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.
Building Peace, Unity, and Solidarity Behind Enemy Lines
Introduction 1. Security Threat Group Wrongful Validation 2. Case Law 3. Oppressed, Oppressing The Oppressed! 4. What It Means To Be A Leader 5. Peace Behind Enemy Lines
Introduction
“I’m going to join the fight wherever Negroes ask for my help…” - Malcolm X
Amani (PEACE) to all Lumpen Organizations (“L.O.’s”) held captive in Amerikkka’s prisons. As we fight against dehumanizing and tortuous conditions that’s done by prisonkrats, we must get united and stay united!
Eye stand with each and every last one of you. Eye take a solidarity stand to see to it that all our needs are met. Of course Eye am one man, however, though these few pages with revolutionary strength we can all liberate ourselves behind enemy lines.
Eye will be building on some topics that need to be addressed. We are the change. Therefore, we must organize, agitate, and educate. Stay on course comrades as we seize the time!!
Security Threat Group Wrongful Validation
“A healer need to see beyond the present and tomorrow. He needs to see years and decades ahead. Because healers work for results so firm that may not be wholly visible till centuries have flowed into millennia. Those willing to do this necessary work, they are the healers of our people…” - Ayi Kwei Armah
Eye am a general of the Damu Nation. Eye am wrongfully validated as “Security Threat Group” (STG) in the state of South Carolina. An STG is a classification that prisonkrats classify Lumpen Organizational members who they fear pose a threat.
The so-called threat can be educating, organizing, agitating, litigating, money getter, and/or violent. In my as well as many it’s all of the above, however all these pigs have on STG’s are Confidential Inmates (C.I.’s). When pigs validate you they place – rather kidnap – you and hold you hostage in segregation.
The only way off of a STG validation is by “snitching”, make parole, max-out, win through lawsuits, or you die. All sorts of foolishness can get you validated such as wearing flags, tattoos, literature, violence, snitches, and just being in a leadership position. Be mindful who you associate with, watch what you do and say etc.
Amerikkka’s prison colonies have contracts with other prisons throughout Amerikkka. When pigs consider you a threat they will send you out-of-state to other prisons within Amerikkka. Comrades STG is not a game this label is on you for life so be very careful…PEACE.
Case Law
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed…” - Steve Biko
Frasie v. Terhune, 283 F.3d 506 (2002)
Taylor v. Rodriguez, 238 F3d 188 (2nd Cir.2001)
Sostre v. McGinnis, 442 F.2d 179 (1971)
Incumaa v. Stirling, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 11321 (2015)
Koch v. Lewis, 96 F. Supp. 2d 949 (2000)
Harrison v. Institutional Gang of Investigations, 2010 U.S. Dist. Lexis 14944
Rivera v. Long (2011)
Oppressed, Oppressing The Oppressed
“Our objective is the destruction of the evil system of global white supremacy and the re-assertion of our right to self-determination and the resurrection of divine humanity that we brought to the world in the beginning…” - Heru Akki Seb
As EYE build with each of you today know and overstand this – if you fail to overstand how white supremacy works, everything that you think you know will only confuse you!! EYE speak these words too because look at how “we” are carrying on? Every organization is at war with each other.
How are we supposed to fight against oppression but yet we are doing the oppressing? We sell the enemy drugs to one another. We use derogatory language towards one another. We do everything we can to destroy one another.
These prisonkrats no longer have to get “down and dirty” to infiltrate the people anymore, you know why? You have as EYE write this C.I’s (Confidential Inmates) within every lumpen organization. And these cowards are feeding all sorts of information to pigs.
Comrades today think that it is cool to be sitting in the office with female pigs running their mouth. Overstand this – pigs use the women to seek information, in return they pass the information on to the higher up pigs.
Overstand without the drug trade in prison majority of those pigs will not work back here. We have to end this oppression, all forms of it, because as of now all EYE see is agent provocateurs working against our liberation…PEACE.
What It Means To Be A Leader
“The leader who is not loyal to his trust, and to his associates, those above him and those below him, cannot long maintain his leadership. Disloyalty marks one as being less than the dust of the earth, and brings down on one’s head the contempt he deserves. Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life…” - Napoleon Hill
EYE am sure that every lumpen organizational leader has his/her own definition for “what a leader is?” However, a leader is one who leads self first, then he/she leads others. A leader is one who judges according to his/her own actions and ways. A leader leads from the front never from the back in retreat.
A leader teaches his/her subjects the necessary knowledge and skills on how to live a productive life as men and women. A leader listens to the people effectively and intently to overstand the needs of the people.
A leader never moves off feelings or emotions nor do he/she feel fear. A leader has hands-on experience with the people and his community. A leader never plays the role of a politician, he/she is out in the field with the people he/she governs.
To be an effective leader one must know him/herself first, his/her culture, history then one recognizes his/her enemy. You must listen to the people and respond to them without lies and false hope. A leader must investigate everyone who declares themselves a member of his/her community. A leader must always educate, organize, and agitate…PEACE.
Peace Behind Enemy Lines
“Revolution is not a speed race, it is a race for he who runs to the end of his life, it is not a race for racehorses, it is a race for warhorses…” - Kwame Ture
There should not be any wars with lumpen organizations! Comrades EYE need you to overstand how oppression works – it works by turning us against us. EYE overstand that people will have differences however, our differences must stop leading to riots, stabbings, degrading one another and murder.
We must end the beef amongst the oppressed if we want to be liberated. If the various leaders within the L.O.s are not leading right he/she must be removed. The only people that can liberate us-is-us!
P.E.A.C.E means Proper Education Activates Constant Elevation, therefore we greet each other with PEACE. From me to you we all we got so we must act like it…P.E.A.C.E
In most issues on of Under Lock & Key we try to address response letters to the previous issue. These articles serve as a forum for ongoing conversations within our movement. One of the topics that came up in different forms this time is the question of who are our friends and who are our enemies, who can we form a united front with? This is a question of utmost importance. In Under Lock & Key 55 we focused on the question of allying with reactionaries (like white nationalists) and outcast groups (like sex offenders), so i encourage comrades to read that issue for more on these topics.
One of the questions we tackle in our intro study program is how to assess whether a group of people are friends or enemies. I’m gonna lead here with the controversial claim that i can see a much stronger argument for why gang members are enemies of the revolution than sex offenders. We have regular letters coming in about how prison gangs are agents of the pigs, flooding the masses with deadly drugs to keep them in a stupor, and then violently attacking our comrades who stand up for themselves and don’t succumb to the plague of drugs. Of course that’s not all lumpen organizations and conditions differ in different places. But i’ve never heard of sex offenders doing that.
In my response to Slaughter below i draw parallels between peoples’ attitudes towards sex offenders and drug dealers. The fact is that both have been used as political pawns to dehumanize groups of people and get votes through fear-mongering. The use of fear-mongering around pedophilia has surged in recent years, with reactionaries linking it to fear-mongering against trans-gender people. While it’s somewhat acceptable to hate trans people, it’s more acceptable to hate pedophiles, so people like U.$. House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, are waging a campaign of pegging the Democrats as pedophiles for supporting gender-affirming care for trans youth. This campaign began in recent years with “Save the Children” marches funded by reactionary think tanks. While the marches were largely populated by QAnon reactionaries, some of our comrades have been taken in by the campaign. So there is some truth to what Slaughter says below about hating pedophiles being a unifying thing beyond politics. But this does not mean it is “not political.” It just means that fear can be used to motivate all kinds of people, and it demonstrates how subjectivism can not be our guide if we hope to achieve our goals of a world without oppression, which Slaughter shares with us.
Slaughter writes: This is a response to the article in ULK 80, “Gender, nation & class divisions – Discussion of ULK 79” by a California prisoner with response by Wiawimawo. I cannot refrain from commenting on this situation within the prison, that is, the common nature of prisoners in general and their attitudes towards sex offenders, and the possibility of organizing any productive work with them in the form of a united effort.
I’ve had to let the implications of what this comrade was saying resonate for a little bit because it sounds to me as if he is attempting to justify the sex offense of a prisoner unfortunately stuck with that tag on them and pass it off as if its the same thing for everyone else comes to prison for and/or has involved themselves with. The author seems to say that crimes of sexual nature aren’t serious offenses in the broader masses of the population. He says that its not a crime to have sex, which I completely agree with. But here’s the thing, when it comes to prisoners who are convicted of say, murder like myself, and prisoners who are convicted of sex crimes. To a certain degree sex crimes are dismissed as simply frivolous…
Many prisoners, like myself, have children (a daughter) who is young, no older than 10-15 years old. And if our child were victimized by a person who is a full grown man, then the outrage that the parents will have towards the perpetrator will be malicious and even murderous in nature. … It’s one of the few unforgivable crimes that most people in and out of prison simply cannot overlook. Killing, as a result of the dynamics of oppression, along with robberies blackmarket sales of weapons and drugs, assaults using weapons, and other violent crimes are seen as something of a necessity. People do not have sex with underage boys and girls because they are oppressed. They cannot say they are pedophiles as a result of the dynamics of oppression. Pedophilia is a mental illness that any rational society, primarily a utopian, would not tolerate and want to be eliminated. There can be no comparison, in my opinion, between New Afrikans unifying with neo-Nazis and prisoners convicted of typical felonies unifying with prisoners who prey on children for sex. To compare is the thesis ad absurdum.
Now I ought to be clear and let everyone know that, having been locked up for over a decade now, and having come in the system at 18 years old, and as a re-educated Rightist, I at one time held an extreme bias towards sex offenders. During my re-education, however, I eventually rid myself of all bias from the nature of certain peoples’ crimes (sex offenders) to other races that are clearly not my own. To be sure, the world I envision is one in which national boundaries no longer exist, a world without passports or visas or immigration quotas. True globalization in the human sense, in which we recognize that the world is one and that human beings everywhere have the same rights. A world in which the riches of the planet would be distributed in an equitable fashion. The goal for me, aligned with all my comrades who have nothing to lose but our chains, is communism.
At the end of the day, however, there is not a way for me to regard a pedophile in the same sense as I regard myself. It is a moral standpoint that is separate from all politics and I think I can speak for all of us when it comes to that point in itself. It is extraordinarily difficult to stand comfortably next to a pedophile, even if our political aims are synchronized.
These very well are potential allies, my comrades; though we also must look at the end results and distinguish if we will accept pedophilia in our commune, society, world. In my opinion, it sets a dangerous precedent to repress the nature of a person if it means attaining a significant end because once the end is reached the repressed nature of a specific person will once again appear on the scene and be in need of dealing with. One thing I’ve taken note of in great revolutionary movements is the tendency to repress a certain aspect of a group to meet future ends, and then once they are met, the fight continues among the party because the characteristic a certain group appear in conflict with the overall standing of the ends which were attained. WE overthrow the oppressors and then regress into civil war. Please correct me if I have understood incorrectly. In this way there are consequences for the deliberate unity of elements that would make for complications before the judgement seat of reason.
…As much as I hate to believe it, I don’t think there will be an opportunity for unification with pedophiles and forcible rapists. Why? Because, again, these are actions that are universally condemned. Actions that inspire murderous revenge and untold malice. When it comes down to it, I simply speak, as someone who was molested by the dad of someone I befriended as a youngster.
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: Slaughter, you are not alone. As mentioned in the original article, doing this work we are well aware of the high frequency of child abuse and child sexual abuse victims those in U.$. prisons. There is research demonstrating how such traumatic experiences as youth can have all kinds of affects on a persyn’s health later in life, including engaging in various behaviors that can lead to being targeted by the injustice system.(1)
Your position on this topic is clearly informed by your experiences, and your position is understandable. Yet the issue we take with your essay on this topic is you offer no solutions. Do you subscribe to the purification solution mentioned in the original article? Lock them all up for life? or worse?
Consider the parallel story: Someone i knew succumbed to drug addiction, and i watched them deteriorate. I was young and it was the most horrible thing i had seen or could imagine. I took up a strong hatred for drug dealers, even began hanging out with others who did so as well. I knew of people who used extreme violence to attempt to purify their neighborhoods of drug dealers. I still find our approach understandable, but recognize its futility. I also came to recognize how the ideas of those i was hanging around fed into the oppression of the state. Thankfully, i came to realize these things soon thereafter. Now i work with former drug dealers and provide them support on a weekly basis.
One comrade wrote us last week to decry a different article in ULK 80, the one on Tookie. Ey saw Tookie as someone who just changed eir tune when they had no other choice left. This is a real phenomenon. We get all kinds of people writing us, many of them desperate for any kind of assistance. At the same time, we think it is an error to say that just because someone never served the people before going into prison that they cannot be for the people after. Such a position we call metaphysics, as it sees things as unchanging, it sees people as having an essence that is eternal.
Now, your argument is that Tookie did what ey had to do given eir conditions of oppression, and a pedophile did not have to do what they did. Okay, i see the distinction you are trying to make, but wouldn’t our comrade above say the same thing about Tookie. I grew up in South Central, and i didn’t become a gang-banger, I became a revolutionary. So there.
“The sex offender registration doesn’t show them. The government is a rapist, a criminal at large,”
The poem is an analogy, but it’s also literal. Not only are most child abusers never caught and convicted, those who are among the people in charge are almost never convicted. As is true with most crimes, the most egregious perpetrators get off scott-free because they are the ones making and enforcing the rules. This is where we are sympathetic to the argument made by the California prisoner that targeting S.O.s in prison is just an emotional outlet for other prisoners to have a scapegoat to feel better than. What is a plan to end the sexual abuse of children that doesn’t let most abusers get off scott-free and keep doing what they’re doing?
The Chinese revolution reformed brutal landlords to join society as productive members. People who robbed, starved, tortured, killed and certainly raped people. Now not all can be reformed. But this was the default approach to all people after the Communists seized state power, to give everyone an opportunity to reform and get on board. Some of the former oppressors just went along to save themselves and became problems later on as you allude to. Yet, the Chinese prisons were very good at getting people to undergo thorough self-criticisms. They did not just let people apologize and get off the hook. See Prisoners of Liberation by Allyn and Adele Rickett. This is what we mean by offering solutions.
It’s worth considering how peoples’ views would be different in such a society that was adequately addressing peoples’ needs and questions of justice. I’d argue that we will see far fewer people resorting to vigilantiism in order to feel justice is served in such a system, and that the popular views that all sex offenders should die, or all drug dealers should die, would whither away as the presence of drugs and sexual abuse also whither away
You spend some time on the California prisoner’s claims in ULK 80 about all sex being outlawed. This is another point of unity we have with you and we did not defend these claims. Even in our belief that all sex is rape, we apply proletarian morality to justice. And in many cases after the seizure of power by the communists in China, proletarian morality meant the death penalty for former landlords and oppressors of the people. But the death penalty alone does nothing to end economic exploitation or child sexual abuse.
As we said in the original article, we see all people in the imperialist countries as reforming criminals. The worst criminals are not in prison, they are running the prison, the military, the country. But as a group, those in prison have also committed some significant crimes, despite some being completely innocent. If we require everyone to be righteous communists from birth, as the critic of the Tookie article seems to imply, then we will never succeed.
It’s striking that you don’t see a parallel between nazis and pedophiles. We argue in the original article that there are less antagonistic contradictions with pedophiles. How do you argue to the contrary? Nazis generally believe that the current system of national oppression, imperialism, should be more extreme and more oppressive towards the majority of the world! Including the genocide of whole peoples! What crime could be worse than this? That said, as we also discussed, some nazis in prison reform to take up anti-imperialism. But we do not say that nazis as a group are allies because some individuals reformed and denounced their anti-people fascist ways.
When you talk about the unbridgeable divide you refer to the outrage of the parent of a molested child, and an inability to stand comfortably next to a pedophile, these are subjective reactions. Understandable, absolutely, but subjective. In the first lesson of our intro study course we have comrades analyze a topic that is very emotional for them and sort out the subjective stories and the hard facts. This is a useful exercise to help us understand the world and transform it.
“Those who wrote in support of Gunnas are in the wrong. They miss the whole point, it’s not about sympathy for the enemy, it’s about oppression. Communism is the goal, get that: communism – not the trading of one oppression for another. Page 2, point #1: read that shit, live that shit, teach that shit – equality against the oppressor is one thing, a legit thing, becoming the oppressor? What?! Communism doesn’t have room for those who wish to become oppressors themselves, you feel like that, then you’re the enemy too. Page 2, point #1, understand that shit: frustration at being oppressed is natural, it’s needed, this is war; but don’t you dare assume that once the power is taken from the oppressor you can fill the role – never that – then you’re the enemy.”
We aim to end all oppression, and do not aspire to oppress others. However, it’s not that oppression is never used by communists, as that is exactly what the dictatorship of the proletariat is – it is a state, a tool used by one class to oppress another. We do think the comrade above is correct in terms of combating “murderous revenge and untold malice” by the communist camp. The Chinese communists did not kill every last landlord as they came to power. They acted objectively, applying proletarian morality, which is informed by the subjective feelings of the masses but in a way that works towards a practical shared goal of transforming material conditions.
There is no apolitical morality as you argue. We must deal with child sexual abuse politically as we do with all crimes against the people. We must figure out how to transform our society to eliminate these crimes, or else they will keep happening. The fascist strategy of purification gets us nowhere.
You say pedophilia is not a result of the dynamics of oppression. I’d challenge that. There are many cases of people abusing children seemingly as a direct result of the abuse they suffered as children. In addition, the sexualization of power and of young people in our culture certainly has an affect on humyn behavior in our society. Attacking this culture and supporting victims are two ways to combat the problem of child abuse. Bourgeois science suggest there are disorders in the brain that cause pedophilia, but like any psychological diagnosis under patriarchal capitalism we are holding out for evidence that these “disorders” still exist in a world where people don’t have power over others.
Your assessment of divisions after a revolution is very astute. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the furthest advance of socialism we’ve seen to date, was based on the idea that a new bourgeoisie arises with in the party. So this is not just about old enemies rising again from the ranks, but the internal contradictions of the system creating new enemies as well. This reiterates that it is idealists to believe we can build an ideologically pure party before waging revolution. Dialectics is the concept that their are always contradictions within a thing, and things are always changing.
Revolutions are won by uniting disparate forces on a common goal. One tool we use to address this issue is the united front. The united front allows separate parties with separate interests to act towards a common goal. It also includes mass organizations, with less developed political lines. The communist party is the proletarian pole, providing proletarian leadership in the united front.
People in the communist party must carry themselves as communists. Even here, we must not be too idealistic, no one is perfect and we are all products of our conditions. But anti-people crimes certainly would not be tolerated within the party. The united front allows for the party to lead and unite with other forces and organization that may not always work in the interests of the people. The united front allows for the party to be critical of our allies when necessary to show the masses there is a better way.
We must put politics in command. With politics in command we can sort out true comrades, allies and enemies. With politics in command we can win over potential allies and sometimes even win over individual enemies. People who have committed crimes against the people and do not recognize them as crimes are people who have not gone through the necessary self-criticism to be called true comrades. We are all products of this world (and victims of it) and we are all self-determining beings. That is the duality of humyn reality. It is up to us whether we struggle with the parts of ourselves that reflect the oppressive system we are in and transform them into something to better serve the people.
NOTES: 1. Nadine Burke Harris, 2018, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.
The state has once again kidnapped the comrade Jose Villarreal (JV) on trumped up charges. After over a decade in the deepest dungeons of Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit, JV was released to the streets in January 2017 following the historic California hunger strikes and the Agreement to End Hostilities (AEH) between the largest lumpen organizations in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) at the time. This is the second time JV has been arrested since eir release. In addition, ey has faced armed raids by the pigs at eir place of residence.
The first arrest following eir release from Pelican Bay was on 2 August 2020 from an incident where JV may have saved someone’s life, but was charged as an accomplice instead. Eir arrest this winter was almost completely fabricated, with no basis in reality. And due to having been a certified member of a “Security Threat Group” (STG) in Pelican Bay ey faces gang enhancements on both sets of charges. Gang enhancements are a way to punish the oppressed for free association with others in their nation.
While the circumstances of the 2020 arrest are suspect, as are any when a revolutionary leader is targeted, the 2022 arrest is based on fabricated testimony rather than an actual incident. This testimony is coming from someone who presented emself as a revolutionary Chican@ nationalist. If the 2020 incident was a setup, then JV diffused it by eir righteous actions in a dangerous situation. Perhaps the state learned its lesson and decided it must fabricate charges in a he-said/she-said case.
In the six years since eir release from CDCR, JV has become most well known for eir radio program Free Aztlán on Poor News Network’s KEXU 96.1 FM in Oakland, California. Over the years JV featured Chican@ authors, researchers, artists and activists of many stripes. They advocated for the “kids in kages”, the migrant field workers, prisoners, and even did a series on the abuse of young people in spiritual movements targetting Chican@ nationalists. Ey was a regular promoter of the book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán and the struggles for national liberation around the globe. JV also was apart of Aztlán Press, which published the second edition of Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán. Listen to the CPA(MLM) announcement (starting at 8:00)
On the last episode of Free Aztlán before eir recent arrest, JV hosted the public announcement of the founding of the Communist Party of Aztlán (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). Eir track record of advocating for national liberation, and eir support of the foundation of the Party in particular, is clearly behind the state’s machinations to imprison JV once again on trumped-up charges.
While MIM(Prisons) recognizes CPA(MLM) as a fraternal organization, it is no secret that we promote a cell structure strategy of organization. We’ve received push back on this in the form of calls for a centralized organization, a movement that spans the country, and a center for training and developing scientific leadership. These are some of the things the CPA(MLM) felt that Aztlán needed. They felt a party was needed to combat/compete with the parties that now mislead the masses under bourgeois political lines.
JV’s connections to various projects, and the connections between different chapters of the Republic of Aztlán are public record on the internet. We do not promote this form of organization. We see the hybrid of online and irl (real life) organizing to favor the strengths of the state over the weaknesses of the masses.
Lest we need reminding, the repeated targeting of JV exposes the lengths to which the state will go to suppress even a young emerging movement like CPA(MLM). JV has been tireless in eir work in the Chican@ community to promote positive change. No proletarian court would convict em of a crime. A socialist justice system would uphold JV as the best-case example of what someone can make of emselves after decades in an oppressive, abusive, torturous prison system.
I remember a comrade that wrote an article a few years back, about
the way some prisoners were doing the pigs’ job and that he won’t be
surprised if in the near future the prisoner will be doing count. If the
comrade who wrote that argument was still receiving ULK, I want
to tell em that eir comrads back then were not wrong, because in my
institution of the Columbia Correctional Institution the “inmates” (I
will not call them prisoners) that work the outside hallways of the
butterfly dorm are doing the pigs’ job, even the “master count”. These
four inmates represent and run under a nation (gang). Because they stay
in the pigs’ face at all times kissing their asses, they receive special
privileges. They pass supplies, they call out the prisoners that come
from other dorms to violate for any given reason, they prey and benefit
from the contraband that the pigs take from the cell searches. The pigs
at that dorm have no reason to come out from the control bubble because
these inmates do the jobs all for them in exchange for just staying
outside.
When I wrote that article that was printed in ULK #79 Winter 2022
page 13 “The
Common Colonial History that Led Us Here” – I finished off in the
last paragraph saying: “in prison there is only 2 uniforms – the
prisoners and the guards – remember always which one you wear”.
That part right there I wrote it because of actions these inmates
performed. The night of the Super Bowl, after these inmates made the
count in the dorm, the Sgt. in charge authorized me to go to another
wing to watch the same; Sgt. opened the door and on the hallway I was
stopped by these inmates because they told me that I couldn’t go to
another wing because the count wasn’t clear. I told them that wasn’t
their problem, besides if they could see Sgt. opened the door for me (I
don’t have keys). I keep telling them that that wasn’t their problem,
then I told them that I had two life sentences and if the front gate
happened to be open that they would expect me to not walk out because if
I escape I could mess up the count.
Long story short when I turned around and kept walking one of them
swung a punch to my face from the back and all of them started to reach
to their waists making it seem like they were armed. Sgt. saw everything
and came out running and took me back to my wing – Sgt. didn’t say or do
anything to them. That is how much pull these inmates pig fuckers have
with security.
I didn’t say nothing to nobody in my wing, didn’t tell nothing, I
just packed all my property and stayed up the whole night. Breakfast was
called at 5:20 AM and I went out to the chow hall for a hunt. Out of the
four that were the previous night 3 of them were at the chow hall
sitting together at a table. Long story short on the way back to the
dorm all three of em were stabbed and the one that throw the punch at me
was air lifted in a helicopter to the hospital. I came out that morning
ready for war and when I pulled out all ey had on em was the apples for
the tray. Nobody will never threaten my life, my circle or my inner
peace, on top of that put their hands on me and think the next day that
everything is over.
When I got to the confinement unit all prisoners from every nation,
of every skin color were standing at their door clapping, “Oye we salute
what you did”. Because of this incident I was given 90 days in SHU plus
I’m under review for Control Management Level 1. Most definitely it will
get approved which means I will stay in SHU–CMI for at least 2 years and
if I keep myself out of trouble then I can start to work my way down so
I can finally be back on general population. I’ve been in prison for 26
years, everything has a limit and these inmates were far beyond that
line, and because they have a group of lapdogs behind them they think
that they can do anything. If I have problems listening to the pigs
orders, definitely an inmate ain’t going to dictate how I am going to do
my life sentences. I ain’t no snitch – I don’t work with the pigs or for
the pigs.
I don’t know if in other state prisons the comrades tolerate that
kind of behavior but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! You must definitely print my
name on it!! Is about time we take the bad apples from the bucket
because they are fucking up the whole basket. You have now all these
young comrades that come in the system for the first time and see this
shit from gang members and think that is cool. IT IS NOT!
History is not a prophet who looks back: because of what was, and
against what was, it announces what will be. I don’t just make war, this
comrade makes history.
MIM(Prisons) responds: One of the five principles of
the United Front for Peace in Prisons is Independence. This
issue of Under Lock & Key has a number stories highlighting
how the agents of the state sew death and destruction among the prison
population. Without independence from that system, we cannot build a
peace between prisoners that serves prisoners. The story above is an
extreme example of how working with the state creates violence between
prisoners.
Lumpen organizations (L.O.s) are a wavering class in the war of the
oppressor nation against the oppressed nations. Prisoners playing the
boss role for the pigs is nothing new, but back in the day it was only
white prisoners who played boss over oppressed nation prisoners. Today
the neo-colonial state knows that it’s better to use the respected
organizations of the oppressed to oppress the oppressed nations. From
what we hear across the country, we are in a period when the above is
often tolerated and the L.O.s in prisons are not maintaining their
independence. This relates to the plague of drug deaths in prisons as
well.
The SHU/RHU/Control Units are tools of social control, and they are
used to target the politically conscious. They use these torture units
because they work to achieve the goals of the oppressor. We encourage
comrades to do their best to avoid getting sent there. We know this
comrade sacrificed a small study cell ey had by being sent to the SHU.
We must apply standards and we must make sacrifices. But we must also
always focus on what is most effective to serve the people.
The author above asked that we print eir name because of the
influence ey has. But we
don’t print names for security and political reasons. We hope our
readers can see the truths in the above without being told that this or
that big homie/shot caller says so. That type of thinking is what has
so-called gangsters playing as junior pigs. We all need to learn to
think objectively and strategically to have any hope of success in this
struggle.
As the assassination date of our redeemed comrade Stanley Tookie
Williams Sr. approaches (December 13th), this will mark 17 years that
our beloved brother, comrade, and C.R.I.P co-founder Stanley Tookie
Williams Sr. was deliberately assassinated by the U.$. imperialist’s
“Correctional Institute (Colony) Repressive Penal System.” It is our
esteemed comrade Stanley “Big Tookie” Williams Sr. along with comrade
Raymond Washington who founded the C.R.I.P.s in 1969. Stanley Big Tookie
Williams ran the West Side Cribs (“Cribs” eventually became “CRIPS” by
1971) and comrade Raymond Washington ran the East Side CRIPS. There was
a small neighborhood community after school center on the East Side of
Los Angeles, California where comrade Raymond Washington and his friends
hung out after school playing pool called the “Community Resource Inner
City Project Service” (C.R.I.P.S).
From this Community Resource Inner City Project Service the “CRIPS”
would form into a bastard party of the former remnants of the Black
Panther Party (a community based nationwide Black nationalist
organization who operated free breakfast programs in the poor
disenfranchised sections of the ghettos and Brown barrios and promoted
“self defense” against U.$. terrorist government sanctioned racial
violence).
Originally when Raymond Washington and Big Tookie Williams joined up
the East Side and West Side CRIPS were about protecting their
communities against other “white” gangs who came into Black
neighborhoods to start trouble and violence against Black people in
general. The C.R.I.P.S. (Community Revolutionary Inter-Party Soldiers)
promoted Community Revolution in Progress (C.R.I.P.) yet over the years
ended up becoming a “self destructive” force which ended up being
consumed by Black self-hatred and non-political violence.
Eventually Comrade Raymond Washington was murdered in the streets of
East Side South Central Los Angeles. He was assassinated by a car of
unknown assailants, in 1979. Comrade Stanley “Big Tookie” Williams was
wrongfully framed by the U.$. government on gruesome murder charges that
he did not commit (and in which he maintained his innocence up until his
dying day). Big Tookie was falsely convicted by a racist court system
and jury which ended up landing him on California’s Death Row at San
Quentin State Prison in the early 1980’s.
Ten years prior to Stanley “Big Tookie” Williams’ arrival, San
Quentin State Prison was the assassination scene of the bold, brilliant
and beautifully courageous revolutionary activist, author and
revolutionary theoretician Comrade George Lester Jackson on 21 August
1971. Jackson was moved to the Adjustment Center in San Quentin on
murder charges of killing a Soledad correctional officer. 25 year old
Officer Mills was beaten to death and thrown over a 30 ft. tier in
Soledad Central “Y” Wing Facility. There was a note in Officer Mills
pocket that said “One down 2 to go” in reference and in retaliation for
3 Black prisoners shot and killed in cold blood by a racist Soledad
prison guard name Officer O.G. Miller. One of the dead convicts was W.L.
Nolen, a close friend/mentor of Comrade George. In February 1970 George
Jackson, John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo would formally be charged
with the murder of Officer John Mills. Since Comrade George already was
serving sentence of one year to life, death on a non-inmate under
California law at that time meant an automatic death penalty for Comrade
George, even though the state had no evidence that George Jackson, John
Clutchette, or Fleeta Drumgo (who become known as the “Soledad
Brothers”) killed Officer Mills.
George Jackson was an activist and revolutionary advocate of the
prisoner class revolutionary movement, “Black family”, and August 7th
movement founder – a movement he founded in remembrance, honor and in
tribute to the death (murder) of his little 17-year-old brother Comrade
Jonathan Jackson whom on 7 August 1970 took a bag full of guns into a
courthouse in Marin County (not far from San Quentin State Prison where
his brother Comrade George was housed). Brother Jonathan Jackson
Sr. calmly took over a courtroom where three Black prisoners were on
trial. Jonathan gave the three guns then took the Judge, District
Attorney and 2 Jurors hostage demanding that the “Soledad Brothers” be
released immediately in exchange for the hostages. Sad to say Jonathan
never made it out of the parking lot as over 200 shots by Marin County
Officers were unloaded into Jonathan’s Hertz rental van. Jonathan was
murdered immediately.
The only sole survivors in the van with Jonathan was one of the three
Black prisoners (Comrade Ruchell Magee - whom is still incarcerated to
this very day despite his deteriorating health) and the District
Attorney who was permanently paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.
A year and 2 weeks later on the 21st of August 1971 prison
authorities concocted an outrageous story to justify the assassination
of George Jackson. San Quentin Prison officials claimed that Comrade
George tried to escape leading six other prisoners out of the adjustment
center allegedly slicing three prison guards’ throats and killing two
snitch prisoners. They claimed George Jackson had a gun and the guards
assassinated Comrade George from the Gun Tower. The state (San Quentin
Prison officials) deliberately murdered/assassinated Comrade George.
Upon investigation, George would’ve beat his case had he went to trial
and very well may have got out of prison. Check out Under Lock and
Key No. 79 Winter 2022 article “History
(and Myth) of a Comrade Should Inspire Us” Written by USW51 for more
on Comrade George. It’s a very well written and detailed article.
How does this relate back to our Comrade Stanley “Big Tookie”
Williams Sr.? Well there are a lot of apparent correlations connecting
these two comrades beginning with the criminal “injustice” system and
the systematic oppression and “judicial lynching” of both these
wonderful Black Brothers (and of Black and Brown males in this U.$.
imperialist country in general).
George Jackson entered the California Penitentiary System in 1960
with an indeterminate sentence of “one (1) year to life” for the
conviction of a gas station robbery that resulted in the theft of
$60.00. Even though evidence was in Jackson’s favor and Jackson
adamantly professed his innocence of the crime, his court appointed
attorney convinced Jackson that if he would only plead guilty to a
lesser offense that he would receive some light county jail time,
instead the racist court judge sentenced Jackson to prison for one year
to life.
“CRIP” co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. up until the day of his
assassination/execution proclaimed his innocence of the murder charges
that he had been wrongly convicted of, yet the racist criminal injustice
system with no real tangible evidence put Big Tookie Williams on trial
and concocted lies in order to assassinate, execute and “judicially
lynch” Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. because he was a threat to the upper
status quo and had been amassing power (revolutionary potential and
Black leadership skill/charisma) and was “leader” of a fast growing
“C.R.I.P” - (Community Revolutionary International Party) which
possessed major revolutionary potential. The U.$. government had to
“contain” him since he could become a potential “Black messiah.” So just
like Comrade Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt the U.$. government framed Stanley
Tookie Williams Sr.
Comrade George Jackson while incarcerated became autodidactic (self
taught); he studied Marx, Lenin, Mao, political science and political
economy, Engels, Stalin, Huey. Jackson was made Black Panther Party
‘General/Field Marshall’ by Huey Newton while he was incarcerated he
become “politically conscious,” reshaped and transformed his Black
criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality. Comrade George
redeemed himself and achieved redemption through his willingness,
determination, self discipline, self-taught education through books.
Comrade George changed and reformed his criminal thinking, Jackson
refused to participate in all “non-political” violence (gang mentality),
George Jackson practiced a very special bastardized style of martial
arts as well as Kung Fu called “Iron Palm” and worked out 6 to 8 hours a
day doing “1000” fingertip pushups a day. Comrade George also authored
two classic political treatises of Black revolutionary literature
“Soledad Brother” and “Blood in my Eye” and one underground book titled
“Communist Manifesto.” Jackson typed laboriously on his typewriter in
his small prison cell, he wrote position papers that dealt with various
political-socio issues such as prison life, economics, and the corrosion
of Amerika’s military-prison industrial-corporate capitalist culture and
circulated these papers throughout and outside prison walls.
For his political/revolutionary activities he was rewarded with
isolation and segregation in Soledad’s “O”-wing administrative
segregation unit and San Quentin’s A/C Lockup where often times his cell
was “welded” with a lock shut. Once that proved not to be enough, he was
set up to be killed.
Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. had undergone a very drastic
revolutionary change after his imprisonment as well, a quite remarkable
one. Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. was autodidactic, self-taught through
reading and politically conscious. He also studied political science,
economics, socio-behavior and psychology to better understand himself
and his negative subconscious programming and “learned” behavior. Big
Tookie Williams studied about the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton,
Bobby Seale, Comrade George Jackson, Nelson Mandela, and Steve Biko.
When Williams Sr. read the infamous “Willie Lynch Document” he was
angered and shocked at how this white slave master from the Caribbean
islands in the early 1700’s had managed to create such a nefarious,
diabolical, cruel and methodical “self-hate” system (which would become
known as the “plantation psychosis”) which would sink seeds of mistrust,
and self hatred, and self-sabotage within our subconscious, unconscious
minds that some 400 years later it is encoded in our (Black folk)
culture and is the primary root of “Unkle Tom-ism” disunity, hatred,
violence, mistrust and cowardice amongst our people, we were
“programmed” negatively to behave this way with one another. The slaves
were taught, whipped, beat, tamed, feathered, set on fire, lynched,
pregnant Black women had their precious unborn fetuses cut out of their
stomachs and stomped on in front of their faces by the white slave
masters, and Big Tookie Williams, Comrade Raymond Washington and their
peers and “rival” Black teens were just lashing out against one another
out of fear, and “self-hate,” the “plantation psychosis” of Willie Lynch
indoctrination. This was the source, the generations of negative
subconscious programming fostering and festering within Black
communities… This was the primary cause of his “Blue Rage.”
[Editor’s Note: While a powerful story that
motivated Tookie and others, Willie Lynch is a myth. Uncle Toms are the
natural outcome of the dialectic of oppression observed across cultures
and time.]
While on San Quentin’s death row Big Tookie decided with utter
conviction he would transform and change. Williams Sr. now being
politically-socially revolutionary conscious sought “redemption” (“Black
redemption”). Mr. Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. started writing several
children’s books that taught peace, and strongly advocated and promoted
diversion from joining gangs and drug abuse, peer pressure to help in
steering children in a “positive”, productive, peaceful life in today’s
society. Mr. Williams even took on a Kiswahili name (Ajamu Ajani) that
reflected his cultural, mental, spiritual transformation. Stanley Tookie
Williams Sr. was even allowed to conduct and operate a podcast from San
Quentin’s State Prison’s death row to educate the public and youths
across Amerika of the failures and downfalls of “gangbanging.” Big
Tookie Williams used his own three hour phone calls on the tier to call
and speak to youth in middle and high schools and interacting and most
importantly patiently and sincerely answering any and all questions
these students may have had (on his own time; even though he knew that
his time was very limited).
Mr. Williams Sr. tried to teach peace and had helped organize the
peace truces between the Bloods and Crips in the early 90’s.
Mr. Williams published a sincere and very self critiquing, deeply
introspective memoir before his assassination by the $tate called
Blue Rage, Black Redemption. In fact, Jamie Foxx had played the
part of Williams in a television movie, “Redemption: The Stan Tookie
Williams Story.” Williams was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Bianca Jagger, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Judge
Greg Mathis, Daz Dillinger and Jamie Foxx tried to gain a stay on his
execution, but on 2005 December 13th, the U.$. government dealt a huge
blow to gang peace truce leaders, and had California prison authorities
at San Quentin State Prison execute/assassinate long-time ‘reformed’
death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. (Ajamu Ajani).
This goes on to prove without a doubt that the U.$. government and
global white imperialist truly “fear” gangbangers and criminals becoming
“revolutionary indoctrinated” and converting into “revolutionary
political soldiers” fighting for the liberation of our oppressed New
Afrikan people’s and all oppressed people’s throughout all colonies of
North Amerikkka and globally. Those who are victims of “plantation
psychosis,” imperialism, capitalistic avarice, racism, police brutality,
and systematic oppression!
So it’s right now, right here that I give honor and tribute of
remembrance to both of these redeemed political giants Comrade George
Lester Jackson and our beloved Blue Dragon Comrade Stanley Tookie
Williams Sr. as his “return to the essence” date approaches this 13
December 2022 (17 years) after his state/government sanctioned
assassination.
Rest in Power Big Tookie
MIM(Prisons) adds: Tookie Williams dedicated one of his
books to a list of mostly revolutionary figures, including George
Jackson. This was one reason given by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to
deny clemency for Tookie. Schwarzenegger said it indicated that he saw
violence as a means to address societal problems, and then proceeded to
use violence to kill Williams. Meanwhile, everything coming out of
Tookie was about promoting peace, and gang truces, and getting kids out
of gangs. As MIM Notes pointed out at the time of Tookie’s
murder, it is hard to know where his ideology was at the time because
the state literally had a gun to his head every time he spoke.(1)
Whether pacifist or revolutionary, there is no doubt that Tookie had
abandoned the negative aspects of his past in order to serve his
community and oppressed people around the world. As demonstrated so
vividly in the book Prisoners of Liberation, this was the goal
of prisons in socialist China, true reform.(2) And with true reform came
redemption and reintegration into society. But not for Amerika, there is
no redemption for the oppressed.
Tookie happened to be born into a neighborhood where the U.$.
government was importing drugs and weapons to create chaos in response
to the organizing of the Black Panther Party in cities like Los Angeles.
Oliver North, who oversaw the Iran-Contra Scandal that brought cocaine
to the streets of the United $tates while serving on the National
Security Council, now serves as high-paid political commentator and
appears on mainstream news shows these days, while Tookie was killed by
the state.
Notes: 1. HC93, 14 December 2005, Tookie, Another
Casualty of War, MIM Notes No. 329, January 2006. 2. Allyn Rickett
and Adele Rickett, 1973, Prisoners of Liberation, Garden City, NY:
Anchor Press. $8 from MIM Distributors.
Many young soldiers have heard of comrade
George, a Black Panther leader, revolutionary prison writer, and
organizer who was assassinated in August 1971 in a California
Penitentiary in San Quentin.
It’s time! Wake up comrades! The California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is a tool of racist
repression for Black & Brown people in the U.$. prison system. CDCR
has made serious mistakes in splitting the prisoner populations (50/50
yards/EOP/GPline/SNY/GP) political and social prisoners. CDCR has
realized their mistake and in the process of trying to correct it at
whose expense? you and I. So CDCR will once again go back to their
reactionary tactics oppressing the masses.
Comrade George gave us a strategy to combat CDCR false ideology:
“When I am denied or corrected, I always understand, but rage on, all on
the principle that the ideal must be flung about, that the oppressed
mentality must first escape the myth, the hoax, that repression is the
natural reaction to a collective consciousness of the commune.” And just
know that ideals cannot be killed with violence, racism has always been
employed as a pressure release for the psychopathic destructiveness
evinced by a people historically processed to fear.
The revolutionary is outlawed!
You can’t understand my pain but me. I’ve used every tool in the kit
to stay sane over these last 11 years in prison. I am alive and learning
for real. The only way CDCR can maintain its power is to create
differences on these yards and cause a diseased mind and feed it drugs.
Comrade wake-up. What’s the problem? If you not a disruptor or agent
provocateur, show proof and let’s start building this collective unity.
That’s the only way we can combat CDCR tactics of repression.
AFW on the move.
A California comrade provides more background info:
California has been phasing out its protective custody (P.C.) yards for
the last few years. CA prisons started eliminating the P.C. yards on the
lower levels and due to the high rate of violence this caused, it is
taking longer than expected to phase out the higher levels (lifers).
CDCR is well aware of the common practice of separating sex offenders
from general population prisoners. The cruelty sex offenders face in
prison is the very reason CA opened the P.C. yards 2 decades ago. Sex
offenders are regularly beaten, murdered, and as hypocritical as it is,
raped in prison.
However, over the years a lot of general population(G.P.) prisoners
have requested protective custody and once on the P.C. yards, these G.P.
prisoners continue their abuse of sex offenders. The result is that
according to CDCR, P.C. yards are more violent than G.P. yards (if
anyone believes that) and so CDCR is now requiring sex offenders to
house with the gang members that everyone knows, especially CDCR knows,
sex offenders need protection from.
I think CDCR is intentionally creating a violent environment for
whatever reason. CDCR is not ignorant that this new policy will and
already has resulted in the murder of a lot of sex offenders. Since the
policy began 3 years ago, the gangs have murdered sex offenders on every
yard the prison has forced them to house on and yet CDCR continues to
push for the complete elimination of protective custody. This is
obviously a deliberate action to increase violence.
Dozens of lawsuits have already been filed, but few if any will bear
fruit due to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which basically is
legislation designed to erase a prisoners constitutional right to sue
the prison. Furthermore, most prisoners have no legal skills whatsoever
and are forced to litigate against professional lawyers. So the chance
of any of the lawsuits asking the court for a right to safe housing of
winning that right is very small.
I will eventually litigate the issue and I will win.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We’ve printed a number of articles
in the last couple years about this integration plan creating violence.
It’s not just about sex offenders, many have gone to Special Needs
Yards in recent years for a number of reasons, including political
ones.
While most seem to agree that the CDCR is creating more violence,
injuries and deaths among prisoners, few have tried to explain why. One
thing that has been happening on the SNY, and now the integrated yards,
is the creation of new prison gangs, many of which have been fostered by
CDCR police gangs and work hand-in-hand. This seems to be part of a
larger strategy to displace the big four lumpen orgs that have
historically dominated the G.P. yards and at least some of which have
been staunch in their refusal to work with the pigs. These four lumpen
orgs were behind the largest prison hunger strikes in history to protest
the torture happening in CDCR’s Security Housing Units.
As we’ve always said, “We Want Peace, They Want Security.” And most
often the two are at odds, where the state uses violence and chaos as a
form of social control and securing it’s power over the prison masses.
That said, the integration offers an opportunity for the prison
population in CA to unite along once deep divisions, and we call on
comrades to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons based on the 5
principles.
As a first time writer for MIM(Prisons) I must confess that, it’s
absolutely a blessing to have found such a space/medium to expose what’s
currently taking place within the Georgia Department of Corrections
(G.D.C), hereinafter “Georgia industrial slave complex”. Because
honestly, with every issue of Under Lock & Key, I thirst to
develop a political cadre, in order to establish a vanguard party among
the (lumpen) prisoner class.
Here at Telfair State plantation, there’s no real sense of political
consciousness among the masses nor is there any form of unity among the
street tribes, whom all proclaim to have been birthed out of Black
struggle to combat against oppression from a political perspective to
protect their community. To which I ask, isn’t the slave plantation
environment currently their community? Then why is it that their claims,
tends to seem as though nothing more than “persuasive rhetoric” produced
from the tenets of a force with every form of materialistic/imperialist
reason to divide the common? and yet, it gets worse.
There’s a massive staff shortage at the root of many Georgia
industrial slave sanitation failures and the problems don’t stop there.
It’s beyond the crisis point and something needs to change. Because
there’s a real humanitarian crisis. In which homicide and suicide rates
has already reached “unprecedented levels.” At Least 25 slave prisoners
deaths on plantation compounds in 2020 were suspected homicides, 7 at
Macon State plantation, according to “G.D.C.” and 19 slave prisoners
supposedly killed themselves in 2020, twice the national average.
The “G.D.C.” annual report for fiscal year 2019 (there was a lack of
access for 2020 FY report) reveals constant churn. According to the OF,
78% of the department’s new hires are (overseers) “Corrections
Officers,” and 71% quit before the year ended. Gov. Brian Kemp, just
proposed a 9.1% pay increase for plantation(overseers) guards that would
raise their entry level salary from $27,936 to $30,730. The experienced
staff are leaving as fast as they can to get out of here. What we’re
left with is kids trying to supervise slave prisoners they’re afraid of
and that has a domino effect. Without adequate staffing, the maintenance
begins to suffer, food service suffers. Because they don’t feel safe,
it’s created a circular problem.
Access to healthcare is more limited than ever and mental health
counselors are afraid to come in the dorms. Under-staffing has led to
more slave prisoners being stationed in temporary holding cages, going
extended periods without food, water or even bathroom visits. Often
we’re left in those cages to urinate and defecate on ourselves. If the
situation persists, lives will continue to be at stake. It’s just a
matter of time before we see causalities among the staff and slave
prisoners.
Urban street tribes have filled the power vacuum. The G.D.C.
estimated it housed 15,000 tribe members; nearly a third of it’s total
population. In the five previous years, authorities said tribe members
were responsible for 1,700 assaults in Georgia industrial slave
plantations. The pandemic has only made the situation worse, as COVID-19
continues to spread throughout the slave plantations. Recently 24 slave
prisoners tested positive for the virus; 3,100 have been infected so
far, 88 have died. Another 1,482 staff members have test positive and
two died from the virus, according the the G.D.C Those figures are
likely 10 times below the actual number of infections, according to a
recent study by the Center of Disease Control & Prevention.
I believe (the G.D.C.) is tolerating levels of chaos we have not seen
in the last 20 years. The scale of the problem is so great that federal
interventions is necessary and warranted. (Side note, the Department of
Justice continues investigation into Georgia prisons.)
Please family, friends and those on the inside report on what is
happening inside the walls of Georgia Department of Corrections prisons.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in September a state-wide
civil investigation into conditions at facilities across the state. The
DOJ investigation is focused on determining whether state prisoners are
reasonably safe from physical harm at the hands of other prisoners. DOJ
is also investigating whether the state offers reasonable protections
for LGBTQIA prisoners from sexual abuse by corrections officers and
other prisoners. If you or someone you know has information that could
raise awareness to this cause, submit tips to:
DOJ email community.georgiaDOC@usdoj.gov.
Dept. of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington DC 20530
MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade’s report echoes what is
being reported
from Alabama from prisoners organizing there. Georgia is one of the
five states with a higher incarceration rate than Alabama, and of course
both are in the Black Belt south. Prison systems across the country are
crumbling and failing. It is our purpose to support those who are trying
to organize for change amongst this chaos. These contradictions create
opportunity for change.
If you did not receive a copy of the JFI petition to the Department
of Justice that we mailed out with Under Lock & Key 78,
write us to get copies and use them to organize a collective voice in
your prison. It is only by independent, collective organizing that we
can stop these unnecessary deaths and abuses.
Peace and Blessings to the Revolutionary Souljahs Around the Globe.
I’m writing you because the Missouri Department of Corruption has found
a way to censor “Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News”. I believe
that it’s retaliation for my activism. However, I’m not the only one
that had their issues taken by Deputy Division Director Jason Lewis and
Ryan Crews. Maybe they want us reading Dr.Seuss and Mickey Mouse!
Anyway, the Struggle continues and the Damus are mobilizing here at
Potosi Correctional Center for the “Greater Good of the Multitude”, We
are cleaning our own house so that we can put things into perspective
and form some type of “solidarity” with the other Lumpen here in misery!
Things must change for the Black, Brown, and Red! We have been getting
slaughtered all over the globe and all we do is “march” chanting “Black
Lives Matter”. If Black Lives Matter, then “why are we still marching?”.
I do understand that there is a time for war and for the “fight to end
oppression”, but how much longer must we sit by and allow the enemy to
oppress us? We are many and must unite to combat the deaths of
our Brothers, Sisters, Uncles, Aunties, Cousins, Husbands, and
Wives!
Quick update on BP 03.91 – Yesterday, while at the law library, one
prisoner recently received an order of photos that had been previously
banned. This happened months after our legal group filed injunctions in
relation to BP 03.91 and how it arbitrary enforcement wasn’t congruent
with its parameters. What is even more eye opening is how staff and
administration keep taking (and breaking) property. All grievances come
back with “your allegations could not be substantiated.”
Some are fighting back small. Dragging the administration through
many small litigation claims will weaken their resolve on bigger ones.
The grievance system is a joke. While staff continue to bully prisoners
around, by throwing away their property in the shakedown, confiscating
their religious items, and cutting down their eating, showering, and
dayroom times. Texas prisons are becoming more and more run by inmates
who utilize drug connections with officers. Recently I had a sergeant
who tried to intimidate me into recanting a grievance which I wrote
about prisoners passing out mail (a new “hustle” some STG’s have turned
up on by holding certain mail “hostage”). When I didn’t relent, he sent
one of the gang members to talk to me. How do you threaten the life of a
lifer? SMH These kids don’t get get it.
MIM(Prisons) adds: As staff shortages become the excuse
to abuse and deny prisoners basic necessities, we are receiving reports
of prisoners being used in this manner to deliver mail, do counts, even
utilizing department walky-talkies to assist staff. In the short-term
this is being used to further divide the prisoner population by granting
some the role of the slave catcher and granting them benefits. But this
also indicates a crisis in the TDCJ that will create new opportunities
as the state loses control over day-to-day operations.
The police state may prove to be over-extended if they cannot get
enough Amerikans to run the machine. With pigs dying from covid-19 at
higher rates due to their bad hygiene, retiring faster, and refusing to
go to work in the biggest prison systems in the world, we will certainly
be seeing shifts in the near future in the terrain of the U.$. criminal
injustice system.
Sanyika Shakur, formerly known as ‘Monster’ Kody Scott, author of
three books and numerous articles, legendary street gang figure,
self-transformed New Afrikan revolutionary and communist, passed over to
meet the ancestors, Black August 2021. Sanyika was only 57 years of
age.
Sanyika is most known for his auto-biography, Monster, which
also was produced as a film. What most don’t know is that even at the
time of writing that book, Sanyika had begun what would become a
life-long struggle to evolve not only his thinking but to have his
social practice match his level of theoretical prowess.
Sanyika’s story is a testimonial to what a lot of us, lumpen, go
through. He battled drug addiction, he struggled to navigate between his
evolving socio-political awareness and the loyalties embedded within him
during decades of hard-core gang-bangin’. In the end he stands as both
an inspirational, as well as a cautionary example, for those of us
lumpen who seek self-evolution, and revolutionary transformation. He is
an inspiration, showing how far We can bring ourselves with Our sheer
will power. When the brother entered prison in 1985, he was functionally
illiterate. A handful of years later he would author the first of three
books. This in itself is quite a feat.
However, Sanyika’s greatest feat was his determination to unify, and
organize gang members, and former gang members into revolutionary
formations. These formations he founded or took part in included, C.C.O.
(Consolidated Crip Organization), C.R.I.P.(s) (Clandestine Revolutionary
Internationalist Party (of Soldiers)), August Third Communist
Organization, and the New Afrikan People’s Liberation Army.
Sanyika obviously wished to be remembered, not as a gang bangin’
Crip, but as a New Afrikan revolutionary nationalist and communist who
sought to unify his people, New Afrikan lumpen, and he was thankful for
the ‘overstanding’ (as he would say) he was able to grasp due to the
knowledge and wisdom passed down by his/ Our ancestors. For his chosen
name, Sanyika, means ‘Unifier of the people’, while Shakur means ‘most
thankful’ in Ki-Swahili and Arabic respectfully.
In including the memory of this comrade-brother in Our newsletter,
Power Moves, We wish to call Our readers to dedicate self to
self-transformation, and more specifically to transform the criminal
mentality into a revolutionary mentality. In order to ‘Re-Build To Win’,
We must first Re-Build Ourselves. By this We mean, We must rectify and
re-orientate Ourselves with new and improved values, social circles, and
social habits. Without these traits of evolution, there will be no
revolution, if We think otherwise We’re merely kidding Ourselves.
REST IN POWER COUSIN
Sources: 1)Re-Build!: A New Afrikan Independence Movement
Periodical, Special Commemorative Issue, Black August
2021.
[This is re-printed with the author’s permission, from the internal
prison newsletter Power Moves, a publication of Black Independence
Taking Root (BITR), an organization taking root in Texas Koncentration
Kamps.]
For over a decade MIM(Prisons) has offered correspondence study
courses to help those trying to transform themselves inside the belly of
the beast. Yet, we struggle to keep these Serve the People Programs
running and ask those on the outside to contact us to help out. This
winter we will be releasing a Revolutionary 12 Step program that is
focused on transforming yourself from the lumpen/criminal lifestyle, to
the committed revolutionary. The first printing will go out to USW
leaders across the country to help implement self-transformation
programs in prisons and on the street.