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.
Recently the small town of SeaTac, Washington passed a ballot measure to
raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Across the United $tates the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) labor union has led an
effort to demand $15 per hour for all fast food workers. For a 28
November 2013 strike, organizers said that there were demonstrations in
over 100 cities.(1)
In 2014 the minimum wage will be going up in many states. Leading the
way are Washington($9.32) and Oregon($9.10), with New York making the
biggest jump to $8.00 per hour. New York City was center to the recent
fast food strikes. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress have plans for a
bill this year that would raise the federal minimum from $7.25 to $10.10
per hour.(2)
Another place that minimum wage struggles made a lot of noise in 2013
was the garment industry in Bangladesh. As we mentioned in the
last issue of
Under Lock & Key, those workers had a recent victory in
the minimum wage being raised from $38 to $68 per month. In Cambodia,
garment workers have been promised a raise in the minimum wage from $80
to $95 per month. Unsatisfied, the workers have joined recent protests
against the current regime to demand $160 per month.(3)
With 48-hour work weeks, garment workers are making around $0.35 per
hour in Bangladesh, and $0.42 in Cambodia. Believe it or not, these are
the privileged workers who have special protections because they are in
important export industries. The common Bangladeshi has a minimum wage
of $19 per month, which is less than 10 cents an hour.
Now, the first cry of our chauvinist critics will be “cost of living,
you forgot about cost of living.” Our proposal for a global minimum wage
would tie this wage to a basket of goods. That means the worker in the
United $tates and the worker in Bangladesh can afford comparable
lifestyles with their pay. Maybe the Amerikan gets wheat where the
Bangladeshi gets rice, for example. But the Amerikan does not get a
persynal SUV with unlimited gasoline, while the Bangladeshi gets bus
fare to and from work. To maintain such inequality the Bangladeshi is
subsidizing a higher standard of living for the Amerikan.
It happens that the World Bank has taken a stab at this calculation with
their Purchasing Power Parity. Using this calculation, the minimum wage
in Bangladesh, which appears to be $0.09 per hour, is really a whopping
$0.19 per hour.(4) So, we must apologize to our critics. The proposed
minimum wage of $10 per hour would only put the lowest paid Amerikans at
50 times the pay of the lowest paid Bangladeshi if we account for cost
of living.
Recently the
New
Afrikan Black Panther Party (Prison Chapter) accused our movement of
dismissing the possibility of revolutionary organzing in the United
$tates because we acknowledge the facts above. Just because struggles
for higher wages, and other economic demands, are generally
pro-imperialist in this country does not mean that we cannot organize
here. But revolutionary organizing must not rally the petty bourgeoisie
for more money at the expense of the global proletariat. Besides, even
in the earliest days of the Russian proletariat Lenin had criticisms of
struggles for higher wages.
While we expressed doubts about
Chokwe
Lumumba’s electoral strategy in Jackson, Mississippi, we remain
optimistic about the New Afrikan Liberation Movement’s efforts to
mobilize the masses there. Organizing for cooperative economics and
self-sufficiency is a more neutral approach to mobilizing the lower
segments of New Afrika than the SEIU clamoring for more wages for
unproductive service work. While our concerns rested in their ability to
organize in a way that was really independent of the existing system,
creating dual power, the SEIU’s begging for more spoils from the
imperialists does not even offer such a possibility. To really address
the inequalities in the world though, we must ultimately come into
conflict with the capitalist system that creates and requires those
inequalities.
One agitational point of the fast food protests has been that 52 percent
of the families of front-line fast food workers need to rely on public
assistance programs.(1) One reason this is true is that most fast food
workers do not get to work 48 or even 40 hours a week. Throw children
and other dependents in the mix and you have a small, but significant,
underclass in the United $tates that struggles with things like food,
rent and utility bills. Most are single parents, mostly single mothers.
Collective living and economic structures could (and do) serve this
class and can offer a means of political mobilization. The Black
Panthers’ Serve the People programs and Black houses (collective living)
are one model for such organizing. But state-sponsored programs and the
general increase in wealth since the 1960s makes distinguishing such
work from working with imperialism a more daunting task.
The campaign for a global minimum wage has little traction among the
lower paid workers in the United $tates, because they do not stand to
benefit from this. This is a campaign to be led by the Third World and
pushed through international bodies such as the World Trade
Organization. We support it for agitational reasons, but don’t expect
mass support in this country. It allows us to draw a line between those
who are true internationalists and those who are not.(5)
Any campaign working for economic interests of people in the imperialist
countries is going to be problematic because the best economic deal for
them will require teaming up with the imperialists, at least for the
forseeable future.
Images of a statue of communist leader V.I. Lenin being torn down in
Kiev have been celebrated in the Western press, as hundreds of thousands
of Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the current regime headed
by president Viktor Yanukovych.
Much of the coverage of the recent protests in Ukraine condemn
government corruption as the common complaint of the protestors, linking
it to Ukraine’s Soviet past. The association is that this is the legacy
of communist rule. In contrast, we would argue that this corruption was
the result of economic Liberalism taking hold in the former Soviet Union
where bourgeois democracy was lacking. Today’s protests are largely
inspired by a desire for bourgeois democracy, and the perceived economic
benefits it would provide over the current rule by a parasitic
bourgeoisie with little interest in the national economy.
The rise of Kruschev to lead the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) after Stalin’s death marked the victory of the capitalist roaders
within the Communist Party, and the beginning of the era of
social-imperialism for the Soviet Union. This lasted from 1956 until the
dissolution of the Union in 1991, when Ukraine became an independent
republic. The period was marked by moving away from a socialist economy
structured around humyn need and towards a market economy guided by
profit. This transformation was reflected in the ideology of the people
who more and more looked towards the imperialist countries and their
crass consumerism as something to aspire to. It also led those in power
to have more interest in their local regions than in the prosperity of
the Union as a whole.
Even under capitalism, the Soviet Union was more prosperous and more
stable than after its dissolution. In 1991, an estimated three quarters
of the Soviet people supported maintaining the Union, but the leadership
had no motivation to do so.(1) A move towards strengthening the Union
would awaken the proletarian interests, which were opposed to the
interests of the leadership that was now a new bourgeoisie. Ukraine
played a key role in initiating the dissolution of the USSR. And it was
no coincidence that in Ukraine, in particular, the dissolution was an
economic disaster as the former Soviet nations were tossed to the wolves
of economic Liberalism. A small emerging capitalist class took advantage
of fixed prices that were a legacy of the Soviet economy and sold
cheaply obtained raw materials at market rates to other countries. They
turned around and invested that capital outside in international markets
while tightening monopolies on trade at home. This was one of the most
drastic transfers of wealth from the hands of the producers to the hands
of capitalists in recent decades.(2)
Ten years after the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin wrote, “the
resultant dropping out of a vast country from the world system of
capitalism could not but accelerate [the process of the decay and the
dying of capitalism]”.(3) The inverse of this is also true, to a degree:
the reentry of many countries into the world system breathed life back
into it. While this brought great change at the hands of the newly
empowered national bourgeoisie in those countries, it did not change the
fact that imperialism had already made capitalism an economically
regressive system. Hence they did not develop the wealth of their
nations as the rising bourgeoisie of centuries past had done by
improving production and developing trade. Today’s rising bourgeoisie
restricts markets via monopolies, and heads straight for high-margin
business like drugs, weapons and financial markets. What happened in the
ex-Soviet countries is a good demonstration of why Libertarian ideals
are not relevant in today’s economy.
The underground economy had been growing for decades before 1991, and
this new freedom to compete was a boon to the criminal organizations
that existed. These mafias were on the ground with direct access to the
resources of the people before the imperialists had time to fight over
these newly opened economies. With rising nationalism in the republics,
Russian imperialism had to keep its distance, while other imperialist
countries had no base in the region to get established. The
inter-imperialist rivalry over the region is playing out today.
In the early years of independence, the Ukrainian state merged with that
criminal class that was taking advantage of the political and economic
turmoil in the country.(4) As a result the GDP dropped to a mere third
of what it was just before the Union dissolved.(5) This came after
decades of declining economic growth after the initial shift away from
socialist economics. The mafias in the former Soviet countries saw an
opportunity to seize local power and wealth in their respective
republics as the super power crumbled. Some were further enticed by
Amerikan bribes, such as Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s family who
received billions of dollars.(6) For a time there was hope that these
changes would improve economic conditions as the bourgeois Liberal
mythology led the former Soviet peoples to believe that they could
follow the advice (and political donations) of the United $tates.
This mess, which the region is still struggling with, was the ultimate
result of what Mao Zedong said about the rise of a new bourgeoisie
within the communist party after the seizure of state power due to their
inherent privilege as directors of the state. A successful socialist
project must combat these bourgeois tendencies at every turn in order to
prevent the proletariat from suffering at the hands of a new bourgeois
exploiting class. At the core of the Cultural Revolution was combating
the theory of productive forces, which Mao had previously criticized the
Soviet Union for implementing. The turn to the western imperialist
countries as economic models was the logical conclusion of the theory of
productive forces in the Soviet Union.
One of the messages underpinning today’s protests in Ukraine is the
desire to move closer to the European Union (EU), as opposed to the
Russian sphere of influence. It seems that looking to the west for hope
has only increased in Ukraine over the last couple decades. But there is
no obvious advantage to becoming a client of imperialist Western Europe
over imperialist Russia except for the higher concentration of
super-profits in the EU. And as other newcomers to the EU can attest,
the imperialist nations in Europe will oppose any perceived distribution
of their super-profits to the east. Similar nationalism is fueling the
Ukrainian protestors who oppose the perceived transfer of wealth from
their country to Russia. In general, increased trade will help a country
economically. But in this battle Russia and the EU are fighting to cut
each other off from trading with Ukraine. As always, capitalism tends
towards monopolies and imperialism depends on monopsonies.
It is little wonder that the masses would be unsatisfied living under
the rule of corrupt autocrats. Yet, it was just 2004 when the
U.$.-funded so-called “Orange Revolution” threw out a previous mafia
boss named Leonid Kuchma.(7) This regime change gained support from
those making similar demands to today’s protestors, but it did not
change the nature of the system as these protests demonstrate. And that
orchestrated movement was no revolution. It was a mass protest, followed
by a coup d’etat; something that the imperialists have been
funding quite regularly in central Eurasia these days. A revolution
involves the overthrow of a system and transformation to a new system,
specifically a change in the economic system or what Marxists call the
mode of production. We don’t see any movement in this direction in
Ukraine from where we are, as nationalism is being used as a carrier for
bourgeois ideologies among the exploited people of Ukraine, just as
Stalin warned against.
Rather than a revolutionary anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist movement,
the criminal corruption in Ukraine has led to right-wing populism in
recent years. This was marked by the surge of the Svoboda party into the
parliament. The men who toppled the statue of Lenin and smashed it with
sledge hammers waved Svodoba flags as they did so, indicating that they
represented not just a vague anti-Russia sentiment, but a clear
anti-socialist one.
Svodoba’s populism challenges the current ruling bourgeois mafia, while
their nationalism serves to divide the proletariat by inflaming various
grudges in the region. This is in strong contrast to the revolutionary
nationalism supported by Lenin and Stalin and by Maoists today. In a
criticism of the provisional government prior to the October Revolution
in 1917, Lenin wrote on Ukraine:
“We do not favour the existence of small states. We stand for the
closest union of the workers of the world against ‘their own’
capitalists and those of all other countries. But for this union to be
voluntary, the Russian worker, who does not for a moment trust the
Russian or the Ukrainian bourgeoisie in anything, now stands for the
right of the Ukrainians to secede, without imposing his friendship upon
them, but striving to win their friendship by treating them as an equal,
as an ally and brother in the struggle for socialism.”(8)
This is a concise summary of the Bolshevik line on nationalism.
A Note on Class and Criminality
Without doing an in-depth class analysis of Ukraine, we can still
generalize that it is a proletarian nation. Only 5.1% of households had
incomes of more than US$15,000 in the year 2011.(9) That mark is close
to the dividing line we’d use for exploiters vs. exploited
internationally. Therefore we’d say that 95% of people in Ukraine have
objective interests in ending imperialism. This serves as a reminder to
our readers that we say the white nation in North Amerika is an
oppressor nation, not the white race, which does not exist.
While official unemployment rates in Ukraine have been a modest 7 to 8%
in recent years, the CIA Factbook reports that there are a large number
of unregistered and underemployed workers not included in that
calculation. That unquantified group is likely some combination of
underground economy workers and lumpen proletariat. In 2011, the
Ukrainian Prime Minister said that 40% of the domestic market was
illegal,(10) that’s about double the rate for the world overall.(11) On
top of that, another 31% of the Ukrainian market was operating under
limited taxes and regulations implemented in March 2005, which were put
in place to reduce the massive black market. In other words, the
underground economy was probably much bigger than 40% before these tax
exemptions were put in place.
One way we have distinguished the lumpen is as a class that would
benefit, whether they think so or not, from regular employment. This is
true both for the lumpen-proletariat typical of today’s Third World
mega-slums, and the First World lumpen, even though “regular employment”
means very different things in different countries. While there is a
portion of the lumpen that could accurately be called the “criminal”
lumpen because they make their living taking from others, we do not
define the lumpen as those who engage in crime. Of course not, as the
biggest criminals in the world are the imperialists, robbing and
murdering millions globally.
For the lumpen, the path of crime is only one option; for the
imperialists it defines their relationship to the rest of humynity.
Crime happens to be the option most promoted for the lumpen by the
corporate culture in the United $tates through music and television. And
in chaotic situations like the former Soviet republics faced it may be
the most immediately appealing option for many. But it is not the option
that solves the problems faced by the lumpen as a class. Ukraine is a
stark example of where that model might take us. As the lumpen
proletariat grows in the Third World, and the First World lumpen
threatens to follow suit in conditions of imperialist crisis, we push to
unite the interests of those classes with the national liberation
struggles of the oppressed nations that they come from. Only by
liberating themselves from imperialism can those nations build economies
that do not exclude people.
Among the bourgeoisie, there are few who are innocent of breaking the
laws of their own class. But there are those who operate legitimate
businesses and there are those who operate in the underground market.
This legality has little bearing on their class interests. All national
bourgeoisies support the capitalist system that they benefit from,
though they will fight against the imperialist if their interests
collide.
So there is no such thing as “the criminal class” because we define
class by the group’s relationship to production and distribution, and
not to the legality of their livelihoods. And we should combat the
influence of the bourgeois criminals on the lumpen who, on the whole,
would be better served by an end to imperialism than by trying to follow
in their footsteps.
While the Ukrainian people push for something more stable and beneficial
to them, the Russian imperialists face off with the EU. The EU is backed
by the United $tates who has publicly discussed sanctions against
Ukraine justified by hypocritical condemnation of the Ukrainian
government using police to attack peaceful protests. Hey John Kerry, the
world still remembers the images of police brutality on Occupy Wall
Street encampments.
The real story here may be in the inter-imperialist rivalry being fought
out in the Ukrainian streets and parliament. While the Ukraine nation
has an interest in ending imperialism, the dominant politics in that
country do not reflect that interest. And one reason for that is the
lasting effects of mistakes from the past, which still lead to
subjective rejection of communism for many Ukrainians in the 21st
century. This only further reiterates the importance of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the need to always put politics in
command in building a socialist economy to prevent the future
exploitation and suffering of the peoples of the world. This is likely a
precursor to much more violent conflict over the rights to markets in
the former Soviet republics. Violence can be prevented in the future by
keeping the exploited masses organized on the road to socialism.
The Butler portrays the life of Cecil Gaines, a butler in the
White House for 34 years, starting in 1957. The movie is a fictionalized
version of the story of Gene Allen’s life. MIM(Prisons) sums up this
movie as propaganda to quell the just anger of the oppressed nation
masses, encouraging them to work within the system for small changes.
The focus of the movie is on the oppression of New Afrikans from the
1950s to the year 2008, dividing its focus between the White House and
the successive Presidents, and the activists in the streets. In the
streets the movie gives special focus to the Freedom Riders and Martin
Luther King Jr. The movie derides the most important political leaders
of the time, barely mentioning Malcolm X, and attempting to portray the
Black Panther Party (BPP) as a brutally violent movement out to kill
whites, just using the community service programs like free breakfast
for school children as a cover.
The heroes of the movie include Gaines’s son, Louis, who participates in
the civil rights and activist movements over the years and eventually
“learns” that the best way forward is to push for change from within,
and runs for Congress. We see his dedication as a Freedom Rider, and
fierce commitment to freedom and justice, as Louis literally puts his
life on the line, enduring brutal beatings, repeated imprisonments, and
constant threat of death. Louis moves on to work with Martin Luther King
Jr. in a highly praised non-violent movement, and then joins the BPP
after King is killed. Louis turns from an articulate and brave youth
into a kid spouting revolutionary platitudes that he doesn’t seem to
understand, making the BPP into a mockery of what it really represented.
The other heroes of the movie are the U.$. Presidents. With the
exception of Nixon, who is portrayed as a drunk, all the other
Presidents are humanized and made to appear appropriately sympathetic
with the civil rights movement. While they all are shown saying things
clearly offensive, racist, and in favor of national oppression, each
President has a moment of redemption. John F. Kennedy tells Gaines that
it is Gaines’s persynal history and the story of his son’s activism that
changed his mind on the need for the civil rights movement. Even Ronald
Reagan is shown secretly sending cash to people who write to him about
their financial problems, and telling Gaines that he’s sometimes worried
that he’s on the wrong side of the civil rights movement. On a positive
note, all of the Presidents were shown as reticent to take any positive
action towards change until the popular movement forced them to act.
This is the reality of any oppressor class.
Gaines does, in the end, come to the realization that real change was
not going to come from the White House, and quits his job to join his
son in activism in the streets. But this action is played up to be as
much an attempt to reconcile his relationship with his son, as a
dedication to activism itself. And the activism seems to end with just
one protest. In the end, both Cecil and Louis celebrate the “victory” of
Obama in the 2008 election as a sign that their battle is finally over.
The Butler does a good job of portraying the Civil Rights
movement of the 1950s and 60s, but only as a minor part of the plot. And
it ultimately suggests that New Afrikans should be satisfied with an
imperialist lackey in the White House as a representation of their
success and equality with whites. It fits into a group of recent movies
that Hollywood has produced, such as Lincoln and
12
Years a Slave, to rewrite Amerikan history to quell the
contradiction between the oppressor nation and the New Afrikan internal
semi-colony.
Tacloban, the Philippines, an island devastated by a recent typhoon,
shows the contrasts between wealth and poverty, and underscores the
reality that “natural” disasters are not natural at all. People in First
World countries have the infrastructure, resources and response systems
in place to save lives that are lost in the Third World when the same
disasters hit.
Overall the Philippines is a poor country; in 2012 there were 15
provinces with over 40% of the population below the poverty
threshold.(1) While not in one of these 15 provinces, the government
reports 32% of people in Leyte (Tacloban’s province) are below the
poverty line.(2) These people, living below the poverty line, had an
income of less than $179/month for a family of five. A third of
Tacloban’s houses have wooden exterior walls and one in seven have grass
roofs.(3) In these conditions, it is no surprise that a typhoon could
wreak such havoc in Tacloban.
Bodies of the dead are rotting in the streets as aid fails to reach
those devastated by the storm. There is no clean water and little food.
Yet the Philippines is a country frequently hit by severe storms, with
about 20 typhoons a year, and this storm was identified well in advance.
Both these conditions should engender preparedness on the part of the
government. However, in the Philippines disaster preparation and relief
are delegated to local governors without a strong central leadership.
Some services are more effectively delivered on a large scale. This is
one area where we can show obviously that communism has a better
solution than the individualism of capitalism. Where central control
will lead to more efficient solutions, a communist-led government would
not hesitate to take that control. But capitalism is not focused on
serving the people, it is focused on maximizing profits and power for
the few. And these profits result in deaths from malnutrition, military
aggression, lack of health care, and “natural” disasters. As long as the
imperialists retain their power and wealth, they don’t mind tens of
millions of preventable deaths a year.
In an interesting historical connection, Imelda Marcos, wife of the
former president of the Philippines, is from Tacloban. The family of
Imelda Marcos dominated local politics for years; she herself held a
congressional seat in the 1990s. Imelda’s husband, Ferdinand Marcos, who
ruled in the Philippines from 1965-1986 with the support of the U.$.
government, embezzled billions of dollars in public funds while in
power. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) waged revolutionary
armed struggle against the Marcos regime, growing in strength during the
Marcos dictatorship. In the end, when Marcos’s demise was inevitable,
the United $tates stepped in to have a role in the change of government,
turning on Marcos and backing Corazon Aquino. Her family legacy lives on
today as her son Benigno Aquino holds the President’s office.
Unfortunately, the popular movement that forced Marcos out did not go
further than installing another imperialist puppet. While the communist
movement was strong, it was not yet strong enough to lead the people to
force the U.$. imperialists out, leaving them to play a dominating role
in the country’s politics and economics to this day.(4)
This is the backdrop for the reported six warships the Amerikans sent to
the Philippines last week, with more than 80 fighter jets and 5,000 navy
soldiers.(5) Today the United $tates is taking advantage of the disaster
in the Philippines to increase military presence, while playing the
hero. As reported in a CPP press release:
“The US government is militarizing disaster response in the Philippines,
in much the same way that the US militarized disaster response in Haiti
in the 2010 earthquake,” said the CPP. The high-handed presence of US
armed troops in Haiti has been widely renounced. The US government has
since maintained its presence in Haiti…
“What the disaster victims need urgently are food, water and medical
attention, not US warships bringing in emergency rations to justifty
their armed presence in Philippine sovereign waters,” pointed out the
CPP. “If the US government were really interested in providing
assistance to countries who have suffered from calamities, then it
should increase its funds to civilian agencies that deal in disaster
response and emergency relief, not in fattening its international
military forces and taking advantage of the people’s miseries to justify
their presence,” added the CPP.(5)
Much of the press is quiet about the ongoing war in the Philippines
between the U.$. puppet regime and the CPP-led New People’s Army (NPA),
as well as other liberation forces in different regions of the islands.
But it has been brought up in the Filipino press to spread propaganda
about NPA soldiers attacking government relief efforts. The Communist
Party of the Philippines (CPP) have denounced these lies pointing out
that the location of the attack was not in an area where relief efforts
were needed. The CPP reiterated that “NPA units in areas ravaged by the
recent super typhoon Yolanda are currently engaged in relief and
rehabilitation efforts assisting local Party branches and revolutionary
mass organizations in mobilizing emergency supply for disaster victims.”
Shortly thereafter a ceasefire was declared on behalf of the NPA in
order to focus on relief efforts.
The liberation struggle has long been connected to the protection of the
natural resources of the islands that the imperialist countries continue
to extract for great profits off the backs of the Filipino proletariat.
The storm has also received a lot of attention at a climate change
summit in Poland where Filipino officials have begun a hunger strike to
attempt to force “meaningful” change in relation to energy consumption.
Climate change has been predicted to cause more extreme weather
conditions, and this recent massive typhoon is just another possible
indicator that that is happening. Yet, as international summits
continue, little change is made in the over-consumption of the
imperialist nations driving this disaster.
As many in the Filipino countryside have already recognized, the only
solution to environmental destruction and disasters is an end to
capitalism. With a rational system that puts the needs of the people
over the goal of profits, we can build infrastructure suited to the
environmental conditions, set up emergency response systems that provide
fast and effective support, and plan consumption in a way that does not
undercut the very natural systems that we live in and depend on.
MIM(Prisons) took up the debate over the use of the term “New Afrikan”
at our January congress this year. We have historically used the term
“Black” interchangeably with “New Afrikan,” but had received a proposal
from a comrade to use the term “New Afrikan” to the exclusion of
“Black,” only using “Black” like we would “Hispanic,” when context
requires.
MIM took up this question of the terms “Black” and “New African” back in
2001 in
MIM
Theory 14 when it published a letter from a RAIL comrade (RC)
proposing use of “New African.” In that letter, the RC proposed that
“Use of the term New African is waging ideological struggle to establish
a national identity.” S/he goes on to explain that “New African implies
the identity of a national territory - the Republic of New Africa” while
the term “Black” “cannot and will not be distinguished from
integrationist, assimilationist, and other petty bourgeois reactionary
agendas.” MIM responded to this pointing out that the term
“African-American” has emerged to distinguish the petty bourgeois
integrationists. MIM’s main complaint with the term “New African” was
cultural nationalism:
“What makes including the word ‘African’ in the term relevant? Culture.
That is, it is not the land in Africa that makes Blacks in North America
a nation, nor the economy, language, and so on. It is the cultural
history that survived the genocidal purges of the Middle Passage and
slavery that links Blacks to a historical African culture. This is
completely true, and this connection is obviously important. However,
for the definition of the nation it plays into cultural nationalism to
give this aspect too prominent a role. In fact, as MIM has argued, this
term has been used most often by people with cultural nationalist
tendencies. All the arguments for stressing the African link are
cultural, and therefore the tendency of this term is toward cultural
nationalism, which is a serious danger from the petty bourgeoisie and
comprador bourgeoisie as well.”(2)
MIM(Prisons) has researched the use of the term “New Afrikan” and
concluded that while there may be cultural nationalism associated
historically with some who use the term, overall today it is being used
by the most progressive elements of the revolutionary nationalist
movement within the United $tates. While we have some reservations about
the ties to Africa promoted by some, we have concluded that “New
Afrikan” is a better term to represent the Black nation than “Black,”
which has strong racial connotations and is generally not associated
with a nation. “New Afrikan” is a term specific to the historical
context of African-descended people in North America and so better
represents our line on this oppressed nation within U.$. borders.
Black
Order Revolutionary Organization (BORO), New Afrikan Maoist Party
(NAMP), New Afrikan Black Panther Party (NABPP), New Afrikan Collective
Think Tank (NCTT) and the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) all
use the term “New Afrikan.” Except for NAIM, these are all prison-based
organizations. NAIM was the progenitor of the term “New Afrikan.”
NAIM has written: “to call oneself New Afrikan, at this early stage, is
to be, by and large, about what We in the NAIM are about: Land,
Independence and Socialism.” They lay claim to the term: “We are the
ones who led the ideological struggle for the usage of New Afrikan as
our national identity (nationality) over ‘black’ as a racial
identity.”(1)
One argument NAIM uses for the term New Afrikan is: “…colonized
Afrikans, who evolved into New Afrikans here, were stolen to be used as
a permanent proletariat. The New Afrikan nation was born as a
working-class nation of permanent proletarians. The fact that We weren’t
paid does not preclude the fact that We were workers. What do they think
so-called ‘slavery’ (colonialism) entails if not work?”(1)
On this last point, MIM(Prisons) disagrees that New Afrikans are a
permanent proletariat. As MIM laid out and we continue to expand on, the
vast majority of U.$. citizens are part of the labor aristocracy, not
the proletariat. This does not necessarily negate the use of the term
“New Afrikan,” but we want to be clear where we differ with NAIM on the
class makeup of the nation today.
The NABPP promotes Pan-Afrikanism, promoting the common interests of the
various oppressed nations of Africa and extending it to the so-called
African diaspora of New Afrikans in the United $tates and other
imperialist countries. This is one of the pitfalls of the term New
Afrikan: it can lead people to associate imperialist-country Blacks with
the oppressed nations of Africa. While most Blacks were originally
brought over as slaves and certainly were strongly connected to their
home continent at first, we see a very distinct oppressed nation that
has developed within U.$. borders in the hundreds of years since the
slaves were first forced to North America.
We do not use the term “New Afrikan” to promote pan-Africanism among
U.$.-resident peoples. New Afrikans have historical ties to Africa, but
today New Afrikans have far more in common with, and are more strongly
connected to, other nations within U.$. borders. New Afrikans are closer
to Amerikans in economic interests and national identity than they are
to Egyptians or Somalis, and will certainly lead any pan-African
movement astray and likely sell out the African oppressed nations.
We have not seen a clear rationale for the distinction between “New
African” and “New Afrikan,” but some use the letter “k” in “Afrika” to
distinguish themselves from the colonial spelling. According to a writer
in MIM Theory 14, the term “New Afrikan” originated in 1968
when the First New Afrikan government conference was held by the PGRNA
(Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika).(3) We have
adopted this spelling, as it is used by the progressive elements of the
nation, but welcome input on the relevance of this spelling distinction.
The battle against torture in California prisons is heading for a
breaking point with unity running high among prisoners and resistance to
change stiffening within the state. Since the third round of strikes
ended in early September the promised state legislature hearing around
the Security Housing Units (SHU) occurred and Pelican Bay SHU
representatives met with California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials. Yet the actions taken by the state in
response to the protests have been the same old political repression
that the SHU was created to enforce, not ending conditions of torture.
One comrade from Corcoran reports:
I read in your latest publication that you guys hadn’t had any news of
the concessions Corcoran SHU made in order to bring our hunger strike to
an end. For the most part, the demands made here are not even worth
articulating, as they don’t incorporate, in any way, the push towards
shutting these human warehouses down completely.
The demands put forth here are simple creature comforts, which have not
even been met by the administration, to pacify those who seem to have
accepted these conditions of confinement.
Worse than the petty reforms, is the blatant political repression of
strikers just as the world’s attention is on them. The state knows that
if it can get away with that now, then it has nothing to worry about. As
another comrade from Corcoran SHU reports:
I stopped eating state food on 8 July 2013 and as a retaliatory measure
I and a bunch of other prisoners were transferred from the Corcoran SHU
to the Pelican Bay SHU. Only the thing is, when we got to Pelican Bay on
17 July 2013 we were placed in the ASU instead of the SHU, which made it
so that we would have a lot less privileges and we couldn’t even get a
book to read. So we were just staring at the wall. On 5 August 2013
others and myself were moved to the SHU where we were again just staring
at the wall. On 7 September 2013 we were again moved back to the ASU to
sit there with nothing. On 24 September 2013 I was moved back to the SHU
and I just received all my property last week.
So we were moved around and denied our property for 3 months or more.
But that seems to be it right now and I can finally settle in. But I’m
telling you that was a long 3 months. Other than that no new changes or
anything else has happened around here. I did, however, receive a 115
rules violation report for the hunger strike, along with everyone else
who participated, and in it it charges that I hunger striked as part of
some gang stuff so it was gang activity. This is ironic since the hunger
strike was about the CDCR misusing the validation process and what is
considered gang activity. So now that 115 can and will be used as a
source item of gang activity to keep me in the SHU longer.
While that comrade was sent to Pelican Bay, our comrade below is being
“lost” in Enhanced Outpatient Program (EOP). Organizing in California
has gotten so advanced that the CDCR is moving people out of Administrative
Segregation to isolate them. But with a third of the people actively
participating in protests, there is no way for them to brush this
movement under the rug.
I am writing to say that it’s been over 5 weeks since our peaceful
protest was suspended. I am a petitioner in the Corcoran Administrative
Segregation Unit 2011 strike and am a participant and a petitioner in
this 8 July 2013 one. I have been moved around and retaliated against. I
went from ASU-1 to Cor 3B02 on 24 July 2013. I was moved back to ASU-1
on 16 August 2013 and then on 19 August 2013 I was moved to where I am
currently housed in isolation with no access to anything although I am
not “EOP.” I am being housed against my will and the correctional
officers here tell me I don’t belong here but that they can’t do
anything because it’s above their pay level. No one seems to know
anything about why I am being housed here but all come to the same
conclusion: that someone above them has me housed here. I’d like to know
if there is anyone out there that you may have heard of that find
themselves in similar situations or am I the only one?
We haven’t heard anything yet. But don’t let their games get to you
comrade.
Another indication of the strength of change in California comes from a
story being circulated by representatives of the Pelican Bay Short
Corridor Collective. Multiple versions have been circulating about a
historic bus ride where these “worst of the worst” from “rival gangs”
were left unshackled for an overnight bus ride. It was reported that not
one of the O.G.’s slept a wink that night, but neither did any conflicts
occur. At least some of these men self-admittedly would have killed each
other on sight in years past.(1) This amazing event symbolizes the
extent to which this has become about the imprisoned lumpen as a whole,
and not about criminal interests.
The CDCR keeps telling the public that they are instituting reforms,
while in reality they are torturing people for being “gang members” for
reasons such as protesting torture. Outside supporters can up the
pressure to end this system of repression by letting them know that we
know what they’re doing, that their words mean nothing, and that going
on hunger strike is not a crime. There is a campaign to call the CDCR
out on their hypocrisy by contacting:
M.D. Stainer, Director Division of Adult Institutions Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation P.O. Box 942883 Sacramento CA.
94283 (916) 445-7688 Michael.Stainer@cdcr.ca.gov
As we reiterated last issue, it is prisoners who determine the fate of
the prison movement. And the only way prisoners can actually win is by
building independent power. As long as this is a campaign for certain
reforms, the state will go back to business as usual as soon as the
outside attention fades. Torture cannot be reformed, and neither can an
exploitative economic system that demands it. Of course prisoners can’t
end imperialism alone, but wherever we are we must focus on building
cadre level organizations that can support independent institutions of
the oppressed.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has held that the Constitution
of the United States only requires a state to provide its inmates with
access to a law library or access to persons trained
in the law. Bounds v.
Smith, 40 U.S. 817, 97, S. Ct. 1491, 52 L. Ed. 2d 72
(1977). The choice of which alternative to provide lies with
the state, not with the inmate. Connecticut has chosen to rely on access
to persons trained in the law in order to comply with the requirements
of Bounds.” - CT DOC
form letter
One of the services that the Connecticut Department of Corrections
offers to prisoners is the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services at Yale
University. In a letter dated 17 November 2012 that organization
responded to a comrade stating:
We received your letter requesting assistance. Unfortunately, this
office no longer has the resources to provide information or
representation to such requests.
This is similar to the situation in North Carolina where the state
contracts with the completely useless
North
Carolina Prisoner Legal Service, Inc. But, as we know, in other
states where law libraries are provided, the resources in those
libraries are also grossly inadequate. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton’s
Prisoners Litigation Reform Act seriously hampered the ability of
prisoners to get their grievances heard in U.$. courts. For those
interested in this law we recommend
Mumia
Abu Jamal’s book Jailhouse Lawyers.
Our response to all of this is two-pronged. The main lesson is that
legal battles cannot win prisoner rights under imperialism. As Mumia
exposes in his book, the belief that they can leads hard-working
jailhouse lawyers to literally go crazy. To win, we must organize
oppressed people to establish a joint dictatorship of the proletariat of
the oppressed nations over the former oppressors. Under proletarian
leadership, exploitation and oppression will become the biggest crimes,
and prisons will become places for education and re-socialization rather
than torture and isolation.
Our second prong is our Serve the People Prisoners’ Legal Clinic. This
is our short-term strategy. We know that legal information is difficult
to obtain in the current system, and that providing access to this
information in a useful way helps oppressed people in prison to survive
this system. Just be careful that our legal work does not help prop up
the very system that oppresses us, as Mumia warns. If you want to help
prepare and share legal guides for anti-imperialist jailhouse lawyers
write in and ask to work with the Prisoners’ Legal Clinic.
In a joint U.$. and UK spying operation, agencies hacked into links to
Yahoo and Google data centers, allowing them to freely collect
information from user accounts on those systems. This data collection
project, called MUSCULAR, is a joint operation between the U.$. National
Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ). Documents released by former National Security
Agency (NSA) contractor, Edward Snowden and “interviews with
knowledgeable officials” are the sources for this news that was broken
by The Washington Post on October 30, 2013. Google was
“outraged” at this revelation, and many Amerikans were shocked to learn
of the violation of their privacy by their own government.
Of course, for those of us serious about security in our political
organizing work, this is not breaking news. It is just further
confirmation of what we’ve been saying for a long time: email is not
secure, especially email on the major service providers like Google and
Yahoo. Back in August
MIM(Prisons)
had our email account shut down when the U.$. government demanded
that our email server, lavabit.com, turn over information on the
accounts it provided. Lavabit decided it would rather stop providing
services at all than comply with the government’s demand. We can only
assume that any email service still in operation is supplying
information to the U.$. government.
What is interesting about this story is not that the NSA is caught red
handed snooping on people’s email, but that they would even need to do
this in the first place, when major companies are freely providing
backdoor access to the U.$. government. A court-approved process
provides the NSA with access to Yahoo and Google user accounts, through
a program known as PRISM. Through PRISM, the NSA can demand online
communications records that match specific search terms. Apparently this
restriction to court approved search terms was too limiting for the NSA,
who has been siphoning off vast portions of the data held in Google and
Yahoo data centers, for analysis and more targeted snooping.
MUSCULAR gets around the already lax U.$. government policies on spying
on Americans by exploiting links between data centers holding
information outside of the U.$. where intelligence gathering falls under
presidential authority and has little oversight or restriction.
As we pointed out in the article
Self-Defense
and Secure Communications: “Currently, we do not have the ability to
defend the movement militarily, but we do have the ability to defend it
with a well-informed electronic self-defense strategy. And just as
computer technology, and the internet in particular, was a victory for
free speech, it has played a role in leveling the battlefield to the
point that the imperialists recognize computer warfare as a material
vulnerability to their hegemony.” In that article we provided some basic
suggestions for communications self-defense, most of which are only
possible for people outside of prisons.
As more information comes out on the vast resources invested in
electronic surveillance it is clearer that improving our technology is a
form of offensive work as well, even if we aren’t launching attacks. The
imperialists are spending a lot of resources trying to defeat the tools
we mention in our last article. In using these tools in our day-to-day
work we tie up those resources that could be used to fight other battles
against the oppressed elsewhere. This should be stressed to those who
think security is taking time away from “real work.”
Some will not organize until they’ve read all of Marx’s writings to
ensure they understand Marxism. This is a mistake, just like waiting to
get the perfect electronic security before doing any organizing work.
But you should assume that all of our communications are being
intercepted. Take whatever precautions you can to ensure your
information cannot be accessed, or if it can, that it cannot be used
against you or others. Security is like theory and any organizing skill;
it should be constantly improved upon, but it should not paralyze your
work.
October 18 - The Utah Supreme Court overturned an injunction that had
barred almost 500 people that Weber County claims are members of a
lumpen organization known as the Ogden Trece from associating with each
other. Members were banned from driving, standing, walking, sitting,
gathering or in any way appearing together anywhere in a 25-square-mile
area that covered most of the city of Ogden. It also imposed a curfew
between 11pm and 5am for these folks. This ban has been in place since
2010.
The Supreme Court threw out the injunction on a legal technicality,
because the county failed to properly serve summons to members of the
organization. The county posted notices on a Utah legal notices website
and in the Ogden Standard Examiner, a local newspaper. The court found
this to be insufficient notice. Members of the organization also
challenged the constitutionality of the injunction in denying their
right to associate, but the Court did not rule on this challenge.
The Deputy Attorney for Weber County made a case for the injunction:
“Case loads on average going from 16 per month on something like
graffiti down to four. So we can show a 75 percent drop in criminal
street gang activity.” This is an interesting definition of “criminal
street gang activity”: acts of graffiti.(1) Clearly the police and
courts are determined to go after this lumpen organization, which they
call a “public nuisance,” civil liberties and rights be damned.
We see a lot of parallels between validation in prison and
identification as a member of a street organization in Ogden. According
to the Ogden Gang Detective Anthony Powers, the police keep a “gang
database” to document who belongs to a street organization. There are
eight possible criteria, and anyone meeting two of them is entered in
the database. A musician in a group that includes people believed to be
Ogden Trece members was included in the injunction because he has been
seen around with these folks.(2)
We only have news of this from the mainstream press, but we regularly
see this same repression of oppressed nations both in prisons and on the
streets. The trick of labeling someone a member of a lumpen organization
is used to lock prisoners in solitary confinement and keep them from
having contact with other prisoners. It’s often used to target
politically active prisoners. On the streets, whether in Utah or any
other state, we are seeing that Amerikans, who are often willing to
suspend constitutional rights for prisoners, are similarly unconcerned
about this same practice on the streets.
We know that street organizations, just like prison organizations, are a
natural result of imperialist society in the United $tates. The
oppressed nations are going to come together in self-defense, and in the
absence of revolutionary leadership they will join whatever group meets
their needs. While lumpen organizations are fighting one another and
targeting their people for street crime they are helping the
imperialists. This is why we work so hard to build a United Front and
bring these groups together for the betterment of all oppressed people.
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies
to share! For more info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Secretary, Division of Prisons 4201 Mail Service Center Raleigh,
NC 27699-4201
Director of Prisons 831 West Morgan Street Raleigh, NC 27626
ACLU of NC PO Box 28004 Raleigh, NC 27611
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
Jennie Lancaster, Deputy Secretary of DOC 4201 Mail Service
Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4201
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
PDF updated May 2012, July 2012, January 2013, and October 2013