Under Lock & Key

On 5 October 2024, about 150 people organized by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3585 picketed to call for an end to paper mail in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Another protest is planned for October 17th.

The plague of drugs in U.$. prisons is real, and it has continued in states where digital mail has been implemented. The claim of this “labor” union that staff are being poisoned is not real. In neighboring Indiana, a number of prisoners were threatened with isolation in torture cells for mail that we sent them that was accused of being drug-laced. Further testing proved they were not. Meanwhile, there have now been a number of cases of prison staff across the country claiming extreme medical crises from contacting prisoner mail, following similar claims by street cops, that have never been substantiated by medical professionals. It’s interesting that this “labor” union is willing to stand out on the street and picket for a policy that would give Correctional Officers a monopoly on bringing paper into IDOC facilities.

Even much of the pro-labor union movement in the United $tates will agree that cops aren’t workers, or the oppressed, but rather are the oppressors, regardless of the question of surplus value. And Marxism has always excluded the employees of the state from the proletariat in any country. So it is of little surprise that the AFSCME would be pushing this reactionary policy to eliminate education, resources and community connection in prisons, even if it risks the very safety of their own members.

MIM Distributors submitted the protest email below to Illinois DOC Director Latoya Hughes. We encourage others to send emails or make phone calls or send letters (especially if you are in Illinois). There are more suggested scripts available from campaign initiators working with Midwest Books to Prisoners.(2)

Dear Director Hughes,

I have recently been made aware that several Illinois legislators are calling for an immediate cessation of non-legal paper mail being delivered to people incarcerated in the IDOC. Our organization sends paper mail to thousands of prisoners across the country and we object to this effort to abridge our First Amendment rights to speech and association, as well as those of the people in your prisons. We will be sharing this letter with our members and supporters, especially in the state of Illinois.

Books, newspapers, and other printed materials are a crucial source of information, education and growth for people locked in prison. Letters can be a rare thing to look forward to. Our organization runs study programs, conducts surveys and regularly sends forms to prisoners to get updates on their status. All of these programs rely on prisoners receiving pieces of paper that we send them so they can fill out the forms and return them. The impact of blocking such mail would be massive.

We have been watching the spread of alarmism around drug-laced mail, and have even had such baseless accusations made against our mail! Of course testing proved the accusation false, just as it did in the recent incident at Shawnee, where the testing by Marion Fire Rescue came back false. We’ve also seen multiple cases where staff have claimed to have gotten sick from handling mail, which have been proven to be impossible claims multiple times now. The benefits of education and community connection are proven to help ensure staff safety far more than these imagined risks of being poisoned. Policy should be fact-based and should not succumb to rumors and fear-mongering.

Again, I am writing this email to clearly state my complete opposition to any and all proposals to halt mail delivered to incarcerated people, and urge you not to move forward with this proposal.

Sincerely Concerned,

MIM Distributors

<sup>Notes:
1. Madison Porter, 5 October 2024, Canton prison workers protest how inmates receive mail, 25 News.
2. For more materials on this campaign you can access Google docs here: bit.ly/IDOCmail</sup>

Dear Top Brass At U.$. Navy (Mr. Omnipotent Administrator),

You guys bicker about sexuality, abortion, gender issues, and whatever non-stop. Let me fill you in on your rape revenge fantasies and myths. Just ask the Florida Department of Corrections for my essay on sexual privilege in amerikkka. They have it in my central file in Tallahassee.

I quote Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice:

“The Omnipotent Administrator conceded to the super-masculine menial all of the attributes of masculinity associated with the body: strength, brute power, muscle, even the beauty of the brute body. Except one. There was this single attribute of masculinity which he was unwilling to relinquish, even though this particular attribute is the essence and seat of masculinity: sex.”

The Omnipotent Administrator said “I will bind your rod with my omnipotent will, and place a limitation on its aspiration which you will violate on pain of death.”

See ULK 85 “Rape Revenge Fantasies Fuel Genocide in Palestine.”

From the Supermasculine Menial

Black August 2024

I have been trying to follow the Palestinian liberation struggle for some time now, well at least in the best ways I can behind enemy lines: piecing bits and pieces of information together from the various media sources that make it in here.

What strikes me the most at this juncture is the dialectic between New Afrikan youth and Palestinian youth. Over here in the Amerikkkan empire, New Afrikan youth, particularly New Afrikan male youth occupy very unfortunate spaces in the Amerikkkan oppressor nation’s mental. These youth dwell in the danger zone, spaces that are purely a figment of the “white” imagination. This criminal Black youth label. This “hyper-reality” is no more real than the emperor’s new clothes, analogous to the rapist who takes the mentally ill patient back to the scene of the crime, back to the moment of trauma, when the delusions began. It is within the dark interiority of this lived nightmare, the womb of the unforgiving chattel slavery regime enclosed within old style colonialism that the New Afrikan male youth was conceived. This is critical and informative for understanding mass imprisonment in New Afrika.

This process of marking New Afrikan youth as criminal prisoners essential to the functioning of mass incarceration is a mechanism of social control operative under national oppression. For this repressive institution to succeed, New Afrikan youth must be branded as criminal before they are formally subject to this mechanism of control. This is essential, for forms of explicit colonial control are not only prohibited but are widely condemned. Capitalism evolved.

Both New Afrikan and Palestinian people are entrenched beneath the boot of their colonizers without a state that is theirs to foster, nurture, and facilitate their respective national liberation struggles to actualize control over their destiny. Both face the repressive arm of mass imprisonment to undermine and destroy their resistance efforts and thus fine comb their national oppression nightmare.

The I$raeli colonial project is a direct extension of U.$. imperialism. The U.$. penal system being the first and largest experiment in humyn bondage, it is only fitting that this institution of social control finds its way into the Palestinian lived experience under I$raeli occupation.

Palestinian youth are the only youth that are formally subject to a “military” court/detention system. Palestinian youth are not privy to a civil court; that means when they go before a judge they are not entitled to a lawyer, nor a translator even though the entire court proceedings are in Hebrew – a non-Arabic language. And if they remain silent, that means they plead guilty. So no civilian proceedings for any Palestinian youth at all.

Many of these oppressed youth are taken during night raids from their parents or adult supervisors to further facilitate intimidating interrogation techniques. These parallel a lot of New Afrikan juvenile situations as the school-to-prison pipeline. The harsh penalties for simple offenses that are the rule, just the whole criminalization process of entire neighborhoods/locations mirror U.$. law enforcement imposition of gang injunctions/occupational patrolling of predominantly New Afrikan neighborhoods in the United $tates of Amerikkka.

The I$raeli settler occupation project parallels Amerikkkan national oppression of New Afrika with the language and practical application of the tried and tired excuse of blaming the so-called “savages” for provoking the “reasonable” and “peace loving” settlers into defending themselves and the land “God ordained” them to have thus dehumanizing and criminalizing a whole nation. The zionist regime’s actions against Palestinian youth are nothing short of genocidal.

In the current news, it is important to note the essential role played by the Palestinian youth, mostly under 18. The resistance movement there is mobilizing their youth to stand up and struggle forward. This is very important to glean lessons from, particularly within the historical and contemporary social dynamics encircling settler colonialism and national oppression in Occupied Palestine. This is good for an application to the Amerikan empire. As ULK aptly notes: the Black Panthers were mostly teenagers.

What is Tox?

It’s an instant messaging protocol with applications available for all the most popular operating systems.

What are the benefits?

1. peer-to-peer: no central point of failure or interference
2. no metadata: related to point 1, no third party can see who you are messaging, when or from where
3. encrypted: content of messages are encrypted
4. perfect forward secrecy: each message is encrypted with a separate key, so that decrypting one message does not allow an attacker to decrypt your previous messages (this is an advantage over GPG encryption)

What are the shortcomings of Tox?

1. new/alpha software not all apps have full functionality (i.e. no group messaging on Antox for Android), and software can be buggy
2. untested related to it’s newness as well as the relative complexity of a full messaging app, the encryption/security of Tox is not as well tested as GPG
3. peer-to-peer: This is not really a shortcoming, but you should be aware that when you use Tox with someone, while no one else should be able to see where you are messaging from, the persyn you are communicating with has access to your IP address by default. This is much better than most other apps out there, and it can mitigated by running Tox behind the Tor network. Below are instructions for how to do this.

How to run TRIfA behind Tor on an Android device

1. install Orbot and TRIfA both are available from F-Droid repositories if you don’t have or don’t want to use Google Play Store
2. open Orbot
3. click the button to turn on “VPN Mode”
4. at the bottom where it says “Tor-Enabled Apps” click the little gear wheel on the right
5. on the following screen check the box for TRIfA and any other apps you want to be forced through Tor
6. hit the back arrow
7. in orbot click the big “Start” button.
8. once orbot has a connection to Tor open TRIfA app and follow instructions for setting up your account

How to install Tox messaging app in Tails OS

[NOTE: If you were already using Tox in Tails, you should back up your config files before installing Tox again. Go to Places -> Dotfiles, then hit ctrl-H, then go into .config folder and copy the folder named “tox” and all its contents to your Persistent folder as a backup.]

• In Tails set up Persistence for dotfiles, applications and personal data following directions here: https://tails.boum.org/doc/persistent_storage/configure/index.en.html#index13h2<
• reboot Tails

• at login screen, first set up administrative password 1) click the “+” under “Additional Settings”

         2) click "Administrative Password"
  
         3) enter a password you will remember in both boxes and click "Add"

• enter your password you set for persistence and click “Unlock”
• once it says “Settings were loaded from the persistent storage” click “Start Tails”
• go to Applications -> System Tools -> Synaptic Package Manager
• you will need to enter the administrative password you set above (not persistence password)
• Synaptic will load the list of available software - will take a couple minutes and requires network connection

• click the search button and type in “qtox” or “utox” depending on which client you want

  Which should i pick?

        qTox, because uTox seems to crash every time you change settings in Tails, however, uTox is the lighter one, so slow computers might prefer it
  
        https://github.com/qTox/qTox
  
        https://github.com/uTox/uTox
  
        NOTE: the versions available in the stable debian repos will often be older than the latest versions on github, you can install the latest version but this guide will not cover that

• right-click on the package you searched for and click “Mark for Installation”
• it will ask if you want to install additional required packages, click “Mark”
• click “Apply” button, then click “Apply” on the screen that comes up – it will now download and install tox packages
• you should get a Tails popup asking if you want to Install Every Time - click that and this will occur automatically next time you boot Tails
• you can close Synaptic
• Run qTox by going to Applications -> Internet -> qTox (or uTox)
• create a Tox ID - password protect it in settings->Advanced

• Set tox up to use Tor

          IN qTox: click the gear in lower left and go to Advanced settings
  
          1) uncheck enable IPv6 and uncheck enable UDP (probably already off)
  
          2) Proxy type: SOCKS5
              Address: 127.0.0.1
              Port: 9050
  
          3) Click "Reconnect" - wait a bit and the circle next your name should turn green when you connect (also probably in your top menu bar)
  
          IN uTox go to: settings->Advanced
  
          1) Proxy (SOCKS 5) Address: 127.0.0.1   Port:9050
  
          2) Force uTox to always use proxy
  
          3) turn off Ipv6
  
  4) turn off UDP
  
         NOTE: sometimes changing these seems to cause uTox to crash, the important setting is the proxy to make sure it's connecting to Tor
  

• Shutdown qTox/uTox IMPORTANT: must do this before the below!

In order to save any settings, including your Tox ID keys, and your friends, you need to copy the files automatically stored in your dotfiles to the permanent persistent folder. More background on how to save dotfiles: https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/persistence/configure/index.en.html#index11h2

local/temporary dotfiles in RAM are found here: /home/amnesia/.config/ permanent persistent dotfiles folder is here: /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/dotfiles/.config/

These files/folders are probably hidden. To see them, if you are in the file folder view click on the icon with three horizontal bars at the top and check the box to show hidden files.

To find these folders in a finder window: Click on Other locations at the bottom, then select computer. There you will see live and home folders

You need to move the tox folder and all its contents from the first location to the second. There should be two files in the tox folder: “tox_save.tox” and “utox_save”, then as you add friends files will be created for their info and your conversations if you choose to have conversations saved in the app.

The first time you do this copying over you will need to create the .config folder in the /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/dotfiles/ location if it’s not there already.

Command to use in terminal window when in the folder you want to copy TO: cp -r /home/amnesia/.config/tox /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/dotfiles/.config/

NOTE: Doing this using sudo (root user) will change file ownership to root. File ownership MUST be amnesia.

To check file ownership in Terminal:

 $ls -lah

To change file ownership in Terminal:

 $sudo chown amnesia:amnesia 

Connecting with others

To connect with others you must send them your Tox ID. This is not your name, your name is for display purposes only.

• click on your name/status in upper left
• you should now see your Tox ID as a long string of characters and a QR code, you can copy the long string into an PGP encrypted email and email it to your contact (if in persyn/on mobile they can scan the QR code, or you can send the image to them)
• if someone send you their Tox ID, in qTox click the “+” in bottom left and paste the code in “Add a Friend” -> Tox ID, similarly in uTox, paste your friend’s Tox ID into the Add Friend at bottom left.
• click “send friend request” and wait for their response - this is best done when you know the friend is online because you must both be online to exchange messages

Updating utox

Tails will automatically install the latest version available in the debian stable repo. Installing newer versions is beyond the scope of this guide.

Troubleshooting utox in Tails suggestions

• Delete the tox files from BOTH .config locations above
• Reinstall tox
• Run tox: it will create new files into your local .config folder
• Shut down tox. Move new tox_save.tox and utox_save over to persistence .config folder
• Try rerunning tox to see if your ID is persistent within a tails session. If so try restarting tails to see if it is persistent now.

0. Things to Avoid

The following will cause you problems using Tor and GPG securely and should be avoided:

• Apple computers (Tails may not work)
• Apple mobile devices (No Tor Limited Tor, No Tox)
• Chromebooks (Tails will usually not work)
• Protonmail (can’t control GPG keys)
• Tutanota (can’t control GPG keys)

Note that everything below can become outdated, so double check the links provided if things aren’t working.

1. Tails OS (Est. 2.5 hrs)

Tails is an operating system that is focused on anonymity for the lay persyn. It is relatively user-friendly, especially once you get it installed. It is unique in that whatever you do on Tails is not saved on the hard drive, unless you setup a PERSISTENT folder on the USB. It should be installed on a USB stick, and does not affect whatever Operating system you currently have. You can use your Tails USB stick, once you have it set up, to boot Tails on any desktop or laptop computer. However, Macs are difficult and require more work to setup. If that is hard for you I’d consider getting a different machine.

First, start by installing Tails OS. You will need the following materials:

• 8GB minimum flash drive (bigger USB stick would be necessary for optimal work so make sure it has space for persistence storage)
• A computer with the following:
• Approx. 2GB RAM
• A 64-bit x86-64 compatible processor
• The ability to start from a flash drive

Tails OS will not work in Mac models that use the Apple M1 chip. Tails OS can work with computers with less than 2GB RAM but might behave strangely or crash.

Download Tails (Approx 1.5-2.0 hours) There are two ways to download tails, we will first go over how the method of installing without a pre-downloaded Tails flash drive.

1. Open up Tor Browser (if you don’t already have it: https://www.torproject.org/download/)
2. Go to the link: https://tails.boum.org/install/index.en.html
3. Choose which operating system you are downloading Tails from (this is the operating system you are using currently to open up a browser)
4. Click “Install From MacOS” under “Download and Install”
5. Click “Let’s Go!”
6. Verify your download by clicking “Verify Tails” and choosing your Tails file

Install Tails (Approx 30 min)

1. Download “Etcher” (the instructions page would tell you to use GNOME Disks if you are on Linux; skip this step if you already have Etcher downloaded)
2. Plug in the 8GB USB stick where you want to install Tails.
3. Click “Select Image”
4. Choose the USB Image you downloaded earlier. Etcher should automatically start saving Tails onto your USB disk. Otherwise, click the “Change” link to choose a different USB stick in which you would need another 8GB USB stick.
5. Click “Flash”
6. Enter your password if asked
7. The installation takes a few minutes. After installing, Etcher verifies the installation.
8. Close Etcher.
9. Congratulations! You have downloaded TailsOS onto your USB stick!
10. Print out the next instructions for opening Tails.

Starting TailsOS (Approx 15-20 min)

1. Shut down your computer and plug in your Tails USB stick.
2. Identify your boot menu key. (This will depend on your manufacture company; search for this info online, or look at your boot screen before your OS loads to get it. Common examples: ESC, F2, F12)
3. Turn on the computer and immediately press several times the first possible Boot Menu Key identified in step 2
4. If the computer starts on another operating system or returns an error message, shut down the computer again and repeat step 3 for all the possible Boot Menu keys identified in step 2. If a Boot Menu with a list of devices appears, select your USB stick and press Enter.
5. If the computer starts on Tails, the Boot Loader appears and Tails starts automatically after 4 seconds.

Create Persistence Storage (This is a MUST!)

1. Your welcome screen should show up. Select your language and keyboard layout in the Language Region section. Click “Start Tails.”
2. Choose Applications ▸ Tails ▸ Configure persistent volume.
3. Specify a passphrase of your choice in both the Passphrase and Verify Passphrase text boxes.
4. Click “Create”
5. Review the list of features - turn on Personal Data, Browser Bookmarks, Thunderbird, GnuPG, and Dotfiles (and anything else you want)
6. Click “Save”

2. Email Address (Est. 5 minutes)

Before we can get started we will need an email address. You can check the list of providers at https://privacytools.io/providers/email/ for suggestions. We obviously use posteo.net, which accepts cash payment in U.$. dollars for easy anonymous payment. You can use a Posteo email with Thunderbird, the email app on Tails.

If you go with a ProtonMail email, keep in mind you cannot use it with Thunderbird unless you pay for ProtonMail Bridge.

For most of those options you will need to use a web browser with JavaScript enabled to register. This is a potential attack vector. So even though you are in Tails, using Tor to connect, you would be best to set up your email at an anonymous/public internet connection. Once we set up Thunderbird you will not need to log in via the website anymore.

You do not want to pick a username that anyone would connect with your bourgeois identity. And you obviously don’t want to use an account that is connected to your school, work, home, etc.

3. OpenPGP / GnuPG Keys (Est. 15 mins)

By creating an OpenPGP key, you will be able to ensure that your emails are fully encrypted. You will have a private key and a public key. The public key is how others address emails specifically to you. The private key is so that only you can read the emails that are addressed to you. If you want to receive email, you decrypt it with your private key. If you want to send it you encrypt your message with the public key of the person you are sending it to (this can be done automatically by Thunderbird).

You can manage your OpenPGP keys using Kleopatra (which you can find in Applications).

REMINDER: You must have persistence turned on above for any of the stuff below here to be saved.

To create your PGP key pair go to: File -> New Key Pair

Enter in your email account and your nickname. You can set the key to never expire, if you want. You do not have to change any of the other settings.

To export your private key, right click the key you made under GPG keys. Choose “Export Secret Keys”. You will use this file below to import into Thunderbird. (Yes you can create a keypair directly in Thunderbird, but you will probably want to use it for other things so we recommend the above.)

4. Thunderbird (Est. 15 minutes)

When you start up Thunderbird, you will want to enter your email address and password and set up the IMAP(receiving) and SMTP (sending) connections based on the info given by your email provider (see their help page). We recommend not saving your password in Thunderbird and entering it each time. Use KeepassXC to securely store any passwords for email, PGP, and other accounts.

In order to set-up Thunderbird with your PGP keys, go to the top right corner of thunderbird. Choose ≡ ▸ Tools ▸ OpenPGP Key Manager. Import your secret key (which is the same as your private PGP key). Import the MIM(Prisons) public key. (see: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/openpgp-thunderbird-howto-and-faq#w_i-have-never-used-openpgp-with-thunderbird-before-how-do-i-setup-openpgp)

In order to import our public key, copy it from here: https://www.prisoncensorship.info/contact

Make sure to include the full header and footer identifying it as a PGP Public Key Block. Paste it into the Text Editor and save the file. Then use the Thunderbird instructions above to import our public key like you did your own.

Afterwards, go to the top right again. Choose ≡ ▸ Account settings ▸ End to End encryption. It’ll say none, select your private key (it’ll read like a bunch of numbers and letters).

On that same page under “Default settings for sending messages” check “Enable encryption for new messages”. You may want to check “Sign unencrypted messages”.

Under Advanced Settings, it’s best to check all 3 options.

Now, you can send an email and it’ll automatically encrypt your messages with the other persons public key, and decrypt messages sent to you with your private key!

5. Tox

Tox is a messaging app we use on Tails. For more details on how to install it: https://www.prisoncensorship.info/article/computer-security-setting-up-tox-messenger/

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.s. 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 inmates 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*^