MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
www.prisoncensorship.info is a media institution run by the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons. Here we collect and publicize reports of conditions behind the bars in U.$. prisons. Information about these incidents rarely makes it out of the prison, and when it does it is extremely rare that the reports are taken seriously and published. This historical record is important for documenting patterns of abuse, and also for informing people on the streets about what goes on behind the bars.
The recent Zionist attacks on Rafah signaled to the world that the
imperialists are in lock step as they cut a hideous path of genocide
through Palestine. U.$. imperialism has given the nod and wink to forge
ahead as we all watch, as we all mourn.
The imperialists have circled the wagons despite the world responding
in disgust. The people should also come together, all sectors here in
the internal semi-colonies also known as the United Snakes.
Of special interest is two sectors who defy the pull of capitalist
bribes. This defiance arrives from different paths and yet our party
feels they are both anti-imperialist in nature. These sectors in the
United $tates are the prison movement – made up of prisoners, former
prisoners and outside supporters, and the other sector being the student
movement – being the students on school campuses across the country.
These two sectors have the least to lose and the most to win when it
comes to revolution. Both bring that passion and fire needed to ignite
the flame of real resistance and thus should find ways to resist in
tandem.
A free Palestine, like a free Aztlán, will only happen when
anti-imperialism is exercised in a united front between all oppressed
and allies. The world sees that Palestine is deserving of peace, for it
is life while Israel signifies death!
The student encampments that were attacked by the state and their
goons were a glimmer of hope that the youth here in these false U.$.
borders hold on to their humynity in the face of repression. Standing up
for the national liberation of Palestine, putting their freedom and
their lives on the line so that the Israeli settler colonialists stop
the attacks on Palestine.
Chican@s stand with Palestine because we are also colonized by
imperialists. The Chican@ nation stands with the students who dare to
struggle. Imprisoned Aztlán awaits our student allies in the
concentration kamps so we can build and solidify our struggle with a
common political enemy.
The Chican@ movement struggles against imperialism too, we stand up
to settler colonialism, and genocide as well. Imperialism is what
creates the conditions where kids
in cages is normalized whether we are talking about in U.$. prisons
or Israeli prisons.
We have a moral obligation to stand against the genocide in
Palestine. We are obligated as conscious people to stand with oppressed
people always.
Everyone has been watching the atrocities happening on the news and
the genocide going down in the Middle East. Israel seems to think that
Palestinian lives mean nothing. Many are shocked at how the news
describes the situation as if Palestine is in conflict when it’s clear
that Israel has reduced Palestine to rubble.
Not one persyn here has felt Israel is in the right. It is clear as
day that a genocide is happening and that U.$. tax payers are complicit
as the U.$. sends billions of dollars to Israel every year.
Every time the news comes on talking about Israel, one of the
prisoners here yells, “Yo Israel, get the fuck out of Palestine!”
Everyone claps in agreement. Some are bewildered as to why the U.$. is
enabling genocide and the more conscious are explaining the history of
Amerika and what it has done to this continent and beyond for the
dollar. Humyn lives are worth more than profit and the courageous
students in their encampments are proving that! To be arrested in a time
of genocide is an honorable thing to do.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes 10 May 2024 PG-13
Spoilers
A main theme throughout both series of Planet of the Apes
movies is the question of whether Apes differ from so-called “humyn
nature.” In the first series (produced 1968-1972) especially, humyn
nature is blamed for the hubris of nuclear weapons that brings humyns’
downfall. In this latest movie of the new series (produced 2011-2024),
apes have been setback in this search for truth, but perhaps this can be
explained by the very existence of class struggle that they share with
humyns.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), the fourth film in
the modern Planet of the Apes film series, is the first to take
us into the future a few generations after the events that led apes to
become competitors with humyns for dominating planet Earth. In it we see
glimpses of the emergence of class society, in the form of slavery. But
it is a slave society that is shaped by a relationship to the formerly
dominant humyns that still reflects a colonial relationship in many
ways.
The Eagle Clan, who are the center of the film, live in a primitive
clan society, with elders who set the laws that are taught to the young
and passed down via tradition. Later in the film, we encounter a larger
ape society that is a kingdom led by King Proximus, that has absorbed
many clans and uses them as slaves. It is not clear that the slaves
produce material wealth for the slavemaster class of the kingdom, as the
film only shows them working to break into an old humyn military bunker
to extract the technology. But someone must be producing the food, tools
and weapons for the soldiers who run the kingdom.
Proximus claims to be the new Caesar. Caesar was the founder and
leader of the apes in the first three movies, and was also a king
figure. But Caesar was a benevolent leader who fought and worked
alongside the others. A virus gave Caesar super-ape intelligence to lead
the apes to liberation from humyn society.
Within 10 years of the events of Rise
of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Caesar had already begun to learn
that apes have the same tendencies as humyns as he had to ally with a
humyn to combat a rogue ape attempting to usurp eir control of ape city
to wage war on humyns.
We previously discussed the themes of integrationism in the newer
series, in contrast to the older series that takes a more scientific
approach to uniting humyns and apes through struggle and re-education.
While the inability of apes to build a a lasting harmonious society may
appear pessimistic, we’d say it is realistic; accurately reflecting the
myth of humyn or ape nature despite the producers’ intentions.
The original series (produced 1968-1972) ends with a humyn ally
remarking that the apes have finally become humyn after the first ape
murder of another ape. This story line is framed more as a biblical
original sin story than class struggle. But in both series the first
ape-on-ape murder occurs because of the struggle between the apes who
want to wage war to annihilate all humyns and those who do not. The
question the producers seem to be asking is do apes have a war-like
nature like humyns supposedly do. Despite the revolutionary themes of
the first series, it largely reinforces this concept of humyn
nature.
When we criticize the concept of humyn/ape nature, we are not
criticizing the “natural” we are criticizing the metaphysical view of an
unchanging phenomenon. In other words, “natural” itself is a myth in
many ways, in other ways “natural” could be dialectical materialism and
the scientific method that explains the world around us. As dialectical
materialists we understand all things to be in a constant state of
change motivated by the contradictions within that thing; the class
struggle in society being the prime example of this in Marxist
thought.
Observed by humyns in our reality, chimpanzees and gorillas have one
leader who is a male silverback. While bonobos have an alpha male role
as well, the alpha female plays the more determinate role.
Interestingly, the king Proximus is a male bonobo. Meanwhile orangutans
in real life tend to be more solitary, which is reflected in this film
with Racka being a loner and no other orangutans being part of
Proximus’s kingdom. As we know, and as Engels lays out in The
Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, humyns have
gone through various social structures; from more collective matriarchal
societies to the more modern hierarchical patriarchal societies, and
these structures have changed to adapt to changing modes of
production.
In our world, we suspect humyn societies have changed more over the
last ten thousand years than other great apes, because their
relationship to the rest of the natural world has changed more through
gaining knowledge and technology. Therefore in the new series of movies
we would expect apes to go through a very similar evolution of
hierarchies and class society as humyns did as they change their
relationship to the production of their material needs. This is
reflected in the kingdom that operates as a primitive system of slavery,
the earliest class system of humyns as well.
However, the evolution of ape society is colored by the existence of
a previous, advanced humyn society. Learning from humyn books and
accessing humyn armories full of technology are ways that Proximus
attempts to make a leap in ape knowledge and technology. As ey does
this, Proximus maintains a line that humyns cannot be trusted, and apes
must work together, even though this is applied cynically as ey is shown
to happily sacrifice the lives of many apes in eir own attempts at power
through humyn technology.
The main character in Kingdom is Noa, a member of the Eagle
Clan, whose father was a master of training eagles. Noa learns about
Caesar for the first time from the last true follower of Caesar after
the rest of the Eagle Clan has been captured by Proximus. Before this,
Noa had no knowledge of the history of humyns or apes; perhaps because
of eir age. But Noa also states that eir elders did not want to know
such things and remained ignorant on purpose through isolation.
The major transformation that Noa makes is to reject the idea that
law is handed down from some higher power. Ey does this overtly by
rejecting the laws of the king, and more subtly by pursuing knowledge
eir elders forbid. This is the transformation of thought that humyn
society went through during its transition to capitalism, when
liberalism, plurality, democracy and the pursuit of scientific knowledge
rose to replace ways of thought that were more stagnant, based more in
idealism and following a god-king. So we see Noa make a shift towards
materialism, that we expect will transform the Eagle Clan as it rebuilds
its village. But Noa’s understanding of ape nature at the end of the
movie still seems behind that of Caesar’s, generations ago. We see this
type of pre-scientific thinking among our comrades today who believe the
white man is literally the devil and the Black man/humyn is god. Like
Noa, they’re on the right side, but are guided by idealist thinking that
can easily lead them astray. Of course, we all struggle with idealism
and subjectivism, which might be considered part of the “nature” of
beings that can reason with limited knowledge and perspective. Part of
the power of the vanguard party, as layed out by Lenin, is its ability
to produce a more scientific approach to social change by pooling
experience and knowledge production at group level for a whole
class.
In our review of Dawn
of the Planet of the Apes (2014) we compare the Caesar
loyalists to the Gang of Four in China, who were those in the leadership
who both understood and represented the Maoist line after Mao’s death.
The Orangutan, Raka, would be like a young persyn in China today who has
deeply studied Mao and Chinese history but has no real experience in
building socialism and no one to help em put it into practice. Proximus
might be compared to the revisionists in power in China, exploiting the
people while trying to strengthen China against the U.$. imperialists
all in the name of “Marxism” (or “Caesar”).
The problem that Noa faces in determining what the right path is, and
what Caesar was really about, becomes a question of trust and judging
what is morally right. In contrast, we can judge the correct Maoist path
by studying history, and putting science into practice. While Noa’s path
in this movie echoes Caesar’s in the previous one, this is only because
they both tried to help their own people. While serving the people is
part of the communist road, we must be more than do-gooders to end
oppression, we must have a scientific understanding of society, what
forces are at play within it, how it is changing and how we can shape
that change.
In practice it seems that Noa may have acted against the interests of
Apes overall by eir alliance with the humyn, Mae. Another sequel will
probably reveal this. This is where the colonial parallels come in. Mae
is part of a humyn society that is no longer dominant, but still
possesses historical knowledge and technology that gives them a great
advantage. The Eagle Clan parallels many primitive groups in humyn
history that have encountered colonialists and allied with them against
other known enemies, perhaps seeing the colonialists as friends and
allies, before being subjugated by them in turn. In this way Proximus
proves more correct in eir distrust of the humyns and calls for ape
unity, despite coming from an exploiter class perspective.
This is why in a United Front the proletariat needs its own party to
represent our class, and to act independently of other classes. It must
be a party based on science, that can see all sides of the situation. At
this slave stage of ape society there is no such leadership available
and therefore no basis for forming principled alliances with either the
humyns or the exploiter class of apes.
The movie ends with Noa asking Mae if humyns and apes can ever live
together in trust. The ending hints that such a future is far off to say
the least. A theme that was more prominent in the original series is the
political question of if the oppressed rise up against white Amerika,
will they wipe out white Amerika or live harmoniously side-by-side. In
the original series, we see many years after the ape revolution that
such a reality is still in the works. There is still distrust, as some
war-mongering humyns still exist in the city, and many apes remember the
past oppression by humyns. While we draw some analogies above about the
latest movie, there are no real revolutionary story lines like the
original series, which showed the joint dictatorship of other great apes
over humyns and discussed the need for a long period of transforming
society and its citizens to build the trust necessary for peaceful
coexistence. Of course, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not just
about trust building, it is about continuing the class struggle to
eliminate all class differences – the internal contradictions of society
that lead to oppressive relationships between groups. That is the only
basis upon which a true communist society can be built. Something none
of the Planet of the Apes movies have brought us to yet.
Greetings, I want to extend my support and appreciation for you
courageous students who stand against the tyranny of genocide.
Your acts and resistance have been well-received around the world and
deeply appreciated by Palestinian refugees, as I seen it on the world
news, painted on the walls of the refugee camps: “Thank you American
students”.
Israel is not fighting Hamas, Israel is creating a Palestinian
genocide. The greatest hypocrisy in history, just as the Nazis did to
the Jews.
In prison we stand in solidarity with your good cause of saving
innocent lives.
by MIM(Prisons) May 2024 permalink
rapper Macklemore and Hind Rajab, killed by Israeli occupation
Hip hop artist Macklemore released a song and music video, called
“Hind’s Hall”, unapologetically supporting the students fighting to stop
U.$. funding of genocide in Palestine. This is a unique statement that
we have not seen from Amerikan celebrities after over six months of
bombing and invasion.
Besides saying “fuck the police” and “free Palestine”, to the
question of voting for Biden, Macklemore says “fuck no” in this song.
This last point puts em ahead of the so-called Communist Party - U$A and
Revolutionary Communist Party - U$A, which have both implicitly and
explicitly campaigned for Democratic presidential candidates, including
Joe Biden. We’d say Macklemore is doing a better job of representing the
interests of the Third World proletariat on this point, than the
so-called communist parties. In the past Macklemore has sported an
Amerikan flag, and campaigned for the Democrats as well. But ey’s an
individual, and a rapper. We gotta expect a little more from a communist
party that is supposed to be a source of truth and to lead us to ending
oppression.
Of course, the MIM slogan has been “Don’t Vote, Organize!” So not
voting for Biden in itself isn’t the call for change; rather the
recognition of the need to make and change history ourselves instead of
casting a vote for this or that celebrity politician.
While it took 6 months and U.$. student protests for this song to
come out, it appears that Macklemore has been involved in the anti-war
movement since October when ey signed a statement supporting ceasefire.
Ey is also donating all proceeds to the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. So good for em, and it
is a good thing to use eir voice as a popular artist to reach more
people. We hope this cracks open the door for other more popular artists
who have been quiet on the genocide.
In the new song, Macklemore also asks “who gets the right to defend?
who gets the right to resistance?” flashing pictures from Ukraine and
answering that it has to do with skin pigment. This is a righteous
defense of the resistance in Palestine that is condemned as terrorism by
the same people chearleading the resistance in Ukraine as a natural
humyn right. However, skin color is a superficial explanation. Though
racism, orientalism, and anti-Arab sentiment is a strong driving force
behind the average oppressor-nation Amerikkkan’s stance on Palestine,
ultimately the U.$.’s position derives not from disdain for certain skin
colors but rather from imperialism. Ukraine, and Zelensky, stand as a
junior partner to Amerikkka against their current greatest imperialist
enemy, Russia, while the potential of a freed Palestine poses a threat
to Amerikkkan and I$raeli imperialism in the Middle East.
Students at Columbia University occupied Hamilton Hall after the
university rejected most of their demands, including to divest from
weapons manufacturers. During the occupation, they renamed it “Hind’s
Hall” after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed
by Israeli forces in Gaza City while trying to get assistance from the
Red Crescent Society after her family had been killed by an Israeli
attack.
They say the best way to hide something is to put it in plain sight.
Student-led activism in the majority New Afrikan populated area of South
Baltimore has rendered this old saying no longer true. For about ninety
years corporate coal companies and the city government have allowed and
perpetuated landfills, and literal mountains of coal being piled up in
plain sight in residential areas, and even directly behind rec centers
with playgrounds and children.
For the last 100 years, coal has been brought into the port city of
Baltimore by the freight transportation company CSX. In data derived
from 2021, it was found that CSX transported more than 8 million tons of
coal into South Baltimore, where the coal is then transported all over
the world. Freight trains coming through the Baltimore transport
terminal with coal on them spill black coal dust throughout South
Baltimore and pollute the air.
Pollution is so outrageous in this predominately New Afrikan
community that the number one cause of death is respiratory related
issues. The death rate from respiratory disease in South Baltimore is
more than twice the rate for Baltimore as a whole. Respiratory disease
is killing more people in this section of the city than diabetes, drugs,
or gun violence. A staggering 90% of youth from the area suffer from
different degrees of asthma, which has been causing chronic death.
What is by now very obvious to anyone is that coal and other
pollutants should not be in residential areas, but the fact that they
are and have been so carelessly handled for generations now, in a
predominately New Afrikan section of a predominantly New Afrikan city,
illustrates major contradictions of the national oppression of so-called
Black people, and Our neo-colonial relationship to the empire and
certain classes within Our collective body-politic.
It is under this back drop that a youth organization was founded in
2011 at the local Benjamin Franklin High School, called Free Your Voice.
In 2011 the Free Your Voice student-activists were fighting, and
eventually defeated an effort to build a waste incinerator in South
Baltimore. The incinerator would’ve burned tons of trash and waste, and
released pollution, as well as converted electricity from the burned
waste.
Today, Free Your Voice is still active and continues to replenish its
pool of student-activists. Now however, the struggle with CSX and city
and state officials is much more daunting. Free Your Voice and
supporters from the community and local colleges have set out to get the
state’s environmental regulators to deny CSX’s operations permit on the
transport terminal and pay residents of South Baltimore reparations for
generations of ‘environmental racism’ (Genocide).
These efforts have been hampered by what some deem as betrayal by the
first ‘Black’ top environmental regulator in Maryland and her
declaration that she and her agency know it’s coal and coal dust found
on streets and public areas but can not act without actual proof of the
identity of the substance.
Laws against air pollution are written so that oppressed and
vulnerable masses of people are at severe disadvantage and would in most
circumstances be dependent upon state agencies, who are in cahoots with
big industrialists, to gather and test substances in question. People
have to prove they’ve been or are being poisoned by specific substances
before regulators can take action.
Students from Free Your Voice along with local college volunteers
spent the summer of 2023 collecting and testing particles of dust found
in the S. B-More area. They have and continue to go door-to-door
spreading the findings of their research with the general community.
Thus far, although the terminal has not been shut down and the mountains
of coal still reside behind rec centers and playgrounds, Free Your Voice
has achieved quantitative victories.
The student-activists’ work thus far has:
Made it harder for city officials, state politicians, and local
residents to ignore their oppression;
They’ve won over neighbors to their work, elevated consciousness
around air pollution and the complicity of the occupying government in
environmental destruction;
They’ve garnered meetings with state regulators, and the fact
that the head of the environmental regulation agency in Maryland is a
‘Black’ female, has elevated the class consciousness and the reality of
the New Afrikan National neo-colonial status;
The aspirations of their movement have risen. From slight reforms
like covering or pouring water on coal mountains in the ghetto, to now,
aspiring to remove or shut down the train terminal.
The continuing work of Our young people is not only there to be
acknowledged and supported, but more importantly in the long run there
are lessons to be learned from this particular student movement. I’ll
touch on some of them briefly here.
For one, while it is widely known that almost all previous moments in
the generational struggle of New Afrikan people the student movement was
the brain trust, and the heart of the struggle. We often fail to make
the connection that these previous students were so successful in
galvanizing people and nationalizing their structures because they
championed causes that had nothing to do with school or education. The
Free Your Voice Movement in S.B-More has connected the youth movement
with environmentalism, and those two things have unearthed class
oppression and national oppression. Our students must make these same
connections around the empire. What is the one thing that connects the
student in B-More to the student in southside St. Louis, or San
Francisco, or in Cancer Alley Louisiana, or Jackson, Mississippi, or
Flint, Michigan? It’s environmental issues. The organizing method We
should take at organizing the student movement in the spirit of New
Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) is to connect environmentalism
with student activism and revolutionary nationalism.
What also struck me in my research of this issue and struggle was the
fact that college students and former students of Franklin High School
have continued to come back and aid and assist in the struggle
there.
The college level student with a NARN orientation must make their
presence and ideological-theoretical prowess available at the sites of
active student movements. In these times of social media, student
activists from each of the previously mentioned cities and others can
and should be in direct communication, and NARN’s must take proactive
steps to influence the direction of the student movement, nationalizing
it and moving it in the direction illuminated by the Front for the
Liberation of the New Afrikan Nation (FROLINAN)’s Programs For
Decolonization, while also incorporating environmental and climate
related concerns to the FROLINAN program for National Alliance of New
Afrikan Students. If implemented by youthful NARN, i believe We can
succeed in building a NARN centered national youth movement.
I$rael’s war on Palestine is without a doubt a genocide.
There has been a groundswell of support from people around the world
that conclude that the settler state of I$rael needs to be brought to
justice and that Amerika has given the “greenlight” for the genocide to
ensue.
At a recent protest over I$rael bombing an Iranian consulate in
Syria, killing several Iranian military intelligence personnel, Hamas
responded with a statement saying among other things that Amerika has
given the green light for this bombing by not denouncing it. We would
agree and go further by stating that Amerika has green-lit genocide
since it first arrived here in Turtle Island over 500 years ago.
It strikes us as odd that the world would be shocked about Amerika
standing by in the face of the genocide happening to Palestine when
Chican@s, First Nations and New Afrikans know first hand that the United
$tates is not only a client but a pathfinder in the realm of genocidal
settlerism. We should remember it was Amerika who inspired the likes of
Hitler in honing his genocidal craft, an evaluation of evidence supports
our point.
In the mire of the oppression being rained down on Palestine,
especially with I$rael assassinating those it has targeted even in other
countries – or in embassies! – we just glean what lessons are available
as the world gets a bold example of what colonization looks like
today.
If we are in fact at the conclusion that Amerika – who gives I$rael
billions of aid each year – is giving a wink and a nod to assassinating
government officials of sovereign countries, it poses the question: how
might revolutionaries here in the imperialist center of the world
prepare and respond?
We should start by understanding that in today’s world genocide
arrives via stages of development by the imperialist agencies. These
stages are 1) Intelligence. 2) Analysis. 3) Logistics and 4) Operations.
What we are seeing happen is war plans, whether we are talking about the
streets of Gaza or the barrios of Califaztlan it all starts with
intel.
The oppressor nation identifies its threats and its assets – on the
ground or online. Because we are in the stage of building public opinion
here in the United $tates we can be vulnerable to data mining that is
employed by agencies globally. Search bots that are known as “spiders”
search the internet 24/7 mining through open source material and all
public records to find any links to revolutionary data, i.e. people,
groups or theory. They snatch everything: Facebook posts, chat rooms,
blogs, news stories, financial records, visa applications, etc… which
can all be harvested quickly on a daily basis, programs like starlight
or spire can then sift, cross reference and separate non-essential
material while then targeting links that lead back to intended targeted
people or groups within the movement. In this way the state is able to
closely monitor not only a movement’s vanguard but anything that
metastasizes out of the movement as well, that is everything in its
realm of influence. Once data is compromised with the help of programs
like Analyst Notebook, it reveals the internal structure of an
organization and its international links as well. All of this intel
helps the oppressor nation develop its genocidal programs which not only
furthers its own interests but the interests of its allies like the
settler state of I$rael.
Here in the occupied territories that some call Amerika, the internal
semi-colonies have long known about Amerika’s stance on genocide.
Chican@s and other oppressed nations who languish in the prisons, in the
control units, and on Death Row overstand that Amerika green-lights
genocide. The Brown and Black people, gunned down every day by Amerikan
police know this as well. The Chican@ nation and other oppressed know
because our land and resources are occupied and controlled by the
capitalists who neutralize us when we threaten the occupation.
In 2018 the California Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
investigated the grievance process at Salinas Valley State Prison. This
resulted in a new process in 2020, where any grievances alleging staff
misconduct in the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) would go to an Allegation Inquiry Management
Section (AIMS) in Sacramento, rather than being handled by staff at the
prison.(1) As we report on in almost every issue of Under Lock &
Key, grievances in U.$. prisons are often ignored, denied, or
covered up by staff.
One problem with this small reform is the staff at the prison was
still deciding what grievances would be forwarded to AIMS. Following OIG
recommendations in 2021, the CDCR changed its system for handling
grievances in 2022 so that staff misconduct could be reported directly
to AIMS. In March 2023, AIMS was replaced with the Allegation
Investigation Unit (AIU), within the Office of Internal Affairs.
In 2010, United Struggle from Within (USW) in California initiated
the “We
Demand Our Grievances Are Addressed!” campaign, which has since
spread across the country. We just released a petition for Indiana this
year, see the report on initial
campaign successes in this issue. And we just updated our petition
for Texas. Since 2010, hundreds of prisoners in California have sent
petitions to the California OIG and others outlining the failures of the
existing grievance system and demanding proper handling of grievances.
This campaign contributed, likely greatly, to the recent changes in
California.
It also happens that February 2023 was the last report we have of
staff in CDCR
retaliating against prisoners for filing grievances (in this case
for freezing temperatures).(2) So we are interested to hear from our
readers how the grievance process has been working over the last year.
However, the OIG’s recent report has already exposed staff misconduct
since the new program was implemented.
The OIG found that in 2023 the department sent 595 cases back to
prison staff to handle that had originally been sent to the AIU to
investigate as staff misconduct. This was reportedly done to handle a
backlog of grievances. The OIG also stressed the waste of resources in
duplicating work, given that the department had been given $34 million
to restructure the grievance process. In 127 of these cases the statute
of limitations had expired so that staff could no longer be disciplined
for any misconduct. Eight of these could have resulted in dismissal and
12 could have resulted in suspensions or salary reductions. Many other
grievances were close to expiring.
Unsurprisingly, when the OIG looked into grievances that had been
sent back to the prisons, many issues were not addressed, many were
reviewed by untrained staff, investigations were not conducted in a
timely manner (39% taking more than a year), and grievances were
improperly rejected. All of these are common complaints on the grievance
petitions prisoners have filed over the years.
The OIG states in their concluding response to the CDCR claims around
these 595 grievances:
“The purpose of this report was not to provide an assessment of the
department’s overall process for reviewing allegations of staff
misconduct that incarcerated people file; that is an assessment we
provide in our annual staff misconduct monitoring reports. This report
highlighted the department’s poor decision-making when determining how
to address a backlog of grievances that the department believed it was
not adequately staffed to handle.”
In ULK 84 we reported on a sharp
drop in donations from prisoners in 2023, and a gradual decline in
subscribers in recent years. We asked our readers to answer some survey
questions to help explore the reasons for these declines and to begin a
more active campaign to expand ULK in 2024. Below is some
discussion with comrades who have responded to the survey so far about
drugs, gangs, COVID-19, generational differences and more. If you want
to participate in this conversation, please respond to the questions at
the end.
Problems We’ve Always Had
A North Carolina prisoner on censorship: i pass my
copies around when i’m able, what i always hear is “Bro i wrote to them
but never received the paper.” Then there is a couple guys who were on
the mailing list who say they’re not receiving the paper no more.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The obvious answer to this is
the newsletter is being censored. Any prisoner of the United $tates who
writes us for ULK will be sent at least 2 issues, and if you
write every 6 months we will keep sending it. Censorship has always been
a primary barrier to reaching people inside, but we have no reason to
believe that has increased in the last couple years. Relaunching regular
censorship reports could help us assess that more clearly in the future.
A Pennsylvania prisoner on the younger generation: I
think it is these younger generation people who are coming into the
prison system or people who have been pretty much raised by the judicial
system, and the guards become mommy and daddy to them… They do not want
to or are possibly afraid to change the only life they have ever known.
I know some of these younger guys here who have gotten too comfortable
and think: “Oh, I am doing so good, I have a certain level of say-so
here, the guards are my buddies, they get me, et cetera.” When on the
outside they did not have that.
Also, on my block, many people are illiterate and cannot read. I know
this because I am the Peer Literacy Tutor.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Most of this doesn’t sound new.
Older prisoners have been talking about the lacking of the younger
forever. Illiteracy is also not new in prisons. There is some indication
that the COVID pandemic has impacted literacy in children, but that
would not be affecting our readership (yet).
A California prisoner: I think a lot of prisoners do
not want to hear negativity or incendiary language, we get enough of
that in here and I notice a lot of unity around positivity in here. I
suggest less dividing language and more unifying language. In
particular, the “who are our friends and who are our enemies” line could
certainly drop the “who are our enemies” part. Prisoners don’t want
someone telling them who to be enemies with, prisoners want to be told
who to be friends with.
I have trouble passing on ULK, natural leaders won’t even
accept it (I try to revolutionize the strong). As soon as I say “it’s a
communist paper”, the typical response is “I’m not a commie.” Any
suggestions??
MIM(Prisons) responds: Not sure if you’re leading with
the fact that it’s a communist newspaper. But when doing outreach, the
fact that we’re a communist organization will not come up until we’ve
gotten into an in-depth conversation with someone. We want to reach
people with agitational campaign slogans, hopefully ones that will
resonate with them. What in this issue of ULK do you think the
persyn might be interested in? Lead with that.
As far as who are our friends and who are our enemies goes – this is
actually a key point we must understand before we begin building a
united front (see MIM Theory 14: United Front where a prisoner
asks this same question back in 2001). We must unite all who can be
united around anti-imperialist campaigns. Our goal is not to have the
most popular newsletter in U.$. prisons; that might be the goal of a
profit-driven newsletter. Our goal is to support anti-imperialist
organizing within prisons. As we’ve been stressing in recent months,
prisons are war, and they are part of a larger war on the oppressed. If
we do not recognize who is behind that war, and who supports that war
and who opposes it, we cannot stop that war. If you see a group of
people that wants to carpet bomb another group of people as a friend,
then you are probably not part of the anti-imperialist camp yourself.
Prisoners who are mostly focused on self-improvement, parole, or just
getting home to their families may be willing to be friends with anyone
who might help them do so. But we must also recognize the duality
of the imprisoned oppressed people as explained by comrade Joku Jeupe
Mkali.
Problems That May Be Getting
worse
A Washington prisoner on the drug trade: Drugs and
gangs are the biggest threat to radical inclination in the system. Drugs
keep the addicted dazed and unable to focus on insurgency. Whereas the
self-proclaimed activist gang member who actually has the mental fitness
to actually avoid such nonsense has become so entrenched in a culture
aimed at feeding on the profit he gains in the process has forgotten his
true goal and would rather stand in the way of change to maintain
profit.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is perhaps the biggest
shift we’ve seen in reports on conditions on the inside in recent years.
Of course, these are not new issues. But there are new drugs that seem
to be more easily brought in by guards and have more detrimental effects
on peoples’ minds. Meanwhile, the economics of these drugs may have
shifted alliances between the state-employed gangs and the lumpen gangs
that work together to profit off these drugs.
When we launched the United
Front for Peace in Prisons over a decade ago, it was in response to
comrades reporting that the principal contradiction was lack of unity
due to lumpen organizations fighting each other. In recent years, most
of what we hear about is lumpen organizations working for the pigs to
suppress activism and traffic restricted items. While Texas is the
biggest prison state and much of those reports come from Texas, this
seems to be a common complaint in much of the country as regular readers
will know.
Related to drugs is the new policy spreading like wildfire, that
hiring private companies to digitize prisoners’ mail will reduce drugs
coming into prisons and jails. Above we mentioned no known increase in
censorship, but what has increased is these digital mail processing
centers; and with them more mail returned and delayed. In Texas, we’ve
been dealing with mail delayed by as much as 3 months for years now. As
more and more prisons and jails go digital, communications become more
and more limited. Privatized communications make it harder to hold
government accountable to mail policies or First Amendment claims. There
is no doubt this is a contributor to a decrease in subscribers.
A Pennsylvania Prisoner reports a change in the prison system
due to COVID-19: The four-zoned-movement system has been
implemented here at SCI-Greene because of COVID. Before COVID,
everything was totally opened up. Now everyone is divided from one
another and it makes it that much harder for someone like me who is
constantly surrounded by an entire block full of people with extreme
mental health or age-related issues.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is an interesting
explanation that we had not yet thought of. While we don’t have a lot of
reports of this type of dividing of the population in prisons into pods
since COVID, we know that many prisons have continued to be on lockdown
since then. An updated survey of prisoners on how many people are in
long-term isolation may be warranted. But even with the limited
information we have, we think this is likely impacting our slow decline
in subscribers.
This does not explain why donations went up from 2020 to 2022, but
then dropped sharply in 2023. However, we think this could have been a
boom from stimulus check money, similar to what the overall economy saw.
In prisons this was more pronounced, where many people received a couple
thousand dollars, who are used to earning a couple hundred dollars a
year. While we would have expected a more gradual drop off in donations,
this is likely related. In 2023, prisoners were paying for a greater
percentage of ULK costs than ever before. We had also greatly
reduced our costs in various ways in recent years though, so this is not
just a sign of more donations from prisoners but also a reflection of
decreased costs. We’d like to hear from others: how did stimulus checks
affect the prisoner population?
Like many things, our subscribership and donations were likely
impacted greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s response to
it. Another interesting connection that warrants more investigation is
how the stimulus money may have contributed to the boon in drug
trafficking by state and non-state gangs in prisons. And what does it
mean that the stimulus money has dried up? So far there is no indication
of a decline in the drug market.
A California prisoner on “rehabilitation” and parole:
The new rehabilitation programs in CDCR are designed to assign personal
blame (accept responsibility). A lot of prisoners are on that trip.
“It’s not the state’s fault, it’s my fault cause I’m fucked up.” That’s
the message CDCR wants prisoners to recognize and once again parole is
the incentive, “take the classes, get brainwashed, and we might release
you.” I call it flogging oneself. But a lot of prisoners are in these
“rehabilitation” classes. It’s the future. MIM needs to start thinking
how to properly combat that.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The Step Down program in
California in response to the mass
movement to shut down the SHU was the beginning of this concerted
effort to pacify and bribe prisoners to go along with the state’s
plan.(1) As we discussed at the time, this is part of a
counterinsurgency program to isolate revolutionary leaders from the
rebellious masses in prison.
Our Revolutionary 12 Step Program is one answer to the
state’s “rehabilitation.” Our program also includes accepting
responsibility, but doing so in the context of an understanding of the
system that creates these problems and behaviors in the first place. Yes
we can change individuals, but the system must change to stop the cycle.
The Revolutionary 12 Steps is one of our most widely
distributed publications these days, but we need more feedback from
comrades putting it into practice to expand that program. And while it
is written primarily for substance abuse, it can be applied by anyone
who wants to reform themselves from bourgeois ways to revolutionary
proletarian ways.
In other states, like Georgia and Alabama,
parole is almost unheard of. The counterinsurgency programs there
are less advanced, creating more revolutionary situations than exist in
California prisons today. In the years leading up to the massive hunger
strikes in CDCR, MIM mail was completely (illegally) banned from
California prisons. Today, it is rare for California prisoners to have
trouble receiving our mail, yet subscribership is down.
Solutions
A California prisoner: Personally I would like to see
play-by-play instructions for unity. I saw something like that in the
last Abolitionist paper from Critical Resistance. A lot of us
want unity but don’t know how to form groups or get it done. I know
MIM’s line on psychology, however it has its uses. The government
consults psychologists when they want to know how to control people or
encourage unity among their employees. I suggest MIM consult a psych for
a plan on how to unify people, then print the play-by-play instructions
in ULK. It’s a positive message prisoners want to hear.
MIM(Prisons) responds: As mentioned above, building the
United Front for Peace in Prisons was a top topic in ULK for a
long time, so you might want to reference back issues of ULK on
that topic and MIM Theory 14. Psychology is a pseudo-science
because it attempts to predict individuals and diagnose them with
made-up disorders that have no scientific criteria. Social engineering,
however, is a scientific approach based in practice. By interacting with
people you can share experiences and draw conclusions that increase your
chances of success in inter-persynal interactions. This is applying
concepts to culture at the group level, not to biology of the
individual.
Again, the key point here is practice. To be honest, the engagement
with the United Front for Peace in Prisons has decreased over the years,
so we have had less reports. Coming back to the question of how to
approach people in a way that they don’t get turned off by “commie”
stuff, a solution to this should come from USW leaders attempting
different approaches, sharing that info with each other, and summing up
what agitational tactics seemed to work best. Comrades on the outside
could participate as well, but tactics in prison may differ from tactics
that work on college campuses vs. anti-war rallies vs. transit
centers.
A North Carolina prisoner: i look forward to receiving
the paper and i love to contribute to the paper. ULK is not
just a newspaper in the traditional sense of the word it’s more than
that. It’s something to be studied and grasped, and saved for future
educational purposes. In my opinion its the only publication that hasn’t
been compromised.
i think ya’ll should publish more content on New Afrikan
Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) then ya’ll do. To be honest, the
ULK is probably the only publication that provides content that
elucidates NARN. Nonetheless, ya’ll keep doing what ya’ll doing.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We’ll never turn away a
well-done NARN article, so keep them coming. This is a newsletter by and
for prisoners of the United $nakes.
A Pennsylvania prisoner: As with everything,
“education” is a key factor. A lot of people really have a lack of
comprehension of the Maoist, Socialism, Communism agenda or actual
belief system is about. I have a general idea, but not the whole
picture. Many people are ignorant to what it is all about. … I was a bit
of a skeptic when I first began writing MIM(Prisons), but I no longer am
3 years later.
As I have continued to write and read all your ULKs I have
begun to realize what you stand for, and that is the common people who
are struggling to survive in a world full of powerful people, who do not
play by the rules. … Those powerful and wealthy who have forgotten what
it is like to be human. … When I get released from prison later this
year and get back on my feet I do plan to donate to MIM(Prisons) because
I strongly support what you stand for.
…It was word of mouth that got me interested in ULK, and
that is what we should use to spread the word. Sooner or later someone,
somewhere is gonna get interested.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate this comrade’s
continued engagement and struggling with the ideas in ULK. Eir
description of what we do is accurate. Though, the same could be said
for many prisoner newsletters. We recommend comrades check out “What is
MIM(Prisons)?” on page 2 to get an idea of what differentiates us from
the others; and to ask questions and study more than ULK to
better understand those differences.
A Washington prisoner: I believe there has not been
enough exposure of ULK in the prison system. I only happened on
it by chance. I sought out communist education on my own after not being
able to shake an urge that there was something incredibly wrong with the
political and economic structures in my surroundings. I believe we
should launch a campaign of exposure and agitation. Create and pass out
pamphlets and newsletters geared to helping people see the relevance of
communism and their current situation. For a start, I would like to
receive copies of the Revolutionary 12 Step Program pamphlets
to strategically place in my facility so prisoners can have access to
them.
MIM(Prisons) concludes: Expanding ULK just for
the sake of it would be what we call a sectarian error. Sectarianism is
putting one’s organization (one’s own “sect”) above the movement to end
oppression. The reason we are promoting the campaign to expand
ULK is that we see it as a surrogate for measuring the interest
in and influence of anti-imperialist organizing in U.$. prisons. As
comrades above have touched on, there is always a limitation in access
and numbers do matter. Most prisoners have never heard of ULK.
The more we can change that, the more popular we can expect
anti-imperialism to be within U.$. prisons and the more organized we’d
expect people to get there.
We are working on expanding our work with and organizing of prisoner
art. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. More art that
captures the ideas of our movement can help us reach more people more
quickly. So send in your art that reflects the concepts discussed in
ULK. We also offer outside support for making fliers and small
pamphlets. What types of fliers and small pamphlets, besides the
Revolutionary 12 Steps, would be helpful for reaching more
prisoners with our ideas and perhaps getting them to subscribe to
ULK?
Another way to reach people in prison is through radio and podcasts.
We are looking for information on what types of platforms and podcasts
prisoners have access to that we might tap into.
We only received 4 responses to our survey in ULK 84 in time
to print in this issue. This is another data point that indicates the
low level of engagement with ULK compared to the past. Another
possible explanation for lack of responses is that this survey was more
difficult to answer than previous surveys we’ve done because it is
asking for explanations more than hard facts. Either way, in our attempt
to always improve our understanding of the conditions we are working in,
we are printing the survey questions one more time (also see questions
above). Even if your answer to all the questions below are “no”, we’d
appreciate your response in your next letter to us.
Have you noticed changes in the prison system that have made it
harder for people to subscribe to ULK or less interested in
subscribing?
Have you noticed changes in the prisoner population that have
made people less interested in subscribing?
Have you noticed/heard of people losing interest in ULK because
of the content, or because of the practices of MIM(Prisons)?
What methods have you seen be successful in getting people
interested in or to subscribe to ULK?
Do you have ideas for how we can increase interest in ULK in
prisons?