MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
by Mica of MIM(Prisons) January 2024 permalink
Shani Louk was one of the I$raelis killed on October 7th that had
glamorous photos spread across the media
18 January 2024 – Today, The Guardian published an article
claiming to have evidence of rape of I$raelis during the October 7th
attack led by Hamas.(1) However, much of the evidence they provide is
the same evidence provided by The New York Times in a similar
article from December that has been largely debunked by The
Electronic Intifada, citing lack of real evidence, claims that have
been countered by the relatives of one alleged victim, and exposing a
prime “witness” for being Zionist a operative who has given inconsistent
accounts of what ey says ey saw.(2)
I$rael, U.$. and British propaganda have been weaponizing gender to
maintain support for the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians of all ages
and genders. This has been their playbook against the Muslim world for
decades, and against oppressed nations for centuries. It is a common
tool of war to demonize and dehumanize the enemy to build support for
violence.
Because Hamas attacked civilians, including a rave full of young,
beautiful people, the images of young, mostly European, wimmin have been
at the forefront of the media since October 7th. Not only are I$raeli
wimmin portrayed very differently than Palestinian wimmin in the
propaganda war, they benefit from a pornographic culture that values
their appearance over that of other peoples of the world. This gives
them real gender power, and gives their images real currency in the
propaganda war.
One of those kidnapped from the rave was the daughter of a
billionaire who built his wealth on the occupation of Palestine. The
BBC strangely titled their article on him, “Eyal Waldman:
Israeli tech billionaire hopes for peace despite daughter’s killing.” In
the article, Waldman seeths about eliminating those who did the attack
and even all of Hamas.(3)
More recently, The Daily Mail featured an “exclusive” on
“The faces of the girls STILL being held by Hamas”. The tabloid style of
The Daily Mail is based on using images of the grotesque and
the sexy to capture attention. Stories such as this have allowed them to
feature both side-by-side.
While at least one order of magnitude more Palestinian young wimmin
have been murdered (not to mention injured, starved, sickened) by I$rael
since October 7th, it is the faces of Euro-I$raelis that we see in
British and U.$. media. Of course this can be explained by imperialist
geo-political interests in the region. But this is also because sex
sells, and young European wimmin are sexy.
MIM gave us the theory of the gender aristocracy to better understand
this dynamic, and how it affects who are our friends and who are our
enemies. The gender aristocracy are the wimmin (and the sexual
minorities, etc) who benefit from and support the patriarchy despite
having the biological characteristics that traditionally put people in
the gender oppressed group under patriarchy. Like the labor aristocracy,
the gender aristocracy expanded and transformed in the era of
imperialism.
MIM Thought points to the material basis of gender in health status,
and the gender aristocracy operating often as a subset of national
oppression. So the young, healthy, strong, beautiful people are the ones
with gender privilege. Tie that with oppressor nation status, and you
have a group of people who have the dual characteristics of being highly
valued as well as considered worthy of protection.
Under patriarchal thinking, the defiling of the nation’s wimmin is
often a higher offense than killing them. So when we compare the capture
of dozens of young Euro-I$raeli wimmin (some who have been murdered) to
the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, there is just no
comparison in the eyes of the oppressor. They will happily kill
thousands of more Palestinian men, wimmin and children as revenge for
this ultimate sin.
Even in death we see the privilege and power of the gender
aristocracy whose pictures are spread around and mourned in the
oppressor nations, while the Palestinian wimmin die nameless and
faceless.
We’ve also seen Jewish student groups in the United $tates using
signs in support of LGBTQ people in their counter protests to those
opposing the war on Palestine. This is another example of trying to
unite the oppressor nations around gender issues against the oppressed
nations that has been used against the Arab world for decades.
Despite these efforts, a November Gallup poll showed that Amerikan
wimmin were less supportive of I$rael’s war than men (44% vs 59%).
Bigger gaps were seen by age and nation, however. For age support was
30% for 18 to 34 year olds, 50% for 35 to 54, and 63% for 55 and older.
Many have commented on the different views of I$rael by age and
historical context. But youth interests always differ from the rest, and
we see this contradiction as the principal contradiction within the
Amerikan nation. Within the United $tates we see the principal
contradiction as that between the Amerikan nation and the oppressed
nations. This is reflected in 61% white support for I$raeli war, and 30%
support from the oppressed nations in the poll.(5)
The current upsurge of youth and oppressed nations in response to the
genocide in Gaza is heartening. We must work to organize these forces
into sustainable anti-imperialist organizations. The primary way to do
this is in the battle of ideas and combatting the trickery the
imperialists use to try to win them back over to the side of the
oppressor.
The Taliban retook power in Afghanistan after the
U.$. retreat in August 2021.(1) In April 2022, the Taliban once
again instituted a ban on poppy cultivation, and by December 2023 they
had reduced production by 95%. Most global poppy cultivation now takes
place in unstable regions of Myanmar.(2) The Taliban banned opium
production with similar results in 2000, but when the United $tates
invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they saw to it that opium production was
restored and there were continued increases up until last year. As a
very poor country, poppy production is a significant cash crop for
Afghan farmers. Still the Taliban has been able to enforce the ban,
while working with farmers to grow alternative crops. The United $tates
says they spent $8 billion trying to eradicate poppy during their rule
over the country from 2001 to 2018.(2)
Afghanistan has been negotiating agricultural deals with China since
the Taliban regained power in 2021, and are scheduled to begin shipping
large exports of produce to China this month [December 2023].
Afghanistan has attended China’s recent Belt and Road Forum, with China
becoming Afghanistan’s second biggest trade partner after neighboring
Pakistan.(3) This growing export of raw materials has come with far
greater imports of products from social-imperialist China, that will
feed a relationship of unequal exchange leading to wealth transfer out
of Afghanistan. But in the short-term it is helping provide economic
options other than exporting opium to Europe, where Afghanistan had
provided 95% of the black market supply.(4)
While the United $tates invaded Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11
attacks, by 2003 they had begun a full-scale invasion of Iraq using 9/11
as a cover once again. Iraq had also had a culture and tradition that
made drug use relatively uncommon. This began to change since the
overthrow of the Ba’ath Party in 2003, with sharp increases in crystal
meth and the stimulant Captagon documented since 2017.(5) It’s also
interesting to note that besides U.$. oil interests, Amerikans were
concerned with the ruling Ba’ath Party’s support of certain militant
groups in Palestine.
Of course a better example of eliminating opium is China, where the
masses were the victims of British Opium War. The Taliban isn’t fighting
addiction so much as they are trying to shift agricultural production in
a way that is challenging the incomes of poor farmers. The Chinese
Communist Party (CPC) gives us a better model than the Taliban of how to
fight addiction by empowering the masses through socialism from
1949-1976. We wrote about this in Issue 59 on drugs:
“Richard Fortmann did a direct comparison of the United $tates in
1952 (which had 60,000 opioid addicts) and revolutionary China (which
started with millions in 1949).(9) Despite being the richest country in
the world, unscathed by the war, with an unparalleled health-care
system, addicts in the United $tates increased over the following two
decades. Whereas China, a horribly poor country coming out of decades of
civil war, with 100s of years of opium abuse plaguing its people, had
eliminated the problem by 1953.(9) Fortmann pointed to the politics
behind the Chinese success:
“If the average drug addiction expert in the United States were shown
a description of the treatment modalities used by the Chinese after 1949
in their anti-opium campaign, his/her probable response would be to say
that we are already doing these things in the United States, plus much
more. And s/he would be right.”(9)
“About one third of addicts went cold turkey after the revolution,
with the more standard detox treatment taking 12 days to complete. How
could they be so successful so fast? What the above comparison is
missing is what happened in China in the greater social context. The
Chinese were a people in the process of liberating themselves, and
becoming a new, socialist people. The struggle to give up opium was just
one aspect of a nationwide movement to destroy remnants of the
oppressive past. Meanwhile the people were being called on and
challenged in all sorts of new ways to engage in building the new
society.”(6)
Here we see the United $tates failing where socialist China
succeeded, using the exact same tools! These historical examples
demonstrate that the principal contradiction behind the drug epidemic is
found within the structure of society and not with specific treatment
techniques. China was also a divided, drug-ravaged population coming
into the war of liberation, proving how a new culture can be built and a
people can rise above addiction.
But wait, the Taliban and the CPC both had state power when they
eliminated drugs. True. And the people in state power in the United
$tates are not interested in empowering the people. Instead, they
continue to allow the free flow of drugs into even the most controlled
environments. On the road to state power, the CPC built dual power, by
developing liberated zones in China where they could begin to experiment
with the policies and practices of building socialism, including the
elimination of drug use.
U.$. prisons are very different conditions than the Chinese
countryside. And communists are far from state power in this country.
But comrades must use the materialist method to develop strategies for
building forms of dual power and transforming the culture of the
oppressed to fight drug addiction. The Revolutionary 12 Steps
that we published last year is one tool for that, but the real challenge
is putting programs into practice. We must build independent
institutions of the oppressed that combat addiction by empowering people
in a greater liberation struggle. It is the plague of hopelessness that
is truly killing us.
The Biden/Harris campaign released the above image criticizing some
language coming from recent Donald Trump campaign speeches for the 2024
U.$. Presidential election. Meanwhile Trump continues to lead by a
landslide for the Republican ticket, which is not surprising, as Hitler
viewed the Amerikan project with envy.
The United $tates has been milking it’s alliance with the Soviet
Union to fight fascism for over 75 years now. If it were not for the
sacrifices of the Soviet people, over 20 million of whom died in the war
fighting fascism, and if it were not for the strategic leadership of the
Comintern in building alliances with some imperialist powers to fight
others, we might not have had 75 years of self-righteousness to have
leaned on by U.$. leaders.
Usually U.$. officials would raise the “Hitler” comparisons when it
was time to expand imperialist wars against another Third World country,
such as Iraq or Panama. But today the leading Democratic presidential
candidate is using it against the leading Republican candidate at the
same time that the Democrat is facing legal charges for enabling
genocide emself. It seems the mask is coming off.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a complaint in
federal court in November on behalf of Palestinians that is seeking
recognition of the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the requirement for
President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do all they can
to prevent Israel’s genocidal acts.(1)
While the occupation of Palestine by I$rael and their imposition of
an apartheid state has long been genocidal, the war has reached
unprecedented levels since the Hamas-led attack against I$rael on 7
October 2023. By mid-December, a whopping 85% of the population of Gaza
has been displaced from their homes and 1% of the population has been
killed by the I$raeli onslaught. At least 8 of the murdered and around
100 of those injured were at the hands of “civilian” settlers.(2) Large
numbers of the displaced have no access to food or clean water.
Whether the Amerikan courts will recognize what is happening to the
Palestinians in Gaza as genocide is questionable according to legal
experts. But legal filings continue to be submitted to bolster the
case.
The “We Declare Genocide” tribunal held within U.$. borders last year
already found the United $tates guilty of genocide against the internal
semi-colonies who are facing an ongoing low-intensity warfare.(3) Of
course, this finding does not have official legal standing by the United
$tates government itself. The CCR suit is attempting to get that for
Palestine, and further brings attention to the genocidal acts of U.$.
imperialism around the globe.
The United $tates has single-handedly prevented the United Nations
Security Council from implementing a ceasefire in Palestine. The United
$tates picks and chooses who is allowed to commit war crimes and who is
not, and the UN is toothless to stop it.
During the second inter-imperialist war, the United $tates was in a
position to play the good guy because of rival interests with the
fascist countries and the opportunity it allowed them to exert power
over Europe as a whole. I$rael on the other hand is the #1 U.$. client
state, receiving far more funding from the Amerikans than any other
country since World War II. As Biden said, if I$rael didn’t already
exist they would have to create it. This puts the U.$. in a position
where it is impossible for them to oppose the genocide in Gaza.
The settler state is by definition a genocidal state. Stalin helped
give the United $tates a fig leaf to cover that legacy in the form of
supporting the Soviet defeat of Hitler. That fig leaf is drying up and
falling off. And the legitimacy of U.$.-run international institutions
like the UN and the United $tates itself are coming more and more into
question by global public opinion.
On 23 December 2023 Reuters reported Iranian Revolutionary Guards
stating the Red Sea will be closed if the United $tates and its allies
continue to commit “crimes” in Gaza. The next day, a drone struck a
commercial tanker owned by an I$raeli billionaire in the Gulf of Oman.
The U.$. and I$rael claim it was Iran who launched the drone, but Iran
denies it.
While involvement of Iran in the emerging regional war remains
cryptic, the Ansar Allah party has been very open about drone attacks
launched by the Yemeni Armed Forces on ships in the Red Sea. They have
said that until the siege of Gaza ends, shipping by I$raeli companies
through the Red Sea is not gonna happen. When U.$. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken called for them to stop their attacks, they responded
brazenly with “No.”
Secretary of State Blinken has been behind imperialist bombings in
Yemen for many years, as we discussed in a 2015 article.(1) It is no
wonder that the Ansar Allah slogan is “Allah is great, death to the
United States, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for
Islam.”(2)
Yemen has been at war with the Amerikans and their Saudi partners for
decades now, and despite being one of the poorest countries in the
world, have maintained their sovereignty against those imperialist
attacks.
The Yemeni Armed Forces response to the bombing of Gaza started with
warnings against any ships entering the Red Sea associated with I$rael,
boarding ships and telling them to turn around. Then on 19 November they
took over the ship Galaxy Leader with helicopters dropping off armed
troops and boats flanking the tanker. They flew the Palestinian flag on
the ship and posted videos online.
In addition, the Yemeni Armed Forces has shot missiles and flown
drones into southern I$rael. They even knocked a $40 million U.$. drone
out of the air.(3)
In Yemen, hundreds of thousands marched in opposition to the recent
bombings of Gaza by I$rael. The people of Yemen have long stood in
strong solidarity with Palestine liberation.
The Red Sea, going through the Suez Canal, is one of the three most
critical shipping routes in the world, with bulk goods and containers
going to the Mediterranean. The Red Sea is full of war ships from all
over the world, Djibouti being the home of many imperialist naval bases.
As much as 30% of global shipping containers can be in this area at any
time.(3)
Many major shipping companies have stopped shipping through the Suez
Canal in recent weeks. This forces them to go around Africa, delaying
ships weeks to a month, greatly increasing cost.
In response to all this, the Amerikans recently announced a U.$.
naval task force to combat Ansar Allah named “Operation Prosperity
Guardian”. Can’t let interventions against genocide get in the way of
profit flows the the United $tates. No states on the Red Sea have signed
on and the only Arab state to sign on, Bahrain, has no navy of its own
but hosts U.$. military bases. Meanwhile, close military allies such as
Jordan and Saudi Arabia are not willing to sign on. It is not just in
Yemen that the people are outraged about what is happening in Gaza. No
Arab state, no matter how brutal and reactionary, is willing to stand
with the U.$./I$raeli camp in this genocide.
Even Egypt, whose whole economy is threatened by a halt of shipping
through the Suez Canal, cannot assist the U.$. effort against Yemen.
They figure they can survive economic collapse better than the response
of their people to such betrayal of Yemen and Palestine.(4)
Saudi Arabia is currently involved in the peace process in Yemen,
bringing internal peace and unity to Yemen, following Ansar Allah’s
victory against U.$./Saudi warfare. Standing up for Palestine militarily
strengthens Yemen’s position in the peace negotiations.(4)
I$rael is taking a huge economic hit from the war overall. The
I$raeli airport is mostly closed, cutting off important tourist money.
The Palestinian proletariat from the West Bank and Gaza are no longer
coming in to do work, and tens of thousands of Thai proletarians have
left kibbutz farms where they did much of the agricultural work for the
country. Meanwhile, half a million I$raelis evacuated the south and the
government is paying to house them in hotels. Unemployment in I$rael has
tripled in the last month, and businesses have lost half of their
revenues.(3) Ansar Allah is contributing to this increasing economic
pressure on I$rael demonstrating what real internationalism looks like
in the face of a genocide against an oppressed nation.
“This anti-Semitic agitation, frequently masking under radical
slogans, represents an enormous danger both to the Jewish people and to
the revolutionary movement in the country, for it threatens to drown in
fraternal blood the whole cause of freeing the people and to cover the
revolutionary popular movement with indelible shame.”
To this day we still have problems in the international communist
movement (ICM) of groups focusing on Israel, rather than the imperialist
powers. This reference to Jews by Ansar Allah’s slogan, similarly risks
misidentifying the enemy, though correctly putting U.$. imperialism
first.
The theme of this issue of Under Lock & Key was inspired by recent essays and interviews by Orisanmi Burton, previewing material from eir upcoming book: Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Comrades in MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle from Within (USW) have been studying Burton’s work. Though we have not had the opportunity to read the book yet, which comes out end of October 2023, we like a lot of the ideas ey has presented so far and the overall thesis that prisons are war.
As we go to press the genocidal war on Palestine is heating up. We have reports inside on Congo, El Salvador, Ukraine and Niger; and we don’t even touch on Guatemala or Haiti. History has shown that as war heightens internationally, war often heightens against the oppressed nations within the empire as well.
In this issue we have reports of political repression as war in U.$. prisons. We also feature articles from comrades who organized around, and reflected on the Attica rebellion and Black August. This is the history that Burton analyzes in eir work, exposing the state’s efforts to suppress the prison movement and how both sides were operating on a war footing. For over a decade readers of ULK have commemorated the beginning of Attica on September 9th with a Day of Peace and Solidarity, as part of the campaign to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons. But how do we get to peace when we find ourselves the targets of the oppressor’s war?
Burton pushes back against some Liberal/reformist lines that have been advanced onto the prison movement to oppose the line of liberation. Burton’s ideas harken back to V.I. Lenin, recognizing prisons as a repressive arm of the state, and the state being a tool of oppression and warfare by one class over another. War is one form of political struggle, and a very important one at that.
It is this framework that we have used to push back against “abolitionism.” Our organization emerged from the struggle to abolish control units, a form of prisons that is torture and inhumane. We see the abolition of control units as a winnable, if difficult, battle under bourgeois rule. In a socialist state, where the proletariat rules over the former bourgeoisie, we certainly won’t have such torture cells anymore; but the abolition of prisons altogether is a vision for the distant future. We find it questionable that Burton frames revolutionary communist martyrs like George Jackson as an “abolitionist”.
Where we have more unity is when Burton takes issue with building the prison movement around the legalist struggle to amend the 13th Amendment of the U.$. Constitution that abolishes slavery except for the convicted felon. Burton points out the history of Liberal thought in justifying enslavement of those captured in just wars. As most in this country see the United $tates as a valid project, it could follow logically that it is just to enslave the conquered indigenous and New Afrikan nations, as well as nations outside the United $tates borders. We see how settlers in Amerika and I$rael are now justifying all sorts of genocidal atrocities against Palestine.
The challenge we have repeatedly made to the campaign to amend the 13th Ammendment is how this contributes to liberating oppressed people? How does it build power for oppressed people?
In one essay Burton draws connections to how the state was handling the war against the Vietnamese people at the same time as the war against New Afrika at home.(1) We have a draft paper out on the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement that discusses the counter-insurgency in Peru, and how the fascist U.$.-Fujimori regime locked communist leader Comrade Gonzalo in an underground isolation cell and then used confusion around political line to crush the People’s War in that country. In Under Lock & Key 47, we reprinted an in-depth analysis of the use of long-term solitary confinement against the revolutionary movement in Turkey and the use of hunger strikes to struggle against it from 2000-2007. All of these historical examples, including to some extent New Afrika in the 1970s, involved an armed conflict on both sides. Today, in the United $tates, we do not have those conditions. However, we can look to the national liberation struggle in Palestine, and the connection to the prison movement there as a modern-day example.
Burton spends time exposing the politics of the federal counter-insurgency program PRISACTS. And one of the things we learn is that PRISACTS is officially short-lived as the counter-insurgency intelligence role is taught to and passed on to the state institutions. We see this today, especially in the handling of censorship of letters and reading materials we send to and receive from prisoners. We see the intentional targeting of these materials for their political content, and not for any promotion of violence or illegal activity. Our comrades inside face more serious consequences of brutality, isolation and torture in retaliation for attempts to organize others for basic issues of living conditions and law violations.
The arrest of Duane “Keffe D” Davis for involvement in the murder of Tupac Shakur has also been in the news this month. Keffe D is a known informant who confessed to driving his nephew to murder Tupac years ago in exchange for the dropping of a life sentence for an unrelated charge. Author John Potash notes that there were many attempted assassinations of Tupac prior to his death, at least one that involved the NYPD Street Crimes Unit. This unit was launched following the supposed “end” of COINTELPRO.(2) This directly parallels what we see with the “end” of PRISACTS and the passing of intelligence operations on to state pigs.
As we’ve discussed in drawing lessons from the repression of Stop Cop City, we need to take serious strategic precautions in how we organize. We must recognize the war being waged on us. If we treat this as something that can be fixed once people see what’s going on, or once we get the right courts or authorities to get involved, we will never accomplish anything. And as always we must put politics in command. There is an active intelligence counter-insurgency being waged against USW and the prison movement in general, and the best weapon we have is grasping, implementing and judging political line.
Prison is War is not just a topic for ULK, it is a political line and analysis. We welcome your future reports, articles and artwork exposing the ways this war is happening in prisons today.
Notes: 1. Burton, Orisanmi (2023).“Targeting Revolutionaries: The Birth of the Carceral Warfare Project, 1970-1978.” Radical History Review. Vol. 146. 2. John Potash on I Mix What I Like, 16 October 2023. (author of “The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders”)
Introduction: Current Existing Ideas Around Snitching
As Marxist-Leninist-Maoists it is important to apply the dialectical materialist method when it comes to handling the contradictions among the masses. In the prison context where most of our organizing revolves around, the contradictions between various prisoner individuals, national groups, and lumpen organizations can become antagonistic and it is our job to transform this antagonistic contradiction into a non-antagonistic one and resolve it from there out.
One example of idealism is around the “stop snitching” slogan and campaign. Is “stop snitching” a correct slogan? Only an idealist could answer this question without more information. The materialist method of finding out what would constitute “snitching” would be to analyze the material conditions of how this “stop snitching” idea came about, the purposes it was for, which classes were promoting it, and going from there. What we must not do is treat it like a general platitude where it can be abused for anti-people purposes and exploited by the pigs to get the masses to fight amongst themselves.
To assume the most righteous origins of the “stop snitching” slogan, we can think of various lumpen organizations, who might be in competition and rivalry with each other at times. Yet these organizations all come to agree that they have a common interest in not sending the oppressor’s cops against each other. Perhaps there is a consciousness as oppressed people uniting these L.O.s to come to this conclusion. But certainly there is a material interest in staying alive and out of prison by reducing the amount of police involvement in their lives.
The “stop snitching” campaign was a success. So much so that today, in many prisons, it has been taken up as an idealistic and dogmatic truth rather than a materialist principle to apply in differing conditions. To many this slogan is true for all times and all places. In fact, it is so absolutely true that they apply it to the police themselves! We’ve received reports from many parts of the country that comrades can’t get others to file grievances against abuse and inhumane conditions against the system because fellow prisoners don’t want to “snitch”.
Now in reality, those fellow prisoners are probably just scared of what prison staff will do to them, so they use the “stop snitching” slogan as an excuse to do nothing and live quietly under the boot of oppression which the stop snitching principle was brought up to fight against in the first place.
However, those who stand up for themselves recognize the role of grievances. We live in a bourgeois democracy. The image of the rule of law is important to the enemy even if things become lawless in the corners of society, like in prisons. There is a grievance system and the bourgeois/imperialist state says they will follow that system. That means this is a tool that can and should be used to improve conditions for comrades organizing within the belly of the beast and fight for the political rights to build independent institutions. To call that snitching is to say that something is true because it’s true; not because of any actual evidence or material basis. To call this snitching is to lack any analysis of class, nation, gender or who are our friends and who are our enemies.
And as we discussed in the last issue of ULK, we must learn to think in percentages to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons. Thinking in absolutes, allows the enemy to keep us divided.
Case Scenario: Inmate Collaborators and Pigs Using Anti-Snitching Sentiment to Repress Prisoners in CDCR
In one of many reports like this, a comrade in California recently wrote us:
Dear MIM Distributors,
I am a disabled person under the Armstrong v. Newsom injunction where I continue to be targeted by officers who specialize in pitting prisoners against each other to discourage and deter use of the grievance process at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD), and in retaliation for the same.
On the morning of 25 August 2023, while exiting my cell quarters to be issued my breakfast and lunch Kosher meal, one of the inmate porter workers (infamous for not only disruptions, violence, and fighting other prisoners on the unit; but also carrying out retaliatory terrorism for officers against prisoners who use the RJD grievance process to report misconduct) began to ridicule me without provocation.
Subsequent to returning to my cell and at commencement of A.M. medication, officer G. Sellano supervised pill line near my cell as the same prisoner porter worker came to my cell door and began hostile provocation calling me a “snitch” for pending grievances (Attached as Exhibit A). Both of which involve this very same inmate porter worker and officer G. Sellano.
This inmate porter worker then stood outside my cell door on a rant to provoke me by yelling “snitch, you a bitch, you wrote a buz on me and Sellano.” The whole time officer G. Sellano stood listening, watching as the inmate porter worker then openly blasted how he is able to “do what I want all around here, I can fight anybody I want and nothing will happen. I won’t even get a 115.” Challenging me to fight as officer G. Sellano stood listening and watching while supervising the A.M. medication line next to my assigned cell.
Said inmate porter worker then began yelling to the tower officer to open my cell door in order to attack me while officer G. Sellano continued to fail to intervene, act, or quell the growing disorder.
The inmate porter worker in question is allowed to volunteer work for officer G. Sellano where the inmate receives detailed information on pending grievances filed against officer G. Sellano – then uses that personal knowledge of grievance information to confront, intimidate, and provoke some violent incident with the grievant: all while officers on the unit watch.
Facility Captain Lewis has turned a blind eye to not only this particular inmate porter worker’s ongoing propensity for violence and daily disruptions on the housing unit, but also the fact that this particular inmate porter worker is and has been for months now, used as a torpedo for housing officers like G. Sellano to be programmed to target prisoners like me who use the grievance process here at RJD while Warden James Hill has been unable to prevent officers like G. Sellano from using working knowledge of department operations to gather information for the purposes of endangering the safety and the welfare of those confined therein.
Inmates vs Prisoners
Inmates are the categorical definition used by the U.$. law to white wash their crimes. It is no different politically than to call the torture of Iraqi POWs “enhanced interrogation.” Inmate also implies a more collaborative relationship between captive and captor, which is an appropriate term to use for the inmate porter described above. A politically appropriate term for the vast majority of the imprisoned lumpen in this country would be prisoners or captives. We do not live in a time where wars are officially declared or sanctioned by governments through formalized documents. Wars are declared through invasions (such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine), bombings (such as Al-Qaeda’s destruction of the twin towers), etc. The U$A has waged war against the oppressed nations inside their borders through mass imprisonment and police occupation – thinly disguised as “war on crime” or “war on drugs.” During this mass imprisonment and lumpenization of the oppressed nation masses through the criminal inju$tice system, inmates are those who collaborate with the pigs behind bars – a consciousness of a lumpen class in itself. A lumpen class for itself, as Marx used the term, would recognize the political importance of the two distinctions.
As stated earlier, the stop snitching slogan can be utilized as principled solidarity as fellow oppressed nationals within the constant anti-people activities of the lumpen class. Through popular support, such as hip-hop culture, this stop snitching principle would even extend beyond street life into the youth where telling on adults or school teachers would even be considered snitching. The principle of a specific lumpen life now become a general platitude and empty virtue. We ask our imprisoned lumpen readers, can snitching really be stopped without independent power from the oppressor? What would it mean to be loyal to “your people” or “your folks”? Can the principle of anti-snitching be applied to the enemy who it is designed to protect fellow oppressed nations or lumpen from in the first place?
We hope to move the discussion a step forward for our readers who seek to transform the anti-people gangster mentality to the pro-people revolutionary path. Using the few rights that the oppressed are given against the oppressor to build power among the masses is not snitching. Perhaps this over-emphasis on snitching on fellow criminals (as the government are criminals oftentimes in lawless corners of society such as prisons) shows the class in itself level consciousness that many of our readers might be susceptible to.
Both Russia and Ukraine have problems of fascism in their society expressed through the most reactionary elements of the Wagner Group of Russia and the infamous Azov Battalion of Ukraine. Both sides are vehement anti-communists despite the sensationalist portrayals of Putin as a USSR-esque tyrant in mainstream media political cartoons. Ukrainian reactionaries will topple down Soviet era statues while for the Russian imperialists, Ukraine itself is a giant Soviet era statue that must be toppled down and engulfed into Russia. Ukraine would have never gotten its independence in the first place without the world’s first proletarian dictatorship of the USSR.
Unlike the United $tates, Japan, Western Europe, and etc., Russian imperialism does not have a majority labor aristocrat population (despite a very significant one) and the class interests of the Russian proletariat lines up with the class interests of the Ukrainian proletariat against Russian and NATO imperialism.(0)
At best, Soviet nostalgia expressed in Russia longs for social-imperialist era command economy coupled with resentment of the political-economic crises caused by the complete opening up of Soviet markets. It is an unscientific frustration of the general masses in Russia. At worst, it is a rallying tool for current Russian imperialism’s moral justification akin to how concepts like democracy, freedom, and women’s rights were rallying tools of U.$. imperialism’s military invasions in the Middle East. We wish to practice revolutionary optimism in regards for the anti-revisionist communists in Russia and Ukraine who could take this popular sentiment away from the hands of the imperialists and into the hands of the broad masses.
Oftentimes in our current conditions where the anti-imperialist movement is weak and undeveloped, the best thing for U.$. imperialism’s involvement in the war in Ukraine is giving the masses the correct analysis from the vantage point of the international proletariat. We should avoid “cheer leading” between various imperialist powers where “various people’s wars and nations at war… [become akin to] fandoms for TV shows to obsess and argue over rather than a movement to popularize and create awareness for.”. We recognize the importance of organs like Under Lock & Key and independent institutions like United Struggle Within – both in their strengths and limitations – for the imprisoned section of the lumpen class.
The Wagner Group
One significant development this summer was an attempted coup by the Wagner Group against the government of Russia. For our readers who might not know, the Wagner group is a private military mercenary group of the Russian Federation formed through the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.(1) While its origins are unclear, the group has been claimed to have been founded by both Dmitry Utkin and Yevgeny Prigozhin with the the former having been the field military commander and the latter being the financier and military programmer.(2) Utikin, being a veteran of the Chechen Wars, was said to have had great admiration of Nazi Germany and his nickname in the battlefield was given by eir fellow imperialist soldiers as “Wagner” named after the German composer whose music was popularly used by Hitler and eir fascist goons as rallying songs during marches.(3) Due to the Nazi ideologies which were part of the Wagner Group’s political DNA from the start, fascist slogans and graffiti by the group’s presence in Ukraine has been known to have surfaced.(4)
On 20 May 2023 Prigozhin, at the time the top commander of the Wagner Group, took the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine.(5) Ey criticized top Russian officials of the military, the defense minister, and the chief of general staff withholding artillery ammunition from the Wagner Group and accused them of “high treason.”(6) Defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced that all members of “volunteer units” must be required to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1st in order to get Wagner and similar mercenary groups under a tighter leash. Despite Prigozhin’s close loyalty to Putin, the latter has chosen to back the defense minister’s decision.(7)
On the midnight of 24 June 2023, Prigozhin while denying to sign the contract and have eir fascist mercenary goons under Russian imperialist control announced a “march for justice” leaving Ukraine and having the first column enter Russia’s Southern Military District. Prigozhin demanded that Shoigu and Gerasimov be brought to him and held a blockade of the city. On the city of Voronezh, the group shot down Russian military helicopters and a command aircraft killing at least a dozen soldiers marking the start of the rebellion.(8) With Putin’s condemnation and the labeling of Prigozhin’s act as treason, the rebellion came to a quick end. On the Sunday of 24 August 2023, Russian authorities have confirmed that Prigozhin has died in a plane crash.(9)
The rhetoric that Russia is an anti-fascist or anti-colonial force in the global imperialist system is a bold-faced lie of Russian imperialism. Acknowledging this fact is in no way supporting Ukraine’s own fascism ridden government. It is the instinct of petty-bourgeois moralism to see armed conflicts as a side of the good guys and the bad guys. This war itself is an inter-imperialist battle where Russian imperialism seeks to gain global hegemony against U.$./NATO aligned forces and where the nation of Ukraine is caught in the middle of this geo-political tug-of-war. The fact that the fascists of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion and the fascists of Russia’s Wagner Group are fighting each other is just another telltale sign how fascism is an incoherent nihilistic political trend that must be stomped out.
Russia Sympathies Among the Masses
Many prisoner comrades have written to us since the previous article was published where they expressed some sympathies for Russian imperialism. Many arguments had to do with the fact that Russian imperialism was defending itself against the NATO/U.$. led powers.
A California prisoner commented:
”I hear too many well proclaimed communists taking sides with Ukraine. “Putin is a fascist,” “Putin is imperialist,” etc…
As a prisoner I have learned to be very cautious about taking sides, I see all kinds of evil up here everyday: a lot of schemes, manipulations, scam artists. I see all of them here in prison.
So why? Why is the United $nakes so interested in Ukraine winning? Why is it worth trillions of dollars to the U.$. for Ukraine to win? We, the common people like myself, does not understand things like the stock market, and the grain exchange. I understand that grain is sold for money. What I don’t understand is how a whole completely separate market created out of thin air, selling absolutely nothing but grain calling itself the grain exchange that is something only the capitalists who run the world understand.
If I had to guess with my simple mind, I would say that Ukraine sells its grain to the west at a premium as a means to launder dirty drug money. But that’s just my simple mind. It probably has more to do with the grain exchange, capitalism itself.“
One sentiment we can agree with this prisoner comrade is that the job of communists and revolutionaries in the U.$. would be to see U.$. imperialism as their principal enemy. Many communists can so far agree with this line, the problem comes in deeper with regards to the analysis of other major imperialist countries – especially ones that spout anti-imperialist rhetoric in words such as while in practice commit imperialism that rivals the traditional NATO imperialist powers..
We would like to iterate to this comrade that their mind isn’t so simple as ey might let off. We appreciate the humbleness that revolutionaries should have that this comrade has shown, but in the end the contrite and popular phrase that the imperialist governments are the real criminals is true. Sure, we wouldn’t boil down world imperialism to money laundering; but theft and murder are important objectionable aspects of imperialism. We see many imprisoned comrades who project the anti-people crimes they struggle to overcome onto the criminal ways of the imperialists, and for a starting point these oversimplifications might not be the worst thing as a step towards revolutionary thinking.
With that said we would disagree that Russia is doing self-defense with regards to their invasion of Ukraine. As the above points laid out, we should avoid choosing sides in inter-imperialist conflict even though the U.$. and NATO imperialist forces didn’t have direct boots in Ukraine (which the comrade has also expressed as well).
The real question comes in as how Lenin’s theses on “The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War” would mean in practice in our current material conditions where the revolutionary forces are much weaker and arguably much more revisionist and opportunist than even the revisionist European and imperialist country communist movements which Lenin was writing polemics against.(10) One point that we can start from is this: the war that we should be focusing on is the war waged by Amerika against its internal semi-colonies of the Black, Chican@, and Indigenous Nations through mass imprisonment and police occupation. With this issue’s Under Lock & Key covering the topic of how “Prisons Are War,” we would like to further expand on how prisons play this role of low-intensity genocide against the masses.
Yesterday, National Public Radio (NPR) aired an interview with a former prisoner in Iran to discuss the recent release of 5 Amerikan citizens from an Iranian prison. The focus was on the horrible effects of solitary confinement and how to adapt to being back in society.
In our 2008 survey of long-term solitary confinement in the United $tates, we found that there were over 90,000 people suffering in those conditions. It is strange for the NPR story to not have mentioned this problem at home as well, or how the oppressed people in this country fair after years in torture cells. The NPR report spoke of “death chambers” in the Iranian prison, yet the United $tates has electric and now injection chairs with viewing areas and what they call “death row” in prisons across this country (though only about a dozen states are actively murdering prisoners in recent years).
The United $tates has long had the highest imprisonment rate across the world. They even boasted a higher imprisonment rate of Black people than the internationally condemned apartheid regime in South Africa.
The one-sided depiction of prisons and solitary confinement in Iran on NPR revealed a strong bias in their reporting. Yet what was most shocking to learn was that these people coming out of Iranian prisons were being offered what sounded like a fully immersive program through the U.$. military for dealing with the mental anguish of being in long-term solitary confinement.
Really? Yet every year we have comrades who are released from the same conditions in this country with nothing but a parole officer watching over them, often sabotaging their efforts to maintain a job and build a new life. Tens of thousands of people every year are released from long-term solitary in the United $tates, either into general population prisons or to the streets, with no concern for their mental well-being from the state. Who the U.$. imperialists offer mental health services to is a political decision, and it is our politics that guide us to offer help to those the imperialists will not.
As of last week, the California Mandela Act (AB 280) passed a supermajority in the state house and senate, heading next to the desk of Governor Newsom. Newsom vetoed the Mandela Act just one year ago. An aspiring presidential candidate, Newsom is likely to reject the calls from the state legislator to stop this torture again. This is over a decade after the historic California hunger strikes that called for an end to long-term solitary confinement, leading to the 2015 Ashker vs. CDCR settlement where those sacrifices led only to individuals being released from the SHU, leaving the institution in place. [UPDATE: The bill has been stalled to negotiate with the Governor and will not be passed in 2023.]
For comrades currently suffering in torture cells in U.$. prisons, you can write to us for back issues of Under Lock & Key on solitary and materials from the American Friends Service Committee on dealing with isolation. For comrades who are getting out, who have spent long periods in solitary, our Re-Lease on Life Program attempts to offer mentoring, guidance and political engagement to ease the transition back into society. Meanwhile, we encourage everyone to get involved in the struggle to abolish long-term solitary confinement in this country completely.
Because over 100,000 people face torture in solitary in the United $tates every year with no imperialist Army programs for rehabilitation offered afterwards, we must develop independent institutions of the oppressed to address this material need among the oppressed masses in this country.
In the last month we have seen the state of Georgia bring RICO Act charges against Rudy Giuliani and others who worked with Donald Trump to steal the 2020 U.$. presidential election, as well as activists who were doing things as simple as handing out fliers opposing the construction of Cop City in Atlanta.
The Federal Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was enacted in 1970 as a tool to charge people with crimes when they were having other people do their dirty work for them. Each crime charged under RICO can add years to ones prison sentence. The Georgia RICO Act of 1980 covers more crimes than the federal version. The Georgia Act makes Racketeering a felony in the state.(1) Historically, we have had multiple readers who were victims of RICO Act charges brought during the Giuliani years in New York City, and more recently in the Atlanta area, for their leadership roles in lumpen organizations, the more typical target of RICO.
Rudy Giuliani earned fame as a federal prosecutor for getting Mafia bosses in New York City convicted on RICO Act charges. He then used his reputation to become a “tough-on-crime” mayor of New York City known for “cleaning up” the city. It was during Giuliani’s time as Mayor of NYC that the infamous case was brought against King Blood (aka Luis Felipe) under the RICO Act. King Blood was charged for murders committed while ey was already in prison and received the inhumane and unprecedented sentence of life in solitary confinement. All of King Blood’s First Amendment rights to communication were denied, allowing only communication with eir lawyer and immediate family. This was not typically something a judge could sentence, but was justified via the racketeering statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(d).(2) Decades later, King Blood still sits in a torture cage in ADX Florence, isolated from the world. While the RICO charges against Giuliani may provide some cathartic humor, the 79-year-old will not be facing anything like King Blood is doing.
Weeks following the Georgia RICO Act charges against Trump, Giuliani, et al., another set of RICO Act charges (and domestic terrorism charges) were made against 61 activists involved in opposing the construction of Cop City in Atlanta. This is a continuation of the state’s warfare against Stop Cop City, including the ludicrous money laundering charges brought against bail support fundraisers we reported on in the last issue of ULK.(3) In the recent RICO indictment, the date of the murder of George Floyd (25 May 2020) is cited as the beginning of the investigations around the so-called “racketeering.” In other words, the state was trumping up these charges against activists before there was a Stop Cop City movement. This is not about stopping any criminal conspiracy, it is about repressing any opposition to the use of lethal police force against New Afrika and oppressed people in general. It is a defense of the state’s right to wage violent war against New Afrika.
In a recent article, a comrade laid out the political nature of the law, debunking the myth that laws were developed as a way to impose morality or address inherent problems in society.(4) Rather law stemmed from the need to manage the division of humyns into classes. With Trump/Giuliani, we see the RICO Act law being used by the bourgeoisie to discipline other bourgeoisie who are threatening the image of bourgeois democracy. And in the case of the 61 activists they are using the same law to discipline youth and oppressed nations who are opposing more violent forms of state discipline.
When we go up against the courts, the police, or even the politicians, we must be prepared for war. The cops murdering us in cold blood is war. The courts and prisons putting us in torture cells for years is war. City governments in Atlanta and San Pablo, California funding cop cities where pigs can play war games is war. These more obvious forms of war, are part of political struggle. There are no rights, only power struggles. To engage in power struggles, requires giving the war two sides.
^*Notes: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_RICO_(Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations)_Act 2. Prison Legal News, 15 March 1999, Judicial Sentence of Life in Solitary Upheld. 3. A comrade, July 2023, “Law and the Courts of Late”, Under Lock & Key No. 82. 4. A comrade of Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support, July 2023 “Atlanta Criminalizes Protest Against Cop City”, Under Lock & Key No. 82.*^
We thank Comrade Slaughter for bringing forth these questions, and as Maoist revolutionaries MIM(Prisons) as a cell has the duty to coordinate this line struggle within the United Struggle Within through unity-criticism-unity. One divides into two: a thing that was in a state of unity will have its contradictions and arrive at a point where the two are split. And through criticism and self-criticism and ridding metaphysics and idealism, the two aspects of the contradiction will find unity where one side will overtake the other.
Before we begin with the following quotes of the responders to Comrade Slaughter, we raise the question Mao Zedong asked when ey and eir comrades were beginning a revolutionary people’s war in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China: who are our friends? who are our enemies?
Comrade Jade responds: In regards to Slaughter’s response I would like to point out a few things you may overlook in regards to sex offenders in general.
First, not everyone convicted of a sex crime is a child molester. Are all white males Aryans? Are all Hispanics Cartel? Are all Black males gang bangers? There will always be diversity in all groups we attempt to label or create. It is a proven fact. We all are individuals who are slightly different even under the exact same conditions.
Next, I believe that you need to truly look at what they did or did not do before ostracizing or mistreating them. Do not just judge them by the label corrupt politics fostered on them.
I agree that those who truly rape/molest and prey on underage children are not likely to be rehabilitated or to further the cause. But, how many of the people convicted of sex crimes are the true predators?
I know from personal experience, as a former psychiatric nurse, that females tend to mature sooner and seek out sex earlier. As puberty shifts from the old 12-15 to 8-11 now due to steroids and worse it makes them even more likely to become sexually active by 14. They will seek out partners where they will, including older more experienced men, who in their opinion can please them or teach them. While I do not advocate for them to be sexually active, especially not with grown men, due to early menstruation and physical development some females 14-17 look like grown adults. Then add to that the over-sexualization of our society, they tend to become aggressive in a sexual nature. As a result, some men may not realize their partner is underage. While this is not an excuse, it does happen.
Then you have men whose adult female partner falsely accuses them in revenge to a variety of things. It is not uncommon in a situation like this for the man to be convicted or pressured into a deal.
This does not mean all sex offenders are able to be rehabilitated, though the ones convicted rarely re-offend according to statistical evidence.
To this end we need a viable alternative to prisons and/or death for all offenders who truly cannot be rehabilitated. None of the current approaches are going to work. It will have to be a new idea.
We also must address the over-sexualization of our society. By making sex less of a pass time, less appealing, less mainstream, we can reduce many sex offenses as well.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Comrade Jade reveals an important aspect of the registered sex offenders status – the moral panic and the scapegoat aspect it represents. How many non-registered sex offenders and non-confirmed sex offenders in prisons (who might perhaps gotten in prison for non-sex related crimes such as murder or drugs) will partake in the ultra-leftist crusade against the confirmed ones? For the readers on the outside, that sentence alone might carry a reactionary and apologist undertones, but that is because petty-bourgeois justice oriented revenge killings is a material reality in prison and much less often outside. The life of a lumpen organization member for example is an oppressive and gritty one, and sexual crimes or sexual relations where consent isn’t prioritized aren’t uncommon; yet most lumpen organization members won’t come to prison on sex related crimes but on drug and homicide related crimes.
Subjectivism, ultra-leftism, and individualist oriented justice is another form of opiate of the masses in prison: take that anger out on the confirmed sex offenders says the pig, but us at MIM(Prisons) know that the pigs are laughing all along as this happens because it’s just that much easier to control a violent lumpen class than a cool and collected one – a class in itself vs a class for itself. Drugs aren’t the only form of individualism that is used to placate the imprisoned lumpen, the imprisoned lumpen’s penchent for ultra-leftist violence will also come in handy as a governing tool.
In a socialist society we will ban things like pornography for profit and misogynistic media and media that is predatory towards children. These things are so common under imperialism and reinforce and encourage sexual abuse.
A Colorado Prisoner Responds: I agree with Wiawimawo. I disagree with Slaughter.
A “sex offense” is whatever a legislature defines as one. It can be anything like actual physical rape to someone who is caught peeing on a dumpster in an alley. In my 14 years in a Corruptarado (as we call this state) prison I have met only a couple of people who were actual “rapists.” The vast majority of sex offenders were people who had younger lovers who chose to be with them. But someone, often a jealous want-to-be lover, found out, ratted the two out, and the older partner was arrested and charged.
Now prosecutors adore sex charges. They require no physical evidence, no witnesses. Only an allegation and a “victim” coached by D.A. investigators to say how they were fooled, manipulated, led astray, by that evil older man (almost always a man). And in states like this one without a time limit for filing, a “victim” can say, “20 years ago he took advantage of me” and the D.A. can file a charge and get a conviction.
Slaughter talks about “children.” A child is whatever the legislator says he is. Anyone under 18 is defined a child. Right now it is 18, which is the “age of consent.” Back in 2009, in Colorado, it was 15. And a female of 12, with parental permission, could marry (official papers) anyone.
In Texas, as in most of the South, the legal age for marriage was 12 when I was there. I don’t know what it is now.
The fact is, the religious right bible-wavers do not like sex, and they do not want these pesky kids having any of it. Thus the law, and the pigs (Amerikkka’s version of the Nazi SA) are used to stop it.
The conclusion of this religious fear will be what was done in the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon. Reported on broadly, on vice.com, “Teachers Forced to Report All Teens Having Sex in Oregon School District.”
At those schools, since Oregon law only allows sex for those 18 or older, anyone under 18 doing the dirty is a criminal. So any school personnel discovering an under 18 having sex is required to report him or her to the police for prosecution.
Hey, if enough “children under law” would be arrested and thrown into prison then unapproved sex could be stopped. Of course, putting older partners in prison is already being done and that does not stop them from re-offending. So it should work with the children also.
Slaughter (what is in a name) wants those sex offenders (ey calls them pedophiles – a term created by prosecutors to inflame) to be punished, and people protected from them. In Colorado there are about 4000 sex offenders in prison (CDOC). The vast majority have indeterminate sentences, which means most will die in prison. That number is a full 25% of the CDOC population. And as you probably know, the giving of indeterminate sentences is an easy way for prosecutors to get a life sentence for defendants that did not kill anyone. Great for the D.A.’s stats when a performance review comes around.
The issue is of life sentences in Amerikkka. Get the article, “The Only Way We Get Out of There is in a Pine Box” in the April 2022 issue of News Inside published by The Marshall Project. It tells of elderly prisoners, convicted of murder or other violent crimes who will die in prison. At great expense to tax payers for all their medical care.
…Make no mistake about it, if the Christians like Pence, DeSantis, etc. take over, a new inquisition, just like the Spanish one in the 18th Century will be instituted. And right at the top of the list, below LGBTQ people, will be the communists. Off to the concentration camps for all.
MIM(Prisons) Responds: A recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative exposes the arbitrary repression of so-called “civil commitments.” In cases where someone is not given a life sentence, they can be civily committed after fulfilling the sentence given by the courts. Most who go to civil commitment will never see the outside world again. At least 6,000 people, mostly men, across the country are in civil commitment after serving their time for sex offenses. Unlike court, the process to be sentenced to civil commitment is largely arbitrary. The following will make you much more likely to be civilly committed: being gay, being transgender, being Black, being disabled.(3)
Under imperialism, well-meaning laws that sound good on paper such as ones surrounding the age of consent (or the anti-mask laws first intended against the Klan protesting while cowardly hiding eir identities, but now used against progressives and oppressed nation youth protesting against police violence) will be abused for the interests of the imperialist-patriarchy. The truth is, law in itself for any given class society has been simply state enforced rules to govern the overall humyn society in accordance with the respective class dictatorships. This is why legalism (in this case referring to the idea that good laws will create good society and bad laws will create bad society) is in no way shape or form a scientific solution against the tragic cases such as rape, molestation, and grooming of children.
Under the imperialist patriarchy that we live in, children have no rights or agency to consent and the rape culture of our world will always harm the most vulnerable. “Good” laws under an imperialist patriarchy will be designed and used for the purposes of maintaining it (the nuclear family, heteronormitivity, youth oppression, etc.) that has children raped in the first place while a socialist society/proletarian dictatorship will give power to the youth to properly protect themselves and prioritize abolishing oppression above all else and especially against prioritizing profits and maintaining a patriarchal culture.
A California Prisoner Responds: I can see this comrade has done a significant amount of revolutionary education. However to truly be a communist means one has to recognize the humanity of others. It is here this comrade’s own hate is still an obstacle in the way. The ONLY path forward for this comrade is to forgive his abuser. This comrade must also recognize that the Known Sex Offenders (KSO’s) on the yard are NOT his abuser, meaning this comrade does NOT know their circumstance.
This comrade separates sex crimes from all other crimes by stating that “all other crimes are political crimes,” as a result of capitalism I presume. Sex crimes are an “illness.” This comrade (let me say comrades) states he is in for murder and that murder is somehow NOT an anti-human crime but only a “political crime.” Furthermore, Comrade Slaughter states that he is rehabilitated by saying he has “learned to be objective towards KSO’s.” He also states it is only possible for all other criminals to rehabilitate by saying “unification with the KSOs is futile because after the revolution the KSO will still need to be dealt with” meaning presumably rehabilitation for sex addiction is somehow not possible for the KSO.
I would like to start with the motion this murderer is not as rehabilitated as ey claim. The statement “after the revolution the KSO will still need to be dealt with” proves Comrade S. is not as rehabilitated as ey thinks. It also proves that Comrade S endorses the puniluation method used by the Nazis to “deal with” 6 million Jews. Comrade S. is obviously proposing the genocide of a whole group of people (KSOs). I think a lot of Jews, Armenians, and Africans would tell Comrade S. that his crime of murder is not political as he claims, but in fact is an anti-people crime. Moreover, most KSOs are more rehabilitated than this murderer.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We would say that the comparison of Slaughter’s comments to the holocaust of Jewish, Gay, Romani, and politically subversive revolutionaries under Nazi Germany to be a bit of an exaggeration. Yet it is true that the fascists will mobilize people around persecuting scapegoats, and currently it is this fanatical connection between pedophilia, transgender people and gender non-conforming people in general that is mobilizing the reactionary forces in the streets.
As we assemble this issue of ULK, a news story dropped about Larry Nassar being stabbed in prison. Nassar was convicted of molesting hundreds of young girls over decades while serving as the doctor for the U.$. Olympic team. Whether it’s to make themselves feel better about themselves, as the California prisoner above proposed, or to take out some anger, or to earn some stripes, the collaborative effort to punish people like Nassar undermines the principal contradiction in prisons. These attacks are generally a collaborative effort between prisoners and staff. Staff who may overlap with the fascist movements on the streets threatening drag story times. And while we would not argue there is never a time to ally with staff, it is a rare occasion, when they actually side with prisoners against the system. In contrast, this type of “outlaw justice” is really state-sanctioned. And it does reinforce the idea that there is some common interest between the oppressed and the oppressor in punishing these crimes considered most heinous.
If we aren’t organizing collectively to transform systems and transform ourselves, then we aren’t working towards justice. Triumphant mentions an example on the streets of FPC addressing open air sex markets in the community. Without knowing the details, this seems like an approach that could actually mobilize the people in a way that reduces sexual abuse of children and teenagers. Within prisons we can point to the example of Men Against Sexism, which successfully eradicated rape in Washington State Prison.(1) So if people are serious about taking action against sexual assault, there are actual effective ways to do this.
The ability to truly rehabilitate people will increase as communists increase their power and influence over society. We agree with this comrade that the current system can’t properly address those who aren’t being rehabilitated. And we look to socialist China’s model for how they rehabilitated people who committed crimes against the people.
Comrade Slaughter is right to bring up the question of how and what the morality of a revolutionary should be implemented and look like. To that we answer that proletarian morality must be based on whatever is best for the whole of society to be rid of oppression in contrast to bourgeois morality which is based on individualism, Liberalism, and profit. We tell Comrade Slaughter, and to all comrades in the revolutionary struggle (especially the imprisoned lumpen) to protect themselves as revolutionaries from individuals with bad intentions, but also to push themselves beyond the subjective trauma that ey has faced as oppressed people. Use mindfulness and other resources made available by this imperialist system and use it to better oneself as a revolutionary to heal the persynal scars to better transform the world around us. Don’t let the imperialists weaponize mindfulness or therapy to numb and placate one’s self.
All crimes are political. Post-modernism (the narrative of non-narrative) recognizes phenomena such as this and says that the persynal is the political. Maoism goes beyond this to say that the narrative of the oppressed must replace the narrative of the oppressor with revolutionary violence (rhetoric alone will solve nothing). Persynal scars are political scars, and recognizing the contradiction between the individual and the oppressive system is recognizing that one must recognize eir own lived experiences isn’t all there is to the world and is an unscientific way for the oppressed nations/internal semi-colonies of the United $tates to understand the material reality around them.
