Under Lock & Key

Addiction is a disease/syndrome that is not dependent upon any given drug. As an addict and alcoholic, what this means to me is that I am a meth addict even though I have never tried meth. I am addicted to K2 even though I have never tried K2. My drug of choice is alcohol, but my struggle is with addiction. My method of combating my addiction in prison is:

1. Not using any substances
2. Refusing to be ashamed of myself
3. Sharing my experience, strength and hope with the addict who is still suffering.

While addiction cuts across class, nationality, ideology, and gender, it concentrates in prison as many of us committed crimes in order to fuel our addiction. Addiction thrives in an atmosphere of shame, of hiding, and of loneliness. All of that and more is the atmosphere of prison. It is incredibly difficult to stay sober by myself. I need community in order to maintain my sobriety.

One incredibly important aspect of recovery that is missing from the revolutionary 12 step program is the personal stories of recovery that form the back of each 12 step book. These stories are essential as they serve as that community of recovery and way for us to relate and be inspired. I would be more than happy to contribute to the revolutionary 12 step program.

Oakland, CA – Organizations came together on March 29 for a caravan from East Oakland to City Hall promoting the Artivists Ending Hostilities (AEH) street program. Initiators included a number of former prisoners who participated in the 2011 and 2013 hunger strikes in California, as well as the organization of currently incarcerated people P.E.P. Talk - Pre-Entry Platform. Former prisoners of CDCr spoke at the rally on the need to bring the message of peace from the original AEH (Agreement to End Hostilities) to the streets. Organizers distributed and read the text of original AEH and a recent message from Cellblock 2 Cityblock.

Kat Brooks of the Anti Police Terror Project was one of the speakers who really got to the heart of things:

“The state creates the conditions in our communities that they know creates violence.”

Ey went on to condemn Amerikan koncentration kamps as a form of violence, saying the carceral state is the most violent institution in the world. Another comrade read from/paraphrased the intro of the Communist Party of Aztlán’s essay on homelessness, making the connection that homelessness is also a form of violence that we must come together to end.

Of course, it is up to the oppressed to change our conditions. Youth from Lulu’s House participated in the event, speaking on their own recent transformations from petty criminals to active community members. One said:

“We gotta push the movement too, it starts with us.”

While another pointed out:

“If you’re scared of the youth you’ll never understand them.”

One of the adults present who wasn’t scared to help these youth change was a BART cop (Bay Area Rapid Transit). This “officer friendly” approach is a well-known counter-insurgency strategy of the occupying forces. They hire cops to do community work, who aren’t involved in the violent repression work, but do intelligence gathering for the state while helping to divide the occupied community.

Independence is one of the principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons for this very reason. There is no progress towards liberation in the united front if it is working with the very imperialist state that is oppressing us.

Minister King X echoed this principle of independence when speaking about learning from the elders released from prison while the U.$. government is smashing the Department of Education. We must learn from the struggles of oppressed people.

Minister King X was one of the MC’s and organizers of the event, representing the Artivist Kadre trying to engage the youth and the oppressed in the movement through artistic expression. Ras Kass was also there representing the Artivist Kadre from Los Angeles. They were sporting patches promoting the New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist (N.A.R.N.) ideology and the AEH. The Artivist Kadre are working with P.E.P. Talk, BOSS (another release support program) and others to address racism, fascism, sex trafficking and more in California.

Hyping up the threat of dangerous gangs of “super-predators.” Using confidential informants, tattoos, and appearance to label people “gang members.” Using that gang affiliation to imprison and torture people. These draconian methods are familiar to readers of ULK, and to those who’ve spent time in U.$. prisons in general. The Trump regime has made this headline news for the whole country.

In recent weeks, hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported from the United $tates to a supermax prison in El Salvador. The Trump regime justified this with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the deportation of non-citizens during wartime, and was last used during WWII to deport Germans and Italians and roundup Japanese in internment camps, seizing their assets for Euro-Amerikans. Trump claimed these people were part of a gang conducting “irregular warfare” in the United $tates, but there seems to be no evidence that Tren de Aragua is even a widely functioning organization here. In February, the U.$. State Department designated Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and a list of Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

A federal court has ordered a halt to the deportations, but the Department of Justice is defying the order. A legal battle continues, while the executive branch continues to defy the courts.

Venezuela has been a consistent target of U.$. imperialism since the rise of Hugo Chavez to power in 1999.(1) As a result almost 600,000 Venezuelans have been accepted into the United $tates with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Trump attempted to cancel TPS for Venezuelans, but a federal court has deemed the move illegal. Without TPS, many from Venezuela, Haiti, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan and elsewhere could no longer legally work in the United $tates and could be legally deported.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is getting special attention as the Trump administration admitted eir deportation was a mistake, and that they can’t get em back from Salvadorean custody. This is despite a court order that prevented em from being sent back to El Salvador, where ey had fled gang violence as a youth. Abrego Garcia has no criminal charges, for what that’s worth, but was labelled a member of MS-13 by a pig citing a “confidential informant” during a round up of day laborers some years ago. As a result, Abrego Garcia has been disappeared from eir family and sent to a torture unit in the very country ey fled for safety reasons.(2)

The ACLU obtained a copy of the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” being used to deport people.(3) Once establishing someone is over 14 years old, of Venezuelan origin and without U.$. citizenship, a point system is used to “validate” gang members. A “TdA” tattoo gets you 4 points while 8 points are required to qualify as validated. The Homeland Security guide lists photos of tattoos like crowns and stars that are “TdA”. In addition, wearing Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan athletic wear are listed. When was the last time you saw someone with Air Jordans on and a star tattoo?

Student Activists Targeted

Educational institutions from Columbia University in New York to the University of California system are enforcing the fascist repression on their campuses, from expelling students during Biden’s Presidency, to disappearing them off the streets and from their homes under the Trump regime. Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk is being detained for writing an article criticizing the U.$.-I$rael genocide in Palestine. Mahmoud Khalil, who was a respected negotiator between Columbia University and the pro-Palestine student encampment last year, told eir story in a recent statement from 18 March 2025:

“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana… On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. …

“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”

“… Columbia [University] targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

“If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. …”(4)

Other targeted students have gone into hiding. At the same time, students across the country are coming together to stand with and defend those who may be targeted next. We commend the solidarity being shown. Schools and prisons are somewhat unique in our society due to the collective identities of their populations and their abilities to organize. With the recent announcements from the Trump regime that they will be deporting U.$. citizens with criminal records to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, prisoners need to be prepared to stand together as students are learning to do. While there are many recent examples to the contrary, there is a long history of U.$. prisoners standing up for one another due to the group consciousness that comes with facing a common oppressor every day.

Fascism Coming Home

The United $tates has been using long-term solitary confinement for decades on a scale not seen elsewhere in humyn history. Physicians for Human Rights released a report in 2024 exposing the use of solitary confinement in ICE detention centers contrary to government directives to limit its use to absolute necessity. They documented at least 14,000 cases of people being put in solitary confinement by ICE from 2018 to 2023. Durations in solitary averaged 27 days, with 42 cases lasting over a year. At the time, in 2024, ICE held over 35,000 people, making it the world’s largest immigration detention system.(5)

Conditions are likely worse for those sent to El Salvador, where President Bukele has stated that the only way gang members will leave the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) ey built in 2023 is in a coffin. With a capacity of over 40,000, there are 65 to 70 prisoners held per cell. “CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.”(6) Bukele has been promoting images of shaved gang members, dressed all in white, being warehoused and man-handled by masked prison guards online since the prison opened. This propaganda campaign has appealed to the pro-fascist elements of Amerika. And with that support, Trump is incorporating this prison into the Amerikan international prison system and sending hundreds of people there from the United $tates. This is a shift closer to home from the network of dark sites, and infamous prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, that were used to torture and hold without trial oppressed people across the Muslim world.

Most press sources are reporting the Amerikans paid $6 million for 238 prisoners to be held in CECOT, which some point out is much less than what it would cost to imprison them in the United $tates. But it is an amount that will greatly help El Salvador to fund their monstrosity of a prison. It doesn’t make sense that the imperialists are paying to have these prisoners held, but then claim they cannot return people like Abrego Garcia back to their families.

In the 1980s, U.$.-sponsored death squads, trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia, killed and displaced countless people across Central America that were fighting for socialism and to remove imperialism from their countries.(7) Many children of this war in El Salvador were displaced to Los Angeles where they joined Barrio 18 or formed the new Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), were persecuted by the state, and then exported back to El Salvador. We’ve reported on efforts at peace between these groups in 2013, which coincided with investment by USAID and the building of new U.$.-inspired prisons in El Salvador.(8) But conditions for the people of El Salvador did not improve, and they voted for President Nayib Bukele who both utilized the lumpen organizations in eir political organizing and later turned on them as a scapegoat for the ills of the country in a fascist repression campaign.(9)

The struggle against fascism in this country relies on the coming together of people to defend migrant populations and students currently under attack. As fascism rises, we see the campaigns of groups like the ACLU coming closer to those of MIM(Prisons). As important legal battles are taking place, we also see the spreading recognition that we can’t rely on the courts to save us. We must have a plan B. We must build our plan B.

<sup>Notes:
1. Soso of MIM(Prisons), January 2019, Imperialists Push Coup in Venezuela to Secure Oil for Amerikans, Under Lock & Key 67.
2. Democracy Now!, 2 April 2025.
3. https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador
4. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/a-letter-from-palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalil
5. Physicians for Human Rights, 6 February 2024, https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador.
6. Aleman & Cano, 17 March 2025, “What to know about El Salvador’s mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there”, Los Angeles Times.
7. MIM(Prisons), June 2009, FBI Arrests Peacemaker, Under Lock & Key 9.
8. MIM(Prisons), March 2013, One-Year Anniversary of Peace Treaty in El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 31.
9. Badgreen of MIM(Prisons), September 2023, 8,000 Military and Police Deployed in Cabanas Province, El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 83.</sup>

i want to thank all of those here in NC who responded to my call to action and submitted grievances about the lack of due process when We’ve been validated as a “gang member” and the draconian policies and restrictions we find ourselves subjected to here in North Carolina. This act of unity was so impactful, to the point i was pulled out to meet with Chief of Security Daryll Vann, and 4 other ranking facility intelligence officers.

After having them pull a komrade of mine to be present during this “meeting,” i agreed to listen to what they had to say. The aforementioned individuals asked if i would be interested in drafting up a proposal for the validation process of SRG members and a denouncement process. i immediately declined their offer and was adamant about my decision until the komrade i had accompany me told me “don’t allow this act of unity to be in vain” and he was right.

228 of ya’ll took the time to support me, therefore i agreed to draft up a proposal for new SRG policies here in North Carolina. Never before has this been done and it was made possible because of you all. Thank you again.

In closing, if any of you would like to read more about komrade George Jackson i encourage you to write to:

And request my In the Spirit of George Jackson zine or The Voice of the Lumpen zine that both Komrade Triumphant and i wrote. The New Afrikan POW journals are available as well. Lastly for prisoners here in NC that are serious about their political education, if you don’t already have a copy of Jalil Muntaqim’s We Are Our Own Liberators write to:

There are limited copies, so write to them immediately.

Again thank you all for yall’s support and it’s a must i thank komrades at MIM for publishing my call to action and providing us with a platform to express ourselves that enables us to organize a unified struggle.

Free The Land

MIM(Prisons) adds: The comrade mentions requiring another comrade to be present during the meeting with staff. This is a wise move to prevent rumors from being spread about what went down in said meeting, and the pigs being able to manipulate the narrative. The more witnesses the better.

Second, we agree with the hesitancy to write up a new policy. We see how the same struggle ended in California, though their agreement was made by lawyers in the midst of a lawsuit. The challenge is how to keep the struggle alive, for without struggle, you end up right where you started. A new policy signed off on by a lead organizer can easily pacify people. Until we recognize that this kind of repression will never end without liberation from imperialism, it will continue.

And as the lawsuit in North Carolina advances, we also must remember what it took in California. And after all that sacrifice, the settlement was still a compromise that did not end torture in California prisons, while expanding the list of Security Threat Groups in that state.

This gang validation repression is only expanding as we’ve seen the Trump regime apply it to those outside of prisons who are not involved in any illegal activities. So we should be thinking big picture. And we will continue to stand with and support the comrades in North Carolina coming together to fight arbitrary SRG repression. If comrades inside can send copies of grievances or other documents related to this campaign we will collect and forward them along.

Comrade Eseibio, revolutionary greetings, it is my pleasure to have the opportunity to conduct this interview facilitated by the comrades at MIM(Prisons). Let me jump right into these questions:

1. By listening to your work, one can clearly see you have a firm grasp of social development. Can you share how you initially were introduced to revolutionary theory and historical organizations and individuals who practiced a revolutionary line?

My uncle was a Black Panther Party member in the early days of the Party. So I been around it all my life. My first introduction was me as a teenager getting caught shoplifting and sent to juvenile hall, and my uncle came to get me out. That’s something the Panthers did, get young brothers out of jail and juvenile hall. I was too young to understand why he did it. Then when I got a little older I had another mentor named Melvin Dickson who was a Black Panther Party member. He took me under his wing and showed me and taught me everything about being a real revolutionary and pushing a hard revolutionary line.

2. In one of your songs Bust a Cap, you spit: “I’m a revolutionary Black Nationalist,” Is this still your political identification? Why or why not?

Yes. I’m a revolutionary, a Black Nationalist, but also much more than that. Something that the Panthers taught me is that there is no more nations. Just communities. We use the word intercomunualism. Because an attack against one is an attack against all.

3. What do you believe is the current state of the revolutionary Black nationalist movement? What can we do to improve?

I believe the current state of the movement is heading in the right direction. Because comrades are getting more politically educated and are beginning to have more real solidarity with each other. And that’s what will help us organize more effectively.

4. I’ve been told your new project is centered upon Mao’s Red Book. What led you to make that book the inspiration of your project?

Yes all of my album and lyrics reflect the red book. The Black Panthers sold red books at UC Berkley. That’s a book that I read so many times it’s a part of who I am and I don’t go a day with out reading it. The Panthers got a saying: “Malcolm X in my heart, red book in my pocket.”

5. What is your favorite chapter or quote from the Red Book or from Mao generally and why?

That’s easy. The very first quote in chapter one. Because it was written on Sept 15th, and that’s my birth day. It says the force leading the cause forward is the revolutionary party. And our thinking is Marxism-Leninism.

6. With the recent elections and the clear rightward shift among most sectors, What are your thoughts on the best ways to move forward and organize in this political and social climate?

My thoughts are to organize around providing for the children. That’s how the Panthers did it. They started with a stop sign at an elementary school and a free breakfast program that was for the children. By teaching the truth to the youth you’re educating the next generation of revolutionaries to continue the struggle. The elder party members taught me and now it’s my turn to pass on the known. Each one teach one.

7. What are your thoughts about the clear rightward shift of an increasing amount of New Afrikan/Black men? Does this affect our ability to reach the masses, if so how?

Yes it does because they got the money and owns all the radio and TV stations. If we want to reach the masses we gotta be more creative and out organize them and use technology to our advantage.

8. What musical accomplishment are you most proud of? What keeps you motivated?

I’m proud of all my work and my biggest accomplishment is my album that I have not recorded yet. Or even started. It’s and accomplishment for me to keep going and making good music. Just recently I was in a documentary movie called “Stop Selling Grandma’s House.”

9. What artists do you listen to yourself?

I listen to a lot of myself. One artist that I think is dope right now is Dave East. I make beats so I listen to a lot of old school. And I listen to tons of audio books. From people like Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, etc.

10. In your music you reference Political Prisoners often. Amerika, Inc. denies the existence of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War within its institutions. Trump calls the cats from the January 6 incident Political Prisoners. So, there is confusion for some on this issue. From your perspective who or what is a political Prisoner/Prisoner of War in the context of occupied Turtle Island?

Because of the politics of America We all are political prisoners and we just don’t know it. There’s only 2 Black Panther Party members in prison left. Mumia abu Jamal and H. Rap Brown [now Jamil al-Amin]. People have that term confused and think that if you throw a rock through a window and getting arrested makes them a political prisoner. But it’s much more than that.

11. Anybody on the inside you want to shout out?

Yes I want to shout out MIM(Prisons) and say “All power to the people!” to all the comrades behind the walls, and free my little cousin Quincy Lane locked up 20+ years in the California prison system. Free Mumia and H. Rap Brown. Let’s organize and watch crime drop and turn all the gang members back into revolutionaries. Listen to my new album “West Coast Revolutionaries.” Oh yea, can’t forget about all of the sisters in prison and all the babies born in jail. Recidivism is a serious thing. Let’s stay out of prison and get back out on the streets organizing our communities.

P.S. Thanks for your time, Comrade-Brotha Eseibio. The ’rades on the inside are bumping your music and we salute you for the content you pushing. Clenched Fist salute. - Triumphant, New Afrikan Political Prisoner

MIM(Prisons) responds: Thanks to Triumphant and Comrade Eseibio for this interview; there are a couple things we’d like to address. First, it is true that Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jamil Abdullah al-Amin are still in prison, however, as far as we know, Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore and Kamau Sadiki are still in prison as well, making at least four former Panthers who are currently incarcerated.

Secondly, we’d like to take this opportunity to discuss the concept of intercommunalism and what it means for our struggle. Huey P. Newton argued that by the 1970s the concept of nation had become obsolete due to the increasing globalization of the world under capitalism. Ey argued that the whole world has become tied together as a unified, economically interconnected system, the idea of any nation gaining independence has become outmoded, and the project of national liberation is not ultimately possible. Newton said we live in an interconnected world system called “intercommunalism,” but the kind of intercommunalism we live in today is reactionary, since it is still based on the overall dominance of the United $tates. Therefore, the project in front of us is to transform reactionary intercommunalism into revolutionary intercommunalism by reorganizing the social relations in society into socialist ones. Armed struggle and revolutionary nationalism were opposed by Newton as outmoded forms of struggle in the years following the peak of the Black Panther Party, after it had split with members who went on to organize Black Liberation Army cells separately. Newton’s faction advocated for building revolutionary intercommunalism community-by-community and building the world into a socialist one on the basis of the strong economic ties created by capitalism.

In practice, the theory of intercommunalism results in “micro-politics.” Instead of fighting for the large goal of national independence and self-determination, we should fight for small, community-level changes that will eventually build up into a global change. Second, intercommunalism prevents us from supporting struggles for national liberation abroad, even though Huey Newton still upheld this to an extent, supporting the Vietnamese struggle against the United $tates; but if we carry the theory to its logical conclusions we cannot come to the conclusion that national liberation is a practicable goal. It goes without saying that these views on what is to be done are in direct contrast to ours. We see our struggle as expressly for the national liberation of the oppressed nations of the whole world, and it is for that reason that we say that we are for the nationalism of the oppressed.

But let us touch on the theory of intercommunalism briefly. It is undoubtedly true that capitalism has a tendency towards the economic integration of all nations into a whole, in a word, towards globalization. However, Newton regards this process as already complete. But if this process is complete, where does the spontaneous tendency towards nationalism arise? The struggle in Palestine, for example, is a spontaneous reaction to national oppression. Why this national division if nations no longer exist? Instead of explaining why national liberation struggles continue, Newton regards them as mistakes. Newton, therefore, fails to explain the events of the world, and merely denounces them. It is evident to anyone who asks the question as to the origin of continuing national liberation struggles that we cannot merely write them off as being the product of people having a false understanding of the world: they are rather based in the real, material interests of the nations involved. To the supporters of the theory of intercommunalism, we ask for an explanation of why national wars continue to exist. In the absence of such an explanation, we regard intercommunalism as an exaggeration of capitalism’s inherent tendency towards globalization, an exaggeration which takes a mere tendency to be already complete.

In order to prescribe the Marxist ideology to our Maoist thought much needs to be understood. I believe there is a contradiction that exist that’s unspoken here: race. There seems to be a strong emphasis embraced on race as a “white” verses all other “non-white” races. The contradictions that exist here are that the “white” race is the only oppressor race. There is a huge historical analysis missing here if MIM(Prisons) is going to promote such race politics in what is fundamentally a human attribute that exists in all races of homo sapiens. To include such a factor in any discussion that involves a dialectical materialistic view of economy and government is destructive to the revolution.

The revolution is to promote equality. Ideally I believe to my understanding, an equality based on, “…each one according to their needs.” With that understanding my question becomes, what is the standard of equality on an international scale and how do we get there?

“Race” has nothing to do with our dialectical materialistic analysis because capitalism is based on only one color right now, green. The color of the Amerikan dollar which is the world’s reserve currency! So if MIM(Prisons) comrades are going to discuss economy, based on capitalism, socialism, and communism through Maoist thought then speak from the perspective of an economist. Or if it is government, then I guess the contradictions need to be explored to define the nation MIM(Prisons) looks to build because as a comrade I feel alienated based on “race.”

Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: You’ll be hard-pressed to find MIM(Prisons) talking about race, since, as this comrade points out, race is not real. The problem is, we talk about the New Afrikan nation, or the Chican@ nation, and our readers think we’re just using fancy words to talk about race.

Perhaps this is an example of us getting a bit ahead of the masses here leading to miscommunication. Another comrade recently submitted a long paper explaining what the New Afrikan nation was because they felt new readers of ULK were confused by it. It’s interesting, since we adopted the term New Afrikan from the prison movement. But goes to show how things have changed. We will be utilizing this feedback to consider how we can improve ULK. But New Afrika is already well-defined in our pamphlet Power to New Afrika, which our New York comrade above has read.

Another source of confusion is that the imperialists will always try to deny the nationality of the oppressed. It’d be hard to find someone who doesn’t recognize Haiti as a nation, because they fought and won their liberation in 1804. Like New Afrika, they are a nation of people from all over the African continent, with a sprinkling of Europeans, that were merged by force to form a new nation. New Afrika has not yet won it’s liberation, so it gets less recognition than Haiti does.

We agree with our comrade above that capitalism is motivated by profits. Racism, and the idea of race itself, arose with the system of capitalism. Though there were certainly other systems of caste and class before. The United $tates of Amerika project was central to the development of race theory. In fact, the internal semi-colony of New Afrika would not exist without racial ideology that separated the first slaves based on what continent they came from. So we may be one of the last places to rid ourselves of this backwards way of thinking, it was so important to what this project is about.

The comrade also asks about our vision for the future. Well we’d suggest reading Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and other works by V.I. Lenin on the national question for background. Because imperialism is a system of oppression/exploitation of most nations by a few, we see the most important source of change, towards a world of equality, to be found in national liberation struggles that challenge that system; from Palestine to Aztlán. Decades ago MIM put forth the theory of the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations (JDPON) as a vision for how socialism can be imposed on Amerika itself. This is because we don’t believe a majority of Amerikans will support socialism at this stage. This idea is also found in Lenin and in Chinese Maoist thought. At the time MIM was discussing the carving up of what is now the United $tates territory into a New Afrikan Black Belt, Aztlán for the Chican@ nation, various First Nation territories. MIM also suggested that Amerika and Kanada were one oppressor nation. Some of these ideas seem much closer to reality today with Amerikan imperialism looking to incorporate Canada, and California looking for separate trade deals with China with popular support.

We have readers who say we’re anti-Black for citing Marx, and readers who say we’re anti-white for applying the ideas of Lenin. The reality is, all of these critics are too brainwashed by the “white man” to see things beyond this racial lens. Yes, the New York prisoner above we’re talking to you as well, you are the one too stuck thinking in racial ideas, not us.

Now to be fair, this is the dominant thinking of our society. So we must learn to speak Marxist truths that people stuck in imperialist, racist thinking will understand. We also recognize that the oppressed nations are more likely to be led to the truth. So we cannot avoid alienating people who identify as “white” and generally should not try to. These forces are either enemies of the revolution, enemies of equality, enemies of communism, or will have to be won over in a later stage of struggle. This is true because of their racial identities, which are the subjective reflections of their material reality as exploiters. Race is divisive – that’s why the imperialists have used it for hundreds of years.

As many of our readers know, one of the primary obstacles MIM(Prisons) and AIPS face in our work is the censorship of our mail by prison administrators. In ULK 86, we published a censorship report detailing some of the brazen lies these administrators use to justify withholding mail from their rightful recipients. Not much has changed on this front, but that’s to be expected. After all, did we really expect the pigs to stop their oinking?

At the same time, our efforts to combat this censorship have not wavered. We have continued to respond to every instance of censorship we receive notice about, whether that notice be from the prison itself or from a comrade on the inside. Since our last report, we have issued over 20 appeals to censorship cases which have included more than 50 letters being sent to prisoners, wardens, and various government institutions. Unfortunately, most of the appeals we send out do not result in successes where our mailed materials get to their intended recipients. The most frequent conclusion of our appeals is that the prison simply stops responding to our communications. Even when we play by their rules, the oppressors still can decide, at any point, to do whatever it is they want. This is exemplified by the following case of censorship in Georgia.

Georgia and CoreCivic

Back in October 2024, we received several letters we sent to prisoners at Coffee Correctional Facility in Nicholls, Georgia marked “Return to Sender” and “Unauthorized Materials”. The materials we sent them were, ironically enough, our guide to fighting censorship as well as our unconfirmed mail form simply asking whether they received the materials we had previously sent. When we tried to file an appeal for this censorship and to follow up with the prisoners at this facility over the proceeding months, all of our attempts were returned with the word “BANNED” handwritten on the envelopes. It is worth noting that Coffee CF is ran by the company CoreCivic and that we have had similar issues with getting mail to prisoners located at other CoreCivic-ran facilities.

The U.$. courts have ruled that prisons are not allowed to institute blanket bans on materials sent from a publisher, yet this is exactly what has happened to us at Coffee CF. Despite the fact that the materials contained nothing that could be construed as a “security threat” (a favorite of the pigs that work in the mail room), the prison administration has refused to address anything we sent them. The lesson here is the same as outlined above: the government and prisons make up endless rules, protocols, and policies while selectively choosing, on any given day, which to follow and which to discard. The natural question, then, is, why do we commit to fighting censorship when our efforts can be nullified by any random C.O. working in the mail room?

Censorship as a Site of Struggle

It is common in political spaces for people to talk about “human rights”. Endless debate is had over defining what exactly a “human right” is and when it is okay to violate said rights (which is typically just a post-hoc justification of the abuse and murder of the oppressed). We here at MIM(Prisons) and AIPS, however, disdain the very category of “human rights” itself. We say that there are no rights, there are only power struggles.

Thus, when we discuss a subject such as censorship in prisons, there are two ways to view it. From one perspective, the prisons are infringing on the rights of prisoners as established by government institutions and this is morally incorrect because violating someone’s rights is intrinsically wrong. An alternative perspective, and the one we in MIM(Prisons) and AIPS advocate for, is that prisoners receiving mail and prison administrators deciding what mail to censor are two competing forces who are engaged in a struggle for political power. When you view the world through this lens, it becomes clear that discussions over “human rights” are nothing more than a way to obfuscate the underlying struggles taking place. The state says you have the “right” to send and receive mail while in prison, but provides endless stipulations on this “right”: you can’t send too many pages, your mail has to be formatted in this way, you can’t have this type of image, you can’t say these certain combinations of words, and you certainly can’t suggest any unorthodox political ideas.

Our fight against censorship, then, should not be misconstrued as us capitulating to the logic of the Amerikan state which claims to uphold the “rights” of all. We see reality for what it is. When we push back against prison censorship, we are standing on the side of prisoners in their struggle for power against the oppressors of the U.$. state. We stand for the oppressed. We stand for you. Won’t you stand with us in this struggle for power?

The Barnes Review published, in their October 1996 edition, a criticism of Marx and Engels as “anti-black racists.” What followed were a series of quotations which prove this point beyond much doubt. Not only did Marx and Engels believe that Black people were inferior to whites, they upheld slavery as progressive at certain points in history, even in North America. We will not and do not contest the author on these unassailable points; we merely seek to show the deeper relations embedded within this “statement of facts.”

Modern society is built upon social relations which are wholly at odds with its technological capacity. This basic fact results in the myriad social problems we encounter in every facet of society. Our task is therefore, first, to understand these social relations, and second, to grasp the manner in which they may be transformed. This is the world-historical gift which Marx gave to the world: a guide to action. This is the essence of Marxism as a revolutionary doctrine. With this perspective on the world, who could think to waste the precious time they have on discussions of personalities? How dedicated someone is to “the cause,” how far someone was able to purge their thinking of bourgeois ideology, whether someone is patriarchal or racially prejudiced in their thoughts and actions – these are topics of gossip, and as such are not questions worthy of discussion in the tasks of a revolutionary organization. What will we focus on: the method of transforming reality in the interests of anti-imperialism, or the racial prejudices of individuals? Discussions of Marx which rise above useless biographical gossip have long become a literary rarity.

Marx and Engels upheld the racial inferiority of certain races. That is a demonstrable fact. What of it? On this our authors tell us nothing. We would like to inform the authors of this reputable and eminently revolutionary newspaper, to return the favor, that the Volga flows into the Caspian, and that horses eat oats. What wondrous facts!

There is one attempt at a discussion of a meaningful topic, however:

“Virtually every serious study concerned with the economics of employing black slaves in the American South shows, with little room for contradiction, that the importation of free white workers from Europe (skilled and semi-skilled) would have proven far more profitable economically.”

This is all we are told as a refutation of Marx’s view that slavery was an integral component in the development of the United States’ economy. It is clear to all that this is merely a platitude, a hint at a position, in order to give some measure of legitimacy to the real object of this article: to imply that Marx’s theories are merely a set of subjective views which may be regarded as reactionary and therefore worthy of being simply set aside. The reactionary nature of a theory, however, is no argument against it, however much it may seem to us that this is the case. Every proposition must be regarded objectively, concretely, and scientifically. Any deviation from this, such as the deviation exemplified by The Barnes Review, is a deviation towards post-modern thought. The question then passes to the clash between Marxism as a modernism with the movement which succeeded it, an important question, but one exceeding the bounds of this reply.

It is worth noting that white nationalist magazines coming out of Washington DC like The Barnes Review and The National Interest spend time “exposing” Marx like this. The latter is the home of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, that saw U.$. imperialism’s global hegemony after the collapse of the Soviet Union as the pinnacle of humyn society, proving the alternatives unworkable. Today the imperialists clearly disagree, as they work to upend the status quo of the United $tates dating back to Fukuyama’s 1989 work. And communists have always disagreed, pointing to the continued heightening of the contradictions within capitalism that Marx elucidated, and the bourgeoisie largely ignores. The early attempts at socialism in the USSR and China were massively successful for decades, with China building on the lessons learned in the USSR. While these early attempts were ultimately overthrown, the proletariat does not give up so quickly.

As for The Barnes Review, their latest issue condemns funding to I$rael and exposes the propaganda around Hamas. So far so good. Then it links all of this to “international Jewry.” While many fascists today support the fascist project of I$rael, The Barnes Review keeps it old school by exposing Marx and the Jews as the source of evil. Here we see how a publication can mix correct conclusions with metaphysical methods of understanding the world. In contrast Marx and Engels, despite having some incorrect conclusions around race, had (and developed) a scientific method of understanding the world that is dialectical materialism, which continues to be a tool for understanding and transforming our world.

Readers of ULK will read many other, less mainstream, publications in their search for answers, for the source of the evil they see in the world. While the I$rael lobby is certainly the enemy of the people, and generally speaking, so is “the white man,” it is the system of imperialism that we must focus our ire at. There is no metaphysical, absolute source of evil; oppression is the product of economic forces that Marx did so much to expose for us. And it is in the resolution of the contradictions of the imperialist system (the contradiction between exploiter and exploited nations, the contradiction between the means of production and the relations of production, etc) that we can build a society without so much unnecessary humyn suffering as ours.

Back in September, as part of Prison Banned Books Week, MIM(Prisons) had pledged to send out more free literature (not counting our newsletter) this winter than any other winter since 2020. Prior to 2020 our organization was bigger both inside and outside, and as a result our Serve the People Free Political Books to Prisoners Program was also larger.

Despite our efforts, we failed pretty hard at meeting this modest goal. It was not for lack of books, nor was it for lack of funding, though we could use help there. It was for lack of participants in the program. Part of this, again, is due to our limited reach with a lower number of subscribers. But even if we normalize for number of subscribers we mailed out more lit last winter than this one.

Therefore it seems it is our inability to recruit people into the program that is our main limiting factor. We attempted to boost the program in 2 main ways. First we printed a large ad in the center spread of ULK advertising some popular books we offer, with an explanation of how to get said books in large font. We know people saw the ad because many wrote in asking for the books in it. But almost no one actually followed the instructions for how to join the program.

The second way we attempted to promote the free books program was through persynal correspondence. We fairly aggressively wrote to people asking for books explaining how the program works.

One possible explanation for this failure is that people in prison just want free books, but aren’t actually interested in anti-imperialist organizing. It has always been the case that the vast majority of our subscribers are not actively involved in the work we do. There are also a myriad of subjective explanations for why people don’t get involved despite having interest. Promoting a Revolutionary 12 Step Program is an attempt to address one of the possible limitations.

Yet, objectively, the number of people in U.$. prisons and the oppression they are facing has not changed significantly. Some prison systems, like in California, have seen significant structural changes in the last ten years. K2 and tablets have been the biggest change countrywide.

Despite the challenges it is up to us to find ways to reach the oppressed masses and serve them in a way that is engaging to them. Us means MIM(Prisons), AIPS, and especially USW comrades who are working on the ground amongst the prisoner population. Our failure to expand the book program this winter is another data point, along with our declining subscribership over many years, to measure our work.

I just received and read my first issue of Under Lock & Key. Thank you and your contributors for putting out such a thought provoking publication! I especially appreciated the reporting on Palestine and Syria.

…Would it be out of line for me to offer a criticism? In the graphic of Hitler and Netanyahu – a legitimate comparison! Netanyahu is portrayed with a yarmulke, which he seldom wears, and side-locks, which he has never(?) worn, thus emphasizing his Jewishness, when the real problem is his Zionism. I happen to believe that all of us have a degree of anti-semitism (and anti-blackness, misogyny, etc.) instilled in us by growing up in this society and it’s important to keep centering love and solidarity toward our Jewish anti-Zionist brothers and sisters.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Yes, we always welcome criticism, especially from our fans and comrades. And we completely agree that Zionism is the enemy, as an extension of imperialism, and not Jews or even Judaism. Jewish people in this country have been represented disproportionately at the front lines of opposing the genocide in Gaza in recent months.