes that had nothing to do with school or education. The Free Your Voice Movement in S.B-More has connected the youth movement with environmentalism, and those two things have unearthed class oppression and national oppression. Our students must make these same connections around the empire. What is the one thing that connects the student in B-More to the student in southside St.Louis, or San Francisco, or in Cancer Ally Louisiana, or Jackson, Mississippi, or Flint, Michigan? It’s environmental issues. The organizing method We should take at organizing the student movement in the spirit of New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) is to connect environmentalism with student activism and revolutionary nationalism.

What also struck me in my research of this issue and struggle was the fact that college students and former students of Franklin High School have continued to come back and aid and assist in the struggle there.

The college level student with a NARN orientation must make their presence and ideological-theoretical prowess available at the sites of active student movements. In these times of social media, student activists from each of the previously mentioned cities and others can and should be in direct communication, and NARN’s must take proactive steps to influence the direction of the student movement, nationalizing it and moving it in the direction illuminated by the Front for the Liberation of the New Afrikan Nation (FROLINAN)’s Programs For Decolonization, while also incorporating environmental and climate related concerns to the FROLINAN program for National Alliance of New Afrikan Students. If implemented by youthful NARN, i believe We can succeed in building a NARN centered national youth movement.

A Juxtaposition to the Works of Orisanmi Burton

A spear, utilized as a weapon to engage in battle, can only be effective insofar as its tip is both sturdy and sharp. And the sharpness of its tip is maintained as part of a process of sharpening in the continuum of a protracted struggle campaign. Otherwise, what you’ll have is not an implement for war, but a stick that merely rhetorically projects a technology for combat that in actuality, is incapable of immobilizing or pushing back against a harmful, even deadly force. So considering the condition of the spear, I have no intention to deal with or re-visit the “Long Attica Revolt” with historicism, relegating the event to a time in history; nor to romanticize its existence for the purposes of psycho-emotional or intellectual masturbation. Instead, I relocate the Long Attica Revolt to the present moment in hopes of creating dialogue and theory around the fundamental question of whether the “Long Attica Revolt” (i.e the prison movement) still exists?

I start my analysis of the question at the end and (epilogue) of Orisanmi Burton’s (hereinafter Ori) text with the statement:

“For many, 1993 was a watershed in the slow disintegration of the prison movement.”(1)

If 1993 marked the crucial turning point in which the prison movement started dissipating, or decomposing, what does the reality look like in 2024, 31 years after its evocation? If we are serious about “interpreting the world to change it, there is no escape from historical materialism,”(2) requiring my analysis to stay anchored to tackle the question from my direct experience as a prisoner of 21 and a half consecutive years of carceral bondage within Michigan prisons. In so doing, I stay true to Mao’s injunction to adhere to what [Vladimir] Lenin called the “most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, [the] concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”(3)

The “prison movement,” according to the New Afrikan analysis that I subscribe to, marked a specific moment in time that spearheaded a qualitative change, transforming issue-based prison struggles centered primarily around conditions of confinement (reform), into a movement that was influenced by and married itself to the anti-colonial national liberation struggles being waged beyond the concrete walls (revolutionary). These circumstances, having affected colonial people on a world scale, radicalized and politicized sections of the colonial subjects in the united states to such an extent where the consciousness developed inside of penal dungeons was being disseminated to the streets where it would be internalized and weaponized by agents against the state. The impetus for this qualitative leap in the substance and character of the prison movement was Johnathan Jackson’s 7 August 1970 revolutionary act of pursuing the armed liberation of the Soledad Brothers, culminating in the 9 September 1971 Attica Rebellion. This is why Ori argued the “Long Attica Revolt was a revolutionary struggle for decolonization and abolition at the site of US prisons.”(4)

While Ori’s assessment may have been correct, his very own analysis, and a concomitant analysis of present-day Michigan, exposes a revolutionary contradiction prone to reversion and therefore revolutionary (Marxist) revision by elements that were, in fact, never revolutionary or abolitionist but only radical reformist. Revisionism spells doom (death) to the prison movement, so part of our objective has got to be how do we oppose the carceral state from an ideological and practical perspective to ensure the survival of a dying prison movement, and reap benefits and successes from our struggle. After all, Ori tells us the aim of his book is “to show that US prisons are a site of war, [a] site of active combat.”(5)

Clausewitz (Carl von) observed that war was politics by other means, just as Michel Foucault reasoned politics was war by other means. War and politics being opposite sites of a single coin, this “COIN” in military jargon is none other than “counterinsurgency.” As explained in the U.S. Army Field Manual at 3-24. It defines insurgency as:

“an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control.”

“The definition of counterinsurgency logically follows:”Counterinsurgency is the military, paramilitary, political economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.””

“Counterinsurgency, then, refers to both a type of war and a style of warfare”(6), whose aim is, in the context of prisons, to neutralize the prison movement and the ability of its agency to build the movement into the future.

As we can see, by isolating and extracting this point from Ori’s text, u.s. prisons as combat zones where war is waged is significant if we are to gleam from this fact what the proponents, the protagonists of the prison movement must do next; how we struggle accordingly in hopes of gaining victories.

The Master Plan

The logical response of a revolutionary tactician to state repression is resistance. But not just resistance for the sake of being recalcitrant – as Comrade George (Jackson) informed us, our fight, our resistance has to use imagination by developing a fighting style from a dialectical materialist standpoint. Because

“…we can fight, but if we are isolated, if the state is successful in accomplishing that, the results are usually not constructive in terms of proving the point. The point is, however, in the face of what we confront, to fight and win. That’s the real objective: not just make statements, no matter how noble, but to destroy the system that oppresses us.”(7)

In constructing long-term insurgency repression (counterinsurgency), the scientific technology deployed by the state was “soft power” as its effective mechanism to accomplish their task. Ori tells us the federal government drafted a “Master Plan” which hinged on “correctional professionals coming to realize that the battle is won or lost not inside the prison, but out on the sidewalks.”(8) This assessment could only be true considering the question surrounding prisons and the corollary prison movement is one of legitimacy, for only through legitimacy could the state preserve carceral normalcy. So counterinsurgency, or war, to be overtly specific, and the game is the acquisition of legitimacy from the masses (national public at-large) as a main objective. This fact should be telling that the struggle for state oppression, aggression and repression within the context of the prison movement is ultimately always a struggle for the people. Thus, “in an insurgency, both sides rely on the cooperation of the populace; therefore they compete for it, in part through coercive means.”(9) These political facts, as tactics of war, envision the real terrain in which the battle for prison lives is waged: the mental realm. It is within this domain that resistance and the legitimacy on both sides of the barb wired cage will be won.

The prisoner population must take cues from these facts. The very first recognition has got to be that prisons, deployed as war machines, cannot possibly be legitimate if we (the prisoners) have been cast as the enemies the state seeks to annihilate as human beings by re-converting us from second-class citizens back to slaves. This was the very point Ori lets us in on regarding Queen Mother Moore’s August 1973 visit and speech in Green Haven Prison in New York, that New Afrikans were in fact enduring “re-captivity.”(10) Blacks have long hoisted this argument, lamenting an amendment to the 13th Amendment to the u.s. constitution, and a host of case law, like the case of Ruffin v Commonwealth cited by Ori, have declared “incarcerated people slaves of the state.”(11) And as slaves, to borrow the words of George, “the sole phenomenon that energizes my whole consciousness is, of course, revolution.” In this vein the prison movement is partially about the survival of the humanity of prisons, their dignity, which requires the survival of the spirit of the prison movement. This is what Chairman Fred Hampton meant when he said “You can kill a freedom fighter, but you can’t kill freedom fighting. You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill revolution.” It is this very same deprivation of human dignity that Huey talked about resulting in what I’m experiencing among Michigan prisoners, who are largely “immobilized by fear and despair, he sinks into self-murder”.(12) But even more dangerous to Huey than self-murder, is spiritual death, what Huey witnessed become a “common attitude… driven to death of the spirit rather of the flesh.”

So the very idea (spirit) of the prison movement must survive, must be kept alive, or, “your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing.”(13). And this is precisely the reality Michigan’s male prisoners have succumbed to, death of spirit, death by de-politicization.

All this begs the question posed by George: What is our fighting style in face of political death? This question can only be answered against the background of the statement: “For many, 1993 was a watershed in the slow disintegration of the prison movement,” because the reality shouts out to us that the prison movement has diminished to such a degree, it’s in desperate need of being incubated back to life (if it still exists at all).

Thus far it has been made clear that at issue is the survival of the prison movement which means by extension a revival of the political life of prisoners. The catalyst breeding political consciousness can only be education. As Ori illuminates, part of the prisoner war project requires guerrilla warfare, the life of which itself is grounded in political education.(14) Ori himself writes in the acknowledgment section of Tip of the Spear that he sharpened his spear (political analysis) by tying himself to a network of intellectuals and study groups, like Philly-based podcast Millenials Are Killing Capitalism.

The Role of Outside Supporters

The “Master Plan” developed by the state concluded “that the battle is won or lost not inside the prison, but out on the sidewalks,” and this leads directly to the utility of individuals and organizations outside the confines of prison life to be leveraging against the subjects inside the walls. Yet, it must not be lost upon us that by virtue of the state’s “Master Plan”, they seek to weaponize outside organizations as tools to drive a nail in the coffin of the prison movement once and for all. Proponents of the prison movement, accordingly, must also utilize and weaponize outside agency to advance the prison movement. When asked, although George said, “A good deal of this has to do with our ability to communicate to people on the street,” we must nevertheless be sure not to allow this communication or the introduction of outside volunteers to stifle the spirit of the movement.

Ori hits the nail on the head when exposing the “Master Plan” to absorb outside volunteers as part of the “cynical logic of programmification, with well-meaning volunteers becoming instruments of pacification.”(15) I spoke to this very phenomena in 2021 essay entitled “Photograph Negatives: The Battle For Prison Intelligentsia”, in response to a question posed to me by Ian Alexander, an editor of True Leap Press’s “In The Belly” publication, on whether outside university intellectuals could follow the lead of imprisoned-intellectuals? There I mentioned how Michigan’s outside volunteers near absolute adherence to prison policy, designed to constrain and be repressive, retarded our ability to be subversive and insurgent, called into question the purpose of the university-intellectuals infiltration of the system in the first instance. And while “many of these volunteers undoubtedly had altruistic and humanitarian motives, they unwittingly perpetuated counterinsurgency in multiple ways.”(16)

The battle for prison intellgentsia itself creates an unspoken tension between the inside (imprisoned) and outside (prison) intellectuals to the detriment of the prison movement, benefiting the state’s “Master Plan.” As I cited in “Photograph Negatives,” Joy James correctly analyzes that it is the imprisoned intellectuals that are “most free of state condition.” Scholar Michel-Rolph Troillot’s insight also champions that imprisoned intellectuals, “non-academics are critical producers of historiography,”(17) yet, as Eddie Ellis told Ori during a 2009 political education workshop, “We have never been able to use the tools of academia to demonstrate that our analysis is a better analysis.”(18) This fact further substantiates my position in response to editor Ian Alexander that outside university-based intellectuals must take their lead from imprisoned intellectuals because (1) we are the experts, validated through our long-lived experiences; and (2) most university-intellectuals are clueless they’re being used as tools within the state’s “Master Plan” against the very prisoners that altruism is directed.

Carceral Compradors Inside

But sadly, it’s not just the outside volunteers being positioned as pawns in the state’s war against prisoners. To be sure, prisoners themselves have become state agents, be it consciously or unconsciously, pushing pacification through various behavioral modification programming that intentionally depoliticizes the prisoner population, turning them into do-gooder state actors. It is in this way that the prison state “strategically co-opted the demands of the prison movement and redeployed them in ways that strengthened their ability to dominate people on both sides of the wall.”(19)

In Michigan prisons, these compromised inmates function as “carceral compradors,” and part of the plan of this de-politicizing regime is to convince the prisoner population to surrender their agency to resist. It has been the state’s ability to appease these, what Ricardo DeLeon, a member of Attica’s revolutionary committee, said was the elements of “all the waverers, fence sitters, and opponents,”(20) exacerbating already-existing fissures, exposing the deep contradictions between a majority reformist element, and the minority revolutionary element. This success effectively split and casted backward the “prison movement” to its previously issue-based conditions of confinement struggle model by “exposing a key contradiction within the prison movement, ultimately cleaving support from the movement’s radical edge while nurturing its accomodationist tendencies.”(21)

All of this was (is) made possible because “a sizable fraction of the population that saw themselves, not as revolutionaries, but as gangsters: outlaw capitalists, committed to individual financial gain”(22), and radical reformist, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, focused rather exclusively on conditions of confinement, instead of materializing a revolutionary goal. If the prison movement is a revolutionary movement, then the revolutionary element must manage to consolidate power and be the final arbitrators of the otherwise democratic decision-making processes. Ori cites Frantz Fanon to make clear that political parties serve as “incorruptible defenders of the masses,” or, the movement will find itself vulnerable to neocolonial retrenchment.(23) The schism that emerges between these two factions, ideologically, paralyzes the prison movement. These implications obviously extend beyond the domain of prisons to the collective New Afrikan struggle on the streets, as the prison movement was fostered by national liberation struggle on the outside, lending the credence to the victory from the sidewalk notion. But in order to secure a revolutionary party-line, the revolutionary party must be the majority seated element in the cadre committee.

Perhaps this is precisely why Sam Melville, a key figure in the Attica rebellion, said it was needed to “avoid [the] obvious classification of prison reformers.”(24) This is significant because otherwise, reformists would dominate the politics, strategies and decision-making, killing any serious anti-colonial (revolutionary) ideology. Again, this is true for both the inside and outside walkways. As a corollary, this reality should cause the revolutionary-minded to seriously rethink ways in which our struggle is not subverted from within the ranks of fighters against the state who, contradictorily, are okay with the preservation and legitimization of the prison machine and its “parent” global white supremacist structure, so long as remedial measures are taken to ameliorate certain conditions.

Our Road

In advance of summarizing, let me just say I do not at all intend to imply a reformist concession can’t be viewed as a revolutionary advancement within the overall scheme of carceral war. I pivot to Rachel Herzing, co-founder of Critical Resistance, that

“an abolitionist goal would be to try to figure out how to take incremental steps – a screw here, a cog there – and make it so the system cannot continue – so it ceases to exist – rather than improving its efficiency.”

But that’s just it. The Attica reforms did not, as Rachel Herzing would accept, “steal some of the PIC’s power, make it more difficult to function in the future, or decrease it’s legitimacy in the eyes of the people.” On the contrary, the Attica reforms entrenched the system of penal legitimacy, seeded the proliferation of scientific repression, and improved upon the apparatus’s ability to forestall and dissolve abolitionist resistance. In addition, the reforms were not made with the consent of the Attica revolutionaries, but by a splintering majority of radical reformers who, in the end, the present as our proof, greased by the levers of power assenting to the machine’s pick up of speed and tenacity.

As inheritors of the prison movement, and as we consider the de-evolution of the Long Attica Revolt and all it entails, specifically its survival, we are called upon to meditate on Comrade George’s essential ask – What is our fighting style? At minimum, I suggest our task is implementing a twofold platform: (1) political education; and (2) internal revolutionary development.

First, those equipped with the organization skills and requisite consciousness, as a methodology of guerilla war, should construct political education classes. These classes should operate within study group formats. We must return to the injunction of prisons functioning as universities, that “The jails (and prisons) are the Universities of the Revolutionaries and the finishing schools of the Black Liberation Army.”(25) We align ourselves with the Prison Lives Matter (PLM) formation model and utilize these study groups to engage in:

“a concrete study and analysis of the past 50+ years, and in doing so, We learn from those who led the struggle at the highest level during the high tide (1960s and 70s), where and how the revolutionary movement failed due to a lack of cadre development, as well as knowing and maintaining a line.”(26)

Our political education study groups must also instill a pride, courage, and will to dare to struggle along the lines of New Afrikan revolutionary ideology. For desperately, “Our revolution needs a convinced people, not a conquered people.”(27) The quality of courage in the face of impending brutality by what Ori calls the state’s “carceral death machine”(28) will be necessary to put in gear the wheels of guerrilla resistance. The invocation of this spirit sets apart the human prepared to demand and indeed take his dignity by conquest, from the weak, pacified slave who rationalizes his fear, which is in fact “symptomatic of pathological plantation mentality that had been inculcated in Black people through generations of terror.”(29) This terror in the mind of Black males inside of Michigan cages is displayed at even the mention of radical (revolutionary) politics, inciting a fear drawn from the epigenetic memory of chattel slavery victimization, and the propensity of master’s retaliatory infliction of a violent consequence. This thought has frozen and totally immobilized the overwhelming majority of Black Michigan prison-slaves, not just into inaction, but turning them into advocates of pacified slave-like mentalities. But these niggas are quick to ravage the bodies of other niggas.

To this point, Ori writes

“Balagoon suggests that the primary barrier to the liberation of the colonized was within their minds – a combination of fear of death, respect for state authority, and deference to white power that had been hammered into the population from birth. Liberation would remain an impossibility as long as colonized subjects respected the taboos put in place by their oppressors.”(30)

To be sure, liberation struggles can only be “successful to the extent that we have diminished the element of fear in the minds of black people.”(31) Biko, speaking to this fear as something that erodes the soul of Black people, recognized “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed.”(32)

Secondly, hand-in-hand with our political education must be the material engagement in the first revolution, the inner revolution. This is “The hard painstaking work of changing ourselves into new beings, of loving ourselves and our people, and working with them daily to create a new reality.”(33) This first, inner-revolution consists of “a process of rearranging one’s values – to put it simply, the death of the nigger is the birth of the Black man after coming to grips with being proud to be one’s self.”(34)

The ability to transform oneself from a nigga to an Afrikan man of character is perhaps the most important aspect of developing concordance with a New Afrikan revolutionary collective consciousness. Commenting “On Revolutionary Morality” in 1958, Ho Chi Minh said that “Behavioral habits and traditions are also big enemies: they insidiously hinder the progress of the revolution.” And because niggas, unbeknownst to themselves are white supremacists and pro-capitalist opportunists, the vanguard security apparatus must forever remain on guard for the possibility of niggas in the rank-and-file corrupting the minds of other niggas who have yet to internalize New Afrikan identity.

May these be our lessons. Ori’s Tip of the Spear text is important in the overall lexicon on the history of the prison movement, and must be kept handy next to the collection of Notes From New Afrikan P.O.W and Theoretical Journals. Tip of the Spear should serve not just as reference book, but a corrective guide for the protagonist wrestling the prison movement out the arms of strangulation, blowing spirit into the nostrils of its decaying body until it’s revived, and ready to fight the next round. And We are that body. Let’s dare to do the work.

Forward Towards Liberation!

We Are Our Liberators!

^*Notes: 1. Orisanmi Burton, October 2023, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, University of California Press, p. 223 2. Praveen Jha, Paris Yeros, and Walter Chambati, January 2020, Rethinking the Social Sciences with Sam Moyo, Tulika Books, p.22 3. Mao Zedong, 1937, “On Contradiction”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung 4. Burton, p.52 5. Burton, p.224-226 6. Life During Wartime, p.6 7. Remembering the Real Dragon - An Interview with George Jackson May 16 and June 29, 1971, Interview by Karen Wald and published in Cages of Steel: The Politics Of Imprisonment In The United States (Edited by Ward Churchill and J.J. Vander Wall). 8. Burton, p.175. 9. Life During Wartime, p.17. 10. Burton, p.1 11. Burton, p.10 12. Huey P. Newton, 1973, Revolutionary Suicide, p.4 13. Steve Biko, I write What I Like, p.150 14. Burton, p.4 15. Burton, p.179 16. Burton, p.175 17. Burton, p.8 18. Burton, p.7 19. Burton, p.150 20. Burton, p.41 21. Burton, p.150 22. Burton, p.99 23. Burton, p.92 24. Burton, p.82 25. Sundiata Acoli, “From The Bowels of the Beast: A Message,” Breaking da Chains. 26. Kwame “Beans” Shakur 27. Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983-1987, p.417 28. Burton, p.105 29. Burton, p.42 30. Burton, p.42 31. Biko, p.145 32. Biko, p.92 33. Safiya Bukhari 34. Burton, p.62

In mid-February on H-pod here in the ECB [Expansion Cell Blocks] prisoners got together and submitted 30 grievances about lack of dayroom and outside rec which G-5, G-4 and G-2 are all experiencing here in the ECB. The response from Warden Smith was that they are “understaffed”. I may submit my own grievance just to see if I get the same response though I have to be careful as the guards are using the gangs to police the prisoners and some of these fucking “Homeboys” do the pigs’ work for them violently. But I thought I would call your attention to an interview of Bryan Collier in the Nov-Dec 2023 and Jan. 2024 Echo Newspaper. In the January edition Collier admits to having “staffing” problems. So both Collier and Smith are aware of this understaffing but still it continues and they are not releasing anybody or hiring enough to quell the problems.

Two weeks ago it is rumored that a prisoner was raped by his celly. The word is this is the reason one of my classmates has been missing. I don’t know if a FOIA can be filed and help his family to get these motherfuckers? But being understaffed is dangerous and cruel for all of us.

These 30 grievances from G-4’s in H-pod on ECB and the January 2024 interview of Collier show corroborated “Deliberate Indifference.” Maybe I should also grieve this and send my copies to a supporter who can coordinate with prisoners, legislators, and the D.O.J. I’m sure Genocide Joe would love to get a piece of Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton for the bad press they have given him on the border?? We should take advantage of these asshole politicians whenever we can!!! Anyway, if you have any extra ULKs sitting around and can afford to send me another bulk mailing, please do so, so that I can distribute them here.

Securus advertises package pricing for movies I think that are about $12 a month but they are not offering these packages. Instead we have to pay from 6-12 dollars per movie rental! And they blame Hollywood Studios for this price gouging. I wonder if Hollywood knows about how they are exploiting us and our families? We should get Netflix for $16/month or something but 4.99-19.99 before tax is too much to charge “slaves” who do not get paid for their mandatory work!

MIM(Prisons) responds: It’s ironic that Abbott is fighting to militarize the border, but can’t find enough people to run his prisons. Though it’s our understanding that many Texas prisons are already being staffed by Nigerian immigrants working on visas. Meanwhile they have gangs working for the state, implementing repression and keeping the population sedated on drugs, while the staff sit around doing nothing. Though Biden has no qualms about supporting genocide, he does like scoring political points on Greg Abbot. This comrade might have a good idea here.

“[Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.” (1)

This feature, “The Culture Corner,” is a space designated to highlight and share cultural content that expresses revolutionary ideals and principles. “The Culture Corner” appears in the newsletter Power Moves, an internal newsletter distributed in certain Texas prisons, and is being reprinted here.

In 2024, the hip-hop genre has evolved to be the most influential genre of music in the world. As such, it is incumbent upon revolutionaries to utilize this genre to express revolutionary ideals and to advance revolutionary consciousness and solidarity.

One artist that has done this prolifically, while steadfastly maintaining a revolutionary nationalist and anti-capitalist political line, is Bay Area lyrical comrade The Revolutionary Eseibio The Automatic.

Just as important as eir content, in my view, is the accessibility of the music to the captive population. In the prison climate today, dominated by tablet devices with their purposely indoctrinating content, Eseibio’s content does its job by providing a revolutionary alternative. Eir content can be accessed on J-pay/Securus tablets on the media store app. Simply search music and type the artist’s name as spelled above. Eseibio has an extensive catalog of music, spanning over a decade worth of material with a wide number of albums and mixtapes.

While all of Eseibio’s material is revolutionary with an underground flavor, there are certain albums and songs that stick out more than others. These include the albums “Black Panther” and “African Revolutionary”. The former’s tracklist reads like a history lesson on the Black Panther Party. Standout tracks like “10 Point Program,” “Hands Off Assata,” “Red Book,” “Letter to Afeni,” “Smile 4 Pac,” “Off the Pigs,” and “George Jackson Day of the Gun” are bangers that also educate the listener. Other standout tracks like “Juche,” “Che Guevara,” “Bust A Cap,” “Kwame Nkrumah,” “Black Boots,” “In Defense of Self-Defense,” “Free The Land,” “Free Em All,” and “C.R.E.A.M-Capitalism Rules Everything Around Me” should be in steady rotation.

Most important of all is that Eseibio, and other artists that shall be featured in “The Culture Corner” in the future, provide a platform for political prisoners to bring brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers who were left by the wayside into the revolutionary movement. It is not good enough to complain of the maneuvers of the enemy. We have to be good at improvising on the new realities. This is only one way of mixing up the necessary improvisation.

A clenched fist salute to The Revolutionary Eseibio The Automatic and all other revolutionary and conscious artists using their talents for the advancement of the class and national struggles.

“The Culture Corner” will put the spotlight on other artists in future issues, We recommend you to go check out the comrade Eseibio.

^{Notes: (1) Mao-Tse-Tung’s Selected Works III p.84, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.”}

A guy walked into special housing on HCON [High Security Maximum Control Unit] in 2022 with a head swollen to the size of a bowling ball, with skin hanging off deep face wounds above his eyebrow. He could barely walk. After the shield team beat him in the cell, then in the hallway on camera, they took him to medical and chained him to a table before beating him in front of the doctor and nurse.

Then they took him to the dry-cell and put his head against a concrete bench (like a chopping block) in a kneeling position and began beating and kicking him in the head. One officer beat him on the ass with a night-stick. Then they stomped him out of consciousness. When he awoke they were still beating him. They left him there for about two hours til shift-change.

Right before shift-change they walked him back down the hall, past the nurse station where a second-shift nurse spotted the offender and asked what happened to him because he didn’t look like that when he went into the dry-cell. The Sergeant Wilson tried to make excuses but nevertheless the nurse had another assessment report done.

The guy was put in a special-housing cell next to mine. At shift-change the replacing sergeant who happened to be at competition with Sergeant Wilson for a lieutenant position reported the prisoner’s conditions to the Administration and Operating Lieutenant.

When the Lieutenant arrived the prisoner refused to take pictures – until I told him to take the pictures and go to medical. The prisoner was later taken to outside medical and diagnosed with a concussion and broken temple bone in his skull.

I myself and many other captives coached this prisoner with legal advice but he refused to appeal the grievance to step 3 in an attempt to arrange a deal with administration to be released from HCON status. He was not released.

In the process the Sergeant Wilson was transferred along with several other officers and one was fired. Shortly after being placed to work in the gate-house away from prisoners Sergeant Wilson quit. Only one of the officers is still here which is one too many.

This prisoner basically saved the officers by refusing to speak with the Warden about the incident or write statements. The prisoner later stated that writing a grievance or statement is snitching, but as I mentioned above he wrote both a grievance and statement, only to turn around and sell himself short, copping pleas and leaving everyone else hanging; while he turns his back and blind eye to fellow comrades who will suffer the same fate from these officers, he sold us out and left us to the wolves for false promises and that’s not what brothers do. Real brothers wouldn’t let any abuser anywhere near their brothers or sisters. Those were cynical decisions without revolutionary consciousness for the betterment of the people, the same people who helped him to medical treatment when he was lying on his deathbed.

Why settle to copping deals with the same foes who watched orders being carried out to kick your head in? I’m not taking anything from this prisoner’s will to self-sacrifice for others, but on an overall standpoint collectively concerning the prison population, the message here is,

“Don’t knock others for their foresight in advancing the people by any means necessary, including pen and paper.” -The Ballot or the Bullet, Malcolm X

Snitching:

1. As long as what you say does not include someone else it is not snitching.
2. Giving a hint that someone did something is dry snitching.

Collaborating: 1. Siding with, taking up for, or covering up for the police.

The generations before us put in decades of paperwork to get where we are today. They wrote newspaper publishers and fought for things we take for granted like bail, trials, showers and recreation etc. Nothing is final until it’s on paper. Any legal case won becomes precedent (law).

Last, police yourselves (nations, neighborhoods, etc). The reason overall Brothers in Islam are more righteous is because we police ourselves to keep each other in-line. If the brothers’ gambling and breaking bread on our watch then we are just as guilty.

“Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win.”