Under Lock & Key

The aim of this article is to provide a brief summation of what Hamas is as a movement. It will expand on the history of Palestine written by a comrade in ULK 84. Both imperialist media and revisionist propaganda create false narratives around Hamas, oftentimes mistaking basic facts to suit their interests. It is important to understand that Hamas is a movement and that over the course of history has changed, likely changing as We speak. The primary aim of this article is not to formulate an opinion on how communists should approach Hamas or to speak over Palestinian and Arab analyses of Hamas. Rather it is to point out the fundamental, but often obscured, facts and history of the origins of Hamas and what it represents.

The Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions brings the resistance together to coordinate a counter-attack against I$raeli colonization on 7 October 2023. Ayman Nofal, senior commander in Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant arm of Hamas. was a main leader in unifying resistance for this counter-attack who died in 2023 soon after the counter-attack.(1) The current war is not just between Hamas and I$rael, but one between the entirety of Palestinian resistance against I$rael for the national liberation of Palestine. Hamas is the largest faction of the Palestinian resistance so an understanding of the movement and its history is crucial for understanding the ongoing struggle.

The origins, emergence and development of Hamas

Hamas is an Arabic abbreviation for Islamic Resistance Movement(Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya). The movement was founded in December 1987 at the beginning of the First Palestinian Intifada. Before Hamas there was the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which had a branch in Gaza since 25 November 1946(founded this year to coincide with year 1366 of the Islamic calendar). The Muslim Brotherhood was non-confrontational with I$rael, which led to criticism and division internally during the 1970s-1980s. Hamas was formed as a way to join the First Palestinian Intifada(Uprising) without endangering the position of the Muslim Brotherhood. Under the defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, the I$raeli military adopted the so-called “iron fist” policy of violent repression: it used live ammunition against unarmed protestors, jailed demonstrators, and imposed punitive curfews and closures. This only added fuel to the fire, escalating into a full scale intifada.(2) The participation of Hamas in the First Palestinian Intifada was a major success, leading it to become more than just an associated organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.(3)

The origins of Hamas lie within the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Centre(Al-Mujamma’ al-Islami). The Islamic Centre was established on 7 September 1973, by the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin(Ahmed Yassin). It emerged out of the Muslim Brotherhood, with it’s stated goals of being the independence of Muslim lands from foreign occupation and establishment of an Islamic sociopolitical system.(4) The rise of the Islamic movements in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, only really took off after the First Intifada. This started on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an I$raeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers. Palestinian resistance emerged in response, being met with 80,000 I$raeli soldiers being deployed to crush it. Hamas emerged specifically for the Muslim Brotherhood to engage in the First Palestinian Intifada, beforehand militant struggle against I$rael by Islamic movements in Palestine were scarce.

Palestinian fedayeen(freedom fighters) network was primarily united under the Palestinian Liberation Organization(PLO) after the Six-Day War, a war between I$rael and a coalition of Arab nations in 1967 which led to I$rael attaining West Bank, Jerusalem, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip. The resistance was primarily led by the Palestinian Liberation Front(PLF), Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah), and Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine(PFLP). In the end, it was harshly repressed by I$rael with the death of Muhammad al-Aswad, known as “Gaza’s Guevara,” on 9 March 1973, marking the end of the military struggle. The failure of the Palestinian national movement marked a major turning point in Palestine.(5)

The Muslim Brotherhood was spared this harsh repression and Ahmed Yassin during this time led a variety of political activities and creation of various social institutions. These were under the name of the Islamic Centre, being recognized more formally on 7 September 1973, when the I$raeli governor attended the Jawrat al-Shams mosque inauguration. Later on, the Islamic University of Gaza, one of the first universities in Gaza, was founded by the Islamic Centre. The institutions and activities of the Islamic Centre played a major role in its establishment, with the university becoming a major site of recruitment for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Centre was officially recognized as a charity in September 1979 by the I$raeli occupation. The reason for I$rael’s benevolent tolerance toward the Islamic Centre was to weaken the Palestinian national movement in exchange for a more conciliatory Islamic alternative.

The Palestinian national movement was even further divided with the PLO adopting the 10 Point Program which was the basis for the two-state solution and drafting of peace with I$rael. The Front of the Palestinian Forces Rejecting Solutions of Surrender was established in 1974 by a coalition of communist and progressive nationalist organizations who wanted to continue armed struggle. The PLO became more conciliatory towards I$rael, and today it rules over the now I$raeli puppet government called the Palestinian Authority. The 10 point program in its content may have had some progressive demands, such as right for displaced Palestinians to return and take back their homes. However, its calls for peace with I$rael and usage in justifying and end to resistance led to collaboration as we see today in the West Bank.(6)

In regard to social institutions, the main competition to the Islamic Centre was the Palestine Red Crescent Society under Haidar Abdel-Shafi, who was close with the PFLP. Specifically, Haidar was part of the Arab Nationalist Movement which was started by one of the founders of the PFLP, George Habash. The PFLP emerged directly out of the Arab Nationalist Movement after the Six Day War in July 1967. The executive committee of the Arab Nationalist Movement decided that the Palestine Section should move toward armed struggle. Three commando groups merged, the Revenge Youth, Heroes of Return, and the Palestine Liberation Front(PLF) to announce the founding of the PFLP on December 11th, 1967. Haidar Abdel-Shafi was both the founder and director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which served as a bastion of Palestinian nationalism in 1972.(7)

The PLO, Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre were dominated by different sections of petty-bourgeois, national bourgeois and even comprador elements. As a result, the PFLP was a major threat to the projects of both groups given the revolutionary nationalist outlook that the front upheld, rooted in the proletariat. The PFLP took heavily from the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionaries both in political and strategic developments.(8) Also, the the front correctly identified the enemies of Palestinian revolution as “Israel, the world Zionist Movement, global imperialism and Arab reactionaries.” In contrast to the other factions within Palestine, the front adopted a firmly dialectical materialist outlook, one based in scientific analysis of material reality with all its developments and changes.(9) This is what led to an allied struggle against communism by the other factions, as the PFLP presented a major threat to the PLO and Islamic movements. To note, the PLO refers to the mainstream conciliatory section, as the PFLP was still part of the PLO.

The co-founder of Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah), Assad Saftawi, was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was crucial in negotiations between the Islamic movement and Fatah in Palestine. He was the pioneer of an anti-communist strategy and alliance between the factions, running against Haidar Abdel-Shafi for leadership of the Red Crescent Society with the support of the Islamic Centre. After an overwhelming defeat, hundreds of protestors supportive of the Islamic movements ransacked Red Crescent offices on 7 January 1980. The protestors continued to attack cafés, cinemas, and drinking establishments in the town center. The I$raeli authorities did not intervene in response to the violent attacks against the Palestine Red Crescent Society intentionally.(10)

Coming back to the Islamic University of Gaza, in 1981 there were protests over the Islamic movement’s monopoly over the policies in the university. The Islamic Centre decided to turn against its former allies, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. The I$raeli authorities and the Islamic movement formed a strange coalition to end the secular nationalist opposition in the university. The Islamic Bloc, an offshoot of the Islamic Centre, won 51% of the votes in student elections and were able to impose Islamic policies; from separate entrances for women and men to the way in which certain ideas and courses were taught.(11) It was reported in 1983 that the Islamic Centre hired armed gangs to attack striking students and teachers. Later on, certain Islamic dress standards among students were encouraged, with women who refused to wear Hijabs being attacked for it. A further bolstering of the Islamic movements against the national movements in Palestine had ensued with the Islamic University of Gaza becoming a bastion for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre.(12)

On June 1984, sixty pistols and sub-machine guns hidden in Ahmed Yasin’s mosque led to his arrest and sentencing to thirteen years in prison. Even if the arms were primarily intended to intimidate other Palestinian factions.(13) Yasin’s incarceration allowed his supporters to wash him of all suspicions of collaboration with I$rael. The leader was freed in May 1985 within the framework of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the PFLP–General Command, a faction that emerged in opposition to the PLO after it created it’s 10 Point Program, based in Damascus. The Muslim Brotherhood remained non-confrontational despite the repression against it and built up the Islamic Centre, with the number of mosques doubling from 77 in 1967 to 150 in 1986. This non-confrontational and passive stance was opposed by Fathi Shikaki, who split off to form the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, inspired by the Iranian Revolution. In response to the Islamic Jihad multiplying attacks against I$rael, the Islamic center formed the Majd. It performed the function of protecting the Islamic network from attacks and in suppression of what was seen as social ills.(14) The priority remained in combating oppositional factions within Palestine rather than I$rael.

On 9 December 1987, the First Palestinian Intifada began in the Gaza Strip and quickly spread to the West Bank. The growing popularity of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad led to an agreement within the Muslim Brotherhood between the conservative old guard, supportive of a non-confrontational approach to I$rael, made up mainly of urban merchants petty-bourgeoisie and general upper petty-bourgeoisie, and the younger generation of new activist cadres, pro-resistance, made up mostly of lower petty-bourgeoisie and refugee camp petty-bourgeois students. Hamas was created in December 1987 as a separate but affiliated organization which joined the First Palestinian Intifada. It was largely successful and began to attract a lot of sympathizers. The post-1973 oil boom allowed for many neighboring Arab nations to back Islamic movements across the region, including Hamas and the Islamic Centre.(15)

The Second Palestinian Intifada and liberation of Gaza

The PLO suffered major setbacks abroad, with the Black September in Jordan, a period of major repression of the PLO there. It led them to be deported and transferred to Lebanon. Later in 1982, the PLO was expelled from Beirut to Tunisia. All of this led to the PLO, led by Fatah, to seek out a diplomatic solution rather than pursuing armed struggle. The Oslo Accords were signed later on in 1991 between I$rael and the PLO, leading to the Palestinian Authority ruling over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Military collaboration between the Palestinian Authority and I$rael had increased against the Islamic movement. The Palestinian Authority allowed continued colonization and occupation.

On 28 September 2000, Ariel Sharon, a Likud party candidate for I$rael, visited the Temple Mount, also known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif, an area sacred to both Jews and Muslims, accompanied by over a thousand security guards. He stated on that day, “the Temple Mount is in our hands and will remain in our hands. It is the holiest site in Judaism and it is the right of every Jew to visit the Temple Mount.” This led to the start of the Second Palestinian Intifada, with Palestinian resistance being carried out by the PLO, Hamas, and other factions. It led to I$raeli settlement and occupation forces withdrawing from the region after being ousted by the resistance in 2005.(15)

In January 2006, Hamas had won the elections in the Gaza Strip, winning 72 out of 132 seats with 42.9% of the vote. I$rael and I$rael’s imperialist backers enforced sanctions on the Hamas-led government soon after. Just a year later, tensions rose between Fatah and Hamas, with Hamas reigning victorious and expelling Fatah from Gaza in 2007 after the Battle of Gaza. The government faced major issues, with the poverty rate sharply rising to 65% by the end of 2006.(16)

The I$raeli blockade banned importation of raw industrial materials and put a siege on Palestinian banks to create an artificial financial crisis. Despite this and the rapidly deteriorating conditions, the oppressor classes enjoyed great luxuries and had high levels of consumption. This was especially the case of private tunnel dealers who controlled a monopoly on prices. A large portion of workers in Palestine found themselves in extreme poverty. There are two aspects to this, internal and external, and the external blockade by I$rael was only the external cause behind this.(17)

The origins of the tunnels were historically havens for both smugglers and outlaws but also for freedom fighters. Before the Second Palestinian Intifada the tunnels were primarily used for drug and gold trafficking for high profits. Near the end of the year 2000 they became primarily used for smuggling arms for the resistance factions.(18) After the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the regeneration and construction of tunnels ensued in response to the siege. During this period, the main lifeline for those in Gaza became these tunnels with an economy centering around it. This led to a regression and neglect of the development of a productive economy or sustainable development. It is possible that during this time the primary class within Gaza was the lumpen-proletariat and perhaps still is.

The number of tunnels increased from 20 in mid-2007 to up to 500 by November 2008.(19) Some estimates by a variety of sources, from the Hamas-led government, Egypt, and others, estimate higher. Regardless, most of the tunnels belonged either to Hamas or its sympathizers. The risks that workers face in the tunnels are immense and there is a popular saying about the tunnels:

hundreds of tunnels deployed on the border, hundreds of young men waiting to get involved in the game … write your will, you are facing the unknown, but this is the land that you loved, roll up your shirt sleeves, and be a man, you are now at a depth of 20 meters in the land of Gaza, trust in God and finish your shift … 12 hours in hell, but remember that hungry mouths awaiting you. Here, death is merciful and quick … No pain… No white phosphorus … nor Israeli soldiers who might use you as a human shield, it’s neither a prison here nor jail; here is God and the darkness of the tunnel and breathing slowly till you die(20)

Hamas is heavily dependent on the tunnel economy, estimated to make more than $700 million annually. This economy is ultimately unproductive and heavily dependent on exploitation, creating a class of private tunnel owners and merchants who make up the leadership of Hamas today. Ismail Haniyeh, the current leader of Hamas, is a millionaire from the money made from his ownership and respective taxation on trade through tunnels. The specific class relations will not be commented on here, but this inquiry into the tunnel economy is done specifically to point out its importance to Hamas. The large national bourgeoisie who own these tunnels and the petty-bourgeoisie merchants who conduct trade within them make up the class basis of Hamas today. This leads to an interest in opposing imperialism and I$raeli occupation while maintaining the exploitation of the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat.

The Hamas charter frames the struggle as a Jihad(holy struggle) against Zionism. In its first charter in 1988, it was openly anti-Semitic, claiming that both liberal and communist revolutions were carried out because of the Jews.(21) The first charter also employs idealism to obscure the internal class struggle and only emphasizes the external one in an idealist manner. This was possibly put in due to the opposition to Hamas by elements of the PLO and PFLP. Later on, this was removed completely possibly in part due to the downfall of both of these factions. As we can see, the ideology of Hamas changes as a result of its class character and relationships with different factions. For that reason, we see that Hamas broke with the Muslim Brotherhood officially in the second charter in 2014 for being too passive. It also shifted toward a more materialist conception of struggle against Zionism, settler-colonialism/colonialism, and imperialism here rather than against Jews and Judaism. In a recent document by Hamas, the organization states this more clearly:

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.(22)

This shift in position is important to note. The specific reason why this occurred is hard to track down but the downfall of elements of the PLO and PFLP is likely an important factor. So is the Second Intifada and liberation of Gaza from I$raeli occupation and imperialism. As we see, resistance to occupation forced Hamas to adopt more correct and materialist political positions in regard to I$rael. It still obscures internal class relations for its own benefit, but given the primary ongoing struggle is against occupation, Hamas is able to maintain majority support. A wartime poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank showed a vast majority supported: the Al Qassam Brigades(Hamas brigades) at 89%, Palestinian Islamic Jihad at 85%, Al Aqsa Brigades(Fatah brigades) at 80%, and Hamas at 76%.(23) Smaller organizations like the PFLP were not included in the survey. So despite the exploitation internally which Hamas is responsible for, its recent practice of being one of the largest groups in the counter-attack against I$rael leads it to win the sympathy of the masses.

Conclusion, Reflections and Future Analysis

As we can see, the Islamic movements in Palestine are not a monolith and have changed overtime. The formation of Hamas and its class basis is important to have clarity on, but this article is by no means an extensive analysis of such. It hopefully has helped in clearing up common myths and confusions around Hamas, with imperialist media constantly making frivolous claims. They range from Hamas having spawned out of the I$raeli far-right funding to Hamas being a terrorist group which kills Palestinians and I$raelis. This article hopefully provided both facts and summarized analyses of why both of these common narratives are false. However, there are major issues left unaddressed and a few will be listed here. The political economy of the Levant and the Palestinian clans/tribes are a crucial factor that has not even been mentioned. The displacement by I$raeli settler-colonialism and imperialism has not been analyzed enough in detail. The Muslim Brotherhood and its relationship to Hamas was glossed over as well. As an analysis and presentation of facts from a foreign perspective, many crucial elements are likely missed that are not known about.

Some of these shortcomings may be addressed in future articles. Specifically, an article about Fanon’s writings on the lumpen-proletariat leading a revolution in Algeria will be pursued. The underground national bourgeoisie of oppressed nations in the United $tates are quite similar to Hamas in current times. The displacement of Palestinians by I$raeli settler-colonialism and imperialism mirrors the conditions of oppressed nations and oppressed national minorities at the hands of Amerika. A greater understanding of how revolutionary struggle can be conducted in conditions of settler-colonial displacement by the participation of the lumpen-proletariat and First World lumpen will be important.

Before ending this article, i would like to make a general acknowledgement. This article was written with the direct help of a variety of MIM(Prisons) and AIPS members along with a variety of comrades not affiliated with MIM(Prisons). The work of Arabic and Palestinian documentation and analysis played a major role in being able to answer this question here in more detail. These sources are worth checking out and have been cited below for readers to read into themselves if they wish. This is not meant to advocate for communists in the Third World to pursue a certain policy toward Hamas, but to provide the facts about and a brief analysis of Hamas to give a deeper perspective of what the movement is and represents.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر

<sup>Notes:
1. Joint Room and ‘Unity of the Squares’: What Will the Next Israeli War on Gaza Look Like by Palestine Chronicle Staff, June 12, 2023
2. The First Intifada, 1987-1993 | Exhilaration of Revolt, Promise of Freedom by Roger Heacock
3. Hamas: its history, development, and critical point of view by Joseph Daher, March 7, 2024 | حماس: تاريخها، تطورها، وجهة نظر نقدية بقلم: جوزيف ظاهر
4. HASAN AL-BANNA AND HIS POLITICAL THOUGHT OF ISLAMIC BROTHERHOOD by The Muslim Brotherhood, May 13, 2008
5. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 by Yezid Sayigh, 1997
6. 10 Point Program of the PLO (1974)
7. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996
8. Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine PFLP by the PFLP, 1969
9. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – PFLP by Maher Charif
10. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996, pp. 106–107
11. The Palestinian Hamas : vision, violence, and coexistence by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, 2018
12. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, 1996
13. The Origins of Hamas: Militant Legacy or Israeli Tool? by Jean-Pierre Filiu, 2012
14. The Palestinian Hamas : vision, violence, and coexistence by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, 2018, pg. 34
15. The Second Intifada, 2000-2005 | Mounting Confrontation, Shattered Aspirations by Roger Heacock
16. Samir Abu Mdallaleh, Poverty and Human Rights, a paper presented to the Independent Commission for Human Rights, Gaza, 2008
17. The Tunnel Economy in the Gaza Strip: A Catholic Marriage by Sameer Abumdallal, 2014
18. Ghazi al-Sourani, Rafah’s Tunnels and their Economic, Social and Political Impacts, Modern Discussion, Issue no” 2495, 14-02-2008, p. 1
19. Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), 25-11-2008<BR. 20. Atta Manna’, The Memoire of a corrupted person-tunnels-2nd paper, Tuesday, 01-12-2009
21. Hamas Covenant 1988 (WARNING: The viewership of article specifically will almost definitely be tracked by the feds, Tor is highly recommended)
22. Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas Media Office, January 21, 2024 (WARNING: The viewership of article specifically will almost definitely be tracked by the feds, Tor is highly recommended)
23. Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD), Wartime Poll: Results of an Opinion Poll Among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Data collected between 31 October and 07 November 2023</sup>

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• End Colonialism, Free Palestine

A comrade attending rallies supporting Palestinian resistance to the I$raeli war distributed ULKs this winter and talked to attendees. Here are a couple of the interviews ey sent to ULK.

1.What brought you to this event?

Well, seeing as I am Black and a Christian, I find it important to come out and demonstrate solidarity with the people of Palestine as I believe our struggles are connected. Many people tend to see what is going on in Palestine as a sort of religious conflict, portraying it simplistically as a conflict between Jews and Muslims. Many Christians in this country support Israel because the Church tells them to, when in reality Christians are just as persecuted as Muslims in Palestine. I mean, they just bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius – one of the oldest churches in the world – last night.

2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical, between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?

Yes, I see many parallels actually. The biggest one being that they are both settler-colonial projects. It is important to remember that in both cases, the land was not empty when the settlers arrived. Israel has been waging a war against the Palestinian people in order to clear and settle the land. When the Europeans came to America, the first thing they did was wage war against the Indigenous population to do the same thing. They are both guilty of ethnic cleansing. Think about the Nakba. Think about The Trail of Tears. In Ohio, they said the land was “too good for Indians” – similar justifications were made for the initial Nakba.

I would also say that Israel is almost as racist as the United States. They have different laws for different people. That’s apartheid. Zionists call us anti-semetic, yet they treat non-White Jews like second-class citizens. Look at how they treat Ethiopian and South-East Asian Jews within their borders. You know they sterilized them in the 1970s and 1980s. Zionism isn’t about Judaism, it’s about white supremacy. So I think there are very real parallels to draw between Israel and the United States as they both are rooted in war, ethnic cleansing, and white supremacy.

3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@, First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to realize self-determination?

I’m not entirely sure if I think it is possible, but I support it. That said, I am very skeptical. The only feasible way I think that could happen is if the American Government allows it to happen by carrying it out themselves, but I really don’t see that happening anytime soon.

4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?

I think we could demonstrate our support and solidarity by boycotting Israeli products and participating in the BDS movement as a whole. By continuing to protest. By not allowing Israel to participate in soccer. And by not allowing Israeli academics to sanitize what has happened in the past 70 years. It is important that we utilize our legal means and push politicians to support an end to the genocide.

Second Interview

1.What brought you to this event?

I’m here to show support against the repression of Arabs in Palestine, to demonstrate mass support, and to lift the spirits of others who find these war crimes unacceptable.

2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical, between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?

Yeah, I see parallels in that they’re settlers, racists, and repress native populations. But I also see parallels between First Nations and the Palestinian people – especially in their emancipatory spirit.

**3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@, First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to realize self-determination?

Yeah, of course! The first priority is emancipation of those groups, even if that means through violence.

4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?

I think we can demonstrate our support by continuing to go to these demonstrations and by showing our support for fringe groups such as Hamas, PFLP, etc…the militant fighters.

NOTE: PFLP is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization that arose during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and was one of the Palestinian organizations greatly influenced by the Maoism of the time. In those early years they gained notoriety for hijacking airplanes and remain on the U.$. terrorist list to this day. They took a pan-Arab approach to the revolution, and co-ordinated with many organizations outside the Arab world, including providing training to communists from Azania (aka South Africa). This connection is relevant to why South Africa today has brought charges of genocide against I$rael to the International Criminal Court, as well as the fact that Palestinians today are facing the same apartheid conditions that Africans in South Africa once faced. PFLP took part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th along with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The latter is also a Maoist-inspired group that came out of PFLP.

“without understanding carceral spaces as zones of undeclared domestic war, zones that are inextricably linked to imperial and officially acknowledged wars abroad, we cannot fully understand how and why the U.S. became the global leader of incarceration that it is today.” (1)

Tip of the Spear is the story of the organization and flourishing of resistance to American imperialism as it developed in the New York state prison system in the 1960s and 1970s, including the time well before the four days of Attica in 1971. Professor of anthropology Orisanmi Burton does many things in this book, a lot of which we’ll only be able to mention briefly or not at all, but MIM(Prisons) has already sent out many copies of this book and is prepared to send out many more to enable further study and discussion of Burton’s very worthy research and ideas.

We are asking our readers to send their own feedback on this book, to write up their own local histories or stories applying the framework below, and to popularize this understanding of U.$. prisons as part of the imperialist war on the oppressed peoples of the world that we must unite against.

Prisons are War

Burton begins his investigation with George Jackson’s observation that Black people “were defeated in a war and are now captives, slaves or actually that we inherited a neoslave existence.” (2) Prison conditions don’t originate in the law or in ideas but in the historical fact of defeat in a war that still continues.

But what kind of war is it? One side surrounds the other and forces it to submit daily, the way that an army laying siege to a city tries to wear down the resistance of the population. These sieges include not just starving prisoners of food but of social life, education, and culture. In maintaining its rule the state uses the tools of counterinsurgency to split the revolutionary ranks, co-opt the cause and re-establish its rule on a more secure level. On the other side, the prisoners have themselves, their ability to unite and organize in secret, and their willingness to sacrifice for the cause – the attributes of a guerrilla army. (3)

Burton spends an entire chapter, “Hidden War,” laying out the strategies the state pursued when its naked brutality failed to prevent prisoner organization and rebellion. After the smoke cleared at Attica and wardens, politicians and prison academics had a chance to catch their breath, they settled on four strategies to prevent another Attica from happening: (4)

One, prisons were expanded across the state, so that density was reduced and prisoner organizing could be more effectively disrupted. If a prisoner emerged as a leader, they could be sent to any number of hellholes upstate surrounded by new people and have to start the process all over again. The longer and more intense the game of Solitaire the state played with them, the better. We see this strategy being applied to USW comrades across the country to this day.

Prisons were also superficially humanized, the introduction of small, contingent privileges to encourage division and hierarchy among prisoners, dull the painful edge of incarceration somewhat, and dangle hope. Many prisoners saw through it, and Burton makes the point that the brief periods of rebellion had provided the only real human moments most prisoners had experienced during their time inside. For example, Attica survivor, John “Dacajeweiah” Hill described meeting a weeping prisoner in D yard during the rebellion who was looking up at the stars for the first time in 23 years. (5) Burton sums this up: “the autonomous zones created by militant action… had thus far proven the only means by which Attica’s oppressive atmosphere was substantially ameliorated.”

Diversification went hand in hand with expansion, where a wide range of prison experiences were created across the system. Prisons like Green Haven allowed prisoners to smoke weed and bring food back to their cells, and permitted activities like radical lectures from outsiders. At the same time, other prisons were going on permanent lockdowns and control units were in development.

And finally, programmification presented a way for prisoners to be kept busy, for outsiders (maybe even former critics of the prison system) to be co-opted and brought into agreement with prison officials, and provide free labor to keep the system stable by giving prisoners another small privilege to look forward to. To this day, New York, as well as California and other states, require prisoners who are not in a control unit to program.

All of this was occurring in the shadow of the fact that the state had demonstrated it would deploy indiscriminate violence, even sacrificing its own employees as it had at Attica, to restore order. The classic carrot-and-stick dynamic of counterinsurgency was operating at full force.

Before Attica: Tombs, Branch Queens, Auburn

Burton discusses Attica, but doesn’t make it the exclusive focus of his book, as it has already been written about and discussed elsewhere. He brings into the discussion prison rebellions prior to Attica that laid the groundwork, involved many of the same people, and demonstrated the character of the rebellions overall.

The first was at Tombs, or the Manhattan House of Detention, where prisoners took hostages and issued demands in the New York Times, denouncing pretrial detention that kept men in limbo for months or years, overcrowding, and racist brutality from guards. Once the demands were published, the hostages were released. Eighty corrections officers stormed the facility with blunt weapons and body armor and restored order, and after the rebellion two thirds of the prisoners were transferred elsewhere to break up organizations, like the Inmate Liberation Front, that had grown out of Tombs and supported its resistance. (6) Afterwards, the warden made improvements and took credit for them. This combination of furious outburst, violent response and conciliatory reform would repeat itself.

Next Branch Queens erupted, where the Panther 21 had recently been incarcerated. Prisoners freed them, hung a Pan-Afrikan flag out of a window, took hostages and demanded fair bail hearings be held in the prison yard or the hostages would be executed. The bail hearing actually happened and some of the prisoners who had been in prison for a year for possibly stealing something were able to walk out. The state won the battle here by promising clemency if the hostages were released, which split the prisoners and led to the end of the rebellion. Kuwasi Balagoon, who would later join the Black Liberation Army, was active in the organization of the rebellion and learned a lot from his experiences seeing the rebellion and the repression that followed after the state promised clemency. (7)

At Auburn Correctional Facility on November 4th, Black prisoners rebelled and seized hostages for eight hours. Earlier, fifteen Black prisoners had been punished and moved to solitary for calling for a day off work to celebrate Black Solidarity Day. After the restoration of order, more prisoners were shipped away and the remainder were subject to reprisals from the guards.

In each case, prisoners formed their own organizations, took control, made demands and also started building new structures to run the prison for their own benefit – even in rebellions that lasted only a few hours. After order was restored, the state took every opportunity to crush the spirits and bodies of those who had participated. All of this would repeat on a much larger scale at Attica.

Attica and Paris: Two Communes

Burton acknowledges throughout the book a tension that is familiar to many of ULK’s readers: reform versus revolution. He sees both in the prison movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York, with some prisoners demanding bail reform and better food and others demanding an end to the system that creates prisons in the first place. But in telling the story of Attica and the revolts that preceded it he emphasizes two things: the ways reforms were demanded (not by petitions but by organized force) and the existence of demands that would have led to the end of prisons as we know them. On Attica itself, he writes that the rebellion demanded not just better food and less crowded cells but the “emergence of new modes of social life not predicated on enclosure, extraction, domination or dehumanization.” (8) In these new modes of social life, Burton identifies sexual freedom and care among prisoners emerging as a nascent challenge to traditional prison masculinity.

Attica began as a spontaneous attack on a particularly racist and brutal guard, and led to a riot all over the facility that led to the state completely losing control for four days starting on September 9th, 1971. Hostages were again taken, and demands ranging from better food to the right to learn a trade and join a union issued to the press. Prisoners began self-organizing rapidly, based on the past experiences of many Attica prisoners in previous rebellions. Roger Champen, who reluctantly became one of the rebellion’s organizers, got up on a picnic table with a seized megaphone and said “the wall surrounds us all.” Following this, the prisoners turned D Yard into an impromptu city and organized their own care and self-defense. A N.Y. State trooper watching the yard through binoculars said in disbelief “they seem to be building as much as they’re destroying.” I think we’d agree with the state trooper, at least on this. (9)

Burton’s point in this chapter is that the rebellion wasn’t an attempt (or wasn’t only an attempt) to get the state to reform itself, to grant rights to its pleading subjects, but an attempt, however short-lived, to turn the prisons into something that would be useful for human liberation: a self-governing commune built on principles of democracy and solidarity. Some of the rebels demanded transport to Africa to fight the Portuguese in the then-raging colonial wars in Mozambique and Angola, decisions were made by votes and consensus, and the social life of the commune was self-regulated without beatings, gassings and starvation.

Abolition and the Concentric Prison

Burton is a prison abolitionist, and he sees the aspirations of the Attica rebels at their best as abolitionist well before the term became popular. But he doesn’t ignore the contradictions that Attica and other prison rebellions had to work through, and acknowledges the diverse opinions of prisoners at the time, some of whom wanted to abolish prisons and some of whom wanted to see the Nixons and Rockefellers thrown into them instead. (10)

The Attica Commune of D Yard had to defend itself, and when the rebelling prisoners suspected that some prisoners were secretly working for the state, they were confined in a prison within a commune within a prison, and later killed as the state came in shooting on the 13th. There was fighting and instances of rape among the prisoners that freed themselves, and there were prisoners who didn’t want to be a part of the rebellion who were forced to. And the initial taking of the guards constitutes a use of violence and imprisonment in itself, even if the guards were treated better than they’d ever treated the prisoners.

Burton acknowledges this but doesn’t offer a tidy answer. He sees the use of violence in gaining freedom, like Fanon, to be a necessary evil which is essential to begin the process but unable to come close to finishing it. Attica, even though it barely began, provides an example of this. While violence is a necessary tool in war, it is the people organized behind the correct political line in the form of a vanguard party that ultimately is necessary to complete the transformation of class society to one without oppression.

Counter-intelligence, Reform, and Control

The final part of the book, “The War on Black Revolutionary Minds,” chronicles the attempts by the state to destroy prison revolutionaries by a variety of methods, some more successful than others, all deeply disturbing and immoral.

Some of the early methods involved direct psychological experimentation, the use of drugs, and calibrated isolation. These fell flat, because the attempts were based on “the flawed theory that people could be disassembled, tinkered with, and reprogrammed like computers.” (11) Eventually the state gave up trying to engineer radical ideas out of individual minds and settled for the solution many of our readers are familiar with: long-term isolation in control units, and a dramatically expanding prison population.

There is a lot else in this book, including many moving stories from Attica and other prison rebellion veterans that Burton interviewed, and who he openly acknowledges as the pioneering theorists and equal collaborators in his writing. Burton engages in lengthy investigations of prisoner correspondence, outside solidarity groups, twisted psychological experiments, and many other things I haven’t had the space to mention. We have received a couple responses to the book from some of you already, which the author appreciates greatly, and we’d like to facilitate more.

^Notes: 1. Burton, Orisanmi Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt p. 19 All citations will be of this book unless otherwise specified.
2. Jackson, Soledad Brother, 111–12 cited in Burton p. 10
3. p. 3
4. pp. 152-180
5. Hill and Ekanawetak, Splitting the Sky, p. 20. cited in Burton, p. 107
6. p. 29
7. p. 48
8. p. 5
9. pp. 88-91
10. p. 95
11. p. 205^

In the United $tates, prisons mean war against the oppressed nations. In occupied Palestine, war means prison for the Palestinians. Two sides of the same blood-stained coin which built the richest empire in hystory. Imperialism considers war to be a legal method of resolving issues, in deeds if not in words.

The struggle for Palestine is a national liberation struggle. The only consistently revolutionary class that may overthrow the bourgeoisie is the proletariat, but imperial domination can unite a whole nation against their occupiers for the establishment of independence. If independence is a precondition for the dictatorship of the proletariat, then Palestine’s struggle is revolutionary and progressive. If I$rael is an arm of imperialism, then the Palestinian struggle against them is revolutionary and progressive. Leadership of the proletariat in that struggle would intensify its revolutionary character, but it is revolutionary even without the proletariat in the vanguard. When Palestinian communists align themselves with all revolutionary forces against I$rael in a united front, that is a correct policy. We have a clear hystory on this subject, and this practice is what led to the victory of the Chinese people in creating the most advanced socialism yet.

We in the United $tates face the strongest enemy in humyn hystory, and I$rael is an arm of the United $tates in the Middle East. Everything which weakens I$rael weakens the United $tates, which puts us in a stronger position. Our comrades fighting in Gaza today are putting us in a position of advantage for the final victory of the oppressed in Occupied Turtle Island. To oppose the struggle in Palestine is to oppose that which objectively weakens our enemy, to leave behind real friends who are fighting real enemies.

“Leftist” support for I$rael in this war is often concealed by a position against Hamas. This anti-Hamas, but allegedly pro-Palestine, sentiment is often based on the supposedly inhuman crimes that have been committed. On top of this being a complete deflection from the primary question of imperialism, the claims surrounding such crimes as the decapitation of infants have zero evidence behind them. Even bourgeois press has shown that the claims are based on videos which show no beheadings, only IDF soldiers claiming that the events occurred.(1) Media campaigns in support of imperialist interventions can go much further and be many times more difficult to uncover than what we are dealing with here. This is a particularly obvious example of an imperialist lie, and the propaganda will not always be so easy to see through. Therefore, in addition to exposing blatant falsehoods, we also need to be able to separate what makes a movement an ally or enemy and what doesn’t, and be able to understand what line the media is attempting to push when they tell a particular story.

The media will tell us that Hamas is committing heinous crimes, killing babies and civilians. We need to ask why they are deflecting from the principal contradiction in the world today. We need to ask who weakens empire, and critically support those who do. We need to ask who strengthens empire, and make ourselves their enemy. That is what it means to understand what is principal and what is secondary. Contrary to popular belief, the moral position of communists is not to do with concepts like eternal justice and true liberty. Communists have one moral position: we are for those actions which strengthen the international proletariat. We understand that the work of Hamas as a whole strengthens the international proletariat. Therefore we understand that they are the allies of the oppressed and we align ourselves alongside them.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free

1. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/12/40-israeli-babies-beheaded-by-hamas/

The Stop Cop City struggle is ongoing.

We explored some of the developments of the Cop City struggle in our article The Struggle Against Cop City in Atlanta in ULK 81. Cop City, or the “Atlanta Public Safety Training Center” as the state calls it, has recently begun construction in Weelaunee Forest in Southwest Atlanta. This effort is funded primarily by the City of Atlanta and is to be owned and operated by the Atlanta Police Foundation. This is a pig training center with a supposed construction cost of $90 million, which will include a fake cityscape for police to learn tactics for suppressing urban resistance. This pig training center is part of a larger assault by the Amerikan state on New Afrikan communities and neighborhoods, along with the rise in gentrification, mass surveillance, police brutality and imprisonment rates. Some readers may remember the establishment of the community-run Rayshard Brooks Peace Center in 2020 and the subsequent state repression. No one can doubt that New Afrikan oppression is intensifying as the police and prison apparatus of the state continues to wreck havoc for the interests of the Euro-Amerikan nation.

In response to these developments, many diverse groups have organized against Cop City. For a while construction in Cop City was stalled because of forest defender activists occupying the intended site of deforestation, resisting raids by police to move them off the site. In this struggle an indigenous anarchist who went by the name Tortuguita was viciously murdered by police agents in a final raid of the forest.

Ongoing Developments in the Struggle

As the Stop Cop City movement continues, dozens of forest defenders and other protesters have been arrested on various felonies, from “domestic terrorism” to “intimidation of an officer.” For example, on 5 March 2023, Atlanta police arrested 23 protesters on “domestic terrorism” charges due to alleged property damage and trespassing, and that number has since risen to more than 40 over the last few months.(1, 2) These felonies are at least 20-year sentences in Georgia.

The state’s repeated arrests were an obvious cause for concern. A non-profit, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, organized funding to bail out these protesters who were the target of state repression. On 31 May 2023, the 3 organizers of that fund have also been arrested, charged with “money laundering” and “charity fraud.”(3) This is yet another example of the state suppressing even the most legal forms of resistance.

While the DeKalb district attorney has declined to prosecute the arrests related to Cop City due to the unpopularity of Cop City, the Georgia attorney general has taken the cases and will still prosecute them.(4)

A “Stop Cop City” referendum petition has been filed (and approved on 21 June 2023) that will put Cop City on the Atlanta ballot if 75,000 signatures are produced in less than 60 days after the approval.(5) Many of the groups against Cop City have focused on this effort, which may have the unfortunate effect of completely legalizing the struggle (which is not a strategy for long-term political development).

Bigger than Cop City

As Maoists we always seek to develop a dialectical materialist perspective that correctly denotes the relations of nation, class, and gender at play. Cop City is no exception. One of the most critical weaknesses of the Stop Cop City movement is that an advanced politics (one that is revolutionary nationalist and aimed at the long-term struggle) is not yet a leading line. If this problem is not properly resolved, the movement will give way to movementism and the Stop Cop City struggle will fizzle out like the 2020 BLM struggle, becoming co-opted into liberal electioneering politics.

We must also look at the global nature of Cop City. The Atlanta Police Foundation is funded by Amerikan finance kapital, from the likes of Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Amazon, Delta Airlines, and Waffle House.(6) Prisons and policing are not a struggle unique to the United $tates. The development of these bourgeois state organs are being rapidly replicated around the world. Cop City can and will be a test run for building pig facilities among the Third World nations as capitalism-imperialism decays. The struggle against Cop City will thus also play a part in the larger anti-imperialist struggle, and this is why developing a revolutionary nationalist line on Cop City is a must in this struggle.

Towards a preliminary analysis, we can say that Cop City is an intensification of New Afrikan oppression in Atlanta. The Euro-Amerikan nation – both Euro-Amerikan kapital and Euro-Amerikan communities – is united towards the policy of increased policing, gentrification, and imprisonment of New Afrikan and other oppressed nation communities. The Stop Cop City movement requires a united front, one that includes all those groups opposed to these methods of oppression, whether these groups be New Afrikan, Indigenous, Chicano, Euro-Amerikan, etc, but maintains some form of dialectical-materialist, revolutionary nationalist leadership in order to expand scientifically.

We have readers often tell us they want to start non-profits, but the Cop City arrests show that there are limitations to this type of organization: the state can and does retaliate against non-profits who pose a threat to the Amerikan state’s interest. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund is one example, where the Amerikan state has no problem arresting protesters or even legal organizers under charges of money laundering if they pose enough of a threat to its expansionary interests.

Cop City reminds us of the need for independent institutions of the oppressed which are flexible and secure, and involve the masses at every step of operation. Campaigns like “Stop Cop City,” or “Abolish Control Units,” attack the war apparatus that is aimed at the population within U.$. borders, especially the internal semi-colonies. As the above recent events demonstrate, we must build organizations that are prepared for the repressive response of the state.

<sup>NOTES:
1. Sarah Taitz and Shaiba Rather, 24 March 2023, “How Officials in Georgia are Suppressing Political Protest as ‘Domestic Terrorism’”, ACLU News and Commentary.
2. Natasha Lennard and Akela Lacy, 2 May 2023, “Activists Face Felonies for Distributing Flyers on ‘Cop City’ Protester Killing”, The Intercept.
3. Jeff Amy and Kate Brumback, 31 May 2023, “3 activists arrested after their fund bailed out protestors of Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’”, ABC News.
4. Pamela Kirkland, 23 June 2023, “DeKalb County district attorney withdraws from prosecution related to proposed ‘Cop City’ training center near Atlanta”, CNN.
5. Joi Dukes, 24 June 2023, “‘Stop Cop City’ organizers in race against time for petition signatures”, FOX 5 Atlanta.
6. Margaret Kimberley, 25 Jan 2023, “Cop City Kills Before It Opens”, Black Agenda Report.</sup>

Since 2021, the city of Atlanta in conjunction with its police force and local developers and contractors, has been trying to bulldoze a significant part of the remaining forest in the city and construct an urban warfare training center for police officers. The forest, which formerly contained a slave labor camp and then a state farm ran on prisoner labor, has been the site of occupations, sabotage of construction equipment, protests and raids by the police. Recently, the cops murdered an activist staying in the encampment defending the forest, while revolts in downtown Atlanta and confrontations with police at the site of the forest have resulted in arrests and terrorism charges for dozens of activists. The movement has racked up several victories already, including delaying the construction of the training center by several months and driving several contractors off the project entirely. But the struggle continues. At press time, the forest faces clear-cutting for the initial stages of construction.

Background

Atlanta is a rapidly and brutally gentrifying city, with a nominally Black elected leadership but a housing and economic policy that has displaced thousands of lower income New Afrikan residents. Cops have been used to harass New Afrikan tenants out of public housing to facilitate redevelopment, rent has spiked well above the already bloated national average, and the arrival of movie production companies (facilitated by tax breaks and other favors) has been a major motor of gentrification across the city.(1) The elected leadership of the city is in a bind – they have to deliver economic growth and good jobs, and get re-elected by appearing to stand against police brutality and white supremacy, but are constrained by their own commitment to capitalism and inability to confront the real power structure of the city, which, as we will see soon, is mostly unelected.

Like most Amerikan cities, Atlanta saw a weeks-long uprising against the police following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. In Atlanta, also like other Amerikan cities, local cases of police brutality added extra impetus to the protesters and their demands. The murder of Rayshard Brooks in June of 2020 led to a revolt that burned down the Wendys he’d been killed at(2), the resignation of hundreds of police officers and even the trashing of the offices of the state police. Local lumpen organizations saw a temporary truce and occupied the Wendys site with arms against rumors of white militas seeking to march near the site of Rayshard Brooks’ death. In the wake of these and similar events police and correctional forces nationwide are facing difficulties filling their ranks and reeling from their abject failure to contain the disturbances of 2020, when over sixty thousand (3) National Guard troops had to be called out to back them up. The need for Cop City is itself a sign of weakness, paranoia and poor morale of the police force.

The Campaign in the City Council

In 2021, after the rebellion, the Atlanta City Council met in secret to arrange two land deals in the South Forest, the largest expanse of forest remaining in the Metro Atlanta area. One was to give a movie studio CEO, Ryan Milsap, a swathe of public land to bulldoze and build a large movie production studio on. A second was to give another large chunk of land to the Atlanta Police Foundation, a private nonprofit that gathers money from some of the largest businesses in the region and funds policing initiatives. The APF was to construct a mock city out of concrete, similar to U.S. Military urban warfare training sites, to prepare police to prevent another 2020 from happening. (4)

The Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) is interesting all on its own. It’s entirely private, with unclear finances and no accountability to the public. It’s staffed by former national security officers, real estate investors and retired police; and it has enacted several large-scale programs around the city by itself such as building a center for a massive surveillance network across the entire city which allows footage from thousands of cameras the foundation has installed to be reviewed at one location. The APF has also built up a house renovation program that buys cheap real estate in New Afrikan neighborhoods, remodels it and gives it to police recruits to live in. All of this is done with money donated by corporations ranging from Coca Cola (who did drop out of the Foundation after pressure from activists) to Norfolk Southern. To repeat: large capitalist firms are directly funding, with no public oversight, the extension of massive surveillance networks, police colonization of New Afrikan ghettos, and the construction of a training center intended to make cops more proficient at urban warfare.

The APF is best understood not as a slush fund or a shady organization behind the scenes, but as a de facto shadow government that actually runs the city on behalf of a mostly white bourgeoisie.(5)

Activists uncovered the land deals and organized protests and a campaign to persuade the city council to not approve the projects. After months of rallies, lobbying and canvassing, the Atlanta City Council voted in late 2021 to allow the project to proceed. This outcome, which many of the activists involved in the campaign predicted, marked the first defeat for Stop Cop City. The coalition that managed this campaign, DARC (Defund Atlanta Police Department, Refund Communities) dissolved among accusations that the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) had tried to take over the campaign and use it (and its failure which they banked on) as a recruiting tool. The DSA’s plan was to allow the campaign to fail instead of criticizing it openly, with the hope that its failure would radicalize people into their organization. Commenting on this, a local communist wrote “the notion that working class Atlantans, people who live their entire lives in the trenches of the city’s class war, require a civics lesson to be radicalized is self-evidently chauvinistic.” (6)

The Campaign in the Weelaunee Forest

Parallel to the campaign against the city council and continuing after it had been defeated, a growing and mostly anonymous group of people calling themselves “forest defenders” were ramping up their activity. Some engaged in tree-sits in the forest, others established gardens or engaged in mutual aid projects and free concerts, and others routinely sabotaged construction and surveying equipment preparing the forest for the project.(7)

At one point members of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe from Oklahoma, who lived in the South Forest before being expelled during the 1820’s, returned to the forest, conducted a stomp dance ceremony and shared the forest’s pre-colonial name: Weelaunee.

Several times, crews hired by Ryan Milsap to start demolishing the forest ahead of official permitting were driven out after direct confrontation by forest defenders. Outside the forest, protests against contractors, politicians and business-people involved in the project routinely escalated to vandalism and provoked repression from the police. In one case, a protest in East Atlanta Village was attacked by cops as it was ending, but the heavy-handed tactics of the police resulted in all 17 arrests being dismissed and thousands in restitution paid to those targeted. One of the general contractors of the project, Reeves + Young, dropped out after another direct protest at their officers and after several of their vehicles were sabotaged in the forest. It should be noted that not all interactions between construction workers and the forest defenders were hostile – when crews from the local power company showed up to do maintenance on a line in the forest, they worked around a garden that forest defenders had planted instead of destroying it.

Throughout late 2021 and 2022 this back and forth continued, with coordinated Weeks of Action bringing hundreds of people into the forest and a fluctuating smaller body of activists building and defending the forest in the interim.

Raids and the Murder of Tortuguita

Different police agencies routinely entered the forest and raided it repeatedly. Last May, following a Week of Action, cops came into the forest and smashed up a lot of protest infrastructure that was on the ground. Activists retreated to the trees, continued confronting work crews and burning equipment that was left unguarded at night. A statement issued after one of these incidents read “if you build it we will burn it.” In December of last year another raid resulted in the destruction of more shelters and 6 people were arrested and charged with ‘domestic terrorism.’

On 18 January 2023, a final raid into the forest by officers from the Georgia State Highway Patrol and numerous other police agencies attacked the forest with guns drawn. During the raid a forest defender sitting under a tarp refused orders to get up and leave, and the cops shot em several times at close range, claiming self defense. Eir name was Manuel Paez Teran (nicknamed Tortuguita or Tort), an indigenous anarchist from Venezuela, and ey’d been living in the forest for almost a year helping to coordinate its supply and defense. The cop story, that Tort had fired first from under the tarp and wounded an officer, began to unravel quickly. On body camera footage released weeks later an officer can be heard saying ‘you fucked your own officer up?’ after the shots, implying that the officer who was wounded was shot by his own people. Tort’s autopsy showed bullet wounds through the palms of eir hands, a story more consistent with an encounter killing than a firefight.(8)

Today

The movement is mostly evicted from the forest for now, and initial tree clearing has begun. The murder of Tortuguita, however, has dramatically raised the temperature of the struggle. The City council has already started walking back some of their plans for Cop City, and support for the movement and criticism of Mayor Dickens for being involved in it, has swelled. It’s also important to remember that without the resistance the whole forest would be gone and Cop City would be half-built already.

For Rayshard Brooks, for Tortuguita, and for victims of poverty and police violence in Atlanta whose names we know and those we don’t, we say Stop Cop City.

^{NOTES:
(1) Cde. KM Cascia “The White Left is Building Cop City” March 2, 2023.
(2) Greyhound, “On the Tragic Death of Secoriea Turner” July 2020.
(3) Alexandra Sternlicht, “Over 4,400 Arrests, 62,000 National Guard Troops Deployed: George Floyd Protests By The Numbers”.
(4) Crimethinc, “The City in the Forest: Reinventing Resistance for an Age of Climate Crisis and Police Militarization” Crimethinc, April 11, 2022. Background for the struggle aginst Cop City comes from this zine unless otherwise noted.
(5) Cascia, “The White Left Is Building Cop City”
(6) Ibid.
(7) Crimethinc, “The Forest in the City: Two Years of Forest Defense in Atlanta, Georgia” February 22, 2023. All info in this section comes from this zine unless otherwise noted.
(8) Alex Binder, “Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Terán’s Independent Autopsy Report Released at Press Conference” March 13, 2023.}

In Texa$ we have received more reports from prisoners about the worsening conditions overall behind bars. Multiple reports of increased repression regarding food quality, medical care, lack of respite for Ad-Seg and increased censorship. Much of the staff is not following any regulations laid out for it regarding the grievance process. Many writers have reported guards throwing out grievances. One report from Clements Unit mentions 100% denial of grievances.

The reports from Clements show some of the worse conditions prisoners face in Texas, with people in isolation suffering worsening health conditions and mental health. From Choper’s report:

“In protest fires burn daily on each of the Ad-Seg lines. Prisoners burn any and all items that will burn. So many so often they don’t even react or bother to put them out, consequently we have no mattresses. Waiting list over 18 months to get a mattress. We sleep on steel and concrete. There are no radios for sale on commissary.”

There is some unity in action going on, but without intentional organizing efforts to facilitate further education in proletarian ideology and connecting the masses behind bars to the oppressed nations in and out of the United Snakes, it may fizzle out due to lack of organization. Tactics such as setting fires can also bring about more repression from guards while taking away energy and materials for organizing. We will continue to fight the censorship and prepare for increased repression, and continue to grow USW inside Texa$ prisons.

We’ve also recently gotten a report of a new SPD (Security Precaution Designate) of Self Harm which is a measure the state is likely taking in response to organizing efforts and legal action against solitary. We are still awaiting updates from the court on the Anti-RHU lawsuit Dillard v. Davis, et al. Civil Action No. 7:19-cv-00081-M-BPs.

The most censored units are Allred and Hughes units. Censorship rates for ULK in TX have been increasing. Censorship rates for the last four issues of Under Lock & Key are as follows:

These are confirmed censorships while many are unconfirmed as received at the moment, so rates are likely much higher.

Much of this is in response to increased pushback from the prisoner population regarding the conditions already prevalent across Texa$ and organizing efforts such as the Juneteenth Freedom Initiative which initiated a wave of censorship which has been ongoing since June.

One comrade has been pushing a censorship lawsuit Owolabi v. TDCJ Allred Unit, et al., 7;22-cv-00094-0 which could have massive implication on facilitating further organizing efforts inside Texa$ prisons, however there have been issues with the Courts trying to dismiss the case on payments grounds despite payment being made for legal documents, that has been resolved for now but it goes to show how unwilling the Texas Department of Criminal Injustice is to follow in own procedure if prisoners use it to further progressive interests in making Texas$ prisons into liberation schools.

Regarding the BP 3.91 case Martinez, ET AL. vs. Members of the TExas Board of Criminal Justice, ET AL. #3:21-CV-00337, it is currently pending and the Judge had sided with the defendants and denied to issue summons to the TDCJ board members and director, however further action is being taken, its not over yet. More proof that this system is completely biased towards the oppressor and we cannot let up on any fronts.

On December 16, 13 comrades have unified in the Michael Unit to stop eating in response to ignored grievances, which both step 1 and 2’s have been filed, and hazardous conditions inside the isolation cells, where we’ve gotten a report where an entire row got sick due to improper ventilation. As with some other units, chow is being left out for hours at a time before being served, and people aren’t being let out to shower. We stand with these comrades and encourage other prisoners to find unity through these worsening conditions.

North Texas AIPS has been established and will be working in coordination with other groups such as Texas T.E.A.M. O.N.E. to ramp up more outside support and awareness of the struggle behind bars, and spreading MIM line in and outside of prisons in Texa$. We will continue to expand our efforts in order to bring awareness and strategize on combating the increased repression Texa$ prisoners have been facing

One project we will be working with a number of jailhouse lawyers on is updating the Texas Campaign Pack to include anything we can find to update the grievance information as well as information regarding the new independent Ombudsman for Texa$. Please send us your edits and changes for the Texas Pack so we can make the next edition as complete as possible.

The struggle in Texa$ is growing, as is state repression, our goals to establish institutions of the oppressed nation and facilitate the study of Maoism and peoples war is our path forward. Stand up for your right, don’t give up the fight.

In early December of last year a hunger strike was called at Ely State Prison, joined by at least 39 prisoners at the start and fluctuating over the following weeks. A prison advocacy group, Return Strong, represented the prisoners’ demands as follows:

1. End the continued and extended use of solitary confinement, lockdowns, modified lockdowns, and de facto solitary confinement.
2. End correctional abuse.
3. End group punishment and administrative abuse.
4. Address due process interference and violation in the grievance process.
5. Provide adequate and nutritious food.
6. Address health and safety concerns in all Nevada facilities and provide resolution status to them.

In response, the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) ignored several of the demands, calling them “false,” (2) but addressed some of the concerns related to food and administrative handling of punishments. Lower-level sanctions that result in loss of privileges will now run concurrently instead of consecutively, and Aramark, the food vendor, is being questioned about the portion sizes. Even the head of the local prison guards union mentioned that they’d noticed the portions shrinking recently.(1) Aramark has faced repeated legal challenges regarding its poor food from prisons across the country (3), so the fact that it’s now squeezing portion sizes in Nevada doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.

Some of the more serious allegations NDOC ignored include food being stolen from prisoners by staff, the existence of no-camera “beat-up rooms,” collective punishment and indefinite 23-hour lockdowns excused by laying the blame on “staffing issues,” and the de facto suspension of programming for many prisoners.(4)

Prisoners at Ely State Prison voluntarily suspended the strike after four weeks and the adjustment of some of the handling of administrative sanctions were addressed.(5) We didn’t receive any info from inside or outside coordinators about how/why the strike ended, just that it did. If any of our readers can provide insight we’d appreciate it.

<sup>Notes: 1. Cristen Drummond, “Inmate advocacy group shares list of prisoner demands on hunger strike,” KNSV Las Vegas, December 6th 2022.
2. NDOC, “NDOC Leadership Responds to Hunger Strike,” December 9, 2022.
3. https://federalcriminaldefenseattorney.com/aramarks-correctional-food-services-meals-maggots-and-misconduct/
4. Naoka Foreman, “Advocates: Nevada inmates on hunger strike to protest food quality, prison conditions,” The Nevada Independent, December 8th, 2022.
5.  Sabrina Schnur, “Hunger strike at Ely State Prison ends,” Las Vegas Review-Journal December 30, 2022.</sup>

Texas prisoners face some of the harshest conditions in the kkkountry mainly due to neglect from prison staff, and disregard for prisoners’ health, safety and rights. For example recently in Estelle High Security we had received a report from one of our readers on dialysis, and a copy of eir grievance,

On 15 August 22 at 5:45PM-7:10PM 11 Dialysis patients were put in a van with NO Rear A/C. We got to the rear gate of high security at 6:10pm our officer driving the van told Lt. Phillips:

“Hey there’s Dialysis in the van and it’s hot for them.”

Lt. Phillips said ,“I don’t give a fuck, I’m crossing my kitchen crew to the main building. They can fucken wait.”

It was about 90 outside. Our officer driving the van told her again, “They just got off dialysis.”

Lt Phillips said, “They’ll be fine.”

Their report describes a fellow prisoner who had passed out after they were left in there for an hour. This is not the only heat related incident, as heat waves were going on for weeks, many units went without A/C or adequate ice or respite as reported on from the Luther Unit. Meanwhile, Stiles Unit spent much of September in lockdown during the heat with no showers and limited food. Heat exhaustion and health issues are being exacerbated by lack of respite, this all being against directive A.D. 1064 requiring access to ice during times of elevated heat. The oppressors at this unit deny this happening of course, and show their own unwillingness to follow their own laws, which gives light to the real purpose of prisons of course being national and political oppression. Unity and mass action is the only way to address this, such as TX T.E.A.M. O.N.E.’s mass petition to mail to the U.$. Department of Justice as mentioned in ULK 78 Juneteenth Freedom Initiative (J.F.I.) Phase 2.

This year has seen an increase in reports (at least 135 recorded by Texas Dept. of Criminal Injustice (TDCJ)) of censorship of mail from MIM(Prisons) across Texas, since the start of the J.F.I. As stated in the last 2 issues of ULK, the J.F.I. is simply organizing for prisoners’ legal rights as stated by the imperialist’s own laws (peacefully advocating for legal rights is not inciting a disturbance). Massive censorship continues in the Allred and Hughes Units, among many others, where conditions are some of the worst in the state. The reason behind this as stated before is to prevent organizing and political education from prisoners, and to limit their knowledge of their legal rights. The state’s interest are of population control, and torture (Restricted housing for decades is unconstitutional torture) along with the many cases of neglect beyond what’s referenced here.

“MIM Distributors and our subscribers within the TDCJ have exhausted all administrative remedies with our appeals, letters and grievances. The TDCJ is not interested in following the law on it’s own accord. Therefore we have begun to step up outside pressure on two fronts.

• the legal front by filing a lawsuit
• the public opinion front via our postcard campaign”

“A prisoner’s administrative remedies are exhausted when prison officials fail to timely respond to a properly filed grievance.” (Haight v. Thompson 763 F. 3d 554 (6th Cir 2014)) According to this, if they do not respond to our grievances we can go on to a §1983 Civil Action.

Anti-imperialist Prisoner support (AIPS) has been hitting the streets with ULK, J.F.I. Flyers, and postcards to be mailed to TDCJ’s Director’s Review Committee office and Jimmy Smith’s (Warden of Allred) office, collecting donations and educating those on the outside. We can always use more feet on the ground, and legal funds from those on the outside, more support in general.

This short summary of some of the conditions recently faced by Texas prisoners is a call to unite against all oppression, primarily against the United Snakes of Amerikkka, and to unify under the common banner of Anti-imperialism. Don’t let the divide and conquer tactics work as intended, this political oppression cannot and will not go unanswered. We need the people on the outside to support those on the inside in their efforts to further organize, rehabilitate, and educate in the United Struggle from Within in Texas. We need public opinion to shift, so keep on the pressure from both sides. The more they censor and oppress, bigger our fight gets!

All Power to the People

Since Monday, 26 September 2022, Alabama has struggled to keep its prisons operating as prisoners across the state have not been performing work in their facilities until their demands for reform of the parole system, sentencing, and oversight are met. Organizing around this campaign began back in June among prisoners and their families, after years of protests and litigation over the escalating brutality of the Alabama Department of Corrections failed to make the state budge.

In the state of Alabama, prisoners manufacture license plates, furniture, clothing, while maintain the prisons themselves by working in the kitchen, laundry, or doing yard and road work. Without this work the prisons are dramatically short-staffed and can barely even keep prisoners fed. Meals being served to prisoners in recent weeks are basically slices of bread and cheese, a powerful indication of the willingness of the state and its employees to run the basic infrastructure prisoners need to survive.

The prisoners’ demands are not centered on overcrowding or the fact that Alabama doesn’t pay its prisoners anything for their labor, or specific acts of brutality by correctional officers, as galling as all of that is. Instead, they are targeted at the parole and sentencing systems, which have led to “more people coming out in body bags than on parole,” in the words of outside organizer Diyawn Caldwell of prisoner advocacy group Both Sides of the Wall.(1) The prisoner’s demands are:

• Repeal the Habitual Offender Law immediately.
• Make the presumptive sentencing standards retroactive immediately.
• Repeal the drive-by shooting statute.
• Create a statewide conviction integrity unit.
• Mandatory parole criteria that will guarantee parole to all eligible persons who meet the criteria.
• Streamlined review process for medical furloughs and review of elderly incarcerated individuals for immediate release.
• Reduction of the 30 year maximum for juvenile offenders to no more than 15 years before they are eligible for parole.
• Do away with life without parole.(2)

The sentencing and parole systems in Alabama have always been bad and have been getting worse in recent years. In mid-October while prisoners in some facilities were still refusing to work, the Alabama parole board granted two paroles out of 124 cases, a rate barely above one percent. Whether this was conscious retaliation or just the day-to-day brutality of the system is unknown at this time.

An investigation initiated by the Justice Department under the Trump administration identified horrific overcrowding (182% of capacity) and neglect that has led to some of the highest rates of homicide and rape among prisoners in the country.(3) Following this investigation, the Justice Department then took the extraordinary step of suing the state of Alabama over the conditions of its men’s prisons.(4) According to prison organizers, nothing has changed in the almost two years since the lawsuit.

Because of the prisoner participation across the state, the government wasn’t able to ignore it like they normally prefer. Governor Kay Ivey called the demands ‘unreasonable’ while also admitting that the building of two new mens’ prisons (with misappropriated COVID-19 relief funds) would meet the DOJ’s demands to end overcrowding.(5) Regarding parole and the basic fact that the state is putting more and more people inside with longer and longer sentences with no end in sight, she had nothing substantial to say.

The warehousing of predominately oppressed nation men, with no opportunities for rehabilitation or release is why we charge genocide against the U.$. criminal injustice system. Alabama is part of the Black Belt south, with 26% of it’s overall population being Black/New Afrikan. Yet, 54% of prisoners were New Afrikan across the state in 2010!(6) Alabama is in the top 6 states in the United $tates for overall imprisonment rates, with most of those states being in the Black Belt.

Caldwell discussed the despair prisoners in Alabama feel because of the lack of opportunities in Alabama prisons:

They’ve taken all the exit and second chance options away from these men and women in Alabama. There’s no hope for parole because the parole board is practically denying everyone and sending them off [with] five [more] years with no explanation, even though these men and women meet the set criteria that has been established.

They practically have a living death sentence, if they don’t have an EOS date, so all the hope is gone. They have nothing to strive for there, they feel like they’re not worthy of a second chance, they’re not given a second chance. And no one has any type of trust or hope in them to come out and reintegrate into society and be a stand-up citizen.

People incarcerated in Alabama face excessive force from correctional officers, a high risk of death, physical violence and sexual abuse from other prisoners and are forced to live in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, according to the DOJ.

The prison authorities have responded to the work refusal by cancelling all visitation, cutting programming back to nothing, and serving next to no food. The Alabama Department of Corrections is one of many prison systems across the country struggling to function without enough people to run its operations. While prisoners are the primary people to suffer under these conditions, this also indicates a contradiction in the United $tates use of prisons to control large populations that could offer opportunities for change. As Under Lock & Key goes to print, the prisoners have faced the state of Alabama down for three weeks. We will continue monitoring the situation and try to extract lessons for the rest of the country.

<sup>Notes:
1. Jessica Schulberg, “Alabama Prison Strike Organizer: ‘They’re At War For Their Life And Freedom’”
2. Julia Conley, 28 September 2022, “Demanding Broad Reforms, Thousands of Inmate Workers on Strike at Alabama Prisons”, Common Dreams.
3. Katie Benner and Shaila Dewan, 3 April 2019, “Alabama’s Gruesome Prisons: Report Finds Rape and Murder at All Hours”, The New York Times.
4. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, “Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against the State of Alabama for Unconstitutional Conditions in State’s Prisons for Men”
5. Howard Koplowitz, September 2022, “Striking Alabama inmate workers’ demands ‘unreasonable,’ Ivey says”.
6. Alabama Profile, 2010, Prison Policy Initiative.</sup>