MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
In the last issue, we mentioned the removal of Spanish-language
content from federal websites. Since then, we’ve seen the Pentagon
removing information about Navajo code-talkers, Jackie Robinson,
Tuskegee Airmen and Japanese who fought for the U.$. in World War II
from their websites.
The U.$. military helps to impose fascism on the oppressed people of
the Third World when they get out of line. But now that fascism is
coming home, the oppressed nations here are the first to feel the
brunt.
There’s a long history of the U.$. military using benefits and even
citizenship to bribe people to fight for them. There’s also a long
history of the United $tates not always coming through with their
promises. This erasure of oppressed people from their history is just
one more slap in the face of those who thought they’d get in with the
Amerikans by fighting in their wars. And we see it as a petty sign of
how Amerika is taking a different approach to oppressed people in this
country.
The Regime
While Trump wasn’t so different as a U.$. president first time
around, we can look to his current cabinet to confirm the consolidation
of fascists for this second term.
Does anyone think a Euro-immigrant from apartheid South Africa who
throws Nazi salutes, and is the richest persyn in the world, is a friend
of oppressed nations? How about Pete Hegseth, the guy with the Christian
nationalist tattoos now in charge of the military that already had a
white nationalist militia problem? Who ironically closed his self-leaked
plans to bomb Yemen with:
“We are currently clean on OPSEC. Godspeed to our Warriors.”
President Trump recently told Salvadorian President Bukele to “build
five more places” to hold “homegrown” criminals from the United $tates,
referring to the giant Salvadorian “terrorist” concentration camp Trump
has begun sending people to. Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for
policy and homeland security adviser to Trump, when asked if Mahmoud
Khalil will be deported, replied:
“Yes he will, as will anyone who preaches hate for America.”
Vice President J.D. Vance is a benefactor of another of the richest
people in the world, Peter Thiel, who also funds Curtis Yarvin, who
Vance says he takes much influence from. Yarvin believes New Afrikans
have lower IQs and that their enslavement was thus justified because
they were destined to be slaves. Yarvin is paraphrased as writing:
“He then concluded that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is
to “virtualize” these people: Imprison them in “permanent solitary
confinement” where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected
to an “immersive virtual-reality interface” so they could “experience a
rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”“(1)
This will sound very familiar to regular readers of ULK.
This is the future of prison tablets. A slow genocide that avoids the
current messiness of videos of dead babies inspiring young
anti-imperialists to destroy weapons manufacturing plants of companies
like Elbit Systems.
These are just some highlights of the current regime that have been
exposed in much more depth by others over the past year. These people do
not want us and they’re serious about it.
Peak Integration?
By the 1960s, the injustices of Jim Crow had garnered sympathy and
support from many sectors for the self-determination of the internal
semi-colonies (in particular the Black/New Afrikan nation). Since the
victory of the Civil Rights Act, that support has declined, replaced
with an imperialist project of assimilation. At this point, most of us
have only lived in an integrated United $tates, which has greatly
reduced the interest in national liberation on occupied Turtle Island.
Of course the disproportionate poverty, homelessness, murder and torture
of oppressed nations continues, but many in the internal semi-colonies
joined the Amerikan consumer class post-integration as well. As a
result, we have more Uncle Toms and Tio Tomas than ever before
(especially the Tios and Tias who continue to join the U.$. military at
increasing rates).
Black Lives Matter (peaking in 2020) and the al-Aqsa Flood in 2023
brought an uptick in support for national liberation. With the
resumption of the U.$.-i$rael war on Palestine and Lebanon, breaking peace
deals in both cases, opposition to what the imperialists are doing
in the Middle East continues to rise within the United $tates. We also
think the internal actions of the current Trump regime are already
beginning to heighten contradictions and broaden the base for possible
alliances as the fascist enemy consolidates its forces against us.
Deportations
have targeted those from Latin America and the Muslim world so far.
As the prospect of war with China advances we will also see the rise of
racism against Chinese people (or those perceived to be Chinese) in this
country, as we have seen in the past, as recently as the COVID-19
pandemic.
You Can’t Think Racism Away
While liberals think we can (and have) made progress against national
oppression by fighting “wrong ideas” in peoples’ heads, racism is in
reality a product of national oppression. It cannot be ended without the
national liberation of the oppressed.
The reason people believe in integration is that they believe that
the wealth and prosperity of the United $tates can exist without
oppressing and exploiting other nations. It cannot. And the Trump regime
has a more realistic understanding of this than most Amerikans.
As support for national liberation and alternatives to the current
system grow, we must make this point very clear. We must draw a clear
line between the proletarian line and the social fascist and
crypto-Trotskyist lines that have historically linked the struggle
against oppression with the struggle for more wealth for Amerikans. The
struggle for more wealth always wins out. This is why the
labor aristocracy is the main force for fascism, even if the
imperialists are doing most of the work so far.
Cuando las tabletas primero salieron en 2017, las primeras tabletas
los vendieron a los presos, yo fui uno de ellos a los cuales sus seres
queridos le compraron una. Luego FDOC decidió cambiar el correo postal a
correo digital, so la seguridad de FDOC recogió todas las tabletas
(incluyendo esos que los presos pagaron). Después regresaron y le dieron
una tableta gratis a todos los presos. Desde ese tiempo hasta ahora las
tabletas han sido actualizados no menos de tres veces.
Este camarada recientemente salio de Close Management (CM) y fue
transferido a Hamilton C.I. Desde que llegue a esta prisión, he
encontrado que durante el ultimo año el Sargento encargado de Propriedad
ha estado confiscando tabletas, dando reclusos reportes disciplinarios
por “manipulación de las tabletas” en la mayorídad de la veces – los
presos se encuentran culpable en 99% de los casos. Son puesto en
suspensión indefinida por poseer otra tableta y imponen un préstamo de
$130 por reconstitución que tienen que pagar. Por un tiempo, FDOC nos
dieron un poco, pero después regresaron ha quitarnos todo. FDOC nos
regalaron las tabletas, pero porque son propiedad del estado, tienen un
a excusa para llevárselas.
La Población Prisionero
Yo llevo 28 años internado en las prisiones y todo ha cambiado. Esto
ya no es una prisión, se ha convertido a un centro de guardería infantil
donde los tontos pueden pasar el tiempo. Todos quieren ser parte de una
pandilla, pero antes que tomas ese juramento, dejame recordarte que es
necesario entender porque esa nación, grupo, o pandilla fue nacido.
Nació por parte de los oprimidos para pelear en unidad (como colectivo)
contra la opresión. Y quien son los opresores? Los puercos que trabajan
aquí, la administración, la sistema, el estado, y el gobierno. Yo
conozco mi historia, sabes la tuya?
FDOC tiene un total de no mas de 30 guardias trabajando por turno
(1/4 de ellos trabajan horas extra) y eso es contando el personal que
trabaja en los controles del área en frente del prisión. Es una
vergüenza que un grupo tan pequeño de puercos puedan controlar, oprimir
y abusa a un grupo de 1250 a 1500 presos, matones, gánsteres, criminales
y pandilleros. Los presos de FDOC no tienen unidad y menos tienen
respeto a ellos mismo. Digo que no tienen respeto a ellos mismo porque
puede ser que yo tengo un deuda de una sopa de 78 centavos y ya están
listo para matarme, pero los puercos te pueden llamar un “montón de
perras” ha ti y tu dormitorio entera y no hacen nada pero seguir con su
cabeza abajo.
En el FDOC, la mayoría de los pandilleros prefieren tener un puerco
como amigo en vez de otro preso que tiene el mismo colores de uniforme.
Respetan mas a los puercos que a sus compañeros presos. Ali-al Haf de
Georgia, leí tu articulo en ULK Winter 2025 – no estas solo! Yo también
creo que esto es un virus contagioso. Ahora los presos están haciendo el
trabajo de los puercos. Revisan y chequean que las puertas de tu celdas
están asegurados, pasan correo, y ellos se aseguran que no comes dos
veces en la cafetería, hasta los puedes ven parados al lado de un puerco
como guardaespaldas. Pasan besando el culo pero al fin del día están
igual como yo; encerrado en una celda. No importa como positiva sea tu
opinión sobre los puercos, porque al fin del día ellos no van as
arriesgar sus cheques de pago para ti. Coño Preso – no seas ciego y mira
el color de tu uniforme! No te das cuenta que es un diferente color?
Aprendan la diferencia entre un derecho y un privilegio. Aprendan y
usen la sistema de quejas institucional (Grievances). Necesitas dejar un
historial pasado escrito en caso si la situación necesitar ir a otro
nivel. Un historial pasado escrito enseña prueba que trataron una ruta
de paz antes de elevar la forma de lucha.
Todos esos camaradas del pasado que sacrificaron sus sentencias,
fechas de salidos, salud, familia, libertad, y otros que hasta fueron
mártires que sacrificando sus vidas solamente para que esta generación
se tiren sus manos arriba y rendirse? De verdad? Esto es como estamos
sirviendo nuestro tiempo en 2025? Donde están tus cojones??
Unámonos todos bajo una misma linea de pensamiento. Antes de que te
quejas por no tener una tableta o por no poder ver el partido en el
tele, necesitamos a pensar sobre los precios de las cantinas, de como
ganar mas “gain-time”, como traer libertad provisional ha los presos de
vida como yo, y como mejorar la comida. Disculpame pero la prisión no es
un lugar donde vienes para pasar el tiempo con tus amigos y donde se
pasa un bien tiempo. Esto es el cementerio de los muertos con vida,
donde tu futuro se puede cambian completamente en menos de 15 segundos.
No te olvides de quien eres, de tu cultura, y de donde vienes. No te
sometes al trabajo del puerco. No me sorprendo si en algunos años
solamente ofrecen nuestra visitas por video y paran todo contacto
físico. Si no nos unimos y no nos levantemos como un pueblo, como una
familia, vamos a seguir de perder. Recuérdate que antes de que fuiste un
pandillero, fuiste un hombre, un ser humano – no un animal. Niego que me
tratan y que me tienen cautivo como uno. No quiero abrazos con la vida
hasta que mi pueblo sea libre.
In order to prescribe the Marxist ideology to our Maoist thought much
needs to be understood. I believe there is a contradiction that exist
that’s unspoken here: race. There seems to be a strong emphasis
embraced on race as a “white” verses all other “non-white” races. The
contradictions that exist here are that the “white” race is the only
oppressor race. There is a huge historical analysis missing here if
MIM(Prisons) is going to promote such race politics in what is
fundamentally a human attribute that exists in all races of homo
sapiens. To include such a factor in any discussion that involves a
dialectical materialistic view of economy and government is destructive
to the revolution.
The revolution is to promote equality. Ideally I believe to my
understanding, an equality based on, “…each one according to their
needs.” With that understanding my question becomes, what is the
standard of equality on an international scale and how do we get
there?
“Race” has nothing to do with our dialectical materialistic analysis
because capitalism is based on only one color right now, green. The
color of the Amerikan dollar which is the world’s reserve currency! So
if MIM(Prisons) comrades are going to discuss economy, based on
capitalism, socialism, and communism through Maoist thought then speak
from the perspective of an economist. Or if it is government, then I
guess the contradictions need to be explored to define the nation
MIM(Prisons) looks to build because as a comrade I feel alienated based
on “race.”
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: You’ll be
hard-pressed to find MIM(Prisons) talking about race, since, as this
comrade points out, race is not real. The problem is, we talk about the
New Afrikan nation, or the Chican@ nation, and our readers think we’re
just using fancy words to talk about race.
Perhaps this is an example of us getting a bit ahead of the masses
here leading to miscommunication. Another comrade recently submitted a
long paper explaining what the New Afrikan nation was because they felt
new readers of ULK were confused by it. It’s interesting, since
we
adopted the term New Afrikan from the prison movement. But
goes to show how things have changed. We will be utilizing this feedback
to consider how we can improve ULK. But New Afrika is already
well-defined in our pamphlet Power to New Afrika, which our New
York comrade above has read.
Another source of confusion is that the imperialists will always try
to deny the nationality of the oppressed. It’d be hard to find someone
who doesn’t recognize Haiti
as a nation, because they fought and won their liberation in 1804.
Like New Afrika, they are a nation of people from all over the African
continent, with a sprinkling of Europeans, that were merged by force to
form a new nation. New Afrika has not yet won it’s liberation, so it
gets less recognition than Haiti does.
We agree with our comrade above that capitalism is motivated by
profits. Racism, and the idea of race itself, arose with the system of
capitalism. Though there were certainly other systems of caste and class
before. The United $tates of Amerika project was central to the
development of race theory. In fact, the internal semi-colony of New
Afrika would not exist without racial ideology that separated the first
slaves based on what continent they came from. So we may be one of the
last places to rid ourselves of this backwards way of thinking, it was
so important to what this project is about.
The comrade also asks about our vision for the future. Well we’d
suggest reading Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
and other works by V.I. Lenin on the national question for background.
Because imperialism is a system of oppression/exploitation of most
nations by a few, we see the most important source of change, towards a
world of equality, to be found in national liberation struggles that
challenge that system; from Palestine to Aztlán. Decades
ago MIM put forth the theory of the Joint Dictatorship of the
Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations (JDPON) as a vision for how
socialism can be imposed on Amerika itself. This is because we don’t
believe a majority of Amerikans will support socialism at this stage.
This idea is also found in Lenin and in Chinese Maoist thought. At the
time MIM was discussing the carving up of what is now the United $tates
territory into a New Afrikan Black Belt, Aztlán for the Chican@ nation,
various First Nation territories. MIM also suggested that Amerika and
Kanada were one oppressor nation. Some of these ideas seem much closer
to reality today with Amerikan imperialism looking to incorporate
Canada, and California looking for separate trade deals with China with
popular support.
We have readers who say we’re anti-Black
for citing Marx, and readers who say we’re anti-white for applying
the ideas of Lenin. The reality is, all of these critics are too
brainwashed by the “white man” to see things beyond this racial lens.
Yes, the New York prisoner above we’re talking to you as well, you are
the one too stuck thinking in racial ideas, not us.
Now to be fair, this is the dominant thinking of our society. So we
must learn to speak Marxist truths that people stuck in imperialist,
racist thinking will understand. We also recognize that the oppressed
nations are more likely to be led to the truth. So we cannot avoid
alienating people who identify as “white” and generally should not try
to. These forces are either enemies of the revolution, enemies of
equality, enemies of communism, or will have to be won over in a later
stage of struggle. This is true because of their racial identities,
which are the subjective reflections of their material reality as
exploiters. Race is divisive – that’s why the imperialists have used it
for hundreds of years.
“The CP, The Sixties, The RCP and the Crying
need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of
communist leadership organization, strategy and practice in the United
States so that we can rise to the challenges before us”
by the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries Kites Journal #8
13 March 2023
In summarizing the intro to the sixties the writers once more fall
into the ideological swamp that we noticed in Part 1 of our review of
this work. They state in part:
“Students, Black People, and (at the end of the Sixties ) soldiers
constituted the main forces of rebellion…”
This continues in the same erroneous tradition as the RCP line.
Statements like this highlight that, and RCPers have heard our stance
before, but much of the non-Chican@ left, here in the snakes are what we
of the ROA have come to define as colorblind. That is they only see
Black and White struggles against empire. This outdated line needs to be
“buried” along with the CP-USA that was previously criticized in Part 1
of our review. This colorblindness is what prevents any real revolution
on these shores, especially with the Third World on our doorstep.
Colorblindness is a major obstacle to many. Asked about the nation by us
in the past, the RCP and their ilk have brushed it off.
“We don’t agree with those who say ‘Put my nation in front of the
line’”, the RCP and their ilk have said in prior talks. Our point here
is that the Chican@ nation simply be acknowledged as being in line
period. For perspective of the times, the Organization of Communist
Revolutionaries (OCR) declare erroneously that “Students, Black people
and soldiers” were the supposed “main forces” of rebellion. Yet, since
the end of the sixties Chican@ revolutionary orgs were developing
throughout Aztlán. Groups like the Brown Berets, Chican@ Liberation
Party and the Crusade for Justice that were brewing in this time would
later be alleged by U.$. “law enforcement” of mobilizing the largest
student strike on these shores with the school “blow outs” that included
over 10,000 Chican@ youth, that mobilized over 10,000 people in a
Chican@ anti-imperialist action in East L.A. called the Chicano
Moratorium that downed a police helicopter and was alleged to have
committed the only bombing of a CIA office on U.$. soil ever(1) not to
mention many other instances of armed struggle.
The idea that any rebellion in these false U.$. borders does not
include the Chican@ Nation is simply mierda. Those who uphold this
thinking deserve full membership in the RCP-USA as their line is in
goose step.
The tactics of “divide and conquer” employed by massa have worked so
well on all of the masses here in the United Snakes; even within the
so-called “Left” that not only are some folks pitted against other
oppressed but some have come to not even acknowledge those in the
trenches right beside them. Mao warned about who are our friends, who
are our enemies. Malcolm X reiterated how we can end up loving our
enemies and hating our friends.
BPP Legacy
As this work delved into the history of the Black Panther Party, it
highlighted lessons learned. We agree with the analysis on the Panthers
for the most part. The Panthers carved a path of resistance yet unseen
in many ways for all of us. At the same time their imprint taught us the
limits under U.$. imperialism, even when united fronts and allies are
strongly in support, it is still not enough, without structural
foundations in place. In this writing the authors frame it nicely in
regard to the Panthers:
“The development of a vanguard party is not the same thing as and
cannot wait for the development of a revolutionary situation. The
ideological consolidation, theoretical development program and
organizational apparatus of a vanguard party must be built consciously
and systematically before the emergence of a revolutionary situation if
the vanguard is to have the ability to withstand and advance through the
pressure of intense events and vicious repression.”(2)
The state repression will come with victories small and large. Even
when victories are small and an organization is not numerically large
the organizers may down play the threat they pose to the state. But the
state and their agents sometimes see the threat before the organizers,
before the revolutionaries can see it and react. For this reason the
vanguard must move in accordance to our potential threat to the
capitalist state.
White Proletarians?
We disagree with the writers on their economic analysis in regards to
who is a proletariat here in the snakes. The writers state:
“Labeling oppressed nations and nationalities in the U.S. as internal
colonies, while morally justified, does not provide the analytical
foundation for such a strategy and program. Instead suggesting separate
struggles to liberate each”internal colony” perhaps linked by solidarity
and a common enemy. The “internal colony” analysis fails to grasp that
there is a multinational proletariat in the U.S. disproportionately made
up of people of oppressed nation(s) and nationalities but also including
white proletarians which bring together people of different
nationalities who have a common class interest and similar but
variegated experiences of exploitation and conditions of life that is in
the strategic position, as a class, to lead the revolutionary overthrow
of U.S. imperialism.”
Although many revolutions were fought and won by multi-national
parties and organizations – including the Chinese Revolution and victory
of 1949 – we disagree with the writers that a “white proletariat” exists
within these false U.S. borders. Furthermore we do believe that there
are internal semi-colonies, and the Chican@ nation, aka Aztlán, is one
such internal semi-colony. The writers state that labeling the oppressed
nations as such does not provide the analytical foundation for such a
strategy and program but we would refer to the Chicano Red Book as the
ROA refers to our precious book Chican@ Power and
the Struggle for Aztlán, which does indeed provide the
analytical foundation for such a strategy and program as it is Chican@
Maoist ideology. As for the bourgeoisified crumb-snatching First World
labor aristocrats that are referred to as “white proletariat” we will
refer the readers to
MIM
Theory # 1: A White Proletariat? for a more in depth
examination of the white labor aristocracy in the occupied territories
or Zak Cope’s Divided World, Divided Class.
Despite the writers alluding to the problematic nature of
revolutionary nationalism we feel otherwise and side with Lenin on
this:
“In the same way as mankind can arrive at the abolition of classes
only through a transition period of the dictatorship of the oppressed
class, it can arrive at the inevitable integration of nations only
through a transition period of the complete emancipation of all
oppressed nations, i.e. their freedom to secede.”(3)
Aztláns secession will be a prelude to how the Chican@ nation votes
via plebiscite on our way forward. No bourgeoisiefied worker will define
our struggle or pre-determine who we consider the proletariat here in
the First World. As we have come to the conclusion through our own
scientific study that the reserve army of labor here in the United
Snakes is imported, that is, the proletariat is Mexican@ for the most
part.
We run into more colorblind assumptions in this writing in regards to
the writers views on mass imprisonment. They seem to continue with the
outdated 50 year-old lenses of mass incarceration when they state:
“The entire justice system, from the police to prosecutors to
prisons, was (and still is) used to keep the Black masses”in their
place” and became a defining feature of their daily lives.”
It seems to be describing the 1960’s or 70’s but in TODAY’S world it
is the Brown masses who are feeling the brunt heel of the injustice
system. The U.S. Federal prison system today reports 8% of its
population being Mexican citizens, and another 8% not being U.$.
citizens. Meanwhile 38.6% are reported as “racially Black”, while 29.4%
are “ethnically Hispanic”.(4) The Federal prisons are often more harsh
than state prisons, and more isolated, with families living in other
states or other countries. Children and babies are being imprisoned in
ICE kamps; babies handcuffed in kourt; Brown babies separated from
parents and then “lost” in foster care. Brown people are now being sent
to Guantanamo Bay to await deportation, or straight to supermax prison
in the U.$.-fascist state in El Salvador.
The new greaser laws ensure that U.S. control units and solitary
confinement units are also well stacked with Brown masses via “Gang”
enhancements and classification within the concentration kamps. The 2013
California Hunger Strike exposed that the SHU, or control units, were
populated by 80%+ Chican@s. With the brutality of the injustice system
in this country used against raza, it is ridiculous to say it is only
used on Black people. In general, the U.S. penal colonies are used for
population control of Aztlán and the other oppressed nations on these
occupied territories.
The section on postmodernism was refreshing to read. Much of the
movement papers and writings these days not only gloss over the ills of
“postmodern” ideology but even become influenced by it in many cases. In
addressing this assault, the movement and its affect on the youth the
writers state:
“For students, the bourgeoisie worked on two main fronts (1) they
promoted, in academia, ideologies and politics that appeared
oppositional but in reality fortified bourgeois rule and in effect
steered students away from communism and other revolutionary ideas.
Postmodernism was chief among these ideologies and has since become the
dominant discourse within liberal academia.”
For the Chican@ nation we see the injection of the terms Latino,
Latina, Latinx and all such derivatives as being part and parcel to the
postmodernism project. For Aztlán, these terms move under the guise of
“inclusiveness” only to obscure the identity of Chican@s, thereby
detouring our focus on national liberation and land into simple
multinational reforms within the confines of the bourgeois electoral
politics arena. Those who espouse the postmodernist views within a raza
context have clipped their wings which compels them to walk the road of
brown capitalism, never soaring for secession or national liberation
because the framers of their line have negated these paths starting with
their identity.
As our Chican@ scholars sank into the swamp of academia their drive
for Chican@ power and self-determination also sank. As Montaya put
it:
“Most tenure-track scholars are aware that academic institutions
rarely recognize grassroots activism and other non-traditional forms of
scholarship.”(5)
In short the path and pull of integration into the empire is too
strong for many who cannot resist the trinkets of blood and treasure
squeezed out of the Third World by U.S. imperialists.
It becomes apparent that the writers were in the orbit of RCP-USA.
The description of life surrounding the RCP-USA seemed like a scene out
of Thomas More’s Utopia. Lots of talk of life surrounding the
RCP being a vibrant socialist experience having “an atmosphere of
theoretical discussion and debate.”…the writers say, I was captivated
for a brief moment, very brief, especially when I realized that all this
“theoretical discussion” left out the Chican@ Nation – as much of the
so-called U.S. “left” seems to do so cleverly. The writers leave out in
their lofty description that the RCP-USA is also colorblind, like the
writers and most of the posers parading like communists in these
occupied territories. “Racial” scientists would likely find unity with
this colorblind RCP line which infects much of the U.$. “left.”
The national liberation struggle is very much necessary despite the
rhetoric from some like the RCP-USA. The “All Lives Matter” crowd swear
that the society we are oppressed in has somehow developed beyond
national struggle and then we picked up some “progressive” rag and read
it cover to cover and not read the word Aztlán, “Chican@” or any mention
of the Chican@ struggle, despite many of these same parties and orgs
existing in the Chican@ National territory (the U.S. Southwest) at this
time. Raza must grasp that exploitation and dehumynization of the
Chican@ did not end with the U.S. “civil rights” movement. Political
exploitation and cooptation remains a threat to the Chica@ nation.
Much of the content on the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) was
spent “dick riding” Avakian, although in the latter part there was some
good criticism of Avakianism and the RCP more generally. The “dick
riding” mostly being the writers gushing over some of Avakians writings
and books.
The criticism of the RCP and Avakian was in pointing out various
errors. One such error was in attempting to create a cult of personality
for Avakian placing Avakian above the masses, above the movement.
Claiming Avakian developed a “new synthesis” and “new communism.” Some
of our members remember reading this claim years ago and not seeing it
then, we do not see it now either. The writers correctly highlight that
Revolution newspaper began to focus almost obsessively on
filling its rag with quotes of Avakian speeches that he gave to the
party. The closing of Revolution Books, the RCP-ran bookstores, was also
criticized, especially when RCP said it was done to focus on promoting
Avakian literature, when Avakian lit was mostly distributed at the
bookstores. More striking was the fact that Avakian promoted voting for
Biden when Biden and Trump squared off the first time. It appears that
when it comes to Bourgeois democracy: the RCP can’t do better than
that.
The portion at the end is informative on the organizational functions
of the vanguard party on what the writers define as the “nuts and bolts”
of the vanguard. There is much to learn from studying the development
and disasters of revisionist parties like the CP-USA and the RCP-USA. We
take our duties here in the beast serious and the Chican@ nation will
not be bamboozled via neo-colonial projects that masquerade in communist
barb. The Republic of Aztlán is re-building the nation and studying the
errors of the past to be successful in our struggle.
Free Aztlán!
Notes: 1 The Crusade for Justice by Ernesto Vigil.
2. “The CP, The Sixties, The RCP and the Crying need for a Communist
Vanguard Party Today” by The Organization of Communist
Revolutionaries. 3. V.I. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the
Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, January-February 1916 from
Selected Works Vol. 1, International Publishers, NY, 1971, P. 160.
4.
https://www2.fed.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_citizenship.jsp
5. “Chicano Movement for Beginners” by Maceo Montoya, 2016, page
202.
When tablets came out in 2017 the very first tablets were sold to the
prisoners. I had a loved one to buy me one. Then the Florida Department
of Corrections (FDOC) decided to change the mail to digital mail, so
FDOC picked up all tablets that the prisoners paid for and came back
around and passed out free tablets for every one. Since then all tablets
have been updated no less than three times.
This comrade just got released from a Close Management Unit and was
transferred to Hamilton C.I. Since I got here I found out that for the
past year the Property Room Sergeant has been confiscating tablets, most
of the time giving prisoners a disciplinary report for tablet tampering
in which prisoners are found guilty 99% of the time and are suspended
indefinitely from having another tablet. On top of this, most now have a
loan on their inmate trust fund account of $130 restitution. FDOC gave a
little for a period of time, then turned around and took everything.
They gave the tablets, tablets belong to the state, and now they have an
excuse to take them.
The Prisoner Population
I’ve been in prison for 28 years and this whole thing changed. This
is not a prison anymore, this is a child care center for these fools to
hang out. Everybody wants to belong to a gang but let me remind you that
before you take that oath, you need to find out why that nation, group,
or gang was born. It was born by the oppressed to fight in unity as a
group against oppression. Who is the oppressor? Pigs that work here, the
administration, the system, the state, the government. I know my
history, do you know yours?
FDOC have a total of no more than 30 officers per shift (with 1/4 of
them pushing overtime) and that is counting the front controls
operators. It is embarrassing how that small group of pigs can control,
oppress, and abuse no less than 1250 to 1500 prisoners, thugs,
gangsters, criminals, and gang members. FDOC prisoners have no unity and
no self-respect. I said self-respect because I might have a debt of a 78
cent soup and you ready to kill me, but the pigs call you and the whole
dorm a “bunch of bitches” and you put your head down.
FDOC prisoners, mostly gang members, would rather have the pigs as a
friend than anybody else with the same uniform color. They respect the
pigs more than their fellow prisoners. Ali-al
haf from Georgia, I read your article in the ULK Winter 2025 issue –
you are not alone! I think it is a virus that is spreading. Now
prisoners do the pigs’ jobs. They check and make sure that your cell
door is secure, they pass mail, they make sure you don’t eat twice in
the chow-hall, they even stand next to some of the pigs like bodyguards.
All this ass kissing and at the end of the night your ass is just like
mine: locked down behind a door. It doesn’t matter how down you might
think the pigs will be, at the end of the day they will not put their
paychecks on the line because of you. Coño Preso – look at the fucking
color of your uniform. Ain’t you noticed that it has a different
color!
Learn the difference between a right and a privilege. Use the
grievance process, you must leave a written historical track in case
issues need to be handled at another level. Written proof is all there
is that shows a peaceful avenue was tried before going all the way out.
All those comrades that in the past sacrificed their prison sentences,
release dates, family, and some of them even their lives for this new
generation to throw their hands up and surrender. Really? That is how
we’re doing time in 2025?? Where are your cojones??
Let’s get together in the same line of thought. Before you complain
about not having a tablet or not being able to watch the game on TV, we
need to think about how high canteen prices are, receive more gain time,
bring parole to lifers like me, get better food. Sorry, but prison is
not a place that you come to to hang out with your homies and have a
good time. This is the cemetery of the walking living dead, where your
whole future could change in 15 seconds. Don’t forget where you are,
your culture, where you came from. Do not submit to do the pigs’ work. I
won’t be surprised if in a few more years visitation is done solely via
video and they stop all contact visits. If we don’t get together and
stand up and work as a group, as a family, we are going to keep losing.
Remember that before you became a gang member you were a man, a human
being – not a beast. And I refuse to be trapped like one. No quiero
abrazos con la vida hasta que mi pueblo sea libre.
A Georgia prisoner echoes Ali-al haf’s report: Here at
Baldwin State Prison in Hardwick, Georgia, some things are the same as
Valdosta, GA. Gang members having a room all to themselves and picking
on the weak, taking all their property.
In one building the unity manager has her boys, [gang members] to
beat some prisoners up (mostly whites). It is told that the female
officer unit manager is a [gang] member. She is always talking down to
the whites.
The drugs are plenty here and the drug called strips is where most go
to.
The mail system is really screwed up. Mail is passed out maybe two
times a week. The mailroom officer puts mail out daily for night shift
to pass out.
Stabbings happen daily. Some cut themselves to be placed in the hole
to get away from the gang members. Some gang members force some, mostly
whites, to put money on their books or send them cash and make them go
to the store for the full amount only to take it from them and officers
let it happen.
Baldwin State has nicknames such as “Bloody Baldwin”, “Body Bag”, and
“Cut Throat”. The names fit well.
$prayer responds from Pennsylvania: Our comrades here
in the PADOC would rather be focused on going at each other and being on
the C.O.’s side and doing a bunch of nonsense, it’s sad. Our comrades
aren’t even focused on their own lives like they should be instead of
worrying what others are doing. They oppress their other comrades like
they’re the oppressor, like they’re not oppressed by the oppressors too.
The oppressing comrades do what the oppressors want them to do so they
take the heat off of their own backs and put it on their own comrades’
backs. Like I really can’t believe all of the OPPRESSION between
comrades, it’s really sad. Like the oppressing comrades call us (who
stand against the criminals of permission “cops”) rats, but look at what
they’re doing, they’re doing the oppressors’ bidding. So who’s the real
rat? They are, aren’t they, since they’re doing the oppressors’ bidding
right? They really need to ask themselves who’s the rat. We’re supposed
to stand up to our oppressors, not stand with them against our own
comrades. Am I right or am I wrong?
MIM(Prisons) adds: We also published a report in
February from a Tennessee
prisoner being extorted by a drug gang that was protected by staff.
Ali-al haf’s article really struck a cord with our readers, indicating
the state of affairs across the prison systems on occupied Turtle
Island. This relates to our campaign: Stop Snitching, Stop
Collaborating, where comrades have repeatedly pointed out that you can’t
snitch on pigs. These prisoners described above are collaborating with
the enemy.
But lumpen orgs working with the imperialists is not a forgone
conclusion. We know this because there are plenty examples in history of
lumpen orgs working on the side of anti-imperialism, especially in the
internal colonies of the United $tates. We also know this because, as
Trauma points out, there is a common material interest in the lumpen
coming together for conditions and for respect. And as $prayer says,
most prisoners should be comrades on the same side. We can make that
happen through education and organization. We must build institutions
that serve the interests of the lumpen better than the state does, to
win over the masses.
MIM(Prisons) regularly publishes articles speaking on the
reprehensible conditions in U.$. prisons. Why do oppressed nationalities
suffer these life conditions disproportionately, and what is the
solution?
The United $tates has been the largest economy in the world for some
time. How is that possible? It is made possible because the United
$tates reaps this profit out of the Third World. Many people know this
subconsciously, but do not put all the pieces together. There is a
common joke about Asian children making smartphones, but we do not
question why this is the case. It is the case because it is profitable
for the United $tates, because the company makes more profit when they
pay lower wages, then these commodities are brought to the United $tates
and sold for cheap, and everyone here benefits. The company makes a
profit and the Amerikans get cheap goods. That much is clear from a
cursory look, and proved by the recent literature on “unequal
exchange.”
It is obvious why the Third World is placed into poverty by this
system, but why the oppressed nationalities within the United $tates?
Historically, the internal semi-colonies were sources of wealth as well,
but today it is a question of distributing that wealth from the Third
World. The Amerikan nation recognizes, consciously or unconsciously,
that they have an interest in keeping their plunder to themselves. For
that reason, Black and Brown people are excluded from employment,
education, housing, and all the benefits of Amerikan empire. Racism,
therefore, is the way that Amerikans assert their economic interest in
keeping others from getting a hold of their money.
The movement against racism stems mostly from the desire of the
oppressed nationalities to integrate into the empire; the desire here is
for an empire free of national bigotry, wherein the currently oppressed
nations have equal access to the wealth which is pulled out of the Third
World, the globally oppressed nations. Anyone with two eyes, however,
can see that this struggle has been raging for decades without an end in
sight. The oppressed nationalities within the United $tates cannot leave
behind the Third World on the low chance that they may succeed in
becoming one with the beast; they must ally with the Third World in the
struggle against imperialism. Only by overthrowing this system of class
and national divisions can the oppressed within this country live to see
a day where oppression in general is dying out, and prisons in
particular become based on rehabilitation instead of “punishment,” and
where people are not restricted from life opportunities in the interest
of protecting the wealth of the privileged nation.
Does anyone today believe that true integration, true “equality”
between nationalities in this country is possible through the ballot or
any other means? The response to this question will be “if not, what
hope is there?” The choice seems to be between the gradual struggle for
equality on the one hand or nothing on the other, since the only method
of achieving liberation without reform is revolution, and most cannot
imagine the oppressed nations in this country winning any real fight
against the empire. But why are we imagining this fight as only between
these two competitors? The oppressed nations within the United $tates
are only one component part of the oppressed nations of the whole world.
The struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of imperialism is a global
one, uniting all who can be united. Yes, none of the oppressed nations
in this country can liberate themselves: neither the Black nation, nor
the indigenous nations, nor the Chicano nation. But the struggle of all
these nations, by themselves too weak to overthrow imperialism, together
form a mass which vastly outweighs the strength of the United $tates,
and this is where our strength lies. This is where our strategic
confidence in success comes from. Through the international struggle
imperialism will overextend itself, and it will open inroads for success
in national liberation struggles. These successes will weaken
imperialism further, eventually setting the scene for the truly
anti-imperialist force, the socialist working class, to make its
appearance.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We’ve published a paper
by the Dawnland Group discussing the organizations that were behind
the now defunct magazine Kites. As summarized in that essay,
these organizations reject the labor aristocracy thesis and the
importance of national liberation struggles (see What is MIM(Prisons)?
for more on our positions).
In addition, this month we are publishing on our website the final
version of our paper, “Why the International Communist Movement (ICM)
Must Break with the Legacy of the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM).” This paper is a critique of the RCP-U$A, and the RIM
that it helped lead, on the grounds that they put First Worldist and
revisionist ideology at the forefront of the ICM. This paper was
inspired in part by the work of the OCR and the ideas and papers (by Bob
Avakian) that they promote. Part 2 of this review by ROA addresses the
section of Kites #8 on the RCP-U$A.]
“The CP, The Sixties, The RCP and the Crying
need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of
communist leadership organization, strategy and practice in the United
States so that we can rise to the challenges before us”
by the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries Kites Journal #8
13 March 2023
In this piece put out by the Organization of Communist
Revolutionaries (OCR) they attempt to shed light on two organizations –
the Communist Party-USA (CP) and the Revolutionary Communist Party USA
(RCP-USA). This paper further delves into the 1960’s and the communist
movement in general, particularly within these false U.$. borders.
As the writers point out little has been written about the RCP-USA so
not much is known for the newer generation of revolutionaries. Some of
the members of our organization however have experience with the RCP-USA
and have debated and struggled with them for a couple of decades over
their neo-colonial line toward Aztlán to no avail. Their failure to
recognize the existence of the Chican@ Nation has led us to label them
as a revisionist party to say the least. So this paper was welcoming and
a way for our comrades to sum up this relic of a distorted past called
the RCP-USA.
The writers list the Socialist Party of America (SP) and the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the forerunners to communist
organization in the United $tates. It should also be noted that white
supremacy and language barriers hindered the recruitment of Chican@s, or
other raza, into these organizations. It is interesting that 100 years
later white supremacy continues to affect the line of many
multi-national organizations like the IWW, especially when they attempt
to put our national interests on the back burner while accusing us of
wanting to put our nation first. It is not that we simply want to put
the national struggle to the forefront for some subjective reward, we do
so as revolutionary nationalists because we have determined that the
principle contradiction is between the oppressed nations and the
oppressor nation. A people cannot be free to determine their future if
they are suffering from oppression.
As noted in this paper, the early days of the communist movement in
the United $tates had a proletariat that was “substantially immigrant”,
today we see the same with the proletariat being mainly migrant workers,
particularly those from Mexico. This seems to make the vanguard’s job
easier organizationally. Back then there was a proletariat of various
migrants from various countries, including many from Europe, so a
communist vanguard role would have been to create agit/prop material in
these various languages in an attempt to raise consciousness in these
populations. We see the Chican@ nations role as key in today’s
environment where the proletariat is largely Mexican@ and from Central
and South America making Aztlán’s job of uniting the Brown exploited
workers under the Chican@ leadership much easier than any other national
organization. The trail of liberation on these shores is Brown.
At one point the issue of Black oppression was addressed in this
paper, noting that the communist movement of this time essentially
dropped the ball and:
“Subjectively, the failure of US communists to prioritize making an
analysis of the Black national question – the oppression of Black People
and how that oppression can be ended through communist revolution and
begin making political interventions in struggles over the oppression of
Black people was a serious, strategic blunder that only compounded the
objective problem.”(1)
Another “strategic blunder” of the time was in not prioritizing an
analysis of Chican@ national oppression – not only back in the early
1900’s but the continued blundering of today when many political
organizations within these false U.$. borders continue to ignore the
very essential Chican@ struggle in their analysis. This also highlights
the continued necessity of single-nation building for Aztlán. After all
if the Chicano nation does not organize for the liberation of Aztlán who
will?
The early 1900’s was prime time for the Chican@ nation in terms of
rebellion, it was just about 50 years since colonization at the hands of
U.$. imperialism but it was also a time of the Plan de San Diego. As our
Chicano Red Book put it:
“During the first decade of the 1900’s a group of unidentified
Mexican@s or Chican@s put out a document calling for armed resistance by
Chican@s. The Plan de San Diego called for Armed Struggle against
Amerika and proclaimed that upon victory the”South West United States”
would become a Chican@ state, New Afrikans would form their own state
and First Nations their own state. This was the first united front of
the oppressed nations on these shores that sought independence for all
oppressed nations upon victory: the Plan demonstrated true
internationalism.”(2)
So although Chican@s have been resisting and organizing for
independence even before U.$. communists began to organize in the SP,
IWW, CP or Communist Labor Party (CLP), none of these so-called
revolutionary orgs developed an analysis on raza or our colonization
during the early 20th century. The RCP-USA still has not supported
Chican@ independence. Marxism taught us historical materialism which we
use to learn from hystory. Hystory has taught us that anytime we have
lifted the boot of the white oppressor nation off our necks it has been
by Chicanos coming together and struggling. Whether it was against white
terror that las Goras Blancas (the white caps) fought or against
Amerikkka which compelled the Plan de San Diego to develop, we have, as
a people, always struggled against national oppression from the
factories to the field. The most significant labor strike in U.$.
hystory, which was a Chican@ strike but which white labor has hijacked
and renamed “The Ludlow Massacre”.
During the time that the SP, CP, IWW and CLP were committing the
blunder on the Black nation, they likewise committed a great blunder on
the Chican@ nation who was also struggling against national oppression.
Because of this hystory we set out to create the Republic of Aztlán, the
government in waiting for the Chican@ nation. The writers note the CP’s
“foreign language workers clubs” and their role in organizing
non-English speakers. Taking into account the almost non-existent
analysis of the Chican@ struggle by the movement in U.$. borders, it
highlights the need for Raza workers org’s and clubs to help organize
and develop immigrants who suffer from exploitation.
This piece sums up the trials and tribulations of the CP. Their
factionalism and devotion to the unions seemed to drown out the
suffering of the internal semi-colonies of the time. The Comintern and,
in particular, Stalin’s guidance, led the CP to finally give the Black
nation and their struggles against national oppression some attention.
Aztlán was ripe for development during this time when white labor denied
Chican@s as well as many other oppressed at the time.
An interesting mention in this piece was on the development of a
“guerilla military force.” In discussing the communist activities of the
1920’s the writers state:
“There is a question of whether Communists could have developed some
type of guerrilla military force to supplement the mass labor struggles
that erupted and to contend with the repression by way of organized
armed defense of strikers where appropriate (some of that happened
spontaneously) and selective assassinations of agents of repression!!”
(3)
Although we do not promote People’s War today, the fact remains that
a vanguard’s role is to be prepared to defend the people, especially
when the capitalist state unleashes the most vile forms of repression.
One has to be prepared for the inevitable, this includes the
understanding that a strike force is a very necessary vehicle for
defense of an oppressed peoples. No nation will ever acquire liberation
without such a mechanism in place. Cadre should grasp this, teach this
and prepare for the time when such a force is necessary. Fanon was clear
in that colonial violence can only be overcome by a greater violence,
the oppressor nation understands no other language. At the same time,
the cadre should accept that such a dialogue is a great sacrifice of the
highest form. Indeed, we cannot study revolution without studying what
such warfare would deliver society to such a transformation. The Black
Liberation Army sliced to the heart of it when they said:
“Bombings, kidnappings, sniping, revolutionary executions, surprise
raids, bank robbery: all of these are rightfully weapons of urban
guerrilla warfare. As we use them we must take care to maintain high
principles and keep in mind that power to the people is more than
just”campaign rhetoric”.” (4)
Although campaign rhetoric may be leading much of the public
discourse, a realistic view of national liberation leads us to develop
plans of attack and self defense even if the plans do not become
operational until after our demise. The future of any socialist
revolution demands this.
Subjectively, the part of this writing that hit the hardest to those
of us who organize within the U.$. concentration kamps was the portion
describing the story of the young womyn named Marian Morna, the 18 year
old member of the CP’s Young Communist League who describes integrating
with the masses to organize strikes in the fields of California’s
Imperial Valley. Her description was incredibly moving, in her
words:
“The years with the fruit pickers became a world within the world, a
microcosm of feelings that never left me, not even when I left them. I
lived with the pickers, ate, slept, and got drunk with them. I helped
bury their men and deliver their babies. We laughed, cried, and talked
endlessly into the night together. And, slowly, some extraordinary
interchange began to take place between us. I taught them how to read,
and they taught me how to think. I taught them how to organize, and they
taught me how to lead. I saw things happening to people I’d never seen
before. I saw them becoming as they never dreamed they could become. Day
by day people were developing, transforming, communicating inarticulate
dreams, discovering a force of being in themselves. Desires, skills,
capacities they didn’t know they had blossomed under the pressure of
active struggle. And the sweetness, the generosity, the pure comradeship
that came flowing out of them as they began to feel themselves! They
were—there’s no other word for it—noble. Powerful in struggle, no longer
sluggish with depression, they became inventive, alive, democratic,
filled with an instinctive sense of responsibility for each other. And
we were all like that, all of us, the spirit touched all of us. It was
my dream of socialism come to life. I saw then what I could be like,
what people could always be like, how good the earth and all things upon
it could be, how sweet to be alive and to feel yourself in everyone
else.”
If one were to replace the words “fruit pickers” with “lumpen” or
“prisoners” it would be spot on to an organizer’s experiences in the
concentration kamps. I feel it. The connections that develop with the
masses in any environment cannot be manufactured insincerely. Oppressed
people, wherever they may be struggling against an oppressor, at some
point develop relations that give us a glimmer of what social
interaction and struggle will feel like as society transforms to a
higher level, we taste it and this sampler compels us forward for
more.
Another glimmer of hope we learn about in this piece was in the
lesson of the Yokinen Show trial in 1931. August Yokinen was a member of
the CP who refused to allow Black folks to enter the Finnish Workers
Club in Harlem and went on to say their place was in Black Harlem. The
reaction to this was the CP having a show trial charging Yokinen with
white chauvinism. It was public and even got coverage in the bourgeois
press with The New York Times putting it on the front page. The
trial provided good agit prop for the masses and highlighted the
inability of the capitalist state to address white supremacy and hold
white chauvinism accountable and the CP did. This educated the masses
and put Amerika on blast. This reminded me of our org’s action around a
gun buy-back program by the pigs. We had a comrade announce on the radio
live that there was going to be a gun buy back, where the pigs can turn
in the stolen “hot” guns they had in their trunks that they regularly
planted on people. We announced they can remain anonymous and that we
will not ask for a badge number. Our goal was simply to keep our streets
safe from pig terror. We did this to raise consciousness and, although
in our case we did not get coverage in the bourgeois press, we addressed
a real form of repression in a very audacious way which, to our
knowledge, had not been previously done.
Raising consciousness is our job as communists however because of the
brainwashing that the state does on a mass scale we have to be bold,
creative and audacious in our efforts, all without crossing the line
where the state has ammunition to lock us up. In the end sometimes
they’ll make shit up and lock us up anyways. The Republic of Aztlán has
taken up its responsibility to serve the people by all means necessary
and we overstand the dangers that come with this role!
This piece has many lessons within it, too many to address in our
writing here. The case of the Scottsboro boys is worth a mention though.
It was of course a sad case of injustice and imprisonment but the lesson
was definitely on how communists of the time responded and struggled
with bourgeois liberals on which way that struggle developed. This
struggle reminded me in a small way to the prisoner hunger strike of
2011/2013 in Califas and how a variety of orgs entered the arena of
coalition.
It is always a struggle to at once unite with the masses in struggle
while resisting the pull towards reformism which often engulfs mass
struggles. This first part of our review framed the CP and its good and
bad characteristics that we can learn from today. Soviet revisionism
ultimately sank the CP ship. Despite all of its efforts, it continues to
be anchored in the graveyard of bourgeois elections today. This first
part of the review was successful in “burying” the CP for our
organization.
Notes: 1. “The CP, the Sixties, the RCP and the Crying
Need for a Communist Vanguard Party today: Summing up a century of
Communist leadership , organization, strategy and practice in the United
States so that we can rise to the challenges before us.” By Organization
of Communist Revolutionaries 2. Chican@ Power and the Struggle for
Aztlán by a MIM Prisons Study Group, 2nd Edition 2021, Aztlán Press,
Page 40. 3. Organization of Communist Revolutionaries IBID. 4.
Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army, Rookery Press, Page
92.
Organizations in Occupied Turtle Island organizing under the label of
Palestine solidarity take various tactics and ideological positions. A
great portion of these efforts are negative, representing leftist
organization-building and guilt-soothing for populations who benefit
from imperialism.(1)
Still, there is much to be appreciated in Palestine solidarity
organizing. The fact that as a class, U.$. workers are wedded to
imperialism as a labor aristocracy(2) does not mean that select
individuals and segments of the same class, such as youth, immigrants
and members of oppressed nations, don’t have a righteous impulse to
rebel against genocide.(3) Further, drawing the line between practicing
manufactured discontent to gain social capital (for example, peaceful,
permitted and policed “solidarity” marches, or gathering social media
clout) versus genuine rebellion (involving significant self-sacrifice)
can be a difficult strategic question and a complicated moral matter.
It’s the job of communists to answer these questions, drawing those who
can be allied in a united front under the leadership of the global
proletariat.
In the United $tates, only small percentages of the country ever will
protest for progressive causes, and usually only a few thousand people
are liable to turn up at anti-imperialist protests, if we’re lucky. But
even this small size of protest crowds can be confusing. We see large
events put on in the name of helping Palestine and, ignoring the lack of
ideological unity required for such crowds, perceive that there is a
strong movement against genocide here. To move how? Against which
genocide? You’ll find that the larger the event, the less likely it is
for such questions to be answered.
Let’s examine one specific way this numbers game is lost among the
U.$. left. A very common protest narrative goes something like this: X
city/institution is partnering with Israel. That partnership uses funds
which could otherwise be spent “on our community” (healthcare, jobs,
public resources). Therefore, we must divest from Israel and invest back
into “our community”. The messaging behind agitational work tells the
organizers, audience and onlookers at protests the purpose and goals of
the work: they represent the ideology pushing our practice forwards.
Here, this oft-repeated messaging about divestment explains that
everyone should join the cause to reclaim what is theirs from an immoral
misappropriation.
This narrative about redirecting resources away from genocide and
towards “community” can be found in endless settler-left slogans such as
“build more schools, not bombs!” or “money for jobs and education, not
for war and occupation!” All such ideas revolve around the mythos of the
Amerikan “community”: a fictitious multi-national concept in which,
abstracted from the violence at the base of the Amerikan colony and the
national conflicts therein, we can imagine harmonious and communal ways
of life involving sharing our resources. This imagination goes back to
the root of settler consciousness in Occupied Turtle Island which
imagines a “Thanksgiving” where the colonists shared food with the First
Nations rather than poisoning, raping and murdering them by the
millions.
An almost identical narrative is wielded by referencing the “tax
dollars” spent on Palestine-solidarity campaigns’ targets, begging
Amerikans to rise up against a supposed misuse of money which is
otherwise rightfully owed to them. This relies on the same conceptual
basis as a “community.” If we believe this narrative then absent
specific policy mistakes (such as funding Israel) there would exist the
basis for peaceful redistribution of the spoils of genocide and
imperialism, and this would be a righteous redistribution. At the base
of these common yet mistaken ideas are 1) a genuine impulse towards
fascism by U.$. citizens who wish to become even more wealthy compared
to the Third World, and 2) ignorance regarding the source of global
wealth disparity to begin with.
We cannot resolve #1, the fascist impulse among a majority here,
without overturning imperialism and settler-colonialism entirely. To
address #2 however, we can study how “communities” in Occupied Turtle
Island are literally built and sustained off of genocide, slavery and
imperialism, especially regarding the “average jo.” There are two main
groups in the United $tates: the settlers and the oppressed nations.
Euro-Amerikan settlers have been a consistently reactionary group for
the past five centuries as their life here is founded on slavery and
land theft.(4) They are the numeric majority of the U.$. population and
have consistently subjected the First Nations, New Afrika and the
Chican@ nation with oppressive, genocidal campaigns.(5)
These oppressed nations on the other hand vacillate between
progressive and regressive tendencies depending on proximity to the
spoils of imperialism. Independence movements among oppressed nations
represent a progressive impulse wishing to sever connections with U.$.
imperialism, whereas participation in DEI (Diversity, Equity &
Inclusion) initiatives, reforming political parties and redistributing
wealth to the oppressed nations represent an integrationist trend which
serves to either enlarge the (petty-)bourgeoisie of these nations at the
expense of their oppressed masses or incorporate swaths of the nation
into the capitalist-imperialist world system.(6) Overall there are
substantial parts of oppressed nations here who still face genocide
while other portions steadily receive a bit more of the imperial
pie.
To the extent that anyone here enjoys it, the First World lifestyle
includes housing, food, medicine, transportation and extensive
leisure-time bought from the blood of indigenous peoples and
manipulation of global labor prices which under-pay workers in the Third
World and deprives them of basic necessities.(7) An over-accumulation of
profits in the United $tates has led to excess money supply and higher
domestic wages: the surplus available to create a complacent consumer
base beyond the settlers alone.(8) This is why wages here are
approximately 10x normal wages in Palestine. Thus while some U.$.
workers suffer under national oppression, they are almost all economic
oppressors of the Third World.(9)
So if we convince the majority here that they are actually
impoverished through imperialism, or would be enriched through its end,
we are misrepresenting the facts and tarnishing the cause of Palestinian
liberation. When imperialism inevitably falls, internationalist forces
in the imperial core will probably be encircled by fascism: citizens
here attempting to cling to lifestyles and social roles which can no
longer exist, led by whichever elements of the bourgeoisie can rally
them around new extractive outlets to replace old imperialism. The
faster we can pull away from self-interested economic thinking here, the
faster we will eventually construct socialism. The more here who search
for their own best interest through the fall of imperialism, the longer
such a task will take.
United front work in the imperial core on behalf of the global
proletariat will involve grappling deeply with the labor aristocracy and
the settler nation. We must investigate this majority’s interests as
they unfold in street protests, unions, universities and even prisons.
We shouldn’t reject them wholesale: we should condemn their economic
gluttony while simultaneously uniting those who will commit to fighting
on the behalf of the international proletariat. We must educate each and
every Amerikan who will listen about how their wealth comes from
genocide and how their lives will change when imperialism finally
falls.
Having rejected the fantasy of an abstract, multi-national Amerikan
“community,” we could instead support the many progressive causes
belonging to the oppressed nations here who have suffered under genocide
like Palestine. But such campaigns must be specific in their slogans and
selection of organizing base, as well as how to relate to those with
varying proximity to imperialism. Connecting progressive campaigns such
as those against police brutality, which predominantly affects oppressed
nations, to Palestinian sovereignty is a righteous cause. Trying to
connect Palestine to the reactionary dissatisfaction of everyday
Amerikan workers, especially settlers, is a recipe for fascism and
genocide.
Notes: 1. A
Million Tiny Fleas “The Anti-War Movement that Wasn’t” Substack, Jun 13
2023. 2. Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class” Kersplebedeb
2012, pg. 9. 3. The
Dawnland Group, “A Polemic against Settler Maoism”, MIM (Prisons)
website, June 2024. 4. Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the
White proletariat from mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb. 5.
Maoist
Internationalist Ministry of Prisons, “Proletarian Feminist
Revolutionary Nationalism” June 2017, pgs 96 – 108. 6. Labor
unions from oppressed nations integrating with settler and imperialist
labor unions is an important historic evidence of this trend. See:
Sakai, J. “Settlers: The mythology of the White proletariat from
mayflower to modern.”(2014). Kersplebedeb, pgs 152 – 174. 7. Jason
Hickel, Christian Dorninger, Hanspeter Wieland, Intan Suwandi,
“Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global
South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015,” Global Environmental Change,
Volume 73, 2022. 8. Cope, Zak “Divided World Divided Class”
Kersplebedeb 2012, pg 200. 9. Undocumented migrants, prisoners,
homeless people, and the chronically unemployed lumpenproletariat are
generally not economic oppressors.
Let The Memory of Marcellus Khaliifah Williams, A New Afrikan
Poet and Revolutionary, Reaffirm Our Commitment to the
Struggle
Marcellus Williams, also known as Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniel, was
murdered by the amerikkkan state on 24 September 2024. He was a proud
Muslim New Afrikan, a poet, an advocate for Palestinian children, and a
prison imam at Potosi Correctional Center. Despite a vast quantity of
evidence showing that Williams did not commit the crime of which he was
convicted -
“Williams was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and burglary
in 2001 for the 1998 killing of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle, a 42-year-old
reporter stabbed 43 times in her home. His conviction relied on two
witnesses who later said they were paid for their testimony, according
to the Midwest Innocence Project, and 2016 DNA testing conducted on the
murder weapon “definitively excluded” Williams.”
The state nevertheless passed the decision, with the approval of the
Supreme Court, to murder him in cold blood.
Williams was convicted in 2001, by a jury consisting of 11 white men
and one New Afrikan. According to Al Jazeera, a New Afrikan
juror was improperly dismissed from the jury, with the justification
that they would not be objective.
Prosecutor Keith Larner said that he had excluded a potential Black
juror because of how similar they were, saying “They looked like they
were brothers.”
In a country that supposedly grants everyone the right to a “trial by
their peers”, the fact that a New Afrikan on trial for the murder of a
white woman was not allowed a jury of his peers – of New Afrikans –
makes it clear that amerikkka cannot be “reformed” into “accepting” the
New Afrikan nation, no matter how much surface-level anti-racist
rhetoric is in the media nor how many bourgeois New Afrikans are elected
to positions of power. For skewing Williams’s jury towards white men the
judge would owe blood debts to the oppressed nations and the proletariat
far greater than any average criminal under the dictatorship of the
proletariat. Ey was right about one thing – a jury of New Afrikans, of
Williams’s peers, would have been more likely than a jury of
white men to consider his innocence. That is why more than half of the
people with death sentences in the United $tates are Black or Latin@
according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
Williams’s conviction, for the murder of a white woman, shines
clarity on why it is necessary to have a proper analysis of the gender
hierarchy in the First World. The trope of a New Afrikan man murdering
or “raping” a white woman has been used to stir up the most vile
representations of national oppression ever since New Afrikans were
imported as a permanent underclass and oppressed nation, from Emmett
Till to Marcellus Williams. The rapidity at which the criminal injustice
system will commit atrocities against New Afrikans accused of violence
against white women makes it clear that the question of “gender
oppression” is far more tied up in national and class oppression than
pseudo-feminists would have one believe. Since time immemorial, the
oppressor-nation men and women both have been spurred into action by the
suggestion of a New Afrikan acting violently towards a white woman;
Williams’s case is no different.
“From 1930 to 1985, the white courts not only executed Black murder
and rape convicts at a rate several times that of white murder and rape
convicts, it executed more Black people than white people in
total.”(2)
Hours before ey was executed, the Supreme Court reviewed Williams’s
case, and denied the request to halt or delay his execution. This is
despite millions of signatures on a petition, and a great deal of social
media activism around the case. The righteous anger of millions was not
enough to save Williams’s life. True radicals, not reformists nor
revisionists, need to look past the idea of incremental reforms, of
politely asking the amerikkkan state to consider the humanities of those
it has deemed worthless. If the time and energy that had been put into
the (nevertheless righteous) cause of petitioning for Marcellus Williams
had been put into studying, organizing, and building towards a movement
of New Afrikan liberation, or towards an overturn of the amerikkkan
empire and its justice system, not only would Williams’s life have
likely been saved (as he would have been granted a true trial by his
peers), but the lives of many others convicted (wrongfully or not) of
crimes that pale in comparison to the crimes against humanity committed
by the First World bourgeoisie and its lackeys would have been saved as
well. Any justice for Williams can only be attained when we feed this
righteous outrage into such systematic solutions.
Many of the narratives from supporters surrounding his death would
have the reader believe that the only reason he was undeserving
of death was his lack of culpability. Undoubtedly, the murder of an
innocent man is something that will tug at the heartstrings of many, and
can be used as an agitational opportunity. But as communists, we
recognize that the use of the death penalty by the bourgeois state, and
especially a jury of euro-amerikans deciding the fate of a New Afrikan,
is always murder. So too are the deaths of New Afrikans at the
hands of the police; so too are the deaths of the Third World
proletariat by starvation, natural disaster, or oppression by
paramilitaries serving as U.$. attack-dogs. Whether or not Williams was
guilty of his crime, whether or not the hundreds of others on death row
are innocent, the system will never prosecute those who uphold the world
order that leads the oppressed into a life of crime, will never order
the lethal injection of those with the blood of millions of
oppressed-nation proletarians on their hands.
Williams was a devout Muslim and served as an imam for those in
prison. The topic of religion has
been covered many times before in Under Lock and Key, but this
case serves as an example of how religion serves as a liberatory force
for many in prison – helping them to transform themselves, and to find
allies among all those fighting against amerikkka and the capitalist
system throughout the First and the Third World alike. Williams’s last
words were “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!”; the author
sees this as an example of why, rather than condemning religion as some
pseudo-“Maoists” and chauvinists will do, we recognize religion to be,
as Marx explained, the sigh of the oppressed people. Islam brought
Williams a sense of comfort and cosmic justice as he headed to his
death, without keeping him from organizing and speaking out against the
moribund and oppressive priSSon sySStem.
Let Marcellus Williams’s death remind all of us that this country’s
injustice system doesn’t care how much people protest, or petition.
Ultimately, polite pleas to higher authority will go ignored. The only
thing that will keep such high-profile injustices like this, as well as
the more covert violence against New Afrikans and other oppressed
nations, from happening again, is freedom from the amerikkkan state, won
through struggle and revolution. And we must remember, unlike so many of
the liberal activists who took up this cause, that we fight for
Marcellus not only because the evidence shows he has a higher chance of
being innocent than most people on death row, but because the oppressive
and racist amerikkkan empire should not have the right to decide whether
a single New Afrikan lives or dies.
Williams’s poetry is a beautiful and striking example of
proletarian-internationalist art, in how it captures the revolutionary
consciousness of New Afrikans in the United $tates, and in how it draws
the link between New Afrika and Palestine.
Communists among demonstrators protesting the murder of Nasrallah by
I$rael in Sidon, in southern Lebanon
28 September 2024 – Protestors gathered across the world to mourn the
killing of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a founding member and leader for 32
years of Hezbollah (the Party of God) in Lebanon.(1) We know some
readers in U.$. prisons will be mourning as well. Nasrallah was the
strongest anti-imperialist voice among world leaders for a generation.
And the recent killings of Lebanese and Palestinian political leaders
have been significant victories for I$rael, at least in the
short-term.
Over 1,000 people have been killed, including Hezbollah’s top
leaders, and 6,000 injured by a series of attacks by I$rael on Lebanon
in the last couple weeks. These included exploding pagers and
walkie-talkies, as well as massive bombing strikes. Amidst these
attacks, the Communist Party of Lebanon has called for national unity to
focus on fighting I$rael, at a time when Lebanon faces its own crisis in
government. They pledged to not let I$rael (and the United $tates, we’d
add) separate the struggle of Lebanon in support of the Palestinian
struggle.(2)
Hezbollah, however, has been the lead party defending Lebanon and
Palestinians from I$rael for decades. They have proven there is still a
progressive role for bourgeois forces to play today, even in our
highly-developed imperialist world.
Nasrallah had a clear analysis of U.$. imperialism:
“America itself is the decision maker. In America, you have the major
corporations; you have a trinity of the oil corporations, the weapons
manufacturers and the so-called ‘Christian Zionism.’ The decision making
is in the hands of this alliance. ‘Israel’ used to be a tool in the
hands of the British, and now it is a tool in the hands of America.”
The Samidoun Palestinian prisoner solidarity network commented on
Hezbollah’s role in the liberation of political prisoners of I$rael:
“Sayyed Nasrallah’s leadership and struggle was also directly
connected to the prisoners’ movement and the liberation of the prisoners
of the Zionist regime. From the liberation of Khiam prison by the
victorious Lebanese resistance in 2000, liberating the torture dens of
the occupiers and their collaborators and turning it into a museum of
honour for those who struggled and sacrificed there, to the repeated
prisoner exchanges achieved by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Resistance,
including the 2004 prisoner exchange, which liberated 400 Palestinian
prisoners as well as 23 Lebanese, five Syrians, three Moroccans, three
Sudanese, one Libyan and one German-British prisoner jailed by the
Zionist regime. These exchanges, in which Sayyed Nasrallah himself
played a major role, illustrated once again that the only viable
mechanism available to liberate the prisoners in occupation jails is to
liberate the land and to achieve an exchange.”(3)
Hezbollah arose from the 1982 I$raeli occupation of Beirut. MIM
founders organized to oppose that 1982 occupation at a time when MIM was
just emerging.(4) The war in 1982 also forged the Joint
Leadership, in which the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine joined
forces and attempted to further unite the Palestinian liberation
movement away from conciliation.(5) During the 2006 war between Lebanon
and I$rael, MIM condemned RCP=U$A, various alt media, and the U.$. state
department for attacking Iran and Hezbollah using gender.(6) In 2024,
the imperialists are circulating clips of Nasrallah making comments
calling for punishment for adultery and homosexuality. We salute the
“Queers for Palestine” in the United $tates who recognize the children
being bombed in Gaza and now Lebanon are a lot more gender oppressed
than any of us are here in the belly of the beast.
The history of the anti-imperialist united front in the region is
beyond the scope of this article. But the region has certainly
demonstrated the expediency of uniting classes on the basis of national
liberation to fight imperialist occupiers. Hezbollah has remarked in the
past that their alliances are closer to some Marxist groups than certain
Islamist groups. This shows the emptiness of those in the imperialist
countries who want to pit Marxism against Islam on principle. Nasrallah
also wrote that Muslims have the duty to provide charity support to any
Palestinian taking up armed struggle – Marxist, nationalist or any other
shade.(7)
A Hamas spokespersyn responded to the death of Nasrallah saying that
it will not make I$rael any safer:
“Is Israel’s problem with armed groups with limited agendas that can
be eliminated by killing their leaders, or with peoples who have rights
that they have been striving to achieve for decades and have not stopped
or surrendered despite the killing of many leaders? Has any resistance
group disappeared after the assassination of the leaders?”(8)
Despite these recent losses by the oppressed nations in the Middle
East, Hezbollah won the war with I$rael in 2006, killing as many
soldiers as I$rael did without all the civilian deaths caused by I$rael
in Lebanon. Just as the war on Gaza, one year out, has not been an easy
victory for I$rael, further escalations into Lebanon will certainly not
be either. Hezbollah and Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) in Yemen
continue to be the front line of the struggle against genocide in
Palestine and against U.$. imperialism in general.
You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the
revolution!
