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.
Snow White in long-term isolation cell
Snow White and the Huntsman is a more in-depth, live-action
take on the Disney classic. A variety of themes are explored in this
film that were glossed over or undeveloped in the animated version, but
the basic plot remains the same.
The story begins with Snow White as a small girl. Her mother falls ill
and dies. Shortly thereafter the widower king is drawn into battle with
a “dark and mysterious” army, whose warriors are made of obsidian or
glass. The army is defeated and a prisoner, a beautiful womyn, is
rescued. The king marries the prisoner the very next day, and she
quickly is revealed to be an evil witch. The new queen kills the king,
locks Snow White in a tower, and destroys the entire kingdom. How Snow
White survived her decade of solitary confinement was not addressed in
the film, but would have been interesting for us to analyze and likely
criticize.
The queen was under a spell that kept her the fairest in the land, so
long as she sucks the youth and beauty out of young wimmin to constantly
replenish her powers. This beauty enables her to manipulate people who
are distracted by her good looks, and to cast spells of her own. The
spell can only be broken by “fairest blood,” and as Snow White comes of
age in her prison tower, she becomes a threat to the queen’s powers. The
magic mirror on the wall instructs the queen to eat Snow White’s heart
so that she will become immortal.
The queen’s brother goes to retrieve Snow White for a meeting with the
queen. Of course Snow White escapes, and through a course of events
leads a revolution to take back the kingdom from the evil queen. It is
Snow White’s “purity” and “innocence” (as well as a blessing from a
forest creature straight out of Princess Mononoke) that give
her magical powers to overcome the queen’s spells and tricks. A classic
Jesus story, complete with a resurrection.
When the evil queen first took power, the subjects initially tried to
resist her rule. They were defeated each time, and eventually everyone
gave up, broke into sects, turned alcoholic, and warred with each other
just trying to stay alive. An oracle dwarf identified Snow White as
having a “destiny.” It was only the power of this destined leader that
could bring everyone together and overcome the evil queen.
The take-home lessons from Snow White and the Huntsman are
defeatist. “Find a good leader and follow them.” “People’s struggle
isn’t winnable.” “There’s nothing you can do to challenge the
all-powerful status quo.” These are typical messages to be expected from
a mainstream Amerikkkan movie.
The only theme that was remotely interesting was the queen’s views on
gender and beauty. She has been a victim of beauty for twenty lifetimes
and has built up a lot of resentment toward men. This resentment comes
up in her murder of the king, because she is distrustful of men, who
will just throw her out when she ages. In a later scene, she is
assessing two male prisoners who have just been captured, and one is
young and handsome. Before killing him with her own fingers, she gives a
monologue about how he would have been her ruin, but instead she will be
his ruin. This is a good critique of the fetishization of youth and
beauty and its contribution to a variety of mental health challenges
people in our society must face. Had the queen not been valued by men
only for her beauty, she may have been a more benevolent dictator, at
least to the handsome young men who cross her path.
Snow White and the Huntsman doesn’t get my recommendation. We
don’t need any more encouragement in our society to drink our sorrows
about the status quo away, waiting for our own Snow White. And it’s
unnecessary to wait, because your Snow White is you!
Outside Adams County Correctional Facility during the rebellion
On May 20 prisoners at the privately run Adams County Correctional
Center in Natchez, Mississippi, rose up in protest of the violence,
abuse and neglect at this prison for non-citizens incarcerated for
re-entering the United $tates after deportation and for other charges.
Prisoners took control of the facility for over eight hours before SWAT
teams took back the prison using pepper spray grenades and tear gas
bombs among other weapons.
The prison administration is claiming the violence was a result of
prisoner-on-prisoner conflicts but one prisoner involved in the struggle
called a Jackson TV station and clearly articulated that the riot was
due to mistreatment of prisoners: “They always beat us and hit us. We
just pay them back… We’re trying to get better food, medical, programs,
clothes, and we’re trying to get some respect from the officers and
lieutenants.” The prisoner confirmed his identity by sending photos from
inside the prison.(1)
In recent years the U.$. has hit 400,000 deportations a year, the
majority Latino nationals. Pre-deportation Detention Centers are the
site
of widespread abuse as the prison guards are accountable to no one
and the prisoners are among the least valued people in Amerika by those
in charge.
As we reported in a 2009 article
“National
Oppression as Migrant Detention”, migrants are the fastest growing
prison population and they face significant abuse behind bars: “The
American Civil Liberties Union says that the conditions in which these
civil detainees are held are often as bad as or worse than those faced
by people imprisoned with criminal convictions. These detention centers
are described as ‘woefully unregulated.’ The ‘requirements’ that they do
have about how to treat people have no legal obligation, reducing them
essentially to suggestions.” So it should be no surprise that these
prisoners in Mississippi are fighting back.
The economic motivations of the private company that runs Adams County
CC, Correctional Corporation of America, is directly counter to the
humyn rights of prisoners. Again from the 2009 MIM(Prisons) article:
“The Correctional Corporation of America, a private prison management
company who controls half of the detention facilities run by private
companies, spent $3 million lobbying politicians in 2004. They want
stricter immigration laws so they can have access to more prisoners,
which will bring them more money. In turn, ICE is able to pay 26% less
per day to house prisoners in a private versus state-run facility. This
is possible because of the lack of public as well as governmental
oversight at private facilities, where they reduce costs by getting rid
of everything that would help prisoners, including necessary-to-life
medical care. One reason state governments shied away from private
prisons for their own citizens was the scandals that they quickly became
associated with. In the year 1998-99, Wackenhut’s private prisons in New
Mexico had a death rate 55 times that of the national average for
prisons. The migrant population’s lack of voice allows these
corporations to get away with their cost-cutting abusive conditions when
contracted by ICE. This is another good example of how capitalism values
profit over humyn life.”
The distinction between legal and illegal residents of the United $tates
is a clear example of the enforcement of imperialist wealth and poverty
using borders. Those who happen to be born on the north side of the
artificial border to Mexico have access to many resources and
opportunities, and most of those born on the south side live in poverty
with very limited opportunities. The United $tates can’t let migrants
through the border because that would open up jobs to all who want to
compete, rather than keeping them for the well off labor aristocracy.
Instead the imperialists set up corporations to suck the wealth out of
Latin American countries, devastate their economies with loan programs
and puppet governments, and benefit from the cheap labor that results.
Prisons are just one aspect of the imperialist oppression of
undocumented migrants. We support the prisoners in Mississippi and
across the country who are fighting back against inhumane conditions. We
need more reporting directly from the prisoners involved in these
protests. Help us spread the word by sending your stories to Under
Lock & Key and request MIM lit in Spanish to spread our
message.
George Zimmerman
In a letter from a long-time reader of Under Lock & Key we
received an interesting criticism of the general political movement
around the shooting of unarmed Black youth, Trayvon Martin. While he did
not criticize MIM(Prisons) directly, some of the comments apply to the
the
article by cipactli on Trayvon Martin printed in ULK 26
which he had not yet seen when he sent the letter. One of the main
points of criticism is based on Zimmerman being half Latino – a point
that cipactli’s article does not address. The article in ULK 26
identifies Zimmerman with white supremacists. This is a correct
categorization of his actions which manifest the results of a lifetime
of racist education, but there is a more subtle point to be made about
race and national oppression when these crimes are oppressed nation on
oppressed nation.
There are some fundamental points on which we disagree with the reader’s
critique. He writes that “it’s long past time for us all to stop
speaking in the terms of the racist color codes used to identify human
beings like any other commodity in order to facilitate marketing and
manipulation.” We see the national contradiction as alive and strong
within the imperialist United $tates, and it is certainly possible for
one oppressed nation to participate in the oppression of another. In
fact, it is possible for individual Blacks to rise to positions of power
within the imperialist state and help repress the Black Nation as a
whole. Barack Obama is an obvious example of this. Those comprador
individuals from oppressed nations who want power and wealth, even at
the expense of their nation, do not provide evidence that we can move
beyond the national contradiction which is what drives attitudes and
practices of racism.
As we explained in ULK 26, the
national
contradiction is still principal in Amerika today. While not called
out in the letter, underlying our disagreement on nation is a
disagreement on class: MIM(Prisons) sees clearly that the vast majority
of Amerikan citizens are not part of the proletariat. Their material
benefits from imperialism have put them squarely within the exploiter
class.
Every persyn in this country sees the stereotypes of Black youth as
hoodlums, dangerous and destined for prison. Zimmerman is no different.
And so it is a result of national oppression that unarmed Black youth
can be killed by cops and vigilantes while the imperialist state does
nothing. Studies have shown that Amerikans (of all nationalities), when
asked to identify or imagine a drug criminal, overwhelmingly picture a
Black person. This is statistically inaccurate: they should be picturing
a white youth. (See our review of
The New Jim Crow for more on this topic).
The state would prefer that oppressed nation youth kill each other, as
this is a more efficient approach for the state and it helps reinforce
the stereotypes about the dangerous hoodlums who must be locked away. By
hesitating to pursue Zimmerman for the death of Martin the state is
treating him more as a white man than a Latino.
This reader criticizes the many people who have come out to demand
“Justice for Trayvon” but didn’t step up when Oscar Grant was murdered
by police officer Johannes Mehserle. “A cold-blooded execution that met
all the elements required to convict Mehserle of premeditated murder
beyond a shadow of a doubt! A murder for which he only served one year!
Where’s the hue and cry for Mehserle’s blood!” This is a fine argument,
but one which again underscores the national oppression in Amerika which
leads to racist stereotypes of Blacks (and other nationalities) that
results in racial profiling and police brutality targeting these
groups.(1)
The reader concludes with some good points about the criminal injustice
system, “After being railroaded into prison for a crime the police
committed, I’ve learned that nearly a third of my fellow prisoners are
innocent, with another third convicted by unlawful police and
prosecutorial tactics. All of you out there are just one arrest away
from the horror show that is justice in America. You don’t have to do
anything, except be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, then, even
white privilege won’t save your ass!” But the reality is, if you are in
the wrong place at the wrong time and you are
Black
you are significantly more likely to get thrown in prison or killed.
A recent report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement cited
at
least 110 Black people killed by Amerikan cops and security in the first
half of 2012.(2) This is in a country where the FBI reports around
400 police killings each year, total!(3) Just as Blacks are about half
the prison population in a country where they make up 12% of the
population, they appear to also be about half the police killings. So in
fact white privilege is alive and well. It doesn’t work for everyone,
the injustice system rounds up plenty of whites, but disproportionately
Blacks, Latinos and First Nations are victims. This is a statistical
truth that is not disproved by individual incidents that are exceptions
to the rule. Statistics and thinking at the group level are important
requirements for a scientific analysis of society, which in turn is
necessary to transform our reality.
Among those in the United $tates who have consistently upheld the right
to self-determination of the internal semi-colonies, there has been some
questioning of the MIM line that the principal contradiction within the
United $tates is nation. With the degree of integration and buying off
of the oppressed nations that has occurred since the Black/Brown/Red
Power era some have questioned if the lumpen underclass are the only
real revolutionary force left in the internal semi-colonies. Others have
pointed to the level of wealth in the United $tates to dismiss the
potential for national liberation struggles within U.$. borders without
offering a new thesis on the principal contradiction. MIM(Prisons) has
entertained the integration question and the possibility of a growing
class contradiction across nation and will address both in more detail
in an upcoming book.
In this issue of Under Lock & Key we feature a number of
articles that demonstrate the dominant role that nationality plays in
how our world develops and changes. The history of MIM’s work with
prisoners comes from its understanding of the principal contradiction in
this country being between the oppressor white/Amerikan nation and the
oppressed internal semi-colonies (New Afrika, Aztlán, Boricua, countless
First Nations, etc.). It is through that work that it became clear that
the quickly expanding prison system of the time was the front lines of
the national struggle.
USW C-4 gets at this in h
review
of MIM Theory 11 where s/he discusses the need to launch “the new
prison movement in connection with the national liberation struggles
which have been repressed and stagnated by the oppressors with mass
incarceration.” Progress in our struggle against the injustice system is
progress towards re-establishing the powerful national liberation
struggles that it served to destroy in the first place. Any prison
movement not based politically in the right to self-determination of the
nations locked up cannot complete the process of ending the oppression
that we are combatting in the United $tates.
MIM(Prisons) focuses our mission around the imprisoned lumpen in general
whose material interests are united by class, even though the injustice
system is primarily about national oppression. Within the imprisoned
class, we see the white prison population having more to offer than the
white population in general for revolutionary organizing. Even
non-revolutionary white prisoners are potential allies in the material
struggles that we should be taking up today around issues like
censorship, long-term isolation, the right to associate/organize, access
to educational programs, a meaningful grievance process and
accountability of government employees in charge of over 2 million
imprisoned lives. Just as we must be looking to recruit oppressed nation
lumpen to the side of the world’s people to prevent them from playing
the role of the fascist foot soldier, this concern is even greater among
the white lumpen and is a question we should take seriously as our
comrade
in Oregon discusses inside.
In this issue we have the typical reports from both Black and Latino
comrades being labelled gang members and validated for their political
and cultural beliefs. This is nothing less than institutionalized
national oppression, which is at the heart of the
proposed
changes in the California validation system that are somehow
supposed to be a response to the complaints of the thousands of
prisoners who have been periodically going on food strike over the last
year.
While we support the day-to-day struggles that unite as many prisoners
as possible, we are clear that these are only short-term struggles and
stepping stones to our greater goals. The most advanced work comrades
can be doing is directly supporting and promoting revolutionary
nationalism and communism within disciplined organizations based in
scientific theory and practice. An example of a more advanced project is
a current USW study cell that is developing educational and agitational
materials around Chicano national liberation. Meanwhile, the United
Front for Peace in Prisons, while focused on mass organizations, is
laying the groundwork for the type of cross-nation unity that will be
needed to implement the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the
Oppressed Nations required to truly end imperialist oppression and
exploitation (see our 6
Points).
It is no coincidence that the word fascism comes up a number of
times in this issue focused on national struggles. In terms of the
principal contradiction between imperialist nations and the oppressed
nations they exploit, fascism is the imperialist nation’s reaction to
successful struggles of the oppressed nations; when the oppressed have
created a real crisis for imperialism; when Liberalism no longer works.
While fascism is defined by imperialism, being guided by imperialist
interests, it is the labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries that
form the main force for fascism.(1) Again, this breaks down to the
national question where oppressor nations and oppressed nations take up
opposite sides of the principal contradiction that defines the United
$tates as a phenomenon.
Rashid of the NABPP-PC suggests in his book
Defying
the Tomb, that “right-wing militias, survivalists and military
hobbyists” are “potential allies” who “have a serious beef with
imperialist monopoly capitalism.” In contrast, we recognize that the
principal contradiction that defines the imperialist system is between
the imperialist nations and the oppressed nations they exploit.
Amerikans calling for closed borders to preserve white power are the
epitome of what imperialism is about, despite their rhetoric against the
“bankers.” It is the same rhetoric that was used to rally the struggling
petty bourgeoisie around the Nazi party to preserve the German nation.
It is the same rhetoric that makes the anti-globalization and “99%”
movements potential breeding grounds for a new Amerikan fascism.
Recent events in Greece, France and elsewhere in Europe have shown this
to be the case in other imperialist countries, which are also dependent
on the exploitation of the Third World. While Greece, where the European
crisis is currently centered, cannot be described as an imperialist
power on its own, its close ties to Europe have the Greek people
convinced that they can regain prosperity without overthrowing
imperialism. Social democrats are gaining political power in the face of
austerity measures across Europe, while fascist parties are also gaining
popular support in those countries. Together they represent two sides of
the same coin, struggling to maintain their nation’s wealth at the
expense of others, which is why the Comintern called the social
democrats of their time “social fascists.” Austerity measures are the
problems of the labor aristocracy, not the proletariat who consistently
must live in austere conditions until they throw the yoke of imperialism
off of their necks.
The fragility of the European Union along national lines reinforces the
truth of Stalin’s definition of nation, and supports the thesis that
bourgeois internationalism bringing peace to the world is a pipe dream,
as MIM has pointed out.(2) On the contrary, the proletariat has an
interest in true internationalism. For the oppressed nations in the
United $tates bribery by the imperialists, both real and imagined, will
create more barriers to unity of the oppressed. So we have our work cut
out for us.
Looking to the Third World,
the
struggle of the Tuareg people in West Africa parallels in some ways
the questions we face in the United States around Aztlán, the Black Belt
and other national territories, in that their land does not correspond
with the boundaries of the nation-state that they find themselves in as
a result of their colonization. And the greater context of this struggle
and the relation of the Tuareg people to Ghaddafi’s Libya demonstrates
the potentially progressive nature of the national bourgeoisie, as
Ghaddafi was an enemy to U.$. imperialism primarily due to his efforts
at supporting Pan-Afrikanism within a capitalist framework.
Nationalism of the oppressed is the antithesis to the imperialist system
that depends on the control and exploitation of the oppressed. It is for
that reason that nationalism in the Third World, as well as nationalism
in the internal semi-colonies of the United $tates, are the primary
focus of anti-imperialist organizing. As long as we have imperialism, we
will have full prisons and trigger-happy police at home, and bloody wars
and brutal exploitation abroad. Countering Amerikan nationalism with
nationalism of the oppressed is the difference between entering a new
period of fascism and liberating humynity from imperialism.
En diciembre de 2011, la Oficina de Estadísticas de Justicia dio a
conocer sus informes anuales sobre la población penitenciaria en los
Estados Unidos.(1) Los informes se refieren a personas mayores de edad
bajo la supervisión correccional del año 2010. Por segundo año
consecutivo, esta población ha disminuido; este fue el primer descenso
desde la década de 1970 cuando el numero de presos en la cárcel empezó a
crecer significativamente. A finales de diciembre de 2010, el número
total de personas en el sistema penitenciario, incluyendo aquellos bajo
libertad condicional, y aquellos en la cárcel, fue 7.076.200. La
población carcelaria en este país cayó 0.6% a partir de 2009, el primer
descenso desde 1972. El número de presos federales en realidad aumentó
un 0.8%, pero la población carcelaria del estado se redujo por la misma
tasa. Debido a que hay más presos estatales que presos federales, hubo
una caída general en las tasa de encarcelamiento.
Las tasas de encarcelamiento por causa de convicciones penales nuevas
han ido disminuyendo desde 2007. No obstante este ha sido el primer año
que las cifras de liberaciones han excedido el numero de nuevos presos
ingresos, lo que mantiene la población carcelaria casi igual. Sin
embargo, las tasas de liberación se redujeron un 2.9% en 2010, por lo
que estos números no reflejan un aumento en liberaciones. De hecho, el
tiempo servido por presos estatales siguió siendo el mismo.
Estas últimas cifras pueden indicar que la población carcelaria ha
llegado finalmente a su punto álgido en Amerika, posiblemente debido a
la pesada carga económica de mantener una infraestructura masiva de
injusticia criminal en este país. Pero incluso si las tasas de
encarcelamiento siguieran disminuyendo, tomará muchos años y contará con
cambios enormes antes de que las tasas lleguen a ser lo suficientemente
bajas para ser comparables a otros países. Los Estados Unidos tiene más
de un 30% de las personas encarceladas en el mundo y tiene la mayor tasa
de encarcelamiento en el mundo. (2)
El informe ofrece dos posibles explicaciones para la caída de la
población carcelaria en los Estados Unidos: “Ya sea una disminución en
la probabilidad de una pena de prisión, o condena dada, o una
disminución en el número de condenas.” Por desgracia, los datos sobre
estas medidas todavía no están disponibles, pero cualquiera de ellos
sería una buena cosa para lograr. Sin embargo, como se mencionó
anteriormente, es probable que estos cambios sean el resultado de las
necesidades financieras y no un cambio en la política en torno a la
prisión y el encarcelamiento.
Hay algunas tendencias interesantes que demuestran la nacionalidad por
parte de un compromiso continuo con la opresión nacional por el sistema
de injusticia criminal en Amerika. Negros y blancos ambos han sentido
una caída en las tasas de encarcelamiento, pero la disminución de los
blancos (6.2%) fue mucho mayor que aquel de los negros (0.85%). En los
últimos años los inmigrantes han sido la población de más rápido
crecimiento en las cárceles de los Estados Unidos. Mientras que el 2010
vio un aumento de 7.3% en las tasas de “hispanos” en la cárcel,
indocumentados vieron una ligera disminución en sus cifras de
encarcelamiento, probamente debido a un aumento masivo de deportaciones.
Los hombres negros siguen componiendo el sector mayor de la población
carcelaria y son encarcelados casi 7 veces más que hombres blancos.
Hunger Games is set in Panem, a society that, it is implied, rose from
the postwar ashes of north America, and now consists of The Capitol and
the 12 fenced off satellite Districts. Many of these Districts produce
wealth for the Capitol while their people live in poverty. There is
apparently no national oppression (most people are white), but class
contradictions are sharp. The Hunger Games are annual fights to the
death by two kids representing each of the Districts. In the wealthier
districts, kids train for this and consider being picked a privilege. In
the poorer districts families are forced to sell their kids into the
hunger games in exchange for food required for bare survival.
Katniss Everdeen is from the mining District 12 where her father, and
many other miners, lose their lives producing wealth they will never
see. She volunteers to take her younger sister’s place for the annual
hunger games match.
The Hunger Games are broadcast live as reality programming. The Games
are meant to remind the people of the power of the government. This
brutal form of reality entertainment serves to keep the people of the
districts distracted and obedient. Out of 24 participants, only one
child lives.
This movie is part one of a trilogy. The books get much deeper into the
politics of oppression, even in the first volume. But as a broad
representation of the first book, the movie gets at the general system
and has a correct message of resistance. Katniss refuses to play the
game the way the Capitol organizers intend, inadvertently earning the
support and respect of other Districts and inspiring resistance against
the Capitol.
In one scene she pauses to pay tribute to a fallen child from another
district who was working with her. In the end [spoiler alert] Katniss
commits the ultimate snub against the Games, refusing to play to the
death. She manages to outsmart the organizers but all she wins is the
right to go home a celebrity of dubious distinction for staying alive.
There are some good lessons from this Hunger Games movie. The importance
of unity across oppressed people in the common cause against the
oppressors is reinforced both in the individual alliances and the
cross-district support of Katniss. The movie also demonstrates the
brutality and distraction techniques of the ruling class and their
willingness to stop at nothing to retain their power. There is an
interesting subplot about the two main characters from District 12
pretending a love interest as a survival technique to get the support of
“sponsors”: wealthy people who can pay to provide advantages to their
favorite players. Using whatever means available for resistance is
important for the oppressed, though the actual romance in the movie
dilutes this message.
The movie is adapted from the first of a trilogy of books but some of
the politics of the books are already quite muted in the movie and it
will remain to be seen how well the sequels represent the struggles of
the oppressed.
In this issue of Under Lock & Key we are featuring reports
from comrades in a number of states who are leading efforts for a
campaign to have prisoners’ grievances heard and responded to by state
officials and employees. This campaign has continued to grow in
popularity, with minimal effort by MIM(Prisons), yet many have not yet
heard of it and there is much room to expand. For all who remain
inspired by the recent efforts of California and Georgia prisoners, but
feel your conditions are not so advanced, we suggest you work on the
USW-led grievance campaigns to start getting people organized in your
area.
The basic actions necessary to advance the grievance campaign are:
File grievances on the problems you face where you’re at. Get people
around you to file grievances. Appeal your grievances to the highest
level.
If your grievances go unanswered, organize people around you to sign and
mail out grievance petitions created by USW, distributed by
MIM(Prisons). Send follow-up letters periodically to check on the status
of your petition. Send responses to the grievance petition to
MIM(Prisons).
If your state is not yet covered by the grievance petition, but your
grievances are going unanswered, translate the petition to work for your
state. This requires looking up citations and policies, and figuring out
who would be best to send the petition to.
While getting grievances responded to is essentially an exercise in
reformism, we see promise in these efforts because they struggle to give
voice to some of the most oppressed. This is a democratic struggle in a
part of the United $tates where the least amount of democracy exists.
Amerikans will tell you that’s the point, “you do the crime, you do the
time.” But we disagree. We don’t think the U.$. prison system has
anything do with justice or applying objective societal rules to its
citizens. The simple fact that about half of all U.$. prisoners are New
Afrikan, while only 12% of the U.$. population is, disproves that theory
in one fell swoop. In general, the oppressed nations have seen an
increase in democracy in the United $tates, yet for a growing segment of
these nations,
their
rights are lawfully being denied. For those who have committed real
crimes against the people and should spend time in prison by proletarian
standards, we think a program of reforming criminals requires
accountability on both sides.
Some have pushed for campaigns to give prisoners voting rights as a
method to increase prisoners’ democratic rights. But we see imperialist
elections having little-to-no bearing on the conditions of the oppressed
nations. In contrast, we see the grievance campaign as a democratic
campaign that we can support because it can actually succeed in giving
prisoners more say in their day-to-day conditions.
The grievance campaign to which we are referring was originally sparked
by some comrades in California in January 2010. Since then it has spread
to Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Texas. The
petitions are updated regularly based on feedback we get from those
using it. The three states which have been particularly active lately
are Texas, North Carolina, and Colorado.
The Colorado campaign kicked off just before
recent
reforms were enacted in the Colorado system as a result of passive
resistance by the prison laborers being used in large-scale industry
there. Similarly, Missouri’s petition is specific to their conditions of
censorship around a relatively new policy banning music with parental
advisory ratings.
In this issue, there are two reports out of Texas, showing the varying
levels of organization within a state. One comrade in
Connally
Unit reports of a mass demonstration.(page X) While another comrade
has
diligently
filed the maximum grievances he can for almost two years, he has
proved this road to be fruitless by himself.(page Y) But what is the
lesson here? Are our efforts worthwhile? We say there are no rights,
only power struggles. We already know that the injustice system is going
to abuse people; it is made to control certain populations. In order to
win in a power struggle, the other side must feel some sort of pressure.
Sometimes one grievance to a higher level is enough to apply pressure.
But when the higher level is involved in the repression, it’s going to
take a lot more than one persyn’s grievance. Look at the example of the
Scotland
lockdown.(page Z) One comrade reported that grievances were being
ignored, as has been common in Scotland before the lockdown. But we hear
from ULK correspondent Wolf that a combination of complaints
from prisoners and outside supporters resulted in an improvement in
conditions, however small. This is parallel to the petition to End the
High Desert State Prison Z-Unit Zoo, which met some success last year.
The lesson isn’t that getting a little extra time out of cells, or skull
caps, is a great victory. The lesson is in how prisoners and their
outside supporters pulled together and exerted their influence on the
DOC as a group. At the same time, a North Carolina comrade reports how
standing
up by oneself can be risky.(page A)
We think the grievance campaign is a good stepping stone for comrades
who say unity and consciousness is lacking in their area. As we know
from reports in ULK, the conditions in most prisons across this
country are very similar. So the basis for mass organizing should exist
even if it requires some hard work to get started. Circulating a
grievance petition doesn’t require a lot of people to start, and just
about everyone can relate to it.
One USW leader involved in the original campaign in California came out
to question the effectiveness of the tactic of signing petitions and
sending them to state officials and legal observers. S/he proposed
moving into
lawsuits
to get them to pay attention, particularly after
one
CDCR staff member implied they wouldn’t address any complaints without a
lawsuit. As John Q. Convict points out, there are also connections
still to be made between the
grievance
campaign and media access in states like California to create more
accountability for the captors. The best tactics will depend on your
situation, but the petition is a good place to get started and to test
out the waters.
This work is not just a way to bring allies together locally, but is
connecting struggles across the country. One Massachusetts comrade was
inspired by the efforts of a Florida comrade who was having trouble
mobilizing others and wrote in to tell h: “To my Florida comrade, I want
to tell you to stay strong.” S/he went on to quote Mao, “In times of
difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the
bright future and must pluck up our courage.”
Of course, oppression will always exist under imperialism, because it is
a system defined by the oppression of some nations by others. And we
cannot hope to use reforms to fix a system that
tortures
people and then ignores administrative remedies to cover their own
asses.(page B) But we must begin somewhere. And the grievance
campaign encompasses many of the little battles that we have all fought
just to be able to read what we want, talk to who we want, and have a
voice in this society.
MIM(Prisons) has six
cardinal principles, all of which we believe the Leading Light
Communist Organization (LLCO) upholds to the degree that we consider
them fraternal. As such, we distribute some of their better work, which
is likely why you are reading this review. LLCO is one of very few who
work within the legacy of the MIM to a significant degree.
This is our first review of the Leading Light Communist Organization by
that name, but the theoretical journal Monkey Smashes Heaven predates
the LLCO. We reviewed them in 2009 in
Maoism
Around Us and addressed them later that year in
What
is sectarianism?
The latter article criticized MSH’s nihilist approach to the struggles
that comrades from the Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika went
through in their last days. Unfortunately, their sectarianism has only
increased since forming LLCO. In their 10 criteria set forth in the
beginning of MSH 1 for who they consider to be a communist, the
number one point is you must uphold their ideology called “Maoism-Third
Worldism”, now “Leading Light Communism.” This amounts to saying, “we
see you as fraternal if you think exactly like us.” Cardinal principles
should be a handful of the most important issues of the day that define
the communist movement. The expectation that the only correct political
organizations are those that share identical ideologies leads quickly to
the Trotskyist requirement that revolution must be led by a single
global organization imposing its will on all countries.
As we addressed already in “Maoism Around Us”, we do not recognize an
advancement of revolutionary science beyond Maoism as MSH claims Leading
Light Communism is. After reviewing MSH 1 and MSH 2,
MIM(Prisons) still fails to see the unique contributions that MSH/LLCO
claim to have made to constitute a new stage of revolutionary science.
They state this repeatedly in their journals, without explaining what
exactly distinguishes Leading Light Communism from Maoism.
The one partial explanation they do provide on p. 51 of MSH 1
is that they were the first to scientifically explain that there “is no
significant revolutionary class or socioeconomic group in the First
World.” MIM was the first to put together a lot of the theories on the
labor aristocracy into a coherent class analysis of the First World. Yet
even they acknowledged that the main points were not new to Lenin, and
even Engels had talked about the buying off of whole nations. LLCO has
written some interesting new articles on the subject, but has not
advanced the theoretical concepts in any way. Where LLCO disagrees with
MIM is on the question of internal semi-colonies being potentially
revolutionary in the First World. The buying off of internal
semi-colonies was most thoroughly addressed in MIM’s “On the Internal
Class Structure of the Internal Semi-Colonies” and recognized as early
as 1992 in MIM Theory 1. We have yet to see LLCO address this issue in
any detail. We have yet to see them explain the revolutionary
nationalism of just a couple generations ago and why it could not happen
again, or even surpass previous experiences. They simply dismiss the
possibility with no analysis or explanation.
While opportunistically presenting as the heir apparent to MIM on
Wikipedia, they almost never cite MIM or use MIM language except to
criticize MIM. In reading the first two print editions of their journal
LLCO takes similar approaches to the theoretical contributions of Marx,
Lenin and Mao. This takes their sectarianism to another level of
knocking down all of their predecessors as inadequate in the face of
their supposedly advanced analysis.
Finally, their sectarian thinking leads to a cultish approach to
organizing, rather than teaching people how to think and solve problems.
While always being sure to hype LLCO as the most advanced, they rarely
explain why. It is the job of the vanguard to raise the scientific
understanding of others through struggle, not to simply encourage them
to follow the leading light.
We won’t list all the things we agree with in the first two issues of
MSH here. The articles from MSH that we choose to distribute in our own
study packs can speak for themselves in how correct they are. We
generally agree with the content of those articles except for the points
above, and we distribute them because they add new insight into the
topics of study.
The point of guerrilla war is not to succeed, it’s always been
just to make the enemy bleed. Depriving the soldiers of the peace of
mind that they need. Bullets are hard to telegraph when they bob and
they weave. The only way a guerrilla war can ever be over, is when
the occupation can’t afford more soldiers. Until they have to draft
the last of you into the service, and you refuse because you don’t
see the purpose. - Immortal Technique, the Martyr
Afghan protesters stomp out police car in Herat
In just over a week, six Amerikan soldiers have been killed by Afghan
patriots within the state military that is supposedly working with the
U.$. occupation. Nominally triggered by reports of the U.$. military
burning copies of the Koran, these killings bring the number of NATO
troops killed by their Afghan “allies” to 36 in the last year. This is a
significant increase from previous years and some have suggested no
other “native ally” of U.$. imperialism has compared.(1) While tiny in
comparison to the loss of life by the occupied population, these
incidents support the assessment that the United $tates continues to
lose their war on Afghanistan. The deaths of Amerikans, while providing
fuel for anti-Afghan propaganda, frightens the Amerikan public away from
participating in ground wars. It took a long 9 years to turn Amerikan
public opinion towards pulling troops out of Afghanistan, and Afghans
are still fighting to get them out.(2)
There are two incorrect bourgeois narratives underlying the reporting on
recent events. One attempts to hide the fact that the nation has faced a
brutal occupation for over a decade, as if Afghans are just irrationally
responding to the minor incident of the burning of some books. The
second narrative is that there is an outside radical religious element,
which must be distinguished from the greater Afghan nation that wants to
work with Amerikans. This narrative was used against the Taliban for
years before the invasion by U.$. troops even began. The truth being
(however flimsily) covered by both of these narratives is that the
Afghan nation has supported a decade-long war of resistance to the
imperialist occupation led by Amerika. A parallel might be drawn to the
media’s portrayal of the prison movement where the outside element is
“criminal gangs” and resistance is pinned to issues like wanting TV or
better food.
In a recent report on NPR, an official stated that USAID had to hide the
fact that they were giving aid to the Afghan people, because no one in
the country would be seen with a blanket or food with a U.$. flag on it.
This fact is a clear demonstration that either the resistance is the
Afghan people, or the “outside radical element” is so prolific as to
make distinguishing it from the Afghan people irrelevant. Meanwhile, the
funeral of an Afghan air force colonel that killed nine Amerikans was
attended by 1500 mourners last year.(3) Since this article was first
drafted another bomb struck near Bagram Air Force Base where the Korans
were burned on March 5. On March 8 the Taliban infiltrated Afghan police
in Oruzgan and killed nine of them, while six British occupiers were
killed during an attack on their vehicle in Helmand province. Our
strategic confidence comes from examples like this, where whole
countries have united to reject and fight imperialism. Comparing these
conditions to those in the United $tates demonstrates our line on where
guerrilla war is possible and not.
“Time works for the guerrilla both in the field – where it costs the
enemy a daily fortune to pursue him – and in the politico-economic
arena.”(4) The occupation of Afghanistan is estimated to have cost as
much as $500 billion(5), with sources reporting costs per Amerikan
soldier at $850,000 up to $1.2 million a year.(6) While almost all of
this money goes to U.$. corporations and their employees supplying the
soldiers, even bourgeois economists have recognized that militarism is
not a sustainable way to prop up a capitalist economy. What they fail to
acknowledge is that only a socialist economic system that produces for
need, not profit, can eliminate the inherent contradictions in
production where circulation of capital must always increase in the
interest of profit.
“There is no great novelty in [guerrilla tactics], nor can the
Marxist-Leninist camp claim any special credit for it. What is new – and
Mao is the apostle and the long Chinese revolution the first proving
ground – is the application of guerrilla activity, in a conscious and
deliberate way, to specific political objectives, without immediate
reference to the outcome of battles as such, provided only that the
revolutionaries survive.”(7)
We are coming out of a period where the universality of Maoism has been
dirtied by an association of communism with revisionists and First
Worldists. Islam continues to unite the national liberation movement in
Afghanistan, while “communism” has an association with foreign invasion.
While socialism is necessary to meet the needs of the people of
Afghanistan, the movement’s ideology so far has kept it isolated from
the toxic politics of the First World. This will work in their favor as
the people’s struggle reaches higher stages.
Here in the United $tates we must continue to find creative ways to help
the Afghans’ heroic struggle to whittle away at Amerikan support for
occupation. And we must learn from the events in Central Asia about who
are our friends and enemies, what is possible where, and what it looks
like to take on a long struggle with the confidence that you are on the
right side of history.
In early February we received a report from a family member that
Scotland Correctional Institution had been on lockdown for over 2 weeks.
All the time prisoners were getting out of their cells was 5 minutes to
shower with handcuffs. They were not allowed to use the phone to call
family, so mail has been the only form of communication.
On February 21 a North Carolina prisoner reports:
I’m on lock down for something that happened on January 19, 2012 which I
had nothing to do with. The prison placed us on an institution-wide lock
down for a small gang riot, which was handled and shut down quickly.
They still got us locked down, just trying to break our spirits.
They’ve not given any religious service, no school, no visits, no sick
calls. I placed a sick call 2 weeks ago and they still haven’t called me
in.
Grievances are not being addressed. I’m so tired of being oppressed. I
want to overcome this oppression and I know it’s a struggle.
On February 16 ULK correspondent Wolf reported:
Other closed custody facilities went back to regular operation after
Prison Emergency Response Teams (PERT) searched and stayed on each unit
for about 2 weeks. But the oppressive Karen Stanback and her assistant
Capt. Covington has continued the oppressive conditions at Scotland.
Details of this oppression include:
On 20 January 2012 we were searched by PERT at 6:30 AM. No shower,
recreation, TV, phone calls, religious services, canteen, etc. that day.
Taken to the shower on 23 January 2012 in handcuffs and made to shower
with handcuffs on. Only had 10 minutes to shower escorted by 2 COs in
handcuffs, one inmate at a time in a block of 48 people. PERT searched
us again on 25 January 2012.
After grievances and receiving complaints from family members and other
outside sources, we received 2 hours in the dayroom, 24 prisoners at a
time. During this period we must shower, make phone calls, or try to
cook or prepare a meal using 1 hot water sink in the dorm. Prisoners
must become bootlickers or snitches or their jobs are being given away
to medical custody.
All the guys who participated in the actions that occurred that night
are on segregation or were sent to long-term lockup. Still these
conditions continue to be enforced on us. Brothers don’t realize they’re
used as pawns in a dirty chess game played by this administration to
finally have a reason to bury us alive in these cemeteries. However,
Resistance Number 1, aka Wolf has entered the fight against the
oppressive imperialistic system of justice and joins MIM. We the
Resistance Number 1 realized our fight is hard and difficult, but
someone must speak out against the laboratory of injustice here at
Scotland CI.