MIM Notes 191 August 1 1999

SLAM 
1998 
Directed by Marc Levin 
(written by Levin, et al) 
reviewed by MC45

SLAM is a poetic prose indictment of the economic and 
criminal injustice systems that set up Black youth as 
players in the drug dealing/using economy, then try to 
end their lives in imprisonment. This film is fiercely 
acted by a nearly all-Black cast. SLAM is worth seeing 
as a fine piece of movie-making; it's quality and 
subject matter both demand that it be ignored by the 
producers and screeners of bubble-gum cinema. The drama 
stars real-life poet Saul Williams as Raymond Joshua, a 
small-time dealer who writes rhymes for his friends to 
tell their girlfriends, and gives out raps and ice cream 
sandwiches to the youth in the DC projects where he 
lives.

The viewer gets the feeling of being bludgeoned by 
SLAM's message that drug dealing is the only readily 
available form employment for young Blacks in the 
ghetto, but the message is effective. Williams' 
character expects that the dealer he answers to will 
invest in helping him record some of his words -- so 
that dealing could effectively give him a way out of 
this life. Ray is arrested for possession of marijuana, 
and bullied by his assigned public defender (who is not 
present at his indictment) into either copping a plea or 
snitching on whomever he chooses. Ray's relationship 
with Lauren, an ex-junkie poet and prison writing 
instructor, reveals the contradictions in seeing drugs 
as a means of escaping gang life. Lauren confronts Ray 
with the fact that as he was tethered to selling to make 
his living, he was the dealer who tethered so many 
addicts to prostituting themselves for drugs. She 
convinces him that he is not an innocent in the so-
called War on Drugs, and that he can choose to accept 
responsibility for being a soldier on the wrong side.

From MIM's perspective, the tragedy of this 
contradiction is seriously weakened in Levin's 
insistence on individual responsibility. There is a ring 
of truth to the fact that revolutionaries and the 
oppressed must first make a persynal commitment not to 
surrender their lives to the imperialist cause before 
they can effect social change. We can't lie to the 
oppressed and say that imperialists bear all 
responsibility for the conditions of the oppressed.

While the imperialists deserve all of the blame for the 
conditions of internal colonialism of the Black nation, 
the proletariat and its vanguard party must seize all 
responsibility for building independent power to serve 
the needs of the oppressed masses. But this is not 
Levin's message. SLAM argues that Ray can serve "his" 
time, can use it to build his poetry, and come out a 
stronger persyn who takes responsibility for his own 
life conditions and relations with other people. 

MIM members uphold party discipline and do not use or 
deal in illegal drugs because we refuse to provide the 
pigs with excuses to lock up more revolutionary 
activists. But we recognize the so called War on Drugs 
for what it is: a war on the oppressed Black and Latino 
internal semicolonies in u.$. borders, and a war against 
the peasants of the poor illegal-drug producing 
countries.

MIM would gladly host showings of SLAM, as it details 
the way Black youth are targeted for drug dealing, 
arrest, prosecution and imprisonment. But this 
explanation of the criminal war against the oppressed is 
only a political tool in the context of revolutionary 
struggle. Prisoners and youth of the oppressed nations 
should take this knowledge of how the criminal injustice 
system works and make it their argument for working with 
MIM to build independent institutions of the oppressed, 
and to build public opinion in favor of the just 
struggles of the oppressed. 

MIM has initiated two anti-imperialist mass 
organizations for people who want to organize against 
imperialism and accept Maoist leadership in doing so. 
United Struggle from Within (USW) is an organization of 
prisoners that has so far taken on group study of Maoist 
literature to advance its organizing base, publishes 
articles in MIM Notes regularly, and includes the 
Prisoners' Legal Clinic -- a Serve the People program 
through which prisoners help each other in breaking down 
legal barriers to their organizing. The Revolutionary 
Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) is a mass organization of 
people who are not in prison, an who want to educate 
about and agitate against colonialism in the form of 
prisons, military occupations of countries like Puerto 
Rico and the Philippines, military aggression against 
the peoples of Iraq and Yugoslavia, and all other forms 
of imperialism.

MIM publishes two pages of news from prisoners in every 
issue of our paper to educate prisoners and those on the 
outside about the Amerikan gulags. We publish this 
information in the context of an independent newspaper 
that spreads news about all forms of imperialist 
oppression from a Maoist standpoint. We call on all 
people who are angered by the injustice of the u.$. 
criminal system to work under MIM's proletarian 
leadership toward ending imperialism and militarism in 
all forms.