I N T E R N E T ' S M A O I S T BI-M O N T H L Y = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = XX XX XXX XX XX X X XXX XXX XXX XXX X X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X V X X X V X X X X X X X XX XXX X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X XXX X X X V XXX X XXX XXX = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT MIM Notes 126 NOVEMBER 15, 1996 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. THE PEOPLE LOSE IN IMPERIALIST ELECTORALISM IN NICARAGUA 2. FILIPINO STUDENTS SUPPORT SISON ASYLUM 3. LETTERS 4. FLORIDA: MASSES POSE 'CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER' 5. ST. LOUIS POLICE BEAT FORMER PRISONER TO DEATH 6. PENNSYLVANIA POLICE WIN MISTRIAL 7. CAPITALIST TOOLS OPPOSE CONVICT VOTING 8. ANTI-COLUMBUS WEEK EDUCATES ABOUT IMPERIALIST GENOCIDE 9. WAKE UP TROTSKYISTS! WHITE WORKERS SHARE PIE WITH IMPERIALISM 10. MAOISM ABORTED: POVERTY IN CHINA TODAY 11. AMERIKAN CULTURE 12. STANDARDIZED TESTS: TESTING AGAINST THE WHITE MAN'S STANDARD 13. IMPERIALISM DESTROYS PHILIPPINE ENVIRONMENT 14. UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONERS AND PRISONS 15. BLACK PANTHER PARTY REMEMBERED 16. AMERIKA AGAINST THE BLACK NATION: GENDER AND NATIONAL OPPRESSION 17. REVIEW: BAD AS I WANNA BE 18. REVIEW: THE RULES * * * WHAT IS MIM? The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is a revolutionary communist party that upholds Marxism- Leninism-Maoism, comprising the collection of existing or emerging Maoist internationalist parties in the English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-speaking internal semi- colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Spanish-speaking Maoist internationalist parties of Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the U.S. Empire. MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish- speaking parties or emerging parties of MIM. MIM is an internationalist organization that works from the vantage point of the Third World proletariat; thus, its members are not Amerikans, but world citizens. MIM struggles to end the oppression of all groups over other groups: classes, genders, nations. MIM knows this is only possible by building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. Revolution is a reality for North America as the military becomes over-extended in the government's attempts to maintain world hegemony. MIM differs from other communist parties on three main questions: (1) MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the death of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's death and the overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in 1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of communism in human history. (3) MIM believes the North American white-working-class is primarily a non- revolutionary worker-elite at this time; thus, it is not the principal vehicle to advance Maoism in this country. MIM accepts people as members who agree on these basic principles and accept democratic centralism, the system of majority rule, on other questions of party line. "The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases, but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution." -- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208 * * * THE PEOPLE LOSE IN IMPERIALIST ELECTORALISM IN NICARAGUA The October elections in Nicaragua revealed the lasting effects of Amerikan imperialism. Amerikan imperialism has succeeded in destroying the lives of the Nicaraguan people so that the majority of the people live in extreme poverty, with 53% of the population jobless or unemployed (1). Amerikan imperialism succeeded in overthrowing the popular Sandinista government and restoring the legacy of the Somoza dictatorship under the pretty face of "democratic" elections. And Amerikan imperialism successfully created a neo-colony out of Nicaragua, a country that now serves as a source of raw materials and labor for Amerikan-run multinational corporations, a strategic base for Amerikan imperialism, and a puppet of Amerikan foreign policy in Latin America. This is what the victory of Arnoldo Aleman, who belonged to the Somcista Liberal Youth during the Somoza dictatorship, and the complete selling out by Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista party, tells us about Amerikan imperialism. At press time, the Sandinistas are still calling the vote results invalid due to counting fraud and there is confirmation of widespread problems in the process.(2) Many of the observers said that the voting process was valid but did not stick around to see through the counting where many votes were "lost" or destroyed or simply misreported. According to Ortega, this reporting and counting fraud means he lost 60,000 votes that were cast in his favor. While MIM does not doubt that there was much fraud in this imperialist run election, even the Sandinistas are not claiming that they won a majority of the vote: at best they hope for a run off between Aleman and Ortega. This is still a strong vote against Ortega by a large portion of a population that has a material interest in opposing imperialism. The history of Nicaragua is important for progressives in this country to understand. In 1979, the Sandinistas successfully overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and took power under a banner of revolutionary change. Aleman was among the wealthy who had their land confiscated and as a lawyer, Aleman represented clients whose property was confiscated by the Sandinista government.(3) For many years progressive people put a lot of time and energy into defending the Sandinistas against Amerikan imperialism (the contras and other imperialist agents attempting to overthrow the popular government.) Unlike MIM, some progressives were stunned when, in 1990, UNO party candidate Violeta Chammoro defeated the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega in presidential elections. To understand the defeat of the popular Sandinista government we have to understand the strength of Amerikan imperialism which spent millions of dollars destabilizing the Sandinista government, destroying the infrastructure of the country, making the peoples lives miserable, and then paying people to vote for the UNO party. To this day the Nicaraguan people are saying that the motivating factors behind their vote are fear of a renewed internal war (between the CIA backed Contras and the Sandinistas) and further economic devastation to their country. These things came from the wrath of imperialist Amerika which was not willing to tolerate a colony breaking free and implementing a popular and independent government. This should make it clear that a revolutionary overthrow of imperialism (whether it is run by Somoza or Chammoro or Aleman) can not happen through bourgeois electoralism. Currently, in elections, the people vote with Uncle Sam twisting their arms. Only when Uncle Sam loses in a decisive war will the people be able to express themselves instead of voting their fears. It is not hopelessly impossible to fight against a strong imperialist country, even for an underdeveloped Third World country. The other part of the failure of the Sandinistas rests with the Sandinistas themselves. Their brand of so-called Marxism involved mixing capitalism with some socialist ideas into a system that was not sustainable or autonomous. Self-reliance is the key to independence from imperialism and a socialist political and economic structure is essential for self-reliant development of production in all fields. Faced with trade barriers with capitalist countries, attacks from Amerika, and offers of new colonial dependency, Nicaragua's only hope for independent development was socialist self- reliance. Instead the Sandinistas took a more liberal "middle road" which left them unable to fight the imperialists and develop the country to sustain the people. The Sandinistas also legitimized electoralism-which includes allowing the U.S. government to spend millions supporting candidates it favors. Now Daniel Ortega says he has learned his lesson and given up on Marxism as unrealistic and has even embraced religion. This is no surprise considering that the Marxism he was advocating was not really Marxism at all. It is no surprise to MIM that Nicaragua was forced back into a colonial relationship with the United Snakes, but from this we don't conclude that Marxism or socialism are failures. Instead we look scientifically at the political, economic and social structure under the Sandinistas and identify reasons why they were unable to become self-reliant and fight off the imperialists. In 1949, China was an underdeveloped country, devastated by war with Japan, impoverished, unable to feed its population, mostly illiterate, and still following Confucian ideals. But with a plan for self-reliance and development that focused on sparking the creativity and initiative of the people to work cooperatively to benefit themselves and all of society, China was able to quickly advance to not only feeding all of its people (saving millions of lives from starvation) but to also develop a health care system that even the World Bank considers one of the best at delivering good health for very low cost. The socialist political structure along with the mobilization of the people to participate in both political and economic life, to educate and empower themselves, was the difference between self-reliant development and immediate re-colonization. While China was by no means perfect, as can clearly be seen by the successful restoration of capitalism by Deng Xiaoping, China's successful development and incredible advances in all aspects of society, puts Maoism in the position of the furthest advance towards equality and liberation of humanity so far. Comparing Nicaragua to China, China clearly did better for its people and came much further under its socialist system than Nicaragua did under its liberal capitalist system. The people of Nicaragua are now suffering from the ideological errors of the Sandinistas and we can't afford to ignore this situation. Instead we must evaluate this historical lesson carefully so that the many Nicaraguans who were killed by Amerikan imperialism did not give their lives for nothing. Nicaragua is an important lesson in the strength of Amerikan imperialism and the failure of liberal capitalism at defeating imperialism. Let's learn these lessons and move forward in struggle. NOTES: 1. Agence France Presse, October 23, 1996. 2. The British Broadcasting Corporation, October 25, 1996. 3. Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1996. * * * FILIPINO STUDENTS SUPPORT SISON ASYLUM MIM attended a Filipino student conference at Boston University in late October to gather petition signatures in support of Jose Maria Sison's asylum case and to talk to people about the political situation in the Philippines and the u.s. involvement. We have been active in opposing Sison's deportation from the Netherlands, which is a possibility mostly because of pressure from the u.s.-Ramos regime. Sison is the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and a key figure in the revolutionary struggle leading the peace negotiations between the National Democratic Front (NDF, led by the CPP) and the Ramos regime. This comrade gathered around 100 signatures in just a few hours and distributed many copies of Maoist Sojourner that included reprints of articles from International Liberation (a publication of the international office of the National Democratic Front) and Sison himself. Most students had not heard of Sison's asylum case but were interested in learning about it. The vast majority of the students were willing to sign the petition once they heard about the case although many were clear that they do not support communism. The few who expressed support for communism were not familiar with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and MIM encouraged them to check out the literature we were handing out and to get in touch with the NDF and MIM for more information. The politics that existed at the conference focused mostly on electoralism with the opening session encouraging Filipino students to get involved in politics in the u.s. through electoral means. The literature being handed out also focused on why Filipino students should be voting in Amerikan elections. We were glad for this opportunity to discuss the situation in the Philippines, the work of the CPP, and the role of Amerikan imperialism with youth already interested in Filipino activism. These students are potential allies and supporters of the NDF and one idea that came out of our many discussions was getting International Liberation on the web since college students would then have easy access to this important information. Several students asked if they could take blank copies of the petition to gather more signatures showing that even the brief explanation of the situation was enough to galvanize some into further action. A few even talked about getting something going at their school around the Sison case. Students we spoke to traveled from as far away as Michigan and showed a real commitment to Filipino student organizing. We hope the information we shared with them will push more to consider the political program of communism as the best path for achieving equality and justice for all people and will convince them to support the struggle of the CPP in the Philippines. NOTES: For more information on the Sison case and the campaign to oppose his deportation back to the Philippines, Send $2 for copies of both MIM Notes 120 and 121. * * * LETTERS Dear MIM, I recently picked up a copy of MIM Notes #123. I thought it was very well well put together and thought provoking. I have a good grasp on communist philosophy and I think I understand the position(s) of your movement. I just have one question: Why do you use the symbol with the two female symbols with raised fists in them? I take this to mean militant lesbianism. I'm not anti-lesbian but I don't understand it's signifigance to the Maoist International[ist-ed] Movement. What does women having sex with each other have to do with class struggle? Thanks for your time, --Internet Reader MIM RESPONDS: We appreciate your letter and are glad to respond to your question. Gender appears to be a missing part of your understanding of MIM's positions. We do not think wimmin having sex with each other has more to do with class struggle than any other aspect of social life. But there are two problems with the question. First, the revolutionary feminism symbol that you ask about does not represent just lesbian liberation, or wimmin having sex with each other per se. Rather, it is an original symbol developed by MIM to represent revolutionary feminism in all respects. MIM's gender line is original to Maoism in that we argue for gender to be considered as a "separate strand" of oppression, which, along with class, is fundamental to oppression in the world today. Class and gender together form the basis for national oppression, the latter of which today is the principal contradiction in the world under imperialism and patriarchy. There can be no national liberation, and no communist revolution, without revolutionary feminism, and there can be no communism without the abolition of gender oppression -- which is not simply a form of class oppression, or a "special case" of class oppression. Gender oppression exists alongside of class oppression, and both need to be challenged and eradicated together. National liberation struggles, which are first on the agenda for communist revolutionaries today, require leadership that is both proletarian and feminist in character. Neither one of these political lines alone can successfully lead national liberation struggles to overthrow the rule of imperialism and commence socialist revolution. Eradicating gender oppression means abolishing sex hierarchies and enforced sexual orientations, as part of the process of eliminating the appropriation of some people's sexuality by others. To understand MIM's gender line, we recommend beginning with MIM Theory 2/3, our original in- depth statement of revolutionary feminism. Subsequent issues of MIM Theory advance this line, in particular MIM Theory 7, "Proletarian Feminist Revolutionary Nationalism on the Communist Road," and MIM Theory 9, "Psychology and Imperialism." Any one of these is yours for $6 postpaid, and well worth it. We hope that answers your question, and we urge you to struggle with us over these issues in practice by either working with MIM to advance revolution because you don't have a better alternative, or trying to convince us that you do have a better alternative. STUDY AND WORK WITH MIM AND RAIL We wrote to you before through e-mail requesting to work with MIM and RAIL, sorry we did not get back to you. We still look foreword to working with MIM distributing MIM Notes and discussing important theoretical issues for a clearer understanding of Imperialism and settler colonialism. I am a student at X university. I recently saw your paper in one of the buildings and remembered one of your cadre mentioned being in the area. I hope this letter gets to you in time before the worker(s) leave. We look foreword to working with MIM. --Comrade in struggle also THERE REALLY ARE OTHER ANTI-IMPERIALISTS OUT THERE I have read the last several issues of MIM Notes and am amazed at the fact that a group such as MIM exists. I live in X and was wondering if your group has a branch here and if so how I can start to get involved with them or learn more. I have also enclosed a check for $70. For two of those dollars could you send me the pamphlet "What is the Maoist Internationalist Movement." The rest of the money use as you deem necessary. Its great to know there are other people who disagree with the mindset of capitalism/imperialism. --New friend in the Midwest * * * FLORIDA: MASSES POSE 'CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER' The mayor and police chief of St. Petersburg, Florida, declared the oppressed masses of their city "a clear and present danger" after a police murder sparked a violent rebellion that left two police buildings, a post office, a bank, and other buildings "destroyed or heavily damaged."(1) The protests followed the murder of a young Black man by white officers. Police apparently pulled over 18- year-old Tyrone Lewis, allegedly for speeding. They say the car "lurched" toward them as they approached with guns drawn. Some witnesses say Lewis had his hands raised inside the car, others say he had stepped out and was not threatening anyone. Lewis and his passenger were both wanted on warrants for nonviolent drug and property crimes, supposedly justifying the police's military approach.(1) The Washington Post said this was the sixth time the St. Petersburg police have been caught shooting at cars this year.(1) But the New York Times said it was the sixth person the police had killed.(2) St. Petersburg was the scene of the debate between vice presidential candidates a few weeks before the murder, and the mayor, who declared Black residents a danger to "order," was upset by the bad press. He complained: "the city worked so hard on its image ... obviously we haven't gotten there yet."(2) One police officer was shot and local media were also attacked by protesters. The Times reported: "Hundreds of people roamed the streets, setting fires and throwing bricks at riot-equipped police. They firebombed a patrol car, torched two television vehicles and burned a police substation and a post office."(2) Political violence in response to state repression and murder is a righteous response in self defense of the Black nation. Such expressions of popular fury against the state and white nation also highlight the need for organized political response to bring about revolution for national liberation and socialism. NOTES: 1. Washington Post, Oct. 26, 1996. p. A3. 2. New York Times, Oct. 26, 1996. p. A8. * * * ST. LOUIS POLICE BEAT FORMER PRISONER TO DEATH St. Louis Police beat a former prisoner to death while he was apparently freaking out and in need of help. Randolph Vance's friend said he was either having a bad drug reaction or a nervous breakdown of some sort when he called police to report that he was in danger. When police arrived they treated him as the danger, and quickly solved the "problem" by killing him. Constance Johnson was quoted by the local newspaper as saying: "One officer was kicking him in the head. Another one was jumping on his neck." She said they began the beating immediately when they arrived, with no provocation, and continued after he was cuffed at the wrist and ankle. "They were beating him with a flashlight and kicking him. I said, 'Stop, you're killing him,' but they kept beating him. One officer was stomping on his head. They beat him for 20 minutes. All Randy was trying to do was to scoot away from them. He wasn't fighting back." Soon more police arrived, and quickly joined in. "When they dragged him out of the house, his head bounced down the steps," Johnson said. By the time they dragged him to the yard, he had stopped breathing and they called for paramedics, too late. Vance had been a prisoner for 20 years. The day after Vance's murder, police arrested Johnson for "disturbing the peace" when she tried to "stir up" onlookers at a police stop in the neighborhood. Some peace! If Vance himself was not on the police's list from his prison stay, Johnson is surely on their list now. In this imperialist country, prison is meant to destroy people. Randolph Vance survived prison only to be hunted down and killed by the long arm of the law. His murder is a warning to all prisoners. Johnson's subsequent persecution is a warning to all who would expose the murderous practices of the state. NOTES: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 24, 1996. p. 1B. * * * PENNSYLVANIA POLICE WIN MISTRIAL Two white Pennsylvania police officers will not have to face an all-white jury for on the charge of "involuntary manslaughter" for their murder of a Black man last year. The case was declared a mistrial after a witness demanded that the defendants testify, which they are not required to do. The officers may be tried again after a new jury is selected. The two officers were among a group of five that murdered Jonny Gammage in Western Pennsylvania after a traffic stop. A Black man driving a Jaguar in an all-white town, Gammage was naturally pulled over, supposedly for erratic driving. They say they were trying to "restrain" Gammage by standing on his neck and pressing down with a metal club at the time of his death. The criminal injustice system supports pigs murdering Black men and gives them a trial by their fascist supporting peers while Blacks and other oppressed nations are also faced with trials by predominantly white juries who have been well trained to believe that Blacks are criminals. MIM would like to see Black people who kill police officers tried for "involuntary manslaughter" before all-Black juries. NOTES: Los Angeles Times, Oct. 19, 1996. p. A14. * * * CAPITALIST TOOLS OPPOSE CONVICT VOTING BOSTON--As elections approach, reactionary columnist Howie Carr wrote against the voting rights of convicted criminals. He predicted that the murderers most notorious to the mainstream media would all vote for Senator Kerry and oppose Governor Weld. The Boston Herald in the same day that it ran the column associating Senator Kerry with murderers also called for Perot to quit the race in favor of Bob Dole for president. Like other reactionaries Carr doesn't seem to realize that we live in the leading police state contrary to his bragging about how our too democratically kept prisoners get to use Nautilus weight-lifting equipment. However, he does have one small point that is just vastly distorted in his hands and the hands of the thousands of other demagogues just like him: Carr understands that some people lose their "rights" in a society when they commit crimes. It's just that Carr writes sensational stories about William Hortons (yes, he's still talking about "Willie" Horton in October, 1996) in order to distract attention from the real mass murderers in the government and heading agribusiness, banks, pharmaceuticals and environmentally destructive industries. We at MIM also believe that while there are violent contradictions in society, there will have to be dictatorship as Carr seems to understand in practice in his own distorted bourgeois way. The reason there must be dictatorship is that there is no way to negotiate over one's right to live; hence those who organize to kill others through starvation, war, toxic pollution, withholding medicine, clothes or shelter must be put down by force, including the use of prison--until that day when no one would get the thought of violence against others for profit. When we get to that day when the profit- system and its kin are as nearly universally loathed as the slave system is today, then we can all live without dictatorship. We at MIM point with pride to the months and years after the U.S. Civil War when some Southern slaveowners lost their rights to vote and run for office. Republicans at the time understood that the slaveowners would come back to power if they were left to organize for what they wanted. Today, we benefit from that act of organized force against slaveowners and only a small portion of the world would think of supporting slavery. That is progress. The next step will be to do the same thing for those who profit from murder. If Howie Carr would be consistent and favor stripping citizenship rights of the rich, white men who organize mass murder for profit, we'd back him all the way. NOTE: Boston Herald Oct. 25, 1996, pp.4-5. * * * ANTI-COLUMBUS WEEK EDUCATES ABOUT IMPERIALIST GENOCIDE East Coast-In early October, RAIL, MIM and another organization organized a week of events entitled "Anti-Columbus Week." The purpose of the week was to "build public opinion against the imperialist genocide in this hemisphere that has been carried out for the last 504 years. The initiating organizations recognize the need for national liberation struggles against imperialism." The event was very successful at getting beyond the reformist debate about whether to change the name of the holiday while leaving the rest of this imperialist society and it's symbols intact. For much of the week, RAIL made hard hitting cases against the United Snakes, and for national liberation struggles. (MIM Notes 123, October 1, 1996 covered a criticism of a First Nations administrator towards the week's event. MIM Notes 124, October 15, 1996 covered the first event, a showing of Incident at Oglala about framed American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier.) PEACE CORPS OPPOSED On Tuesday a guest lecturer spoke about the Peace Corps and U.S. Imperialism. RAIL wasn't very happy with this event because the invited speaker conducted a "workshop on imperialism" instead of making a presentation on the Peace Corps. Many members of the audience left dissatisfied that they did not get the information they had hoped to attain. RAIL's criticism is that the workshop format failed to challenge incorrect ideas, and failed to draw out the various radical positions held by audience members. One additional problem has it's root in the speaker's passing reference that the history of U.S. foreign policy has been "imperialistic." In ** Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin stresses the importance of viewing imperialism not as a foreign policy but as an integral part of capitalism. Kautsky, whom Lenin was criticizing, held that imperialism was a foreign policy, and that as imperialism developed (or super-imperialism as he called it) it would eliminate war because it was bad for business. Lenin smashed this reformist view of imperialism, which simultaneously held that imperialism could be stopped by a change in policy by the imperialist government. Lenin correctly argued that imperialism is a stage of capitalism where in order to obtain more labor-power and markets, the capitalists must expand beyond the borders of their home countries. Not only is there a continual war carried out against the oppressed nations, but inter- imperialist wars are inevitable because that is the only way that the imperialists can resolve contradictions amongst themselves. As Clauswitz said, "war is just politics by other means", and sometimes the imperialists need to leave the board rooms and bargaining tables and need to shoot each other--or more accurately, arrange for the oppressed under their control to shoot each other--in order to resolve their differences. The inevitability of war is proven by the need to resolve the contradiction between economic growth and the need for colonies. For example, Germany before World War I was growing greatly, but it had few colonies and there were no "unclaimed" colonies, so it had not choice but to attempt to seize other's colonies by war. Rather than being a slip of the tongue with little importance, the little noticed comment by the speaker served as an encapsulation of an overall line problem in the speaker's talk. It led to a passing reference to a book called "Alternatives to the Peace Corps" about other NGO programs for Amerikans to go down and mess with Third World people's societies. While these other programs are no doubt under less direct control of the State Department and the CIA, it is incorrect to positively endorse an "anything but the Peace Corps approach" without getting at the root of imperialism. The speaker said he wanted to get at the diversity of the Peace Corps' methods of attacks and bring it back to the conclusion that from Honduras to the Togo, the Peace Corps is part of imperialism. But this didn't come across, and an excellent opportunity to further this analysis would have been to discuss the role of all imperialist-backed NGO "service organizations" in the Third World instead of endorsing all but the Peace Corps. As a RAIL comrade said an event later in the week, this would be like talking about how the U.S. Marines are part of imperialism and then suggesting that people join the Navy! Overall RAIL, was not pleased with this event. Had the speaker allowed a facilitated discussion at the end of the event--as RAIL had expected--RAIL and individuals in the audience would have been able to ask questions and challenge the speaker and each other. But without this form of struggle and accountability, we regret doing the event as we did. But what did come out of the event was a small group of people who want to aid RAIL in doing anti- Peace Corps work, including protesting recruiting sessions and organizing our own talks. APARTHEID IN AMERIKA On Thursday, RAIL and two members of the other organization sponsoring the week were on a panel discussing "Prospects for Decolonization in the Americas." These other activists discussed the history of Amerika's broken treaties with the First Nations. They explicitly didn't propose any particular path forward and just wanted the audience to "join an organization." RAIL advocated it's line and that of MIM as a superior way forward. The RAIL comrade explained that the problem with the "United Snakes" is that it is an illegitimate "nation," containing many nations oppressed by the white nation--Amerika. The RAIL comrade started from the question that a student asked the comrade repeatedly during the week: "I don't understand why the Indians want to be different. Why don't they want to be a part of society?" The RAIL comrade explained that the 500 First Nations contained within the borders of the United Snakes are their own societies. Just because Amerika has more people doesn't give it the right to forcibly assimilate (or exterminate) minority populations. The RAIL comrade asked him: Why do you Amerikans want to be your own society? Why aren't you arguing to merge with Germany? Or why not merge with Mexico, the United Snakes' border touches that of Mexico?" The student had no response to this, other than to explain that he was a liberal Democrat. The RAIL comrade discussed recent tax struggles of the First Nations enclosed within the borders of Canada or New York State. As sovereign nations, they should not have to pay taxes to other nations. Sometimes, even this basic right of self- determination must be defended with arms, as has been the case recently with the Mohawk and Seneca Nations. The RAIL comrade explained the RAIL position that armed struggle will be necessary for national liberation. This was a big part of the discussion at the end of the event. Most surprisingly, during the discussion, everyone said that they agreed with the statement "The U.S. is an apartheid society." We hope that this agreement fuels more practical unity as RAIL goes about our work. The biggest opponent of armed struggle was an Azanian student who distorted the history of the African National Congress and its struggle to achieve state power in Azania and South Africa. He argued that violence only breeds more violence and that only peaceful means can bring real change. Before he was challenged on it, he claimed that Nelson Mandela being elected president and leaving fundamental issues of power and wealth remaining untouched, constituted national liberation. He also attempted to argue that the neo-colonial power the ANC now holds was a result of their non-violent work, not as a result of their armed wing and the support the Azanian people held for it. RAIL would make a different criticism of the ANC: not putting enough reliance on the power of an armed proletariat. Instead of going to the masses for power, the ANC often went to the white government or internationally, to negotiate. Even the armed struggle that the ANC carried out was limited to symbolic actions aimed at bringing the white government to the table, and not in concretely adding to Azanian political power. This incorrect strategy has led to the neo-colonial situation today. Overall this week of events was a success at educating more people about the oppression of indigenous nations by Amerika and fueling more support for national liberation struggles against imperialism. We hope to build on this unity as we carry on the legacy of the struggles for self- determination of all oppressed people every day and not just on Columbus Day. * * * WAKE UP TROTSKYISTS! WHITE WORKERS SHARE PIE WITH IMPERIALISM In a bid for more bargaining leverage, AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney used a recent public appearance to articulate the theory of imperialism's relations with the Labor Aristocracy. Addressing the organization Business for Social Responsibility Sweeney said "We want to work with you to bake a larger pie which all Americans can share and not just argue with you about how to divide the existing pie." Sweeney is out to convince the Amerikan bourgeoisie that the AFL-CIO is all for increasing profits, so long as the workers it represents get a share. Lenin's theory of imperialism recognizes that in the imperialist countries the working class exists as a labor aristocracy--trading loyalty to imperialism for a cut of the superprofits in the form of substantially higher pay than the workers of the oppressed nations. Sweeney told business owners that they should encourage unionization by only doing business with unionized companies, and that they should give workers more power within the corporations as well as higher wages, better benefits packages and more training. MIM has been arguing for years that Amerikan labor's interests lie with imperialism, as evidence by white unions' struggles for benefits from imperialism. MIM works from the vantage point of the Third World proletariat--the majority of the world's workers who are exploited and superexploited by imperialism. We happily unite with all Amerikans who understand and work for the liberation of the Third World proletariat But unlike the Trotskysists we will not slow down and coddle the self-interested struggles of the labor aristocracy in the name of bringing that class to revolution. NOTES: New York Times Oct. 27, 1996, p. 15. * * * MAOISM ABORTED: POVERTY IN CHINA TODAY In its consistent campaign to agitate against socialism and for capitalism, the New York Times has run a feature article on poverty in China today. Although the Times tarnishes the name of Communism by referring to capitalist-roader Deng Xiaoping as a communist, its reporting is valuable for exposing some of Deng's reactionary policies and some of the contradictions between fast capitalist growth and the well-being of the masses.(1) One of the big lies told in this article is that Deng and his capitalist reforms are responsible for lifting the standard of living of the Chinese people.(1) In Shanghai in 1972, the infant mortality rate was lower than the rate for New York in 1971.(2) Clearly this was a huge development in the standard of living in China given that pre- revolution China was already much poorer than the United Snakes, and this statistic is from 4 years before Mao's death and the revisionist coup in China. In 1979 (3 years after the revisionist coup and 1 year after the beginning of reforms the Times credits with improving Chinese life), the Chinese life expectancy was 68 while citizens of the middle income capitalist countries could expect to live to age 60.(3) An important point of exposure is that there is more poverty in Chinese cities now because of massive firings in state factories. Under socialism (1949-1976), China's factories and the rest of the economy observed planning, and placed greater emphasis on political advance and on total economic advances than on the profitability of a single factory. The primary object of socialism is to increase the quality of life of the masses and to build their social, political and economic power. This goal could hardly be served by laying off workers, even if it does mean that "the overall economy continues to register impressive growth."(1) This is not growth that is benefiting the majority, it is instead benefiting the minority of state capitalists in power in China. The Times article also notes that China now faces tremendous and growing debt(1)--a feature of neo- colonial relations with the west. Maoism emphasized socialist self-reliance in China, and the Maoists understood that even temporary rapid growth from foreign investments was problematic because it could not be sustained. An economy that depends on outside investment will quickly degenerate into mounting debt and interest, once it has surrendered its capacity for independence. Finally, this report on China accentuates the growing gap between the cities and the countryside.(1) An inspirational feature of Maoist political economy is the recognition that while the proletariat leads in the struggle for socialism, the peasantry and the agricultural economy are the basis of the socialist economy. The current state- capitalist regime in China is doing everything it can to deny this fact and instead following the revisionist mantra of putting profits in command. This includes diverting funds from less profitable to more profitable enterprises, and from the countryside to the cities. MIM has many books available for sale on the genuine history of the success of socialist China and on the capitalist restoration, whose shining results we see in the growing poverty of the Chinese masses. Write to the address on page 2 for a literature list, or if you have more news to share on what's going on in China now. NOTES: 1. New York Times 26 October, 1996. 2. Victor Sidel and Ruth Sidel, Serve the People: Observations on Medicine in the People's Republic of China, (New York: Macy Foundation, 1973), p. 257. 3. MIM Theory 4: A Spiral Trajectory, the Failure and Success of Communist Development, p. 70. * * * AMERIKAN CULTURE MUSIC REVIEW: CRACKER "The Golden Age," the latest album from Cracker, is another political disappointment. When Cracker's lead singer was with Camper Van Beethoven he demonstrated an understanding of the main conflict currently facing Amerikan youth: assimilation into an evil, rotting system versus true rebellion. But Cracker's lyrics have been increasingly apolitical and individualist. Most of the songs on "The Golden Age" are dedicated to romance culture, and the remaining songs are either surreal and meaningless or smug and nihilist. "Key Lime Pie," the last Camper Van Beethoven album, was principally anti-militarist. "When I win the Lottery," for example, dissed Reagan-era jingoism and anti-Communist hysteria: "Never run a flag up a pole/Like Mr. Red-White-and- Blue/Down the road/But I never called myself a hero/For killing a known communist. "Now I can walk into any old bar/And find a fight without looking too hard/But I never killed someone I don't know/Just 'cause someone told me to." Some of the songs on "Key Lime Pie" even recognize that imperialism fosters a decadent ideology which romanticizes colonial oppression and promotes escapism. Here are some of the lyrics from "All Her Favorite Fruit": "And I'd like to take her there/Rather than this train/And if I were a civil servant/I'd have a place in the colonies. "We'd play croquet/Behind whitewashed walls/And drink our tea at four. "Within/intervention's/distance of/The embassy" Still, although the song compares this ideology to rotten fruit under the noonday sun, it does not explicitly reject it. There is a certain self- serving hopelessness in the song along the lines of "the world may be going to hell in a hambasket but at least I'm enjoying the ride." In any case, "Key Lime Pie" may not talk about solutions to the problems it outlines, but at least it directs its anger and ridicule towards the violent and oppressive status quo and those who defend it. Cracker, on the other hand, has carved itself a nice market niche by satirizing activists and turning hopelessness into a matter of principle. The confusion of "The world sucks but what can I do about it?" has turned into "Yeah the world sucks but fuck you for suggesting that I should do anything about it." Cracker's first big hit was "Teen Angst," which included one liners like "What the world needs now/is another folk singer/like I need a whole in my head" and "I don't know what the world may need/but a good stiff drink it surely don't/think I'll go and fix myself a tall one." It's possible to read this song (and other Cracker songs) as a satire on philistines who would rather get drunk and screw than make revolution, but Cracker never gives an alternative to this attitude. Since the imperialists spend lots of money screaming "Escape! Enjoy Yourself! Forget about the movement!" at Amerikan youth, they drown out any possible subtle criticisms. Ultimately, all this careful ironic distance only serves to justify Cracker's own participation in the culture it criticizes. That's how "How Can I Live Without You," which pokes fun at patriarchy, can end up on the same album as straight-up harlequin-romance- trash like "Big Dipper." All of this is a big step backward from "Key Lime Pie," which recognized that "just keepin' on keepin' on" was a luxury and a crime, since it left the status quo unchanged: "It's a luxury/'Cause all our heroes [the heroes of Amerikan imperialism-MIM] are bastards/It's a luxury/'Cause all our heroes are thieves/Of the innocence/Of the afternoon/That we think it's a virtue/To simply survive" As MIM would say: As long as there is imperialism, there will be oppression. Don't adjust to oppression, overthrow it! Study and apply the science of revolution! * * * SLEEPERS 1996 Sleepers is the purportedly true story of four Amerikan boys who grew up in Hell's Kitchen on the West Side of Manhattan. When one of their otherwise low-level childhood pranks goes awry, the boys accidentally nearly kill a man and are sentenced to one year at a juvenile prison. The movie is the story of the savage abuse they endured during their incarceration -- and then the trial of two of them when, ten years later, they execute the most sadistic of the guards in revenge. MIM likes the movie for several reasons. First, whether it's really true or not, it's an exposure of the oppression of both children and prisoners in a prison system that has nothing to do with stopping "crime" and everything to do with exercising power over youth and the oppressed. The very fact of being guards over young boys -- and all that power -- becomes pornography for the guards, who live in a sadistic sexual dreamworld of terror-rape at will. The guards repeatedly rape the boys the whole time they're in the prison. They are stripped at whim, made to eat what passes for food off the floor, and generally terrorized for their entire stay at the so- called "home" for boys. Second, when the boys get out, two of them are basically ruined and become hit-men, and the movie does not morally judge them for that. The meaning is clear: the prison experience made them killers. The movie celebrates their murder to the point of comparing it to winning a trophy in a dance contest. Third, the idealized community of Hell's Kitchen unites around the boys after they are grown up. Everyone thinks it's fine that they kill the guard in revenge. And, rather than rescue the legal system, the movie shows that the only way for them to get real justice is to completely subvert the legal system and the trial they face. Some people are upset because they don't believe the story. The part about how they undermine the court system by getting the killers acquitted is especially irritating to some people, and various defenders of the system insist that no such case ever happened. The Catholic church is also bent out of shape because in the movie their neighborhood priest agrees to lie for them on the stand -- to get them off for a murder they did commit -- because he sees the greater justice in their execution of the guard. The lying priest is a hero in the movie, which suits MIM fine. In his case lying is the moral thing to do because sending the killers back to jail would accomplish nothing except more ruined lives. Finally, the movie does not have a falsely happy ending, which is itself refreshing. The nuclear family is not saved, the court system is not vindicated, and no one lives happily ever after. However, the characters do find a way to redeem their humanity within an oppressive system, and in that the movie is positive without raising false hopes of reformist solutions. Obviously, MIM prefers movies where the characters realize the necessity of revolution, but in this case, at least, it leaves room for a realistic appraisal which reveals that there is no other choice. *DAUGHTER OF VIET NAM* Wake up, my sister, the nightmare is over, You live again, sister, you really live; The searing electric shock, the piercing point, The brilliant knife; the consuming fire Have not killed you; heroic girl, your heart, my sister, Your heart so great, with one drop of blood It will beat again and it will not beat for you alone. It will beat for justice, for your native village, for your country, For humanity. From the regions of death, you have come back to us, resplendent As on the day you went away when the nation called; You have come back, daughter of glory. The whole country embraces you As flesh of its flesh and blood of its blood, You live again, for you have conquered . . . . --To Huu, Vietnamese national leader *THE LIBERATION GIRL* From a child, I have been dreaming of becoming a fighter Against U.S. aggression and a defender of the land. I'll say farewell to my dear ones and respond To the vibrant call of the Truong Son Range. Wrapped in the affection of the whole country I'll be tempered in the crucible of war, Aware of the Truong Son hardships Aware that it's an immense school of life. --Dang Thi Ha (d.1972) *INSCRIBED IN BLOOD ON HER CELL WALLS:* A rosy-cheeked woman, here I am fighting side by side with you men! On my shoulders, weighs the hatred that is common to us. The prison is my school, its mates my friends, The sword is my child, the gun my husband. --Nguyen Thi Minh Khai , Secretary of the Saigon- Cholon branch of the Indochinese Communist Party (executed 1941) * * * STANDARDIZED TESTS: TESTING AGAINST THE WHITE MAN'S STANDARD In Massachusetts, results of standardized testing for primary and secondary school students were released in late October. MIM does not believe standardized tests put together by the imperialist schools are a good measure of youth's achievement. By the test standards, only one quarter of students in the state can communicate well or think critically. The results divide students into proficiency levels from one to four. Students at level one and below are said to have little or no grasp of the most basic facts.(1) Those at level two have firm grasp of the facts, but cannot interpret those facts or use sound reasoning in answering essay questions. This supposed crisis in education caused ultra- right wing Board of Education chairperson John Silber to pronounce this a scandal in the state because, he said, the school system is producing adults unprepared for life. Having just taken over this job recently, Silber can make these criticisms without taking any blame. One of Silber's main fears seems to be that students in the state will not be able to compete adequately in the job market so that companies that want to hire people with a high school education will leave the state to find a better educated workforce elsewhere. Let's take a look at what these standardized tests really measure. The Boston Globe printed one example of a question on the test which included a paragraph about bikes getting stolen that suggested that putting a piece of paper with your name on it inside the handlebar grips as a good way to secretly identify your bike in case a thief rubs off the serial number. The question about the paragraph wanted to know the main point. Anyone who lives in the city knows that bikes are frequently stolen and that there is no way that putting a piece of paper inside the grip of your handlebars will help you recover your bike. They are stripped, repainted, and sometimes just sold for parts. So the student who knows something about life might be stumped because the possible answers on this multiple choice question don't include anything logical like this. But the student who has been trained at taking multiple choice tests will quickly be able to identify the answer that the test scorers want. This question is actually one of the better ones because at least it is asking for reading comprehension skills rather than memorization of "facts". Much of the outcry in the aftermath of this test has been over the need for more learning of "basics." Many people are actually talking about the importance of students having the same basic "facts" memorized. For instance, some people working in the state education system called in to a public radio talk show to say that "facts" about the civil war should be known by all students. This is an excellent example of what people really want from standardized tests. They want everyone to have certain knowledge and skills that they think is important. In the case of Massachusetts (and Amerika in general), this means knowing the white man's history and knowing how to take the white man's tests. This includes throwing common street sense out the window as with the question above and it includes memorizing things that masquerade as facts about history that are really facts about the way the imperialists like to interpret history. An excellent example of this historical interpretation was shown in the recent issue of the ** United Youth ** newspaper, a publication put out by progressive youth in Boston. This issue included an article about the history book used for Amerikan History classes that describes John Brown as a "lunatic", a "culprit" and a "butcher." One student wrote a paper describing how Brown was really "the greatest White friend, without reservations, that Black people had in the nineteenth centuryŠ."(2) So on the standardized test, this student would get questions about John Brown wrong because he won't accept the white man's version of history. This is true of imperialist versions of history throughout the public schools in Amerika. In a way Silber is right: he wants to train the youth of Massachusetts to be good devoted young imperialists or if they can't be imperialists or petty bourgeois imperialist supporters because they are Black or Latino and tracked into vocational ed instead, at least they can be good devoted workers for imperialism. So the best way to accomplish this is to pick your future imperialist leaders by how well they do on a standardized test created to measure future success in a white man's world, while forcing youth to memorize lies as facts so that they won't know the truth about imperialist history. If MIM were to measure useful knowledge, we'd give high marks to those students who have been able to develop the thinking skills to criticize an imperialist history book in spite of all the attempted brainwashing they've received in school and in spite of the attempts by educators to quell this kind of thinking. We'd give high marks to those prisoners who have educated themselves about imperialism and are working with the revolutionary movement to fight imperialism even though they have their reading and writing materials stolen and destroyed by guards. And we'd definitely give points for activism in the face of a society that encourages apathy, drugs and other avenues of escapism. NOTES: 1. Boston Globe, Oct. 22, 1996, p. A1. 2. United Youth, Fall 1996. P.O. Box 4, Jamaica plain, MA 02130. * * * IMPERIALISM DESTROYS PHILIPPINE ENVIRONMENT Armed private security guards and Philippine National Police (PNP) brutally attacked and arrested more than 250 barricaders who were protesting the expansion of open pit mining operations in barangay Loacan in the Cordillera. One person died as a result of the attack. The people of Loacan protested for over two months and eventually barricaded the mine site in order to defend their land and livelihood. The Benguet Corporation's open pit mines have devastated much of the lands in the area, and Benguet has used trickery and outright violence to seize the lands it wants.(1) This conflict is characteristic of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, which is itself characteristic of the u.s.-Ramos regime's neo-colonial role.(2) Ramos et al claim that liberalizing the economy and giving "foreign investors" (i.e. imperialists) a free rein will bring investment dollars and therefore prosperity to the people of the Philippines. But in reality the increased penetration of monopoly capital into the Philippines brings poverty, loss of sovereignty, and environmental destruction.(3) In the case of the mining industry, the imperialists (with the aid of the PNP and the u.s.- backed Armed Forces of the Philippines) have driven peasants and indigenous peoples off of their lands against their will and destroyed much of the Philippine environment, harming the people's health and their livelihood. Although it tries to put on a show of "consulting" the people affected, the toady Manila government grants land sales and "development" permits without the input and against the will of local residents. As the case of Loacon shows, it will use military might to impose these permits on the people. Existing permits cover more than 50% of the Cordillera region. In order to please imperialist mining and technical firms, the Ramos government now wishes to relocate whole peoples--many of whom it relocated in the name of "development" 40 years ago.(4) In MIM Notes 116 we reported on the Marcopper Mining disaster, where toxic sludge from a Canadian-owned mine destroyed a river and forced more than 1,200 local residents from their homes. Investigators from progressive organizations have found that drains from the mine continue to poison local irrigation systems and rivers. About 19,000 cubic meters of waste from the mine spill into the Boac river daily.(5) Those living near the mine have high levels of leukemia and skin diseases, and suffer generally from diarrhea and headaches.(6) Marcopper has a history of dumping waste with the tacit approval of the reactionary government, and little has changed. The investigators concluded that "[The Ramos government] is guilty of looking the other way as Marcopper poisons our land and waters. It is guilty of tolerating and coddling Marcopper by simply suspending its operations when Marcopper and Placer Dome should be permanently banned."(5) The imperialists and their paid lackeys point to all kinds of band-aids and pipe dreams in order to make it seem like they are not responsible for the massive destruction of the environment in neo- colonies like the Philippines. The u.s-Ramos regime's Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), for example, proposed an amendment to the implementing rules of the Mining Act to raise the fees companies should pay for the putting up of a rehabilitation fund--AFTER the Marcopper incident. Too little, too late--actually: nothing, never. The imperialists and the Manila government "propose" to pay a little money to put a happy face on a major disaster, while in reality they continue to poison the people and the environment. A flyer protesting the liberalization of the mining industry and other anti-people "development" projects put it this way: "If we cut a tree to make a house, the DENR arrests us for violation of the law. But when a company fells so many and destroys the environment, that is not a violations of the law. What kind of law do we have?" Answer: a law which serves imperialist monopoly capitalism. Imperialism necessarily plunders, destroys, and pollutes the environment, just as it necessarily exploits and oppresses colonized nations. Opposition to the destruction of the environment in oppressed nations therefore requires opposition to imperialism, which ultimately requires armed struggle and the struggle for socialism. The Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is currently waging Protracted People's War against the u.s.-backed puppet regime in the Philippines. In its own words, "The broad masses of people led by the CPP resolutely and militantly fight for the conservation and wise utilization of natural resources for the purpose of self-reliant development against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism." CPP-led forces have put these words into practice by enforcing a ban on all logging for export and by carrying out a broad reforestation campaign. MIM calls on all who truly despise the destruction and pollution of natural resources around the world to take up an anti-imperialist perspective. NOTES: 1. Press release, Itogon Inter-Barangay Alliance, Sep. 2, 1996. 2. MIM Notes 114 and 116. 3. For more information, order "Support the National Democratic Front of the Philippines," a RAIL Pamphlet, send $1 to the address on page 2. 4. HAPIT: Official Publication of the Cordillera People's Alliance, Jan-Apr 1996. 5. Balitang BAYAN, May-Jun 1996. 6. Balitang BAYAN, Apr-Mar 1996. * * * UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONERS AND PRISONS LAWYER PREDICTS FAVORABLE COURT RULING Dear Comrade, Please renew my subscription to MIM Notes. The last issue I received was 118. Though issue 117 and 118 were selectively denied. They only let certain issues reach my cell. The good news is that the Federal courts rule around October on the constitutionality of this censorship. My attorney stated it's an open and closed case, being that the prisoncrats have no penological reason to deny the publications. Thus I should get all past denied issues of MIM Notes if the court rules fairly. There's been a lot of restrictive changes within the last month. Once the prisoncrats finish doing their modifications I will send a chronological calendar of events, for MIM Notes.... In Struggle. -- An Iowa Prisoner, Aug. 28, 1996 HARASSMENT IS THE NORM IN WISCONSIN FEDERAL PRISON Dear MIM, Here in the Federal Gulag of Oxford, Wisconsin, things remain the same: staff harassment, discrimination, and violation of privacy (yeah, the little we do have guaranteed by University-student contract.) Lest I forget the prevention of rehabilitation which ensues because of Bureau of Prison staff actions. While my MIM Notes are not censored, and I do wish to continue receiving them, this tolerance of publications does not hide the clearly biased behavior of the Department of Justice staff here at FCI-Oxford. Should you at MIM be interested in the details of my case...don't hesitate to contact me. Keep up the great work. Sincere in the struggle, --A Wisconsin Prisoner, Oct. 3, 1996. PRISONERS MUST WAIT HOURS FOR THE BATHROOM, WHILE PIGS GO IN THE FOOD ...I would like to thank you for your support. I already received two newspapers of yours. I am very happy to receive your paper from Notas Rojas. I want to say a few things that happen here. In the prison that I'm in, some pigs got caught pissing in the people's food while inmates were in the hole. These pigs are still working in this facility. At this moment two got fired and one is still working.... At the moment I'm doing top lock for some major tickets. There are some racist officers up there in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Most of these officers are KKK members that are constantly harassing Blacks and Latinos. These officers write tickets on us just for looking at them the wrong way. They will take a piss in people's food, take your mail and give it to an inmate whenever that feel like it. Thank Allah-Solah God, that I got all your papers, late but I got them. We are having a problem here. The deputy warden passed a new policy saying that inmates in top lock for major misconduct will remain in our cells and wait for 2 to 3 hours, until they make rounds, so that we can go to the bathroom. Sometimes I wait two hours or more just to go to the bathroom, because if I get out of my cell to tell them that I need to use the rest room, they will give us a ticket for that.... --A Michigan Prisoner, Aug. 26, 1996 POLICE BRUTALITY IN TEXAS I am in Bell County Jail. I was talking to one of my cell-mates when he showed me your newspaper. He gave me some to read. I read some of the stories and was glad that someone was trying to help and look after people and prisoners. That made me mad knowing what some prisons get away with, as was glad to see prisoners fighting back. Like one time I got arrested in ... Texas just because they didn't like my last name. But anyway, they threw me on the hood of the police car. I was talking to one of the officers asking what was I being arrested for. One of the officers behind me sprayed pepper spray in my eyes. At the time I didn't know what to do, so I was trying to rub my eyes because they were burning. As I was trying to rub my eyes, the officers jumped on me. One choking me and two other ones trying to throw me to the ground. I was charged with resisting arrest. I tried to fight it in court, but the officers said, "We didn't use pepper spray." So I got six months probation for resisting arrest....Now every time I go to town a cop stops me or my family. I wrote you to see if I can get some of MIM Notes, because they tell the truth and they fight back. Thanks, --A Texas Prisoner, Aug. 22, 1996 UNSANITARY LIVING CONDITIONS IN ILLINOIS ...The topic that I'm about to speak about is the unsanitary living conditions which are purposely imposed and ignored by the Menard Administration. The cell house in the North segregation unit is infested by numerous different types of vermin: rodents, birds, bats, insects and roaches. This creates an unhealthy living environment. We have not seen any effort to exterminate or prevent further infestation of our living environment. The response to our numerous grievance issues about the birds, mice, roaches and insects have been basically disregarded or completely ignored. The only response that was given, was that they denied that these conditions exist....We have nothing to keep them out of our cells. They eat through the cardboard boxes in which we place our clothes, commissary and hygiene items. The birds fly through the cell house, leaving their feces on the gallery floor, cell bars, our food cart, etc. The mice make their nests in everything or where ever they can. The roaches infested here so bad, that they are immune to the roach spray. They live in almost every crack, corner, crevice they can. The insects are unbearable to experience. In the shower stalls we must constantly endure unsanitary and inhumane conditions. They purposely deny us proper cleaning materials for our cells. We are issued two SOS brillo pads. We have for years been forced during these deadlock periods to live yet under more inhumane and unsanitary conditions. The galleries are extremely filthy and are never swept or mopped. There is dirt caked on the floors....The drainage systems are constantly clogged which make the water we use to shower, overflow. We are forced to stand in this foul smelling water while showering and take our chances on catching some type of disease or ailment.... Some of the toilets are dysfunctional, some constantly flush and some don't flush at all. Some of the sink water fixtures don't work at all, some when they do, never stop flowing.... All inmates who reside in the Menard segregation unit, request that the health department be notified. [We want] all our accusations to be investigated by a unbiased individual who will expose these conditions to the outside world. Without you we have nobody to hear our voices or anyone who could care enough to speak out against this administration. --An Illinois Prisoner, Sept. 20, 1996 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE CENSORS MIM NOTES To Whom it May Concern You are hereby advised that a publication entitled, "MIM Notes" June 1, 1996, No. 115, and "Notas Rojas", Enero-Marzo de 1996, No. 8 has been found unacceptable, under Federal Prison System Program Statement 5266.6, Incoming Publications, for delivery to inmates of this institution for the following reason: it is determined detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution.... Sincerely, --George E. Killinger, Warden, Jul. 30, 1996 Letters of protest can be sent to Warden George E Killinger, US Department of Injustice, Federal Prison System, Federal Correction Institution, 3150 Horton Rd, Fort Worth, TX 76119. Regional Director, South Central Regional Office, Federal Prison System, 4211 Cedar Springs Rd., Suite 300, Dallas, TX 75119. KANSAS CENSORS MIM NOTES Comrades, I received the first paper that you sent. It was refreshing! Unfortunately the second wasn't allowed in. They'll refuse each and every one. The reason, part of it was written in a language other than English. While I know this wasn't the real reason the military penal system is far worse than the normal [prison] and has unlimited resources. Continue to carry forth the word to the masses and I wish you the best in your endeavors. --A Kansas Prisoner, Aug. 9, 1996. Letters of protest can be sent to: Department of the Army, 310 McPherson Ave, Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-1363. PRISONER INDICTED WITHOUT EVIDENCE OR WITNESSES I'm writing this [about] the situation I'm in, in the hope of getting legal help, or just to let the world know how the system messes over inmates (mostly of Color or without money). My problem is this: I'm an inmate at Tennessee Colony, Texas Penitentiary, in ad-seg [administrative segregation] for aggravated assault on an officer. (Which happened in....[another prison]) A free world charge that I got a disciplinary report on. I was found guilty for striking an officer with a lock, with no officer or lock at the hearing. Then I got an indictment for that charge, but they didn't lie about a lock being involved. As that indictment said, it was just my fist, but I got all these legal papers in which "lock" was the main word...Is putting a jacket on my back and getting me beat up on every unit. To top it off, a female officer was hit, but not by me. In the course of beating me, one law man hit this female officer and blamed me. I was beat by three officers on racial grounds. (Just having color in my skin) and not listening to an order after I was talked to like a slave. I go to court in October. I don't know much about law and I have an "Inmate Service Lawyer" who was trying to get me to plea guilty. Now how can I let my life be in his hands?... --A Texas Prisoner, Aug. 14, 1996 A 10TH GRADE AZANIAN YOUTH FACES THE DEATH PENALTY IN MISSISSIPPI A Madison County, Mississippi District Attorney named John Kitchens wants to play God by seeking the lynching of ..[X]..., a17 year old South African, in his self-serving promotion to advance a political career in this well publicized case. The Johannesburg native who has become D.A. Kitchens victim was born and raised in the former Apartheid black township of Soweto, where [X] lived through the turbulent years of racial tensions. Two years ago, he moved with his parents to Jackson, Mississippi, after his mother had won a scholarship to Jackson State University... All through [X]'s stay in America, he has done exceptionally well in his classes while attending ...high school, with no difficulty adjusting academically even though like many children in Soweto, had missed numerous days of formal instruction on account of school boycotts in protest of Apartheid. In 1995, wanting to be accepted by his peers, who basically rejected him due to his foreign accent and mannerisms, he chose to befriend a group of older youth who spent little time in class but were very street-wise. Eventually [X]'s parents became concerned because of the new crowd he was hanging out with. So in desperation they decided to scrape together the funds to send him to .... a well respected boarding school for black youth outside of Jackson. [X] was set begin this new school when tragedy struck. According to police reports, he was riding in a car...with a man [Z]..with a past criminal background in January 1995. While cruising around..[Z], ...followed a woman [Y] until she pulled into her apartment building's parking lot. [Z] got out of his car with a gun and forced [Y] to move to the passenger side of her car and ordered [X] into the backseat....[Z] then drove to the woods,... instructed [Y] to come with him and [X] to stay in the car. ....[Z] shot and killed [Y]..... ...Prosecutors are vigorously seeking the Death penalty in a county notorious for its biased juries. Most of the area is populated with white middle-class families who find ninety percent of minorities guilty within its criminal courts, and serve out harsher penalties against these groups then their own white counterparts. In fact Mississippi Supreme Court documented in 1971, clear instances in which Madison County officials had systematically excluded Blacks from jury rolls especially during capital trials, which this practice is still being routinely carried out to this very day. Not surprising is [X]'s right to receive a fair trial in this racially biased community is unlikely. Even worse, the prosecutor John Kitchens bragged to a local paper how he was a force behind getting [X]'s trial moved to Madison County from a predominately black ... county to increase the chances of getting a death penalty sentence. He stated, "The death penalty is the only deterrent we have in this country to stop these senseless murders going on, and I'll defend it to my death." How ironic being that Kitchens dropped the capital murder charges against [Z] without a second thought. This shows Kitchen's intentions and how justice has gone terrible wrong for [X].If he does receive the death penalty and the sentence is carried out, he will become one of the many children in the United States put to death every year. Since 1990, only five nations in the world are known to have executed persons for crimes they supposedly committed while under 18 years of age. These countries are: Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United States.. Of these 5 the U.S. has executed the most, with 66 percent of those persons sentenced to die, people of color. Even more perturbed is this nation continues to violate widely accepted international human rights standards which expressly forbids imposing the death penalty on people for crimes committed as children. Steven Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in Washington said, "It is terribly iron that a child like [X] could survive some of the most turbulent years of apartheid, only then face the death penalty in Mississippi." That we should be critically drawn into his situation because it simply not right to be sentencing children to death. The capitalist system with its corruption and incompetence, discrimination and poverty is about to commit a horrendous crime with complete premeditated vengeance against a human being. "All in the name of Justice", and all [X]'s family can do is watch the state of Mississippi slowly kill their son, mentally then eventually physically. Currently [X] is being housed in ....jail, and denied bail..... --An Iowa Prisoner, Oct. 1, 1996 PRISONER UNITY IN MICHIGAN QUESTIONED Greetings Comrades! ...I received info about your Maoist International Movement through another prisoner. I read a letter that you had communicated to him that caught my interest enough for me to inquire and consider. You presented some real questions in your letter to this prisoner. I have no idea if he answered your questions or not, and answered them honestly. Therefor I would like to take this opportunity to answer a few of your questions. You asked are the other prisoner with whom he can start up a study group to discuss MIM Notes and other revolutionary literature. The honest answer to this question is: There are no prisoners with any Maximum Michigan Facility that are serious enough and committed enough to come together in a Unified manner to discuss or do anything else in a sophisticated political revolutionary beneficial constructive aspect for self and others alike self. There is no such thing as a Unified Political organized revolutionary struggle in the Michigan Maximum Prison system. In an attempt to eliminate the corruption deeply embedded into the criminal justice system and the Michigan Prison system. If there is such a struggle, the struggle is only demonstrated on a solo-individual basis....And if there is such a ...word as unity, it is the unity of ignorance, stupidity and foolishness......demonstrated against each other in the most destructive and demanding of ways. And if a prisoner jumps up to make a stand in an attempt to bring all the other prisoners out of the stages of their ignorance, stupidity and folly against each other, in an attempt to unify everyone in making a meaningful stand against the corruption and atrocities of the system; these prisoner will actually turn on and turn against (you) in their attempt to destroy you. The very person whose trying to bring them together to fight against their real enemies who seeks to keep them incarcerated, oppressed and deprived by any means necessary....I have been threatened, slandered.. and plotted against by other prisoners, simply because of the radical revolutionary stand I made against the system. The sad thing is that I didn't just make a stand for myself, I made it for all oppressed prisoners, and they turned against me to side with the system in deviating, blocking and frustrating my efforts. The very system that doesn't care a damn about any of them. I haven't met a prisoner, not one single prisoner who stood with me seriously committed in making a stand against the system. But I can name more than two hand fulls who stood against me. So I have become solo in my struggle. Because no- one's really sincerely seriously committed to the struggle. This doesn't mean that I stopped caring about the oppressed ones who are daily oppressed, afflicted, denigrated, assaulted and even sometimes murdered. I still care. But I realized that there is nothing I can do for the cause and upliftment of others if they don't want to demonstrate the cause to uplift themselves. Therefore my struggle is in vain and is defeated as long as I'm stuck in here behind these walls oppressed with the oppressed. I'm interested in a people and a movement that is serious about making some changes. But I have been subjected to so many phony people and informants and smoke screen organizations that were only in disguise to undermine my efforts and anyone else's efforts who stood against the system. So how am I to know if your movement is real or if its just another smoke screen organization that seeks to keep me oppressed and in prison? I say this because I have an experience of injustice I would like to share with you and that you can make my experience made known to the public about the evil and wickedness of this system called the Department of Corrections. The wickedness and evil that I personally had to endure. Am I alone in my struggle, or are there really any real organized movement groups out there seriously committed to the same cause? PS. Please let me know if you received this response. Because of the contents they may intercept it. In the struggle, -- A Michigan Prisoner, Aug. 27, 1996 MIM responds: You are not alone comrade. Our legitimacy as the vanguard of the oppressed should be clear from our practice. While your direct observation of our practice is limited by the terms of your confinement, much can be gathered from the text of this newspaper and the fact that month after month, we write the stories and raise the funds to send it to you. The letters pages of MIM Notes and MIM Theory also make it clear that we are not dogmatists who fear criticism. Rather, we thrive in it as without the criticism and participation of the masses, we will not be able to advance. It is unfortunate that you have not found other revolutionary prisoners to work with and feel that there in no political unity in Michigan Maximum prisons. Readers, what do you think? MIM hears from lots of politically motivated individuals. There are some fairly organized and unified revolutionaries in prisons all over the United Snakes. Please respond to this letter and tell of your experiences with political unity. ***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. ***WHAT PRISONERS CAN DO TO BUILD MIM*** *1. Start a study group. This is the best way to share materials and ideas. In groups, prisoners can better benefit from the limited resources MIM has. *2. Get MIM Notes and MIM Theory into your library. This allows one copy of the paper to be seen by many comrades. *3. Contact people on the outside. MIM needs comrades and allies everywhere. Maybe you know people on the outside who want to subscribe to MIM Notes or distribute it. *4. Share materials. If MIM sends books or periodicals, please make sure that as many people as possible get a chance to read them. *5. Write MIM at least every three months. Otherwise, you will be dropped from our mailing list. There are many cases where your keepers throw out MIM Notes, so we need to know that you actually get it. Also, comrades are moved around a lot, especially those who are known to be political. Please let us know of any address changes as soon as you know them. *6. Make MIM Distributors an official distributor. Many prisons require registration before MIM can send books or other materials. Usually we can comply with these bogus rules. It helps immensely to have someone there do the reasearch and send us the proper forms. *7. Send money or stamps. 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. Please make all checks payable to "MIM Distributors." *8. Write for MIM Notes or Notas Rojas. Prisoners write almost all of Under Lock & Key. We don't care if you know how to spell or write good English or Spanish. Write on any topic you like, it does not have to be a prison story. *9. Translate. If you can read and write English and another language fluently, let us know. Any translation work you do will help us make Maoist ideas accessible to more people. *10. Fight censorship. When you know of censorship of books or newspapers, investigate. Write to MIM to confirm what has happened, then see what you can do about it. *11. Keep in touch after your release. Many comrades stop doing political work after their release. Write to MIM as soon as you know where you'll be so we can hook you up with comrades on the outside. * * * BLACK PANTHER PARTY REMEMBERED In October, marking the 30th anniversary of the formation of the Black Panther Party (BPP), the Harvard Film Archives hosted a showing of the Murder of Fred Hampton. The film's director, Mike Grey, introduced the film as "a record of state murder." This documentary--focusing on the Chicago branch of the BPP, and the state repression and ultimate murder of Illinois state chairperson of the BPP, Hampton--was followed by a panel discussion involving Kathleen Cleaver, Charles Pinderhuges, Bobby Seale and Mike Grey. Cleaver began by reminding the audience that Bobby Rush, one of the key figures in the film as a BPP leader alongside Fred Hampton, is now a Democratic congressman for the state of Illinois. This was a good introduction to the politics that the panel of ex-Panthers would represent. They all said some very radical things, but these statements sounded like well-rehearsed but empty rhetoric in the context of their current activities. Many former Panthers who are not still being held as political prisoners have given up on revolutionary politics and instead have turned to electoral work. Cleaver said "I think our revolution was aborted. It was artificially killed. What happened to Fred Hampton is what happened on a larger scale...." She disagreed with Rush who thinks the revolution was not aborted but instead was co-opted by the Democratic party. It was not clear how Rush could be saying this without also seeing himself as party to that co-optation. Charles Pinderhuges, a Panther leader from New Haven, CT opened his comments by saying that he had always considered himself "an ordinary member of the BPP" and was honored to be on a panel with those he had so admired as the leaders. He went on to say that he thought the revolution was both aborted and co-opted. The FBI used as many tactics as it could come up with to murder or buy off as many Panthers as it could. This analysis is closer to reality than either Rush's or Cleaver's insistence that the demise of the Panthers was due to just one or the other cause. MIM had hoped Pinderhuges would give more details on his views about the BPP history as someone who may not have sold out, but he seemed unwilling to take stage time away from Seale and Cleaver and they made no attempt to encourage him to participate (instead cutting him off the few times he began to answer a question) so the first few minutes of opening comments were practically the only words he said all night. Bobby Seale spent a lot of time talking about his own and Huey Newton's educational backgrounds when they formed the Panthers--both had college educations and were not gang members. Seale attacked the film ** Panther **, by Marvin and Mario Van Peebles, for doing just about everything wrong in portraying the history of the BPP. Many of Seale's talks these days are spent building up his own and Huey's educational backgrounds and attacking others' histories of the BPP. MIM is all for historical accuracy and this is especially important when we are dealing with our revolutionary predecessors' history. But Seale has fundamentally revised the reason for the Panther's existence, and has been making money off of misrepresenting the BPP. MIM talked to a few people after the event who thought that Seale's attack on ** Panther's ** misrepresentation of the BPP founders' educational backgrounds was misplaced. ** Panther ** does not make them out to be random thugs but instead places them in a context of men who had their roots in the Black community and who retained this contact. Seale was pretty honest that some of his criticisms of ** Panther ** were based in his personal finances. He is currently trying to make "a good film about the Party." He also implied that he had a $25 million contract with Warner Brothers when the Van Peebles made a "cheap" film, suggesting that they undercut his market and destroyed his big project. At the end of the discussion he came back to this point again, this time saying he was now trying to raise $40 million to do a documentary film about the Panthers, soliciting the audience's help in finding sources for the funding. Getting money from the bourgeoisie to make good films is fine, but MIM would not criticize the Van Peebles because they were able to produce the film at a lower price. Those working on progressive issues frequently have very small budgets and it is not the case, as Seale clearly implied, that to make a good movie you need lots of money. This was a particularly ironic line of attack given the context of the panel: a showing of a very low budget film that does an excellent job documenting the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. At one point in the question and answer period, Seale started to say that an anti-slavery clause in the Declaration of Independence would have significantly changed the history of Black people in Amerika. But Cleaver correctly jumped in and pointed out that the Declaration of Independence did not cause oppression in this country, this and other documents were interpreted and used to support oppression but were not causal. Seale then backed off and said he agreed with Cleaver. Several incidents like this that made it seem that Seale had to be reminded he was supposed to be putting forward a radical analysis. One young person attending the event asked "How do you continue the revolution?" Seale responded that in those days they had lots of organization across the country that were radical, naming the Democratic party among others. He went on to say that the BPP was about "organizing the political electoral community vote so we could take over the city councils" and other elected positions. "By the end of the 1980s there were 12,000 duly elected Black politicians, so that phase is over." He went on to say "Now we need more elected in the second phase. But the real third phase, we have to see the interconnected relationship of it all." What is this interconnected relationship we need to see? Well Seale then pointed out that his Bar-B-Que cookbook is on CD Rom and that to make a documentary on the BPP "40 odd million dollars I need to produce a major feature film." To see him wearing a "Seize the Time" shirt and "Seize the Time" beret, presumably to promote sales of this second edition printing of his historical account of the early years of the Panthers, it sounded like this whole thing has turned into a question of making money for himself. Probably realizing that telling the youth of today that devoting themselves to raising $40 million for his movie was not a good way to maintain his legendary image, Seale went on to say that it's also about grassroots programs and unifying the people around them and education about history. The question, he said, is the ballot or the bullet. He answered it by saying that Malcolm basically preferred the ballot and "we preferred the ballot" too, suggesting that Panthers only carried guns because they had to defend themselves in this electoral work they were doing. This is the revision of Panther history that cannot be tolerated. Fortunately, in his rush to make money, Seale is reprinting an excellent documentary of the early history of the Panthers that dispels this myth that they were all about electoral organizing. MIM will continue to uphold the BPP of the late 1960s as the vanguard in Amerika of their time. If we are to move forward with revolutionary organizing in Amerika, we must understand that the Panthers did not stand for electoralism. They were revolutionary Maoists and nationalists and MIM will struggle to publicize their genuine history and carry out their political legacy. * * * AMERIKA AGAINST THE BLACK NATION: GENDER AND NATIONAL OPPRESSION The Tulsa County District Attorney recently dismissed charges of inciting a riot against a Black businessperson who had jumped bail while awaiting trial 75 years ago. J.B. Stradford was a wealthy hotel owner in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma in May, 1921, when a riot took place outside of the Tulsa County Courthouse where a Black man was being held for allegedly assaulting a white womyn.(1) The rioting charge demonstrates the tenuous position of the Black petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie in Amerika. Unlike the imperialist bourgeoisie, whose interests the law serves by definition, the Black wealthy and exploiting classes live as the upper echelons of an oppressed group. This group can flourish and prosper to the extent that imperialism allows it to do so. But in the end its interests do not coincide with imperialism and the imperialists will act against it. In this case, a rich man whose relatives say he tried to prevent a riot, was forced to leave his home permanently by charges of violence against white Amerika. Secondarily, this case shows how an oppressed nation man can be gendered female in relation to oppressor nation wimmin and men. The riot J.B. Stradford was accused of inciting started with a white lynch mob waiting to punish a Black man for supposedly assaulting a white womyn. Black men in Amerika are not in control of their own sexuality when it comes to white wimmin. Statistically, it is more likely that the white womyn who was said to be assaulted in this case would have been sexually assaulted by a white man than by a Black man.(2) But protecting wimmin from abuse within the white nation is not a high priority for the patriarchy because white men assaulting "their" wimmin do nothing to upset the patriarchal order. But white Amerika is very clear that Black men have no business having sex with white wimmin and will seize any opportunity--real or imagined--to enforce this message. MIM organizes from the perspective of revolutionary nationalist proletarian feminism--from the vantage point of nation, class and gender oppressed people. We support the struggles of oppressed nations to liberate themselves from imperialism, because only from the basis of national self-determination can they proceed to eradicate class and gender oppression within their nations. NOTES: 1. New York Times Oct. 26, 1996, p. 7. 2. MIM Theory 2/3: Gender and Revolutionary Feminism (available for $6 from the address on page 2). * * * BAD AS I WANNA BE Dennis Rodman with Tim Keown NY: Delacorte Press, 1996 This autobiography of basketball star Dennis Rodman covers all the most titillating aspects of Rodman's life--sex, fame and money. He has a chapter about his romance with the music star Madonna and speaks freely about many famous people in basketball. We at MIM do not find Dennis Rodman so very unusual. He is simply right about all the stupid conformity in basketball and life in general. With the huge sums of money infused into professional sports we find that the management of the San Antonio Spurs and the National Basketball Association (NBA) generally value conformity, and safe messages for its audience, more than winning the game or playing it with greater athleticism. As such, Dennis Rodman becomes a symbol of how ruling class demands for conformity stifle sports and the economy (through analogy). We find that public attention to Rodman's supposed antics is in fact a means of control by the owners of basketball teams set on delivering non- controversial family entertainment--even if that means the sport of basketball should be damned. What we end up with is not the best basketball, but the basketball that generates the most revenue according to the guess of conservative entrepreneurs. Rodman spells it out that big money goes into hyping players such as Michael Jordan, Shaq and Grant Hill. The referees also know what entertains the public and they cut certain kinds of players slack to do certain kinds of thing in the game if the public will be more entertained. One job of the referees is to call fouls--to make those subjective judgments which nonetheless make and break careers. Also important are the fines imposed by the organization of the league. Fines and bad press from owners are the ways in which basketball players come to go along with the charade of competitive sport. Dennis Rodman may not play any differently than anyone else, but he can be ejected from games, called crazy, have his capitalist lifestyle cut back and get condemned in the press. If a player gets ejected from the games or fouls out of the games, that player still gets his guaranteed salary but he may lose out on other perks and his next contract may be impossible to obtain. Meanwhile, players such as Shaq and Grant Hill who the NBA thinks will bring in the entertainment money have the way cleared for them to be stars before they leave college and join the NBA. Such is the influence of money on sport. We at MIM believe in amateur sports over spectating. Too much energy of spectators goes into sports like football, baseball and basketball which the masses should be playing themselves instead of watching. That is not to say we oppose professional efforts at human achievement. Stalin believed that all kinds of sporting, science, art and other feats should be publicized and backed with state funding. For instance, the feat of trekking to the North Pole or climbing a mountain was something that Stalin believed in giving media to. This was Stalin's way of leading the people to understand their own capabilities in a concrete way. Such feats can be organized and massively supported with resources without the spectator craze we have in the profit-mad entertainment industry in the imperialist countries. Currently the money and the sexual rewards for athletes and other famous entertainers take on a life of their own, as Rodman himself explains of both the case of basketball players and music stars like Madonna. Rodman correctly believes there are many sick aspects to such fame and fortune. Rodman himself is cashing in on the decadence of imperialist society that leaves people searching for stars in sports and music to fill a gap in their boring lives. We do not believe there is anything particularly radical about anything he says about being bisexual-minded or wanting to play his last NBA game nude. He is just making himself more of a commodity with that and his colored hair and female clothing stunts. (We do applaud his speaking out against homophobia.) However, he is astute in calling himself a "sports slave" and comparing himself to prostitutes and models (p. 81). In the imperialist countries, we have this phenomenon of the Madonna and the Rodman. While biological females dominate the modeling and prostitution businesses, biological males dominate the sports. In both cases the body is the center of attention for entertainment and in both cases the stars are selected for their unique or dramatic physical characteristics. It takes the free time that goes with money in order to have physical characteristics become sexual privilege. Somewhere in our leisure-time culture Rodman goes from being a 220 pound 6 foot 8 Black man to being a sex symbol. Rodman and Madonna are not sexploited, but in fact they hold privileges connected to their own exceptional bodies and the imperialist system of gender oppression. The issues of able-bodiedness and access to the human body are important parts of leisure-time life that form the bulk of what we call gender oppression. Men in prison may have similar physical characteristics to Rodman, but they are gender oppressed because their access to sex and the human body is completely controlled by the state. Other so-called communist parties shy away from saying that having a harem like Rodman or Madonna is sexual privilege. They talk about "bourgeois feminism" all the time without ever talking about gender oppression. For example, most phony Marxists side with the players in the sports strikes and believe Madonna is sexploited because she is a sex object. In fact Madonna is part of the ruling class in the sexual hierarchy; she has access to the human body in leisure-time and the means of production, both to the utmost degree. * * * THE RULES: TIME-TESTED SECRETS FOR CAPTURING THE HEART OF MR. RIGHT by Ellen Fein & Sherrie Schneider 174 pp. 1995 According to USA Today, ** The Rules ** is 20th on its best-sellers list. The book has sold over 455,000 copies and constitutes a statement about the realities of gender in a system incapable of real progress. There is not a single fact in the book about the subject of romantic relationships. It consists entirely of 35 rules of dogma concentrating the nature of the romance culture. Among the points of advice -- never ask men out, never stare at men or otherwise indicate attention, never return phone calls, never spend more than 10 minutes with a man on the phone and always be the one to end a date. These kinds of pseudo-power games are a reflection of the fact that power is considered sexy, that we adjust to the fact of domination in society more generally and find it pleasurable thanks to the culture of the dominators. There are about two rules that MIM agrees with: 1) Men don't change. 2) Don't talk about the book with your therapist. MIM knows that men don't change, because that's the system we live in. Efforts of individual biological wimmin to get individual men to change are indeed futile. Men as a group are in a constant flux, but they do not change on account of individual efforts. MIM thinks that people shouldn't talk about this book to their therapists because no one should be talking about this book to anyone, which is less useful than toilet paper. The authors do not want psychologists to challenge their book, recognizing that even though psychotherapy is about convincing women into being happy with their gender roles in relationships, even therapists find their drivel manipulative beyond the pale. Most of MIM's readers will immediately scoff at ** The Rules ** and some will wonder why MIM takes it seriously. We answer that this book has sold more copies than any MIM book; it has received serious reviews and is in no way meant as a satire of our culture. The book is written by the Archie Bunkers of the gender aristocracy and the authors mean what they say; they spend much of their book talking about the need for determination to follow ** The Rules ** to the end. Even the richest of people are no exception in their culture. In fact the romance life of Charles and Di or Donald Trump is the poor example that the ruling class sets for the people in the capitalist system. Indeed, following the romances of the ruling class is itself a multi-million dollar tabloid and television industry in itself. We cannot be surprised that the media conglomerate Time-Warner -- which is also the money and power behind pseudo-feminist leader Gloria Steinem -- published ** The Rules. ** In an interview with USA Today, famous imperialist wimmin's author Erica Jong could not find the strength to condemn the book and admitted she had ambiguous feelings about it because she believes "it works" in finding Mr. Right and that men have always been "predators." Erica Jong should have developed this excellent point about the book: it sanctions men as predators. This would not be very important to MIM in itself, because dating culture is not inherently a life-and-death issue. It's a subject of leisure time activity. (But somehow our romance culture has managed to become the single largest cause of murder as defined by the FBI.) Of course, relative to other kinds of imperialist murder through starvation, war and environmental destruction, "relationship" murder is unimportant, but MIM still does not sanction it. MIM is concerned with toppling the patriarchy, not with making dating more fun or productive under capitalism. What should not be at all important involves antagonistic contradictions between the people and an enemy that is very difficult to pin down -- all men and the biological wimmin socialized to be men. According to Fein and Schneider, men who really love their wimmin will chase them with dogged determination, and they should be forced to prove that obsessive determination or they are not worth wasting time on. The marrying kind are the ones who seek a "challenge" -- the "impossible" womyn that is "hard to get." MIM translates: don't bother dating anyone who isn't stalking you. We must state firmly that these Feins and Schneiders of the world should be busy working to overturn the laws against stalking passed this year. They won't, because to them it's the men who will risk crossing the pseudo-feminists and other p.c. fascists that are the most determined suitors worth settling down with. Instead of working to dismantle the patriarchy, Fein and Schneider are holding seminars on The Rules so that they can provide personal instruction to wimmin desperate for a "real" relationship. All the women participants interviewed for a Washington Post article Style section (Oct. 21, 1996) refused to give their names for fear that their potential dates would find them out. Capitalist romance culture teaches people that love is worth risking stalking/being stalked and killing/being killed over. That is the reason this book has sold so many copies. There are tens of millions of people so lacking in any absorbing and worthy goals -- thanks to the profit-mad capitalist-system which sets people's sights so low -- these people actually go out and buy books like ** The Rules. ** The wimmin who buy into ** The Rules ** tend to be gender privileged -- so gender privileged they won't rock the boat on even the smallest points, to the point where they can't even ask men out. The petty nature of these concerns combined with their doggedness reminds MIM of the labor aristocracy and its outlook against the proletariat and lumpen- proletariat. Tens of millions of people absorb books like ** The Rules, ** but these same people are no where to be found with such a passion attacking the causes of disability preventing romantic life. Physically disabled and diseased people have their sexual privilege curtailed. Other millions of people wrongfully imprisoned also have their "rights" to access to the human body for leisure time drastically cut back. These are the kinds of people who want to change the patriarchy. Children (or young adults) who are owned by their parents until they are 18 are also an especially important vehicle of change under imperialist patriarchy.