MIM Notes 35                    Jan 23 1989 

Correspondence:

Dear MIM:

Profound revolutionary greetings. Some time ago I wrote you 
and requested some literature which you promptly sent me along 
with a list of organizations. I joined the _______.

I got into a disagreement with the chairman over some 
grotesque policies and so on. In time, by reading their 
publications, I soon developed doubts about the organization.

I wrote you several more times requesting some MIM Notes/MIM 
Theories, but I received no response.  In addition I wish to 
inform you that I wrote every organization that you had on 
your list stating that they provide free literature to 
prisoners, and several others that weren't on that list, not a 
single response!

--A comrade from the West

June, 1988

MC5 replies: 

It seems likely that this is a case of censorship by prison 
authorities.  MIM has sent this comrade MIM Notes/MIM Theory 
as part of its free subscriptions policy for prisoners.

Other groups have the same policies.  Perhaps all the groups 
are as slow as we are to put literature into the prisons, but 
it seems more likely that this comrade has faced a common 
problem in the prisons. Prison officials often feel justified 
in confiscating prisoners' mail.

Dear MIM:

This writing is into the possibility of my receiving certain 
books from you that will enable my taking that quantum leap -- 
for struggle.

Furthermore, and this writing's essence: I am without the 
means to purchase the necessary books hence this writing.

Forward in struggle. Material requested:

1.	Volume I, Selected Works Mao Zedong

2.	Quotations from the Chairperson Mao Zedong

--A prisoner from the South

June, 1988

Dear MIM:

I am writing this letter with the utmost conviction and deep-
rooted dedication I can dream of. I need your help. Help me if 
you can, the only way you can, by trying to understand. I am 
Black; I am poor, and "cause the rich don't make this route," 
I am in Captivity., i.e. in this Amerikkkan Bourgeois 
Capitalist Cesspool Stinking Prison System.

Yet, my commitment to better understand the World  is a 
profound thing. A very dedicated thing that grows and 
continues to grow until I am a better person or else it will 
consume and destroy us all.

I received the catalog. . . .

Other comrades have been waiting for me to come up with a True 
Address where we can order free material and literature from 
out of the Internationalist Revolution. . . .

I would like to be put on the subscription list. . . .

Comrades let me state that most of us here in this Southern 
Prison System. . . indigent as ever, and without outside 
resources or peoples like you who help distribute literature, 
we would be stuck. . . .

I served time in the Armed Forces, but I turned out to be a 
rebel against U.S. imperialism and bourgeois catastrophic war 
-- killing peoples that haven't done anything to me or this 
country, people which I have never seen or didn't even know. I 
went AWOL. . .

The Emancipation of the Working Classes Must Be Achieved By 
the Working Classes Themselves!! Power to the Revolutionaries 
and Oppressed Sisters and Brothers!

	(Books requested):

	1. Eritrea: Never Kneel Down, James Firebrace and Stuart 
Holland. 

	2. George Jackson: Blood in My Eye.

	3. Israel Shahak: Israel's Global Role: Weapons for 
Repression

	4. "South Africa and Disarmament"

	5. Robert Aldridge: First Strike!

Apartheid No! Revolution Yes!

Stop Racist Political Repression!

Support the Prisoners Movement!

Free All Political Prisoners!

--Another prisoner from the South

June, 1988

Dear MIM:

I saw your advertisement in the Guardian Weekly newspaper that 
I subscribe to. I have always been on the far Left for years. 
I've read a number of books about Mao. I've always wanted, to 
get a Little Red Book. I could never get a Little Red Book.

I am very interested in receiving the free catalog. . . .

Right now, I am incarcerated . . . .

I don't have ample funds to subscribe. . . Please send two or 
three issues to me.

When I am released, I will subscribe to your newsletter. . . .

From what I read about China and Russia, both countries are 
starting to really follow the capitalist path. I know I am no 
great expert on this. But from what I see on the news on TV 
and newspapers. . . .

--A prisoner in the Northeast

June, 1988

Dear MIM:

I hope this letter reaches its destination finding everyone 
strong in the struggle. As for myself, I just try not and let 
these jailers jail my "mind."

I am currently incarcerated and in the hole! I have always 
disliked the things I've seen in this country--capitalism and 
corruption.  I understand that the latter is everywhere; yet, 
the former is what this country is all about!

I was turned on to the struggle by poverty; yet, through 
knowledge, I want to do something in the technical sense. A 
brother in the struggle shared his MIM Newsletter with me 
(6/7/88) and I found it enlightening, fascinating. . . REAL!!

However, I have no income coming in at all, which leaves me 
indigent and I need literature to keep me informed.

 Well comrades, I wish to do all I can to bring this form of 
government DOWN and until I am in position, I will hold fast 
and keep learning.

	[Requests Sakai's Settlers: Mythology of the White 
Proletariat and Tani and Sera's False Nationalism, False 
Internationalism]

--A prisoner in the Northeast

July, 1988

Dear MIM:

May peace be upon you.

I am a young Muslim of African descent incarcerated in the 
infamous X.  I have been confined in a "segregation cell" for 
23 hours each and every day since October 1986. My periods of 
communication and socialization with reputable people, groups 
and organizations--while so confined--has been few and far 
between.

So I spend most of my time (in order to improve my condition) 
doing calisthenics, contemplating the lessons learned from my 
mistakes and experiences, contemplating ways to build a strong 
foundation upon my release. But in spite of my perseverance, I 
feel that my daily agenda is inadequate.

For these reasons I earnestly request you to provide me with 
some complimentary literature (i.e., books, periodicals, 
whatever) designed to help me become the comrade, the soldier, 
the father, husband. . . who is so desperately needed in our 
communities the world over.

[Requests How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, 
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, "On Protracted War" 
by Mao Zedong, Black Panthers Speak and Comrade George by Eric 
Manning]

--Prisoner from the Northeast

July, 1988

Dear MIM:

The fall of our society and the destruction of our society and 
all life on this planet will be from the high technology that 
MC5 thinks can replace heterosexual intercourse in the 
propagation of the species. Using a lethal tool to eliminate 
Nature, which system brought us life on this planet to date, 
scares me to death.

In addition, sanitationwise, placing one's genitalia in a 
waste pit makes people sick. Ergo A.I.D.S.

All the sins of the patriarchy must not be placed at the door 
of heterosexuality. That would be reverse discrimination, 
would it not? It is very shakey ground to politicize 
sexuality. (Two wrongs don't make a right).

Because the patriarchy over most of recorded history used the 
sexuality of women for their own power and wealth, is hardly 
to say that heterosexuality is to blame for everything. Sex is 
a tool of Nature: the patriarchy didn't invent it. It was the 
development of the post-hunting and gathering stage, I 
believe, which put the male in control--in short--something 
unnatural.

(I must follow this up with my theory that mankind is a poor 
experiment of Nature's--one that turned out to be destructive. 
Mankind has gotten just smart enough to mess things up /with 
"science"/ and not wise enough to straighten it out). It is 
modern medical science that has overpopulated the earth, as it 
is capitalism that is fast destroying the rain forests which 
will cause drought, famine etc.

If people have a homosexual orientation, that is their right. 
It is not their right to mess up the natural system that 
brought mankind to the 20th Century.

--A writer from the South

MC5 replies: 

The writer is responding to the review of the RCP's 
theoretical position on homosexuality in the last issue.

MC5 never blamed heterosexual sex for the crimes of the 
patriarchy. He only raised the connection because the RCP 
commonly compares homosexual ideology with communism instead 
of to heterosexual ideology.

Since that issue came out, MIM has learned from a Detroit 
member of the RCP that the RCP intends to criticize both 
heterosexual and homosexual ideology, and eliminate them both.

On the other hand, in a shocking revelation to MIM, the RCP 
apparently does not allow practicing homosexuals in its party, 
but it does allow practicing heterosexuals. Such is the 
unwritten rule in the RCP and contradicts the RCP assertion 
that homosexuality is not a dividing line question in its 
party.

In this comrade's opinion, that position of the RCP alone is 
sufficient to demarcate the RCP from MIM.  As stated in the 
review in the last issue, the question of sexual orientation 
alone is not a dividing line question of the proletarian 
revolution. However, bourgeois opportunism and the exclusion 
of communists from the RCP based on sexual practice is a 
dividing line question.  The international proletariat cannot 
afford the luxury of having a revolution against war and 
imperialism led only by heterosexuals.  (See proposed 
constitution.)

Comrades, we must openly call on the RCP and the Revolutionary 
Internationalist Movement of which it is part to explicitly 
abandon this provincialist outlook and put forward a coherent 
position on sexism and heterosexism. MIM comrades have pushed 
the RCP on this question for several years, only to encounter 
incoherence, delay and excuses that the question is not a 
dividing line question!  As it turns out, more than five years 
after MIM's initiating discussions of homosexuality with the 
RCP, the question is quite literally a dividing line question 
for the RCP.

MCø replies: To term heterosexual relations a "natural" 
dilutes the social constructs of gender relations which are 
particularly focused in heterosexual relations, intercourse.  
The economic, social and political forces which compell women 
to have intercourse are not the products of nature.  The same 
forcres exist in sex, sexuality, and sexism.  See Andrea 
Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possesing Women or Catherine A. 
MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified.  MacKinnon elaborates on the 
assumption that women control sex:

Feminism has found that women feel compelled to preserve the 
appearance -- which acted upon, becomes the reality -- of male 
direction of sexual expresxsion, as if male initiative itself 
were what we want as if it were that which turns us on.  It is 
what pornography eroticizes and prostitutes provide.  Rape -- 
that is, intercourse with force that is recognized as force -- 
is adjudicated not according to thepower or force that the man 
wields, but according to indices of intimacy betwseen the 
parties.  The more intimate you are with your accused rapist, 
the less likely a court is to find that what happened to you 
was rape.  Often indices of intimacy include intercourse 
itself. If "no" can be taken as "yes," how free can "yes" be?

Comrade has problems with mail

Dear MIM:

I am currently a prisoner in the Federal X X, having passed 
through several other federal kamps over the past 12 years.

I am writing to request a book or some literature dealing with 
the International Character of Struggle. I'd like to be able 
to read/study the requested material and recommend it to 
others I know whose interests lie in that direction.

At present I'm in "the hole." 

Prompt and proper handling of my mail is a constant problem 
here so it's best that you acknowledge receipt of this letter 
at your earliest convenience. Apparently, I'm going to have to 
file some sort of litigation just to get my mail straightened 
out.

There's a lot to be said and a lot to be done within the kamps 
in terms of revitalizing things and unifying progressive 
forces inside. And of course there's always the need for solid 
support from pro-rev elements outside for those of us behind 
the walls and fences who are moving to inject pro-rev vibes 
into the general kamp population.

Warm regards to the Righteous.

Strength and Struggle.

--A prisoner from the South

September, 1988