Your newsletter is very empowering but a little too hardcore for the
Department of Corrections in Florida. We must not forget where the
people you’re trying to reach are at. Our vernacular is too straight
forward such as using words like “hunger strike” or “organizing of any
kind.” You got to start making your newsletter more informative to
political theory and education and building a community. Fasting has its
time and place, and its reasons. But we must be mindful how we address
certain issues. I look up to George Jackson and how he focused on
building the Black Guerilla Family (BGF). I am a new generation Black
Panther and I use your newsletters in my political education classes. We
are all in the same struggle for liberation, but we must understand that
real unity comes from sharing and mutual cooperation between the
comrades of revolution.
I’ve been in prison for 14 years and only had to fast once. Yes, it did
make the pigs do their job. However, from my observation and
participation we need to all just come together and focus on building
communities that can adjust to their social housing. Because it’s not
the pigs who do the raping, stealing, robbing, stabbing, killing, etc.
If BGF had to put a worldwide ban on all gangbanging, what makes you
think teaching them how to organize will make things any better? There
are a lot of groups who you ain’t gonna be able to unite and bring
peace. I’m not knocking your work, but we got to put political
differences aside and focus on building a commune that will protect and
serve the people. It can’t be just a prison thing. In order to get a
strong hold in any state you must have dedicated troops on both sides
(prison and turf) all working together under one banner. Yes
ULK and United Struggle from Within are established but the
people who claim that they are united under the banner of the United
Front for Peace in Prisons (UFPP) are the very same people oppressing
the people with gang violence.
How can 3 Blood Kingdoms unite with the UFPP when the actual leader of
these Blood sets are in opposition with the idea of peace and unity?
Most of these dudes be renegades who try to get some type of support to
continue their renegading. And not knowing any better we, out of
unconditional love for revolution, tell them that it’s okay. No! We must
draw the line and be str8 forward with them! You can’t be a liberator by
day and an oppressor by night! Your newsletter is on the banned list
becuz these renegaders are using you as a sponsor for their renegading,
plus the vernacular in the newsletters is too flamboyant. Look at how
fast these same dudes are requesting to be removed off your mailing
list. Their loyalty is not in the UFPP, it’s to their sets. Please don’t
let them be the demise of a powerful tool we need in here. I don’t wish
to be removed becuz I’m loyal to revolution.
I believe if you ease up on your newsletter and focus on educating the
people about theory and what’s going on in the free world the pigs will
allow the newsletter to circulate. Communicating and educating is power,
so when that is cut off proper growth and development is dead. You
probably thinking why didn’t I grieve it? Well how can I get round
justifying my rights to have a newsletter that blatantly uses vernacular
that gives the pigs every right to reject it according to Rule
33-501.401 FAC (3)(G) stating: “It is dangerously inflammatory in that
it advocates or encourages riot, insurrection, disruption of the
institution, violation of department or institution rules.” And (3)(m)
stating: “It otherwise presents a threat to the security, good order, or
discipline of the correctional system or the safety of any person.”
The pigs read everything that comes in this slave plantation, so you
can’t put your comrades on the chopping block to get their heads cut off
politically. If you’re going to coach then coach, but don’t forget that
you’re out there in the free world and we are not. Every day we have to
deal with these pigs’ bullshit! And they use the gangs as their puppets
to do hits for smokes and food. That’s the real story in this place that
the prisoners are brushing under the rug. It ain’t just the pigs who are
oppressing our people, it’s their puppets. So we got to build
self-defense communities that are not afraid to establish new order in
the land. It’s too many chiefs and political debates about bullshit.
Ride or Die! Unite or Perish!
MIM(Prisons) responds: It’s always good to hear about serious
organizers using MIM(Prisons) literature in political education classes
and as organizing tools. And this comrade is writing from a state where
most issues of Under Lock & Key are being censored
systematically, so we do need to take seriously our challenge of getting
political literature in to prisoners in Florida. This writer says we
need to focus on educating people about theory, and we do have a lot of
theory resources available to anyone who asks (just trade some work for
lit if you can’t pay). But ULK is an agitation and
organizational publication, and our goal is to educate people through
information and news about what’s going on in prisons and in the world
in general. We purposely maintain this focus instead of just putting out
political theory because we need a tool that can organize people. If we
only offer political theory we are missing the final step in helping
people to connect the theory with practice. While we agree with this
comrade that there are some things we do not need to say, we cannot
sacrifice our political line to get our publication inside. And the fact
is that the prisons use these “dangerously inflammatory” and “threat to
security” claims for all sorts of literature we mail to prisoners,
including reference materials, history books and theory.
Further, we do not agree with this comrade that ULK actually
fits within those rules for censorship. Instead of presenting a threat
to security and good order, ULK actually promotes security by
promoting peace. The prisons, on the one hand, claim that prisoners
fighting one another is one of the biggest problems they face and so
they need more guards and more security weapons to deal with this
problem, and then when a publication shows up promoting peace among
prisoners they claim this is a threat to security as well. We need to
fight this bogus claim. ULK does not encourage violation of
rules, and in fact for events like the September 9 day of peace, we
encourage prisoners to work within the rules of their institution to
build peace. Even hunger strikes were developed as a form of non-violent
protest, so we will continue to fight the censors who claim reporting on
them somehow encourages “violence and insurrection.” To them, prisoners
in peaceful protest is a threat of violence and pigs beating prisoners
is instituting security. To them newspapers calling for the bombing of
other countries are cool, but newspapers exposing torture in U.$.
prisons are dangerous. We cannot accept such double standards and
hypocrisy.
As for the question of various lumpen organizations declaring their
unity with the United Front for Peace in Prisons and then turning around
and disrupting efforts to build peace, we recognize that this is a
potential contradiction with lumpen organizations. It is a real
challenge for groups that have historically promoted
prisoner-on-prisoner violence to take up organizing for peace. We cannot
expect this path to be smooth and easy. Nor can we expect all groups to
join us on this path. But even the declaration of support for the UFPP
is a step forward for LOs. And we must work to push them even further
and confront their contradictions, rather than dismissing them as
hopeless. For the record, we don’t have lots of people asking to stop
their subscription to ULK. In fact very few people write to be
removed from our list once they get a copy of ULK. And our
subscribers continue to increase, even in high censorship states like
Florida and North Carolina, because people hear about our organizing to
fight that censorship. When the pigs stop abusing and torturing people
in U.$. prisons we will shift the content of our newsletter to focus on
parts of the world where people are still being abused and tortured.