Under Lock & Key

In ULK 84 we reported on a sharp drop in donations from prisoners in 2023, and a gradual decline in subscribers in recent years. We asked our readers to answer some survey questions to help explore the reasons for these declines and to begin a more active campaign to expand ULK in 2024. Below is some discussion with comrades who have responded to the survey so far about drugs, gangs, COVID-19, generational differences and more. If you want to participate in this conversation, please respond to the questions at the end.

Problems We’ve Always Had

A North Carolina prisoner on censorship: i pass my copies around when i’m able, what i always hear is “Bro i wrote to them but never received the paper.” Then there is a couple guys who were on the mailing list who say they’re not receiving the paper no more.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The obvious answer to this is the newsletter is being censored. Any prisoner of the United $tates who writes us for ULK will be sent at least 2 issues, and if you write every 6 months we will keep sending it. Censorship has always been a primary barrier to reaching people inside, but we have no reason to believe that has increased in the last couple years. Relaunching regular censorship reports could help us assess that more clearly in the future.

A Pennsylvania prisoner on the younger generation: I think it is these younger generation people who are coming into the prison system or people who have been pretty much raised by the judicial system, and the guards become mommy and daddy to them… They do not want to or are possibly afraid to change the only life they have ever known. I know some of these younger guys here who have gotten too comfortable and think: “Oh, I am doing so good, I have a certain level of say-so here, the guards are my buddies, they get me, et cetera.” When on the outside they did not have that.

Also, on my block, many people are illiterate and cannot read. I know this because I am the Peer Literacy Tutor.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Most of this doesn’t sound new. Older prisoners have been talking about the lacking of the younger forever. Illiteracy is also not new in prisons. There is some indication that the COVID pandemic has impacted literacy in children, but that would not be affecting our readership (yet).

A California prisoner: I think a lot of prisoners do not want to hear negativity or incendiary language, we get enough of that in here and I notice a lot of unity around positivity in here. I suggest less dividing language and more unifying language. In particular, the “who are our friends and who are our enemies” line could certainly drop the “who are our enemies” part. Prisoners don’t want someone telling them who to be enemies with, prisoners want to be told who to be friends with.

I have trouble passing on ULK, natural leaders won’t even accept it (I try to revolutionize the strong). As soon as I say “it’s a communist paper”, the typical response is “I’m not a commie.” Any suggestions??

MIM(Prisons) responds: Not sure if you’re leading with the fact that it’s a communist newspaper. But when doing outreach, the fact that we’re a communist organization will not come up until we’ve gotten into an in-depth conversation with someone. We want to reach people with agitational campaign slogans, hopefully ones that will resonate with them. What in this issue of ULK do you think the persyn might be interested in? Lead with that.

As far as who are our friends and who are our enemies goes – this is actually a key point we must understand before we begin building a united front (see MIM Theory 14: United Front where a prisoner asks this same question back in 2001). We must unite all who can be united around anti-imperialist campaigns. Our goal is not to have the most popular newsletter in U.$. prisons; that might be the goal of a profit-driven newsletter. Our goal is to support anti-imperialist organizing within prisons. As we’ve been stressing in recent months, prisons are war, and they are part of a larger war on the oppressed. If we do not recognize who is behind that war, and who supports that war and who opposes it, we cannot stop that war. If you see a group of people that wants to carpet bomb another group of people as a friend, then you are probably not part of the anti-imperialist camp yourself. Prisoners who are mostly focused on self-improvement, parole, or just getting home to their families may be willing to be friends with anyone who might help them do so. But we must also recognize the duality of the imprisoned oppressed people as explained by comrade Joku Jeupe Mkali.

Problems That May Be Getting worse

A Washington prisoner on the drug trade: Drugs and gangs are the biggest threat to radical inclination in the system. Drugs keep the addicted dazed and unable to focus on insurgency. Whereas the self-proclaimed activist gang member who actually has the mental fitness to actually avoid such nonsense has become so entrenched in a culture aimed at feeding on the profit he gains in the process has forgotten his true goal and would rather stand in the way of change to maintain profit.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is perhaps the biggest shift we’ve seen in reports on conditions on the inside in recent years. Of course, these are not new issues. But there are new drugs that seem to be more easily brought in by guards and have more detrimental effects on peoples’ minds. Meanwhile, the economics of these drugs may have shifted alliances between the state-employed gangs and the lumpen gangs that work together to profit off these drugs.

When we launched the United Front for Peace in Prisons over a decade ago, it was in response to comrades reporting that the principal contradiction was lack of unity due to lumpen organizations fighting each other. In recent years, most of what we hear about is lumpen organizations working for the pigs to suppress activism and traffic restricted items. While Texas is the biggest prison state and much of those reports come from Texas, this seems to be a common complaint in much of the country as regular readers will know.

Related to drugs is the new policy spreading like wildfire, that hiring private companies to digitize prisoners’ mail will reduce drugs coming into prisons and jails. Above we mentioned no known increase in censorship, but what has increased is these digital mail processing centers; and with them more mail returned and delayed. In Texas, we’ve been dealing with mail delayed by as much as 3 months for years now. As more and more prisons and jails go digital, communications become more and more limited. Privatized communications make it harder to hold government accountable to mail policies or First Amendment claims. There is no doubt this is a contributor to a decrease in subscribers.

A Pennsylvania Prisoner reports a change in the prison system due to COVID-19: The four-zoned-movement system has been implemented here at SCI-Greene because of COVID. Before COVID, everything was totally opened up. Now everyone is divided from one another and it makes it that much harder for someone like me who is constantly surrounded by an entire block full of people with extreme mental health or age-related issues.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is an interesting explanation that we had not yet thought of. While we don’t have a lot of reports of this type of dividing of the population in prisons into pods since COVID, we know that many prisons have continued to be on lockdown since then. An updated survey of prisoners on how many people are in long-term isolation may be warranted. But even with the limited information we have, we think this is likely impacting our slow decline in subscribers.

This does not explain why donations went up from 2020 to 2022, but then dropped sharply in 2023. However, we think this could have been a boom from stimulus check money, similar to what the overall economy saw. In prisons this was more pronounced, where many people received a couple thousand dollars, who are used to earning a couple hundred dollars a year. While we would have expected a more gradual drop off in donations, this is likely related. In 2023, prisoners were paying for a greater percentage of ULK costs than ever before. We had also greatly reduced our costs in various ways in recent years though, so this is not just a sign of more donations from prisoners but also a reflection of decreased costs. We’d like to hear from others: how did stimulus checks affect the prisoner population?

Like many things, our subscribership and donations were likely impacted greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s response to it. Another interesting connection that warrants more investigation is how the stimulus money may have contributed to the boon in drug trafficking by state and non-state gangs in prisons. And what does it mean that the stimulus money has dried up? So far there is no indication of a decline in the drug market.

A California prisoner on “rehabilitation” and parole: The new rehabilitation programs in CDCR are designed to assign personal blame (accept responsibility). A lot of prisoners are on that trip. “It’s not the state’s fault, it’s my fault cause I’m fucked up.” That’s the message CDCR wants prisoners to recognize and once again parole is the incentive, “take the classes, get brainwashed, and we might release you.” I call it flogging oneself. But a lot of prisoners are in these “rehabilitation” classes. It’s the future. MIM needs to start thinking how to properly combat that.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The Step Down program in California in response to the mass movement to shut down the SHU was the beginning of this concerted effort to pacify and bribe prisoners to go along with the state’s plan.(1) As we discussed at the time, this is part of a counterinsurgency program to isolate revolutionary leaders from the rebellious masses in prison.

Our Revolutionary 12 Step Program is one answer to the state’s “rehabilitation.” Our program also includes accepting responsibility, but doing so in the context of an understanding of the system that creates these problems and behaviors in the first place. Yes we can change individuals, but the system must change to stop the cycle. The Revolutionary 12 Steps is one of our most widely distributed publications these days, but we need more feedback from comrades putting it into practice to expand that program. And while it is written primarily for substance abuse, it can be applied by anyone who wants to reform themselves from bourgeois ways to revolutionary proletarian ways.

In other states, like Georgia and Alabama, parole is almost unheard of. The counterinsurgency programs there are less advanced, creating more revolutionary situations than exist in California prisons today. In the years leading up to the massive hunger strikes in CDCR, MIM mail was completely (illegally) banned from California prisons. Today, it is rare for California prisoners to have trouble receiving our mail, yet subscribership is down.

Solutions

A California prisoner: Personally I would like to see play-by-play instructions for unity. I saw something like that in the last Abolitionist paper from Critical Resistance. A lot of us want unity but don’t know how to form groups or get it done. I know MIM’s line on psychology, however it has its uses. The government consults psychologists when they want to know how to control people or encourage unity among their employees. I suggest MIM consult a psych for a plan on how to unify people, then print the play-by-play instructions in ULK. It’s a positive message prisoners want to hear.

MIM(Prisons) responds: As mentioned above, building the United Front for Peace in Prisons was a top topic in ULK for a long time, so you might want to reference back issues of ULK on that topic and MIM Theory 14. Psychology is a pseudo-science because it attempts to predict individuals and diagnose them with made-up disorders that have no scientific criteria. Social engineering, however, is a scientific approach based in practice. By interacting with people you can share experiences and draw conclusions that increase your chances of success in inter-persynal interactions. This is applying concepts to culture at the group level, not to biology of the individual.

Again, the key point here is practice. To be honest, the engagement with the United Front for Peace in Prisons has decreased over the years, so we have had less reports. Coming back to the question of how to approach people in a way that they don’t get turned off by “commie” stuff, a solution to this should come from USW leaders attempting different approaches, sharing that info with each other, and summing up what agitational tactics seemed to work best. Comrades on the outside could participate as well, but tactics in prison may differ from tactics that work on college campuses vs. anti-war rallies vs. transit centers.

A North Carolina prisoner: i look forward to receiving the paper and i love to contribute to the paper. ULK is not just a newspaper in the traditional sense of the word it’s more than that. It’s something to be studied and grasped, and saved for future educational purposes. In my opinion its the only publication that hasn’t been compromised.

i think ya’ll should publish more content on New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) then ya’ll do. To be honest, the ULK is probably the only publication that provides content that elucidates NARN. Nonetheless, ya’ll keep doing what ya’ll doing.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We’ll never turn away a well-done NARN article, so keep them coming. This is a newsletter by and for prisoners of the United $nakes.

A Pennsylvania prisoner: As with everything, “education” is a key factor. A lot of people really have a lack of comprehension of the Maoist, Socialism, Communism agenda or actual belief system is about. I have a general idea, but not the whole picture. Many people are ignorant to what it is all about. … I was a bit of a skeptic when I first began writing MIM(Prisons), but I no longer am 3 years later.

As I have continued to write and read all your ULKs I have begun to realize what you stand for, and that is the common people who are struggling to survive in a world full of powerful people, who do not play by the rules. … Those powerful and wealthy who have forgotten what it is like to be human. … When I get released from prison later this year and get back on my feet I do plan to donate to MIM(Prisons) because I strongly support what you stand for.

…It was word of mouth that got me interested in ULK, and that is what we should use to spread the word. Sooner or later someone, somewhere is gonna get interested.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate this comrade’s continued engagement and struggling with the ideas in ULK. Eir description of what we do is accurate. Though, the same could be said for many prisoner newsletters. We recommend comrades check out “What is MIM(Prisons)?” on page 2 to get an idea of what differentiates us from the others; and to ask questions and study more than ULK to better understand those differences.

A Washington prisoner: I believe there has not been enough exposure of ULK in the prison system. I only happened on it by chance. I sought out communist education on my own after not being able to shake an urge that there was something incredibly wrong with the political and economic structures in my surroundings. I believe we should launch a campaign of exposure and agitation. Create and pass out pamphlets and newsletters geared to helping people see the relevance of communism and their current situation. For a start, I would like to receive copies of the Revolutionary 12 Step Program pamphlets to strategically place in my facility so prisoners can have access to them.

MIM(Prisons) concludes: Expanding ULK just for the sake of it would be what we call a sectarian error. Sectarianism is putting one’s organization (one’s own “sect”) above the movement to end oppression. The reason we are promoting the campaign to expand ULK is that we see it as a surrogate for measuring the interest in and influence of anti-imperialist organizing in U.$. prisons. As comrades above have touched on, there is always a limitation in access and numbers do matter. Most prisoners have never heard of ULK. The more we can change that, the more popular we can expect anti-imperialism to be within U.$. prisons and the more organized we’d expect people to get there.

We are working on expanding our work with and organizing of prisoner art. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. More art that captures the ideas of our movement can help us reach more people more quickly. So send in your art that reflects the concepts discussed in ULK. We also offer outside support for making fliers and small pamphlets. What types of fliers and small pamphlets, besides the Revolutionary 12 Steps, would be helpful for reaching more prisoners with our ideas and perhaps getting them to subscribe to ULK?

Another way to reach people in prison is through radio and podcasts. We are looking for information on what types of platforms and podcasts prisoners have access to that we might tap into.

We only received 4 responses to our survey in ULK 84 in time to print in this issue. This is another data point that indicates the low level of engagement with ULK compared to the past. Another possible explanation for lack of responses is that this survey was more difficult to answer than previous surveys we’ve done because it is asking for explanations more than hard facts. Either way, in our attempt to always improve our understanding of the conditions we are working in, we are printing the survey questions one more time (also see questions above). Even if your answer to all the questions below are “no”, we’d appreciate your response in your next letter to us.

• Have you noticed changes in the prison system that have made it harder for people to subscribe to ULK or less interested in subscribing?

• Have you noticed changes in the prisoner population that have made people less interested in subscribing?

• Have you noticed/heard of people losing interest in ULK because of the content, or because of the practices of MIM(Prisons)?

• What methods have you seen be successful in getting people interested in or to subscribe to ULK?

• Do you have ideas for how we can increase interest in ULK in prisons?

^{Notes: 1. cipactli of Brown Berets - Prison Chapter, October 2014, (Un)Due Process of Validation and Step Down Programs, Under Lock & Key No. 41.}

In 2018 the California Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigated the grievance process at Salinas Valley State Prison. This resulted in a new process in 2020, where any grievances alleging staff misconduct in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) would go to an Allegation Inquiry Management Section (AIMS) in Sacramento, rather than being handled by staff at the prison.(1) As we report on in almost every issue of Under Lock & Key, grievances in U.$. prisons are often ignored, denied, or covered up by staff.

One problem with this small reform is the staff at the prison was still deciding what grievances would be forwarded to AIMS. Following OIG recommendations in 2021, the CDCR changed its system for handling grievances in 2022 so that staff misconduct could be reported directly to AIMS. In March 2023, AIMS was replaced with the Allegation Investigation Unit (AIU), within the Office of Internal Affairs.

In 2010, United Struggle from Within (USW) in California initiated the “We Demand Our Grievances Are Addressed!” campaign, which has since spread across the country. We just released a petition for Indiana this year, see the report on initial campaign successes in this issue. And we just updated our petition for Texas. Since 2010, hundreds of prisoners in California have sent petitions to the California OIG and others outlining the failures of the existing grievance system and demanding proper handling of grievances. This campaign contributed, likely greatly, to the recent changes in California.

It also happens that February 2023 was the last report we have of staff in CDCR retaliating against prisoners for filing grievances (in this case for freezing temperatures).(2) So we are interested to hear from our readers how the grievance process has been working over the last year. However, the OIG’s recent report has already exposed staff misconduct since the new program was implemented.

The OIG found that in 2023 the department sent 595 cases back to prison staff to handle that had originally been sent to the AIU to investigate as staff misconduct. This was reportedly done to handle a backlog of grievances. The OIG also stressed the waste of resources in duplicating work, given that the department had been given $34 million to restructure the grievance process. In 127 of these cases the statute of limitations had expired so that staff could no longer be disciplined for any misconduct. Eight of these could have resulted in dismissal and 12 could have resulted in suspensions or salary reductions. Many other grievances were close to expiring.

Unsurprisingly, when the OIG looked into grievances that had been sent back to the prisons, many issues were not addressed, many were reviewed by untrained staff, investigations were not conducted in a timely manner (39% taking more than a year), and grievances were improperly rejected. All of these are common complaints on the grievance petitions prisoners have filed over the years.

The OIG states in their concluding response to the CDCR claims around these 595 grievances:

“The purpose of this report was not to provide an assessment of the department’s overall process for reviewing allegations of staff misconduct that incarcerated people file; that is an assessment we provide in our annual staff misconduct monitoring reports. This report highlighted the department’s poor decision-making when determining how to address a backlog of grievances that the department believed it was not adequately staffed to handle.”

<sup>Notes:
1. California Office of the Inspector General, 29 January 2024, The Department Violated Its Regulations by Redirecting Backlogged Allegations of Staff Misconduct to Be Processed as Routine Grievances.
2. AV Brown Berets, February 2023, CDCR Freezes Elderly Inmates in Retaliation of Grievance Campaigns, Under Lock & Key 81.</sup>

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

The aim of this article is to provide a brief summation of what Hamas is as a movement. It will expand on the history of Palestine written by a comrade in ULK 84. Both imperialist media and revisionist propaganda create false narratives around Hamas, oftentimes mistaking basic facts to suit their interests. It is important to understand that Hamas is a movement and that over the course of history has changed, likely changing as We speak. The primary aim of this article is not to formulate an opinion on how communists should approach Hamas or to speak over Palestinian and Arab analyses of Hamas. Rather it is to point out the fundamental, but often obscured, facts and history of the origins of Hamas and what it represents.

The Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions brings the resistance together to coordinate a counter-attack against I$raeli colonization on 7 October 2023. Ayman Nofal, senior commander in Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant arm of Hamas. was a main leader in unifying resistance for this counter-attack who died in 2023 soon after the counter-attack.(1) The current war is not just between Hamas and I$rael, but one between the entirety of Palestinian resistance against I$rael for the national liberation of Palestine. Hamas is the largest faction of the Palestinian resistance so an understanding of the movement and its history is crucial for understanding the ongoing struggle.

The origins, emergence and development of Hamas

Hamas is an Arabic abbreviation for Islamic Resistance Movement(Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya). The movement was founded in December 1987 at the beginning of the First Palestinian Intifada. Before Hamas there was the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which had a branch in Gaza since 25 November 1946(founded this year to coincide with year 1366 of the Islamic calendar). The Muslim Brotherhood was non-confrontational with I$rael, which led to criticism and division internally during the 1970s-1980s. Hamas was formed as a way to join the First Palestinian Intifada(Uprising) without endangering the position of the Muslim Brotherhood. Under the defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, the I$raeli military adopted the so-called “iron fist” policy of violent repression: it used live ammunition against unarmed protestors, jailed demonstrators, and imposed punitive curfews and closures. This only added fuel to the fire, escalating into a full scale intifada.(2) The participation of Hamas in the First Palestinian Intifada was a major success, leading it to become more than just an associated organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.(3)

The origins of Hamas lie within the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Centre(Al-Mujamma’ al-Islami). The Islamic Centre was established on 7 September 1973, by the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin(Ahmed Yassin). It emerged out of the Muslim Brotherhood, with it’s stated goals of being the independence of Muslim lands from foreign occupation and establishment of an Islamic sociopolitical system.(4) The rise of the Islamic movements in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, only really took off after the First Intifada. This started on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an I$raeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers. Palestinian resistance emerged in response, being met with 80,000 I$raeli soldiers being deployed to crush it. Hamas emerged specifically for the Muslim Brotherhood to engage in the First Palestinian Intifada, beforehand militant struggle against I$rael by Islamic movements in Palestine were scarce.

Palestinian fedayeen(freedom fighters) network was primarily united under the Palestinian Liberation Organization(PLO) after the Six-Day War, a war between I$rael and a coalition of Arab nations in 1967 which led to I$rael attaining West Bank, Jerusalem, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip. The resistance was primarily led by the Palestinian Liberation Front(PLF), Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah), and Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine(PFLP). In the end, it was harshly repressed by I$rael with the death of Muhammad al-Aswad, known as “Gaza’s Guevara,” on 9 March 1973, marking the end of the military struggle. The failure of the Palestinian national movement marked a major turning point in Palestine.(5)

The Muslim Brotherhood was spared this harsh repression and Ahmed Yassin during this time led a variety of political activities and creation of various social institutions. These were under the name of the Islamic Centre, being recognized more formally on 7 September 1973, when the I$raeli governor attended the Jawrat al-Shams mosque inauguration. Later on, the Islamic University of Gaza, one of the first universities in Gaza, was founded by the Islamic Centre. The institutions and activities of the Islamic Centre played a major role in its establishment, with the university becoming a major site of recruitment for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Centre was officially recognized as a charity in September 1979 by the I$raeli occupation. The reason for I$rael’s benevolent tolerance toward the Islamic Centre was to weaken the Palestinian national movement in exchange for a more conciliatory Islamic alternative.

The Palestinian national movement was even further divided with the PLO adopting the 10 Point Program which was the basis for the two-state solution and drafting of peace with I$rael. The Front of the Palestinian Forces Rejecting Solutions of Surrender was established in 1974 by a coalition of communist and progressive nationalist organizations who wanted to continue armed struggle. The PLO became more conciliatory towards I$rael, and today it rules over the now I$raeli puppet government called the Palestinian Authority. The 10 point program in its content may have had some progressive demands, such as right for displaced Palestinians to return and take back their homes. However, its calls for peace with I$rael and usage in justifying and end to resistance led to collaboration as we see today in the West Bank.(6)

In regard to social institutions, the main competition to the Islamic Centre was the Palestine Red Crescent Society under Haidar Abdel-Shafi, who was close with the PFLP. Specifically, Haidar was part of the Arab Nationalist Movement which was started by one of the founders of the PFLP, George Habash. The PFLP emerged directly out of the Arab Nationalist Movement after the Six Day War in July 1967. The executive committee of the Arab Nationalist Movement decided that the Palestine Section should move toward armed struggle. Three commando groups merged, the Revenge Youth, Heroes of Return, and the Palestine Liberation Front(PLF) to announce the founding of the PFLP on December 11th, 1967. Haidar Abdel-Shafi was both the founder and director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which served as a bastion of Palestinian nationalism in 1972.(7)

The PLO, Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre were dominated by different sections of petty-bourgeois, national bourgeois and even comprador elements. As a result, the PFLP was a major threat to the projects of both groups given the revolutionary nationalist outlook that the front upheld, rooted in the proletariat. The PFLP took heavily from the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionaries both in political and strategic developments.(8) Also, the the front correctly identified the enemies of Palestinian revolution as “Israel, the world Zionist Movement, global imperialism and Arab reactionaries.” In contrast to the other factions within Palestine, the front adopted a firmly dialectical materialist outlook, one based in scientific analysis of material reality with all its developments and changes.(9) This is what led to an allied struggle against communism by the other factions, as the PFLP presented a major threat to the PLO and Islamic movements. To note, the PLO refers to the mainstream conciliatory section, as the PFLP was still part of the PLO.

The co-founder of Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah), Assad Saftawi, was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was crucial in negotiations between the Islamic movement and Fatah in Palestine. He was the pioneer of an anti-communist strategy and alliance between the factions, running against Haidar Abdel-Shafi for leadership of the Red Crescent Society with the support of the Islamic Centre. After an overwhelming defeat, hundreds of protestors supportive of the Islamic movements ransacked Red Crescent offices on 7 January 1980. The protestors continued to attack cafés, cinemas, and drinking establishments in the town center. The I$raeli authorities did not intervene in response to the violent attacks against the Palestine Red Crescent Society intentionally.(10)

Coming back to the Islamic University of Gaza, in 1981 there were protests over the Islamic movement’s monopoly over the policies in the university. The Islamic Centre decided to turn against its former allies, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. The I$raeli authorities and the Islamic movement formed a strange coalition to end the secular nationalist opposition in the university. The Islamic Bloc, an offshoot of the Islamic Centre, won 51% of the votes in student elections and were able to impose Islamic policies; from separate entrances for women and men to the way in which certain ideas and courses were taught.(11) It was reported in 1983 that the Islamic Centre hired armed gangs to attack striking students and teachers. Later on, certain Islamic dress standards among students were encouraged, with women who refused to wear Hijabs being attacked for it. A further bolstering of the Islamic movements against the national movements in Palestine had ensued with the Islamic University of Gaza becoming a bastion for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre.(12)

On June 1984, sixty pistols and sub-machine guns hidden in Ahmed Yasin’s mosque led to his arrest and sentencing to thirteen years in prison. Even if the arms were primarily intended to intimidate other Palestinian factions.(13) Yasin’s incarceration allowed his supporters to wash him of all suspicions of collaboration with I$rael. The leader was freed in May 1985 within the framework of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the PFLP–General Command, a faction that emerged in opposition to the PLO after it created it’s 10 Point Program, based in Damascus. The Muslim Brotherhood remained non-confrontational despite the repression against it and built up the Islamic Centre, with the number of mosques doubling from 77 in 1967 to 150 in 1986. This non-confrontational and passive stance was opposed by Fathi Shikaki, who split off to form the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, inspired by the Iranian Revolution. In response to the Islamic Jihad multiplying attacks against I$rael, the Islamic center formed the Majd. It performed the function of protecting the Islamic network from attacks and in suppression of what was seen as social ills.(14) The priority remained in combating oppositional factions within Palestine rather than I$rael.

On 9 December 1987, the First Palestinian Intifada began in the Gaza Strip and quickly spread to the West Bank. The growing popularity of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad led to an agreement within the Muslim Brotherhood between the conservative old guard, supportive of a non-confrontational approach to I$rael, made up mainly of urban merchants petty-bourgeoisie and general upper petty-bourgeoisie, and the younger generation of new activist cadres, pro-resistance, made up mostly of lower petty-bourgeoisie and refugee camp petty-bourgeois students. Hamas was created in December 1987 as a separate but affiliated organization which joined the First Palestinian Intifada. It was largely successful and began to attract a lot of sympathizers. The post-1973 oil boom allowed for many neighboring Arab nations to back Islamic movements across the region, including Hamas and the Islamic Centre.(15)

The Second Palestinian Intifada and liberation of Gaza

The PLO suffered major setbacks abroad, with the Black September in Jordan, a period of major repression of the PLO there. It led them to be deported and transferred to Lebanon. Later in 1982, the PLO was expelled from Beirut to Tunisia. All of this led to the PLO, led by Fatah, to seek out a diplomatic solution rather than pursuing armed struggle. The Oslo Accords were signed later on in 1991 between I$rael and the PLO, leading to the Palestinian Authority ruling over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Military collaboration between the Palestinian Authority and I$rael had increased against the Islamic movement. The Palestinian Authority allowed continued colonization and occupation.

On 28 September 2000, Ariel Sharon, a Likud party candidate for I$rael, visited the Temple Mount, also known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif, an area sacred to both Jews and Muslims, accompanied by over a thousand security guards. He stated on that day, “the Temple Mount is in our hands and will remain in our hands. It is the holiest site in Judaism and it is the right of every Jew to visit the Temple Mount.” This led to the start of the Second Palestinian Intifada, with Palestinian resistance being carried out by the PLO, Hamas, and other factions. It led to I$raeli settlement and occupation forces withdrawing from the region after being ousted by the resistance in 2005.(15)

In January 2006, Hamas had won the elections in the Gaza Strip, winning 72 out of 132 seats with 42.9% of the vote. I$rael and I$rael’s imperialist backers enforced sanctions on the Hamas-led government soon after. Just a year later, tensions rose between Fatah and Hamas, with Hamas reigning victorious and expelling Fatah from Gaza in 2007 after the Battle of Gaza. The government faced major issues, with the poverty rate sharply rising to 65% by the end of 2006.(16)

The I$raeli blockade banned importation of raw industrial materials and put a siege on Palestinian banks to create an artificial financial crisis. Despite this and the rapidly deteriorating conditions, the oppressor classes enjoyed great luxuries and had high levels of consumption. This was especially the case of private tunnel dealers who controlled a monopoly on prices. A large portion of workers in Palestine found themselves in extreme poverty. There are two aspects to this, internal and external, and the external blockade by I$rael was only the external cause behind this.(17)

The origins of the tunnels were historically havens for both smugglers and outlaws but also for freedom fighters. Before the Second Palestinian Intifada the tunnels were primarily used for drug and gold trafficking for high profits. Near the end of the year 2000 they became primarily used for smuggling arms for the resistance factions.(18) After the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the regeneration and construction of tunnels ensued in response to the siege. During this period, the main lifeline for those in Gaza became these tunnels with an economy centering around it. This led to a regression and neglect of the development of a productive economy or sustainable development. It is possible that during this time the primary class within Gaza was the lumpen-proletariat and perhaps still is.

The number of tunnels increased from 20 in mid-2007 to up to 500 by November 2008.(19) Some estimates by a variety of sources, from the Hamas-led government, Egypt, and others, estimate higher. Regardless, most of the tunnels belonged either to Hamas or its sympathizers. The risks that workers face in the tunnels are immense and there is a popular saying about the tunnels:

hundreds of tunnels deployed on the border, hundreds of young men waiting to get involved in the game … write your will, you are facing the unknown, but this is the land that you loved, roll up your shirt sleeves, and be a man, you are now at a depth of 20 meters in the land of Gaza, trust in God and finish your shift … 12 hours in hell, but remember that hungry mouths awaiting you. Here, death is merciful and quick … No pain… No white phosphorus … nor Israeli soldiers who might use you as a human shield, it’s neither a prison here nor jail; here is God and the darkness of the tunnel and breathing slowly till you die(20)

Hamas is heavily dependent on the tunnel economy, estimated to make more than $700 million annually. This economy is ultimately unproductive and heavily dependent on exploitation, creating a class of private tunnel owners and merchants who make up the leadership of Hamas today. Ismail Haniyeh, the current leader of Hamas, is a millionaire from the money made from his ownership and respective taxation on trade through tunnels. The specific class relations will not be commented on here, but this inquiry into the tunnel economy is done specifically to point out its importance to Hamas. The large national bourgeoisie who own these tunnels and the petty-bourgeoisie merchants who conduct trade within them make up the class basis of Hamas today. This leads to an interest in opposing imperialism and I$raeli occupation while maintaining the exploitation of the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat.

The Hamas charter frames the struggle as a Jihad(holy struggle) against Zionism. In its first charter in 1988, it was openly anti-Semitic, claiming that both liberal and communist revolutions were carried out because of the Jews.(21) The first charter also employs idealism to obscure the internal class struggle and only emphasizes the external one in an idealist manner. This was possibly put in due to the opposition to Hamas by elements of the PLO and PFLP. Later on, this was removed completely possibly in part due to the downfall of both of these factions. As we can see, the ideology of Hamas changes as a result of its class character and relationships with different factions. For that reason, we see that Hamas broke with the Muslim Brotherhood officially in the second charter in 2014 for being too passive. It also shifted toward a more materialist conception of struggle against Zionism, settler-colonialism/colonialism, and imperialism here rather than against Jews and Judaism. In a recent document by Hamas, the organization states this more clearly:

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.(22)

This shift in position is important to note. The specific reason why this occurred is hard to track down but the downfall of elements of the PLO and PFLP is likely an important factor. So is the Second Intifada and liberation of Gaza from I$raeli occupation and imperialism. As we see, resistance to occupation forced Hamas to adopt more correct and materialist political positions in regard to I$rael. It still obscures internal class relations for its own benefit, but given the primary ongoing struggle is against occupation, Hamas is able to maintain majority support. A wartime poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank showed a vast majority supported: the Al Qassam Brigades(Hamas brigades) at 89%, Palestinian Islamic Jihad at 85%, Al Aqsa Brigades(Fatah brigades) at 80%, and Hamas at 76%.(23) Smaller organizations like the PFLP were not included in the survey. So despite the exploitation internally which Hamas is responsible for, its recent practice of being one of the largest groups in the counter-attack against I$rael leads it to win the sympathy of the masses.

Conclusion, Reflections and Future Analysis

As we can see, the Islamic movements in Palestine are not a monolith and have changed overtime. The formation of Hamas and its class basis is important to have clarity on, but this article is by no means an extensive analysis of such. It hopefully has helped in clearing up common myths and confusions around Hamas, with imperialist media constantly making frivolous claims. They range from Hamas having spawned out of the I$raeli far-right funding to Hamas being a terrorist group which kills Palestinians and I$raelis. This article hopefully provided both facts and summarized analyses of why both of these common narratives are false. However, there are major issues left unaddressed and a few will be listed here. The political economy of the Levant and the Palestinian clans/tribes are a crucial factor that has not even been mentioned. The displacement by I$raeli settler-colonialism and imperialism has not been analyzed enough in detail. The Muslim Brotherhood and its relationship to Hamas was glossed over as well. As an analysis and presentation of facts from a foreign perspective, many crucial elements are likely missed that are not known about.

Some of these shortcomings may be addressed in future articles. Specifically, an article about Fanon’s writings on the lumpen-proletariat leading a revolution in Algeria will be pursued. The underground national bourgeoisie of oppressed nations in the United $tates are quite similar to Hamas in current times. The displacement of Palestinians by I$raeli settler-colonialism and imperialism mirrors the conditions of oppressed nations and oppressed national minorities at the hands of Amerika. A greater understanding of how revolutionary struggle can be conducted in conditions of settler-colonial displacement by the participation of the lumpen-proletariat and First World lumpen will be important.

Before ending this article, i would like to make a general acknowledgement. This article was written with the direct help of a variety of MIM(Prisons) and AIPS members along with a variety of comrades not affiliated with MIM(Prisons). The work of Arabic and Palestinian documentation and analysis played a major role in being able to answer this question here in more detail. These sources are worth checking out and have been cited below for readers to read into themselves if they wish. This is not meant to advocate for communists in the Third World to pursue a certain policy toward Hamas, but to provide the facts about and a brief analysis of Hamas to give a deeper perspective of what the movement is and represents.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر

<sup>Notes:
1. Joint Room and ‘Unity of the Squares’: What Will the Next Israeli War on Gaza Look Like by Palestine Chronicle Staff, June 12, 2023
2. The First Intifada, 1987-1993 | Exhilaration of Revolt, Promise of Freedom by Roger Heacock
3. Hamas: its history, development, and critical point of view by Joseph Daher, March 7, 2024 | حماس: تاريخها، تطورها، وجهة نظر نقدية بقلم: جوزيف ظاهر
4. HASAN AL-BANNA AND HIS POLITICAL THOUGHT OF ISLAMIC BROTHERHOOD by The Muslim Brotherhood, May 13, 2008
5. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 by Yezid Sayigh, 1997
6. 10 Point Program of the PLO (1974)
7. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996
8. Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine PFLP by the PFLP, 1969
9. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – PFLP by Maher Charif
10. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996, pp. 106–107
11. The Palestinian Hamas : vision, violence, and coexistence by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, 2018
12. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996
13. The Origins of Hamas: Militant Legacy or Israeli Tool? by Jean-Pierre Filiu, 2012
14. The Palestinian Hamas : vision, violence, and coexistence by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, 2018, pg. 34
15. The Second Intifada, 2000-2005 | Mounting Confrontation, Shattered Aspirations by Roger Heacock
16. Samir Abu Mdallaleh, Poverty and Human Rights, a paper presented to the Independent Commission for Human Rights, Gaza, 2008
17. The Tunnel Economy in the Gaza Strip: A Catholic Marriage by Sameer Abumdallal, 2014
18. Ghazi al-Sourani, Rafah’s Tunnels and their Economic, Social and Political Impacts, Modern Discussion, Issue no” 2495, 14-02-2008, p. 1
19. Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), 25-11-2008<BR. 20. Atta Manna’, The Memoire of a corrupted person-tunnels-2nd paper, Tuesday, 01-12-2009
21. Hamas Covenant 1988 (WARNING: The viewership of article specifically will almost definitely be tracked by the feds, Tor is highly recommended)
22. Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas Media Office, January 21, 2024 (WARNING: The viewership of article specifically will almost definitely be tracked by the feds, Tor is highly recommended)
23. Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD), Wartime Poll: Results of an Opinion Poll Among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Data collected between 31 October and 07 November 2023</sup>

Related Articles:

• The Significance of the Palestinian Liberation Struggle

• Hamas liberates Gaza Strip

• End Colonialism, Free Palestine

In the past, the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), and its mass org at the time, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League, campaigned to get the University of California to Divest from I$rael.(1) This was a correct strategy, because U.$. imperialism is the number one backer of the I$raeli war machine. Behind the flag of I$rael is the stars and stripes.

More recently, United Struggle from Within (USW) carried out a petition campaign, which read in part:

“Therefore with this declaration we angrily express our indignation with the state of Israel for committing genocide, and for the Israeli people for allowing it to happen in the 21st century after vowing”never again.”

The petition recognized that Palestinian political prisoners had supported the California hunger strikes in recent years and it was time to return solidarity. By 2016, comrades in 16 prisons had gathered 189 signatures. Recognizing the limitations of conditions, the petition also read:

“Within these walls we are as yet powerless to tap into the potential of the imprisoned lumpen; the oppressed internal nation lumpen in particular as agents of social change, but we are not yet powerless to sign a piece of paper to denounce the state of Israel and their support in the U.$.”

Still today, comrades are asking what can we do to support Palestine?

Settlers Supporting Settlers

The war against Palestine is what Amerika has always done from its very founding – land grab, occupation, genocide. Therefore, there is much support in the United $tates for I$rael’s current bombing campaign and invasion of Gaza. And the tactics being used against Palestine could easily be tried against indigenous people here on Turtle Island next.

MIM and others have documented the history of Amerikan labor union support for I$rael.(2) Yet, in recent months not only has the U.$. seen millions demonstrate to oppose U.$. militarism in Palestine, but labor unions representing millions of Amerikan so-called workers have signed a call for a cease fire.(3) While Amerikans have always been settlers, the United $tates is more and more a population of people who do not come from settler backgrounds. And more and more, people from non-settler backgrounds are joining the ranks of labor unions, big tech companies and other professional roles. This is one factor behind the wavering support for I$rael. Of course, it is the Palestinian resistance that is forcing Amerikans to take a position.

The cease fire call is a shift for many Amerikan labor unions away from outright Zionism to the left wing of white nationalism. Despite the cease fire statement, these unions will still be campaigning for Genocide Joe this year. And while some members of the International Longshoreman Workers Union (ILWU) participated in a one day protest/shut down of the port of Oakland in support of Gaza, there has been no sustained strike by Amerikan unions that are actively involved in shipping arms to I$rael.

The United Auto Workers (UAW), having been in the news for strikes last year, is one of the unions to issue a statement for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, the UAW has been hosting talks with employees of arms manufacturer Raytheon for a “just transition” to guarantee labor aristocracy union jobs in thefuture technologies of war and genocide. Brandon Mancilla, director or UAW’s Region 9A, announced in a tweet on Dec 1st the formation of a Divestment and Just Transition working group to explore how “we can have just transition for US workers from war to peace.” Behind the UAW’s ceasefire resolution, was UAW Labor for Palestine. Self-described on their website as a “nationwide group of rank-and-file UAW members” that seeks to “organize UAW worksites that send arms and other material to Israel.” They have faced great resistance from the UAW in general to taking any action to stop producing arms for I$rael. Like the Amerikan leaders who mumble words about humanitarian efforts in Palestine while continuing to authorize more and more shipments of war machines to I$rael, Amerikan labor makes statements about ceasefire, while continuing to produce these machines. Actions speak louder than words.

As we reported in ULK 84, arms shipments must get to the Red Sea before they face real resistance; resistance by Yemen’s armed forces. And following I$rael’s attacks on Iranian diplomatic soil in Syria in April, Iran has seized an I$raeli-linked cargo ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz. While the Strait, which accesses the Persian Gulf, does not lead to I$rael, it does lead to I$rael’s new Arab allies in the UAE.

Doing Better

The #1 thing people in the United $tates can be doing in the short-term to stop genocide in Palestine is to stop shipments of arms and aid to I$rael. Just as the imperialists have used blockades to weaken the Palestinian resistance. The question is how to make such a blockade meaningful and sustainable.

In the longer-term it is our responsibility in the United $tates to weaken imperialism from the inside. As we see the principal contradiction in the United $tates to be between nations, it is by supporting national liberation struggles at home that we believe we can best make this happen faster. And without building the revolutionary forces here in the United $tates, we do not foresee a successful, sustained blockade of aid to I$rael.

Another realm of struggle we should be tuned into is the struggle against political repression of those supporting Palestine, and especially the state imposing limitations on the exchange of information between Palestine and the world. The labeling of organizations linked to the Palestinian struggle as “terrorist organizations” is parallel to organizations in the oppressed nations in the United $tates being labelled “security threat groups (STGs).” As our readers know well the right to free speech and association is not guaranteed but must be struggled for within this bourgeois democracy.

Finally, correct political line must lead for us to succeed on all fronts. Democratic Party-supporting labor unions calling for “cease fire” is not the correct political line. Stopping all aid to I$rael is correct. Supporting national liberation struggles of the oppressed is correct. Recognizing the populations of the exploiter countries to be part of the bourgeoisie is correct. And recognizing the need for independent communist organizations in all parts of the world is correct for avoiding past mistakes that restricted the revolutionary potential of oppressed nations (see next section).

There is a reinforcing effect between revolutionary nationalist and communist movements around the world. Communism was more popular in Palestine when communists were demonstrating models of success in practice in other parts of the world. The revolutionary nationalism of Palestine today will impact the consciousness of revolutionary nationalism around the world, including within U.$. borders. Amplifying this effect in the short-term will help us build the type of movement that can provide real solidarity with Palestine in the short-term. The history and class interests of Amerikan labor prove that their current level of sympathies with Palestine are tenuous and lacking in militancy.

It is the struggle of the occupied indigenous populations, the largest of which is Aztlán, that are most parallel to Palestine in our context. Meanwhile New Afrika has probably been the most ardent supporter of Palestine in the United $tates historically. Though it’s also worth noting the prominence of Jewish voices in opposing the war from the United $tates, due to the connection the existence of I$rael has forced onto all Jewish people. As a resistance movement based in a compact area of land that is mostly urban, there is much to be learned tactically from the successes of the ongoing struggle in Palestine today that relates to the conditions of oppressed nations in the heart of empire.

The ICM, Pan-Islamism and Palestine

Support from communists around the world, especially those waging People’s War in the Third World, has been unwavering on the side of Palestine liberation since October 7th. But the history of the International Communist Movement (ICM) has led to setbacks in Palestinian and pan-Arab liberation.

MIM(Prisons) has been working on reiterating MIM line on the Communist International in recent years as part of an effort to compile MIM’s work opposing crypto-Trotskyism. One of the key issues we have with Trotskyism is its view that the most advanced capitalist countries will/should lead the communist movement. MIM line says that the most exploited and oppressed nations will lead the way, and recognizes the need for independent initiative and direction from within each nation. We also see the need for a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations (JDPON) as a tool for overthrowing imperialism. Under the JDPON, it will be the communist minorities in former imperialist countries that are benefiting from the assistance of more advanced, socialist, former colonies.

From 1919-1943, the third Communist International (Comintern) was the first experiment in an international communist movement that involved parties in state power. At that time the idea that the advanced capitalist countries would lead the socialist revolution was more popular. Bolshevik leader Mirza Sultan-Galiev was one of the biggest critics of this position. In 1923, at the 9th Conference of the Tatar Obkom, Sutlan-Galiev stated:

“If a revolution succeeds in England, the proletariat will continue oppressing the colonies and pursuing the policy of the existing bourgeois government; for it is interested in the exploitation of these colonies. In order to prevent the oppression of the toiler of the East we must unite the Muslim masses in a communist movement that will be our own and autonomous.”(4)

MIM positively reviewed eir ideas:

“Sultan-Galiev was for the formation of a”Colonial International” to replace the Comintern as organization of central importance. He also called for the “dictatorship of the colonial nations over the metropolis.”“(5)

Sultan-Galiev applied this concept to Russians, who were far more oppressed and exploited than Amerikans today, as well as to the United $tates, which ey saw as built on the genocide and labor of First Nations and New Afrikans.

For a brief period, about 5 years after the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks had created a Muslim communist party separate from the Russian one. But this project was quickly abandoned. Decades later, USSR leader Joseph Stalin, who also played a leading role in the Comintern, abolished the Comintern in 1943. Stalin and Mao both said the communist international was no longer appropriate for the complicated conditions of international struggle. One of the problems with the communist international was the mixing of people from exploiter countries and exploited countries in one organization. Another was the mixing of people engaged in armed struggle against imperialism with those who are not. Sultan-Galiev’s proposal for a “Colonial International” addresses the first problem. However, eir ideas were not ultimately adopted by the Comintern, and ey was purged from the Bolshevik Party in 1923.

Current Events in Russia and Palestinian Communism

Last week a horrible mass shooting took place in Moscow, killing 143 people. The gunmen are reportedly from Tajikistan and working with the Islamic State-Khorasan, based in Central Asia. An Amerikan analyst explained that this group “sees Russia as being complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims” and that a number of other Central Asian militants have allied with the Islamic State group due to their own grievances against Moscow.(6) Tajikistan is a former Soviet republic. One must wonder if a Muslim Communist International, separate from the Russian one, could have avoided the emergence of militant groups in Central Asia today that have violent beefs with Moscow. This goes both ways, with chauvinist attitudes by many Russians today towards the other former Soviet republics. As the capitalist/imperialist USSR collapsed in 1991, both sides of this national divide perceived the other to be exploiting them.(7)

On the Western side of the USSR Sultan-Galiev helped establish a separate Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921. This became a bastion for German Nazis in the 1940s, leading to the native Tatar population being relocated by Stalin, and the area populated by Russians and Ukrainians – leading to disputes over the territory today. This suggests that Stalin was correct to oppose Sultan-Galiev for narrow nationalism in the late 1920s and ultimately have em killed in 1940 as the Nazis were preparing to invade.

The problems with trying to unify too quickly with a communist international seems to have played a role in Palestine and the Arab world as well. The Soviet Union supported the partitioning of Palestine by the Zionists, leading to the Nakba (“The Catastrophe” or ethnic cleansing of Palestine) in 1948. Despite the Comintern having been dissolved in 1943, apparently it was still policy for the Communist Parties in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon to support the USSR line on the partitioning of Palestine against their own beliefs. This led to massive loss of support for the communists in Syria and Lebanon for years to come (there was not much support in Palestine until years later).(8)

While U.$. and I$raeli imperialism played a role in suppressing communist organizing, these internal contradictions and short-comings are what allowed such efforts to succeed. We can see how the strategies we choose today can have grave and lasting impacts decades later. That is why we, as communists, must do a better job of implementing an effective internationalism by recognizing the national self-determination of each oppressed nation. Independence in action must coincide with a struggle for unity in ideology.

“The early stages of socialism according to both Lenin and Stalin would see a vast multiplication of nations seizing their destinies. It was only under advanced communism that we could contemplate the disappearance of nations.”(7)

The above is in line with USW’s slogan of “unity from the inside out.” It is only with true self-determination of the oppressed nations that they can fully unite with other nations. Of course, the more unity we have the stronger we are. So we must struggle for unity, without forcing it before conditions are ripe.

We call on comrades to continue to make connections between Palestine and national struggles in occupied Turtle Island, and to build national liberation struggles here in the heart of empire.

<sup>Notes:
1. MIM - California, UC Divest From Israel! campaign page
2. Boston MIM, August 2005, Labor aristocracy hits the streets for I$rael, This article gives a more comprehensive background on the connection between Zionism and U.$. labor unions: Jeff Schuhrke, 11 November 2023, US Labor Has Long Been a Stalwart Backer of Israel. That’s Starting To Change., Jacobin.
3. Democracy Now!, 26 December 2032, Labor Demands a Ceasefire: UAW, Electrical & Postal Workers Call for Israel’s Assault on Gaza to End.](https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26/us_labor_movement_israel_palestine)
4. Joshua Alexander, 08 August 2016, Two Articles by Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, 1919, Anti-Imperialism.org.
5. MIM’s Pan-Islamic Page
6. Sophia Yan, 23 March 2024, Islamic State attackers publish selfie following Moscow attack, The Telegraph.
7. MIM, The role of the National Bourgeoisie: The decline of Soviet social-imperialism
8. Guerrilla History, 15 March 2024, History of Palestinian Communism w/ Patrick Higgins.</sup>

What is to be done? That’s the most important question for a revolutionary. “How can it be done?” is as important. Theory and practice are of equal importance when it comes to revolution. Theory without practice, ideas without action, are useless. Practice without theory leads to failure. That’s why Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels decided that scientific socialism will accomplish what utopian socialism could only dream of. An event such as the Great October Revolution of 1917 required a leader such as Lenin, a philosopher. Now, a revolution is for the people. That’s why we need to educate the people, and to do that we should educate ourselves. Study politics, history, science, psychology, philosophy, but most importantly study revolutionary history and the writings of past and present revolutionaries. It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance. We need well-educated revolutionaries.

The Black Panther Party was committed to educate the people and they required their members to study. They studied Mao, Lenin, Marx, and the works of Black radicals. The Black Panther newspaper was meant “to educate the oppressed”. That was its primary purpose. Che Guevara was a brilliant man who educated people through his speeches in a clear manner. Mao, Lenin, Marx, Engels, they all wrote extensively in order to guide their readers before, during, and after a revolution. Why wouldn’t we take advantage of all that wisdom?

Karl Marx was a philosopher, sociologist, economist and a voracious reader. Lenin too. And they studied the works of different types of radical thinkers. They studied, and admired, the French Revolution. Lenin was a fan of Peter Kropotkin’s history of the French Revolution. Karl Marx admired Charles Darwin’s work, and noticed how Darwin was influenced by Thomas R. Malthus. How can we claim to support scientific forms of socialism and never actually read any science, or economics at least?

I recommend the following: “Quotations From Chairman Mao Zedong” edited by Lin Biao, “Essential Works of Lenin” edited by Henry Christman, “Theories of Surplus Value”, “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”, and “The Poverty of Philosophy” by Karl Marx, “The Black Panthers Speak” edited by Philip Foner, and any other books on radical politics, history, science and philosophy.

And remember, comrades: “Hasta la victoria siempre!” -Che Guevara

MIM(Prisons) responds: We welcome this statement from the study group of the Iron Lung Collective, and we support its sentiments. Through our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program, comrades inside can receive any of the books Modern Cassius recommends, with the exception of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong or “The Little Red Book.” We believe all of the historical texts of revolutionaries must be studied and understood in their historical context. The mish-mash of quotes from different periods of the Chinese revolution in “The Little Red Book” make it very difficult to do so.

As we work to re-ignite the prison movement, regular, local study groups are the base of our efforts to re-build. We have a guide for starting a local study group, and a decent stock of revolutionary and historical literature you can find on our literature list. Please see page 2 of ULK for more details on how to participate in the Free Political Books to Prisoners Program.

Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona as a private prison is being run illegally by these authorities: WARDEN - Sean Wead, Assistant WARDEN - Jody Bradley, HAWAII CONTRACT MONITOR - Jennifer Bechler and others.

Here, disciplinary segregation is run against CoreCivic policy and by law from the above, because they are segregating only the Hawai’i prisoners for over one (1) year in a segregated unit. And no matter how you look at it, there is no way out, not even if you take them to court, because the courts here in Arizona for SCC all work together to just get free money off the Hawai’ian prisoners when we file a lawsuit.

Help Our Hawai’ian Population

They have this thing that they call SHIP. No policies pursuant to any law authorizes SHIP. SHIP is identified as Special Housing Incentive Program.

CoreCivic does not provide “intensive program” within SHIP:

• Does not provide substance abuse treatment
• Does not provide education
• Does not provide comprehensive programs
• Does not provide vocational opportunities to prepare prisoners for a successful re-entry into society or the general population

SHIP does not support academic development through Adult Basic Education (ABE) or General Equivalency Diploma (GED). Therefore SHIP lacks any penological goal or correctional interest.

Why does Hawai’i support SHIP when it does not help our Hawai’ian population? Our people deserve better. SHIP is fraud. CoreCivic is degrading our Hawai’ian people.

Halawa Correctional Facility (the state prison in Honolulu, Hawaii) does not recognize SHIP, so how does CoreCivic get away with it here?

The First Amendment authorizes anyone to grieve the government. Due Process requires at the minimum some type of hearing to be held. The Eighth Amendment, which is “cruel and unusual punishment” as well as “retaliation” is heavy in this private prison of Saguaro Correctional Center. And these authorities just get away with it. It is wrong for the law to do that to innocent prisoners that are only trying to go home to their family and learn from the mistakes that led them to prison.

MIM(Prisons) adds:In 1995, 300 Hawai’ian prisoners were shipped from occupied Hawai’i to the occupied Sonoran Desert, where CoreCivic (at the time the Corrections Corporation of America) runs the Saguaro Correctional Center. This was billed as a “temporary measure” to deal with extreme overcrowding in prisons on the Hawaiian islands. But it was not temporary. Today there are about 1000 Hawaiians there, and at the peak there were about 1,500.

Just over a year ago, Hawaii News Now got rare video access to Saguaro CC for an apparent fluff piece to appease growing concerns among Hawai’ians for the people being shipped there. The story praises the program for giving access to cleaner, less crowded prisons where there are more programs for rehabilitation preparing people for their release back to Hawai’i.(1) According to the author above, it seems everything took a sharp change after Hawaii News Now left, or someone was lying.

While only 10% of the population of the state of Hawai’i today, Native Hawai’ians and Pacific Islanders make up 44% of the prison population.(2) In 2010, Pacific Islanders were 1.5% of the prison population in Arizona, despite being 0.2% of the state population. This is due primarily to the shipping of Hawaii’s prisoners to Saguaro CC.

Hawai’i is one of the internal semi-colonies of the United $tates. We report regularly on the disproportionate targeting of the internal semi-colonies for imprisonment, and once in prison, for isolation. So it is no surprise that Hawai’ians are facing similar repression by Amerikans. We support this comrade’s call, and hope we can play a role in the campaign to bring Hawaiian prisoners home.

<sup>Notes:
1. Lynn Kawano, 15 December 2022, These prisoners have access to better facilities. The price? They’re 3,000 miles from home, Hawaii News Now.
2. Prison Policy Initiative profile on Hawaii, using data from 2021.</sup>

Back in September we printed an article from a comrade in Virginia about PREA audits and why they do not work. This article did not appear in ULK, but touched on the abuses faced by wimmin in Federal Correctional Institution - Dublin (FCI-Dublin). On the ineffectiveness of PREA audits in Virginia, the comrade wrote about how the audits were pre-announced, communications with the auditors were done in front of staff, and once the auditors left, staff retaliated against prisoners who talked. Comrades in Pennsylvania and Texas have also reported on retaliation for filing PREA complaints, as is common for filing any kind of grievance against staff. The failure of PREA is just a subset of the failure of any accountability of prison staff across the country for abusing prisoners.

After the incidents at FCI-Dublin that were largely reported in 2022, nothing changed. This led to over 63 lawsuits being filed. On Monday, 11 March 2024, the FBI raided FCI-Dublin and arrested the acting Warden, Associate Warden, a Captain and an Executive Assistant who all lost their jobs. They were all members of the infamous “rape club” at FCI-Dublin, which continued on after previous firings in recent years.

“Federal law classifies any sexual contact between staff and incarcerated people as a felony punishable with up to 15 years in prison. But, as one incarcerated survivor testified during the trial of former Warden Ray Garcia, the Prison Rape Elimination Act “really doesn’t exist at Dublin.”(1)

PREA doesn’t really exist in most of this country, where grievances are routinely thrown in the trash and retaliation for filing PREA complaints is the norm. And this is not the first time the FBI has been involved in investigating and arresting FCI-Dublin staff for rape.

Trans Pride Initiative (TPI) is working to hold PREA auditors accountable in Texas. However, they report:

“Under PREA § 115.401(o), auditors “shall attempt to communicate with community-based or victim advocates who may have insight into relevant conditions in the facility.” TPI has seldom been contacted concerning information we have about Texas prisons, and the National PREA Resource Center, which oversees the audit process, has failed to hold auditors accountable to this requirement. TPI has developed a simple auditor tool for auditors to see current information about any unit that we have in our system, so they do not have to even contact us. They are required to list if they tried to contact others about prison information and who they contacted. We are seeing many auditors list no contacts, or contacts that are perfunctory and likely provided no information.”(3)

TPI has an impressive database of incidents of violence and retaliation against prisoners on their website. They want the details of dates, who did what, what happened, what was said, where it happened, witnesses, etc., which you can send to:

Before publishing this article, an investigation into suits filed under the Adult Survivors Act in New York City’s state supreme courts revealed that 719 of 1,256 cases came from Riker’s Island Jail.(2) That is, more than half of the suits filed in the whole city of New York for sexual assaults that had occurred in the past were filed against city correctional officers. Almost all of them came from the wimmin’s jail. Like the rest of the country, wimmin make up a small minority of prisoners at Rikers. While male-bodied prisoners face very high rates of sexual assault compared to the general U.$. population, it is clear that being in a wimmin’s prison puts you in one of the highest-risk groups to be sexually assaulted.(4) And within men’s prisons, being trans, gay, queer, intersex, smaller or weaker will all put you at greater risk as the reports below suggest.

Gender oppression is built in to the U.$. prison system. Despite laws, lawsuits and FBI raids, it is not going away on its own. It is only by organizing the oppressed to stand together that we can put an end to these abuses.

Below are a couple recent reports from Polunsky Unit in Texas on how PREA incidents are handled. TPI’s data shows they have received many more PREA reports from other Texas prisons, including: Allred, Hughes, Connally, Telford and Stiles Units.(5)

A Trans Prisoner at Polunsky Unit in Texas Reported in March 2024: I put a Step 1 Grievance against one officer and wrote to the Ombudsman in Huntsville and he denied any allegations and got other officers to start to do stuff to me. I wrote to the Warden Mr. Anderson and I was placed around other gang members who keep threatening to harm me and call me punk, snitch, hoe and all that and use officers against me. Last month another officer name Suniga started threatening to harm me and sexually harassed me.

…Later Suniga got mad at me and threatened to take my booty shorts and other clothes. He told all those other inmates that I’m snitching on them with the I.G. who coming to investigate me for the incident with the other officer I mention before. And they took my jail housing manual charter #30 for the LGBTQ inmates with all the PREA standards, rules and regulations for jailers and inmates.

He took it and threw it away, so I put a step 1 grievances and sent a letter to the PREA offices in Huntsville, who are doing an investigation, and the PREA officer respond back and said they did an investigation but can’t go forward because Mr. Suniga resigned from his job. Now no body want to do anything or restore my papers which I don’t get for free. …even if Suniga quit his job, the TDCJ should be responsible for what he did while he were employed at the TDCJ.

A female officer who worked with Suniga before and knows that I put a Step 1 against Suniga, works here named Ms. Smith. When she came to my cell door she tell me that I got her friend in trouble and she refused to feed me my lunch. She said that she was going to write me up for not being dressed appropriately because I was wearing my shorts and she said that she don’t care if I were punk, transgender, or whatever.

They stop our physical mail claiming that too much drugs are coming into the TDCJ units. She worry about me wearing booty shorts, but drugs still get here every day. And not only K2, they get methamphetamine, ice, weed, all kind. I know because I seen who bring into the C pod. And I got notes in my cell right now, on 8 March 2024, on people who ask me if I want to buy K2 and ice, but I can’t say shit because if I do or report it to the I.G. or STG they going to let these gang members know that I told on them and more retaliations going to occur.

I am the only transgender or gay at C. Pod. All other inmates here are gang members or part of some groups. I filed I-60 requests and send letters to classification in Huntsville asking to move me to a pod or unit where most LGBTQ prisoners are and never get a reply or get moved. It is so cruel what they doing to us. About a month ago, someone killed himself on C. pod. And two others try to cut they self too… Now, one more time, I ask please help me with legal assistance to put a stop to all this abuse. Thank you and hope I can hear from y’all or someone who want to help me.

Another Polunsky Unit prisoner wrote us in March 2024: I was called out by Captain Cerda concerning a PREA Safe Prison for sexual harassment and sexual assault…. he began asking me what’s up with this letter to PREA Ombudsman. I began to explain and he said, “aw hell, we got to do this whole PREA thing.” He then hands me a statement sheet. I ask for the dates for the PREA letter and times, but he said “don’t worry about it, just leave ’em out.” I told him I needed them cause this inmate was suppose to be out of his assigned work area and in safe keeping, and I’ve written PREA Ombudsman about this repeatedly. He stated, “If we weren’t so short handed all this shit wouldn’t be happening and if TDCJ had housing, safe keeping wouldn’t be on my fucking unit cause I damn sure don’t want yall here!”

I felt badgered and like I was wrong for filing the complaint with only half the info. And with Captain Cerda’s demeanor and Lt. Rodriguez throwing questions in… and her standing over me I felt pressured and I wrote as little as possible. I just wanted to be away from them.

…TDCJ Executive Directive PD22 #4 Tampering with a witness violation level 1: states “An employee shall not attempt to hinder or influence in any manner the testimony or information or any witness or potential witness in an investigation or administrative proceeding.”

<sup>Notes: 1. Victoria Law, 14 March 2024, FBI Raids California Prison Facing 63 Lawsuits Over Systemic Sexual Abuse, Truthout.
2. Jessy Edwards and Samantha Max, 26 March 2024, Late-night sex assaults. Invasive searches. The 700+ women alleging abuse at Rikers, The Gothamist.
3. Trans Pride Initiative PREA website
4. MIM(Prisons), September 2007, Gender Oppression in Prisons, Under Lock & Key No. 1.
5. TPI Prison Data Explorer</sup>

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.

The Digital mail system launched by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) last year has been disastrous for prisoners and those who communicate with them.

One comrade from Coffield Unit just wrote to say:

“In response to the TDCJ Digital Mail initiative article from ULK 84. My own postal mail has been averaging 3 months for receipt since the implementation of the program. Even our Securus e-mail at my unit has been taking up to 3 or 4 weeks to be received – both incoming and outgoing.”

Meanwhile we are receiving mail from comrades in Allred Unit that is dated from 3 months ago. While there are more delays in mail going in, they are happening in both directions.

The Warrior In White newsletter has been investigating delays and received the following responses:

[TDCJ Ombdusman to the nonprofit:] “There are no staff shortages and all mail is being processed within the 3 day limit as stated in the policy.”

[Mail System Coordinator in Huntsville:] We are currently experiencing a staff shortage. We were not expecting the volume of mail at the Dallas facility. All mail to you has been received at the facility, but not yet scanned (acknowledging the USPS Informed Delivery Service evidence showing the mail at the Dallas facility).”

[From Securus:] “There is no staff shortage. All mail is being processed within 5 days, unless there are pictures or photos, in which case it may take a little longer.”

One comrade is leading a lawsuit against the violations of the digital mail system as we reported in ULK 84.

Another comrade wrote in response to that suit to suggest:

“To a Texas prisoner who has filed a complaint challenging the constitutionality of the Agency’s contracting with a private vendor (i.e.: a for-profit company in Dallas, Texas) to digitalize all Texas prisoners’ incoming general mail and photographs for computer-generated posting to a prisoner’s Securus authorized tablets. I believe this Texas prisoner needs to read Securus Technologies, LLC’s Agreement of Terms and Conditions when challenging the Agency’s policy-related ban of senders’ mail piece items off of prisoners physical mail. See Texas General Arbitration Act.”

For those who cannot commit to participating in the lawsuit, we can continue to agitate around this issue. And one way is to file grievances. Below is an example grievance from a comrade that can help you write your own:

All Power to New Afrika

In the previous issues of the ULK there have been several articles, wherein, We expanded upon how these prisons serve as a repressive arm of the oppressor nation, and how they are used as an apparatus to wage war against New Afrikans and other oppressed nations here in United $tates. There have been some well written diatribes, however, We’ve neglected to point out how this way impacts our children.

There are approximately 1.7 million parents incarcerated across the United $tates, leaving behind approximately 3 million children suffering the loss of a mother, or the loss of a father, and in some cases the loss of both primary care givers. This has resulted in Our children suffering immense trauma due to their separation from their parents, similar to that of losing their parent to death. This can lead to severe depression, anxiety, high-rates of obesity and behavioral issues.

The combination of trauma, shame and stigma has led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to label paternal incarceration an Adverse Childhood Experiences (A.C.E.).

Currently, 50% of juveniles that are in detention centers actually have a parent in prison and there are some studies that say children of incarcerated parents are 7 times more likely to end up in prison than their peers.

One in 57 children of European descendant have a parent that is incarcerated, it is 1 in 28 for Chican@ children and to no surprise 1 in 9 New Afrikan children have a parent that is incarcerated.

You see when a parent is charged with committing a “crime” law enforcement and the judicial system intervenes a behalf of the “victim” of the committed “crime,” however, no one intervenes on behalf of the children of the prisoner. These children are left to suffer.

This is by design. The aforementioned numbers reflect the genocide being carried out against New Afrikans.

Article II of the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948 states in part that Genocide means ANY of the following acts committed with INTENT to destroy in whole or part, a national, ethical, “racial” or religious group, as such:

A. Killing members of the group;

B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

C. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

D. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

The oppressor nation has had well over 400 years to perfect those methods of genocide. Beginning with the aggressive European invasion of Afrika, it progressed with the euro-Amerikkkan slave trade during which millions of Afrikans died during the “middle passage.” All the deaths of Afrikans on slave ships at the hands of village raids, and city police, were acts of genocide.

Amerikkka is still the enemy, and today it uses its prisons as genocidal weapons. Amerikkkan prisons are instruments used to practice political, economic, and social oppression of New Afrikan people. Prisons are used to practice genocide, to practice physical and mental destruction of the group, and as one of the instruments used to prevent the group’s successful struggle for liberation Amerikkan prisons are Koncentration Kamps. The entire U.$. “criminal justice system” is used as an arm of the government to repress and destroy the national liberation struggle, sadly this includes our children.

Post Script: i need to inform North Carolina Prisoners that our (S.W.A.P) address has changed. Prisoners should write to:

At the moment our support is limited to providing the New Afrikan P.O.W. Journals to NC prisoners. If you are interested in supporting the Do M.O.R.E. (Mobilize Organize Revolutionize & Educate) campaign. i entreat that you write to us with your ideas.

The primary objective of the campaign is to have the Security Risk Group (SRG) sanctions and restrictions removed from prisoners who don’t pose a “threat” to the “security” of the prison system. Please write for details.

To All Comrades,

This is for those who are soon to be released. I’ma keep this short and sweet and to the point. Forget about EVERYTHING you think you may know concerning “Freedom” once you’re free! Unless you’re blessed to pertain to that exclusive 1-5% of individuals who are returning home and whom will still be fed with the silver spoon, forget about everything you think you may know.

First and foremost, the sad reality still exists that money, the almighty dollar, still rules. What I mean is, you will have to get some type of job to generate income in order to sustain your lifestyle. From essentials/necessities like phone bills, groceries, rent, gas, car note, to luxuries like clothes, entertainment, jewelry, travel, etc. there ain’t no handouts out here. Contrary to popular belief and you’ll already know, ain’t sh free. Bottom line is this fellas: this transition and re-entry back into society after 12+ years in the Florida DOC is nothing short of egregious. It’s difficult, and it’s one door after another that’s closing right in your face. Y’all better be ready to come out with that hustler mindset, and I mean that I’ma grind nonstop for that legit slow money… To Be Continued

MIM(Prisons) adds: We want to commend comrade Fatal for sticking with the basic program of our Serve the People Re-Lease on Life Program. Ey has stayed in touch since eir release, got set up with a way to communicate with us securely, and has been distributing Under Lock & Key locally. As we tell all soon-to-release comrades, staying in touch is all you need to do in the beginning. As Fatal explains, you’ll be so busy figuring other things out in your life, so just stay in touch.

If you have a release date coming up let us know, get in our intro study course, and develop a regular line of communication now, while it’s easier. So many comrades who write us regularly inside, just never reach out, or we only hear from them once after they release and then they disappear. While our resources are limited in what we can offer you in support, we are always building our networks to support more comrades on release. And we can always provide you a connection to the movement, which can be vital in keeping you on the right path and not end up locked back up again as happens to many who do not stay in touch.

In our last issue we covered the mythology of sex crimes being painted onto Hamas in the imperialist media, and the flaunting of beautiful, young, “white” wimmin to rouse the hunger for war in the men of the United $tates, Britain and I$rael itself. In effect they have turned the genocide in Palestine into a rape revenge fantasy.

Since that article, multiple news agencies have done further investigation into the claims made by the New York Times and echoed across the imperialist media. Yes! and The Intercept both conducted investigations, and to those paying attention, it seems very clear that there is actually no real evidence of rape committed on October 7th, especially by Hamas itself. Both investigations report on the experience of one of the lead investigators for the New York Times, who questioned eir own qualifications to be working on the article, and hit dead end after dead end while intentionally trying to dig up information on alleged rapes. This “reporter,” Anat Schwartz, also liked a tweet saying that I$rael needed to “turn the [Gaza] strip into a slaughterhouse.”(1)(2)

Another figure in this propaganda campaign, Cochav Elkayam-Levy, was hosted by the White House in December, whom it described in a press statement as the “Chair of Israel’s Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children.” Since then ey has been the center of scandal in I$rael where it has been exposed that the “Commission” is just one persyn, and despite its name is not an official state commission. Elkayam-Levy released a “Horrors Report” that was 4 pages long, listing newspaper headlines and some signatures. Meanwhile ey attempted to raise $8 million for the “Commission’s” investigation.(3)

While working on this article another New York Times piece came out claiming that an I$raeli prisoner was sexually assaulted. This came out months after her release and having given a press conference on her imprisonment. It also came out shortly after that new evidence had been uncovered to prove some of their claims about rapes on October 7th false. In reality, it was already known that these claims were false before the original article came out.(4) What is not debated is the fact that these wimmin were killed in the October 7th attack. The grandfather of the two girls killed by Hamas, mentioned in the NYT report on rape, said it “was the saddest day of my life.” So why is it so necessary for the imperialists to create these stories that they were raped as well? Finally, this new sexual assault story comes to light as I$rael is conducting an intentional mass starvation campaign and destruction of medical care in the Gaza Strip and as footage is released of I$raeli drones hunting down and murdering unarmed Palestinians walking down the street.

The imperialist media has at times painted the myth of sexual assaults on October 7th as the greatest tragedy in the conflict in Palestine. Greater than the almost 35,000 dead Palestinians, greater than the thousands of Palestinian babies starving to death as we write this, even greater than the hundreds of I$raeli lives taken.

Meanwhile, many U.$. prisoners are confused by the state to think that anyone with a “sex offender” label has assaulted children. And they see this assault of children, whether real or imagined, by another prisoner as the greatest tragedy that they will sacrifice their body and their freedom to avenge. This is a greater tragedy to them than the tens of thousands of oppressed nation men and wimmin being tortured every day by the U.$. prison system. The 100,000 rotting away in long-term isolation. The minds of multiple generations being zombified by chemical warfare agents being brought in and sold by the guards. Staff beating people to within an inch of their lives over frivolous trespasses. Some of our misled readers would rather attack another prisoner than avenge these atrocities of the state.

Young New Afrikan males are one of the demographics that are most likely to be raped in the United $tates because of their vastly disproportionate rate of imprisonment.(5) Palestinians face similar rates of imprisonment, with accounts of rape in those prisons of both men and wimmin. A recent UN report says allegations of I$raeli sexual assault and rape of Palestinan wimmin and girls are credible.(6) It is clear that by fighting imperialism – its occupations, its wars, its prisons – we can do the most to combat rape. It is clear that bombing Gaza is not stopping rape. It should also be clear that attacking other prisoners who are threatening no one does not stop rape.

Rape revenge fantasies are built up by the patriarchy, to tug at the emotions of the patriarchal men who are called to avenge the innocent who are defiled. This props up the very gender relations that lead to rape in the first place, where individuals take other individuals’ fates into their own hands through the use of inter-persynal force. These fantasies are used to divide the oppressed and rally the oppressors. They are used to justify division and oppression in U.$. prisons, and they are used to justify war and genocide in the Third World.

<sup>Notes:
1. Arun Gupta, 5 March 2024, Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation, Yes!
2. Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Daniel Boguslaw, 28 February 2024, “Between the Hammer and the Anvil: The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Expose, The Intercept.
3. Ali Abunimah, 25 March 2024, Israeli “commission” on 7 October rape claims exposed as fraud, The Electronic Intifada.
4. Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, 4 March 2024, Kibbutz Be’eri Rejects STory in New Yortk Times October 7 Expose: “They Were Not Sexually Abused”, The Intercept.
5. MIM(Prisons), September 2007, Gender Oppression in U.$. Prisons, Under Lock & Key No. 1
6. Julian Borger, 22 February 2024, Claims of Israeli sexual assault of Palestinian women are credible, UN panel says, The Guardian.</sup>

Power to New Afrika

When i was first introduced to the concepts and ideology of NARN (New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism) and New Afrikan Nationhood i subjectively analyzed it, thinking that it was based on narrow-nationalism that was focused on representing “race.” My narrow-mindedness would act as an impediment to my own development, which would ultimately prevent me from ascertaining that NARN actually provides a complete social, political and economic theory that constitutes a comprehensive network of principles, rules, beliefs, values and morals that teaches Us the importance of decolonization and National Independence.

You see many of Us profess to be all-the-way revolutionary, when in fact We are actually robots running on dogmatism and stale formulas. i myself was a robot running on dogmatism and stale formulas, a robot that was inimically opposed to any and all concepts and ideologies that were not compatible with my own.

My ignorance would persist up until recently when i had an experience similar to the supernatural experience that all Christians claim to have, e.g “i heard god talking to me and i seen the light.” However, my experience was corporeal.

i use the analogy because it epitomizes exactly what transpired. i was reading Atiba Shanna’s [AKA James Yaki Sayles] book Meditations On Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth.(1) But it was Atiba Shanna emself talking to me and “the light” grew brighter with each page i read, i began to have a different perspective.

Prior to being aroused from my pontifical stupor i had wrote a response to a poem titled, “White in the Mix” that had been published in the No. 82 Summer 2023 edition of Under Lock & Key, wherein i criticized the author’s idea of not seeing color as it related to “race” and proceeded to provide what at the time i thought to be insight into what is the criterion for the “white” revolutionary. Who else better than me to elucidate this? A former member of the White Panther Organization and the epitome of an anti-racist. One would assume that i was more than capable of elucidating race/racism.

Instead of being published my letter was met with criticism, which i automatically assumed was subjective, due to the disputes i had with the komrades of MIM. However, this assumption was a manifestation of my own subjectivism. The truth is my criticism was based on binary opposites “Black” and “White” (racial categories), thusly the komrades rightfully deemed my response to the poem as being contradictory to NARN and a further perpetuation of the myth of “race.”

It is difficult not to perceive everything through a racialized lens when the truth is that hundreds of years of racial oppression have ingrained this way of thinking in our minds. Even thinking of ourselves as “Whites” or “Blacks” testifies to the success the colonizers have had in undermining Our conscious as human beings.

Moreover, said thinking upholds the concept of “race” and promotes racialized thought and practice that ultimately impedes the advancement of national and social revolution.

Even though the author of the poem claims to see no color (which is an idea promoted by the conservative bourgeoisie that perpetuates the concept of “white” power) it is obvious that his ideas and ideals are based on society’s racialized paradigms, moreover, it is evident that the komrade has yet to understand that until he commits class suicide/white privilege suicide, that he is indeed complicit in the oppression of the oppressed nations that is perpetuated by the oppressor nation – the Amerikan nation.

As Komrade Atiba emphasized:

“To commit class suicide means to”Kill” the (class) consciousness of the bourgeois/capitalist order that exercises hegemony in our lives and minds. We tend to think of revolutionary activity as that which takes place outside ourselves – as overthrowing the capitalist institutions and property relations – but We seldom think of the need to uproot the bourgeois ideas in our own minds, to repudiate the values, morals, and the entire range of beliefs that We now hold “in so far as they are bourgeois.”(2)

Class suicide was first a theory engendered by the great Amilcar Cabral, therein he was referring to the Afrikan petty-bourgeoisie (a very small elite class in 1960s-1970s Afrika). This class were the only “natives” with a full colonial style education, had been to universities in europe and amerikkka and had returned and been hand-picked by the colonialists to work in the government public institutions. Similar to DuBois’ Talented Tenth Theory, Cabral saw that the Afrikan masses would have to be led by that petty-bourgeoisie, but to prevent the reality of a new bourgeoisie and neo-colonial establishment in native face, the petty-bourgeoisie had to commit “class suicide.” They had to bring what made them “elite” and lay it at the feet of the masses, allow those masses to gain and learn from the elite’s expertise and learn from the masses.

What that meant was forgetting the subtle notions of white supremacist theories they had been implanted with from youth. Forget the notion that all things Western are superior, come back to “the source”, return to the culture of your native people, relearn your native tongue, remove the Western name you’ve adopted, the clothes, the wealth and privilege. PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) cadre were stationed in the countryside engaging with the peasants, seeing their daily lives, creating the institutions and programs to improve their lives (from the masses to the masses). The peasant masses were getting political education and tools needed to defeat the enemy. This was “class suicide” for them. Similar to Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China around the same time.

Now as it pertains to the Euro-Amerikkkan committing “class suicide” the process will be different, but to make it as clear as possible you will have to objectively forget your whiteness, while simultaneously utilizing it to gain advantages for the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM).(3) You would be required to engage in the most extreme revolutionary factions instead of hiding in the comfort of your whiteness.

As the Komrad Triumphant advised me: “Forget your whiteness even when those around you (especially New Afrikans) try their damnedest to make you remember. Forget your whiteness.”

Our class is the lumpen, and here in Amerikkka We’ll have to simultaneously organize as a class for itself while also committing class suicide, by abandoning the culture (ways of living/thinking) that accompanies the lumpen, in favor of an international proletarian class analysis. This abandonment is the fundamental function of class suicide and white privilege suicide.

When committing to such an endeavor one must be scientific in their thinking and not be like the “whites” Malcolm X spoke of, those who join the struggle for New Afrikan liberation because they are seeking to appease their conscience for all the horrible things done to New Afrikans and other oppressed nations by the oppressor nation.

Most “whites” will not be able to make such a commitment, not until there is a deep societal change among those who make up the oppressor nation and this is fine, because the New Afrikan nation doesn’t need the support of the colonial-oppressor system. In fact, as New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalists not only are we actively seeking to resist all oppression and the malignant sickness of the colonial oppressor-system but we are striving to build our own independent nation that would enable us to provide our people with food, shelter, clothes, education and other such essentials for Our own self-determination.

In closing, i want to express that i know there will be many who vehemently disagree with what has been said and will assume that i’ve taken this “wanna be” to a whole other level and i am laying the foundation for the New Afrikan identity to be hijacked by “white” people. My response to you is this:

Let me hasten to point out: By “New Afrikans” i don’t mean “black” people. i mean those who came to identify their nationality as “New Afrikan,” and who thus exhibit the consciousness and embrace the values and philosophy… those who pursue the goals of the “New Afrikans.” To me, to be a “New Afriakn” is not about the color of one’s skin, but about one’s thoughts and practice. i know that not everyone agrees with this, but that’s their problem…“(2)

Postscript: It’s only right that i give a clenched Fist Salute and a sincere thank you to the Komrad Triumphant of T.E.A.M.O.N.E & The Brow Box Collective for being so instrumental in my political development as a New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist. Thank you, Komrad, you walk it how you talk it.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We commend this comrade for making a public self-criticism following the feedback ey received from us and further study. We are all in the process of transforming ourselves, so engaging with others with shared goals, who have studied dialectical and historical materialism, is a necessary and ongoing part of all of our political development. We cannot change society without changing ourselves. We have a short study pack on the theory of Intercommunalism, which is the ideology this author has promoted in the past, if others are interested.

One of the main reasons we officially began using New Afrikan in place of “Black” was for the reason this comrade gives.(4) Similarly we have come to use Euro-Amerikan more consistently in place of “white.” The terms Black and white have their place and are still used and understood by the masses, but using them too much reinforces the racial constructs of the oppressor as this author explains.

In our study of the recently released Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army we also came across their very explicit inclusion of all revolutionary people into the Black or New Afrikan nation. Again, the author rightly offers some caution here. And we’d go further to stress the historical errors that have been forced onto oppressed nations by integrating with oppressor nations in the revolutionary struggle. We also believe different oppressed nations face different conditions that often warrant separate parties, while recognizing their struggles to be the same overall and favoring as much unity as possible. The answer is going to have to be determined in each situation. But clearly we must stand by the principle that (Euro-)Amerika is an oppressor nation and an ally of imperialism and not a base for revolution.

<sup>Notes: 1. for a review of this book see: Wiawimawo, May 2011, Education of the Nation, Under Lock & Key 20
2. James Yaki Sayles, 2010, Meditations On Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Kersplebedeb and Spear & Shield Publications.
3. A California prisoner, February 2017, To Identify as White is to Identify as Oppressor, Under Lock & Key 55
4. MIM(Prisons), November 2013, Terminology Debate: Black vs. New Afrikan, Under Lock & Key No. 35.</sup>

This question is not a matter of ancillary importance. Why? Because it seems as if after George Floyd was sadistically and undoubtedly murdered on camera for all to see by a person who was employed as a police officer supposedly standing under the motto of serve and protect (let them tell it), all of a sudden white America was finally awakened after 400 years of conveniently sleeping under the blanket of “better them than me.” (For the record of course “we know all white people are not racist”. Yeah, we know that to be a statement of gospel.)

I myself predicted seriously, when Rodney King (R.I.P) was beaten by obvious racist cops like a pair of weathered drums in Tommy Lee’s garage, that change would somehow slip through the cracks of injustice in the early nineties. However, that was daycare in comparison with what occurred on the unfortunate day of 21 June 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma after a Black shoe shiner was arrested for assaulting a white girl in an elevator. The Publisher of the local paper, eager to win a circulation war published a front page headline screaming, “To Lynch Negro Tonight.”

It was indeed a familiar occurrence for a Black man accused of sexually assaulting a white woman in the Deep South era. Rewind and fast forward to 21 June 1921 after the paper hit the streets an angry white mob began to gather outside of the courthouse where the Black shoe shiner (Dick Rowland) was being held (Rowland would be later released after the women refused to press charges). That alone reeks of rel-a-tion-ship. Some Blacks from the Tulsa neighborhoods of Greenwood – some were recently discharged war vets – began to descend upon the courthouse with the objective of saving Rowland from being lynched. Long story short, shots were fired and total chaos broke out. As a result over 12,000 whites were fully backed by the white police force. In all, 300 black lives were taken in vain, 1,200 homes burned to the ground and not a single (white) person arrested or ever held accountable for these untimely deaths of Black men, women and kids. To sugar coat the incident it was labeled a riot but in realty is was no less than ethnic cleansing genocide carried out on American soil. So do Black Lives Really Matter in the eyes of white America?

A couple of more Black lives in question, two of the greatest leaders to ever walk the earth, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mr. Malcolm X. At the time of their tragic assassination FBI agents were indeed on the scene under the orders of racist FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as if they where known terrorists. J. Edgar Hoover was said to express paranoid thinking that Martin Luther King would one day turn radical and his followers would no longer turn the other cheek to the nasty side of injustice and racism. Even though up until his fatal demise he showed not the slightest hint of radicalism. Malcolm X had continuously complained to law enforcement that his life was in danger and he often requested a gun permit, which was apparently never granted.

Now the very thing that initiated this question/article in my head as I sit behind enemy lines in a cell for allegedly selling crack cocaine that conveniently was found behind a pay phone on the South Side of Dallas, Texas: Here I’ve remained for the last 20 years as if I murdered the President. Make no mistake I am not miserable nor bitter as I continue to seek justice in my case. Yeah, I was found not guilty of the exact same indictment and found guilty of the exact same offense. This is overtly obvious Double Jeopardy under the 5th Amendment. It does take 20 years for the courts to grasp this simple and clear vital error which was made purposely to get a conviction due to the fact that I refused to cop-out to a charge I was totally innocent of.

So I have educated myself since I have been incarcerated and there is no way of avoidance on behalf of the courts. Every so called law enforcement affiliate that I have relayed this information to has turned a blind eye to my situation so as of now I am in a lawless environment and failure is not an option as the system attempts to sweep me under the rug so to speak to cover their criminal activity. Now tell me, do Black Lives Really Matter?

MIM(Prisons) adds: Studying Black history like Tulsa, and current events in Palestine, the connections are clear. While the imperialists haven’t dropped any bombs on New Afrika in a few decades now, the low intensity warfare and genocide continues here in the United $tates. It is fueled by white Amerikans’ paranoid delusions, which make them fear that the oppressed might treat them as bad as they have treated the oppressed. The fact is that the Amerikan project is further along than the I$raeli project, and pacification is in full effect. But the contradictions remain, and cannot be resolved without ending imperialism. The oppressed will not see justice until then.

“[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.”}

Dear UL&K Editor & Staff,

When i originally wrote to you regarding my lawsuit on the digitalized mail, i had NOT yet been assigned a case no. i have one now:

• Prisoners are NOT allowed to correspond with Plaintiff. ALL other INDIVIDUALS may write to Plaintiff using the name, #, and Unit, with:

WARNING Any fellow Texas Prisoner who wants to seek to join this suit as a Defendant WILL be required by the Court to pay applicable fees and court costs – so, don’t put your foot in the pond if you aren’t prepared to swim.

Again – as the Plaintiff – i am extending an open invitation to any Attorneys, Investigators, Paralegals, Researchers, Legal Aid Groups, or Sponsors who would like to offer assistance with this litigation.

• ALL pleadings filed to date should be available for viewing/downloading on the Court’s public website.

With appreciation for ANY assistance extended into my hand – have a great day and Blessed be.

Within the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM), when We think of Hinds County Mississippi, We often think of El-Malik, or many of Our movement elders building independence for Our people in the heart of dixie. On December 18th, NBC News published the identities of 215 buried bodies that had been secretly hidden behind the Hinds County Penal Colony in a ‘paupers’ graveyard. These 215 people were all buried there between 2016 and December 2023. In total 672 people were buried at this location. Although each of the 215 graves were marked by a metal pole with a number attached indicating unclaimed or unidentified remains, in truth each one of these 215 people were identified by the Hinds County officials and were only unclaimed because officials did not attempt to notify kin of the deceased.

The Wade Family

Of the hundreds of the affected families one of the most striking stories is that of the Wade family, whose matriarch Bettersten Wade was instrumental in bringing the existence of the secret graveyard, next to the jail, to public attention.

In 2019, Jackson pigs pulled over Bettersten’s brother, pulled em out of eir car and slammed em to the ground in such a way that it caused eir death. Eir sister, Bettersten Wade, became a recognizable figure in the local Jackson community as ey waged a relentless public battle to advocate for prosecution of the pigs who were responsible. One of the pigs was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a mere five years. Subsequently, Bettersten Wade filed a wrongful death suit against the Jackson Police Department, this lawsuit is ongoing and has been highly publicized in the local news.

On 5 March 2023, Bettersten Wade’s 37 year-old son, Dexter Wade, left home with a friend but never returned. Bettersten Wade filed a missing person’s report and continuously contacted Jackson and Hinds County officials for months but never got a reply. Then, five months after the fact, an investigator came to eir home to inform em of Dexter’s death.

The story coming from the pigs is that an hour after leaving home, Dexter was hit by a police vehicle driven by an off-duty pig. The illegitimate authorities claim they’ve been unable to reach Ms. Bettersten Wade for months, despite finding Dexter’s wallet with eir I.D. and Ms. Wade’s address, and with Ms. Wade being a known local figure due to eir struggle against police murder of eir brother. Nevertheless, Dexter’s body was buried behind the jail with the number 672 stuck to the pole. To make matters worse, once Ms. Wade found the burial plot ey was told ey would have to pay $250 to the county to have eir son’s remains retrieved, as eir body was considered property of the state of Mississippi!

Ms. Wade and eir lawyer requested to be present when the body was examined, and ey was denied even that dignity and eir humyn courtesy. Dexter’s remains were not embalmed, nor put in a casket, but were stuck in a bag causing rapid decomposing in a shallow grave. When Ms. Wade and eir lawyer arrived the remains of Dexter had already been dug up, “breaking the chains of custody” necessary to determine Dexter’s actual cause of death.

From the results of a later independent autopsy, Dexter Wade’s body was in an advance state of decomposition, showed multiple blunt force injuries to the skull, ribs, and pelvis; in addition eir left leg was completely amputated from eir body. Eir body had been completely ran over by a police vehicle. By secretly burying the body without notifying the family, it makes it unlikely that the official findings of “accidental death” could later be questioned. Number 672 was never meant to be uncovered. But ey was. And the hidden horrors connected to Dexter’s death and burial would subsequently lead to many more families coming forward, finding missing loved ones secretly buried in Pauper’s graveyard behind the prison.

The striking similarities between the Emmett Till murder and attempted cover-up among county and state officials, and this contemporary tragedy highlight the ever present need for programs for decolonization in Jackson and the National Territory more generally. Each tragedy and struggle the people experience in which the inadequacy and/or corruption of the U.$. colonial government can be implicated is an issue We can organize around to intensify the class struggle for national unity.

Intensify the class struggle for national unity

Our lives depend on it!

Re-Build to win!

In my opinion, ULK 84 was the best issue I have ever seen in my years of getting the newsletter. In response to “On Tennessee Bans Slavery - So What?”: While I agree voting has poor success it is a start on the process and can help create awareness among the sheeple.

Corruptaradans(as we call the sheeple of this corrupt state) changed the Colorado constitution to ban all slavery. But the Dept of Corruption ignored the will of the people (I am shocked!) and said it did not apply to prisoner slaves.

However, two law firms joined forces and filed an action in Denver Dist Court to demand minimum wage for prisoners’ work (case no: 2022CV30421). The firms are:

Around the country more than 65 groups have joined the fight to take prisoner slavery is just peachy out of the U.$. Constitution. For a list of these, contact:

In ULK 84, we announced the addition of Indiana to our list of states with a campaign and petition to get prisoner grievances heard and addressed. The comrade who wrote the petition immediately put it to work, sending copies of the petition to all the official addresses listed on the bottom.

This comrade had mail confiscated in June 2023 that ey has been trying to get ever since.

“The indorm counselor asked me to sign the paper which said I had to either send it home or have it destroyed and they violated/broke my due process rights as well as my 1st Amendment rights. I told her I ain’t signing shit.”

“Then a day later I.A. here at Putnamville Correctional Facility called me over to give my publication to me after they had them for well over 6 months, which is a victory, and we will see more I believe.”

The comrade sent us a copy of the letter from the Deputy Chief of Investigations granting that the publications sent in early June were permissible – 7 months later!

While we agree there will be more victories, we’ve also seen setbacks following censorship battles in Indiana over the last couple years. MIM(Prisons) believes there are no rights, only power struggles. The grievance campaign being waged in over a dozen states across the country is geared towards getting prisoners organized to advocate for themselves because the system is always there to maintain the status quo.

Today the Deputy Chief of Investigations helped a comrade out, tomorrow ey might not be so generous. Recently the FBI arrested rapists running FCI-Dublin, yet at other times they’ve imprisoned and assassinated those who fight for the liberation of the oppressed. The agents of the state act in the interest of the state. So we cannot rest on our laurels after a couple censorship victories.

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.”

In Under Lock & Key 83, my article Ruchell Magee was published with the line:

“He would later impregnate her before his demise, with a son his mother would deny. A son that would grow into a polar opposite of George Jackson.”

This was a mistake as i intended to write that Jonathan Jackson’s son looks like a polarized version of George Jackson. This was merely a reference to the son’s appearance.

There is a duality in regards to the existence of the victimization in the New Afrikan nation and generally among oppressed people. The duality expresses itself when oppressed people avoid struggle, avoid acknowledgment of their colonization and oppression, because of a psychosocial tendency to align one’s self with strength, victory, privilege, excess, and power. This tendency is deeply rooted in one of the characteristics of the “colonial mentality,” which is a lack of dignity, pride, and self-worth. In this case of identity crisis and pathology, the oppressed chooses to derive its pride, dignity, self-worth (and perceived social, political, and economic interests) from the upper echelons of empire, from the imperialist power structure.

There is another side of this duality which thrives, not on its own victimhood per se, but more aptly on its ability to resist, thwart, and overcome the complexities of the colonial-imperial oppression. These are “the people,” so often refereed to in radical discourse, “the people’s” collective will in movement fighting, struggling ceaselessly.

The basic truth is that in every contradiction there are winners and losers. Losers, by default, die victims. Winners are victimizers. The issue, from my humble point of view, only arises when We have a social group, or a broad mass within a social group after long periods of oppression, become content with their own status as victims. So content in fact that they themselves have rendered all resistance and tactical victories among themselves as illegitimate expressions of the oppressed experience. This is indeed an issue because war has a sole purpose to destroy the will and/or ability for the opposition to resist our advancement.

“War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale. If we would conceive as a unit the countless number of duels which make up a war, we shall do so best by supposing to ourselves two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: his first object is to throw his adversary, and thus to render him incapable of further resistance… Violence arms itself with the inventions of Art and Science [cognitive, neuro sciences, behavioral sciences] in order to contend against violence.”(1)

The inherent danger and crippling effect of the pathology of New Afrikan Victimization can be seen in many instances, but i will highlight one in particular.

i am speaking here of the case of Brother Othal “Ozone” Wallace, a New Afrikan man in Florida currently fighting against the State’s death penalty. Ozone is a father and was an active participant in the efforts of liberation for New Afrikan and other oppressed people. Prior to his current captivity Ozone was active in search and rescue missions of suspected human trafficking victims. As a craftsman by trade he helped rebuild communities damaged by hurricane disasters. Ozone was also on the front lines of armed demonstrations advocating armed self defense and armed struggle against the oppression of New Afrikans.

In June 2021, Ozone was exiting his vehicle while in a residential area, when he was approached by a Daytona Beach Police officer who asked a question common to colonial and oppressed subjects globally, “Where are you going? Do you live here?” Body cam footage shows the officer repeat, “Do you live here? Yes or no?” While he grabbed Ozone by the shoulders. At that point the footage becomes shaky and blurry, but it should be understood that this entire incident, from the Police’s observation as someone “unwelcome”, “suspect”, “threatening”, is a textbook chain of events in the efforts of occupation and counter-insurgent forces. This “regular” treatment of New Afrikans is contrary to the U.$. constitution’s Fourth Amendment right to protection from illegal search and seizure, but its regularity showcases that New Afrikans are still a colonized population whose existence is situated outside the general legalities of the empire.

Somehow during the physical struggle, initiated by the officer’s arrogant choice to grab Ozone, the officer ended up shot in his face, while Ozone escaped the scene. He was captured days later, in a wooded area in Georgia, where state agents also allege to have found multiple flash bangs, rifle plates, body armor, two rifles, two handguns, and several boxes of ammunition.

In the ensuing “legal” drama, once the officer died in a hospital as a result of his wounds in August of 2021, Prosecutors began seeking the death penalty, the family of the officer filed a civil suit, suing Ozone for $5 million, specifically the money accumulated by Ozone’s criminal defense fundraiser page. Prosecutors have sought to have his GoFundMe account shutdown. In short, Ozone was and remains under attack, and his experience is synonymous with New Afrikan liberation in general.

My reason for highlighting Ozone’s experience is that i see it as an example and a dividing line question among “the left” and New Afrikans particularly and Black liberationists (of many stripes) generally. My question to the movement(s), to Our People, why is Ozone not as known as Michael Brown or George Floyd? Why is he not garnering support and attention from the Black and radical press? Why is he virtually unknown to the common persyn of the street? The simple answer is that New Afrikans, generally speaking, even within so-called radical circles, have become infected with that colonial pathology that i call New Afrikan Victimization. Some of us are too content with Our imagery and association with victimhood. Others delude themselves into behaving as if this victimization doesn’t exist on an institutional and systemic level. Instead opting for the “boot straps” mentality which is also a socio-pathology.

Too many of us have failed to acknowledge that We are at war, that we’re subjects, not free and liberated citizens of a free democratic society. We’ve failed to realize the there are no “rights” only power struggles, and those who dictate power subsequently dictate what “rights” are respected or discarded. Most important, We’ve failed to realize the implications of these failures. Thus We have Ozone, and other Political Prisoners of War lost in captivity without support or even acknowledgment from even elements of Movement(s) that are supposed to be supporting Political Prisoners of War. Such groups, generally, have forgotten the current epoch of struggle, that there are Political Prisoners being captured almost daily. That yesteryears “Black Nationalist hate group” designation that fueled COINTELPRO and PRISACTS has been replaced by today’s “Black Identity Extremist” designation that is fueling present day surveillance, sabotage, and imprisonment of movement activists. While we should never forget or relinquish support of BPP/BLA Political Prisoners or others from earlier eras of struggle, We also should not exclude or ignore those currently active in the streets (even if We do not agree with their political line).

Free Ozone and All Political Prisoners

^{Notes: 1. Carl von Clausewitz, 1832, On War.}

As I embark upon this mission to impose my spirit within your world, I ask that you be patient with me. I do not wish to cause you any discomfort but, I do mean to cause you to become “ANGRY” at the injustices that have been committed against every man, woman, and child, living within this capitalistic KKKountry called Amerikkka! Only when WE become “ANGRY” about a situation, a circumstance, a problem, do WE wish to do something about it. Therefore, as you read word by word, line by line, I hope that you become ANGRY!

As WE all know, the month before us is the month in which WE celebrate “Black History.” The “History” that so many wish, hope to, and try to keep away from US, Our children, and the people, will be told within the schools that so many Black, Brown and Red children attend. However, the teachings will be “whitewashed”, “diluted”, and “carefully told”, by those that do not want Afrikan History to be taught here in Amerikkka! Our history is their history! So, WE must tell Our stories to the people. Impose Our own history upon Our children. Let the people know that “Without Us” this so called “New World” would be nothing. WE must tell Our children the true history of Queen Harriet Tubman. WE must tell them about Nat Turner, Geronimo Pratt, George Jackson, Yogi Bear, Assata Shukar, Angela Davis, and those that played a part in the Afrikan Liberation movement. All those that lost their lives fighting for the freedom of “THIS” generation of men, women, and children. Souljahs, well, organized for revolutionary determination! Revolutionary Organized Sistas of the Earth!

We must tell them how those within power crushed our babies’ heads and attempted to raid our homes with guns blazing only to suffer their own casualties. We must tell them about the Black Liberation Army, the Black Ridahs Liberation Party, the Black Panther Party, and all those that do not get mentioned within those schools of hindrance.

With that being said, I end this with,

Vita Wa Watu

MIM(Prisons) adds: Black History Month is an attempt to appease the oppressed and control the narrative of revolutionary history as this comrade points out. It is only by sharing, learning from, and applying the lessons of our true revolutionary history that we can meet the needs of the oppressed. That is why we must build our own study programs, study groups, and organizing networks.

In Under Lock & Key No. 83 (Fall 2023) there was an article authored by the Komrade General Divine Minister titled “The Enemy Within,” wherein the Komrade expressed his antipathy for the prisoners who have malleable and submissive personalities. I intend to elucidate upon why said prisoners are so complacent and have an unfortunate propensity for collaborating with their overseers. However, before doing so I find it necessary to elucidate what constitutes a political prisoner.

Major documents have been written on this subject and multiple definitions have been used to define what constitutes a political prisoner. From Komrade George Jackson’s definition:

“All Black people, wherever they are, whatever their crimes, even crimes against other Blacks, are political prisoners because the system has dealt with them differently than with Whites. Whitey gets the benefit of every law, every loophole, and the benefit of being judged by his peers – other White people. Blacks don’t get the benefit of any such jury trial by peers. Such a trial is almost a cinch to result in the conviction of a Black person, and it’s a conscious political decision that Blacks don’t have those benefits…”(1)

To the definition given by the Komrades of MIM(Prisons):

“All prisoners are political. War is politics and prisons are war. While some enter prison politicized, many more are politicized inside…”(2)

Albeit, both definitions provide some context, they ultimately fail to explicate the criterion for Political Prisoners. As explained by the New Afrikan Freedom Fighter Atiba Fakih:

“PRACTICE is that criterion. Political Prisoners are Revolutionaries; they are conscious and active servants of the people, Political Prisoners direct their energies toward the enemies of the people – they do not commit”crimes” against the people. Political Prisoners are Revolutionary Cadre; they are “fighting men and women” from among the people. Political Prisoners are the most conscious element of the people. While they are a “part of” the people, distinctions must be made between them and the colonized masses as a whole.”(3)

This definition draws a clear line of demarcation between the political prisoner and the “inmate slave”. Unlike the complacent, submissive prisoner, the political prisoner has undergone a process of social and mental growth. S/he has transformed the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality, further arming themselves with the discernment that is needed to combat the war of attrition that has been launched by the oppressor nation.

The distinctions between the political prisoner and the “inmate slave” are sharped by the political prisoner’s praxis. However, this doesn’t relieve the political prisoner from eir duties of doing Mobilizing, Organizing, Revolutionizing, & Educating among eir peers. With knowledge comes responsibility.

You see the “real enemy” recognizes that these prisons are reservoirs full of freedom fighters from the oppressed nations who are most receptive and responsive to the need to become conscious, active participants in the war against the chief colonizer. Which is why the overseers are adroit at dividing and conquering the “inmate slave”.

We become complicit to the war being waged against us when we further alienate the “inmate slave”. We must understand everything and everybody is a unity of opposites and everything is in motion and changing all the time. Internal contradictions are the basis for change, but external factors set the conditions and influence. If we look for the worst in people, we shall always find it, this is not so difficult, but it is better to bring out the good in them if we can. Alienating people is easy, but inspiring them takes more effort and has better results. Getting angry and fed up with our peers is also easy, it takes more effort to understand the cause of their behavior. You see when adopting an ideology that compels – at some point – one to take a confrontational stand against a stronger opponent based solely upon principle, one must have a certain mental and emotional fortitude and commitment. The majority of our peers don’t have this sort of constitution; therefore, this certain mental and emotional fortitude must be instilled in our peers and this can only be done if we assist them with breaking the psychological barriers that have stultified their will to resist.

The prisoner is the child of a domestically colonized people – a people who have been traumatized, abused, miseducated, murdered, denigrated, and perpetually subjected to economic insecurities. Under these conditions their values and sense of self have been destroyed, therefore making them susceptible to manipulation and other psychological warfare techniques.

As the Komrade Joka Heshima Jinsai points out:

“Perhaps the single most glaring proof that New Afrikan people, Our people, suffer from colonial psychosis (i.e. irrational behavior by colonial subjects) is the historic and consistent irrational responses We have had to Our collective oppression.”(4)

He goes on to say:

“The people, by and large, have been conditioned to compete, not cooperate, to revere hyper-individualism while looking skeptically upon collective work and responsibility; to be dependent on the same institutions responsible for their oppression, instead of depending on one another.”(4)

We must always remember to remember this when struggling with Our peers. The oppressors have waged some intense psychological warfare on us. Some are just not going to be receptive to progressive thinking. Nevertheless I’m firmly convinced that if we do Mobilizing, Organizing, Revolutionizing, & Education We will create conditions that promote an ethics of duty, loyalty, commitment, and responsibility.

The Struggle is Never Ending

<sup>Sources:
1. George Jackson, Blood in my Eye.
2. “On Transforming The Colonial/Criminal Mentality”, New Afrikan P.O.W. Journal, Book One.
3. General Divine Minister, October 2023, “Where Your Loyalty Lies, The Enemy Within”, Under Lock & Key No. 83 Fall 2023.
4. Joka Heshima Jinsai, On Withdrawal, Part 1.</sup>