MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Since my earlier letter I have now come across many prisoners who are
existing members. It is encouraging to know that other prisoners want a
revolution recharge to Texas’s prison environment. In my past years of
confinement, in the units I have been assigned to, not many prisoners
saw the need for revolutionary prison reform. On this unit, I am coming
across more prisoners who are seeing the need and attempting through
civil litigation to see this reform come about.
Texas still wants to deny prisoners the right to have the government
redress our grievances for violations of our constitutional rights. The
right of a prisoner to petition the government exists in theory only,
but not in practice.
The poorer and less educated prisoners have to face a two-front battle
just to get into court. As an indigent prisoner I have to fight access
to courts officials just to get the legal correspondence supplies that I
need to litigate my claims. After I get them into court I have to battle
court authorities and judges just to keep them in.
When I write to judges of my treatment by officials I face retribution
by other prison officials. Judges and court authorities want to deny my
right to exercise my claims in court under proper due process and equal
protection rights. If I had funds, family or friends who could help me
out with legal correspondence supplies, then the prison officials would
not be able to place me in a figurative full-body straitjacket.
It is so bad that many prisoners’ claims being filed in court are being
stolen right out of court by magistrate judges, dismissing lawsuits on
which they do not have the right to render a final judgement. When
prisoners appeal it, they send it to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
District court judges’ judgements are nothing more than a court directed
verdict. The rendered judgements do not fit the evidence filed in court
in complaints, evidence and exhibits.
Prisoners in Texas have filed so many individual lawsuits that Texas
does not want any more to be filed because, whether a lawsuit succeeds
or fails, it leaves an electronic paper trail. Texas prison officials
are scared that the feds will step in and take their prison system away.
This to me is an encouraging sign so I say keep up the good work and
soon we can see the Texas prison walls come crumbling down.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with this comrade that lawsuits
are an important part of our current strategy to fight the criminal
injustice system. But this will never bring about revolutionary change,
because the legal system is a part of the criminal injustice system as a
whole, as this comrade’s experience demonstrates. The imperialists will
never relinquish control of this critical part of their internal system
of national oppression through legal battles. We can use their system
against them to an extent, and even win some key battles in the legal
arena, but we will do that as a part of the broader struggle which must
build for independent revolutionary change.
Throughout the few years I have spent reading Under Lock & Key
(ULK) it is apparent to me that many people behind these prison
walls have come together, either to subscribe to ULK or express
their opinions and expose conditions within their specific prisons. But
this is just one aspect of the basis of a United Front, and does not
constitute a quantum leap in our march towards building a politically
conscious class within prison life itself.
Many comrades have expressed a need for sharing education, whether
piecemeal or in study groups, and I have always been an advocate of
such. But I always viewed other prisoners’ lack of interest in holding
political discussions as an obstacle for a United Front advancement.
That was my subjective view until it finally dawned on me that there
might be lack of interest wherever I was housed, but it was abundant in
ULK.
Comrades taking the time to pick up an issue of ULK have
started educating themselves on the political thoughts of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
In acquainting themselves and reading it they are in a process of
studying. Furthermore those comrades who take it a step further to write
essays, articles on specific topics, and/or express their opinions on
other comrades’ articles, can open up debates or collaborations for
future tasks to be accomplished. By forming a study group within the
lines of ULK by ULK subscribers and finally bringing up the
other aspect of educating ourselves from grasping what we study, we
acquire knowledge.
But our new-found education must be put into practice. We must apply
what we have learned to our current conditions.
“Every study of Marxism shakes up people and the contradiction between
the two world outlooks comes to the fore. Marxism gives hammer blows to
the non-proletarian outlook and fuels the ideological force, as in every
task, three stages each with its own contradiction, present themselves.
At the beginning arises the contradiction between starting the study and
not starting it. Starting up already constitutes a 50% advance.” -
Comrade Gonzalo from Peru.
Although I strongly encourage comrades to study the works of Marx,
Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, one cannot just narrow on that road. Many
other topics/subjects are encouraged as well: legal news, winning 602s
(grievances), fighting mail censorship, filing a writ of habeas
corpus, etc. Any topic that’s informative and helpful to our
interests is an advanced step in our struggle.
The digital age is slowly reaching behind prison walls. So much so that
the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation recently
began implementing cell phone blocking technology around its prisons.
MIM(Prisons) regularly receives emails from comrades behind bars via
state-run email systems for prisoners. While we have long promoted
careful study and practice around the use of computers for revolutionary
work, we have generally felt this material had little immediate
relevance for our comrades behind bars. This is changing.
While pointing to resources for further study and giving pointers on
what the risks of using computers and cell phones are, we have
historically veered away from recommending certain technology. This was
partly due to a desire to prevent the state from building a profile of
the technologies that we rely on, and partly because there are
organizations more focused on these questions that will have more
up-to-date and in-depth information to offer. While the latter is still
true, there are a few technologies that are so standard that we see
little risk in mentioning them by name.
Another thing we want to touch on here is imposing higher standards for
our electronic communications from other revolutionary organizations.
Recent communications we’ve received have reinforced to us the need for
diligence in having secure communication networks. So let us begin with
some basic principles.
Assuming that we have a practical interest in developing communications
with another revolutionary organization, there are three political
questions that we must ask about the organization: 1) what is their
political line? 2) what practice can we see to prove they are consistent
in implementing that political line? 3) can we confirm that we are
talking to someone that represents the organization? Once we decide to
communicate with an organization we must then be concerned with who
knows that we are communicating and who knows what we are saying to each
other.
On our website we have our
public email
address, a form to submit anonymous messages, and our public GPG key
to encrypt messages to us. Our website has been online for over 5 years
and has material dating back that far demonstrating our work and our
political line. We believe this is a good model that would allow another
group to confirm who we are and communicate with us securely and
anonymously via the internet.
The downside to the public email address is that it is easily targeted
for monitoring, allowing the state to know who is contacting us. This is
why we have the anonymous form and why we tell people to email us from
addresses that are not linked to them persynally. For prisoners, one may
think that one’s mail is monitored anyway, so emailing is no greater
risk than sending a letter. However, there is an increased risk in that
digital communications provide for permanent documentation of who you
communicate with and what you say, allowing for easy data mining of that
information later. This is possible with snail mail, but it requires
more effort by the state and is not done consistently; at least for most
people. Emailing is convenient, and is a fine way for prisoners to
contact us, but be aware of the increased ease of surveillance. If you
are using non-state-sponsored technology, then you should consider using
the tools we mention below if you have access to them.
For other revolutionary organizations, if our only communication is via
anonymous email then we need a way to confirm who you are. Having an
established website with your public email address and public GPG key on
it and then using that GPG key to encrypt all email is a way to do this.
GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) encryption
should be used for all communications. Not only does it prevent a
snooper from reading intercepted messages, it allows the receiver to
confirm the identity of the sender if they have a trusted GPG key from
that party. Email addresses are easy to spoof, while it is practically
impossible to spoof GPG signatures.
One of the documents we link to on this subject is titled
Surveillance Self-Defense. We think
this is an appropriate title, and we need comrades to think beyond fists
and guns when they think about “security” and “self-defense.” Even if
you don’t use computers or cell phones at all, then you must have a
basic understanding of the risks to come to that decision (unless you
are in prison and have no choice in the matter). While martial arts are
great in many ways, we do not see hand-to-hand combat as a decisive
aspect of the struggle at this time. And since we have assessed our
strategic stage to be one where armed struggle would be a fatal mistake,
we do not require or promote weapons training. We do require regular
study, review and practice of anti-surveillance technology of our
members. And we hold those we relate to to similar standards. The worse
your security practice, the more risk you are to us, and the less we
will interact with you. Simple as that.
While being effective in self-defense requires further study than this
document, we want to give some simplified recommendations here to get
people started:
When you carry a cellphone it is easy for the state to know where you
are and to electronically record sound and even video of your
surroundings, even if your phone is off
Encrypt your data, if possible encrypt your whole drive including your
operating system; there are different tools to do this effectively, but
TrueCrypt is a popular
cross-platform tool
As discussed above use GPG to encrypt messages and confirm who messages
are from
Of course, prisoners using state-owned computers will not have the
option to use any of these technologies, so it is mostly just a question
of using email or snail mail. But if you are looking forward to a
release date and hope to keep in touch with MIM(Prisons) then it would
be worth learning more about these technologies and tactics to protect
yourself.
How we approach self-defense is very much informed by our political
line. Our line leads us to focus more on the First Amendment than the
Second. But ultimately there are no rights, only power struggles.
Currently, we do not have the ability to defend the movement militarily,
but we do have the ability to defend it with a well-informed electronic
self-defense strategy. And just as computer technology, and the internet
in particular, was a victory for free speech, it has played a role in
leveling the battlefield to the point that the imperialists recognize
computer warfare as a material vulnerability to their hegemony. The
Obama administration has gone so far as to call journalist Julian
Assange a “terrorist” after WikiLeaks published documents that the
United $tates did not want the world to see.(1) As the means of
production advance, we must learn to utilize the emerging technologies
for both offense and defense in the interests of the international
proletariat.
The Economics of Integrity By Anna Bernasek Harper Collins
Publishers NY (2010) 195pp
This book is a perfect example of a culture obsessed with
subjectivism and idealist philosophies. The book demonstrates the lack
of integrity of people (bankers, stock brokers, etc.), claiming that it
was the main reason the economy crashed in 2008.
In the prologue we read: “my father, a native of Czechoslovakia, risked
his life to escape from communism in 1949…”(p3) Here we go again with
the vilifying of communism well past the “cold war.” The author even
points to the subjectivism and individualism mentioned above, saying
“This book pays tribute to the spirit of this nation, a spirit of
optimism and idealism.”(p3) And no wonder, a nation that’s imperialist
would send the message to its parasites that there would be food for
all, just wait till we steal it from Third World, poor, semi-colonial
nations!
One would expect that with economics in it, some portion of this book
would discuss political economy. Not the case here, but with vulgar
economics the author separates the political from the economy, when in
fact the two are intertwined. Instead we are told “to be true to that
spirit [optimism and idealism], my focus isn’t on what went wrong. I am
not primarily concerned with scandals, fraud and cheating.”(p5) Again,
“the economy isn’t some dirty game where all the players are only out
for themselves, trying to make their names and their fortunes.”(p5) Wow!
A guest commentator on CNN, CNBC spewing this bullshit, shouldn’t be a
surprise anyway.
The author basically negates the whole point by saying she is not
concerned on what went wrong. The problem is that the whole damn game
(capitalism) is in for itself. With one company/corporation trying to
maximize their profits how can they not be out for themselves? But with
such phrases as “…integrity unlocks enormous opportunities for wealth
creation…”(p5), and “It is shared assets that make us wealth.”(p13), or
“for without integrity, the economy would not function”(p13), we
shouldn’t expect much of an analysis.
The author goes on to propagate the notion that integrity prompts
companies to profits, not exploitation. She gives examples like milk
production, taking money out of an ATM, Toyota, LL Bean, and banks.
Besides some interesting factoids about these corporations (Of the
world’s official gold holdings (March 2009), Amerika holds 27%, Germany
11%, IMF 11% (p67). The top 3 brands and their wealth is as follows 1)
Coca-cola - 66,667 (U$) 2) IMB-59,031(U$) 3) Microsoft -59,007(U$) (2008
brand values (millions)) (p124).), the book is a joke.
What the author fails to realize is that integrity does not create
wealth in itself. Surplus value is the source of wealth. Not from First
World world workers but from Third World proletarians who are paid less
than the value of their labor for their productive work. Hopefully the
author can come to grips with classes and national oppression more
easily than pseudo vulgarist economy. What this simply amounts to is an
apology for the loss the parasites in the U.$. felt during the
2008
meltdown.
In August 2012, thirty-four South African miners were murdered by the
police at the Maricana Platinum mine owned by Amplats (Anglo Material
Platinum). These humyn beings were attempting to convince Amplats to pay
them a livable wage. This is a serious “crime” to the money hungry Anglo
who still looks upon the South African as a farm animal or dog.
We refer to ourselves as internationalists. However, many times we get
so caught up in our own local struggles in these slave pens of
oppression, we forget that there are comrades world wide who want and
need a dictatorship of the proletariat. Our international outlook
teaches us to keep a trained eye on the geo-political, social, economic,
and fascist military climate across the globe.
In November 2012 nearly 120 Bangladeshi textile workers were burned
alive. These human beings were working at the Tazreen Textile Factory in
Dhaka, Bangladesh. Labor activists took pictures of the various clothing
labels being worked on at the Bangladeshi garment factory. It was
prominent throughout the debris. Walmart immediately feigned ignorance
claiming the factory was a third party and they were unaware of any
dealings with the factory. This was discovered to be a lie. In June of
2012 the factory had asked Walmart for money in order to improve safety
conditions at the factory. It was found that there were not any fire
exits, and the most shocking fact, other than the deaths, is that
Bangladeshi textile workers are paid 18 to 20 cents an hour.
Let’s take a look at
MIM
Theory 10. The labor aristocracy article entitled: The White
Working Class: Gross Parasitism, by MC12, pg 48:
“Defining the value of labor power is difficult. It has to be at least a
subsistence wage in order to reproduce the working class so that
capitalists have more workers. But in the era of imperialism, things
have changed. On the one hand, in many oppressed nations we find that
the proletariat is paid less than the value of their labor power,
measured as a bare subsistence. That is, in many countries the wages
paid to workers are not enough to sustain them physically, so that they
rely on other means of subsistence, such as family farming or other
informal economic systems - and they die or are sick more. For that
reason, imperialist multinational corporations (IMCs) never employ all
the potential workers in a poor country. Those who are not employed by
the imperialists need to work to supplement the wages of the paid
workers. This is the system of super exploitation, and it generates
superprofits, as Lenin described in Imperialism, The Highest Stage of
Capitalism.”
Comrades, do you realize MC12 wrote that piece 17 years ago? It is as
relevant today as it was then, and maybe even more so.
Walmart is establishing a pattern of deceptive and unethical business
practices and for some reason the department of injustice has been
turning a blind eye to their blatantly criminal behavior. In December
2012 journalist David Barstow of the New York Times wrote a
piece entitled “Walmart, Bribes and Mexico.” The piece detailed
Walmart’s conspiracy to bribe the mayor of Teotihuacán, Mexico.
Teotihuacán is the site of some ancient pyramids, a bona fide cultural
historical place. But Walmart wanted to expand by any means necessary
even if it meant violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. However,
there has been evidence that shows FBI investigators never notified the
Injustice Department. Oh, the cat is out of the bag now but Walmart is
doing everything possible to hush up the vast Mexican bribery scheme.
Environmental Destruction
February 18, 2013 on the Washington mall in Washington D.C., the largest
climate change rally ever in U.S. history was staged. The main focus was
convincing President Barack Obama to stop the Keystone Pipeline. The
Keystone Pipeline would run from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico
and it would transport a product known as tar sands oil. Tar sands is
one of the most volatile, noxious, toxic, and environmentally damaging
oil products known to man. Greenhouse gases are doubled, sometimes
tripled, in reference to the production of this volatile product.
Chemicals like Benzene, a known carcinogenic, must be mixed with tar
sands so that it may move through the pipeline. I don’t even want to
begin to describe the natural disaster or threat to the environment that
will occur if one of these pipes were to rupture.
Imperialist multinational corporations that deal in fossil fuels
(i.e. oil and gas) have conspired to create an entity that funds the
denial of global warming. In mid-February 2013 journalist Suzanne
Goldberg of the Guardian did an exposé on Donors Trust, a right
wing fund raising monster which specializes in funding groups which
publish information denying global climate change. The key to the
deception is this: Donors Trust right wing financial backers remain
anonymous.
Comrades this is why I refer to these IMCs as our most formidable enemy
and greatest threat. When you have the money and power as well as the
intent to engage in a misinformation and disinformation campaign that
has the potential of contributing largely to the destruction of our
planet, you are the greatest enemy to Maoism. Without a planet there
will be no revolution. This all ties into our anti-imperialist struggle.
So now we must apply historical dialectical materialism and figure out
who is behind this conspiracy. Once we identify the threat, we must make
plans to disarm, disable, and eradicate the threat.
Since Donors Trust keeps their donation rosters secret we must ask
ourselves what group of individuals or state would benefit the most by
disseminating quack science information which discounts global warming
or denies climate change? The state of Texas is #1 in oil production in
the United $nakes. Activists in east Texas have been engaged in a
long-standing fight to stop the Keystone Pipeline from passing through a
private citizen’s property who was not told that tar sands would be the
product transported across his land. Keystone offered the citizen a
“sweet cream puff” deal: “We will pay you half of what your property is
worth. Or if you say no we will pay you nothing, take your shit, and
claim imminent domain!” So not only do they think of sinister ways to
shape and mold your thinking, if you say “no,” they just take what they
want anyway.
Comrades, my days of idealism and romanticism are long gone! President
Barack Hussein Obama will not stop the Keystone Pipeline. Activists in
Oklahoma, Texas, and all over the U.S. and Canada better prepare for a
dramatic increase in fascist repression and oppressive tactics by the
state which is working hand in glove with the imperialist multinational
corporations.
It is time for us to educate and organize like never before. Answering
comrade Ehecatl’s, call to
study
Maoism seriously (ULK 30 Jan/Feb 2013), we must think of innovative
means and strategies to reach out to our comrades in Bangladesh, South
Africa, Greece, and Europe who are sick and tired of having the boot of
imperialism on the back of their neck.
MIM(Prisons) adds: Overall, the environmental threats of
imperialism, especially those like the Keystone Pipeline that really hit
home, will make greater inroads with the labor aristocracy than issues
of labor repression in the Third World. While it is true that people in
the First World will suffer from environmental destruction along with
the rest of the world, we should keep in mind that even with
environmental destruction the suffering is pushed on the Third World as
much as possible. As described in
MIM
Theory 12: Environment, Society, Revolution, in the article
“On
Capitalism and the Environment”, “Pollution, like all else under
capitalism, is unequally distributed. On a world scale, waste from the
imperialist countries is dumped in the neocolonies.” This is all part of
why we say the national contradiction is principal, and why we see
majorities of people in the First World allying with imperialist
interests overall. As such, we disagree with USW88 that the people of
Europe have the boot of imperialism on their neck. The white
nationalists, from the social democrats to the fascists, portray the
principal contradiction as the people versus the corporations. This line
leads to a focus on local interests, which in the First World are the
interests of the oppressor nation.
So when we promote internationalism, we are talking about proletarian
internationalism, that is anti-revisionist in that it draws clear lines
between our friends and our enemies and whose interests are being
served. Opposition to the Keystone Pipeline must include this
internationalist perspective, or the opposition movement will consider
it success when the crude oil extraction moves from their own back yard,
literally, to the Third World.
by a North Carolina prisoner February 2013 permalink
Mr. Piggy, you are what you eat – swine Your oppression is your shit,
mud and urine you roll around in when you think of ways to try to take
mine Your rage is the rage of a wild hog I sit and plot on you
sipping this eggnog I wake from the dream and you’re still here As
I look into your eyes I see you filled with fear Your oppression is
soon to be over, your time is near Don’t worry your cowardly soul
while I live day to day in this cell Build myself in a way you could
never tell I hide in the shadows waiting for war Always remember
when it rains it pours When your time comes I will not shed a
tear Cause all my loyal eyes see is Uncle Toms and Klan members My
mind, body and soul will never surrender Leave a mark for the future
comrades to remember Your corrupt mind is on never ending oppression
till we all dead and gone So I guess day by day it’s on Comrades
we will see a better day at the end of this oppressed time zone
As all oppressed nations within the U.$. injustice system know there is
no such thing as justice or rehabilitation, let alone rights!
In prison is where we see fascism getting out at its harshest.(1)
Recently governor Jerry Brown spoke about how prisoners’ lawsuits are
costing the tax payers (parasites) money.(2) We should know better than
this as it’s a coverup to implement more restricted measures in prison.
Not only is he seeking support to curb lawsuits but now Brown wants to
implement policies limiting what prisoners can actually sue about. Like
an enemy telling his combatant he can only shoot at the ground. Perhaps
the recent events of prisoners waking up has caused prisoncrats to put a
gag order on us. If tax payers really want to save money they should
realize how much more officers (pigs) get paid for working in the SHU
(ASU, PSU) than working in general population.
As a comrade wrote in ULK 30 about a
case
concerning the suppression of Black Panther literature, (Tani
Toston v. Muchael Thurmer et al. no#10 cv 288) “The ruling is a
joke and more about suppression and control.” Here in California the
state apparatus is gearing up for repression and suppression of our
so-called “freedom of speech.” This time they are attacking our right to
redress a grievance. Prisoners should be aware of the consequences this
plan can have on our fight against repression. Once this policy is
implemented it’ll be much more difficult to rectify issues we face. Of
course when push comes to shove the state will not hold back to silence
the resisters, as the Attica prison rebellion has shown us.
Time should be taken to study and realize the hows and whys. Giving them
an inch will only do us harm and further sink us into the hole of doom.
Combating the issue of censorship should be one of the top issues we
fight right now.
MIM(Prisons) adds: Jerry Brown knows how to rally the Amerikan
tax payer against the imprisoned lumpen. Not a difficult task we might
add. The federal government already passed the Prison Litigation Reform
Act in 1996, which severely restricted prisoners’ ability to file
lawsuits. Yet Brown claims California still can’t afford the lawsuits
that make it past these restrictive measures. He claims lawyers are just
scouring prisons looking for problems. Well,
MIM
Distributors was officially banned from sending mail to prisoners locked
up by the CDCR for years, a ban that still comes back to haunt us
every so often, by bureaucrats who didn’t get the memo that it ended in
2008. Yet no lawyers came out of the woodwork to fight for our
constitutional right to free speech (Brown claims these constitutional
issues are easy money). And we’ve got a long line of prisoners with
serious grievances, of not just censorship but physical abuse and
neglect, who would love to talk to these lawyers looking for this
supposed easy money. We’d be happy to put them in touch.
The president, commander-in-chief of the greatest empire on earth, the
U$A, gave the yearly “state of the union” on February 12, 2013, as
required by the U.$. constitution.
Funny thing is that while I sit in prison and know first hand that what
he says is crap, I couldn’t help laughing at the contradictions in his
speech. Let’s start off with this: “…kept the promises we made.” Well,
let’s go to the obvious and talk how the U.$. broke most, actually all,
of its treaties with the First Nations. They promised them a specific
amount of land and agreed to leave them alone. But then the U.$. took
more land thereby shrinking the “Reservations.”
The pre$ident said this is the “greatest nation on earth.” Third World
nations and oppressed nations within the U.$. know this is BS. This
nation was founded on genocide and continues its tradition of
destruction and death with wars in the Middle East. Keep an eye out for
the United $tates’s next deployment of aggression and occupation on
other nations or, as they say “humanitarian missions.”
Obama talked about “Peoples’ government.” As a settler nation, this
Euro-Amerikan population has no legitimacy to rule, govern or even be on
this continent. This is not a government for all people, but a select
few who rule over the rest, while buying off most Amerikans to
complicity (i.e. the labor aristocracy).
Obama spoke about “respect[ing] the fundamental rights of people.” If
the United $tates had an ounce of respect for rights they wouldn’t have
the largest percentage of its population in prison of any country in the
world; 2.3 million locked away, most Latino and Black. Singling out
certain nationalities for imprisonment is not respect, but oppression.
If the United $tates respected fundamental rights of people why did it
invade Iraq? No proof of weapons of mass destruction were found. Why
does it sanction torture? Why is the white nation in Amerika better off
than the oppressed nations, not to mention Third World nations?
Finally Obama talked about “fundamental rights of democracy [and] the
right to vote.” He never mentioned anything about prisoners and how they
can’t vote. This is a clear example of a deliberate policy of outcasting
certain people.
Obama’s speech offers lip service to the ideas of equality and
representative government, possibly tricking the colonized into thinking
there is some hope of making this democracy work for them. But Amerika
remains an imperialist nation whose wealth is built on the exploitation
of the Third World peoples. Those who sweat and die to supply the cushy
lives of Amerikan citizens do not get a vote in this “democracy.”
28 January 2013 - Greetings and respects to you all and my fellow
comrades who are enduring the struggle. Keep your heads held high
always. They can lock us up physically, but can’t lock our hearts, minds
and souls away.
I was not able to keep in contact because of these white oppressors. My
last issue of ULK was denied due to what the oppressor calls
advocating hunger strikes.
I am a Texas prisoner housed in a high security unit, Lewis Unit, in
Administrative Segregation. Since 10 January 2013 we have been fed
minimal rations of food and it continues to get worse. For example,
today we were fed 2 small corn dogs and 5 prunes. It was a breaking
point. Some fellow comrades and I have initiated a hunger strike due to
the feeding and continual physical abuse of prisoners while handcuffed
or during use of forces.
The unity in Texas prisons is almost nonexistent. Most prisoners let the
racist pigs treat them like animals. Only a few of us are willing to
stand up. We cannot get change with five or six comrades, but we will
fight to the death of us to get what we rightfully are supposed to have.
On behalf of prisoners in the United States and abroad, I greatly
appreciate your dedication to the struggle.
MIM(Prisons) comments: Hunger strikes are one of the few options
available to prisoners fighting abuse and harmful conditions. But this
form of protest comes with the risk of physical harm to the protesters,
and is often handled with force by the prison administration. While
prisoners must determine what is appropriate for their conditions, we
encourage everyone to put in the time to educate and organize others.
Unity may be non-existent in your prison today, but that should make
clear what one of your key tasks is. We must educate others while
organizing for demands that will unite them around a common cause.
Ultimately we want to unite the oppressed in the struggle against
imperialism, but we can start by helping them to see the source of their
day-to-day oppression in the criminal injustice system.
The pigs have been up to the same old stuff around here. Three days ago
they shot and killed one of the brown brothers with the mini 14 assault
rifle, the same rifle type the media and congress has been trying to
ban. Two guys were attacking another guy and they were on him and
wouldn’t stop. So the pig stopped it with the assault rifle. The
official report is that the victim had a stabbing instrument in his
hand. But the men who were closest to the incident said they saw no
weapon.
Of course they did the routine investigation and sent out some COs to
ask if anybody saw anything. And of course no one wanted to talk. The
pigs have brainwashed so many of us that we believe if we report on the
pigs’ wrongdoing then that makes you a snitch. A lot of guys are afraid
to write a grievance for fear of being labeled. The bad thing is the
pigs have their compradors in place to push this point.
Some guys here on a facility organized a food strike to protest the fact
the kitchen has a mice/rodent problem. It was only one building. There
was no communication that it was going to take place. They did it and
got some people’s attention. Inspectors came out and looked at the
kitchen and gave the kitchen workers a pep talk and told them they
needed to tell the population that the problem was being taken care of.
All they did was put some mouse traps down and nothing else.
Hopefully the population continues to stand up for themselves. If this
is a sign of change I hope it continues because the pigs got nervous
when those guys refused to eat.
MIM(Prisons) adds: The righteousness of opposing “snitching” is
in the idea that you don’t go running to the oppressor to deal with
problems among the oppressed people. In other words, don’t snitch to the
oppressor on the oppressed. There is no such thing as snitching
on the oppressor. To report abuse of the pigs, you are not
bringing the oppressor into a conflict among the oppressed; the
oppressor already is the source of the conflict. And if the
oppressed don’t have the means to resolve that conflict, then it may be
tactically correct to turn to other oppressors to resolve that conflict.
It is true that the prison administration gets nervous when prisoners
organize. The more we can unite around common goals, the more power we
will have. If the oppressed stay quiet and disunited, there is no
counterbalance to the abuse that prisoners face.