Under Lock & Key

A South Carolina prisoner writes:

“Why did one of the coordinating members unexpectedly leave MIM(Prisons)? We should be informed on his/her departure because he/she do know our names in the group.”

This is a good question. We explained why ey left the best we can in an article on the comrade’s defection.

As to your concern about the info that this comrade had, it is a valid concern, and one we are always thinking about. The persyn who left MIM(Prisons) was a long-time cadre-level member who had access to information on a need-to-know basis, which included subscribers’ names, addresses and communication records. But as discussed in the article, ey left for some kind of nihilism and sense of defeat, and ey still feels like ey agrees with what we are doing. So we are confident in saying there is no ill-will there.

Over the existence of our organization we have constantly improved the security of our organization and specifically the security of our subscribers’ information. There have been at least 4 major technological leaps in our tracking of your info in our over 10 years of existence. We are confident in saying that our information is more secure than any other organization that you may write to, and about as secure as it could possibly be while still using computers connected to the internet.

Other than the technical side of security is the humyn side. We organize our movement in a hierarchical way. People must work their way up the ladder, and information is released on a need-to-know basis. Comrades must put in work to get access to any information. So even if they do do harm, we try to make sure they are doing more good for the movement.

We recently put out documents outlining a new mass organization called Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support (AIPS). In those documents we outline the hierarchy of supporters, member, leaders and cadre. Cadre is the highest level, and would be full members of MIM(Prisons) or other Maoist cells. We have the same hierarchy within United Struggle from Within for our comrades inside, except that cadre-level prisoners cannot join MIM(Prisons) for security reasons. (Since the state can read our mail or listen to our phone calls, there is no way to have democratic centralism with cadre while they are still in prison.)

Our latest iteration of technological improvements was a major achievement that was just launched over the last couple months. It involved allowing supporters and members, working as AIPS, to help us with work like typing reports we receive from prisoners on conditions and organizing, articles and study group responses. This is done in a way where our subscribers’ identity and persynal information is completely inaccessible to these AIPS comrades. In fact, that persynal info physically cannot be “hacked” into from the information that these comrades have.

Even within the different levels of commitment outlined above, we have instituted different levels of access to information. It is all handled on a need-to-know basis and based on one’s quality of work and proven commitment to the movement. For example, members of AIPS have begun to participate in the introductory study group that you are also doing right now. And from the people that complete it, we will invite AIPS supporters to respond to imprisoned comrades’ answers to help both parties develop their political consciousness. This will be a level of political responsibility and access that must be earned.

Back to the comrade that left MIM(Prisons). As soon as ey left, we cut off eir access to all of our digital information and accounts. Most importantly, we released a new gpg key. We use gpg to encrypt our email and confirm our messages are officially from us. So anyone emailing us should use our new gpg key to ensure that anyone with our old gpg key cannot read our messages. Using the new gpg key provides extra certainty that you are only communicating with current members of MIM(Prisons).

In this era, people are more aware than ever about the susceptibility of their persynal information being sucked up and used by all kinds of powers that be. For revolutionaries this can become a life or death concern, and is certainly a concern of success or failure. Only recently have we seen other organizations and movements begin to talk about the kind of practices that MIM was once mocked for. While most of what we’re saying here you just need to take our word for, we do think our historical practice around security culture speaks to the seriousness with which we take the work that we are doing. And we commend you (the comrade who asked this question) for also taking these things seriously.

Last year statements appeared in another newsletter from a USW leader who spoke in the voice of a subcommittee of the United Struggle from Within Countrywide Council (USW CC). These statements were not first run by, nor approved by the Countrywide Council.

The previous year, the USW CC, established policies for official correspondence with other organizations. We published an article in ULK 58 describing these efforts and giving guidance to all USW members. USW is a mass organization, meaning that people with differing beliefs can be members and might write or state things as USW members that contradict. In the cited article we instructed USW members to pass on communications with other organizations to the USW CC once you are unable to handle the discussion on your own. Meanwhile the USW CC established official policy that any statements from the CC would come through official MIM(Prisons) communication channels:

• our P.O. Box in San Francisco
  
• our website www.prisoncensorship.info
  
• our official email with GPG signature (mimprisons@posteo.net)

The statements in question, printed in Turning the Tide, did not go through this process. We cannot expect other publications to know and enforce this. Rather it is the USW leader who broke protocol, and wrote a self-criticism to that effect. But this does go to show that comrades should not take as gospel anything in print that claims to be from USW or even the USW CC. If it appears in Under Lock & Key, then you can be assured that it went through the proper channels of approval.

This incident triggered us to address the question of how to verify communications from MIM(Prisons) and the USW CC in general. Unfortunately the only sure fire way to verify an isolated communication is cryptographically. This makes it hard to verify things in print, coming through the mail, etc.

Every regular reader of our website who has a computer should copy and save our public gpg key from our contact page. Even if you don’t know what to do with this key, you could figure it out in the future when needed. The sooner you save the key, perhaps the more sure you can be that the key is legitimately from the original MIM(Prisons). If someone seized control of our website, and slowly started changing the political line on that site, and you waited to copy the key then it might have already have been changed.

While GPG is our primary public way of verifying statements, another tool our comrades have been promoting is a chat tool called Tox, which is available for all common operating systems, including smart phones like android. If you are someone who works with us already and have a device that you can install Tox on, we can exchange Tox IDs to establish encrypted and verifiable communications moving forward. Tox is a chat tool (like texting), and can be easier to set up than email with GPG.

Email without GPG signing, or letters through the mail are easy to fake as one-off communications. So repeated communications back-and-forth should be used to confirm any questionable messages. Our website and Under Lock & Key should be considered more reliable, and harder to fake by our enemies.

Most of our communications with most of our readers are at the level of line and strategy. Therefore, our allies and supporters can and must use a political lens to verify communications. You should study our work and our line so that you can tell when something unusual pops up. And then you should communicate with us about it in the most verifiable and secure line of communication that you have at your disposal. Overall, as a movement, politics in command is the best way for us to defend against falsified, or unofficial communications leading us astray.

Everything is political. While originally developed around a subculture with ideas of “free speech”, reddit.com is an Amerikkkan corporation controlling major segments of online traffic and information. It’s policy of public anonymity made it a platform that MIM(Prisons) had actively participated on for the last 5 years. We say public anonymity, as over time the site has done more and more to track the identities and patterns of its users privately. But it is unlike Facebook where you must publicly identify yourself in order to participate.

MIM(Prisons) official Reddit account, /u/mimprisons, has been suspended by Reddit for “suspicious activity” and is seemingly unrecoverable. [UPDATE: After some more work on this issue Reddit has since recovered the /u/mimprisons account. We still don’t know what the cause was of this temporary suspension. But it has been resolved.] This came one month after the account began actively promoting tactics for secure online organizing in the /r/mao_internationalist subreddit. This comrade will now be posting as /u/mimonline. We will see how long that is allowed.

When we originally set up our official Reddit account it was partially an insurance policy in case we became inaccessible via email, as happened when the FBI shut down our email provider, lavabit.com. While Reddit and Facebook are centralized communication platforms controlled by one entity, email is a federated system with many central email servers inter-operating with each other. However, setting up and maintaining an email server is not easy, so the options are still limited and anonymous email has been challenging at times.

Decentralized systems of communication are the only model that is truly censorship resistant. This is why tools like Tox are important and something our movement is beginning to use and promote more. Tox provides censorship resistance, encryption and verifiable identities. It is also available for all major platforms.

Totalitarianism in the United $tates masquerades as freedom by allowing you to pick your toys in the color of your choice, or even by making statements that are nominally outside the mainstream as long as they reinforce systems of oppression (i.e. pornographic denigration of wimmin). Meanwhile it successfully paints the image of socialist countries as grey, drab and unsexy in contrast. The internet embodies this contradiction, by offering an endless stream of content, with almost all of it controlled by the corporate gatekeepers of Google, Facebook, Reddit, Cloudflare and others.

MIM has always promoted a free internet, whether under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. This can only be ensured with the proper technological infrastructure, which is currently being built by volunteers and fringe organizations. Under socialism these technologies will receive state sponsorship to ensure the integrity of mass communication in the digital age. Currently, the vast majority of the Third World are stuck in closed corporate ecosystems like Facebook and QZone. We have strategic confidence that the vast majority of the world has an interest in building communism, and unfettering their communications will contribute to that project.

Just arrived at the Ad-Seg unit @ Kern Valley State Prison (KVSP) on a charge for conspiracy to assault C.O.s on a particular facility, drag for “Administration wants you out of here.” I get to the cell and the first voice I hear coming through the adjacent HVAC duct is the voice of a Southern California Chican@, who is my neighbor asking, “Ey homes, are you active?” inquiring as to whether I am housed with California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) as a General Population prisoner or a Sensitive Needs Yard (SNY) prisoner. Because I do not engage in the police agenda of separating and segregating California prisons based on racial disparities, I replied, “I’m a konvict!”

To say the least this lost child of Aztlán continued to press down on myself the hellish investigative tactics so often applied under the prison politic culture. As a New Afrikan leader under the strict guidance of the L1 cell of USW, I know the difference between Politics and Politrix. And the California prison system is saturated in Politrix, most practiced by the prisoners themselves. I relieved the lost child of their fears and went to the bunk area and began opening my Prisoners Legal Clinic Accounting System. I was called by another set of prisoners who were housed on an SNY facility and were members of a lumpen group. These individuals sent me their lock-up orders and asked to review mine in order that we could engage in a confidential dialogue in relation to current feuds between Chican@ lumpen factions and a new born faction of Blacks. This brings me to the titling of this report, “Checking Paperwork v Checking Ourselves.”

Here it is. I, a leader of the New Afrikan revolutionary nationalist identity is sitting in Ad-Seg unit after being kidnapped from a previous prison to fill “Black bed space” at Kern Valley State Prison; space created by racial altercations orchestrated by the C.O.s. I’ve been shot in the arm and gassed by the pigs with no reports or medical attention administered. I’ve had a Sergeant threaten to fuck (rape) me because of my involvement in a case witnessing pigs apply unnecessary force, while the anti-intelligence agents (ISU/IGI) do everything they can to keep my voice as an activist for the “Prison Rape Elimination Act” silent. I’ve been used to carry out acts of violence on other prisoners, in a mafia-like way by CDCR and KVSP officers. Officers who then doctor their reports to justify removing the targeted prisoner. All this done against my will and yet when I pull up, the lost children of Aztlán ask me am I active.

We need to re-evaluate what it means to be active. In these last hours it means less what the person’s p.work says and more to what one’s actions say. As a member of the USW-L1 cell I stand on the principle of unity as described by the United Front for Peace in Prisons. For New Afrika, UMOJA brings about UHURU as a five letter word equal to the five point star, and/or square that is Planet Earth. Whether we are visitors or make prison our deathbed, prisoners must begin addressing our problems amongst one another using investigation methods based in true information. Not hearsay or gossip shared with us by the pigs. We must not determine who is active or who isn’t solely on a housing status, because when the tables are turned you might be the one de-activated.

In struggle and solidarity.

MIM(Prisons) adds: It is easy for the state to create paperwork, and phoney documents have been a known tactic in CDCR for a long time. This is similar to our discussion around sex offenders, who are regularly ostracized and even attacked based on cases that the imperialist state has put on them. We know there are many who snitch in prison, just as there are many who committed sexual crimes against the people to get there. But we will echo the comrade above, that we must base our judgments on peoples’ actions.

Revolutionary Greetings,

I just recently received ULK 56. To get straight to the point, you asked to help you do a “survey,” on the drug culture in the prison we’re at. Wow! Are you serious? Really! I know you are aware that 1st, the cops or C/Os read the letters and studies we send to you. Are you asking us to work with the K-9 to inform the administration on that issue? Cause that’s what i’m getting from this. I am definitely not going to do that survey. Would you please inform me on why you are asking us to do that?

MIM(Prisons) responds: Another imprisoned comrade wrote to us with a similar concern: “Look I’m all for trying to fix things in the prisons but I’m not with exposing certain things that goes on within the system as far as how certain convicts take care of themselves. No coubt it’s prisoners getting drugs in these institutions and how they getting them I won’t be the one to expose it, that’s snitching at its highest level and people get seriously hurt for things like that. So that article kinda threw me off.”

We are asking those questions to investigate a problem that comrades bring up over and over. As Maoists we attempt to apply the method of “from the masses to the masses.” The drug survey came about because we have been hearing from comrades across the country that the people around them are consumed by drugs or are more concerned with selling drugs than fighting for their own dignity and rights. With that in mind we drafted the series of questions in an attempt to survey the facts on the ground around this problem. Perhaps they are not the most useful questions, and comrades can send us suggestions for improving them. But we were conscious about how we worded them because we knew it could be sensitive to answer certain questions on this topic. We think all the questions can be answered in a general way that does not incriminate anyone, or give out information that is sensitive. From the answers we have received so far we think that’s proven true. We imagine none of the info we’ve received is news to the prison staff.

However, the point both of these writers make is a good one. No one should be filling out that survey with information that the pigs don’t have already. And at the very least we should have printed a warning about not giving any information that could get you or anyone else in trouble. We are printing this letter in this issue of Under Lock & Key to both serve as a warning and to remind comrades that we are still interested in this information. We will be summing it up in a future report in ULK. Anyone who feels there is a risk to responding to the survey should not do so.

In addition, we welcome general feedback on the topic, on the survey, or articles on the topic as well. All of this is with the goal of exploring ways to resolve or at least address this contradiction that poses a problem to those organizing for positive change on the inside.

10 July 2017 - CA Prisoner responds: Thank you for your most diplomatic and well-received response about my concerns about the drug survey. Granted there is a problem with drugs in prison. Some institutions more than others. Where i’m at, here in SATF, Corcoran, CA, the administration recently installed an x-ray machine in visiting to curtail the introduction of drugs coming in. It worked. Drugs here are practically non-existent. Works for them and people who have a substance abuse problem. Not so much for the people who are, or were rather, trying to feed themselves and their families. This facility is a substance abuse “treatment” facility. I’m sure the federal government gives them extra funding for that title alone. Thank you for clarifying why you are doing the survey on drugs in prison. … My sincerest apologies if I was “over the top” with my critique, although I know you do understand my concerns.

Yes, I’m a hypocrite. I castigate the anarchists for busting out Starbucks windows or torching the Governor’s mansion without achieving any political gains or advantage; yet here I am doing 4 years for assaulting a pig, trying to bring a little Ferguson to Austin.

Subjective? How ’bout plain idiocy. I was not disciplined and had been losing my self-discipline for years. My present imprisonment caused my then 13-year-old granddaughter to ask how her grandpa could possibly be locked away in prison. I explained to her the contradictions between visceral and cerebral actions. In effect, I had to admit to my adoring granddaughter that grandpa was an ass at the time of my arrest.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We thank this comrade for eir self-criticism and willingness to share this mistake for others to learn from. We all face a constant struggle to navigate between right and left errors. This is a particularly tough challenge in the First World where we cannot ground ourselves in the proletarian majority to stay orientated. The above is an example of a left error; more specifically a left subjectivist error. Some ultra-leftism is based on a belief that armed struggle now is the best way to spark the revolution. While this comrade did not believe that, still ey gave in to subjective desires for action. We’d say eir action was actually worse than the real anarchists who have a line closer to the former.

Left errors are more dangerous in terms of getting put in prison or hurt. Then you can live the rest of your life in prison or on disability with your street cred for what you did that one time. Right errors are a less respectable way of giving in, in the eyes of most. But both are a form of giving up, particularly when driven by subjectivism.

Without a proletariat base we must seek out a source of grounding to avoid these tendencies. Reading and study is one great way to do this. Having comrades who you work with who can keep you in check is another way. This is one reason one-persyn cells are not ideal. If you do find yourself isolated in your location, try to stay in touch with an organization you trust through regular communications. It is also possible to find pockets of society where there is a revolutionary, or at least progressive current that can keep you motivated. Finally, music, culture, meditation and other leisure time activities can help you stay focused and orientated.

While we are organizing for revolutionary change under imperialism it is important that we build independent institutions of the oppressed. These are institutions that do not have ties to the power structure that we are fighting to dismantle. For instance, Under Lock & Key is an independent institution serving prisoners. It gives us the freedom to write the truth about the criminal injustice system and imperialism more broadly without worrying about the interests of our owners and advertisers, which is a problem for those writing for mainstream newspapers. Another good example was the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast programs for schoolchildren program, which provided much needed food and political education, nourishing both body and mind. These independent programs often fall in the category of what we call Serve the People programs. The breakfast for schoolchildren is a good example of providing something that the people need, thus serving the people.

A group called Better Angels is working on an independent project that uniquely serves the peoples’ need for security and safety from the police. This project, Buoy, is a tool to help people “call a friend, not the cops,” when in need of help. This free software, which Better Angels is calling a “community-driven emergency dispatch system” will allow people to connect a network of people, within a smartphone app, who will be alerted when anyone in the network is in danger. The app includes a map so that the person in danger can be quickly located.

We see some very good applications for this tool: activists who are engaging in protest and who are threatened by the police may want to quickly locate all of their comrades and ensure no one is arrested or hurt. This tool includes the ability to set a timed alert, which will only notify a persyn’s network if they do not cancel the alert. For instance, if you are entering a dangerous situation in the next 10 minutes you could set this alert and then if nothing bad happens and you cancel it within 10 minutes there is no notification sent out. But if you can not access your phone before the ten minutes are up the alert will be sent to your network.

This sort of network alert system gives people a good alternative to calling the cops, who are often a source of danger themselves. But we do have some security concerns about the project. Better Angels is encouraging organizations to set up Buoy networks and this means providing intelligence agents with easy access to information about these networks. This is not a concern for those groups that are using Buoy for persynal safety such as domestic violence organizations, campus safety groups, etc. But for activists, migrants, former prisoners and others, networking with larger organizations through Buoy could significantly increase the risk to the entire group as police catch on and monitor the whereabouts of everyone in a network, using alerts to notify themselves of potential situations of interest.

We’d recommend Buoy for people to use instead of the cops within their persynal networks. For instance, Buoy is a good tool if you are regularly harassed by the cops and want to set up an alert for support and witnesses when this happens. Or if you are crossing a border and risk being targeted by agents. Or if you are in a situation of persynal danger unrelated to the cops or government. But in all of these cases we think people will need to set up networks that are not directly linked to a political organization that is the target of government interest. And everyone should keep in mind that if they are doing political work against the government, their smart phones are likely monitored. And so any alerts sent to friends are also going to the cops.

It is difficult to set up independent institutions serving the oppressed and we commend Better Angels for its work. The Buoy project raises the very real need for an alternative to police intervention when people are in danger. Unfortunately the security problems with announcing this risk to the government via smartphone technology will limit the usefulness of this tool for activists.

We hope this project inspires others to think creatively about how revolutionaries can set up independent institutions of the oppressed, serving needs and also providing political education about these needs. Building these institutions is a key part of building the revolutionary movement.

Knowledge is the higher power. Thru dedication, struggle, sacrifice, knowledge and revolution we will put Aztlán along with the rest of the oppressed back in power. Don’t let TV and the bullshit ass propaganda dictate what you can and can’t do, much less a bunch of sheep heads with a stitched up patch that suppose to mean “authority say so.” Also to my elders out in the so-called free world and the ones coming out them SHU dungeons after years and decades of oppression, my message is this: Avoid calling the youth “little homies” as in diminishing their status comrade!! Instead if you are so “big,” I’m assuming in mind, por favor embrace the youth and teach em to teach, teach em to understand, teach em to resist, teach em to organize. Put a mirror in front of em and give em a soul. Cuz 80% of the population are zombied out. We all put in work the same, but you that are looked upon as elder and leader, especially from out the dungeon, have a stage and a mic. Remember a true revolutionary is not categorized by age, looks, material items or what one did a thousand years ago, but by what one is doing now and is willing to do for the causa.

Anyone can sit on a bunk and zombie out at the stupid box (TV) for all your life. That my friend is not a revolutionary individual, an Oh Gee or whatever you want to call it. The youth is our future. Embrace and teach. Oh, one more thing, don’t get caught up on the goodies. The pigs love to see that shit. I wonder why?

Also, there’s this hardcore book that just came out: Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán. Man, everybody needs to read it. Go on and put that paypal you was gonna spend on hold and order this book. And don’t forget to also slide a donation to MIM to help out with the books and material that MIM provides to the less fortunate. Think of it as the prison kitty we have here in the yards and write in!!

Enclosed is a bit of stamps as a donation, and I’ve been recruiting. I hope they’ll pitch in as well.

p.s. For those going to board, know that the swine is conducting a facebook background check, trying to catch mofos on the web. Incognito fellas, it can result in a denial of parole.

MIM(Prisons) adds: A few good tips from our comrade here who is putting eir money where eir mouth is. While we do not promote an idealized revolutionary lifestyle, we do think that people can often underestimate the effect that watching TV has on people and their health. And if that is what you are doing with all your time you really aren’t living life.

MIM has long been cutting edge in terms of promoting good security practices and technologies. And a while ago we realized that even prisoners need to be conscious about security in relation to computers and cell phones as we wrote about in Under Lock & Key 31. Finally, if prisoners want to get Chican@ Power, it is available for the discounted rate of $10 from MIM Distributors or for work exchange from our Free Books for Prisoners program.

With the growing calls and efforts to establish tangible peace and understanding amongst the litany of disparate “Lumpenos” that inhabit and coexist inside the many ghettos and over-bloated prison camps of the United $tates, and who suffer the same systematic cycles of inherent and inherited poverty, inequality, and oppression, the following is a poignant example of how no one wins but our common enemy when we allow what divides us to take precedent over what should unite us. As history has taught us, Uncle $am and his reactionary cronies will never miss an opportunity to capitalize, exploit and instigate misunderstandings and hostilities amidst the oppressed classes.

“The FBI capitalized on these recurrent tensions [between the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Chicago and the Blackstone Rangers] by sending Jeff Fort [the leader of the Blackstone Rangers] another anonymous letter. This time the bureau made the letter look as if it had come from a concerned citizen with official ties to neither group. [FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover approved the following letter on January 30, 1969:

‘Brother Jeff,
’I’ve spent some time with some Panther friends on the west side lately and I know what’s been going on. The brothers that run the Panthers blame you for blocking their thing and there’s supposed to be a hit out for you. I’m not a Panther or a Ranger, just black. From what I see them Panthers are out for themselves not black people. I think you ought to know what they’re up to. I know what I would do if I was you. You might hear from me again.
’(sgd.) a black brother you don’t know.’

The Chicago office explained that the purpose of the letter was ‘to intensify the degree of animosity between the two groups’ in the hopes that Fort retaliated against the BPP leadership.”(1)

The degree of the system’s stratagems against the oppressed class can be gauged and better understood by the following FBI memo written by the Sergeant in Charge of San Diego, bragging to FBI Director Hoover about the detrimental effects accomplished with the COINTELPRO scheme:

“Excerpt from an August 20, 1969 report summarizing the ‘accomplishments’ and plans for the BPP/US COINTELPRO in San Diego:
‘Shootings, beatings, and high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego. Although no specific counterintelligent action can be credited with contributing to this over-all situation, it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this program.’”(2)

I hope that all of the above will help to enlighten the “Lumpenos” to the devious and dangerous nature of this beast, and to provoke conscious and productive thought and dialogue across racial, geographical, and ideological lines. What unites us is greater than what divides us, and the only winners of our ignorant misdirected hostilities is the beast. It devours us all.

MIM(Prisons) adds: These historical documents are a very good reminder of the importance of the United Front for Peace in Prisons principle of unity. We need the oppressed to come together to fight our common enemy. The imperialists have far more resources, and an extensive spy and disruption network in place. At this stage in our work, when we are significantly weaker than the imperialists, we must counter their disruption with good security, and by refusing to help them foment fighting amongst the lumpen. Don’t judge people based on labels, rumors or second-hand information; judge based on actions. All who are on the side of the people will show this by putting in good work in the anti-imperialist struggle.

On the morning of 30 March 2015 I was called once again to the security threat group (STG) coordinator’s office. When I arrived, there were already five brothers waiting so I asked one of them what was going on. The komrade explained that the STG coordinator was profiling dudes as members of STGs but I thought to myself that I couldn’t be there for that because I had already been profiled two times. After almost an hour of wondering what it could be I was finally called into his office.

As I sat down on the opposite side of the watchdog, there was a moment of silence and a menacing glare being aimed at me and I realized that this watchdog would try three tactics to deploy me from my task. He would begin with the “scare tactic” by throwing false accusations as if I’ve violated some rule, and he would use any of my past history as evidence of why I am in fact guilty of the accusations. He would then apply pressure on me with the “good cop tactic” in order to take me off my defenses by explaining to me how much he understands and how much he hates to profile me but “it is his job and he hopes I understand.” Finally he would play his “lets make a deal tactic” by either trying to convince me to turn informant or to compromise the integrity of the people, which to me is just as bad if not worse than the first choice.

Well as soon as I realized this I decided to apply my own tactics to destroy this pig. Because I have a vigorous study habit in my cell, amongst my peers and with the komrades of MIM(Prisons) it’s helped me become well informed on not only our history but also with the rules that currently govern me here on this plantation. His first tactic was impossible to implement with my cool, calm and sure demeanor and my basic knowledge of my rights as a prisoner. Even when some of the information was accurate, I would deny, deny, deny! Deny not out of fear but out of strategy, because I believe we are at a point where we must use the clandestine strategies of the Black Liberation Army to regroup, refashion and re-establish ourselves until we are strong enough. But until then we must vigilantly study and organize.

As the watchdog tried to perform his “good cop tactic” I informed him that his reasoning for pursuing to profile me for the third time within seven months was clearly a violation of my First Amendment rights and is of course retribution for my political activity. Once I made it clear I recognized the constant profiling as a means to intimidate me into submission he was stunned; what a dumb pig! Stand your ground and do not accept any of their undercover allegations or remarks, komrade, and if you do not feel comfortable enough to slay the pig verbally then don’t say anything. You are not obligated to say anything but “no!”

The watchdog’s last and only tactic left was to persuade me to “make a deal.” The watchdog claimed that there was a file on me that held information about how many times I had received mail from the Black Panther Party, and because they had just confiscated more through my incoming mail, he had to profile me as a “Black supremacist”!

He may have thought he was dealing with “just another nigga” but I cut so deep into this pig, I swear he squealed! I explained to him that although I am not a Panther (deny) I am well aware that they were indeed not racist. I explained to this dumb pig that the Panthers do not fight racism with racism, they fight racism with solidarity and they fought for the freedom, justice and equality of all people. When he saw that I knew this, he offered to label me as a Panther as if that would make things better. I let him know it would not be better until I’m off the STG list totally because by this being their third time profiling me (August 2014 as a Blood and January 2015 as a Five Percenter) they obviously don’t have anything concrete proving any affiliation, so their only true intent is to just keep me profiled by any means necessary.

This has become my normal routine for the last year and a half. Although I honor sacrificing and suffering for my people, if we can take actions to prevent these encounters at the moment, we should do so. The smallest tactics we use will make the biggest differences in our struggle for liberation, such as receiving material from MIM(Prisons) or any other material in someone else’s name; specifically if your mail is red flagged like mine. Write the dates of your outgoing/incoming mail, and any incidents or run-ins you may have or witness with the pigs, and never keep all the reading material you and your komrades use in only your possession. Keep it in other brother’s cell not only so they can absorb the knowledge but also in case you become a target and the watchdogs confiscate your things. I hope my experiences will be a beacon of light for those seeking strategies for their plantation. Until our liberation, the struggle continues.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This writer makes a good point about the importance of tactics that will make it possible for us to evade censorship and set ourselves up for success within the very repressive environment of prison. It is very important that we pay close attention to security, and all comrades can take a stand against profiling and validation as members of any organization, whether or not you have some involvement with that group. Validation and profiling are tactics of the prison to target and isolate activist prisoners. This is just one more piece to the criminal injustice system’s social control of oppressed nations. Follow this comrade’s example and work out your own tactics for fighting back.