Under Lock & Key

In mid June of this year my cell block (unit 7) at TRCI conducted a food strike and a canteen strike. We agreed that we would not come out of our cells during meal times for 4 days. Also we agreed not to purchase canteen for one month since they use the profits for themselves in a lot of ways and as you know, the best way to slay Goliath is to hit their pockets. We were contesting a few different things. For one, this is the only prison in Oregon that will not allow group photos and we have to wear jeans, long sleeve blue shirt (no sunglasses or hats!) All of the other joints you can have 4 people in the photo, shirts off, in shorts, with sunglasses and a hat on if you so desire! For two, they were trying to change our TV program package to very basic cable. There was a couple other reasons we decided to demonstrate also, but I’ll pass on that for now.

Anyway, the food strike went on for 4 days and the whole unit minus some old 72 year old guy participated.

The authorities were pissed! Almost one month later they came and snatched me and 5 other guys off the unit and threw us in the dungeon under the guise of being “key” shot callers in the food strike.

Here I sit with the max sanctions, 180 days in the hole, 24 days loss of privileges upon release from seg and a $200 disciplinary fine. All of their “evidence” results from confidential informants. Of course I am appealing, but their appeal process is a joke. However, I aim to take it to court as soon as my appeal is denied.

I have spread and continue to the word about your publication/organization and my comrades and I are always spreading information to help hinder the very ones who oppress us.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We are pleased to hear reports like this one about prisoners coming together to fight for common goals. And we do not know the full story of the demands these protesters put forward, but we will point out that the photo and TV situation described above is not high on the list of demands from the anti-imperialist movement. These problems are neither torture nor repressive towards political organizing and education, and those are the primary areas of our focus for protests. While it is important to develop demands that will unite a broad group of prisoners, we do not want to water down the goals of our movement to the extent that these demands lose their value. We work towards this unity of goals and prisoners through the United Front for Peace in Prisons and we look forward to working with these comrades in Oregon on future protests.

The recent mass hunger strike got the prisoncrats’ attention even though the prisoncrats seek to downplay or minimize the success of the strike by spoon feeding the media. In particular, their Sacramento Bee spin doctor stooge accepts the official representations which contain very few facts mixed with the typical misleading, provocative and confusing innuendo so as to perpetuate their coined myths.

The public is gullible and must be constantly educated to see through muddy water. Such has been the case for years because of the assumption that government officials and law enforcement allegedly have their safety, security and best interests at the forefront when it’s really all about the money or budget. The CDCR purveys to the public that the most dangerous and supposedly most hardened prison gang leaders called for the hunger strike even though they also claim that the modus operandi of gangs are violence and intimidation which is totally contrary to the utilization of a passive non-violent form of protest which requires self restraint and determination.

The secretary, Matthew Cate, stated in a CDCR prepared statement that “hunger strikes are dangerous and ineffective as a means for prisoners to attempt to negotiate.” Yet, the administrative appeal process is also dangerous and ineffective as each level rubber stamps the arbitrary decision of the prior level. Even when the decision was obviously in error and a threat to prisoner health and safety, they refuse to accept responsibility and accountability.

What the secretary has not said is that the hunger strike by masses of prisoners have in fact overwhelmed the prison medical department with additional medical expense to an already overburdened prison healthcare system. The strikers pose a more significant problem for the prisoncrats’ budget than the shooting and gassing of violent prisoners in prison uprisings or even non-violent prisoners who are also shot, gassed/sprayed and beat with zeal as prisoncrats claim they were a threat to institutional security [see grievance campaign].

Prisoncrats, as any conscious prisoner should know, could not care less about the health of prisoners. They do care about the expense of providing constitutional mandated medical care. Therefore we should question the prisoncrats’ claim to have had plans since January to review and change some policies, which were only revealed to us after weeks of food strikes.

Prisoncrats tend to take full advantage of the divide and conquer concept and are at their best when they are able to pit the lumpen divisions against each other for amusement or distraction which is why one should be suspicious of any claim by the prisoncrats to want to eliminate what they have for years encouraged and perpetuated in the penal system to justify the excessive prison budget.

The mass hunger strike may have only lasted 20 days, but it was like a shot across the bow of the CDCR’s battleship by an enemy they can not justifiably target with all their massive violent resources and infrastructure. Yes the mass hunger strike got the prisoncrats’ attention and their immediate response was to again expand the censorship of information prisoners receive so as to keep us unaware of what’s going on. However, it also got their budgetary attention via their healthcare pocketbook.

The hunger strike also got the attention of the CCPOA which realizes that such strikes benefit the SEIU who are gaining more clout in the prison system and custody staff have effectively been rendered impotent as they do not have a real or effective contingency for dealing with non-violent forms of protest that they can not counteract or employ violence to suppress and to that extent the mass hunger strike was a success.

MIM(Prisons) responds:
Many are writing in disappointed with the outcome of the California hunger strike so far. But as this comrade points out, the strategy of the hunger strikers was effective in a number of ways. And as the CDCR is given a “brief grace period,” as one of the strike initiators called it, we are regrouping. There are many who just found out about the strike as it was happening. If the CDCR continues to drag its feet on making any real changes, as we all expect they will, we should see an even stronger and more widespread response from prisoners across California and beyond. Of course, CDCR is regrouping as well, and we must guard against efforts to trick prisoners into thinking they do not share the same conditions and the same enemies.

Of all the agencies and offices I filed the California grievance petition with, only the U.S. Department of Justice and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation bothered to respond. They only issued form letters disclaiming any responsibility for further investigation, and simply redirected me back to the same dysfunctional process that I had complained of!

MIM(Prisons) responds: It is clear that the U.$. Department of Injustice and the CDCR won’t back up their words to give administrative remedy to prisoners with actions when they discover the process isn’t working. In fact, it’s to their benefit if the grievance system is broken so that they won’t have to actually deal with the problems that arise in the prison system. This ensures their control over oppressed nations peoples.

The prisoner who received these defeating form letters asked for more copies of the petition in the same letter. S/he recognizes that the response from the bureaucrats isn’t the be-all-end-all goal of the grievance petition. We want to show that if we ask nicely for a solution, we will be given the brush off. We also want to use this petition to recruit others into doing political work, even if it’s just sending out the petition to a few administrators. Hopefully this action will be a simple beginning to a long history of contribution to the struggle against oppression.

We currently have grievance petitions prepared for California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, Colorado, North Carolina, and Texas. If you’re experiencing obstructions of your grievance procedure but your state isn’t currently covered by the grievance campaign, consider modifying it to apply to your state! Write in for more info, or to get petitions.

[Editor’s note: We want to remind our readers that USW is open to anti-imperialist prisoners of all nationalities, just as the strike is being led by prisoners of all nationalities. MIM(Prisons) agrees with the line put forth here, because it is by building movements for national liberation
from imperialism that we can best conquer the oppressive system we currently live in. And any genuine national liberation movement supports the liberation of all people. We want to be clear about this because there have been reports of the CDCR attempting to fuel divisions among the prisoners on strike along long-standing organizational and national divisions as they always do.]

A people’s salute goes out to all who find themselves under lock and key in Amerika! I wanted to write and send a brief update on the conditions here in Pelican Bay coming from one of the participants of the hunger strike (HS) that began two weeks ago, on July 1 of 2011. I figured the historic precedent that the HS has accomplished thus far is worth noting as the cause of the non-violent protest is one in which many people find themselves in across Amerika. The material conditions that have forced prisoners to deny themselves nutrients and sustenance are not exclusively bound to Pelican Bay, California. Whenever imperialist lackeys run a country they will also be expected to round up the most rebellious and potentially revolutionary populations and bury these people alive as these are the ones who pose the highest threat to the ruling class.

The fact that the protest is in regard to torture chambers known as the Security Housing Unit (SHU) in California, a state that has more prisons than any other state in a country that has more prisoners than any other country, should be examined more closely for what it means to oppressed nation prisoners in general but to people of Aztlán in particular. The fact that the state of California, which is geographically in Aztlán, has initiated what amounts to a war on the people of Aztlán by setting up more koncentration kamps (prisons) in Aztlán than anywhere else in Amerika, along with incarcerating more Latinos in California than any other oppressed nations, and the fact that Latinos are now the largest population of captives held in Federal prisons, and the fact that most of the prisoners held in California SHUs are Latinos, all show that oppressed nation are under attack via the injustice system, and that prisoners from the Aztlán Nation are particularly targeted in Aztlán. California is also the state with the largest Latino population in Amerika.(1) Thus the scope of what is taking place should be seen for what it is - the assault on Aztlán is real and should be met as such.

What is occurring here at Pelican Bay is an attempt to break the will and desire to resist state repression plain and simple. The SHU was opened in 1989 and this facility was designed to isolate and deprive people of the most basic “human rights.” Things like human contact, a cell mate, the ability to eat salt in one’s food, the ability to correspond with friends and family via the mail, the ability to have natural sunlight or even to be able to read political literature have all been stripped from prisoners in the SHU. Brutality here has been documented for decades. Beatings and physical torture have even been brought to the courts to no avail. Recently the U.$. Supreme Court has ruled that California prisons constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” They are telling the state of California to clean up its act.

Medical services are even used as barter. One prisoner was told if he wanted medical treatment then he should “debrief” (snitch on another prisoner). This is the depraved culture that has thrived here in SHU. This is a world where prisoners who are most often poor Brown and Black people are subject to a whole plethora of experimental depravity which in some cases would probably have Mengele raise an eyebrow.

It is well known that solitary confinement causes very real psychological damage even if used for a few weeks, yet here in SHU prisoners have endured solitary for years and even decades in some cases. Human rights groups have condemned solitary confinement, yet the SHU continues this brutal practice. Once here in SHU the only way back to general population is to snitch on others (even if it is false accusations), die, or parole. Keep in mind the vast majority sent to SHU have not committed any crime or physical acts but are labeled a “gang member or associate” and thus locked in this control unit for one’s supposed gang affiliation, i.e. one’s beliefs. They are locking one in a solitary confinement cell, sometimes for life, for what amounts to thought crimes!

Placement in the “hole” or SHU is frequently due to political affiliation of prisoners who are members or may associate with revolutionary groups or lumpen organizations that the state labels as “gangs.” In their play on words, any attempt at oppressed nations to organize in a way that is not state sanctioned, is a gang. Similarly, they call uprisings “riots” in a derogatory way, to hide the real causes behind them. But many times people aren’t even members of any organization and are falsely accused by others who are trying to get themselves out of SHU. In either case, prisoners held in SHU conditions overwhelmingly qualify as political prisoners.

The world would gasp should they find out the thought police are goosestepping in lock step here in Pelican Bay, jack boots and all. The Gestapo in Nazi Germany rounded up communists and others and placed them in kamps and jails under “preventative custody.” And now the imperialists’ first line of defense keeps oppressed nations in neo-kamps (SHUs) under “validation custody.” This is what the lumpen face in the United $tates; this is our apple pie in the home of the incarcerated, land of the oppressed.

Yet, prisoners have always defied the lash, because as Mao said, where you find much repression you’ll find much resistance. This is the dialectical materialism that manifests itself and blossoms, even within cinderblock gardens, in the form of our united resistance.

The first of the five demands issued for the hunger strike here at Pelican Bay is to end group punishment. This happens frequently where one prisoner breaks a rule and that whole group or ethnicity will be locked down or penalized in some way. We are talking about one person doing something against prison rules and two or three hundred people are then locked down for months over it. This is common practice and is meant to pit prisoners against prisoners.

The second demand is to abolish debriefing and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. Debriefing is used to force people held in SHU to give up names and activities of others in order to leave SHU - even if the information provided is false. The accused cannot even present a good defense as the informants are not identified and often times the accusations themselves are considered “confidential.” Active/inactive status is when after six years if one has no new activity one may be given “inactive” gang status and released to the general population. But this is rare since anything qualifies as “activity.” For example, participating in this hunger strike will be considered new gang activity.

The third demand is that the CDCR complies with recommendations from a 2006 U.S. Commission which called for an end to isolation. The fourth demand is to provide adequate food. The food here would make a racoon’s stomach turn. Often we don’t know what it is we are eating and we get no salt, so all food is bland. For punishment often times we get boiled beans with no salt, and this has gone on for years. The fifth demand is to expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU prisoners. This means those of us who must stay in SHU will be able to have educational courses, art supplies, and the ability to make a phone call, which some have not done for 30 or more years.

These points are basic things that should be given, especially to people who have not broken any rules to be placed in SHU in the first place! What is happening here in Pelican Bay SHU amounts to crimes against humanity. To have people in solitary confinement in some cases for decades is incredible, and it’s incredible that this has gone on so long and that for the most part the public has been silent over this. Well, today the light is shining on these torture chambers and Pelican Bay prisoners will no longer be silent while taking the lash.

RCP=U$A chair Bob Avakian once again sets his sails towards billowy clouds in the May 29, 2011 issue of ‘Revolution’ newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the rcp=u$a, in which the party leader once more makes the case for a socialist revolution in the U.$. with the labor aristocracy at the helm. He puts forth this idea in a talk broken down into series of articles titled: “Birds cannot give birth to crocodiles, but humanity can soar beyond the horizon.” He states that: “…in imperialist countries in particular it is only with major qualitative change in the situation - that is, the eruption of a revolutionary crisis and the emergence of a revolutionary people in the millions and millions - that it becomes possible to wage the all out struggle for the seizure of power…”

To begin with, it is important that we point out that socialist revolution will not reach the bastions of imperialism until the Third World proletariat and peasantry rises in the billions to first eject the imperialists, subsequently defeating the compradors and then mobilizing itself to smash the imperialists on their home turf with the help of the oppressed nation lumpen of the internal semi-colonies. These oppressed nation lumpen who are currently situated within the internal semi-colonies, i.e. barrios/ghettos/reservations of amerika and it’s prisons, are the only people in the U.$. with any kind of revolutionary potential whatsoever!

So we don’t know where all these “millions of millions” of revolutionary people that Avakian loves to harp about will be drawn from, unless he’s counting on the labor aristocracy to take up arms and call itself “comrade.”

Something else worth nothing here in the chairman’s flawed war thesis, if you could even call it that, is that this economist/opportunist deviation is not just owed to the RCP’s failure to acknowledge the outcome of a proper class analysis, but also, because of their erroneous line on the self-determination rights of the oppressed nations. The rcp-u$a’s line is that all nationalism is bourgeoisie, hence reactionary. More pointedly they don’t think there’s any nations within the United $tates that need liberating, with a possible exception for the Black Nation.

The party leader goes on to talk about how important it is for the struggle not to settle into “protractedness” because according to Avakian “that would very much be a recipe for defeat.” The chairman then makes some completely ludicrous and out of context comparisons when he describes how the Maoist concept of a protracted Peoples War is no longer a viable solution in the Third World and certainly is not suited for U.$. conditions. Well, he’s certainly right that in regards to the United $tates this is not a viable solution. However, with respect to the former, Avakian attributes this to a lack of “finiteness” in the struggle, instead, pushing for one big decisive battle. I assume here that Mr. Avakian is referring to the now defunct Maoist struggles of Nepal and Tamil of which the rcp=u$a has been very critical.

The fact that the rcp=u$a would denigrate various revolutionary Third World struggles as “too much of things unto themselves” (which is also a common rcp-u$a criticism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution) is a straight up disrespect to the Third World masses dying daily at the hands of imperialism and it’s comprador cartels, as well as delegitimizing to the real science of revolutions: M-L-M.

No Mr. Avakian, the fact that the Nepalese and Tamil struggle has not brought the proletariat victory has nothing to do with the failure of the Maoist concept of a protracted peoples war, rather failure in these struggles can be directly linked to revisionist leadership of the rcp-u$a sort!

Continuing with this bourgeois-centric analysis, the party leader then goes into some detail concerning the crucialness of public opinion building and cultural work in general when it comes to preparing the “masses” for revolution. However, and this is where you have to watch him, he gets sneaky and besides already counting the labor aristocracy as proletariat, he attempts to smuggle broad sections of the petit-bourgeoisie into the revolution and eventually the dictatorship, thereby killing the dictatorship of the proletariat before it’s ever even born. This is what he says: “there is also, very importantly, the problem of the development of the necessary political and ideological conditions for the initiation of this struggle for the seizure of power - and the organized expression of the political and ideological influence of the vanguard - among the basic masses but also, to the greatest degree possible at every point along the way, among other strata of the people as well, in order to have the best possible basis for carrying forward the struggle for power once it has been launched and not, in fact to be contained and crushed, but to have the best possible basis to ‘break out of encirclement.’”

It is true, historically speaking, that once socialist revolutions had begun and proletarian victory was within reach, hoards of the enemy class have come over to the side of the revolution. However, it has never been the intent of the vanguard to focus their efforts so ferociously on the enticement of parasites as Afakian and the rcp-u$a so incessantly advocate for. It was however and remains so the principal task of the revolutionaries, to unite all who can be united, i.e. the truly oppressed and exploited.

If sections of the bourgeoisie so wish to either, (a) commit class suicide and join the revolution or (b) see that victory is inevitable for the proletariat and it’s allies and decide it better to be on the winning side of the war, then so much the better. But neither Marx nor Engels, Lenin, Stalin or Mao ever sought to actively recruit pigs who were not dedicated to the revolution and neither should we.

If anything, the “middle” and “broad strata” would only be too happy to swell the ranks of the imperialists armed forces and smash the internal semi-colonies to pieces; they know which side their bread is buttered on.

Indeed, seasoned readers of Kautsky’s, I mean Afakian and the RCP’s vile distortions of M-L-M have come to understand that whenever Avakian and company casually, indirectly or directly throw out the terms “middle” and “broad strata” what they’re really trying to emphasize is the reliance and inclusion of the bought off traitorous sections of the population into and with the revolution. Notice how they consciously exclude the true element of change from the equation the Third World masses.

The rest of the chairman’s article basically rehashes some of the points already made such as work in the cultural sphere prior to and during the seizure of power, the importance of the “one, two, knockout blow” to the bourgeoisie which serves to counteract the problem of “finiteness.” And of course, he can’t emphasize enough the reliance of the revolution on the “middle” and “broad strata”. And oh yea his deep lamentations that white people have been turned against the oppressed by way of propaganda, and all that’s needed for their return to the side of the revolution is arduous public opinion building.

It is fitting that Bob Avakian’s piece is concluded by his making companions between Mao’s China, pre-liberation and the United $tates today, drawing parallels between the middle strata of the revolutionary base areas in the Chinese countryside (the better off peasants) and the decadent labor aristocracy which the rcp-u$a knows and loves today.

Truly, Bob Avakian is delusional.

MIM(Prisons) adds: For more on this topic check out other articles on the rcp=u$a and our analysis of the labor aristocracy in the First World.

I am writing this article in response to the article in ULK 20 entitled “We must fight ULK denials.”

Brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers of ULK, we have to take a stand against the oppressors. Not by rioting, physically fighting, or boycotting but by means of communication. The same way the officers banned together we should put our differences to the side and unite as one!

I have 17 years in the special housing unit (SHU) mostly for fighting the oppressors physically and with my pen’s ink. I’ve caught two new bids for going at it with the oppressors. One bid was a 2.5 to 5 years and the second bid was a 7 year flat 5 year post.

What I did is not important, but why I did it is, I did it because too many comrades were being violated. We have the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.

Also I don’t know about the rules in the Texas DOCS, but here in New York state when we’re locked down (which I am right now) we’re given 1 hour out of cell recreation everyday of the week. So what should happen is whether everybody gets along or not, whoever is in this “close custody” should grieve the issue. The oppressor might fuck with five of those grievances but they won’t fuck with everybody’s grievance. It will be too suspicious.

Every ULK I get the mailroom got something to say about it. With ULK 20 they said the articles on pages 3, 10, and 13 (continued from 3) posed a threat to the safety and security of the facility. Those articles were entitled “Light of Liberation” and “NJ Avalon Crip signs on to UF Statement.” So once again they’ve taken our right of freedom of speech, the 1st Amendment and swept it under the “security risk” rug, just like the other comrade stated. So let’s stand together as one and “take” our rights back.

So remember comrades, yes we’re imprisoned but we still have rights!

MIM(Prisons) adds: Unity in the fight against oppression is a key element of this fight. As this comrade says, we need to put aside our differences to join forces against a common enemy. Filing grievances is a good way to get this fight going, and we have initiated a grievance campaign to help prisoners fight grievance denials. Write to us for a copy of the letter and petition.

“Amerika the beautiful.” This is the image of the perfect killing machine that is instilled in Us from youth, even as the Amerikans oppress, exploit and super-exploit our people in the Third World. This is what we’re taught. It’s bad enough that we have to deal with great Amerikan chauvinism coming straight from the oppressors but now we have to deal with it from within the oppressed as well.

Just the other day as the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat squared off for supremacy in the basketball world and the “national anthem” took center stage, blood-boiling hoops and hollers of “that’s right!” and “U$A baby!” could be heard throughout the building. And I’m sitting here thinking, really?! That’s right what?! “That’s right” that these fucken pigs got us locked up? Or “that’s right” that these motherfuckers are out there reeking oppression, death, destruction and exploitation throughout the Third World? Cause that’s all I can think of whenever I hear that oppressive and repulsive war-mongering song.

Actually, I also think of how our anti-imperialist comrades in the Islamic Third World put it down on these sorry ass pigs showing them that, no, Amerika isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For if that were true then these sorry ass pigs wouldn’t be getting their asses blown to smithereens on a daily basis.

Serio, these fools in here really got shit twisted, but I suppose it’s no surprise that the bourgeoisified lumpen picks up and holds tight to the ideology of the parasitic coupon-clippers, as they themselves clip coupons. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the lumpen tend to cheerlead when the oppressor’s military trots the globe seeking to extend its sphere of influence. They are better defenders of the Amerikan way of life than the Amerikans themselves, and surprisingly reactionary.

Instead of cheerleading for these punk-ass Amerikans, wishing, wanting and thinking that we are Amerikkkans too, we should start recognizing the fact that these Amerikkkans want us locked in their prisons for life while slowly fading out of existence. Instead we should realize the devastating toll which our being imprisoned takes on our collective nations.

Instead of doing the oppressor’s bidding the world over, we need to realize the crucial role which we in the barrios/ghettos in the internal semi-colonies can play in bringing down U.$. imperialism from within. We need to start recognizing the fact that we too are the hope of the oppressed.

So until all that happens, the only time you’ll ever get a “that’s right!” from me will be when I see that Amerikan death toll count rise in the middle east.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Those who cheer for the U.$. military are a small minority in this world. The oppressed nations in this country, who have historically been the subjects of Amerikan violence, would be smart to return to (or stay on, as the case may be) the winning side of history. It is alienating to live in a country that celebrates domination and exploitation through violence. But as the Third World unites in cheering for the armed defenders of Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, India and elsewhere, we become closer to the end of imperialist oppression, a time when unnecessary deaths of all peoples can be prevented.

Pull the fucking pistol out of your mouth
and pick up a book
turn off that damn bourgeois television
and take a look
shit’s getting hectic, brother, sure
But a bullet in the brain, amigo, isn’t the cure
It’s too late for you, man, but what about your son
What about his generation who’s been taught to run
to stomp and tantrum and tattle-tale
suck the plastic flea market and dodge bourgeois “hell”
imperialist sons medicated for depression
A hybrid oppressor slash enemy nation
I’ll sell you this for a gallon of that
Then starve the world and die of heart attack fat
It isn’t the way it was meant
All these senseless suicides ain’t some static event
the reasons exists - the “whys” right here
Your casket costs thousands - payment plan three years
sucking the fucking juice out of life - capitalism
then profiting off of your death - straight sadism
Rent the church to grieve you in
Buy the hole they bury you in
Pay the petty priest to say some words
Then scribble on some gray marble how much it hurts
Picking the pocket of the family that weeps
Dying’s expensive while living is cheap
Business in death and death in business
What’s the price, father, the price to miss us

I sit doing ten years for a gram of dope
Witnessing Johannes Mehserle get probation for murder
I sit watching men starve to death
Witnessing guards who can’t even alight a flight of stairs
Because they’re too fucking fat
I sit in a country that told me to stay in school
and educate yourself
In a cell where they won’t give me a book
I was told in my youth to just say no
to drugs
And now that I refuse their psychotropics
they refuse me parole
They told me to love thy neighbor
like you love yourself
and now I watch my country men shoot Mexicans
swimming the border
I sit in the land of the free
rattling my chains
waiting
I see the hypocrisy and the bitter twisted lies
Do you?
I sit alone
7.4 million strong
knowing nothing more than to carry on
nothing more than my country’s wrong
knowing nothing - nothing’s at all wrong
Do you?

The show centers on a seemingly friendly encounter with space aliens who visit planet Earth. The space aliens first arrive bearing gifts of advanced medicine, superior technology and their trademark logo of “we come in peace.” The show also focuses on a small, infant underground movement of humyns committed to unmasking the seemingly friendly space aliens for what they really are: hostile space invaders or intergalactic imperialists who have in all reality begun an undercover invasion of planet Earth, which most humyns either don’t realize is taking place or are too busy being bought off to admit.

The united front portrayed in this show was started by an FBI agent assigned to the anti-terrorist unit; a liaison to the space alien delegation; a rogue priest; a space alien who’s committed species suicide by coming over to the side of the humyns; and a so called “terrorist” who’s wanted by the “international community” for supplying Third World liberation movements with weapons and guerrilla warfare training.

As a matter of fact, FBI agent Erica Evans was first tasked with capturing the wanted “terrorist.” However, once she finds out what the space aliens are really up to by spying on underground anti-space-alien organizations with methods straight out of COINTELPRO, combined with her own near-death experience with the intergalactic imperialists, she decides that it’s time to form an opposition to the invaders. So along with the alien species traitor Ryan Nichols and the rogue priest, they begin to seek out and court the wanted “terrorist.” Despite the FBI agent’s hate for this “terrorist” she knows that if this anti-space-imperialist movement is gonna be for real, then the humyn species is gonna need all the tactical assistance it can get, even if that means hooking up with her enemies.

This rag-tag band of individuals eventually unites to re-establish the then-defunct Fifth Column, an anti-space-imperialist movement originally founded by empathetic space aliens who committed species suicide in order to protect the prior oppressed species whom the parasitic space imperialists enslaved and wiped out.

In real life, the historical Fifth Column were Nazi infiltrators in several European states such as Poland, France and even the USSR, leading up to and during WWII. Their main objective was to sabotage and wreck government and military institutions for the purpose of softening the ground in preparation for Nazi attacks. The real Fifth Column was most notably brought to light by the Soviet Union’s purge trials of 1937-38 which Stalin ordered to smash the fascist traitors. The Fifth Column depicted in the TV series is an anti-space-imperialists movement instead of pro-Nazi.

In the most recent episode the insurgent rogue priest known as Father Jack has become conflicted by the humyn death and collateral damage, so much so that he begins to endanger the movement by refusing to adhere to the Fifth Column’s version of democratic centralism when it comes to the group’s mission. Instead of kicking him out of the movement, they subject him to a sorry excuse of party criticism and then keep him around based on his laurels.

In countless other episodes the importance of the individual and the individual’s needs are stressed to the point that it leaves the impression that if any one of the Fifth Column leaders doesn’t get his or her way then the movement will suffer irreparable damage to the point that its very existence will be put in peril. While leaders are certainly important to any movement this show takes the meaning and importance of a leader to a whole different level.

In recent episodes they’ve also shown how the Fifth Column’s small-scale focoist adventures have now inspired many other humyns across the globe to band together and form a larger mass organization of the same name to launch spectacular focoist attacks on the space-imperialists. Little by little however the Fifth Column has begun to land serious blows to the space invaders proving that a united front, though an uneasy and still developing one, does work. While we don’t encourage the focoist approach of armed struggle without consideration of the imperialists’ strength, the humyns on the show are at a tipping point where the space imperialists’ sinister plans would have severe dire consequences if not immediately stopped.

In the original “V” series of the 80s, “V” stood for victory and the mass of humynity eventually came together to launch a protracted guerrilla struggle against the oppressor space imperialists. When that series ended the viewer was left doubting whether the humyns prevailed.

Who knows how this updated version of the series will turn out. In a realistic approach the humyns need to first get their shit right, and instead of launching their spectacular focoist attacks, they need to begin the long arduous task of building public opinion against the invaders to bring the bulk of humynity together for when the real battles begin.