This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
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         THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT

     MIM Notes 154          JANUARY 15, 1998



MIM Notes speaks to and from the viewpoint of the 
world's oppressed majority, and against the 
imperialist-patriarchy. Pick it up and wield it in 
the service of the people. support it, struggle 
with it and write for it.


IN THIS ISSUE:
1.  FREE OUR COMRADES IN AMERIKAN GULAGS
    ORGANIZE TO END THE AMERIKAN LOCKDOWN
2.  ALL PRISONERS ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS: 
    IS THIS A DIVIDING LINE QUESTION IN 1998?
3.  MISSOURI PIG CLEARED IN MURDER OF UNARMED INNOCENT 
    MAN
4.  LETTERS
5.  HONDURANS FIGHT DEPORTATION FROM U.$.
6.  HONDURAN WORKERS TAKE OVER FACTORY
7.  ACTIVIST FORCED TO PLEA BARGAIN BECAUSE PIGS LIE
8.  WHITE YOUTH DRUG USE RISES -- OPPRESSED NATION 
    YOUTH ARRESTS INCREASE
9.  PIGS ADMIT THEY HARASS AND LIE TO IMPRISON 
    OPPRESSED NATIONALS
10. PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL FINDS MUMIA'S OPPRESSORS GUILTY
11. AMISTAD REVIEW: SOME GOOD HISTORY AMIDST SETTLER MYTH
12. MANDELA STEPS DOWN AS ANC LEADER:
    ANC CONTINUES TO SELL OUT THE PEOPLE
13. KIM DAE JUNG KISSES IMPERIALIST ASS
14. KIM DAE JUNG KISSES MILITARIST ASS
15. POLITICAL REPRESSION OF BASQUE IN SPAIN
16. ADVANCES AND RETREATS FOR MIM'S BOOKS FOR PRISONERS 
    PROGRAM
17. MURDER STATISTICS IN DOUBT AS DEATHS ARE CALLED 
    'UNDETERMINED'
18. MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES PROMOTE NATIONAL 
    OPPRESSION
19. IMPERIALISM KILLS: LIFE EXPECTANCY LOW FOR OPPRESSED
    NATIONALS
20. UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONERS AND PRISONS


* * *


FREE OUR COMRADES IN AMERIKAN GULAGS
ORGANIZE TO END THE AMERIKAN LOCKDOWN

Jericho'98 is a march on Washington, D.C. on March 
27th, 1998. The march, primarily organized by 
various nationalist and progressive groups, is 
aimed at exposing the incarceration of leaders and 
activists who are imprisoned because of their 
political beliefs and actions. Jericho'98 calls 
attention to the demand for amnesty for these 
prisoners and is part of broader campaigns to build 
support for these prisoners.

MIM urges all supporters of prisoners and opponents 
of oppression to build Jericho'98 and other 
educational events which expose the crimes of the 
Amerikan bourgeoisie against the people. Amerika 
has imprisoned political leaders and continues to 
steadily build the Amerikan police forces and 
prison system as tools of social control and 
national oppression.

Through education and mass practice, the 
Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) builds 
support for all struggles against oppression. This 
includes supporting the release of those 
incarcerated because of their political beliefs and 
actions. RAIL is organizing contingents from 
various locations to attend the Jericho'98 march on 
Washington, D.C. and is also hosting a teach-in the 
following day in D.C. The teach-in will include 
information on specific prisoners' cases and on the 
Amerikan INjustice system in general. We will also 
discuss tactics for activism. There is still room 
for organizations and individuals to participate in 
the teach-in. So write to the address on page two 
to donate time or money or to talk with us about 
facilitating a discussion on a particular topic.


WHY THE CALL FOR AMNESTY?


Organizers of Jericho '98 wrote:  "There are over 
150 political prisoners in US jails. They are in 
jail because they are committed to taking action 
for social justice. They are Black, Puerto Rican, 
Native American and progressive white people who 
have dedicated their lives to fighting against 
racism, colonialism and exploitation. Some of them 
have been in jail for over 26 years. This makes 
them some of the longest held political prisoners 
in the world.

"Through history, whenever the dispossessed have 
risen up, they have come under attack. They are 
assassinated, imprisoned, and harassed. The last 
few decades in this country have been no exception.

"Many of the political prisoners are locked up as a 
result of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program 
(COINTELPRO). During the 1960s and 1970s the FBI 
developed COINTELPRO to attack, frame, assassinate, 
and imprison participants and leaders of the Black 
Panther Party, the American Indian Movement and 
other powerful social movements. Others have 
received excessively long sentences because of the 
political nature of their actions."

Communists, pacifists, anarchists and nationalists 
should support the call for amnesty and release of 
political leaders and activists. We can wage 
winnable reformist battles to free some of the 
people's leaders and activists. Even if you 
disagree with the political or ideological stance 
of these prisoners, you can see that they are 
imprisoned because of these beliefs and that this 
is undemocratic. Amerika's so-called democracy is a 
hypocrisy. It frames and imprisons people for 
working to reform or eliminate capitalistic 
exploitation. Anyone who says these prisoners 
should remain locked up for their political beliefs 
and actions is saying that it should be illegal to 
struggle against oppression.


STRUGGLES AGAINST OPPRESSION ARE CRIMES IN AMERIKA


Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa have been 
imprisoned for over 26 years because of their 
political involvement in the National Committee to 
Combat Fascism (an off-shoot of the BPP.) These 
comrades were framed to serve the settler nation's 
interest in breaking up and slowing down the 
struggle for oppressed nation self-determination. 
In 1971, they were convicted of killing an Omaha 
cop despite the great deal of evidence which proves 
otherwise. The cop was killed after he accidentally 
triggered a suitcase and it exploded.

The primary evidence against the comrades came from 
Duane Peak who was himself a suspect in the case. 
Peak allegedly confessed (after being threatened 
with the possibility of facing the electric chair) 
that he, Poindexter and Langa were responsible for 
leaving the suitcase for the pigs to discover. When 
Peak took the stand, he denied planting the bomb 
with Langa and Poindexter. The prosecutor 
immediately called for a recess and when that was 
over, Peak returned with clear signs of physical 
abuse. Despite the obvious coercion and lack of 
credible evidence in the case, Langa and Poindexter 
received life sentences. Their kangaroo court 
trials and imprisonment demonstrate what happens 
when even the legacies reminiscent of the BPP are 
perceived as a threat to white Amerika.

Another case of a Black male leader is Kojo Bomani 
Sababu who has been imprisoned since 1975 after the 
state attacked and destroyed his Black Liberation 
Army unit. His sentence of multiple life terms was 
handed down because he fought for self-
determination of the Black nation. His unit engaged 
in bank expropriation and liquidated dealers 
bringing drugs into the Black community. These are 
political activities intended to strengthen the 
Black nation (though MIM argues that engaging in 
such political activities at this time is incorrect 
inside Amerika.) This is the real reason that he is 
imprisoned though the state would deny it. If you 
disagree that these are political actions, ask 
yourself why Amerika considers his actions a crime 
and why it allows MNCs to extract super-profits 
from workers in oppressed nations and why it allows 
pig units to receive kickbacks from drug dealers 
throughout the United Snakes.

Another leader of the Black nation, Albert 'Nuh' 
Washington has spent over 16 years in prison, seven 
of them in solitary confinement to deny him the 
ability to conduct political education among the 
prison masses. He stated, "As a former member of 
the Black Panther Party and a member of the Black 
Liberation Army, it is my position to struggle for 
the right of self-determination for Black people in 
the United States. Historically, our political 
rights have been determined not by our own national 
will, but by the needs of the political system that 
enslaved us. Therefore, as any other colonized 
people, Black people must be free to decide their 
own national, political, economic and social 
destiny." It is because of his work to build self-
determination that he was sent to prison for the 
trumped up charge of killing two New York City 
pigs. "The district attorney, by his own admission, 
stated he couldn't say or prove what part Nuh 
allegedly played in the killings, but asked a jury 
to convict him based on his beliefs, which they 
did."

Hanif Shabazz Bey has been subjected to continued 
confinement in the Behavior Modification Program at 
Marion federal penitentiary. He was told by an in-
house shrink that his chances of leaving Marion 
would be better if he toned down his political 
views. He said, "what I see as the main factor as 
to why I am persistently being held at Marion is 
the fact that I was convicted in a Virgin Islands 
court in 1973 for the armed attack on the Nelson 
Rockefeller-owned golf course on the island of St. 
Croix in 1972, and the Bureau of Prisons now finds 
it convenient to keep me here so they can point to 
my case in their media interviews to show what type 
[of prisoners] is being housed at Marion. This way 
they can justify spending the tax payers' dollar on 
this high security operation whose sole purpose is 
to impose terror tactics on the rest of the BOP as 
well as the state prisoner population."

First Nation leader of the American Indian 
Movement, Leonard Peltier has been in prison since 
1975 after false evidence justified his extradition 
from Kanada. There still has been no evidence which 
shows that Peltier killed the two FBI agents who 
Oglala land. In fact, the so-called evidence was 
obtained through force and coercion and later 
denied when the witness was allowed to tell the 
truth. And the rest of the so-called evidence only 
reveals what a contrived frame-up the case against 
Peltier is because it is contradictory to basic 
facts.

The above are only a few of the people's leaders 
locked up because of political action to end 
oppression. Several Puerto Rican leaders have been 
sentenced to outrageously disproportionate 
sentences, tortured while in prison and denied very 
basic needs. The reason? Amerika says that they 
committed seditious conspiracy. What this means is 
that they were sentenced because they organized the 
people to expose and stop the domination of the 
Puerto Rican nation by Amerika. MIM continues the 
struggles to stop Amerika's control over the Black, 
Latino and First nations. But the battle to 
eventually have the power in the hands of the 
people will be more quickly achieved if we are able 
to press the Amerikan bourgeois to stick to its own 
terms of war which appear on paper.


PROLIFERATION OF PRISONS EQUALS MASS REPRESSION


MIM and RAIL see that it is the entire prison 
system in Amerika that is a tool of oppression. It 
is not only the tactics of COINTELPRO and the 
imprisonment of political leaders and 
revolutionaries which have been tools to perpetuate 
oppression. We are committed to building support 
for prisoners incarcerated specifically for 
political beliefs and actions, but the majority of 
our work more broadly builds support for all 
struggles against oppression. And in this, we see 
that the disproportionate imprisonment rate of 
oppressed nationals alone necessitates a broad 
struggle against the current Amerikan prison system 
in its totality.

The rate of imprisonment in the united $tates 
increased more than fourfold from 1972 to 1990, 
from 100 per 100,000 to 455 per 100,000. Currently 
the u.$. imprisons people at a higher rate than any 
other country. Black men are imprisoned at a rate 
seven times that of white men, and one in three 
Black men is either in prison, on parole, or on 
probation. Private prisons are a growth industry. 
And politicians try to out-do each other with their 
proposals for more cops, more arrests, tougher 
sentencing, and more prisons allegedly to combat 
crime.

But a closer look shows that more cops, more 
arrests, and more people in prison does not deter 
crime. Using u.$. government definitions and 
statistics, the violent crime rate in the u.$. has 
remained about the same since the 70s, despite a 
600% increase in the budget for cops, courts, and 
prisons. Furthermore, the very definition of crime 
and the application of anti-crime laws are used 
selectively. Why is it a crime to possess a small 
amount of crack cocaine, while it is business as 
usual for the CIA to import cocaine by the ton? Why 
are sentences for powder cocaine mostly affecting 
whites lighter than the sentences for crack cocaine 
possession which almost entirely affect Blacks? The 
answer is that the prison system in the u.$. is 
designed to maintain the systems of capitalist and 
national oppression. That is why oppressed 
nationals and poor people are disproportionately 
represented in prison.

The Amerikan settler nation does not consider it a 
crime for the bourgeoisie to exploit the labor of 
the masses. Nor is it a crime in Amerika to be a 
white paper or button pushing labor aristocrat who 
produces no value but lives on the land and off the 
sweat of the masses. But it is considered the crime 
of a poor womyn to steal piddly amounts to 
supplement her inadequate income she uses to 
support her family. It is considered a crime for 
oppressed nationals to sell drugs to make money 
when they live in areas which offer no productive 
job opportunities, but it is not a crime for rich 
white college students to use drugs or rape wimmin 
when they are drunk and at parties.

Many prisoners write to MIM explaining that their 
actions were taken out of desperation or self-
defense -- of themselves or their peoples. Many 
more explain that their sentences are particularly 
long under abusive conditions because they become 
politically active while in prison. Other prison 
comrades have been murdered outright by pigs while 
serving sentences for white nation defined crimes. 
The Amerikan prison system is a targeted attack 
against the oppressed and serves absolutely no goal 
of eradicating crime against the people.

The trend towards harsher and broader imprisonment 
and repression continues. MIM's recent projections 
based on u.$. government statistics show that if 
current trends in imprisonment continue, there will 
be almost 10 million prisoners in the u.s. by 2020. 
Blacks would be imprisoned at a rate of 9,517 per 
100,000 if current trends continue that means 
almost 1 Black person out of every 10 would be in 
prison, not to mention on parole or on probation. 
This bleak future in not inevitable, but it will 
take the consistent efforts of activists in and out 
of prisons to prevent it.


PHYSICAL REPRESSION IN PRISONS


Amerika's prisoners report to MIM that gulag 
conditions are dangerous and inhumane. Unsanitary 
conditions, inadequate medical care, exposure to 
toxins and inadequate heating are among the many 
forms of physical torture and repression that 
Amerika's prisoners face daily.

Late in 1996, the Michigan state legislature passed 
a law requiring prisoners to pay a $3.00 charge for 
all non-emergency medical care. Now, Michigan 
prisoners are forced to pay $3.00 (more money than 
the state pays most of its prisoner employees for a 
week of work) every time they see a doctor. The 
$3.00 does not include getting prescriptions filled 
or any care beyond the visit.

Forcing prisoners to pay for health care is a form 
of economic repression and is a fundamental part of 
the Amerikan bourgeoisie's war against the 
oppressed nations. The state of Michigan already 
follows U.$. policy in imprisoning Black men eight 
times as much as it does whites. With this new 
prisoner co-payment for health care policy the 
state is further legitimizing the attitude that 
oppressed nationals are a drain on state resources 
and not a productive part of society.

Making prisoners pay for sub-standard health care 
is equivalent to saying that prisoners who did not 
pay for this service were mooching off the rest of 
the state. This is a cover for the fact that 
prisoners are denied the opportunity to earn any 
money while in prison, and that they are being 
discriminated against by being scapegoated for the 
problems of capitalism. 

The reactionaries who make prison policy and run 
the prisons promote the idea that prisoners deserve 
to be treated as less than citizens. In one 
example, prisoners who are of an age to collect 
their social security benefits are denied these 
benefits for the time that they are imprisoned. The 
logic to this law is that while people are in 
prison their basic needs are paid for by one arm of 
the state so they do not need to receive payment 
from its other arm. The reality to this law in 
combination with the payment for non-emergency 
medical care regulations is that prisoners who 
would receive social security payments if they were 
not in prison are being made to pay money to the 
state for care, and this care is at the same time 
being used as the rationale for denying them money 
which they would have gotten were they not in 
prison.

Another form of physical and mental control over 
prisoners is the recent rash in massive transfers 
of prisoners between states. The transfers allow 
the state to perpetuate the lie that the state 
needs more money to build prisons because of 
alleged overcrowding. The facilities hosting the 
transferred prisoners are then allowed to make a 
profit off of the labor of those prisoners or 
simply off of the contract from the state sending 
the prisoners half way across the United Snakes.

In September, MIM reported on the one incident in 
which transferred prisoners from Missouri had been 
beaten repeatedly. Capital Correctional Resources 
Inc. had a $6 million dollar contract with Missouri 
-- 415 prisoners had been transferred to Texas 
under this contract. Transferred prisoners were 
beaten by pigs and attacked by the pigs' dogs.

Conditions in prisons across the country are 
literally a threat to the lives of the prisoners. 
But since Texas started to sell space to detain 
prisoners from other states, many prisoners have 
written to MIM explaining that the conditions in 
Texas are worse than in their own states. Texas has 
about tripled the size of its prison system since 
1991, spending $3 billion on nearly 100,000 new 
beds which is uses to profit from the imprisonment 
of more and more people.

Massachusetts RAIL has been fighting the 
deportation of prisoners from that state since 1995 
when over 300 prisoners were transferred in the 
middle of the night to Texas far from their 
families. Massachusetts continues to send prisoners 
to Texas to support the political argument of the 
oppressor that there needs to be more money spent 
on prison construction. Many other states engage in 
this disgusting slave trade. And now, RAIL and MIM 
are taking up the struggle to stop the transfer of 
prisoners from Michigan to West Virginia which 
started during this last week.


PRISONER LABOR EXPLOITED TO FILL OPPRESSOR'S 
POCKETS


As if the state couldn't generate enough false 
propaganda against prisoners just by exaggerating 
the dangers "criminals" pose to society, RAIL and 
MIM have recently discovered the first hints that 
that the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) 
is baldly lying about how much money it pays its 
prisoner laborers. In May of 1997, RAIL put out a 
factsheet, based on DOC statistical reports, about 
how little prisoner laborers get paid in Michigan. 
RAIL knew when it did this that most prisoners are 
not even lucky enough to have jobs and most do not 
even have the low level of income the state says it 
provides. What RAIL and MIM did not know is that 
the state lies about the wages it publishes.

As so many comrades in prison have pointed out to 
MIM over the years, slavery remains legal in 
Amerikan prisons under the Thirteenth Amendment to 
the U.$. Konstitution. The amendment states in part 
that slavery and involuntary servitude are both 
acceptable as a form of punishment for crime 
"whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

So if a jury agrees to convict someone for 
committing a crime, that person can be enslaved to 
the state. But where is the blind justice in this 
law? How is it that the oppressed manage to fall 
disproportionately prey to the fate of "slavery and 
involuntary servitude" even into 1998? It is 
nothing short of political repression and 
imprisonment when forced labor is extracted from 
poor people who have passed a bad check, or been 
convicted of doing this; while the heads of state 
who invade other countries and kill their people go 
free.

According to the MDOC Statistical Report for 1992, 
prisoner factory workers were paid $.24/hour for 
unskilled labor and $.70/hour for skilled labor. 
For unskilled and skilled farm labor respectively, 
prisoners were supposed to have earned $1.62 and 
$4.94 per hour. Yet one prisoner wrote us recently 
saying that the going rate at his low-security 
prison is $.71 per eight-hour day for unskilled 
labor -- this is less than half what the state 
claims to be paying prisoners. The same prisoner 
reports that prisoners working the MDOC farms make 
no more than $5 per eight-to-ten-hour day -- again 
less than half of the minimum the DOC claims to be 
paying.

Another Michigan prisoner writes that the average 
prisoner with a job earns between $20 and $30 per 
month. If we take the lowest rate the DOC claims to 
pay prisoners and assume 8 hour work days and five-
day weeks (most prisoners with jobs work more), 
prisoners would be earning a minimum of $38.40. 
This particular prisoner works much more than 40 
hours per week and is still earning less than $40 
per month.

In 1995, government agency prison industries had 
sales of $1.2 billion and private prison industries 
had sales of $83 million. The actual amount that 
prisoners are forced to produce and paid little or 
nothing for is hard to determine because the 
government sales are undervalued.

In 1994, 44% of state and federal prisoners were in 
prison work programs and another 6% were in work 
release programs. Prisoners are paid nothing in 
some states and in the rest are paid very little. 
Then in places like Kentucky, prisoners do the work 
which otherwise the state would have to pay someone 
else to do. Because of the ability of companies and 
the state to make incarceration more affordable 
through growing prison industries, there is no 
impetus for the Amerikan settler nation to decrease 
the number of oppressed nationals it imprisons.

MIM believes it is desperately important for pro-
prisoner activists to bring attention to these 
types of repression suffered by prisoners. As we 
work to bring attention to the plights of those 
imprisoned explicitly for their political activity, 
we also heed the words of Geronimo Pratt on his 
release from prison: "you have political prisoners 
on top of political prisoners" in Amerika's so-
called correctional facilities. We must continue to 
point to the political repression of ordinary 
Blacks, Latinos and First Nationals who are bound 
up in U.$. custody for the crimes of being minority 
nationalities and/or being poor. We see that the 
primary struggle is to fight for self-determination 
of oppressed nations. The struggle against the 
political use of prisons as a tool in war against 
oppressed nations continues and will be strengthen 
by Jericho'98 and RAIL's teach-in the following 
day. Join us.



* * *



ALL PRISONERS ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS: 
IS THIS A DIVIDING LINE QUESTION IN 1998?

MIM has long worked around the principle that under 
imperialism all prisoners are political prisoners. 
This is an important aspect of our line and of the 
work we do in support of all prisoners. Yet we urge 
organizations doing genuine work around prisons 
issues not to make this a dividing line question.

MIM founded the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist 
League (RAIL) to mobilize anti-imperialist 
activists who do not agree with MIM on all things. 
Many RAIL members will not agree that all prisoners 
are political prisoners. These activists will be 
quite welcome to work in RAIL to expose the 
imprisonment of specific political prisoners. 
RAIL's contingent at the Jerichoš98 march will 
fully support the release of those prisoners who 
are broadly recognized as being political 
prisoners. RAIL is also a revolutionary mass 
organization and as such its efforts will be 
focused both on the release of individual prisoners 
and on general education about imprisonment in the 
United Snakes.

MIM recognizes that some organizers of the 
Jericho'98 march focus specifically on the freedom 
of prisoners incarcerated for their political 
actions or beliefs. Others emphasize the link 
between these prisoners' battles and the overall 
struggle against oppression. MIM urges both camps 
not to let this question block unity between 
separate organizations in our preparations for 
Jerichoš98 or in other pro-prisoner work.

MIM argues that all prisoners are political 
prisoners because not one of the over 1.6 million 
people incarcerated in Amerika's gulags was 
arrested, tried and convicted by representatives of 
the people. Even the laws under which prisoners 
have been convicted support the material interests 
of the oppressor. The intensely disproportionate 
imprisonment rate of oppressed nationals further 
shows that the prison system perpetuates the white 
nation's domination of its internal colonies.

Inadequate education and job opportunities are 
social and economic conditions imposed upon the 
oppressed. The state, which runs its prisons with 
one hand, uses the other hand to commit murder in 
the form of militarist aggression and theft in the 
form of imperialist expansion. This state is 
responsible for the poor living conditions of the 
oppressed and so cannot fairly judge the oppressed 
for any so-called crimes.

MIM struggles to build a new revolutionary society 
under which the state and the people will answer to 
the same law under the same standard of proletarian 
justice. Current prisoners will be retried and 
imperialist criminals will be brought for judgment 
before the same people's courts. The masses are 
responsible only for building such a revolutionary 
society, not for subservience to the laws of the 
oppressors.

Mao wrote: "The contradictions between ourselves 
and the enemy are antagonistic contradictions. In 
ordinary circumstances, contradictions among the 
people are not antagonistic. But if they are not 
handled properly, or if we relax our vigilance and 
lower our guard, antagonism may arise." MIM has 
deep respect for the contradictions which may arise 
among the progressive forces. Disagreements among 
the people should be expected, and it is our 
responsibility to ensure that these disagreements 
do not turn into deeper divisions among the friends 
of the oppressed. For this reason, we seek unity in 
all our work against oppression with all those who 
will work with us for justice.

While MIM seeks unity with all who can be united 
around specific progressive political struggles, we 
do believe in having strict dividing line questions 
for the Party. For this reason we are clear on our 
line about political prisoners. Clarity in our own 
line keeps the Party from swinging right and left 
with the wind. We assert our independence in 
developing a revolutionary Party -- this 
independence is the basis for our straightforward 
leadership of the masses. But one party's dividing 
line questions should not be used to divide it from 
other organizations which genuinely share some 
goals in common. This is why you will see MIM 
working with organizations which may criticize our 
general use of the term political prisoners.

MIM's stance is clear. We will continue our work 
and join together with others to expose the 
imprisonment of comrades locked up for their 
political beliefs and actions. We will not work 
with organizations which insist that we water down 
our political line or mass work, and we will not 
work with organizations which are infiltrated or 
led by cops or revisionists. We will struggle with 
individuals and organizations to build support for 
all prisoners' struggles against oppression. We 
will even struggle with individuals and 
organizations to study Marx, Lenin and Mao and to 
support armed liberation struggles internationally. 
But we know that support at such a high level is 
not inherent at birth. So we will continue to 
pursue political struggle and mass work to develop 
deeper support for all struggles against 
oppression.

The Jericho march, its preparation and follow-up 
are great opportunities for genuine progressives to 
educate one another, the masses and community 
members about the various tactics of oppression. 
Some attending or even organizing sections of the 
teach-in may be focusing on specific prisoners' 
cases. The principal contradiction in the world and 
in Amerika today is the fact that oppressed nations 
are controlled by the imperialists. We need the 
people to fight against various aspects of this 
control as we build deeper unity necessary for 
genuine liberation. We look forward to working with 
all activists who are steadfastly pursuing any 
aspect of the struggle against oppression.



* * *



MISSOURI PIG CLEARED IN MURDER OF UNARMED INNOCENT 
MAN

While 25-year old Ravone Thompson rode as a 
passenger with his friends on the afternoon of 
December 1, 1997, he had no idea that his life 
would end on that day. Pine Lawn, MO pig Bryan 
Hubbard pulled their car over while looking for 
suspects who had robbed a nearby beauty supply and 
fashion shop. When Hubbard began questioning 
Thompson, he ran. Hubbard chased him into nearby 
St. Louis where he shot Thompson in the back in 
cowardly fashion.

Thompson was wanted by St. Louis County pigs for 
narcotics trafficking. Black people know that 
Amerika's criminal injustice system is designed to 
victimize them, so it is not too unusual to run 
when you know you won't be dealt with fairly. Pigs 
later admitted that Thompson was not involved in 
the armed robbery and was unarmed when he was shot. 
But that didn't matter to St. Louis Circuit 
Attorney Dee Joyce-Hayes. She plays judge and jury 
when the pigs commit murder. Eleven days after 
Hubbard fatally shot Thompson, she said it was an 
act of self-defense! This is not the first time 
Joyce-Hayes has exonerated a kop for shooting an 
unarmed Black youth in the back (Garland Carter, 
1994).

As Thompson's 22 year old spouse and their three 
and five year old daughters mourn the loss of their 
loved one, pig Hubbard is given a psychiatric 
review which determined that he is fit to return to 
"duty," that duty being keeping the streets safe 
for the capitalists and the white settler 
community. Hubbard is also Black, which verifies 
the old slogan of the Black Panther Party - "A pig 
is a pig is a pig." There have always been traitors 
and sellouts among oppressed peoples. This makes it 
much easier for the oppressors to rule. It makes 
things "look good" when they use the oppressed as 
pawns against their own people. A lot of so-called 
radicals and nationalists still fall for this one. 
They demand that under the present capitalist-
imperialist system "we need Black police officers 
to police the Black community." That can only work 
when the Black nation is truly independent and is 
able to exercise self-determination.

After Dee Joyce-Hayes cleared pig Hubbard of any 
wrongdoing, Thompson's spouse and relatives 
organized a protest march and rally. More than 100 
people gathered near the site of the shooting and 
marched spiritedly for several blocks shouting "No 
Justice, No Peace!" The march took them past the 
Pine Lawn city hall where RAIL explained that the 
role of the police, no matter what nationality, is 
to keep white supremacist and capitalist rule 
intact.

When marchers returned to their starting point, 
they vowed to continue their struggle against 
police terrorism. A relative of 17 year old Garland 
Carter, who was murdered by pigs three years ago, 
told marchers not to leave without making plans to 
continue the struggle. Another speaker, formerly of 
the Black Liberators and now a minister, addressed 
the youth: "Don't be on the streets when you don't 
need to be. It only makes you an open target for 
the police - the enemy. When you organize against 
the police you have to do it away from the eyes and 
the ears of the enemy." 

Led by RAIL, the crowd shouted "The people, united, 
will never be defeated." A day and time was given 
to meet again. RAIL will continue to organize 
against police brutality as we put these acts in 
the larger picture of the criminal injustice system 
and the need for revolution to overthrow 
imperialism before police brutality will be 
stopped.



* * *



LETTERS TO MIM

THE USE OF "LATINO"


REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS!... I was wondering what 
was up with the word "LATINO" that MIM uses to 
refer to Spanish speaking people.

This bothers me b-cuz Latinos are people or white 
people from "Latin Europe". A lot of people living 
in spanish speaking countries are of pure First 
Nation blood and don't even speak Latin languages. 
Personally to me it's just a tool to separate the 
Indigenous peoples of the Americas; like the 
illegitimate borders and their conquistador 
languages. Chicano is a better word....

 -- An Arizona Prisoner, 16 Oct 1997


MIM RESPONDS:   We use the term Latino to refer to 
people from Latin America. The word Chicano is 
generally used to refer to people of Mexican 
descent in both Mexico and the Southwestern u.s. 
When we use the term Latino we are not just talking 
about Mexicans. So while MIM does use Chicano, the 
word does not serve the purpose of a general term 
to refer to all Latinos. Of course, there are 
significant national differences between Latino 
nations, but within the u.s., these nations share 
certain characteristics of national oppression, and 
frequently information is only collected on 
"Hispanics" as a group so that we can only speak in 
generalizations.

This comrade is correct to raise the question of 
the politics of language and the importance of 
revolutionaries using the most progressive language 
possible. In this way we use language to expose 
reactionary culture while beginning to build 
revolutionary culture. For more on MIM's line on 
language order a copy of MIM Theory #13 "Culture in 
Revolution", available for $7.50.


MAOIST SOJOURNER AND BUSINESSES OF THE OPPRESSED

DEAR MIM, I am in receipt of the October 15, 1997 
issue [and will distribute the papers MIM sent in 
my area --ed.] I have mailed you funds for MIM 
theory and MIM Notes for distribution. I am 
interested in "catching up" with what I have missed 
in previous years. So, please send me info on the 
Philippine revolution. (Rebolusyon, Philippine 
Society and Revolution and Liberation 
International.) ...

About a year ago I obtained a copy of Maoist 
Sojourner. I do not understand what this paper is 
about. Could you perhaps send me a copy, plus an 
explanation of its purpose. As I recall, it was 
"about" Maoists who were not at "home" (their 
natural homelands), but who wanted an 
organ/journal?

Can you please explain further what you mean on 
page 5, issue 148, in the boxed article on 
unleashing businesses of the oppressed. I do not 
know if this is something I should get involved in, 
but I am interested. ...

Thank you, 
 -- a friend in the South


MIM RESPONDS:  The goal of Maoist Sojourner is to 
disseminate news and news analyses from Maoists in 
the Third World, in their own words whenever 
possible. It also includes MIM's analysis of 
international news. One difference between this 
publication and MIM Notes is that it focuses on 
societies where the labor aristocracy does not play 
as big a role as it does in the imperialist 
countries like the United States, England and 
Japan. Hence, the labor aristocracy is not a 
dividing line question for the Maoist parties in 
the Third World that are published in Maoist 
Sojourner.

The Maoist Sojourner is needed in the imperialist 
countries to serve the population of both the 
imperialist countries and the population that 
migrates to the imperialist countries. A sojourner 
is someone who leaves a country with the 
expectation of returning. In many cases, sojourners 
leave, because they have to escape U.S. 
imperialist-backed puppet regimes and they hope to 
return after collapse of the imperialist-lackey 
regime.

If anyone wants a sample copy they can write to MIM 
and send 55 cents to cover the postage. If you are 
interested in distributing copies of MS in your 
city, let us know and we can start sending you 
copies. 

In response to the question about unleashing 
businesses of the oppressed:  MIM is developing 
financial institutions that can fund our work and 
our workers. We need people willing to invest in 
these institutions and also people willing to help 
out with the work of setting up and working for 
these institutions. As this is a new project for 
MIM, we welcome ideas about financial institutions 
that others think might be worth our investment. 
One such project involves setting up housing and 
work for released prisoners. We also welcome ideas 
about smaller scale projects. If you have any 
thoughts or if you are interested in helping out 
with this work let us know.


WHERE CAN I GET MIM NOTES?

DEAR MIM:  I'm glad that you do freedropping on my 
campus, but why are the papers always old ones 
(sometimes months old)? Is there anywhere I can 
find more recent issues? I know, I know, I could 
subscribe, but I'm living on scholarship money and 
it's been getting tight.

--a friend in the east

MIM RESPONDS: We don't have any corporate sponsors 
and it is only possible for us to give papers away 
for free by raising the money somewhere else. If 
you want to ensure that you get copies of current 
MIM Notes every two weeks you could become a 
distributor of the paper on your campus. We will 
send you a bundle of papers every issue and you are 
welcome to keep one for yourself and distribute the 
rest in places they'd be picked up on campus. We do 
ask that our distributors make a contribution 
towards the cost of mailing them the papers but for 
those who can not afford it, we still welcome the 
distribution help.


CORRECTION:

In the last issue of MIM Notes and in the many 
letters that were sent to all Michigan prisoners in 
touch with MIM, we printed a letter titled "The 
Political Prisoner/POW Issue." We printed this 
because of its correct analysis of the thoroughly 
political nature of imprisonment and the line that 
all prisoners are political prisons. We incorrectly 
credited this to "a Michigan prisoner." The article 
represents the political stance of the Political 
Prisoners of War Coalition [PPWC] and should have 
been credited to this organization which fights for 
genuine justice and liberation of the people and 
consistently exposes the corrupt nature of the 
Amerikan prison system.



* * *



HONDURANS FIGHT DEPORTATION FROM U.$.

On December 16, so-called illegal Honduran 
residents in the United Snakes announced a hunger 
strike to begin December 22 to pressure the 
northamerican government to stop deportations and 
grant them legal residency. The hunger strike took 
place in front of the offices of immigration in 
Miami and included the participation of nine 
Hondurans who are coordinators of the group 
confraternidad hondurena.

On December 15 approximately 4000 Hondurans held a 
protest in front of the offices of immigration in 
Miami demanding to receive the same treatment as 
other centroamericanos in this country who have 
been given amnesty from the deportation laws and 
are being allowed to remain in the country legally.

The Amerikan government has no right to be telling 
people from anywhere in the world that they do not 
deserve to live legally within u.s. borders and 
receive the benefits that come from living in this 
wealthy country. The people from Honduras who are 
being kept out labor for a few dollars a day in 
their own country so that North Amerikan 
corporations can make huge profits to bring back to 
the u.s. This country was built on stolen land and 
made wealthy by the exploitation of people around 
the world. MIM calls for open borders as one of the 
first steps to be taken after the revolution as we 
begin the long process of returning the stolen 
wealth to the hands of the people in the Third 
World.

NOTES:  La Prensa Honduras 17 December 1997.



* * *



HONDURAN WORKERS TAKE OVER FACTORY

More than 800 workers of the Korean business 
American Transpacific took over the plant the Zona 
Libre de Puerto Cortes to protest the business not 
complying with the collective contract. The workers 
have the support of four thousand workers in other 
factories. Like American Transpacific, they are 
large foreign businesses.

One womyn who had worked for American Transpacific 
for five years denounced the sexual accosting that 
the wimmin face from the bosses of the factory. 
When the wimmin refuse to accept the propositions 
of their superiors they are sanctioned with long 
work hours without overtime pay. In addition, the 
factories don't allow for maternity leave or even 
time off for medical problems. And the workers are 
obligated to work on the weekends as well as the 
week days.

A number of other workers organizations have 
expressed support for the protesting wimmin and the 
Confederation of Workers of Honduras sent a group 
of their leaders to help.

These conditions are typical of maquiladoras across 
Latin America and many of which are run by Amerikan 
corporations making products to bring back home to 
sell for a nice profit at a still-very- cheap 
price. It is important that we support the 
struggles of these workers and expose imperialism 
as we fight to overthrow the system that is based 
on the exploitation and oppression of the majority 
of the world's people.

NOTES:  Rebelion Internacional 17 December 1997 
(www.eurosur.org/rebelion).



* * *



ACTIVIST FORCED TO PLEA BARGAIN BECAUSE PIGS LIE

Richard Picariello, a long time political activist, 
was forced to plea bargain at his trial in mid-
December after the cops came up with a number of 
"witnesses" who were willing to say that they saw 
exactly what the cops wanted them to see. 
Picariello was arrested in July for the crime of 
being in the student center at MIT and not being a 
student. The student center has stores that are 
open to the public, and Picariello was sitting in a 
chair outside the stores, apparently a crime if you 
don't look like a student. A cop out of uniform 
approached him, initiated a physical confrontation, 
and then when Picariello tried to defend himself, 
called for backup so that a gang of pigs could beat 
up Picariello. They charged Picariello with assault 
with a deadly weapon (the deadly weapon was 
Picariello's foot).

In spite of efforts by RAIL and other activists to 
help Picariello come up with witnesses who would 
testify about what really happened during the 
police assault, in the end the cops came up with 
many more witnesses (almost all of whom were police 
officers) willing to say whatever they needed to 
say to put Picariello in prison.

This case came to court just days after a big 
expose in the Boston Globe about police 
unwillingness to tell the truth when it might mean 
implicating one of their own. The Globe story 
focused on an undercover cop who was seriously beat 
up by another cop who mistook him for the bad guys 
(the undercover cop was Black.) After several years 
of investigation no one has been able to get the 
pigs to tell the truth about even this case where 
the person who was hospitalized was another cop. 
Instead every cop's story is filled with lies and 
contradictions and no one cares.

In fact, this practice of "testilying" is common. 
The Mollen Commission studied the problem of pigs 
lying on the stand in New York and concluded that 
many police officers "commit falsifications to 
serve what they perceive to be 'legitimate' law 
enforcement ends. In their view, regardless of the 
legality of the arrest, the defendant is in fact 
guilty and ought to be arrested. Officers reported 
a litany of manufactured tales." The Christopher 
Commission, which studied the LA Police Department, 
found the same problem.(1)

Picariello was in prison for many years for the 
political crime of attempting to overthrow the u.s. 
government. He never harmed another person, and he 
served his entire term, but the pigs are convinced 
that he is a criminal who must be put away for the 
safety of society. RAIL considers it a great asset 
to the revolutionary movement that people like 
Picariello continue to be activists and serve the 
people of the world even after so many years of 
torture by the criminal injustice system. But the 
pigs are correct that it is a threat to the safety 
of society to have revolutionaries outside of 
prison, because even though we are not waging an 
armed struggle right now, we are fighting to 
overthrow the very system that props up this 
decadent, patriarchal imperialist society.

Fortunately, because of the weakness of the pigs 
case and the clear contradictions, excessive use of 
force, and strong public pressure, the lawyers for 
the cops accepted a plea that did not put 
Picariello in prison. Although he was forced to 
plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, 
Picariello was given a 90 day suspended sentence 
with a year probation during which time the only 
stipulation is that he not be arrested. Picariello 
sees it as a "rape of my dignity" to have to admit 
to a crime he did not commit, but when we fight on 
the turf of the criminal injustice system the 
battle will never be fair. We have to continue to 
build public opinion around cases such as this one 
to expose the crimes of the system.

NOTES:  Boston Globe 11 December 1997, p.A27.



* * *



WHITE YOUTH DRUG USE RISES -- OPPRESSED NATION 
YOUTH ARRESTS INCREASE

In December, the Washington Post ran a two part 
series on white suburban youth drug use in Fairfax, 
Virginia. The articles served both to vilify and 
demonize the oppressed nation population of the 
"inner city" where these drugs are bought and sold, 
and to advance the fiction that youth who do drugs 
are rarely caught or prosecuted. While this may be 
true for white youth -- who when they are caught 
are less likely to end up the criminal system than 
in the psychiatrist-school counselor-parent system 
-- it is not true for youth of oppressed nations, 
who are being arrested at higher rates than ever.

The Post investigation found that marijuana use 
especially was very prevalent among the white 
teenagers in Fairfax Country, in suburban 
Washington. Contrary to most media images of the 
drug problem, it was good to see research showing 
the use of drugs is not limited to oppressed-nation 
youth. On the other hand, the point of the article 
-- with its focus on how little suburban youths are 
prosecuted -- was to increased the repression of 
white suburban youth, rather than address the 
repression of oppressed nation youth or the 
alienation of white nation youth.

In addition to dealing and using illegal drugs in 
the suburbs, the Post interviewed high school 
students who said they routinely went to D.C. to 
buy drugs. The Post reporter described a Washington 
neighborhood in Southwest as a "reliable" but 
"menacing" place for white youth to buy drugs. 
According to D.C. police Sgt. Donald Yates, 
suburbanites "are not familiar with these areas ...  
They are just a pigeon ready to be plucked."(1) 
These same pigs are the ones that complain about 
measures that protect juveniles from things like 
having their names publicized or their parents 
notified by health clinics if drugs are detected. 
Their paternalistic concern that youth will be 
"menaced" in the city is part of the movement to 
erode these measures.

The Post got much of its evidence that youth are 
getting away with rampant drug use (mostly 
marijuana) from one undercover pig at a northern 
Virginia high school, who during his few months 
posing as a teenage drug user gathered enough 
evidence for only four arrests -- resulting in no 
jail time for the arrestees. "The most serious 
punishment any of the teenagers got -- and that was 
for selling drugs inside a school -- was a year's 
probation and temporary loss of his driver's 
license," the undercover pig said.(2)

The article blamed a supposedly lenient judicial 
system which does not punish first time juvenile 
drug offenders and sentences repeat offenders to 
probation or drug treatment rather than jail 
time.(2)

"We are dealing with an absolutely massive problem 
in this country, and at the lowest level, no one 
really has time to concentrate on it," said Pete 
Grudin, head of the Drug Enforcement 
Administration's Washington field office.(2)

Don't believe the hype -- pigs target juveniles at 
higher rates. According to a report recently 
released by the U.$. Department of Justice, 
"between 1992 and 1996, juvenile arrests for drug 
abuse violations increased 120%."(3) "Juvenile 
arrests for drug abuse increased 90% between 1980 
and 1996."(4)

And the report acknowledged that oppressed nations 
are disproportionately in the injustice system at 
large, and specifically account for a greater than 
their population share of drug arrests. While Black 
youth constituted 15% of the total youth population 
in 1996, in that year "roughly equal numbers of 
arrests for violent crimes involved white and black 
youth." Since the FBI counts most Latinos as 
"white," we don't know how many of the 62% of drug 
arrests of juveniles in 1996 were of settler nation 
whites.(5)

Finally, in contrast to the picture the Post 
painted of a criminal justice system soft on youth, 
the Justice Department report stated that "the 
proportion of juvenile arrests sent directly to 
criminal court in 1996 (6%) was the highest in the 
last two decades."(6)

Drug use is a "crime" like speeding -- millions 
more people do it than get caught. Power to enforce 
the law is arbitrarily wielded by the pigs on the 
street -- and up the chain of command to 
prosecutors and judges. These Post articles 
demonstrate some of this arbitrary enforcement, and 
reveal the agenda of national oppression behind it.


NOTES:
1. Washington Post 15 December 1997.
2. Washington Post 16 December 1997.
3. "Juvenile Arrests 1996," Office of Juvenile 
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, p. 1.
4. IBID, p. 8.
5. IBID, p. 5.
6. IBID, p. 6.



* * *



PIGS ADMIT THEY HARASS AND LIE TO IMPRISON 
OPPRESSED NATIONALS

An article published in the December 15 Time 
magazine shows once more how Amerikan criminal 
injustice system fails to live up to its own 
standards of due process. The article tells the 
story of two Philadelphia cops, "Ryan and Blondie," 
who routinely fabricated probable cause and 
harassed residents of the poor, Black neighborhood 
where they worked. They were eventually exposed and 
confessed to "more crimes than anybody suspected." 

Usually, when some cops get caught brutalizing the 
people the bourgeois media will argue something 
like this: "The vast majority of cops are good. 
There are a few bad cops who do things which are 
sort of wrong. But the courts and the police 
themselves can spot these bad cops and punish 
them." This article in Time refutes that argument. 
For starters, Ryan and Blondie implicated more than 
50 other cops in their crimes. Furthermore, every 
police expert and every police officer interviewed 
for the story say that Ryan and Blondie's methods 
are the norm, not the exception.

MIM reprints excerpts from the article here in 
order expose the pigs' daily crimes using their own 
words.


BRUTALITY & "TESTILYING"


Ryan and Blondie took a young Black man who was 
lost and had asked them for directions to an 
abandoned house and beat him with fists, 
nightsticks, and long-handled flashlights. Blondie 
placed his revolver against the young man's head 
and said, "If you don't tell us what we want to 
know, I'm going to blow your head off." To this 
day, Blondie defends the tactic. "I viewed it as 
kind of a humane alternative. It was less hurtful 
than beating [of course, they had already beaten 
this man -MIM], and it usually got us the 
information we wanted." This young man's testimony 
later started the investigation which led to the 
conviction of Ryan and Blondie.

Another cop in the Time article said, "Folks get 
whacked around a lot. You get used to hearing about 
that."

Blondie had this to say about the police academy. 
"They taught a bit about things like probable cause 
- just to say they had taught it - but the message 
was clear: What you really do as a cop you learn on 
the streets from the veterans, and you could be 
sure, as they said, that it was nothing like what 
you learned at the academy." 

The Time article describes Blondie's first arrest. 
"'Nothing fit,' Blondie recalls now. 'The clothes 
description over the radio wasn't like what our guy 
had on, and he wasn't sweating. He said he was just 
standing outside his home, which turned out to be 
true. But the victim ID'd him, so we took him 
anyway. She was so hysterical; she would have 
identified anyone.' When Blondie vociferously 
questioned the arrest, he was told to 'shut up, 
listen, and learn.' He then watched as the original 
description was altered to fit the suspect, who was 
held for eight months until the victim recanted her 
identification." MIM has reported earlier on 
studies which show that 21% of the time an 
eyewitness will pick someone from a lineup when the 
actual criminal was not in the lineup.

The Time article continues: "'Basically, the first 
thing you really learn as a cop is how to lie' says 
Blondie... 'Now say you see some guy driving who 
you think is wrong [i.e. Black -MIM]... You stop 
him on no basis that could stand up in court. So 
you lie if you have to. You say he ran a stop sign 
or didn't signal or had a broken taillight that you 
had to break after you've determined he's bad. That 
makes the initial stop legal.'"

Of course, cops can't do this to everybody, Blondie 
explains. Only people from oppressed nations. "The 
first [rule] is, keep it in the ghetto. In the good 
areas, you don't go stopping people without cause." 
Another cop describes how they fabricate grounds 
for a raid. "[Y]ou drop a dime, which means you 
call in a 'shots fired' alarm to 911. Sometimes you 
even fire your own gun. Then you wait for the 
shots-fired call to come over the radio, and you 
respond to your own call. It's all made up, but 
that makes it legal." Blondie adds, "[S]ometimes 
we'd laugh and say, 'Gee, which story should we use 
today? How about No. 23?'"

Ryan and Blondie's supervisor admits that "almost 
all of our [2,233] arrests were bad."

Time again: "'Prosecutors and judges know a lot of 
testimony by cops is false,' says Alan Dershowitz, 
the Harvard law professor and criminal defense 
attorney who has popularized the term testilying. 
'But they only know it generically, rather than in 
any particular case. So in a battle of conflicting 
testimony, cops are given the benefit of the 
doubt.'"

Bourgeois reality refutes bourgeois ideals. The 
judge who convicted Ryan and Blondie told them, 
"You've squashed the Bill of Rights in the mud." 
Indeed, given that the cops admit they regularly 
beat innocent people, harass oppressed 
nationalities, ignore the bourgeoisie's own due 
process, and lie to get convictions, the sentiments 
expressed in the Amerikan Bill of Rights aren't 
worth the paper they're printed on. That's the 
beginning of the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the 
bourgeois state. Whatever ideals it may cloak 
itself in, the bourgeois state is an instrument of 
rule by force: The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie 
over the oppressed masses. In Amerika, this 
dictatorship is principally aimed at the oppressed 
nations. That's why Black males are imprisoned at a 
rate nine times that of white males, for example.

That's also why cops like Ryan and Blondie will be 
the norm until the political and economic system 
which creates them is overturned. 



* * *



PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL FINDS MUMIA'S OPPRESSORS GUILTY

On December 6 in Philadelphia, a People's Tribunal 
found "those charged are guilty of criminal 
conspiracy to deny Mumia Abu-Jamal's Human Rights 
and we call for his immediate release, with 
exoneration and compensation." Those charged 
included Gov Ridge, the PA Supreme Court, the PA 
Department of Corrections, Philadelphia Mayor 
Rendell, the Fraternal Order of Police, 
Philadelphia Police Department, Judge Albert Sabo, 
the Philadelphia District Attorney, the FBI and 
Janet Reno. The accused were also found guilty of 
"criminal conspiracy to deny justice and take the 
life of Mumia Abu Jamal".

The people's tribunal was an important event 
because it was the first public forum to air the 
evidence gathered that proves Mumia's innocence and 
government misconduct in the case. A significant 
portion of Mumia's appeal of his verdict centers 
around the bias of the presiding judge, Judge Sabo. 
Sabo is also the same judge was has been overseeing 
Mumia's appeals.

From June 26 through July 1st, Judge Sabo presided 
over a remand hearing for a higher court reviewing 
Mumia's appeals. At this hearing, Sabo denied the 
majority of the defense's motions and objection and 
halted all potentially important witnesses.

MIM sees this case as symbolic of the political 
repression that used against the Black Nation in 
general and its revolutionary leadership in 
particular. The People's Tribunal brought the 
information on Mumia's frame-up to the masses, and 
the people spoke: Mumia must be set free! 

NOTES: For coverage of the June/July remand 
hearing, see MIM Notes 142, August 1 1997.



* * *



HISTORICAL DATES FOR CONTEXT:

#1839: Amistad uprising

#1841: U$ slaves seize slave ship Creole -- Amerika 
badgers England for their return to their "rightful 
owners."

#1857: Same Supreme Court justices who freed 
Amistad uprisers wrote Dred Scott decision, 
declaring that Blacks had "no rights which a white 
man is bound to respect."

#1861: Civil War breaks out, NOT as a result of 
Amistad


AMISTAD REVIEW:
SOME GOOD HISTORY AMIDST SETTLER MYTH

by MC17 and MCB52

This three hour historical account of the Amistad 
slave story gives a glimpse of how captivating 
history can be when removed from dry textbooks and 
memorization of names and dates. Unfortunately, the 
story is not all historical fact. It was taken from 
the written accounts of white men involved in the 
case and then embellished (further) presumably to 
make it more entertaining and palatable to Amerikan 
audiences. But in spite of the historical problems 
and the clearly white perspective, this movie 
provides some valuable insights into history.

The most important contribution of the movie 
ultimately will be its depiction of the horrors of 
the slave trade and the passage from Africa to the 
Americas in particular. The movie shows slave 
traders who brutally chain rows of Africans to the 
lower decks of their ships, where they are left for 
weeks or months of the trip. Then, when the slave 
traders realize they were running short on food 
they start denying food to the Africans who are 
less healthy-looking. Finally, they chain 50 
Africans to a net full of rocks and throw them all 
overboard, while the rest of the Africans watch. In 
response, the movie also correctly shows some 
slaves throwing themselves into the ocean to avoid 
slavery.

The filmmakers decided to use subtitles for some 
parts of the Africans' dialogue, and this was used 
to show that they were intelligent and aware of 
their surroundings (such as commenting on the 
ridiculousness of the abolitionist carolers who 
came to their cell window.) However, most of the 
Africans' dialogue was not subtitled, so most 
viewers have no idea what they were saying. This 
was used to create emotional effect, such as when 
they were all shouting and upset about their 
oppression, but it also made sure that viewers had 
the English-speaking perspective at all times, 
primarily the white perspective. This is in the 
tradition of "noble savage" literature, in which 
select Africans are shown to have powerful and 
noble emotional reactions but are not accorded 
human complexity and intelligence by imperialist-
nation writers. Despite token attempts to break 
with this tradition, in the main Spielberg stuck to 
it.

The film's hero is Cinque, who emerges as leader of 
a group of forty Mende people (from the English 
colony of Sierra Leone West Africa) who were 
captured for slavery and transported through Cuba 
for the now illegal slave trade. After leading a 
violent rebellion on the ship, leaving two white 
folks alive to navigate back to Africa, the ship is 
captured by British soldiers who bring it to New 
Haven, CT. There, Cinque and all the other Africans 
are the subject of legal proceedings weighing the 
claims of the British finders, the Spanish sailors, 
and through an upstart lawyer funded by 
abolitionists, themselves.

The white lawyer who defended the Africans, 
Baldwin, was a good character who understood that 
dealing with cases like this, pragmatism in the 
courts is the best approach. If we expect to win 
battles on enemy turf, we may have to play by the 
enemies rules. Baldwin used those rules to force 
the court to decide in his favor. This was contrary 
to the white idealist abolitionist who stood his 
moral ground and repeatedly argued that the case 
should only be tried on moral issues. This white 
man was quite happy to sacrifice the lives of the 
Africans if it meant he would have some good 
martyrs for his cause. This position is typical of 
the white pacifist left who say that the morally 
superior position of no violence at all will win in 
the end without thinking that they are telling the 
oppressed that they must be slaughtered in the name 
of morality. This position is only taken by those 
comfortable enough in their lives that they won't 
be slaughtered themselves.

Amistad distorts the history of the truest 
abolitionists -- Blacks themselves -- by creating 
just one composite character from many involved in 
the case. Where we see subtleties of white 
perspectives, we hardly see any Black perspective. 
The composite character does call the Amerikan 
pacifist on saying that matyrdom for these Africans 
might be a good thing, but cannot get the focus on 
correct Black ideas.

Cinque is often wiser than the lawyers and 
abolitionists who sought to defend the Africans. We 
get a good picture of how jailhouse lawyers quickly 
develop skills and knowledge out of necessity. 
His analysis of leaders was better than the white 
perspective. Cinque correctly said, contrary to the 
constant individualistic assertions of the white 
folks, that it was circumstances that had made him 
a hero and led him to slay the lions in his path 
but that he was not superior to any other man who 
would attempt to do the same in similar situations. 
He did not see himself as a hero but he did 
understand the importance of leadership.

The treatment of religion in the movie was mostly 
added fiction and from MIM's perspective this did 
not add much to the story. The lawyer was very 
cynical about religion saying that he would need to 
do better than Christ's lawyer in order to save the 
Africans from the same senseless death. Throughout 
the scenes in Amerika we see a small crowd of 
religious people praying over the Africans, 
apparently trying to save their souls. One African 
takes a copy of the bible and reads the story by 
looking at the pictures. He gets pretty close to 
the main story in the bible and concludes that when 
people in Amerika die their souls go to heaven so 
being killed in Amerika would not be such a bad 
thing.

Most of the major historical figures of the time 
were portrayed as either heroes or idiots. 
President Van Buren came off as a man who didn't do 
much until political pressures forced him to act. 
Queen Isabella II of Spain was shown as a stupid 
little girl (she was only 11 at the time) and it 
was implied that she didn't grow up much as she got 
older. Of course the movie does recognize that she 
was acting in the interests of her country who 
would have done well to have the Amerikan court 
system serve Spain. John Quincy Adams was one of 
the main heroes of the story, as he eventually 
stood up and defended the Africans in front of the 
supreme court. Overall Adams was a libertarian 
abolitionist who, for some reason, was inspired to 
action on this specific case. In one scene of 
refined northerners in the Amerikan government we 
see their hypocrisy as the Black servants bring 
them dinner. 

Overall the movie does a good job of showing how 
the executive and judicial branches of the 
government in Amerika are far from separate. First, 
the judge on the case is removed when it looks like 
he will rule in favor of the Africans. Then, when 
the President's hand picked judge still rules in 
favor of the Africans, the President appeals the 
case to the supreme court. And there we learn that 
7 of the 9 justices are slave owners themselves. 
The fact that the case was ultimately won is not a 
testimony to the workings of our criminal justice 
system. It is just the opposite, a demonstration of 
how these cases can sometimes be won but only on 
loopholes and pragmatic arguments. In this case the 
supreme court did not rule that slavery is wrong, 
instead they ruled that the treaty governing these 
particular Africans was not applicable in this 
particular case.

Viewers should take from the movie the message that 
while we should fight legal battles when we can, 
the real battle against oppression is going to take 
place in the streets. And on this message another 
of the failings of the white perspective in this 
movie is found. The liberation of slaves is shown 
as an act of white people saving Africans. The 
final scenes of the destruction of an African slave 
trading fortress by English soldiers and of white 
northerners fighting the civil war in Amerika are 
presented as the final word on slavery. While there 
were certainly acts like that of the English 
liberating the fortress that contributed 
significantly to the battle against slavery, the 
fights against injustice have always ultimately 
been won by the oppressed themselves, not by 
superior saviors running to their rescue.

The English in the movie are shown to oppose 
slavery. And the U.$. government at that time 
officially opposed the slave trade and banned it, 
although it clearly continued. The fact that the 
English and U.$. governments did not oppose slavery 
primarily on moral grounds is made clear by the 
fact that they banned the slave trade at first 
without banning slavery itself. The whole point of 
the Amistad court case was that if the Africans 
were born in Africa they would not be considered 
slaves because the slave trade was banned, whereas 
if they were born in Cuba they could be considered 
legal slaves. In fact, the Amerikan and the English 
governments opposed the slave trade as a way to get 
the upper hand over the Spanish. In the liberation 
scene, in which the English free the slaves from a 
fortress and then destroy it, viewers are led to 
believe the English morally opposed slavery, when 
in fact the act had more to do with the imperialist 
rivalry with Spain. There were moral political 
currents among some whites opposed to slavery, but 
they never dominated the mainstream political 
scene.



* * *



MANDELA STEPS DOWN AS ANC LEADER:
ANC CONTINUES TO SELL OUT THE PEOPLE

The African National Congress (ANC) week long 
convention that began December 16th marked the end 
of Nelson Mandela's leadership as president of the 
ANC. Mandela opened the convention with a speech 
that attacked a wide range of South African 
individuals and organizations for impeding the 
country's progress towards democratic majority 
rule. While there is truth in the criticisms he 
made of various groups and individuals, this attack 
ignored the fact that the main responsibility for 
South Africa's stalled progress towards greater 
equality for all its people lies at the feet of 
Nelson Mandela and the ANC. It is the people who 
must overthrow reactionary rule and put in place a 
government of the people, the ANC claimed to 
represent the people but it failed to overthrow the 
apartheid government, instead compromising and 
leaving them with significant power (both inside 
and outside the government) and wealth.

Mandela criticized the white reactionaries who are 
resisting the move towards majority rule, in 
particular naming the reactionary National Party 
under whose rule apartheid was maintained for many 
years: "This counterrevolutionary network -- which 
is already active and bases itself on those in the 
public administration and others in other sectors 
of our society who have not accepted the reality of 
majority rule -- is capable of carrying out very 
disruptive actions," he said. "It measures its own 
success by the extent to which it manages to weaken 
the democratic order."(1) This is quite true and 
demonstrates why it is necessary to have a 
dictatorship of the proletariat OVER the 
bourgeoisie if we wish to keep them from fighting 
(through illegal and violent means) to return to 
power.

Mandela also attacked nongovernmental organizations 
dependent on international subsidies, stating that 
some NGOs had become instruments of foreign 
governments and institutions trying to influence 
South African politics.(1) This criticism is 
hypocritical considering the negotiations between 
South African and the World Bank which would give 
South Africa a significant amount of aid in return 
for enacting very restrictive economic and 
political policies. Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's 
successor as head of the ANC has stated that he 
would sign these agreements with the World Bank 
without delay. 

Mandela, will remain president of the country until 
the 1999 vote but has turned over the day-to-day 
business of running the government to Mbeki, his 
deputy president.(2) It is generally accepted that 
Mbeki will succeed Mandela as President in the next 
election. Mbeki has been a guiding force of 
"market-friendly economic policies," encouraging 
foreign investment and selling off state assets.(3) 
Clearly he is a friend of the imperialists in the 
u.s. and elsewhere who welcome the opportunity to 
continue to exploit the South African people with 
the pretty face of the ANC to tell people that all 
the evils of apartheid have been eliminated.

Although the overthrow of Apartheid in South 
African represents progress, this is progress 
towards a more liberal free market capitalism, not 
progress towards a system of equality and justice 
for all people. As MIM Notes pointed out in June of 
1997: 

"The retreats from the not-so-radical positions of 
the ANC Freedom Charter have been clear. First the 
Freedom Charter was dropped in favor of the 
Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) which 
was a retreat from nationalization demands made in 
the pragmatist interest of keeping support of 
foreign investors. And now even the RDP has been 
abandoned in favor of the Growth, Employment and 
Reconstruction Program (GEAR), an even milder 
program. As a result, homelessness is a growing 
problem, Mandela has failed to deliver on the 
promised 1 million houses for the homeless, instead 
so far providing less than 100,000. And the wealthy 
white property owners continue to retain their 
wealth that was stolen from the Blacks of the 
country.

"An even more blatant sign of the selling out of 
the South African government is their moves towards 
accepting loans from the IMF and World Bank. These 
two organizations only grant loans with 
conditionalities which allow them to determine the 
economic and political agenda of a country. They 
require no limit or floor to wages (no minimum 
wage) and a guarantee that there will be no labor 
unrest or demands for increased wages. These 
conditions allow corporations to maximize profits 
and lower production costs. In South Africa they 
are also demanding privatization of all state owned 
companies, and an agreement to sell off the 
electricity system and telecom system. South 
African Airways is currently a state owned company 
which is producing revenues for the government: by 
forcing privatization, the World Bank forces the 
government into greater dependency on these loans. 

"The results of World Bank loans are devastating. 
Of the 35 African countries that have taken World 
Bank loans, 33 are bankrupt. In Zambia the 
government is paying 30% of the GNP on interest on 
their loan and they are not even touching the 
capital. [The] government of South Africa is trying 
to placate corporations and foreign investors and 
as a result they have retreated on helping the 
people, the homeless, jobless and workers."


NOTES:
1. Los Angeles Times 17 December 1997.
2. AP 17 December 1997.
3. AP 15 December 1997.



* * *



KIM DAE JUNG KISSES IMPERIALIST ASS

On December 18, Kim Dae Jung was narrowly elected 
as the new president of south Korea. There has been 
much hooplah in the Amerikan press about Kim Dae 
Jung's history as strong critic of the militarist 
regimes in Korea in the 70s and 80s and what it 
might mean for his presidency. Here MIM sums up 
Kim's stances on issues we think are essential to 
revolutionaries and anti-militarists:

(a) Amerikan troops on Korean soil "Kim supports 
the continuation of u.$. military presence in 
Korea, where 37,000 u.$. troops are now 
stationed."(1) There has also been some talk that 
Kim will be more open to peace talks with north 
Korea, but there can be no meaningful resolution to 
the Korean war until there are no Amerikan soldiers 
on the Korean peninsula. Some analysts have 
suggested that the u.$. state department prefers 
Kim's stance to the current regime's harsh stance 
towards north Korea, because it thinks that now is 
the time to cut a deal with north Korea.(2) Kim Dae 
Jung may end up playing good cop after the current 
regime's bad cop, but he will still be serving the 
same master.

(b) The IMF Kim Dae Jung said that he would 
"faithfully implement the agreement with the IMF 
[International Monetary Fund]"(1) which south Korea 
just made. In return for a $57 billion loan, south 
Korea will follow IMF dictates, many of which 
require south Korea to dismantle its independent 
industrial capacity. "Reform without pain is not 
possible," said Kim. Businesses which could not 
compete in the international market economy "shall 
surely perish because that is the cold, harsh 
reality of globalization."(1) Of course, in 
general, Korean businesses will not be able to 
compete with the monopoly capitalists in Amerika, 
Japan, and Europe. The IMF dictates will increase 
the imperialists' control over the Korean economy.

MIM's assessment: Thumbs down on both counts.

NOTES:
1. Los Angeles Times, 20 Dec 97.
2. National Public Radio, 19 Dec 97.



* * *



KIM DAE JUNG KISSES MILITARIST ASS

As MIM Notes went to press, president Kim Young Sam 
of south Korea and president-elect Kim Dae Jung 
granted amnesty to former dictator Chun Doo Hwan 
and former president Roh Tae Woo. Both Chun and Roh 
were recently convicted by bourgeois courts for 
leading the Kwangju massacre of 1980, which killed 
over one thousand civilians. Chun was originally 
sentenced to death for his crimes. Kim Young Sam 
and Kim Dae Jung also granted amnesty to 23 other 
former politicians who were convicted of 
corruption.(1)

Korean activists swiftly condemned the amnesty, 
pointing out that many militant opponents of Chun's 
military regime still languish in prison. "Why 
should laws exist if they fail to punish the most 
ugly criminals." said Lim Ki-ran, a spokeswoman for 
human rights group Mingahyup. "The amnesty is a 
backward step in our history and will not help heal 
national wounds inflicted by Chun and Roh. So many 
people were imprisoned, tortured and murdered under 
Chun and Roh's military regimes. How dare the 
government think about freeing the two former 
presidents."(2)

Kim Dae Jung spent most of the 70s and 80s in exile 
or under arrest for his vocal opposition to the 
military regime in Korea. The Amerikan bourgeois 
media is already hailing Kim as "the Korean Begnino 
Aquino" or "the Korean Nelson Mandela" for 
conceding to the militarists. MIM finds these 
analogies correct. Just like Aquino and Mandela, 
Kim turned his back on any meaningful opposition to 
militarism and anti-people dictatorship in order to 
play the bourgeois political game.(3)

Upon his election, Kim Dae Jung said, "I respect 
and love all regions and all classes in this 
nation." But pardoning the most reactionary 
representatives of the Korean bourgeoisie and the 
Amerikan imperialists does not show respect or love 
for the working class or those regions neglected by 
the so-called economic miracle. 
Bourgeois commentators in Korea and in the u.$. 
have praised Kim Dae Jung for his willingness to 
"reconcile" with the militarists he formerly 
opposed. One Kim supporter said, "In the past, when 
people who sided with the oppressors talked about 
Chun and Roh, we were angry. But now the victim 
wants to pardon them, so we will go along with the 
idea."

This kind of talk is based in the idea that with 
the election of Kim, the oppressed in Korea have 
actually robbed the militarists of their power. 
This, however, is not true. The militarist clique 
which Chun and Roh represent still controls the 
army, and there are still more than 30,000 u.$. 
troops on Korean soil. Kim's formal election will 
do little to stop the military from seizing power 
again if he steps too far out of line. Pardoning 
these creeps gives the militarists concrete aid and 
sends a clear signal that Kim Dae Jung will treat 
them with kid gloves.

NOTES:
1. Los Angeles Times, 20 Dec 97.
2. Kim Myong-hwan for Reuters, 21 Dec 97.
3. National Public Radio, 20 Dec 97



* * *



POLITICAL REPRESSION OF BASQUE IN SPAIN

In a strike against the legal organizing of 
political activists around the world, at the 
beginning of December a three-judge panel in Spain 
sentenced 23 Basque politicians to seven years in 
prison for airing a video of armed ETA [Basque] 
guerillas in an election broadcast. French 
President Jacques Chirac, Spain's partner in crimes 
against Basque self-determination, praised the 
sentences as "good for all."

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, "echoing 
the reaction of most mainstream Spanish 
politicians, welcomed the verdict, saying it showed 
'everyone is equal under the law.'"

But the verdict, against members of the Herri 
Batasuna party, which had recently won 15% of the 
popular vote in the Basque "region," is clearly a 
verdict of political repression against legal 
struggle of the Basque people. The lie of the 
capitalist government -- from the United Snakes to 
Spain -- is supposed equal justice under the law.

MIM does not have enough information on the Basque 
struggle to say whether or not this is a true fight 
for self- determination against national 
oppression. We would need further information about 
the Basque economy as well as the economy of Spain. 
We encourage our readers who support the Basque 
struggle to send us more information.


NOTES: CNN Interactive, December 2, 1997. 
(http://www.cnn.com)



* * *



ADVANCES AND RETREATS FOR MIM'S BOOKS FOR PRISONERS 
PROGRAM

MIM's Books for Prisoners program sends in copies 
of MIM Notes, MIM Theory and a wide variety of 
political theory and history books to prisoners. 
The demand is tremendous and we are unable to keep 
up with money or books. The end of the semester on 
college campuses meant some sizable donations of 
books and finances to our program this year. 

We took advantage of the semester's end at Boston 
University by setting up a collection point in 
front of the main book store. Because this was 
public sidewalk, the bookstore could do nothing to 
stop us from asking students to donate their books 
rather than return them for the few dollars the 
store will give. At BU we collected over 400 books. 
Many of these were textbooks and fiction books that 
we were able to sell to raise money to send in the 
political books we collected. This book collection 
caught the attention of several students who 
donated their time to help staff the collection 
point. And at BU and other campuses across Boston 
people also donated money in addition to the books 
they dropped off. A lot of the political books that 
have been donated are not revolutionary and some 
are not even progressive. But these books are also 
useful for people to read and we have began a book 
review program where prisoners are invited to write 
reviews of these books for publication in MIM 
Theory, giving readers an overview of the useful 
information in the book and the points of political 
agreement and disagreement. Response to this 
program has been very good and we've already 
received a number of reviews back from prisoners 
excited to do more.

Unfortunately, our Books for Prisoners program is 
also faced with a tremendous amount of censorship 
that means many prisoners are unable to receive any 
literature. The following is one example of a 
typical letter from the prison administration, this 
one was sent in response to a book we sent in for 
the prisoner to review.

***From the Texas department of criminal justice 
programs and services division Director's review 
committee decision form for incoming enclosures***

The Director's Review Committee has rendered the 
following decision regarding your appeal: The unit 
decision not to allow you to receive the following 
item(s) received in contradiction to the rules: 
Book not from vendor of paperback books 
(correspondence to offender) from MIM. Upheld. You 
will not be allowed to receive the above referenced 
enclosure(s).

MIM needs more donations: finances as well as 
books. The books most in demand are Marx, Lenin, 
Mao, and political history of the Black Panther 
Party, Latino revolutionary struggles and 
revolutionary struggles around the world. We also 
need help fighting the censorship. Any lawyers 
willing to help out with this struggle should 
contact us. This is a battle we can win but we need 
your help.



* * *



MURDER STATISTICS IN DOUBT AS DEATHS ARE CALLED 
'UNDETERMINED'

by MC12

New revelations about the Washington, D.C. 
government's recording of hundreds of deaths calls 
into question the definition of murder and the 
official statistics for murders in the U.$. capital 
city.

In the past MIM has said we think murder statistics 
are the most accurate crime statistics because the 
crime is most likely to be reported and accurately 
counted by the government -- unlike more subjective 
crimes like rape or underreported crimes like 
bribery.

Many deaths that the international proletariat 
would consider murders are not counted as murder in 
the legal sense -- just like the bourgeoisie 
doesn't call exploiting labor "theft" or sex under 
patriarchy "rape." But we have argued that the 
legal murder rate does measure something important: 
by looking at trends in the murder rate, for 
example, we know that incarcerating hundreds of 
thousands of people doesn't "work" to reduce murder 
(See MIM Theory 11).

However, the Washington Post has reported that "an 
average of three people a month ages 15 to 44 have 
died in Washington since 1990 under circumstances 
that have never been fully determined by the 
medical examiner's office or the police 
department." Many of these deaths may have been 
murders in the legal sense, and there were many 
more in the 1980s.

The scandal came to light when it emerged that as 
many as five Black wimmin had been killed in one 
neighborhood -- possibly by the same killer -- but 
their deaths were not ruled homicides because the 
government didn't determine the exact manner of 
death. In one case, only the torso of a woman was 
found, and they still didn't call it a homicide. 
Residents are enraged that the medical examiner's 
office didn't call the deaths homicides and the 
police department didn't care to pursue the cases 
until there was a scandal. The wimmin were Black 
and poor.

The D.C. department of health reported to the 
federal government that from 1984 to 1994 at least 
1,800 deaths of people ages 15-44, which are most 
likely to be homicides, resulted in "negative 
autopsies," meaning the circumstances of their 
deaths were not determined (or reported). Since 
1990, the government says 276 more deaths have been 
labeled "undetermined." Experts from around the 
country said the rates of inconclusive results were 
extremely high. Medical examiners from other cities 
blamed the D.C. medical examiner's office as well 
as D.C. police for not coming up with the 
information the doctors would need to determine 
what led to the deaths.

It appears to MIM that the medical examiners and 
the police cooperate to keep homicide rates down: 
the doctors don't come up with conclusive results, 
and then the police don't have to pursue murder 
cases they wouldn't be able to solve; and the 
police help by covering up or not providing 
evidence to the doctors.

A similar scandal broke in 1995 when two young 
wimmin were found strangled near each other within 
three weeks in Black Southeast Washington. At the 
time police admitted that there were 42 similar 
unsolved homicides in that part of town, and 46 
more deaths that were "undetermined." For a while 
the FBI was involved, as they said they might link 
the murders to 17 similar cases in Florida, in 
which wimmin were raped and strangled. Then, the 
Post reported: "Last year, police and FBI agents 
who were examining the cases in Southeast 
Washington abandoned the joint effort because of 
the city's fiscal restraints and because 'concerns 
shifted somewhere else,' said Susan Lloyd, the 
spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office."

MIM does not join the critics who demand more 
police action to catch murderers. But we do think 
it is important to expose the police and the 
government when they blatantly apply double 
standards in the treatment of deaths depending on 
the basis of the nation, class, and gender of the 
people who died. In Washington, hundreds of deaths, 
especially of Black wimmin, are being misreported, 
"undetermined," or -- quite possibly -- covered up 
through a combination of factors that may or may 
not be accidental.

We conclude from this, first, that the state and 
the police cannot be counted on to protect the 
lives of oppressed nation wimmin, and, second, that 
we must again remind ourselves that even when we 
use official statistics because they are the best 
we have, there are many ways that these statistics 
also distort or conceal the truth.

NOTES: Washington Post 22 December 1997, page A01; 
http://www.washingtonpost.com



* * *



MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES PROMOTE NATIONAL 
OPPRESSION

by an RC 

Recent research on the United Snakes policy on 
mandatory minimum sentencing has shown that it 
promotes national oppression. This is nothing new 
for those of us who are familiar with the Amerikan 
legal system, but it is a good sign that this kind 
of unjust policy is being revealed as such to the 
general public. Harvard medical school researcher 
William N. Brownsberger is extremely critical of 
the mandatory minimum sentence policy. He points 
out that those who can afford the best lawyers 
don't go to prison. 

MIM knows that this phenomenon is not only a 
characteristic in mandatory minimum sentencing, but 
the exposure of the bias in our legal system is a 
move in the right direction. This Harvard 
researcher found further evidence of national 
oppression from the disproportionate use of 
mandatory minimums on oppressed nationals.

Mandatory minimum sentencing is a policy which 
requires a set length of sentence for certain 
crimes. This means that no matter what the 
circumstances, even first time offenders will be 
given the mandatory minimum sentence on conviction. 
In many states a third conviction for a minor 
offense can put a person away for life because of 
this relatively new policy. This policy which 
requires longer prison terms is a result of the 
tough on crime hype that has surfaced more and more 
since the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

The associated press quotes the Harvard researcher 
saying:  "mandatory sentencing laws are wasting 
prison resources on non-violent, low-level 
offenders and reducing resources available to lock 
up violent offenders." MIM believes that locking 
anyone up in the Amerikan gulags is a waste of 
resources because of the horrible conditions and 
treatment within the prisons and the unjust 
practices of the legal system. The structure of 
Amerikan society as a whole perpetuates and creates 
crime through its oppressive conditions. Add this 
to a criminal injustice system devoted to social 
control and it is not hard to understand why the 
United Snakes has more people in prison per capita 
than any other country in the world.

Another study by the RAND corporation shows that 
the mandatory minimum sentencing policy has not 
been proven to reduce crime in any way. Research 
shows that people convicted under the old-order 
sentencing of shorter term lengths are two to three 
times less likely to re-offend after release. This 
is just another piece of evidence which shows that 
prisons in the u.s. are not for rehabilitation and 
therefore cannot effectively reduce crime. In fact, 
research results from the RAND corporation show 
that rehabilitation centers are seven times more 
effective in convictions where substance abuse is a 
factor. An independent English researcher released 
information which shows that rehabilitation 
programs within prisons are much less effective 
than those in the community.

Research also shows the federal sentencing laws 
blatant discrimination through its differential 
sentencing for equal amounts of crack and powder 
cocaine. This discrimination shows the 
disproportionate targeting of oppressed nations as 
opposed to the white nation. Powder cocaine is more 
popular with the white nation but it is too 
expensive for oppressed nationals. This research 
also shows that there is no evidence that substance 
abuse is encountered more frequently among lower-
income groups. This means that the disproportionate 
amount of low- income, oppressed nationals in 
prison for drug offenses is a direct result of 
discrimination by the Amerikan legal system.

It is important that we take this opportunity to 
point out that this kind of discrimination is used 
throughout the u.s. prisons system. Mandatory 
minimum sentencing is one method to control 
internal colonies within u.s. borders, but it is 
definitely not the only oppressive policy in the 
system. The findings of this recent research are 
useful in showing the bias of this policy and could 
prove to be helpful in putting an end to the use of 
this particular oppressive policy of mandatory 
minimum sentences. However, it is not possible to 
reform the criminal injustice system into a just 
system. Only by overthrowing imperialism can we 
establish a justice system that serves all the 
people.



* * *



IMPERIALISM KILLS:
LIFE EXPECTANCY LOW FOR OPPRESSED NATIONALS

Results released in December from a study conducted 
by Harvard University professor Chris Murray 
bolsters MIM's argument that national oppression 
leads to death within u.s. borders. While the 
Amerikan government and its propaganda machine are 
quick to jump on individual cases of murder or so-
called terrorism as tragic for prematurely taking 
someone's life, rarely does the government or even 
academics mention the premature preventable deaths 
that are a direct result of imperialism.

Murray's study looked at life expectancies in 
counties across the united states and found 
tremendous variation, much of which can be 
explained by the nationality of the county. Life 
expectancy was lowest in South Dakota among First 
Nation men, who can expect to live only 56.5 years. 
Black men living in Washington D.C. have a life 
expectancy of 57.9 years. This is contrasted with 
the highest life expectancy for men in the u.s. of 
77 years in Stearns County, Minn., a relatively 
wealthy county.

Overall, the ten unhealthiest areas were in inner 
cities and in the South and in areas which settlers 
have relegated First nations. This is no surprise 
for anyone who recognizes that national oppression 
has been leading to the death of indigenous people 
and Blacks ever since settlers invaded the First 
Nations and brought Africans over as slaves.

Dr. Murray found that high income whites lived only 
about two years longer than poor whites and income 
made little difference among Blacks. This 
demonstrates what MIM has been saying for years: 
within u.s. borders national oppression is the 
principal contradiction.

The united states has a bigger spread in life 
expectancies than any other "high income" (a.k.a. 
imperialist) country. The life expectancies of 
Black and indigenous men are comparable to those in 
Third World countries like India or parts of 
Africa.

These years of lost life should be easily 
preventable all over the world where simple and 
cheap preventive and curative health measures could 
save many lives. And MIM holds the imperialists 
responsible for all these premature deaths 
happening while they refuse health care and create 
unsanitary conditions in the name of profits. These 
findings within u.s. borders should make clear to 
even the white nation chauvinists that national 
oppression kills. For all those living comfortably 
within u.s. borders claiming to oppose injustice 
but opposing the violence of revolutionary change, 
MIM hopes statistics like these will make it clear 
that imperialism is violent and murderous, whereas 
armed revolutionary struggle seeks to install a 
system of equality and justice.

NOTES: The New York Times 4 December 1997, p.A24.



* * *



UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONERS AND PRISONS


WAGES END IN SOUTH CAROLINA'S GULAGS

... I am going to end this short note by informing 
you of yet another one of SCDC's [South Carolina's 
Department of Corruptions] schemes to hoard more 
and more capital. As of January 20, 1998, if you 
are in lock-up or unemployed, you will not be paid 
for the rest of your sentence. Any new prisoner 
entering the South Carolina Department of 
Corruptions after January 19, 1998 will not be 
paid. If you are found guilty of a major 
disciplinary or criminal offense within SCDC, you 
will lose all of your pay for the remainder of your 
sentence. Even though it costs more money to keep 
someone incarcerated than to send them to Harvard 
University, still yet they find it necessary to cut 
costs by cutting our pay. Business as usual! I 
guess the privatization of South Carolina's prisons 
is next (like in Texas).

-- A South Carolina Prisoner, 18 November 1997


EXPOSING THE WAR ON URBAN COMMITTEES

I am a Black revolutionary being held political 
prisoner in a concentration camp called Garner 
Correctional Institution in Newtown, Conn. I've 
been placed in what they call close monitoring 
(gang units). I was taken out of population and 
placed in this gang unit. Not for fighting, not for 
stabbing another prisoner, or taking of other 
prisoners' property. But for pictures; pictures I 
took in another state, not Conn. And because my 
pictures have a very expressive body language, that 
makes me a gang member [in the eyes of the state]. 
The only hand sign in my pictures is the peace 
sign. That's right! The peace sign. When white 
people used it at Woodstock, it meant "peace and 
love." But when young African-Americans use it, it 
means gangs. Many of my young comrades are also 
here for the same thing. 

The state of Connecticut's law enforcement along 
with correctional institutions have declared war on 
all of Connecticut's urban communities and have 
said that these low income areas are to be 
considered gang territories. Let me explain this 
skillfully designed, corrupt Security Risk Group 
(SRG) system. SRGs are considered to be gang 
members who pose a so-called threat to the 
Connecticut Department of Corrections. Information 
will be gathered on an individual, whether it's 
true or not. Most information is provided by 
institutional snitches and is not accurate. An 
individual will be given a hearing to inform him 
that he will be removed from general population and 
placed in a Close Custody Unit where this 
individual will be locked up 23 hours a day, 
whereas in population, he's out most of the day 
working or in school, learning a vocational skill, 
taking college classes, or trying to better himself 
by going to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics 
Anonymous meetings.

It should be mentioned that once this individual is 
placed in these concentration camps called Close 
Custody, none of the above-mentioned programs are 
available to said individual. However, he is forced 
into these group gang programs, and maneuvered into 
spilling out his feelings as to why he would join 
an organization (which they call a gang). They are 
using us; dissecting our minds in these 
experimental, psychological, genocidal labs; having 
us give them more information they can use against 
us. This information is then turned over to the 
office of the Governor of Connecticut, John 
Rowland, who will address concerned taxpayers as to 
why the state needs more money to build high- 
security prisons. You see, there's big money at 
stake for local police and correctional departments 
that target gangs. Law enforcement along with 
prison systems are using gangs as a means of 
keeping their financial stability. Connecticut's 
prison system has become industrial business. 
Prisons with 1,158 beds are worth $25 million a 
year and 350 jobs to the community. 

Some officials sent out for color brochures 
promoting prison economics. And these gang units 
are one of their most brilliant. I've been in these 
units for two years. I have not yet eaten a hot 
meal. All the meals here at Garner are as cold as 
the outside. We are served very small portions of 
food. And this is only to bring the commissary 
sales up. They overcharge us for generic products. 
Officers in these units are constantly showing 
aggressive behavior towards my comrades and me in 
these units. We are not receiving proper medical 
attention. Some of the brothers go weeks sick.

Brothers like myself who speak out about this 
corruption are sent to segregation (the hole) on 
bogus prison charges. In these units, we are not 
allowed to talk with one another. We go to 
recreation with only eight brothers for one hour a 
day. The program is supposedly for one year. But if 
a prisoner receives an infraction, he must begin 
all over. The conditions here at Garner are at 
times intolerable. My brothers and sisters of MIM, 
I write to you in the faith that you will support 
your brothers who are being held political prisoner 
in these concentration camps called gang units.... 
Power to the people!

Your brother, -- A Connecticut Prisoner, 27 October 
1997


NEW CONCENTRATION CAMP IN MISSOURI

... This library is poorly equipped. This is a new 
concentration camp that has only been open for only 
seven months and the book selection is extremely 
week and watered down. These modern day slave ships 
called correctional facilities will never make 
available the literature that is needed to open 
ones eyes to the injustices that are committed 
everyday against the oppressed nations of the 
world. 

That is why it is so imperative that MIM and other 
organizations of liberation like it, continue to 
pour the waters of revolution over the walls, 
gates, and electric fences of the slave labor 
camps. Camps that have been set up by this very 
wicked government to subdue and brake those who 
cannot and will not adapt to America's racist, 
sexist and oppressive rules that govern this 
illegally founded country. As of now, I am in the 
administrative segregation unit for an assault on 
an inmate. Although I am for the people and I 
believe in uniting together in struggle against the 
pigs, sometimes there are situations where one has 
to defend themselves by going on the offensive.

Under these savage conditions prisoners are 
constantly exposed to the old divide and conquer 
scheme of the settler nation. One group of 
prisoners is pitted against the other. Inmate 
informants are constantly observing the militant 
minded soldiers and reporting everything that they 
see and hear to the pigs. The pigs spread false 
propaganda to disorient and stagnate political and 
religious groups in the institutions. Anyone who 
stands up and speaks out against the wrongful 
treatment of the inmate body is instantly locked up 
in the ad-seg unit.

For instance there was a minor rebellion that took 
place three months ago, where two pigs were 
hospitalized in critical condition. After the camp 
was locked down the pigs locked up an estimated 
ninety prisoners and transferred an estimated forty 
inmates to other concentration camps. These inmates 
who were locked up and transferred had nothing to 
do with the rebellion. In fact most of them were in 
their housing units when the rebellion happened.

The institution was locked down for the mandatory 
count. After the count, housing unit four was 
released for mainline and that is when the 
rebellion sparked. All of the inmates involved in 
the rebellion were from housing unit four and none 
of the other housing units had been released for 
mainline yet. So why did the pigs kidnap inmates 
from housing units three, five and six, if they 
were not even on the yard when the rebellion kicked 
off? I believe it is because any and all 
individuals who are perceived as a threat to the 
pigs and this uncivilized government are marked and 
targeted for termination or ostracization.

As long as we have radical free thinkers who 
believe in the empowerment of the people we will 
have federal and state establishment whose sole 
purpose of existence is to destroy, persecute and 
imprison those who dare to challenge this monster 
called the system. 

The administration's lame excuse for locking up the 
inmates who were in their housing units during the 
uprising was because they had so-called aggressive 
institutional records. The inmates who had the so-
called aggressive institutional records ... had 
committed no infraction to warrant their lockup for 
the rebellion. They did not even participate in the 
uprising. This only show that whether active or 
non-active all revolutionaries will meet the same 
dreadful fate if we do not stand together in 
solidarity and overthrow this terroristic regime 
that we are under in this beast of a country.

In Revolutionary Love, -- A Missouri Prisoner, 21 
November 1997


TIGHTENING THE CHAINS IN WISCONSIN

I am writing to you regarding the corruption of the 
Wisconsin Department of Corrections system. I have 
sent tickets for which I have been falsely accused, 
and Inmate Complaints in which I have been 
mistreated -- all go unresolved. I am referring to 
the Jackson Correctional Institution in particular. 
The Institution is a breeding ground for a riot. I 
am a white man who associates with the Black people 
for the most part. I am called racial things as 
well as others by a group that calls themselves the 
Aryan Nation. The group's leaders were beaten up 
for calling my cellmate a "nigger-lover". The 
leaders were released into General Population 
status but my cellmate was given an eight-day 
adjustment and 360 program segregation.

The guards themselves are liars and racists. I have 
seen swastikas on their arms and I have heard them 
direct racist comments at my friends. Something 
needs to be done. We are also Tommy Thompson's 
political prisoners. He is trying to ban any nudity 
from the prisons. I do not look at pornography. 
However, it is our right and it soothes the 
prisoners. I am a Christian and that is why I do 
not look at pornography, but I am not the one to 
judge, God is. If Tommy Thompson takes our 
pornography, what's next? Our electronics, 
clothing, our only real contacts with life? He only 
wants to be re- elected, not help us. I agree that 
people that have any sex crimes should be banned 
from pornography and segregated to a different 
prison, but to take it away from everyone is wrong.

The man needs to be stopped. He has already 
overcrowded the Wisconsin prison system and wants 
to start a "truth in sentencing" law which would 
cost taxpayers $14 billion more. That much money 
could be used to house the homeless population and 
create jobs for people, but no, Tommy Thompson 
wants to stick the inmates in prison and build more 
prisons. What's going to happen when roads and 
schools, etc., need replacement ten years from now? 
Obviously, the state will lie, but the truth is 
they spent all their money on prisons. I want to 
put a stop to Thompson's charade.

I am rated medium security and am in a maximum 
security institution which is against Wisconsin DOC 
policy, but they don't care. Inmates need to help 
one another before it's too late. Tommy needs to be 
put on a leash....

 -- A Wisconsin Prisoner, 17 August 1997


MIM ADDS:  We agree with your assessment that Tommy 
Thompson is not banning pornography to improve the 
morals of prisoners, but to further punish them. We 
like you do not condone pornography. Pornography is 
a tool of patriarchy in which wimmin are viewed as 
sexual objects and not equal human beings. Porn 
distracts potential revolutionaries from the 
important anti-imperialist work at hand. As Maoist 
revolutionaries we work towards the destruction 
imperialist patriarchy. Instead of just banning 
porn a revolutionary society through struggle and 
thought reform would demonstrate the harm and 
destruction of pornography.

We disagree that people convicted of sex offenses 
should be banned from viewing pornography and 
segregated in a different facility. The state is 
not capable of judging who is a sex offender. This 
nation has a history of lynching Black men for just 
looking at a white womyn. So one cannot assume that 
a person convicted of sex crimes is any different 
from any other prisoner. It is the imperialists who 
are the real criminals here.


EXPOSING BRUTALITY IN TEXAS

... The James V. Allred Unit opened up back in 1995 
at which time the guards under Warden L. W. Woods 
saw fit to use verbally abusive language to create 
physical altercations by several guards' 
aggressiveness to use force on inmates while they 
were still handcuffed on the floor.

The current excessive force rate is usually 200 to 
400 cases a year throughout the Texas prison 
system. Guards' family members and friends working 
at the TDCJ-ID Medical Departments cover up most of 
these incidents.

There are prison guards who come to work with an 
authority problem. These guards take their job 
overboard when they yell or spit in an inmate's 
face. In thanks, these inmates will not lose 
control to zero- tolerance by physical force.

We as prisoners seek to return to our family and 
friends and do our time. We didn't come here to be 
abused like animals, but to be rehabilitated and 
not relapse into recidivism.

The Texas prison system needs to be given an 
independent investigation by the Justice Department 
and the American Civil Liberties Union.

On May 22, 1995, Lieutenant James McCormick 
assaulted me with major excessive force while on 
the Eastham Unit. This Lieutenant has a history of 
excessive force, but the state prison Internal 
Affairs Department says that it was an accident.

I am one of many prisoners who fight the system for 
change in a struggle for humane conditions, a 
struggle to be free from force, spit, and yelling 
and abusive name-calling by TDCJ-ID guards. I will 
name a few that has total immunity from policy 
disciplinary by General Rules of Conduct PD-21.

The guards listed below have a history of excessive 
force or verbal assault toward prisoners when they 
are handcuffed by security guards before the 
yelling assault takes place. These assaults are 
mostly done on minority prisoners who don't have 
legal or family support. These guards will 
maliciously, sadistically, and wantonly violate 
contemporary standards of decency with verbal or 
physical force to cause harm:

Captain Clyde Hargrove; Major Cary A. Cook; Belinda 
Gentry, Admin Tech; Wade King, Lt.; Brenda 
Wilkinson, Law Librarian; Ronald Stephens, 
Correctional Officer; Carl Spencer, Correctional 
Officer; James Sutton, Sgt.; Marty D. Carlock, 
Correctional Officer; Johnny Mabe, Correctional 
Officer; Sandra Campos, Correctional Officer; Keith 
Surney, Correctional official; Terry Torbert, 
Correctional Officer; A. Kalmanov, M.D.; Kent 
Fullerton, Correctional Officer; James Anthony, 
Correctional Officer; and Sgt. Douglas McCaffery.

There are more of them, but they cover up their 
nametags with tape to hide their names from inmates 
so they won't be filed on through the grievance 
system, which doesn't work for any inmates.

I ask people of Houston, Texas and all other cities 
and counties to write letters to Warden Leslie W. 
Woods at James V. Allred Unit, P.O. Box 1860, Iowa 
Park, TX 76367-6568 and let him know that you have 
knowledge of the incidents that are occurring in 
this prison unit. I truly appreciate all the 
support the people of Houston have given to the 
care, custody, and control of the human condition 
of prisoners rehabilitated support.

 -- A Texas Prisoner, 10 October, 1997


REVOLUTIONARY POLITICIZATION

Greetings from within the belly of the beast. After 
years and years of studies and consideration, I've 
come to the point in my life where I want to jump 
100% into the struggle/movement to some great 
benefit for myself and my people/comrades. I'm an 
ex-gang member. For years, I have committed my life 
and my efforts towards uplifting and representing 
the set I am from. Suddenly, it has become apparent 
to me that I am wasting my valuable ideas, work, 
and life for something that leads to the grave or 
to being locked-down forever. The gang I am from 
represents no political stand and has no positive 
future goals besides harming and self-destructing 
my own people.

I have arrived at the point where I have been made 
conscious of what is more important than drive-bys, 
dope trafficking and gang-banging. I have always 
had a militant, revolutionary, rebellious side to 
me, and I've always wanted to represent something 
big, powerful and strong, something to help my 
people, something right and something needed. I've 
spent ten years here, ... I've read Black Panther 
material, Revolutionary Workers, MIM Notes, The 
Militant, books by and on Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Mao, 
etc. And I always felt a strong relation and 
identity with this material in some way or another, 
as if finding my cue. I am in Texas prison. Texas 
has no truly significant prison organization that 
represents 100% and gonna bring all prisoners 
together to stop this prison brutality and 
undercover genocide, racism, and extreme 
discrimination. There are gangs here, groups, etc.: 
Texas Syndicate, Mandingo Warriors, Crips, Bloods, 
Pirus, Latin Kings, 5%ers, Mexican Mafia, Aryan 
Nations, Aryan Circle, TAB, Texas Bad Boys, 
Pistoleros, Raza Unida, Self Defense Family, 
African Nation. And the list goes on. The only 
problem is it seems that we fight prisoner against 
prisoner and no one has come up with the idea to 
fight the system that has us fighting and killing 
each other. Fight the system legally, collectively 
and fearlessly like we do one another. This Texas 
system seems to be full of snitches, perpetrators 
and phonies. But this is one thing that I have seen 
here and Texas, and this is my main reason for 
writing: There are thousands of comrades here in 
prison with a true heart of warriors for a cause, 
but because there is nothing real here, they like 
myself are hooking up with things that serve no 
real political stand and are no benefit to our 
people in the way we need. And until we get 
something, we're never going to be able to conquer 
this system. I've been studying the history and 
platform of the Black Panthers hard, so hard that 
I've been dreaming of it. Now I've been hearing 
that there are some BPP groups about, but none of 
them true to the party's Maoist roots. Here in 
Texas prisons, we have none. No BPP. But we want 
it. Me and some of my comrades want to start a 
Black Panther Party true to the original Maoist 
principles, for us here inside, because you have an 
army of brothers here just waiting to have a chance 
to represent something true, real and no-nonsense. 
I personally am putting forth the initiative to 
found this program's start, for which I will commit 
my life and every effort. I want to offer my 
comrades something stronger and deeper and more 
meaningful than having to join a gang and gangbang 
against one another. There is something far better 
that you can represent. And I want to make it 
available to every comrade in Texas prisons ASAP. 
Can you hook me up with someone who can give me the 
permission, the guidelines, the material and 
whatever it takes to set up our own Texas internal 
Black Panther Party? I have some comrades that will 
be working with me on this. We want to make it 
official and correct, because it's time for some 
real leaders to step up and lead with something 
that's gonna be respected by these people as no 
joke. So I would appreciate your response to this 
letter, and if any outside comrades would, please 
contact me in reference to this letter and what 
we're seeking. We just want to legally set it up, 
so we can set it off. 

Unity, love, honor, respect,

 -- A Texas prisoner, 16 October 1997


MIM RESPONDS:  We commend your call to unify Texas 
prisoners in a progressive and political way. The 
Maoist vanguard of the late 1960s, the Black 
Panther Party is certainly one of the best sources 
for building revolution in an imperialist nation. 
Though there are some groups claiming the name of 
the BPP, MIM knows of none which have continued the 
Maoist revolutionary legacy of the original 
Panthers to put you in touch with. We suggest that 
you work with us to form a Maoist Revolutionary 
group in Texas prisons. We would be more than happy 
to help you create an organization true to the 
legacy of the Black Panther Party.


HIGH SECURITY HELL

... The pigs here are also out of control. I'm on a 
High Security Unit ... and that is the name of this 
unit -- no bullshit. They have cameras on the 
outside of the cells so I can't pass nothing to the 
other brothers, including the reading materials I 
got from you all, but I'll keep trying. This unit 
just open up, so later on there will be ways to 
overcome the pigs. 

Also did you know that the state of Texas is now 
going to start charging us for every time we go and 
see the medical staff (Doctor, dentist, nurse, 
etc.). Man, on the first of January 1998, they are 
going to start charging $3.00 for each visit. We 
gotta go to work for free and now pay for the 
doctor too. Man, they are out of control. Can they 
do this?

Also this unit is brand new and we don't have no 
heat. They have the A.C. [air conditioning] on all 
day. Right now I'm wrapped up in my blanket as I 
write this. I'm telling you. ...

-- A Texas Prisoner, 17 November 1997



* * *


MIM ON PRISONS AND PRISONERS

MIM seeks to build public opinion against Amerika's 
criminal injustice system, and to eventually 
replace the bourgeois injustice system with 
proletarian justice. The bourgeois injustice system 
imprisons and executes a disproportionately large 
and growing number of oppressed people while 
letting the biggest mass murderers - the 
imperialists and their lackeys - roam free. 
Imperialism is not opposed to murder or theft, it 
only insists that these crimes be committed in the 
interests of the bourgeoisie.

MIM does not advocate that all prisoners go free 
today; we have a more effective program for 
fighting crime as was demonstrated in China prior 
to the restoration of capitalism there in 1976. We 
say that all prisoners are political prisoners 
because under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, 
all imprisonment is substantively political. It is 
our responsibility to exert revolutionary 
leadership and conduct political agitation and 
organization among prisoners -- whose material 
conditions make them an overwhelmingly 
revolutionary group. Some prisoners should and will 
work on self-criticism under a future dictatorship 
of the proletariat in those cases in which 
prisoners really did do something wrong by 
proletarian standards.


***WHAT NON-PRISONERS CAN DO TO SUPPORT 
PRISONERS***

*1. Struggle with, work with, finance and join MIM. 
The best way to support prisoners is to overthrow 
the system under which capitalists profit from the 
exploitation of prisoners. History shows that the 
best way to do this is to build a Marxist-Leninist-
Maoist party. The oppressors will not give up their 
power without a fight.
*2. Finance MIM's prison work. Our biggest bill 
each month is postage. Most of the prison comrades 
who read MIM Notes have no way of paying for it. So 
if you have money, send what you can afford. Every 
cent helps, and stamps are as good as cash to us.
*3. Distribute MIM Notes and Notas Rojas. Bring the 
voices of prisoners and their supporters to as 
large and wide an audience of people as possible. 
Contact MIM for bulk rates and distribution tips.
*4. Start or join a prison support group. MIM can 
provide advice and resources to help you build 
public opinion for prisoners and their struggles.
*5. Fight censorship, beatings, torture and other 
fascist outrages. Under Lock and Key often features 
the addresses of prisoners' friends and enemies. 
Work with the friends and let the enemies know 
you're watching. (Don't expect to win the fascists 
to the side of humanity, however. See #1 in this 
list).
*6. Stay in touch. Keep us informed of pro-prisoner 
work you do. Our readers might find it educational 
or inspirational.

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