MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Last year myself and various comrades within the anti-prison movement
came under heightened political repression during Black August and
Bloody September well into October. The Palestinian National Liberation
after Operation Al Aqsa Flood seemed to keep the war games intact
against us prisoners/revolutionaries.
The Stop Cop City activists and myself have been branded as domestic
terrorists by the U.$. empire and are facing the new type of political
persecution greenlit after September 11, 2001. I quote Obama: “We do not
use drone strikes to punish people but to eliminate those who pose a
continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” It was said in a
cleverly written and well executed speech, and also layered very
carefully.
The Supreme Court says the only question to ask to a case like this
is whether the speech “transcends the bounds of freedom of speech which
the constitution protects.”
How far can the phrase “imminent threat” be stretched? We are the
domestic guinea pigs. Security Threat Group (STG) units all over the
empire have war plans that move into operation mode in Bloody September,
prison activists and deemed leaders will be hid inside the various
control units that pockmark the penal landscape. Get ready.
This is that season again. There is no need for Congress or state
legislature approval. The authorization for use of military force is a
unilateral decision by executive power. Beware the drone strike for
rebels and those in their reach. Beware the raid for rebels and those in
their reach. Beware the heightened political prosecution/assassination
of the Republic of New Afrika. This is a defense of the state’s right to
wage war against New Afrika.
The student movement for a free Palestine must correct the following
errors: capitulation, the First World obsession with “mutual aid”,
refusal to learn from history, blind fumbling in the interest of “doing
something”, hastiness to condemn (rather than critique) the struggle
here and abroad, surface level third-worldism as a justification for
inaction, and the fetish for determining who’s making “real communist
revolution” in place of a dialectical-materialist analysis of
history.
1: The Liberal Trend, The Capitulationists, The Refusal to
Stand IN OPPOSITION to Empire
The first trend I will critique consists of centering one’s own
pro-Palestine political action around things that in fact stop short of
anything that aids the fight for a free Palestine and an end to i$rael.
People following this trend do not fight for things such as divestment
from (or destruction of) weapons manufacturers or rejecting politicians
who support i$rael in words, policy, or money. Rather, these people and
groups focus on things such as organizing donations for individual
Palestinian families, securing scholarships for Palestinian refugees and
diaspora, or, in a more specific and truly condemnable example, the
schools who capitulated and abandoned their encampment for paltry
promises such as a house for Arab and Muslim students.
People rush to defend these forms of “resistance” with “we’re
centering Palestinian voices”, while not recognizing that none of the
things they’re fighting for (NGO-style refugee aid, more
Palestinian-diaspora petty-bourgeois in elite ideological institutions
of the amerikkkan state) are in any way actually opposed to the
amerikkkan empire or contribute in any way to a future in which
Palestine and its people are free from i$raeli and amerikkkan
aggression. We saw the protests in 2020 end in symbolic gains that were
not in any way contradictory to the U.$. empire, nor did they bring true
freedom from the brutality of kkkops in the ghetto. Today, this trend
threatens an unpleasant end for the currently-still-radical Palestinian
liberation movement – a ceasefire on i$rael’s terms, maybe two states,
more scholarships for the Palestinians who survived and were wealthy
enough to get to the United $tates, and everyone who was uncomfortable
chanting anything besides “ceasefire now” (the big brother of “defund
the police”) gets to feel good about “playing their part”.
In the past, people have been harsh on MIM(Prisons) for refusing to
capitulate to accepting any concessions for the First World that come at
the expense of the Third World, or even concessions that don’t
necessarily come at the expense of the Third World but serve to pacify
the First World. Most notably, this is expressed in how angry people get
about the analysis proving that prisoners, while no doubt an oppressed
class and a hotbed for potential for organizing, are not exploited, so
MIM(Prisons) doesn’t generally promote the fight for better wages for
prisoners. To self-criticize, even I myself originally was upset about
MIM(Prisons)’s stated intentions not to fight for healthcare for
transgender prisoners, interpreting this as latent transmisogyny rather
than a recognition that healthcare for trans prisoners (as important a
battle as I believe it to be) is not a struggle in the interest of the
global proletariat. Incidents like the capitulation of student
encampments at Northwestern University, Vassar College, and other elite
universities display clearly how radical a line that really is.
Going forward, two things are going to have to happen in order for
further protests for Palestine of this form to yield meaningful results:
first, protesters are going to have to recognize that everything they do
in protest should be in the actual, direct interest of the oppressed
people of Palestine, not in the interest of “anti-racism” or
“solidarity” or any bullshit half-measures. Second, protesters will have
to prepare to be faced with violence and with the full force of state
repression. Here’s a little logic-puzzle version of what happens when
you say “we’re staying here, we’re causing trouble, and we’re not moving
until you (divest/get rid of your dual degree program/get this
politician out of our town/whatever)”: there are three options. Option
one: you give in, you leave there, you stop causing trouble, you get
your House or your scholarships or your vote-in-six-months. Option two:
they give in, they accept your demands and nothing less. Option three:
they break out the tear gas, the riot batons, the robot dogs, the
big-ass battering-ram pigmobiles. And here’s the truth of it all: if you
let it be option one, you’re worthless, you’ve sold out the people of
Palestine. If you don’t let it be option one, if you make The Man choose
between option two and option three. Well, if he doesn’t have a really
good goddamn reason to choose option two, it’s gonna be option three.
That’s the unfortunate truth, so you better be ready, and start doing
wrist and shoulder stretches, because plastic flexicuffs hurt worse than
the metal ones, what’s up with that.
2. The Dogmatic Trend and its Flaws
What I just laid out describes the main current that I see “on the
ground” in so-called pro-Palestine “activism” that does nothing at all
for Palestine itself. I doubt I’m telling you guys anything new here,
besides confirming that such things are happening and making the
particulars clear. On the flip side of activism-theater, refusal to
study history, and “wins” for the First World, I also have noticed that
there is a trend to be unbelievably reductive and flippant when it comes
to what one’s orientation towards Third World liberation groups engaged
in armed struggle should be, what course of action should be taken in
the First World, and a refusal to engage in good-faith conversation
about either of those subjects without dogmatism.
I am speaking in particular about people who will say (correctly)
“fundraising and mutual aid and liberal-left protests don’t do anything
for Palestine”, but then follow that statement up with “the ONLY thing
that will ACTUALLY free Palestine is communist revolution”. Though the
last month has only strengthened my convictions that communism (in the
form laid out by Marx, Lenin, and Mao, and practiced in the USSR and
China) is correct, and true, and the only pathway to the permanent
liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world, it seems
disgustingly chauvinistic to imply that the thing that a First-Worlder
can do that has the most material impact on the people of Palestine is
to focus on one’s home country, on some idea of “making revolution”.
Notably, other than MIM(Prisons) and another group I am working with
who I shall not name, I have noticed that people who say such things
don’t ever enjoy discussing what “making revolution” looks like, in this
day, in this country, beyond platitudes. I see this trend frequently
among communists who I know offline, but also among certain prominent
users of popular “anti-revisionist” communist online discussion boards
(I say this not to gossip or shit-talk, but rather because I believe it
behooves one to recognize that even spaces that portray themselves as
“anti-chauvinist” or “anti-revisionist” do not by default take Third
World liberation and the contradictions that it would entail seriously.
Judging by former discussions I’ve seen on the Maoist forums, this
warping of the idea of “revisionism” to defend inaction isn’t a new
trend per se).
This correct rejection of mutual aid and petit-bourgeois identity
politics, followed by the proclamation of the vulgar line of “nothing
you do has an impact for the people of Palestine if you aren’t making
communist revolution in your home country”, seems to me to be a
disguised version of the same sentiment that leads to disgusting and
chauvinistic lines such as “well, we should critically support Hamas,
but they aren’t communist, so the most important thing is to be critical
of them”. Did Torkil Lauesen believe that the most important thing that
a First-Worlder could do was “make revolution”, and that in the absence
of a clear path forward, one should sit on their heels and wait for one
to appear? did Ulrike Meinhoff? Would any of the people who say, whether
behind their screens or out on the streets or in the encampment, “the
only thing you can do for the people of Palestine is make communist
revolution”, genuinely try and claim that they’re doing more for
Palestinian liberation than Hamas, Lauesen, or Meinhoff? Of course I
don’t intend to advocate adventurism, I don’t believe that we in the
First World should be taking up the gun or robbing banks, but I do
believe that a refusal to engage with the question of what a liberated
Palestine (and, if Cuba and South Africa, for example, are any
precedent, not necessarily a communist Palestine) would look like beyond
First World radical academics’ ideas of “building revolution” is just a
flipside of the chauvinism displayed in the “well, at least we’re doing
SOMETHING” rhetoric of mutual aid and peaceful protest.
No matter whether they distort Marxism, Maoism, or third-worldism,
they inevitably find their way to the same conclusion: none of the
groups currently debating and fighting and sacrificing for the
Palestinian cause are worthy of my time; they’re all revisionist,
bourgeois, labor-aristocrats; students are all postmodernist
bourgeois-wannabes risking their educations and sometimes their lives
for the bit; protesters are all shills for the DNC; thank goodness I
don’t have to feel bad about my inaction. The dogmatists, the
“do-nothing”-ists, imply, in essence, the same thing that the first type
of chauvinists implicitly believe. The job of a First-Worlder is to
fundraise, or to go to art builds, or to read and daydream about the day
a revolution free of contradictions springs from the soil, while the job
of a Third-Worlder is to die.
3. Both Are Worse
As I’ve already said, my central point is thus: both trends, more
than anything else, serve as a justification for the ostensibly
class-conscious First-Worlder to not do anything that would compromise
their comfortable lives, a veritable “class-suicide hotline.”
“no, First Worlder, don’t go beyond liberalism and bourgeois
legality, don’t commit your valuable free time to reading and study,
don’t risk getting expelled – parade-type protests, symbolic
encampments, and mutual aid funds are totally sufficient and just as
important! You have so much to chant for, you have so many tech jobs to
land!”
“no, First-Worlder, don’t get involved, don’t join any groups, don’t
talk to the lower and deeper masses, don’t learn from resistance
movements of the past – you haven’t fought with enough other First
Worlders online or in your book clubs, god forbid you accidentally make
a mistake and learn from practice!”
These are the two trends that we must combat in the struggle for a
free Palestine here in the belly of the beast, where all the funding and
weapons for the ongoing genocide continue to flow from.
In a recent episode of the RevLeft podcast, a couple of
student leaders reflected on their experiences so far in the student
encampments demanding university divestment from I$rael. Here we will
briefly summarize some of their lessons learned and connect them to
similar experiences in the prison movement.
The biggest regret expressed by one of the students, and echoed as
important by the other, was conceding to closed-door negotiations with
the administration. A comrade once described a campaign that ended up
with a large group of prisoners being in a room with administration. The
administration expressed that they had heard their demands and would go
deliberate on them and let them know their decision. The comrade
correctly saw the risk of divide and conquer and kept everyone there
until the admin would commit to how they would actually address their
very reasonable requests. When making demands of the powers that be it
is important to mobilize the masses as fully as possible to participate.
Behind closed doors, individual negotiators, whether due to
inexperience, opportunism, fear, etc, will not get the same outcome.
A related demand that the admins often made of the student
encampments was to exclude community members from the struggle on
campus. This similarly helped to isolate students, potentially from more
experienced organizers in particular.
Another big critique one student made of eir group was too much
hemming and hawing over escalation of building occupations to the point
of losing the momentum they had.
The students discussed the varied interests of different parties
involved, whether on campus or off-campus students, staff with tenure or
not, income levels, etc. This is paralleled in prisons where people with
different amounts of time often have very different attitudes towards
things, and some groups are often granted privileges by staff in order
to divide and conquer. Related to this is the fact that many of the
students didn’t know each other at all, so there was a lack of trust and
familiarity. This might be easier to overcome in prison, but speaks to
the need for developing relationships with others and organization prior
to events like this.
The students mentioned how they should have studied the history of
how their institutions responded to similar events in the past more. We
offer the pages of ULK to document the history of the prison
struggle for others to study.
Finally, they self-criticized for succumbing to reformist language
that was coming from the administration in their own outreach. They
stressed the importance of going into a movement with established
principles in order to stick to the goals and the messaging when things
get hectic and confusing. They stressed how much language matters.
These are very universal lessons that we can all benefit from better
understanding. We encourage our readers to write in with more examples
of lessons learned from their experiences of fighting oppression so we
can all get better at what we do.
NOTES: Revolutionary Left Radio, 5 June 2024, Student
Encampments for Palestine: An Interview with Student
Organizers.
i want to begin with a sort of disclaimer or qualifier, due to the
fact that many speak on the realities of the lumpen, particularly the
street gang elements, who’re not cut from that cloth, if you will.
Although i am now a committed New Afrikan Freedom Fighter, i was
initiated into what is now the Forum Park Crips, in Houston, Texas, when
i was in my early teens. My life in the streets was one of tribal
animosities and strife, territorial beefs, and a survivalist level of
hustling and scheming. i did everything one does in the street life from
selling narcotics, to thievery, burglary, armed robberies, pimping, and
of course ‘sliding’, as they say nowadays.
As a result of this lifestyle and my social ignorance, and lack of
firm identity, purpose and direction, by age nineteen i found myself
wanted for capital murder, and by twenty-one sentenced to life without
parole for said murder, while holding strong to the key principle one
was taught in the lumpen sub-culture, ‘No Snitching’!
Prior and during my prison stint i operated as a makeshift hystorian,
and due to my persynal background i’ve paid much attention to the
historical development of the lumpen in North amerikkka in general, New
Afrika in particular, and the lumpen-organizational development
specifically. This along with my adherence to historical dialectical
materialist philosophy, i believe, qualify me to speak with a certain
level of knowledge, wisdom and understanding on the subject.
The Foundation
At the moment in time of the founding of the original Crips, one of
its co-founders, Tookie Williams(Ajami Kiamke Kamara) states plainly,
“The crips mythology has many romanticized, bogus accounts.” i believe
We in revolutionary movements take these and other similar ones too
literally and therefore misrepresent the origins and hystorical
functions of the Crips and others within the class and national
liberation struggles. In this realm we often promote an idealized,
non-materialist perspective.
Mr. Kamara(Williams) continues,
“Another version[ of Crip mythology] incorrectly documents the Crips
as an offshoot of the Black Panther Party (BPP). No Panther Party member
has ever mentioned the Crips(or Cribs) as being a spin-off of the
Panthers. It is also fiction that the Crips functioned under the acronym
C.R.I.P, for Community Resources Inner-City Project or Community
Revolutionary Inner City Project.(words like ‘revolutionary agenda’ were
alien to our thuggish, uninformed teenage consciousness.) We did not
unite to protect the Community; our motive was to protect ourselves and
our families.”
i’ve begun this ‘Foundational’ part of this piece within these words
from the late Mr. Kamara, because We too often, and too easily
romanticize the beginnings of the urban amerikkkan street organizations.
Now that i’ve clarified that the Crips weren’t exactly founded with a
revolutionary or progressive intent it makes it clearer why the Crips
have largely stagnated in their operations for so long now.
The late Malcolm X once said that ‘prison is the poor man’s
university’, and proving his maxim true, it was many of the first
generation of Crips who populated the prisons in California, being
influenced by the politicized culture in the prison established by those
who came before them, who began an effort(s) to improve the imagery, and
provide meaning to what Mr. Kamara himself even called, ‘a causeless
cause’.
When the imprisoned Crips began to become more culturally aware in
the 80’s and onward they sought to stir the crip force in another
direction by establishing a constitution, which was largely influenced
by the BGF constitution, they functioned under acronyms like C.R.I.P,
for Community Revolution In Progress, and other similar ones, brothers
began becoming Afro-centric and instituted speaking ki-swahili. Also,
many around those times became radical and politicized. Some formed orgs
like the Black Riders Liberation Party, a new generation Black Panther
Party that was formed in the 90’s by former Crips and Bloods. Others
formed more groups like the C.C.O.(Consolidated Crips Organization)
which was to be de-tribalized, more centralized and politicized version
of the Crips street gang. Many of these brothers had intentions of
changing the various communities and ‘Crip turfs’ they represented upon
their release from prison. More often than not their efforts were not
effective enough to curtail or re-focus the self-destructive culture
that had by then turned southern California upside down.
Simultaneously the Crips and other similar groups were spreading
throughout the north amerikkkan continent, what wasn’t spreading however
was the more refined and socially aware sectors or versions of the Crips
entity. So instead of ’hoods across amerikkka emulating a Conscious
Crip, they were emulating cats who were Crip Crazy, and this
subsequently intensified elements of self-destruction among the New
Afrikan nation in amerikkka.
Building On The Foundation
As the 21st century came and settled in, the spread of the Crips to
every corner of the kkkountry resulted in different locales placing
their own unique cultural traits and adding on to the hystory of the
original formation Mr. Kamara and Raymond Washington founded along with
Mac Thomas. Therefore, many people, and groups Built of the
Foundation.
i’ll preface the following by stating that lumpen organizations have
repeatedly showcased the capacity to turn away from basic parasitic
criminality. However, they’ve done this in two similar but unique ways.
One way is progressive in terms of its break from basic criminality, yet
it is reactionary in terms of its benefit to the revolution. The other
way is progressive in that it provides the break from the criminal
mentality, and is also revolutionary in that it seeks to join the
revolutionary forces in collective war against the state and its enemy
institutions.
We’ve seen examples of the first way numerous of times. One which may
be familiar to some is the 1966 arranged truce between the then
Blackstone rangers and the East Side Disciples, which was instigated by
the promise of the $930,000 in grant money from the federal government
through the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). The grant was based on
a deal that the two street organizations would cease their beef and come
together to prevent uprisings, which had become common throughout
heavily populated New Afrikan enclaves throughout the kkkountry.
Local politicians in the Chicago Democratic Party and the Southern
Democrats in Congress did not approve of these particular elements being
provided with Grant money from the government, and the grant was
cancelled a year later(1967). In 1968 the Chicago BPP was founded and
these same lumpen orgs were enlisted or attempted to be enlisted by the
federal government to prevent the rise in influence of the BPP and its
revolutionary line. The Rangers and the Conservative Vice Lords opted
for the former way, and were showered with grant money from the
bourgeoisie(Clement Stone of Combined Insurance of America; Sears; First
National Bank of Chicago, among others). These lumpen moved toward Black
Capitalism, and filled the vacuum in what was then a new non-profit
sector instituted to remove the teeth from the revolution and the
revolutionary potential of the lumpen particularly.
On the other hand, the East Side Disciples changed their name to the
Black Disciples (identifying as Black instead of negro was a culturally
progressive action at the time) and formed an alliance with the Chicago
BPP.
So as this hystorical account illustrates, the lumpen are a
vacillating class. We can flow whichever way the wind blows, but Our
life experience under monopoly capitalism and imperialism, suggested
that absent a form of ‘class-suicide’, We will do like the Rangers and
take the capitalist road, which will have us cozied up with the
bourgeoisie, making love with our enemies and murdering our friends.
Within the Forum Park Crip experience there has been an evolution and
a certain level of class struggle, and ideological struggle (which is
one in the same thing). To quote Malcolm X, again, ‘Prisons are the poor
man’s university’. One member of the Forum Park Crips (FPC) spent time
incarcerated and chose to apply himself.
He learned somethings from the cats like myself who have been
politicized while in captivity and he began to develop a New Vision for
our street tribe. Upon release, he began to institute the New Vision.
See everyone and every entity has a basic Identity, Purpose and
Direction, and as evolution takes place it takes place within the nature
of these three elements of the entity in question. So upon release the
first step was to apply a New Vision to what the Identity of a FPC
was/is.
Like the brothers in California decades ago with their
C.R.I.P.(Community Revolution In Progress), the homie strove to fine
tune the image, by establishing Forever Protecting the Community(FPC) as
an official community organization dedicated to mentoring youth,
minimizing gang violence, and empowering the community.
Because of the numerous influences, and illegitimate capitalism being
foremost among them, FPC in its beginning stages turned down a similar
road as Jeff Fort’s Rangers in 1960’s Chicago. FPC received grants from
the city and used them along with other similar formations to fund a
purchasing of acreage to start community gardens, promoting food
sovereignty, a memorial tribute to victims of police and gun violence.
Prior to the grants FPC provided school supplies and thousands of
backpacks, sponsored summer kids’ festivals, and mentoring school
children by doing speaking engagements at local schools.
As i’ve pointed out, these efforts are progressive in the sense
they’re a long way from the parasitic criminality the homies had been
involved with prior. However, it can be reactionary in the sense that
absent any sense of revolutionary orientation, this amounts to nothing
more than mere community service, and never did at the root of the
systematic problems that cause the surface level expression of the
oppressive social contract.
After discussing this somewhat with some of the guys plans have come
to fruition to establish a campaign that attacks a particular vestige of
genocidal culture in the Forum Park area. This being the out of control
open-air sex trafficking that de-values our community and makes it
uncomfortable and unsafe for elements in Our community. The campaign
will create a class struggle for unity both within the community and the
organization, and will make the bond between the org and the people.
Moreso, it will begin to establish what will hopefully become a distinct
line of demarcation between the local government, and the rest of the
non-profit sector, who’ve become entranced with utilizing the plights of
the people as a stepping stool to gain economic upliftment. As FPC and
other similar formations move out of that mode of operations, and begin
to call others out on it and for their deceitful service to the people,
it will create unity within classes apart of the local class
struggle.
In closing, i’ve found the observation of comrade Jalil Abdul
Muntaqim to be true,
“Beneath the Black working class are the subculture
lumpen-proletariat, the unskilled and menial laborers whose primary
means of subsistence is based on hustling(stealing, selling drugs,
prostitution etc), marginal employment, and welfare. For the most part
the socioeconomic provision within the subculture are maintained by the
‘illegitimate capitalist’ activity of the lumpen-proletariat. In
accordance with their aspirations to fulfill the social values of the
bourgeoisie, they employ business acumen in criminal activity for
subsistence and profit. As they seek material wealth and social status
of the bourgeoisie within the confines of the subculture, they are in
many ways politically reactionary, unconcerned with anything other than
personal survival and individual gain. It is only when the
lumpen-proletariat are educated and become politically aware of their
socioeconomic condition, that the possibility exists for them to become
staunch supporters of the revolution, recognizing their dire standard of
living is based wholly on the system of oppression they are desperately
trying to emulate…”
As has been routinely stated, the revolutionary forces must
ingratiate themselves within the activities of the lumpen organization.
Specifically once they’ve already reached a certain level of collective
social awareness and activity. And then, influence the development of
their social awareness and activity by providing political education, by
conceptualizing programs that are pertinent to the particular lumpen
community one is seeking to organize. The lumpen is a vacillating class,
that can and often does see-saw between revolutionary and reactionary
activities. There are some socially aware and nationalistic elements,
particularly among the oppressed nations of north amerikka, who can be
coached towards full support of the revolution, the choice between
serving the people heart and soul, and the reactionary road are
ultimately up to the lumpen themselves. i’ll leave with a word from
Comrade George:
“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of the
situation, understand that fascism is already here. That people are
already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live
poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done,
discover your humanity and your life in revolution. Pass on the torch,
join us, give up your life for the people.” - George L. Jackson
SOURCES: 1. Blue Rage Black Redemption, Stanley Tookie
Williams 2. Ibid. 3. Vita Wa Watu #11, Spears & Shield
Publications 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. We Are Our Own Liberators,
Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, ‘National Strategy of FROLINAN’ 7. Blood In My
Eye, George L. Jackson
They say the best way to hide something is to put it in plain sight.
Student-led activism in the majority New Afrikan populated area of South
Baltimore has rendered this old saying no longer true. For about ninety
years corporate coal companies and the city government have allowed and
perpetuated landfills, and literal mountains of coal being piled up in
plain sight in residential areas, and even directly behind rec centers
with playgrounds and children.
For the last 100 years, coal has been brought into the port city of
Baltimore by the freight transportation company CSX. In data derived
from 2021, it was found that CSX transported more than 8 million tons of
coal into South Baltimore, where the coal is then transported all over
the world. Freight trains coming through the Baltimore transport
terminal with coal on them spill black coal dust throughout South
Baltimore and pollute the air.
Pollution is so outrageous in this predominately New Afrikan
community that the number one cause of death is respiratory related
issues. The death rate from respiratory disease in South Baltimore is
more than twice the rate for Baltimore as a whole. Respiratory disease
is killing more people in this section of the city than diabetes, drugs,
or gun violence. A staggering 90% of youth from the area suffer from
different degrees of asthma, which has been causing chronic death.
What is by now very obvious to anyone is that coal and other
pollutants should not be in residential areas, but the fact that they
are and have been so carelessly handled for generations now, in a
predominately New Afrikan section of a predominantly New Afrikan city,
illustrates major contradictions of the national oppression of so-called
Black people, and Our neo-colonial relationship to the empire and
certain classes within Our collective body-politic.
It is under this back drop that a youth organization was founded in
2011 at the local Benjamin Franklin High School, called Free Your Voice.
In 2011 the Free Your Voice student-activists were fighting, and
eventually defeated an effort to build a waste incinerator in South
Baltimore. The incinerator would’ve burned tons of trash and waste, and
released pollution, as well as converted electricity from the burned
waste.
Today, Free Your Voice is still active and continues to replenish its
pool of student-activists. Now however, the struggle with CSX and city
and state officials is much more daunting. Free Your Voice and
supporters from the community and local colleges have set out to get the
state’s environmental regulators to deny CSX’s operations permit on the
transport terminal and pay residents of South Baltimore reparations for
generations of ‘environmental racism’ (Genocide).
These efforts have been hampered by what some deem as betrayal by the
first ‘Black’ top environmental regulator in Maryland and her
declaration that she and her agency know it’s coal and coal dust found
on streets and public areas but can not act without actual proof of the
identity of the substance.
Laws against air pollution are written so that oppressed and
vulnerable masses of people are at severe disadvantage and would in most
circumstances be dependent upon state agencies, who are in cahoots with
big industrialists, to gather and test substances in question. People
have to prove they’ve been or are being poisoned by specific substances
before regulators can take action.
Students from Free Your Voice along with local college volunteers
spent the summer of 2023 collecting and testing particles of dust found
in the S. B-More area. They have and continue to go door-to-door
spreading the findings of their research with the general community.
Thus far, although the terminal has not been shut down and the mountains
of coal still reside behind rec centers and playgrounds, Free Your Voice
has achieved quantitative victories.
The student-activists’ work thus far has:
Made it harder for city officials, state politicians, and local
residents to ignore their oppression;
They’ve won over neighbors to their work, elevated consciousness
around air pollution and the complicity of the occupying government in
environmental destruction;
They’ve garnered meetings with state regulators, and the fact
that the head of the environmental regulation agency in Maryland is a
‘Black’ female, has elevated the class consciousness and the reality of
the New Afrikan National neo-colonial status;
The aspirations of their movement have risen. From slight reforms
like covering or pouring water on coal mountains in the ghetto, to now,
aspiring to remove or shut down the train terminal.
The continuing work of Our young people is not only there to be
acknowledged and supported, but more importantly in the long run there
are lessons to be learned from this particular student movement. I’ll
touch on some of them briefly here.
For one, while it is widely known that almost all previous moments in
the generational struggle of New Afrikan people the student movement was
the brain trust, and the heart of the struggle. We often fail to make
the connection that these previous students were so successful in
galvanizing people and nationalizing their structures because they
championed causes that had nothing to do with school or education. The
Free Your Voice Movement in S.B-More has connected the youth movement
with environmentalism, and those two things have unearthed class
oppression and national oppression. Our students must make these same
connections around the empire. What is the one thing that connects the
student in B-More to the student in southside St. Louis, or San
Francisco, or in Cancer Alley Louisiana, or Jackson, Mississippi, or
Flint, Michigan? It’s environmental issues. The organizing method We
should take at organizing the student movement in the spirit of New
Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) is to connect environmentalism
with student activism and revolutionary nationalism.
What also struck me in my research of this issue and struggle was the
fact that college students and former students of Franklin High School
have continued to come back and aid and assist in the struggle
there.
The college level student with a NARN orientation must make their
presence and ideological-theoretical prowess available at the sites of
active student movements. In these times of social media, student
activists from each of the previously mentioned cities and others can
and should be in direct communication, and NARN’s must take proactive
steps to influence the direction of the student movement, nationalizing
it and moving it in the direction illuminated by the Front for the
Liberation of the New Afrikan Nation (FROLINAN)’s Programs For
Decolonization, while also incorporating environmental and climate
related concerns to the FROLINAN program for National Alliance of New
Afrikan Students. If implemented by youthful NARN, i believe We can
succeed in building a NARN centered national youth movement.
In ULK 84 we reported on a sharp
drop in donations from prisoners in 2023, and a gradual decline in
subscribers in recent years. We asked our readers to answer some survey
questions to help explore the reasons for these declines and to begin a
more active campaign to expand ULK in 2024. Below is some
discussion with comrades who have responded to the survey so far about
drugs, gangs, COVID-19, generational differences and more. If you want
to participate in this conversation, please respond to the questions at
the end.
Problems We’ve Always Had
A North Carolina prisoner on censorship: i pass my
copies around when i’m able, what i always hear is “Bro i wrote to them
but never received the paper.” Then there is a couple guys who were on
the mailing list who say they’re not receiving the paper no more.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The obvious answer to this is
the newsletter is being censored. Any prisoner of the United $tates who
writes us for ULK will be sent at least 2 issues, and if you
write every 6 months we will keep sending it. Censorship has always been
a primary barrier to reaching people inside, but we have no reason to
believe that has increased in the last couple years. Relaunching regular
censorship reports could help us assess that more clearly in the future.
A Pennsylvania prisoner on the younger generation: I
think it is these younger generation people who are coming into the
prison system or people who have been pretty much raised by the judicial
system, and the guards become mommy and daddy to them… They do not want
to or are possibly afraid to change the only life they have ever known.
I know some of these younger guys here who have gotten too comfortable
and think: “Oh, I am doing so good, I have a certain level of say-so
here, the guards are my buddies, they get me, et cetera.” When on the
outside they did not have that.
Also, on my block, many people are illiterate and cannot read. I know
this because I am the Peer Literacy Tutor.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Most of this doesn’t sound new.
Older prisoners have been talking about the lacking of the younger
forever. Illiteracy is also not new in prisons. There is some indication
that the COVID pandemic has impacted literacy in children, but that
would not be affecting our readership (yet).
A California prisoner: I think a lot of prisoners do
not want to hear negativity or incendiary language, we get enough of
that in here and I notice a lot of unity around positivity in here. I
suggest less dividing language and more unifying language. In
particular, the “who are our friends and who are our enemies” line could
certainly drop the “who are our enemies” part. Prisoners don’t want
someone telling them who to be enemies with, prisoners want to be told
who to be friends with.
I have trouble passing on ULK, natural leaders won’t even
accept it (I try to revolutionize the strong). As soon as I say “it’s a
communist paper”, the typical response is “I’m not a commie.” Any
suggestions??
MIM(Prisons) responds: Not sure if you’re leading with
the fact that it’s a communist newspaper. But when doing outreach, the
fact that we’re a communist organization will not come up until we’ve
gotten into an in-depth conversation with someone. We want to reach
people with agitational campaign slogans, hopefully ones that will
resonate with them. What in this issue of ULK do you think the
persyn might be interested in? Lead with that.
As far as who are our friends and who are our enemies goes – this is
actually a key point we must understand before we begin building a
united front (see MIM Theory 14: United Front where a prisoner
asks this same question back in 2001). We must unite all who can be
united around anti-imperialist campaigns. Our goal is not to have the
most popular newsletter in U.$. prisons; that might be the goal of a
profit-driven newsletter. Our goal is to support anti-imperialist
organizing within prisons. As we’ve been stressing in recent months,
prisons are war, and they are part of a larger war on the oppressed. If
we do not recognize who is behind that war, and who supports that war
and who opposes it, we cannot stop that war. If you see a group of
people that wants to carpet bomb another group of people as a friend,
then you are probably not part of the anti-imperialist camp yourself.
Prisoners who are mostly focused on self-improvement, parole, or just
getting home to their families may be willing to be friends with anyone
who might help them do so. But we must also recognize the duality
of the imprisoned oppressed people as explained by comrade Joku Jeupe
Mkali.
Problems That May Be Getting
worse
A Washington prisoner on the drug trade: Drugs and
gangs are the biggest threat to radical inclination in the system. Drugs
keep the addicted dazed and unable to focus on insurgency. Whereas the
self-proclaimed activist gang member who actually has the mental fitness
to actually avoid such nonsense has become so entrenched in a culture
aimed at feeding on the profit he gains in the process has forgotten his
true goal and would rather stand in the way of change to maintain
profit.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is perhaps the biggest
shift we’ve seen in reports on conditions on the inside in recent years.
Of course, these are not new issues. But there are new drugs that seem
to be more easily brought in by guards and have more detrimental effects
on peoples’ minds. Meanwhile, the economics of these drugs may have
shifted alliances between the state-employed gangs and the lumpen gangs
that work together to profit off these drugs.
When we launched the United
Front for Peace in Prisons over a decade ago, it was in response to
comrades reporting that the principal contradiction was lack of unity
due to lumpen organizations fighting each other. In recent years, most
of what we hear about is lumpen organizations working for the pigs to
suppress activism and traffic restricted items. While Texas is the
biggest prison state and much of those reports come from Texas, this
seems to be a common complaint in much of the country as regular readers
will know.
Related to drugs is the new policy spreading like wildfire, that
hiring private companies to digitize prisoners’ mail will reduce drugs
coming into prisons and jails. Above we mentioned no known increase in
censorship, but what has increased is these digital mail processing
centers; and with them more mail returned and delayed. In Texas, we’ve
been dealing with mail delayed by as much as 3 months for years now. As
more and more prisons and jails go digital, communications become more
and more limited. Privatized communications make it harder to hold
government accountable to mail policies or First Amendment claims. There
is no doubt this is a contributor to a decrease in subscribers.
A Pennsylvania Prisoner reports a change in the prison system
due to COVID-19: The four-zoned-movement system has been
implemented here at SCI-Greene because of COVID. Before COVID,
everything was totally opened up. Now everyone is divided from one
another and it makes it that much harder for someone like me who is
constantly surrounded by an entire block full of people with extreme
mental health or age-related issues.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is an interesting
explanation that we had not yet thought of. While we don’t have a lot of
reports of this type of dividing of the population in prisons into pods
since COVID, we know that many prisons have continued to be on lockdown
since then. An updated survey of prisoners on how many people are in
long-term isolation may be warranted. But even with the limited
information we have, we think this is likely impacting our slow decline
in subscribers.
This does not explain why donations went up from 2020 to 2022, but
then dropped sharply in 2023. However, we think this could have been a
boom from stimulus check money, similar to what the overall economy saw.
In prisons this was more pronounced, where many people received a couple
thousand dollars, who are used to earning a couple hundred dollars a
year. While we would have expected a more gradual drop off in donations,
this is likely related. In 2023, prisoners were paying for a greater
percentage of ULK costs than ever before. We had also greatly
reduced our costs in various ways in recent years though, so this is not
just a sign of more donations from prisoners but also a reflection of
decreased costs. We’d like to hear from others: how did stimulus checks
affect the prisoner population?
Like many things, our subscribership and donations were likely
impacted greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s response to
it. Another interesting connection that warrants more investigation is
how the stimulus money may have contributed to the boon in drug
trafficking by state and non-state gangs in prisons. And what does it
mean that the stimulus money has dried up? So far there is no indication
of a decline in the drug market.
A California prisoner on “rehabilitation” and parole:
The new rehabilitation programs in CDCR are designed to assign personal
blame (accept responsibility). A lot of prisoners are on that trip.
“It’s not the state’s fault, it’s my fault cause I’m fucked up.” That’s
the message CDCR wants prisoners to recognize and once again parole is
the incentive, “take the classes, get brainwashed, and we might release
you.” I call it flogging oneself. But a lot of prisoners are in these
“rehabilitation” classes. It’s the future. MIM needs to start thinking
how to properly combat that.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The Step Down program in
California in response to the mass
movement to shut down the SHU was the beginning of this concerted
effort to pacify and bribe prisoners to go along with the state’s
plan.(1) As we discussed at the time, this is part of a
counterinsurgency program to isolate revolutionary leaders from the
rebellious masses in prison.
Our Revolutionary 12 Step Program is one answer to the
state’s “rehabilitation.” Our program also includes accepting
responsibility, but doing so in the context of an understanding of the
system that creates these problems and behaviors in the first place. Yes
we can change individuals, but the system must change to stop the cycle.
The Revolutionary 12 Steps is one of our most widely
distributed publications these days, but we need more feedback from
comrades putting it into practice to expand that program. And while it
is written primarily for substance abuse, it can be applied by anyone
who wants to reform themselves from bourgeois ways to revolutionary
proletarian ways.
In other states, like Georgia and Alabama,
parole is almost unheard of. The counterinsurgency programs there
are less advanced, creating more revolutionary situations than exist in
California prisons today. In the years leading up to the massive hunger
strikes in CDCR, MIM mail was completely (illegally) banned from
California prisons. Today, it is rare for California prisoners to have
trouble receiving our mail, yet subscribership is down.
Solutions
A California prisoner: Personally I would like to see
play-by-play instructions for unity. I saw something like that in the
last Abolitionist paper from Critical Resistance. A lot of us
want unity but don’t know how to form groups or get it done. I know
MIM’s line on psychology, however it has its uses. The government
consults psychologists when they want to know how to control people or
encourage unity among their employees. I suggest MIM consult a psych for
a plan on how to unify people, then print the play-by-play instructions
in ULK. It’s a positive message prisoners want to hear.
MIM(Prisons) responds: As mentioned above, building the
United Front for Peace in Prisons was a top topic in ULK for a
long time, so you might want to reference back issues of ULK on
that topic and MIM Theory 14. Psychology is a pseudo-science
because it attempts to predict individuals and diagnose them with
made-up disorders that have no scientific criteria. Social engineering,
however, is a scientific approach based in practice. By interacting with
people you can share experiences and draw conclusions that increase your
chances of success in inter-persynal interactions. This is applying
concepts to culture at the group level, not to biology of the
individual.
Again, the key point here is practice. To be honest, the engagement
with the United Front for Peace in Prisons has decreased over the years,
so we have had less reports. Coming back to the question of how to
approach people in a way that they don’t get turned off by “commie”
stuff, a solution to this should come from USW leaders attempting
different approaches, sharing that info with each other, and summing up
what agitational tactics seemed to work best. Comrades on the outside
could participate as well, but tactics in prison may differ from tactics
that work on college campuses vs. anti-war rallies vs. transit
centers.
A North Carolina prisoner: i look forward to receiving
the paper and i love to contribute to the paper. ULK is not
just a newspaper in the traditional sense of the word it’s more than
that. It’s something to be studied and grasped, and saved for future
educational purposes. In my opinion its the only publication that hasn’t
been compromised.
i think ya’ll should publish more content on New Afrikan
Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) then ya’ll do. To be honest, the
ULK is probably the only publication that provides content that
elucidates NARN. Nonetheless, ya’ll keep doing what ya’ll doing.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We’ll never turn away a
well-done NARN article, so keep them coming. This is a newsletter by and
for prisoners of the United $nakes.
A Pennsylvania prisoner: As with everything,
“education” is a key factor. A lot of people really have a lack of
comprehension of the Maoist, Socialism, Communism agenda or actual
belief system is about. I have a general idea, but not the whole
picture. Many people are ignorant to what it is all about. … I was a bit
of a skeptic when I first began writing MIM(Prisons), but I no longer am
3 years later.
As I have continued to write and read all your ULKs I have
begun to realize what you stand for, and that is the common people who
are struggling to survive in a world full of powerful people, who do not
play by the rules. … Those powerful and wealthy who have forgotten what
it is like to be human. … When I get released from prison later this
year and get back on my feet I do plan to donate to MIM(Prisons) because
I strongly support what you stand for.
…It was word of mouth that got me interested in ULK, and
that is what we should use to spread the word. Sooner or later someone,
somewhere is gonna get interested.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate this comrade’s
continued engagement and struggling with the ideas in ULK. Eir
description of what we do is accurate. Though, the same could be said
for many prisoner newsletters. We recommend comrades check out “What is
MIM(Prisons)?” on page 2 to get an idea of what differentiates us from
the others; and to ask questions and study more than ULK to
better understand those differences.
A Washington prisoner: I believe there has not been
enough exposure of ULK in the prison system. I only happened on
it by chance. I sought out communist education on my own after not being
able to shake an urge that there was something incredibly wrong with the
political and economic structures in my surroundings. I believe we
should launch a campaign of exposure and agitation. Create and pass out
pamphlets and newsletters geared to helping people see the relevance of
communism and their current situation. For a start, I would like to
receive copies of the Revolutionary 12 Step Program pamphlets
to strategically place in my facility so prisoners can have access to
them.
MIM(Prisons) concludes: Expanding ULK just for
the sake of it would be what we call a sectarian error. Sectarianism is
putting one’s organization (one’s own “sect”) above the movement to end
oppression. The reason we are promoting the campaign to expand
ULK is that we see it as a surrogate for measuring the interest
in and influence of anti-imperialist organizing in U.$. prisons. As
comrades above have touched on, there is always a limitation in access
and numbers do matter. Most prisoners have never heard of ULK.
The more we can change that, the more popular we can expect
anti-imperialism to be within U.$. prisons and the more organized we’d
expect people to get there.
We are working on expanding our work with and organizing of prisoner
art. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. More art that
captures the ideas of our movement can help us reach more people more
quickly. So send in your art that reflects the concepts discussed in
ULK. We also offer outside support for making fliers and small
pamphlets. What types of fliers and small pamphlets, besides the
Revolutionary 12 Steps, would be helpful for reaching more
prisoners with our ideas and perhaps getting them to subscribe to
ULK?
Another way to reach people in prison is through radio and podcasts.
We are looking for information on what types of platforms and podcasts
prisoners have access to that we might tap into.
We only received 4 responses to our survey in ULK 84 in time
to print in this issue. This is another data point that indicates the
low level of engagement with ULK compared to the past. Another
possible explanation for lack of responses is that this survey was more
difficult to answer than previous surveys we’ve done because it is
asking for explanations more than hard facts. Either way, in our attempt
to always improve our understanding of the conditions we are working in,
we are printing the survey questions one more time (also see questions
above). Even if your answer to all the questions below are “no”, we’d
appreciate your response in your next letter to us.
Have you noticed changes in the prison system that have made it
harder for people to subscribe to ULK or less interested in
subscribing?
Have you noticed changes in the prisoner population that have
made people less interested in subscribing?
Have you noticed/heard of people losing interest in ULK because
of the content, or because of the practices of MIM(Prisons)?
What methods have you seen be successful in getting people
interested in or to subscribe to ULK?
Do you have ideas for how we can increase interest in ULK in
prisons?
A spear, utilized as a weapon to engage in battle, can only be
effective insofar as its tip is both sturdy and sharp. And the sharpness
of its tip is maintained as part of a process of sharpening in the
continuum of a protracted struggle campaign. Otherwise, what you’ll have
is not an implement for war, but a stick that merely rhetorically
projects a technology for combat that in actuality, is incapable of
immobilizing or pushing back against a harmful, even deadly force. So
considering the condition of the spear, I have no intention to deal with
or re-visit the “Long Attica Revolt” with historicism, relegating the
event to a time in history; nor to romanticize its existence for the
purposes of psycho-emotional or intellectual masturbation. Instead, I
relocate the Long Attica Revolt to the present moment in hopes of
creating dialogue and theory around the fundamental question of whether
the “Long Attica Revolt” (i.e the prison movement) still exists?
I start my analysis of the question at the end and (epilogue) of
Orisanmi Burton’s (hereinafter Ori) text with the statement:
“For many, 1993 was a watershed in the slow disintegration of the
prison movement.”(1)
If 1993 marked the crucial turning point in which the prison movement
started dissipating, or decomposing, what does the reality look like in
2024, 31 years after its evocation? If we are serious about
“interpreting the world to change it, there is no escape from historical
materialism,”(2) requiring my analysis to stay anchored to tackle the
question from my direct experience as a prisoner of 21 and a half
consecutive years of carceral bondage within Michigan prisons. In so
doing, I stay true to Mao’s injunction to adhere to what [Vladimir]
Lenin called the “most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of
Marxism, [the] concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”(3)
The “prison movement,” according to the New Afrikan analysis that I
subscribe to, marked a specific moment in time that spearheaded a
qualitative change, transforming issue-based prison struggles centered
primarily around conditions of confinement (reform), into a movement
that was influenced by and married itself to the anti-colonial national
liberation struggles being waged beyond the concrete walls
(revolutionary). These circumstances, having affected colonial people on
a world scale, radicalized and politicized sections of the colonial
subjects in the united states to such an extent where the consciousness
developed inside of penal dungeons was being disseminated to the streets
where it would be internalized and weaponized by agents against the
state. The impetus for this qualitative leap in the substance and
character of the prison movement was Johnathan Jackson’s 7 August 1970
revolutionary act of pursuing the armed liberation of the Soledad
Brothers, culminating in the 9 September 1971 Attica Rebellion. This is
why Ori argued the “Long Attica Revolt was a revolutionary struggle for
decolonization and abolition at the site of US prisons.”(4)
While Ori’s assessment may have been correct, his very own analysis,
and a concomitant analysis of present-day Michigan, exposes a
revolutionary contradiction prone to reversion and therefore
revolutionary (Marxist) revision by elements that were, in fact, never
revolutionary or abolitionist but only radical reformist. Revisionism
spells doom (death) to the prison movement, so part of our objective has
got to be how do we oppose the carceral state from an ideological and
practical perspective to ensure the survival of a dying prison movement,
and reap benefits and successes from our struggle. After all, Ori tells
us the aim of his book is “to show that US prisons are a site of war,
[a] site of active combat.”(5)
Clausewitz (Carl von) observed that war was politics by other means,
just as Michel Foucault reasoned politics was war by other means. War
and politics being opposite sites of a single coin, this “COIN” in
military jargon is none other than “counterinsurgency.” As explained in
the U.S. Army Field Manual at 3-24. It defines insurgency as:
“an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to
weaken the control and legitimacy of established government, occupying
power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent
control.”
“The definition of counterinsurgency logically
follows:”Counterinsurgency is the military, paramilitary, political
economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to
defeat insurgency.””
“Counterinsurgency, then, refers to both a type of war and a style of
warfare”(6), whose aim is, in the context of prisons, to neutralize the
prison movement and the ability of its agency to build the movement into
the future.
As we can see, by isolating and extracting this point from Ori’s
text, u.s. prisons as combat zones where war is waged is significant if
we are to gleam from this fact what the proponents, the protagonists of
the prison movement must do next; how we struggle accordingly in hopes
of gaining victories.
The Master Plan
The logical response of a revolutionary tactician to state repression
is resistance. But not just resistance for the sake of being
recalcitrant – as Comrade George (Jackson) informed us, our fight, our
resistance has to use imagination by developing a fighting style from a
dialectical materialist standpoint. Because
“…we can fight, but if we are isolated, if the state is successful in
accomplishing that, the results are usually not constructive in terms of
proving the point. The point is, however, in the face of what we
confront, to fight and win. That’s the real objective: not just
make statements, no matter how noble, but to destroy the system that
oppresses us.”(7)
In constructing long-term insurgency repression (counterinsurgency),
the scientific technology deployed by the state was “soft power” as its
effective mechanism to accomplish their task. Ori tells us the federal
government drafted a “Master Plan” which hinged on “correctional
professionals coming to realize that the battle is won or lost not
inside the prison, but out on the sidewalks.”(8) This assessment could
only be true considering the question surrounding prisons and the
corollary prison movement is one of legitimacy, for only through
legitimacy could the state preserve carceral normalcy. So
counterinsurgency, or war, to be overtly specific, and the game is the
acquisition of legitimacy from the masses (national public at-large) as
a main objective. This fact should be telling that the struggle for
state oppression, aggression and repression within the context of the
prison movement is ultimately always a struggle for the people. Thus,
“in an insurgency, both sides rely on the cooperation of the populace;
therefore they compete for it, in part through coercive means.”(9) These
political facts, as tactics of war, envision the real terrain in which
the battle for prison lives is waged: the mental realm. It is within
this domain that resistance and the legitimacy on both sides of the barb
wired cage will be won.
The prisoner population must take cues from these facts. The very
first recognition has got to be that prisons, deployed as war machines,
cannot possibly be legitimate if we (the prisoners) have been cast as
the enemies the state seeks to annihilate as human beings by
re-converting us from second-class citizens back to slaves. This was the
very point Ori lets us in on regarding Queen Mother Moore’s August 1973
visit and speech in Green Haven Prison in New York, that New Afrikans
were in fact enduring “re-captivity.”(10) Blacks have long hoisted this
argument, lamenting an amendment to the 13th Amendment to the u.s.
constitution, and a host of case law, like the case of Ruffin v
Commonwealth cited by Ori, have declared “incarcerated people
slaves of the state.”(11) And as slaves, to borrow the words of George,
“the sole phenomenon that energizes my whole consciousness is, of
course, revolution.” In this vein the prison movement is partially about
the survival of the humanity of prisons, their dignity, which requires
the survival of the spirit of the prison movement. This is what Chairman
Fred Hampton meant when he said “You can kill a freedom fighter, but you
can’t kill freedom fighting. You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t
kill revolution.” It is this very same deprivation of human dignity that
Huey talked about resulting in what I’m experiencing among Michigan
prisoners, who are largely “immobilized by fear and despair, he sinks
into self-murder”.(12) But even more dangerous to Huey than self-murder,
is spiritual death, what Huey witnessed become a “common attitude…
driven to death of the spirit rather of the flesh.”
So the very idea (spirit) of the prison movement must survive, must
be kept alive, or, “your method of death can itself be a politicizing
thing.”(13). And this is precisely the reality Michigan’s male prisoners
have succumbed to, death of spirit, death by de-politicization.
All this begs the question posed by George: What is our fighting
style in face of political death? This question can only be answered
against the background of the statement: “For many, 1993 was a watershed
in the slow disintegration of the prison movement,” because the reality
shouts out to us that the prison movement has diminished to such a
degree, it’s in desperate need of being incubated back to life (if it
still exists at all).
Thus far it has been made clear that at issue is the survival of the
prison movement which means by extension a revival of the political life
of prisoners. The catalyst breeding political consciousness can only be
education. As Ori illuminates, part of the prisoner war project requires
guerrilla warfare, the life of which itself is grounded in political
education.(14) Ori himself writes in the acknowledgment section of
Tip of the Spear that he sharpened his spear (political
analysis) by tying himself to a network of intellectuals and study
groups, like Philly-based podcast Millenials Are Killing Capitalism.
The Role of Outside
Supporters
The “Master Plan” developed by the state concluded “that the battle
is won or lost not inside the prison, but out on the sidewalks,” and
this leads directly to the utility of individuals and organizations
outside the confines of prison life to be leveraging against the
subjects inside the walls. Yet, it must not be lost upon us that by
virtue of the state’s “Master Plan”, they seek to weaponize outside
organizations as tools to drive a nail in the coffin of the prison
movement once and for all. Proponents of the prison movement,
accordingly, must also utilize and weaponize outside agency to advance
the prison movement. When asked, although George said, “A good deal of
this has to do with our ability to communicate to people on the street,”
we must nevertheless be sure not to allow this communication or the
introduction of outside volunteers to stifle the spirit of the
movement.
Ori hits the nail on the head when exposing the “Master Plan” to
absorb outside volunteers as part of the “cynical logic of
programmification, with well-meaning volunteers becoming instruments of
pacification.”(15) I spoke to this very phenomena in 2021 essay entitled
“Photograph Negatives: The Battle For Prison Intelligentsia”, in
response to a question posed to me by Ian Alexander, an editor of True
Leap Press’s “In The Belly” publication, on whether outside university
intellectuals could follow the lead of imprisoned-intellectuals? There I
mentioned how Michigan’s outside volunteers near absolute adherence to
prison policy, designed to constrain and be repressive, retarded our
ability to be subversive and insurgent, called into question the purpose
of the university-intellectuals infiltration of the system in the first
instance. And while “many of these volunteers undoubtedly had altruistic
and humanitarian motives, they unwittingly perpetuated counterinsurgency
in multiple ways.”(16)
The battle for prison intellgentsia itself creates an unspoken
tension between the inside (imprisoned) and outside (prison)
intellectuals to the detriment of the prison movement, benefiting the
state’s “Master Plan.” As I cited in “Photograph Negatives,” Joy James
correctly analyzes that it is the imprisoned intellectuals that are
“most free of state condition.” Scholar Michel-Rolph Troillot’s insight
also champions that imprisoned intellectuals, “non-academics are
critical producers of historiography,”(17) yet, as Eddie Ellis told Ori
during a 2009 political education workshop, “We have never been able to
use the tools of academia to demonstrate that our analysis is a better
analysis.”(18) This fact further substantiates my position in response
to editor Ian Alexander that outside university-based intellectuals must
take their lead from imprisoned intellectuals because (1) we are the
experts, validated through our long-lived experiences; and (2) most
university-intellectuals are clueless they’re being used as tools within
the state’s “Master Plan” against the very prisoners that altruism is
directed.
Carceral Compradors Inside
But sadly, it’s not just the outside volunteers being positioned as
pawns in the state’s war against prisoners. To be sure, prisoners
themselves have become state agents, be it consciously or unconsciously,
pushing pacification through various behavioral modification programming
that intentionally depoliticizes the prisoner population, turning them
into do-gooder state actors. It is in this way that the prison state
“strategically co-opted the demands of the prison movement and
redeployed them in ways that strengthened their ability to dominate
people on both sides of the wall.”(19)
In Michigan prisons, these compromised inmates function as “carceral
compradors,” and part of the plan of this de-politicizing regime is to
convince the prisoner population to surrender their agency to resist. It
has been the state’s ability to appease these, what Ricardo DeLeon, a
member of Attica’s revolutionary committee, said was the elements of
“all the waverers, fence sitters, and opponents,”(20) exacerbating
already-existing fissures, exposing the deep contradictions between a
majority reformist element, and the minority revolutionary element. This
success effectively split and casted backward the “prison movement” to
its previously issue-based conditions of confinement struggle model by
“exposing a key contradiction within the prison movement, ultimately
cleaving support from the movement’s radical edge while nurturing its
accomodationist tendencies.”(21)
All of this was (is) made possible because “a sizable fraction of the
population that saw themselves, not as revolutionaries, but as
gangsters: outlaw capitalists, committed to individual financial
gain”(22), and radical reformist, despite their rhetoric to the
contrary, focused rather exclusively on conditions of confinement,
instead of materializing a revolutionary goal. If the prison movement is
a revolutionary movement, then the revolutionary element must manage to
consolidate power and be the final arbitrators of the otherwise
democratic decision-making processes. Ori cites Frantz Fanon to make
clear that political parties serve as “incorruptible defenders of the
masses,” or, the movement will find itself vulnerable to neocolonial
retrenchment.(23) The schism that emerges between these two factions,
ideologically, paralyzes the prison movement. These implications
obviously extend beyond the domain of prisons to the collective New
Afrikan struggle on the streets, as the prison movement was fostered by
national liberation struggle on the outside, lending the credence to the
victory from the sidewalk notion. But in order to secure a revolutionary
party-line, the revolutionary party must be the majority seated element
in the cadre committee.
Perhaps this is precisely why Sam Melville, a key figure in the
Attica rebellion, said it was needed to “avoid [the] obvious
classification of prison reformers.”(24) This is significant because
otherwise, reformists would dominate the politics, strategies and
decision-making, killing any serious anti-colonial (revolutionary)
ideology. Again, this is true for both the inside and outside walkways.
As a corollary, this reality should cause the revolutionary-minded to
seriously rethink ways in which our struggle is not subverted from
within the ranks of fighters against the state who, contradictorily, are
okay with the preservation and legitimization of the prison machine and
its “parent” global white supremacist structure, so long as remedial
measures are taken to ameliorate certain conditions.
Our Road
In advance of summarizing, let me just say I do not at all intend to
imply a reformist concession can’t be viewed as a revolutionary
advancement within the overall scheme of carceral war. I pivot to Rachel
Herzing, co-founder of Critical Resistance, that
“an abolitionist goal would be to try to figure out how to take
incremental steps – a screw here, a cog there – and make it so the
system cannot continue – so it ceases to exist – rather than improving
its efficiency.”
But that’s just it. The Attica reforms did not, as Rachel Herzing
would accept, “steal some of the PIC’s power, make it more difficult to
function in the future, or decrease it’s legitimacy in the eyes of the
people.” On the contrary, the Attica reforms entrenched the system of
penal legitimacy, seeded the proliferation of scientific repression, and
improved upon the apparatus’s ability to forestall and dissolve
abolitionist resistance. In addition, the reforms were not made with the
consent of the Attica revolutionaries, but by a splintering majority of
radical reformers who, in the end, the present as our proof, greased by
the levers of power assenting to the machine’s pick up of speed and
tenacity.
As inheritors of the prison movement, and as we consider the
de-evolution of the Long Attica Revolt and all it entails, specifically
its survival, we are called upon to meditate on Comrade George’s
essential ask – What is our fighting style? At minimum, I suggest our
task is implementing a twofold platform: (1) political education; and
(2) internal revolutionary development.
First, those equipped with the organization skills and requisite
consciousness, as a methodology of guerilla war, should construct
political education classes. These classes should operate within study
group formats. We must return to the injunction of prisons functioning
as universities, that “The jails (and prisons) are the Universities of
the Revolutionaries and the finishing schools of the Black Liberation
Army.”(25) We align ourselves with the Prison Lives Matter (PLM)
formation model and utilize these study groups to engage in:
“a concrete study and analysis of the past 50+ years, and in doing
so, We learn from those who led the struggle at the highest level during
the high tide (1960s and 70s), where and how the revolutionary movement
failed due to a lack of cadre development, as well as knowing and
maintaining a line.”(26)
Our political education study groups must also instill a pride,
courage, and will to dare to struggle along the lines of New Afrikan
revolutionary ideology. For desperately, “Our revolution needs a
convinced people, not a conquered people.”(27) The quality of courage in
the face of impending brutality by what Ori calls the state’s “carceral
death machine”(28) will be necessary to put in gear the wheels of
guerrilla resistance. The invocation of this spirit sets apart the human
prepared to demand and indeed take his dignity by conquest, from the
weak, pacified slave who rationalizes his fear, which is in fact
“symptomatic of pathological plantation mentality that had been
inculcated in Black people through generations of terror.”(29) This
terror in the mind of Black males inside of Michigan cages is displayed
at even the mention of radical (revolutionary) politics, inciting a fear
drawn from the epigenetic memory of chattel slavery victimization, and
the propensity of master’s retaliatory infliction of a violent
consequence. This thought has frozen and totally immobilized the
overwhelming majority of Black Michigan prison-slaves, not just into
inaction, but turning them into advocates of pacified slave-like
mentalities. But these niggas are quick to ravage the bodies of other
niggas.
To this point, Ori writes
“Balagoon suggests that the primary barrier to the liberation of the
colonized was within their minds – a combination of fear of death,
respect for state authority, and deference to white power that had been
hammered into the population from birth. Liberation would remain an
impossibility as long as colonized subjects respected the taboos put in
place by their oppressors.”(30)
To be sure, liberation struggles can only be “successful to the
extent that we have diminished the element of fear in the minds of black
people.”(31) Biko, speaking to this fear as something that erodes the
soul of Black people, recognized “the most potent weapon in the hands of
the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed.”(32)
Secondly, hand-in-hand with our political education must be the
material engagement in the first revolution, the inner revolution. This
is “The hard painstaking work of changing ourselves into new beings, of
loving ourselves and our people, and working with them daily to create a
new reality.”(33) This first, inner-revolution consists of “a process of
rearranging one’s values – to put it simply, the death of the nigger is
the birth of the Black man after coming to grips with being proud to be
one’s self.”(34)
The ability to transform oneself from a nigga to an Afrikan man of
character is perhaps the most important aspect of developing concordance
with a New Afrikan revolutionary collective consciousness. Commenting
“On Revolutionary Morality” in 1958, Ho Chi Minh said that “Behavioral
habits and traditions are also big enemies: they insidiously hinder the
progress of the revolution.” And because niggas, unbeknownst to
themselves are white supremacists and pro-capitalist opportunists, the
vanguard security apparatus must forever remain on guard for the
possibility of niggas in the rank-and-file corrupting the minds of other
niggas who have yet to internalize New Afrikan identity.
May these be our lessons. Ori’s Tip of the Spear text is
important in the overall lexicon on the history of the prison movement,
and must be kept handy next to the collection of Notes From New
Afrikan P.O.W and Theoretical Journals. Tip of the
Spear should serve not just as reference book, but a corrective
guide for the protagonist wrestling the prison movement out the arms of
strangulation, blowing spirit into the nostrils of its decaying body
until it’s revived, and ready to fight the next round. And We are that
body. Let’s dare to do the work.
Forward Towards Liberation!
We Are Our Liberators!
^*Notes: 1. Orisanmi Burton, October 2023, Tip of the Spear: Black
Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, University of
California Press, p. 223 2. Praveen Jha, Paris Yeros, and Walter
Chambati, January 2020, Rethinking the Social Sciences with Sam Moyo,
Tulika Books, p.22 3. Mao Zedong, 1937, “On Contradiction”, Selected
Works of Mao Tse-Tung 4. Burton, p.52 5. Burton, p.224-226 6. Life
During Wartime, p.6 7. Remembering the Real Dragon - An Interview with
George Jackson May 16 and June 29, 1971, Interview by Karen Wald and
published in Cages of Steel: The Politics Of Imprisonment In The United
States (Edited by Ward Churchill and J.J. Vander Wall). 8. Burton,
p.175. 9. Life During Wartime, p.17. 10. Burton, p.1 11. Burton, p.10
12. Huey P. Newton, 1973, Revolutionary Suicide, p.4 13. Steve Biko, I
write What I Like, p.150 14. Burton, p.4 15. Burton, p.179 16. Burton,
p.175 17. Burton, p.8 18. Burton, p.7 19. Burton, p.150 20. Burton, p.41
21. Burton, p.150 22. Burton, p.99 23. Burton, p.92 24. Burton, p.82 25.
Sundiata Acoli, “From The Bowels of the Beast: A Message,” Breaking da
Chains. 26. Kwame “Beans” Shakur 27. Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina
Faso Revolution 1983-1987, p.417 28. Burton, p.105 29. Burton, p.42 30.
Burton, p.42 31. Biko, p.145 32. Biko, p.92 33. Safiya Bukhari 34.
Burton, p.62
In mid-February on H-pod here in the ECB [Expansion Cell Blocks]
prisoners got together and submitted 30 grievances about lack of dayroom
and outside rec which G-5, G-4 and G-2 are all experiencing here in the
ECB. The response from Warden Smith was that they are “understaffed”. I
may submit my own grievance just to see if I get the same response
though I have to be careful as the guards are using the gangs to police
the prisoners and some of these fucking “Homeboys” do the pigs’ work for
them violently. But I thought I would call your attention to an
interview of Bryan Collier in the Nov-Dec 2023 and Jan. 2024 Echo
Newspaper. In the January edition Collier admits to having
“staffing” problems. So both Collier and Smith are aware of this
understaffing but still it continues and they are not releasing anybody
or hiring enough to quell the problems.
Two weeks ago it is rumored that a prisoner was raped by his celly.
The word is this is the reason one of my classmates has been missing. I
don’t know if a FOIA can be filed and help his family to get these
motherfuckers? But being understaffed is dangerous and cruel for all of
us.
These 30 grievances from G-4’s in H-pod on ECB and the January 2024
interview of Collier show corroborated “Deliberate Indifference.” Maybe
I should also grieve this and send my copies to a supporter who can
coordinate with prisoners, legislators, and the D.O.J. I’m sure Genocide
Joe would love to get a piece of Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton for the bad
press they have given him on the border?? We should take advantage of
these asshole politicians whenever we can!!! Anyway, if you have any
extra ULKs sitting around and can afford to send me another
bulk mailing, please do so, so that I can distribute them here.
Securus advertises package pricing for movies I think that are about
$12 a month but they are not offering these packages. Instead we have to
pay from 6-12 dollars per movie rental! And they blame Hollywood Studios
for this price gouging. I wonder if Hollywood knows about how they are
exploiting us and our families? We should get Netflix for $16/month or
something but 4.99-19.99 before tax is too much to charge “slaves” who
do not get paid for their mandatory work!
MIM(Prisons) responds: It’s ironic that Abbott is
fighting to militarize the border, but can’t find enough people to run
his prisons. Though it’s our understanding that many Texas prisons are
already being staffed by Nigerian immigrants working on visas. Meanwhile
they have gangs working for the state, implementing repression and
keeping the population sedated on drugs, while the staff sit around
doing nothing. Though Biden has no qualms about supporting genocide, he
does like scoring political points on Greg Abbot. This comrade might
have a good idea here.
The methods employed by the U.$. government that are directed at the
internal semi-colonies are vast. Although counter insurgency is a
practice taken up by many oppressor nations globally, it is unique
within the U.$. empire because of the magnitude of national oppression
in the form of mass imprisonment of the internal nations and the fact
that the carceral state has in fact created the very conditions that
uphold and nurture insurgency from its very bowels. U.$. counter
insurgency has had a program in place which changes names but stays
consistent in targeting its enemies within the prison system in general
and those within the prison movement in particular. Methods employed
today within U.$. prisons and especially prisons within Aztlán (the
so-called “U.S. Southwest”) are meant to declaw our young Jaguars and to
seduce the nation into a role that is at war without shield nor
spear.
It is this clear persynal experience in being a target of COINTERLPRO
which led to the culmination of this paper. Our party sees the need to
begin this conversation in the nations so that not just Aztlán but all
who fight colonization and the hyper-policing, frame ups,
state-sponsored terror, and assassination can begin the hard work of
guarding against counter insurgency in an era that demands our boots on
the ground to stomp out the rising tide of repression.
Revolutionaries are organizing daily in the occupied territories to
raise consciousness and heighten the contradictions whenever they arise
through agitation and political education. The state and its apparatus
is also working hard daily to subdue our efforts and seduce our young
jaguars into the temptation of empire and all the trappings of U.$.
imperialism.
Chican@ units and organizations that influence the nation to
challenge the state and set out on the path of liberation and
independence are targeted. The imperialist state will do everything in
its power to prevent socialist revolution from developing in Aztlán and
beyond. Our role as Chican@ revolutionaries should be to hold workshops
in every barrio of Aztlán where the ideas of socialist revolution are
realized and embraced, it is the duty of Chican@ communists to respond
to U.$. counter insurgency in this manner. Only by mobilizing the entire
community, the entire barrio in this way, will we ever finally get over
the obstacle of U.$. counter insurgency.
Political Line Is Decisive
In our analysis we uphold the idea that ideology is key in how we
move. Political line helps guide us in our political endeavors and we
must constantly make adjustments and test our theory in order to
maneuver in ways which push not just the Chican@ movement forward but
the whole International Communist Movement (ICM) forward as well. We
realize that the trappings of living in the imperial core among the
world’s labor aristocracy pushes many to believe that revolutionary
organizing is not a life-or-death choice. The Communist Party of Aztlán
(CPA) feels otherwise. Indeed we see that – even here in the First World
where most “workers” are bought off by blood stolen from the Third World
– revolutionary organizing is a matter of life or death to the Chican@
nation. If we do not set out on the task of organizing Aztlán and
revolutionize our nation it will succumb to capitalist roaders. For this
reason this paper serves not just as a study guide for oppressed nations
but also as a cri de coeur (cry of the heart) for the raza to grasp the
urgency that we see in the great task ahead or our nation may die.
Although we have a huge responsibility positioned here in the heart
of imperialism, as we combat counterinsurgency and mobilize the people
we have no confusion about the fact that the Third World leads the ICM
and our efforts here in the First World merely compliment them. Maoism
as an ideology is clear on this despite the eye rolls from the trots,
who have never led a single successful revolution.
It is crucial that Aztlán comes to grasp the reality of the class
structure in the United $nakes – as well as in Aztlán – as being made up
of petty-bourgeois class forces. The exploitation of workers does not
exist on the scale that it did in Lenin’s Russia, on the contrary, what
exists today in the occupied territories for the most part is a labor
aristocracy whose life support remains connected to the value extraction
from the Third World. We need to move from this perspective and
understanding. Aztlán’s future demands that we grasp this. Political
line must be decisive in order for our tactics and strategies to be
effective in our struggle for national liberation in the midst of the
counterinsurgency offensive. Ideology allows us to identify our friends
and separate them from our enemies. This does not mean we will not take
losses to state repression. it simply means that we will be better
equipped to continue in this beautiful struggle against oppression.
As Maoists we realize that being triumphant over U.$.
counterinsurgency efforts and the occupation of our homeland will only
happen when the U.$. government has been completely overthrown and a
complete revolution on these shores has occurred. Anything short of that
will prevent real liberation from being realized for Aztlán.
As a party for the Chican@ nation we believe the Maoist concept of
mass line is the way forward. It is the Chican@ masses who define the
path by their ideas which are synthesized by our party. The raza will
make hystory. Ultimately, our job is to engage the people into realizing
their power.
The U.$. government is at war with Aztlán, yet the tactic of low
intensity warfare pulls the wool over our eyes and clouds our social
reality from being realized except for the more politically conscious.
Even among conscious raza in general, and communist raza in particular,
one of the things which separates revolutionaries is the understanding,
which Mao pointed out, of class struggle continuing not just under a
socialist government but even within the party itself as a bourgeoisie
develops within. Understanding this Maoist doctrine in pre-revolutionary
times is perhaps more crucial than even picking up the gun in
revolution. Even in our current battle of raising public opinion and
evading counterinsurgency tactics by the state, grasping this doctrine
helps anchor us on the path to liberation rather than the capitalist
road.
Raza of all political stripes may be targets of the imperial
counterinsurgency campaign. Many may even be successful in evading state
repression, yet evasion per se is not the objective, our aim of course
is national liberation. As a semi-colony existing in the world’s
imperialist center Aztlán’s primary objective is national liberation. We
cannot help free other nations if we are not yet free. At the same time
we should also identify that in order to win a war for national
liberation we need a Raza Army, a Raza Army that is led by the CPA.
U.$. Counterinsurgency
Counter-insurgency is a military concept meant to partake in certain
actions that neutralize insurgents. The United $nakes target and
identifies politically conscious and revolutionary folks within the
occupied territories as insurgents and has designed a program that aims
to destroy us and our efforts. This program attempts to neutralize us
“legally” according to its own illegitimate “laws”, but will resort to
cold-blooded murder if necessary.
Most of those targeted come from the oppressed nations. This is not
to say that most anti-imperialists or revolutionaries are from the
oppressed nations, but that the U.$. knows that it will ultimately be
the internal nations that tip the scale in our favor come civil war.
AmeriKKKa has worked hard to brainwash the oppressed and although they
have managed to ward off the seizure of power by the oppressed they
truly never gained real legitimacy in the eyes of the raza. At the same
time the imperialist center has not held on to the internal colonies and
its global influence for nothing, indeed they pour billions each year in
its various agencies in order to hold onto white power.
Communists often say we are “professional revolutionaries” because we
take our role seriously and understand that many times our very lives
are at risk as we organize here in the Snakes. We should also grasp that
the imperialist state also sees itself as professional oppressors
because it is their lives that are in peril should revolution
succeed.
The oppressor’s counterinsurgency methods rely largely on intel.
Information about the intended target is essential. Knowing everything
about a target is vital to take that target down cleanly. The state
agents are like hunters at this stage of struggle, one of their roles is
to stalk their prey, find its habits and activities so that when it’s
time to hunt they’ll know whether to use a bullet, crossbow, knife or
simply poison the water hole. We give them this intel wittingly or not
because they can only find a trail that we ourselves leave.
In the year 2023 our party took some hits by the state. It’s
interesting that in the California prison system the number 23 is a
known symbol of white power so in some sense we anticipated the white
power structure to strike in some way. But 2023 was also a year of
growth and development for the CPA. We were able to learn a lot from the
repression that was rained down on us when our Chairman was
kidnapped.
National oppression in the form of imprisonment is one of the weapons
the state uses in its counterinsurgency campaign. When targeting
revolutionaries the state will often raid a cell or do a round up sweep
but allow one or two to “get away”. This tactic is meant to study the
regrouping method and allow the one or two “lucky ones” to lead them to
the others. It reminds me of an ancient Chinese tactic, where Chinese
families for thousands of years have caught cormorant birds on Weishan
Lake and tied string around their throats, letting them dive in lakes
for fish while being unable to swallow, in this way recruiting a fleet
of slaves for the master fisher. This is also akin to
probation/parole.
The state also employs agents of various stripes who do in fact
infiltrate revolutionary groups and cells. Counterinsurgency aims to
neutralize insurgents. The state identifies those who take up agitation
and/or organizing in order to reach our goal of national liberation.
Once identified these individuals, groups, or organizations become the
state’s target. Various methods are used in surveillance, but of course
human intel is always preferred by the state. Plants who give the state
the ins and outs of a target’s daily functions as well as goals and
objectives or war plans are golden.
The FBI and CIA both utilize various assets for COINTELPRO – like
operations which spawn various counterinsurgency actions. Their assets
may be a partisan, prisoner, or paralegal. Most people can be utilized
so nothing should be a surprise and people should be on a need-to-know
basis from a comrade to a lover. We should also understand that the
$tates’ wet dream is to in fact have the comrade or lover of a target as
an asset, it is the golden egg in the realm of counter-insurgency.
Assets
Assets come in many forms as has been stated. The state may employ a
deep cover asset which would provide undercover intelligence and assist
the state in gauging the threat. By alerting her/his controllers to an
impending “crime” which can be real or imagined, for example the deep
cover asset may report that a target has an arsenal of firearms at their
residence which may not even be true, the controllers will either obtain
probable cause for a search warrant or will send in an undercover
informant within the scenario who can then corroborate the asset’s
intelligence. An informant’s job will be to record conversations (wear a
wire or plant bugs) and to get up on the stand in open court to swear on
their undercover “evidence”. With regard to revolutionaries, this
“evidence” is usually the most outlandish story imaginable so long as it
neutralizes the target. An informational informant would be one whose
only role is to gather intel to feed to the agents but would never
reveal themselves nor get on the stand in open court. Such informants
usually work for years in this way and almost always join the movement
in some way, in an organization, as an occasional protester or in
today’s world as some sort of online activist . . . the point is they
will attempt to stay familiar to revolutionaries and to gain the raza’s
trust in some way.
COINTELPRO
We can never hear too much about COINTELPRO, (counter intelligence
program) which the U.$. government unleashed on the people in the
1950’s. Initially COINTELPRO was used during the “Red Scare” when
communists in these false U.$. borders were targeted and terrorized. The
state would infiltrate communist organizations and even study groups
gathering intel in order to strike. In the 1960’s the repression
continued this time on the oppressed nations.
AmeriKKKa trembles at the thought of a Leninist cadre organization
developing on its shores, its stomach turns when professional
revolutionaries are conceived in its putrid womb. Our existence can only
be realized if security measures are upheld to guard against COINTELPRO
attacks.
The state employs COINTELPRO tactics to entrap or even assassinate
our leaders. It develops moles of all types and agent provocateurs to
get our cadre killed or captured. It slanders our brightest and most
dedicated and frames those who can’t be neutralized any other way. The
imperialist state does the unthinkable in order to keep the slaves
holding their own blinders and covering their own ears. Just as the
unjust cruelty is unleashed on the Third World, our most cherished acts
and ideas are thoroughly violated in order to inflict the most damage to
the movement. Not only are emotions like love defiled, in some cases
they are weaponized to serve the imperialist masters.
Today we have the memory of COINTELPRO and even of the pigs that have
been mostly etched out for us from seasoned revolutionaries or from the
dusty pages of library shelves. But we define a pig as the MIM defined
it in their pamphlet “What’s Your Line?”:
“A pig is a police officer or other representative of the
government’s repressive apparatus, especially one who breaks down
people’s doors or quietly infiltrates a movement.”
We often think of a pig as a uniformed badge-wearing slave hunter
but, according to the above definition, how many pigs are really out
there?
Our party has enacted security precautions because of COINTELPRO
attacks that we suffered in 2023. We do not name members of our party.
How can organizations that are seeking to seize power identify
themselves to the enemy who will come to kill them when the
revolutionary war arrives? Why would we arm the state with a list of
those it should round up? Why would we hand them the thread to pull
apart the fabric of our party?
Those who scoff at the warnings of COINTELPRO are those who
consciously or not believe in the fantasy of U.$. “democracy”. They have
a disdain for those who attempt to raise the alarm of COINTELPRO and who
raise consciousness around these matters. These Ti@ Tacos usually embed
themselves in progressive orgs and wallow in cultural nationalism if
they are raza. They essentially feel safe in the United $nakes. We
should identify these Toms and learn to never feel safe among them or
their kind.
Most recently it was reported in the corporate U.$. news that the
settler state of I$rael assassinated the leader of the Palestinian
resistance in its current war on Palestine. We hear these selective
strikes happen all the time yet many are still oblivious to the fact
that the oppressor nation and its agencies always keep lists of
revolutionaries. Their flow charts list leaders of the movement it has
identified and will strike at will. We should move like we know
this.
Hystorical materialism teaches us to learn from hystory in order to
transform the future, and COINTELPRO in the 1960’s taught us lessons
when it came to the Black Panthers. For example, the FBI sent in
informants and agents who identified what groups the Panthers were
funking with, and one such group was the black nationalist organization
United Slaves. The feds ordered their agents to foment conflict and
heighten tension. Within the Chican@ movement today we see this play out
in various forms. In order to guard against this we need a no tolerance
policy in this area.
Tactics
AmeriKKKa has been very creative in its efforts which have helped to
stunt the growth of any real rebellion that confronts U.$. imperialism.
Since colonization the state has employed various tactics to the
oppressed nations, often utilizing others among the oppressed to do the
$tates’ bidding. An early record from the U.$. army from
Geronimo touches on this:
“Reliable Indians will be used as auxiliary to discover any signs of
hostile Indians, and as trailers. This is the fifth time within three
months in which the Indians have been surprised by the troops . . .
given them a feeling of insecurity”
The above gets into the mindset of the imperialist state. It tells us
that – despite many among the oppressed internal nations feeling as if
they are mere fingerlings in the geo-political landscape – the state
sees us as extreme threats. The U.$. government wants to know who the
hostile people are, who the rebels are, the anti-imperialists, the
revolutionary nationalists, and all the enemies of the state. The state
also wants to psychologically harass and confuse us, at one time this
was accomplished by horseback and today it is via the internet.
Prisons are also a target. The state knows very well that when
revolutionaries are captured they continue with their duty to raise
consciousness and to politicize the very concentration kamps they are
held in. La lucha don’t stop in any sense of the word, if anything the
struggle accelerates because of the uncut repression that prisons and
prisoners experience.
The FBI actually created a prison activists surveillance program
(PRISACTS) in 1970. This was meant to crush the prison movement. The
methods used were military tactics which Orisanmi Burton calls “carceral
spaces as zones of counter-revolutionary warfare” in Targeting
Revolutionaries. This government project displays the lengths to
which the state is willing to go to neutralize revolutionaries even when
they are imprisoned. We take these methods serious as all people should
as we all have comrades who have been captured if we are truly fighting
imperialism.
Outro
The state ultimately works to seduce our raza with financial
incentive, integration, or intimidation. We need to build a stronger
security culture which strengthens our efforts in the anti-imperialist
movement. Counterinsurgency efforts by the state are real. Our role in
the empire is real.
We need to build stronger networks that nurture and support our
imprisoned and captured comrades. We cannot forget about those who
sacrificed their lives by being on the front lines. The front is
wherever we find ourselves, even behind the razor wire and in the
concentration kamps. All Power To The People!
A comrade attending rallies supporting Palestinian resistance to the
I$raeli war distributed ULKs this winter and talked to
attendees. Here are a couple of the interviews ey sent to
ULK.
1.What brought you to this event?
Well, seeing as I am Black and a Christian, I find it important to
come out and demonstrate solidarity with the people of Palestine as I
believe our struggles are connected. Many people tend to see what is
going on in Palestine as a sort of religious conflict, portraying it
simplistically as a conflict between Jews and Muslims. Many Christians
in this country support Israel because the Church tells them to, when in
reality Christians are just as persecuted as Muslims in Palestine. I
mean, they just bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius – one of the
oldest churches in the world – last night.
2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical,
between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?
Yes, I see many parallels actually. The biggest one being that they
are both settler-colonial projects. It is important to remember that in
both cases, the land was not empty when the settlers arrived. Israel has
been waging a war against the Palestinian people in order to clear and
settle the land. When the Europeans came to America, the first thing
they did was wage war against the Indigenous population to do the same
thing. They are both guilty of ethnic cleansing. Think about the Nakba.
Think about The Trail of Tears. In Ohio, they said the land was “too
good for Indians” – similar justifications were made for the initial
Nakba.
I would also say that Israel is almost as racist as the United
States. They have different laws for different people. That’s apartheid.
Zionists call us anti-semetic, yet they treat non-White Jews like
second-class citizens. Look at how they treat Ethiopian and South-East
Asian Jews within their borders. You know they sterilized them in the
1970s and 1980s. Zionism isn’t about Judaism, it’s about white
supremacy. So I think there are very real parallels to draw between
Israel and the United States as they both are rooted in war, ethnic
cleansing, and white supremacy.
3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed
nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do
you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@,
First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the
so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to
realize self-determination?
I’m not entirely sure if I think it is possible, but I support it.
That said, I am very skeptical. The only feasible way I think that could
happen is if the American Government allows it to happen by carrying it
out themselves, but I really don’t see that happening anytime soon.
4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could
demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?
I think we could demonstrate our support and solidarity by boycotting
Israeli products and participating in the BDS movement as a whole. By
continuing to protest. By not allowing Israel to participate in soccer.
And by not allowing Israeli academics to sanitize what has happened in
the past 70 years. It is important that we utilize our legal means and
push politicians to support an end to the genocide.
Second Interview
1.What brought you to this event?
I’m here to show support against the repression of Arabs in
Palestine, to demonstrate mass support, and to lift the spirits of
others who find these war crimes unacceptable.
2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical,
between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?
Yeah, I see parallels in that they’re settlers, racists, and repress
native populations. But I also see parallels between First Nations and
the Palestinian people – especially in their emancipatory spirit.
**3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed
nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do
you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@,
First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the
so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to
realize self-determination?
Yeah, of course! The first priority is emancipation of those groups,
even if that means through violence.
4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could
demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?
I think we can demonstrate our support by continuing to go to these
demonstrations and by showing our support for fringe groups such as
Hamas, PFLP, etc…the militant fighters.
NOTE: PFLP is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
an organization that arose during the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution in China, and was one of the Palestinian organizations
greatly influenced by the Maoism of the time. In those early years they
gained notoriety for hijacking airplanes and remain on the U.$.
terrorist list to this day. They took a pan-Arab approach to the
revolution, and co-ordinated with many organizations outside the Arab
world, including providing training to communists from Azania (aka South
Africa). This connection is relevant to why South Africa today has
brought charges of genocide against I$rael to the International Criminal
Court, as well as the fact that Palestinians today are facing the same
apartheid conditions that Africans in South Africa once faced. PFLP took
part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th along with Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The
latter is also a Maoist-inspired group that came out of PFLP.
