MIM Notes 229                   March 1, 2001

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Under Lock & Key

Washington prisoner comments on protest

I am on the revolutionary line. But I am a Shiah Muslim and I 
believe in establishing Islamic governments, but right now we -- 
me and you -- are faced with a common enemy that is trying to rule 
the world and is in a certain sense, and this is the capitalistic 
democratic system. May it be razed to the ground.

I have received your letter and I don't mind doing things for a 
revolutionary cause. However, would you have qualms about me doing 
it on Islamic lines? If not, then we can get something going. I 
will tell you the things I'm interested in, but first I must tell 
you that there is a saying of our first imam that says the effect.

Your friends are three and your enemies are three; your friends 
are: your friend's friend, your friend, your enemy's enemy; then 
he said, your enemies are: your enemy, your friend's enemy & your 
enemy's friend.

I will now comment on a topic so I can receive books and letter. 
Before I do so I must let you know that my grandfather was a Black 
Panther and I've had throughout my life an "against the 
government" attitude but I was not pure nor clear. Since I've been 
Muslim it's been clear. I now tell you a topic.

On Aug 15 outside the Democratic convention more than 1000 were 
doing a protest against the oppressive US system for the bombings 
of Iraq. This is good for the oppressed because it lets them know 
that we are aware of their game plan to take over oil. I however 
am tired of protest; all the oppressor does is laugh; since when 
does an oppressor here you unless they change things for a 
political motive? It is time to stop protesting and it is time to 
shut the media down and invade the governmental spots and then 
take the military. This is the only way to take down oppression. I 
get sick and tired of hearing Bill Clinton, Al Gore & Bush, 
because they all are evil. George Bush says that he will increase 
attacks on Iraq if he becomes president. Also the reason why these 
people want a missile defense system is so they can attack without 
discrimination, so that no one can attack back because they know 
that certain nations they have done wrong to are becoming 
powerful. In a way protest helps them by them seeing that they 
have potential enemies and that they know who to pick off if it 
gets real bad, but the good outweighs the bad of it because you 
influence society by protest. Someone needs to take Wall Street 
away because from what I gather it is part of their economic 
means.

I'm ready to do something but never will injustice make me become 
unjust, and be over zealous because I realize that eventually not 
only is one punished by Allah but that one's cause becomes 
deteriorated.

-- a Washington prisoner, November 2000.

MIM responds: MIM agrees that in order to defeat imperialism, we 
must seize state power, and have media and military control. 
However, MIM does not encourage this kind of activity now. We must 
gain strength by waging winnable legal struggles, building public 
opinion and independent institutions to be fully prepared to 
engage the imperialists at a higher level of struggle.

MIM's goal differs from this prisoner's goal of establishing 
Islamic governments. However, we have no qualms about working with 
people who agree with us politically, but are also religious. 
Religion is a type of mysticism, and as communists, we want to 
eliminate mysticism ultimately. At this stage, MIM educates 
against mysticism and we always use materialism as the base of our 
analysis. Some will be convinced by our materialist analysis and 
others will continue to disagree regarding religion. MIM will not 
change it's anti-religious stance, but we do not draw religion as 
a dividing line for anti-imperialist work within the proletarian 
united front. We welcome all who can be united against imperialism 
within the united front.

To the captive that lost use of his hand and leg, from Iowa

This goes out to the captive that lost partial use of his hand and 
full use of his leg. I hope that these words reach you and are 
instrumental in redressing part of the wrongs you have suffered at 
the hands of the department of corruptions. The appropriate 
vehicle for abuse such as that you have suffered is constitutional 
deprivation complaints.

First, You will need to find out the name of the Director of the 
department of Corrections in the state you are being held hostage 
in, as well as the warden, his assistant and the El roys directly 
related to the incident at hand. After listing your complaint, 
mention whether or not you have any pending litigation in other 
courts, how much money you may or may not have in your inmate 
account.

From where I stand, you have a platinum complaint with your 
injuries being tissue damage. Probably the most difficult aspect 
of this ordeal, next to learning how to cope with the loss of use 
of your limbs, will be gathering the names of the prisoncrats and 
the El roys directly responsible for what you have been subjected 
to.

-- an Iowa prisoner, 12 December 2000.

Illinois DOC misuse of funds

Recently in the u.$.a. today there was an article that spoke of 
the misusage of funds by Director Snyder, his using jets, cars, 
money, etc. for his and his staff's personal use. Yet Governor 
Ryan still commended him on a job well done??

Now Governor Ryan has incorporated into his scheme of things 
medical co-payment (effective immediately) whereas inmates have to 
pay $2.00 for non-emergency medical treatment. We are already 
being house in unsanitary conditions and given the lowest quality 
of medicine and medical treatment (this is capitalism in one of 
its rawest forms). So where is all the money going? Heating and 
ventilation are worse than an abandoned building. [The way] Menard 
and Springfield tell it, every cell house is run accordingly and 
prisoners' grievances concerning treatment, heating, medical 
assistance and care not forgetting sanitation are frivolous and 
without merit.

We need to come together and unite to combat this plot to exploit 
money and free labor from us. If we don't stand as one we 
definitely will fall together.

-- an Illinois prisoner, 7 December 2000.

No Free Speech in Prison

Upon receiving your MIM Notes, I found them to be very informative 
and educational to young comrades who are learning of the 
struggle. I found well printed facts that the puppet media fails 
to inform its dumbfounded audience. MIM Notes is truly a 
publication that responds to the cries from the invisible world of 
lost souls.

On any given day in Amerikkka, more than two million people in 
prisons and jails spend their days subjected to the most rigorous 
censorship and are denied the fundamental rights protected 
everywhere else by the freedom of speech. They are denied reading 
material deemed objectionable and punished for possessing 
"radical" views, but rewarded for renouncing them. No matter 
whether the winds of the United Snake$ Supreme Court blow left or 
right, prisoners are most often utterly abandoned by the federal 
courts.

Prison officials have not hesitated to use their position of total 
control over every aspect of a prisoner's life to punish an inmate 
for expressing unpopular views. And the federal courts show 
unbecoming credulity when administrators dutifully insist their 
goals were proper. Eg., in Nickens v. White, 662 F. 2wd 967 (8th 
Cir, 1980), prison officials at a medium security institution 
placed an inmate in solitary confinement and then transferred him 
to a maximum facility when he refused to take his name off a 
petition. The petition, signed by about two hundred prisoners, was 
directed to a state official and protested prison conditions. The 
US court of appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld both the policy 
against petitions (imagine that) as well as its peculiar 
enforcement. The court found no First Amendment problem in 
punishing a prisoner for refusing to renounce his prior speech. If 
I am not mistaken the First Amendment states that people have the 
right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances". 
How can we depend on these unjust courts that upon hearing a case 
from a prisoner, it mysteriously gets a case of Constitutional 
amnesia.

The First Amendment protection of the quest for political and 
social truth is only discoverable when people are free "to think 
as they please and speak what they think"! Free speech rights are 
also cherished as a vacation against tyranny and abuse of 
government power. Within a prison, the hand of government is far 
heavier and more frequently involved. What the government and its 
prisoncrats fail to realize is that punishing a revolutionary 
comrade for speech does not discourage the speech; it only drives 
it underground and encourages more unity among the struggle!!! 
Remember Comrades, the most dangerous man on earth is one who has 
knowledge. He becomes notorious once he begins to use it!

--a New Jersey prisoner, 26 November 2000.

Youth will feed the revolution

Revolutionary Greetings to all comrades in the struggle within the 
bars of the imperialists. I received MIM Notes of Dec. 1, 2000, No 
223. There was an article that caught my attention, which was 
"Never too young to get involved." I am a firm believer in 
educating the young, cause they are tomorrow's leaders for the 
fight against imperialism. We should all make it a priority to 
educate the young. Many believe that the young are incapable of 
educating themselves politically, but they fail to realize that 
these youngsters are hungry for the truth. I must give much 
respect to what Huey P. Newton said on one of his BPP pamphlets, 
"feed the young and the young will feed the revolution." He could 
not have put that in any better way. I must give support to all 
the youngsters that are willing to find the truth, and I encourage 
all comrades to feed the truth to the leaders of tomorrow.

A clenched fist salute to all comrades and "Peace in Black & 
Gold." 

-- a New Jersey Prisoner.

Censorship in New York prisons

I finally received my first issue of MIM Notes. Oct 1, 2000 # 219 
& Oct 15, 2000 # 220. What's left of them. I personally met with 
the chairperson of media review committee. I agreed to have two 
pages removed from each paper, which he said were a bit too 
radical.

After nearly two months I received one page from issue #219 all in 
Spanish and two pages from issue #220, 1 & 3 about Firestone 
tires. This coward censored 20 pages in all. It's evident that 
literature of this nature (MIM Notes) exposing the government for 
what it is isn't wanted in the hands of prisoners.

I recently received a notice from this coward again stating that 
Nov. 1, 2000 of MIM notes are being held for media review 
committee.

-- a New York prisoner, January 2001.

No education in Amerikkkan prisons

I've been in prison 4 years and have been denied an education. 
I've had jobs unloading tractor-trailers, cutting grass, and doing 
mail pick-up. Each paid $8.25 every 2 weeks for 10 months. I was 
not properly put in GED classes during this time, but continued to 
receive this wage due to not having a diploma.

-- a New York prisoner, January 2001.

MIM adds: Until the prison system is run in the interests of the 
oppressed under a proletarian dictatorship, we cannot trust that 
prisoners will be provided with adequate education.

However, it is possible to wage battles around the need for access 
to education within prisons. It is good that you help to expose 
the lack of education in prison for ULK, but we suggest that 
prisoners in situations like the above take it a step further. 
Gather the prisoncrat policies regarding education in your prison 
(get the copies of state regulations as well). If the policy is to 
guarantee access to GED classes, help us to publicize prisons not 
sticking to their own rules. If such basic education is not 
guaranteed either in your facility or in the state, use this as a 
launching point to develop the struggle to gain access to basic 
education. MIM can provide you with some resources regarding 
struggles to gain access to basic education in prisons. And we can 
help you develop tactics for a successful campaign for access to 
education in prisons. One part of building public opposition to 
the Amerikkkan Lockdown is to expose Amerika's unwillingness to 
help prisoners educate themselves.

That said, even after gaining access to educational programs 
sponsored by the united snakes, we do not conclude that this means 
prisoners have adequate education. Amerikan education is 
specifically geared toward bolstering support for imperialism and 
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. We encourage prisoners to 
form revolutionary study groups to learn various subjects from the 
bias of the international proletariat. In total, we encourage 
prisoners to get as much out of the prison system as possible 
while studying with MIM for revolutionary foundations.

Revolutionary poetry

INSTITUTIONALIZED

Programmed to the point,
where you benefit supremacy,
help keep its legacy,
for life, forever be.
Established colonialism,
for nothing but control,
from the master (Cristobal) Colon,
on for life, forever more.
The solution, PHYSICAL REVOLUTION!

--a New Jersey prisoner, December 2000.

UNTITLED

To thee oppressor,
your time has come,
your death is near,
It is I,
thee oppressed,
that you fear.
You feared me from the beginning,
scared of my Brown shine,
and now I come for you,
your heart is "MINE!"

--a prisoner in New Jersey, December 2000.

(I am) U.$. Torture (Insane American Madness)

I am, the innocent confined to a cell, sentenced to a fate worse 
than death, a torturous living hell that they call jail.

I am, live from death row, about to be condemned by the wizard to 
walk down the yellow brick road to be euthanized for a corrupted 
lie.

I am, the mentally ill test patient of the conglomerate 
pharmaceutical industry who's mind and memory has been stolen by 
Prozac, Ritalin and Lithium pumped full of controlled substances 
to be a modern day zombie convicted of selling drugs, who's really 
insane?

I am, the 2 million man standing army, prisoners of war who are 
confined to a concentration camp, out on a rural plantation, 
waiting to be called to active duty.

I am, U.S. torture, U.S. corruption, U.S. destruction, U.S. 
pollution.

I am, the disenfranchised minority who is locked in the belly of 
the beast, worth more in bondage than in college.

I am, the poor white descendent of penal convicts, banished to the 
colonies to start a new land, swindled the natives, and dissipated 
his clan, exiled to a reservation like some foreign land, a 
forgotten alcoholic stupor, spirits blown to the winds.

I am, the female inmate snatched from her children like a hen from 
her eggs, by mountainous wolves, devouring my flesh, raping and 
selling my body, domestic violence are the scars on my face.

I am, the inmate restrained to a chair for 48 hours my limbs go 
numb, in pain, I cry out like a peacock, but my cries go unheard. 
Pain reverberates through my bones like arthritis in the rings of 
old oak trees, where thousands of Negroes hanged from sea to 
shining sea.

Strapped to a chair I feel the paraplegic horror and their hell 
immobile and vulnerable to all assaults unable to represent myself 
needing a public defender, a lawyer pretender.

I am, U.S. torture, U.S. corruption, U.S. destruction, U.S. 
pollution.

I am, the human toilet that the police/plumber uses his sadistic 
tactics to plunge. Sticking a snake baton up my ass, disemboweling 
my inside with gut wrenching pain yet be acquitted and away goes 
trouble down the drain into a cesspool of immorality.

I am, the Trojan football team clothed in helmet and pads, who 
huddles for a cell extraction hut one -- hut two, hike doors open; 
six run in smashing the convict dummy against the capitalist 
concrete wall. Hog tied like a rodeo calf, dragged off and skinned 
naked, thrown into the slaughter house of isolation.

I am, the one suffocating from toxic poisonous gases being sprayed 
in my cell, oxygen being cut off like CFCs evaporating in air. 
Carbon monoxide steals my breath, as loggers steal forests. 
Chemicals burn my skin to a degree of a hundred exposures of skin 
cancer; cell temperatures rise like global warming heating the 
atmosphere, roasting my insides, making me puke like an active 
volcano's lava, reality of injustices.

My eyes burn tears from seeing police brutality and correctional 
assaults; my dreams turn to nightmares being kidnapped by a 
corrupt criminal justice system, held ransom by the prison 
industrial complex until the demand is paid.

I am, U.S. torture, U.S. corruption, U.S. destruction, U.S. 
pollution.

I am, the handicapped inmate strapped down in five point 
restraints crucified for days beaten and bloodied; feces and urine 
soil my garments from lack of medical treatment. Am I covered by 
HMOs (Health Malpractice Organizations) or CMSs (Correctional 
Murder Services). "Please call my doctor", Dr. Kill-vork-i-klan.

I am, the AIDS infected population, contaminated by the world's 
corrupted polluters, environmental destroyers, toxic wasters.

I am, the microcosm of society thrown into the belly of a beast, 
inoculated by the C.D.C. corporation with HIV, hepatitis, X, TB, 
STDs, anthrax, Desert Storm Syndrome, flesh eating disease, 
cancers affecting the world.

I am, U.S. torture, U.S. corruption, U.S. destruction, U.S. 
pollution.

I will be the new solution.

--a Washington prisoner,

October 2000.