New York Prisons

In February and March, the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) underwent a multi-week lock down, imposing terrible conditions on prisoners, including a pause to all visitations, deprivation of food and medical care, and riots in two prisons. During the strike, at least 7 prisoners died, one of whom was beaten to death by staff just as Robert Brooks was. Other deaths seem to be the result of medical neglect from the information released so far. As of writing visitation has apparently resumed, but otherwise bourgeois media has not clearly reported to what extent the lockdown has ended yet, nor have our readers in New York. This situation was caused in part by a wildcat pig strike lasting from February 17 to March 11th which began due to alleged concerns about under-staffing and “working” conditions for correctional officers, namely increased violence towards staff.(1)

Regarding the second death by beating, a comrade reports:

“Just got the 411 on the killing of the prisoner at Mid-State C.F. The first state police who conducted the investigation lied in their report that the prisoner died of an overdose of K2. But the body was too badly beaten to death for that to stick. …The first investigator was moved from his post and transferred but not fired. Crazy!”

As we go to press, 10 more guards have been indicted for the murder of Messiah Nantwi in Mid-State C.F., which is across the street from Marcy C.F. As a writer to ULK pointed out in March, the strike came right after the indictment of ten NY pigs over the earlier murder of prisoner Robert Brooks on 9 December 2024.(2) The New York Focus reported a trend of C.O.s refusing to work, in protest against being held accountable for abuse:

“In 2013, New York City corrections officers (C.O.s) responsible for transporting people from Rikers Island stopped working the day an incarcerated person was supposed to testify about a caught-on-video beating he endured at the hands of guards, who were later acquitted. Two years later, DOCCS corrections officers staged a work slowdown after the prison agency tried to fire guards who beat an incarcerated man, breaking both his legs. Those officers pleaded guilty to misdemeanors, avoiding jail time.”(1)

Currently, six of the former correctional officers involved in killing Brooks are being charged with murder, three with manslaughter, and one with evidence tampering. All ten seem to be negotiating with the NY District Attorney towards settlements, their fortunes at trial not helped by body camera video evidence depicting the murder they committed.(3)

Five days before the pig strike, prisoners rose up at Collins Correctional Facility. As noted by The Real Movement Report, the extent of the uprising varies greatly depending on asking the DOC, former employees, or the press.(4) In response, the New York State prison system was placed on lockdown and Correctional Emergency Response struggled for 12 hours to regain control of the facility. There was another disruption at Riverview Correctional Facility on February 20th which also saw prisoners taking control of some areas and Emergency Response crews eventually reasserting control.(5)

In response to the strikes and riots, over 3500 National Guard members were mobilized by NY Governor Kathy Hochul to bring repression back to the staff-abandoned prisons. Then the state filed an injunction forcing C.O.s to return to work, resulting in an agreement with the C.O. union and termination and ban from future employment of 2000 employees who refused to return by March 4th. The deal reduced 24 hour mandatory overtime for pigs and modified the HALT Act.(6) This 2021 law set a maximum of 15 days solitary confinement for prisoners, established reporting guidelines, and prohibited solitary prior to a disciplinary hearing and access to legal counsel.(7) The state agreed with the union early in March to create a commission examining the HALT Act, and to suspend the portions of the act which require out-of-cell programming for prisoners, for 90 days.(8)

The wildcat strike was not sanctioned by the C.O. union and was illegal based upon a law preventing the striking of certain NY public employees. On March 27th many of the 2000 C.O.s who had been fired and barred from future employment rallied at the state capitol. Despite the pause of aspects of the bill, demonstrators called for further “improvements” to the HALT Act. Although the source in question does not name or count speakers behind each different position from the rally, some called for changes to “make our prisons safer” and others suggested the state follow the Mandela Rules, a series of UN-sanctioned standards for prisoner treatment including a list of “human rights” which are routinely denied to U.$. prisoners including recreation, medical care and healthy food. The Mandela Rules limit solitary to 15 days.(9)

The prisoner (support) movement should organize against the repeal of the HALT Act. Solitary confinement is torture, it harms people, it prevents rehabilitation and prevents prisoners from coming together in a productive way.

The New York State prison system is now attempting to release some prisoners early because of the staffing shortage resulting from C.O. layoffs. Releases may be available to those whose sentences end in 15-110 days and don’t have violent or “serious” felonies, but the scale is unclear.(10) Additional reforms proposed by the Hochul government include expanding programs for prisoners to reduce their sentences, also vague, and lowering the minimum age of C.O.s from 21 to 18 in order to attract more pigs to the workforce.(11) Democrats wish to slightly reduce the prison population and hire new C.O.s whereas Republicans wish to simply reinstate all the dismissed pigs.

This story saw two different NY prison riots develop in which prisoners took control of portions of their prisons for small periods of time. Beyond selfishness, the weakness of these C.O.s was put in full display, needing to depend on emergency responders and the national guard to quell prisoner uprisings. And before all that, a comrade explains:

“Gang members have placed a statewide hit on me all because I gotten myself in an argument with a prison guard at Green Haven C.F. …The gang members are helping the prison administration run the prisons, which you know has a pig shortage. …The head of security is a motherfucker and have you killed quick.”

C.O.s are powerful enough to murder a lone prisoner in an 18-versus-one fight but helpless against the unified actions of even a handful of inmates who are upset with the status quo, as they even rely on other prisoners to do their dirty work.

These events are related to a trend of increasing retaliation against C.O. abuse in NY prisons, 2024 assaults against staff having doubled those of the previous year in certain months.(12) One important question is the underlying reason for the recent increase in retaliation, between poorer conditions, increased repression, heightened class consciousness among the (imprisoned) lumpen, or a combination. A more speculative question is if these instances of prison takeovers represent growth towards prison occupations akin to Attica, complete with advanced leadership and political demands.

Whatever is changing in the relationship between the C.O.s and the state, it is evidently driven by factors within the prison population, in this case greater retaliation against oppression. Can the bourgeoisie resolve the under-staffing crisis without improving conditions in prisons or releasing prisoners? The imperialists need prisons for population control, and simultaneously want high wages, low taxes and high spending on guards to “keep the community safe?” This balance of contradictions parallels ongoing policy debates among the imperialists regarding “border control” and deportation of migrants.

Certainly, the labor aristocrats is favoring more national oppression as a solution to perceived scarcity, rather than the formation of internationalist consciousness. The C.O.s did not rally en masse to convict their murderous co-“workers” but to support them, demanding an increase of repression against prisoners, as well as for reduced mandatory overtime: the timeless labor aristocracy dream of receiving more money for less work relative to the global proletariat. Where is the demonstration for the C.O.s’ victims?

Prisoners and supporters should be organizing against solitary, and asserting more alliances and sovereignty in their prisons in the face of C.O.s who are more concerned with repression than providing food, healthcare or other prisoner needs. Spread ULK to friends, request our September 9th study pack on the history of the Attica rebellion, and please submit any reports regarding conditions in New York or other prisons experiencing neglectful or abusive C.O.s and fighting back.

<sup>Notes:
1. https://nysfocus.com/2025/02/19/why-new-york-prison-guards-strike
2. https://apnews.com/article/new-york-prison-strike-guards-fired-f5700f3437b9021f1435fa90fb8e7f08
3. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/prosecutor-makes-offers-to-10-new-york-prison-guards-charged-in-inmates-death/ar-AA1C0BDP
4. https://therealmovementreport.substack.com/p/new-york-jailer-strikes-enter-7th
5. https://www.wwnytv.com/2025/02/20/inmates-take-over-what-happened-riverview/
6. https://www.northcountrynow.com/stories/after-terminating-2000-corrections-officers-state-plans-to-release-inmates-early-due-to-staffing,292130
7. https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/senate-passes-halt-solitary-confinement-act
8. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/former-ny-correction-officers-rally-for-prison-safety-reforms-amid-mass-firing-controversy/ar-AA1BNMIc
9. https://gothamist.com/news/new-york-prison-strike-ends-as-75-of-officers-return-to-work-officials-say
10. https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/crime/new-york-to-release-some-prison-inmates-early-over-shortage-of-guard-staff/ar-AA1C6dCv
11. https://www.wrvo.org/2025-04-02/ny-gov-kathy-hochul-proposes-new-prison-reforms-in-the-face-of-staffing-crisis
12. https://www.timesunion.com/projects/2025/prison-turmoil/</sup>

The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (NYS-DOCCS) has been on lockdown since 17 February 2025. It started with Upstate area Correctional Facilities and spread to the statewide declaration by the Governor of a state of emergency when some 14,000+ Correctional Officers (C.O.s) decided to illegally strike and refuse to come to work.

The National Guard was dispatched to some 40 prisons statewide. As of Thursday, the 27th of February, a so-called deal was negotiated for C.O.s to come back to work but I see no change here at Franklin Correctional Facility. There are still 3 soldiers in the dorm I’m in and I see many more moving around and only a few C.O.s driving around picking up garbage, escorting nurses with meds and delivering food to dorms. The food portions are small, cold and missing items indicated on the menu.

Luckily I’m in a medium, which is dorms, and I can shower freely, watch TV, cook – if I was able to afford to – and in general move around the dorm as opposed to maximum security prisoners who are locked in their cells 24/7. Hopefully their tablets are keeping them sane.

Generally, the C.O.s are striking because on the 18th of February 2025 ten of them were indicted for the murder of Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility. These pigz are crying about being forced to work multiple shifts and on their days off, the legislation called the “HALT Act”, having to wear body cameras (which is how the 10 murderers of Brooks were exposed), and they want to photocopy our legal mail because they think there is K2 coming in on it. They also wrote the state to hire more C.O.s.

The HALT Act (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement) of 2022 changed the criteria for solitary confinement, forbidding it for those over 55, those under 21, those with a disability, and anyone who is pregnant. It also limits its use to 3 days in a row, or 6 days per month per prisoner in most cases. It allows prisoners to receive their property, commissary and packages if they did not lose those privileges, entitles them to more hours of outside recreation and programming such as “RRU” educational programming and other provisions.

Robert Brooks, a 43 year old New Afrikan man, was beaten to death by Correctional Officers (C.O.s) in Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York on 9 December 2024, dying in the hospital the next day. On 27 December the New York Attorney General’s office released body camera footage from 6 C.O.s and 2 Sergeants involved in the beating. They show Brooks being pinned to a gurney, while handcuffed, and beaten on-and-off for many minutes by the pigs.(1) Thirteen staff members of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) are being investigated in the beating.(2)

Marcy C.F. is in an area of upstate New York known for its racist rednecks, a very white area abutting the Oneida Nation Reservation. Just down the road is the infamous Clinton Correctional Facility as well as the Mohawk Correctional Facility offensively named after the neighboring Mohawk nation of the Iroquois confederacy. A comrade struggling with addiction was moved from Mohawk last year to a Secure Housing Facility where ey reports:

“I still am recovering from the brutal assault, battery, torture and sexual assault by the gang of pigz here at Upstate C.F. I am physically healing slowly and taking some drug to help with the brain damage I suffered from all the fractures in my face and forehead. I’m doing physical therapy for my arm. My studies with you all have given me the focus and strength to recover. I am no longer on the Suboxone program, smoking cigarettes, marijuana or PCP. I still struggle with K2, but the more time I spend grounded in studies, writing and reading with you all, the less time I have to think about wanting to get high. I thank you all and hope my struggle is an example to those who are sick themselves and struggling.”

Brooks had recently been transferred from Mohawk as well, and sent to Marcy this month.(2) The state investigation indicates that Brooks did not attack the officers or do anything to warrant the use of force, which the videos show as well.(1,2) Brooks’s death is suspected to be a result of “asphyxia due to compression of the neck.” New York State Correctional Officers are required to wear body cameras and have them running whenever encountering a prisoner. While many involved covered their cameras, the beating continued despite the presence of the body cameras in the room. The Times Union reports that the C.O.s seemed to be unaware that their body cameras could be passively recording the incident.(2)

People posted pictures of Mario and Luigi cartoon characters online in response to pictures and videos of the beating posted online. The outrage at this state-sponsored lynching is somewhat encouraging, but posting images online obviously won’t solve the brutality waged against oppressed nations, and against prisoners in general, in this country. Organization is needed. Only together can we protect ourselves.

<sup>Notes:
1. https://ag.ny.gov/osi/footage/robert-brooks
2. Brendan J. Lyons, 27 December 2024, Court records confirm inmate was beaten while handcuffed, The Times Union.</sup>

“without understanding carceral spaces as zones of undeclared domestic war, zones that are inextricably linked to imperial and officially acknowledged wars abroad, we cannot fully understand how and why the U.S. became the global leader of incarceration that it is today.” (1)

Tip of the Spear is the story of the organization and flourishing of resistance to American imperialism as it developed in the New York state prison system in the 1960s and 1970s, including the time well before the four days of Attica in 1971. Professor of anthropology Orisanmi Burton does many things in this book, a lot of which we’ll only be able to mention briefly or not at all, but MIM(Prisons) has already sent out many copies of this book and is prepared to send out many more to enable further study and discussion of Burton’s very worthy research and ideas.

We are asking our readers to send their own feedback on this book, to write up their own local histories or stories applying the framework below, and to popularize this understanding of U.$. prisons as part of the imperialist war on the oppressed peoples of the world that we must unite against.

Prisons are War

Burton begins his investigation with George Jackson’s observation that Black people “were defeated in a war and are now captives, slaves or actually that we inherited a neoslave existence.” (2) Prison conditions don’t originate in the law or in ideas but in the historical fact of defeat in a war that still continues.

But what kind of war is it? One side surrounds the other and forces it to submit daily, the way that an army laying siege to a city tries to wear down the resistance of the population. These sieges include not just starving prisoners of food but of social life, education, and culture. In maintaining its rule the state uses the tools of counterinsurgency to split the revolutionary ranks, co-opt the cause and re-establish its rule on a more secure level. On the other side, the prisoners have themselves, their ability to unite and organize in secret, and their willingness to sacrifice for the cause – the attributes of a guerrilla army. (3)

Burton spends an entire chapter, “Hidden War,” laying out the strategies the state pursued when its naked brutality failed to prevent prisoner organization and rebellion. After the smoke cleared at Attica and wardens, politicians and prison academics had a chance to catch their breath, they settled on four strategies to prevent another Attica from happening: (4)

One, prisons were expanded across the state, so that density was reduced and prisoner organizing could be more effectively disrupted. If a prisoner emerged as a leader, they could be sent to any number of hellholes upstate surrounded by new people and have to start the process all over again. The longer and more intense the game of Solitaire the state played with them, the better. We see this strategy being applied to USW comrades across the country to this day.

Prisons were also superficially humanized, the introduction of small, contingent privileges to encourage division and hierarchy among prisoners, dull the painful edge of incarceration somewhat, and dangle hope. Many prisoners saw through it, and Burton makes the point that the brief periods of rebellion had provided the only real human moments most prisoners had experienced during their time inside. For example, Attica survivor, John “Dacajeweiah” Hill described meeting a weeping prisoner in D yard during the rebellion who was looking up at the stars for the first time in 23 years. (5) Burton sums this up: “the autonomous zones created by militant action… had thus far proven the only means by which Attica’s oppressive atmosphere was substantially ameliorated.”

Diversification went hand in hand with expansion, where a wide range of prison experiences were created across the system. Prisons like Green Haven allowed prisoners to smoke weed and bring food back to their cells, and permitted activities like radical lectures from outsiders. At the same time, other prisons were going on permanent lockdowns and control units were in development.

And finally, programmification presented a way for prisoners to be kept busy, for outsiders (maybe even former critics of the prison system) to be co-opted and brought into agreement with prison officials, and provide free labor to keep the system stable by giving prisoners another small privilege to look forward to. To this day, New York, as well as California and other states, require prisoners who are not in a control unit to program.

All of this was occurring in the shadow of the fact that the state had demonstrated it would deploy indiscriminate violence, even sacrificing its own employees as it had at Attica, to restore order. The classic carrot-and-stick dynamic of counterinsurgency was operating at full force.

Before Attica: Tombs, Branch Queens, Auburn

Burton discusses Attica, but doesn’t make it the exclusive focus of his book, as it has already been written about and discussed elsewhere. He brings into the discussion prison rebellions prior to Attica that laid the groundwork, involved many of the same people, and demonstrated the character of the rebellions overall.

The first was at Tombs, or the Manhattan House of Detention, where prisoners took hostages and issued demands in the New York Times, denouncing pretrial detention that kept men in limbo for months or years, overcrowding, and racist brutality from guards. Once the demands were published, the hostages were released. Eighty corrections officers stormed the facility with blunt weapons and body armor and restored order, and after the rebellion two thirds of the prisoners were transferred elsewhere to break up organizations, like the Inmate Liberation Front, that had grown out of Tombs and supported its resistance. (6) Afterwards, the warden made improvements and took credit for them. This combination of furious outburst, violent response and conciliatory reform would repeat itself.

Next Branch Queens erupted, where the Panther 21 had recently been incarcerated. Prisoners freed them, hung a Pan-Afrikan flag out of a window, took hostages and demanded fair bail hearings be held in the prison yard or the hostages would be executed. The bail hearing actually happened and some of the prisoners who had been in prison for a year for possibly stealing something were able to walk out. The state won the battle here by promising clemency if the hostages were released, which split the prisoners and led to the end of the rebellion. Kuwasi Balagoon, who would later join the Black Liberation Army, was active in the organization of the rebellion and learned a lot from his experiences seeing the rebellion and the repression that followed after the state promised clemency. (7)

At Auburn Correctional Facility on November 4th, Black prisoners rebelled and seized hostages for eight hours. Earlier, fifteen Black prisoners had been punished and moved to solitary for calling for a day off work to celebrate Black Solidarity Day. After the restoration of order, more prisoners were shipped away and the remainder were subject to reprisals from the guards.

In each case, prisoners formed their own organizations, took control, made demands and also started building new structures to run the prison for their own benefit – even in rebellions that lasted only a few hours. After order was restored, the state took every opportunity to crush the spirits and bodies of those who had participated. All of this would repeat on a much larger scale at Attica.

Attica and Paris: Two Communes

Burton acknowledges throughout the book a tension that is familiar to many of ULK’s readers: reform versus revolution. He sees both in the prison movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York, with some prisoners demanding bail reform and better food and others demanding an end to the system that creates prisons in the first place. But in telling the story of Attica and the revolts that preceded it he emphasizes two things: the ways reforms were demanded (not by petitions but by organized force) and the existence of demands that would have led to the end of prisons as we know them. On Attica itself, he writes that the rebellion demanded not just better food and less crowded cells but the “emergence of new modes of social life not predicated on enclosure, extraction, domination or dehumanization.” (8) In these new modes of social life, Burton identifies sexual freedom and care among prisoners emerging as a nascent challenge to traditional prison masculinity.

Attica began as a spontaneous attack on a particularly racist and brutal guard, and led to a riot all over the facility that led to the state completely losing control for four days starting on September 9th, 1971. Hostages were again taken, and demands ranging from better food to the right to learn a trade and join a union issued to the press. Prisoners began self-organizing rapidly, based on the past experiences of many Attica prisoners in previous rebellions. Roger Champen, who reluctantly became one of the rebellion’s organizers, got up on a picnic table with a seized megaphone and said “the wall surrounds us all.” Following this, the prisoners turned D Yard into an impromptu city and organized their own care and self-defense. A N.Y. State trooper watching the yard through binoculars said in disbelief “they seem to be building as much as they’re destroying.” I think we’d agree with the state trooper, at least on this. (9)

Burton’s point in this chapter is that the rebellion wasn’t an attempt (or wasn’t only an attempt) to get the state to reform itself, to grant rights to its pleading subjects, but an attempt, however short-lived, to turn the prisons into something that would be useful for human liberation: a self-governing commune built on principles of democracy and solidarity. Some of the rebels demanded transport to Africa to fight the Portuguese in the then-raging colonial wars in Mozambique and Angola, decisions were made by votes and consensus, and the social life of the commune was self-regulated without beatings, gassings and starvation.

Abolition and the Concentric Prison

Burton is a prison abolitionist, and he sees the aspirations of the Attica rebels at their best as abolitionist well before the term became popular. But he doesn’t ignore the contradictions that Attica and other prison rebellions had to work through, and acknowledges the diverse opinions of prisoners at the time, some of whom wanted to abolish prisons and some of whom wanted to see the Nixons and Rockefellers thrown into them instead. (10)

The Attica Commune of D Yard had to defend itself, and when the rebelling prisoners suspected that some prisoners were secretly working for the state, they were confined in a prison within a commune within a prison, and later killed as the state came in shooting on the 13th. There was fighting and instances of rape among the prisoners that freed themselves, and there were prisoners who didn’t want to be a part of the rebellion who were forced to. And the initial taking of the guards constitutes a use of violence and imprisonment in itself, even if the guards were treated better than they’d ever treated the prisoners.

Burton acknowledges this but doesn’t offer a tidy answer. He sees the use of violence in gaining freedom, like Fanon, to be a necessary evil which is essential to begin the process but unable to come close to finishing it. Attica, even though it barely began, provides an example of this. While violence is a necessary tool in war, it is the people organized behind the correct political line in the form of a vanguard party that ultimately is necessary to complete the transformation of class society to one without oppression.

Counter-intelligence, Reform, and Control

The final part of the book, “The War on Black Revolutionary Minds,” chronicles the attempts by the state to destroy prison revolutionaries by a variety of methods, some more successful than others, all deeply disturbing and immoral.

Some of the early methods involved direct psychological experimentation, the use of drugs, and calibrated isolation. These fell flat, because the attempts were based on “the flawed theory that people could be disassembled, tinkered with, and reprogrammed like computers.” (11) Eventually the state gave up trying to engineer radical ideas out of individual minds and settled for the solution many of our readers are familiar with: long-term isolation in control units, and a dramatically expanding prison population.

There is a lot else in this book, including many moving stories from Attica and other prison rebellion veterans that Burton interviewed, and who he openly acknowledges as the pioneering theorists and equal collaborators in his writing. Burton engages in lengthy investigations of prisoner correspondence, outside solidarity groups, twisted psychological experiments, and many other things I haven’t had the space to mention. We have received a couple responses to the book from some of you already, which the author appreciates greatly, and we’d like to facilitate more.

^Notes: 1. Burton, Orisanmi Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt p. 19 All citations will be of this book unless otherwise specified.
2. Jackson, Soledad Brother, 111–12 cited in Burton p. 10
3. p. 3
4. pp. 152-180
5. Hill and Ekanawetak, Splitting the Sky, p. 20. cited in Burton, p. 107
6. p. 29
7. p. 48
8. p. 5
9. pp. 88-91
10. p. 95
11. p. 205^

Greetings!

I received ULK 83 and I too agree prison is war. I’ve in the past heard on numerous occasions that the prison guard “respects violence!” No, they “expect violence.” They can and will never “respect” those they consider subhuman and dispensable. And they fear those knowledgeable enough to know and combat this.

This “expect violence” recently reigned true for me when a Sgt. Reid came to my cell and ripped my clothing line down (making my wet clothes fall on me and the floor) in anticipation of some violent outburst. When he didn’t receive one, he literally stalked me for the rest of the day provoking me and hoping to get a violent reaction. Singing things like, “you’re too scared to die,” to no reaction and therefore the harassment continued into the bathhouse and so forth.

In 1970 few of Attica’s captives made more than 6 cents a day and the state’s food budget was a meager 63 cents per day per prisoner, causing able-bodied men to go to bed hungry in, of all places, the United $tates of America! These same men were also only allowed 1 shower per week & spent 15-24 hours everyday locked in tiny cages as if they were some type of exotic bird. For prisoners from the New York City area it would cost loved ones over $100 in travel expenses to visit and 24 hours of time away from work, school, etc., leaving no realistic way for those struggling to provide help to their loved ones in the future if they did in fact decide to visit.

With money being a known issue for these poor Black and Brown prisoners, doctors at Attica Correctional Facility would offer these men money to be “volunteers” as subjects for exposure to a test virus.(1) Albeit, these men were made to sign informed consent agreements being denied access to real vocational & educational training opportunities and/or drug programs. How “informed” were they really? Only 1.6% of Attica’s operating budget was allotted to academic & vocational training. That is 1.6% out of 100%! So, malnourished, ignored, & hindered from life skills, “They’d need to fight the invisibility that comes with being poor… They would have to work just to learn!” (quoting imperialist Michelle Obama) And “a riot is the language of the unheard.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

What was falling on deaf ears were a list of 15 “practical proposals” by these oppressed prisoners, which could’ve been easily agreed to putting an end to this uprising. Question: Why not “allow all inmates at their own expense to communicate with anyone they please”? (Request #5) Why not “when an inmate reaches conditional release, give him a full release without parole”? (Request #6) Why not “institute realistic rehabilitation programs for all inmates according to their offense & personal needs”? (Request #8) Why not “educate all Correctional Officers to the needs of the inmates, i.e. understanding rather than punishment,” (Request #9) & so on & so forth.(2)

Instead government would rather send in armed troopers, policemen, Correctional Officers, Conservation Corps helicopters that would drop C.S. gas [orthochlorobenzylidene] that would hang suspended in the air causing tearing, nausea, & retching in anyone that inhales it. Instead, Governor Rockefeller via Executive Order No. 51, even after all inside were immobilized by the gas, would give the command: “Tell all your units to move in!” Cosigning the murder of hostages and prisoners alike. “Trooper Gerard Smith … saw a trooper approach a prisoner who was lying still on the pavement and shoot him in the head.”(3) “It was very painful to see all these old & crippled guys getting shot … They were in D yard because they had no place else to go.”(4) “Another prisoner who had been shot in the abdomen & in the leg was ordered to get up and walk, which he was unable to do. ‘The trooper then shot him in the head with a handgun.’”(5) “Guard Robert Curtiss also felt the fear of imminent death when a trooper kept knocking him over every time he tried to sit up. He shouted… that he was an officer, but still had to beg the trooper not to shoot him.”(6) “Ultimately … 128 men were shot – some … multiple times … 9 hostages were dead & … 29 prisoners had been fatally shot.”(7) Another hostage in critical condition would later die, pushing the total to 10 hostages killed. “The most tragic thing about the bloody riot & massacre … is that it could have been avoided. If the state had listened to warnings from correctional officers, if administration had shown a modicum of sensitivity in providing for the inmates – if the state had just listened, the revolt might never have occurred!”(8)

For this carnage, escalated by the state to a protest for civil rights and basic liberties, you must blame someone and so you charge 63 prisoner survivors with 1,289 crimes, and not 1 single trooper or guard was indicted. However, some of these survivors continued to fight & share their little light on the hidden truth(s) and via civil rights litigation would win their lawsuit against one man, Attica’s deputy superintendent Karl Pfeil. But, “if any defendant was found liable, the state was liable, and this was no small thing.”(9)

On 5 June 1997, they awarded one of the survivors “Big Black” $4 million in damages. The state would recoup for these losses by underhandedly paying hostage survivors and surviving family members from the workman’s compensation fund, knowing that these people could no longer sue under NYS law because they had elected a remedy the moment they cashed these much needed checks. This is after 2,349 - 3,132 lethal pellets from shotguns were fired indiscriminately in Attica’s D yard; 8 rounds from a .357 caliber; 27 rounds from a .38 caliber & 68 rounds from a .270 caliber, [not to include C.O.’s and other members of law enforcement] fully aware that not 1 prisoner or hostage had a single firearm.

You don’t show a modicum of remorse & pay everyone their just due, but instead you con and scam the dead in the name of budgeting. “40 years after the uprising of 1971, conditions at Attica were worse than they had ever been … by 2001 the Department of Correctional Services had cut over 1200 programs providing services to inmates that were there in 1991.”(10) I wonder how much more money they’d save if they cut out prison & kept the programs? There will be more Attica’s until Federal and State governments and the American people accept their responsibility to establish minimum standards of decency & respect for human rights in our prisons. We cannot afford to wait for new explosions." (Senator Jacob Javits) Instead of waiting for “new explosions” why not get rid of the powdered keg altogether… prisons!

In remembrance of Sept. 9, 1971 REST IN POWER

MIM(Prisons) adds: This issue of ULK is inspired by recent scholarship by Orisanmi Burton, that centers around Attica. One of the points made by Burton is about the revolutionary vision of leaders in Attica and other contemporary organizing efforts, some of which included the same people. These were people who were members of or worked closely with formations like the Black Panther Party, Young Lords Party, Republic of New Afrika, the Puerto Rican Nationalist movement, etc.

One of the conclusions drawn from this is that the reformist demands listed by the comrade above were merely a campaign, with obvious and reasonable demands, that would appeal to the broadest sectors in this country. These reformist demands were not the be all end all goals for many of the leaders involved in these movements. They were winnable demands within a broader strategy for total liberation from oppression.

<sup>Notes:
1. Dr. Michael Brandriss, Interview Transcript, Aug. 18, 2012, Criminal Injustice: Death & Politics at Attica, (Blue Sky Project 2012).
2. Richard X Clark, Testimony, Akil Al-Jundi et al. v. The Estate of Nelson A. Rockefeller et al., October 25, 1991, 131;133.
3. Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water p. 183 (Vintage Books)(2016).
4. Ibid. @ p. 184
5. Ibid. @ p. 185
6. Ibid @ p. 186
7. Ibid @ p. 187
8. Ibid. @ p. 260
9. Ibid. @ p. 477
10. Ibid. @ p. 567</sup>

The world has become extremely subjective with Kyrie Irving’s posts of a documentary of someone else’s views and opinions of the Holocaust, and other Jewish history. The world thereafter vilifies him for not conforming to their way in apologizing and admission of his anti-Semitism. He however lets the world know that he embraces his complete Afro-Black history, and reposes the question to him asked on how could he then be antisemitic?

The jew of antiquity I believe Kyrie refers to in debate of his non “anti-Semitism”, were either the black skinned Falasha of Abyssinia and/or, the Chinese Jews of Kai-Feng and/or, Jews of the Berber tribes located in the African Sahara [many colorful shades of Jewry]. So the real underlying question to Kyrie was not if he was “anti-self-metic”, but did Kyrie learn the truth and now possibly hate the modern caucasian Eastern European Jew who adopted his ancestors way of life as their own.

The bulk of today’s Jewry isn’t of Palestinian but of Caucasian Origin, and Yiddish is shockingly a mix of Hebrew, medieval German and Slavonic. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, in the 16th century there was about 1 million Jewish people and the majority were Khazar [located in the eastern confines of Europe between the Caucuses and the Volga] a substantial part was from Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, and the Balkans who founded the Eastern Jewish Community. This was the dominant majority of the world Jewry. If Kyrie delved even further he would discover that in the dark ages commerce in western Europe was monopolized by the Jews, including but not limited to the slave trade. Albeit, the “Jews” became a motley crew of humanity partly due to Abraham cohabiting with Hagan [an Egyptian]; Joseph marrying Aseneth [an Egyptian]; Moses marrying Zipporah; and King Solomon who loved many strange women, and had a Hittite mother of dark-complexion, the original tenets of the Jewish faith was practiced by Africans long before the “Jews”. [Thus making Africans possibly not the creator of the Jewish brand but, originators of the Jewish Faith.] “The religious belief in sacrifice for the remission of sins was an African belief and practiced at least 2,000 years before Abraham”, and “Practically all of the Ten Commandments were embedded in the African Constitution ages before Moses went up Mt. Sinai in Africa in 1491 B.C.” Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization p.135 (Third World Press) (1987)

“The large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European– Thus perhaps mainly of Khazar–origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun, Uiger and Magyan Tribes than to the seed of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Should this turn out to be the case, then the term”anti-semetism” would become void of meaning, based on a mis-apprehension shared by both the killers and their victims.” Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe (Last Century Media)(1976)

I do not agree with murder of innocent people especially children. Hitler and his cronies did massacre countless human beings for nonsensical reasons of “race, color, and creed.” He orchestrated the genocide of over 6 million human souls of the Jewish Faith. But in all objectivity Adolf Hitler killed people of his own race and color, who centuries ago adopted a different creed from a migratory people of African/Semite descent. In all reality Hitler may not have even been a real racist and/or even knew the trajectory of the true African/Semite Jew in order to be authentically “Anit-Semite.” Hitler was merely a desperate white privileged capitalist, colonialist, imperialist wannabe, who would murder and oppress anyone within range, even his own country-men [for a man who hated the “Jews” so much he never waged war on a predominately Jewish State [Coward]. Hitler was an opportunist who made innocent people his opportunity] in the end the outcome of this inhumane genocide called the holocaust was real. But, the falsity may be in its premise. Did Hitler kill over 6 million “Jews” because he hated “Jews”, or did he kill over 6 million people because he hated LIFE! He died by suicide as a coke head, evidence that he too hated his own

Free Kyrie

MIM(Prisons) responds:

“Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment.” - Mao Zedong (Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?)

Just like how the above quote mentions, correct ideas come from the social practice of class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experiment. We extend this claim of knowledge coming from class struggle to bad ideas as well. Reactionary ideas among the masses also don’t drop from the skies nor are they innate in the mind.

A popular cultural phenomenon that is being widely reported on television is New Afrikan celebrities like Kyrie Irving (mentioned by the comrade above) expressing the idea that New Afrikans here in the United $tates are the original Hebrews described in the bible alongside sharing a documentary on social media which further elaborates on this trend. On top of similar sentiments, popular rapper Kanye West expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, and claimed that he is going “death con 3” on Jewish people.

The reason why we would like to emphasize the above statements on correct ideas coming from social practice is because as chauvinist and strange these claims may be, they didn’t drop from the sky either. We can see a similar type of chauvinism against Asian national minorities from the masses of New Afrikans/Chican@s as well highlighted during the LA riots of burning down Korean petty-bourgeois establishments, and the sensationalized attacks of New Afrikans assaulting Chinese nationals during the earlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city centers of this country.

In no way does this responder claim that anti-semitism and chauvinism in general is a correct thing, nor that all Jewish/East-Asian people are petty-bourgeois so they deserve what’s coming to them in times of crisis such as an uprising or a global pandemic. Communists who hold these ideas shouldn’t even hold that label in the first place. However, there should be a deeper and more scientific study of these contradictions and to recognize common reactionary ideas in the masses in the historical context. On top of this, to have the oppressed nations (particularly New Afrikans in this case) being the media’s face of modern anti-semitism is a ridiculous chauvinist idea as well in a country where the oppressor nation Amerika is one of the strongest contenders in the world of turning fascist in world economic crisis.

Many religious/cultural nationalists in the oppressed nations particularly share this attitude of New Afrikans being the real Hebrews described in the bible alongside the line that the common Jewish people we see in Europe/North Amerika today are pretenders. This particular trend of nationalism can be traced back in the late 1800s by Frank Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy who respectively founded two different Black Israelite churches in 1886 and 1896 respectively after both claiming to have had revelations that New Afrikans are descendants of the Hebrews in the bible. Both men were from the southern black belt territory still suffering from sharecropping at its height. In a region where almost semi-feudal conditions still reigned for a semi-colonial nation, religious ideas entrenched in a nationalist trend isn’t surprising.

In the modern setting, the contradiction between New Afrikan masses that live in the ghettos and Jewish petty-bourgeoisie can be exemplified in the Crown Heights riots of 1991 where a Guyanese child was murdered in an accident where a motorcade of Chabad (A Hasidic Jewish movement) carrying the famous rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson struck Gavin Cato to the child’s death. This led to several Jews being attacked on the street by New Afrikan youth.

While some comrades might be quick to condemn these ideas as anti-semtiic, we should see the prejudices of the masses (in this case anti-semitism) as a historical process that emerged in a specific time of class society (particularly in the United $tates). A scientific understanding of this problem would first lead one to recognize that the frustration the oppressed nation masses might have with prominently petty-bourgeois religious/national minority groups such as Jewish Americans (or certain demographics of Asian Americans) as based on the masses frustrations against their class enemy. One would also recognize that conspiratorial and chauvinist ideas should be eliminated through mass political education. Jewish communities of Russia of the Middle East/North Africa to the United $tates all have different relations to world imperialism from many belonging to both friend and enemy classes. Conspiratorial claims of Jewish elite are reactionary, but that is often what the masses think during times of oppression where they have not yet grasped scientific thinking.

In the United Struggle Within, there are many Black Hebrew Israelite tendencies along with other religious nationalist groups that might vary in terms of anti-semitism or conspiratorial thinking like the comrade above. The key point in all this is to properly assess unity-criticism-unity and to what point do some tendencies of nationalism have more good than bad. Ultimately, it’s these masses of the oppressed nation whose historical duty is to create a revolution and society where ideas such as anti-semitism will be gotten ridden of, and to put these groups as the leading cause of anti-semitism in the United $tates is classic settler-chauvinism.

I just wanted to let you know some more of the tricks the system is implementing against me via the J-Pay E-Mail/kiosk system they have set up.

It seems that anytime I send an e-mail to my loved ones asking them to contact a Court and/or government official these e-mails show up blank, yet J-Pay says these messages are being held and/or censored by the prison for reasons of “third party contact” (SMH). Imagine that, I can’t even send an e-mail to my Power of Attorney to contact the courts on my behalf as my LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE!

What would they be trying to “censor” from reaching the courts? (rhetorical question).

In other (related?) news they are also using some device to “un-download” movies I purchase from this same system shortly after I lock back into my cell. This is causing me to lose the movie sometimes due to time restrictions on them, which is a form of consumer fraud.

Note that only here on my company in Auburn Correctional Facility, have the oppressors instituted kiosk privileges 1 day per week, when Directive #4425 clearly states 15 minutes daily. Also, due to Covid restrictions we don’t have visitation privileges, so these once a week e-mails are cruel & unusual due to the already strained circumstances.

I have been debilitatingly sick here twice already taking all precautions against such especially at the times I got sick. I didn’t leave my cell outside of showers, packages & visits for approximately 6 months.

By intentionally taking away in-cell entertainment you force one outside where the chances are higher of me getting sick. Because of prior retaliation akin to this, this seems the most plausible ploy. Let me know what you think.

In Struggle.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with our comrade in Virginia that there is a strategic effort to profiteer off prisoners and their families while increasing surveillance and censorship of prisoners’ communications with the outside world. The fact that you are losing movies you paid for, or others are being charged by the minute to read a book is just JPay profiteering off of control of data. It’s the same in the outside world where companies like Apple and Google lock you into a system where they can keep tempting you to spend more money and they decide what media you consume. Only in prison you have less choice.

Many prisoners write us asking to communicate on platforms like JPay, which we cannot do. These platforms increase censorship, surveillance and state control over what you can read or listen to. If we do not fight this, other states will join North Carolina in banning U.S. postal mail and materials like MIM(Prisons) study packs and resource guides.

On Monday, 31 August 2020 the officers on the 7 to 3 shift beat a prisoner in A-Block that was locking on M-gallery. The prisoner could of been Spanish or white. The prisoner was beaten kind of bad.

On Wednesday, 2 September 2020 officers had beaten a prisoner that was in the block. That was B-Block. It was said they had broke the prisoner’s arm! The officers in B-Block is known to beat up prisoners that live in B-Block.

Earlier this month, the city of New York and the world watched detainees at MDC Brooklyn freeze in their cells during the most recent polar vortex. People were in awe that this high-tec, modern-day dungeon – with both the Statue of Liberty and Wall Street in view as testaments to hypocri$y – would be so crass, so brutal, so inhumane.

No heat, no food or water as detainees were locked in their cells as a result of a power outage stemming from a fire. Crowds of people gathered outside witnessing people – not inmates, people – bang on windows, shouting and crying in horror, fearing for their lives, locked away and forgotten in the 9-story Sunset Park detention facility. There were reports from the inside of pigs shaking down (i.e., ransacking) cells, looking for contraband cell-phones – the only means of communications by which prisoners, locked in their cells, could communicate their predicament to outside friends, family, and supporters.

Shouting and banging on cell doors was met with fire hoses. Terrified family members of those inside with no recourse but to rush the building and plead with the officers were pepper-sprayed.

As someone who did almost 4 years there, who left behind many loved ones over there, it made my blood boil, and yet I was not surprised at all. Warden Quay, who didn’t even have the minimal amount of human compassion to provide extra blankets is the same Warden Quay who shut down the mental health unit in February 2016 – transferring vulnerable people (I say again, PEOPLE – not inmates) afflicted with Schizophrenia, Autism, PTSD, and cerebral palsy to the overcrowded general population.

Yes, I remember in the winter time they wouldn’t turn the heat on even when the electricity was working. I remember how we’d complain and they’d send a cop in to wave some fake thermometer around that always stayed at 60-70 degrees. Yup, vermin and scabie-infested MDC. I remember you. I remember the beat-up squad. I remember the retaliation against anyone who raise their voice in dissent, including myself who, upon sending out an e-mail about “gang-members” on the Bronx 120 indictment being arbitrarily rounded up and sent to the SHU, had my cell ransacked by the facility’s red squad.

Better not get sick at MDC, cause medical might kill you. Everyone knows that…. Yup, MDC Brooklyn Goddamn.

And this was happening well before De Blasio and other politicians expressed their faux outrage. Well before our oppression was trending on social media. (Disclaimer: by saying that, I do not intend to belittle the support of ordinary people who, from no fault of their own, had just found out about MDC through recent events).

But if you ask the average incarcerated person, they’ll say “Yeah, you know … jail is jail.” And that’s what it is. This is happening all over the system in places that you’ve never heard of before nor dreamed of going to. MDC Brooklyn is just in your face about it – smack dab in the middle of the liberal metropolis of downtown Brooklyn – just a few blocks away from the Barclay center (I was able to see it from my cell).

The support is appreciated and much needed to make sure you ask yourself the question, and this is most sincerely directed towards specifically the white liberals who were in awe of what they saw in their progressive city: Does it bother you because we’re “innocent until proven guilty,” or does it bother you simply because we’re human?

One thing’s for sure, two thing’s for certain: You don’t reform oppression, you abolish it.

So, which side are you on?