MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
This topic keeps coming up again and again and now I see it listed in
the USW campaign list. Let’s look at this from a practical perspective
and not from an ideological one.
Snitching is telling on people. It’s giving information on someone
else to a higher authority to act on it. We can all agree on that
definition. The more important question is to what INTENTION is someone
snitching, and this is what we should analyze as it pertains to our
struggle.
I’ve been reading in ULK about these “comrades” who snitch
on other prisoners because they claim it’s for the good of our struggle.
I call Bullshit. If you really care so much about the health of the
population, become a drug counselor or start a campaign to fight drug
addiction. But you’re not doing any of those things, which actually
involve WORK. Instead you sit in your cell and file these papers to
internal affairs or whoever using the same system you claim to be
opposing, and then you beg them to protect you. Disgusting.
The cops you are snitching on are not part of some larger conspiracy
to keep inmates addicted to drugs or control the population. That’s
absurd. These cops are actually our allies, and though they may be
motivated by profit, they are still facing the same risk and fate we now
find ourselves in. If it weren’t for these allies, we would never have
phones in prison which allow us to contribute to the struggle in ways we
otherwise could never do, not to mention the obvious connections with
our loved ones without police invasion of our privacy.
I understand you who snitch probably can’t afford a phone, and this
makes you angry and spiteful so you wish to do your “public service,”
right? Or maybe you are simply envious of the power and influence of
those who have the plugs. Sorry for that; prison is rough. But don’t sit
here and claim you do it because you just care about us all so much.
That being said, are drugs beneficial to the population? No, but
unfortunately sometimes that comes with it and we should spend our
efforts to make sure the right things are coming in and not the wrong
things. We don’t need to throw out the whole baby with the bathwater. In
fact, a lot of marijuana comes in too and personally this helps a lot
with my service-related PTSD. Shame on you or anyone trying to shut down
these precious lifelines using the guise of our struggle. Getting more
people locked in prison because of your personal misery does not help
the movement. You are not fooling me or any of the real ones out
there.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This comrade is largely
responding to an article in ULK 84, CA
Silences Reports of Drug Trade in Prisons. We can acknowledge the
added nuance in this situation. However, most of the articles we’ve
printed on this topic are comrades trying to get people to file
grievances against political repression or physical abuse by staff,
and other prisoners refusing because they “don’t snitch.” Such cases are
cut and dry. While we can’t rely on the imperialist state to police
itself, grievances and lawsuits are tactics that contribute to building
power. We must expose abuses of the state to combat them. So to say
“Stop snitching on pigs” as this comrade does is truly a reactionary
statement equivalent to saying “don’t resist oppression”.
What the comrade above says about running programs to fight drug
addiction is right on. Just reporting things to the imperialists is
never gonna change things on its own. We must build our own power and
our own independent institutions of the oppressed. That is when the
imperialists will really start to make moves to out compete us by
reforming their own institutions. As far as the state conspiring to
spread drugs, we need to understand the levels at which such things
happen. Just because every C.O. didn’t come together and discuss these
plans doesn’t mean it’s not intentional. To put
it another way, if the state wanted to stop drug use in prisons they
could. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Whether prescription meds or
illicit ones, we know this is a common tool of pacification in prisons,
as is digital media as the comrade
from Pennsylvania discusses.
We discussed with this comrade the loosening of old hierarchies,
staff shortages, and the opening of opportunities in prisons today. Some
of the old ways are going away. Mostly this has led to negative things
like more drugs and neglect so far. But it does create new
possibilities. And that is why we are printing this response. We do want
comrades to be trying to understand the changes where they are
imprisoned and thinking about how our goals can expand and work within
the existing motions of change. United fronts and temporary alliances
are necessary strategic tools.
We just wrapped up our Fourth of You-Lie annual fundraiser. The
results so far aren’t great. We’ve only received about a third of the
number of donations we got from comrades inside for all of 2023, and
less than a third in the amount received. That means we need to get
twice as many donations in the next 6 months as we got in the first 6
months of this year to maintain where we were. And ideally, we want to
be increasing the percent of funding that comes from donations from
prisoners. The amount of donations we receive from prisoners is one way
we measure mass support for our work and whether we should keep doing
it.
Our education programs continue to develop. We’ve mailed out the
first group response to our University of Maoist Thought study group on
the Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army. We’ve
completed an update to our study guide for The Fundamentals of
Political Economy, a must-read text. Comrades on the outside also
completed a study of MIM Theory 14: United Front that is
reflected in the content of this issue. We will likely continue this
theme in ULK 87, looking at the united front in Palestine more
and printing your reports on building united front for the September 9th
Day of Peace and Solidarity.
We are also entering Black August as this issue hits the cell blocks.
And soon after that, the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.
Besides the Runaway
Slaves Coalition statement on the United Front for Peace in Prisons,
we did not get any submissions on these topics. But as always we have
our September 9th Organizing Pack that prisoners can request to get more
information on the history of this day, and countless books and
pamphlets on the Black liberation struggle that you can get from our
Free Books to Prisoners Program in exchange for political work.
The week of December 6-13 has been marked as a week of solidarity by
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. Over the years comrades have suggested a
boycott of any activities that financially benefit the prison system.
This is the tactic being implemented in December, with the campaign
focusing on ending prison slavery and overall abolition of prisons in
general. Our next issue will be out in early November. So if you are
organizing for this week of solidarity, send in art or articles to share
for ULK 87.
This issue features content produced by United Struggle from Within
comrades as part of our campaign to connect the prison struggle to the
student movement for Palestine. Some of these materials were also used
in a pamphlet
put together and distributed on the streets, to get these messages into
the hands of students and outside supporters.
As we finalize the content for this issue, reports are coming in of
the disproportionate deaths of prisoners in the recent heat waves.
Prisoners and prisons are being excluded from new worker protection laws
dealing with heat. This June was the hottest on record. And yet the
imperialists still aren’t getting serious about reducing CO2 emissions
to slow global warming. We welcome your reports on heat and climate
change, especially organizing efforts and how to build a united front
around these campaigns, for the next issue of ULK.
Amerikan Elections
Finally, i thought we should say a few words on the upcoming U.$.
presidential election. For those that don’t know, our slogan is, “Don’t
Vote, Organize!” We aren’t too interested in who becomes president
because there is no anti-imperialist option.
As has become the trend, the Democratic Party wing have been
campaigning hard to “stop fascism”. Our line has not changed since 2016,
when we argued that Trump was not instituting fascism as president
then either. But that does not mean we should not be vigilantly looking
for the emergence of fascism and opportunities to combat it.
Comrades in Texas have reported on lumpen gangs being used by the
state as enforcers in Coffield
Unit and Allred
Unit. Another reader in Allred more recently reported that staff
using drugs to bribe prisoners has continued:
“The prison administration here at Allred Unit have been getting away
with killing prisoners for so long with the help of these so-called gang
members that they fear not the possibility of accountability.”
The use of gangs to police prisoners is not new in Texas history.
However, in the past this role was filled by the euro-Amerikan prisoners
who enjoyed privileges in exchange for enforcing discipline on the
oppressed nation prisoners.(see Robert T. Chase’s book We Are Not
Slaves) While we have written extensively on the revolutionary
potential of the First World lumpen, and even lumpen organizations,
these organizations also have this reactionary potential, making them an
unreliable ally of the proletariat.
In fact, it is quite damning that these L.O.s are consciously working
for the imperialists to violently repress other oppressed nationals. We
address this further in this issue with the ongoing campaign (and
debate) around “Stop Collaborating!” Of course we see the same thing in
Third World countries around the world where the imperialist have built
death squads by bribing various lumpen and military men. And we do
recognize such death squads as a form of exported fascism with no real
base in the Third World itself.
Here in the heart of empire it is more typical to see the
euro-Amerikan petty bourgeoisie play the role of fascist foot soldiers.
We saw a glimpse of this in the attacks of bands of young white men on
the UCLA encampment for Palestine as cops idly stood by. And we’ve seen
it in various street clashes over the last decade with groups like the
Proud Boys attacking radical left demonstrators or gender-non-conforming
events.
But these remain fringe events. While Trump represents a certain
heightening of contradictions in this country, the U.$. state is still
very stable. No one can become president of the United $tates without
support from the imperialists. The current support of the ultra-rich for
another Trump presidency has been pinned largely on the possibility of
Trump era tax cuts expiring if Biden wins a second term. So this is
hardly a sign of the imperialists recognizing the need for a strong man
to move this country into a more authoritarian direction. On the
contrary, it is a sign of a further eating away at the stability of the
United $tates by undercutting state funding through neo-Liberalism. Yes,
the contradictions are heightening, no it is not time to join in united
front with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever ends up being the more
status quo option they give us in November.
The student movement for a free Palestine must correct the following
errors: capitulation, the First World obsession with “mutual aid”,
refusal to learn from history, blind fumbling in the interest of “doing
something”, hastiness to condemn (rather than critique) the struggle
here and abroad, surface level third-worldism as a justification for
inaction, and the fetish for determining who’s making “real communist
revolution” in place of a dialectical-materialist analysis of
history.
1: The Liberal Trend, The Capitulationists, The Refusal to
Stand IN OPPOSITION to Empire
The first trend I will critique consists of centering one’s own
pro-Palestine political action around things that in fact stop short of
anything that aids the fight for a free Palestine and an end to i$rael.
People following this trend do not fight for things such as divestment
from (or destruction of) weapons manufacturers or rejecting politicians
who support i$rael in words, policy, or money. Rather, these people and
groups focus on things such as organizing donations for individual
Palestinian families, securing scholarships for Palestinian refugees and
diaspora, or, in a more specific and truly condemnable example, the
schools who capitulated and abandoned their encampment for paltry
promises such as a house for Arab and Muslim students.
People rush to defend these forms of “resistance” with “we’re
centering Palestinian voices”, while not recognizing that none of the
things they’re fighting for (NGO-style refugee aid, more
Palestinian-diaspora petty-bourgeois in elite ideological institutions
of the amerikkkan state) are in any way actually opposed to the
amerikkkan empire or contribute in any way to a future in which
Palestine and its people are free from i$raeli and amerikkkan
aggression. We saw the protests in 2020 end in symbolic gains that were
not in any way contradictory to the U.$. empire, nor did they bring true
freedom from the brutality of kkkops in the ghetto. Today, this trend
threatens an unpleasant end for the currently-still-radical Palestinian
liberation movement – a ceasefire on i$rael’s terms, maybe two states,
more scholarships for the Palestinians who survived and were wealthy
enough to get to the United $tates, and everyone who was uncomfortable
chanting anything besides “ceasefire now” (the big brother of “defund
the police”) gets to feel good about “playing their part”.
In the past, people have been harsh on MIM(Prisons) for refusing to
capitulate to accepting any concessions for the First World that come at
the expense of the Third World, or even concessions that don’t
necessarily come at the expense of the Third World but serve to pacify
the First World. Most notably, this is expressed in how angry people get
about the analysis proving that prisoners, while no doubt an oppressed
class and a hotbed for potential for organizing, are not exploited, so
MIM(Prisons) doesn’t generally promote the fight for better wages for
prisoners. To self-criticize, even I myself originally was upset about
MIM(Prisons)’s stated intentions not to fight for healthcare for
transgender prisoners, interpreting this as latent transmisogyny rather
than a recognition that healthcare for trans prisoners (as important a
battle as I believe it to be) is not a struggle in the interest of the
global proletariat. Incidents like the capitulation of student
encampments at Northwestern University, Vassar College, and other elite
universities display clearly how radical a line that really is.
Going forward, two things are going to have to happen in order for
further protests for Palestine of this form to yield meaningful results:
first, protesters are going to have to recognize that everything they do
in protest should be in the actual, direct interest of the oppressed
people of Palestine, not in the interest of “anti-racism” or
“solidarity” or any bullshit half-measures. Second, protesters will have
to prepare to be faced with violence and with the full force of state
repression. Here’s a little logic-puzzle version of what happens when
you say “we’re staying here, we’re causing trouble, and we’re not moving
until you (divest/get rid of your dual degree program/get this
politician out of our town/whatever)”: there are three options. Option
one: you give in, you leave there, you stop causing trouble, you get
your House or your scholarships or your vote-in-six-months. Option two:
they give in, they accept your demands and nothing less. Option three:
they break out the tear gas, the riot batons, the robot dogs, the
big-ass battering-ram pigmobiles. And here’s the truth of it all: if you
let it be option one, you’re worthless, you’ve sold out the people of
Palestine. If you don’t let it be option one, if you make The Man choose
between option two and option three. Well, if he doesn’t have a really
good goddamn reason to choose option two, it’s gonna be option three.
That’s the unfortunate truth, so you better be ready, and start doing
wrist and shoulder stretches, because plastic flexicuffs hurt worse than
the metal ones, what’s up with that.
2. The Dogmatic Trend and its Flaws
What I just laid out describes the main current that I see “on the
ground” in so-called pro-Palestine “activism” that does nothing at all
for Palestine itself. I doubt I’m telling you guys anything new here,
besides confirming that such things are happening and making the
particulars clear. On the flip side of activism-theater, refusal to
study history, and “wins” for the First World, I also have noticed that
there is a trend to be unbelievably reductive and flippant when it comes
to what one’s orientation towards Third World liberation groups engaged
in armed struggle should be, what course of action should be taken in
the First World, and a refusal to engage in good-faith conversation
about either of those subjects without dogmatism.
I am speaking in particular about people who will say (correctly)
“fundraising and mutual aid and liberal-left protests don’t do anything
for Palestine”, but then follow that statement up with “the ONLY thing
that will ACTUALLY free Palestine is communist revolution”. Though the
last month has only strengthened my convictions that communism (in the
form laid out by Marx, Lenin, and Mao, and practiced in the USSR and
China) is correct, and true, and the only pathway to the permanent
liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world, it seems
disgustingly chauvinistic to imply that the thing that a First-Worlder
can do that has the most material impact on the people of Palestine is
to focus on one’s home country, on some idea of “making revolution”.
Notably, other than MIM(Prisons) and another group I am working with
who I shall not name, I have noticed that people who say such things
don’t ever enjoy discussing what “making revolution” looks like, in this
day, in this country, beyond platitudes. I see this trend frequently
among communists who I know offline, but also among certain prominent
users of popular “anti-revisionist” communist online discussion boards
(I say this not to gossip or shit-talk, but rather because I believe it
behooves one to recognize that even spaces that portray themselves as
“anti-chauvinist” or “anti-revisionist” do not by default take Third
World liberation and the contradictions that it would entail seriously.
Judging by former discussions I’ve seen on the Maoist forums, this
warping of the idea of “revisionism” to defend inaction isn’t a new
trend per se).
This correct rejection of mutual aid and petit-bourgeois identity
politics, followed by the proclamation of the vulgar line of “nothing
you do has an impact for the people of Palestine if you aren’t making
communist revolution in your home country”, seems to me to be a
disguised version of the same sentiment that leads to disgusting and
chauvinistic lines such as “well, we should critically support Hamas,
but they aren’t communist, so the most important thing is to be critical
of them”. Did Torkil Lauesen believe that the most important thing that
a First-Worlder could do was “make revolution”, and that in the absence
of a clear path forward, one should sit on their heels and wait for one
to appear? did Ulrike Meinhoff? Would any of the people who say, whether
behind their screens or out on the streets or in the encampment, “the
only thing you can do for the people of Palestine is make communist
revolution”, genuinely try and claim that they’re doing more for
Palestinian liberation than Hamas, Lauesen, or Meinhoff? Of course I
don’t intend to advocate adventurism, I don’t believe that we in the
First World should be taking up the gun or robbing banks, but I do
believe that a refusal to engage with the question of what a liberated
Palestine (and, if Cuba and South Africa, for example, are any
precedent, not necessarily a communist Palestine) would look like beyond
First World radical academics’ ideas of “building revolution” is just a
flipside of the chauvinism displayed in the “well, at least we’re doing
SOMETHING” rhetoric of mutual aid and peaceful protest.
No matter whether they distort Marxism, Maoism, or third-worldism,
they inevitably find their way to the same conclusion: none of the
groups currently debating and fighting and sacrificing for the
Palestinian cause are worthy of my time; they’re all revisionist,
bourgeois, labor-aristocrats; students are all postmodernist
bourgeois-wannabes risking their educations and sometimes their lives
for the bit; protesters are all shills for the DNC; thank goodness I
don’t have to feel bad about my inaction. The dogmatists, the
“do-nothing”-ists, imply, in essence, the same thing that the first type
of chauvinists implicitly believe. The job of a First-Worlder is to
fundraise, or to go to art builds, or to read and daydream about the day
a revolution free of contradictions springs from the soil, while the job
of a Third-Worlder is to die.
3. Both Are Worse
As I’ve already said, my central point is thus: both trends, more
than anything else, serve as a justification for the ostensibly
class-conscious First-Worlder to not do anything that would compromise
their comfortable lives, a veritable “class-suicide hotline.”
“no, First Worlder, don’t go beyond liberalism and bourgeois
legality, don’t commit your valuable free time to reading and study,
don’t risk getting expelled – parade-type protests, symbolic
encampments, and mutual aid funds are totally sufficient and just as
important! You have so much to chant for, you have so many tech jobs to
land!”
“no, First-Worlder, don’t get involved, don’t join any groups, don’t
talk to the lower and deeper masses, don’t learn from resistance
movements of the past – you haven’t fought with enough other First
Worlders online or in your book clubs, god forbid you accidentally make
a mistake and learn from practice!”
These are the two trends that we must combat in the struggle for a
free Palestine here in the belly of the beast, where all the funding and
weapons for the ongoing genocide continue to flow from.
We ask our imprisoned lumpen readers, can snitching really be
stopped without independent power from the oppressor?
What would it mean to be loyal to “your people” or “your
folks”?
Can the principle of anti-snitching be applied to the enemy who it
is designed to protect fellow oppressed nations or lumpen from in the
first place?
Lumpen as Aspiring
Oppressors
First off, I’m not gonna sugar coat shit. We must identify the
‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressor’, with a concrete analysis, which can get
confusing; because the two groups are united under the flag of the 2nd
Beast and because the oppressed lumpen in the United $tates of Amerika
are struggling to ‘transform themselves’ into the oppressors, so when
they look in the mirror their reflections often resemble the opposite;
in a political, spiritual, psychological, geographical and sexual
essence. Keep in mind that, subjectively and objectively, the U.$.
lumpen are in a figurative yacht compared to the canoes of the
proletariat and peasants of the Third World, as seen in their past and
present conditions. They also sail on entirely different waters,
figuratively speaking.
However, neither ship has an arsenal of cannon balls, as does the
oppressive Imperial Navy, which is a similarity. The problem is that the
U.$. lumpen are trying to arm themselves with cannons inside their
yachts, as a means of initiating the Imperial Navy and are aspiring to
become oppressors themselves, not as a means of internationally ending
oppression/exploitation – it’s the Amerikan nightmare. They are a
spitting image of their culture. They want to grow up and get spanked by
porn stars, like Donald Trump, with herds of piggy banks to save the day
like captain-save-a-rate. The majority of them worship Amerikan Idols,
not because they have to, but because that’s what they strive, with
blood, sweat and tears, to become.
What use is it for the lumpen of the oppressed nations to wrestle
power away from the oppressors only to use that power to restore, or
intensify imperialism? Chances of success is less than a gamble, with
these people steering the ship, it’s a guaranteed loss, because they
only understand bourgeois revolution, not a communist endgame. In a
materialist sense, the lumpen have never demonstrated, throughout
history, any success in establishing socialism. The lumpen have always
failed as a vanguard for very specific reasons, because they are a root
of imperialism. And if you don’t uproot the entire plant, from the roots
up, then the weeds resurrect, inside of the garden, and we find
ourselves in the same situation. It’s a rookie mistake to paint an
idealistic picture of the lumpen dictating to the rest of the world; not
only that, it would be revisionism for the lumpen to jump the
proletariat’s place, as dictators.
The lumpen of the oppressed nations often as not tend to feed into
the weed of imperialism, by cheer leading for and supporting the pigsty
with its state and federal criminal injustice system. What I’m trying to
say is that, even if the oppressed nations establish independent power
from the oppressor, they are likely to keep the same police system in
place, or worse. So, not only will snitching not ‘really be stopped
without independent power from the oppressor,’ snitching will not stop
even with independent power from the oppressor. There’s no
telling what the lumpen will do, if they get cannon for their yacht, but
the way that it looks from my hypothetical perspective is that the
lumpen are likely to use cannons to hunt down, loot, rape and sink the
canoes of the Third World proletariat, who aspire to eliminate
imperialism. Yachts, canoes and the Imperialist Navy represent the
material forces keeping each group afloat. Cannons represents an ability
to commit piracy, to dominate and sink other ships.
The Other Side
People need to wake up and realize that the reason why the
oppressed/exploited have historically been opposed to the oppressors
(the pigs, badge-less pigs, rodents of all varieties, who serve the pigs
for many flavors of cheese/slop, and reptilian serpents of the
Illusionati) is because they were common enemies who openly oppressed
along all three strands of oppression (nation, class, and gender). The
fucked up part that’s got all of the oppressed clawing at each others’
throats is that the slick ass enemies are disguising themselves as
friends and acting out delusional charades to convince the oppressed
masses into believing that the united snakes of pigtropolis are friends
and not infiltrators.
On to the next aspect of the contradiction; silence versus full
disclosure. To this day, the oppressed lumpen do not truly uphold and
adhere to a code of silence in a solid, revolutionary way. Originally,
the code of silence was meant to bolster organizational unity and
loyalty amongst the communities, so that our oppressed nations could
grow, struggle and develop internally. Making moves in silence is a
powerful organizational strategy and tactic, when applied correctly.
Codes of silence are meant to shield allies, who we are loyal to,
from incrimination. They are not to shield enemies, who are not loyal to
us, from incrimination. Why would we show loyalty to the enemy? Showing
loyalty to the enemy is showing disloyalty to your allies. The problem
is that we’ve got snakes and such trying to silently ride with the enemy
and apply codes of silence to them, in their defense.
With that said, it’s one thing to disseminate information to the
enemy to get should-be allies targeted, but it’s on a whole other level
when somebody, who’s claiming to be anti-pig, decides to put in actual
work in collaboration with the pigs. The collaborators even go so far as
to let these pigs into their L.O.’s, so that they’re official gang
members who get to transform at will and exercise their ability to set
you up on fraudulent disciplinary reports to get you stuck in maximum
security prisons. To get away with murder and police brutality, with
manipulating sex-starved prisoners into weird ass situations, with false
jacket allies, etc. Cooperating and coordinating with pigs on these
types of levels is against the code and should be serious violations for
all L.O.’s involved.
In my experience, these L.O.’s typically police the prisons and
streets more so than the actual pigs, with detective investigations full
of incriminating ass pig-questions and their violent enforcing of
childish rules, laws, codes, etc. Different names for the same shit. The
key word is enforce. When they enforce laws, that makes them
law enforcers. Their game of dress-up comes with the same biased and
prejudiced judgments that lead to sentences which are much more
oppressive than the pigs prisons and jails. These sick mfer’s are liable
to force innocent people into physical and sexual torture chambers,
where they do fucking weirdo shit to em, on an intense level that
happens in prisons. They use coded lingo like pigs, they wear uniforms
and badges like pigs they hide behind numbers for protection like pigs
and they get paid to do evil ass shit like pigs.
It sucks if I hurt anybody’s soft, mushee-gushee, sensitive ass
feelings, but I’m not going to refrain from speaking the truth in
criticism.
Our Tasks
What I’m wondering is why do we even maintain a code of silence
towards any of these piggly-wiggly ass L.O.’s, when they ride with the
enemy against us on a regular basis?
Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that, in order for the
oppressed to win power and keep our feet down on the necks of those who
prayed on our downfall, we’ll need an independent intelligence network
of our own. So, technically we just need to redirect intelligence
gathering apparatuses in our favor and win them over to our side of the
fight, so as to counteract the counter-revolutionaries and others of
their ilk. And by this, I mean that snitching isn’t to be stopped when
we have our own independent institutions of the oppressed but that we
have to look at this aspect of the contradiction in a different light.
We have to call it something positive instead of a hackneyed,
connotative phrase that’s been abused and distorted since its conception
and use it to our advantage against our enemies, who seek to use such
tactics and strategies against us. It’s impossible to support an
emerging socialist government without an agency that specializes in this
field of work. What I’m saying is that we need to police the police.
In the meantime, we can locate the enemy’s snitches, show em mercy
and recruit em to our side without letting the enemy know. Then, we
flood the imperialists with double-agents who feed the imperialists
misleading or false intel. I mean, one way to look at this is that if we
try to “kill all the rats/pigs,” we’d have to kill almost the entirety
of every imperialist country. We can’t kill the entire world.
Oppression is a contagious disease that is transmitted through
imperialist society like an opioid addiction with withdrawals and
cravings. Once one contracts the disease, ey becomes desensitized,
individualistic and apathetic towards society. Voluntary and involuntary
participation in capitalist society is the cough that spreads this
disease. This sickness has an infinite array of symptoms, but the main
symptoms that pertain to this article are disloyalty, disunity and the
inability to distinguish ally from enemy. The oppressed nations have
maxims such as ‘it’s not about what you know, but who you know.’ The
oppressed seek to make friends with the powerful oppressors as a means
of rising from oppression to become oppressors themselves, and these
oppressed people will turn over all kinds of incriminating info (‘what
they know’) to these powerful enemies.
Successful socialist revolution is the medicine for the ailment.
Under communism, there are no pigs for rats to snitch to and no pigs to
police us. So if you wanna liquidate rats, pigs and serpents thus ending
snitching, socialist revolution welcomes you into the rank-and-file with
open arms.
The next question (one of my own) that I’ll explore is “what strands
of oppression are keeping snitching and policing alive?” Oppressed
nations don’t ‘keep snitching and policing alive’, per se. And from an
amerikan perspective one would automatically assume that the bourgeois
males of the white oppressor nations are the only ones to slam.
Nevertheless, snitching existed long before capitalism-imperialism and
long before white people had a nation. Despite what these ‘white power’
lunatics think, ‘power’ (snitching/policing being what ‘white’ people do
with ‘power’) is colorless. Ultimately, societal oppression itself, in
all three strands, is what fuels snitching/policing, because it concocts
an opportunity for all government of society to incentivize oppressed
people to desperately find a way out of said oppression through
cooperation with the oppressors, who have the power to lift the
oppressed up to their level. So if you end oppression altogether,
there’s no logical reason to snitch on anyone. Those who advocate for
the imperialist sources of oppression are to blame for keeping snitching
and policing alive. The criminal injustice system created oppressive
consequences for those who oppose their power structure and they feed
scooby snacks to the mystery-gang members who assist them in targeting
their enemies. Basically, it’s not the ‘strands of oppression’ that
keeps snitching/policing alive, but the oppressors who create oppression
that encourage people of every class, nation and gender to sell each
other out.
Snitching and policing will remain if current society remains. Only
under a communist society will snitching and policing end.
MIM(Prisons) responds: While these harsh critiques of
lumpen organizations do not apply to all L.O.s for all time, they
certainly will ring true for many. And while we look to the imprisoned
lumpen in this country as one of the most oppressed groups, which has
historically produced some dedicated and effective revolutionaries, it
is true that they are not the proletariat. And they/we all must
transform ourselves and combat the class (and often nation and gender)
interests that we are born into.
As this comrade points out, L.O.s power often comes from their
willingness to act outside what is normally allowed. “The ends justify
the means” is one version of this. This is why Tupac
and Mutulu
Shakur worked together to develop the THUG
LIFE code to promote among the oppressed nation lumpen via Tupac’s
music. They recognized the progressive capacity of the L.O. rejection of
the imperialist code, but the anti-people tendency of the L.O.s that no
longer had a code of their own, or had a very reactionary one.
This comrade gets to the heart of it when ey says we need to use the
tools that work to build an independent path for the oppressed towards
socialism. Just as the imperialists have intelligence operations, so
must we. Though our intelligence cannot mimic the pigs like so many
L.O.s do that use torture, sexual abuse, and other anti-people behaviors
to promote fear among the masses.
“Snitching”, or sharing information, is a tool that goes both ways.
You can tell the imperialists on the revolution, or you can tell the
revolutionaries about what the imperialists are up to. The real crime is
collaborating with the imperialists in either direction.
All of our readers who operate within the hideous belly of the beast
that is the United $nakes prison system know about this system’s cruel
and unrelenting oppression in every facet of daily life. This article
serves to highlight and expose the asinine nature of one particular
aspect of this oppression that is particularly relevant to our work:
censorship. Every time we send out a document, book, or newspaper, there
is always the risk that whatever pig is working in the mail room on the
day it arrives will arbitrarily opt to censor it for any number of
made-up reasons. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, this behavior has
the backing of the U.$. court system which has granted the prison
bureaucrats almost total control over deciding what comes into prisons.
Like every other instrument of control wielded by the state, the pigs
use this power to repress the masses of the oppressed groups, especially
if this repression targets political content that challenges the status
quo.
However, there are still victories to be won in appealing these cases
of censorship, which comrades in Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support
(AIPS) are striving to do for every incident that comes to our
attention. With this in mind, we hope to start publishing these
censorship reports as a way to communicate to you, our readers, our
efforts in combating censorship as well as to showcase particularly
pathetic attempts by the pigs to censor our mail.
North Carolina’s Brazen
Hypocrisy
In ULK 84, we included a piece of art sent in by a
subscriber of ours which depicted a pig officer beating a prisoner with
a baton. This was apparently too far for the North Carolina Division of
Prisons (NCDOP) who said that they don’t allow “depictions of violence”
and that this image “may encourage a group disruption.” We simply had to
scoff when we read this in light of the fact that the NCDOP specifically
lays out guidelines on when it is “appropriate” to beat prisoners with
“impact weapons” like the baton depicted in the art. To the pigs, it’s
fine to physically abuse and maim prisoners. But showing them a cartoon
of such acts? That’s where they draw the line.
MIM(Prisons):
Political Organization or Tattoo Artists?
MIM Distributors recently sent a copy of the Fundamental
Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons
(FPL) (which we recommend to all our readers who wish to get a
deeper understanding of our organization’s politics) to a comrade
serving time in the heinous Florida Department of Corrections. Usually
the FPL gets through to prisoners fine, so we were a bit
surprised to receive a censorship notice in this case. This
unfortunately means that FPL is now on the Florida ban list,
preventing any Florida prisoners from doing our intro study course (they
were already prevented
from doing our 12 Step Program). And the official reason listed for
this censorship? That the FPL contained an image “large and
distinctive enough to be used as a tattoo pattern.” This was truly a new
one for this author (though our records show it’s been done before).
Apparently, sending any sort of art can justify censorship if some pig
decides the art might make a good tattoo! The silver lining to this
abuse of power is that it provides the perfect example of how the pigs
will use any justification to achieve their goals of repressing the
masses.
Indiana Finds “Drugs” in Our
Letters
The third and final case of censorship we’ll discuss is more aptly
described as a crusade against one of our comrades in Indiana. Nearly
every issue of ULK or any other mail we send to this comrade is
censored for some inane reason usually relating to our alleged promotion
of “Security Threat Groups.” We think it’s more likely that the state
has it out for our comrade though, seeing as ey are currently filing a
lawsuit against one of the pigs at the Indiana Department of
Corrections. Recently though, the mail room at the facility this comrade
is imprisoned in decided that MIM(Prisons) had laced one of their
letters with drugs. Not only this, they threatened the comrade with a
year in lock up and to take away all of eir legal work. After sending
our letter off to the lab it turns out that the “drugs” were simply some
ink that got smeared. When the oppressed simply try to survive, the pigs
will resort to beatings, administrative punishments, and acts of
sabotage. But when the pigs are caught actively lying to facilitate such
cruel acts, the oppressed get nothing, not even an apology.
In spite of this brutal repression, our comrade in Indiana is
continuing on with eir lawsuit in an attempt to expose and hold
accountable the pigs who think they can just violate the rights of
prisoners without a second thought. If you’d like to read more about our
campaign to support this prisoner as well as ways you can help, look to
our campaign linked below (or p. 16 of ULK).
In May of this year, Texas governor greg abbott pardoned a man named
daniel perry. Some of you may remember the incident in which daniel was
convicted of murder. Recall the summer of 2020. The hope, optimism and
liberty many felt as they bum-rushed the streets in protest in cities
worldwide decrying anti-blackness.
In the midst of this surge of proactive and progressive human energy
after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, was
a tag team, husband and wife duo in Austin, Texas. Austin, the state
capital, was the most active and longstanding protest site in the state
during that summer. In the eye of this storm was Garrett Foster and eir
wife, Whitney Mitchell. Mitchell, who was confined to a wheelchair,
wanted to be involved in the ground swelling movement of humynity, and
would not let being confined to a wheel-chair detour em. Garrett was eir
guide and aid.
Garrett and eir wife attended many of the protests that summer,
mostly centered around the police headquarters and state capital in
downtown Austin. Garrett, a u.$. air force veteran, routinely adorned
fatigues and carried a rifle which ey was legally permitted to possess
by the laws of the state. In July of 2020, while walking and escorting
eir wife Whitney down Congress Avenue, Garrett and daniel got into a
verbal altercation. daniel was an Uber driver and was on the job. daniel
was also legally armed. daniel, behind the protection of an Uber
vehicle, began revving eir engine up in order to intimidate protesters.
Mr. Foster addressed this behavior verbally and after doing so, daniel
rolled down the window and shot Garrett Foster multiple times, killing
em.
During the pre-trial proceedings, this case, along with the case of
kyle rittenhouse, received a swarm of media attention on conservative
networks. The neo-confederates believed that the two white supremacists’
acts of murder had struck a blow for all of them (them being the white
settler amerikans, particularly the neo-confederacy).
At that time in 2020, greg abbott appeared on the tucker carlson show
and vowed that in the event of guilt ey would pardon daniel perry. In
May, abbott made good on this vow and pardoned daniel perry, stating
that ey “stood his ground”.
i hope this news upsets the reader. At the very least i hope this
news brings you in on the not so little secret my comrades and i have
long known. You wanna know what that secret is? Sure, i’ll tell you.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LAW, ONLY POWER STRUGGLES.
The good, if i can even call it that, is that some will see this and
finally realize the illegitimacy of law in Texas and amerikan society.
To understand why this was such a thrust and showcase of reactionary
power, we have to understand the history of the pardon and commutation
in Texas. Briefly, in the 1980’s the legislature passed measures to
limit the power of the governor to pardon and commute sentences. What
they passed made sure that in the case of pardons, at least 10 of 18
members of the Pardons and Parole Board, all of which are appointed by
the governor, would have to recommend a pardon. All 18 members
recommended the pardon of daniel perry. A spit in the face of bourgeois
democracy and the bourgeois legal process. So now We can see that it’s
okay not to play by the rules, this will free us of some of our
handicapping hang-ups. Will you step up and commit to wrestling power
out of the hands of tyranny? We All Have A Choice To Make; Power to the
People! Power to New Afrika!
I am a prisoner of the Cañon City Complex, a “campus” with seven
prisons holding up to 10,000 victims of Colorado’s giant injustice
system. A few weeks ago I went out for a day trip to a doctor in the
town next to the complex, Cañon City. Much of the town is new,
businesses like motels, fast food joints, etc. line the main drag.
When sitting in the doctor’s office I asked the prison guard who was
there, “who or what financially supports all the people and businesses
in this town?” He replied, “The Cañon City Complex”. Yup, a whole town
that survives (mostly) because of mass imprisonment. Shut down the
prisons and the town would quickly become a ghost town.
We think about all the people that suck at the teat of The System,
from cops to lawyers, to all jail/prison personnel, to parole officers.
But few consider all the people/businesses that have a symbiotic
relationship with the teat suckers. Providers of all the goods and
services that they use from food, to clothing, to auto repair. A great
mass of people around the United $tates who will always cry “law and
order,” and who will oppose any reform efforts to reduce the number of
people arrested every year (10 million plus per Law Prof. Dan Canon),
the number of people imprisoned, or the length of the sentences.
My thesis is: If you are an activist/reformer who wants to change The
System, then you need to know exactly what you are up against. You
cannot have any real success unless you do.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We agree with that thesis. And this
comrade’s report aligns with our past research on the U.$.
prison economy and what is driving it. It has become chic to talk
about the “Prison Industrial Complex” as if there are a bunch of big
corporations whose profits are driving mass incarceration in this
country, like the ones that drive military production and war
(militarism). As this comrade describes, the prison system is more like
the New Deal. But instead of funding jobs to build roads to improve
transport for commerce, they are funding jobs to build prisons for
population control. In this way a goal of the state is accomplished,
while shuffling superprofits from the Third World to the Amerikans in
these prison towns doing unproductive labor whether as prison guards,
salespeople, cashiers, or insurance agents.
by Grim of United Struggle from Within July 2024 permalink
Same Struggle - a piece connecting the liberation struggles of New
Afrika and Palestine from the years of their colonization
At the end of Orisanmi
Burton’s Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and
the Long Attica Revolt – a book USW cadre have been studying
since its release in late October 2023 – Burton correctly labels the
prison tablets supplied to the imprisoned lumpen by predatory prison
communications companies like Securus and Global Tel Link(GTL)/ViaPath
Technologies as “the cutting edge of carceral war.”(1)
Much has already been written by
MIM and USW comrades about these tablets including the several areas
Burton shortly discusses: the use of predatory pricing strategies that
extract even more money from oppressed nation communities, expanding the
surveillance state, and behavior modification/digital babysitters.(2)
What has not been discussed in much detail is the use of the tablets as
imperialist propaganda machines.
Of course, all of the content on the tablets is highly censored, with
an extensive vetting process for orgs who want to place their content on
them. On the GTL/ViaPath tablets we have at Main Jail in San Jose (Model
VT-TABLET-5081S) the only app we have besides the GTL phone app is the
free edu-tainment platform “Edovo”, which is – to no ones’ surprise –
full of garbage content.
Shortly after the Palestinian resistance launched Operation Al-Aqsa
Flood, smashing the Iron Wall and entering the rest of their homeland as
a force to be reckoned with, there was an almost weekly upload of
Christian Zionist and other Zionist propaganda pushed onto the platform.
The first of these that I noticed was the feature film “Exodus: Gods
& Kings” which details the Old Testament story of Moses leading the
Israelites to Palestine, or as it is called in the movie, Canaan. This
story, along with several other books of the Old Testament, are the
basis for what Zionists today use as their claim to Palestine as their
“ancient homeland”. And yet, as Palestinian hystorian Nur Masalha
writes, “The Old Testament is not actual history but imaginative
fiction, theology, sacred literature, ethics and wisdom.”(3) In short,
the stories that Zionists base their land claims to Palestine on are
myth narratives, not proven hystory.
Roughly around the same time, episodes of a Christian Zionist podcast
started to be uploaded to Edovo. This podcast, called “Real Vida TV”, is
put together by evangelists from Tyler, Texas who use their show to
spread vaccine/COVID conspiracy theories popular among the Amerikan
right, as well as anti-immigrant, queer & transphobic rhetoric
alongside Bible verses.
Since October 7th they’ve been spreading the usual Zionist
lies of mass rape, beheading babies, etc… that the imperialist media
continues to propagate. They also have been tying everything occurring
in Palestine and the Middle East into the strange and insane “end times”
prophecies that are the main reason for the strong support of Christian
Zionism, led mostly by Amerikan evangelists.
To understand this a bit better, let’s take a step back from the
Zionist podcast and take a closer look at Christian Zionism, which, to
my knowledge, hasn’t had anything substantial written on it in
ULK.
Evangelical Christians, the bulk of Christian Zionists in the United
$tates, take the writings in the bible literally. To get a numerical
picture, there are roughly around 15 million Jews around the world today
(which I’d like to note, a large percentage are anti-Zionist and
completely reject the genocidal state of “i$rael”); in comparison there
are over 70 million evangelicals who share the same “ironclad” support
of “i$rael” as Genocide Goe in the United $tates. Christian Zionism also
finds its roots in the Bible, but it is not because of some altruistic
wish to “return” the Jews to the safety of their so-called “ancient
homeland”. The return and consolidation of the Jews in the land of
Palestine is supported so strongly by the Christian Zionists because
they believe once this has been finally accomplished their “messiah”
Jesus Christ will return, render judgement(punishment) upon the
nonbelievers (which includes Jews as they do not believe Christ is the
“messiah”), and then get into motion the so-called end-times prophecies
of the Book of Revelation (which depicts Armageddon), where the
non-believers will burn and the true believers will float up with Jesus
to LaLa Land.
No, I am not making this up sadly.
Even more sadly, these views are being used by those who produce the
podcast to justify the ongoing genocide and dispossession of Palestinian
people, the actual indigenous inhabitants of the land of Palestine.
What’s worse, at least for Our comrades in Texas, is that these
Christian Zionists go to and have access to all of the TDCJ gulags where
they can spread this poisonous rhetoric, possibly making it even harder
to shift public opinion in the units in favor of the Palestinian
liberation struggle (I’d be interested to know the point of view of Our
comrades in Texas on this). As the Zionists and their imperialist
backers continue to spread their lies to try to sway the opinions of the
masses toward support of their genocidal logic, We must counter them in
every way We can, especially in the writing and dissemination of
articles on Palestine in the pages of ULK, and by
supporting/working on the USW Palestine campaign.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be
free!
MIM(Prisons) adds: A USW leader in Florida wrote an
article on the Biblical “history” of the Jewish people. We are not
printing that article. But here is their explanation for the approach
they took in that piece:
“I’m hearing pro-I$raeli comments in the quad and on the yard every
day. Prisoners are completely swallowing and promoting the CIPWS zionist
pro I$raeli narrative, ie., that the Palestinians brought the genocide
upon themselves when they attacked I$raeli citizens, rather than
settlers/invaders, on October 7, 2023, rather than in response to
70-plus years of CIPWS zionist occupation and oppression.
“I am surrounded by prisoners who hear the word”Israel” and
automatically think “Jesus”. Prisoners see the entire
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and situation from a biblical point of view
rather than a historical and U.$. imperialist political one.
“The average prisoner had never heard of Hamas, Zionists, Hizbullah,
Houthi, etc. until recently. Prisoners identify with Israel mostly due
to religion and all they are told is that Israel was attacked by
Palestinians, and that Palestinians want Israel extinct, even as they
see the total opposite happening with their own oppressed eyes. Even
Muslims here, due to subliminal incognizance, do not support or identify
with he Palestinians’ plight. They see the Palestinians, not as victims,
but as terrorists, not as brothers.”
As members of United Struggle from Within (USW) have come out in
strong support of the Palestinian resistance, we see this is not
representative of the consciousness of the imprisoned lumpen as a whole.
Thus the need for our leaders inside to continue this campaign to
support Palestine in the realm of education and ideological struggle
among the oppressed in this country. People who are suffering a lower
level genocide through the prison system itself are somehow identifying
with their own oppressor. If the national liberation struggles were
stronger in this country, we would be seeing a lot more support for
national liberation of Palestine here as well.
Notes: (1) Burton, Orisami, “Tip of the Spear: Black
Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt”,(University
of California Press, 2023),p.227 (2) Ibid. p.228 (3) Masalh,
Nur, “Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History”,(I.B. Taurus, 2018)
p.30
Our movement sees the contradiction between internal semi-colonies
(New Afrikan/Black Nation, First Nations, Chican@s, Puerto Ricans,
Hawaiins) and the Amerikan oppressor nation as the principal
contradiction in the United $tates. In practice that means if we want
change, we need to push this contradiction to its conclusion. However,
in the years that MIM(Prisons) has existed, we’ve seen that
contradiction to be at a relatively low level, historically speaking.(1)
Since we don’t have things like armed struggle today to assure us of
this contradiction, a recent Pew Research study provides us with some
reassurance that the national consciousness of New Afrika is alive and
well.(2)
The survey showed that 74 out of 100 Black people in the United
$tates believed the prison system was designed to hold Black people
back. It asked this question for numerous state institutions, with
slightly lower levels of agreement. Another question in the survey
showed 69% of respondents feel that being Black is important to how they
feel about themselves. The latter question demonstrates a level of
national consciousness, even if most respondents would call it “race”.
The distrust in the U.$. government places this national consciousness
in conflict with Amerika and its institutions.
It’s worth noting that the results were pretty consistent along
demographics of age, income, education, sex. The biggest predictor for
not agreeing that the government is holding Black people back is being a
Republican – but even then the majority agreed.
This survey got more attention in the press because it was originally
framed as demonstrating that most “Black Americans” believe “racial
conspiracy theories.” Pew Research responded by amending the language in
the report, and they provide historical examples of the U.$. state using
these institutions against Black people. To view such beliefs as
conspiracy theories is obviously telling.
MIM(Prisons) of course upholds the belief that the U.$. prison system
exists to hold back and repress the internal semi-colonies and control
the population in general. It is part of the system of maintaining
national, class and gender oppression. Interestingly the survey also
showed 74% of Black people believing, “Black people are
disproportionately incarcerated so prisons can make money.” This, as
we’ve discussed extensively, is mostly
a myth. It might be harsh to call it a conspiracy theory, since
everything under capitalism is about money on some level. But we believe
the question of whether people are imprisoned for profit, or for social
control, is an important question for understanding the system and how
to combat it.
The importance of surveys like this from Pew Research is
scientifically investigating our conditions. Despite the fact that Pew
went into this survey with some clear bias around the relationship of
Black people to the United $tates, their resources allowed them to
survey thousands of people across demographics to give them 95%
confidence that their numbers are within plus or minus 2%. While
MIM(Prisons) has done a number of surveys over the years, even our best
did not have such tight confidence intervals. And to date our surveys
have been limited to prisoners, who are also mostly male. Therefore
bourgeois-funded surveys and government statistics are an important part
of our scientific investigation of our conditions. Transforming this
latent national consciousness in New Afrika into action is where
revolutionary practice must come in and deepen our knowledge of our
conditions.
I would like to make you aware of, and I seek your assistance, with
what is transpiring here in the Missouri Department of Corrections
(MO-DOC).
They have revised the mail policies again, and they are saying that
the only postal mail accepted at correction centers are:
Privileged/legal mail
Certified mail
Publications ordered by an offender sent directly from a publisher,
distributor or other bona fide vendor
Visitor applications
The problem is that they’re saying that if publications are not
coming from a publishing company they need to be sent to the Digital
Mail Center in Tampa, FL. And once sent there, the Digital Mail Center
is not sending them and sending digital copies.
To sum this up, we are not receiving our free newsletters or digital
copies of them. Unless we purchase something using a green check, they
are not allowing it to enter the prison. This is a violation of our
First Amendment rights, and the precedent set by Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78,
89-90 (1987). This is clearly established law that is being
violated by the MO-DOC’s restrictive mail policies which need to be
challenged. I seek your assistance on this.
MIM(Prisons) responds: According to the new policy on
the MO-DOC website, MIM Distributors should be able to send prisoner
literature directly at their prison as we have in the past.(1) But
according to this comrade’s report, Missouri has effectively banned free
subscriptions and free books to prisoners.
Staff at Pendleton Correctional Facility in Indiana recently tried to
claim a ban on donated books, but comrades in Indiana and the Midwest
Books Project took the issue up to the Indiana DOC who confirmed this is
not their policy.
A combination of confusion with new complicated digital mail systems
and staff engaging in political repression with “new rules” as an
excuse, continue to keep comrades busy.
According to our data, some comrades have still received recent
issues of Under Lock & Key in Missouri, though the numbers
so far are down from last year. The problem is we need more information
from readers in Missouri about what you have and have not received, and
what your prison has told you when they’ve rejected our mail. We are
currently investigating this matter with MO-DOC in hopes of clearing
this up.
Recently ULKs have been returned to us from Missouri with
the following written on them:
“Return to Sender: Mail should be sent to the address specified at
www.doc.mo.gov”
And an envelope of ULKs was returned and marked:
“RTS - Unauthorized”
As we go to press, we have not received any response from the MO-DOC
to our March appeal of censorship of ULK 83. However, that same
subscriber received ULK 84 fine.
In the West Bank, I$rael has killed at least 502 Palestinians since 7
October 2023, the day Operation Al Aqsa Flood commenced by the
Palestinian resistance. At least 4,950 people were injured, 3,985 people
were displaced, 8,088 people were arrested and 648 structures were
demolished.(1) All of this is not even mentioning the recent declaration
by I$raeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that 800 hectares (1,977
acres) in occupied West Bank are now state land for I$raeli
settlements.(2) As we know, the I$raeli war has focused on Gaza, where
official estimates put the death toll at 38,000, while public health
experts estimate that number could be as high as 186,000.(2.5)
These figures alone are abstract, so to paint a better picture of
accounts from those living in the West Bank now, contextualizing history
and statistics will be provided. It is estimated that 3.25 million
people live in the West Bank, meaning that just from the above
statistics 0.54% (17525 affected / 3.25 million population) of people
were directly affected with countless more affected indirectly from the
intensified settler terror in just 6-7 months. The amount of deaths has
been three times as high as 2022 already. The lack of infrastructure to
collect accurate data also makes this statistic likely an underestimate
of the severity, with it only getting worse on the ground as we
speak.
The aim of this article is to historicize the initial I$raeli
response in the West Bank to the Al Aqsa Flood before the prisoner
exchange and temporary “end” (which was constantly violated by I$rael)
of hostilities in Gaza. It will be the first part of a series of
articles that cover the occupation of the West Bank. Together, Gaza and
the West Bank make up the “occupied territories” of Palestine that have
not yet been seized by I$rael.
Operation
Al Aqsa Flood, settlers panic in West Bank
The very existence of settlers are premised on the displacement of
the native people and colonial occupation of entire nations or sections
of nations. This is on top of the exploitation of land and labor of the
colonized to feed an ever-growing parasitic strata. The I$raeli colonial
projects on the border of Gaza were challenged on October 7th, with
resistance seizing their land back from the settlers by force. The sense
of control from having some of the best surveillance methods and
technologies in the world, while being backed by the most powerful
imperialist power, was shattered. The carefully crafted methods to
maintain and further colonization to feed I$raeli settlers while helping
their Amerikan overseers to pacify the entire region under its boot was
challenged. The I$raeli project floats on nothing, it produces nothing
for the world beyond feeding the hunger of settlers and their
imperialist allies off the backs of the colonized. Desperately, it
sought to reduce its reliance on those it displaced and colonized,
knowing full well what that’d mean. I$rael sought out Third World labor,
begged for a share of profits from its imperialist overseers and tried
to become more “self-sufficient”. Ultimately it failed in its endeavors,
finding itself reliant on imperialist backers to sustain itself against
militant resistance from all sides. Once that runs dry, I$rael is doomed
and its dream will be ruined, with a victory for the resistance and the
liberation of Palestine!
On 11 October 2023, a lock down on West Bank was declared, shutting
down more than 500 checkpoints and the only major international border
crossing, which is with Jordan, at Allenby Bridge.(3) The I$raeli
settlers were faced with a war on two fronts, resorting to extreme
measures in fear of losing control of their occupation. Their fears were
further confirmed with the death of General Leon Bar, a senior officer
of the West Bank Division of the I$raeli Offensive Forces (IOF) on 12
October 2023.(4) Alarms were set off in both “Beitar Illit”, near
Bethlehem, and “Ma’ale Efraim”, near Ramallah, due to fears of
resistance infiltration on 13 October 2023. On the same day, raids were
conducted in Nablus, Aqabat, Jaber camp, Areeha, and Aida refugee camp
in Bethlehem. The IOF began an invasion of the city of Nablus and
clashes continued in Jenin as resistance fighters confronted the
invasion. Hamas’s brigades, the Izz al Din al-Qassem Brigades, were one
of the known resistance factions who fended off the IOF invasion, while
also fighting in the Ain Al-Sultan and Aqabat Jabr camps in
Areeha.(5)
As of October 14th, 842 acts of resistance were carried out in the
West Bank in just a week. Of those confirmed, there were 241 shooting
operations, 30 qualitative operations, one settlement infiltration, 570
confrontations in various forms, and 98 demonstrations and marches.
Twenty two IOF injures were confirmed, a number were killed, and there
were 56 martyrs on the side of the resistance. The confrontations took
place in 254 areas, including Nablus (45), Al-Quds (38), Ramallah (38),
Al-Khalil (33), Jenin (27), Tulkarem (19), Bethlehem (17), Qalqilya
(13), Areeha (11), Salfit (9), and Tubas(4).(6) Just a week since
Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the resistance was stiff against I$raeli
attempts to subdue the West Bank under its grasp. A resistance to
settler-colonialism and national oppression within the United $tates
must adopt similar discipline, rejecting integration for
self-determination for oppressed nations in solidarity with the struggle
against imperialism across the world.
The resistance in the West Bank continued, with the al-Nasser Salah
al-Deen Brigades, which are the military wing of Popular Resistance
Committees, targeting the Belt Furik checkpoint and the IOF post
established on “Mount Gerizim” on 15 October 2023. The IOF by this time
had abducted more than 500 in the West Bank and Al-Quds.(7) On 17
October 2023, protestors in the occupied West Bank demanded the fall of
president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, a neocolonial
puppet entity ruling over West Bank. The response was repression, with
tear gas and stun grenades used to disperse the protestors.(8) Amidst
the protests, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which are military wing of
Fatah, were able to successfully target zionist occupation checkpoints
and clashed with them on the same day.(9)
Sheikh Hassan Yousef, co-founder of Hamas, was abducted by the IOF in
his home in Ramallah after giving a speech there on 18 October 2023.
This was part of a larger campaign of abductions by the IOF which
expanded that day.(10) Confrontations further escalated within the West
Bank, with a victory for the resistance occurring with the Saraya
Al-Quds, which is the militant wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ), part of the Tulkarm Brigade carried out numerous strikes,
offensive operations, ambushes, explosive detonations, and ambush
executions. It was a 28 hour battle, which led to the IOF completely
withdrawing from the Nour Shams camp.(11) The cowardly settlers
retaliated the next day at the Al-Ansar mosque, believing that Hamas and
PIJ used it as a headquarters. This resulted in the death of two, and
the arrest of dozens who were suspected to work with the Jenin Brigade
or other resistance groups.(12) On the same day, Zionist special forces
stormed the Askar camp in Nablus, clashing with the resistance.(13) Just
four days later, on 26 October 2023, the IOF carried out a massive
arrest campaign across the West Bank with armed clashes breaking
out.(14) This preludes the rise of resistance in the West Bank the next
day, with violent confrontation in the Al-Aroub camp, against the
“Nitzani Oz” checkpoint, the “Dotan” checkpoint, Jabal Al-Tur and Abu
Dis on 27 October 2023.(15)
I$raeli
invasion of Gaza, settler counter-offensive
The invasion of Gaza officially began on 28 October 2023. On this
day, many cities in the West Bank went on strike in support of the
resistance in Gaza.(16) A specialized hospital in Nablus was targetted
in the West Bank due to the IOF’s suspicion of the resistance groups
there.(17) On 2 November 2023, armed clashes broke out across various
cities in the West Bank following a wide campaign of arrests.(18) On 4
November 2023, the resistant youth in the West Bank threw Moltov
cocktails at settlers’ vehicles near Marda and at zionist forces in
Al-Aroub camp. In addition, they threw stones at settlers near Hizma and
Route 443.(19) The important part to note here is the role of the youth
and how a large section of the Palestinian people are under 18. The
resistance’s mobilization of the youth to fight is important to learn
from, especially in contexts of settler-colonialism and national
oppression, for application to the United $tates. The Black Panthers
were mostly teenagers.
The armed clashes continued between resistance fighters and zionist
forces in Qalqilya, following raids on cities and a large campaign of
abductions.(20) The Lion’s Den, a Palestinian resistance group in the
West Bank, claimed responsibility for conducting shooting operations
near “Itamar” which was successful on 8 November 2023.(21) In Jenin, a
day afterward, the Al-Qassam fighters and all resistance formations in
the Jenin camp engaged in armed clashes with the IOF. Reinforcements
were sent toward the Balata camp by the IOF after the resistance
discovered a special zionist force. In the end, the battle resulted in a
victory for the resistance after two hours, with the IOF withdrawing
without being able to abduct resistance fighters or occupy the area.(22)
The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, militant wing of the PFLP, were
able to target the occupation forces in Jenin with explosive devices on
11 November 2023. The same day, resistance fighters open fired on the
“Belt Hefer” settlement and “Nitzanei Oz” checkpoint in Tulkarem. It
ended successfully, with a safe return for the resistance forces and
heavy damage to the targeted areas.(23)
The Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, part of the Tulkarem Brigade,
announced a general mobilization in the West Bank and Al-Quds on 12
November 2023.(24) The Al-Qassam Brigades – West Bank, announced
responsibility for storming the Tunnel Checkpoint in the south of
occupied Al-Quds in the morning. Here the resistance was able to attack
enemy forces at the military checkpoint separating northern Bethlehem
and southern occupied Al-Quds.(25) On 20 November 2023, the Mujahideen
Brigades were victorious in firing upon an incursion of IOF soldiers in
Jenin, clashing with special forces in Tubas, and shooting a jeep in
Tubas.(26) On November 21st, an IOF drone targeted a site in Tulkarem
camp, continuing to prevent ambulances from reaching the site. Afterward
the IOF stormed the Thabet Thabet Hospital to prevent the ambulances
from working.(27) Only a few days later on November 23rd, a wave of
widespread arrests were carried out, clashing with the resistance and
locals in Balata refugee camp, Al-Arroub, Dura, Beit Liqya, and
Qalandiya refugee camp.(28) On November 24th, the Mujahideen Brigades,
succeeded in bombing the “Dotan” military checkpoint southwest of
Jenin.(29)
Conclusion
The resistance in the West Bank face similar conditions to the
nationally oppressed in the United $tates. One key difference is the
proximity to imperialism with integrationist pull that pacifies
resistance. Aside from that, both are firmly occupied under the boot of
the colonizers with no state of their own and both face mass
incarceration to destroy resistance and further colonization. The
resistance’s capability to form a united front to fight back and
coordinate in conditions of immense surveillance and repression is
important to note. I$rael used all of its capabilities, controlling the
supply of food, water, medicine, internal movement, and etc… but it
still failed in face of resistance. A strategy within the United $tates
will have to encompass these factors and surpass them, coordinating not
only internally but externally with the Third World against forces of
imperialism and colonialism.
In the next part, there will be a discussion of the prisoner exchange
and temporary “end” of hostilities, at the least, along the beginning of
I$rael’s advance in Rafah along with the emboldened colonization which
I$rael embarked on in the West Bank. Specifically, declaring more than
800 hectares of land as part of I$rael, aiming to fully annex the West
Bank.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be
free!
Readers of Under Lock & Key, may this kite find you in
the best of health and spirits. In the last issue, Spring 2024, No. 85,
there was a request for prisoners to sign up for a petition and issues
about no
dayroom and yards. I have been down now 18 years in the Illinois
Department of Corrections (I-DOC) and I want to help everyone who is
seeking more out-of-cell time.
I filed a §1983 Civil Action about this topic, Patrick Bakaturski
V. Director et al, 3:23-cv-03609-SPM, which is currently pending
merit review in the Southern District of Illinois.
The basis grounds of the civil suit is that under all of the Covid-19
lockdowns, the endless cell restriction violated my 8th amendment
rights. Wexford Health Care signed an affidavit in Patrick
Bakaturski v. Rob Jeffreys, 21-cv-00014-GCS, which stated that
Wexford Health Care did not approve any of the Covid lock downs. Yet in
every grievance I-DOC said I was on quarantine.
So How Do I Get out of the Cell More? What should be the
Legal Argument?
First Look up Ashoor Rasho et al., v. Director John R. Baldwin,
NO: 1:07-cv-1298-MMM-JEH, Mental Health Settlement agreement. If
you go to page 20 you will see that I-DOC agreed that all prisoners
under segregation statutes should get 20 hours per week of out of cell
time. That means if you are being kept in the cell and not being given
10 hours of Day room and 10 hours of yard this violates your 8th
Amendment rights. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act for general
mental health every prisoner must get 10 hours of yard per week and at
least 10 of day room or programs per week in maximum security prison. I
am not in max anymore, but my prison is being ran as an unclassified max
in violation of state and federal law. So under the same standard of a
basic human right, I requested my 20 hours per week, 10 hours of day
room and 10 of yard.
The legal argument is clear, 23 and 1 is unconstitutional. ALL max
prisoners could fight to make their max a 21 and 3 by invoking the
wording in the Mental Health Settlement. The Federal Government has
already agreed in part that 23 and 1 is unconstitutional. You need to
use page 20 of the settlement to support your grievances and legal
arguments.
If anyone has any questions of how to file the grievance or would
like to see the format on what might work in Federal Court, key cite
Bakaturski in Federal Court. If you can get a copy of the
petitions I have filed pro-se.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We are not lawyers and do not offer
legal advice. When we print tips like this it is up to the reader to
determine how this information applies to your situation. The settlement
above applies to the Illinois DOC, though strategies in those cases may
be relevant elsewhere. We have long worked to shut down long-term
solitary in all its forms. The settlement is one small tool to help
prevent de facto long-term isolation from occurring in
Illinois.
by Simon of The Dawnland Group July 2024 permalink
UAW members creatively tie political repression on University of
California campuses to unfair labor practices, but an undercurrent of
exploiter-country economic demands remains
On May 13th, UAW Local 4811 voted to authorize a statewide stand-up
strike across University of California campuses. Though representing
largely class enemy strata, the United Auto Workers union (UAW) has, in
the past few years, been an innovator in strike tactics. “Stand-up
strikes,” as they are called, differ from traditional strikes by having
local branches be called to the picket by a central coordinator, as
opposed to having all members strike at once. This tactic reduces
burnout among the strikers by introducing “shift work” into the nature
of the picket, and psychologically attaches rank-and-file members more
closely to movement developments with anticipation of not knowing until
the day of whether it is their turn to strike.
The public response of the university administration has been
traditionally liberal. Unable to argue on the moral grounds of the
genocide and their active support of it, administrators displace the
discussion to either the process of dissent (whether it’s “through the
right channels”) or how the dissent affects the lives of settlers. After
failure to challenge the legal grounds of the strike, the UC office of
the President moved to pearl-clutching,
“UAW’s goals of ‘maximize chaos and confusion’ have come to fruition,
creating substantial and irreparable impacts on campuses and impacting
our students at a crucial time of their education.”
As of the writing of this article, all universities in the state of
Palestine have been destroyed in the genocide.
The UAW represents 5,000 workers at UC Irvine, 8,000 at UC San Diego,
and 3,000 at UC Santa Barbara, totaling 31,500 members for all six of
the universities affected by the strikes. According to an interview
conducted May 31st by The Orange County Register, “UAW Local 4811 is
asking the UC schools to give amnesty to all academic employees and
students who faced arrest or disciplinary actions for protesting at
campuses. The union also wants the students to have guarantees of
freedom of speech and political expression on campus and is asking for
researchers to be able to opt out of funding sources tied to the Israeli
Defense Force.”
Like much university faculty outrage across the country following the
student intifada of the past few months, faculty demands have been
animated by, and primarily center protecting students and staff from
criminal charges, less so the criminal slaughter of civilians by the
zionist entity. Even if driven by a racist instinct that the well-being
of their peers are of more value than the faceless masses of the Third
World, this is an interesting case study in how labor-aristocratic
elements may be leveraged as an auxiliary for genuinely progressive
ends.
This case study, and the many parallels of it across Turtle Island,
reinforces the need for approaching international solidarity work in the
imperial core with united front tactics. Were all actors on these
campuses concentrated into a single organization or coalition, outrage
over the arrests of students and faculty would have quickly gobbled up
all the air in the discussion surrounding Palestine. Though not
intentionally designed, the separation of student activists and union
organizations has contributed to the success of the student intifada. As
has the organic separation between faculty and students, though
sometimes muddled by unionized students in the UAW. This separation has
permitted, but not guaranteed, the more principled students to take
initiative in fighting their local foot-soldiers of ethnic cleansing.
Many have taken the opportunity to occupy key locations, destroy
property facilitating genocide, or symbolically renaming liberated
buildings on their campus after Martyrs slain in the liberation
struggle.
So long as the student radicals keep ahead of the social fascists
keen to rally around them, they can keep efforts centered on Palestine
and fix these tertiary elements into a supporting role behind their
initiatives, lest they be dragged down into drivel like the UAW’s
campaign to hijack the movement into unionizing
arms manufactures, as we reported last issue. This is only possible
if the students maintain organizational independence from the forces
which risk slowing them down. While united front tactics don’t guarantee
success – it’s up to the students to center the right lines and pick the
correct strategies to see their goals fulfilled, without it they will be
tackled at the starting line. As the next school semester approaches on
the horizon, we wish the student radicals the best of luck in their race
against backward elements.
MIM(Prisons) adds: The “social-fascism” thesis was
applied by Bolsheviks to Western Europe’s social-democracy of the late
1920s and early 1930s. Behind this thesis was MIM’s understanding of
social-democracy as not always based in a politically foggy sector of
the proletariat but usually in the super-profit bribed petty-bourgeoisie
known as the “labor aristocracy” –at least in the imperialist countries,
especially those long-established imperialist countries with colonies or
neo-colonies. The “social-fascist” term applied to social-democrats who
appeared socialist on the outside while serving fascism in content. MIM
applies this term to all those today who appeal to the economic
nationalism of the imperialist country labor aristocracy. Those calling
for closing the borders, import restrictions etc. and calling themselves
“socialist” or even “communist”–these are the social-fascists today.(2)
“I held my gun so that the generations after me could hold a sickle…”
-Palestinian song, Ahd Allah Ma Nerhal (By God We Won’t Leave)
“… [W]e have hope because we know, now more than ever, that these
horrors in the name of upholding a racist settler-colonial occupation
are not going to last forever. Anyone who ever thought it would will be
astounded in hindsight.” -Rawan Masri, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood Was An
Act of Decolonization”
I, like most of Our comrades who contribute to and/or read
ULK and organize behind the gulag walls, have been following
the ongoing genocide carried out by the Zionist entity upon the people
of Palestine with varied mixtures of feelings, with the number one
emotion being unadulterated rage alongside an equal amount of awe at the
steadfast courage of the Palestinian resistance and their allies
throughout the Middle East.
You might think that the rage stems from the atrocious conduct that
sadly has been par for the course of the Zionists since at least 1947 in
the beginnings of what would become the Nakba carried out by the various
Zionist terror organizations such as the Haganah, Irgun and LEHI who
most infamously were responsible for the April 9, 1948 Deir Yassin
massacre in which 250 defenseless Palestinians were slaughtered,
including 100 wimmin and children, and then the village was looted and
plundered. While I cannot deny that the daily depredations of the
Zionist occupation forces raises my ire profoundly, the rage actually
stems more from the stunning ignorance of the so-called “friends and
supporters” of I$rael who voice their profoundly inaccurate, and most of
the time entirely false statements, “history lessons on the so-called
‘conflict’,” (non)interpretations of the international law, and most
importantly their insistence on not calling the Zionist entity’s actions
and policies what they’ve been since the start of the ethnic cleansing
under Plan Dalet beginning in April 1948: genocidal. Many of these
people are probably of the opinion as well that the vast majority of
other settler-colonist projects (such as the United $nakes, New Zealand,
Australia, Canada, etc.) were also not genocidal from their beginnings,
likely using the age old excuses of blaming the so-called “savages” for
provoking the “reasonable” and “peace loving” settlers into defending
themselves and the land they mistakenly believe they didn’t steal thanks
to their belief that God gifted or promised it to them in perpetuity
because “he’s God” and “what he says goes.”(1) These “friends and
supporters” of I$rael will do absolutely no research into the validity
of their statements, instead choosing to equate the Palestinian struggle
to liberate all of the historic Palestine and finally be free to return
to their lands with a genocidal Arab conspiracy to wipe out the
Jews.
So in the interests of correcting the misinformation and lies, and
cutting through the Zionist propaganda it stems from and in full
solidarity with Our comrades across historic Palestine, in the diaspora,
on campuses and in the streets, this article will attempt to deconstruct
some of the most common discourse that is parroted in the mainstream
media which has fueled this latest round of anti-Arab hysteria and
Islamophobia and crucially, the pattern of Amerikan rejectionism to
Palestinian Liberation and indifference to the crimes of its client
state.
As communists or anarchists (as many of Our comrades who read
ULK identify as), it behooves Us to study history, and studying
the histories of what has become known as the Palestinian-I$raeli
conflict and the principal actors and organizations is not an exception
to this rule.
So in that context, I will begin with one of the Zionists’ more
devious lies; the so-called I$raeli “purity of arms” and its common
usage, that I$rael never targets civilians or civilian infrastructure.
Although any cursory observation of I$rael’s conduct from the 1948 Nakba
to the present day would prove otherwise, We can look to none other than
Zionist hero and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion for the proof. In
his Independence War Diary, he set down on paper the military doctrine
that would become standard protocol throughout the history of the
Zionist project.
There is no question as to whether a reaction is necessary or not.
The question is only time and place. Blowing up a house is not enough.
What is necessary is cruel strong reactions. We need precision in time
place and causalities. If we know the family – [we must] strike
mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise the reaction is
inefficient. At the place of action there is no need to distinguish
between guilty and innocent.(2)
This specific entry was written on January 1, 1948, one day after the
Haganah occupied the Palestinian village of Balad al-Shaykh, the burial
place of Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (one of Palestine’s most revered
resistance leaders of the 1920’s and 30’s), massacring over 60
Palestinian civilians, men, wimmin, and children, most while they were
asleep in their homes. This massacring of civilians in their sleep over
75 years ago lines up exactly with the countless stories told by
survivors of today’s indiscriminate bombings to the doctors that have
been working nonstop within the largely destroyed remains of Gaza’s
hospitals.(3)
Let us also remember that when Ben-Gurion wrote those words, the
Zionist leadership at the time was working on “Plan Dalet”, finalized on
March 10, 1948, which was the military blueprint for the ethnic
cleansing of historic Palestine.(4)
To illustrate before moving on to the next topic, lets look back at
two of the lesser known massacres during the initial Nakba; “Lydda and
Ramla” and “Safsah.”
On a blistering hot Ramadan day in July 1948, a Haganah general named
Yitzhak Rabin (who would later become ambassador to Washington D.C.,
then I$raeli Prime Minister, then sign the Oslo accords on the White
House lawn, then be assassinated for it by I$raeli reactionaries)
descended upon the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramla with his unit
and violently expelled approximately 50,000 men, wimmin and
children.
In Lydda, dozens of Palestinians were gathered and detained in the
Dahmash mosque and church premises, all unarmed, and were subsequently
gunned down. Afterwards the Zionists gathered an additional 20 to 50
Palestinians to clean up the mosque and bury all of the bodies. After
they had placed the bodies in their graves, they themselves were slot
into the open graves and left there to bleed out and die. In total
between 250 to 400 Palestinians were massacred in Lydda. An additional
350 more died after being expected and forced to march to the frontlines
of the Arab armies in what would become known as the Lydda Death
March.(5)
As a sidenote, the events that occurred at Lydda and the subsequent
death march after, were a formative event in the life of a young George
Habash, who was from Lydda, and in 1948 at age 19 left the American
University in Beirut, Lebanon where he was a medical student and
returned to Lydda during the war to help his family. The Haganah
attacked the town soon after, and in the subsequent death march, without
water or food, during Ramadan no less, his sister died before they
reached the Arab army’s frontlines. This could possibly be one of the
reasons which fed his uncompromising leadership and opposition to the
Zionist regime as a pivotal leader of first the Harakat al-Qawmiyyin
al-Arab (Arab Nationalist Movement) and then of the Popular Front for
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Lastly, we come to the massacre at Safsaf during the initial Nakba.
Though this is one of the lesser known atrocities of the Nakba, it is
vital to the overall understanding, as a quarter of the 12 well
documented instances of rape by the Zionists were recorded here (though
many more may have occurred, lost to history but not to the long memory
of the people and the land of Palestine).
The Zionists started by cleansing the town by using their “patented”
strategy of surrounding the town on 3 sides, firing into the air and
into the sides of buildings in the hopes of driving the population out
of the fourth, open side of the town. Then they entered the town,
gathering up all of those who still remained in their homes, initially
shooting and killing 12 young men. The remaining 52 men were caught,
then tied together and thrown into a pit the Zionists dug, then
subsequently shot and killed. Seeing this, the remaining wimmin of the
town came and asked the Zionists for mercy. The Zionists, not being
satisfied with the massacre they had just committed, told several of the
wimmin to go and fetch water to the town. Once they moved away from the
others, they were followed by the militiamen and raped, two of the
wimmin being killed in the process. The womyn who survived was a child
of fourteen years old.(6) These are just a few of the massacres of
civilians by the Zionists during the initial Nakba. If we line them up
alongside others, for instance, the October 1953 massacre in the West
Bank village of Qibya by Ariel Sharon’s (another past war criminal made
prime minister) infamous unit 101 of the I$raeli Defense Forces (IDF)
special forces, the October 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre, the full IDF
support given during the 1982 Lebanon war to their proxies, the
Christian Phalangist and Maronite militias, to massacre 2,000 civilians
in the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila (which in hindsight
was probably the last time there was mass protests within I$rael by Jews
over their regime’s crimes against Palestinians), to the more recent
wars, like today’s war, but also ones such as during “Operations Cast
Lead” in 2008-09 which the UN’s fact finding report (Goldstone report)
called a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish,
humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population”, a certain pattern
starts to emerge; one of the ethnic cleansing and genocide, funded and
with political cover by Amerika.
Genocide & Denial
Genocide, the word as well as the action hangs heavy over Amerika and
I$rael, so much so that it has stopped many from speaking out and
acknowledging the Zionist regime’s actions against Palestine as
genocidal.
A comrade over at Slingshot Collective in Berkeley, CA wrote an
article for their latest newspaper issue, trying to elaborate on the
reasons behind the silence during an active genocide, and though I agree
with many of their conclusions (not wanting to sound “anti-Semitic”,
general Amerikan apathy and indifference to the suffering of others and
not wanting to split the Democratic Party base leading to a Trump
victory this election year), I think there are other, deeper
explanations for this, as well as outright genocide denial.(7)
When most Amerikans and I$raelis think about the word genocide, it is
inevitable that they will first think of the Holocaust. The mass
shootings carried out by the Einstatzgruppen and the gassing and
immolation of millions of Ashkenazi Jews are rightfully called genocide;
and yet many of these same Amerikans and I$raelis forget the genocide of
approximately half of the 2 million Sinti and Romani peoples (Gypsies)
of German occupied Europe known as the Porrajmos in the Romani language,
nor do they seem to remember the systematic massacres of Slavic, gay,
and disabled peoples along with many political dissidents during the
same time period by Nazi Germany.(8) And so, the benchmark for both
countries for some act to count as genocide is something which looks
like the Holocaust; a massive extermination of people in a relatively
short amount of time.
And yet, the Nazi genocide and Zionist genocide do not resemble each
other structurally or in any other meaningful way.
Like the settler colonial regimes of the United $nakes, Canada, New
Zealand and Australia among others, the genocides that took place upon
the indigenous First Nations have taken place over many decades, a small
act here, a large act there, and this is what the genocide of the
Palestinian Arab people by the Zionist regime has looked like and
continues to look like to this day.(9)
As this practice of genocide continues against the people of
Palestine, so too does Amerika continue this practice upon the internal
semi-colonies of New Afrikans, Chican@s, and the First Nations here on
occupied Turtle Island. Amerika also has a very interesting, as well as
appalling, history relating to the UN Convention of the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that bears mentioning.
After its founding convention in San Francisco in 1945, the United
Nations set about sponsoring the creation of an international legal
instrument for the prevention and punishment of genocide. The job for
drafting this document was handed down to the Economic and Social
Council of the UN General Assembly (GA) which retained several
international legal consultants foremost among them Dr. Raphael Lemkin;
an exiled Polish-Jewish jurist who had in 1944 coined the term
‘genocide’ in his work “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” Lemkin, who
authored most of the draft, submitted it in June 1947, and a month later
it was rejected by several member states of the General Assembly,
foremost among them the United $nakes, because of “important
philosophical disagreements.” It was edited and then finally adopted by
the GA on December 9, 1948. By 1951 enough countries had ratified it to
afford it the status of binding international law; except for a partial
ratification (with conditions and edits) in 1988 by the Reagan
Administration, the U.$. has still not ratified the convention in its
entirety.(10)
First off, lets look at what parts of Lemkin’s draft were so
“philosophically disagreeable” to the United $tates. Lemkin was
extremely thorough in the draft document, where he included linguistic
and political groups under currently protected groups of racial,
national, and religious groups. Also importantly, he included in the
list of punishable acts (enumerated in Article 3 of the current
convention) engaging in a number of “preparatory” acts such as
developing techniques of genocide and setting up installations for the
purpose of committing genocide.
Already we can see that if the above made it into the final draft,
both Amerika and I$rael would have been in the ‘hot seat’, so to
speak.
Lemkin also included preventing the “preservation or development” of
the above groups as a punishable act as well as policies that would
bring about the disintegration of the political, social, or economic
structure of a group or nation (author’s note: Settlers &
Neocolonialists Beware!).
Lastly and most crucially, Lemkin detailed 3 distinct and specific
forms of genocide: physical, biological, and cultural. For physical
genocide he included “slow death” measures such as the “subjection to
conditions of life which, owing to lack of proper housing, clothing,
food, hygiene and medical care… are likely to result in debilitation or
death of individuals”, as well as “deprivation of all means of
livelihood by confiscation of property, looting, curtailment of work,
and denial of housing and supplies otherwise available to the other
inhabitants of the territory concerned.” Biological genocide, apart from
compulsory abortion and sterilization, included segregation of the sexes
and obstacles to marriage. Cultural genocide included forced and
systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group, as
well as the destruction of a groups historical or religious monuments
and the destruction of a group’s historical, artistic, and religious
documents or objects.(11)
If one looks to the UN Genocide Convention today, it would be
entirely accurate to say it no longer resembles in any meaningful way
the original intentions of the author(s).
One might ask what the consequences of this are, and though there are
many, I’ll only go into one.
Consequently, it has continued to further obfuscate what constitutes
genocide, further allowing imperialist and reactionary regimes to
continue policies of genocidal oppression, domestically as well as in
the Global South. Yet as a direct result of this in the case of I$rael,
many countries in the Global South have had enough of the genocidal
Zionist regime. Most importantly South Africa (where the Zionists
supported the apartheid regime before its collapse) charged the Zionist
entity with genocide at the ICC in the Hague. Many Central and South
American countries, like Chile and Honduras, who both had to deal with
genocidal reactionary regimes propped up by the support of both Amerika
and I$rael, have both said enough is enough, and recalled their
ambassadors to I$rael over the Amerikan funded genocide.(12) And also
extremely important, and as a great way to segue into my last topic of
this article, it has set off an explosion of support for Palestine from
within the belly of the imperialist beast, in the U.$. but also all
across Europe; vital to this effort has been Our comrades on college
campuses across Turtle Island.
Student
Activism and U.$. Attempts to “Silence the Intifada”
When the first encampments and building occupations were setup, from
Columbia University to campuses across Turtle Island all the way to UC
Berkeley, though I wasn’t surprised, (and forgive me for my emotional
subjectiveness) tears of joy and pride sprang to my eyes as I watched
the moving images on CNN move across the screen. Not since the Vietnam
War and organizations like Student for a Democratic Society (SDS) have
we seen the anti-war movement, nor the BDS movement since South African
apartheid, consolidate into such a huge outpouring of love, rage, and
solidarity on college campuses.
I was sadly also not surprised when the Pro-Zionist reactionaries
sent the pigs in to silence the movement, nor have I been surprised at
the Zionist propaganda campaign attempting to label the entire
Palestinian solidarity movement “anti-Semitic” and “violent”, even going
so far (a la Stop Cop City activists) as calling all protesting for
Palestine “terrorists” and “supporters of terrorists”. Here in the Bay
Area, there have been lies spread saying that the BDS strategy is no
longer viable or legally possible for UC Board of Regents to
boycott/divest from the Zionist entity, which has been uncovered as a
lie to get Our comrades at Berkeley to abandon their camp and goals.
Whether divestment is possible, we can look to the success of the BDS
movement in 1986 at Berkeley to finally pressure the UC to divest $3.1
billion from companies doing business with apartheid South Africa.(13)
Aside from this it’s also been insane to watch the bipartisan effort,
from genocide Joe to the outer reaches of the far right, to attempt to
get the masses concerned with some of the alleged rhetoric of
individuals on campus and the violence (which from numerous sources have
been proven to be incited by Zionist counter-demonstrators and the pigs)
at the encampments, to try to get everyone to somehow forget his
“ironclad” support of I$raeli genocide. Sadly for Genocide Joe and his
Pro-Zionist rabble in Congress, students on campuses across Turtle
Island have dug in and refused the false images the imperialists and
their media have tried to paint of them, and have let the imperialists
know 3 things: We are NOT going anywhere, We will NOT be silenced, and
PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
As the college term wraps up for the summer and many in the Palestine
Solidarity Movement, on and off campus, set their sights this summer on
an explosive confrontation at the Democratic National Convention
alongside many other avenues for protest and action, I’d like to give
one bit of advice if any students or other outside comrades may be
reading: I think aside from the also important avenues of protest and
actions here in the belly of the imperialist beast, it would be
extremely beneficial to send as many comrades (students or otherwise) to
the West Bank this summer, to live and learn among the Palestinian
people themselves. Mao himself called attention numerous times to the
importance of this, as did Huey P. Newton which led him to visit
revolutionary China. SDS and what would become the Weather Underground
Organization (WU) also saw the importance of this in the 60’s and early
70’s meeting with revolutionaries from Cuba, Vietnam, and other
countries to learn about them, their life and their struggle from their
own points of view and in their own voices.
As the Zionists have only continued the ramping up of repression in
the West Bank since operation Al-Aqsa Flood, you could also play an
integral role in getting the stories of Palestinians there back to the
masses here in the U.$. as well as help in the already ongoing
humanitarian efforts going on there. Just something to think about as we
move into the summer.
In case you weren’t aware, We behind the gulag walls admire your
unshakable and uncompromising support for Palestine’s liberation, and
your unwavering courage in the face of wave after wave of attacks by
Zionist reactionaries and their pig helpers. You inspire us behind the
wall and We can’t wait to see what you do next.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be
Free!
MIM(Prisons) responds: Wimmin and children have fought
bravely in the resistance to Zionist occupation. There is something
concrete to seeing the murder of children as more egregious in terms of
the immiseration of a people via genocide by destroying its capacity to
produce for the nation and build the future. But to treat wimmin’s lives
as more precious or needing additional protection feeds into the
patriarchal thinking that lets I$rael
use myths of rape to rally support for bombing thousands of more
Palestinians. To the extent that it is true that grown men are doing
more of the fighting for Palestine, this only demonstrates the value
their lives have for the nation.
MIM talked about genocide as one of a number of forms of “absolute
immiseration” today:
“there is a sociology discourse claiming that Marx’s ideas
of”absolute deprivation” are incorrect, because supposedly absolute
immiseration of the proletariat has not happened under capitalism since
Marx’s time. …To avoid talking about [examples of absolute immiseration
like] militarism, the environment and prison, the bourgeois social
scientists talk about “relative deprivation” …Genocide is a matter of
absolute immiseration. There can be nothing worse.”
It is no mystery that Palestine is a key contradiction in the
imperialist system today. It is not because Palestinians play an
important role in value production, but because of the absolute
immiseration they face at the hands of U.$. imperialism in its attempt
to maintain a foothold in the part of the world they happen to
inhabit.
Notes: 1. Patrick Wolfe, December 2006, “Settler Colonialism
and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research,
814 2. Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle – The United States,
Israel, and the Palestinians, ( Haymarket Books, 2014), pp. 200 3.
Irfan Galaria, February 23, 2024,”Doctor in Gaza sees only
annihilation”, San Jose Mercury News 4. Noam Chomsky & Ilan
Pappe, “Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S. Israeli War on the
Palestinians” (Haymarket Books, 2013), pp.69 5. Nur Masalha, “The
Palestinian Nakba: Decolonizing History, Narrating the Subaltern,
Reclaiming Memory” (Zed Books, 2012), pp. 86 6. Adel Manna, “Nakba
and Survival: The Story of Palestinians who Remained inn Haifa and the
Galilee, 1948-1956” (University of California Press, (2022),
pp. 75-80 7. Kermit, “Watching and Waiting?: On Speaking Out &
Being Silent During Genocide”, Slingshot Issue 140 Summer 2024,
pp. 2-3 8. Ward Churchill, “A little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust
and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present” (City Lights Books,
1997), pp. 36-49 9. Patrick Wolfe, December 2006, “Settler
Colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide
Research, 814 10. Ward Churchill, pp. 363-364 11. Ward
Churchill, pp. 265-366 12. FP
Explainers, 3 May 2024, After Colombia, now Turkey: Which other nations
have cut ties with Israel over Gaza war?, FirstPost.com 13. DD,
“Resisting the Neoliberal University & Unethical Investment”,
Slingshot Issue 140 Summer 2024, pp. 5 14. MC5, March 1999, On the
Internal Class Structure of the Internal Semi-Colonies, MIM Theory 14:
United Front, p.57-58.
Months after rebellions began in Kanaky (aka New Caledonia), fighting
continues against the French militias and colonial forces. In New
Caledonia, voting is restricted to families who have been living there
since 1998.(1) This is in order to establish the dominance of the
natives over the settlers in the voting system. On 2 April 2024, the
French Senate voted for an amendment to the rule which would allow
voting for anyone who has lived in New Caledonia for a continuous ten
years, on a rolling basis.(2) This triggered the resistance of the
people, as one Kanaky source recently reported:
“The toll of the riots since May 13 is very heavy: Nine people were
killed and hundreds of others injured, 200 houses burned or looted and
nearly 900 businesses closed. A first estimation raises the “damage” to
1.5 billion euros. More than 3,000 soldiers, gendarmes and police were
deployed there by the colonial State. Great victory for the Kanak
people: hundreds of French families made the decision to pack their bags
and leave the colony for good.”(3)
However, the struggle over voting rights itself has cooled as
parliamentary crisis struck France, and French President Macron
announced on 12 June 2024 the suspension of the proposed changes in
voting rights in New Caledonia. France is now focused on an emergency
election at home to try to prevent a sharp rightward turn in the
parliament and presidency.
[UPDATE: 7 July 2024 - Voters succeeded in
preventing a victory of the anti-immigrant Le Pen, but results leave
uncertainty in France as there was no clear majority.]
Background on Kanaky
For our readers to understand New Caledonia (home of the Kanak), we
might use a shortcut of thinking about Puerto Rico (home of the
Boricua). New Caledonia is an island near Australia and Aotearoa (aka
New Zealand) claimed by France with a history of brutal colonization and
imperialist domination. Europeans arrived in Kanaky in the late 18th
century, beginning the colonial period in which the natives (Kanak
people) were enslaved, sold, exposed to European disease, displaced from
their land and placed on reservations. After France gained control of
the area, nickel was discovered in the territory and the French
government began sending prisoners to extract the resource and settle on
the land. Ever since that time settlement has continued, though the
Kanak people remain the largest group.(4) The Kanak people have been
struggling for independence and liberation for generations, with recent
events reflecting the latest upsurge of resistance. In recent years, the
liberation movement has engaged in violent resistance to the sale of
their nickel mines.
As mentioned above, New Caledonia hit news headlines after France
proposed allowing all immigrants, including newer settlers, to vote in
elections on the island. On 15 April, tens of thousands protested the
bill, and on that same day the French National Assembly voted in favor
of it, moving it one step further towards being passed. In May, violent
protests of Kanak people were responded to with the arrest of hundreds
and the French deploying their armed forces to suppress the movement.
This deployment of forces starkly reveals the absurdity of a “free
choice” to be independent. As MIM said about Puerto Rico in 1998:
“The Puerto Ricans have tried for decades”to persuade” the United
States to leave, but only dictatorship (organized force) will settle the
question. Without the freedom to keep the Yankees out, the elections
only show what the Puerto Rican people will say with their arms twisted
behind their backs.”(5)
One of the major arenas of struggle has been the independence
referendum. There have been three of these in the past 4 years; in the
first two the option to remain a territory of France narrowly won (56.6%
and 53.2%), and nationality played a major role in the decision. Kanaks
generally voted for independence while the other minorities generally
voted for dependence. In the third, the independence movement boycotted
the referendum, resulting in a 97% victory for dependence, but the
turnout was only 43.9%, throwing its validity into question.(6) The
protests and riots in May led to the declaration of a state of emergency
(lifted after May 31) and the deployment of reinforcements from France.
Barricades were set up by independence protesters and, in earlier
reports, the clashes led to the death of two French Armed Forces
personnel and injury of over 54 police officers.(7)
The struggle for an independent New Caledonia is a revolutionary
struggle against imperialism. New Caledonians fight France, Palestinians
fight I$rael, and the oppressed here in Occupied Turtle Island fight the
United $tates, all in a united struggle against a common enemy. The
struggle in Puerto Rico against the corrupt government of Ricardo
Rosselló is no different. Puerto Rico was acquired by the United $tates
in the bloody wars of its ascendancy into an imperialist power.
Imperialism is the number one enemy of the self-determination of
nations, reaching its hands across the globe to squeeze every last drop
of profit it can find. The struggle of the oppressed nations, wherever
they are, is the number one weapon against this imperialist system, and
that weapon is ever more powerful the more the oppressed nations ally
with each other and fight imperialism as one. Puerto Rico has a history
of independence movements being co-opted by leaders trying to get a
slice of the imperialist pie. The movement for statehood represents this
tendency, while the independence movement is the movement for national
self-determination against imperialism. In both New Caledonia and Puerto
Rico, the referendums have shown the majority of the population voting
to remain a part of their imperialist occupiers in order to access
certain benefits, whereas the independence movement represents the
revolutionary opposition to national oppression and the upholding of
self-determination.
Kanaky Will Be Free!Palestine Will Be
Free!Puerto Rico Will Be Free!
In a recent episode of the RevLeft podcast, a couple of
student leaders reflected on their experiences so far in the student
encampments demanding university divestment from I$rael. Here we will
briefly summarize some of their lessons learned and connect them to
similar experiences in the prison movement.
The biggest regret expressed by one of the students, and echoed as
important by the other, was conceding to closed-door negotiations with
the administration. A comrade once described a campaign that ended up
with a large group of prisoners being in a room with administration. The
administration expressed that they had heard their demands and would go
deliberate on them and let them know their decision. The comrade
correctly saw the risk of divide and conquer and kept everyone there
until the admin would commit to how they would actually address their
very reasonable requests. When making demands of the powers that be it
is important to mobilize the masses as fully as possible to participate.
Behind closed doors, individual negotiators, whether due to
inexperience, opportunism, fear, etc, will not get the same outcome.
A related demand that the admins often made of the student
encampments was to exclude community members from the struggle on
campus. This similarly helped to isolate students, potentially from more
experienced organizers in particular.
Another big critique one student made of eir group was too much
hemming and hawing over escalation of building occupations to the point
of losing the momentum they had.
The students discussed the varied interests of different parties
involved, whether on campus or off-campus students, staff with tenure or
not, income levels, etc. This is paralleled in prisons where people with
different amounts of time often have very different attitudes towards
things, and some groups are often granted privileges by staff in order
to divide and conquer. Related to this is the fact that many of the
students didn’t know each other at all, so there was a lack of trust and
familiarity. This might be easier to overcome in prison, but speaks to
the need for developing relationships with others and organization prior
to events like this.
The students mentioned how they should have studied the history of
how their institutions responded to similar events in the past more. We
offer the pages of ULK to document the history of the prison
struggle for others to study.
Finally, they self-criticized for succumbing to reformist language
that was coming from the administration in their own outreach. They
stressed the importance of going into a movement with established
principles in order to stick to the goals and the messaging when things
get hectic and confusing. They stressed how much language matters.
These are very universal lessons that we can all benefit from better
understanding. We encourage our readers to write in with more examples
of lessons learned from their experiences of fighting oppression so we
can all get better at what we do.
NOTES: Revolutionary Left Radio, 5 June 2024, Student
Encampments for Palestine: An Interview with Student
Organizers.
I’m an prisoner in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC)
this is my second run inside the claws of Pennsylvania Judicial System
and Department of Corrections.
The scary thing now is what I call “the pacifier”. The Pennsylvania
Department of Corrections has “Game Rooms” now. Filled with Nintendo
Switch (hand-held game system), PlayStation 5, Xbox 1 and throw Madden
tournaments along with 2k tournaments. This is the system’s control.
The young generation is being pulled away from the law libraries,
school and what’s most important to their release. Keep the youth from
the tools and the system doesn’t have to worry about any revolution. The
prisons in the PA D.O.C. suspend you for a minimum of six (6) months
from the “Game Room” if you receive a misconduct. So the younger
generations is tucking their tales and playing games instead of suiting
up for the real world and their release.
Thanks to the pacifier, it’s even more important we organize and
reach our youth. If not prisons will be seen as playgrounds and
acceptable. Maybe I’m wrong. When I started coming to prison there were
no tablets, TV’s in the Restricted Housing Unit (R.H.U.) or game rooms.
Guys actually like being here.
We need to Reach Our Youth.
MIM(Prisons) adds: In response to our reader survey
this year asking if there’s been changes in prisons that make people
less likely to subscribe to ULK, a North Carolina prisoner
suggested digital entertainment as a cause:
“Change to prison system, yes. Less interested in subscribing, maybe.
With tablets a lot of guys don’t care about mail any more. We have GTL
tablets. Maybe try to get our content loaded on there? News Inside does,
for free.”
I am a single individual among a multitude of revolutionaries being
held captive behind imperialist enemy lines (Texa$ Pri$on $y$tem).
I am a part of the Growth and Development movement and I stand for
righteousness, unity, love and the liberation of all oppressed nations.
At this time, I can only speak on my own behalf and not on behalf of the
movement as a whole.
It is, however, my sincere hope that my brothers and sisters of
struggle will find agreement and solidarity with the following
statement:
I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian People and I stand in
solidarity with those who struggle against oppression everywhere. As is
said: an injury to one is an injury to all, and none are free until all
are Free!
I am Pro-Palestine; I am not anti-Israel.
I am Pro-Humyn; I am not anti-semitic.
I am Pro-Liberation and I am anti-Imperialist oppression!
Regarding Pro-Palestine protests that are currently taking place; I
urge my fellow humyn beings to stand upon a Foundation of Love.
The imperialist press continues to paint an image of hate so I
especially urge our young comrades who are in the protest trenches to
stay strong and give the enemy absolutely no ammunition to utilize in a
smear campaign.
My young comrades, fear is a natural response to danger, feel no
shame if you are afraid and remember that courage is doing what is
righteous despite the presence of fear.
To our young comrades who are willing to commit class suicide and
sacrifice the numerous benefits of belonging to a college educated
bourgeoisie, I salute you, continue to stay true to your beliefs and
stand firm on righteousness.
If you should face confinement because of a righteous struggle, take
heart in knowing that so long as you stand on righteousness, you will
find support and solidarity wherever you go.
i want to begin this writing by expressing sincere solidarity to the
surge of student activism in support of the Palestinian people and
against amerikan and israeli militarism and imperialism. If i could tell
the students who’re facing or will face charges in the empire’s courts,
i would tell them to keep in constant memory that no matter what they,
the empire, says or does you are not a criminal. i would tell them that
be careful to remember the righteousness of our cause and to remember
that they are not alone.
In every mass movement and organization there are varying levels of
socio-political consciousness and radicalism. Those who are neophytes to
the struggle should pay careful attention to the machinations of the
institutions of the empire. One’s experiences with the empire’s
institutions usually increase one’s level of radicalism and
consciousness. While we enter struggle usually because of various
sympathies we hold, We continue and elevate our activism usually because
we realize that our theories and sympathies only barely touched the
surface of the ugliness of the empire.
Allow the experience you will have going through the motions of the
empire’s institutional shuffles to harden you, to motivate you.
Understand that your sacrifices are worth it, and that while we face
certain levels of sacrifices, the people who’ve inspired us so much, the
people whose stiff resistance is the reason i am even writing this
missive, those people are making sacrifices and facing down levels of
repression that most humans will never know. Be proud of the trials the
oppressors put you through, and also be vigilant in order to learn
lessons to apply to your future work in the struggle.
Advice for those inside facing charges for fighting for Palestine, my
best advice would be to not let the repression to stop you from
organizing in furthering the cause. Continue your work on the inside. My
experience on the inside in recent months is that there are a lot of
patriotic, amerikanized prisoners. More than we often realize. And they
are louder than those of us who support the self-determination of
Palestine, and the divestment of amerikan institutions from israel. Your
voice, your commitment is needed just as much inside as it is outside.
Captivity is not the time for self-defeat. The struggle must
continue.
Palestine’s struggle has and is being analyzed in various ways. But
for the record the Palestinian struggle is a nationalist, anti-colonial
struggle. There are many connections to other nationalist,
anti-neocoloinal struggles within the united $tates. In north amerika
the empire has succeeded in stamping out the struggle, the culture, and
much of the existence of the Indigenous people, New Afrikan people,
Chican@ People, and Puerto Rican people. They have already done to us
what israel is attempting to do to Palestine now. amerika looks
different and is softer with its policies of social control only because
they’re further along in their experiment of empire building and
settler-colonialism. As a captive New Afrikan revolutionary nationalist
i am extremely proud of, and inspired by, the Palestinian struggle for
national independence. Their struggle provides a measuring stick to
other nationalist movements. i hope we take note and begin to organize
more in earnest.
Because there are many students who’ve been drawn into this movement
by the extremes of the Palestinian situation, some may not be aware that
there are revolutionary nationalist movements here in their backyards
itching to mobilize enough people to raise the level of contradiction to
the point that the Palestinian struggle is already at. Because there are
connections between these nationalist movements we hope that you will be
able to identify them and connect yourselves to these revolutionary
nationalist struggles. In Our effort to smash the tentacles of amerikan
militarism and imperialism in Palestine and elsewhere, We have to raise
our level of struggle here. We have to raise our capacity here within
the nationalist movements, and i believe the student movement is a key
part of doing that. As such the best we in the prison movement and those
of you in the student movement can do is to build connections with each
other, help each other, and help the world’s oppressed and exploited
people.
i hope this letter is received well, and that you, the reader
continue to struggle ceaselessly until victory is won.
Freedom: is contraband in prison because free
thinking, independence of spirit and open mindedness are like acids that
eat away at a prison bars and locked doors. Liberating the heart and
mind, even when the body is not free.
Equality: is contraband in prison because
brotherhood always speaks out against oppression and poses threats to
the power structures. Color-blind prisoners overcoming racism, prejudice
and hate, to see each other as equals, is the system’s biggest
fear.
Justice: is contraband in prison. How many of my
brothers are here who shouldn’t be? Some innocent of guilt, others
guilty of innocence. While many here have harmed others, still there are
those whose “crimes” have no victim. Moreover, we must never forget that
cops, judges, jurors, and prison guards often see to it that justice is
not done for the poor, oppressed, and helpless inside these
walls.
Peace: is contraband in prison. From fists and
shanks to shields and batons, violence is the way of all tyranny.
Remember: The system wants us at each other’s throats because it makes
us much easier to control. And the worst violators of the peace are
often those pledged to defend it (e.g. killer cops, military leaders,
jingoistic politicians, etc.).
Love: is contraband in prison. The warm embrace
of family and friends. The touching and holding of lovers dear. The
fires of passion, stoked and quenched by hands, lips, tongues, and
bodies. All this is denied and forbidden here. There is no room for love
in Hell! When you can’t be with your loved ones in times of joy or
crisis…That is when the contraband nature of love in a carceral state
becomes most clear…But really…In a society where hatefully punitive
laws, institutions and practices are all too often the established
norms…Should anyone be surprised that love is nowhere to be found in
prison??
Truth: is contraband in prison because, if we
knew even half of what the system didn’t want us to know, surely the
walls would come tumbling down. For their bricks are laid with the
mortar of doublethink and their foundations are always built upon
falsehood. This is the house Orwell’s Big Brother built. But, by
developing a new and revolutionary consciousness…Together perhaps, we
can find a way out of this deception, this misnomer, this evil hoax,
this lie the system dares to call “corrections”, when, in fact, it is
absolutely nothing of the kind. For the ultimate truth is this: The
ruling elites need to keep the most marginalized elements of our society
stuck in the revolving door of recidivism, because they fear
them!
Reason: is contraband in prison. How else can it
be in a place like this? Where inane rules, illogical policies, twisted
thinking and warped minds reign supreme…Among both prisoners and staff.
Here, the authorities often make up the rules as they go along. What
regulations do actually exist are always interpreted in ways that serve
the interests of the powers that be…So…If you’re a victim of wrong-doing
in prison, don’t expect there to be a common sense resolution to your
problems. Especially not if it inconveniences those who run the hell
holes in any way, shape or form they please. Critical thinking means
nothing where arbitrariness is the order of the day. Power always trumps
fairness and logical deduction and rationality are never approved of in
slaves.
Happiness: is contraband in prison. As powerless
beings we are jammed into tiny cubes, forced to live in unnatural close
quarters or unnatural solitude. Manacled, thwarted, squelched, isolated
and restrained at every turn. Required or compelled to do this;
prohibited or punished if we do that. Deprived of simple pleasures and
quite often necessities as well…When you are locked up, contentment can
be as fleeting as a lightening flash and seeking joy can be as futile as
a dog chasing its tail. Those who say: “Prisoners have no right to be
happy,” just don’t understand. Such people should be made to suffer and
endure the demeaning life behind bars and locked doors which is our
constant reality, but not part of our sentences, because then, such
hateful fools wouldn’t be so quick to open their mouths against
us!
Dignity: is contraband in prison. When you’re
treated like a cross between a wayward child and a potentially dangerous
or predatory animal, it’s often as if you’re a nonentity, devoid of
rights, privacy and humanity. So how can respect for the inherent worth
of the life, person and meager possessions of inmates ever be achieved?
Such a thing stands an ice-cube’s chance in Hell as long as the modern
day slavery of imprisonment in penal institutions, mental hospitals and
all other such places continues to exist.
Unity: is contraband in prison. Because through
unity, we can join the fight against cruelty, malfeasance and corruption
as a bulwark of mighty solidarity. For unity always stands tall against
unfairness of all kinds. But, if I take your hand…You, me and tomorrow
link up as one. Regardless of race, creed, color, class or cultural
background, no matter who or what we are, or what some of us have done,
we must never forget that we’re all in this together. “Gung Ho” is the
Chinese word for “All together now!” This must become our motto! For
united there is little we cannot do! Making vows against injustice.
Raising voices in loud protest against harm masquerading as
“Rehabilitation”. Speaking truth to power, we are a resounding war cry,
shouting down all that is unfair! Together, our siren duet can reach a
great thundering crescendo. Shaking rafters of established order, from
chambers of crypto-Fascist inhumanity, our voices will be heard, like
clarion trumpet calls wailing! Until the rotting floors of authoritarian
control collapse and fall away. As one for all and all for one, we must
fight and work and scream and bleed. We are a pair! We are a team! We
are a movement for a better way! We are the caged wretches, whose words
are a conspiracy against the silence of indifference. And our voices
will never stop yelling “Foul!” until we are heard. The bottom line is
that all prisoners lives matter!
Therefore…
We refused to be branded, “The irredeemable dregs of
humanity”.
We, the first world’s lumpen proletariat who vacillate between the
jail cells, street shelters, crash pads and alleyways of your
plutocratic, quasi-police state, nightmare society.
We, the poor souls caught between the stigma of our criminal past and
our society’s refusal to truly help us integrate.
We, the oppressed ex-offender, caught between the violence of poverty
stricken urban jungles on the one hand and the violence of the constant
threat of re-incarceration or death on the other…
We, the disenfranchised masses for whom the promises of “Free
Enterprise”, “Democracy” and Bourgeois bliss ring hollow.
We, say:
No More!
No More to locking people up like animals!
No More to police shootings and brutality!
No More to all the evils that the prison industrial complex
perpetuates.
Our Demands for recognition.
Our Demands for fair treatment.
Our Demands for radical change should never be deemed…
The British did it to the Native
Americans,
the Zionists are doing it the Palestinians
taking the people’s land.
No one wants to stop the genocide,
because it’s not their people being victimized,
but let it would have been the other way around,
they would be begging the world to sympathize.
To all “Bund” Jews, I love you,
if you’re a “Zionist”, fuck you,
for what you’re doing to the Palestinians,
the new Hitler is Netanyahu.
It ain’t Israel or the Jews, it’s the Zionist government,
doing Amerikkka’s bidding and devilishment,
manipulating the six point star, invaders being decadent.
To Israel, Amerikkka’s giving weapons of every kind,
while sending food and aid to Palestine,
what could be more hypocritical,
people, please read between the lines.
If you vote for any of these hypocrites,
you are worst than them in head and feet.
Before I vote for any plutocrat,
I’ll vote for a dog in the street.
This is no democracy, it is a plutocracy,
the Palestinians are dying by the thousands,
to uphold CIPWS Zionist supremacy.
Your time is coming NetanHITLER,
you will forever be guilty in the eyes of history.
Dear pro Palestinian student protesters,
please know that the world is with you,
you own the future.
You are being admired by all,
including prisoners,
but most of us don’t understand,
what’s really going on
because your picture,
is being painted by the CIPWS
(capitalist imperialist patriarchist white supremacist)
media.
Please understand
the masses only know of Israel, and Palestine,
from a biblical perspective and point of view.
Thus, it is easy for the CIPWS,
to turn the miseducated against you.
As was done against the Panthers,
and every other movement,
that came egalitarian and true.
So I request that you paint your own narrative,
tell the politically miseducated,
and myopic,
why you do what you do.
Explain to the miseducated,
that the Arabs are semitic too.
And the Zionists are racist Europeans,
manipulating the word “Jew.”
The first Zionist conference,
was held in 1897,
which made all else post-holocaust,
capable of coming back through.
Expatriation to Israel in 1947,
declared independence on land,
on which they were in 1948,
still foreigner new.
Expelling 700,000 Arabs from Israel,
no telling how many thousands they also slew.
Expelling 250,000 more Arabs from Israel,
in 1967,
giving birth to what is now called,
the West Bank and Gaza,
out of blood the invaded still spew.
Fast forward to the present,
after 70-plus years Israeli occupation,
and oppression,
with nothing but the US to thank.
Wombmen and children in Israeli prisons,
for offenses,
as simple as throwing rocks at tanks.
Amerikkklan drones, rockets, missiles,
lynching Palestinians,
with no regards for age, sex or rank.
Turning Gaza into one big prison with a flag,
surrounded by barbed wire, check points,
facial recognition cameras,
and sadist, racist, fascist,
antisemitic Israeli tyrants,
turning any hope for egalitarianism,
into a ship,
that in 1947 went rogue and sank.
Pro Palestinian student protesters,
everything I’m saying here,
you are all probably already well aware.
But these truths are all unknown,
to the world’s people,
especially here on Turtle Island,
Amerikkka.
So tell your own story,
because the CIPWS media,
is miseducating the people about ya,
using CIPWS propaganda.
Do not allow the CIPWS media,
to paint your narrative or speak for ya.
This is how they turned the people,
against every egalitarian movement,
threatening the rule, wealth and power.
I am in prison,
and the CIPWS media is the only means,
of knowing in real time what’s happening.
The CIPWS has oppressed prisoners,
identifying with the Israeli invaders,
who did the land grabbing.
Zionist settlers living on blood stolen land,
doing the real antisemitic crabbing.
Show the world the true colors of the Zionists,
their antisemitic parasitic back stabbing.
Apartheid genocide,
all with Amerikkklan economic backing,
and bureaucratic white supremacist trappings.
Can’t fight, kill and die,
for people who do know why,
or for whom you are snapping.
knowing the history of a situation,
is what makes it worth the sacrificing,
and strapping.
Lift your voice, shout it all out,
over-talk and out-talk,
the CIPWS media’s constant capping.
While you are organizing,
educate against the 400 years of lies,
keep the lies from escaping the mouths,
of those doing all the CIPWS rapping.
Make it known to the world,
that the Palestinians,
are the Shemitics(Semitics).
And the Zionists are the true antisemitics.
Living on stolen land, and being parasitic.
The CIPWS media,
is telling lies about you,
that you are being violent,
and antisemitic,
for defending the Ishmaelites,
the Palestinians, the first Semitics,
If they don’t believe you,
tell them,
“do research on the topic”.
“Google it”.
The recent Zionist attacks on Rafah signaled to the world that the
imperialists are in lock step as they cut a hideous path of genocide
through Palestine. U.$. imperialism has given the nod and wink to forge
ahead as we all watch, as we all mourn.
The imperialists have circled the wagons despite the world responding
in disgust. The people should also come together, all sectors here in
the internal semi-colonies also known as the United Snakes.
Of special interest is two sectors who defy the pull of capitalist
bribes. This defiance arrives from different paths and yet our party
feels they are both anti-imperialist in nature. These sectors in the
United $tates are the prison movement – made up of prisoners, former
prisoners and outside supporters, and the other sector being the student
movement – being the students on school campuses across the country.
These two sectors have the least to lose and the most to win when it
comes to revolution. Both bring that passion and fire needed to ignite
the flame of real resistance and thus should find ways to resist in
tandem.
A free Palestine, like a free Aztlán, will only happen when
anti-imperialism is exercised in a united front between all oppressed
and allies. The world sees that Palestine is deserving of peace, for it
is life while Israel signifies death!
The student encampments that were attacked by the state and their
goons were a glimmer of hope that the youth here in these false U.$.
borders hold on to their humynity in the face of repression. Standing up
for the national liberation of Palestine, putting their freedom and
their lives on the line so that the Israeli settler colonialists stop
the attacks on Palestine.
Chican@s stand with Palestine because we are also colonized by
imperialists. The Chican@ nation stands with the students who dare to
struggle. Imprisoned Aztlán awaits our student allies in the
concentration kamps so we can build and solidify our struggle with a
common political enemy.
The Chican@ movement struggles against imperialism too, we stand up
to settler colonialism, and genocide as well. Imperialism is what
creates the conditions where kids
in cages is normalized whether we are talking about in U.$. prisons
or Israeli prisons.
We have a moral obligation to stand against the genocide in
Palestine. We are obligated as conscious people to stand with oppressed
people always.
Everyone has been watching the atrocities happening on the news and
the genocide going down in the Middle East. Israel seems to think that
Palestinian lives mean nothing. Many are shocked at how the news
describes the situation as if Palestine is in conflict when it’s clear
that Israel has reduced Palestine to rubble.
Not one persyn here has felt Israel is in the right. It is clear as
day that a genocide is happening and that U.$. tax payers are complicit
as the U.$. sends billions of dollars to Israel every year.
Every time the news comes on talking about Israel, one of the
prisoners here yells, “Yo Israel, get the fuck out of Palestine!”
Everyone claps in agreement. Some are bewildered as to why the U.$. is
enabling genocide and the more conscious are explaining the history of
Amerika and what it has done to this continent and beyond for the
dollar. Humyn lives are worth more than profit and the courageous
students in their encampments are proving that! To be arrested in a time
of genocide is an honorable thing to do.
Greetings, I want to extend my support and appreciation for you
courageous students who stand against the tyranny of genocide.
Your acts and resistance have been well-received around the world and
deeply appreciated by Palestinian refugees, as I seen it on the world
news, painted on the walls of the refugee camps: “Thank you American
students”.
Israel is not fighting Hamas, Israel is creating a Palestinian
genocide. The greatest hypocrisy in history, just as the Nazis did to
the Jews.
In prison we stand in solidarity with your good cause of saving
innocent lives.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes 10 May 2024 PG-13
Spoilers
A main theme throughout both series of Planet of the Apes
movies is the question of whether Apes differ from so-called “humyn
nature.” In the first series (produced 1968-1972) especially, humyn
nature is blamed for the hubris of nuclear weapons that brings humyns’
downfall. In this latest movie of the new series (produced 2011-2024),
apes have been setback in this search for truth, but perhaps this can be
explained by the very existence of class struggle that they share with
humyns.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), the fourth film in
the modern Planet of the Apes film series, is the first to take
us into the future a few generations after the events that led apes to
become competitors with humyns for dominating planet Earth. In it we see
glimpses of the emergence of class society, in the form of slavery. But
it is a slave society that is shaped by a relationship to the formerly
dominant humyns that still reflects a colonial relationship in many
ways.
The Eagle Clan, who are the center of the film, live in a primitive
clan society, with elders who set the laws that are taught to the young
and passed down via tradition. Later in the film, we encounter a larger
ape society that is a kingdom led by King Proximus, that has absorbed
many clans and uses them as slaves. It is not clear that the slaves
produce material wealth for the slavemaster class of the kingdom, as the
film only shows them working to break into an old humyn military bunker
to extract the technology. But someone must be producing the food, tools
and weapons for the soldiers who run the kingdom.
Proximus claims to be the new Caesar. Caesar was the founder and
leader of the apes in the first three movies, and was also a king
figure. But Caesar was a benevolent leader who fought and worked
alongside the others. A virus gave Caesar super-ape intelligence to lead
the apes to liberation from humyn society.
Within 10 years of the events of Rise
of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Caesar had already begun to learn
that apes have the same tendencies as humyns as he had to ally with a
humyn to combat a rogue ape attempting to usurp eir control of ape city
to wage war on humyns.
We previously discussed the themes of integrationism in the newer
series, in contrast to the older series that takes a more scientific
approach to uniting humyns and apes through struggle and re-education.
While the inability of apes to build a a lasting harmonious society may
appear pessimistic, we’d say it is realistic; accurately reflecting the
myth of humyn or ape nature despite the producers’ intentions.
The original series (produced 1968-1972) ends with a humyn ally
remarking that the apes have finally become humyn after the first ape
murder of another ape. This story line is framed more as a biblical
original sin story than class struggle. But in both series the first
ape-on-ape murder occurs because of the struggle between the apes who
want to wage war to annihilate all humyns and those who do not. The
question the producers seem to be asking is do apes have a war-like
nature like humyns supposedly do. Despite the revolutionary themes of
the first series, it largely reinforces this concept of humyn
nature.
When we criticize the concept of humyn/ape nature, we are not
criticizing the “natural” we are criticizing the metaphysical view of an
unchanging phenomenon. In other words, “natural” itself is a myth in
many ways, in other ways “natural” could be dialectical materialism and
the scientific method that explains the world around us. As dialectical
materialists we understand all things to be in a constant state of
change motivated by the contradictions within that thing; the class
struggle in society being the prime example of this in Marxist
thought.
Observed by humyns in our reality, chimpanzees and gorillas have one
leader who is a male silverback. While bonobos have an alpha male role
as well, the alpha female plays the more determinate role.
Interestingly, the king Proximus is a male bonobo. Meanwhile orangutans
in real life tend to be more solitary, which is reflected in this film
with Racka being a loner and no other orangutans being part of
Proximus’s kingdom. As we know, and as Engels lays out in The
Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, humyns have
gone through various social structures; from more collective matriarchal
societies to the more modern hierarchical patriarchal societies, and
these structures have changed to adapt to changing modes of
production.
In our world, we suspect humyn societies have changed more over the
last ten thousand years than other great apes, because their
relationship to the rest of the natural world has changed more through
gaining knowledge and technology. Therefore in the new series of movies
we would expect apes to go through a very similar evolution of
hierarchies and class society as humyns did as they change their
relationship to the production of their material needs. This is
reflected in the kingdom that operates as a primitive system of slavery,
the earliest class system of humyns as well.
However, the evolution of ape society is colored by the existence of
a previous, advanced humyn society. Learning from humyn books and
accessing humyn armories full of technology are ways that Proximus
attempts to make a leap in ape knowledge and technology. As ey does
this, Proximus maintains a line that humyns cannot be trusted, and apes
must work together, even though this is applied cynically as ey is shown
to happily sacrifice the lives of many apes in eir own attempts at power
through humyn technology.
The main character in Kingdom is Noa, a member of the Eagle
Clan, whose father was a master of training eagles. Noa learns about
Caesar for the first time from the last true follower of Caesar after
the rest of the Eagle Clan has been captured by Proximus. Before this,
Noa had no knowledge of the history of humyns or apes; perhaps because
of eir age. But Noa also states that eir elders did not want to know
such things and remained ignorant on purpose through isolation.
The major transformation that Noa makes is to reject the idea that
law is handed down from some higher power. Ey does this overtly by
rejecting the laws of the king, and more subtly by pursuing knowledge
eir elders forbid. This is the transformation of thought that humyn
society went through during its transition to capitalism, when
liberalism, plurality, democracy and the pursuit of scientific knowledge
rose to replace ways of thought that were more stagnant, based more in
idealism and following a god-king. So we see Noa make a shift towards
materialism, that we expect will transform the Eagle Clan as it rebuilds
its village. But Noa’s understanding of ape nature at the end of the
movie still seems behind that of Caesar’s, generations ago. We see this
type of pre-scientific thinking among our comrades today who believe the
white man is literally the devil and the Black man/humyn is god. Like
Noa, they’re on the right side, but are guided by idealist thinking that
can easily lead them astray. Of course, we all struggle with idealism
and subjectivism, which might be considered part of the “nature” of
beings that can reason with limited knowledge and perspective. Part of
the power of the vanguard party, as layed out by Lenin, is its ability
to produce a more scientific approach to social change by pooling
experience and knowledge production at group level for a whole
class.
In our review of Dawn
of the Planet of the Apes (2014) we compare the Caesar
loyalists to the Gang of Four in China, who were those in the leadership
who both understood and represented the Maoist line after Mao’s death.
The Orangutan, Raka, would be like a young persyn in China today who has
deeply studied Mao and Chinese history but has no real experience in
building socialism and no one to help em put it into practice. Proximus
might be compared to the revisionists in power in China, exploiting the
people while trying to strengthen China against the U.$. imperialists
all in the name of “Marxism” (or “Caesar”).
The problem that Noa faces in determining what the right path is, and
what Caesar was really about, becomes a question of trust and judging
what is morally right. In contrast, we can judge the correct Maoist path
by studying history, and putting science into practice. While Noa’s path
in this movie echoes Caesar’s in the previous one, this is only because
they both tried to help their own people. While serving the people is
part of the communist road, we must be more than do-gooders to end
oppression, we must have a scientific understanding of society, what
forces are at play within it, how it is changing and how we can shape
that change.
In practice it seems that Noa may have acted against the interests of
Apes overall by eir alliance with the humyn, Mae. Another sequel will
probably reveal this. This is where the colonial parallels come in. Mae
is part of a humyn society that is no longer dominant, but still
possesses historical knowledge and technology that gives them a great
advantage. The Eagle Clan parallels many primitive groups in humyn
history that have encountered colonialists and allied with them against
other known enemies, perhaps seeing the colonialists as friends and
allies, before being subjugated by them in turn. In this way Proximus
proves more correct in eir distrust of the humyns and calls for ape
unity, despite coming from an exploiter class perspective.
This is why in a United Front the proletariat needs its own party to
represent our class, and to act independently of other classes. It must
be a party based on science, that can see all sides of the situation. At
this slave stage of ape society there is no such leadership available
and therefore no basis for forming principled alliances with either the
humyns or the exploiter class of apes.
The movie ends with Noa asking Mae if humyns and apes can ever live
together in trust. The ending hints that such a future is far off to say
the least. A theme that was more prominent in the original series is the
political question of if the oppressed rise up against white Amerika,
will they wipe out white Amerika or live harmoniously side-by-side. In
the original series, we see many years after the ape revolution that
such a reality is still in the works. There is still distrust, as some
war-mongering humyns still exist in the city, and many apes remember the
past oppression by humyns. While we draw some analogies above about the
latest movie, there are no real revolutionary story lines like the
original series, which showed the joint dictatorship of other great apes
over humyns and discussed the need for a long period of transforming
society and its citizens to build the trust necessary for peaceful
coexistence. Of course, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not just
about trust building, it is about continuing the class struggle to
eliminate all class differences – the internal contradictions of society
that lead to oppressive relationships between groups. That is the only
basis upon which a true communist society can be built. Something none
of the Planet of the Apes movies have brought us to yet.
by MIM(Prisons) May 2024 permalink
rapper Macklemore and Hind Rajab, killed by Israeli occupation
Hip hop artist Macklemore released a song and music video, called
“Hind’s Hall”, unapologetically supporting the students fighting to stop
U.$. funding of genocide in Palestine. This is a unique statement that
we have not seen from Amerikan celebrities after over six months of
bombing and invasion.
Besides saying “fuck the police” and “free Palestine”, to the
question of voting for Biden, Macklemore says “fuck no” in this song.
This last point puts em ahead of the so-called Communist Party - U$A and
Revolutionary Communist Party - U$A, which have both implicitly and
explicitly campaigned for Democratic presidential candidates, including
Joe Biden. We’d say Macklemore is doing a better job of representing the
interests of the Third World proletariat on this point, than the
so-called communist parties. In the past Macklemore has sported an
Amerikan flag, and campaigned for the Democrats as well. But ey’s an
individual, and a rapper. We gotta expect a little more from a communist
party that is supposed to be a source of truth and to lead us to ending
oppression.
Of course, the MIM slogan has been “Don’t Vote, Organize!” So not
voting for Biden in itself isn’t the call for change; rather the
recognition of the need to make and change history ourselves instead of
casting a vote for this or that celebrity politician.
While it took 6 months and U.$. student protests for this song to
come out, it appears that Macklemore has been involved in the anti-war
movement since October when ey signed a statement supporting ceasefire.
Ey is also donating all proceeds to the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. So good for em, and it
is a good thing to use eir voice as a popular artist to reach more
people. We hope this cracks open the door for other more popular artists
who have been quiet on the genocide.
In the new song, Macklemore also asks “who gets the right to defend?
who gets the right to resistance?” flashing pictures from Ukraine and
answering that it has to do with skin pigment. This is a righteous
defense of the resistance in Palestine that is condemned as terrorism by
the same people chearleading the resistance in Ukraine as a natural
humyn right. However, skin color is a superficial explanation. Though
racism, orientalism, and anti-Arab sentiment is a strong driving force
behind the average oppressor-nation Amerikkkan’s stance on Palestine,
ultimately the U.$.’s position derives not from disdain for certain skin
colors but rather from imperialism. Ukraine, and Zelensky, stand as a
junior partner to Amerikkka against their current greatest imperialist
enemy, Russia, while the potential of a freed Palestine poses a threat
to Amerikkkan and I$raeli imperialism in the Middle East.
Students at Columbia University occupied Hamilton Hall after the
university rejected most of their demands, including to divest from
weapons manufacturers. During the occupation, they renamed it “Hind’s
Hall” after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed
by Israeli forces in Gaza City while trying to get assistance from the
Red Crescent Society after her family had been killed by an Israeli
attack.
They say the best way to hide something is to put it in plain sight.
Student-led activism in the majority New Afrikan populated area of South
Baltimore has rendered this old saying no longer true. For about ninety
years corporate coal companies and the city government have allowed and
perpetuated landfills, and literal mountains of coal being piled up in
plain sight in residential areas, and even directly behind rec centers
with playgrounds and children.
For the last 100 years, coal has been brought into the port city of
Baltimore by the freight transportation company CSX. In data derived
from 2021, it was found that CSX transported more than 8 million tons of
coal into South Baltimore, where the coal is then transported all over
the world. Freight trains coming through the Baltimore transport
terminal with coal on them spill black coal dust throughout South
Baltimore and pollute the air.
Pollution is so outrageous in this predominately New Afrikan
community that the number one cause of death is respiratory related
issues. The death rate from respiratory disease in South Baltimore is
more than twice the rate for Baltimore as a whole. Respiratory disease
is killing more people in this section of the city than diabetes, drugs,
or gun violence. A staggering 90% of youth from the area suffer from
different degrees of asthma, which has been causing chronic death.
What is by now very obvious to anyone is that coal and other
pollutants should not be in residential areas, but the fact that they
are and have been so carelessly handled for generations now, in a
predominately New Afrikan section of a predominantly New Afrikan city,
illustrates major contradictions of the national oppression of so-called
Black people, and Our neo-colonial relationship to the empire and
certain classes within Our collective body-politic.
It is under this back drop that a youth organization was founded in
2011 at the local Benjamin Franklin High School, called Free Your Voice.
In 2011 the Free Your Voice student-activists were fighting, and
eventually defeated an effort to build a waste incinerator in South
Baltimore. The incinerator would’ve burned tons of trash and waste, and
released pollution, as well as converted electricity from the burned
waste.
Today, Free Your Voice is still active and continues to replenish its
pool of student-activists. Now however, the struggle with CSX and city
and state officials is much more daunting. Free Your Voice and
supporters from the community and local colleges have set out to get the
state’s environmental regulators to deny CSX’s operations permit on the
transport terminal and pay residents of South Baltimore reparations for
generations of ‘environmental racism’ (Genocide).
These efforts have been hampered by what some deem as betrayal by the
first ‘Black’ top environmental regulator in Maryland and her
declaration that she and her agency know it’s coal and coal dust found
on streets and public areas but can not act without actual proof of the
identity of the substance.
Laws against air pollution are written so that oppressed and
vulnerable masses of people are at severe disadvantage and would in most
circumstances be dependent upon state agencies, who are in cahoots with
big industrialists, to gather and test substances in question. People
have to prove they’ve been or are being poisoned by specific substances
before regulators can take action.
Students from Free Your Voice along with local college volunteers
spent the summer of 2023 collecting and testing particles of dust found
in the S. B-More area. They have and continue to go door-to-door
spreading the findings of their research with the general community.
Thus far, although the terminal has not been shut down and the mountains
of coal still reside behind rec centers and playgrounds, Free Your Voice
has achieved quantitative victories.
The student-activists’ work thus far has:
Made it harder for city officials, state politicians, and local
residents to ignore their oppression;
They’ve won over neighbors to their work, elevated consciousness
around air pollution and the complicity of the occupying government in
environmental destruction;
They’ve garnered meetings with state regulators, and the fact
that the head of the environmental regulation agency in Maryland is a
‘Black’ female, has elevated the class consciousness and the reality of
the New Afrikan National neo-colonial status;
The aspirations of their movement have risen. From slight reforms
like covering or pouring water on coal mountains in the ghetto, to now,
aspiring to remove or shut down the train terminal.
The continuing work of Our young people is not only there to be
acknowledged and supported, but more importantly in the long run there
are lessons to be learned from this particular student movement. I’ll
touch on some of them briefly here.
For one, while it is widely known that almost all previous moments in
the generational struggle of New Afrikan people the student movement was
the brain trust, and the heart of the struggle. We often fail to make
the connection that these previous students were so successful in
galvanizing people and nationalizing their structures because they
championed causes that had nothing to do with school or education. The
Free Your Voice Movement in S.B-More has connected the youth movement
with environmentalism, and those two things have unearthed class
oppression and national oppression. Our students must make these same
connections around the empire. What is the one thing that connects the
student in B-More to the student in southside St. Louis, or San
Francisco, or in Cancer Alley Louisiana, or Jackson, Mississippi, or
Flint, Michigan? It’s environmental issues. The organizing method We
should take at organizing the student movement in the spirit of New
Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) is to connect environmentalism
with student activism and revolutionary nationalism.
What also struck me in my research of this issue and struggle was the
fact that college students and former students of Franklin High School
have continued to come back and aid and assist in the struggle
there.
The college level student with a NARN orientation must make their
presence and ideological-theoretical prowess available at the sites of
active student movements. In these times of social media, student
activists from each of the previously mentioned cities and others can
and should be in direct communication, and NARN’s must take proactive
steps to influence the direction of the student movement, nationalizing
it and moving it in the direction illuminated by the Front for the
Liberation of the New Afrikan Nation (FROLINAN)’s Programs For
Decolonization, while also incorporating environmental and climate
related concerns to the FROLINAN program for National Alliance of New
Afrikan Students. If implemented by youthful NARN, i believe We can
succeed in building a NARN centered national youth movement.
I$rael’s war on Palestine is without a doubt a genocide.
There has been a groundswell of support from people around the world
that conclude that the settler state of I$rael needs to be brought to
justice and that Amerika has given the “greenlight” for the genocide to
ensue.
At a recent protest over I$rael bombing an Iranian consulate in
Syria, killing several Iranian military intelligence personnel, Hamas
responded with a statement saying among other things that Amerika has
given the green light for this bombing by not denouncing it. We would
agree and go further by stating that Amerika has green-lit genocide
since it first arrived here in Turtle Island over 500 years ago.
It strikes us as odd that the world would be shocked about Amerika
standing by in the face of the genocide happening to Palestine when
Chican@s, First Nations and New Afrikans know first hand that the United
$tates is not only a client but a pathfinder in the realm of genocidal
settlerism. We should remember it was Amerika who inspired the likes of
Hitler in honing his genocidal craft, an evaluation of evidence supports
our point.
In the mire of the oppression being rained down on Palestine,
especially with I$rael assassinating those it has targeted even in other
countries – or in embassies! – we just glean what lessons are available
as the world gets a bold example of what colonization looks like
today.
If we are in fact at the conclusion that Amerika – who gives I$rael
billions of aid each year – is giving a wink and a nod to assassinating
government officials of sovereign countries, it poses the question: how
might revolutionaries here in the imperialist center of the world
prepare and respond?
We should start by understanding that in today’s world genocide
arrives via stages of development by the imperialist agencies. These
stages are 1) Intelligence. 2) Analysis. 3) Logistics and 4) Operations.
What we are seeing happen is war plans, whether we are talking about the
streets of Gaza or the barrios of Califaztlan it all starts with
intel.
The oppressor nation identifies its threats and its assets – on the
ground or online. Because we are in the stage of building public opinion
here in the United $tates we can be vulnerable to data mining that is
employed by agencies globally. Search bots that are known as “spiders”
search the internet 24/7 mining through open source material and all
public records to find any links to revolutionary data, i.e. people,
groups or theory. They snatch everything: Facebook posts, chat rooms,
blogs, news stories, financial records, visa applications, etc… which
can all be harvested quickly on a daily basis, programs like starlight
or spire can then sift, cross reference and separate non-essential
material while then targeting links that lead back to intended targeted
people or groups within the movement. In this way the state is able to
closely monitor not only a movement’s vanguard but anything that
metastasizes out of the movement as well, that is everything in its
realm of influence. Once data is compromised with the help of programs
like Analyst Notebook, it reveals the internal structure of an
organization and its international links as well. All of this intel
helps the oppressor nation develop its genocidal programs which not only
furthers its own interests but the interests of its allies like the
settler state of I$rael.
Here in the occupied territories that some call Amerika, the internal
semi-colonies have long known about Amerika’s stance on genocide.
Chican@s and other oppressed nations who languish in the prisons, in the
control units, and on Death Row overstand that Amerika green-lights
genocide. The Brown and Black people, gunned down every day by Amerikan
police know this as well. The Chican@ nation and other oppressed know
because our land and resources are occupied and controlled by the
capitalists who neutralize us when we threaten the occupation.
I have already taken measures to develop peace and unity between
factions here at the Bay Correctional Facility in Panama City, Florida.
As a basis here we are opposing oppression of prisoners and oppressed
people in general. Work has begun, and we will campaign around the
September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.
The objective this month is getting every organization on the
compound to make sure every member of their various organizations send a
short, one paragraph letter to the USW Council pledging allegiance to
the Runaway Slave Movement and making sure every member of the various
respective organizations are on MIM(Prisons) newsletter subscription
list.
MIM(Prisons) adds: Greetings to the Runaway Slave
Coalition and all associates in Florida that are working towards a
united front of the oppressed. This comrade wrote asking for
certification and official sanction for eir group. We do not certify
anyone who is not a member of MIM(Prisons). And no one locked in prison
can be a member of MIM(Prisons). United Struggle for Within (USW) is an
independent org working under our leadership. This means they should not
be promoting things that disagree with our 6 main points (see page 2 of
ULK) - if so, they are no longer USW as they have broken their
charter. Even if they are acting under the broad definition of USW as an
anti-imperialist prisoner organization, that does not mean we agree with
everything they say or do, and we do not have any say in their
day-to-day operations. In the case where someone reports a USW member
breaking USW policy, even then it is hard for us to investigate or
intervene.
Similarly many organizations have signed onto the UFPP, but that
doesn’t mean we agree with everything they say or do. We have only
pledged to agree to the 5 principles of the UFPP. This is how united
fronts work, everyone maintains organizational independence, while
uniting around common goals or principles (see MIM Theory 14: United
Front for more info).
Anyone can write to us to get Under Lock & Key in U.$.
prisons. Just because someone is distributing ULK or claiming
they have articles published in ULK does not mean that we
endorse them. Everyone should be judged by their actions. USW comrades
must be accountable to the masses. Ultimately it is the masses at your
locality that must judge the correctness of a USW leader or chapter, not
MIM(Prisons). We do our best to support comrades from a distance in
these endeavors.
Bang Bang!
Hit the nail on its head
Set sailing this Captain
That Capped him
Liquid fled
From the hole in one
And flowed on the concrete
As the theme song playing in his chest fades to a non-beat
Eyes that wouldn’t see years more than 15
Puberty was right around the corner
If he could have searched the end of the block
The ground blocked his decent to hell
So to heaven he went
Sole followed the light of a patrol car
This bloody nightmare
That it seems we’ll never wake from
Still police escape from
Apprehension
Under the false pretenses
Of duty to a community
That’s so in fear it’s from police they flee
Hoping to see Another day
Or we’ll hear our last sound Bang Bang
Before we’re blown away…
Download printable PDF
