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         THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT

     MIM NOTES 112                 MID-APRIL 1996


PRISONS AWARENESS WEEK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF 
MICHIGAN


Ann Arbor--MIM, RAIL, and the American Friends 
Service Committee sponsored Prisons Awareness Week 
(PAW) at the University of Michigan, March 25-30. 
The week of events exposed prisons as tools of 
national oppression and social control, and were an 
opportunity to mobilize the masses against prisons. 
Here we cover some PAW events; the next issue of 
MIM Notes, to be published May 1, will include more 
coverage of this week.

MIM and RAIL organize and educate around prisons 
and the criminal injustice system because both are 
forms of state-sanctioned national oppression. From 
police brutality to the brutality of control unit 
prisons and the inhumane treatment of prisoners in 
general, the so-called criminal justice system is 
attacking national minorities. The Under Lock and 
Key section of MIM Notes (pages 6 and 7 of this 
issue) exposes violence inside the prison walls. 
Prisoners do not have free access to print or 
broadcast media; that is why it is so important for 
people on the outside to organize and agitate on 
behalf of prisoners, keeping in mind the larger 
goal of ending the criminal injustice system as we 
know it.


A SOCIALIST SOCIETY'S RESPONSE TO CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR


Dr. Allyn Rickett, co-author of **Prisoners of 
Liberation**, opened PAW with a talk on his 
experience in a communist prison in China from 
1951-1955. Rickett was arrested in China for spying 
on China during the Amerikan war in Korea. Through 
the process of criticism, self-criticism and study, 
Dr. Rickett came to realize why his spying activity 
was wrong. MIM looks to China's prison system under 
Mao as an example of how a society can effectively 
deal with its enemies. 

Amerika could not implement criticism and self-
criticism as a solution to criminal activity. 
Criticism and self-criticism are important 
processes for revolutionaries organizing within 
Amerika, but they require that a person be able to 
reform thoughts and behaviors. Rickett stressed 
that a person's conditions were a decisive factor 
in whether or not they could maintain their new way 
of thinking and acting. Without eliminating 
national oppression in Amerika, so-called crime and 
recidivism will never decrease, no matter how many 
people the state locks up. A socialist revolution 
will eventually make proletarian justice in Amerika 
a reality.


ALL PRISONERS ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS


On Tuesday night, MIM and RAIL showed a 20/20 clip 
called **Johnny-D** about a Black man in Alabama 
who was framed for murder and sentenced to death. 
MIM then led a discussion on why all prisoners are 
political prisoners. One audience member who has 
been active with Puerto Rican independence fighters 
in Amerika's prisons objected to this. S/he argued 
that calling all prisoners political prisoners 
denies legitimacy to prisoners who were captured 
specifically for their revolutionary activities. 

MIM does to work with prisoners captured for 
political activity. But we struggle to take the 
struggle beyond a few prisoners by defining 
Amerikan occupation of ghettos, barrios and First 
Nation land as a war on the internal colonies. MIM 
asks: if only prisoners captured for political 
activity on the outside are political prisoners, 
what about jailhouse lawyers who are put in control 
units for their activity? What about people 
imprisoned for killing cops in their neighborhoods 
in retaliation for pig murders in their 
communities? We fight for justice for prisoners 
because they are being held captive by a 
illegitimate government--recognizing this fact, 
marking distinctions between prisoners we work with 
and for serves no purpose.

In the heated discussion about imperialism and 
national oppression that followed, one audience 
member argued that the criminal injustice system 
was essentially good and that injustices within it 
are unfortunate aberrations. Another attendee 
correctly explained how the criminal justice system 
never works for the oppressed. Another audience 
member explained why people in the Third World 
deserve the right to control their own economic and 
political conditions without Amerikan (or any other 
imperialist) domination. MIM then explained how 
imperialism hinders development.

Everyone at the events agreed on the need for 
changes within the criminal injustice system. Some 
agreed with MIM that the system as we know it needs 
to be abolished. No one argued that increasing the 
number of people in the Amerikan gulags would solve 
anything. Yet many people were content to leave 
without agreeing to learn more about and organize 
against the Amerikan prison system of oppression. 
MIM encourages all people who want to abolish 
oppression, including the oppression of prisoners, 
to work with MIM and RAIL toward this goal. 
Recognition of problems does nothing without 
organizing action to solve them!



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