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.
In regards to the article by a Texas prisoner “Stimulus Checks are
being stolen by TDCJ-CID”, well Texas isn’t the only state with such
tricks up its sleeve. Last week the great snake of Arkkkansas done the
exact same thing, however, they turned right around & put the money
back in prisoners’ accounts after being met with resistance by means of
grievances. Quite often they’ll try to pull a caper simply just to see
if they can get away with it. Point: Utilize the grievance process.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Right on to the comrades in
Arkansas who stood together to grieve this issue. As we say, there are
no rights, only power struggles. Just because the law says they can’t
take your stimulus money doesn’t mean they won’t. A comrade in
California has drafted sample grievances and raised the money to
distribute them to comrades who haven’t received their stimulus money in
that state. We’ve also been hearing from more comrades in Texas and in
the Federal Bureau of Prisons who continue to fight this battle. Because
we are getting so many requests, here are some FAQs from
https://www.taxoutreach.org
Will the amount of my second stimulus check be reduced if I
have overdue debts in prison?
Unlike your first stimulus check, your second stimulus check has
greater protection from garnishment. Like the first stimulus check, your
second stimulus check is protected from back taxes or federal and state
debts. In addition, the second stimulus check is also protected from
debt collection. That means that federal and state prison cannot reduce
the amount of your second stimulus check to pay overdue debts.
Will the amount of my third stimulus check be reduced if I
have overdue debts in prison?
It is unclear whether your third stimulus check will be reduced to
pay certain prison fees or debts. We will update this page once we have
more information.
What happens if my stimulus check was sent as a debit card
instead of as a check?
The IRS sent a letter to prison officials that if debit cards
couldn’t be processed at your prison facility, prison officials have to
return the debit cards to the IRS fiscal agent at:
Fiserv
Attn: RAPID
1007 North 97th Circle
Omaha, NE 68122
The debit cards will be voided and you will have to claim the
stimulus checks as the Recovery Rebate Credit by filing a 2020 tax
return or using GetCTC.org if you don’t have a filing requirement.
Previously I argued that taxpayers are not responsible for government
capital policy because they are ignorant. My error was pointed out to me
and now I see the truth – the January 6th rioters showed me that they
are willing to fight for my oppression therefore their ignorance is
irrelevant – they are indeed more responsible than I assumed, therefore
I must ignore my compassion for their humanity as unnatural as that is
for me. The object is more important than the subject.
When evaluating responsibility, it is tempting to be blinded by the
subject. For instance, government officials are directly responsible for
enforcing capital policy. However, collaborators often look like our
neighbors, friends or even family. These collaborators will support
& encourage oppression & tyranny out of ignorance or out of a
callous heart. Ignorance cannot be excused if freedom is ever going to
be won. When the object of freedom becomes important enough all barriers
must fall, even if that means forcing ourselves to do what is not
natural.
Rights are never granted, rights are won. Unfortunately, this
includes basic human rights such as freedom. To win freedom from the
tyranny & oppression that comes with a capitalist economy, the
opposition must fall. This necessity does not come naturally, that is
because the values instilled in our youth are instilled by capital
policy (submission), these values are what allows capitalists to steal
your freedom. We must relearn a greater value.
There exist those that will take more than one has to give, that is
what capital is (inequality). There is only so much resource & for
one to have more than one needs he/she has to deprive another of what
they need. For one to be rich, one must be poor.
As I watch the January 6th investigation, one thing is clear. That is
the effort was weak. I think that is because the rioters knew in their
hearts that they were fighting for the exploitation of an oppressed
class. Ironic that they choose to capture the Capitol Building in order
to keep their capital wealth at the expense of the oppressed class.
For those of us that are fighting for freedom, We will not make a
half-hearted effort because it is our very survival that we are fighting
for. We are not fighting for material wealth because we have none.
Because our oppression is total & complete then so is our fight for
freedom.
We will not fight for one building, not even for one city, or one
country. We are fighting for equality. We will not stop until all
opposition is fallen. Our fight comes from the heart & that is why
it is stronger than the January 6th fight for material wealth.
The difference is that I am sick & tired of being oppressed so
that another can live lavishly. The difference is that unlike the
January 6th rioters I am not here to have a big party with a bunch of
friends at the Capitol Building – I am here to win my freedom and to
fight for the freedom of all oppressed people and I will not stop and
lay down, I will never stop!!
That is what Marx means by permanent revolution, we must never stop
fighting because the very moment we relax is the moment the exploiters
continue to exploit as they have always done. Sun Tzu said we can “never
leave an enemy on the battlefield.” If we do they will come back
again.
As communists we must know our enemy is the object and not the
subject. Compassion can blur our vision of the object and it is in these
moments I must remember that the capitalists never had any compassion
for the oppressed.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This point is relevant as Amerikans
remember the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, and Afghans sigh in relief as the invader of
their country pulls out. Professor Ward Churchill took a lot of heat for
quoting Malcolm X on chickens coming home to roost after 9/11 and
referring to Amerikans as “little Eichmanns.”(1) Adolf Eichmann was a
Nazi in Germany who ran logistics for the system of concentration camps
there. He was captured years after the war and in his trial claimed he
was just following orders, just a cog in the machine, and should not be
blamed for the deaths caused by that machine.
Since the end of the second imperialist war, the Amerikans have run
the largest system of concentration camps in the world. While they lack
the mass murder of the Nazi system, they are genocidal nonetheless
against the oppressed nations that make up the majority of the
prisoners. The day will come when Amerikans will be charged for their
decades of crimes against humynity. Our success at building
anti-imperialism and accountability in the United $tates today will ease
the transition to a more just future on these lands.
The most recent killing of U.$. troops in Afghanistan on 26 August
2021 marks the deadliest day in over a decade for the imperialists in
that country. It also makes two points quite clear. First, the once
reviled Taliban has negotiated a deal with the United $tates in which
they regained control of their country in exchange for cooperation
against organizations like ISIS(K) who’ve claimed responsibility for the
attack. The explosion took the lives of thirteen U.$. soldiers.
ISIS(K) is just one of over twenty armed groups in Afghanistan that
pose a threat to Taliban rule. However, the main incentive for the
Taliban’s allegiance to U.$. imperialism seems to be the Afghan economy
which the Taliban inherited once the “democratically elected” government
of Afghanistan realized that U.$. imperialism would no longer prop them
up.(1)
Second, Chican@s continue to account for a substantial portion of
Amerikan occupation forces in the Third World. Statistics in recent
years have shown Chican@s continue to be a growing source of foot
soldiers for the Amerikans.
The attack on U.$. troops came just three days before the fifty-first
anniversary of the hystoric Chican@ Moratorium. Contrary to what various
sell outs, integrationists and those who’ve simply been kept in
ignorance have to say about the matter, the moratorium was not about
civil rights or equality. Rather, the moratorium was an exercise in
power by Raza who attempted to deprive the imperialists of Chican@
troops in their war of colonization and attrition in Vietnam.(2) Thus,
it is both heartbreaking and sickening to see that so many years after
the last real upsurge against U.$. imperialism in the semi-colonies,
Chican@s continue to sacrifice and be sacrificed for the oppressor
nation. If Chican@s are to live and die for a cause then it should be
for Aztlán, the international proletariat and socialism. August 26 was
yet another example of what happens when we fail to organize the
oppressed – the imperialists organize them for us.
While four of the thirteen soldiers killed at the Afghanistan
International Airport that day were Chican@s born and raised in occupied
Aztlán, it should be noted that at least two other fatalities had
Spanish surnames.(3) That said, it is still important to note that the
attack was a blow against U.$. imperialism by anti-imperialists in the
region, and for that we should be appreciative, not horrified. Our
sympathies should be with the Afghan family who lost their lives in the
U.$. retaliation drone strike and the rest of the victims of the ISIS(K)
who were caught in the crossfire on August 26. Chican@s or not, those
U.$. soldiers chose their own destiny when they decided it was okay to
travel halfway around the world to further oppress an already oppressed
population.
It is not far-fetched to envision a reality in which Chican@ youth
strive to live and die for Aztlán liberated and free. The development of
material conditions will be crucial in this regard, but it will be the
struggle of revolutionaries and the masses of turned up youth that will
be principal. We should not let the fact that Amerika’s longest war has
come to an end deter us from the urgency of organizing the oppressed
nations for liberation and against U.$. militarism. “Raza Si, Guerra
No!” should be one of many political slogans that we champion in the
bi-polar world that is life under imperialism, as Amerikkka’s designs on
the African continent promise to become an even bloodier killing field
in the years to come.
Notes: 1. The PBS News Hour, 27 August 2021. 2. A
MIM(Prisons) study group, 2015, Chican@ Power and the Struggle for
Aztlán. (available to prisoners for $10) 3. KTLA 5 News, 27 August
2021.
This will be the official statement of the North Carolina United
Front for Peace in Prisons. We will contribute to accomplishing these
goals:
Peace. We must first find peace within, then help
those around us to understand the tactics of divide and conquer; the
true reason they’re in the system and how and why making peace within
thy-self and with those around us is what real men/wimmin & L.O.’s
represent.
Unity. Unite to achieve common interests; justice
& peace and safeguarding our communities. Brothers of the faithful
will continue efforts to restore peace among NC L.O.’s. All within the
USW may join our branch of the UFPP.
Growth. Study MIM Assignment 1 on dialectical
materialism & MIM structure & organization study pack. Then
continue to study in whatever fields are appealing. To be successful we
must learn to organize and (in certain matters) learn from the past
(dialectical materialism). We spread our message and ULK to
interested convicts and outside supporters. Books will be cyphered among
comrades.
Internationalism. We will support the liberation
programs of the oppressed nations internationally.
Independence. We plan to use a clothing company to
promote political art. Some of us will also learn to become independent
from government, which allows you to also make citizens arrest. Further
abolishment.
In April, we published a piece covering the
killing of Adam Toledo: a 13-year-old Mexican lumpen youth who was a
member of the Mexican/Chican@ neighborhood of Little Village, westside
Chicago. Here we address some of the organizing that has come out of
this tragic death.
The Mexican/Chican@ Youth
Speak
On the day the Chicago city government released the body camera
footage of the way Adam was killed, police abolitionist rallies and
protests were gathered in Chicago and other major cities of the United
$tates. Primarily, these rallies were calls for abolition and reform of
pig forces in the United $tates and were attended by the Mexican and
Chican@ masses – mostly the youth. Despite comprador Mayor Lightfoot and
the Chicago Pig Department’s fearful cries of imminent social unrest and
“riots,” these social rallies were peaceful and non-violent.(1)
During school time, the same youth who might have attended those
non-violent rallies mourning Adam’s death and righteously condemning the
Chicago Police Department (CPD) would have found a bit more safety than
usual due to the lack of pig presence in their schools. Chicago Public
Schools (CPS) officials announced on the 23rd of April – a week after
the release of the body cam footage – that uniformed pigs won’t be on
school campus until the fall semester. This policy however, is only
temporary and will not apply to sergeants who patrol the areas around
CPS schools. On top of that, officers are still assigned to 55 high
schools whose local school councils voted to keep them in.(2)
The murder of a fellow oppressed nation youth has sparked a lot of
righteous resentment against the oppressive police system among
Chicago’s public school students during that month – the CPS population
is comprised of 83% oppressed nation students.(3) Nathaniel Martinez, a
sophomore of Roosevelt High School in Albany Park, made the following
statements:
“The cops are the ones who are holding the gun. They have the power
to choose what will happen, what won’t happen. And what they chose for
Adam was death. And when I saw that, when I realized that, it just made
me scared. But at the end of the day… am I scared of cops? Yes. Am I
scared what one of them will do to me if one of them ends up having a
bad day and they just want to do something crazy? Yes, I always am. …
But right now we’re trying our best to make a difference.”
“We shouldn’t have students being monitored like criminals by cops in
schools,”
Oppressed nation youth like Nathaniel lead movements across the
country to get rid of armed pigs monitoring school halls. Many of these
youth correctly recognize the disparity of how much harsher and more
frequently New Afrikan or Latin@ children would be targeted by school
pigs as compared to their Amerikan peers. Other progressive minded
people have also recognized how the patrolling of schools and youth
(oppressed nation youth in particular) lead to those youths entering the
prison injustice system. In this sense, there is strong solidarity that
should be built among the prison movement and the youth movement.
However, a big weakness, reflecting pre-scientific thinking within these
movements, is reformism and dependency on the imperialist system. These
are ideas communists should be challenging through political education
when deepening their roots into the progressive youth movements.
The Elders Respond
One important voice that has been raised are the ones from the older
migrants. While these elders recognize the tragedy of Adam’s death, they
also supported more pig presence among the Mexican/Chican@ neighborhoods
in fear of violence from lumpen organizations. One Mexican elote
(Mexican street food) vendor aged 74, named Santamaria, had this to
say:
“We are tired of gang violence; it’s sad what happened with the young
boy, but he had a gun with him and his friend had been shooting, so the
officer responded to the threat,”(4)
Many of our reader base will know that the oppressed nation lumpen in
the urban centers of the United $tates have hostile relationships with
their urban petty-bourgeois counterparts. Some of our readers (and also
many communists) might be quick to condemn the above attitude claimed by
Miss Santamaria as coming from a petty-bourgeois street vendor and a
chauvinist attitude against the lumpen class. However, we shouldn’t be
too quick to brush off these sentiments and thoroughly combat the
anti-people aspect of the lumpen class as well. Ideas stem from material
reality after all. The segregated nature of the United $tates will mean
that the bread and butter of oppressed nation lumpen will be other
oppressed nation people: pigs will care less if a gangbanger steals from
a New Afrikan or a Chican@ in the ghettos/barrios than stealing from the
Amerikans. As stated in “Who
is the Lumpen in the United $tates?” by MIM(Prisons), the First
World Lumpen parasitically gets its means of living through other labor
aristocrats, or other lumpen. This examination should lead to their
surrounding petty-bourgeoisie as well. While it is true that in the
United $tates, the First World Lumpen class should be organized to
abandon the road of banditry and follow the road of revolution, it is
also true that to demand respect and sympathy from poor and lower
petty-bourgeois masses while also committing said banditry is idealist
and commandist.
One important point that has been brought up by the youth and the
intellectuals which led many of the mass rallies and discourse
surrounding the murder of Adam was the fact that many of the elders in
the Mexican/Chican@ community bring over conservative cultural attitudes
of the countryside in mother country Mexico to the cities of the United
$tates.(5) Many of these attitudes include the reaction against the
violence of the lumpen proletariat drug lords and the Mexican
bourgeoisie that fund and cooperate with these enemies of the people.
Nine times out of ten, the Mexican drug lord is a gangster and a
comprador capitalist at the same time – if not the running dogs of those
comprador bourgeoisie. In the oppressed nation areas of the United
$tates, most lumpen organizations might just be small-scale collectives
of hustlers, pimps, and drug peddlers who claim blocks and corners and
can’t afford to have the country’s military under their thumbs; in the
Third World, they are war lords who control swaths of land and political
power. This difference should stay in the minds of revolutionaries and
communists who intend to organize not only the first world lumpen, but
also the migrant proletariat who come from the third world oftentimes to
escape from war lord tyranny.
The Campaign Against
ShotSpotter
Several months after Adam was murdered, his family and activists
gathered on the site of his death to protest the ShotSpotter technology
used to detect gunshots in areas where lumpen activities heavily occur.
On the Thursday of July 29th when that rally was held, activists
demanded the cancellation of ShotSpotter’s surveillance presence in
their neighborhoods as the contract the company had with the city of
Chicago only had one month left.(6)
In response to the protests held by the people, ShotSpotter issued
this response:
“All residents who live in communities experiencing persistent
gunfire deserve a rapid police response, which gunshot detection enables
regardless of race or geographic location. Because cities lack
sufficient funds to cover an entire city with gunshot detection
technology, they deploy sensors in neighborhoods suffering the highest
levels of gun violence.”(7)
In classic Amerikan fashion, ShotSpotter disguised its surveillance
and monitoring of the empire’s problem population (the oppressed nation
of urban centers) as a gift and a right that the said population
“deserves.” Maoists recognize that gunshot detectors in ghettos and
barrios aren’t a safety measure. These technologies enable pigs to be
deployed faster to occupy these regions in a more efficient and fruitful
manner. The company also claimed that the technology detects “gunshots
regardless of race or geographic location.” Any sane person should be
able to recognize that this claim means nothing since humyn beings (in
this case Amerikan corporations profiting off of militarized police
occupation) put these technologies in to monitor New Afrikans and
Mexicans/Chican@s geographically located in ghettos and barrios. Like
Mao Zedong taught us, man is principal over machine and weaponry in
warfare.
Adam’s Place
On August 11th, Adam Toledo’s family spoke about the plan of creating
“Adam’s Place”; a non-profit shelter for at risk boys trying to escape
inner-city conditions and lumpen violence. The shelter would be built on
a 70 acre farm in Potosi, Wisconsin and was chosen by the family’s
attorney Joel Hirschorn. The location is 3.5 hours away from Chicago and
2.5 hours away from Milwaukee.(9) The non-profit is claimed to be
modeled after the Christian ministry program “Boys’ Farm.” In a town
hall meeting in Potosi, Wisconsin, Joel Hirschorn announced that the
home will not take in boys already in a lumpen organization. We are not
sure how Adam’s Place will define a child to be “in a gang” (whether
affiliates or individual hustlers will be classified as belonging to a
“gang”); however, we see the fact that Adam Toledo himself would not be
allowed in Adam’s Place as a prime example of liberal NGO tactics.(10)
We hope for stable and safe path for all children who will enter Adam’s
Place, and wish the family members of Adam Toledo for a peace of mind
from the nightmare they must be facing. For attacking the problem at the
root, and for real rehabilitation of lumpen youth, we point our
directions away from NGOism to our readers and towards socialism and
revolution.
When my brother first articulated the vision for the new venture,
Forever Protecting the Community, and his general desire to uplift Our
people, We were in a supermax prison, in the middle of nowhere. He
himself had just days prior been released from a similar prison and had
come to visit me. It was Our first time seeing each other in six years,
since my trial, in which i was unjustly sentenced to life without the
possibility of parole.
Thick, shatter proof glass separated Us in the visitation booth. i
expressed through the phone, between static, my approval and tipped my
head in acknowledgment of the self-development and maturation process
that i knew had led up to this point in his life. i knew the process
intimately, as i myself have undergone it as well in my own way. It is a
process of social and mental growth that many before us have gone
through. It is a process that sees one evolve from a state of self and
socially induced ignorance, towards a state of a more completely
functional humyn being, one who is engaged with the community and world
around them, being productive therein. It is this way which We were
meant to live among each other, but through the process of
social-economic development, from a communal economy, into a hyper
capitalistic society, We’ve become a mutation of Our true selves.
Individualism dominates collectivism, greed has taken the place of
contentment. Being as We are born and bred in such a world it takes a
process of re-education and re-commitment in order to shun these
counter-productive characteristics and act in the furtherance of
productivity and communal upliftment.
Sometime later after Our visit, Prisoner A asked me to make a
contribution to a collection of short stories that he wished to publish
under the banner of Forever Protecting the Community. He stated that his
vision was to correct those of Our homeboys behind enemy lines with the
movement that was/is in process in the streets. As it is, when Our
people are held captive by the state they’re often forgotten about, or
merely become just another hashtag, as the world moves on. Additionally
he figured, and i agreed, that brothers such as myself who are living
the effects of social alienation, political disengagement/dependence,
and economic insecurities, the combination of which has led to lives
tarnished by and through captivity, should have much to express in
regards to the direction of Our communities and Our nation (that is the
nation of Black people in Amerika which i refer to as New Afrikans).
In responses to my brother’s request i consciously refused to
contribute a ‘short story’. Reason being, short stories are fictional,
while the subject matter surrounding the necessity of Forever Protecting
the Community is far from fiction. It is real life that drugs and STD’s
have ravished Our communities. It is real life that millions of New
Afrikans – Black children, wimmin, and men are currently in captivity or
under the ‘supervision’ of the state. It is real life that the public
school system is failing Our youth, not providing the necessary tools to
live a self-sufficient life but only to enter the ranks of the wage
slaves. It is real life that in areas which We call ‘Our community’,
property ownership among New Afrikan people is less than 5%, this number
includes homes, commercial real estate, and ‘essential infrastructure’.
These property relations are significant, as it is this factor which
creates ‘social alienation, political dis-engagement/dependence, and
economic insecurities’, so it is real, very real, that many of us live
and die without having owned Our living spaces, and under the rules of
Amerikan settler-colonialism and imperialism, it is increasingly
difficult to own Our very identities, both collectively and
individually.
So because this is Our real life, and has been for sometime, i felt
what was/is needed more than mere entertainment is some ‘real talk’ as
it pertains to ‘us’. Therefore i’ve offered up this place to shed light
and open much needed communal discussion.
The word ‘protect’ means ‘to guard’; ‘to secure’; ‘to hold in safe
keeping’; all these definitions imply that there is a force, or forces
which seek to bring destruction, in whole or in part, to whatever entity
needs guarding, security, safekeeping, or protecting. In Our context We
are alluding to the need to secure Our ‘communities’, which are
essentially semi-colonized territories dependent upon and occupied by
outside forces.
It follows that if and when there is an entity that seeks the
destruction of Our territory, Our community, Our nation, Our family, Our
people, and Our self, that said entity is an avowed enemy to Our cause
and Our interests. So therefore i pose the question, ‘who are Our
enemies and who are Our friends?’ 402 years ago with the advent of the
Maafa (African slave trade; tragedy) an unresolved contradiction arose.
This contradiction has been characterized by the colonization of New
Afrikan Black people, first as slaves, a nation of slaves, and oppressed
and exploited free people, until now, where Our colonization is
characterized by the forced dependence upon the United States,
settler-imperialist neo-colonial empire, for the basic functions of
modern nationhood. That is free development of independent political,
social, and economic production and advancement.
During the last 402 years, what it means to be a New Afrikan in
Amerika has been tied to Our ongoing collective struggle to express
Ourselves in the full extent of Our humynity, to cast off the old forced
colonial relationship, which saw us as completely dependent pawns in the
‘game’ of world affairs, and to exercise a role and position which has
been guaranteed to almost all other peoples of the world, that is to
determine for Ourselves who We are, what We are (a colonized nation),
and how We wish to organize Ourselves for the daily survival of Our
people.
For the settler-empire’s part in this contradiction they’ve sought to
undermine Our natural, independent, development at every turn. All the
empire’s actions towards Our people, whether they be in the field of
military intimidation (police terrorism), propaganda, political
policies, and all other matters, they have all been to further the
relation of dependence upon their governance and economic structure.
Due to these simple truths and the multitude of ramifications that
they produce, it shouldn’t be lost on the reader that the enemy of New
Afrikan–Black people is the system of economic and political power that
has been FORCED upon us. This system is called capitalism-imperialism,
and the u.s. government at both federal and local levels is the world
leader of this system which is the cause of not only Our collective
misery, but that of the majority of the world’s people.
We, as a people, must come to understand that, ‘yes’, ‘protection’ is
needed and it is needed from the forces of power. Our enemies are not
those of another block, set, or turf who not only look like us, but more
importantly, are victims of the same systemic oppression and alienation
as us, which has fostered Our like conditions. Our enemies are not those
whom the real enemy has told us are the ‘gangs’ and ‘criminals’. These
We must begin to see as Ourselves, Our siblings, Our allies, in this
struggle. Allies whom have not yet been awakened to their place and
position within the ranks of Our New Afrikan Independence Movement.
Forever Protecting the Community, as many of you reading this already
know, has grown out of the legacy of the Forum Park Crips, in
particular, and that of New Afrikan-Black street organizations in
general. Modern street organizations within Our colonies (communities)
have for a long time possessed the tendency to re-imagine their
identities and the role in which they intend to play in the development
of Our people, that of destroyers or builders.
Prior to the creation of the original Crips of Los Angeles in 1971,
there were other street organizations. During the mid-1960’s as Our
nation was on a collective march to determine for Ourselves Our own
destiny, several Black Power organizations began to recruit effectively
within the class of people in Our colonies that were or would likely
become members of street organizations. These Black Power
revolutionaries impressed upon the sisters and brothers that the most
effective way to combat the mistreatment they all faced was to unite on
the basis of nationhood, and the shared quest for
self-determination.
On the West Coast, the main Black Power groups leading the shift in
social philosophy and participation among the ‘street class’, were the
Black Panther Party, and the US organization. The former would succeed
in consolidating ALL of the New Afrikan Black street organizations on
the West Side of South Central into one mass body. This effort was led
by Panther deputy chairman Alprentice Bunchy Carter: a former leader of
the ‘Slausons’ street organization, and convict, turned political
revolutionary while in California’s San Quentin Concentration Camp.
Bunchy Carter would help politicize most of his former ‘gang’ buddies,
recruiting them into the Panther organization and more importantly,
re-install the sense of common-unity (community) among the working class
of the surrounding area, with the former ‘destroyers’, the ‘gang’
element. This was only possible once the people could see that the 5,000
strong Slausons had made themselves a vehicle for productivity in
opposition to the people’s REAL enemies instead of assisting the enemies
of the people in the destruction of the people and Our areas of
residence. Forever Protecting the Community, if it lives up to its
calling, will follow down this same path of self-liberation, utilizing
the examples set by the Slausons and others to build upon the
advancement of Our nation in Our quest for self-determination and
independence.
“The time is NOW for a total refocusing of Our efforts, away from
non-productive distractions and other elements of temptations, and focus
towards those disciplines that will make us real [contributors] in Our
communities. We must stop the gangbanging and drive-bys. Our [nation] is
being destroyed by the killing [drugging and imprisonment] of Our own
youth. We must stop hating one another because of the block, hood, turf,
and color We represent, these actions only continue the cycle of
self-destruction.
“And finally, in my sincere appeal for peace and unity: Those of us
that have experienced being Our brother’s keeper – We must educate Our
members around Us. Education brings about awareness. Awareness generates
the ability to think. Our youth must know the end result of crime is
shame, disgrace, and imprisonment to themselves, as well as the
community. We must come to the point of outlawing those who willfully
disrupt Our communities and Our call [to Forever Protect the Community].
Crime must not be accepted as the normal way of doing things.” – Larry
Hoover’s 1993 ‘Call For Peace’
As articulated previously, there has been a tendency among New
Afrikan-Black street organizations to re-imagine their identities and
the role in which they play, or intend to play in the development of Our
people, that of destroyers or builders. Larry Hoover leading the
transition of his organization from ‘Gangster Disciples’ to ‘Growth and
Development’ is one of the most noteworthy and informative examples that
We can/should take lessons from. Yet before We delve more into the
lessons We can take from this grouping, it is important that We
illustrate the hands of the enemy in regards to the growth and expansion
of today’s street organizations and the sanctioned culture of
gangsterism.
Going back to the mid-60’s, as the Slausons and other similarly
situated groups began to cast off the self-destructive, and
counter-productive behaviors, they consequently began engaging in the
socio-political battles Our people faced at the local, ‘national’, and
global levels. Once it became clear to the masses that Our oppression
was/is political and economic and that the political reinforced the
economic, it became evident that the interests of Our people had to be
represented, by Our people, in the political sphere, and subsequently
political bodies were formulated. The Black Panther Party, along with
the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, were two of
the foremost leaders among these such groups. On a national level, the
‘street class’ began to be involved in the development of themselves,
and their people on an objective basis, as such naturally their
priorities began to shift, instead of clubbing, slanging and banging,
this class of people, many of Our predecessors, began to initiate
community political education classes, free health clinics, community
‘face lifts’, and clean up programs, free busing to prison for visits,
and a host of other ‘survival programs’.
It was during this time, because Our people had clearly drawn a line
of demarcation between themselves and the enemies of the people,
furthermore the same elements of the New Afrikan-Black Nation which had,
by force of circumstance, been most dependent upon the u.s. federal and
local governments couldn’t and/or wouldn’t. Such a development signaled
to the people that they themselves had the necessary power to liberate
themselves, hence the popularity of the phrase, ‘Power to the
People’.
Much of the oppressors continued rule depends upon the people’s
belief that they’re utterly helpless without the structure of the
settler-colonial imperialists. Once this illusion is unmasked and the
essence of the establishment is exposed, the oppressive state apparatus
must solely rely on brute force to maintain its illegitimate rule upon
the people, Our people. The establishment seeks to bypass such a
reality. Overt violence for the sake of political repression usually
swells the ranks of those in opposition to the illegitimate governmental
authorities.
It was this exact situation which saw the federal government
intensify the contradiction which began in Black August 1619 to the
level of a domestic war between two opposed and contradictory entities,
through the FBI’s declared war on the various organizations and people
within the Black Liberation Movement, by way of the Counter Intelligence
Program (COINTELPRO).
The u.s. government’s carrying out of COINTELPRO in order to prevent
the self-developed expression of the New Afrikan-Black experience as a
colonized nation held captive for centuries by the u.s. government,
resulted in numerous political assassinations of New Afrikan-Black
liberation combatants, the political/false imprisonment of various
souljahs and activists of Our cause, and the subsequent obliteration of
what has been up until this point the most progressive era of Our
collective struggle in 402 years (the Black Liberation Movement).
The defeat of the movement is important to this discourse on FPC,
because it was in the wake of the defeat of the movement that the Crips,
Bloods, Folks and Peoples established themselves. The establishment of
these street groups was facilitated by the war initiated on the
movement, and the subsequent elimination of progressive, productive, and
revolutionary leadership in the colonies which We call communities.
Ajamu Niamke Kamara (Stanley Tookie Williams), co-founder of the Crips,
said the following:
“i’m convinced that had the Black Panther Party still been recruiting
- uninterrupted by the duplicitous COINTELPRO… Huey Newton and Bobby
Seale would have salivated over the untapped youthful potential We
represented.
“Throughout this state and country, We embodied only a small divided
body within a multitude of reckless, energetic, fearless, and explosive
young Black warriors. Though we were often seen as social dynamite, i
believe We were the perfect entity to be indoctrinated in cultural
awareness and trained as disciplined soldiers for the Black
struggle.”
Unfortunately for the original Crips and Bloods, and the many
multitudes who have since followed in their foot steps, in 1971 while
Tookie Williams and Raymond Washington were establishing the teenage
clique that would become an international menace, the Black Panther
Party was enduring a major split within its ranks, which was caused,
partially, by the assault(s) of COINTELPRO, that would be the beginning
of the end for the Party and the movement.
In the wake of the defeat, the establishment initiated a wide variety
of methods to ensure that the widely dispersed wave of righteous
rebellion and the desire of an internal colony to free itself from the
forced yoke of imperialism and neo-colonialism, would never happen
again. To insure that Our people would remain collectively divided and
conquered, and sleep, the enemies invented and distributed crack
cocaine, and military grade weapons throughout the mid 1980’s and into
the 1990’s, allowed for the AIDS/HIV epidemic, created laws and policies
that would hold millions of Our youthful and vibrant siblings in
captivity based on fabricated and over-exaggerated portrayals of Our
colonized territories and peoples, and Our responses to Our colonial
oppression.
While the movement for self-determination was brutally crushed by the
u.s. government, that same government, wherever it could, assisted the
growth and expansion of the street organizations. The very industry that
was factually created by the CIA (the Crack Trade) was the vehicle which
drove Crips, Bloods, Folk, and Peoples factions in their growth across
the u.s. empire. This subsequent growth and expansion led directly to
the formation of the street organization, Forum Park Crips, an
independent Crip faction in Houston, Texas, along with countless other
similar factions and groups. What could have been the u.s.
establishment’s motive in instigating the growth of parasitic groups,
while murdering and torturing the productive organized bodies? The
answer can only possibly be the intended destruction of Our nation and
people.
With this realization that We have been manipulated, on a large
scale, to act against Our own interests and that of Our nation, the
formation of Forever Protecting the Community, though not the solution
within itself, surely takes a step in the correct direction.
“… Our women and children are suffering greatly at the hands of an
oppressive, dominant, racist political system… We can no longer afford
the forced luxury of non-involvement or non-participation. The question
remains: How can We contribute within Our limited capacities? .. i say
to you: If We accept a partial responsibility for the plight of Our own
people, then We must take an active role in the game of POLITICS.” –
Larry Hoover’s 1993, “Call to Action”
Where Do We Go From Here? As stated above, the formation of Forever
Protecting the Community is not a solution in and of itself, and it
remains to be seen whether or not this formation will live out its full
potential. What has already taken place however is the necessary act of
determining for ones self what your identity and purpose will be. There
will be naysayers who will point to all sorts of negative aspects of
those who are or become active with the new FPC movement. They will, if
hystory is any indicator, deter the general public from supporting and
identifying with the movement of Our people and colonies.
In order to get out in front of this foreseeable roadblock to Our
progress, We must do one of two things. 1) Abandon the words and
personification of ‘gang’, and ‘criminal’, to those who have defined
them (Our enemies) so that now they will have purely negative
connotations; 2) redefine those words/personifications - or create a new
word or phrase to describe organized groups within Our oppressed
colonies (communities).
Whichever choice is made, NEW concepts must be developed that
reinforce NEW forms of activity that should begin to appear on the basis
of the NEW concept. Forever Protecting the Community is the NEW concept,
and now what the leaders of this organization must act towards is
organizing a wide variety of people of the community to work
collectively to transform the ‘gang’ into a progressive organization of
New Afrikan people, which struggles and works in the interests of Our
people. The problem within Our colonies (communities) isn’t that there
are ‘gangs’, but it is the real problems which all peoples under
capitalist domination face, it is capitalism itself, and the social,
economic and political alienation it creates, which indirectly gives
birth to ‘gangs’ and ‘crime’.
Forever Protecting the Community has taken one step towards
empowerment – one critical step closer to a new sense of collective
identity, purpose, and direction – by using the power that We already
have, to define Ourselves, name Ourselves and speak for Ourselves –
instead of being defined and spoken for by others. The next step
consists of leading all the people of the community to share in the
responsibility for providing a NEW broader sense of collective identity,
purpose, and direction – for Our children and Ourselves. It is time now
to promote NEW ideas about the life We wanna live and the society We
wanna live in. Its time to promote NEW definitions of Our problems
(e.g. ‘racism’ or capitalism/colonialism) and the real solutions to Our
problems (e.g. ‘empowerment’ or genuine independence). We must begin to
promote among Our people the idea that Our purpose isn’t to simply own a
nice car, jewelry, a house, or even to quasi control a few city blocks,
but to share in Our control of entire cities, entire states, and
eventually, to share in the control of Our independent nation.
The task is to begin to formulate a community coalition behind the
idea/motto/slogan of Forever Protecting the Community. By a coalition i
mean connecting with a variety of people who identify with and support
the cause of the organization. Particularly, the following elements
within the community should be sought out for support and
assistance:
“What We have to do is get together the conscientious progressive
thinkers within these [street] organizations that know that they have to
make a change in order to survive… We have to put together a concerted
effort by all segments of Our community– clergy, business, activists,
and progressive thinkers within street organizations [local elected
officials, educators, health care providers]. You have to go within
these organizations to change them… You can’t just write off a
generation… It is time for [New Afrikans] from all over the country to
realize what has happened to Our people, and that while much of it can
be attributed to outside forces We have to begin to take responsibility
for Ourselves.” – Larry Hoover
As a politicized prisoner, and activist, co-founder of the prison
activist organization Texas T.E.A.M.O.N.E., i extend my hand, and that
of my comrades and supporters on both side of the walls, in support and
solidarity of the Forever Protecting the Community organization, and
more importantly i look forward to workin with my brothers, the 10’zzz,
on concrete actions both FPC and Team One can collab on that will suit
both Our missions.
We of TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E. believe the current United Struggle from
Within movement which We support, along with the general prison
resistance/abolition movements, align perfectly with Forever Protecting
the Community’s mission. As such, We humbly ask that if you are a part
of or support the mission to FOREVER PROTECTING THE COMMUNITY, that you
also contact and actively support the souljahs behind enemy lines within
the TX Team One formation fighting against legal slavery in Texas
prisons, and the inhumane use of indefinite, and long term solitary
confinement, as a toll of social and political repression.
Dare 2 Struggle Dare 2 Win; 1 Love 1 Struggle for LAND AND
INDEPENDENCE
“Look you a Blood, i’ma Crip, but i figure we can get back to that
Black shit, instead of killin and bangin for crack shit, is n****z too
stuck in they ways? i know We long overdue, but is We ready for change?
Stand under one flag like an ARMY brigade. Time to put the deuce-deuce
down and pick a ‘K’, and if We bangin on sum Black shit. Let’s ride for
the dead homies and get the burners for Malcolm and Nat Turner. Talkin’
to them other n*****z, my so called enemies We don’t own one block but
We live and die for these city streets. Even though the pain runs deep,
REAL n*****z know its time to make PEACE so We can FOCUS ON THE
PAYCHECK.” – Nipsey Hussle
“Now if We wanna live the THUG LIFE and the gangsta life and all
that, okay, so stop being cowards and let’s have a REVOLUTION. But We
don’t wanna do that, dudes just wanna live a character. They wanna be
cartoons, but if they really wanted to do something, if they was tough
alright, lets start Our OWN COUNTRY, lets start a REVOLUTION, let’s get
out of here [prison], let’s do something.” – Tupac Amaru Shakur
Triumphant
TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E Co-founder
New Afrikan Independence Movement
To contact/support/learn more about TX Team One:
TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E
113 Stockholm, #1A
Brooklyn, NY 11221
TexasTeamOne@gmail.com
MOwolabiIS@protonmail.com
To receive the NEW TX Team One Primer write a request to:
As we prepare this issue of Under Lock & Key (ULK) we
tallied results of our first annual fundraiser. We have chose the Fourth
of You Lie as a time to ask you to donate to this independent media
institution of the oppressed. Without prisoners’ support and
contributions this newsletter ceases to exist.
Our fundraiser had some successes in that we raised the second most
donations in a month from prisoners in years; the highest amount being
in March 2021. So we are on the upswing this year. We got an even bigger
donation from an anonymous outside supporter, which are much less
common. Our goal is to establish regular contributions from more people,
both inside and out. Whether you send donations monthly or annually, we
want to know we can count on you.
Compared to the previous 2 month period we reported on last time, our
donations from prisoners were less than half in amount and also less in
the number of people donating. The number of donators these past 2
months was about average for recent years, and far less than years past
when we had more subscribers. And once again, the vast majority
of the total amount we received from prisoners came from established USW
leaders. So we did not see much of a response to the fundraiser from our
general subscriber list.
Of course, it’s never too late to donate, and you can still send in
your 7 stamps to cover your 2021 subscription to ULK. Or 14 to
cover someone who is indigent as well. As always, ULK is
available free to U.$. prisoners, and we know that many do not have
access to funds. If that’s you, recommend ULK to friends inside
and out to build support.
This issue is coming out a little later than planned because of a few
setbacks. With more supporters on the outside working on ULK we
can make this independent institution a more resilient one. So please
get involved if you can.
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century:
Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis
by John Smith
Monthly Review Press
2016
[Editor: The author of this review uses “southern countries” to refer to
what we would call the Third World, exploited or neo-colonial countries,
and “northern countries” to refer to the imperialist, First World,
exploiter countries.]
The dominant trend in capitalism for the last forty or so years has
been the relocation of production from northern to southern countries,
where the vast majority of the global industrial workforce lives. It’s
impossible to ignore the offshore origin of most of the commodities we
interact with in the U.S. every day, and equally impossible to ignore
the wretched conditions and dramatically lower wages that most of these
southern workers deal with. What this means for the present structure
and future of the global economy is less clear, and that’s where this
book comes in.
There’s a lot in this book I won’t talk about that was nonetheless
very interesting – Smith’s discussion of GDP and productivity
measurements, his history of Marxist thinking on imperialism, and his
in-depth discussion of the production of a wide range of specific
commodities.(1) I’ll just focus on his main contribution, the value
theory of imperialism, in which he incorporates and expands on Marx’s
discussion of surplus value and Lenin’s century-old understanding of
imperialism.
Surplus in Marx’s Capital
Smith’s value theory of imperialism begins with value, which is the
amount of labor required to produce a given commodity. A capitalist
producing t-shirts wants to churn out the largest amount of them in a
working day, at the highest possible intensity of work, and with the
latest technology. Out of the sale of the t-shirts he buys equipment,
raw materials, and pays wages. These wages are the monetary expression
of labor power, or what a worker is paid to show up at a specific time
and place and put their energies and abilities at the disposal of the
capitalist. In return, the worker can use the wage they get to buy a
basket of goods to keep themselves alive til the next day. The amount of
labor that goes into the production of this basket the worker needs can
be called the value of labor-power itself, which under capitalism is a
commodity just like clothing, pickups or rifles. The pile of shirts the
capitalist gets to sell at the end of the day can be sold for more money
than the wages he pays for the labor that produced it. To cut a long
story short, Marx investigates this anomaly and discovers that there is
a part of the day where workers produce enough commodities to pay for
their wages, and a part of the day where the labor they expend creates
commodities that just make the capitalist money. The labor that happens
in this second part of the day is surplus labor, and the value of the
commodities produced at this time is surplus value. This magically free
labor is the beating heart of capitalism, and its pursuit and
distribution are the core of all capitalist economic phenomena.
Marx discussed two main ways that capitalists in the 19th century
would attempt to grab more surplus value.(2) The first he called
‘absolute surplus value,’ and it consists of extending the working day
by either making workers work harder for the time they’re at work, or
making them work for longer at the same or similar wages. The second
path to more surplus is making the value of labor power (or the amount
of labor it takes to create enough goods for a worker to survive) less.
Marx called this second form ‘relative surplus value’.
Smith takes this basic account and expands it to an era Marx didn’t
live to see and couldn’t have predicted – the transformation of the
labor-capital relationship into a relationship mostly between northern
capital and southern labor.(3)
North-South
relations in Lenin’s Imperialism
Lenin’s book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
describes a world divided into oppressor and oppressed nations, the
competition of monopolies, and the trends inherent in capitalist
development of this era that lead to ever more destructive bouts of
violence. The need for more surplus and more profits drives capitalist
firms beyond the confines of their home market, to seize and exploit
foreign ones. Competition gives way to centralization and large
monopolies, and the increasing integration of these monopolistic
interests into the state makes war over colonies and their resources
more and more likely. At home, the super-profits obtained in the
colonies create a labor aristocracy, the size and influence of which has
been debated basically for the entire hundred years since Lenin’s book
first appeared.
Smith identifies a weakness in Lenin’s work, mainly that he doesn’t
discuss or use value as a concept to explain imperialism.(4) The thing
Smith attempts, after several chapters of setting up the data on the
existence and persistence of wage differentials and trade relationships
between northern firms and southern labor, is a synthesis and update of
Marx and Lenin’s contributions.
Synthesis
Smith’s point is that the outsourcing of production has allowed
capitalist firms to conduct what he calls ‘labor arbitrage,’ or buying
labor power where it is cheap and selling the commodities produced where
they can be sold dear. Thanks to innovations in shipping and
communications technology, firms can seek out the cheapest labor and the
most favorable environmental and labor laws (ideally, they want no
environmental or labor laws) to churn out the most surplus value
possible. This has driven the wage down below the value of labor power –
workers in many countries are not paid enough to survive and have to
make a living through wage-labor in capitalist factories plus something
else, like subsistence farming or stealing. This is an extreme form of
the relative surplus value extraction method that Marx discussed, or
what has also been called superexploitation.
Additionally, the relationship between companies like Foxconn (which
actually makes the iPhone) and companies like Apple (who first create a
design that breaks in three years, then contract the production out and
stamp a logo on it for 300% markup), or ‘arms-length outsourcing’(5),
hides the exploitation and transfer of value from one country to another
behind an apparently innocent market transaction. The vast majority of
the profits, taxes and tariffs from offshored production end up not in
the country where the commodity was produced, but in the country where
the final seller of the commodity is headquartered. This is how Germany,
a country that cannot produce coffee, makes dramatically more from its
re-export than any country where it is actually grown.(6) Marx hints
that this phenomenon, called ‘value capture,’ could exist theoretically,
but Smith demonstrates that it is at the core of relationships between
countries in today’s economy. There is also a lengthy discussion of
‘value chains’ or sequential input-output relationships conducted
between firms that leads to the final commodity. A Zambian copper mine
sells to a wire factory, which sells to a company that makes circuit
boards, which sells to a car company who uses the circuit board to run
an automatic transmission in a hundred thousand dollar pickup. The
conditions of work and the selling price dramatically swell along the
chain, to the point where the worker watching a robot bolt the circuit
board into place makes more in an hour than the copper miner made in a
month. But all labor really is equal. It’s not like swinging a pickaxe
is an entirely different movement in Zambia or America. And it’s not
like the people doing the swinging are any different either.
The Political Economy of
Coffee
Smith provides a lot of concrete examples of how these exploitative
relations between nations lead to permanent conditions of
underdevelopment in southern countries, and vast profits in northern
ones. Maybe the most stark of these examples is his discussion of coffee
from the early part of the book. Coffee is only grown in southern
countries, and it is almost exclusively processed in northern countries,
where the markups can exceed four hundred percent. Wages paid in the
coffee-processing sector, taxes from this business and tariffs on
imports, all contribute to the northern economy in question (Germany,
perversely for a country that can never grow coffee except in a
greenhouse, is the biggest exporter of processed coffee) and rely on
southern countries furnishing the raw material at a reliably low price,
a price that ends up being a tiny fraction of the cost of the final
product. In this case it’s clear not only how unequal the exchange is,
but also how the entire chain of production in the northern country
relies on the exploitation of other workers. Another writer on this
subject, Zak Cope, estimates that the total transfer owing to this
process of hyper-exploitation, markup and re-export, across all
commodities, amounts to sixteen percent of GDP in northern countries
every year.
What makes these conditions permanent is the persistently low price
of the export for the country where the coffee is grown, which will not
allow it to develop or move up the ladder to more capital-intensive
forms of production that might be safer on the global market. An
additional factor is politics, and the careful policing of the ability
of southern countries to raise wages, enforce their own labor laws, hold
northern firms to account when they commit crimes(7), and raise the
price of their exports. In the case of Rwanda (a major coffee producer)
in the early 90s, the political destabilization and genocide that
occurred in the country was partially the result of the collapse of an
international coffee-exporting agreement that attempted to set a (low)
floor on the price of the commodity and provide some stability and
guaranteed income for countries who rely on its export. Northern
countries oppose any agreement that would make their inputs cost more,
or make their value-chains dependent on cheap labor any more expensive.
They can be more or less effective at ensuring this, in cooperation with
the comprador bourgeoisie. A particularly galling example of this, from
the textile sector, unfolded in Haiti in 2009 over the raising of the
minimum wage of 31 cents an hour, which president Rene Preval eventually
backed away from, after opposition from the U.S. Embassy and local
factory owners.(8)
Whose fight, and who’s
fighting?
What Smith doesn’t do is discuss the immediate political consequences
of all this for us. On the last page of the book he says “together with
their sisters and brothers in the imperialist countries, [southern]
workers have the capacity, the mission and the destiny to dig a grave in
which to bury capitalism.”(9) It’s a little too convenient, and maybe in
the future he can discuss the history of this elusive internationalism.
Whether workers in northern countries fight actively or consciously for
this super-exploitation to continue, whether and to what exact extent
different groups of workers in northern countries benefit from this
arrangement of production, whether workers of the world can unite and
what they could accomplish if they could, are all questions Smith
doesn’t answer. MIM would argue that workers in northern countries
clearly benefit from imperialism, and seek those benefits in an alliance
(an alliance that might have some rough spots now and then) with the
bourgeoisie of their own countries, and are thus not a mass base for a
revolutionary movement but instead a labor aristocracy. Changes to all
of these relationships – between northern and southern countries, and
between workers and their bosses, north and south – will drive changes
in the political economy John Smith’s book goes a long way towards
helping us understand.
Notes: 1. pp. 13-34 2. p. 237 3. p. 12 4.
pp. 225-230 5. p. 68 6. p. 31 7. It always helps when the
law in northern countries maintains a fictitious barrier between a
northern firm relying on exploitation and those they exploit. A recent
extreme example is the Supreme Court’s ruling that the slave labor of
children used in harvesting product for Nestle under conditions the
company controlled wasn’t technically the company’s fault. See:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-nestle-in-child-slavery-case.html
8. Dan
Coughlin and Kim Ives, 1 June 2011, WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3
a Day, The Nation. 9. p. 315
Any pig that enjoys punishing citizens who even think about resisting
arrest or even ‘looking funny’ at him should move to Corruptarado (as we
call this state) and go work for the Denver Pig Department.
Per an 11 August 2021 article in the Denver Post, “Denver
paid $1.1 million settlement to police officers fired after beating
unarmed man, records show,” two pigs that severely beat a 23 year-old
Latino man in 2011 were fired, but as part of the ‘deal,’ were paid
thousands of dollars in exchange for agreeing to never work for a pig
department ever again.
But wait. The pigs sued, claiming they should have not been fired.
After a ten year battle, the Colorado Supreme Court allows this Colorado
Court of Appeals ruling to stand. A ruling for the pigs.
So … one of the pigs got $420k, and the other got almost six hundred
grand from the City and County of Denver. City officials said “We are
acutely aware that this result means that the officers essentially
escape the consequences of their conduct.” Ya think?
No doubt pigs around the country smile when they read of this
decision. Maybe many of them will now be sending their job applications
to the Denver Pig Department, home of the pigs with 007 licenses to
kill.
This is in reply to the article “An
Ongoing Discussion on Organizing Strategy”, which appeared in
ULK 73. In it, the author labels the following statement as
incorrect and unscientific:
“From an organizers perspective, [struggling for quality-of-life
reforms such as increased phone access] are not battles which we can
effectively push anti-imperialism forward, much less MLM…”
The author cites a failure to apply the materialist dialectic, or the
‘science’ behind scientific socialism, to the situation at hand. When
viewed in isolation and out of its proper context, the conclusion that
they have reached would certainly be a commonsense position to take. And
as they write a little further on:
“How can we then deem that prison struggles aren’t aligned with
anti-imperialism?”
Yet if the quote being critiqued were analyzed in its totality, we
can begin to see more nuance and why such a statement was made in the
first place. So to continue where the partial quote left off:
“…without veering into reformist practices of little tactical or
strategic value. I am aware that arguments of principle can be
mounted to the contrary, but absent a practicable, totalizing
strategy for revolution domestically being put forward by an MLM
organization that is actionable in the here-and-now, we cannot
effectively utilize many of these prison struggles as a proper
springboard to corresponding actions in other areas, actions which do
not translate into long-term pacification which benefits their prison
administration in an objective, cost-to-us, benefit-to-them analysis. If
we cannot muster the resources and external manpower to mount a facility
or state-specific campaign for a tactical reform to push our agenda and
continually imprint firmly in the minds of all incarcerated that we have
their best interests in mind, it may be advisable to abstain from
participation lest credit for the reforms go elsewhere and become
politically-neutered, or, worse yet, the system co-opts the struggle as
its own and touts its successes (ie. The First-Step Act). Otherwise, we
are gaining no more than sporadic traction amongst those we are
attempting to revolutionize, and then only of a transient nature.”
(emphasis added)
As mentioned earlier, there is a nuance to the position I have taken
that is obscured in comrade Triumphant’s approach to mounting an
argument on principle, and that in itself constitutes an incorrect and
unscientific approach to proper discourse. Quoting someone out of
context may buttress a particular argument or agenda, however arguments
begin to lose their strength when quotations are re-situated in their
proper place. You ask, ‘how can we then deem that prison struggles
aren’t aligned with anti-imperialism?’, but who has or where has such a
view been advocated in the first place for this allegation to be made?
As you can see, the position put forth in the original commentary
advocated not an abandonment of revolutionary struggle within prisons
but rather its placement within a more explicitly revolutionary
framework. Refining our approach does not imply an abandonment of all
struggle just to focus on study.
It is agreed that the materialist dialectic can be applied in all
manner of social phenomena, and the Amerikan injustice system and the
struggle between prison staff and the captive population are no
exception. But the real question is, should it be applied in
this particular instance in the manner which the Team One Formation,
K.A.G.E. Universal and others have done thus far – that is, pushing for
minor reforms largely divorced from a wider revolutionary
anti-imperialist agenda resulting in pacification once concessions are
made? I would argue that advocating for these various minor reforms to
address the prison masses immediate needs can be classified as
(presupposing these formations desire revolution or claim communism as
their goal) right opportunist deviations.
Right opportunism is an error in practice that occurs when an
organization attempts to embed itself in the masses and in doing so
gives up a clear revolutionary program in the interest of fighting for
immediate demands. This leads to economism/workerism (or in this case
‘prisonerism’), which is the purview of reformism: solely focusing on
economic demands (economism), or the demands of prisoners.
You write that “quality-of-life reforms are connected to the strategy
of cadre development.” Now can experience be gained in how to train
cadre and organize people while doing this? Sure, but similar things can
be argued about improving one’s marksmanship and related skills acquired
while employed as a cop too. While a rather extreme analogy, what I am
getting at is that productive skills can technically be derived from
incorrect practice. Yet the question for both scenarios remains the
same: Is there a better methodological approach to training cadre?
It is a laudable desire to want to avoid being all ‘study’ and no
struggle, but if ‘struggle’ leads a group to avoiding, obscuring or
watering down their politics in order to attain their demands, then that
is not getting us any closer to our desired results. As MIM(Prisons)
notes:
“We can also say that only focusing on the reformist campaigns,
without the larger goals, is not going to change anything in regards to
ending oppression and injustice.”
It is encouraging to see that in consequence of previous organizing
experience comrade Triumphant has pledged to focus on “reorganizing of
the TX Team One under a clearer program and a better understanding of
what our strategic and tactical goals are.” This statement also aligns
with what this comrade wrote in the November 2020 USW organizing update
in reference to the reformist practice of the Prisoner Human Rights
Movement (PHRM):
“unless anti-imperialist, revolutionary nationalist and/or communists
take hold of this movement and see it as a tactical operation instead of
a be-all end-all and thereby re-center the movement, it may only further
‘Amerikanize’ the (only) vastly-proletarian revolutionary sector of
society we have (lumpen in prison). That could occur if cats become
pacified with all these tokens and reforms that have been struggled
for.”
But just because we re-center a movement along these lines and dress
future demands to the state in sufficiently ‘revolutionary’ language to
avoid the perception of reformism does not mean that we are actually
avoiding these same pitfalls.
Here I will argue that even with an explicitly revolutionary program
guiding us in the struggle for tactical reforms, we can still be
susceptible to a sort of unwitting crypto-reformism if our struggles are
not chosen very carefully and with the correct tactical,
strategic and narrative approach. In the original commentary I wrote
that
“we should not be trying to ‘improve’ Amerikan prisons, much like we
should not be attempting to cut a bigger portion of imperialist profits
from Third World super-exploitation for the lower class, yet still
relatively privileged, citizens of empire.”
This statement meshes with your desire not to have strictly-reformist
campaigns “further ‘Amerikanize’ the (only) vastly-proletarian
revolutionary sector of society we have.” Of course our current approach
differs strategically from the reformists but, noble intentions aside,
it is still having the same overall effect in practice: we are
inadvertently pacifying individuals, making them complacent sleepwalkers
again. You may probably think: ‘Bullshit. We are teaching the masses
not to fall for any old reform, that these are ’tactical
maneuvers’,etc. And you may very well be able to indoctrinate a core of
cadre to hold strong to a political line which promotes this view.
However, if we view matters through a historical lens, when concessions
from the state were achieved via a revolutionary stage of struggle these
victories largely blunted the sympathetic masses desire to seek further
redress by way of revolutionary means. Whether that be (to cite a
non-Maoist, yet anti-capitalist example) during the peak of IWW
organizing a century ago, the transient successes of the
anti-revisionist New Communist Movement era or our current campaigns to
‘Abolish the SHU’ and ‘Release the Kids in Kages.’ Our ‘successes’ end
up serving as a pressure-release for many and creating a ‘kinder,
gentler machine-gun hand’ for our opponents to use against us, akin to
replacing the arrogance and political incorrectness of Trump for the
soothing reassurances of Biden.
From the commentary of the same USW organizing update from November
2020, you write that
“from an anti-imperialist perspective, the PHRM is only a tactic, a
means to an end. That end being, sharpening the contradiction between
oppressed and oppressor nations, and advancing the oppressed aspect of
that contradiction.”
But how do we really expect to sharpen the contradiction between
oppressed and oppressor nations and advance the oppressed aspect of that
contradiction if we are actively participating in the lowering or
resolution of the contradictions which heightened tensions in the first
place? There is a periodic ebb and flow of the revolutionary tide in
this country; why do we by way of our current tactical, strategic and
narrative approach inadvertently help turn an upswing into a downturn?
Of course the inherent contradiction in (note:their) Amerikan
society will never truly go away absent revolution, but we are in the
meantime attempting to apply balm to their societal problems
and in effect delay its arrival.
Circling back to the arguments put forth in ‘An Ongoing Discussion on
Organizing Strategy’, you bring up a good question when you write
that
“the real crux of the issue, as it pertains to linking a totalizing
revolutionary strategy, lies in practical experience gained by the
masses in asserting their collective power. For, how will we seize state
power if the people lack the strategic confidence to assert their
power?”
As my position does not advocate pushing for more quality-of-life
reforms even if there happens to be some positive by-product in cadre
development, my reply to this question is that we should re-orient our
tactics, strategy and narrative approach to the masses by
over-emphasizing self-reliance and independence-mastery on the
road to communist revolution. Therefore we should largely abstain from
trying to prevent erosions of their bourgeois legal rights such as
affirmative action, LGBTQ rights, abortion access, etc. and, if we are
to engage in any tactical reforms to begin with, instead focus on
opposition to proposals to place limits on magazine capacity, bans on
assault rifles and other perceived or actual threats to their 2nd
Amendment and other measures which will aid in our ability to maneuver
and take them down when the time comes. This of course does not
mean that we don’t support LGBTQ rights or abortion access, but fighting
for their (re:Amerika’s) civil liberties and other bourgeois
rights keeps many, including some well-meaning comrades, from seeing the
bigger picture: Let their country go to hell. The Amerikan
government will not become any less imperialist by advocating for more
rights for more people within U.S. borders and it is debatable that we
are contributing to anything more than a temporary weakening of
imperialism domestically. If anything we are contributing to its further
consolidation under the guise of new exploiters with more varied
genders, orientations and skin tones.
Our cadre and the masses will gain practical experience and strategic
confidence in their power by continuing to focus on construction of
independent institutions, not making demands of an illegitimate
government to provide redress. In the prison context, I repeat: “if we
are to engage in any prison organizing, then censorship battles
concerning our political ideology, the UFPP and the Re-Lease on Life
programs should take center stage… As for our comrades who do not have
the luxury of a release date, or have sentences which essentially
translate into the same, their best hope for release lies not in reforms
but with an all-sided MLM revolutionary organization planning their
release through eventual People’s War.”
Bypass the reforms which do not help us either strengthen our
party/cell formations, build independent institutions for the people or
hasten People’s War.
Say ‘NO’ to negotiations; focus on revolutionary-separation and
self-determination.
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: I want to thank
Triumphant and S. Xanastas for their thoughtful articulations on this
topic. And i hope that printing these in ULK are helpful to
others in thinking about how to organize effectively under the United
Struggle from Within banner or on the streets.
In my many years of working on this project i would say this two-line
struggle is really at the heart of what we do. Of course, how we walk
the line between ultra-left and rightism is always at the heart of those
deciding strategy for a communist movement. But these comrades address
this question in our context today in the United $tates and in the
context of organizing the First World lumpen and engaging in
prison-based organizing.
In all contexts, going too far left means isolating ourselves from
the masses and going too far right means tailing the masses and
following them into dead ends. Therefore finding the correct path also
requires determining who are the masses in our conditions. If we did not
agree on who the masses are then we could not have this discussion in a
meaningful way. Since we do agree, this is a two line struggle within
our movement. With that frame I want to quickly address a couple points
brought up here.
First, I think the strength in Triumphant’s argument is not in the
skill-building of the individual cadre leaders as organizers, which
arguably could be found elsewhere, but rather “in practical experience
gained by the masses in asserting their collective power.” Triumphant
also talks about the importance of the tactical battles in “increas[ing]
the collective practical experience of contesting the state as a united
body.”
S. Xanastas’ suggested program echoes closely to what Narobi Äntari’s
calls for comrades to do upon release. And they echo much of
MIM(Prisons) focus, especially in more recent years. Yet, i pose the
question: can building the Re-Lease on Life and University of Maoist
Thought programs mobilize and reach the masses in the same way as the
campaigns making demands from the state?
And one final point, is that MIM always said the principal task was
not just to build independent institutions of the oppressed, but also to
build public opinion against imperialism. Isn’t a campaign exposing the
widespread use of torture in U.$. prisons an undermining of U.$.
imperialism regardless of the maneuvers the various states make to cut
back on or hide their use of long-term isolation? Or should we focus
solely on the Third World neo-colonies and expose U.$. meddling in
Ethiopia, Cuba and Haiti?