MIM NOTES 195	October 1, 1999

Event celebrates prisoner struggles against oppression
by MIM

In Los Angeles, MIM and RAIL held an event on August 21, the 28th 
anniversary of the murder of revolutionary prisoner activist 
George Jackson. Jackson's death at the hands of a San Quentin 
guard provided some of the impetus for the already organized 
Attica prisoners to escalate their demands on prison authorities 
by seizing control of Attica State "Correctional" Facility on 
September 9, 1971. As MIM and RAIL devote a month of heightened 
agitation to the criminal injustice system during "End the 
Amerikkkan Lockdown Month" this September - October, we remember 
and study the significance of these events for revolutionary 
activists today.

A RAIL comrade opened the event by reading several letters written 
by our comrades under lock and key especially for this event. One 
prisoner wrote, "Unlike some of the higher profile cases of 
injustice we've come to know so well (i.e. Mumia, Geronimo), 
Jackson's arrest and conviction didn't provoke initial outrage. 
But his literary work while on the inside - especially the book 
Soledad Brother - drew attention to his unflinching perspective of 
the proletariat's struggle and Black militancy; a perspective I 
believe which refocused the goals of political prisoners from 
coast to coast, San Quentin to Attica."

The letters were followed by a brief talk by a MIM supporter on 
the imprisonment and death of George Jackson. The speaker stressed 
the relevance of Jackson's extreme sentence -- one year-to-life 
for stealing $70 from a gas station -- to today's longer 
sentences, mandatory minimums and "third strikes." S/he then read 
excerpts from Jackson's second published book, Blood in My Eye, to 
illustrate that Jackson was both a revolutionary nationalist and 
internationalist, as well as a communist who upheld the Black 
Panther Party as the political vanguard of the Black colony.

In Blood in My Eye, Jackson wrote to a friend in 1971, "We've gone 
through approximately the same changes since they separated us -- 
the confused flight to national revolutionary Africa -- through 
the riot stage of revolutionary Black America. We have finally 
arrived at scientific revolutionary socialism with the rest of the 
colonial world. ..." 

Despite MIM's criticisms of Jackson's focoism (see MIM Theory 5, 
11 and "What is MIM"?), MIM recommends his books as a strong case 
for national liberation and reminds activists of the link between 
his leadership and the Attica rebellion. At the event MIM and RAIL 
showed clips of the documentary on the organization of the Attica 
prisoners, and the state's massacre as they ruthlessly re-took 
control of the prison, killing 39 people. A MIM supporter then 
spoke of the historical significance of the rebellion to prison 
organizing:

"The response of the state was a cold-blooded massacre, so vicious 
that it surprised everyone. It wouldn't have cost the state much 
to improve conditions. That wasn't the point. The point was that 
the Attica rebellion -- and the revolutionary nationalist and 
anti-war movements it was associated with -- were a crisis for the 
state."

After, some friends and associates of MIM and RAIL, including 
Foundation Kollective, contributed poetry and spoken word 
performances to the event, audience members discussed the current 
crisis of Amerikan prisons, and talked about concrete actions that 
people could take on behalf of prisoners. MIM and RAIL stressed 
revolutionary education and MIM's Serve the People Free Books for 
Prisoners Program. Participants also discussed state-sponsored 
obstacles to those efforts, including literature censorship and 
political repression, especially the so-called "Secure Housing 
Units" or SHUs.

A Texas comrade wrote from under lock and key, "Here in Klan 
capital Texas we who are held captive are fighting for our very 
lives. You have trigger-happy field guards and a medical staff 
that is bent on unleashing the spreading of AIDS and hepatitis. 
Guards in Texas prisons have a long history of murdering inmates 
and getting away with it ..."

As George Jackson wrote, and the experiences of Attica and today 
illustrate, the prison system is a tool of class and national 
warfare against oppressed peoples. Join MIM and RAIL's efforts 
during "End the Amerikan Lockdown Month" to expose the extreme 
repression and brutality of Amerikan prisons. See our webpage 
(www.etext.org/Politics/ MIM/) for events in your area, or work 
with us to bring such events to where you are.

MIM thanks the co-sponsors of this event -- Foundation Kollective 
and People Against Racist Terror -- for their help publicizing and 
contributing to the event.