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.
Black lives matter, or so the slogan goes. To who does these lives
matter is the real question. Tell this to the black mother who teaches
her son to be careful of strangers, polite and respectful to his elders.
He pays strict attention to his mother and plays in the playground,
where he feels safe. He runs back and forth playing with his friend, his
little amerikkkan baseball cap and his two dollar plastic water gun,
only to be shot down in a hail of 9mm bullets by men who spend their
days training at a gun range qualifying to achieve only the highest
marksmen scores.
Black lives matter, or so the slogan goes. Just attempt to explain that
to the Black mother whose son’s bullet riddled body lies in the street
on display for four hours, for other Black men to witness and be a
reminder of what is in store for them if they dare think about talking
back to a police officer. Yet after the gun smoke has cleared and the
law deems this an appropriate action, against a creditable threat, there
are those who still are foolish enough to think about having a sit down
and dialog the matter of why Black lives don’t matter to them.
The so-called Black leaders are only leading us to the devil for
slaughter. Black leaders jump on a plane and travel halfway across the
globe in an attempt to diplomatically broker a cease fire in a foreign
country, yet they are missing in action when it comes to driving into
the next county to stand up to the racist cop who proudly stated that he
hates niggas.
Black lives matter, or so the slogan goes. Yet if a gay couple gets
stared at sideways, the whole country is up in arms and the very best
lawyer that money could buy defends them, free of charge, to prove that
this great country has stepped into a brand new day. While little
Jamal’s mother is given some background public defender who claims that
the world will listen to us and we will make a difference.
When will they learn that the only way these Black lives will matter is
when they tell the world that talking and dialogs only ends up with dead
children. The time is done for talking, let’s give them the only thing
that they understand, the only thing they respect. When a rabid animal
approaches you it’s not interested in talking or being rational, it
deserves to be put down, or the infectious disease that it suffers from
will only spread wider and stronger until it consumes an area that can
no longer be contained. When will we wake up and stop being lead, and
take the lead, before there are no more Black lives to matter.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We echo this writer’s call for organizing
against the entire system that uses police brutality as just one tool in
an arsenal of national oppression and social control. Dialogues with
those who have the guns and power will not convince them to just give
that up. We can only make serious and lasting change by force. This is
why MIM(Prisons) is a revolutionary communist organization: we have
learned from history that only a revolution, led by the proletariat and
so fought in the interests of the oppressed and exploited, will put an
end to the brutality and suffering under capitalism. Police brutality is
just one aspect of this suffering.
This writer draws a contrast between the fight against gender oppression
(against gays) and the fights against national oppression, noting that
there is institutional money and support to fight the former while there
is institutional support to maintain the latter. Overall we agree that
within U.$. borders the majority actually enjoy gender privilege. But we
should not ignore the hate crimes against the queer community. Many of
these attacks target oppressed nations. Being New Afrikan and gay or
transgender is even more dangerous than just being New Afrikan. In 2012,
for instance, 50% of LGBTQ homicide victims were New Afrikan, 19.2% were
Latin@ and only 11.5% were white.(1) And we should never pit the gender
oppressed against the national oppressed. All oppressed people are
allies in the fight against imperialism.
Your newsletter is very empowering but a little too hardcore for the
Department of Corrections in Florida. We must not forget where the
people you’re trying to reach are at. Our vernacular is too straight
forward such as using words like “hunger strike” or “organizing of any
kind.” You got to start making your newsletter more informative to
political theory and education and building a community. Fasting has its
time and place, and its reasons. But we must be mindful how we address
certain issues. I look up to George Jackson and how he focused on
building the Black Guerilla Family (BGF). I am a new generation Black
Panther and I use your newsletters in my political education classes. We
are all in the same struggle for liberation, but we must understand that
real unity comes from sharing and mutual cooperation between the
comrades of revolution.
I’ve been in prison for 14 years and only had to fast once. Yes, it did
make the pigs do their job. However, from my observation and
participation we need to all just come together and focus on building
communities that can adjust to their social housing. Because it’s not
the pigs who do the raping, stealing, robbing, stabbing, killing, etc.
If BGF had to put a worldwide ban on all gangbanging, what makes you
think teaching them how to organize will make things any better? There
are a lot of groups who you ain’t gonna be able to unite and bring
peace. I’m not knocking your work, but we got to put political
differences aside and focus on building a commune that will protect and
serve the people. It can’t be just a prison thing. In order to get a
strong hold in any state you must have dedicated troops on both sides
(prison and turf) all working together under one banner. Yes
ULK and United Struggle from Within are established but the
people who claim that they are united under the banner of the United
Front for Peace in Prisons (UFPP) are the very same people oppressing
the people with gang violence.
How can 3 Blood Kingdoms unite with the UFPP when the actual leader of
these Blood sets are in opposition with the idea of peace and unity?
Most of these dudes be renegades who try to get some type of support to
continue their renegading. And not knowing any better we, out of
unconditional love for revolution, tell them that it’s okay. No! We must
draw the line and be str8 forward with them! You can’t be a liberator by
day and an oppressor by night! Your newsletter is on the banned list
becuz these renegaders are using you as a sponsor for their renegading,
plus the vernacular in the newsletters is too flamboyant. Look at how
fast these same dudes are requesting to be removed off your mailing
list. Their loyalty is not in the UFPP, it’s to their sets. Please don’t
let them be the demise of a powerful tool we need in here. I don’t wish
to be removed becuz I’m loyal to revolution.
I believe if you ease up on your newsletter and focus on educating the
people about theory and what’s going on in the free world the pigs will
allow the newsletter to circulate. Communicating and educating is power,
so when that is cut off proper growth and development is dead. You
probably thinking why didn’t I grieve it? Well how can I get round
justifying my rights to have a newsletter that blatantly uses vernacular
that gives the pigs every right to reject it according to Rule
33-501.401 FAC (3)(G) stating: “It is dangerously inflammatory in that
it advocates or encourages riot, insurrection, disruption of the
institution, violation of department or institution rules.” And (3)(m)
stating: “It otherwise presents a threat to the security, good order, or
discipline of the correctional system or the safety of any person.”
The pigs read everything that comes in this slave plantation, so you
can’t put your comrades on the chopping block to get their heads cut off
politically. If you’re going to coach then coach, but don’t forget that
you’re out there in the free world and we are not. Every day we have to
deal with these pigs’ bullshit! And they use the gangs as their puppets
to do hits for smokes and food. That’s the real story in this place that
the prisoners are brushing under the rug. It ain’t just the pigs who are
oppressing our people, it’s their puppets. So we got to build
self-defense communities that are not afraid to establish new order in
the land. It’s too many chiefs and political debates about bullshit.
Ride or Die! Unite or Perish!
MIM(Prisons) responds: It’s always good to hear about serious
organizers using MIM(Prisons) literature in political education classes
and as organizing tools. And this comrade is writing from a state where
most issues of Under Lock & Key are being censored
systematically, so we do need to take seriously our challenge of getting
political literature in to prisoners in Florida. This writer says we
need to focus on educating people about theory, and we do have a lot of
theory resources available to anyone who asks (just trade some work for
lit if you can’t pay). But ULK is an agitation and
organizational publication, and our goal is to educate people through
information and news about what’s going on in prisons and in the world
in general. We purposely maintain this focus instead of just putting out
political theory because we need a tool that can organize people. If we
only offer political theory we are missing the final step in helping
people to connect the theory with practice. While we agree with this
comrade that there are some things we do not need to say, we cannot
sacrifice our political line to get our publication inside. And the fact
is that the prisons use these “dangerously inflammatory” and “threat to
security” claims for all sorts of literature we mail to prisoners,
including reference materials, history books and theory.
Further, we do not agree with this comrade that ULK actually
fits within those rules for censorship. Instead of presenting a threat
to security and good order, ULK actually promotes security by
promoting peace. The prisons, on the one hand, claim that prisoners
fighting one another is one of the biggest problems they face and so
they need more guards and more security weapons to deal with this
problem, and then when a publication shows up promoting peace among
prisoners they claim this is a threat to security as well. We need to
fight this bogus claim. ULK does not encourage violation of
rules, and in fact for events like the September 9 day of peace, we
encourage prisoners to work within the rules of their institution to
build peace. Even hunger strikes were developed as a form of non-violent
protest, so we will continue to fight the censors who claim reporting on
them somehow encourages “violence and insurrection.” To them, prisoners
in peaceful protest is a threat of violence and pigs beating prisoners
is instituting security. To them newspapers calling for the bombing of
other countries are cool, but newspapers exposing torture in U.$.
prisons are dangerous. We cannot accept such double standards and
hypocrisy.
As for the question of various lumpen organizations declaring their
unity with the United Front for Peace in Prisons and then turning around
and disrupting efforts to build peace, we recognize that this is a
potential contradiction with lumpen organizations. It is a real
challenge for groups that have historically promoted
prisoner-on-prisoner violence to take up organizing for peace. We cannot
expect this path to be smooth and easy. Nor can we expect all groups to
join us on this path. But even the declaration of support for the UFPP
is a step forward for LOs. And we must work to push them even further
and confront their contradictions, rather than dismissing them as
hopeless. For the record, we don’t have lots of people asking to stop
their subscription to ULK. In fact very few people write to be
removed from our list once they get a copy of ULK. And our
subscribers continue to increase, even in high censorship states like
Florida and North Carolina, because people hear about our organizing to
fight that censorship. When the pigs stop abusing and torturing people
in U.$. prisons we will shift the content of our newsletter to focus on
parts of the world where people are still being abused and tortured.
Prisoners day - September 9th - must be kept silent no more. This
particular day, marking its ground breaking appearance on 9 September
1971, is making a slow steady trod towards mass movements and prisoner
organizations from the east coast to the west.
Any prisoner subscribing to Under Lock & Key, or the
variety of political newsletters free to prisoners, can attest to the
constant reminders of the one day that prisoners stood up in unity to
get shot down, and lifted back up year after year. For many who are
familiar with the Attica uprising, just hearing the name Attica
reawakens the stories told about the protest back east, where a select
few brothers of a mixture of lumpen organizations were put in a position
to stand for something and not just fall for anything. A protest from
which many political prisoners take inspiration today in their thirst
for freedom. Attica became legendary.
Many prisoners were forced into the tombs of the beast, known as the
control unit facilities, for their commitment to keeping alive the
memory of the day that history was made by prisoners struggling for a
common cause. These prisoners forced into the tombs of the beast, who
spoke from the grave to the injustice of the system, became the silent
force of an already nuclear-reactor-type vibration within U$ prisons.
As time went on so then did the minds and movements of the masses, its
leaders, and the lumpen organizations charged with serving the interest
of the prisoners. The lines of the parties involved with commemorating
the anniversary of Attica were crossed and compromised. The dream of
rehabilitation and reforms set many in backward positions compliant to
the interest of the enemy of the prisoners, the state.
Details of the September 9 uprising and certain individuals involved
began meaning less and less. The historical facts, leadership, and goals
became gossip of he said she said, your homie got my father killed.
The state understood the importance of stemming the tide with the tactic
of division, thus a line was drawn between the political prisoner and
the prisoner just trying to do their time and get back to what they knew
as freedom. The latter wanted nothing to do with the former, as these
old timer political prisoners were viewed as extreme in their ideas and
objectives. The former, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the
latter, who at each turn of the age began to appear as a type of
foreman, respecting the privileges and rewards for the good behavior of
not upsetting the system. Even to this day these lines are the principal
contradiction between the prisoner mass and the few political leaders.
Attica served as an example to both sides of the fence. Power is in
people’s unity. With the support of the people at Attica in 1971, time
stood still long enough for prisoners to occupy the prison yard and a
few dorms. In a stand off with state police, prisoners demanded to be
afforded humyn decency.
The end result was the murders of many who knew they had nothing to lose
but their chains. Attica’s effect is on all prisoners. Attica’s effect
lives with prisoners even today. Let prisoners refresh their memories in
as many uprisings as possible with peace as the objective.
It is not at this time that prisoners should be waging war with each
other. Nor should we, in the United $tates, be taking up armed struggle.
We must learn that prisoners must not prey on other prisoners with
exploitative practices that result in the beefs that go beyond prison
yards and effect more than just the local factions. But prisoners must
consider the conditions of the entire class which it is rooted in and
decide what direction it as a whole will move in.
Attica gave birth to many many great prisoner demonstrations and prison
uprisings across the United $tates. More recently in Texas, California,
North Carolina, and Georgia, just to name a few.
The day of solidarity is rooted in a reality that prisoners must at some
points and time, for a specific frame of time, put to the side their
differences in order to pool the energy and resources for the causes
that contribute to tearing down this system as they know it. And after
that, if they want to go back to their state of parasitic lifestyles,
then they can take it up with the people.
The September 9 Day of Peace and Solidarity is the prisoner’s memorial
day; the convict holiday. It is the one day that prisoners as a whole
can safely cross the lines of divide that have been expanded over the
ages of time. Prisoners at this time can become festive in their
anticipation of the entertainment, education, application and advocation
of a vocal prisoner mass speaking up and out to the injustice of the
U.$. prison system.
USW invites all those who have committed to the
five
principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons to participate
in the coming September 9 celebrations. Submit high quality artwork to
our Strugglen Artist Association to be printed and circulated within
your prison, spreading the message of peace on September 9. Our comrades
MIM(Prisons) offer political books free of charge that your group can
study and write or draw your interpretations of the reading. You can
even just write a statement describing the nature of your local
September 9 celebration program.
It is now the age of speak up speak out for prisoners. If prisoners can
build upon their shared experiences like the uprisings in the past,
their voices can speak to their interests aligned with the
internationally oppressed, and begin upsetting the system one state at a
time.
Then and only then will the power be reinstated in the leadership who
are most capable of representing the interests of the whole, without
fear of retaliation or repression for their leadership roles. The
September 9 Day of Peace and Solidarity prepares all prisoners for the
day that all must make the decision of whether they’ll stand up for
something or fall for anything.
For those who want Rashid’s criticism with our point-by-point response
(“100
Reasons Why Rashid Needs to STFU About MIM(Prisons)”) and a list of
suggested study material on the many topics referenced you can get a
copy from us for $4 or work-trade. If you have a hard time
distinguishing between MIM(Prisons) and the NABPP-PC, as many do, then
you should study this material until the differences are obvious.
It is useful to use this as a teaching moment on how to provide
scientific leadership. In particular, we encourage everyone to study
logic and logical fallacies as a part of learning to think
scientifically. Here are a few basic principles which we found severely
lacking in Rashid’s polemic:
Mao taught us “no investigation, no right to speak.” Rashid’s long
attack on MIM(Prisons) gets many points wrong about our political line.
These points are found clearly in the literature we distribute free to
prisoners and have readily available on-line. A significant portion of
his polemic focuses on the membership requirements for our study groups,
for United Struggle from Within (USW) and for MIM(Prisons), sloppily
confusing them all, and spreading misinformation in the process.
Correctness of ideas must be assessed independent of who says them.
Rashid defends his criticism of the labor aristocracy line by accusing
MIM(Prisons) comrades of having petty-bourgeois backgrounds.
MIM(Prisons) could be Satan, but that doesn’t mean there’s no labor
aristocracy. This approach is a political bullet to the head, and is a
fallacy of irrelevance.
A lot of Rashid’s article is baiting for information about
MIM(Prisons). Whether intentional or not, this is pig work. We do not
give out any information that the pigs could use to assess or destroy
our movement. And anonymity isn’t just about security, it’s also about
teaching people to think scientifically rather than follow the persyn
with the right skin tone or haircut. We are against identity politics,
which are too easily controlled by the oppressor. People who buy into
identity politics also defend Obama just because he’s Black.
Taking a scientific conclusion about a group and then applying it to
individuals or small segments of that group is called an “ecological
fallacy” and is a basic statistical error. During the Chinese Cultural
Revolution, Maoists spent much time combating this tendency, because
people were attacking others based on their family’s class background.
Sociology as a science allows us to predict things with a certain
probability. We can say that the petty bourgeoisie as a class has
particular interests, and therefore it is very likely that an individual
from that class will defend that interest. But that likelihood is less
than 100%.
Educational Urgency
This criticism from Rashid, as baseless as it is, does highlight the
urgency of getting our interactive glossary finally available on-line,
and sending it to our readers behind bars. It also underlines the
importance of sending literature to our subscribers and conducting study
groups, whether led by MIM(Prisons) or by USW comrades.
Like most prisoners, Rashid does not have easy access to our website,
and he’s only able to access literature from us that the prison mailroom
permits him to have. We have no reason to believe Rashid has received or
read any of the most fundamental material on our political line, which
is perhaps an error on our part. He criticizes our class definitions,
and in criticizing them completely misrepresents them. Our class
definitions have been made public to prisoners with most clarity in the
booklet Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist
Ministry of Prisons. This booklet was published in March 2012 and
contains all our class definitions spelled out in paragraph form.
Additionally, we send a short list of these definitions to all new
subscribers. It would be overkill to expect us to provide a full
definition each time we use a word, as Rashid seems to require. Our last
response to Rashid was written assuming he had access to definitions of
our political line, perhaps another error on our part.
In our newsletter Under Lock & Key, we publish economic
analysis, mostly regarding class relationships in the First World.
Rashid’s most recent criticism of MIM(Prisons) suggest that he does not
read ULK. It’s unclear to us if Rashid has read any
contemporary material on the labor aristocracy; whether by MIM(Prisons),
Ehecatl, or Zak Cope. [Update: Rashid has since published
a criticism of Zak Cope’s book
Divided World Divided Class on his website. Similar to his
critique of MIM(Prisons), he does not actually engage any of the
evidence provided by Cope. For those who are interested in some good
material on the labor aristocracy question you’d be better off reading
the debate that Zak Cope had with labor-aristocracy denier Charles
Post.]
Defining Mass Work
Rashid claims MIM(Prisons) has no mass work to speak of. He thinks the
labor aristocracy should be our mass base, and we think they are enemies
of the international proletariat, so it makes sense that MIM(Prisons)
would not engage in what Rashid would consider mass work.
Assuming for a moment that we do agree on a mass base, how would Rashid
even know what MIM(Prisons)’s practice is amongst those masses? Rashid
doesn’t engage in our study groups, doesn’t write articles for
ULK, and doesn’t participate in United Struggle from Within
(USW) campaigns, or any other prisoner-based projects we facilitate.
Rashid claims our organizing with prisoners is either (a) nonexistent or
(b) taking advantage of a vulnerable population. If by “vulnerable” he
means “not completely bought off by the spoils of imperialism” and
“having a direct material interest in overthrowing imperialism and
destroying Amerikkka,” then yeah.
For as much as Rashid is out of touch with our prisoner organizing, he
is ten times more out of touch with the organizing we do outside of
prisons. As a security-conscious organization, we don’t publicize where,
when, or how much organizing we do outside of prison. Yet Rashid claims
to be an expert on our practice, and claims we have none. This sort of
baseless shit-talking is another logical fallacy, as it still does not
address the labor aristocracy question. Rashid spends much time trying
to make us look bad, while avoiding actually having to make sound
arguments against our political line.
Importance of Class Background
True or not, Rashid’s petty-bourgeois accusations are not that exciting.
Here are some facts which should not surprise anyone: MIM(Prisons)
operates in the United $tates. MIM(Prisons) comrades are not in prison.
MIM(Prisons) comrades have time to devote to revolutionary study and
work. At least some MIM(Prisons) comrades have money to donate to
purchasing, publishing and mailing books and newsletters to prisoners
for free. At least some MIM(Prisons) comrades are fluent in writing and
reading the English language. Considering the vast majority of the U.$.
population is petty bourgeois (which includes the labor aristocracy,
which Rashid calls the proletariat), it doesn’t take a stroke of genius
to assume that at least some MIM(Prisons) comrades are likely petty
bourgeois.
Class backgrounds certainly play a role in subjective political
orientation, and that’s where class suicide comes in. Just as we try to
encourage members of the lumpen class to abandon their petty-bourgeois
tendencies and align themselves (against their immediate material
interests) with the international proletariat, we also encourage members
of the labor aristocracy, petty bourgeoisie, and bourgeoisie to commit
class suicide and work in favor of the international proletariat. In
Rashid’s studies of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China,
we’re surprised he didn’t also pick up the principle that criticizing an
individual based on their class background is a textbook error.
The important question is, does our work do more to support the
international proletariat, or more to support the First World classes
(including the bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie, and labor aristocracy)?
Rashid says MIM(Prisons) comrades should commit class suicide. Yet we
are the ones actively campaigning to redistribute wealth away from the
country we live in, while the NABPP-PC allies with the labor aristocracy
oinking for more.
Scientific Approach to Revolutionary Work
Below are a couple excerpts from our annotated response to Rashid’s
criticism:
Rashid: MIMP admits choosing prisoners because they
prove most receptive to its ‘leadership’ which in essence means MIMP has
latched onto a particularly
vulnerable and desperate social group(1), an isolated group whose
severely miserable predicament leaves them desperate(2) for any
sympathetic ear and tending to be less critical of those who present
themselves as sympathetic. Also prisoners generally lack political
awareness and training and access to the voluminous Marxist and relevant
works. So they are least suited to critically challenge MIMP’s Maoist
representations.(3)
MIM(Prisons): 1. Patronizing. 2. Desperate for change.
How is the proletariat better than this? 3. We distribute these
materials for free to any prisoner in the United $tates who is genuinely
interested. Our work-trade standards are just to help us determine who
will make the best use of these resources, so we aren’t sending them to
people who will just throw them in the trash. Send us work (art,
article, organizing report, etc) and engage with us and we’ll send you
plenty of free study materials with no strings attached. So to say we
try to keep prisoners in the dark so that they can’t criticize us is
just bullshit.(p. 10)
Rashid: Contrary to Stalin’s admonition, MIMP neither
has its feet planted within the masses, nor is it willing to “listen to
the voices” of its followers, or anyone else for that matter. A point we
should look at closer, from a Maoist standpoint.
MIM(Prisons): What is the evidence that we don’t listen
to our followers? We definitely don’t listen to the enemy class, as that
is not the masses. We don’t aim to organize the labor aristocracy but we
are in very close contact with lumpen masses. The only “evidence” Rashid
presents in this essay to prove that we don’t listen to the lumpen are
(a) that we don’t accept his “class analysis” of classes in the United
$tates, and (b) that we removed someone from our study group because
they had clear dividing line differences with us that we were not going
to change, see below. These are two people we tried to struggle with at
length and determined to have dividing line differences with us. We
struggle with the lines represented by these two entities (Rashid and
Ruin) continuously in the pages of Under Lock & Key, which
is more efficient than one-on-one struggle, especially in this case. And
they are more than welcome to keep writing to us and keep receiving
ULK for free forever. But no, we’re not likely going to reneg
on our six main points which define our organization.(p. 12)
Rashid lacks an understanding of the importance of organizational
structure and political standards. Liberalism on our 6 main points for
membership in our organizations would be the antithesis of providing
scientific leadership. This is MIM(Prison) clearly drawing lines around
political questions that we think are most important to advancing the
revolutionary struggle at this time. To those who oppose this scientific
approach to revolutionary organizing, we suggest you may be better off
working with another group. There are plenty of organizations out there
that will accept anyone as a member, regardless of political line or
ability to think critically, and which are happy to debate whether 2+2=4
endlessly. We will provide the doubters plenty of political resources
that explain how we know 2+2=4, but we won’t waste our time, or limited
ULK space, on unscientific people who insist the answer is 3.
The sovereign citizens movement has become among the top domestic
terrorist groups on the FBI’s list in the United $tates for refusing to
cooperate with the government. People of this movement assume an
artificial independence as a nation and refuse to file taxes, carry any
type of license or hold a social security card. Question is, where does
the anti-imperialist movement stand with these individuals and how does
their approach to liberation compare to that of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
It is reported that more than 300,000 people are self-declared sovereign
citizens in the United $tates, and it is predicted to be one of the
fastest growing movements in U.$. history.(1) So it is a reasonable
question to ask whether these people are on to something or not.
It appears that the sovereign citizens movement is currently one of a
mixture of oppressed nation lumpen, bourgeois nationalists and petty
bourgeois organizations across the United $tates. For example, among
those claiming to be sovereign citizen organizations are the New Afrikan
groups like the Moorish Nation, the Mawshakh Nation of Nuurs and the
Washitaw Nation, both Islamic and Hebrewic. Then there are the white
nationalists responsible for publications and broadcasting programs for
the movement: From the Embassy of Heaven, The Aware Group, the Republic
of Texas, Rightway LAW, Freedom Bound International and Amen-Ra BTO,
Inc.; and personalities like David W. Miller, Charles Weisman, Alfred
Adask, George Gordon and Brent Johnson.
Lumpen class in search of answers
The talk of sovereign citizens in prison was first heard by the author
in 2009, promoted by a variety of lumpen prisoners professing to be
card-holding members of the jailhouse lawyers National Lawyers Guild.
They claimed to possess the mysterious knowledge, which utilized in U.$.
courts could result in riches from financial settlements, as well as the
potential of an early release for prisoners who have learned the craft
of cracking the code described as redemption.
Lumpen in the United $tates, in general, are always looking for a come
up, but they rarely consider at what cost will they come up. They, in
general, believe that if they can just grow their underground economy
they can free themselves. This viewpoint is a product of the lumpen’s
relationship to capitalism as belonging to internal semi-colonies.
Lumpen are excluded from the prosperous imperialist economy overall, yet
given tastes of that wealth via these underground economies that also
provide an illusion of acting outside of the system. It seems that the
popularity of the sovereign citizens movement in prisons can be
explained this way, the difference being that it actually claims to be
based in law.
With its promises of wealth, stature, independence and self-control,
lumpen prisoners are not blamed for lining up to receive what they’ve
been conditioned to know as being freedom. However, they are cautioned
that everything that glitters isn’t gold. What we see at play is the
principal contradiction that defines the lumpen class in our society:
the individualist tendencies to come up at the expense of others that
are required of an excluded class in a capitalist economy, and the need
for collective action to overcome those conditions and attain true
freedom. We even see the New Afrikan organizations promoting the ideas
of sovereign citizenship have borrowed from the ideas of national
liberation movements as well. But rather than fight for national
liberation of New Afrika, they define their nation in opportunistic ways
as if a nation is something that any group of people can just create out
of thin air. We recognize nations as scientific phenomena, that exist in
the real world and are defined as a group of people with a common
culture, territory, language and economy.
It is important that lumpen prisoners begin to pick out the right
things, that which they have persynally tested, inspected, researched
and referenced to reality in the method of dialectical materialism.
Lumpen prisoners have a problem in the areas of these last four key
words: tested, inspected, researched and referenced. This failure is the
main cause of the material circumstances leading to the divisions
between the individualist lumpen prisoners vs. the self-sufficient
collective of prisoners struggling for liberation within the movement
towards national independence.
Too often lumpen prisoners get something, or hear of something from
another inmate and they just run with it, spreading something that they
are unfamiliar with and misinforming others. The sovereign citizens
movement has benefited from this tendency.
What is sovereign citizens about?
Lumpen prisoners of white oppressor nation origins probably can describe
a more definitive history of this movement beginning somewhere in the
1960s to challenge the legitimacy of U.$. tax laws and the U.$.
government itself. It is doubted whether most oppressed nation prisoners
can describe the founding groups, from Oregon and California, like the
Posse Comitatus, which is based in extreme, unrealistic white supremacy.
The philosophy of the sovereign citizens movement is based in the theory
that the U.$. government is operating as a fraud commercial entity that
is bankrupted and indebted to foreign nations. Many sovereign citizens
movement groups subscribe to this idea in that the original U.$.
government was that of colonial Amerika based in British common law as a
de jure government. After the civil war there supposedly
developed a secondary government de facto of its previous
state-based governments of settlers.
When they say de jure, they mean legal and therefore
legitimate. In contrast, de facto means that it exists but it
is not official. It is common to refer to a de facto government
after a civil war to imply that things have not been settled and brought
back to order. What that order is, is of course a political question in
itself. The dictatorship over the capitalists in the south by the
capitalists of the northern states after the civil war was a progressive
one that marked the end of slavery and forced integration on the white
settlers, though much of the progress on integration was later turned
back by reactionary forces and proved an overall failure. Therefore, to
question the legitimacy of the post-civil war government in the United
$tates has a clear connection to this ongoing reactionary movement for
white supremacy in North America. While these forces see independence
and state’s rights as a means of maintaining their national privilege,
the internal semi-colonies are attracted to national liberation
struggles (and therefore other politics of local control) as means of
ending the national oppression that is the other side of the dialectical
coin. To have an oppressor nation, you must have at least one oppressed
nation.
Many sovereign proponents, like the Whitten Printers, have broken down
the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.$. Constitution to the least common
denominator. They argue that it was created by the de facto
government in order to nationalize Black slaves and afford free Black
slaves with comparable rights of the unalienable Constitutional rights
of white settler state citizens, leading us to question whether they are
reading from the same history books as the rest of us struggling for
self-determination.
These sovereign citizens hold that they are not subject to the
nationalization process to become federal citizens under the Fourteenth
Amendment de facto government because they weren’t slaves, they
aren’t colored, and they never signed into any contract agreements with
the de facto government. Basically, they are royal citizens
holding on to the good ol’ days of the British colonies. Ain’t that
cute.
Critics of the sovereign citizens theory assert that it fails to
sufficiently examine the context of the case law from which they cite
and ignore adverse evidence, such as The Federalist No. 15, where
Alexander Hamilton expressed the view that the Constitution placed
everyone persynally under federal authority. And as the Fourteenth
Amendment itself reads, in part:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the
state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”(2)
Additionally,
“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by
law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for
services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be
questioned.”(3)
All oppressed nation prisoners must be aware of these facts before they
allow themselves to be rallied into support for a movement like the
sovereign citizens. The sovereign citizens movement is a white oppressor
nation movement whose interest is directly in conflict with yours. They
want to preserve imperialism at the cost of your independence and
self-determination. National liberation from the imperialist states is
in the interest of all lumpen prisoners, and the best way to effect this
objective is for all the semi-colonies of the United $tates to support
national liberation struggles of the oppressed.
We must also remind comrades that the fascist movement in Italy and the
Nazi movement in Germany were appealing to a primarily dissatisfied
petty bourgeoisie as well as lumpen and proletarian elements with
rhetoric against the state, the bankers and big businesses at the time
with some nonsensical religious ideas mixed in and lots of chauvinism.
In the event of further imperialist crisis, if the imperialists are
pushed to take a fascist approach to managing the people and economy,
the sovereign citizens and similar movements will be the ready made mass
movements that provide the footsoldiers for such a project. The
oppressed peoples of the world must combat this with proletarian
internationalism and dialectical materialism and break free of the
ignorance that allows us to be suckered by the false claims of such
groups.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We want to give Loco1 props for working on
this review of the sovereign citizens movement. S/he was one of a number
of comrades who have written us about it. And as a very active leader in
USW we asked h to write a critique of the ideology behind the movement.
Loco1 was hesitant at first for lack of information and knowing where to
start.
While limiting access to information helps prevent ideological unity
across the imprisoned lumpen, this article goes to show the greater
importance of method. Loco1 was able to spearhead this critique with
limited resources at h fingertips, but using an analytic approach.
Some of the appeal of the sovereign citizens and similar right-wing
anti-government movements is based in an appeal to authority, where they
cite a bunch of case law in an effort to convince you that they know
what they are talking about. But this reliance on caselaw itself is
idealism. It is similar to those who search for answers in ancient
religions, as if there is a secret out there that just needs to be found
and it will solve all our problems. This is appealing, it is a theme
that sells many movies and books, but it is not reality. A real way to
solve problems is to understand reality, the contradictions that make it
up, and how things are moving so that we can transform reality. No one
has been liberated by sovereign citizen paperwork, because it is just
words on paper, and words on paper cannot magically liberate you from a
real system that is made up of millions of people.
When young Trayvon Martin was killed, people held candles and prayed to
“God.” And George Zimmerman walked away free. Then we heard of the young
brother in Missouri, unarmed yet gunned down by a pig – an amerikkkan
kolonial thug. The people held candles and quoted fables from the book
of “God.” The pig went free.
Cleveland, Ohio – Black child of twelve. Yes, Black not because of his
dark skin color, but Black because of the gaping wound to human dignity
because he was gunned down by another enforcer of white amerikkkan
privilege. The people wept and prayed while the assassin slithered away
quite free.
Then Wisconsin and another brother of African descent. Unarmed yet shot
and killed by scum who are sworn to “protect and serve.” The killer pig
was not even charged with a crime while the people sing and pray and
dance and wave candles to their “God.” But suddenly – Baltimore.
Freddy Gray killed by pigs. This time people overturn vehicles; break
into businesses; loot them; set fires; throw rocks and bottles at pigs.
And six pigs are indicted.
Perhaps “God” merely honors large candles of burning buildings and
burning cars? Or perhaps white amerikkkans only care about dead people
of color when the financial losses come to Whitey? Like when the
oppressed say, “Get your pigs under control or we will burn your fucking
city to the ground.”
Do we want social and economic justice that requires people held
accountable? Or do we want merely to whine and pray and bemoan the
injustice of the amerikkkan grand jury that failed to indict a pig who
killed a brother selling loose cigarettes? Facts reveal observable
actions leading to desired outcomes. Fables reveal actions of pointless
futility.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This writer is spot on about the failure of
prayer and kind requests to change systemic violence. It is only with
force that the imperialists will give up their guns. Yet we don’t mean
to say that we should just take up arms and act without planning and
organizing.
The righteous anger of the masses in Baltimore is a power that must be
harnessed by a revolutionary vanguard party. The oppressed can
coordinate their actions and ensure these actions are taken only when
victory is possible through strong and centralized leadership. We are
still at the stage of educating and building for revolution. Part of
this work involves spreading anti-imperialist theory to all who know
from personal oppression and experience that they must fight back,
helping them to see the bigger picture and take up leadership in the
struggle.
We must remember that in Oakland, California, cars were lit on fire and
businesses were looted in response to the murder of 22-year-old New
Afrikan Oscar Grant. Grant’s murderer, a transit cop, was indicted,
charged, and imprisoned. In the end, it was a slap on the wrist for this
blatant murder. For a period of time the state will respond to people
protesting in the streets. They may go through some motions or
formalities to appease people and quell their anger. But ultimately
there will just be more names to add to the list of oppressed nation
people killed – a list that has been growing for centuries. It should be
obvious that we need more fundamental changes to our daily life than
body cameras and reliance on our present injustice system.
Imperialism is the ravenous cancer eating away the body of humynkind.
Karnes Detention Center in Texas is owned and operated by slimy fungi in
the guise of humyns known as GEO group. And GEO group is Amerikkkan
kkkapitalists feeding at the table of suffering like worms eating the
insides of defenseless infants.
Karnes Detention Center (KDC) is one of the hundreds of torture chambers
housing lumpen who are labelled “Illegal Immigrants” by the Amerikkkan
elitists. Housed at KDC are mothers and their children. They have no
criminal backgrounds. All came to amerikkka because of persecution in
their native lands. Persecution often caused by amerikkkan kkkapitalist
intervention in the domestic affairs of those lands.
At KDC one lawyer reports seeing many children with persistent cough.
The children complained of no medical care and lack of edible food. A
three-year-old girl with asthma was told to “drink water” when her
mother sought treatment for her.
The food was pre-packaged and expired. Rotted and beyond use. The lawyer
brought cookies for them from a vending machine. One sad looking girl
held hers but did not eat. When the lawyer asked her, the tiny child
said, “I will share mine with mommy.” It was then noticed that none of
the children ate cookies until they could share with their mothers.
KDC exists because of an executive order signed by united snakes
president Obama. He reminds me of a “house nigger.” You know, the “smart
one” who looked after “Massa’s affairs,” and slept in “Massa’s house?”
The one who kept massa informed of dem dumb field niggas jes in case dey
was a plottin’ and schemin’. House nigger don’t care that his
“privilege” stands on the backs of bleeding filed workers. Chief Pig
Obama and GEO Group stock holders get tax money for crushing
undocumented children and their mothers.
Now we could discuss Obama’s overwhelming and extensive use of military
drones to kill innocent families in Third World nations. We could
discuss how house nigger plans to sell drones to other countries to
enable those countries to do “operations” that are illegal for the u.$
to perform. Or we could discuss Judge Gideon of Dewitt Town Court in New
York. He issued an Order of Protection for Colonel Earl Evans. Colonel
Evans is commander of Hancock Field where weaponized Reaper Drones are
remotely piloted to make lethal strikes in Afghanistan. These cowardly
amerikkkans fire missiles and kill innocent Afghani mothers and children
from a cozy office across half a continent and an ocean from the
victims. Slaughter without risk.
But Colonel Evans was granted an Order of Protection. He lives on a
military base surrounded by soldiers with massive weaponry who are
trained and ready to defend Colonel Evans. He needs an Order of
Protection because he wants “protection” from peace activists who stand
outside the base protesting drone warfare. And then Judge Gideon jails
those activists for violating that Order of Protection, circumventing
the First Amendment of the united snakes constipation.
Odd but I hear that old tune “London Bridge is Falling Down,” but the
word “Amerikkka” replaces “London Bridge.” May the piece of shit soon
implode. Maybe then the Afghanis can get an Order of Protection.
[Having a narrow understanding of the world makes it easier to be
manipulated into believing things that aren’t true or that are against
one’s own interests. When we say 80% of the world’s people have an
objective interest in communism, this is not just based on comparing
incomes or wealth. The imperialists try to hide the historical fact that
at one time a third of the world’s people lived in socialist systems,
and this was achieved by the valiant armed struggles of those peoples
fighting for liberation. Even beyond the borders of the socialist
countries the oppressed people of the world openly supported the
leadership of those countries, meaning the vast majority of the world’s
people supported communism as the way forward. We cannot say this today,
but the numbers are certainly higher than most are aware of. In South
Asia, in particular, Maoism has been alive and well among the masses for
decades, and consolidating its forces in recent years. Most of what is
considered South Asia is the state of India. South Asia has some of the
most densely populated regions of the world, with a population much
larger than all of North and South America combined.]
Half a century ago, India was in turmoil, with rebellions popping up in
the countryside. One such being the Marxist-led food movement of 1965
and another being a peasant revolt in 1976 in a village in West Bengal
called Naxalbari. This peasant revolt would later inspire a Maoist-led
people’s movement, which was named after the Naxalbari revolt, and
inspired by Mao Zedong’s model of agrarian reform. The rebels are today
known as “Naxalites” by the locals; we know them as the Communist Party
of India (Maoist) (CPI(Maoist)). Today they are leading the largest
Maoist struggle in the world, liberating vast areas in the jungles,
mountains, and the countryside from the neo-colonial regime of India.
The first Maoists to arrive in the jungles of Abujamarh in 1989 were
largely petty-bourgeois revolutionaries and college students from the
Indian state of Andhra Pradesh following a government crackdown on
communists in the cities. It is here that the Naxalite cadres have taken
up the people’s struggle. In the depth of the jungles the Naxalites have
found a new ally: the adivasi. Adivasi means “original people”
and they are the First Nations within India, who number 84 million, or
about 8.6% of the population. Today the Naxalite communist forces
include not only the petty bourgeoisie and college students, but also
very large numbers of revolutionaries from India’s socially
disadvantaged segment known as “the backward class.” As a matter of
fact, while the CPI(Maoist) was initially composed of various
intellectuals from the cities, it is the admixture of the intellectuals
with the peasants that has given the people’s struggle new life and
sustainability. As the struggle rages on it’s the adivasi who have taken
up leadership roles as CPI(Maoist) cadres, in particular the wimmin who,
according to reports, now make up 60% of the Maoist top hierarchy.
In India’s countryside, where 180 million exploited people survive on
less than two dollars a day; where in poor rural areas like Abujmarh the
farmers, peasants, and the poor can’t even feed themselves; where
children are malnourished and plagued by disease; the people have taken
a revolutionary stand against national oppression. They have taken up
Maoism. According to a recent National Geographic article, what
kicked up the insurrection was newly elected Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s attraction to the country’s mineral wealth, which happens to be
in the Naxalite territories. The coal reserves being the most
attractive, the coal reserves (the fifth largest in the world) fuel the
power plants that light up India’s very distant metropolises. The
company Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), a local subsidiary of Coal
India Limited (CIL), has offered money to locals, jobs and other petty
bribes in return for the locals’ land. Some accepted the bribes, but I
wonder for how long will they last? To the peasant farmers whose
livelihood is linked to their land the state’s bribes hold little
attraction.
The bullshit money CCL offers will go as quick as it came and the petty
jobs will not last forever. What then? The people want to keep their
farmland to be able to feed their families. Many have resisted the
capitalist encroachment, but some have been unable to resist the
pressures from big business. Others have simply sold out. Since it
became law in 1894, the Land Acquisition Act (a colonial legislation
created to allow the bourgeoisie to seize land under the so-called
principal of “eminent domain”) has left millions without homes due to
the state’s mining activities. In response to this the Naxalites have
established people’s courts within both the disputed and liberated zones
so that the masses can not only put the predatory land agents on trial,
but the traitors as well. Such institutions of the oppressed are part of
the building of dual power in India, where an emerging socialist state
challenges the existing capitalist one. The people’s courts follow in
the traditions of the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions. In particular
the latter, after Japanese imperialism’s defeat and liberation from both
British and Amerikan imperialism. With these courts the targets of the
masses were not only pro-Japanese landlords, but counter-revolutionaries
as well.
When discussing political affairs, chiefly the oppression and
exploitation of the Third World countries, people ask, what do you care?
You’re on the other side of the world. Well, as humyn beings we should
care. What the Naxalite/adivasi struggle teaches is that without
national liberation for self-determination of an oppressed nation, which
should be led by a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard, imperialist
oppression will never end. As anti-imperialists we are duty-bound to
support the struggles of the oppressed against imperialism. The adivasi
and other peasant masses are tired of foreign and domestic capital
exploiting their people and their land. The adivasi struggle is our
struggle! With unification of the masses, and with the correct
leadership of the Maoist unity, victory is on the people’s side.
excerpt from a March 2015 report from India:
“Overcoming innumerable obstacles and snatching initiative, PLGA
fighters and urban action team combatants led by the Western Ghats
Special Zonal Committee (WGSZC) of the CPI (Maoist) have opened up a new
warfront in the State of Keralam, situated along the South Western
coast of India… The necessity of taking up arms and advancing the
revolutionary war as the true means to seize and secure the rights of
the adivasis and other masses over the ‘Land, water and forests’ has
been widely propagated through these actions.
“…These actions were carried out as part of a Politico-Military
Campaign (PMC) carried out over a three month period, from November 2014
till January 2015. The aim of the campaign was to prepare the masses for
the revolutionary war, defeat the initiative and aggressiveness of the
enemy armed forces and advance the revolutionary movement…
“The successful completion of the PMC marks a qualitative turn in the
expansion of the people’s war led by the CPI (Maoist) in the country as
well as an overcoming of the stagnation faced in the armed struggle
initiated in the Western Ghats more than a decade ago in the Malnad
region of Karnataka. Facing heavy repression, the party lost 16 of its
valiant leaders and fighters, including comrades Saketh Rajan and
Rajamouli (Secretaries of Karnataka State Committee) during this period,
while striving to sink firm roots and advance the new democratic
revolution by rallying the masses. Meanwhile, efforts to initiate the
armed struggle in Tamil Nadu and Keralam too failed to get off,
suffering grievous losses of comrades who were martyred in enemy
attacks.
“…[Decades earlier] Wayanad was one of the main areas of revolutionary
struggles in Keralam inspired by the armed peasant rebellion of
Naxalbari… Keralam has a long history of communist activity and valiant
armed struggles led by the communists. When the CPI leadership deviated
into revisionism, rank and file comrades in different parts of the State
started seeking a way forward. They were attracted to the fierce
ideological struggle being waged against Khrushchev revisionism under
the leadership of Mao Tsetung.
“Ever since then Maoist led revolutionary activities has been a regular
feature of the political scene. A number of heroic armed actions were
carried out successfully. Many militant mass struggles were organised.
At different periods, youth and students came forward in large numbers
to join the revolutionary movement and serve the people. Yet all these
efforts did not lead to building a sustained and developing Maoist
movement. All throughout these decades, the revolutionary movement was
repeatedly derailed by wrong tendencies and rightist deviations.
“This was ruptured with in the early 1990s. On the one hand, a section
of comrades rebelled against the revisionist line of K. Venu, rejected
the theses that conditions in Keralam are not conducive for people’s war
and went forward. This initiative would be one of the components forming
the Maoist Unity Centre, CPI (ML), along with comrades in Maharashtra,
and then later, the CPI (ML) NAXALBARI, uniting with revolutionaries
led by the late comrade SA Rawoof. A group of comrades, who had formed a
new centre, rebelling against CPI(ML) Jana Shakthi rightist leadership,
later merged with this. Meanwhile, sections who were disgusted with the
right opportunism of the various ML parties present in Keralam rebelled
and joined the CPI (ML) People’s War in the early 1990s, which later
merged with the Maoist Communist Centre, India in 2004 to form the CPI
(Maoist). They too set out to rubbish the revisionist theses of
Keralam’s exclusivity. Both of these initiatives had been working
independently towards initiating armed struggle.”(4)
30 March 2015 - As ordered by the Federal government, the U.$. Army must
reduce Amerika’s active-duty soldier ranks by more than 40,000 by 2017.
Recently, here in Alaska, a state which, since its colonization and
subsequent possession by the United $tates, has been very heavily
subsidized by government funding, large crowds of predominantly white
petty-bourgeoisie turned out to demonstrate and rally against the
military cuts. The reason? Some 10,000 troops and their families may
leave the state, causing 1 billion dollars in losses to the state
economy.(1) In other words, large groups of social parasites, living off
the largess of their imperial overlord in Washington and the Pentagon,
and the sub-parasites who feed off the primary parasites’ existence,
stand to lose their stable and guaranteed incomes and relatively high
standards of living (gained mainly from the oppression and exploitation
of the Third World and enforced by the same military) and may need to
find other ways to support themselves.
The “Rally For Our Troops,” attended by more than 400 people, was
organized by Anchorage, Alaska-based business, civic and municipal
organizations and was aimed at sparing cuts to Anchorage’s joint base
Elmendorf-Richardson and Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks. Alaska has more
veterans per capita than any other state, and in the so-called
“worst-case scenario,” as many as 10,800 troops and 19,000 dependents
could be forced to depart, amounting to a loss of about 4 percent of
Alaska’s population.(1) This is not surprising, as some estimates place
the amount of the working population associated with government
employment as high as 60%.
Of course, the event began with a resounding display of the
imperialists’ early indoctrination and brainwashing of the young through
a performance of a local middle school’s Drum Corps and Flag Team,
accompanied by hundreds of others waving little Amerikan flags and
cheering. After the initial show, the discussion began around convincing
the four-person army committee present of the “strategic importance” of
the main unit (4th brigade/25th infantry combat team).
The local community concern over losing Army Combat Brigades is
economic. It could cost the state 1 billion dollars in economic impact,
according to Bill Popp, Anchorage Economic Development corporation
President and one of the rally coordinators.(1) That, along with the
expected population decrease aforementioned, is the overriding concern
for businesses and many concerned participants. Hence, we are here
confronted with a major historic and pernicious problem with such
outlooks: that being the insipid and persistent factor of self-interest
and economic dependence of a large percentage of the Amerikan labor
aristocracy on the continuation and preservation of imperialism and its
most oppressive and pervading manifestation, the military industrial
complex.
The labor aristocracy’s support of imperialism coupled with the
strategic concerns of the ruling class in perpetuating global capitalist
domination via military and political power are two of the biggest foes
of the international proletariat in achieving socialist revolution and
change in the world today. The front-line defense of any existing,
regular administration and order of imperialist rule is its police and
regular army, and will be deployed against the will of the revolution
when it comes. It will undoubtedly obey its political and economic
masters. History is replete with examples of the U.$. military being
unleashed not only on the international proletariat to further the
interests of the imperialists in their unceasing quest for strategic
domination and natural resource/labor exploitation, but also on internal
colony repression and domestic discontent control. The U.$. military,
just as much as the prison system, is an inherent and vital mechanism
for social control and the protection of the established order.
Historical instances abound around the world where the military and U.$.
troops were used to break workers’ strikes, put down political and
social demonstrations, and help corporate power exploit and repress the
working class and quash popular discontent with governmental policy.
Often times they use quite brutal and violent means and tactics,
including blatant murder of citizens, armed or not. Troops have also
been used to entrench and enforce racial and economic inequality and
conserve the status quo.
To illustrate a few examples of domestic military oppression: from very
early on, continuing right through to almost the mid-20th century and
including sporadic examples even in the present day, the military was
very frequently called out to suppress and eliminate labor disputes and
strikes all over the United $tates at the bidding of their corporate
masters in Washington. This occurred primarily in the days when a true
economic and political proletariat existed within the U.$. borders. One
example of this type of domestic military oppression was the infamous
“Ludlow Massacre” of 1914, in which the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Corporation, owned by the Rockefeller family, used murder, beatings,
imprisonments and gun attacks to break the strike of thousands of
deplorably-exploited foreign-born miners, employing the Army National
Guard to do so. At one point, the National Guard opened fire with
machine guns on an encampment housing hundreds of women and children,
which resulted in the deaths of 11 children and 2 wimmin after the Guard
set fire to their tents with torches.(2) Less than 60 years later,
another Rockefeller was responsible for the brutal Attica prison
massacre, once against perpetrated by the Army National Guard.(3)
During the civil rights era, military attacks occurred against Black
demonstrators repeatedly, such as happened in Watts, Los Angeles,
Detroit and Chicago, with numerous accounts of brutality committed on
peaceable demonstrators and even mere bystanders. In Ohio, college
students demonstrating against the imperialist Vietnam War were mowed
down by Federal troops. The list of such barbaric and repressive actions
against U.$. citizens by military agencies is far too long to include
here, but just these few examples should show succinctly how willing and
ready U.$. military forces can and will be in violently confronting
anyone who poses any challenge to the Amerikan status quo and
imperialist agenda.
Even soldiers themselves can become victims of imperialist greed. In
both the Vietnam and Iraq wars thousands of veterans were for years
denied medical care or even recognition of numerous insidious maladies,
many life-threatening, resulting from munitions or chemicals used by the
military in those wars: Agent Orange in Vietnam, uranium=tipped shells
and inoculations for chemical warfare in Iraq, and other causes of “Gulf
War Syndrome” in Iraq. Of course, all this says nothing for the
countless thousands of indigenous victims of these brutal wars of
imperialist oppression, many civilians and children, who get no help at
all from the Amerikan government since such statistics aren’t kept by
the Pentagon.
The imperialists create new threats and dangers to justify ongoing
funding to the already enormous Amerikan military. The “Cold War” and
the “War on Terror” are just two examples of these excuses for
maintaining a hugely bloated military establishment. As leftist
political commentator Noam Chomsky wrote: “the appeal to security is
largely fraudulent, the Cold War framework having been employed as a
device to justify the suppression of independent nationalism - whether
in Europe, Japan or the Third World.” As Maoists, we recognize that it
includes the suppression of internal colonies within the United $tates
as well.
Of course, the biggest threat to any revolutionary movements is the
standing army, which reactionary and counter-revolutionary factions and
governments will not hesitate to use, unleashing military personnel and
arms against citizens who pose any threat or challenge to the
establishment. As was seen in the 1917 Russian Revolution, reactionary
generals such as Kornilov and Kaledin initiated counter-revolutionary
attacks against the newly-formed Soviets, and the Western imperialist
powers inserted military forces in an intervention aimed at undermining
the socialists and keeping Russia embroiled in the inter-imperialist
world war.(4)
Revolutionary activists need to confront rallies like the one held in
Anchorage with their own counter-rallies opposing military spending and
maintenance. Those under lock and key can write letters and send
petitions to representatives, suggesting more funds be spent for
educational, nutritional or medical programs for the dispossessed and
recently-imprisoned as opposed to military funding. Any opposition to
military expenditure and activity is desirable as first steps toward the
future of socialism in imperialist Amerika. Don’t let the official,
unceasing propaganda in the media (i.e., ISIS, Russia/Putin, etc) fool
anyone - the imperialist military establishment needs to be opposed at
all levels and through all possible endeavors by all committed
socialists, even if it conflicts with relations to family members who
may be enlisted. Every dollar spent on military funding should be seen
as one less morsel for food, one less book or pen, or one less dose of
life-saving medicine for the world’s proletariat. And now with
imperialist defenders and lap dogs like Representative John Boehner
asking for increased funding for military and “national security” in the
face of the continuing “ISIS” farce and propaganda, and U.$. Senator Dan
Sullivan proclaiming that “he who owns Alaska owns the entire world”
(statements from U.$. politicians don’t get more imperialist-minded than
that!), we can see that the Amerikan imperialists will continue to use
any excuse to perpetuate the money pit and pig sty that is the U.$.
military establishment and its presence both domestic and abroad.
Socialists everywhere must hold it as among the highest priorities to
organize and act against this greatest of threats to humynity and
equality.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This writer does a good job explaining the
importance of opposing the U.$. military and the reasons why so many
Amerikans support this imperialist army. S/he proposes that we take
action by demanding that the money currently funding the military be
instead used to help provide food, medicine and education for the
international proletariat. As a goal for improving the lives of the
world’s people we certainly agree. But we do not see this as a winnable
battle under imperialism. As the author explains, the Amerikan military
is a tool of U.$. imperialism: it’s purpose is to keep the people around
the world in line so that imperialist corporations can exploit the
workers and steal the natural resources. This colonialism is fundamental
to the economic model of imperialism. Calling on the Amerikan government
to voluntarily redirect military funds to the very people that military
is helping to oppress and exploit is not a battle we can win with words
alone.
It will take the forcible overthrow of the imperialist government before
they will lay down their weapons and give up their wealth. History has
shown this time and again: peaceful revolutions are not really
revolutions at all. By playing their game and asking kindly for the
government to redirect military funds to humanitarian needs we give the
imperialists the chance to pretend they are actually working in the
interests of the people. We should not mislead people into thinking this
is possible. Any so-called humanitarian work by the imperialists is just
a cover for their brutal militarism.
This author is correct: “Every dollar spent on military funding should
be seen as one less morsel for food, one less book or pen, or one less
dose of life-saving medicine for the world’s proletariat.” The urgency
of the situation can not be overstated, people around the world are
dying while Amerikans are rallying for expansion of the imperialist
military.
En realidad, la celebración de Agosto Negro debería ser todo el año.
Solo nosotros(as) podemos hacer que esto cambie. Carter G. Woodson es el
creador de la semana de historia Afro-Americana (Black history week), y
50 años después tenemos mes de historial Afro-Americana (Black history
month). Para los(as) que no tienen conocimiento de Agosto Negro, este
mes se celebran a los(as) “luchadores(as) de libertad.” El color de la
piel es irrelevante. Te amo hermana Marilyn Buck (descansa en poder),
Lolita Lebron (descansa en poder), y Silvia Berrideni, entre otras que
no eran de color negro. Pero ellas eran negras. Porque para el(a)
oprimido(a) de cualquier nacionalidad, negro no es un color.
Negro es un establecimiento creado para proteger los derechos civiles de
uno(a). Negro es valentía. Negro es motivación propia para ganar. Negro
es visión. Negro es respeto. Negro es amor. Negro es lealtad. Negro es
unidad. Negro es orgullo. Negro(a) eres tu! Además y más importante,
negra soy yo!
Colectivamente, estas expresiones de cariño negras somos nosotros(as)
(por ejemplo, soldados unidos y soldadas unidas). Por esto creo que
Agosto Negro, la celebración de luchadores(as) de libertad, debería ser
todo el año.
En preparación para esta celebración, estoy llamando a todos los(as)
camaradas que escojan a un(a) luchador(a) de libertad de su preferencia
y sometan una redacción de 250 palabras de su escogido(a) luchador(a) de
libertad, escribe porque lo(a) selecionaste y el impacto que éste(a)
luchador(a) de libertad tuvo en tí. En solidaridad con Bajo Llave y
Candado (BLC), (Under Lock & Key en inglés) estoy llamando a
todos(as) los(as) leyentes de BLC que participen. Aunque cada artículo
no sea publicado por limitaciones financieras y por espacio, su
participación no será ignorada. Fortalezcamos a la voz de BLC. Porque si
somos considerados la voz de BLC y no la fortalecemos, ¿quién lo hará?
La unidad es una herramienta poderosa cuando es aplicada adecuadamente.
Unámosnos en vez de destruirnos.
El MIM(Prisiones) añade: Decidimos aceptar la llamada de este
camarada para la presentación de redacciones de luchadores(as) de
libertad todo el año, anunciandola durante Agosto Negro y siguiendo con
la publicación de redacciones sometidas por leyentes de BLC en futuros
ejemplares. De importancia particular en esta llamada, es el
entendimiento que todos(as) los(as) prisioneros(as) son prisioneros(as)
políticos(as) y por eso no solo identificamos a luchadores(as) de
libertad como personas que fueron famosas por su activismo político
antes de que fueron puestos(as) bajo llave y candado. En cambio,
sugerimos que piensen de prisioneros(as) que te han influido en una
manera positiva, incluyendo esos(as) que no han escrito libros o
recibido atención por la prensa. Celebremos a todos(as) los(as)
luchadores(as) de libertad y esforcemosnos en ser luchadores(as) de
libertad nosotros(as) mismos(as).