Under Lock & Key

In the early hours of Wednesday, December 4th, a masked gunman shot the CEO of United $tates insurance company UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, to death in the bustling streets of New York City. By midday, CCTV footage of the act had gone viral across the internet and traditional news media, spawning endless narratives and theories. Simultaneously, the high-profile nature of the shooting prompted a national manhunt to search for the suspect. The shooter evaded capture for five days, but ey was eventually arrested after a tip was called in by a McDonald’s employee in rural Pennsylvania.

As communists operating in the United $tates, how are we to understand this event? What does the event itself and its resulting fallout tell us about the political landscape we work within? If we wish to live up to the title of being Marxists, the only answer to these questions is that we must conduct a, as Lenin put it, “concrete analysis of concrete conditions.” Let us begin with the facts of the case.

The Facts

The name of the alleged shooter is Luigi Mangione. As laid out in eir so-called ‘manifesto’, Luigi’s motivation for the shooting is a disdain for U.$. healthcare insurance companies in general and UnitedHealthcare in particular. The origin of this disdain likely lies in a combination of Luigi’s persynal interactions with health insurance companies through eir struggles with back pain as well as the more widespread antagonism between the U.$. population and health insurance companies.

Luigi comes from a well-connected family which has its roots in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. Eir grandfather ran several successful business ventures which guaranteed employment and prosperity for the next generations of the Mangione family as they have now taken the reins on the family businesses. Luigi emself attended a private high school before attending the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania where ey got eir degree in computer science in 2020. According to Luigi’s family and friends, ey ceased all communication with them in July 2024. Presumably, Luigi spent the time between then and December planning the shooting, which we will now focus on.

As mentioned, the shooting itself took place on the morning of 4 December 2024. Interestingly, Luigi employed a 3D-printed firearm to commit the shooting, which marks the first time such a weapon has been used in such a high-profile case. Immediately after, Luigi evaded the swarms of police by traveling via foot, cab, and e-bike before boarding a train towards Philadelphia. Not much else is known about Luigi’s whereabouts and travels during the 5 days between the shooting and eir arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

The biggest takeaway here is how easily Luigi evaded both the NYPD and the FBI for an extended period of time. If Luigi had continued traveling, discarded the evidence ey carried on em, or put any effort into changing eir appearance, it’s likely that ey would have never been caught. But this is simply speculation on our parts. Let us now turn from the objective facts of the case to the realm of ideology.

Luigi’s Ideology

To understand why Luigi Mangione shot Brian Thompson, we must first understand eir ideology. The only clues we have towards this understanding are scattered social media posts as well as the aforementioned “manifesto” Luigi had on em when ey was arrested. While we’ll primarily focus on the “manifesto”, we will first highlight one of Luigi’s social media posts where ey reviews the writings of Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. In this review, Luigi highlights how Kaczynski was “rightfully imprisoned” because ey “maimed innocent people” but that these were the actions of an “extreme political revolutionary.” Luigi’s review finishes by quoting multiple paragraphs from a Reddit comment expounding how violence is the only method we have at our disposal to fight back against “our overlords.”

Now, turning to the “manifesto”, we wish to give our readers the fullest picture possible, so we have included below a full copy of the writing that was recovered when Luigi was arrested:

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as [sic] our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”(1)

Let us take a closer look at this writing. Luigi begins with saying:

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country.”

To those who proclaim Luigi is spreading “class consciousness” or that ey is a revolutionary, this single sentence should shatter all illusions. If an ally of yours said ey respects federal agents (of the FBI, CIA, etc.) for what they “do for our country,” would you be on eir side? Our answer to this question is a resounding Fuck No.

What else does Luigi write about? Ey brings up some rudimentary statistics about life expectancy in the U.$. and market capitalization before asserting that U.$. corporations have “gotten too powerful” and “they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away with it.” This strikes us as similar to the proposition that the Amerikkkan public is “brainwashed” (how? by whom? why?) into merely passively accepting the capitalist-imperialist world-system. This stands in opposition to our political line which is that Euro-Amerikans actively embrace imperialism (consciously or not) as the primary source of their wealth via super-profits extracted from the Third World proletariat.

Luigi ends eir writing by admitting that ey is not “the most qualified person to lay out the full argument” for the issues of U.$. health insurance system but assures us that ey is, “evidently […] the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

How high and mighty! Luigi is “evidently” the first to break through the veil of ignorance which plagues the rest of us. Though we would contend that there are perhaps a few people who have come before Mr. Mangione who have faced the “corruption and greed” of the healthcare industry (which is only a particular form of capitalist industry in general) with “such brutal honesty.” Off the top of our heads, we can think of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, or Huey Newton, just to name a few. These are of course only the most popular figureheads of past communist movements. In reality, there are millions who have stood their ground against the imperialist-bourgeoisie and lost their lives for it. But no matter their sacrifice, for we have been blessed with the gift of the wealthy Euro-Amerikan from Maryland showing us the path forward!

So where does all this leave us? Is Luigi really a Marxist revolutionary who has been sent down from the Heavens to end the oppression of the masses? Of course not. Luigi’s writings and musings are nothing more than regurgitations of the same social fascist populism that is reminiscent of the messaging around Bernie Sander’s presidential campaigns combined with an impetus towards political violence. Discontent with the healthcare insurance industry is normal everyday politics for people living in the United $tates. All Luigi did was elevate this discontent from the level of complaining on the internet or attending protests to killing a CEO. An escalation of force, to be sure, but not one that is qualitatively different in its nature.

The Public’s Reaction

However critical we may be of Luigi Mangione, ey is only an individual. It would be an error to narrowly focus on the individual agents of hystory rather than the political trends and their material causes which compel individuals to act the way they do. So what trend underlies the actions of Luigi? And how has this been reflected in the public’s reaction to the killing?

Broadly, reactions to the shooting can be grouped into one of two camps: condemnations of Luigi’s actions or celebrations of them.

Those who condemn Luigi tend to do so from a position of superficial pacifism wherein you must be totally against violence in all situations – unless it benefits yourself or your nation. A vast majority of U.$. politicians fall into this group as well as a sizable portion of the U.$. citizenry. Typically hailing from the upper strata of U.$. society, these individuals are largely hypocritical and uninteresting for our purposes here. After all, even a child can identify the contradiction that’s present when one mourns the death of a single CEO while simultaneously advocating for imperialist armies to indiscriminately murder the oppressed.

On the other side, there are large swaths of people who view Luigi as a “folk hero” or a “savior” and exist somewhere on the spectrum between sympathizing with or admiring Luigi. Typically viewed as part of the Amerikan “left” (though we have observed both Democrats and Republicans expressing these views), this group wishes for healthcare reform in order to ease up on the contradictions intrinsic to the capitalist system. More specifically, these individuals fall into the same category of social fascist labor aristocrats as Luigi. Their class status as labor aristocrats is being threatened by the “greedy” capitalists of the health insurance corporations who want to take away their hard-earned wealth (i.e. superprofits from the Third World) and Luigi’s actions are simply one response to this threat. So long as their aim is narrowly limited on what can be done to improve the lives of Amerikans rather than taking a revolutionary approach to understand what can be done to improve the lives of all humyns, they remain enemies of the international proletariat.

This graph helps illustrate the demographics of either group as well as the proportions of the U.$. population that fall into either side. We also must wonder if the 20% support for Luigi Mangione among Amerikans would translate to support for retribution for the killing of Robert Brooks by New York prison guards and the slow genocide of New Afrikan men in U.$. prisons? We probably all know the answer to this question.

Though there is a real ideological divide between the two aforementioned groups, it would be wrong to overstate the width of this divide. Both groups are merely two factions of the white supremacist Amerikkkan establishment which exploits the Third World in order to secure their own prosperity.

Our Thoughts

Where do we lie in this divide? You certainly won’t find us shedding tears over a dead CEO, disavowing violence, or proclaiming pacifism, but you also will not see us celebrating Luigi Mangione as some sort of hero of the oppressed. Instead, we view Luigi as merely the latest manifestation of labor aristocracy angst towards the imperialist leaders of the United $tates. If either of Luigi’s actions or political line were rooted in revolutionary politics, we’d be a bit more sympathetic to em. But as it stands, Luigi’s lone wolf killing is both tactically inept and ideologically confused.

More broadly, we understand the struggle of people in the United $tates for more comprehensive healthcare. But rather than trying to secure healthcare for Amerikans only, why don’t we set our sights on securing healthcare for all people? Why should we advocate for petty reforms like getting earlier colonoscopies for middle-aged Amerikans when millions die each year in the Third World from easily-preventable diseases because of imperialist wealth extraction? or when U.$. weapons are used to murder doctors and bomb hospitals in Gaza? This is a topic comrades have written on before in relation to the Affordable Care Act(3), and it clearly remains relevant today. Even if we limit our scope to be within U.$. borders, the lack of healthcare that’s available for prisoners is a much more pressing issue than the reforms which the social fascists are seeking. For prison bureaucrats, it’s well documented how healthcare, and lack thereof, is used as a tool to punish and torture prisoners(4) rather than recognizing it as a constitutional right.

Circling back to the central topic of this article, the question still stands: will this shooting actually change anything about the healthcare industry? Almost certainly not. But it has provided an opportunity for the fascism of the labor aristocracy to rear its head in a particularly brazen fashion through the actions of Luigi Mangione. As the U.$. labor aristocracy is faced with political chaos both at-home and abroad, they will resist the ever-looming threat of proletarianization. Will they recover and maintain their position in the imperialist world system? Will the U.$. population come face-to-face with proletarianization as global inter-imperialist conflicts intensify? We cannot say which is the case. The only thing we are sure of is that the actions of Luigi Mangione have provided a unique insight into the political terrain we operate in within U.$. borders. As communists, we must harness this insight and use it to guide our political action so that we may empower the international proletariat in their struggle against capitalist-imperialism. The only path forward is revolution.

^{(1) Ken Klippenstein, 10 December 2024, Exclusive: Luigi’s Manifesto}

^{(2)YouGov Poll, December 2024}

^{(3)ULK 38, April 2014, Affordable Care Act Underscores Need for Global Health Coverage}

^{(4)ULK 12, September 2009, Basic Healthcare Threat to Security}

Just a few months ago we reported on the ongoing illegal funding of I$rael by the United $tates, with a recently announced $8.7 billion funding package. As Biden prepares to leave office later this month, it has been reported that another $8 billion is being sent to fund the imperialist outpost in the Middle East. Axios reports:

“The State Department has notified Congress ‘informally’ of an $8 billion proposed arms deal with Israel that will include munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) responded in part:

“Only racists who do not view people of color as equally human, and sociopaths who delight in funding mass slaughter, could send Netanyahu even more bombs while his government openly kidnaps doctors, destroys hospitals, and exterminates the last survivors in northern Gaza.”(1)

The Palestinian resistance has drawn the line in the sand, and are continuing to expose the racism of Amerikans and others in the imperialist countries who support this ongoing genocide. But it is especially the people in the United $tates who benefit from the funds feeding the military industrial complex, as most aid to I$rael is spent here.

In further support of militarism on his way out of office, Biden has once again begun direct bombing of Yemen by U.$. war ships despite a pledge to end the war on Yemen when campaigning for the presidency. As part of Operation Prosperity Guardian U.$. aircraft carriers have been in the Red Sea for over a year to safeguard international trade in general, and shipments to I$rael in particular. Recently, the Amerikans bombed the only airport in Yemen, killing 6 and injurying 40, as well as the main port that is the lifeline for supplies to Yemen. This port was already largely damaged in the ongoing war with the U.$.-backed Saudi regime. The airport attack was timed by I$rael to happen while the World Health Organization General Secretary was there, though ey was not injured.(2)

Despite over 22 years of continuous U.$.-sponsored attacks, the people of Yemen stand strong, and Ansar Allah are clear they will not stop rerouting ships in the Red Sea and attacking I$rael until genocide in Gaza stops.

There is no hope of the U.$. imperialists cutting off I$rael on their own volition, and everything in our power must be done here in the heart of empire to stop the funding of genocide and the expansionist settler colonialism spreading across the region. Palestine, Yemen and others in the region are at the front lines fighting imperialism and oppression.

<sup>Note:1. CAIR, 4 January 2025, CAIR Calls Biden Admin’s New $8 Billion Arms Sale for Israeli Genocide ‘Racist, Sociopathic’.
2. Democracy Now! 3 January 2025.</sup>

A group called Americans For Tax Fairness posted an announcement online that:

“The wealth of the four richest Americans hit $1 TRILLION yesterday.

“It’s the first time in history the net worth of just four men – Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg – has hit the trillions.

“These four men were worth $74 billion twelve short years ago.

“Tax billionaires.”

A startling increase in wealth for sure. And who could possibly use so much wealth? Have their lives even changed with this increase of wealth of two orders of magnitude? Did they even notice? In related news people are up in arms about one of the 4, Jeff Bezos, putting on a $600 million wedding.

It is true that any of these individuals could take a chunk of that wealth and ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. But like any one of us, we can only operate within the laws of the world we were born into. And the laws of capitalism would just fill that slot with another individual.

We’ll let Engels explain this in more depth:

“The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that”vicious circle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin. But the perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead-weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital.” - Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring

For those four people to keep increasing their wealth, is to fulfill their destiny in the system of capitalism. It is not a question of persynal greed, nor of humyn nature, rather it is the natural law of the current economic structure.

The call to tax billionaires is ultimately a futile act in opposition to the laws of the capitalist machine. It is possible to do, and could change the balance of wealth among those living in the most wealthy country in the world. But the tendency of the laws of capitalism is to go back to this point, and surpass it, in terms of the concentration of wealth. This tendency to concentrate wealth, to maintain profitability by out-competing others, is one of the inherent contradictions in the capitalist system that require its end.

To live in such a time is exciting. The opportunities increase as capitalism becomes top-heavy and crisis looms. It’s terrible, but it’s fine.

Engels also talks about how the inherent contradictions of capitalism build a “reserve army” of labor, excluding more and more from participating in the wage system. Even in the richest country of the world, where there is virtually no proletariat like that described by Engels above, these laws of capitalism apply and we have a class we call the First World lumpen. A class that is excluded by capitalism – the only economic system that has ever had a thing called “unemployment.” The idea that there is no work for some people to do is unheard of in most of humyn history, as well as in socialist countries of the past like the USSR and China.

In 2024, homelessness increased 18%, following a 12% increase in 2023. The official count is over 770,000 people, meaning real numbers are approaching a million.(1) That is still less than half the people we have locked in prisons and jails in this country. And both numbers may continue to surge with proposed plans under the second Trump regime. However, mass deportations could also contribute to a decline in homelessness, as migrant raza make up a significant portion of those without houses.(2)

Most of the people in the United $tates raise their pitchforks at these billionaires in hopes of raising their taxes to maintain the standard of living here. These people believe in the system, just think it needs to change a bit. The First World lumpen are at least torn, in that they benefit from operating against the rules of the system, while also receiving some benefits from it. As contradictions spiral up, as Engels describes, the lumpen will be some of the first to see opportunity in the destruction of the old and the creation of something new, in particular the oppressed nation lumpen, who we identify in our analysis, “Who is Lumpen in the United $tates?”

<sup>1. Michael Casey, 27 December 2024, US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people, Associated Press.
2. Communist Party of Aztlán, November 2024, On Homelessness: A Growing Site of Lumpen Organizing, Under Lock & Key 87.</sup>

Robert Brooks, a 43 year old New Afrikan man, was beaten to death by Correctional Officers (C.O.s) in Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York on 9 December 2024, dying in the hospital the next day. On 27 December the New York Attorney General’s office released body camera footage from 6 C.O.s and 2 Sergeants involved in the beating. They show Brooks being pinned to a gurney, while handcuffed, and beaten on-and-off for many minutes by the pigs.(1) Thirteen staff members of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) are being investigated in the beating.(2)

Marcy C.F. is in an area of upstate New York known for its racist rednecks, a very white area abutting the Oneida Nation Reservation. Just down the road is the infamous Clinton Correctional Facility as well as the Mohawk Correctional Facility offensively named after the neighboring Mohawk nation of the Iroquois confederacy. A comrade struggling with addiction was moved from Mohawk last year to a Secure Housing Facility where ey reports:

“I still am recovering from the brutal assault, battery, torture and sexual assault by the gang of pigz here at Upstate C.F. I am physically healing slowly and taking some drug to help with the brain damage I suffered from all the fractures in my face and forehead. I’m doing physical therapy for my arm. My studies with you all have given me the focus and strength to recover. I am no longer on the Suboxone program, smoking cigarettes, marijuana or PCP. I still struggle with K2, but the more time I spend grounded in studies, writing and reading with you all, the less time I have to think about wanting to get high. I thank you all and hope my struggle is an example to those whoa re sick themselves and struggling.”

Brooks had recently been transferred from Mohawk as well, and sent to Marcy this month.(2) The state investigation indicates that Brooks did not attack the officers or do anything to warrant the use of force, which the videos show as well.(1,2) Brooks’s death is suspected to be a result of “asphyxia due to compression of the neck.” New York State Correctional Officers are required to wear body cameras and have them running whenever encountering a prisoner. While many involved covered their cameras, the beating continued despite the presence of the body cameras in the room. The Times Union reports that the C.O.s seemed to be unaware that their body cameras could be passively recording the incident.(2)

People posted pictures of Mario and Luigi cartoon characters online in response to pictures and videos of the beating posted online. The outrage at this state-sponsored lynching is somewhat encouraging, but posting images online obviously won’t solve the brutality waged against oppressed nations, and against prisoners in general, in this country. Organization is needed. Only together can we protect ourselves.

<sup>Notes:
1. https://ag.ny.gov/osi/footage/robert-brooks
2. Brendan J. Lyons, 27 December 2024, Court records confirm inmate was beaten while handcuffed, The Times Union.</sup>

I recently read a writing titled: “Law, Prison and Double-Double Consciousness: A Phenomenological View of the Black-Prisoner’s Experience” by James Davis III. This led me to write the following:

“What I pondered was my own double-double consciousness! The development of the”New Afrikan” within the greater black populace of captives. From the taking of the Afrikan attribute(s)’s learning of Ki-Swahili, the mandated study of all things dealing with black culture, history and struggle, to the daily remaking of one’s world view through study and application…the identity of “New Afrikan” implores one to rise above the lowly station of inmate, of n-word.”

In reading this piece by Mr. Davis, I was reminded of the innate power of a man. The power to literally reinvent oneself within an environment designed to annihilate the soul of a man. Prison(s) are created with a purpose to force a human to willingly acquiesce to half-man existence.

To develop a double-double consciousness is to resist such inferior station(s), to be a man! One who stands on principle(s), personified purpose, and willingly accepts his responsibilities to both uplift and reeducate the masses, which is a revolutionary ideal!

To embrace a revolutionary ideological precept is to strive even harder at evolving this “double-double consciousness”. Aside from the aforementioned character improvement(s), the revolutionary-minded man immerses himself in all things dealing with progressive politics and the science of struggle.

As his prison cohorts grow comfortable living captive man half-lives (i.e. embracing typical prison activities: gambling, drug usage, etc.) the revolutionary-minded captive creates a compass of consciousness which guides him daily. He spends his time always pushing himself to excel, regardless of tasks or conditions.

This is the cat who aligns with other men who reject the half-lives and/or inferior designations expected of the captive class. Whenever he/they are seen, they’re reading something, writing something, attending college, engaging in some form of constructive dialogue, or physically training their bodies. Forging his new self: the unbroken, unbowed man that’s living and potentially dying, upon revolutionary standards and practices.

The identification of oneself as a militant, as a revolutionary theorist, anchors oneself. As those around him list to-and-fro, uncertain of their next move(s), the innate belief within the mind of the man moving by a revolutionary compass is that he represents something greater than himself. That he is a soldier that happens to be behind enemy lines if you will: captured! It is through this perception, that he re-imagines his reality, and in turn finds purpose in his every action. He discovers the reservoir of resistance within which moves him to set his personal bar of daily exemplary conduct higher than those around him. Understanding his calling, devoting himself to the people. To meeting their needs.

I find all of the above to be quite close to describing myself. Though admittedly, I fall short of the mark most days. Being human, with all of the subjectivisms that accompany it, at times, my objective conditions threaten to overwhelm me. Yet it is the will to win, to resist the “colonial mentality” which has historically impacted my ilk, propels me to stand firm. Existing within a perpetual mode of resistance!

In looking back, I can really see that I’ve been in a state of rebellion my entire life! That I have never been one of those “go along to get along” type of brothas. Unfortunately, this ingrained sense of recalcitrance has led to many years of imprisonment and designations by those of the oppressor class, as being anti social and/or suffering some mystery “personality disorder”. To not be a shoe shine boy, a buck dancing coon, a tom! The conventional roles assigned to the U.$. man/woman of color! Is to be castigated by those in power, and/or positions of authority.

I now fully comprehend this whole “double-double consciousness” as it pertains to myself individually and my New Afrikan/black kinfolk! Collectively! All colored folk whom live in capitalist society, which is governed by those who use race and class as measurements of worth! Not only adjust to the double consciousness of faux citizenry…they also develop their own “double-double consciousness” to cope!

However, the one brutal fact which distinguishes the U.$. Black man/woman from any other ethnic groups is the historical miscarriage of chattel slavery! Our socio-cultural creation of a double-double consciousness is our collective survival mechanism if you will. A way to figuratively stay rooted in our Afrikan beginnings! Whilst literally standing on the shoulders of the many, many activists, struggle-ists, revolutionaries, and average citizens whom were wounded, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered! For daring to dream of having freedom, justice and equality! We repay the debt to our martyrs by clinging fiercely to their memories, living within our “cocoon’s” of double-double consciousness! Forging bonds with other forward thinking folk of Afrikan ancestry. And then, united in purpose, teach others how to “escape” our half life existences! Moving towards a revolutionary ideology and corresponding actions as the conditions reveal the time to manifest them! I stand firm within the confines of a satanic creation! Striving to be the catalyst for progress and change. As I survive, only through my own “double-double consciousness” cocoon.

MIM(Prisons) adds: Davis’s double-double consciousness is a product of alienation through oppressive structures. These oppressive structures isolate people from “the world”, putting them in a new reality, with new rules and norms, that are generally worse than “the world” they know in every way. This is in contrast to prisons in socialist China – where people were encouraged (you might say coerced) to study the outside world, to better understand their own actions and find a new way to be in that world that is in line with the interests of the people. In a socialist prison, criminals can focus on struggling with themselves because they aren’t forced to struggle against the oppression of the prison environment first.

We offer comrades support in developing the consciousness that is in rebellion against the oppressive system. We offer Under Lock & Key as a forum to connect with and share ideas with other like-minded individuals. We have our Revolutionary 12 Steps that is one tool for those trying to transform themselves into new people. And we have books on revolutionary societies like China, and their prison system, and how they were able to radically transform a whole society. So if this comrade’s essay resonates with you, get involved and get plugged in with these resources today!

Spoilers

A Thousand and One is a drama film set during the years of 1994-2005 in New York City. The movie follows a hairdresser and recently released prisoner Inez de la Paz (played by New Afrikan rapper/actress Teyana Taylor) who has spent the past years imprisoned in Rikers Island. A persyn who has been part of the foster home system growing up, Inez returns to her former care in Brooklyn where she sees her son, Terry (who is also in a home), out on the streets. Trying to escape from the home, Terry is hospitalized and Inez secretly visits him and takes Terry to illegally raise him as her child under a false birth certificate/social security card in Harlem.

Inez reunites with her former romantic partner/lumpen associate during her times as a petty thief named Lucky. At first, Lucky is hesitant to join in on this plan to build a new family with his former street partner, but eventually marries Inez and promises to take care of Terry. At the time, Pig Rudy Giuliani has begun his campaigns to start an improved New York City which they place much hopes for as life-long residents of NYC.

By 2001, Pig Giuliani’s attacks on the New Afrikan masses of NYC through the stop-and-frisk policies are coming down hard and we see Terry, now a teenager, being affected by this. Despite being a soft-spoken kid excelling at school, the street pigs frisk him and his friend with no other reason than being New Afrikan. Alongside Terry’s entrance into young adulthood, Inez’s marriage begins to meet difficulties as Lucky has become involved in affairs with other wimmin.

By 2005, Lucky succumbs to cancer as Terry prepares for college. The effects of gentrification are beginning to take the offensive against the masses as Euro-Amerikans begin to move in and Inez’s new landlord attempts to drive them out of the apartment using loophole methods to evict them early. In school, Terry’s guidance counselor asks for his birth certificate and social security card for a job program for underprivileged students. Without telling his mother, Terry submits his forged papers which comes back as invalid. After Terry confesses that the government documents were fake, the counselor calls social services who enter Inez’s home. Terry warns his mother about this and she begins to flee as under the imperialist law, despite caring for and stepping up to be the mother for Terry, Inez has committed a kidnapping of a ward of the state. The social services agents reveal to Terry that Inez is not his biological mother and that the two have no real blood relations. The pigs exposes Inez’s lumpen past to Terry leaving him distraught and in tears.

In the end, Inez confesses to Terry the truth. Inez was not the womyn who abandoned Terry on the street corner in his memory. She had found Terry for the first time lost in the streets when she was recently released as a prisoner from Riker’s island. Inez explains to Terry that she saw her younger self in him and that she could not stand to see another child go through the system that she was put through: the foster homes, the juvenile centers, the prisons, etc. Terry, crying, expresses the fear that he feels in becoming independent as he enters adulthood and affirms to Inez that he still loves her as a mother. The two separate on their own paths and before leaving, Inez promises Terry that “this isn’t goodbye.”

Down With Gentrification, Wimmin Hold Up Half the Sky

At the beginning of the movie, we see Inez de la Paz work as a street hawker offering hair/beauty services on the streets. We would say that this is a good portrayal of who we mean when we talk about the First World Lumpen or semi-proletariat who might not participate in overtly anti-people or parasitic ways of self-subsistence (such as sex work or drug peddling) and lives similarly to the semi-proletariat we see in the Third World. In our modern times of the 2020s, we see many folks using social media pages for these grey area side hustles while also maintaining a lower labor aristocrat level minimum wage job (oftentimes in the service industry). In the 1990s when this movie was being set, holding a cardboard box and approaching passer-bys was the common move. Readers might imagine Inez de la Paz to be in an extremely vulnerable political-economic situation as this semi-proletariat/First World Lumpen who had just been released from prison and not much support. However, the movie makes clear that Inez is a tough womyn and avoids both the traps of a damsel in distress needing a male figure out in the dangerous streets nor the over-masculinized New Afrikan womyn whose humynity is stripped away. In an artistic and political sense, we would say the movie did a great job in this regard and is an example we can look up to for creating socialist art/realistic portrayal of the masses under oppression.

Another trap that the movie avoids well is the habit of ruminating on the sensationalist/traumatic pain of New Afrikan life under U.$. imperialism. Mich art which depicts stories of the oppressed nations will fall victim to depicting a suffering masses who suffer like how the sky is blue. A Thousand and One refuses to show Inez, Terry, and Lucky as part of a faceless hoard of suffering while also refusing colorblind individualism: it intertwines the national oppression Black people face (the gentrification, the foster system, the prison system, the education system, etc.) while showing the deeply impersynal effects imperialist institutions have on these very humyn characters and how they take control over their lives without letting the system win. Because of this strong humynization of unapologetically New Afrikan characters, what might seem like a sensationalist plot twist at the end where Inez is revealed to not be Terry’s biological mother is welded to the material reality of the masses’ conditions.

The humnynization of these characters (the foster orphan, the former prisoner, the cheating husband, etc.) that this film undertakes fights against the dehumynization that already exists on these archetypes within the Amerikan imperialist-patriarchal superstructure (especially the oppressed nations and, in this case, principally New Afrika). We as Maoists believe that despite the great storytelling and care that A.V. Rockwell has put in for this story, this film is still part of the U.$. imperialist-patriarchal machine. One persyn and their creation (in this case a film director and her film) will be swept into the wave of the bourgeois superstructure. There will be many Euro-Amerikan viewers of the film who might watch this during February while it is being recommended to them by Netflix in their petty-bourgeois suburbia homes. Would they appreciate/recognize the persynal revolution that Inez has underwent throughout this story? Would they understand the self-determination that Inez has taken over her life against these social forces for the new generation to find happiness? Or would Inez’s motivations and reasons become watered down to a story of the strong independent Black womyn whose intentions were good but her methods of trying to find happiness for Terry was just wrong and too radical? Or worse, they might just paint her as a criminal con artist whose vicarious happiness to a boy she never met gave her a chance to play the act of a mother and a stable family the system eventually took away from her as well. Ms. Rockwell has put great effort into the humynization of these characters, we are afraid that a film alone is not enough to change the consciousness of most people in the level necessity for a society without oppression. That would be a job for a cultural revolution under a proletarian dictatorship.

One thing that interested me as a Maoist revolutionary is the role of motherhood that Inez was able to master over Terry despite her having the knowledge that Terry was not her biological son: a fact that is so overemphasized and shoved down the masses throats when it comes to their legitimate claim over a child. Biological determinism (like in “race”) is a core principle of the imperialist-patriarchial superstructure: gender, motherhood, etc. is determined by one’s bloodline or something they are “born with.” The reality however, is that conditioning of individual by an entire society’s relations of production and class struggle is the true driving force for these roles. For Inez de la Paz, an individual New Afrikan womyn who has recently been released from Rikers Island, to use what she has learned as her life as a lumpen to fight against this broad society’s conditioning and condition herself using individual determination is a great depiction of the social potential of the lumpen class. Historically, abandoning the bourgeois quest of giving orphaned children a nuclear family for them to go into and instead giving them a new environment to live on as orphans has been the successful practice of solving the problem of orphan street kids in the Soviet Union. While a Maoist telling of this story would perhaps depict independent institution building for people like Terry and Inez, the story that is told instead serves good medium for studying and appropriating bourgeois individualism of the Amerikans for the interests of the oppressed nations.

I would like to conclude the review of this movie with two quotes:

“The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.” - Mao Zedong

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” - Bobby Sands

The complex issue of dealing with homelessness here in the imperialist center has led to much debate within our party. In our current stage, we are engaged in consciousness building and raising public opinion, while it is our proletarian morality which compels us to struggle against oppression in all arenas. Homelessness is a crisis more serious than fentanyl and yet the capitalist state via its “supreme kourt” has recently determined that codifying homeless “sweeps” of encampments and criminalizing the homeless for being displaced is their remedy for the economic depression that capitalism creates. Surely communists can think of a far more humynizing solution.

At the same time, our responsibility here in the First World is not to follow the capitalist state around with a rag to wipe up its spills and a dust pan and broom to pick up its litter. We are not brainstorming to create reforms that simply make life in the occupied territories more bearable. We must fight oppression while serving the revolution.

Homeless Have National Oppression to Blame

The capitalist system is ultimately behind all social ills, and it was capitalism that first created a “surplus population”, which includes much of the homeless. However, looking particularly at recent rises in homelessness in the so-called United $tates, we can see how national oppression played a significant role in who became homeless.

During the 1960s and 70s, as the national liberation struggles peaked in the United $nakes, the movement suffered extreme repression from the U.$. government. Death and prison helped Amerika scale down the rise in resistance among the lumpen. As the 1980s arrived, so too did the introduction of crack cocaine to the ghetto streets – and soon followed mass incarceration. It’s important to note that during the 1960s and 70s there was not a homeless epidemic and there were no massive homeless encampments in every large city as is currently seen now. While statistics are not good, it’s possible that homelessness in the mid 1980s had reached rates that were double what they are today.(1)

Mass incarceration served the state in preventing another wave of revolutionary resistance. “Tough on crime” laws were enacted to curtail any efforts from the movement in the U.$. to regroup and reorganize the lumpen. As a result, the 1980s and 90s saw a mass capture of non-whites not seen on that level since the time of the middle passage. This mass incarceration – or mass kidnapping, to be more precise – led to the disruption and dissolution of the family unit while simultaneously injecting drugs on the scene. This mass kidnapping then led to mass displacement as single parents struggled to stay afloat often succumbing to escapism and criminalization themselves, only to be released to homelessness. Though the massive prison boom did allow for a shift of a significant portion of the lumpen from the streets to cages.

And while it is unclear how today’s rates compare to the 1980s, we are currently seeing a record in homelessness since the HUD started a more systematic count in 2007. And this has disproportionately hit oppressed nations again:

“This year’s big jump was driven by people who lost housing for the first time, which Biden administration officials say reflects the sharp rise in rent. The largest increase was among families, and the count also finds a significant rise among Hispanics. Nearly 40% of the unhoused are Black or African-American [who are only 12% of the general population -editor], and a quarter are seniors. The annual count does not include the many people who couch surf with friends or family, and who may be at high risk of ending up on the street.”(2)

We Don’t Want Peace with Amerikkka

Homelessness affects all of society in one way or another. Financially, it costs over 2 billion per year for former prisoners who are homeless.(3) If we look at it holistically, homelessness affects everything from mortality rates, healthcare, education, marriages, parenting, divorce, child welfare, the environment, etc. It’s unknown how this will affect future generations. What is known is that many of those in the homeless encampments, like most of those in the prison kamps, are Brown or Black. This all translates to economic oppression that the oppressed nations face with mass imprisonment, gentrification of their historic neighborhoods and of course being squeezed into homelessness. For those who support the empire, crumbs are flung their way, but for the lumpen who have no interest or intention to contribute to the U.$. capitalist system, an I.V. drip of violence, displacement, threat and trauma is fed to this population. When the United $tates describes “peace” for Aztlán, it is describing Chican@ capitulation to Amerikkka. To this, we decline, as we don’t want peace with Amerikkka, we want to be free. Our efforts to heighten the contradictions to step closer towards our goal of revolution and independence is what should guide us as we move toward our national interests.

The Nature of the Homeless

Marxism taught us that the natural laws can be harnessed in the interests of the masses. Under capitalism, there is a whole sector – the lumpen-proletariat, or the First World lumpen in the non-proletarian countries – who are systematically locked out of the production process and whose very lives are sacrificed in the name of profit and seen as castaways of society. The First World lumpen make up the vast majority of the homeless here in these false U.$. borders. Capitalist ideology here in the U.$. has been shaped by a long chain of oppression that has squeezed the colonized internal nations into our current state. White supremacy and slavery helped forge capitalist theory and practice and helped accelerate class development even surpassing Europe in many ways. Indeed, even James Bryce in “The American Commonwealth” documented the early stages of the U.$. petit bourgeois nature of the 1800s when he made several trips to the U.$. and wrote:

“In Connecticut and Massachusetts the operatives in many a manufacturing town lead a life far easier, far more brightened by intellectual culture and by amusements than that of the clerks and shopkeepers of England or France.”(4)

By the late 1800s, Amerikkka became increasingly bourgeoisified in many areas. By the early 1900s, U.$. imperialism would begin to exploit abroad, bringing the blood money back to these false U.$. borders and distributing it to buy off sectors of workers as investments to its future survival. But capitalism can never provide full employment and this means the alienated masses turn to the underground economy to survive. For many ex-prisoners, the underground economy is the only way they can survive. And for the homeless – which consists in large part on Injustice-impacted people – the underground economy is, for some, the only game in town.

When we examine the homeless population in the United $tates, we find that it is made up of many ex-prisoners(5). The internal semi-colonies are the majority percentage-wise.(6) This highlights the class contradictions within the United $tates as well. The state has imported European immigrants in their scramble to counter their social reality. The 2022 U.$. Census data shows that the white population in the U.$. would have decreased had it not been for 391,000 white people immigrating to the U.$. from Europe.(7) This approach to maintaining demographics favorable to the oppressor nation is nothing new, of course. Sakai points out how in the decades following the Haitian Revolution of 1791, it became “increasingly obvious that a ‘thin, white line’ of a few soldiers, administrators and planters could not safely hold down whole oppressed nations” which was the political impetus behind several waves of immigration from Europe in the 19th century.(8)

We can even trace the interconnection and evolution of homelessness and criminalization in the United $tates from pop culture to the prison gates. In the 1950s, Hollywood movies depicted the classic train riding “hobo” while prisons were filled with chain smoking conmen. Both populations were whiter than meemaw’s tuna casserole. Today, both populations are mostly Brown and Black, and yet the revolutionary movement here within the occupied territories have yet to bring us closer to finding a remedy with teeth. Only a remedy that helps the oppressed nations while undermining Amerika will be sufficient in this scenario. While searching for the consideration of homelessness in the occupied territories let us not lose focus of how national oppression ties into the equation, despite Amerika flinging crumbs to a myriad of agencies, case managers, construction companies, advocacy groups and so-called social services.

On the surface it appears as if the capitalists are using the profits they accumulate through exploitation to help soothe the very social ills that they create. Nothing can be further from the truth, as the Maoist Internationalist Movement’s Prison Ministry put it:

“Under capitalism, the anarchy of production is the general rule. This is because capitalists only concern themselves with profit, while production and consumption of humyn needs is at the whim of the economic laws of capitalism. As a result, people starve, wars are fought and the environment is degraded in ways that make humyn life more difficult or even impossible. Another result is that whole groups of people are excluded from the production system, whereas in pre-class societies, a group of humyns could produce the basic food and shelter that they needed to survive. Capitalism is unique in keeping large groups of people from doing so.”(9)

Indeed, the capitalists lock entire sectors out of the production process and create social band-aids that do not eradicate this mess. Imperialism creates a network of petty bourgeois jobs for Amerikans that feed off this population that we call the lumpen but which most know as the “Homeless”. The capitalists have devised a way to make the lumpen useful for keeping others busy and paid, while preventing the lumpen themselves from being productive for their own humynity.

The Prison Parallel

As mentioned above, another place we find concentrations of lumpen are the prisons, where they are treated similarly. A recent example of this is in California where the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (known as CAL/OSHA) recently attempted to address climate change and adapting to a rising heat epidemic. The State of California recently created heat standards for California workers. This would include more breaks and cooling and ventilation in all state buildings that respond to climate change. CAL/OSHA excluded California prisons and jails from the new regulations.(10)

The jails and prisons are lumpen centers where prisoners are often subjected to subhuman conditions, torture, medical maltreatment in HELLth care, not to mention outright murder by the state. The heat is also used against those prisoners who challenge the state in general and revolutionary prisoners in particular. Indeed, our Party has heard first hand accounts from some of our members who have been held in the U.$. concentration kamps (prisons). Our Chairman himself was held and tortured for a decade in the state’s Security Housing Units (S.H.U.) in solitary confinement, so our understanding of the conditions of prisoners is in depth. Some of the accounts we heard were that in the most humid prisons where temperatures in the summer rise to 110°F (43°C) the prison officials will turn on the heaters in the cells, while in the coldest prisons, even where it snows, the prison officials will crank up the air conditioning to make the cells like “ice boxes”. One comrade described how at a particular prison they were at, it was so hot in the cell that this comrade would pour water on the cement floor and lay on the floor only in underwear as it was extremely unbearable. Another comrade described that it was so hot at one Central Valley prison that it felt as if eir “insides were cooking”.

Science tells us that excessive heat also increases risk of stroke and other health problems. Those with pre-existing conditions or failing health will have their conditions exacerbated in extreme heat. The excuse cited for excluding prisoners from these new climate related protections was cost. It’s too expensive to humynize the lumpen. This points to another example of the lumpen simply being useful at this time to be given the bare minimum to exist another day in dehumynized conditions.

The lumpen are in a precarious position to say the least, here in the United Snakes and in any society for that matter. First World lumpen can have a hand in emancipating humynity here in the imperialist center or end up succumbing to its demise like the old couple who had been married half a century and when one dies the other spouse quickly follows. The lumpen plays a vital role where it can be bought off as foot soldiers for capitalism in its fascist development or as the lumpen developed in Maoist China as some of the fiercest fighters for the revolution in the form of the Red Guards.(11)

Marx hinted at this when he said:

“But capital not only lives upon labor. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises.”(12)

Today, in the First World, most “workers” are in the labor aristocracy and not the slaves of capital that Marx describes here. The lumpen, however, can be seen as “runaway slaves”, those who in many ways have cast off the tethers of capitalist society.

It is important that we understand that social control determines the mass influx of planation-like facilities which prisoners in the U.$. are compelled to endure as well as the lumpenization that comes with it. The future of the Chican@ Nation relies on us grasping this and responding in a way that advances Aztlán closer to independence.

Concrete Analysis of a Concrete Situation

The lumpen who mostly comprise the “homeless” within the U.$. are a resourceful bunch who organize in unprecedented ways within these false U.$. borders. In our party’s study, we have interviewed dozens of homeless people living in various modes of existence. Some homeless exist as couch surfers living persyn to persyn, some live in cars or RVs, some in cardboard boxes on sidewalks across the U.$., some live in mental facilities, jails or prisons and yet some live in abandoned buildings, parks, creeks and in homeless camps. About 62% of homeless in the general population are “sheltered”, while only 50% of former prisoners in the homeless population are “sheltered.”(13)

The encampments are of special concern, as they are the most organized of the homeless population. In the State of California, recent numbers show the homeless population at 181,000.(14) These are the numbers that could be documented, so we suspect the actual count to be much higher, probably in the range of 200,000, as there are many who live in the shadows and for many different reasons refuse to be counted by the state. It should also be noted that it was in San Jose, California some years back where some have called the largest homeless camp in the U.$. was found. This camp even had a name that the lumpen gave it – “The Jungle” and this encampment had up to 10,000 people living there, 10,000 lumpen, mostly Chican@s who existed for over a decade as a camp.

It is also interesting that the State of California which is not just a state within Aztlán but currently includes the heart of what the capitalists call “silicon valley” also has huge swaths of homeless people. So much wealth and privilege exists alongside such misery, poverty and hunger in this place where people’s lives are reduced to nada if those lives do not build capitalism. This reminds us what we are fighting.

The homeless camps are comprised of lumpen of all ages, including babies and the elderly. There are teens who have lived much of their lives in the camps. Many children are illiterate and relocating from camp to camp or from camp to “flying homeless” (i.e., living on sidewalks or in cars).

The larger and more established camps have a main organizer who acts as a warlord of sorts. These larger camps tend to be organized more on the model of U.$. youth survival groups, which the capitalists call “gangs” rather than lumpen organizations. These main camps have rules and penalties that go with them. The high crimes in these camps are crimes against children, for which the penalty can be a beating and banishment or even death depending on the severity of the crime.

The shot-callers within the main camps have hystorically been male, although the shot-callers tend to be more permanent while the rest of the community tends to be more fluid, with many relocating regularly or ending up in jail. In our study, all of the shot-callers have been imprisoned in some form, whether that be in county jail or prison.

Those who comprise these main camps “surface” to the streets sporadically for food, showers or to tap into the underground economy by any means necessary. Camp life tends to revolve around food, water and drugs. “Communal” living in the main camps is often injected with drugs. Drug use is rampant in the camps, although not all homeless in the camps are users. Some are sellers who slang dope in the camps making thousands in profits off their fellow lumpen’s misery and addiction. The prime drugs of choice in the camps being meth, heroin and crack. The dealers on the streets ensure that the main camps stay flooded with dope.

Most of the main camps are located in creeks, industrial areas, or under freeway bridges and underpasses. Many of the camps have electricity from stolen generators and power lines. Contrary to what people believe, many of the homeless do not bathe in the creeks even when their camps are in the creek. Many use camping showers or seek showers at community centers or at the homes of friends and family.

The factors contributing to the epidemic known as homelessness have been formulated elsewhere, we know that the heart of the problem remains to be capitalism. We understand that factors like hunger afflict the homeless population and throwing the homeless something to chew on has continued to be done by both liberals and religious conservatives alike and to no avail. As communists, we need to take action that translates to radically different terms and which is more impactful and deep reaching.

Identifying and heightening the contradictions here in the occupied territories of Aztlán while aiding the Brown masses and pushing the national liberation struggle forward on these shores is a key tenet of our party. Homelessness is one of the major fractures within the empire in which the development of resistance is likely, the other being the U.$. prison system. It is our duty to nurture these factors. In order to properly carry out our duties, we need to understand how the lumpen are currently responding to these capitalist assaults on their humynity.

Cultural Revolution

“Due to the precarious stratification of the lumpen, and the imperialists’ refusal to let us fully integrate into Amerika, our allegiance to the imperialists is more tenuous. As the lumpen experience oppression first hand here in Amerika, we are in a position to spearhead the revolutionary vehicle within U.$. borders” (15)

Social practice is the remedy which will deliver the Chican@ masses to national liberation. A heightened consciousness nurtured by and forged in the fires of political theory is the vehicle that we have awaited since colonization. As we struggle to rebuild the resistance that we need, the capitalist bribes sway our people to the tempo of their blood stained rhythm, and we listen to Lenin and dig deeper within the people to find those elements that continue to have nothing to lose but their chains. Here in the First World, those elements are the lumpen.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), which took place from 1966 - 1976 in revolutionary China, revolutionary intellectuals were sent from the cities to the countryside to take revolutionary culture to the peasants and politicize them, learn from them, to engage them so that they can take their rightful place in contributing to the revolution. To many at the time, the thought of venturing out to the countryside was not inviting. To those truly seeking to contribute to the revolution, the sacrifice of having no running water or indoor plumbing was miniscule. This practice of sending urban intellectuals and professionals to do practical work in the countryside was also done in the Soviet Union from the very earliest days of revolutionary power.

Here in the First World, the lumpen (which includes the homeless population) are a potential revolutionary force that must be tapped. Marx taught us that capitalism prevents us from solving the social ills like homelessness and that only through socialist revolution will we realize this truth. Mao’s China solved many social ills amongst the lumpen including drug addition and prostitution, both of which are activities found amongst the lumpen (homeless) throughout the U.$. and as we begin this work of politicizing the homeless, or of bringing revolutionary culture to them, we are in essence preparing the lumpen for the revolution.

We believe that it is not a question if we should go to the homeless camps to bring revolutionary culture to the lumpen, we believe that it must be done. Our party has begun this task. Lenin describes our task ahead:

“We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, it is not an easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.”(16)

Although we are not “building socialism” now, we are building the conditions for revolution which will advance us toward socialism. We must take action, social practice amongst the homeless – on their turf. Cheerleading for the homeless in front of City Hall or sliding them a burrito is cute and subjectively fulfilling to an extent, but it moves the lumpen not one iota towards resistance or revolution. Comrades, we must do more than the churches and more than a liberal non-profit. As communists, our role is not to make the lumpen more comfortable under capitalism, rather we must prepare the lumpen for insurrection.

It is important that we work towards transforming the homeless camps into political bases, safe zones with Chican@ cadre in every camp throughout Aztlán. But we should also take our endeavors in this field seriously, as the state has captured or killed Chican@ revolutionaries for lesser ambitions. Amerikkka is deadly serious in its repression, we should be just as serious in our evasion and resistance and utilize a strong security culture as we move through the camps. There is much potential in the lumpen encampments and the enemy knows this.

Marx taught us that the lumpen were indeed the “dangerous class”. We agree that there is a certain danger in interacting with the lumpen, just as there is a certain danger of interacting with the capitalist state, not to mention the white settler nation in general. History has taught us that to be colonized is dangerous as well, so we have learned to struggle through generational danger and in many cases to do so armed and ready to resist.

At this stage, we only seek to bring revolutionary culture to the lumpen encampments as we see it as complimenting our efforts to raise public opinion. At the same time, we stand firm that ultimately it will be through armed struggle that Aztlán will be free and the lumpen will play a key role in the national liberation struggle here in the internal semi-colonies. Here we agree with Fanon when describing the lumpen, he said:

“…that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”(17)

As Fanon suggests, the lumpen moves differently. It is not a class which succeeds at town hall debates or boycotts. Hit the lumpen up when it’s time to boogie, when violence explodes in the metropole and the capitalist state feels the slugs of liberation, for this is the arena in which the lumpen excels. Forged through oppression, the lumpen will perform on the stage built by the bourgeoisie and their collaborators. But the party must perform as well and the movement more broadly must perform. We must perform agitation and propaganda (agit/prop) and do so well amongst the lumpen.

In “Combat Liberalism”, Mao discussed how liberalism prevents people from acting on living up to their obligations as communists. Among other things, he points to failing to show concern for the masses and not engaging in agit/prop. There are many reasons why people practice liberalism. In many ways, some have fallen into liberalism here in the occupied territories. Many within the movement have opted out of reaching back into the lumpen encampments to those alienated not only from labor but from society as well. In this sense, the party seeks to combat liberalism in this field.

Some have wondered what is to be done with the lumpen encampments, “what is possible?” some ask. There is much work to be done. We need our presence felt, we need to become a regular presence in the camps and begin to inject them with revolutionary culture – with art, literature and teatro. We need to gain their confidence and to teach and learn – from the masses, to the masses.

The Chican@ movement of the past never dealt with the homeless in this way, although the homeless epidemic was not in existence to today’s levels we must be honest that scant attention was given to the homeless in general. Today’s Chican@ movement must do more as the next generation must in turn do more than us and continue to build.

The lumpen encampments are self-governed as the pigs or other state agencies rarely ever go into the camps. We see that there is potential in these zones, especially with their concentrated amount of lumpen. We believe that by focusing our energy on this demographic, it will complete our overall strategy of winning this struggle for national liberation. There is much work to do in these camps, but political education is essential and a stepping stone to developing dual power in these zones.

Let us be clear that any weakening of resolve about the task ahead only helps Amerikkka and hurts the struggle for national liberation. At the same time, our efforts are not to set up re-entry services for the homeless lumpen, on the contrary, our efforts are to set up and recruit the lumpen to serve the people. We are not seeking reforms, nor do we believe in them, rather we agree with the BLA that

“reform of the oppressive system can never benefit its victims: in the final analysis, the system of oppression was created to insure the rule of particular racist classes and sanctify their capital. To seek reform therefore inevitably leads to, or begins with, the recognition of the laws of our oppressor as being valid.”(18)

Reform is only tactical in getting the boot off our neck long enough for us to breathe to fight and resist the oppressor nation another day. Likewise, the oppressors laws and kkkourts mean nothing to us, as they are illegitimate to the core, we only navigate them in order to plot the demise of Amerika.

The lumpen encampments, like the prisons, are fertile grounds for resistance. In the First World, we are forced to dig deeper into the social forces to find those who are not bribed by the profits stolen from the Third World pockets. Our efforts today are for the Third World.

^{Notes:
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States - gives a homeless rate of 0.09% in 1990, but mentions this was probably an undercount; it gives 200-500 thousand as the homeless count in 1984, which doubled by 1987 - at the high end this would put homeless rates at 0.22% and 0.42% respectively; the 2023 rate was 0.19% the highest rate since HUD began gathering data more accurately in 2007
(2)Jennifer Ludden, 15 December 2023, Homelessness in the U.S. hit a record high last year as pandemic aid ran out, All Things Considered.
(3) “The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the U.S.”, from the Institute for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation”, October 2016, George Warren Brown School of Social Work.
(4) “The American Commonwealth”, by James Bryce (1888-1959, Vol II, pp.557-58).
(5)According Prison Policy Initiative analysis of HUD data, formerly incarcerated have 2% homelessness rate compared to 0.21% of the overall population. A Harvard Business review article says there are about 5 million formerly incarcerated in U.$.; 2% of 5 million is 100,000; .21% of 350 million is 735,000. Based on these estimates, formerly incarcerated are less than 15% of homeless in U.$. streets.
(6) about 61% of homeless are oppressed nations according to stats in “Defining and Measuring the Lumpen Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by MIM(Prisons), July 2016.
(7) U.S. Census Bureau.
(8) “Settlers”, by J. Sakai (2014, pg. 52).
(9) “Defining and Measuring the Lumpen Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by MIM(Prisons), July 2016.
(10) “Prisons are a Cruel Exception to Heat Rules”, by Nicholas Shapiro and Bharat Jayram Venkat, the Mercury News, July 14, 2024.
(11)Wiawimawo, October 2018, Sakai’s Investigation of the Lumpen in Revolution, ULK Issue 64.
(12) “Wage, Labor and Capital”, by Karl Marx.
(13)Lucius Couloute, August 2018, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative.
(14) “Newsom Orders Sweeps of Camps”, by Ethan Varian, The Mercury News, July 26, 2024.
(15) “Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán”, by a MIM(Prisons) Study Group, 2015, 2021, pg. 14.
(16) V.I. Lenin, “Left-wing communism – an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pg. 50.
(17) “The Wretched of the Earth”, by Frantz Fanon.
(18) “Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army”, pg. 111.}

I have been a member of USW since 2017. Since then I have contributed zealously, especially the move away from publishing the revisionist ideal of prisoners complaining about prison conditions and their grievances, which served no purpose to the movement other than to teach comrades revisionist methods of resolution to make prisons ideally more comfortable and less punitive.

As I attempt a corrective analysis, I ask is writing grievances and filing lawsuits against prison adminsistrators a revisionist ideal or revolutionary? and if it is revolutionary, how?

I know no revolution that was won through writing grievances or use of the courts! Read Dr. Burton’s book Tip of the Spear and see how that ideal worked for the comrades in the Attica Liberation Faction (ie. BPP, BLA, W.U. and all). It gets minimum results that require the exhaustion of much energy, study of law and money. Tip of the Spear calls for deep analysis of revolution and how it looks when applied in multiple states and facilities.

I am so disappointed I never received ULK 83 so I can analyze comrades’ analysis of Dr. Burton’s book.

Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: I don’t know of any USW leaders that don’t write grievances or file lawsuits. Grievances are tactics. So we agree that no revolution has been won by grievances, just as none is won by maintaining a website. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do these things.

To further answer your question i’d point you to Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A. by Mumia Abu-Jamal, or my review of it. In that book Delbert Africa is quoted explaining what happens to people who go deep into fighting their case in the courts:

“They go crazy becuz, Mu, they really believe in the System, and this System always betray those that believe in it! That’s what drive them out they minds, they cain’t handle that.”

As i said, we look at these things as tactics, as opposed to strategy. Though strategically we do believe we are in a stage of legal struggle in this country, we mean that in the broad sense. Legal struggle in the courts is just one form of legal struggle, and not one that we focus on.

So why engage in grievance battles and the grievance campaigns USW has going in various states?

1. To win battles that are more strategic, especially around First Amendment rights to communicate, affiliate and just read. Fighting censorship has always been a struggle we have put effort into because it is a direct threat to our organizing efforts. It’s not just about making conditions more comfortable. The most recently added grievance petition was in Indiana, where it has already been used to help get 6-month-old mail delivered. When we distribute the petitions to prisoners we include a cover letter where we state:

“MIM(Prisons) sees these petitions as a good use of our resources because our ability to fairly have our grievances handled is directly related to preventing arbitrary repression for people who stand up for their rights or attempt to do something positive. We support this petition in light of our anti-censorship work and anti-repression work in general.”

An outside supporter recently expressed concerns echoing Orko’s:

“but if what it ends up being is just MIM(Prisons) helping prisoners get their immediate personal grievances addressed, i don’t see how that differs from the work being done by hundreds of other reformist/bourgeois prison advocacy groups, other than that you also offer them Maoist resources”

It is true that people use the grievance petitions for various issues. And an individual using the petition to get some persynal issue addressed is not contributing to the prison struggle, nor to the anti-imperialist struggle. It is up to the comrades on the ground to use the petitions to build an organizing base. In either case, it is a tiny amount of time and resources that we are putting into getting petitions into peoples’ hands. When we put in the effort to assemble articles and conduct support campaigns, it will be around issues like censorship, solitary confinement and political repression.

2. To mobilize the masses of prisoners. The grievance campaigns have been utilized by many to mobilize those around them for a common cause. Mobilizing the masses to organize against state oppression is a central task to any revolutionary movement. However, both of the critics above pointed out that just filing grievances and petitions is only teaching people to beg the oppressor for resolutions. It is up to USW organizers to ensure that multiple tactics are employed in any campaign, including tactics that contribute to building independent struggle. As we always say, there are no rights only power struggles.

A longer debate between USW leaders over how to do this has already appeared in a series of articles in ULK.(1) As the comrade concluded in that first article, when the masses see the smallest victory as a miracle and are easily pacified by it, leaders are easily isolated by the state, so security precautions are of utmost importance for any sustained effort. The other USW leader in that article argues that without a strong cadre organization to frame such struggles, they will only set the revolutionary struggle back.

There have been many cases where USW comrades report that with a lot of struggle they barely get people to sign a petition or grievance if the leader does all the work to write them up and make copies. In such cases, where the masses must have their hands held to express the slightest bit of discontent, we must conclude that we are not succeeding in mobilizing the masses to take their destinies in their own hands.

3. To appeal to the masses where they are at. In 2022, our Texas campaign pack was one of the top referrals for new subscribers after word of mouth and ULK. The grievance petitions are also a tool for recruiting new comrades from the masses. Some will never be interested in anything beyond getting their local grievances heard, others will see the futility in relying on the system and join USW.

[We are currently out of copies of Jailhouse Lawyers by Mumia but would happily distribute more to prisoners across the country if anyone wants do donate copies to our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program.]

^{Notes: 1. see Orientating USW Organizing Strategy in Light of Texas Victory in ULK 72, and the 4 articles titled An Ongoing Discussion on Organizing Strategy found in ULKs 73, 74, 76 and 77.}

This past summer, we gathered commentary from our readers on the student uprising against the genocide in Gaza, which is now expanding across the region. These articles were used in a pamphlet that many USW comrades received, and were all printed in Under Lock & Key 86.

Comrades on the streets distributed the pamphlet and ULK 86 to students (and non-students) in a number of regions across the country. We attended rallies and speaking events, visited the remnants of encampments and shared publications at conferences.

In general, the response was enthusiastic to the articles written by prisoners, especially regarding solidarity with Palestine. Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support (AIPS) maintained a presence at Socialism Conference 2024 which took place in Chicago during the end of August. Over 100 copies of ULK were handed out at the conference, while also agitating against prisoner repression.

At a New York hacker conference, audience members eagerly grabbed copies of the Palestine pamphlet at a talk on prison surveillance. The speaker exposed most of the issues we discuss in our Prison Banned Books Week articles. Ey also exposed how Securus has a patent to use the phone numbers of prisoner contacts to track their spending data. And Securus already provides location data to Correctional Officers by phone number! We hope comrades can understand why we’re sticking to snail mail. This also happened to be the only talk at the conference where the speaker shouted “Free Palestine!”

At a southern California Palestine solidarity event comrades were able to give out ULK 86 to a large group of students and noticed that others would grab a copy on their way out. Reactions were mostly positive with one criticism being that it may have been too tough on the students. This was presumably referring to the critique written by an outside comrade involved in the student movement.

Comrades have communicated with a number of student groups to solicit responses or statements for this issue of Under Lock & Key. While at least one group expressed interest, we did not get any reports from students on the ongoing legal struggles and political repression they are facing for this issue. It is clear more work is needed to strengthen a connection between the prison movement and the student movement. But progress is being made.

Decades ago, Under Lock & Key was a section in the newspaper MIM Notes put out by the original Maoist Internationalist Movement and its party in the United $tates. For a time, MIM distributed newspapers on the streets at 20-30 times the amount they sent to prisoners, and their paper came out every 2 weeks. Since MIM(Prisons) launched Under Lock & Key in 2007, it has always been a primarily prisoner newsletter. Though in the past we’ve estimated our online readership to be bigger. A couple years ago we set the goal of distributing as many newspapers on the streets as we do in prisons. While not quite there, ULK 86 was by far the closest we’ve gotten to reaching that goal.

If you want to help expand ULK distribution on the street, send us $55 in cash or postage stamps with a return address and we’ll send you 100 copies of the next ULK we print. ULK currently comes out at the beginning of November, February, May, and August.