Under Lock & Key

Muchas personas caen presas a la idea de que millones son esclavizados en este país, y que el principal factor motivador trás la gran explosión de prisiones en décadas recientes, es el hacer trabajar a los prisioneros con el fin de enriquecer a las corporaciones o al gobierno. MIM(Prisiones) claramente ha comprobado que las prisiones de los Estados Unidos no son primaria, o significativamente, para explotar a trabajadores, puesto que no son una fuente de ganancias, sino que más bien tienen un gran costo financiero para los imperialistas.(1)

“De verdad, en su punto máximo alrededor del 2002, menos de 5,000 presos estaban empleados por empresas privadas, el equivalente a un cuarto del uno por ciento de la población carcelaria. En lo que respeta al aproximadamente 8 por ciento de convictos, quienes bajo llave, trabajan para las industrias estatales y federales, son ‘empleados’ a pérdida de las autoridades correccionales; incluso a pesar de las enormes subvenciones, de las ventas garantizadas a un mercado cautivo de administraciones públicas, y al exagerado pago mínimo (un promedio de menos de un dólar por hora).”(2)

En oposición, nuestro argumento es que a lo ancho de este país, y a diario, hay un sistema de control de población que incluye todos los elementos de la definición internacional de genocidio, y que generalmente utiliza métodos de tortura contra los Nuevos Afrikanos y personas Latinos, así como una representación desproporcionada de las personas de la Primera Nación. Mientras el nuevo movimiento de prisiones crece y gana mas atención en el ojo público, es de mayor importancia que mantengamos nuestro enfoque en la verdad y no dejar que los nacionalistas blancos definan lo que es al fin de cuentas, una batalla de las naciones opresas.

Para analizar por el cual el término “Complejo Industrial de Prisiones” (PIC por sus siglas en inglés) es incorrecto y es engañador, veamos unos esloganes típicos de los demócratas sociales, quienes dominan la izquierda nacionalista blanca. Primero hablamos del eslogan “Si a la asistencia social y no a la guerra.” Este eslogan es una falsa dicotomía que demuestra una falta de entendimiento del imperialismo y el militarismo por parte de quien lo proclama. En el mundo del día hoy, no es una coincidencia que los más grandes “Estados de asistencia social” son países imperialistas. El imperialismo trae más ganancias a la casa al irse a la guerra para robar recursos, al controlar el labor, y al forzar políticas económicas y contratos de negocios sobre otras naciones. El militarismo es el producto cultural y político de ese hecho. El “Complejo Militar Industrial” fue creado cuando la industria privada se unió con el gobierno E$tadunidense para combinar sus mutuos intereses imperialistas. Estas industrias adquirieron contratos gubernamentales, con ganancias garantizadas incluidas; mientras que el gobierno posee las armas que ellos necesitaban, para que, el dinero de las naciones opresas continuara fluyendo hacia los E$tados Unidos. Esta concentración de riquezas produce los altos salarios e infraestructura de los cuales se benefician los Amerikanos, y esto sin mencionar el dinero de impuestos que se hace disponible a través de los programas de asistencia social. Entonces, es ignorancia de los activistas el denunciar que se empobrecen por las guerras de los imperialistas, tal como es dado a entender por la falsa dicotomía de asistencia social vs. hacer la guerra.

Otro eslogan de los demócratas sociales que habla y da a entender porqué son tan rápidos para condenar al “PIC” es el de “Escuelas no Cárceles.” Este eslogan resulta de que solo hay una cierta cantidad monetaria de impuestos hecha disponible en un estado para financiar o a las escuelas, o a las cárceles, u otra cosa. Si, la cantidad de dinero es limitada porque extrayendo más impuestos solo incrementaría el conflicto de classes entre el estado y la aristocracia laboral. Esta batalla es real, y es una batalla entre diferentes sindicatos de servicio público de la aristocracia laboral. El eslogan “Escuelas no Cárceles” es el grito unificador de un lado de esa batalla entre la aristocracia laboral.

A diferencia del militarismo, el imperialismo no tiene un interés de ganancia en el preferir a las cárceles en vez de a las escuelas. Esta es precisamente la razón por la cual el concepto del “PIC” es una fantasía. Mientras que la economía E$tadunidense seguramente colapsaría sin los fondos que entran por concepto de las industria armamentísta, Loïc Wacquant señala que las industrias de bebidas gaseosas es casi dos veces más grande que la industria de prisiones, con la prisión siendo meramente un 0.5% del producto interno bruto (PIB).(2) Comparado al complejo militar industrial, que es el 10% del PIB de los E$tados Unidos, el sistema de prisiones no es obviamente un “complejo” que combina intereses estatales y privados. Este podría ser desmantelado sin graves consecuencias para el imperialismo.(3) Por supuesto, aquellos que condenan la linia “PIC” deben admitir que más de 95% de las prisiones en este país son propiedad de dueños públicos y manejadas por ellos.(4)

El hecho de que las agencias federales usan el sistema de prisiones para controlar elementos sociales que ven como una amenaza para el imperialismo, es la motivación principal del sistema de injusticia y no el deseo imperialista de obtener ganancias monetarias. Más aún, el sistema está mayormente decentralizado e incorporado en los intereses de la mayoría de de los Amerikanos al nivel local, y no solo los sindicatos locales y pequeños negocios quienes se benefician directamente del gasto de las prisiones. Lo más seguro es que no tendríamos el alto ritmo de encarcelamiento sin la presion de quienes son llamados “la clase media.”

Algunos de la izquierda blanca nacionalista parecen disentir con los otros Amerikanos sobre la necesidad de tener más prisiones y más policías. La raíz de ambos lados es la creencia de que la mayoría de Amerikanos son explotados por el sistema, mientras que las voraces corporaciones se benefician de ello. Bajo esta línea de pensamiento es fácil aceptar que generar utilidades es la razón de ser de la prisiones, tal como lo es todo lo demás, y que la avaricia corporativa puede ser culpada por la explosión del sistema carcelario.

En realidad, la explosión de prisiones está directamente relacionada a las exigencias de la gente Amerikana de tener políticos “duros contra el crimen.” Los Amerikanos han forzado al sistema de injusticia criminal a convertirse en una herramienta para la histeria blanca. Los imperialistas han dado grandes pasos para integrar financieramente a las semi-colonias internas, sin embargo, la nación blanca exige que estas poblaciones sean controladas y excluidas del patrimonio hereditario nacional. Hay muchos ejemplos del gobierno tratando de cerrar prisiones y de tomar otras medidas de ahorros costosos que podrían haber reducido al sistema de prisiones, pero los sindicatos laborales pelearon con diente y uña contra ellos.(1) Este es el continuo legado de opresión nacional, expuesta con gran detalle en el libro “The New Jim Crow,” (El Nuevo Jim Crow) el cual cubre el término “Complejo Industrial de Prisiones.” El encubrimiento continuará sin que importe cuanto estos seudo-Marxistas lamenten las grandes injusticias sufridas por los Negros y los Morenas a manos del “PIC”.

Este desafortunado término ha sido popularizado en la izquierda Amerikana por un número de teoristas seudo-Marxistas que están detras de algunos grupos externos de activistas de prisiones. Al rechazar explícitamente este término, estamos marcando una linia clara entre nosotros y las otras organizaciones que estos activistas representan, con muchos de los cuales hemos trabajado de una manera u otra. En mayor parte, estas organizaciones mismas no se atribuyen alguna influencia Marxista o por lo menos un análisis particular de clase, sin embargo, los líderes de estos grupos están muy conscientes acerca de los puntos de desacuerdo con el pensamiento de MIM. Es importante que las masas también esten conscientes de este desacuerdo.

Por estas razones, en el congreso del 2012, MIM(Prisones) aprobó la siguiente política:

El término “Complejo Industrial de Prisiones” (PIC) no será generalmente usado en Under Lock & Key porque está en conflicto con la linia de MIM(Prisones) acerca de la composición económica y nacional del sistema de prisiones en los E$tados Unidos. Solamente será impreso en contexto cuando el significado del término sea declarado por el autor, y sea criticado por ellos o por nosotros.

Notas:
1. MIM(Prisiones) en la Economia de Prision Estadunidense, Under Lock & Key 8, Mayo 2009.
2. Wacquant, Loic. 2010. Prisoner reentry as myth and ceremony. Berkeley, CA.
3. Endres, Mike. Reflections on the military/industrial complex. 4 Agosto 2010. Mientras gastos director militaries due $800 billions en el 2010, este article pone el total circa de $14.4 trill ones (tea nota 2).
4. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California. Universidad de CAlifornia imprimidora: Berkeley, 2007. p.21.
5. Gracias al prisionero de Michigan que propuso esta nueva linia.

I’m writing in response to one of your statements in the May/June 2012 issue of Under Lock & Key. In your ULK you erroneously stated “Many prisoners write about the horrible things happening to them with the mind-set that once the outside world finds out, their problems will be over and the perpetrators punished. This expectation is a myth…”

You’re wrong. It’s not a myth. I’ve heard about, and have seen, corrupt officials get walked off the unit. Once proper complaints (i.e. step 1 and step 2 grievances) have been filed and family, friends and/or representatives continue calling the director with complaints, an investigation is conducted. The rest is history. It may take a while before action is taken against corrupt officials, but with outside help, justice gets served!

Thank you for your time and concerns. Please continue the struggle.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree that it is sometimes possible to get individual corrupt prisoncrats removed from jobs through public pressure and complaints. But this comrade demonstrates the truth of what we wrote: just writing about horrible things happening is not enough. You need outside support, which is not something many prisoners have. Even when outside supporters call in to demand investigations, this is not necessarily enough to cause change. The prisons do respond to public embarrassment, and we can win some small victories this way. But with all the individual cases and abuses out there, there is just not enough energy and resources among people who care to fight each of these instances. Similarly, punishing one bad prison employee does not change the fundamentally repressive system. One repressive prison worker will quickly be replaced by another. Until we change the criminal injustice system fundamentally we will not have a true system of justice. In the meantime we must focus on battles that can mobilize prisoners around their common interests.

I am currently on a 6 month program called Intensive Control Unit (I-Con). Since I’ve been on “state” I have come across many injustices towards prisoners from the administration. I know the situation in California with the debriefing process in Pelican Bay SHU. Here it is very different. Here a prisoner can get snatched up off the yard solely on the words of a confidential informant (CI). The administration does not need facts to convict, just the label “reliable source,” and a prisoner will be stripped of school/work and be placed in Ad-Seg, possibly Security Threat Group (STG). And, like in my case, thrown in a lockdown program.

Not only this, but prisoners who have completed their term in I-Con or M-Con (Maximum Control) have gone to board to be released without any incidents are being lied to. Board is telling prisoners that they have completed their term only to still be held for another 6 months. Corruption.

There’s many injustices that I can write about and share with you. But truth is that these people really don’t want us to learn and better ourselves. So this is why I believe that one has to approach this life behind these walls with caution. Do our best to move and operate under the radar of these people, and of those who are blind, misled or sometimes brainwashed.

MIM(Prisons),

I am enclosing the response I received from the assistant warden at Southeast Correctional Center (SECC) for the censorship petition I sent to Tom Clements. The policy quoted is Missouri’s censorship policy (IS 13-1.2).

Prisoners are constantly being denied due process right here, when the oppressor enforces a punishment called “limited property.” We are put on limited property immediately based on an officer’s words, with no hearing or anything.

It is so hard for the captives here to even attain an informal resolution request that we must file before going to the grievance process. They are just doing whatever they want, not following policy.

I wrote the Assistant Warden a kite to inform him of the difficulties in the grievance procedure in Ad-Seg, and the Functional Unit Manager intercepted it and responded herself. The message I received from that is that the only correspondence that will reach its destination from her house are those that she approves of. A violation of my First Amendment rights in the U.S. Constitution.

Offenses of assault and sexual harassment occur daily in Ad-Seg here. The Warden (Ian Wallace) removed the strip cages from the housing unit. Now prisoners are stripped of their clothes off camera by COs while captives are still bound by mechanical wrist restraints. They can do anything they want to us off camera; assault us, free case us, and if we write a complaint the officers will refute it and the response we will receive is that we have provided no evidence of the allegations.

If there is a grievance petition already for the prisoners in Missouri, please send a copy so I could circulate it here, because they’re not being responded to fairly and justly. Looking forward to the upcoming issue of Under Lock & Key.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The current campaign in Missouri is based around the Petition Against Violations of the Constitution focusing on censorship, and including the failure to respond to grievances. We are always working with local USW comrades to improve ongoing campaigns and petitions. So feel free to draft up new petitions or proposals and send them in for consideration.

In many cases the lack of meaningful grievance procedure may trump censorship battles if censorship appeals are being ignored. At the same time, if we hope to see any incremental improvements in conditions we should focus our energies on specific demands that are both winnable and popular among the masses of prisoners.

I received issue 27 of ULK along with MIM Theory 13, thank you. I’ve already read the ULK and I appreciate all the articles. A few months back you sent out a letter to the warden here over an issue of ULK I did not receive. Although I never received the issue, I did talk to a lieutenant who claimed that MIM was banned. I didn’t pursue it because I had passed the time limitation to raise the issue, but I’ve since received the most recent issues after that. I believe it was issue 25 I didn’t get. Your letter got their attention.

Other than that it’s business as usual with the oppressor. Just last week the pigs slammed a young Black male (22 years old) to the ground and charged him with assaulting a “peace” officer. The prisoner was attempting to enter the housing unit when one of the pigs asked to see the watch he was wearing.

The young man being a rebel without a cause chose to ignore the pig and proceeded to walk into that building. The pig and his cronies blocked the door and told him he wasn’t going anywhere until he showed them the watch. The young man backed off and requested to speak to a sergeant. This simple request pissed the pigs off. They proceed to escalate the situation immediately.

As the sergeant was making his way across the yard one pig rushed the guy and slammed him to the ground. This caused some of the prisoners to act out verbally and tell the pigs that the force was unnecessary. The whole thing was a set up from the start. While one pig was confronting the guy another was on the walkie talkie reporting something (most likely a lie), and then two pigs came out of the building and the only Black pig out of the crowd of six or seven pigs chose to slam the young Black male. When I read the article “Trayvon Martin National Oppression Debate” it hit home when Soso stated: “Every persyn in this country sees the stereotypes of Black youths as hoodlums…” as a result any “unarmed Black youth can be killed by cops and vigilantes while the imperialist state does nothing.”

Here lately the pigs have seemingly been trying to incite the masses. It’s summertime and out here in Imperial County, California (which is less than five miles from Yuma, Arizona) it’s extremely hot. Triple digits regularly, the pigs have been forcing us to wear state issue clothing to the chow hall and the shirts must be tucked in. When it was winter and cold we were not allowed to wear thermals to the chow hall. Now that it’s hot they’re forcing us to wear stuff that will make you hotter. Furthermore, they have launched a campaign of constant harassment. Searching cells everyday which is causing folks to complain. As of yet no one has written a 602 [grievance form] and me personally I don’t have any grounds to write one as I have not been harassed. I try to lead by example and share the literature with the brothers of the struggle.

It seems as if we’ve lost a generation or two. There’s a shortage of revolutionaries, at least here at this place. Only time will tell if the masses wake up. I often imagine myself coming up in the era of George Jackson and the likes. I attempt to put myself in those guys’ shoes, and I try to emulate what I picture them being. I’ll close on that note, power to the people.

Incluimos este articulo sobre la demostración en Septiembre porque no tenemos el reporte de actividades traducido. Es algo que pensamos en organizar cada año y animamos a todos a contemplar que quieres hacer el año que viene.

SAMAEL esta llamando a todos prisioneros para participar en un demostración de solidaridad el domingo, 9 de septiembre 2012. Nosotros estamos pidiendo a todos prisioneros (quienes son capaz) a embarcar en un ayuno y paro de trabajo desde media noche 8 de septiembre hasta medianoche 9 de septiembre en una muestra de solidaridad con:

1. Ayunando por el periodo citado arriba a menos que una necesidad medica requiere comer.
   2. Abstener de trabajar por nuestros captores (o trabajo lento a productividad mínimo) por el periodo citado arriba.
   3. Participar en solo contra-oppressor, acciones redactes y solidarias por el periodo.
   4. Cesar todo prisionero - contra - prisionero hostilidades a pesar de pandilla, raza, custodia, sexo, religión o otro división.
   5. Mostrar respeto por nuestra esclavitud mutuo y sufrimiento también los sacrificios de todos hermanos ye hermanas revolucionarias.

Esto día coincidir con el aniversario de la revuelta de Attica y es previsto a atraer atención a nuestro tratamiento prendado y abuso intensificante de prisioneros del estado.

A cogemos todos prisioneros - encarcelado o no - ha mostrar apoyo con participar o hablar claramente.

Solo un día, solo una voz!

No esperamos que nuestros hermanos y hermanas incurren heridas ni muertes - pero si queremos mandar un mensaje, no solo a ellos, pero a nosotros mismos. Esto es una casa de nosotros - una frente verdaderamente unida.

Solo un día.

MIM(Prisiones) añade: Apoyamos esta llamada desde un grupo participando en la Frente Unida por Paz en Prisiones por un día de unidad y protesta pacifico, y va trabajar con células locales organizantes para coordinar este demostración. Este es una oportunidad por el FUPP a desarrollar sobre el principio de paz: “Nosotros organizamos para acabar con conflictos innecesarios y violencia adentro del medioambiente de prisiones estado unieses. Los opresores usan estrategias de dividir y conquistar para que peleamos entre nosotros en vez de contra ellos. Nosotros nos pararemos juntos y nos defenderemos de la oppressión.”

Este acción de 24 horas requierirán un poco de sacrificio por prisioneros, pero no debería incurrir herida, y debe resultar en una reducción de violencia así que todo prisionero-contra-prisionero hostilidades cesará por el día. Podrémos aumentar conocimiento mas grande sobre la opresión contra cual luchamos, y construir la unidad que es necesaria por esa batalla, con organizar grupos y individuos a participar.

Desde Georgia a California, desde Virginia a Illinois, a cruzar los Estados Serpientes, déjenos mostrar que la lucha de prisioneros es una lucha común.

I would like to bring something to your attention that’s going on here at Union Correctional Institution with staff attacks and starvation tactics. In April I was assaulted by prison staff. Upon grieving the issue at the institutional level, I was immediately retaliated against, choked with security waist chains, placed on strip status butt naked, property taken and destroyed, and placed back into cold cell 40/50 degrees with AC blowing for nine days straight without clothes. I had no sheets, no comfort items, no property, no toothpaste, no toilet tissue, no socks, no mattress, no nothing, just sleeping on a concrete bunk.

I was set up with all kinds of weapons, income tax forms, gang letters, bogus urine test, etc. These staff are out of control. I’m constantly being verbally threatened after I have already been assaulted. Security staff have orderlies empty food trays and pour chemicals and spit in the food after they starve us for 7 or 8 days straight, knowing prisoners will eat anything after not being fed for that long. Medical staff here are covering up for these attacks.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This story of prison staff abuse and retaliation against those who file grievances is unfortunately very common in prisons across the country. The campaign to demand grievances be addressed is spreading to new states quickly as comrades look for ways to fight back against this repression. We don’t yet have a petition for the state of Florida so we need someone from that state to look up citations and policies specific to Florida for reference in the petition. If you do this research and send us what needs to be rewritten for your particular state, we will gladly send an edited, accurate copy to other USW and Legal Clinic folks in your state.

I have been a reader of your publication going on a couple years now, and I find it the most uplifting and informative I’ve seen yet! Also, the comrades in this movement have been most helpful in demonstrating to us how to file a petition against the grievance process here in North Carolina prisons. I am currently housed at Marion Correctional Institution’s segregation unit in Marion, North Carolina where they keep any prisoner who dares to challenge and question their conduct or actions. However, I have witnessed over the years how our grievance process has become so watered down to the point when you ask for the DC-410 form you’re laughed at by correctional officers and told to spell their names right (ha ha ha). It has become no more than a venting process for us! There is no consideration that this is a constitutionally protected right.

However, I recently have sent copies of my petition to the Justice Department in Atlanta, Georgia and the Inspector General’s office in Virginia, as well as two copies to North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NC DPS) Secretary Jennie Lancaster via certified mail. I haven’t even gotten acknowledgements that they received any of them. So you see, we’re being stifled, even at the highest levels. Therefore, we won’t get anything done on this issue, short of court action. The people who are supposed to protect our rights won’t even do so. So we regroup, and continue this fight for justice, so as to stop this “rubber stamping” game with our rights.

MIM(Prisons) responds: It seems other prisoners in North Carolina have already come to similar conclusions, as comrades recently passed the two week mark on a hunger strike demanding improvements in conditions, including an end to long-term isolation.

On Monday July 16th, prisoners began hunger strikes at Bertie CI in Windsor, Scotland CI in Laurinburg, and Central Prison in Raleigh. Targeting a wide range of conditions related but not exclusive to solitary confinement, the prisoners have vowed not to eat until their demands are met.(1)

Check this link below for the full list of demands, because apparently the list released by the NC DPS had sections redacted for “security issues.”(2) Which might explain why the mainstream media is not reporting the more serious demands, such as “An immediate end to the physical and mental abuse inflicted by officers”, “The end of cell restriction. Sometimes prisoners are locked in their cell for weeks or more than a month, unable to come out for showers and recreation” and “An immediate stop to officers’ tampering or throwing away prisoners’ mail.”(1)

We’ve seen the increased activity in North Carolina over the last couple years, and so has the DPS, who have stepped up a campaign to keep Under Lock & Key and other mail from MIM(Prisons), out of the hands of their prisoners. Below is one image that triggered censorship in the last issue of ULK.

Just as this comrade has been pushing every administrative avenue to get prisoners’ rights respected, MIM(Prisons) has been doing the same to fight this rampant censorship and ignoring of grievances. As this comrade says, we continue to regroup and do everything we can to stop these injustices. We encourage the comrades in North Carolina to keep speaking up, as your rights are not guaranteed; you must stand up and demand them.

I’m answering the article in ULK 26, “Debating the Need for New Organizations: Cell Structure and United Fronts.”

The author wrote: “So often there’s ‘new’ groups popping up, and I only laugh.” I ask myself, why put it like that? Okay we do live in an era where there’s many beliefs and points of view on different politics or outlooks. I think there was too much written for just too little. Start uniting, stop dividing. Come together as one people in one struggle doing one work to overcome those who oppress us.

Paraphrased, MIM(Prisons)’s response was that it’s true on one hand; you agree with this comrade on the importance of not forming new groups just for the sake of recognition or self-aggrandizement. The writer fails to address the need to lead by example, as well as showing others by organization for our struggle within, and leading by positive actions.

If you arrive in an environment that lacks structure or recognition and there’s so many bright strong minds, but they fail to see how they should be fighting for a united front, you are not just going to stand around and let it be. You should strive to maintain positive communications not by bringing negative attention but by doing it correctly. At this current stage of struggle within imperialist Amerika, there is a practical need for organizing and structure in a cell where regional independence provides security. Demonstrate your work with even the best in your organizations claiming to uphold Maoism. We hold everyone to a high standard of work and don’t just look at the names and labels they choose.

Another thing, a person can’t force people to comprehend. We are here to show by example, learn, and study the value of communism. I’m with whoever is building peace in prisons. As I do time in this state, it’s really not as unorganized as it’s said to be. As time passes, progress builds. I’m not even from this state but since I’m doing my time here that makes it my home. I myself am learning and truly interested in our movement and will always strive to stay positive, uniting for what’s right. Comrades, keep on pushing, stay strong mentally, and lead by example.

On July 7, 2012 a kite was passed to me, and it read as follows:

“I might be in some trouble. You don’t know me and this is going to blow your mind. If I die in the next day Sr. Menendez in Unit 11 is responsible and probably the warden too. They are going to use inmates to do it. I threatened the warden with letters to the health department about blatant violations in the culinary and the way they do laundry and other things they are getting away with in here. If you hear of an inmate dying in the next couple of days don’t let my death go in vain.”

Without addressing the veracity of this communication, it is disturbing for a number of reasons (aside from the obvious). First and foremost is the specter of the state’s use of inmates (and I use “inmates” here in the most specifically derogatory and anti-revolutionary sense of the term) to do their bidding. That a prisoner who sought to expose an evil visited upon us all would then have to fear reprisal from fellow targets of the evil, at the direction of the oppressor, is treachery of a singularly despicable character. (This is nothing new, but its nature has become more dominant, as is discussed below.) This is aside from the actual violation of our most fundamental constitutional and human rights, the subsequent retaliation for exposing this malfeasance of prison officials and the complete and utter disregard and contempt for human dignity.

This “tool” culture is becoming increasingly prevalent. Today, not only do we revolutionary and activist prisoners have to combat the oppressors themselves, but we must overcome their minions within the ranks of the oppressed as well – we must be ever vigilant against their agents among us. Not in the ordinary sense of infiltrators and narcs, but a whole culture of puppets, sympathizers and panderers intoxicated by imperialist fictions. What is truly frightening about this new breed of traitor is this fact: they want no recompense for their treachery. They believe in the rightness of the betrayal. They believe in the rightness of their loyalty to the oppressor, the enemy. These “people” are not seeking gain. They are an enemy cadre, steeped in enemy thought and ideology. They are (in the truest sense) patriotic Amerikkkans.

Doubtless, the state creates deprivations and uses these deprivations as bargaining chips to enlist the aid of petty snitches and unsavories of all types. That is never going to change in or out of prison. That is not the same animal. What is named here is a devoted enemy, an unrecognized and unofficial extension of the state in both thought and deed.

We must be aware of this counter-revolutionary element and be prepared to deal with them as they arise. There is increased urgency for A) the unification of all revolutionaries and activists regardless of race, religion, gender, custody, set or hood; B) critical analyses of the battle field without set mentalities; and C) application of the principles and theory which arise out of critical analyses. We must rethink our strategies and possibly our associations and act based upon what we have been taught by our conditions, not by what we feel or desire. The local conditions as applied to the global struggle should advise us – not predilection.

The only reason why we have remained oppressed is the enemy’s effective and continuous infiltration and dis-empowerment. It is the enemy’s ability to disunite and exploit this disunity, which provides them with a critical advantage. These are textbook guerrilla tactics which continue to work and reinforce the need for a steel-willed revolutionary vanguard. As such, we must immediately re-evaluate our objectives and tactical assessments, and evolve to meet the pale of the enemy. This requires that we take a long hard look at our environment and account for this emerging class of “enemy combatants.”

A friend of the enemy is still an enemy.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We recently announced a day of solidarity for the United Front for Peace in Prisons, which in part is about promoting the five principles to discourage the kind of petty back-biting where prisoners will sell out for small favors from the pigs. But this comrade brings up a good point, that not all prisoners can be won over. The divisions created by the oppressors are not just individuals bought off to carry out individual reactionary acts in exchange for favors, but also individuals who buy in to the Amerikan political ideology and truly support imperialism as a system. Both groups are dangerous to the movement. We must protect ourselves from these people, both by trying to turn them to the side of the oppressed while exposing them and avoiding their traps and aggression.