MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
On 17 March 2025, one of the U.$. propaganda arms of Imperialism
“Voice of America” was shut down. This came after major cuts to USAID,
which serves U.$. interests through aid to people in crisis situations
in other countries. Of course any time any of the capitalist
institutions is shut down it’s a good thing. But these institutions of
“soft power” influence are being replaced with trade war in the form of
massive tariffs, and possibly hot war with ramped up military
spending.
Voice of America? Voice
of Imperialism.
It was World War II which compelled the United $tates to create the
“Voice of America” (VOA) after taking a page out of Nazi Germany’s radio
propaganda outlets. The VOA was used to play propaganda radio programs
to countries opposed to U.$. imperialism. Over the years VOA has funded
and created various propaganda broadcasts such as Radio Free Europe,
Radio Free Asia and Radio Marti aimed at Cuba. VOA would essentially
transmit U.$. propaganda at the targets with a goal to foment unrest,
rebellions and to destabilize the targets. USAID, established in 1961,
provides actual resources to influence conditions on the ground.
Amerikans should keep this in mind when they get upset about Russian
propaganda on the internet.
VOA often was used to promote and support opposition forces within a
country that was targeted while spreading lies, disinformation and smear
campaigns against those in power. No doubt countless lives were
negatively affected if not lost to those who took directives or followed
the advice from VOA in the decades it was in service. Perhaps we may
never know the totality of damage that VOA is responsible for in its
reign of terror. The Trump Administration has shut down the VOA, citing
it as having become “radical” and pushing liberal views. We believe
there is more to it and it’s important that the Chican@ Nation
understands what this shut down means.
On the one hand, we welcome the death of VOA; however, to be honest,
the VOA was no longer as vital to imperialism today as it was 80 years
ago at the height of radio around the world. Today, many of the targets
that the United $tates is focused on have blocked access to VOA via
internet or radio waves. It was no longer as accessible as it once was.
Furthermore, the occupiers seek to harness resources for harsher forms
of oppression. The radio waves today are also packed with white
nationalist broadcasts, on radio and internet podcasts and other media
in multitudes that the days of WWII never dreamed of. Indeed, Goebbels
would have soiled his pants in glee over the flood of white power media
spewed out to the world from these false U.$. leaders. So, in that sense
eliminating the VOA was simply trimming the fat for the oppressor
nation. The state has developed the white nationalists to an extent
where they can now supplement the capitalist state allowing Amerikkka to
reroute its resources. As revolutionaries, we should glean the lesson in
this and work harder to develop our independent institutions among the
Chican@ masses while adjusting our resources to other much needed areas
in our work.
Is the U.S. Tariff War
Class Warfare?
Recently a bourgeois “journalist” asked a Trump official about the
tariffs and how it’s “hurting” the economy. The capitalist politician
said the tariffs were “class warfare” and that this warfare was being
waged by the current administration on behalf of the working class. This
of course is a gross distortion of the reality of what is taking place.
What we are seeing is not class warfare. It is inter-imperialist rivalry
where imperialists are fighting over resources, rare minerals and clout
in the world. “Class War” is the furthest from the reality, if anything
it’s the imperialist class fighting for who is going to exploit the
proletariat of the world the most.
Political democracy in the United $tates is bourgeois in nature and
one way that it survives another day is in fooling the masses into
believing that it operates in their interests. It promotes the false
narrative that it is fighting for equality for the people but true
“equality” can only come when classes don’t exist, when capitalism – the
very system which keeps the U.$. on life support– no longer exists. This
is how ridiculous the U.$. bourgeois democracy is. But this is nothing
new. Lenin spoke of the capitalists selling snake oil in the guise of
democracy. This is because it lulls the masses into believing that the
capitalist state is truly working in the people’s interests. Listening
to the capitalist press (U.$. Corporate News Media) the masses believe
in the propaganda that they do not need to engage in national liberation
struggles because the colonizers are engaging in “Class War” and working
towards equality. Aztlán will only be free as a class when we are free
as a nation. Shutting down a propaganda arm or charging tariffs do not
bring us one iota closer to national liberation. We don’t want money or
lies, we want to be free!
MIM(Prisons) update: As we go to press Trump had put
significant tariffs on goods coming into the United $tates from almost
every other country, then quickly repealed them after bond markets
became unstable (because other countries began to question the
reliability of U.$. debt pay offs). The only new tariff increase the
U.$. has maintained as we write this is on Chinese goods, which has
triggered a tariff war between the United $tates and China. This is a
war that Trump will not want to back down from, but China has less
reason to back down since they are actually a self-sufficient economy.
Since the overthrow of socialism in China in 1976, the Chinese
proletariat have been brought into the world capitalist system, becoming
the source of much of the cheap goods (and surplus value) in the United
$tates. As these economies became tightly intertwined over the last 50
years, the large proletariat in China has supported the smaller, but
still significant, labor aristocracy consumer class in this country. The
United $tates no longer produces enough to support its own people, even
if we cut our consumption to more modest means. We have become a mall
economy, where we buy and sell to each other the things that other
countries make. While this system has been booming for decades, Trump is
correct that this is not sustainable. The trade imbalances the Trump
regime used to calculate the new tariffs notably excluded services, only
accounting for trade deficits in goods. This is because Trump has been
touting a plan to bring goods manufacturing back to the United $tates by
forcing other countries to invest here.
It’s interesting to watch Amerikan social fascists, who for decades
have lamented the loss of “good manufacturing jobs” to China suddenly be
worried about becoming slaves in computer chip factories. They seem to
now admit the truth that to destroy the relationship with China will
lead to a significant reduction in capitalist trade and profits globally
in the short term, as well as the ability of Amerikans to enjoy the
consumption levels that we have enjoyed since WWII.
The United $tates has been preparing for war with China for years as
this economic relationship has supported their continued rise to a
technologically advanced super power. You cannot have imperialism
without the contradictions between nations. And that includes the
contradiction between the exploiter and exploited nations as well as
between the imperialist nations themselves (such as the U.$. and China).
Since there are no more non-capitalist countries to pull into this
exploitative system, the expansion of finance capital is reaching its
limits. Trump’s pulling back from tariffs on most countries indicates a
disagreement among the imperialists on how to proceed. But at this point
the only way for the imperialists to create the opportunity for
expansion that the collapse of Chinese socialism offered is the
destruction of capital via massive war. A war that the U.$. military and
other imperialist militaries are ramping up for. Such a war poses a
great threat to all people of the world, but especially those in the
imperialist core who have been insulated from war for many decades. The
only wars we support and will serve in is the wars for national
liberation and for socialism of those under the boot of imperialism.
The complex issue of dealing with homelessness here in the
imperialist center has led to much debate within our party. In our
current stage, we are engaged in consciousness building and raising
public opinion, while it is our proletarian morality which compels us to
struggle against oppression in all arenas. Homelessness is a crisis more
serious than fentanyl and yet the capitalist state via its “supreme
kourt” has recently determined that codifying homeless “sweeps” of
encampments and criminalizing the homeless for being displaced is their
remedy for the economic depression that capitalism creates. Surely
communists can think of a far more humynizing solution.
At the same time, our responsibility here in the First World is not
to follow the capitalist state around with a rag to wipe up its spills
and a dust pan and broom to pick up its litter. We are not brainstorming
to create reforms that simply make life in the occupied territories more
bearable. We must fight oppression while serving the revolution.
Homeless Have
National Oppression to Blame
The capitalist system is ultimately behind all social ills, and it
was capitalism that first created a “surplus population”, which includes
much of the homeless. However, looking particularly at recent rises in
homelessness in the so-called United $tates, we can see how national
oppression played a significant role in who became homeless.
During the 1960s and 70s, as the national liberation struggles peaked
in the United $nakes, the movement suffered extreme repression from the
U.$. government. Death and prison helped Amerika scale down the rise in
resistance among the lumpen. As the 1980s arrived, so too did the
introduction of crack cocaine to the ghetto streets – and soon followed
mass incarceration. It’s important to note that during the 1960s and 70s
there was not a homeless epidemic and there were no massive homeless
encampments in every large city as is currently seen now. While
statistics are not good, it’s possible that homelessness in the mid
1980s had reached rates that were double what they are today.(1)
Mass incarceration served the state in preventing another wave of
revolutionary resistance. “Tough on crime” laws were enacted to curtail
any efforts from the movement in the U.$. to regroup and reorganize the
lumpen. As a result, the 1980s and 90s saw a mass capture of non-whites
not seen on that level since the time of the middle passage. This mass
incarceration – or mass kidnapping, to be more precise – led to the
disruption and dissolution of the family unit while simultaneously
injecting drugs on the scene. This mass kidnapping then led to mass
displacement as single parents struggled to stay afloat often succumbing
to escapism and criminalization themselves, only to be released to
homelessness. Though the massive prison boom did allow for a shift of a
significant portion of the lumpen from the streets to cages.
And while it is unclear how today’s rates compare to the 1980s, we
are currently seeing a record in homelessness since the HUD started a
more systematic count in 2007. And this has disproportionately hit
oppressed nations again:
“This year’s big jump was driven by people who lost housing for the
first time, which Biden administration officials say reflects the sharp
rise in rent. The largest increase was among families, and the count
also finds a significant rise among Hispanics. Nearly 40% of the
unhoused are Black or African-American [who are only 12% of the general
population -editor], and a quarter are seniors. The annual count does
not include the many people who couch surf with friends or family, and
who may be at high risk of ending up on the street.”(2)
We Don’t Want Peace with
Amerikkka
Homelessness affects all of society in one way or another.
Financially, it costs over 2 billion per year for former prisoners who
are homeless.(3) If we look at it holistically, homelessness affects
everything from mortality rates, healthcare, education, marriages,
parenting, divorce, child welfare, the environment, etc. It’s unknown
how this will affect future generations. What is known is that many of
those in the homeless encampments, like most of those in the prison
kamps, are Brown or Black. This all translates to economic oppression
that the oppressed nations face with mass imprisonment, gentrification
of their historic neighborhoods and of course being squeezed into
homelessness. For those who support the empire, crumbs are flung their
way, but for the lumpen who have no interest or intention to contribute
to the U.$. capitalist system, an I.V. drip of violence, displacement,
threat and trauma is fed to this population. When the United $tates
describes “peace” for Aztlán, it is describing Chican@ capitulation to
Amerikkka. To this, we decline, as we don’t want peace with Amerikkka,
we want to be free. Our efforts to heighten the contradictions to step
closer towards our goal of revolution and independence is what should
guide us as we move toward our national interests.
The Nature of the Homeless
Marxism taught us that the natural laws can be harnessed in the
interests of the masses. Under capitalism, there is a whole sector – the
lumpen-proletariat, or the First World lumpen in the non-proletarian
countries – who are systematically locked out of the production process
and whose very lives are sacrificed in the name of profit and seen as
castaways of society. The First World lumpen make up the vast majority
of the homeless here in these false U.$. borders. Capitalist ideology
here in the U.$. has been shaped by a long chain of oppression that has
squeezed the colonized internal nations into our current state. White
supremacy and slavery helped forge capitalist theory and practice and
helped accelerate class development even surpassing Europe in many ways.
Indeed, even James Bryce in “The American Commonwealth” documented the
early stages of the U.$. petit bourgeois nature of the 1800s when he
made several trips to the U.$. and wrote:
“In Connecticut and Massachusetts the operatives in many a
manufacturing town lead a life far easier, far more brightened by
intellectual culture and by amusements than that of the clerks and
shopkeepers of England or France.”(4)
By the late 1800s, Amerikkka became increasingly bourgeoisified in
many areas. By the early 1900s, U.$. imperialism would begin to exploit
abroad, bringing the blood money back to these false U.$. borders and
distributing it to buy off sectors of workers as investments to its
future survival. But capitalism can never provide full employment and
this means the alienated masses turn to the underground economy to
survive. For many ex-prisoners, the underground economy is the only way
they can survive. And for the homeless – which consists in large part on
Injustice-impacted people – the underground economy is, for some, the
only game in town.
When we examine the homeless population in the United $tates, we find
that it is made up of many ex-prisoners(5). The internal semi-colonies
are the majority percentage-wise.(6) This highlights the class
contradictions within the United $tates as well. The state has imported
European immigrants in their scramble to counter their social reality.
The 2022 U.$. Census data shows that the white population in the U.$.
would have decreased had it not been for 391,000 white people
immigrating to the U.$. from Europe.(7) This approach to maintaining
demographics favorable to the oppressor nation is nothing new, of
course. Sakai points out how in the decades following the Haitian
Revolution of 1791, it became “increasingly obvious that a ‘thin, white
line’ of a few soldiers, administrators and planters could not safely
hold down whole oppressed nations” which was the political impetus
behind several waves of immigration from Europe in the 19th
century.(8)
We can even trace the interconnection and evolution of homelessness
and criminalization in the United $tates from pop culture to the prison
gates. In the 1950s, Hollywood movies depicted the classic train riding
“hobo” while prisons were filled with chain smoking conmen. Both
populations were whiter than meemaw’s tuna casserole. Today, both
populations are mostly Brown and Black, and yet the revolutionary
movement here within the occupied territories have yet to bring us
closer to finding a remedy with teeth. Only a remedy that helps the
oppressed nations while undermining Amerika will be sufficient in this
scenario. While searching for the consideration of homelessness in the
occupied territories let us not lose focus of how national oppression
ties into the equation, despite Amerika flinging crumbs to a myriad of
agencies, case managers, construction companies, advocacy groups and
so-called social services.
On the surface it appears as if the capitalists are using the profits
they accumulate through exploitation to help soothe the very social ills
that they create. Nothing can be further from the truth, as the Maoist
Internationalist Movement’s Prison Ministry put it:
“Under capitalism, the anarchy of production is the general rule.
This is because capitalists only concern themselves with profit, while
production and consumption of humyn needs is at the whim of the economic
laws of capitalism. As a result, people starve, wars are fought and the
environment is degraded in ways that make humyn life more difficult or
even impossible. Another result is that whole groups of people are
excluded from the production system, whereas in pre-class societies, a
group of humyns could produce the basic food and shelter that they
needed to survive. Capitalism is unique in keeping large groups of
people from doing so.”(9)
Indeed, the capitalists lock entire sectors out of the production
process and create social band-aids that do not eradicate this mess.
Imperialism creates a network of petty bourgeois jobs for Amerikans that
feed off this population that we call the lumpen but which most know as
the “Homeless”. The capitalists have devised a way to make the lumpen
useful for keeping others busy and paid, while preventing the lumpen
themselves from being productive for their own humynity.
The Prison Parallel
As mentioned above, another place we find concentrations of lumpen
are the prisons, where they are treated similarly. A recent example of
this is in California where the California Division of Occupational
Safety and Health (known as CAL/OSHA) recently attempted to address
climate change and adapting to a rising heat epidemic. The State of
California recently created heat standards for California workers. This
would include more breaks and cooling and ventilation in all state
buildings that respond to climate change. CAL/OSHA excluded California
prisons and jails from the new regulations.(10)
The jails and prisons are lumpen centers where prisoners are often
subjected to subhuman conditions, torture, medical maltreatment in
HELLth care, not to mention outright murder by the state. The heat is
also used against those prisoners who challenge the state in general and
revolutionary prisoners in particular. Indeed, our Party has heard first
hand accounts from some of our members who have been held in the U.$.
concentration kamps (prisons). Our Chairman himself was held and
tortured for a decade in the state’s Security Housing Units (S.H.U.) in
solitary confinement, so our understanding of the conditions of
prisoners is in depth. Some of the accounts we heard were that in the
most humid prisons where temperatures in the summer rise to 110°F (43°C)
the prison officials will turn on the heaters in the cells, while in the
coldest prisons, even where it snows, the prison officials will crank up
the air conditioning to make the cells like “ice boxes”. One comrade
described how at a particular prison they were at, it was so hot in the
cell that this comrade would pour water on the cement floor and lay on
the floor only in underwear as it was extremely unbearable. Another
comrade described that it was so hot at one Central Valley prison that
it felt as if eir “insides were cooking”.
Science tells us that excessive heat also increases risk of stroke
and other health problems. Those with pre-existing conditions or failing
health will have their conditions exacerbated in extreme heat. The
excuse cited for excluding prisoners from these new climate related
protections was cost. It’s too expensive to humynize the lumpen. This
points to another example of the lumpen simply being useful at this time
to be given the bare minimum to exist another day in dehumynized
conditions.
The lumpen are in a precarious position to say the least, here in the
United Snakes and in any society for that matter. First World lumpen can
have a hand in emancipating humynity here in the imperialist center or
end up succumbing to its demise like the old couple who had been married
half a century and when one dies the other spouse quickly follows. The
lumpen plays a vital role where it can be bought off as foot soldiers
for capitalism in its fascist development or as the lumpen developed in
Maoist China as some of the fiercest fighters for the revolution in the
form of the Red Guards.(11)
Marx hinted at this when he said:
“But capital not only lives upon labor. Like a master, at once
distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses
of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the
crises.”(12)
Today, in the First World, most “workers” are in the labor
aristocracy and not the slaves of capital that Marx describes here. The
lumpen, however, can be seen as “runaway slaves”, those who in many ways
have cast off the tethers of capitalist society.
It is important that we understand that social control determines the
mass influx of planation-like facilities which prisoners in the U.$. are
compelled to endure as well as the lumpenization that comes with it. The
future of the Chican@ Nation relies on us grasping this and responding
in a way that advances Aztlán closer to independence.
Concrete Analysis of
a Concrete Situation
The lumpen who mostly comprise the “homeless” within the U.$. are a
resourceful bunch who organize in unprecedented ways within these false
U.$. borders. In our party’s study, we have interviewed dozens of
homeless people living in various modes of existence. Some homeless
exist as couch surfers living persyn to persyn, some live in cars or
RVs, some in cardboard boxes on sidewalks across the U.$., some live in
mental facilities, jails or prisons and yet some live in abandoned
buildings, parks, creeks and in homeless camps. About 62% of homeless in
the general population are “sheltered”, while only 50% of former
prisoners in the homeless population are “sheltered.”(13)
The encampments are of special concern, as they are the most
organized of the homeless population. In the State of California, recent
numbers show the homeless population at 181,000.(14) These are the
numbers that could be documented, so we suspect the actual count to be
much higher, probably in the range of 200,000, as there are many who
live in the shadows and for many different reasons refuse to be counted
by the state. It should also be noted that it was in San Jose,
California some years back where some have called the largest homeless
camp in the U.$. was found. This camp even had a name that the lumpen
gave it – “The Jungle” and this encampment had up to 10,000 people
living there, 10,000 lumpen, mostly Chican@s who existed for over a
decade as a camp.
It is also interesting that the State of California which is not just
a state within Aztlán but currently includes the heart of what the
capitalists call “silicon valley” also has huge swaths of homeless
people. So much wealth and privilege exists alongside such misery,
poverty and hunger in this place where people’s lives are reduced to
nada if those lives do not build capitalism. This reminds us what we are
fighting.
The homeless camps are comprised of lumpen of all ages, including
babies and the elderly. There are teens who have lived much of their
lives in the camps. Many children are illiterate and relocating from
camp to camp or from camp to “flying homeless” (i.e., living on
sidewalks or in cars).
The larger and more established camps have a main organizer who acts
as a warlord of sorts. These larger camps tend to be organized more on
the model of U.$. youth survival groups, which the capitalists call
“gangs” rather than lumpen organizations. These main camps have rules
and penalties that go with them. The high crimes in these camps are
crimes against children, for which the penalty can be a beating and
banishment or even death depending on the severity of the crime.
The shot-callers within the main camps have hystorically been male,
although the shot-callers tend to be more permanent while the rest of
the community tends to be more fluid, with many relocating regularly or
ending up in jail. In our study, all of the shot-callers have been
imprisoned in some form, whether that be in county jail or prison.
Those who comprise these main camps “surface” to the streets
sporadically for food, showers or to tap into the underground economy by
any means necessary. Camp life tends to revolve around food, water and
drugs. “Communal” living in the main camps is often injected with drugs.
Drug use is rampant in the camps, although not all homeless in the camps
are users. Some are sellers who slang dope in the camps making thousands
in profits off their fellow lumpen’s misery and addiction. The prime
drugs of choice in the camps being meth, heroin and crack. The dealers
on the streets ensure that the main camps stay flooded with dope.
Most of the main camps are located in creeks, industrial areas, or
under freeway bridges and underpasses. Many of the camps have
electricity from stolen generators and power lines. Contrary to what
people believe, many of the homeless do not bathe in the creeks even
when their camps are in the creek. Many use camping showers or seek
showers at community centers or at the homes of friends and family.
The factors contributing to the epidemic known as homelessness have
been formulated elsewhere, we know that the heart of the problem remains
to be capitalism. We understand that factors like hunger afflict the
homeless population and throwing the homeless something to chew on has
continued to be done by both liberals and religious conservatives alike
and to no avail. As communists, we need to take action that translates
to radically different terms and which is more impactful and deep
reaching.
Identifying and heightening the contradictions here in the occupied
territories of Aztlán while aiding the Brown masses and pushing the
national liberation struggle forward on these shores is a key tenet of
our party. Homelessness is one of the major fractures within the empire
in which the development of resistance is likely, the other being the
U.$. prison system. It is our duty to nurture these factors. In order to
properly carry out our duties, we need to understand how the lumpen are
currently responding to these capitalist assaults on their humynity.
Cultural Revolution
“Due to the precarious stratification of the lumpen, and the
imperialists’ refusal to let us fully integrate into Amerika, our
allegiance to the imperialists is more tenuous. As the lumpen experience
oppression first hand here in Amerika, we are in a position to spearhead
the revolutionary vehicle within U.$. borders” (15)
Social practice is the remedy which will deliver the Chican@ masses
to national liberation. A heightened consciousness nurtured by and
forged in the fires of political theory is the vehicle that we have
awaited since colonization. As we struggle to rebuild the resistance
that we need, the capitalist bribes sway our people to the tempo of
their blood stained rhythm, and we listen to Lenin and dig deeper within
the people to find those elements that continue to have nothing to lose
but their chains. Here in the First World, those elements are the
lumpen.
During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), which took
place from 1966 - 1976 in revolutionary China, revolutionary
intellectuals were sent from the cities to the countryside to take
revolutionary culture to the peasants and politicize them, learn from
them, to engage them so that they can take their rightful place in
contributing to the revolution. To many at the time, the thought of
venturing out to the countryside was not inviting. To those truly
seeking to contribute to the revolution, the sacrifice of having no
running water or indoor plumbing was miniscule. This practice of sending
urban intellectuals and professionals to do practical work in the
countryside was also done in the Soviet Union from the very earliest
days of revolutionary power.
Here in the First World, the lumpen (which includes the homeless
population) are a potential revolutionary force that must be tapped.
Marx taught us that capitalism prevents us from solving the social ills
like homelessness and that only through socialist revolution will we
realize this truth. Mao’s China solved many social ills amongst the
lumpen including drug addition and prostitution, both of which are
activities found amongst the lumpen (homeless) throughout the U.$. and
as we begin this work of politicizing the homeless, or of bringing
revolutionary culture to them, we are in essence preparing the lumpen
for the revolution.
We believe that it is not a question if we should go to the homeless
camps to bring revolutionary culture to the lumpen, we believe that it
must be done. Our party has begun this task. Lenin
describes our task ahead:
“We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human
material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the
human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, it is not an easy
matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant
discussion.”(16)
Although we are not “building socialism” now, we are
building the conditions for revolution which will advance us toward
socialism. We must take action, social practice amongst the homeless –
on their turf. Cheerleading for the homeless in front of City Hall or
sliding them a burrito is cute and subjectively fulfilling to an extent,
but it moves the lumpen not one iota towards resistance or revolution.
Comrades, we must do more than the churches and more than a liberal
non-profit. As communists, our role is not to make the lumpen more
comfortable under capitalism, rather we must prepare the lumpen for
insurrection.
It is important that we work towards transforming the homeless camps
into political bases, safe zones with Chican@ cadre in every camp
throughout Aztlán. But we should also take our endeavors in this field
seriously, as the state has captured or killed Chican@ revolutionaries
for lesser ambitions. Amerikkka is deadly serious in its repression, we
should be just as serious in our evasion and resistance and utilize a
strong security culture as we move through the camps. There is much
potential in the lumpen encampments and the enemy knows this.
Marx taught us that the lumpen were indeed the “dangerous class”. We
agree that there is a certain danger in interacting with the lumpen,
just as there is a certain danger of interacting with the capitalist
state, not to mention the white settler nation in general. History has
taught us that to be colonized is dangerous as well, so we have learned
to struggle through generational danger and in many cases to do so armed
and ready to resist.
At this stage, we only seek to bring revolutionary culture to the
lumpen encampments as we see it as complimenting our efforts to raise
public opinion. At the same time, we stand firm that ultimately it will
be through armed struggle that Aztlán will be free and the lumpen will
play a key role in the national liberation struggle here in the internal
semi-colonies. Here we agree with Fanon when describing the lumpen, he
said:
“…that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from
their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and most radically
revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”(17)
As Fanon suggests, the lumpen moves differently. It is not a class
which succeeds at town hall debates or boycotts. Hit the lumpen up when
it’s time to boogie, when violence explodes in the metropole and the
capitalist state feels the slugs of liberation, for this is the arena in
which the lumpen excels. Forged through oppression, the lumpen will
perform on the stage built by the bourgeoisie and their collaborators.
But the party must perform as well and the movement more broadly must
perform. We must perform agitation and propaganda (agit/prop) and do so
well amongst the lumpen.
In “Combat Liberalism”, Mao discussed how liberalism prevents people
from acting on living up to their obligations as communists. Among other
things, he points to failing to show concern for the masses and not
engaging in agit/prop. There are many reasons why people practice
liberalism. In many ways, some have fallen into liberalism here in the
occupied territories. Many within the movement have opted out of
reaching back into the lumpen encampments to those alienated not only
from labor but from society as well. In this sense, the party seeks to
combat liberalism in this field.
Some have wondered what is to be done with the lumpen encampments,
“what is possible?” some ask. There is much work to be done. We need our
presence felt, we need to become a regular presence in the camps and
begin to inject them with revolutionary culture – with art, literature
and teatro. We need to gain their confidence and to teach and learn –
from the masses, to the masses.
The Chican@ movement of the past never dealt with the homeless in
this way, although the homeless epidemic was not in existence to today’s
levels we must be honest that scant attention was given to the homeless
in general. Today’s Chican@ movement must do more as the next generation
must in turn do more than us and continue to build.
The lumpen encampments are self-governed as the pigs or other state
agencies rarely ever go into the camps. We see that there is potential
in these zones, especially with their concentrated amount of lumpen. We
believe that by focusing our energy on this demographic, it will
complete our overall strategy of winning this struggle for national
liberation. There is much work to do in these camps, but political
education is essential and a stepping stone to developing dual power in
these zones.
Let us be clear that any weakening of resolve about the task ahead
only helps Amerikkka and hurts the struggle for national liberation. At
the same time, our efforts are not to set up re-entry services for the
homeless lumpen, on the contrary, our efforts are to set up and recruit
the lumpen to serve the people. We are not seeking reforms, nor do we
believe in them, rather we agree with the BLA that
“reform of the oppressive system can never benefit its victims: in
the final analysis, the system of oppression was created to insure the
rule of particular racist classes and sanctify their capital. To seek
reform therefore inevitably leads to, or begins with, the recognition of
the laws of our oppressor as being valid.”(18)
Reform is only tactical in getting the boot off our neck long enough
for us to breathe to fight and resist the oppressor nation another day.
Likewise, the oppressors laws and kkkourts mean nothing to us, as they
are illegitimate to the core, we only navigate them in order to plot the
demise of Amerika.
The lumpen encampments, like the prisons, are fertile grounds for
resistance. In the First World, we are forced to dig deeper into the
social forces to find those who are not bribed by the profits stolen
from the Third World pockets. Our efforts today are for the Third
World.
Notes: (1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States - gives
a homeless rate of 0.09% in 1990, but mentions this was probably an
undercount; it gives 200-500 thousand as the homeless count in 1984,
which doubled by 1987 - at the high end this would put homeless rates at
0.22% and 0.42% respectively; the 2023 rate was 0.19% the highest rate
since HUD began gathering data more accurately in 2007 (2)Jennifer
Ludden, 15 December 2023, Homelessness in the U.S. hit a record high
last year as pandemic aid ran out, All Things Considered. (3)
“The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the U.S.”, from the Institute
for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation”, October 2016, George
Warren Brown School of Social Work. (4) “The American Commonwealth”,
by James Bryce (1888-1959, Vol II, pp.557-58). (5)According Prison Policy
Initiative analysis of HUD data, formerly incarcerated have 2%
homelessness rate compared to 0.21% of the overall population. A Harvard
Business review article says there are about 5 million formerly
incarcerated in U.$.; 2% of 5 million is 100,000; .21% of 350 million is
735,000. Based on these estimates, formerly incarcerated are less than
15% of homeless in U.$. streets. (6) about 61% of homeless are
oppressed nations according to stats in “Defining and Measuring the
Lumpen Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by
MIM(Prisons), July 2016. (7) U.S. Census Bureau. (8) “Settlers”,
by J. Sakai (2014, pg. 52). (9) “Defining and Measuring the Lumpen
Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by MIM(Prisons),
July 2016. (10) “Prisons are a Cruel Exception to Heat Rules”, by
Nicholas Shapiro and Bharat Jayram Venkat, the Mercury News, July 14,
2024. (11)Wiawimawo,
October 2018, Sakai’s Investigation of the Lumpen in Revolution, ULK
Issue 64. (12) “Wage, Labor and Capital”, by Karl Marx.
(13)Lucius
Couloute, August 2018, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly
incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative. (14) “Newsom
Orders Sweeps of Camps”, by Ethan Varian, The Mercury News, July 26,
2024. (15) “Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán”, by a
MIM(Prisons) Study Group, 2015, 2021, pg. 14. (16) V.I. Lenin,
“Left-wing communism – an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31,
pg. 50. (17) “The Wretched of the Earth”, by Frantz Fanon. (18)
“Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army”, pg. 111.
The recent Zionist attacks on Rafah signaled to the world that the
imperialists are in lock step as they cut a hideous path of genocide
through Palestine. U.$. imperialism has given the nod and wink to forge
ahead as we all watch, as we all mourn.
The imperialists have circled the wagons despite the world responding
in disgust. The people should also come together, all sectors here in
the internal semi-colonies also known as the United Snakes.
Of special interest is two sectors who defy the pull of capitalist
bribes. This defiance arrives from different paths and yet our party
feels they are both anti-imperialist in nature. These sectors in the
United $tates are the prison movement – made up of prisoners, former
prisoners and outside supporters, and the other sector being the student
movement – being the students on school campuses across the country.
These two sectors have the least to lose and the most to win when it
comes to revolution. Both bring that passion and fire needed to ignite
the flame of real resistance and thus should find ways to resist in
tandem.
A free Palestine, like a free Aztlán, will only happen when
anti-imperialism is exercised in a united front between all oppressed
and allies. The world sees that Palestine is deserving of peace, for it
is life while Israel signifies death!
I$rael’s war on Palestine is without a doubt a genocide.
There has been a groundswell of support from people around the world
that conclude that the settler state of I$rael needs to be brought to
justice and that Amerika has given the “greenlight” for the genocide to
ensue.
At a recent protest over I$rael bombing an Iranian consulate in
Syria, killing several Iranian military intelligence personnel, Hamas
responded with a statement saying among other things that Amerika has
given the green light for this bombing by not denouncing it. We would
agree and go further by stating that Amerika has green-lit genocide
since it first arrived here in Turtle Island over 500 years ago.
It strikes us as odd that the world would be shocked about Amerika
standing by in the face of the genocide happening to Palestine when
Chican@s, First Nations and New Afrikans know first hand that the United
$tates is not only a client but a pathfinder in the realm of genocidal
settlerism. We should remember it was Amerika who inspired the likes of
Hitler in honing his genocidal craft, an evaluation of evidence supports
our point.
In the mire of the oppression being rained down on Palestine,
especially with I$rael assassinating those it has targeted even in other
countries – or in embassies! – we just glean what lessons are available
as the world gets a bold example of what colonization looks like
today.
If we are in fact at the conclusion that Amerika – who gives I$rael
billions of aid each year – is giving a wink and a nod to assassinating
government officials of sovereign countries, it poses the question: how
might revolutionaries here in the imperialist center of the world
prepare and respond?
We should start by understanding that in today’s world genocide
arrives via stages of development by the imperialist agencies. These
stages are 1) Intelligence. 2) Analysis. 3) Logistics and 4) Operations.
What we are seeing happen is war plans, whether we are talking about the
streets of Gaza or the barrios of Califaztlan it all starts with
intel.
The oppressor nation identifies its threats and its assets – on the
ground or online. Because we are in the stage of building public opinion
here in the United $tates we can be vulnerable to data mining that is
employed by agencies globally. Search bots that are known as “spiders”
search the internet 24/7 mining through open source material and all
public records to find any links to revolutionary data, i.e. people,
groups or theory. They snatch everything: Facebook posts, chat rooms,
blogs, news stories, financial records, visa applications, etc… which
can all be harvested quickly on a daily basis, programs like starlight
or spire can then sift, cross reference and separate non-essential
material while then targeting links that lead back to intended targeted
people or groups within the movement. In this way the state is able to
closely monitor not only a movement’s vanguard but anything that
metastasizes out of the movement as well, that is everything in its
realm of influence. Once data is compromised with the help of programs
like Analyst Notebook, it reveals the internal structure of an
organization and its international links as well. All of this intel
helps the oppressor nation develop its genocidal programs which not only
furthers its own interests but the interests of its allies like the
settler state of I$rael.
Here in the occupied territories that some call Amerika, the internal
semi-colonies have long known about Amerika’s stance on genocide.
Chican@s and other oppressed nations who languish in the prisons, in the
control units, and on Death Row overstand that Amerika green-lights
genocide. The Brown and Black people, gunned down every day by Amerikan
police know this as well. The Chican@ nation and other oppressed know
because our land and resources are occupied and controlled by the
capitalists who neutralize us when we threaten the occupation.
The methods employed by the U.$. government that are directed at the
internal semi-colonies are vast. Although counter insurgency is a
practice taken up by many oppressor nations globally, it is unique
within the U.$. empire because of the magnitude of national oppression
in the form of mass imprisonment of the internal nations and the fact
that the carceral state has in fact created the very conditions that
uphold and nurture insurgency from its very bowels. U.$. counter
insurgency has had a program in place which changes names but stays
consistent in targeting its enemies within the prison system in general
and those within the prison movement in particular. Methods employed
today within U.$. prisons and especially prisons within Aztlán (the
so-called “U.S. Southwest”) are meant to declaw our young Jaguars and to
seduce the nation into a role that is at war without shield nor
spear.
It is this clear persynal experience in being a target of COINTERLPRO
which led to the culmination of this paper. Our party sees the need to
begin this conversation in the nations so that not just Aztlán but all
who fight colonization and the hyper-policing, frame ups,
state-sponsored terror, and assassination can begin the hard work of
guarding against counter insurgency in an era that demands our boots on
the ground to stomp out the rising tide of repression.
Revolutionaries are organizing daily in the occupied territories to
raise consciousness and heighten the contradictions whenever they arise
through agitation and political education. The state and its apparatus
is also working hard daily to subdue our efforts and seduce our young
jaguars into the temptation of empire and all the trappings of U.$.
imperialism.
Chican@ units and organizations that influence the nation to
challenge the state and set out on the path of liberation and
independence are targeted. The imperialist state will do everything in
its power to prevent socialist revolution from developing in Aztlán and
beyond. Our role as Chican@ revolutionaries should be to hold workshops
in every barrio of Aztlán where the ideas of socialist revolution are
realized and embraced, it is the duty of Chican@ communists to respond
to U.$. counter insurgency in this manner. Only by mobilizing the entire
community, the entire barrio in this way, will we ever finally get over
the obstacle of U.$. counter insurgency.
Political Line Is Decisive
In our analysis we uphold the idea that ideology is key in how we
move. Political line helps guide us in our political endeavors and we
must constantly make adjustments and test our theory in order to
maneuver in ways which push not just the Chican@ movement forward but
the whole International Communist Movement (ICM) forward as well. We
realize that the trappings of living in the imperial core among the
world’s labor aristocracy pushes many to believe that revolutionary
organizing is not a life-or-death choice. The Communist Party of Aztlán
(CPA) feels otherwise. Indeed we see that – even here in the First World
where most “workers” are bought off by blood stolen from the Third World
– revolutionary organizing is a matter of life or death to the Chican@
nation. If we do not set out on the task of organizing Aztlán and
revolutionize our nation it will succumb to capitalist roaders. For this
reason this paper serves not just as a study guide for oppressed nations
but also as a cri de coeur (cry of the heart) for the raza to grasp the
urgency that we see in the great task ahead or our nation may die.
Although we have a huge responsibility positioned here in the heart
of imperialism, as we combat counterinsurgency and mobilize the people
we have no confusion about the fact that the Third World leads the ICM
and our efforts here in the First World merely compliment them. Maoism
as an ideology is clear on this despite the eye rolls from the trots,
who have never led a single successful revolution.
It is crucial that Aztlán comes to grasp the reality of the class
structure in the United $nakes – as well as in Aztlán – as being made up
of petty-bourgeois class forces. The exploitation of workers does not
exist on the scale that it did in Lenin’s Russia, on the contrary, what
exists today in the occupied territories for the most part is a labor
aristocracy whose life support remains connected to the value extraction
from the Third World. We need to move from this perspective and
understanding. Aztlán’s future demands that we grasp this. Political
line must be decisive in order for our tactics and strategies to be
effective in our struggle for national liberation in the midst of the
counterinsurgency offensive. Ideology allows us to identify our friends
and separate them from our enemies. This does not mean we will not take
losses to state repression. it simply means that we will be better
equipped to continue in this beautiful struggle against oppression.
As Maoists we realize that being triumphant over U.$.
counterinsurgency efforts and the occupation of our homeland will only
happen when the U.$. government has been completely overthrown and a
complete revolution on these shores has occurred. Anything short of that
will prevent real liberation from being realized for Aztlán.
As a party for the Chican@ nation we believe the Maoist concept of
mass line is the way forward. It is the Chican@ masses who define the
path by their ideas which are synthesized by our party. The raza will
make hystory. Ultimately, our job is to engage the people into realizing
their power.
The U.$. government is at war with Aztlán, yet the tactic of low
intensity warfare pulls the wool over our eyes and clouds our social
reality from being realized except for the more politically conscious.
Even among conscious raza in general, and communist raza in particular,
one of the things which separates revolutionaries is the understanding,
which Mao pointed out, of class struggle continuing not just under a
socialist government but even within the party itself as a bourgeoisie
develops within. Understanding this Maoist doctrine in pre-revolutionary
times is perhaps more crucial than even picking up the gun in
revolution. Even in our current battle of raising public opinion and
evading counterinsurgency tactics by the state, grasping this doctrine
helps anchor us on the path to liberation rather than the capitalist
road.
Raza of all political stripes may be targets of the imperial
counterinsurgency campaign. Many may even be successful in evading state
repression, yet evasion per se is not the objective, our aim of course
is national liberation. As a semi-colony existing in the world’s
imperialist center Aztlán’s primary objective is national liberation. We
cannot help free other nations if we are not yet free. At the same time
we should also identify that in order to win a war for national
liberation we need a Raza Army, a Raza Army that is led by the CPA.
U.$. Counterinsurgency
Counter-insurgency is a military concept meant to partake in certain
actions that neutralize insurgents. The United $nakes target and
identifies politically conscious and revolutionary folks within the
occupied territories as insurgents and has designed a program that aims
to destroy us and our efforts. This program attempts to neutralize us
“legally” according to its own illegitimate “laws”, but will resort to
cold-blooded murder if necessary.
Most of those targeted come from the oppressed nations. This is not
to say that most anti-imperialists or revolutionaries are from the
oppressed nations, but that the U.$. knows that it will ultimately be
the internal nations that tip the scale in our favor come civil war.
AmeriKKKa has worked hard to brainwash the oppressed and although they
have managed to ward off the seizure of power by the oppressed they
truly never gained real legitimacy in the eyes of the raza. At the same
time the imperialist center has not held on to the internal colonies and
its global influence for nothing, indeed they pour billions each year in
its various agencies in order to hold onto white power.
Communists often say we are “professional revolutionaries” because we
take our role seriously and understand that many times our very lives
are at risk as we organize here in the Snakes. We should also grasp that
the imperialist state also sees itself as professional oppressors
because it is their lives that are in peril should revolution
succeed.
The oppressor’s counterinsurgency methods rely largely on intel.
Information about the intended target is essential. Knowing everything
about a target is vital to take that target down cleanly. The state
agents are like hunters at this stage of struggle, one of their roles is
to stalk their prey, find its habits and activities so that when it’s
time to hunt they’ll know whether to use a bullet, crossbow, knife or
simply poison the water hole. We give them this intel wittingly or not
because they can only find a trail that we ourselves leave.
In the year 2023 our party took some hits by the state. It’s
interesting that in the California prison system the number 23 is a
known symbol of white power so in some sense we anticipated the white
power structure to strike in some way. But 2023 was also a year of
growth and development for the CPA. We were able to learn a lot from the
repression that was rained down on us when our Chairman was
kidnapped.
National oppression in the form of imprisonment is one of the weapons
the state uses in its counterinsurgency campaign. When targeting
revolutionaries the state will often raid a cell or do a round up sweep
but allow one or two to “get away”. This tactic is meant to study the
regrouping method and allow the one or two “lucky ones” to lead them to
the others. It reminds me of an ancient Chinese tactic, where Chinese
families for thousands of years have caught cormorant birds on Weishan
Lake and tied string around their throats, letting them dive in lakes
for fish while being unable to swallow, in this way recruiting a fleet
of slaves for the master fisher. This is also akin to
probation/parole.
The state also employs agents of various stripes who do in fact
infiltrate revolutionary groups and cells. Counterinsurgency aims to
neutralize insurgents. The state identifies those who take up agitation
and/or organizing in order to reach our goal of national liberation.
Once identified these individuals, groups, or organizations become the
state’s target. Various methods are used in surveillance, but of course
human intel is always preferred by the state. Plants who give the state
the ins and outs of a target’s daily functions as well as goals and
objectives or war plans are golden.
The FBI and CIA both utilize various assets for COINTELPRO – like
operations which spawn various counterinsurgency actions. Their assets
may be a partisan, prisoner, or paralegal. Most people can be utilized
so nothing should be a surprise and people should be on a need-to-know
basis from a comrade to a lover. We should also understand that the
$tates’ wet dream is to in fact have the comrade or lover of a target as
an asset, it is the golden egg in the realm of counter-insurgency.
Assets
Assets come in many forms as has been stated. The state may employ a
deep cover asset which would provide undercover intelligence and assist
the state in gauging the threat. By alerting her/his controllers to an
impending “crime” which can be real or imagined, for example the deep
cover asset may report that a target has an arsenal of firearms at their
residence which may not even be true, the controllers will either obtain
probable cause for a search warrant or will send in an undercover
informant within the scenario who can then corroborate the asset’s
intelligence. An informant’s job will be to record conversations (wear a
wire or plant bugs) and to get up on the stand in open court to swear on
their undercover “evidence”. With regard to revolutionaries, this
“evidence” is usually the most outlandish story imaginable so long as it
neutralizes the target. An informational informant would be one whose
only role is to gather intel to feed to the agents but would never
reveal themselves nor get on the stand in open court. Such informants
usually work for years in this way and almost always join the movement
in some way, in an organization, as an occasional protester or in
today’s world as some sort of online activist . . . the point is they
will attempt to stay familiar to revolutionaries and to gain the raza’s
trust in some way.
COINTELPRO
We can never hear too much about COINTELPRO, (counter intelligence
program) which the U.$. government unleashed on the people in the
1950’s. Initially COINTELPRO was used during the “Red Scare” when
communists in these false U.$. borders were targeted and terrorized. The
state would infiltrate communist organizations and even study groups
gathering intel in order to strike. In the 1960’s the repression
continued this time on the oppressed nations.
AmeriKKKa trembles at the thought of a Leninist cadre organization
developing on its shores, its stomach turns when professional
revolutionaries are conceived in its putrid womb. Our existence can only
be realized if security measures are upheld to guard against COINTELPRO
attacks.
The state employs COINTELPRO tactics to entrap or even assassinate
our leaders. It develops moles of all types and agent provocateurs to
get our cadre killed or captured. It slanders our brightest and most
dedicated and frames those who can’t be neutralized any other way. The
imperialist state does the unthinkable in order to keep the slaves
holding their own blinders and covering their own ears. Just as the
unjust cruelty is unleashed on the Third World, our most cherished acts
and ideas are thoroughly violated in order to inflict the most damage to
the movement. Not only are emotions like love defiled, in some cases
they are weaponized to serve the imperialist masters.
Today we have the memory of COINTELPRO and even of the pigs that have
been mostly etched out for us from seasoned revolutionaries or from the
dusty pages of library shelves. But we define a pig as the MIM defined
it in their pamphlet “What’s Your Line?”:
“A pig is a police officer or other representative of the
government’s repressive apparatus, especially one who breaks down
people’s doors or quietly infiltrates a movement.”
We often think of a pig as a uniformed badge-wearing slave hunter
but, according to the above definition, how many pigs are really out
there?
Our party has enacted security precautions because of COINTELPRO
attacks that we suffered in 2023. We do not name members of our party.
How can organizations that are seeking to seize power identify
themselves to the enemy who will come to kill them when the
revolutionary war arrives? Why would we arm the state with a list of
those it should round up? Why would we hand them the thread to pull
apart the fabric of our party?
Those who scoff at the warnings of COINTELPRO are those who
consciously or not believe in the fantasy of U.$. “democracy”. They have
a disdain for those who attempt to raise the alarm of COINTELPRO and who
raise consciousness around these matters. These Ti@ Tacos usually embed
themselves in progressive orgs and wallow in cultural nationalism if
they are raza. They essentially feel safe in the United $nakes. We
should identify these Toms and learn to never feel safe among them or
their kind.
Most recently it was reported in the corporate U.$. news that the
settler state of I$rael assassinated the leader of the Palestinian
resistance in its current war on Palestine. We hear these selective
strikes happen all the time yet many are still oblivious to the fact
that the oppressor nation and its agencies always keep lists of
revolutionaries. Their flow charts list leaders of the movement it has
identified and will strike at will. We should move like we know
this.
Hystorical materialism teaches us to learn from hystory in order to
transform the future, and COINTELPRO in the 1960’s taught us lessons
when it came to the Black Panthers. For example, the FBI sent in
informants and agents who identified what groups the Panthers were
funking with, and one such group was the black nationalist organization
United Slaves. The feds ordered their agents to foment conflict and
heighten tension. Within the Chican@ movement today we see this play out
in various forms. In order to guard against this we need a no tolerance
policy in this area.
Tactics
AmeriKKKa has been very creative in its efforts which have helped to
stunt the growth of any real rebellion that confronts U.$. imperialism.
Since colonization the state has employed various tactics to the
oppressed nations, often utilizing others among the oppressed to do the
$tates’ bidding. An early record from the U.$. army from
Geronimo touches on this:
“Reliable Indians will be used as auxiliary to discover any signs of
hostile Indians, and as trailers. This is the fifth time within three
months in which the Indians have been surprised by the troops . . .
given them a feeling of insecurity”
The above gets into the mindset of the imperialist state. It tells us
that – despite many among the oppressed internal nations feeling as if
they are mere fingerlings in the geo-political landscape – the state
sees us as extreme threats. The U.$. government wants to know who the
hostile people are, who the rebels are, the anti-imperialists, the
revolutionary nationalists, and all the enemies of the state. The state
also wants to psychologically harass and confuse us, at one time this
was accomplished by horseback and today it is via the internet.
Prisons are also a target. The state knows very well that when
revolutionaries are captured they continue with their duty to raise
consciousness and to politicize the very concentration kamps they are
held in. La lucha don’t stop in any sense of the word, if anything the
struggle accelerates because of the uncut repression that prisons and
prisoners experience.
The FBI actually created a prison activists surveillance program
(PRISACTS) in 1970. This was meant to crush the prison movement. The
methods used were military tactics which Orisanmi Burton calls “carceral
spaces as zones of counter-revolutionary warfare” in Targeting
Revolutionaries. This government project displays the lengths to
which the state is willing to go to neutralize revolutionaries even when
they are imprisoned. We take these methods serious as all people should
as we all have comrades who have been captured if we are truly fighting
imperialism.
Outro
The state ultimately works to seduce our raza with financial
incentive, integration, or intimidation. We need to build a stronger
security culture which strengthens our efforts in the anti-imperialist
movement. Counterinsurgency efforts by the state are real. Our role in
the empire is real.
We need to build stronger networks that nurture and support our
imprisoned and captured comrades. We cannot forget about those who
sacrificed their lives by being on the front lines. The front is
wherever we find ourselves, even behind the razor wire and in the
concentration kamps. All Power To The People!
The October 7th attack that was launched by Palestine in the war for national liberation is but a response to their colonization from the hands of the settler colonialist Israel. For decades the Palestinians have maintained a consistent push for freedom to live without the threat of genocide at their doorstep. The Chicano nation overstands the need to struggle under the brute heel of colonization, our occupied territories – like the Palestinians – will not be free until the oppressor nation is overthrown point blank period! For this reason Aztlán stands with the Palestinian people in their freedom struggle.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry since 7 October 2023, 2,670 Palestinians have been killed [as we go to press that number has doubled] and Israel has continued to spread its disinformation in regards to the cause of the savagery unleashed by Israel. The truth is the Israeli war on Palestine has the full backing by Chief Colonizer in the World – the United Snakes. The U.$. completely ignores the decades of war crimes Israel has unleashed on Palestine, from white phosphorous cluster bombs to terrorizing generations of Palestinians with death and psychological warfare.
Today the U.$. propaganda “news outlets” snivel about 20 alleged U.$. citizens being supposedly held in Gaza. [By the time this article went live, Hamas had released two elderly prisoners who reported being handled “gently” and seemingly treated better than many prisoners who read Under Lock & Key in the United $tates.] Once again the people here in these occupied territories are being fed snake oil in preparation for U.$. Special Ops to enter Gaza and provide full technical and logistical support for its settler brethren. For this reason we hear a lot about allegations of violence from groups within Palestine. But how about the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was murdered on Friday the 13th of October 2023 after Israel unleashed a brutal shelling on Palestine?
The Chicano nation stands with Palestine and welcomes the wrath of resistance that oppression harvests.
Revolutionary Greetings Comaradas! We must address parliamentarism within the empire in general, and reformism in particular. As our nation develops it compels us to deal with the new challenges and obstacles hurled our way by the oppressor nation and its lackeys.
In the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, the Chicano nation mostly dealt with the two-party trap, that is the Republican Party and its counterpart the Democratic Party. These two wings of the Amerikkkan bird have hystorically bamboozled Chican@s and other colonized peoples into supporting its charade of bourgeois elections. The Chican@ Movement of 50 years past did a good job of alerting the nation of the “Two-Party Trap”, which simply entangles our gente in models of bourgeois politics that in the end uphold U.$. imperialism while preventing the oppressed nations from ever obtaining true liberation.
Today we are faced with the Three-Party Trap. Parties “outside” of the traditional Democrat and Republican camps have begun to lure some of our gente into the swamp of dead-end bourgeois politics in the guise of a “Third Party” option. This Three-Party Trap simply results in imperialism maintaining Amerikkkan hegemony over bourgeois politics.
Muddying the Waters of Revisionism
Some may point to Lenin’s stance on parliamentarism and specifically how in his time it was encouraged for communists to participate in the ballot box as millions of proletarians partook in such ventures. This may have been true of Lenin’s time and for the proletariat of 1917 Russia. This debate also highlights the crucial necessity of studying correct political line as it is easy to take quotes from over 100 years ago and convince some of the masses why it applies today. Yet, without analyzing today’s social reality here in the imperialist center the dogmatists and revisionists will have revolutionaries voting for the best imperialist while raising a clenched fist.
Imperialist U.$.A. is not 1917 Russia, and the millions of proletariat of that time were a vehicle for revolution, meanwhile there is relatively little proletariat within the United Snakes, and most are found in the fields and food production; the migrants. This rote learning of the revisionists and vendidos (sell-outs) who study quotes and dogmatically pass on these weak arguments to the masses attempting to justify why they support U.S. imperialism via its bourgeois politics is what separates the bourgeois or cultural nationalist Parties from the Communist Party of Aztlán (CPA).
Our struggle for self-determination means we must delink from imperialism not uphold it by participating in its politics. As dialectical materialists we move by analyzing objective reality as we believe Marx, Lenin and Mao did. And although a newby to political theory may read something from the classics, a quote that speaks in favor of parliamentarism or trade union organizing, those quotes derive from another country with different social forces and economy, etc. over 100 years ago! Had these revolutionary leaders been alive today in 2023 United $tates, they would have likely had different views and plans of action for the internal colonies today.
The revisionists and vendidos (sell-outs) love to make assumptions on how Marx, Lenin and Mao would feel about the Three-Party Trap and how because of a quote they made over 100 years ago in another country under different economic circumstances with very different social forces that in imperialist U.$.A. today they would support a Green Party, Chican@ Party or any other party outside of the Dems or Republicans, which participates in the ballot box of bourgeois politics. This is absurd at best. Since the revisionists love to make assumptions, we will do so as well and assume that Marx, Lenin and Mao would be against participating in the U.$. bourgeois elections via the Three-Party Trap or through any other vehicle. There’s why, a deep study of the U.$. and its social forces uncovers where the revolutionary vehicle lies.
As communists we study dialectics, the contradictions that exist. Looking to the social forces within these false U.$. borders reveals that the principal contradiction today is that between the white oppressor nation vs. the oppressed nations. Likewise, the small sector of proletariat mostly resides in the fields. The migrants who mostly do not partake in bourgeois elections and many being “undocumented” means they do not even have access to many of the options that paper citizenship brings!
The “work force” for the most part consists of labor aristocrats who most U.S. citizens derive from. These elite workers benefit off the spoils of Third World plunder. The paid sick days and pensions that even many retail workers receive would have the Trotskyites scream exploitation and slave wages, while the proletariat of the Third World roll their eyes from the underground mines and maquiladores where they make pennies a day.
To date, there is no Three-Party line that identifies the concept of the labor aristocracy within so-called “workers” in the U.S. As historical materialism teaches, we look to history on what the ballot box approach has done. The strategy of a peaceful transition that the Three-Party line holds would only lead us down the road to neo-colonialism. We know this to be true through scientific study, because not a single nation has ever been liberated and completely independent from imperialism through a peaceful transition from the ballot box. This is our scientific proof without assumption and without a dogmatic view of historical quotes. Looking at quotes from 100 years ago is good, to learn from hystory is good, but applying Maoism to today’s social reality and environment in order to create change is even better. This is what separates our political line from those upholding the Three-Party Trap and participating in bourgeois politics that uphold imperialism. The trojan horse approach of joining enemy politics in order to change them is a tired dream that has never been successful. And this voting in U.S. elections is not a revolutionary act, it is legitimizing imperialism in the eyes of raza.
Imperialism is Incorrigible
It is necessary to address the left hand of U.$. bourgeois politics and that is reformism. Those of the Three-Party camp commit a political error in lofty ideals of reformism. Although reforms are nice and make existence more comfortable for the oppressed and down-trodden, reforms do not make fundamental changes in imperialism nor put a dent in the colonization of Aztlán or any other of the internal semi-colonies for that matter. In fact, within these false U.$. borders, reforms have pushed people further away from revolution while bald repression has always invited revolution i.e. the Great Pueblo Revolt, The Taos Revolt, and more recently the Watts rebellion, the L.A. Rebellion of 1992, the San Quentin Six, Attica, the Pelican Bay hunger strikes, etc. When has reforming imperialism sparked resistance?
The conditions in any given time will define our path forward. One of the arguments used by those who promote participating in imperialism’s electoral politics is that they believe doing so will somehow bring Raza closer to our goals of a liberated Aztlán. At the same time they scream Chican@ Power! at the street rallies with a raised fist. One with even the least amount of political study must see through this and identify what such behavior really benefits, revolution and independence for Aztlán or upholding capitalism-imperialism?
A correct understanding of this and the so-called Three-Party promoters would be to call this behavior for what it is – petty bourgeois vacillation. Even so-called “independent” parties or Chican@ parties promoting the idea of voting for colonizer in chief or openly flirting with bourgeois politics amounts to crass flattery, to do so is a great disservice to Aztlán and oppressed in the periphery.
One of our long-term goals as communists is in the abolition of class society. How can comrades contribute to this goal by voting another imperialist into the White people’s House, to do so would be acting as compradors, herding the masses into the corral of the enemy politics. A system that cannot be reformed, one that needs to simply be abolished and overthrown. How does voting – even in an “independent” or Chican@ bourgeois party, get us closer to this realization? How does it garner us international support? These are the questions that the Three-Party Trap cannot answer.
As revolutionaries we must be firm and clear on our stance as anti-imperialists. The Trots would have us spending our lives organizing white “workers” in the unions, reformists would have us voting for the next colonizer in chief as our way forward. As Chican@ Communists we see us contributing the most to the International Communist Movement by raising consciousness and providing an ideological center for Aztlán while training cadre who can begin to build base areas within the barrios where forms of dual power may be realized. We see that building a brown labor movement spanning both sides of these false U.$. borders is also an honorable way a Party of Communists should spend their lives building and supporting. For these questions on needs and goals of the Party we must put politics in command.
Mass line is key in a Party determining the needs of the raza. The barrios have the answer to where we need to focus. The ballot box is out, and encouraging party members to knock on doors to vote a colonizer in chief for imperialism is not only a crime against the people, it’s treason to the nation.
The state encourages, and in some cases funds, many of the Three-Party Traps that claim to be independent or even Chican@ in nature. It does so because corralling oppressed people who have a bone to pick with imperialism, in some cases having ancestral rights to the land going back before the white settler nation arrived, is beneficial to the state. Surely a landless field worker or an oppressed lumpen persyn would be less threatening to the state if they took their anger out in the ballot box than if they did so at the gates of the White House. Bourgeois politics provides a release valve while at the same time supporting the absurd notion that we live in a society of civil liberties rather than a prison house of nations. The Three-Party Trap thus ultimately upholds U.$. imperialism and declaws any struggle for national liberation.
The leadership of parties who promote the notion of partaking in bourgeois politics, voting in a new imperialist president, have in many ways become class enemies to the oppressed nations. Partaking in the bourgeois elections in the U.$. is perpetuating a system that has exploited and genocided peoples around the world. U.$. imperialism is the enemy of the global majority, its politics is an ideology that is contrary to Aztlán and the Third World and which supports fascism.
Conclusion
The Three-Party Trap is one we will battle and raise consciousness on, as our predecessors did decades ago with the Two-Party Trap. Today’s trap is probably even more dangerous as these parties are mostly comprised of Chican@s and New Afrikan peoples. To the Chican@ nation We say organize outside of the influence of the oppressed nation. Siempre!
As I understand it, Chicano nationalism draws heavily from Indigenismo – an ideology of the settler colonial Mexican state that says that all the inhabitants of Mexico are indigenous, all are Mestizos, and so on. Such an ideology is fundamentally anti-indigenous as it seeks to indigenize Mexican settlers. The conception of Aztlan is similar – it is a land claim based on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo – land taken from Mexico during the Mexico-American war. It’s worth noting that the treaty itself distinguishes between Mexican settlers in this territory and Indigenous “savages”.
While it is true that a section of the colonized proletariat of the America is from Mexico, I am convinced that they are not members of an oppressed Chicano nation. They are more often members of Indigenous nations in Mexico displaced from their homelands.
Chicano nationalism is ultimately a form of settler nationalism. It expresses the class interests of mainly Euro-Mexican settlers against Euro-American settlers. It disguises the legitimate claims for decolonization by oppressed indigenous and African nations in Mexico and the American Southwest, by pretending that all Chicanos are descendants of ancient Aztecs. It is extremely unfortunate that this ideology has taken hold in America’s prisons by people who are not connected to Aztec/Nahua people, culture or elders.
I’m not an expert in this, I’m still learning much about it. But I’m just letting you know that the issue is a lot more complicated than it seems from the outset. There’s lots of liberal carry-over on reddit where I see people lumping all POC together and assuming they are revolutionary. Which is just not the case.
Xipe of the Communist Party of Aztlán responds:
On Indigenismo
Chican@ revolutionary nationalism has often been misunderstood. Our belief is that this is due to the Chican@ Nation not meeting its responsibility in addressing a correct political line to the ICM (International Communist Movement) on the one hand and in the ICM’s mostly incorrect analysis of the social forces within these false U.S. borders.
To be clear the CPA does not draw heavily on indigenismo – which is steeped in metaphysical trappings. We draw heavily on materialism. As materialists we recognize that not all inhabitants of Mexico are indigenous – although according to Jack Forbes most are! What’s more We disagree with your understanding that Chicano nationalism believes all are “mestizos” in Mexico, the CPA(MLM) believes that the term Mestizo is actually a label deriving from the colonizers agit/prop that strips Chican@s of many features of nationhood. “Mestizo” is anti-materialist, that as Jack Forbes suggests, is better suited to describe many of the European nations such as Italy, Sicily, etc.
Our analysis overstands that the inhabitants of current day Mexico are a combination of bloodlines that include indigenous, Spanish colonizer, African and others. And yet blood quantum don’t define a nation. We draw from Stalin on the national question for what defines a nation and we thoroughly address this in the book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán.
On Land
It seems to many that the political line of some Chican@ cultural nationalists is interpreted as the political line of the entire nation, this is incorrect. Our stance on land does not simply derive from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, although we certainly cite this treaty in much of our agit/prop surrounding our struggle for national liberation. To rely simply on the colonizers treaty to validate our struggle for national liberation is akin to anti-imperialists within these false U.S. borders simply relying on the U.S. Constitution to validate its anti-imperialism. Although one can use the imperialists’ words and articles against them, we are not reformists who simply want our class enemies to re-word a document or follow its own law. We want a complete transformation of society and to free the tierra! Our lucha for land is for a Chicano Socialist Government not for permission from the colonizer to own acres of land under an imperialist rule.
Those who confuse Chican@ revolutionary nationalism with the settler need to study the development of nations, specifically the book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán, which includes the political line of the CPA when it comes to a nation. We ask those who are curious on our line to read the Chican@ Red Book (Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán).
Even if the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was never written our national liberation movement would be just. Chican@s developed in what is now the “U.$. Southwest” as surely as Africans developed in what is now Haiti to become Haitians. Our line is not anchored in us believing we are descendants of ancient “Aztecs” – although some actually are! We overstand that the term “Aztlán” was used 50+ years ago within the Chican@ movement as a rallying cry and point of unity for Chican@s of the time and we see the relevance of using it in our struggle today.
Revolutionary greetings Raza! The future of our nation relies on us
all knowing the political standing of our people and for Chican@ groups
and orgs. It's essential that we keep our finger on the pulse of the
people to closely follow our strengths/weaknesses in order to push our
movement forward. A national liberation struggle exists in stages.
Without knowing what stage we are in, we cannot respond or struggle to
meet the demands of a given stage. For those reasons the Communist Party
of Aztlán (CPA) has conducted this study and is releasing this Report of
the State of Aztlán 2023.
Many years have transpired since a true materialist analysis has been
given on the nation. There has been "statements" given by various
Chican@ groups but none with political lenses. Political line is key for
all that we do as revolutionaries, from our organizing food drives to
giving a political analysis. Our political line is our foundation,
without a correct line all of our work remains "in progress." Every
project or scientific study done amongst the Chican@ masses becomes
efforts in perpetual transition or revision. Although we can expect all
matter to remain in motion and in need of adaptation to given responses,
we can also limit the need of playing Whack-A-Mole because of an
incorrect line. For this reason Maoism plays a key role not just within
the national liberation movement of Aztlán, but within the International
Communist Movement (ICM) as well.
Our Moral Compass
The Chican@ nation today is engaged in a War for Independence. Make
no mistake that within the folds of all the vicarious trappings that a
capitalist society can muster there exists a war, a low intensity war
but a war nonetheless between Amerikkka (aka the White nation) vs.
Aztlán. This war is for the national liberation of our nation. We want
land, we want freedom, we want to form our own government that is
socialist in nature. But don't get it twisted, as we used to say in the
Barrio, We are communist revolutionaries who overstand that the innate
contradictions within capitalism and thus imperialism demands that we
strive for a communist future if we are truly for equality of all humyn
beings.
One of the challenges that Aztlán faces today is in not enough groups
or orgs raising the Communist banner. Today the Communist Party of
Aztlán, Republic of Aztlán and ROA Brown Berets are the only
unapologetically Chican@ Communist orgs repping communism proudly and
openly.
Of course we believe that a communist world will not arrive today or
in our current lifetime. Today we struggle for a socialist government,
where state power is in the hands of the have-nots and led by a
proletarian political line. This proletarian political line, the goal of
which is a communist future, remains our moral compass.
Historical Materialism of Aztlán: Energy with incorrect line
In order to understand the development of the Chican@ Movement we
must first describe a brief political overview of the movimiento. Marx
taught us that historical materialism can help us gauge a
phenomenon to then respond to it in a way which pushes a given struggle
forward. We can learn from history in order to transform the future. For
a true materialist analysis of the Chican@ Movement, let us look to the
last wave of Chican@ resistance of the 1970's.
Although there were groups that developed, such as the August 29th
Movement, which were essentially communist, the Chican@ movement of the
1970s was for the most part a cultural nationalist formation. A
collection of Chican@ groups and orgs that mostly sought better schools,
jobs, and housing while fighting discrimination, police brutality and an
end to Chican@s in Vietnam. Despite the great energy behind these
movements, a push for a socialist government was not yet a topic on the
Chican@ "kitchen table" for most groups. Reforms were at the helm.
Besides the student group MEChA, the largest formation was the Brown
Berets. The Brown Berets has chapters across these false U.$. borders,
it was militant as far as mobilizing against the state, particularly
against the pigs and instilling a Chican@ nationalism throughout the
Barrios. And yet the Brown Berets of the 1970's had a political line
that could not lead to Aztlán's liberation and were actually not a
socialist organization. They fought to reform the system not replace it
with socialism. In fact the Brown Berets of the 1970's had not one
chapter that was openly communist, not a single one openly striving for
a socialist government and not a single chapter studying Maoism. This
should not surprise us because the inherent flaw in cultural nationalism
is that it is reformist in nature and its "Lucha" leaves the settler
colonialist economic superstructure intact and merely swaps culture.
Brown Capitalism is fine to the cultural nationalist so long as a Brown
Massa replaces White Massa on the plantation.
The essence of our oppression lies not simply in a greedy settler who
don't like our skin tone but loves our land, but in an economic system
that enriches a minority at the expense of the global majority. A system
that strips every drop of humynity from the conscience of a people in
order to enrich a few. Capitalism teaches that profit is more important
than humyn life.
The 1970's taught the movement great examples of how to organize in
the barrios, how to create a Chican@ student movement and resist the
U.$. colonizer military. Many lessons are gleaned but it also taught us
that resistance without targeting Capitalism is like having a new sports
car without gas, it looks great, and has lots of potential but it cannot
drive us to the liberation highway, or out of the driveway for that
matter.
The 1970's Chican@ Movement had the energy but it lacked communist
ideology at the helm. Had the Brown Berets, MEChA and other Chican@
groups of the 1970's been Communist-led, Aztlán may have launched a
strong Socialist revolution given the other struggles of the times with
the Panthers and others within these false U.S. borders and
internationally.
Some correct line; not enough energy
Today's Chican@ Movement exists and has slightly recovered from the
U.$. government's efforts to neutralize all resistance to colonization.
The vanguard of the contemporary Chican@ Movement has identified Maoism
as the leading line in the world today. No other ideology has advanced
Communist thought as far as Maoism.
We see Maoism leading the struggles today in India, the Philippines,
and sprouting in barrios within the U.$. Empire itself. Maoism has
blossomed in Chican@ hearts like no other time in our nation's
hystory.
Maoism taught us that a new bourgeoisie develops within the Party
itself. This is a great lesson for today's Chican@ Movement as it would
have been for the 1970's. It reminds us that despite a leadership of any
type the possibility exists of a leadership to become corrupt even after
a socialist revolution. Many can see this truth play out today in the
leadership of their own groups. In the case of both the Soviet Union
after the death of Stalin and in China after Mao's death this proved
true.
The publishing of the book Chican@ Power and
the Struggle for Aztlán in 2015 was akin to a nuclear missile being
launched on the United Snakes. If we look at the political landscape of
Aztlán pre-2015 and post-2015 we see a dramatic shift take place within
the Chican@ nation. Pre-2015 Chican@ groups, especially the Brown Beret
formation were still simply service groups working on reforms, toy
drives, free lunches and coat drives. The language was of "Viva la
Raza," "Stop Police Brutality" and "Stop School to Prison Pipeline"
which are all good campaigns. Post-2015 1,000 of the Chican@
Power books had been sold and distributed to people inside and
outside prison. Revolutionary nationalism became a term that Chican@s
re-popularized. Many Brown Beret groups began studying the Chican@
Power book with some making it required reading for new recruits.
Many Brown Berets began to identify openly as socialist and communist.
Slogans such as "Free Aztlán" became popularized in Aztlán. The idea of
secession and independence was revived in Aztlán. The Chican@
Power book was republished by Republic of Aztlán in 2021. Chican@
press, radio and other media was developed promoting Maoism and
independence. Online Maoist groups were created for the Chican@ nation.
Online Maoist study groups were developed for specific Brown Beret
formations in various states. In 2022, the first Communist Party of
Aztlán was founded and announced live on the FM dial on an East Oakland
Chican@ Maoist Radio program/ YouTube channel called Free
Aztlán.
As Materialists we cannot make an analysis subjectively. We can only
come to a conclusion after reviewing the data from tests in the field. A
review of the above developments helps lead us to our conclusion.
The Chican@ Power book is political ideology created for
Aztlán. Chican@ Maoism, it's what was the missing link, the igniter. The
political line that the Chican@ Movement never had in a book written by
and for Chican@s.
The Chican@ nation has made a leap in consciousness, a development
has taken place and the state is responding. It is responding by sending
in its agents to employ COINTELPRO tactics to leaders of today's
movement. But it is also inserting agents amongst us to bourgeoisify our
revolutionary momentum. These agents will have a group that claims to be
revolutionary encouraging its members to vote in the imperialist
elections for a U.$. President. That is no longer a revolutionary group,
it is a branch of the Democratic Party.
The Chican@ Movement is at a crossroads. There is a revival with some
energy. The political ideology exists and cadre have been trained that
can push the momentum forward. At the same time we see the state
employing a counter intelligence offensive on Aztlán to push it back.
Security is needed now more than ever as the state begins to neutralize
certain figures. We suspect imprisonment but they will also want to go
past that to curtail any bigger leaps in our movement. We suspect the
state will assassinate a key figure in the Chican@ Movement. What the
state doesn't know is our leaders realize and walk toward this
possibility willingly from the first act of resistance against
colonization. If leading the raza onto a real push of liberation means
risking one's life, it is an easy choice. In the spirit of Mao, I would
say to die for the raza is heavier than Mt. Popocatépetl.
Conclusion
Chican@ Maoists need to separate the wheat from the chaff, as Mao
said. It is apparent what groups are infiltrated by state agents. It's
important that these revisionists not influence the movement.
More study groups need to be launched pushing the correct line.
Develop prison outreach because as the lucha heats up, members of your
groups will be imprisoned.
Highlight that revolutionaries do not vote for imperialists. The
Democrats have long infiltrated "grass roots" orgs to bring them into
the fold and they continue today.
We need to continue teaching the next generation in order to keep
that drum of resistance beating in the hearts and minds of our youth.
Each one, teach one.
Our beautiful movement continues to develop. Do not let the many
lives that have been sacrificed be made in vain. When they assassinate
one of our leaders use it to push the struggle forward. When they
imprison one of our leaders highlight this injustice and use it as a
teaching tool for all freedom fighters. When they target and harass,
agitate and propagate.
The Road to revolution is painted Brown. Dare to struggle, dare to
win!
State repression is real in the United $tates of Amerikkka. The
Chicano Nation has undergone colonization and occupation since 1848. In
recent times our nation has developed in a way that calls for a higher
level of organization. This demand launched the founding of the
Communist Party of Aztlán, CPA (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist).
Three days after the announcement of the founding of the CPA(MLM) our
Chairman JV was arrested on trumped up charges. It is no coincidence
that the arrest of our Chairman occurred after this groundbreaking
announcement. We believe that the agents of the state have studied the
contradictions on these occupied territories and their threat assessment
highlights the threat a communist party for the Chicano nation would
pose.
Our Party has created a think tank to analyze the immediate attacks
on the Party and on Aztlán. We realize that the revisionist Trotskyite
and crypto-Trots like the CP-USA and RCP-USA are allowed to exist intact
because they pose no real threat to colonization. The CPA on the other
hand is a different story. For this reason our Party is forced to go
semi-underground.
We will not publish the names of our membership, but we will stand by
and struggle to free our Chairman of these false charges and illegal
kidnapping. It is well understood that had our Chairman been a wanna-be
capitalist or engaged in crimes against the people he would have been
left alone. The minute he stands up for the raza, repression is rained
down. This sacrifice was discussed and the necessity of the decision to
announce the founding of the Party was decided.
Our Chairman is not only completely innocent, but was targeted by the
state. This was COINTELPRO through and through. Our temporary loss of
our Chairman out in minimum security is imprisoned Aztlán’s gain. The
prisons are and always have been hotbeds of resistance, fertile grounds
where revolutionary shoots thrive. The CPA will establish its presence
and raise public opinion on both sides of the concentration kamp
walls.