Federal Prisons

Indiana State Prison’s (I.S.P.) Administration are deliberately indifferent towards B-Cellhouse. B-Cellhouse is the closest (in comparison) to being honor dorm in I.S.P. Very rarely goes on lock down. Most inmates are enrolled in classes of some kind. But yet the administration is set on showing severe deliberate indifference on various levels toward occupants of B-Cellhouse.

In this prison there are 6 cellhouses and 3 dorms. C and A Cellhouses are the cellhouses with the continuous recurring lockdowns, I-Cellhouse is the honor cellhouse, D-Cellhouse is RHU, P-Cellhouse is protective custody, E-Dorm is older adults, F-Dorm is the overflow for NSB-RWI program. Dorms are free flowing at all times except count times and after 6PM. C-Cellhouse and A-Cellhouse are allowed out of cell all day except for count times. B-Cellhouse (the cellhouse that has little to no conflict) we are locked in our cells 24/7 unless we have any class, pass, rec, chow outside of cellhouse. Any time we return to cellhouse we are forced to be locked in cells, which in turn deprives us of use of showers, phones, kiosk, counseling.

If at rec time we don’t go out to gym to play basketball, shoot pool, lift weights, then we are not allowed rec time to be used inside cellhouse to take care of our other much needed, required things such as speaking to the team counselors for any needs such as legal, programs, filing paperwork, etc. We are not allowed to use phones to contact our families, we are not allowed to use showers, we aren’t allowed to just use the time outside to walk, talk, socialize with others. We are basically forced to choose to either go to chow or use the time that chow is being ran to use phone or shower. Anytime we attempt to go to chow or return to cellhouse to use phone, shower, or speak with unit team counselors we are forced to return to our cells to be locked in.

So in reality B-Cellhouse is on administrative segregation for incarcerated individuals that have no disciplinary code violations and are enrolled in constructive personal development programs. Our rights to shower, make phone calls, speak with unit team, any movement that does not involve going to chow or strictly outside rec only, or to classes, we are being forced to be solitary confinement in 1 man cells.

There is this little 22-year-old 105 lb girl that is the officer in charge, Atwood, that enforces this no touch torture, mental anguish, deliberate indifference, violation of our civil rights by way of approval from administration. This cellhouse consists of elderly, educated, religious, goal-oriented, positive, rehabilitative seeking incarcerated individuals striving to make better choices in life, that also avoid conflict and altercations. There are only 22 cells on each range, 10 ranges with a maximum capacity of 222 individual cells. Of the 222 individuals in cellhouse, the only ones allowed to use showers, phones, unit team counselors, are the cellhouse workers that consist of approximately 30 people in total. The only designated times out of cells are chow time, rec (only outside), passes (medical, library, legal mail, DHB, visit), classes, chapel. Yet the cellhouses with problematic occurrences daily – rapes, killings, robberies, etc., are allowed to spend the entire day out of cells with exception of 5:30AM - 6AM, 10AM - 11AM, and 2PM - 3PM.

The administration are taking advantage of the less rowdy, less violent, goal oriented, positive individuals to enforce violation of policy, civil rights, state and federal laws by refusing bare necessities of shower, communication, with family, use of unit team to assist in resources for legal or any other assistance needed by counselors of unit. The cellhouses that are not restricted have approximately 400 inmates in them. Their constitutional rights are being respected. They are allowed full use of shower, phone, unit team access, inside of cellhouses rec with a minimum of approximately 10 disciplinary lock downs a year for anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months lock down each occurrence.

The administration of I.S.P. is enforcing the violation of rights of incarcerated individuals housed in B-Cellhouse only. We have no way of filing grievances due to restriction of contact with unit team to obtain grievance forms, request slips, law library forms, etc. Also denial of use of phone to communicate the deliberate indifferences, discrimination, non-touch torture, etc. Access to outside sources, family, attorneys, etc. is also being prevented. We really need your assistance in sorting this out. To every forum available to expose the illegal abuse of power, and denial of rights aforementioned, violation not only of state and federal laws but also policy and administrative procedures. It’s sending the message as if incarcerated individuals housed in B-Cellhouse don’t go against the rules and continue to strive to better themselves in a rehabilitative manner. Then B-Cellhouse will be will be treated unjustly and unfairly, being denied rights and discriminated against, tortured, confined, etc. Only violence, chaos, uncontrolled, unethical behavior will be rewarded with adherence to rights and policy and administrative procedures. Here at Indiana State Prison, the warden will not allow anyone who tries to make a positive change to eat, shower, use phone, or talk to unit teams.

Organizations in Occupied Turtle Island organizing under the label of Palestine solidarity take various tactics and ideological positions. A great portion of these efforts are negative, representing leftist organization-building and guilt-soothing for populations who benefit from imperialism.(1)

Still, there is much to be appreciated in Palestine solidarity organizing. The fact that as a class, U.$. workers are wedded to imperialism as a labor aristocracy(2) does not mean that select individuals and segments of the same class, such as youth, immigrants and members of oppressed nations, don’t have a righteous impulse to rebel against genocide.(3) Further, drawing the line between practicing manufactured discontent to gain social capital (for example, peaceful, permitted and policed “solidarity” marches, or gathering social media clout) versus genuine rebellion (involving significant self-sacrifice) can be a difficult strategic question and a complicated moral matter. It’s the job of communists to answer these questions, drawing those who can be allied in a united front under the leadership of the global proletariat.

In the United $tates, only small percentages of the country ever will protest for progressive causes, and usually only a few thousand people are liable to turn up at anti-imperialist protests, if we’re lucky. But even this small size of protest crowds can be confusing. We see large events put on in the name of helping Palestine and, ignoring the lack of ideological unity required for such crowds, perceive that there is a strong movement against genocide here. To move how? Against which genocide? You’ll find that the larger the event, the less likely it is for such questions to be answered.

Let’s examine one specific way this numbers game is lost among the U.$. left. A very common protest narrative goes something like this: X city/institution is partnering with Israel. That partnership uses funds which could otherwise be spent “on our community” (healthcare, jobs, public resources). Therefore, we must divest from Israel and invest back into “our community”. The messaging behind agitational work tells the organizers, audience and onlookers at protests the purpose and goals of the work: they represent the ideology pushing our practice forwards. Here, this oft-repeated messaging about divestment explains that everyone should join the cause to reclaim what is theirs from an immoral misappropriation.

This narrative about redirecting resources away from genocide and towards “community” can be found in endless settler-left slogans such as “build more schools, not bombs!” or “money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!” All such ideas revolve around the mythos of the Amerikan “community”: a fictitious multi-national concept in which, abstracted from the violence at the base of the Amerikan colony and the national conflicts therein, we can imagine harmonious and communal ways of life involving sharing our resources. This imagination goes back to the root of settler consciousness in Occupied Turtle Island which imagines a “Thanksgiving” where the colonists shared food with the First Nations rather than poisoning, raping and murdering them by the millions.

An almost identical narrative is wielded by referencing the “tax dollars” spent on Palestine-solidarity campaigns’ targets, begging Amerikans to rise up against a supposed misuse of money which is otherwise rightfully owed to them. This relies on the same conceptual basis as a “community.” If we believe this narrative then absent specific policy mistakes (such as funding Israel) there would exist the basis for peaceful redistribution of the spoils of genocide and imperialism, and this would be a righteous redistribution. At the base of these common yet mistaken ideas are 1) a genuine impulse towards fascism by U.$. citizens who wish to become even more wealthy compared to the Third World, and 2) ignorance regarding the source of global wealth disparity to begin with.

We cannot resolve #1, the fascist impulse among a majority here, without overturning imperialism and settler-colonialism entirely. To address #2 however, we can study how “communities” in Occupied Turtle Island are literally built and sustained off of genocide, slavery and imperialism, especially regarding the “average jo.” There are two main groups in the United $tates: the settlers and the oppressed nations. Euro-Amerikan settlers have been a consistently reactionary group for the past five centuries as their life here is founded on slavery and land theft.(4) They are the numeric majority of the U.$. population and have consistently subjected the First Nations, New Afrika and the Chican@ nation with oppressive, genocidal campaigns.(5)

These oppressed nations on the other hand vacillate between progressive and regressive tendencies depending on proximity to the spoils of imperialism. Independence movements among oppressed nations represent a progressive impulse wishing to sever connections with U.$. imperialism, whereas participation in DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) initiatives, reforming political parties and redistributing wealth to the oppressed nations represent an integrationist trend which serves to either enlarge the (petty-)bourgeoisie of these nations at the expense of their oppressed masses or incorporate swaths of the nation into the capitalist-imperialist world system.(6) Overall there are substantial parts of oppressed nations here who still face genocide while other portions steadily receive a bit more of the imperial pie.

To the extent that anyone here enjoys it, the First World lifestyle includes housing, food, medicine, transportation and extensive leisure-time bought from the blood of indigenous peoples and manipulation of global labor prices which under-pay workers in the Third World and deprives them of basic necessities.(7) An over-accumulation of profits in the United $tates has led to excess money supply and higher domestic wages: the surplus available to create a complacent consumer base beyond the settlers alone.(8) This is why wages here are approximately 10x normal wages in Palestine. Thus while some U.$. workers suffer under national oppression, they are almost all economic oppressors of the Third World.(9)

So if we convince the majority here that they are actually impoverished through imperialism, or would be enriched through its end, we are misrepresenting the facts and tarnishing the cause of Palestinian liberation. When imperialism inevitably falls, internationalist forces in the imperial core will probably be encircled by fascism: citizens here attempting to cling to lifestyles and social roles which can no longer exist, led by whichever elements of the bourgeoisie can rally them around new extractive outlets to replace old imperialism. The faster we can pull away from self-interested economic thinking here, the faster we will eventually construct socialism. The more here who search for their own best interest through the fall of imperialism, the longer such a task will take.

United front work in the imperial core on behalf of the global proletariat will involve grappling deeply with the labor aristocracy and the settler nation. We must investigate this majority’s interests as they unfold in street protests, unions, universities and even prisons. We shouldn’t reject them wholesale: we should condemn their economic gluttony while simultaneously uniting those who will commit to fighting on the behalf of the international proletariat. We must educate each and every Amerikan who will listen about how their wealth comes from genocide and how their lives will change when imperialism finally falls.

Having rejected the fantasy of an abstract, multi-national Amerikan “community,” we could instead support the many progressive causes belonging to the oppressed nations here who have suffered under genocide like Palestine. But such campaigns must be specific in their slogans and selection of organizing base, as well as how to relate to those with varying proximity to imperialism. Connecting progressive campaigns such as those against police brutality, which predominantly affects oppressed nations, to Palestinian sovereignty is a righteous cause. Trying to connect Palestine to the reactionary dissatisfaction of everyday Amerikan workers, especially settlers, is a recipe for fascism and genocide.

<sup>Notes:
1. A Million Tiny Fleas “The Anti-War Movement that Wasn’t” Substack, Jun 13 2023.
2. Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg. 9.
3. The Dawnland Group, “A Polemic against Settler Maoism”, MIM (Prisons) website, June 2024.
4. Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb.
5. Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons, “Proletarian Feminist Revolutionary Nationalism” June 2017, pgs 96 – 108.
6. Labor unions from oppressed nations integrating with settler and imperialist labor unions is an important historic evidence of this trend. See: Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb, pgs 152 – 174.
7. Jason Hickel, Christian Dorninger, Hanspeter Wieland, Intan Suwandi, “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015,” Global Environmental Change, Volume 73, 2022.
8. Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb 2012, pg 200.
9. Undocumented migrants, prisoners, homeless people, and the chronically unemployed lumpenproletariat are generally not economic oppressors.</sup>

i enjoyed comrade Grim’s article on Christian Zionism and the prison tablet propaganda. i wanted to comment a little since Grim asked for comments from TX comrades.

Comrade Grim was spot on with what was said about the ideas and ideals driving Christian Zionism generally and as it manifests itself in the prison tablet space.

Regarding the group Grim mentioned by name, Real Vida TV, i was able to work closely with Real Vida while organizing on behalf of Texas T.E.A.M. O.N.E. At the time their line on solitary confinement was that they saw it as torture and that it should be shut down in its totality. This matched Our own line on solitary confinement and Real Vida was willing and did assist us in spreading Our message, connecting us with interested groups and opening their platform up to us and our supporters. At the time it was only an audio radio show, not a podcast, and there were no tablets. They also acted as communication assistants helping us make important contacts with each other from plantation to plantation as we organized a state-wide hunger strike against solitary confinement. All this is to say that at the time we had a working relationship, regardless of their Christian Zionist beliefs.

However, this changed after Operation Al-Aqsa flood. Personally speaking i couldn’t even listen to the garbage they were spewing let alone look past it. Ties were severed. To me the question of the Third World proletariat and the Palestinian nationalist struggle far out-weighs the U.$. prisoner class-based struggles.

They’re the most reactionary manifestation of the christian prison ministries and also one of the most popular. A lot of their videos are widely discussed afterwards and i’ve had more than a few disputes and even fisticuffs surrounding the B.S. they spew. The cold truth is that as MIM(Prisons) says, not all prisoners are swayed by this garbage. But the Palestinian struggle has unearthed the reactionary, patriotic amerikkkan spirit among the lumpen here. What i observe is that only the most politically and socially conscious prisoners side with the Palestinian struggle, and this is the minority.

The tablets play a role in that they have very limited selection of voices and ideas, particularly on this sort of issue. Pando App dominates the landscape and prior to March 2024, when podcasts were uploaded onto all tablets, Pando was basically the only source of entertainment. i have filed complaints concerning discrimination in content that is available on the KA Lite app, which is an education app that has a wide variety of scientific and hard historical factual knowledge, but the prison admin has to allow permission to download content. My complaint came after observing that there was no content concerning Africa, the Black Liberation struggle, and anti-colonial revolutions. Although these videos have been made by the app creator, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has not allowed us access to the content. i also filed a complaint on the podcast platform for similar reasons but pertaining solely to Palestine.

The final comment is that outside comrades have to begin to get their content on the music and/or podcast platforms. i sent a previous note to MIM(Prisons) on how to do that with the Securus people.

Firewater of USW also responded: Grim, read your article in ULK 86. I totally agree with you about the Christian religion and these “evangelists” supporting mass murder and exploitation around the world. The people at Real Vida are real nice folks, but they are brainwashed and misguided like all Christians. We need to be able to copy what they do only for our revolutionary work.

We need to be doing what Real Vida is doing but like you said the Christian Zionists have a monopoly on these tablets and it needs to be broken up! I was in medium and high security and all we could watch was “Pando App”, which is nothing but Christian Evangelists and we have an FYI App that is run by TDCJ and is all Jesus all the time!

TDCJ is run by these Christian Chapels and they oppress other religions such as Muslim, Native American, Eastern religions, etc. The Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) Unitarian Universalists’ Prison Ministry said that the “PANDO” App would not allow the CLF to participate. Probably because the PANDO folks are right-wing evangelical kooks and the CLF and UUA are extremely liberal organizations.

Grim is right on when ey talks about the genocide of Turtle Island and the raping and pillaging of Mother Earth’s treasures. They love to tout capitalism as the greatest engine of wealth ever created. But it’s like Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the farm animals are ruled by their newly formed governance of PIGS!

Let The Memory of Marcellus Khaliifah Williams, A New Afrikan Poet and Revolutionary, Reaffirm Our Commitment to the Struggle

Marcellus Williams, also known as Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniel, was murdered by the amerikkkan state on 24 September 2024. He was a proud Muslim New Afrikan, a poet, an advocate for Palestinian children, and a prison imam at Potosi Correctional Center. Despite a vast quantity of evidence showing that Williams did not commit the crime of which he was convicted -

“Williams was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and burglary in 2001 for the 1998 killing of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle, a 42-year-old reporter stabbed 43 times in her home. His conviction relied on two witnesses who later said they were paid for their testimony, according to the Midwest Innocence Project, and 2016 DNA testing conducted on the murder weapon “definitively excluded” Williams.”

The state nevertheless passed the decision, with the approval of the Supreme Court, to murder him in cold blood.

Williams was convicted in 2001, by a jury consisting of 11 white men and one New Afrikan. According to Al Jazeera, a New Afrikan juror was improperly dismissed from the jury, with the justification that they would not be objective.

Prosecutor Keith Larner said that he had excluded a potential Black juror because of how similar they were, saying “They looked like they were brothers.”

In a country that supposedly grants everyone the right to a “trial by their peers”, the fact that a New Afrikan on trial for the murder of a white woman was not allowed a jury of his peers – of New Afrikans – makes it clear that amerikkka cannot be “reformed” into “accepting” the New Afrikan nation, no matter how much surface-level anti-racist rhetoric is in the media nor how many bourgeois New Afrikans are elected to positions of power. For skewing Williams’s jury towards white men the judge would owe blood debts to the oppressed nations and the proletariat far greater than any average criminal under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ey was right about one thing – a jury of New Afrikans, of Williams’s peers, would have been more likely than a jury of white men to consider his innocence. That is why more than half of the people with death sentences in the United $tates are Black or Latin@ according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

Williams’s conviction, for the murder of a white woman, shines clarity on why it is necessary to have a proper analysis of the gender hierarchy in the First World. The trope of a New Afrikan man murdering or “raping” a white woman has been used to stir up the most vile representations of national oppression ever since New Afrikans were imported as a permanent underclass and oppressed nation, from Emmett Till to Marcellus Williams. The rapidity at which the criminal injustice system will commit atrocities against New Afrikans accused of violence against white women makes it clear that the question of “gender oppression” is far more tied up in national and class oppression than pseudo-feminists would have one believe. Since time immemorial, the oppressor-nation men and women both have been spurred into action by the suggestion of a New Afrikan acting violently towards a white woman; Williams’s case is no different.

“From 1930 to 1985, the white courts not only executed Black murder and rape convicts at a rate several times that of white murder and rape convicts, it executed more Black people than white people in total.”(2)

Hours before ey was executed, the Supreme Court reviewed Williams’s case, and denied the request to halt or delay his execution. This is despite millions of signatures on a petition, and a great deal of social media activism around the case. The righteous anger of millions was not enough to save Williams’s life. True radicals, not reformists nor revisionists, need to look past the idea of incremental reforms, of politely asking the amerikkkan state to consider the humanities of those it has deemed worthless. If the time and energy that had been put into the (nevertheless righteous) cause of petitioning for Marcellus Williams had been put into studying, organizing, and building towards a movement of New Afrikan liberation, or towards an overturn of the amerikkkan empire and its justice system, not only would Williams’s life have likely been saved (as he would have been granted a true trial by his peers), but the lives of many others convicted (wrongfully or not) of crimes that pale in comparison to the crimes against humanity committed by the First World bourgeoisie and its lackeys would have been saved as well. Any justice for Williams can only be attained when we feed this righteous outrage into such systematic solutions.

Many of the narratives from supporters surrounding his death would have the reader believe that the only reason he was undeserving of death was his lack of culpability. Undoubtedly, the murder of an innocent man is something that will tug at the heartstrings of many, and can be used as an agitational opportunity. But as communists, we recognize that the use of the death penalty by the bourgeois state, and especially a jury of euro-amerikans deciding the fate of a New Afrikan, is always murder. So too are the deaths of New Afrikans at the hands of the police; so too are the deaths of the Third World proletariat by starvation, natural disaster, or oppression by paramilitaries serving as U.$. attack-dogs. Whether or not Williams was guilty of his crime, whether or not the hundreds of others on death row are innocent, the system will never prosecute those who uphold the world order that leads the oppressed into a life of crime, will never order the lethal injection of those with the blood of millions of oppressed-nation proletarians on their hands.

Williams was a devout Muslim and served as an imam for those in prison. The topic of religion has been covered many times before in Under Lock and Key, but this case serves as an example of how religion serves as a liberatory force for many in prison – helping them to transform themselves, and to find allies among all those fighting against amerikkka and the capitalist system throughout the First and the Third World alike. Williams’s last words were “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!”; the author sees this as an example of why, rather than condemning religion as some pseudo-“Maoists” and chauvinists will do, we recognize religion to be, as Marx explained, the sigh of the oppressed people. Islam brought Williams a sense of comfort and cosmic justice as he headed to his death, without keeping him from organizing and speaking out against the moribund and oppressive priSSon sySStem.

Let Marcellus Williams’s death remind all of us that this country’s injustice system doesn’t care how much people protest, or petition. Ultimately, polite pleas to higher authority will go ignored. The only thing that will keep such high-profile injustices like this, as well as the more covert violence against New Afrikans and other oppressed nations, from happening again, is freedom from the amerikkkan state, won through struggle and revolution. And we must remember, unlike so many of the liberal activists who took up this cause, that we fight for Marcellus not only because the evidence shows he has a higher chance of being innocent than most people on death row, but because the oppressive and racist amerikkkan empire should not have the right to decide whether a single New Afrikan lives or dies.

Williams’s poetry is a beautiful and striking example of proletarian-internationalist art, in how it captures the revolutionary consciousness of New Afrikans in the United $tates, and in how it draws the link between New Afrika and Palestine.

^Note: 1. Elizabeth Melimopoulos, 25 September 2024, Why was Marcellus Williams executed? What to know about the Missouri case, Al Jazeera.
2. see MIM Theory 2/3:Gender and Revolutionary Feminism for more on the intersections of nation and gender*^

I recently received my first Under Lock and Key (Winter 2023, No. 80) newsletter. I really wish I’d been receiving it years ago, cuz it’s a good read, and very informative.

Just read page 7. Drug addiction remains a primary barrier to unity, and I would like more info on United Struggle from Within’s Revolutionary 12 Step training program. And if, and how, I can get involved, cause here in the Illinois prison system, drugs have become a major issue, especially since Covid hit. Prisoners are having their people dip/spray letters, cards, books, magazines, and even obituaries with drugs and other chemicals in order to eat or smoke the paper to get some type of high. Whatever these guys are smoking is causing them to have episodes such as freaking out, seizures, and even O.D.ing. It’s so bad at times you can see a smoke cloud in the air, and C.O.’s, Sgt’s, Lt’s, and even Major’s have been on a wing during this and have done nothing but tell the wing to put that shit out and spray something in order to cover up the odor, and they’ve even said, smoke it at your own risk and don’t call for help if you O.D. There ain’t a unit, wing, or housing that don’t have an issue with this stuff. Seg and even the infirmary are smoking it up. To a point the staff have given up trying to get this under control and these substances have caused multiple issues for all of us in here.

They’ve gotten real strict on the mail and what we receive and how we receive mail such as letters, cards, photos, and books/magazines. They’ve told us that our letters can’t be more than 3 pages, we can’t receive 2-ply cards, and they can’t have any glitter on them. All photos have to go through a company such as Freeprints or Pelipost, can’t come from our family, friends, Walmart, or Walgreens any more. All books and magazines must come from a vendor or company, and even then, a lot is not allowed, no hard cover books, and can’t be over a certain size.

Also, it plays on us prisoners that have health issues and altered immune systems such as myself. I have breathing issues and I’ve even had a sinus surgery in order to open my nose so I could breathe better. And I use a rescue inhaler and have been put in by my surgeon to have a sleep study done due to my breathing and my surgeon has even said that I need a CPAP machine which is what the sleep study is for.

I’ve even gotten into arguments/fights with cellies that I’ve had over them wanting to smoke this stuff.

I have wrote the warden and the placement officer multiple times, the warden has never responded. And it took me three times writing the placement officer before I got a response. I had asked, “which wings exactly are the non-smoking wings?” “This is a smoke-free institution.”, word-for-word the response I was given.

Staff C.O.’s and nurses crack jokes and talk about how bad the smoking is on a unit or on a wing, and I’ve heard/been told by a few C.O.’s and nurses that some staff have lawsuits in due to them coming in contact with said substance and/or smoke.

There is nowhere in this prison that is smoke free, and with them not having a place for those of us that don’t want to be around this stuff, they are putting us in harm’s way and putting our health at risk.

A couple questions: is this a violation of my rights? What should/can I do about it?

Please help me if you can, thank you!

Please send me the Grievance Campaign – petition for Illinois.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is the same story we’ve been hearing across the country, and one of the reasons we launched our Revolutionary 12 Step program when we did. It’s almost as if this drug plague prisoners are facing was intentional. You should have received a copy of our 12 Step program by now. Unfortunately we do not have an active training program. But we are looking for experienced comrades to restart our training program, and for comrades on the ground to implement the program and send in reports on its successes and failures and how to improve it. This is an important challenge that the anti-imperialist prison movement must overcome to be successful.

Is the smoke a violation of the law? Yes, as the staff told you it is a non-smoking facility and you have a legal right to not be exposed to second hand smoke there. The Smoke-Free Illinois Act (SFIA) of 2008 forbids smoking in all buildings (with exceptions like homes and designated hotel rooms), where smoking is defined as:

“Smoke” or “smoking” means the carrying, smoking, burning, inhaling, or exhaling of any kind of lighted pipe, cigar, cigarette, hookah, weed, herbs, or any other lighted smoking equipment. “Smoke” or “smoking” includes the use of an electronic cigarette.

Is the smoke a violation of your rights? Well, we’d say there are no rights, only power struggles. So you can use the SFIA to grieve this issue, but if they don’t listen you’ll have to get organized, find allies inside or outside and apply pressure. We’ve sent you the grievance petition, this is one tool you can use to try to organize people around this issue.

The oppression which prisoners face in this country is one result of the global system of imperialism whose primary victims are the oppressed nations globally, meaning that this system is our primary enemy. We must spread the word that prisoners in this country are suffering because the Amerikan empire’s wealth is based on class and national barriers; the Amerikan nation does not want to share its privileged position with Black and Brown people, so they restrict them from employment, from education, from housing, and force them into a life in the “underground.” The solution for the oppressed is not to fight to get into the club, but to unite with the oppressed in the Third World to destroy the club system as a whole and build a socialist world. A world where peoples’ needs are put first, not the current world where people are constantly struggling for petty basic rights like not to have your life threatened by toxic smoke.

I have received two much-needed documents from you: “How to Form an Effective Study Group” and the “Revolutionary 12 Step Program” during the holy month of Black August. During Black August (B.A.) there were three young neophytes who also embarked on the journey of Kebuka (remembrance) by studying the works and examples of ancestors, comrades and many of the beautiful souls that sparked the momentous flow of resistance.

Prior to B.A., I was invited to a think tank class where the serious minded men here can come into a space to talk, think and reflect on solutions to problems that plague the prison population and society at large.

After attending a few of the sessions I realized the class lacked a starting point to build and grow on.

However, I shared the 12 Step Program with the facilitator, and the brothers all agreed that the layout was a great format and that the five principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons enumerated on page 2 of ULK should be the pillars that hold this class.

Thanking you for all the tireless work that’s being put in.

28 September 2024 – Protestors gathered across the world to mourn the killing of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a founding member and leader for 32 years of Hezbollah (the Party of God) in Lebanon.(1) We know some readers in U.$. prisons will be mourning as well. Nasrallah was the strongest anti-imperialist voice among world leaders for a generation. And the recent killings of Lebanese and Palestinian political leaders have been significant victories for I$rael, at least in the short-term.

Over 1,000 people have been killed, including Hezbollah’s top leaders, and 6,000 injured by a series of attacks by I$rael on Lebanon in the last couple weeks. These included exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, as well as massive bombing strikes. Amidst these attacks, the Communist Party of Lebanon has called for national unity to focus on fighting I$rael, at a time when Lebanon faces its own crisis in government. They pledged to not let I$rael (and the United $tates, we’d add) separate the struggle of Lebanon in support of the Palestinian struggle.(2)

Hezbollah, however, has been the lead party defending Lebanon and Palestinians from I$rael for decades. They have proven there is still a progressive role for bourgeois forces to play today, even in our highly-developed imperialist world.

Nasrallah had a clear analysis of U.$. imperialism:

“America itself is the decision maker. In America, you have the major corporations; you have a trinity of the oil corporations, the weapons manufacturers and the so-called ‘Christian Zionism.’ The decision making is in the hands of this alliance. ‘Israel’ used to be a tool in the hands of the British, and now it is a tool in the hands of America.”

The Samidoun Palestinian prisoner solidarity network commented on Hezbollah’s role in the liberation of political prisoners of I$rael:

“Sayyed Nasrallah’s leadership and struggle was also directly connected to the prisoners’ movement and the liberation of the prisoners of the Zionist regime. From the liberation of Khiam prison by the victorious Lebanese resistance in 2000, liberating the torture dens of the occupiers and their collaborators and turning it into a museum of honour for those who struggled and sacrificed there, to the repeated prisoner exchanges achieved by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Resistance, including the 2004 prisoner exchange, which liberated 400 Palestinian prisoners as well as 23 Lebanese, five Syrians, three Moroccans, three Sudanese, one Libyan and one German-British prisoner jailed by the Zionist regime. These exchanges, in which Sayyed Nasrallah himself played a major role, illustrated once again that the only viable mechanism available to liberate the prisoners in occupation jails is to liberate the land and to achieve an exchange.”(3)

Hezbollah arose from the 1982 I$raeli occupation of Beirut. MIM founders organized to oppose that 1982 occupation at a time when MIM was just emerging.(4) The war in 1982 also forged the Joint Leadership, in which the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine joined forces and attempted to further unite the Palestinian liberation movement away from conciliation.(5) During the 2006 war between Lebanon and I$rael, MIM condemned RCP=U$A, various alt media, and the U.$. state department for attacking Iran and Hezbollah using gender.(6) In 2024, the imperialists are circulating clips of Nasrallah making comments calling for punishment for adultery and homosexuality. We salute the “Queers for Palestine” in the United $tates who recognize the children being bombed in Gaza and now Lebanon are a lot more gender oppressed than any of us are here in the belly of the beast.

The history of the anti-imperialist united front in the region is beyond the scope of this article. But the region has certainly demonstrated the expediency of uniting classes on the basis of national liberation to fight imperialist occupiers. Hezbollah has remarked in the past that their alliances are closer to some Marxist groups than certain Islamist groups. This shows the emptiness of those in the imperialist countries who want to pit Marxism against Islam on principle. Nasrallah also wrote that Muslims have the duty to provide charity support to any Palestinian taking up armed struggle – Marxist, nationalist or any other shade.(7)

A Hamas spokespersyn responded to the death of Nasrallah saying that it will not make I$rael any safer:

“Is Israel’s problem with armed groups with limited agendas that can be eliminated by killing their leaders, or with peoples who have rights that they have been striving to achieve for decades and have not stopped or surrendered despite the killing of many leaders? Has any resistance group disappeared after the assassination of the leaders?”(8)

Despite these recent losses by the oppressed nations in the Middle East, Hezbollah won the war with I$rael in 2006, killing as many soldiers as I$rael did without all the civilian deaths caused by I$rael in Lebanon. Just as the war on Gaza, one year out, has not been an easy victory for I$rael, further escalations into Lebanon will certainly not be either. Hezbollah and Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) in Yemen continue to be the front line of the struggle against genocide in Palestine and against U.$. imperialism in general.

You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution!

<sup>Notes:
1. The New York Times, 28 September 2024, Protestors Mourn Nasrallah’s Death Around the World.
2. Omar Deeb, 25 September 2024, Transcript of interview on SSawt al-Shaab Radio.
3. Samidoun, 28 September 2024, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: The martyrdom of a great international revolutionary leader of our era.
4. MIM, 2007, Substantial Hezbollah book appears finally.
5. Interview of Habash and Hawatmeh on the Joint Leadership and PLO (Draft Translation)
6. MIM, 2006, Six percent of Amerikans support Hezbollah’s side in Lebanon
7. Nicholas Noe ed., 2007, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, London: Verso, p. 269
8. Tom O’Connor, 27 September 2024, Hamas Warns Killing Hezbollah’s Nasrallah Will Not Make Israel Safer, Newsweek.</sup>

We hope those who have been following our series of articles this week have been both angered by what is going on inside U.$. prisons and inspired to action. (see campaign link below to read previous articles)

MIM(Prisons) is in a period of growth, after some setbacks. In recent years we’ve gradually reinstated each of our 3 different levels of correspondence study courses for prisoners. Just this summer we put out a long-planned Reference Guide that contains historical timelines, maps and a glossary to provide background for many of the things we talk about regularly. We’ve released the Revolutionary 12 Steps Program and Power To New Afrika, both written by prisoners, in the last couple years. We continue to put out Under Lock & Key every three months. And we’ve updated a number of other study packs and resources. And we do it all out of our own pockets and volunteer time. So if you can spare some money or some time to support us it can go a long way.

By the time this series of articles reaches most of our readers inside, in Under Lock & Key 87, the holiday season will be approaching. In that spirit and inspired by all this talk about banned books, we are pledging to mail out more books this winter than any other winter in the 2020s so far!

Please see our get involved page for ways to donate and other ways to help out. Outside supporters can help us make this happen by sending cash or stamps, helping acquire in demand books like dictionaries, Black Panther Party, or Marxist classics, or by volunteering in various ways. All of the new publications listed above have been censored in various prisons, even the Reference Guide was censored in Michigan’s Thumb Correctional Facility for being more than 12 pages long! So continued campaigning and legal support is much needed.

Prisoners can help us get more books out by taking the steps to join our Serve the People Free Political Books to Prisoners Program. Get others to sign up for a subscription to ULK or become a distributor of ULK in your prison. Let us know what organizing work you are doing, what your local study group is discussing, what questions are coming up for you and your comrades. By doing these things you can receive books to help with your local work and studies. We have books on Black/New Afrikan studies, Chican@ studies, First Nation studies, gender, economics, history of Chinese socialism, the Soviet Union, books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and more.

Sergeants here are not doing rounds and when they do they’re not signing grievances, so my grievances don’t get signed and they expire. We have to hold the shower or yard down just to get someone down to sign something. Even that doesn’t always work.

The Lieutenants and Captains feel they’re too high in rank to sign grievances, and they don’t make their Sergeants do anything. My question to you is what do I do? I’ve wrote it up and all they do is deny my allegation and find it without merit. I have a paper trail on the same issue though.

Also, our due process is being violated at Disciplinary Court. 1) The Serving Officer is refusing our court appearances because she doesn’t like us or is trying to get done early; 2) The Disciplinary Hearing Officers are not even trying to see if the prisoner is not guilty. You can’t use the camera as a witness but they can to find you guilty. They’re putting “staff eyewitness is accepted” but policy states they cannot just put that, they have to list all “evidence relied upon.” Finally, policy states you have to sign a waiver if you refuse court, but they’re getting away without that.

We can’t get a notary here, no problem solver, so most guys end up “bucking” and ultimately they lose. I know Arkansas is a little better than other prisons, but it’s not all green down here. We’re one of the few states that still do “hoe squad” for free, prisoners don’t get paid to work in Arkansas. I’m here to fight and spread the word!

MIM(Prisons) responds: It sounds like the people held at Tucker Max Unit have tried a number of different tactics to get grievances heard and have begun to assess which ones work when and how they might be improved. In that sense, you are in a better situation to answer your question of “what do I do?” than we are.

We can offer some advice for how to approach this problem. All of the tactics you mention above should be on the table. Tactics are things that we must choose day-to-day based on specific situations, and there will not always be a “right” answer. Strategy however, is our overall approach, and this can decide whether we succeed or fail. Strategically, we must rely on the masses to win. In other words, your real strength comes from collective struggle, whether that’s holding down the yard or filing 100s of simultaneous grievance petitions to state officials.

As this comrade recognized in their letter to us, there are often no quick solutions. The grievance petitions that prisoners have developed and that we distribute cannot solve the problem of oppression in prisons. They can be a tool in getting state officials to support your ongoing collective struggle.

As we recently reiterated, freedom from oppression can’t be won through the courts. The law is a tool of the oppressor. Keeping paper trails is part of the struggle to hold them to their word, which can sometimes be done, and should be done to advance the struggle of the oppressed.

Please continue to send us updates on the struggle there. We will print them on our website and maybe in ULK. This is one more tactic to expose what is going on and to share lessons with others struggling in similar situations.