Federal Prisons

I received the September 9th Organizing Pack and I am humbly and proud to say that with my broken English and strong Boricua accent I spoke (mostly yelled) from behind the door to the whole unit. Out of 85 prisoners in the SHU-CM1, at least half of the unit denied all three food trays that were put on the slots. Even though I was yelled at by guards to shut the fuck up and that i was disrupting their unit, I made my point.

At lunch time the guards had called the captain cuz they didn’t know what the hell was going on and that prisoners were refusing their trays. When the Captain asked me I informed him that it was out of respect for all those brothers that became martyrs in the Attica uprising and all those who have sacrificed their lives for the struggle against oppression. After, I was called a “radical freak.” He told the guards in the unit to not disturb us on that day. Later I found out that the Captain was from NY and has a blood brother doing time at Clinton Correctional Facility in NY.

Power to the People!

I am continuing the fight in the struggle. I am recently lied on by the oppressors’ corrupt gang unit here saying I was organizing an unauthorized group activity and that I’m a leader of the White Panther Movement. They also said that I was trying to organize a riot and take over the prison from the guards because I try to unite and educate. They don’t like it. So I am in solitary awaiting to be placed in SHU here in the corrupt Ohio Concentration Camps.

I am filing grievances against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Corrections, because while in SHU we cannot order no books – not even legal books. Then last time I was placed in solitary they lost my legal book “self help litigation manual” and now they won’t allow me to re-order it at my own cost.

So the inspector has put fake tickets saying I threatened him, false. So know I am truly at war here.

Now in solitary they won’t allow no porter to my door to pass me a reading book or nothing. The library lady won’t bring me nothing either. So I’m in it.

“I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army, or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.”

-Mao Tse-tung (1)

Behind the walls of Amerika’s gulags there will come a time when every serious revolutionary (whether ey are organized in a cell or party structure, or in a small collective or political study group with eir comrades) will draw the eyes of the pig surveillance apparatus for eir political activity and organizing. Some, those that are well read and practiced in security and counter-surveillance, will no doubt last longer than others without scrutiny; but with all simple channels of communication under heavy surveillance – from audio equipped security cameras, to monitored, recorded, and archived phone calls, to mail room pigs sticking their hideous snouts into your mail (not to mention those dealing with smart communications/TextBehind/etc.) – the pig administration and rank and file can and will monitor, censor, obstruct, and otherwise engage in their reactionary low intensity warfare against political agitation and those that would dare to educate and unite the oppressed masses against Our common enemy: the state, its lackeys, and all they stand for. So, in a very real sense the gulags of the United $nakes are exactly that: WAR.

As the contradictions between the oppressor class and the oppressed are inherently antagonistic in nature, and playing out in a myriad of ways upon this particular front. This is not to say, however, that these antagonistic contradictions with the enemy are solely resolved in isolation from the larger struggle against imperialism and U.$. hegemony and capitalistic exploitation. Indeed, these struggles are one and the same; inter-related with each other.

Thus, Our efforts to educate, organize, and mobilize the masses toward socialist revolution are viciously repressed by the imperialists and their lackeys. Though, as Mao stated in the above quote, it would be bad if the enemy weren’t making a concerted effort to attack Us. The simple fact that they are engaged in the assault against Us means they are worried if not downright fearful, that We may succeed in realizing Our and Our countless fallen comrades’ lifelong goal and dream that We’ve all been struggling and striving for: the destruction of patriarchal capitalist-imperialist empire through social revolution and the ushering in of communism throughout the world.

And yet, as Mao correctly warned Us,

“The imperialists and domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat lying down and they will struggle to the last ditch.”(2)

In so doing, they will utilize all available tactics to sabotage Us and Our efforts. Within the gulags in Amerika, the oppressor has a wide range of tactics to quash dissent. Indeed, the U.$. gulag archipelago is itself a tool used currently and hystorically against communists, anarchists, and all those the oppressor sees as a threat to the status quo. Other familiar tactics used against the politically active range from blatant assassination (George Jackson, San Quentin Aug. 21, 1971), assassination by pig proxy (The Aug. 12, 2015 assassination of Hugo “Yogi” Pinell by white supremacist prisoners Jayson Weaver and Waylon Pitchford at New Folsom Prison (3)), (in)definite solitary confinement, snitch-jacketing, targeted mail surveillance and censorship, etcetera, etcetera ad nauseam.

However, these tactics cease being their main focus once they understand (and they obviously do) a key fact; as Steven Biko so succinctly put it, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” The pigs are fully aware, as are the imperialists, that a docile, unquestioning mass of sheeple is easier to control than an angry, educated, politically-conscious mass of revolutionary militants. To that end, they do everything within their power to reproduce these brainless sheeple in mass quantities: pigs engaging in widespread chemical warfare upon the imprisoned lumpen by introducing and pushing mass quantities of drugs while simultaneously banning publications like MIM(Prisons)’s “Revolutionary 12 Step Program”(4); amassing huge lists of banned books, often for ridiculous reasons, and more often as an extension of political repression; small, if any portions of gulag facility budgets spent on books for the library (and nearly all mind-numbing selections at that); the introduction of tablets for use, along with TV’s, to zone out on and isolate, ignoring the world and the problems around you in sheer ambivalence; and finally (though not conclusively) the lack of truly helpful classes/programs offered, while offering Eurocentric, status-quo affirming programs to get those foolish enough to take them “all ready to head back to ‘minimum security’ (the so-called ‘free world’) to re-acclimate to the oppression and exploitation ey had sadly been content with living under anyway.”

Much to the dismay of the imperialists and their pig lackeys, there are those of Us that see through their attempts to incapacitate Us, Our movements, and Our struggle for a better world. And we are multiplying, regardless of what they throw in Our way, and no matter how many times they try to divide Us. No matter what the oppressor tries, they will be out maneuvered again and again by Our overflowing revolutionary love for the People. All because the oppressor cannot grasp a simple truth that was reiterated again and again by Our beloved comrade Fred Hampton before he was assassinated by Chicago pigs and the FBI on December 1969, that still proves true to this day: “You can kill a revolutionary, but you can never kill the revolution.”

<sup>Notes:
1. Mao Tse-tung, “To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing” (May 26, 1939), First Pocket Edition, pg. 2.
2. Mao Tse-tung, “Opening Address at the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference” (September 21, 1949).
3. Nate Gartrell, 14 September 2023, “Aryan Brotherhood pair charged in fatal stabbing”, San Jose Mercury News.
4. See: Triumphant, November 2022, “TDCJ’s Repression of its Political Prisoners Leads to Devastating Effects Among the Wider Prison Population,” ULK No. 80. and Texas Prisoner, March 2021, “TDCJ: Your Staff are Bringing in the Drugs, and it Must Stop,” ULK No. 73.</sup>

Occupation of Cabanas

On 4 August 2023, 8,000 military troops and police were deployed in the countryside province of Cabanas, El Salvador in part of the campaign to crack down on the MS-13 and Barrio 18 lumpen organizations (L.O.s) – many of whom have fled to the region from the cities.(1) One thousand police and 7,000 soldiers were deployed to set checkpoints blocking all roads leading in and out of the area.(2) The congress of El Salvador added new criminal codes as part of President Nayib Bukele’s war on the two organizations that will enact mass trials based on what area they lived in and which organization controlled that particular territory.(3) These actions are merely an expression of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s war on lumpen organizations operating in El Salvador.

The Anti-Gang Campaign Waged by the President

Bukele’s anti-gang campaign is best characterized as a set of “mano dura” (“iron fist”, i.e. tough-on-crime) policies. Said policies reflect an overall seven-phase plan offered to combat lumpen organizations known as the “Territorial Control Plan”. As of 1 August 2023, only five of the seven phases have made its way into the daily existence of Salvadoran society. Those five phases are outlined as follows:

1. Preparation: Increased military and police presence in municipalities with high degrees of L.O. presence.
2. Opportunity: Providing alternative opportunities to Salvadoran youth (e.g. legal labor) to sway said youth from joining L.O.s.
3. Modernization: Modernizing (or rather, militarizing) the national police.
4. Incursion: “Modernized” rehash of phase one.
5. Extraction: “Extracting” the remaining L.O. members continuing L.O. activities.(4)

While Bukele spits out anti-establishment rhetoric – painting emself as neither left nor right, criticizing both the dominant so-called left and right wing parties of El Salvador to do so, and claiming to offer “innovative” nonpartisan solutions that will take care of the societal ills plaguing the masses – eir politics and so-called solutions do nothing but feed into the development of a militarized far-right state.(5) In fascist fashion, Bukele exploited the concerns of the masses, offered them a scapegoat, and targeted symptoms rather than root cause to the contradictions that produce violence in Salvadoran society. Interestingly enough, Bukele seems to be fully aware of this and seemingly embraces it in an ironic fashion by self-appointing emself as the “World’s Coolest Dictator” on Twitter.(6)

One thing to make note is that the fascism of the Third World is imported from the First World. Bukele has had big rise through eir business career as a comprador-bourgeois businessman, and is now in the comprador-bourgeois state itself. The crisis of these lumpen organizations in El Salvador has shown that imperialism’s neo-colony of El Salvador cannot rule the way it did before, and therefore a comprador fascist movement has been exported onto it. While Bukele’s political support was far less overt and hands on than the likes of Pinochet of Chile and Syngman Rhee of southern Korea, the regime’s close ties to the Trump administration shows this trend. Bukele’s regime is now rejected by the left-wing imperialist faction of the U$A, the Biden administration.

The Old Ideas of Nuevas Ideas

We define fascism as the open terroristic violence of finance capital during a time of crisis when the bourgeois state cannot govern itself in the way it did before. Despite the constant police/military occupation of the ghettos, barrios, and reservations (alongside the great reversals of abortion rights); in the context of the United $tates, this has been the standard method of strategy exert rule onto the oppressed nations and uphold imperialist-patriarchy. Mass imprisonment, police/military occupation, and protracted low-intensity genocide are not the exception, rather the rule. We believe that when global political-economic crisis threatens U.$. imperialism, U.$. imperialism will start to crack out the real tests of open terrorism. It is out of that reasoning that the U$A cannot be considered fascist at this time.

On the other hand, it is arguable that the bourgeois state of El Salvador (due to the existing crisis of the two dominant L.O.’s: MS-13 and Barrio18) cannot rule itself the way it once did before, and with that – Bukele’s rise could be considered a fascist movement. In El Salvador (like many third world neo-colonies) the objective conditions of the bourgeois state is much weaker than in the U.$. The fact horizontal-structured L.O.s such as MS-13/Barrio18 are capable of causing intense crisis exposes this. Another big difference is the qualitatively different anti-people nature of the lumpen-proletariat class of the Third World compared to the First World lumpen. In this sense, Bukele’s political movement can be considered more fascist than Trump’s on the crisis aspect – although Trump’s mass base of imperialist country labor aristocracy is a much stronger fuel for a fascist movement than the crisis-jaded proletariat and petite-bourgeoisie of El Salvador who long for a single day where ultra-violent anti-people activities are no longer an expectation of daily existence.

Despite the strongman militarization and self-identification as the “world’s coolest dictator,” Bukele and eir government held secret meetings with the leaders of these organizations to lower the crime rates. The U.$. department of treasury states:

“In 2020, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s (Bukele) administration provided financial incentives to Salvadoran gangs MS-13 and 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18) to ensure that incidents of gang violence and the number of confirmed homicides remained low. Over the course of these negotiations with Luna and Marroquin, gang leadership also agreed to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in upcoming elections. Nuevas Ideas is the President’s political party and won a two-thirds super majority in legislative elections in 2021. The Bukele administration was represented in such transactions by Luna, the Chief of the Salvadoran Penal System and Vice Minister of Justice and Public Security, and Marroquin, Chairman of the Social Fabric Reconstruction Unit. In addition to Salvadoran government financial allocations in 2020, the gangs also received privileges for gang leadership incarcerated in Salvadoran prisons, such as the provision of mobile phones and prostitutes.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Luna also negotiated an agreement with gang leaders from MS-13 and Barrio 18 for the gangs’ support of President Bukele’s national quarantine in gang-controlled areas. Separately, Luna participated in a scheme to steal and re-sell government purchased staple goods that were originally destined for COVID-19 pandemic relief. These items were transferred to private companies and then resold on the private market or back to the government. Luna’s mother, Alma Yanira Meza Olivares (Meza), acted as the negotiator in some of these transactions. Additionally, Luna and Meza developed a scheme to embezzle millions of dollars from El Salvador’s prison commissary system. They also created fraudulent job positions within the prison system, in which supposed “employees” would receive monthly paychecks and return most of the earnings back to Luna and Meza.”(7)

Despite all the comprador-bourgeois fascism that came with Bukele’s military strongman strategy to get rid of the crisis of lumpen-proletariat violence in eir country, the independent leadership of these anti-people L.O.s was an indispensable and unavoidable class force in lowering the death rates. With all the talks about the pragmatist “tough on crime” and “round them all up” narratives expressed by the imperialist and comprador press, Bukele’s government gives money and political immunity in exchange for political support and cooperation of gangs. MIM(Prisons) will not be surprised if there are opportunist and anti-people MS-13/Barrio18 members in the undemocratic injustice system of El Salvador today who sees Bukele as their political-economic patron and sponsor.

The facts presented above provide a case against Bukele’s tough-on-crime policies as ineffective, yet bourgeois propaganda is a powerful tool and these policies, due to their perceived success, may find new homes abroad in Honduras and Guatemala.(8)(9) This sets potential precedents for a new-wave of mano dura “solutions” throughout Latin America.

As mentioned above, these policies (however popular and effective or ineffective they may be) are aimed towards symptoms, not causes. However qualitatively different the First World and Third World lumpen may be, it is in this that there is a unifying struggle against the real cause of their oppression – namely, imperialism. Bourgeois propaganda may be powerful, but concrete conditions are concrete conditions and concrete conditions require concrete solutions, not old ideas.

In social media, which Bukele’s regime has utilized greatly for public image, whenever news reports of the humyn rights abuses in Salvadorian prisons overcrowded with L.O. members were shown, the comments were flooded with Amerikan chauvinists and Trump supporters saying similar actions should be done against the oppressed nation lumpen organizations in the United $tates. The truth is, U.$. imperialism already often breaks their own bourgeois democratic values when it comes to imprisoning and lumpenizing their oppressed nations. Guilty by association policies has been a long standing practice against Black and Latin@ masses to the point that merely being family related to a lumpen organization member can get you labeled as part of that organization by the pigs. The settlers/Amerikans will jeer at the oppressed nations telling them that they don’t have it as bad as the victims of Third World fascism while hoping and wishing for the day that Third World fascist policies can one day become a reality within U.$. borders. This issue’s topic of “Prisons Are War” seeks to highlight this message and tell our readers that low intensity genocide is already happening to them.

For revolutionary ways on handling these problems, we point to the ways when these same lumpen organizations’ leaders have sought to unite and abandon their anti-people ways without fascist repression and how the FBI murdered them for it.

^{Notes 1. Associated Press, 1 August 2023, El Salvador sends 8,000 troops and police officers to comb rural province in massive anti-gang raid}

^{2. Ibid.}

^{3. Associated Press, 27 July 2023, El Salvador allows mass trials for thousands imprisoned in gang crackdown}

^{4. Paola Nagovitch, 13 February 2020, Explainer: Nayib Bukele’s Territorial Control Plan, Americas Society/Council of the Americas}

^{5. Times of Israel, His Dad Was an Imam, His Wife Has Jewish Roots: Meet El Salvador’s New Leader}

^{6. Mat Youkee, 26 September 2021, Nayib Bukele calls himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’ – but is he joking?, The Guardian}

^{7. U.S. Department of the Treasury, 8 December 2021, Treasury Targets Corruption Networks Linked to Transnational Organized Crime}

^{8. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/19/honduras-to-build-island-colony-to-imprison-gang-members}

^{9. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/7/could-el-salvadors-gang-crackdown-spread-across-latin-america}

I have received a few publications this year. Some from The National Lawyers Guilde, The Coalition For Prisoners Rights, and two MIM publications. Of course, there are a tremendous amount of struggles taking place. How could there not be? We as prisoners are after all being punished.

Punishment means, according to U.S. interest and interpretation of the word by the Supreme Court, that states are granted permission to impose upon their prisoners “harsh conditions”, and that ultimately prisoners have “no right to comfort”.

Texas has definitely taken advantage of the fact that they are granted permission to punish prisoners. I know this for a fact because I am a prisoner in Texas prison. I can not speak for any other state. I have only personally experienced, and still am experiencing, life inside a Texas prison compound. I have been confined/hostage for going on 10 years. I have been in TDCJ-CID for about 7 1/2 years.

Yes, there are a lot of things I have witnessed and because of that a lot I can report about and or discuss. The majority of this information has actually already been brought to the attention of some outside the prison. Consequently, most people in the free world could care less. The imprisoned lumpen are a hated class and the public has been conditioned to believe that prisoners deserve their punishment and harsh living conditions.

I disagree with those who think we deserve punishment. Harsh conditions in Texas involves being enslaved, pinned against your cellmate, exposed to the elements, exposed to insects and vermin, mental anguish, denial of mail etc.. It truly goes on! How could any conscious human be deserving of punishment, that by design, is intended to defeat you, break you down, and cause long-term fundamental changes within you. Long-term changes that are not for the betterment of yourself or humanity.

TEXAS’ MURDEROUS HEAT

The harsh condition that I am going to now write about is one that I have not seen in any of the ‘prisoners struggle’ publications this year: extreme heat within Texas prisons. This is a real problem, a problem that not only imposes harsh conditions and punishes prisoners, but as history has shown, sometimes even executes the prisoner!

Under information and belief and from what I have heard on F.M. radio news, prisoners, forced into this Texas punishment compound, have actually been executed this year by being forcefully exposed to the harsh condition of extreme heat in Texas. Many more, including me, have been physically assaulted by this tortuous and murderous heat. Heat that causes physical illness and or Death!

Sadly, those who have been conditioned to hate prisoners most likely take extraordinary pride in the fact that their state, Texas, punishes its prisoners literally to Death. As the saying goes: DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS!

Well, I have recently filed a §1983 over this deadly and dangerous heat here at the McConnell Unit. See Civil Action No. 2:23-cv-00201 filed in U.S. Dist. Court Southern Dist. Texas Corpus Christi Div. Will I prevail? Most likely not because T.X. claims to have in place adequate heat mitigation measures, and T.X. prisoncrats do an exceptionally well job at covering up illegal conduct.

RETALIATION

As of right now, I am being retaliated against by TDCJ Prison guards on the McConnell Unit. I seen this coming because there is a gang of ‘punishers’ who are employed at the McConnell Unit. Sometimes you know who they are by the Patch that they wear on their vests. This Patch is a picture of the comic book character Punisher’s emblem that is superimposed on to either a Texas Flag or an American Flag.

Since filing grievances, when I attempt to get a officers name, I am rudely denied and often threatened with a case. Even though officers are required to give their names upon request, rank does not enforce this upon their subordinates at all!

On July 30, 2023, I requested names from several officers, all in the presence of a sergeant, I was refused their names then written a fraudulent major case by the sergeant Samantha Ramirez. This was the second fraudulent case that was written on me since filing grievances about the heat.

In addition to the fraudulent major case, a hearing was ran on me without me knowing about it or having a chance to confront the accuser. I found out that a case was ran on me when prison classification changed my custody level from g3 to g4 status requiring me to live in a more restrictive housing assignment and forfeiting any of my immediate chances at getting moved to a prison closer to my C.O.P.D. dying Mother. Due Process does not exist for me at this ‘Government Blacksite’

Even more, I have had my life threatened by these vigilantes, denied medical, denied showers, denied recreation, denied dayroom, denied access to phone calls, denied my diet food trays, etc, and I am sure it. It is not over with.

This shit is really going on! I will continue to keep in contact with MIM. Good bye for now!

Greetings, To all the “Warriors”, “Soldiers”, and “Comrades”, a new day is at hand. Those that have been subjected to “colonial rule” are rising up and ousting the “puppet regimes” installed by the enemy.

The brothers and sisters over in Afrika are saying “enough is enough!”. Those Afrikans over in France are also rising up! It’s only a matter of time before the Black, Brown, Red. and Yellow souljahs here on these shores say “Down with the imperialists and their flunkies!”.

We must unite and stand with those who wish to overthrow the puppets and install a government for the people and by the people.

Vita Wa Watu

A Memorandum issued by the PREA Auditors of America was recently posted in all dorms and other areas here at Dillwyn Correctional Center where incarcerated people frequent advising us of the following:

“The Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) will be conducting an audit for Compliance with the United States Department of Justice’s National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) for Its Adult Detention Facility.”

The scheduled dates of the PREA Audit are from September 26th-28th, 2023.

The Memorandum further advises:

“Any person with relevant information pertaining to this compliance Audit may * confidentially * correspond with the Auditor via the following address:

Ron Kidwell P.O. Box 193 Palmyra, Virginia 22963

“CONFIDENTIALITY. All correspondence and disclosures during interviews with the designated auditor are CONFIDENTIAL and will not be disclosed unless required by law. There are exceptions when confidentiality must be legally broken. Exceptions include, but are not limited to the following:

If the person is an immediate danger to him/herself or others (e.g., suicide or homicide)

Allegations of suspected child abuse, neglect, or maltreatment

In legal proceedings where information has been subpoenaed by a court of appropriate jurisdiction.”

The Prison Rape Elimination Act or PREA was passed by the U.$. Congress and codified into federal law as Title 42 U.S.C.A. section 15601. It was passed in response to the high incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence incarcerated people were subjected to in prisons across the country.

Despite the language of PREA, it does not stop, prevent or reduce the rape and sexual violence of incarcerated people. As an example, the rape and sexual assaults against women at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California in the years before 2022 was so bad the prison was called the “rape club” by incarcerated women and prison staff alike. Even the Warden of the prison at the time, Ray J. Garcia, took part in raping and sexually exploiting women at the prison.

The real purpose of PREA was to create a set of national standards (also called PREA standards) by the U.$. Attorney General that state and federal prison systems can give the appearance of being in compliance with in order to gain accreditation and federal grant money from the U.$. Department of Justice.

PREA Audits as they are currently conducted do not work and will never work for the following reasons:

As the above quoted Memorandum reveals, prison officials are given advanced notice their prisons will be audited for PREA compliance. This advanced notice sets in motion a scheme whereby prison officials began the process of cleaning up and beautifying the prison before PREA auditors arrive, both literally and figuratively. I have witnessed time and time again how in the days leading up to the audit, incarcerated people are instructed to paint walls, plant flowers, and wax and buff the floors. Guards and prison staff begin acting nice and treating incarcerated people with a little bit more dignity and respect. A special meal is sometimes serviced to incarcerated people either on the day of the audit or on the day before. In some cases, a prison may go on an unexpected lockdown where incarcerated people are locked in their cells on the day of the audit. All of this is done to placate/pacify incarcerated people so they’ll be least likely to give the PREA auditors a “bad report” or, in the case of the unexpected lockdown, to prevent them from giving a report altogether.

In order for the PREA audit to be truly effective, they must be conducted without prison officials having prior notice of the date and time of the audit.

In addition to that, incarcerated people must be allowed to communicate freely with auditors in a confidential setting. This is often not possible because PREA auditors are accompanied by brass and are deliberately led on a prearranged course throughout the prison that keeps them out of contact with incarcerated people and out of the housing areas where incarcerated people live and sleep.

Incarcerated people must not be retaliated against for making complaints about having been raped and sexually assaulted by prison staff. I know of many fellow incarcerated people who have been harassed, threatened, moved to another housing unit, transferred to another prison, and written bogus infractions in retaliation for submitting PREA complaints. This sort of retaliation chills other incarcerated people’s desire to submit PREA complaints which allows their abusers to escape accountability.

Lastly, the only real solution to ending the rape and sexual violence of incarcerated people is to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex. If there are no prisons, then there can be no prison rape.

All Power to the People Who Don’t Fear Freedom!

MIM(Prisons) responds: We actually think we can do a lot to eliminate rape for all people before abolishing prisons. Prisons are a tool of class struggle. In the control of a communist government, prisons would be revolutionized to serve the people. There would be an end to the torturous practices so common in capitalist prisons of isolation, heat, lack of health care and physical and sexual assaults.

Unlike prisons, rape and sexual violence are forms of oppression that cannot serve the people. While the path to eliminating any of these things remains long and challenging. Previous revolutionary societies have made quick progress in the realm of reducing and almost eliminating many forms of gender oppression. So we call on those who want to put an end to rape and sexual violence to join us in the struggle to end imperialism and replace it with a system in the hands of the international proletariat.

Triple Cross: How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI
By Peter Lance
Harper-Collins Publishers, 2006
608 pages

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I had briefly heard the story of Ali Muhammid, the Al Qaeda operative who infiltrated various U.$. agencies, but nothing in depth. This book answered lots of unanswered questions. Many of the assumptions I had surrounding the 9/11 attacks were confirmed in this book and still other questions arose.

It’s important to understand one’s enemy. The U.$. government has an immense amount of operatives going at once and is instilling terror globally on a massive scale. The author, Peter Lance, reveals some of this here and calls out the FBI on its actions and to a lesser extent the CIA.

This book shows the vulnerabilities of the empire. Much of the state apparatus is as Mao rightly identified a paper tiger. The 9/11 Commission is a perfect example. The 9/11 Commission was created to investigate the attacks on 9/11. The “findings” resulted in a huge book titled The 9/11 Commission. Peter Lance was himself interviewed by the commission and explained how upon being interviewed he found out that half of the “9/11 commission” was made up of former FBI – the very agency that Lance states failed to stop the attacks on 9/11! Thus such a commission was bound to fail from the start. An utter failure.

Peter Lance lays out the idea that years before 9/11 attacks the FBI had intel that could have prevented the attacks and dropped the ball. It’s interesting to hear the FBI’s vulnerabilities because the state works hard to maintain this facade that the FBI is this all knowing behemoth when in reality they are prone to humyn fallacy just like any other, paper tigers.

This book mentions that one of the reasons the author feels that the FBI dropped some of its leads into the Al Qaeda cell responsible for 9/11 was that a Senior Supervisory Special Agent of the FBI Roy Lindley DeVechio was alleged to be leaking information to a member of the Colombo Crime Family: Greg Scarpa Senior. So to save the Feds the embarrassment and jeopardize dozens of members of the Colombo family’s cases the intel was swept under the rug. The FBI has been known throughout its hystory to commit every crime we can think of in its repression on the people. Some agents have even been known to have intimate relationships, even falling in love with their intended target.

It’s clear after reading this book that when we look at the Al Qaeda network and all of its figures, Ali Mohammid stands out as the most audacious and one of the most important figures in that organization. The fact that while being trained at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg he was simultaneously training the Al Qaeda cell that blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 is amazing. His photographs were also used by Osama Bin Laden in bombing the U.$. embassy in Kenya that killed 224 people in 1998.(1)

As communists we do not condone terrorizing the populace by targeting civilians. Nor do we support the notion of taking actions based in supernatural superstitions of any sort, but this does not take away the blow to U.$. Intelligence Agencies that Ali Mohammed was able to execute by toying with them and basically working them all like a handler. He was an Al Qaeda sleeper, a deep penetration triple agent who played Amerikkka at its own game. The only reason this story is not on the front page of every newspaper and at movie theaters is it is a huge embarrassment to U.$. intelligence.

The FBI, like Amerikkka, has a long hystory of breaking their own laws while claiming to enforce their laws. During the Red Scare of the 1950s, the Feds would routinely employ “Black Bag Jobs”: breaking into homes, stealing property, planting evidence or disappearing targets that were political and often communist. Years later COINTELPRO taught us that murder was not off the FBI’s table nor was imprisonment of dissidents. The integrity of the FBI from the perspective of revolutionary folks is shot and Lance gets at this a little on page six when discussing how Ali Mohammed is the one who took the very photographs Bin Laden used to target the U.$. Embassy in Nairobi in 1994:

“As the man who had sat in a room with the ‘terror prince,’ while Bin Laden personally targeted the Nairobi embassy back in 1994, Mohammed should have been the star witness in the embassy bombing trial, which was just months away. Yet Patrick Fitzgerald, the lead prosecutor, never called him.”

For prisoners it’s bewildering to hear a D.A., in this case Patrick Fitzgerald, did not call a witness who is alleged to have started the chain of events to which people were killed. Anyone who has been to a couple of court proceedings or who has watched a crime show on television has a basic understanding that anyone involved in some way would be subpoenaed if not charged. And yet Mohammid was not called as a witness. It’s pretty apparent that the FBI was avoiding further embarrassment and possible culpability in crimes much more grisly than anything they were dealing with in the Nairobi Embassy bombing of 1994. The hystory of the FBI is pretty grisly, indeed. During the 1960s and 70s many freedom fighters from the Chican@ movement and the Black movement were disappeared or murdered in COINTELPRO operations. For most revolutionary minded folks FBI and crime are synonymous in the United Snakes. Even in non-revolutionary circles many understand that when discussing the FBI it is not the local 4-H club by any means. An FBI cover-up is quite understandable as such revelations naturally nudge the people to then unravel U.$. agencies and naturally to examine the legality of the United Snakes.

This book was a good exposé on how the FBI can go to such lengths as covering up a mass murder plot to preserve its reputation within the empire. For the oppressed nations we know how U.$. agencies have been nothing more than arms of the State who uphold repression, but to so many who are not conscious this book is a rough-hewn example of an entity like the FBI which can hunt and murder unarmed freedom fighters, free thinkers, and communist theorists but let it face folks arriving with bombs, hijacked planes, and suicide vests and they trip over themselves trying to flee to safety. We don’t promote armed struggle today, but it was still subjectively nice to read how the FBI got duped.

1. United States v. Ali Muhammid, 5(7) 98 Cr. 1023 (LBS) Sealed Complaint, September 1998, affidavit of David Coleman, FBI

Religion was part of the impetus that went into the creation of modern prisons in the United $tates of Amerika. With the opening of the Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829 in Philadelphia, the experiment of molding human behavior with confinement and a bible, the idea was isolation and self-reflection would lead to penitence and a corollary eradication of sin, or criminality. However, the seeding of religion within such a volatile atmosphere never took root as designed, but has nevertheless served a persisting role behind the walls, bars and fences of condemnation and incapacitation, with positive and negative consequences. This short article visits the phenomenon of Black religion as it occurs from a materialist perspective within the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), and its implications relative to Black life inside and outside the walls.

Social organization within the MDOC is controlled by Black men from the enclaves of cities hosting large segments of Black denizens. Power dynamics on the prison yards were determined by crews and cliques from these enclaves, with the inhabitants of Detroit overwhelmingly determining the direction and atmosphere of the prison yard; but the power of crews and cliques would start to diminish as a result of the Black power movements of the 1960s and 70s which had serious implications on how social (power) dynamics would be reformed. This reshaped the inner prison structure within the MDOC.

The prison system witnessed an exodus of Blacks from Christianity into the bosom of Black Muslimhood (Islam) for many Black cons – often infused with a radicalism endemic of the times. As prisoners from the cross-section of Michigan cities with the largest Black neighborhoods adopted membership into religious organizations like the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), Orthodox Islam, the Nation of Islam (NOI), and lastly the Melanic Palace (and Islamic Palace) of the Rising Sun (MPRS/MIPRS), the diversity of the crews/cliques coagulated into unions of these religious folds. The yard was now structured, for the most part, by these four religious blocs who set the rules of compliance and how prisoners related to the powers that be: prison guards and administrators.

These Black religions served multiple functions from individual protection and a greater collective security in the face of growing quantitative and qualitative changes characterized by violence; a sense of belonging; quasi-familyhood and a material support system, however loose; an avenue to educate oneself and engage in character edification for self-betterment; an alternative power base to offset, counter and resist the state agency of the MDOC and its forms of repression, oppression, and aggression typical of a white political body utilized to isolate, control and dominate potential Black rebels, societal dropouts, and the politicized elements capable of organizing and fomenting direct opposition to white racism and anti-Black hate and containment.

During the onset of the 1980s, the Melanic Islamic Palace of the Rising Sun caught fire with its inductee membership [soaring] to rival other Black religious groups. But what set the Melanic Islamic Palace apart was their willingness to inflict violence on prison guards and staff. This, too, would prove to have both positive and negative consequences. Positive in that energy was invested in degrees of political education and the building of a requisite consciousness steeped in Black nationalist rhetoric, which spilled over and was consumed primarily by the NOI, and to lesser degrees the MSTA and Orthodox Muslims. Negative in that the State, like any serious sociopolitical entity, started focusing attention on these groups which would later bloom into a tsunami of backlash and repression that would blast the political and radical elements out of MDOC religious groups, pushing them to take up a near exclusive God-centric and moralistic brand of religious practice.

The Melanics would eventually be repressed, banned from group service, and branded a security threat group which is tantamount to free society’s terrorist designation. The ripple effects of this move would fuel the aftershocks for decades to come to this very day. Political content and its verbiage are now nearly obsolete among the Black religious groups for fear of repression and possible banishment of group worship. Radical activism has not only largely died out, but can also be frowned upon by Black religious adherents. The yard structure and its rules based compliance has all but evaporated with exception of a few prisons. And with those older prisoners from the 1970s and 80s having returned to society, become frail seniors in prison or having died off, a leadership vacuum was opened to be filled by the incoming street gangs of the younger generation who would steer asunder the remaining residue of rule by structure. A by-product of this alteration in yard power has been that the Black religious groups have become old in age relative to its membership, have become socially and politically ineffective, and have reverted to existing as mere prison social groups who sometimes operate as prison yard gangs.

In the midst of the expiring decades in prison from the 1970s to the 2020s, the move towards Black Muslim-ism in prison has had some serious uninttended consequences, mainly, a lost and/or move away from Afrikanism (consciously and unconsciously). Plagued by anti-Afrikan bias as a result of post-slavery cultural, spiritual and mental colonialism (mentacide), with the exception of few, the Black Muslim groups argued instead for an Asiatic and/or Arab identity that didn’t require them to identify with the savage, barbarian, backward, uncivilized Africans who had no history and remained primitive, as their white masters had intentionally misinformed them during the breaking process of Afrikans to Niggas. And when/where a colonial based Blackness was expressed, unbeknownst to its propounders, it was delivered from a religious package that actually vitiated Blackness as it grew out of a Eurocentric conceptuality birthed during the Hellenistic epoch.

This contradictory pro-Black western (Eurocentric) religious conceptuality carries itself from behind the walls into open society as one of the nails in the coffin to serious liberation struggle advanced by Black people inside the imperialist center of North Amerika. Unfortunately, Black has proven to be ineffective as a sole basis for unity in this country as its nuanced nature cultures fragmentation, and Black western conceptualized religion only fuels the fractures of Blackness into an extreme polylithic substance that rejects a collective Black consciousness that’s bound for, or even focused on liberation.

But does there exist any light to dispel this dark period of irrelevant prison-religion utility? With the 2022 revision to the MDOC religious policy permitting the group service of the indigenous Afrikan Ifa spirituality, and the often radical Hebrew Israelite religion, one might argue the cusp of change is potentially present, and a new day may be dawning. However, I am not convinced. The perpetual distortion of indigenous Afrikan spirituality with western conceptuality spells doom to prospects of Black religion being utilized for liberation purposes. And like education, if a subject is not used for liberation, despite whatever radical nature it may acquire, and pro-Black or anti-white rhetoric it protest, its final product will prove to be a pro-Amerikan assimilationist one.

So the problem with Black religion in prison, speaking in the context of Blackness, no different than Black religious experience in the free world, is it’s devoid of power politics, is Eurocentric (laden with western [Hellenistic] concepts), and is reformist-integrationist-assimilationist (pro-Amerika). These three elements fight against the ability of the Black body to develop a monolithic character (collective consciousness), at least as it concerns Black unity as necessary for our capacity to adequately struggle for liberation or an activist model and mentality that is capable of loosening the screws and weakening the bricks of the prison complex structure.

Prison religion, or Black religion in general has made Karl Marx into a prophet where they serve to actualize his quote: “religion is the opium of the people.” And while I am certain over time many brothers within the MDOC will be exposed to Ifa and even grow to appreciate and practice it, no different than those brothers who have acquired knowledge about Kemeta, it will yet remain tethered to western monotheistic conceptuality through which brothers will be taught to practice it. In this way, it’ll be of little consequence as the receiving receptacles will fail to decolonize their minds of western conceptuality. Instead, the example of the Haitian revolutionaries must be followed by marrying our spirituality to struggle for power. Otherwise, Ifa will function as a mere symbol of Afrikanism, and brothers will be lying to themselves about being Afrikan-centered while actually promoting an inconsequential cultural nationalism that does absolutely nothing to foment a consciousness that could serve as models to alter prison conditions to their benefit. Ifa will be a mere badge of knowledge; a gold chain or Rolex shown off as a fetish, and will soon be denigrated to the margins of irrelevancy on par with the rest of black prison religions within the MDOC.

In my final analysis, drawing from more than two decades inside the cage, I conclude Black religion in the MDOC has been regressive. And contrary to some external beliefs outside the walls, Black prison-religion is not progressing towards Afrikan-based religious affiliation. Black Islamism is still the preferred go-to as it has successfully positioned itself as the popular vehicle for black intellectualism, freedom and expression of Black pride. In the end, however, Black religion in the MDOC is failing Black convicts and has betrayed and continues to betray authentic Black activism and struggle.

It’s uncanny how books fall into your hands at times. Recently my circle has been discussing the subject of prisoners of war (POW’s) in the United $nakes and, what do you know, a comrade slides me this book on a POW who died imprisoned, the Chiricahua Apache Chief Geronimo.

Going into the book I treaded lightly as biography type books are quite biased. Many of the tomes written on leaders of the oppressed within the empire tend to be heavily biased slander that amounts to imperialist propaganda. This book was written as an “Interview” by Barret while Geronimo was a POW at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I went into the book bracing myself for a book that would attempt to tell Geronimo’s story while promoting Amerikkkan ideals if even unconsciously. I was not wrong.

The subtitle of the book itself is an error: “The True Story of America’s Most Ferocious Warrior.” Geronimo was a First Nations warrior. America is the name of the white nation who stole the land it now occupies. The subtitle thus describes Geronimo as a member of this white settler nation which is ridiculous, as he fought against Amerikkka.

The first part of the book focuses on general Apache life with an emphasis on the mythology of the Apache creation story of origin. Steeped in the metaphysical ideas of a “God” and how a talking dragon would visit early ancestors. Sadly many of the world’s societies have such creation myths that are passed down. It highlights the need for a materialist approach to all we do and gives a glimpse of how the world would think if we were without dialectical materialism.

Part two, “The Mexicans”, answered a lot of questions I had. Here it describes how at one point Geronimo and his tribe traveled into “old Mexico” – as he calls it – and while the warrior went to trade in the town they returned to a massacre where it was reported that Mexican troops had killed everyone including Geronimo’s aging mother, wife, and three children.

I had often heard of Geronimo’s anti-Mexican sentiment, now I know why. Contradictions among the people continue today where oppressed nations fight for crumbs and leave devastation on either side. It’s disappointing to hear, knowing Geronimo’s passion for fighting Amerika it would have been beneficial for the oppressed to join forces and fight Amerika as this was in 1858, ten years after the U.$. war on Mexico and the birth of the Chican@ nation. Surely there was much resistance sparking and embers of resistance still burning.

I can’t stop to wonder had a united front of oppressed nations come together and resisted the U.$. how it would have resulted, add Black folks in the mix and it would be even better.

The first half of the book seemed to exalt Geronimo’s raids and murder of Mexican people. The first half has almost no mention of his war on the white nation, on which much of his reputation is built on.

Part three titled “The White Men” depicts various attacks and treachery when U.$. troops would call “peace” only to meet up and murder the Apache forces. At one point the Apache Chief Manigus-Colorado was called by the U.$. military for peace talks and assassinated. Geronimo seemed to be the only one who did not trust the U.$. troops or “white men” and thus never attended peace talks during that time period and lived through the treachery.

Chapter 16 titled “In Prison And On The War Path” was chilling to read. Here Geronimo contemplates war on Amerikkka and death. This portion of the book struck me more than any other of the passages. I feel his words and taste them internally. To me it’s as raw as it gets for those of us who are prisoners of war.

He states:

"In the summer of 1883 a rumor was current that the officers were again planning to imprison our leaders. This rumor served to revive the memory of all our past wrongs, the massacre in the tent at Apache Pass the fate of Mangus-Colorado, and my own unjust imprisonment, which might easily have been death to me.

“We thought it more manly to die on the war path than to be killed in prison.”

So much to unpack here. The mention of the leaders being imprisoned brought back memories of Pelican Bay SHU. The SHU was where leaders of the imprisoned oppressed nations in Califas were kidnapped and “imprisoned”. Taking leaders is a common practice of the oppressor nation. For Geronimo it triggered the Apache when they heard that their leaders would be kidnapped again. That’s a very traumatizing experience. I feel it. For those who have never been captured, tortured or kidnapped I can only say that the closest example I can give of Geronimo’s words here is that of a child who was kidnapped by a stranger, taken from their family and returned as an adult and then one day this persyn was either snatched again or told that another person would be kidnapped. Imagine the trauma this persyn would feel: the memories of being taken. The trauma likely became unbearable to the point that resistance, even resulting in death, must have seemed welcoming.

It seemed that every few pages Geronimo or his tribe would sign another treaty with Amerikkka. A lack of political investigation resulted in decisions based on subjectivity. As materialists we know that the oppressor will not relinquish power willingly, hystory has taught us that. Had Geronimo been a dialectical materialist he would have come to that realization much sooner.

Reading how the U.$. Army General Miles told Geronimo he would build Geronimo a house and give him access to cattle and provisions if he would simply stay in his place on the reservation was really revealing. Geronimo was a prisoner of war and knew it. Today many Chican@s and other oppressed don’t even know that we too are prisoners of war, for the U.$. war on Aztlan continues. We too are in a reservation called the United Snakes.

A low intensity war continues on the Chican@ nation. The U.$. government has always maintained an offensive on the colonies since the invasion was first launched, the offensive simply changes names, vehicle, and nationality, but its vision and operation remains fully intact. On April 20th, 1886 U.$. troops stationed in Arizona and New Mexico were issued this order by the U.$. War Department:

“The Chief object of the troops will be to capture or destroy any band of hostile Apache Indians found in this section of country and to this end the most vigorous and persistent efforts will be required of all officers and soldiers until the object is accomplished.”

If one were to substitute the word “Chican@s” instead of “Apache Indians” this statement could have been written last night. Insert the dreaded “gang member” which the colonizers love to use to vilify oppressed nations youth survival groups and the statement may be even more authentic to today’s mission. The pigs are tasked with accomplishing this mission in their war on the poor. Political groups or parties claiming to work in the interest of the oppressed here in the Snakes who do not move in ways that acknowledge this program of protracted soft war on the oppressed while conducting their work in the field in the so called interest of the colonized reduce their efforts to crass concerns of proletarian morality.

Today the state is resuming its offensive to “capture or destroy” hostile indigenous people (Chican@s, not First Nations in this context) and as the statement says they are obligated to do so “until the object is accomplished.” “Their vigorous and persistent” efforts today amount to the KKKourts, three strikes, “gang” enhancements, hyper-policing, and of course murder and assassination to none but a few.

It is not that Chican@ people are dimwitted and without comprehension to grasp that we are being attacked and targeted. What muddies the water is to see Chican@ or Black pigs carry out this program of “capture or destroy.” This works in the state’s interest to disguise the ONGOING onslaught on our people, that has not stopped since 1848 and before. As one long chain of oppression the state may employ Chican@ Toms and Black Uncle Toms as actors, but it is a state operation, that is: a program of white supremacy to maintain white power.

At the end of this book it’s a shame to read about Geronimo converting to Christianity to which he describes associating with Christians will “improve my character”. A warrior reduced to surrendering to the oppressor. Metaphysical thought like Christianity has not “improved” the character of the oppressed, rather, it has worked to subdue and pacify even one of the “ferocious” warriors like Geronimo. There’s even a picture of Geronimo in his Sunday best with the caption “ready for church” at the end of this book.

This was an interesting book that teaches one of the injustices committed by Amerikkka against indigenous peoples; but there are also lessons of how a warrior can (through the brute heel of the oppressor) become broken and surrender, and in doing so lead much of eir people into the abyss of plantation-minded Amerikan apologia. I needed to read this book at a time of extreme repression in my own life to re-energize and I think you need to read it as well. To die on the war-path for liberation . . .