MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Texas prisons are notoriously rough and primitive. Some inmates work in
TCI (Texas Correctional Industries) sweatshops making products like
t-shirts, shorts and detergent. We work for free and then the state
sells us these products at a high cost through the prison commissary.
Nonviolent prisoners earn good time and work time which is often not
honored. We’re caged in hot boxes with no air conditioning, and
prisoners die each summer as a result. In addition to the
new limits
on correspondence, last September marriage by proxy was eliminated.
Inmates can no longer marry their loved ones on the outside, meaning
they can’t get contact visits with them, or their own children. The list
goes on and on.
The term divide and conquer still holds true today. TDCJ is glad the
majority of us are fighting amongst ourselves, and are more consumed
with television, radio and gossiping, than unity and change. Texas
prisoners, do you like working for free? Do you like being a model
inmate who’s changed, but gets their parole denied year after year? Do
you enjoy living in a negative repressive environment? If you don’t,
then let’s drop the racial and gang nonsense. Let’s quit worshipping the
TV, our radios and commissary. Let’s bring Texas prisons out of the dark
ages and into the twenty-first century. Make sacrifices for the great
good of all prisoners and our families. Oppressors only have control
over their captors as long as the oppressed allow them to.
Each year the big wigs running Texas prisons decide on what to take from
the prisoners next. This year it involves indigent mail and stationary
sent in from the outside. Prisoners who have no money on their trust
fund account are able to receive supplies (paper, pen, envelopes) and
send out letters through the indigent mail. Before this March prisoners
could send out five letters a week, now it’s just five letters a month.
Going from twenty to just five letters a month shows how indifferent and
uncaring towards our family members and friends the prison
administration really is. What’s worse is that we’re charged for
indigent mail services. Whenever we get money on our account, the cost
for every letter mailed and each supply is deducted.
Prior to this March our friends and family could have stationary from an
outside store sent to us. This was eliminated, and now our only option
is purchasing stationary from commissary, and paying their prices. Like
any oppressor, TDCJ enjoys coming up with new ideas and ways to make
life more difficult for their captors. There’s strength in numbers. The
more of us who write grievances, send letters to state politicians, and
get the word out to our family and friends, the better chance we have of
telling our oppressors that we’re not going to take this lying down.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade is right on about the strength in
numbers. We have a number of prisoners across the state working on this
campaign to end the restrictions on correspondence in Texas, and we’ve
come up with a few
key
steps for prisoners and supporters to take.
Some jailhouse lawyers have created guides to fighting this injustice as
well as a broader
grievance
guide for Texas, and we are seeing an influx of prisoners requesting
these resources. We look forward to the results of this growing activism
in this state with the largest prison population and one of the highest
incarceration rates in the country.
On 27 March 2014, a Federal judge in the United States District Court
issued an order requiring prison staff to record any use of force,
should force be required on a prisoner.
Some other prisoners and I filed a lawsuit because the pigs at Central
Prison in Raleigh used blind spots in the current video system to hide
from surveillance so they could beat prisoners. We also informed the
courts of the “lack of policy for proper method of investigation in any
use-of-force incidents.”
As a result, Judge Terrance Boyle appointed an expert (former
corrections administrator Eldon Vail) to review the prison’s
surveillance system. Based on several problems he found, he made five
recommendations.
North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) prisons adopted four
of the recommendations but said using a hand-held video camera is not
feasible and placed “undue burden upon Central Prison.” However, on
Thursday, 27 March 2014 Judge Boyle ordered the fifth recommendation be
adopted. His order stated “…defendants are placed on notice that if
there is not voluntary compliance and implementation of the
recommendation, a preliminary injunction will ensue.”
The pigs deny any abuse, saying they used minimal amounts of force
required to deal with prisoners characterized as the “worst of the
worst” among the prison system’s population.
Still the state agreed last year to install more security cameras to
cover previously unmonitored areas. But Vail’s report said the new
cameras still don’t monitor all the blind spots where prisoners say the
abuse occurs. Vail also reported finding lenses so out-of-focus and
smudged with grime that it was difficult to make out what the camera was
recording.
The recommendations made by Vail that must be followed are:
Adjust each camera that demonstrates a pattern of “freezing” to improve
motion detection sensitivity.
Establish a written preventive maintenance schedule for lens cleaning,
camera refocusing and replacement of faulty cameras.
Install additional cameras to view the sally ports of each cell block in
Unit 1.
Modify the video surveillance retention policy and procedure to clarify
the responsibility to provide notice to the video retention officer to
preserve a video by the unit supervisor from the investigator’s
responsibility to request a copy of the video for the investigation.
Change the use of force policy, SOP 4.100, to require that a handheld
video camera operator respond to the scene of spontaneous use-of-force
incidents and that a camera remain on until the event is over and
[prisoner] has been safely placed in a cell.
This fifth recommendation means that during an anticipated use-of-force
(any use-of-force) a hand-held camera will be used until a prisoner is
no longer in contact with the pigs.
We are now getting ready for a pretrial conference. But we are one step
closer to getting justice. We have at least made the prison safer. Now
the pigs will not have anywhere to hide.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This update to the
ongoing
legal battle in North Carolina is good news for this carefully
planned and hard fought legal battle. We know that often we cannot win
when fighting abuse by employees of the criminal injustice system in
their own courts. But sometimes the courts have to pretend objectivity
and, when presented with facts that show the NCDPS is violating their
own laws and policies, we can win some improvements to conditions. While
the courts won’t be where we make revolutionary change, for now we can
use them as one tool to struggle against abuse. We must always accompany
these court battles with publicity and education about the case, using
them to expose both the brutality we are fighting and the injustice when
the courts rule against us.
Comrades here at Special Management Unit (SMU - long-term isolation) are
doing what they can to protest and fight against the illegal housing
that they are being subjected to. Prisoners here are going on hunger
strikes and are suffering due to the lack of outside support. Further,
the DOC has taken actions to keep outside inquiries from being made
public and the news media is refusing to expose the inhumane treatment
of prisoners in Georgia’s SMU unit.
Prisoners are being transferred to SMU for refusing to participate in
the so-called tier step down programs they’ve started in Georgia. The
DOC is trying to force lumpen groups to be housed two men in a 24-hour
lockdown cell, thus placing prisoners in physical jeopardy, in order to
start a war. Just another attempt to enact the Willie Lynch mentality
amongst these prisoners. Before, the prisoners enacted peace and
brotherhood policies amongst and between the lumpen groups, and there
was no tier step down program. So this program is to create strife
amongst the brotherhood by building enough stress and confusion to
destroy peace that prisoners worked hard to establish.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We have received a lot of
reports
about the hunger strike in Georgia, and the struggles against
SMU
classification. The unity and awareness being built in Georgia
prisons is definitely frightening the prison administrators. This is an
important lesson for organizers: when we build for peace among the
lumpen organizations our enemies will take this as a call to war. The
United Front
for Peace in Prisons is bringing together organizations and
individuals in this important battle. Get involved today in building
peace in your prison.
While capitalism advances technology and produces consumables at high
rates, most people lack decent health care April 1 - The deadline
for enrollment in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
passed last night, and there are now 4.4 million people in the United
$tates newly enrolled in Medicaid health insurance plans sponsored by
the federal government, and another 8 million people newly enrolled in
government-regulated private insurance plans.(1) Those who do not enroll
in any insurance and are not covered by a plan through their family,
work or school will face fines. For people with incomes less than 400%
of the federal “poverty line,” the plans are subsidized by the
government, and those with less than 138% of this cut off will receive
free health care via Medicaid. In the end, for at least the lumpen class
the penalty will actually cost them more than having health insurance
would cost.
This new healthcare system in the United $tates, often called
“Obamacare,” is far from socialist, but it does serve as a good reminder
of the failures of capitalism to care for some of the basic needs of
imperialist country citizens. The United $tates has had government-run
healthcare for military service people and their families since the
1800s, and for the relatively poor, disabled and elderly since the 1960s
with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. But these programs serve a
minority of Amerikans, leaving the rest to seek health care through
insurance provided by their work or through privately purchased plans or
by paying directly for services. This means that people out of work or
in jobs that don’t provide insurance coverage are often left without any
health insurance. The ACA attempts to address this problem by providing
a government-run program to help insure citizens without coverage.
We’re not going to take on the critics who say that health care quality
would go down if run by the Amerikan government. These same people would
abolish free universal education, privatize water distribution, and
eliminate the fire department. This is a debate between different
factions of the bourgeoisie, and not worth the time of communists,
except to point out that we have fundamentally different values. We have
no need to defend the ability of a capitalist government to run these
programs well because we don’t support capitalist governments. And we
know that the profit motive does not make for greater “efficiency”, as
capitalists like to claim. We see this clearly in the United $tates
where food is dumped rather than distributed to people going hungry, and
the tremendous waste of money on advertising rather than meeting basic
needs.
Communists think about health care the same way we think about
education, food, clean water and other basic necessities. These are
things we seek to provide to all people indiscriminately. We prioritize
basic humyn needs over luxury items like boats, fancy cars, big houses,
TVs, etc. Capitalism, on the other hand, functions on the concept that
profitable luxury items are a priority over basic humyn needs. While in
a matter of years capitalism has gotten hand-held computers into the
hands of anyone with a little disposable income, the decades-long
struggle against easily preventable diseases in the Third World
continues. Millions of children under five years old die each year in
southern Asia and Africa south of the Sahara as a result. We believe
that the Affordable Care Act should offer these people free health care
services as well. While the ACA has proven once again that small reforms
in capitalism can be achieved when they serve the interests of
imperialist country citizens, capitalism will never allow reforms to
improve the lot of the rest of the world. In fact, even within U.$.
borders non-citizens are not eligible for insurance under the ACA. Those
most in need, working the hardest and most dangerous jobs for the least
money, are still denied basic health care.
While it’s easy for Amerikans to ignore what goes on outside of their
borders, it should be an embarrassment for Amerikan imperialism that the
individualism of its citizens is so strong that until now they had
refused health care to even their own relatively well-off citizens. Even
now, many across the country continue to fight and resist this new law.
Prior to the Affordable Care Act, Amerikans who wanted to buy health
insurance on their own were often rejected by the health plans for
“pre-existing conditions.” This means the health plans were picking only
the healthiest individuals for insurance, leaving those with even minor
history of health problems with no recourse because most insurance plans
in the United $tates are privately run for a profit. Now most insurance
in this country is still run for profit, but the federal and state
governments provide minimum standards of care that must be provided with
every policy, and sell these approved insurance plans on a marketplace,
in hopes that the market competition inherent in capitalism will
increase quality and transparency while reducing cost.
Abolishing the profit motive behind health care will be a priority for
communists when we take control of a government. We want to make
preventive care and treatment available to all people. The new ACA law
in the United $tates does not eliminate private insurance or remove the
profit from health care, and it’s a fundamentally timid step towards
universal coverage for Amerikans. But it does enable people to get
health insurance regardless of income or health status. For Amerikan
citizens this is progress. And for most it is part of the ongoing
bribery of these citizens by the imperialists, ensuring their allegiance
to the imperialist system. However, a large number of the uninsured in
the United $tates come from the oppressed nation lumpen class, and the
ACA is a positive step for the survival and healthy living of this group
which has a relatively high material interest in revolution.(3) Overall
we see the ACA as a progressive step towards universal health care for
everyone in the world, if only because it demonstrates the concept of
health care as a basic right.
We will continue to fight for health care for the world’s exploited and
oppressed, who are mostly found in the Third World, where even basic
medical services are difficult to obtain. 801,000 children under age 5
die from diarrhea each year, most of which are caused by lack of access
to clean water and sanitation. More than 3 million people die from
vaccine-preventable diseases each year. 86% of deaths among children
under age 5 are preventable and due to communicable, treatable disease,
birth issues and lack of nutrition. These abysmal numbers would cost
very little to rectify. Truly universal health care is a priority for
communists, and the statistics above are just a few reasons why the
overthrow of capitalism is literally a life or death issue for the
majority of the world’s people.
In approximately 1.5 years, between 2 February 2012 and 1 December 2013,
there were 50 reported cases of censorship of material sent by MIM
Distributors in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). The
censored material included copies of MIM Theory and Under
Lock & Key, along with informational zines and personal
letters.
Out of those 50 reported cases a staggering 78% (39) of them were
censored with no reason being given as to why they had been censored.
This is typical of the IDOC.
If they do not like a given topic they will ban it without giving any
reason why. This is a continuing violation of prisoners’ constitutional
rights. The only way to combat this injustice is by filing grievances
and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil suits.
Resist! Rebel! Defy!
MIM(Prisons) adds: Many facilities in Illinois have enacted total
bans on our mail. Get involved in the
campaign to
fight censorship in Illinois. We need legal help both behind bars
from our jailhouse lawyers and from lawyers on the streets.
This computer animated story could have been a feature length ad for the
popular children’s toy, funded by Lego itself, but it’s not hard to read
a not-too-subtle communist message into this movie. From the main plot
it appears that Marx’s conclusions are logical to anyone thinking about
organized work and struggle against those dominating the world for
persynal gain. What is particularly refreshing about this movie is the
strong theme that heroes are not people with special talent but rather
the masses are all heroes when we unleash their creativity.
The movie starts off in Lego world with regular ordinary construction
worker Emmet, as he follows the instruction booklet for life, produced
by the Octan Corporation, which details how he should dress, what music
to listen to, the expensive coffee to drink, what brainless TV to watch,
and how to do his job working with lots of other people building things
that are without purpose and will be torn down to be built again another
day. These workers are uncreative, but very cooperative in their work.
When it comes time to fight back against President Business, the CEO of
Octan Corp., who is trying to dominate the world, it is Emmet who
realizes that the collective organization of the workers is
indispensable to building the resistance against Octan. In fact, the
Lego heros (batman, spaceman, superman, NBA players, etc.) find their
heroic individualism an impediment in their attempts to fight back as an
organized group.
These are themes of Marxism, which sees that the organized labor of the
industrial proletariat will make up the leadership of the communist
revolution because of their unique position exposed directly to the
contradiction of collective labor being deployed for individual profit.
But there is another layer to this Marxist theme because the workers are
not actually proletarian in the Lego land. There is no profit in the
construction work which appears to just be happening to keep everyone
busy. The workers are paid a high salary, judging from Emmet’s living
conditions. In reality these workers are a labor aristocracy just like
we have in the imperialist countries today, where workers are bought off
with the superprofits from exploitation of unseen workers in the Third
World. The complete lack of productivity of the Lego workers underscores
the impossibility that they are the ones creating the profits. No longer
a part of the proletariat in the real world, these workers will defend
imperialism against revolutionary forces to maintain their elevated
standard of living. So we wouldn’t actually expect them to lead the
revolution that is serving the interests of the global proletariat.
However, at some point a contradiction may arise that is such a threat
to the labor aristocracy that they will be compelled to join the forces
of revolution. This threat will likely be life threatening, like Lord
Business’s plot to kill everyone. But until that contradiction arises,
we should expect the labor aristocracy to join in the chorus of the Lego
theme song “Everything is Awesome,” and continue their unproductive
labor, enjoying their capitalist-created entertainment.
In the beginning of the movie Vitruvius, the white-haired god-like
leader of the forces of good, prophesies that there will be an
individual who will rise up to lead the resistance and foil the ultimate
plot of Lord Business. These strong religious overtones are nicely
dispelled later when Vitruvius confesses that he made up the prophesy
because he thought it would help average people believe in themselves,
and in fact he knows that the creativity of the masterbuilders (heroes)
exists within everyone.
In the end Emmet is able to convince Lord Business that he doesn’t have
to be evil and so the communist theme is undermined by the pacifist view
that we can convince those with money and power to give up exploiting
and oppressing the people of the world. Communists know that this
fairytale ending is far from the reality that will require violent
overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and ongoing military force to keep them
from reclaiming power until we can transform society and create a
culture that does not nurture individualism and profit over people.
Like in past years, I will begin to plan a few months ahead of time for
the revolutionary festival of September 9. This day is a special one
which marks the day when the United Front for Peace in Prisons was given
its first concrete example in these dungeons. I attempt to have
educational study materials available on this day, which usually
includes poetry, short stories or articles, and of course some art if
possible.
In the past I helped read articles and poetry on the tier which
reflected on prisons and what it means to be prisoners. So many times
people forget that what we experience is unbridled oppression and
instead think that we somehow brought it upon ourselves. This backwards
thinking only helps to solidify our own mental captivity! This day helps
to refocus our attention of who we are as people and what is the path
forward for the next year in our struggle for humyn rights in these
dungeons.
I have heard different ways of observing this day, from having an open
line on the tier where folks get a certain “air time” to share their
ideas on what they feel will move the humyn rights struggle forward.
Others talk about creating conscious rap to be performed on the tier.
The main thing I hear is folks being ready to promote peace in prison.
It is a time to help to heal the people outside of state influence.
MIM(Prisons) adds: September 9 will be the third annual United
Front for Peace in Prisons
solidarity
demonstration. This demonstration coincides with the anniversary of
the Attica uprising. On this day prisoners should create ways to work
towards greater peace among the prison population. We will cease all
prisoner-on-prisoner hostilities regardless of set, race, custody,
gender, religion or other division. Some will fast, engage in solidarity
organizing, and carry out educational work. Start planning now for your
September 9 solidarity day.
The New Afrikan Maoist Brotherhood (NAMB) is a collective committed to
the study and propagation of New Afrikan Political Philosophy. We see
the lack of political consciousness amongst the masses of New Afrikans,
along with the multiple and diverse aims of our semi-colonized nation.
Therefore we see it as our duty to take the much-called-for initiative
so that the New Afrikan liberation and independence movement’s aims and
objectives do not die out in vain in this or the next generation. We, as
students to communist thought, understand that the beginning of national
liberation starts with mass political education. Hence, our current
organizational structure is that of a study group, which we intend to
develop and multiply inside and outside of prison. NAMB stands with the
United Front for Peace in Prisons (UFPP). The principles of the UFPP are
important for the following reasons (but not limited to):
The prison environment can become a violent place to dwell. But our
enemies want just that. It is counter-revolutionary for the lumpen
proletariat to waste our time, resources and energy fighting our
comrades in the struggle. We must transform our thinking and in turn
transform our environment. We must make prison a “school of revolution,”
where we invest into each other, by using such terms as “Each one Teach
one” so that we create in ourselves and for ourselves, leaders of our
communities.
Reckless warring and fighting will not aid the lumpen organizations.
That’s why the first principle of peace is so important. Unity is the
key! The enemy divides the lumpen into smaller and smaller illusionary
sections, and we play into it. We internalize divisive thinking, not
thinking about the ill-effects this capitalist thinking has. We must
unite!
Unity will in turn produce Growth (the third principle) in ourselves and
in our collective. And this growth and unity are weapons against the
capitalist imperialists who seek to continue their exploitation of the
people.
The New Afrikan Maoist Brotherhood supports and stands by these
principles of the UFPP. From our Conservative Vice Lord and Mafia Insane
Vice Lord upbringing we have come to know of our national liberation
struggle, for the nation of New Afrika. And coming to this awareness, we
have recognized our national allies in the First Nations, Latino/as and
all those who are in the Third World that face the same oppressive enemy
as us. We understand that national liberation of our semi-colonized
nations will be counter weights in the international war against
capitalist-imperialism, and so we support all nations and all fronts and
parties to this battle. For this is in the spirit of internationalism.
The long legacy of socialism and communism teaches that in building
revolution and nation-building, the people, led by a vanguard party,
must develop independent institutions that will “serve the people” -
both by providing for their needs and in a form of public teaching of
“learning thru practice.” Independence, the last principle of the UFPP,
is one of the building blocks of national self-determination, without
which an independent nation cannot stand!
These 5 principles can be drawn from by all lumpen organizations inside
prison and also even incorporated into the communities where our
organizations are based. It’s “nation time” comrades! It’s time for us
to think and live outside of our individual selves and dedicate our
lives, minds, spirits, energy and resolve to making the world a better
place! And that can only happen if we all have a place to live free and
openly express ourselves. But, freedom only comes to those willing to
die for it.
Greetings to all revolutionary comrades who are kaptive in the gulags of
these United Snakes of a Amurderer (U.$.). I write on behalf of E-NUF,
an organization we formed to develop revolutionary consciousness in
those held kaptive, and to compel direct action to agitate the enemy.
Here we issue our formal statement of unity with the principles of the
United Front for Peace in Prisons. We recognize the importance of all
the principles. It is through growth and unity that we can have peace
amongst the kaptive lumpen irregardless of nation. And it is through the
creation of independent institutions that we can develop
internationalism.
We recognize our existence as being a part of the lumpen class. We
believe when we unite as a conscious class the contradictions existing
between the exploiter class (imperialism) and the oppressed (ourselves)
become clear, exposing our true enemy. Through unity we can develop the
best strategies to fight our way out of the grip of imperialism.
As kaptives we seek to ignite the spark first within our class.
Revolutionary power to the kaptive lumpen.