Under Lock & Key

In ULK 84 we reported on a sharp drop in donations from prisoners in 2023, and a gradual decline in subscribers in recent years. We asked our readers to answer some survey questions to help explore the reasons for these declines and to begin a more active campaign to expand ULK in 2024. Below is some discussion with comrades who have responded to the survey so far about drugs, gangs, COVID-19, generational differences and more. If you want to participate in this conversation, please respond to the questions at the end.

Problems We’ve Always Had

A North Carolina prisoner on censorship: i pass my copies around when i’m able, what i always hear is “Bro i wrote to them but never received the paper.” Then there is a couple guys who were on the mailing list who say they’re not receiving the paper no more.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The obvious answer to this is the newsletter is being censored. Any prisoner of the United $tates who writes us for ULK will be sent at least 2 issues, and if you write every 6 months we will keep sending it. Censorship has always been a primary barrier to reaching people inside, but we have no reason to believe that has increased in the last couple years. Relaunching regular censorship reports could help us assess that more clearly in the future.

A Pennsylvania prisoner on the younger generation: I think it is these younger generation people who are coming into the prison system or people who have been pretty much raised by the judicial system, and the guards become mommy and daddy to them… They do not want to or are possibly afraid to change the only life they have ever known. I know some of these younger guys here who have gotten too comfortable and think: “Oh, I am doing so good, I have a certain level of say-so here, the guards are my buddies, they get me, et cetera.” When on the outside they did not have that.

Also, on my block, many people are illiterate and cannot read. I know this because I am the Peer Literacy Tutor.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Most of this doesn’t sound new. Older prisoners have been talking about the lacking of the younger forever. Illiteracy is also not new in prisons. There is some indication that the COVID pandemic has impacted literacy in children, but that would not be affecting our readership (yet).

A California prisoner: I think a lot of prisoners do not want to hear negativity or incendiary language, we get enough of that in here and I notice a lot of unity around positivity in here. I suggest less dividing language and more unifying language. In particular, the “who are our friends and who are our enemies” line could certainly drop the “who are our enemies” part. Prisoners don’t want someone telling them who to be enemies with, prisoners want to be told who to be friends with.

I have trouble passing on ULK, natural leaders won’t even accept it (I try to revolutionize the strong). As soon as I say “it’s a communist paper”, the typical response is “I’m not a commie.” Any suggestions??

MIM(Prisons) responds: Not sure if you’re leading with the fact that it’s a communist newspaper. But when doing outreach, the fact that we’re a communist organization will not come up until we’ve gotten into an in-depth conversation with someone. We want to reach people with agitational campaign slogans, hopefully ones that will resonate with them. What in this issue of ULK do you think the persyn might be interested in? Lead with that.

As far as who are our friends and who are our enemies goes – this is actually a key point we must understand before we begin building a united front (see MIM Theory 14: United Front where a prisoner asks this same question back in 2001). We must unite all who can be united around anti-imperialist campaigns. Our goal is not to have the most popular newsletter in U.$. prisons; that might be the goal of a profit-driven newsletter. Our goal is to support anti-imperialist organizing within prisons. As we’ve been stressing in recent months, prisons are war, and they are part of a larger war on the oppressed. If we do not recognize who is behind that war, and who supports that war and who opposes it, we cannot stop that war. If you see a group of people that wants to carpet bomb another group of people as a friend, then you are probably not part of the anti-imperialist camp yourself. Prisoners who are mostly focused on self-improvement, parole, or just getting home to their families may be willing to be friends with anyone who might help them do so. But we must also recognize the duality of the imprisoned oppressed people as explained by comrade Joku Jeupe Mkali.

Problems That May Be Getting worse

A Washington prisoner on the drug trade: Drugs and gangs are the biggest threat to radical inclination in the system. Drugs keep the addicted dazed and unable to focus on insurgency. Whereas the self-proclaimed activist gang member who actually has the mental fitness to actually avoid such nonsense has become so entrenched in a culture aimed at feeding on the profit he gains in the process has forgotten his true goal and would rather stand in the way of change to maintain profit.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is perhaps the biggest shift we’ve seen in reports on conditions on the inside in recent years. Of course, these are not new issues. But there are new drugs that seem to be more easily brought in by guards and have more detrimental effects on peoples’ minds. Meanwhile, the economics of these drugs may have shifted alliances between the state-employed gangs and the lumpen gangs that work together to profit off these drugs.

When we launched the United Front for Peace in Prisons over a decade ago, it was in response to comrades reporting that the principal contradiction was lack of unity due to lumpen organizations fighting each other. In recent years, most of what we hear about is lumpen organizations working for the pigs to suppress activism and traffic restricted items. While Texas is the biggest prison state and much of those reports come from Texas, this seems to be a common complaint in much of the country as regular readers will know.

Related to drugs is the new policy spreading like wildfire, that hiring private companies to digitize prisoners’ mail will reduce drugs coming into prisons and jails. Above we mentioned no known increase in censorship, but what has increased is these digital mail processing centers; and with them more mail returned and delayed. In Texas, we’ve been dealing with mail delayed by as much as 3 months for years now. As more and more prisons and jails go digital, communications become more and more limited. Privatized communications make it harder to hold government accountable to mail policies or First Amendment claims. There is no doubt this is a contributor to a decrease in subscribers.

A Pennsylvania Prisoner reports a change in the prison system due to COVID-19: The four-zoned-movement system has been implemented here at SCI-Greene because of COVID. Before COVID, everything was totally opened up. Now everyone is divided from one another and it makes it that much harder for someone like me who is constantly surrounded by an entire block full of people with extreme mental health or age-related issues.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is an interesting explanation that we had not yet thought of. While we don’t have a lot of reports of this type of dividing of the population in prisons into pods since COVID, we know that many prisons have continued to be on lockdown since then. An updated survey of prisoners on how many people are in long-term isolation may be warranted. But even with the limited information we have, we think this is likely impacting our slow decline in subscribers.

This does not explain why donations went up from 2020 to 2022, but then dropped sharply in 2023. However, we think this could have been a boom from stimulus check money, similar to what the overall economy saw. In prisons this was more pronounced, where many people received a couple thousand dollars, who are used to earning a couple hundred dollars a year. While we would have expected a more gradual drop off in donations, this is likely related. In 2023, prisoners were paying for a greater percentage of ULK costs than ever before. We had also greatly reduced our costs in various ways in recent years though, so this is not just a sign of more donations from prisoners but also a reflection of decreased costs. We’d like to hear from others: how did stimulus checks affect the prisoner population?

Like many things, our subscribership and donations were likely impacted greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s response to it. Another interesting connection that warrants more investigation is how the stimulus money may have contributed to the boon in drug trafficking by state and non-state gangs in prisons. And what does it mean that the stimulus money has dried up? So far there is no indication of a decline in the drug market.

A California prisoner on “rehabilitation” and parole: The new rehabilitation programs in CDCR are designed to assign personal blame (accept responsibility). A lot of prisoners are on that trip. “It’s not the state’s fault, it’s my fault cause I’m fucked up.” That’s the message CDCR wants prisoners to recognize and once again parole is the incentive, “take the classes, get brainwashed, and we might release you.” I call it flogging oneself. But a lot of prisoners are in these “rehabilitation” classes. It’s the future. MIM needs to start thinking how to properly combat that.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The Step Down program in California in response to the mass movement to shut down the SHU was the beginning of this concerted effort to pacify and bribe prisoners to go along with the state’s plan.(1) As we discussed at the time, this is part of a counterinsurgency program to isolate revolutionary leaders from the rebellious masses in prison.

Our Revolutionary 12 Step Program is one answer to the state’s “rehabilitation.” Our program also includes accepting responsibility, but doing so in the context of an understanding of the system that creates these problems and behaviors in the first place. Yes we can change individuals, but the system must change to stop the cycle. The Revolutionary 12 Steps is one of our most widely distributed publications these days, but we need more feedback from comrades putting it into practice to expand that program. And while it is written primarily for substance abuse, it can be applied by anyone who wants to reform themselves from bourgeois ways to revolutionary proletarian ways.

In other states, like Georgia and Alabama, parole is almost unheard of. The counterinsurgency programs there are less advanced, creating more revolutionary situations than exist in California prisons today. In the years leading up to the massive hunger strikes in CDCR, MIM mail was completely (illegally) banned from California prisons. Today, it is rare for California prisoners to have trouble receiving our mail, yet subscribership is down.

Solutions

A California prisoner: Personally I would like to see play-by-play instructions for unity. I saw something like that in the last Abolitionist paper from Critical Resistance. A lot of us want unity but don’t know how to form groups or get it done. I know MIM’s line on psychology, however it has its uses. The government consults psychologists when they want to know how to control people or encourage unity among their employees. I suggest MIM consult a psych for a plan on how to unify people, then print the play-by-play instructions in ULK. It’s a positive message prisoners want to hear.

MIM(Prisons) responds: As mentioned above, building the United Front for Peace in Prisons was a top topic in ULK for a long time, so you might want to reference back issues of ULK on that topic and MIM Theory 14. Psychology is a pseudo-science because it attempts to predict individuals and diagnose them with made-up disorders that have no scientific criteria. Social engineering, however, is a scientific approach based in practice. By interacting with people you can share experiences and draw conclusions that increase your chances of success in inter-persynal interactions. This is applying concepts to culture at the group level, not to biology of the individual.

Again, the key point here is practice. To be honest, the engagement with the United Front for Peace in Prisons has decreased over the years, so we have had less reports. Coming back to the question of how to approach people in a way that they don’t get turned off by “commie” stuff, a solution to this should come from USW leaders attempting different approaches, sharing that info with each other, and summing up what agitational tactics seemed to work best. Comrades on the outside could participate as well, but tactics in prison may differ from tactics that work on college campuses vs. anti-war rallies vs. transit centers.

A North Carolina prisoner: i look forward to receiving the paper and i love to contribute to the paper. ULK is not just a newspaper in the traditional sense of the word it’s more than that. It’s something to be studied and grasped, and saved for future educational purposes. In my opinion its the only publication that hasn’t been compromised.

i think ya’ll should publish more content on New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) then ya’ll do. To be honest, the ULK is probably the only publication that provides content that elucidates NARN. Nonetheless, ya’ll keep doing what ya’ll doing.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We’ll never turn away a well-done NARN article, so keep them coming. This is a newsletter by and for prisoners of the United $nakes.

A Pennsylvania prisoner: As with everything, “education” is a key factor. A lot of people really have a lack of comprehension of the Maoist, Socialism, Communism agenda or actual belief system is about. I have a general idea, but not the whole picture. Many people are ignorant to what it is all about. … I was a bit of a skeptic when I first began writing MIM(Prisons), but I no longer am 3 years later.

As I have continued to write and read all your ULKs I have begun to realize what you stand for, and that is the common people who are struggling to survive in a world full of powerful people, who do not play by the rules. … Those powerful and wealthy who have forgotten what it is like to be human. … When I get released from prison later this year and get back on my feet I do plan to donate to MIM(Prisons) because I strongly support what you stand for.

…It was word of mouth that got me interested in ULK, and that is what we should use to spread the word. Sooner or later someone, somewhere is gonna get interested.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate this comrade’s continued engagement and struggling with the ideas in ULK. Eir description of what we do is accurate. Though, the same could be said for many prisoner newsletters. We recommend comrades check out “What is MIM(Prisons)?” on page 2 to get an idea of what differentiates us from the others; and to ask questions and study more than ULK to better understand those differences.

A Washington prisoner: I believe there has not been enough exposure of ULK in the prison system. I only happened on it by chance. I sought out communist education on my own after not being able to shake an urge that there was something incredibly wrong with the political and economic structures in my surroundings. I believe we should launch a campaign of exposure and agitation. Create and pass out pamphlets and newsletters geared to helping people see the relevance of communism and their current situation. For a start, I would like to receive copies of the Revolutionary 12 Step Program pamphlets to strategically place in my facility so prisoners can have access to them.

MIM(Prisons) concludes: Expanding ULK just for the sake of it would be what we call a sectarian error. Sectarianism is putting one’s organization (one’s own “sect”) above the movement to end oppression. The reason we are promoting the campaign to expand ULK is that we see it as a surrogate for measuring the interest in and influence of anti-imperialist organizing in U.$. prisons. As comrades above have touched on, there is always a limitation in access and numbers do matter. Most prisoners have never heard of ULK. The more we can change that, the more popular we can expect anti-imperialism to be within U.$. prisons and the more organized we’d expect people to get there.

We are working on expanding our work with and organizing of prisoner art. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. More art that captures the ideas of our movement can help us reach more people more quickly. So send in your art that reflects the concepts discussed in ULK. We also offer outside support for making fliers and small pamphlets. What types of fliers and small pamphlets, besides the Revolutionary 12 Steps, would be helpful for reaching more prisoners with our ideas and perhaps getting them to subscribe to ULK?

Another way to reach people in prison is through radio and podcasts. We are looking for information on what types of platforms and podcasts prisoners have access to that we might tap into.

We only received 4 responses to our survey in ULK 84 in time to print in this issue. This is another data point that indicates the low level of engagement with ULK compared to the past. Another possible explanation for lack of responses is that this survey was more difficult to answer than previous surveys we’ve done because it is asking for explanations more than hard facts. Either way, in our attempt to always improve our understanding of the conditions we are working in, we are printing the survey questions one more time (also see questions above). Even if your answer to all the questions below are “no”, we’d appreciate your response in your next letter to us.

• Have you noticed changes in the prison system that have made it harder for people to subscribe to ULK or less interested in subscribing?

• Have you noticed changes in the prisoner population that have made people less interested in subscribing?

• Have you noticed/heard of people losing interest in ULK because of the content, or because of the practices of MIM(Prisons)?

• What methods have you seen be successful in getting people interested in or to subscribe to ULK?

• Do you have ideas for how we can increase interest in ULK in prisons?

^{Notes: 1. cipactli of Brown Berets - Prison Chapter, October 2014, (Un)Due Process of Validation and Step Down Programs, Under Lock & Key No. 41.}

I wanna add my voice to the ongoing conversation on Sex Offenders (S.O.’s) and LGBTQ people from a revolutionary perspective.

One key hurdle I think has to be constantly attacked and can only be attacked through criticism and self-criticism: so-called revolutionaries, activists, and political prisoners self-identifying as these things but still holding to the vestiges of their gangster, reactionary world views that make them comfortable.

A political activist analyzes people, places, and things from a political perspective. What is this person, place, or thing’s worth, or lack thereof, to the political programs that political group/individual is striving for? The military activist analyzes people, places, and things from a military perspective, analyzing what will be most advantageous to the military goals of their army, militia, unit, etc.

Because of this, morals and standards in political and military groups, among such people are constantly shifting. When one is on the battlefield, even the most avowed racist, sexist, homo-transphobe, sex offender bigot, will not allow their hate or disdain for the “other” to cost them their lives. The primary concern for the soldier or military commander would be can this person maintain discipline in battle, can they perform under pressure, will they desert their comrades in battle or go AWOL, are they reliable. If the S.O. or non-heterosexual was saving your life on a battlefield, no one would say “let me die I don’t like your kind” or “you’re irredeemable.” At that moment, the equality of humankind will shine bright and true and all the self-gratifying lies we tell each other will shrink in comparison with the truth.

I am not saying you should have no concern about the moral fabric of comrades. Usually morality and politics overlap. What I am saying is that a person/group’s political line and commitment should be of deciding and primary concern if you yourself are indeed a political activist or military activist.

How many times in prison have we seen the “rules” of organizations bent for certain “stomp down” individuals. How many times have we seen people look the other way when a member of their org partakes in sexual gratification that the org prohibits or has a case that’s frowned upon by the org? When this occurs it is usually because those in the org recognize the person in question is a practitioner of violence and that violent aggression is better with you than against you. So people make a tactical or strategic decision to condone, accept what they would otherwise attack or shun. For better or worse, this is political maneuvering at its core and it’s done every day in every prison. I am not promoting it, simply stating truths. The purpose of pointing these truths is to say that if the apolitical populace can discern these nuances then why can’t the politically do so when our causes are so much more noble and worthy of forgiving of one another’s trespasses (real & perceived).

Try a new way of relating to the people on the compound with you. If we’re revolutionaries then we should be revolutionizing the social relations and castes in prison. The prison culture fosters a caste system based on criminal history, skin color, material wealth, propensity for violence, and sexual orientation. As revolutionaries we must check ourselves if we’re not actively establishing a new prison culture and eliminating the hard-line caste structure. How? It starts with building and maintaining relations based on ones level of revolutionary ideology and practice.

Instead of greeting people with “Where you from, what you in for?” or being concerned about who they’re attracted to or intimate with, your greetings, concerns, and inquiries should be, “What are your politics? What do you think about capitalism? How do you think we could organize against the issues we face? Check out this political program, and tell me what if anything you’d be willing to contribute to advancing it.” If you aren’t doing that in some form or fashion you need to engage in self-criticism, are you a revolutionary or a convict bound by the rules and ideas of prison culture?

Lastly, the notion that any group, or person is exempt from recovery, rehabilitation, or transformation is metaphysical, subjective, and thus incorrect. Despite the subject matter, the universe and everything in it, including one’s ideas and impulses, attractions, are in constant movement and development. Nothing remains stagnant. This universal truth is the only universal truth, that nothing remains the same. Therefore to predetermine that anyone or anything is irredeemable is out of compliance with reality and is therefore incorrect thinking, and merely a reflection of one’s biased and narrow analysis. Another small point I want to turn on from ULK #82, ‘Thugs Are Sex Offenders Too’, where the writer says:

“The problem is that most transgender men-women in prison are sex offenders, they are in for preying on children.”

This statement is obviously biased and subjective, and leads to flawed analysis. It is possibly true that the trans people that writer has encountered in prison are all S.O.’s, but it is the exact opposite for my own lived experience. No transgender person I’ve encountered has ever been locked up for a sexual offense, outside of soliciting prostitution. Here’s what I mean by a purely subjective analysis, one that is narrow and one sided relying on one’s own experience only. The truth is that trans people are most often victims of sexual predators in and out of prisons. Those who’ve become predators themselves, whether trans or not, are most often victims of prior sexual abuse. Though this may not align with the writers lived experience it is the majority experience in society as told by polls and statistics. Yet the metaphysical, subjective, nature of postmodernist philosophy has us giving more credence to our own individual lived experience than that of the society at large or a wide array of the population. If we’re in the business of transforming society at large that sort of analysis will not work well.

Dare to Invent the Future

The No. 80, Winter 2023 edition of Under Lock & Key hosted an article titled “Sacrifice Behind Bars”, wherein a comrade expressed very heavy sentiments that I intend to magnify and address from a revolutionary perspective. The details of his mention were strikingly consistent with the circumstances and characters of the North Carolina prison system enabling an apparent conclusion that our obstacles as lumpen are, indeed, collective. To that extent I consider it necessary to re-evaluate our responsibilities as revolutionaries from within; as they are comparable to our revolutionary history as Marxist-Leninist-Maoists.

The central theme of the comrade’s message can be boiled down to one question he posed: “what are you willing to sacrifice?” The comrade illustrated his legacy of sacrifice to which he is honored and should know he’s not alone in that identical regard. However, for the new-coming comrade who may not understand his conviction yet and is attracted to his energy and posture; for the seasoned comrade who may be becoming burned out; for the growing comrade who may be struggling with understanding this political line; and for the critic, we must unify on the collective understanding of why sacrifice is necessary and how to measure the particular type of sacrifice to be offered for our revolutionary objective.

The author of that article asks the question of sacrifice to comrades on the streets and comrades within alike. Demonstrating his willingness to actualize guerrilla tactics amidst similarly situated individuals who have been compromised in exchange for goods supplied by the opposition makes it apparent that a revolutionary united front is diminished in that environment, to say the least. Essential to being compromised is the viewing that an individual – or a class – is not only without, but is desperate, moralless and to whatever degree, gullible. With respect to comrade’s mention of such individuals, we should not haste into judgment nor spring into belligerence without careful and scientific observation of our own perspective. It is not sound to conclude that it is an immaculate practice of social science for the opposition to infiltrate a mind that has never operated outside of its conditioning by that opposition. “Boy they got you good” etc. is not technically true if that person is underdeveloped morally, politically, and intellectually. Even if that person is from where you are from and have been through similar experiences. If you are a conscious revolutionary – conscious in the sense that you are aware of and intuit the frame of thinking employed by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong – then you are unique: especially coming from capitalist-imperialist Amerikkka. That’s nothing to pride yourself on in arrogance nor egoism, its to empower your desire to fulfill your responsibilities to those unconscious. Therefore, to be ‘revolutionary’ in its most rudimentary expression is to redirect the impulses to be inhuman as you usher in humanism.

If one is morally sound, intellectually competent, and has a desire for general welfare of others, then from those perspectives that one is enriched, if he/she/they have not sequestered the abstract and subtle impetus of the capitalist-imperialist nature of his/her/their cultural (and political-economic) domicile then even with the above virtues, in those contexts, what will be is a repeat of what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels called in The Communist Manifesto ‘reactionary socialism’; the remnants of feudal socialism. This is to the extent and in the regard of issuing counter-narratives in sole order to arouse sympathy in those who aren’t as ‘enriched’ as you to behave in a way that secures your sense of comfort. The motivations are not comparable in that example and the circumstances are as night and day by juxtapose. However, by principle and mentality its enough to say that one could be more creative from a revolutionary vantage point.

Sacrifice of any sort is rooted in the intention for a net-positive future occurrence. Therefore, the theoretical objectification of that sacrificial act bears no weight on the immediate circumstances one experiences. To add on to the comrade’s thoughts, what you are willing to sacrifice depends on your measure of awareness of what is to come of it. The knowledge of the accuracy of what is to come is based on your ability to identify with the material circumstances – emphasis on the conditions that define them – of that situation as it relates to your theory, essentially, of the world. From a revolutionary perspective ‘the world’ includes others, so when we speak of practice, i.e., sacrifice, it is necessarily unbalanced without theory.

If the masses, even in the prison setting, are viewed to be slumbering it is not for the revolutionary to wake them with a cacophony of political rhetoric, especially if their slumber is characterized by the fanaticals of capitalist production. So, we do place a high emphasis on practice. It is that practice must be guided by theory. Lenin stated:

“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” (V.I. Lenin, What is to be done?)

In his Selected Works Mao Zedong stated:

“Theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice.” (Mao, On Practice: The Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, 1937)

Mao did not differ with Lenin in this regard, he magnified the principle of Lenin’s point. In real time this means to structure revolutionary practice in a manner that conveys the core principles at work in an action bound language that is interpretable to and for the observer all while being disciplined enough not to exaggerate your behavior as to make the demonstration unrealistic. The standard by which one can scale his/her/their proposed action is in one’s ability to become one with the reality of the situation; being cautious of personal biases and having rational and isolated conclusions about each component of the embodying manifest circumstance. The sum of this process is the base from which to determine what means of action to deploy. To that extent, we in prison have to be realistic without compromising our theory (i.e. political line), some of us have immense anger issues and if that is true for the proposed actor in a revolutionary demonstration then if the action to be had does require a use of force we must consider if that one is sufficient or not for the action. Use of force does not always mean complete annihilation or insurrection. Whatever is decided upon, the objective is to be clear and decisive. The actualizer must be disciplined enough to actualize the task without going too far and thereby jeopardizing the precision of the demonstration. Lenin and Mao actually had a revolution, so this frame of thinking is sound, its relevance here and now depends on our willingness to truly get with the program, i.e., Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

The answer to the comrade’s question to the world of sacrifice, should be proportional to the details of your circumstance and the individuals and lives it would effect; from a revolutionary perspective. Only a matter of intelligence compels the conclusion that revolution is sustained by an environment prepared for it. The blaze does not come before strenuous economic, political, financial, social, cultural, and theoretical preparation. Let us take the time we DO have and align ourselves with the correct theoretical knowledge.

North Carolina IS in the building. We have recently birthed a movement – S.W.A.P. (Serving With A Purpose) – which I am proud and honored to be a founding member of. S.W.A.P. is a N.C. prisoner-led organizational base empowered by the literary guidance of MLM and in unity with the United Front for Peace in Prisons; a United Struggle from Within initiative. Our halls of learning are open for all sisters, brothers, and non-binary comrades to partake in our programs and we are dedicated to organizing with comrades abroad on the basis of theory and practice – being MLM distinguished. We currently do provide a bi-monthly newsletter called Voice of the Lumpen, by which comrades may submit articles to be published, we host a penpal mentorship program with at risk youth both in facilities and those on the streets, we provide a jailhouse lawyer legal program called “Blue Skies Legal Initiative” where comrades can learn how to utilize legal provisions in a manner that furthers our political line, and are developing more programs as time progresses.

Organize, strategize, execute!

Death to capitalist imperialism!

SWAP 1625 S. Alston Ave. Durham, NC 27707

In ULK 81, there was an article on how we should handle sex offenders in our prison movement where Comrade Slaughter expressed what can be explained as an anti-sex offender line when it comes to forming a united front..(1) This can be traced back to our overall effort to not expel and write off snitches, sex offenders, and general pariahs within the prison injustice system of the United $tates pertaining to our movement.(2) In the ULK 81 article, Comrade Slaughter has raised the questions of persynal trauma of the victim, the morality of a revolutionary movement, and the ideal socialist society’s handling of the very real anti-people sex crimes that happen day-to-day in our imperialist society – all very important questions that a revolutionary prison movement that seeks to rehabilitate the imprisoned lumpen onto a revolutionary road must cover.

We thank Comrade Slaughter for bringing forth these questions, and as Maoist revolutionaries MIM(Prisons) as a cell has the duty to coordinate this line struggle within the United Struggle Within through unity-criticism-unity. One divides into two: a thing that was in a state of unity will have its contradictions and arrive at a point where the two are split. And through criticism and self-criticism and ridding metaphysics and idealism, the two aspects of the contradiction will find unity where one side will overtake the other.

Before we begin with the following quotes of the responders to Comrade Slaughter, we raise the question Mao Zedong asked when ey and eir comrades were beginning a revolutionary people’s war in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China: who are our friends? who are our enemies?

Comrade Jade responds: In regards to Slaughter’s response I would like to point out a few things you may overlook in regards to sex offenders in general.

First, not everyone convicted of a sex crime is a child molester. Are all white males Aryans? Are all Hispanics Cartel? Are all Black males gang bangers? There will always be diversity in all groups we attempt to label or create. It is a proven fact. We all are individuals who are slightly different even under the exact same conditions.

Next, I believe that you need to truly look at what they did or did not do before ostracizing or mistreating them. Do not just judge them by the label corrupt politics fostered on them.

I agree that those who truly rape/molest and prey on underage children are not likely to be rehabilitated or to further the cause. But, how many of the people convicted of sex crimes are the true predators?

I know from personal experience, as a former psychiatric nurse, that females tend to mature sooner and seek out sex earlier. As puberty shifts from the old 12-15 to 8-11 now due to steroids and worse it makes them even more likely to become sexually active by 14. They will seek out partners where they will, including older more experienced men, who in their opinion can please them or teach them. While I do not advocate for them to be sexually active, especially not with grown men, due to early menstruation and physical development some females 14-17 look like grown adults. Then add to that the over-sexualization of our society, they tend to become aggressive in a sexual nature. As a result, some men may not realize their partner is underage. While this is not an excuse, it does happen.

Then you have men whose adult female partner falsely accuses them in revenge to a variety of things. It is not uncommon in a situation like this for the man to be convicted or pressured into a deal.

This does not mean all sex offenders are able to be rehabilitated, though the ones convicted rarely re-offend according to statistical evidence.

To this end we need a viable alternative to prisons and/or death for all offenders who truly cannot be rehabilitated. None of the current approaches are going to work. It will have to be a new idea.

We also must address the over-sexualization of our society. By making sex less of a pass time, less appealing, less mainstream, we can reduce many sex offenses as well.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Comrade Jade reveals an important aspect of the registered sex offenders status – the moral panic and the scapegoat aspect it represents. How many non-registered sex offenders and non-confirmed sex offenders in prisons (who might perhaps gotten in prison for non-sex related crimes such as murder or drugs) will partake in the ultra-leftist crusade against the confirmed ones? For the readers on the outside, that sentence alone might carry a reactionary and apologist undertones, but that is because petty-bourgeois justice oriented revenge killings is a material reality in prison and much less often outside. The life of a lumpen organization member for example is an oppressive and gritty one, and sexual crimes or sexual relations where consent isn’t prioritized aren’t uncommon; yet most lumpen organization members won’t come to prison on sex related crimes but on drug and homicide related crimes.

Subjectivism, ultra-leftism, and individualist oriented justice is another form of opiate of the masses in prison: take that anger out on the confirmed sex offenders says the pig, but us at MIM(Prisons) know that the pigs are laughing all along as this happens because it’s just that much easier to control a violent lumpen class than a cool and collected one – a class in itself vs a class for itself. Drugs aren’t the only form of individualism that is used to placate the imprisoned lumpen, the imprisoned lumpen’s penchent for ultra-leftist violence will also come in handy as a governing tool.

In a socialist society we will ban things like pornography for profit and misogynistic media and media that is predatory towards children. These things are so common under imperialism and reinforce and encourage sexual abuse.

A Colorado Prisoner Responds: I agree with Wiawimawo. I disagree with Slaughter.

A “sex offense” is whatever a legislature defines as one. It can be anything like actual physical rape to someone who is caught peeing on a dumpster in an alley. In my 14 years in a Corruptarado (as we call this state) prison I have met only a couple of people who were actual “rapists.” The vast majority of sex offenders were people who had younger lovers who chose to be with them. But someone, often a jealous want-to-be lover, found out, ratted the two out, and the older partner was arrested and charged.

Now prosecutors adore sex charges. They require no physical evidence, no witnesses. Only an allegation and a “victim” coached by D.A. investigators to say how they were fooled, manipulated, led astray, by that evil older man (almost always a man). And in states like this one without a time limit for filing, a “victim” can say, “20 years ago he took advantage of me” and the D.A. can file a charge and get a conviction.

Slaughter talks about “children.” A child is whatever the legislator says he is. Anyone under 18 is defined a child. Right now it is 18, which is the “age of consent.” Back in 2009, in Colorado, it was 15. And a female of 12, with parental permission, could marry (official papers) anyone.

In Texas, as in most of the South, the legal age for marriage was 12 when I was there. I don’t know what it is now.

The fact is, the religious right bible-wavers do not like sex, and they do not want these pesky kids having any of it. Thus the law, and the pigs (Amerikkka’s version of the Nazi SA) are used to stop it.

The conclusion of this religious fear will be what was done in the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon. Reported on broadly, on vice.com, “Teachers Forced to Report All Teens Having Sex in Oregon School District.”

At those schools, since Oregon law only allows sex for those 18 or older, anyone under 18 doing the dirty is a criminal. So any school personnel discovering an under 18 having sex is required to report him or her to the police for prosecution.

Hey, if enough “children under law” would be arrested and thrown into prison then unapproved sex could be stopped. Of course, putting older partners in prison is already being done and that does not stop them from re-offending. So it should work with the children also.

Slaughter (what is in a name) wants those sex offenders (ey calls them pedophiles – a term created by prosecutors to inflame) to be punished, and people protected from them. In Colorado there are about 4000 sex offenders in prison (CDOC). The vast majority have indeterminate sentences, which means most will die in prison. That number is a full 25% of the CDOC population. And as you probably know, the giving of indeterminate sentences is an easy way for prosecutors to get a life sentence for defendants that did not kill anyone. Great for the D.A.’s stats when a performance review comes around.

The issue is of life sentences in Amerikkka. Get the article, “The Only Way We Get Out of There is in a Pine Box” in the April 2022 issue of News Inside published by The Marshall Project. It tells of elderly prisoners, convicted of murder or other violent crimes who will die in prison. At great expense to tax payers for all their medical care.

…Make no mistake about it, if the Christians like Pence, DeSantis, etc. take over, a new inquisition, just like the Spanish one in the 18th Century will be instituted. And right at the top of the list, below LGBTQ people, will be the communists. Off to the concentration camps for all.

MIM(Prisons) Responds: A recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative exposes the arbitrary repression of so-called “civil commitments.” In cases where someone is not given a life sentence, they can be civily committed after fulfilling the sentence given by the courts. Most who go to civil commitment will never see the outside world again. At least 6,000 people, mostly men, across the country are in civil commitment after serving their time for sex offenses. Unlike court, the process to be sentenced to civil commitment is largely arbitrary. The following will make you much more likely to be civilly committed: being gay, being transgender, being Black, being disabled.(3)

Under imperialism, well-meaning laws that sound good on paper such as ones surrounding the age of consent (or the anti-mask laws first intended against the Klan protesting while cowardly hiding eir identities, but now used against progressives and oppressed nation youth protesting against police violence) will be abused for the interests of the imperialist-patriarchy. The truth is, law in itself for any given class society has been simply state enforced rules to govern the overall humyn society in accordance with the respective class dictatorships. This is why legalism (in this case referring to the idea that good laws will create good society and bad laws will create bad society) is in no way shape or form a scientific solution against the tragic cases such as rape, molestation, and grooming of children.

Under the imperialist patriarchy that we live in, children have no rights or agency to consent and the rape culture of our world will always harm the most vulnerable. “Good” laws under an imperialist patriarchy will be designed and used for the purposes of maintaining it (the nuclear family, heteronormitivity, youth oppression, etc.) that has children raped in the first place while a socialist society/proletarian dictatorship will give power to the youth to properly protect themselves and prioritize abolishing oppression above all else and especially against prioritizing profits and maintaining a patriarchal culture.

A California Prisoner Responds: I can see this comrade has done a significant amount of revolutionary education. However to truly be a communist means one has to recognize the humanity of others. It is here this comrade’s own hate is still an obstacle in the way. The ONLY path forward for this comrade is to forgive his abuser. This comrade must also recognize that the Known Sex Offenders (KSO’s) on the yard are NOT his abuser, meaning this comrade does NOT know their circumstance.

This comrade separates sex crimes from all other crimes by stating that “all other crimes are political crimes,” as a result of capitalism I presume. Sex crimes are an “illness.” This comrade (let me say comrades) states he is in for murder and that murder is somehow NOT an anti-human crime but only a “political crime.” Furthermore, Comrade Slaughter states that he is rehabilitated by saying he has “learned to be objective towards KSO’s.” He also states it is only possible for all other criminals to rehabilitate by saying “unification with the KSOs is futile because after the revolution the KSO will still need to be dealt with” meaning presumably rehabilitation for sex addiction is somehow not possible for the KSO.

I would like to start with the motion this murderer is not as rehabilitated as ey claim. The statement “after the revolution the KSO will still need to be dealt with” proves Comrade S. is not as rehabilitated as ey thinks. It also proves that Comrade S endorses the puniluation method used by the Nazis to “deal with” 6 million Jews. Comrade S. is obviously proposing the genocide of a whole group of people (KSOs). I think a lot of Jews, Armenians, and Africans would tell Comrade S. that his crime of murder is not political as he claims, but in fact is an anti-people crime. Moreover, most KSOs are more rehabilitated than this murderer.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We would say that the comparison of Slaughter’s comments to the holocaust of Jewish, Gay, Romani, and politically subversive revolutionaries under Nazi Germany to be a bit of an exaggeration. Yet it is true that the fascists will mobilize people around persecuting scapegoats, and currently it is this fanatical connection between pedophilia, transgender people and gender non-conforming people in general that is mobilizing the reactionary forces in the streets.

As we assemble this issue of ULK, a news story dropped about Larry Nassar being stabbed in prison. Nassar was convicted of molesting hundreds of young girls over decades while serving as the doctor for the U.$. Olympic team. Whether it’s to make themselves feel better about themselves, as the California prisoner above proposed, or to take out some anger, or to earn some stripes, the collaborative effort to punish people like Nassar undermines the principal contradiction in prisons. These attacks are generally a collaborative effort between prisoners and staff. Staff who may overlap with the fascist movements on the streets threatening drag story times. And while we would not argue there is never a time to ally with staff, it is a rare occasion, when they actually side with prisoners against the system. In contrast, this type of “outlaw justice” is really state-sanctioned. And it does reinforce the idea that there is some common interest between the oppressed and the oppressor in punishing these crimes considered most heinous.

If we aren’t organizing collectively to transform systems and transform ourselves, then we aren’t working towards justice. Triumphant mentions an example on the streets of FPC addressing open air sex markets in the community. Without knowing the details, this seems like an approach that could actually mobilize the people in a way that reduces sexual abuse of children and teenagers. Within prisons we can point to the example of Men Against Sexism, which successfully eradicated rape in Washington State Prison.(1) So if people are serious about taking action against sexual assault, there are actual effective ways to do this.

The ability to truly rehabilitate people will increase as communists increase their power and influence over society. We agree with this comrade that the current system can’t properly address those who aren’t being rehabilitated. And we look to socialist China’s model for how they rehabilitated people who committed crimes against the people.

Comrade Slaughter is right to bring up the question of how and what the morality of a revolutionary should be implemented and look like. To that we answer that proletarian morality must be based on whatever is best for the whole of society to be rid of oppression in contrast to bourgeois morality which is based on individualism, Liberalism, and profit. We tell Comrade Slaughter, and to all comrades in the revolutionary struggle (especially the imprisoned lumpen) to protect themselves as revolutionaries from individuals with bad intentions, but also to push themselves beyond the subjective trauma that ey has faced as oppressed people. Use mindfulness and other resources made available by this imperialist system and use it to better oneself as a revolutionary to heal the persynal scars to better transform the world around us. Don’t let the imperialists weaponize mindfulness or therapy to numb and placate one’s self.

All crimes are political. Post-modernism (the narrative of non-narrative) recognizes phenomena such as this and says that the persynal is the political. Maoism goes beyond this to say that the narrative of the oppressed must replace the narrative of the oppressor with revolutionary violence (rhetoric alone will solve nothing). Persynal scars are political scars, and recognizing the contradiction between the individual and the oppressive system is recognizing that one must recognize eir own lived experiences isn’t all there is to the world and is an unscientific way for the oppressed nations/internal semi-colonies of the United $tates to understand the material reality around them.

^{Notes: (1) Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons), April 2023, ULK 80 Responses on Sex Offenders, Pedophiles, Gunnas and Gangstas, Under Lock & Key 81.
(2) Legion of United Struggle From Within, September 2017, We Can’t Write Off Whole Groups From the United Front for Peace in Prisons,Under Lock & Key 58.
(3) Emma Peyton Williams, 18 May 2023, What is civil commitment? Recent report raises visibility of this shadowy form of incarceration, Prison Policy Initiative.<BR}

After printing our long discussion of sex offenders in ULK 81 we thought we might have spent a bit too much space on the topic. But as all the responses came in, we were reminded why we did a whole issue focused on this topic 5 years ago. It is a topic of great interest to the prison masses. It is important for building the United Front for Peace in Prisons. And we learned some stats on the large percentages of prisoners who are convicted of some kind of “sex offense” across the country (25% in Colorado, 21% in California).

Many of our readers feel they have been wronged or mistreated by other prisoners because they are labelled a sex offender. Others who are not convicted of any sex-related crime spoke up on behalf of those who are. And we know there are many with such charges who are reading ULK, reaching out to MIM(Prisons), who want to be part of the anti-imperialist prison movement. And so the question is, should we be excluding 1/5 to 1/4 of the population in any given prison system from the movement based on this label?

As scientists, we must think in terms of percentages. If 25% of people in a given prison system are sex offenders, that means in a wing of 100 people, 25 of them are convicted of some kind of sex crime. Are 100% of these 25 prisoners enemies of the people who cannot be redeemed? Even those who wrote to say that some cannot be reformed, did not include all “sex offenders” in that category. Yet, often, the way it plays out is 100% of those with known sex crime convictions are treated as outcasts. This is dividing the prison population. This is just one of many things dividing prisoners in the United $tates today. But it is one that affects a lot of people.

The possibility that we’ve been working to create since before the founding of the United Front for Peace in Prisons (UFPP) in 2012, is a united prison movement that acts in the interests of all oppressed people. People in U.$. prisons are being tortured, starved, denied medical care, denied educations, imposed with mental suffering and being repressed for political activity. A strong, united prison movement is the only way we can overcome these conditions.

The divisions preventing this level of unity is the old way, the way of imperialism. We are fighting for a new way, a revolutionary socialist way. This new way requires changes in how we live and interact. On the level of the individual this means applying the Maoist method of criticism/self-criticism. This is something we all must participate in to be part of the movement to overcome imperialism. It’s not just sex offenders, or drug addicts, or murderers who need to self-criticize and reform ourselves, it’s all of us. All of us have ways of thinking and behaving that are based in the values of imperialism.

We are calling on comrades to lead criticism/self-criticism sessions with the goal of building unity to build for the UFPP’s annual Day of Peace & Solidarity, this September 9th. For years we’ve been promoting the Day of Peace and sharing report backs on events organized by prisoners across the country. What we want to focus on this September 9th is the importance of criticism/self-criticism in the building of unity. We challenge USW leaders to take on the following plan of action:

• Every day, ask yourself what is an interaction you could have handled differently to better promote unity among prisoners? This could be a daily meditation question you take on for Black August.

• Every week, meet with like-minded people and discuss ways you are working to change yourselves to be better leaders at building unity. Give each other feedback on your shortcomings and progress.

• On September 9th, organize others to take the day off from work and school, to fast, and to focus on this question of building unity for common interests on a facility-wide level.

Use the article Criticism & Self-Criticism as a guide and in your discussions in the coming weeks. In addition, last year we released our Revolutionary 12 Step Program. This pamphlet is a guide to self-assessment and self-criticism. It is a framework for transforming yourself along the guidelines of proletarian morality. Get a copy via our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program to help you with the above tasks.

Then send us a report on your successes and failures this September 9th so we can all learn, grow and share in the next issue of Under Lock & Key. Issue 83 will be focused on the theme of “Prisons are War.” We will be printing stories that highlight the political war being waged against oppressed people and politically active people by the U.$. criminal injustice system.

^{1. PTT, November 2012, Review: The Anti-Exploits of Men Against Sexism, Under Lock & Key 29.}

Building Peace, Unity, and Solidarity Behind Enemy Lines

Introduction

“I’m going to join the fight wherever Negroes ask for my help…” - Malcolm X

Amani (PEACE) to all Lumpen Organizations (“L.O.’s”) held captive in Amerikkka’s prisons. As we fight against dehumanizing and tortuous conditions that’s done by prisonkrats, we must get united and stay united!

Eye stand with each and every last one of you. Eye take a solidarity stand to see to it that all our needs are met. Of course Eye am one man, however, though these few pages with revolutionary strength we can all liberate ourselves behind enemy lines.

Eye will be building on some topics that need to be addressed. We are the change. Therefore, we must organize, agitate, and educate. Stay on course comrades as we seize the time!!

Security Threat Group Wrongful Validation

“A healer need to see beyond the present and tomorrow. He needs to see years and decades ahead. Because healers work for results so firm that may not be wholly visible till centuries have flowed into millennia. Those willing to do this necessary work, they are the healers of our people…” - Ayi Kwei Armah

Eye am a general of the Damu Nation. Eye am wrongfully validated as “Security Threat Group” (STG) in the state of South Carolina. An STG is a classification that prisonkrats classify Lumpen Organizational members who they fear pose a threat.

The so-called threat can be educating, organizing, agitating, litigating, money getter, and/or violent. In my as well as many it’s all of the above, however all these pigs have on STG’s are Confidential Inmates (C.I.’s). When pigs validate you they place – rather kidnap – you and hold you hostage in segregation.

The only way off of a STG validation is by “snitching”, make parole, max-out, win through lawsuits, or you die. All sorts of foolishness can get you validated such as wearing flags, tattoos, literature, violence, snitches, and just being in a leadership position. Be mindful who you associate with, watch what you do and say etc.

Amerikkka’s prison colonies have contracts with other prisons throughout Amerikkka. When pigs consider you a threat they will send you out-of-state to other prisons within Amerikkka. Comrades STG is not a game this label is on you for life so be very careful…PEACE.

Case Law

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed…” - Steve Biko

• Frasie v. Terhune, 283 F.3d 506 (2002)
• Taylor v. Rodriguez, 238 F3d 188 (2nd Cir.2001)
• Sostre v. McGinnis, 442 F.2d 179 (1971)
• Incumaa v. Stirling, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 11321 (2015)
• Koch v. Lewis, 96 F. Supp. 2d 949 (2000)
• Harrison v. Institutional Gang of Investigations, 2010 U.S. Dist. Lexis 14944
• Rivera v. Long (2011)

Oppressed, Oppressing The Oppressed

“Our objective is the destruction of the evil system of global white supremacy and the re-assertion of our right to self-determination and the resurrection of divine humanity that we brought to the world in the beginning…” - Heru Akki Seb

As EYE build with each of you today know and overstand this – if you fail to overstand how white supremacy works, everything that you think you know will only confuse you!! EYE speak these words too because look at how “we” are carrying on? Every organization is at war with each other.

How are we supposed to fight against oppression but yet we are doing the oppressing? We sell the enemy drugs to one another. We use derogatory language towards one another. We do everything we can to destroy one another.

These prisonkrats no longer have to get “down and dirty” to infiltrate the people anymore, you know why? You have as EYE write this C.I’s (Confidential Inmates) within every lumpen organization. And these cowards are feeding all sorts of information to pigs.

Comrades today think that it is cool to be sitting in the office with female pigs running their mouth. Overstand this – pigs use the women to seek information, in return they pass the information on to the higher up pigs.

Overstand without the drug trade in prison majority of those pigs will not work back here. We have to end this oppression, all forms of it, because as of now all EYE see is agent provocateurs working against our liberation…PEACE.

What It Means To Be A Leader

“The leader who is not loyal to his trust, and to his associates, those above him and those below him, cannot long maintain his leadership. Disloyalty marks one as being less than the dust of the earth, and brings down on one’s head the contempt he deserves. Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life…” - Napoleon Hill

EYE am sure that every lumpen organizational leader has his/her own definition for “what a leader is?” However, a leader is one who leads self first, then he/she leads others. A leader is one who judges according to his/her own actions and ways. A leader leads from the front never from the back in retreat.

A leader teaches his/her subjects the necessary knowledge and skills on how to live a productive life as men and women. A leader listens to the people effectively and intently to overstand the needs of the people.

A leader never moves off feelings or emotions nor do he/she feel fear. A leader has hands-on experience with the people and his community. A leader never plays the role of a politician, he/she is out in the field with the people he/she governs.

To be an effective leader one must know him/herself first, his/her culture, history then one recognizes his/her enemy. You must listen to the people and respond to them without lies and false hope. A leader must investigate everyone who declares themselves a member of his/her community. A leader must always educate, organize, and agitate…PEACE.

Peace Behind Enemy Lines

“Revolution is not a speed race, it is a race for he who runs to the end of his life, it is not a race for racehorses, it is a race for warhorses…” - Kwame Ture

There should not be any wars with lumpen organizations! Comrades EYE need you to overstand how oppression works – it works by turning us against us. EYE overstand that people will have differences however, our differences must stop leading to riots, stabbings, degrading one another and murder.

We must end the beef amongst the oppressed if we want to be liberated. If the various leaders within the L.O.s are not leading right he/she must be removed. The only people that can liberate us-is-us!

P.E.A.C.E means Proper Education Activates Constant Elevation, therefore we greet each other with PEACE. From me to you we all we got so we must act like it…P.E.A.C.E

SEIZE THE TIME

Last year prisoners in Texas took the opportunity of the declaration of a federal holiday on Juneteenth to launch the Juneteenth Freedom Initiative (JFI), triggering a repressive response from the state prisoncrats at the TDCJ. The JFI campaign said:

“As you may know, Juneteenth has now been made a federal holiday in amerika. On this day many will sing the praises of Our oppressors or otherwise negate the reality of the lumpen (economically alienated class), that according to amerika’s 13th amendment We are STILL SLAVES. While We do not wish to nullify the intensity of the exploitation and oppression that New Afrikan people held in chattel slavery faced, We must pinpoint to the general public, those upcoming generations of youngsters looking to follow Our footsteps, that to be held in captivity by the state or feds is not only to be frowned upon but is part and parcel with the intentions of this amerikan government, and its capitalist-imperialist rulers. We say NO CELEBRATING JUNETEENTH until the relation of people holding others in captivity is fully abolished!!”

The Juneteenth Freedom Initiative put forth demands and calls for action including:

End Solitary Confinement! End Restrictive Housing Units(RHU)!

End Mass Incarceration!

Transform the prisons to cadre schools! Transform ourselves into NEW PEOPLE!

The history of utilizing Juneteenth to fight the torturous long-term isolation cells in U.$. prisons didn’t start last year with the campaign to shut down the RHU. At the 2011 Juneteenth celebration in Berkeley, CA, MIM(Prisons) did an extensive outreach campaign in support of the first round of historic hunger strikes to protest the SHU in California. These we see as proper ways of honoring the spirit of Juneteenth, which is a holiday that was kept alive for over a century by the New Afrikan nation before the United $tates took it as its own.

In his 2022 book on the history of Texas, historian Gerald Horne points out some holes in the story of Juneteenth being paraded by the bourgeois Liberals of the Biden regime. He points out how the Emancipation Proclamation did not really extend to the territory of Texas that remained beyond the jurisdiction of the Lincoln government. Texas was an independent state of Euro-settlers claiming territory from Mexico in 1836. Texas remained its own country until 1845 when it joined the United $tates. By 1865, Texans were strongly considering rejoining Mexico, which was temporarily under the rule of the French puppet Maximillian in order to maintain the system of slavery. While this did not happen, slavery continued in many parts of Texas for many years after the historic date known as Juneteenth. According to one source, “two-thirds of the freedmen in the section of country which I travelled over have never received one cent of wages since they were declared free…” Horne cites another source saying “the freedmen are in a worse condition than they ever were as slaves.”(Horne, p.457) Texans were determined to hold on to their slaves until the U.$. government came in to compensate them for their “property.”

Some fifty years after so-called emancipation, the war continued to wage between the newly coalesced white oppressor nation and the oppressed nations in the region of Texas.

“However, given the dialectic of repression generating resistance – and vice versa – it was also during this same period that Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion from Galveston, was forced into exile in order to elude spurious charges and wound up in Mexico City during the revolutionary decade. There he sought to establish a beachhead against Jim Crow. It was also then that the monumental “Plan of San Diego” was crafted, which was said to involve retaking the land seized improperly by the U.S. during the war of aggression of the 1840s and establishing in its stead independent Black and Indigenous polities."(Horne, p.565)

In 2017, USW comrades launched a campaign to commemorate the Plan de San Diego each August, as the military operations carried out in southern Texas by units of 25 to 100 men against the Euro-settlers reached their high point in August and September of 1915. If you want to commemorate this revolutionary history this August, write in and ask for copies of the Plan de San Diego flier to use for outreach and get more ideas for how to honor that history.

^{NOTES: Gerald Horne, 2022, The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism, International Publishers, New York.}

In most issues on of Under Lock & Key we try to address response letters to the previous issue. These articles serve as a forum for ongoing conversations within our movement. One of the topics that came up in different forms this time is the question of who are our friends and who are our enemies, who can we form a united front with? This is a question of utmost importance. In Under Lock & Key 55 we focused on the question of allying with reactionaries (like white nationalists) and outcast groups (like sex offenders), so i encourage comrades to read that issue for more on these topics.

One of the questions we tackle in our intro study program is how to assess whether a group of people are friends or enemies. I’m gonna lead here with the controversial claim that i can see a much stronger argument for why gang members are enemies of the revolution than sex offenders. We have regular letters coming in about how prison gangs are agents of the pigs, flooding the masses with deadly drugs to keep them in a stupor, and then violently attacking our comrades who stand up for themselves and don’t succumb to the plague of drugs. Of course that’s not all lumpen organizations and conditions differ in different places. But i’ve never heard of sex offenders doing that.

In my response to Slaughter below i draw parallels between peoples’ attitudes towards sex offenders and drug dealers. The fact is that both have been used as political pawns to dehumanize groups of people and get votes through fear-mongering. The use of fear-mongering around pedophilia has surged in recent years, with reactionaries linking it to fear-mongering against trans-gender people. While it’s somewhat acceptable to hate trans people, it’s more acceptable to hate pedophiles, so people like U.$. House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, are waging a campaign of pegging the Democrats as pedophiles for supporting gender-affirming care for trans youth. This campaign began in recent years with “Save the Children” marches funded by reactionary think tanks. While the marches were largely populated by QAnon reactionaries, some of our comrades have been taken in by the campaign. So there is some truth to what Slaughter says below about hating pedophiles being a unifying thing beyond politics. But this does not mean it is “not political.” It just means that fear can be used to motivate all kinds of people, and it demonstrates how subjectivism can not be our guide if we hope to achieve our goals of a world without oppression, which Slaughter shares with us.

Slaughter writes: This is a response to the article in ULK 80, “Gender, nation & class divisions – Discussion of ULK 79” by a California prisoner with response by Wiawimawo. I cannot refrain from commenting on this situation within the prison, that is, the common nature of prisoners in general and their attitudes towards sex offenders, and the possibility of organizing any productive work with them in the form of a united effort.

I’ve had to let the implications of what this comrade was saying resonate for a little bit because it sounds to me as if he is attempting to justify the sex offense of a prisoner unfortunately stuck with that tag on them and pass it off as if its the same thing for everyone else comes to prison for and/or has involved themselves with. The author seems to say that crimes of sexual nature aren’t serious offenses in the broader masses of the population. He says that its not a crime to have sex, which I completely agree with. But here’s the thing, when it comes to prisoners who are convicted of say, murder like myself, and prisoners who are convicted of sex crimes. To a certain degree sex crimes are dismissed as simply frivolous…

Many prisoners, like myself, have children (a daughter) who is young, no older than 10-15 years old. And if our child were victimized by a person who is a full grown man, then the outrage that the parents will have towards the perpetrator will be malicious and even murderous in nature. … It’s one of the few unforgivable crimes that most people in and out of prison simply cannot overlook. Killing, as a result of the dynamics of oppression, along with robberies blackmarket sales of weapons and drugs, assaults using weapons, and other violent crimes are seen as something of a necessity. People do not have sex with underage boys and girls because they are oppressed. They cannot say they are pedophiles as a result of the dynamics of oppression. Pedophilia is a mental illness that any rational society, primarily a utopian, would not tolerate and want to be eliminated. There can be no comparison, in my opinion, between New Afrikans unifying with neo-Nazis and prisoners convicted of typical felonies unifying with prisoners who prey on children for sex. To compare is the thesis ad absurdum.

Now I ought to be clear and let everyone know that, having been locked up for over a decade now, and having come in the system at 18 years old, and as a re-educated Rightist, I at one time held an extreme bias towards sex offenders. During my re-education, however, I eventually rid myself of all bias from the nature of certain peoples’ crimes (sex offenders) to other races that are clearly not my own. To be sure, the world I envision is one in which national boundaries no longer exist, a world without passports or visas or immigration quotas. True globalization in the human sense, in which we recognize that the world is one and that human beings everywhere have the same rights. A world in which the riches of the planet would be distributed in an equitable fashion. The goal for me, aligned with all my comrades who have nothing to lose but our chains, is communism.

At the end of the day, however, there is not a way for me to regard a pedophile in the same sense as I regard myself. It is a moral standpoint that is separate from all politics and I think I can speak for all of us when it comes to that point in itself. It is extraordinarily difficult to stand comfortably next to a pedophile, even if our political aims are synchronized.

These very well are potential allies, my comrades; though we also must look at the end results and distinguish if we will accept pedophilia in our commune, society, world. In my opinion, it sets a dangerous precedent to repress the nature of a person if it means attaining a significant end because once the end is reached the repressed nature of a specific person will once again appear on the scene and be in need of dealing with. One thing I’ve taken note of in great revolutionary movements is the tendency to repress a certain aspect of a group to meet future ends, and then once they are met, the fight continues among the party because the characteristic a certain group appear in conflict with the overall standing of the ends which were attained. WE overthrow the oppressors and then regress into civil war. Please correct me if I have understood incorrectly. In this way there are consequences for the deliberate unity of elements that would make for complications before the judgement seat of reason.

…As much as I hate to believe it, I don’t think there will be an opportunity for unification with pedophiles and forcible rapists. Why? Because, again, these are actions that are universally condemned. Actions that inspire murderous revenge and untold malice. When it comes down to it, I simply speak, as someone who was molested by the dad of someone I befriended as a youngster.

Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: Slaughter, you are not alone. As mentioned in the original article, doing this work we are well aware of the high frequency of child abuse and child sexual abuse victims those in U.$. prisons. There is research demonstrating how such traumatic experiences as youth can have all kinds of affects on a persyn’s health later in life, including engaging in various behaviors that can lead to being targeted by the injustice system.(1)

Your position on this topic is clearly informed by your experiences, and your position is understandable. Yet the issue we take with your essay on this topic is you offer no solutions. Do you subscribe to the purification solution mentioned in the original article? Lock them all up for life? or worse?

Consider the parallel story: Someone i knew succumbed to drug addiction, and i watched them deteriorate. I was young and it was the most horrible thing i had seen or could imagine. I took up a strong hatred for drug dealers, even began hanging out with others who did so as well. I knew of people who used extreme violence to attempt to purify their neighborhoods of drug dealers. I still find our approach understandable, but recognize its futility. I also came to recognize how the ideas of those i was hanging around fed into the oppression of the state. Thankfully, i came to realize these things soon thereafter. Now i work with former drug dealers and provide them support on a weekly basis.

One comrade wrote us last week to decry a different article in ULK 80, the one on Tookie. Ey saw Tookie as someone who just changed eir tune when they had no other choice left. This is a real phenomenon. We get all kinds of people writing us, many of them desperate for any kind of assistance. At the same time, we think it is an error to say that just because someone never served the people before going into prison that they cannot be for the people after. Such a position we call metaphysics, as it sees things as unchanging, it sees people as having an essence that is eternal.

Now, your argument is that Tookie did what ey had to do given eir conditions of oppression, and a pedophile did not have to do what they did. Okay, i see the distinction you are trying to make, but wouldn’t our comrade above say the same thing about Tookie. I grew up in South Central, and i didn’t become a gang-banger, I became a revolutionary. So there.

The poem, “The Government is a Rapist” by a Michigan prisoner reads:

“The sex offender registration doesn’t show them. The government is a rapist, a criminal at large,”

The poem is an analogy, but it’s also literal. Not only are most child abusers never caught and convicted, those who are among the people in charge are almost never convicted. As is true with most crimes, the most egregious perpetrators get off scott-free because they are the ones making and enforcing the rules. This is where we are sympathetic to the argument made by the California prisoner that targeting S.O.s in prison is just an emotional outlet for other prisoners to have a scapegoat to feel better than. What is a plan to end the sexual abuse of children that doesn’t let most abusers get off scott-free and keep doing what they’re doing?

The Chinese revolution reformed brutal landlords to join society as productive members. People who robbed, starved, tortured, killed and certainly raped people. Now not all can be reformed. But this was the default approach to all people after the Communists seized state power, to give everyone an opportunity to reform and get on board. Some of the former oppressors just went along to save themselves and became problems later on as you allude to. Yet, the Chinese prisons were very good at getting people to undergo thorough self-criticisms. They did not just let people apologize and get off the hook. See Prisoners of Liberation by Allyn and Adele Rickett. This is what we mean by offering solutions.

It’s worth considering how peoples’ views would be different in such a society that was adequately addressing peoples’ needs and questions of justice. I’d argue that we will see far fewer people resorting to vigilantiism in order to feel justice is served in such a system, and that the popular views that all sex offenders should die, or all drug dealers should die, would whither away as the presence of drugs and sexual abuse also whither away

You spend some time on the California prisoner’s claims in ULK 80 about all sex being outlawed. This is another point of unity we have with you and we did not defend these claims. Even in our belief that all sex is rape, we apply proletarian morality to justice. And in many cases after the seizure of power by the communists in China, proletarian morality meant the death penalty for former landlords and oppressors of the people. But the death penalty alone does nothing to end economic exploitation or child sexual abuse.

As we said in the original article, we see all people in the imperialist countries as reforming criminals. The worst criminals are not in prison, they are running the prison, the military, the country. But as a group, those in prison have also committed some significant crimes, despite some being completely innocent. If we require everyone to be righteous communists from birth, as the critic of the Tookie article seems to imply, then we will never succeed.

It’s striking that you don’t see a parallel between nazis and pedophiles. We argue in the original article that there are less antagonistic contradictions with pedophiles. How do you argue to the contrary? Nazis generally believe that the current system of national oppression, imperialism, should be more extreme and more oppressive towards the majority of the world! Including the genocide of whole peoples! What crime could be worse than this? That said, as we also discussed, some nazis in prison reform to take up anti-imperialism. But we do not say that nazis as a group are allies because some individuals reformed and denounced their anti-people fascist ways.

When you talk about the unbridgeable divide you refer to the outrage of the parent of a molested child, and an inability to stand comfortably next to a pedophile, these are subjective reactions. Understandable, absolutely, but subjective. In the first lesson of our intro study course we have comrades analyze a topic that is very emotional for them and sort out the subjective stories and the hard facts. This is a useful exercise to help us understand the world and transform it.

Another comrade responding to the self-criticism i wrote in ULK 80 around the “Gunnas Stop” article criticized the prisoner who wrote in for being understanding of sexual acts towards prison staff:

“Those who wrote in support of Gunnas are in the wrong. They miss the whole point, it’s not about sympathy for the enemy, it’s about oppression. Communism is the goal, get that: communism – not the trading of one oppression for another. Page 2, point #1: read that shit, live that shit, teach that shit – equality against the oppressor is one thing, a legit thing, becoming the oppressor? What?! Communism doesn’t have room for those who wish to become oppressors themselves, you feel like that, then you’re the enemy too. Page 2, point #1, understand that shit: frustration at being oppressed is natural, it’s needed, this is war; but don’t you dare assume that once the power is taken from the oppressor you can fill the role – never that – then you’re the enemy.”

We aim to end all oppression, and do not aspire to oppress others. However, it’s not that oppression is never used by communists, as that is exactly what the dictatorship of the proletariat is – it is a state, a tool used by one class to oppress another. We do think the comrade above is correct in terms of combating “murderous revenge and untold malice” by the communist camp. The Chinese communists did not kill every last landlord as they came to power. They acted objectively, applying proletarian morality, which is informed by the subjective feelings of the masses but in a way that works towards a practical shared goal of transforming material conditions.

There is no apolitical morality as you argue. We must deal with child sexual abuse politically as we do with all crimes against the people. We must figure out how to transform our society to eliminate these crimes, or else they will keep happening. The fascist strategy of purification gets us nowhere.

You say pedophilia is not a result of the dynamics of oppression. I’d challenge that. There are many cases of people abusing children seemingly as a direct result of the abuse they suffered as children. In addition, the sexualization of power and of young people in our culture certainly has an affect on humyn behavior in our society. Attacking this culture and supporting victims are two ways to combat the problem of child abuse. Bourgeois science suggest there are disorders in the brain that cause pedophilia, but like any psychological diagnosis under patriarchal capitalism we are holding out for evidence that these “disorders” still exist in a world where people don’t have power over others.

Your assessment of divisions after a revolution is very astute. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the furthest advance of socialism we’ve seen to date, was based on the idea that a new bourgeoisie arises with in the party. So this is not just about old enemies rising again from the ranks, but the internal contradictions of the system creating new enemies as well. This reiterates that it is idealists to believe we can build an ideologically pure party before waging revolution. Dialectics is the concept that their are always contradictions within a thing, and things are always changing.

Revolutions are won by uniting disparate forces on a common goal. One tool we use to address this issue is the united front. The united front allows separate parties with separate interests to act towards a common goal. It also includes mass organizations, with less developed political lines. The communist party is the proletarian pole, providing proletarian leadership in the united front.

People in the communist party must carry themselves as communists. Even here, we must not be too idealistic, no one is perfect and we are all products of our conditions. But anti-people crimes certainly would not be tolerated within the party. The united front allows for the party to lead and unite with other forces and organization that may not always work in the interests of the people. The united front allows for the party to be critical of our allies when necessary to show the masses there is a better way.

We must put politics in command. With politics in command we can sort out true comrades, allies and enemies. With politics in command we can win over potential allies and sometimes even win over individual enemies. People who have committed crimes against the people and do not recognize them as crimes are people who have not gone through the necessary self-criticism to be called true comrades. We are all products of this world (and victims of it) and we are all self-determining beings. That is the duality of humyn reality. It is up to us whether we struggle with the parts of ourselves that reflect the oppressive system we are in and transform them into something to better serve the people.

^{NOTES: 1. Nadine Burke Harris, 2018, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.}

In Under Lock & Key No. 83 (Fall 2023) there was an article authored by the Komrade General Divine Minister titled “The Enemy Within,” wherein the Komrade expressed his antipathy for the prisoners who have malleable and submissive personalities. I intend to elucidate upon why said prisoners are so complacent and have an unfortunate propensity for collaborating with their overseers. However, before doing so I find it necessary to elucidate what constitutes a political prisoner.

Major documents have been written on this subject and multiple definitions have been used to define what constitutes a political prisoner. From Komrade George Jackson’s definition:

“All Black people, wherever they are, whatever their crimes, even crimes against other Blacks, are political prisoners because the system has dealt with them differently than with Whites. Whitey gets the benefit of every law, every loophole, and the benefit of being judged by his peers – other White people. Blacks don’t get the benefit of any such jury trial by peers. Such a trial is almost a cinch to result in the conviction of a Black person, and it’s a conscious political decision that Blacks don’t have those benefits…”(1)

To the definition given by the Komrades of MIM(Prisons):

“All prisoners are political. War is politics and prisons are war. While some enter prison politicized, many more are politicized inside…”(2)

Albeit, both definitions provide some context, they ultimately fail to explicate the criterion for Political Prisoners. As explained by the New Afrikan Freedom Fighter Atiba Fakih:

“PRACTICE is that criterion. Political Prisoners are Revolutionaries; they are conscious and active servants of the people, Political Prisoners direct their energies toward the enemies of the people – they do not commit”crimes” against the people. Political Prisoners are Revolutionary Cadre; they are “fighting men and women” from among the people. Political Prisoners are the most conscious element of the people. While they are a “part of” the people, distinctions must be made between them and the colonized masses as a whole.”(3)

This definition draws a clear line of demarcation between the political prisoner and the “inmate slave”. Unlike the complacent, submissive prisoner, the political prisoner has undergone a process of social and mental growth. S/he has transformed the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality, further arming themselves with the discernment that is needed to combat the war of attrition that has been launched by the oppressor nation.

The distinctions between the political prisoner and the “inmate slave” are sharped by the political prisoner’s praxis. However, this doesn’t relieve the political prisoner from eir duties of doing Mobilizing, Organizing, Revolutionizing, & Educating among eir peers. With knowledge comes responsibility.

You see the “real enemy” recognizes that these prisons are reservoirs full of freedom fighters from the oppressed nations who are most receptive and responsive to the need to become conscious, active participants in the war against the chief colonizer. Which is why the overseers are adroit at dividing and conquering the “inmate slave”.

We become complicit to the war being waged against us when we further alienate the “inmate slave”. We must understand everything and everybody is a unity of opposites and everything is in motion and changing all the time. Internal contradictions are the basis for change, but external factors set the conditions and influence. If we look for the worst in people, we shall always find it, this is not so difficult, but it is better to bring out the good in them if we can. Alienating people is easy, but inspiring them takes more effort and has better results. Getting angry and fed up with our peers is also easy, it takes more effort to understand the cause of their behavior. You see when adopting an ideology that compels – at some point – one to take a confrontational stand against a stronger opponent based solely upon principle, one must have a certain mental and emotional fortitude and commitment. The majority of our peers don’t have this sort of constitution; therefore, this certain mental and emotional fortitude must be instilled in our peers and this can only be done if we assist them with breaking the psychological barriers that have stultified their will to resist.

The prisoner is the child of a domestically colonized people – a people who have been traumatized, abused, miseducated, murdered, denigrated, and perpetually subjected to economic insecurities. Under these conditions their values and sense of self have been destroyed, therefore making them susceptible to manipulation and other psychological warfare techniques.

As the Komrade Joka Heshima Jinsai points out:

“Perhaps the single most glaring proof that New Afrikan people, Our people, suffer from colonial psychosis (i.e. irrational behavior by colonial subjects) is the historic and consistent irrational responses We have had to Our collective oppression.”(4)

He goes on to say:

“The people, by and large, have been conditioned to compete, not cooperate, to revere hyper-individualism while looking skeptically upon collective work and responsibility; to be dependent on the same institutions responsible for their oppression, instead of depending on one another.”(4)

We must always remember to remember this when struggling with Our peers. The oppressors have waged some intense psychological warfare on us. Some are just not going to be receptive to progressive thinking. Nevertheless I’m firmly convinced that if we do Mobilizing, Organizing, Revolutionizing, & Education We will create conditions that promote an ethics of duty, loyalty, commitment, and responsibility.

The Struggle is Never Ending

<sup>Sources:
1. George Jackson, Blood in my Eye.
2. “On Transforming The Colonial/Criminal Mentality”, New Afrikan P.O.W. Journal, Book One.
3. General Divine Minister, October 2023, “Where Your Loyalty Lies, The Enemy Within”, Under Lock & Key No. 83 Fall 2023.
4. Joka Heshima Jinsai, On Withdrawal, Part 1.</sup>

I’m currently in the process of trying to start a non-profit organization to shed some light on the corruption that’s currently taking place in the Florida Department of Corrections and I was hoping that you guys can connect me with some people or provide me with some material to assist me with laying the foundation of this non-profit organization that is guaranteed to last for generations to come. I’m actually currently writing a book that goes into depths about some of the things prison officials have been doing to prisoners in Security Housing Units and I’m planning on using the book as the face of the non-profit. It’s just hard finding people to assist me with this organization, which is why I’m reaching out to you guys in hopes that you guys can assist me with this matter, because it’s time the people of society become aware of what’s currently taking place in the Florida Department of Corrections.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We want to express solidarity with this comrade’s mission to expose oppression in prison, that is one of the goals of the independent institutions Under Lock & Key and prisoncensorship.info, that have been consistently exposing this abuse across the country since 2007. We also agree with the focus on what is going on in the SHU/Ad-Seg/solitary confinement torture units that our movement has campaigned to end for decades.

We want to respond to this comrade publicly though to discuss some points of how to effectively expose these atrocities, and more importantly how to effectively stop them.

We also want to address everyone who has written us for help with or just plans for starting a new non-profit, and everyone who has written to us about their new book they want help promoting. We’ve received countless letters of both types in recent months. So we want to make a couple things clear.

If you wrote a book and you haven’t been doing it as part of your study with us over the years, we’re not going to publish it, we only publish Maoist literature. Similarly, we aren’t going to promote the book you already put out, we only promote Maoist literature.

If you’re trying to start a new organization, first we will refer you to our congress resolution from 2011, that reads in part:

"We only work to build two organizations at this time: MIM(Prisons) and USW. The only organizing group we run for prisoners is the USW leaders group, and even that is mostly done through Under Lock & Key for efficiency and to reach the masses with info on USW work.

“There are only a few conditions that would merit launching a new prison-based organization: [in short, you disagree with MIM(Prisons) cardinal principles, you are migrating an existing lumpen org to become a revolutionary org, or you are building a single nation org]”(1)

This resolution is targeted more towards independent revolutionary organizations. The comrade above, and many others, write to us about starting non-profits. In short, and in general, non-profits use institutional money to fund jobs for people to do reformism who might otherwise fight for real change. Now, we will admit some non-profits do good work. You will see us cite the work of groups like the Prison Policy Initiative and the Human Rights Defense Center/Prison Legal News over the years. In fact, HRDC does a lot to expose the Florida DOC, so we must ask our comrade from Florida, why not just work with HRDC? Why waste all that effort to create a new group that has the same goal when it’s so hard to find supporters? It could be that your strongest supporters already have an org.

Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the the mid-1800s, commented on how Amerikans create a new organization for everything. Probably something about our crass individualism in this country. This is being amplified today with the internet, where individuals can create online persynalities that feign to be projects or organizations. In these cases they often rely on the cult of persynality, and sometimes become actual cults.

We must question the motivations of people sometimes. Do you want to end oppression, or do you want to create a project that is yours? If you want to end oppression, what do you think the thousands of other organizations out there all got wrong that you need to form a new one?

The only way we will be effective in real change is to unite more forces, not by dividing into more and more little cliques and narrowly-focused non-profits. And while we can ally with and find useful the work of some non-profits today, we must grow the Maoist movement to be able to do the things they do under Maoist leadership to have a greater impact.

We know most of our readers just want to reform the prison system. If that’s where you’re at politically, by all means, join a non-profit. And we are happy to ally with you in battles against things like censorship and solitary confinement. But we know, based on our study of history, that only by completely overthrowing imperialism and building socialism through constant class struggle can we ever hope to end the oppression that certain populations face today in Amerikan prisons. We do not promote books or build organizations that hide this fact. And we work to win over reformists to the revolutionary road through struggle against the state and demonstrating the limitations of efforts that do not actually seek to build power to overcome imperialism.

^{Notes: 1.MIM(Prisons) 2011 Congress Summary and Resolutions}