I N T E R N E T ' S M A O I S T BI-M O N T H L Y = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = XX XX XXX XX XX X X XXX XXX XXX XXX X X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X V X X X V X X X X X X X XX XXX X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X XXX X X X V XXX X XXX XXX = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT MIM Notes 174 November 15, 1998 MIM Notes speaks to and from the viewpoint of the world's oppressed majority, and against the imperialist-patriarchy. Pick it up and wield it in the service of the people. support it, struggle with it and write for it. IN THIS ISSUE: 1. AMERIKA DEMANDS CHRISTIAN FREEDOM INTERNATIONALLY, DENIES FREEDOMS AT HOME 2. A CALL FOR ACTION TO THE CONSCIOUS PEOPLE 3. LETTERS 4. REACTIONARY FANATICS KILL MEDICAL DOCTOR, GAY STUDENT 5. WORLD RAINFOREST WEEK 6. RAIL A HIT AT CRITICAL RESISTANCE 7. PROTESTERS DENOUNCE BRUTALITY IN CALIFORNIA PRISONS 8. MIM LEGAL NOTES 9. SUPPORT THE REVOLUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES 10. WHITE MAN GETS A VOTE ON INDIAN CASINOS 11. LENINGRAD CONGRESS SUPPORTS LENIN AND STALIN 12. MICHIGAN PRISONS OVER THE EDGE: FACILITY CENSORS VIBE 13. RAIL INITIATES RADIO PROGRAM ON PRISONS 14. GREEN POLITICS 15. AFGHAN LIBERATION ORGANIZATION CELEBRATES MARTYR'S DAY 16. CULTURE PAGE 17. SOLDIER 18. FBI'S WAR ON BLACK AMERICA 19. RUSH HOUR 20. BLADE 21. UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONS AND PRISONERS * * * WHAT IS MIM? The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is a revolutionary communist party that upholds Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, comprising the collection of existing or emerging Maoist internationalist parties in the English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-speaking internal semi-colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Spanish-speaking Maoist internationalist parties of Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the U.S. Empire. MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish- speaking parties or emerging parties of MIM. MIM is an internationalist organization that works from the vantage point of the Third World proletariat; thus, its members are not Amerikans, but world citizens. MIM struggles to end the oppression of all groups over other groups: classes, genders, nations. MIM knows this is only possible by building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. Revolution is a reality for North America as the military becomes over-extended in the government's attempts to maintain world hegemony. MIM differs from other communist parties on three main questions: (1) MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the death of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's death and the overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in 1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of communism in human history. (3) MIM believes the North American white-working-class is primarily a non- revolutionary worker-elite at this time; thus, it is not the principal vehicle to advance Maoism in this country. MIM accepts people as members who agree on these basic principles and accept democratic centralism, the system of majority rule, on other questions of party line. "The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases, but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution." -- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208 * * * MIM Notes 174 November 15, 1998 AMERIKA DEMANDS CHRISTIAN FREEDOM INTERNATIONALLY, DENIES FREEDOMS AT HOME In a cynical move to give Amerika more excuses to attack Third World countries and their economies, the U.$. congress has passed a bill allowing the President to take a variety of economic actions against countries that do not uphold u.$.-style freedom of religion. The Senate unanimously approved the bill, which gives the President clearance to limit or withdraw aid and bank loans, and cancel business contracts with "offender" states.(1) "The bill's sponsors say most of the abuses are occurring within militant Islamic countries and the few remaining Communist nations. They have cited Sudan, China, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria and Vietnam as some of the worst offenders of religious freedom."(2) To MIM and the peoples of the world this bill means that Amerika is finding more reasons to exert its economic hegemony. In this case, anyone who does not uphold Judeo-Christianity can come under attack. Enacting a law that allows Amerika to increase its imperialist repression of Third World peoples for the purpose of protecting religious freedom is the height of hypocrisy as the Amerikan prisons within U.$. borders continue and increase their repression of religious organizations under lock and key. The international and domestic policies are two sides of the same record: they both amount to repression of any nation whose religion does not include bowing to u.$. imperialism. The principal contradiction in the world today is that between imperialism and the oppressed nations. This makes the first task of Communists the struggle against national oppression - to support the struggles of colonized peoples for national liberation. Liberation from imperialist domination is the only thing that will make it possible for the oppressed to freely choose their national destinies. When Black Muslim groups talk about whites as being the devil, they are describing in mystical terms the same thing that MIM describes through science. No nation has done as much to suppress the will of oppressed peoples internationally as the white nation in Amerika. Arguing for the passage of this new bill, Sen. Joseph Lieberman(D-CT) said: "[somewhere] right now, a man or woman languishes in prison, some on death row, because he or she did nothing more than choose faith in God It is a reminder to the executive branch of the American government, both now and in the future, that as it encourages human rights all over the world, it must consider freedom of religion."(1) It should be no surprise that the Senator did not include an explicit indictment of Amerikan policy towards prisoner religious groups. Amerika continues to imprison more people per capita than any other country on the planet. MIM points the finger back at the United Snakes and says that a country as prison-happy as this one has no business telling other countries what they can imprison people for. In terms of religious imprisonment, prisoners all over the United Snakes are languishing in segregation cells because they "chose faith in god" yet the u.$. government does not see this as religious persecution because it sees only that these individuals chose a religion that includes speaking out against oppression. STG Policies: the "war on gangs" charade In the past few years, prisons systems in many of the united Snakes have enacted Security Threat Group (STG) policies. The policies are used to attack prisoner religious and political organizations, but they are designed to trap nearly all oppressed nation prisoners under the STG label. STG policies let the prisons take extra administrative and disciplinary actions against individuals who are tagged as members of organizations that "pose a threat to staff or other prisoners or to the custody and security of the facility."(3) The majority of prisoners are oppressed nationals; they know that any religion or political ideology, support of national liberation and self-determination, celebration of non-whitebread cultures, or opposition to the disproportionate imprisonment of Blacks, Latinos and First Nations is considered a "threat to the security of the facility." This is necessarily true because the prisons' security relies on the premise that the white nation has legitimate authority over all other nations that occupy this continent. Currently the 5% Nation of Gods and Earth, an Islamic sect of which many Black prisoners are members, is fighting the gang label in several states. In a letter petitioning New Jersey state officials to drop gang charges against five percenters in the state's prisons, the organization wrote: "The Department of Corrections (DOC) has built a gang unit intended to segregate inmates they have classified as gang members on a near 24 hour a day lock-down. "Since its opening on March 4th, 1998, over one hundred inmates classified as five percenters have been placed in the gang unit. None of which received any disciplinary charges. These alleged inmates were all placed in the Security Threat Group Management Unit (STGMU) based on the prison staffs identification of them as advocates of the five percenters teachings. Once placed in the gang unit the only opportunity one has to be released is to denounce the five percenter teachings. "There has been no organized plans within the five percenter teachings to interfere with the security of any prison, so they should not be labeled as a security threat group. ... "The placement of five percenters in gang units has resulted in many inmates being unable to: * receive contact visits from family members * has hindered legal access to the courts * removed individuals from prison programs. * discriminatory treatment of inmates of five percenters * confiscation of all personal pictures, literature, letters, clothing, books, and any material associated with five percenters."(4) Outside of these conditions in New Jersey, the Five Percenter web site reports that the New York DOC has been censoring the Five Percenter, the organizational newspaper.(5) Yet MIM understands from a NY corrections officers' website that the 5% has won the right not to be called a gang from the courts.(6) MIM Notes Under Lock & Key has published articles in the past about the true nature of the STG policies. The policies are an extension of the prisons' goal of keeping the oppressed nations from organizing. They accomplish this first by putting huge numbers of the oppressed in prisons, separating prisoners from their communities. When prisoners succeed in organizing from behind the walls, the state makes laws to separate prisoners from each other. If you know of specific organizations or individuals targeted by STG policies, write to MIM Notes. We will continue to publicize and expose this pro-national oppression, anti-people tactic. Notes: 1. Associated Press 14 Oct., 1998. 2. Jewish Telegraphic Agency 14 Oct., 1998. 3. "Identification and Management of Security Threat Groups and Members" Michigan DOC Policy Directive no. 04.04.113, 16 December, 1996, p. 1. 4. http://sunsite.unc.edu/nge/injustice/justiceallah.txt 5. http://sunsite.unc.edu/nge/injust/ 6. http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Downs/3548/gang.html * * * A CALL FOR ACTION TO THE CONSCIOUS PEOPLE by a South Carolina prisoner Preceding this prisoner's statement, s/he wrote the following: I received your missive and it was truly welcome as always. However, most important is the progress being made on your end in professionalizing support for prisoners. We do send our salute! Please overstand that I am operating from a supermax control unity, a unit where we are in a cage 23 hours a day, where I/We plan to raise awareness of the violation existing on this unit in hopes of obtaining national attention. I/We are hoping the mass organization can get off the ground and become a resistance movement in building to call for an end to human rights abuses, and the use of control units and (General Administrative Segregation units) as tools of racism and political repression.... The enforcers of this war realize that they must develop the tightest control possible in order to prevent the inevitable insurgency of revolutionary self-determination moving to challenge their corrupt, illegitimate power. We all are isolated because of who we are and the beliefs that we share and our over all opposition to oppressive, racist prison violent conditions. So we will do our best to focus on programs indicative of this oppression.... I, X, do accept respectfully the challenge to contribute and put forth my best efforts and/or potential in unifying and rallying those conscious individuals, as well as revolutionary prisoner forces, into a collective effective unit of liberational thinkers, from all progressive groups, organizations, and oppressed people, for the benefit of the masses of oppressed people in the United Snakes of Amerikkka. I also make the plea and challenge to you, my 'action speaks louder than words' revolutionize, intellectual brothers and sisters, to unite in this struggle against [our] historical common oppressors whom promote capitalism, division, classism and racist control of the masses of our people. Yes, less talk, more action. Let us formulate and construct a comprehensive informational action oriented network that will bring forth viable, pragmatic solutions to the imprisoned masses. We must combine our forces to crush and drain the resources of our common enemy. [We] are be[ing] subjugated to new forms of manipulation and genocidal slavery, going into the 21st century. We must change and revolutionize with the times and expand our collective struggles or be forever subservient to our oppressors. Each one of you must bring forth this message to your respective affiliates now! I make a call out to all: Kings and Queens, Netas, Bloods, Cripps, Vicelords, Disciples, Islamic revolutionary forces, political prisoners, Young Boys Inc., Ponydown, Propagandists, Anarchists, African liberation forces, anti- imperialists, artists, strategists, tacticians, come forth Walk the walk that we have been individually talking for generations. Erase the artificial lines and racist capitalistic boundaries that allow the historical oppressors to keep their exploitative foot up [our] _____ and chains on our minds. I mentalities, to the rear! Alright, we know this thing is simple as A-B-C. So, let's raze the walls of security and turn the tide against the common oppressors and those that support them. Our people, children, sisters and brothers have been waiting and wanting for too damn long! Via a show of revolutionary voices, let's get it on and build this think tank of the incarcerated masses. Here's your chance to do the unthinkable and undoable. Take this article, use the enemy's duplication processes to your advantage and pass this around to your respective brother and sister-hoods. We await you the masses reply! * * * LETTERS United front Dear MIM, You asked me to be more specific about what I liked in the MIM Notes united front articles. My reference was to "Join the proletarian led United Front" and "Anti- imperialists, Join RAIL! Maoists, Join MIM!" These articles were simple and clear in explaining proletarian independence and initiative in the united front and made good use of practical, concrete examples to show how this comes down in practice. These concrete examples, along with the concise guidelines for building the United Front, seemed to me to make the articles very effective teaching tools for lessons about the united front, as well as reliance on the masses, the liquidationist nature of revisionism, and the limits of reformism. --A comrade in the south September, 1998 Who's the vermin? Dear MIM, How dare you? Where do you people get off, unjustly maligning and defacing this great nation the way you do. Your twisted views of the world and the way you think it should be are both sad and tragic. Why do you hate the "united snakes" so? Don't you realize that you are in the greatest place you can possibly be? No place in the world is a better place to live than the united states. Deep down inside you know this is true, or else you wouldn't still be here. Do you even realize what true anarchy would mean? A true anarchy situation would be so evil and brutal that a small time outfit like yourselves wouldn't even survive the first 6 months. Don't kid yourselves, you don't have the kind of power it takes to survive anarchy. One ironic point is that, this good country is so great and fair that it actually protects maladjusted kids like yourself so you can spread your hate and deceit as you choose. Why are you so angry? Didn't your mother touch you enough when you were a baby? You are very fortunate that I am not President. I would have you tried under the Sedition Act. You have no right to live in the United States. You are a cancer on society and you need to be eradicated, like so many vermin. I would appreciated it if in the future, you could print something of substance in your newsletter. Why not print your plan of how the new system would work or whatever. Half you ingrates probably had your educations paid for by the U.S. government. Why do you continue to live here and reap the rewards you don't deserve? Go start your utopia somewhere else. If it works, give me a call, I'll come visit. You aren't' citizens of the united States - you are traitors and should at least by deported. Authority exists everywhere in the world. You will never change that. Do you even bother trying to understand the American government? It is the fairest in the world. It also has the oldest constitution still in practice. You know why? Because no one else has figured out a better way yet. And your hate and anger trip sure isn't going to cut it. I look forward to reviewing more of your lies. --a capitalist supporter in Michigan. MIM responds: This letter will strike most readers of MIM Notes as clearly reactionary. But in fact, many of the positions taken by this letter writer are very similar to positions of people who consider themselves radical. For this reason we are printing it with a response. Many people who oppose injustice within u.s. borders still call the u.s. the greatest country on earth and stress how free it is and how much better it is than other countries. MIM does not deny that we enjoy a considerable amount of freedom within u.s. borders relative to other countries. But first we'd point out that these freedoms are far more available to white people and particularly older white people. Secondly we ask people to think about where these freedoms come from. Why is it that the many countries around the world which the united snakes controls economically, militarily and politically do not offer their populations the same freedoms. The u.s. has the power to manipulate many governments to get policies enacted that favor u.s. corporations and the u.s. military so why not policies that favor the people of those countries? The fact is, the u.s. benefits from the repressive laws in other countries which make it easier for u.s. corporations to exploit the people and steal the resources. And they make it easier to control those populations so strongly opposed to u.s. imperialism. It is no accident that the people in countries which are u.s. colonies have much less freedom than those of us in the u.s. This government offers its people these concessions because they can afford to. People in the Third World are constantly rebelling against oppressive working conditions, the tyranny of corporate landlords and government repression. In the u.s. the people may complain about not being able to afford a second car or they may be concerned about financing their children's education through college but these concerns are not enough to bring them to the streets in protest. The relatively high standard of living enjoyed by the vast majority of people within u.s. borders keeps them passive. One further point about this "great" country. In reality it is not only this letter writer who would throw us in prison for sedition. There are hundreds of activists held in u.s. prisons specifically for their political activism. The government spends a lot of money and time building FBI programs to spy on, infiltrate, and set up activist organizations and individuals. Given that we are already living here in the belly of the imperialist beast, activists working in MIM believe that this is the best place we can be. Behind enemy lines, supporting our comrades waging revolutionary struggles around the world while building a revolutionary movement of our own. We don't expect to convince people like this letter writer but we do hope that others who might proclaim the greatness of this country will think twice next time. * * * REACTIONARY FANATICS KILL MEDICAL DOCTOR, GAY STUDENT The extralegal right-wing continued its armed struggle by shooting an abortion doctor to death on October 23rd, Dr. Barnett Slepian who lived near Buffalo, New York. Police believe the same sniper may have been the one to shoot three other doctors since 1994 (all of which survived). Two of the other doctors live in Canada.(1) The shooting of the medical doctor came only 11 days after the death of Matthew Sheppard, a student at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. Bigots beat Sheppard to death in a world-renowned case that has resulted in widespread demonstrations. The National Organization for Women (NOW) called for a candlelight vigil in memory of the deceased physician to be held October 24th. However, the NOW press release stressed a strictly through-the-channels and from-the-grasstips approach to beating back this recent attack. The NOW press release read as follows: "NOW Executive Vice President Kim Gandy called on the Justice Department to take immediate action to stop anti-abortion violence. 'It's long past time for the Justice Department to file criminal conspiracy charges against the nationwide ring of anti-abortion terrorists, as NOW did in civil court,' Gandy said referring to the NOW v. Scheidler case. 'They need to put the same resources into investigating this kind of domestic terrorism as they put into terrorism at the World Trade Center and the Atlanta Olympics,' Gandy said. "'These terrorists have friends in high places. Their right-wing sympathizers in state legislatures and Congress give credence to their tactics by creating legislation to restrict or outright ban abortion. These measures will ultimately be as deadly for women as bombs or bullets,' Ireland concluded."(2) Patricia Ireland is the president of NOW. >From MIM's point of view the parallels to the Weimar Republic that gave birth to Nazism though not complete are nonetheless present. In particular, with the mainstream organizations such as NOW calling for legal action while the reactionaries fight in the streets, we cannot help but remember how the Nazis and Mussolini-style fascists won it in the streets. It seems to MIM that every time the pseudo-feminists have a problem in the U$A, they run to the Justice Department for help. They do not expose the Justice Department with the intention of increasing anti- patriarchal consciousness. Instead, the pseudo- feminists sincerely seek patriarchal state help and the sad part is that they do not seem to notice that passing laws and changing prosecutors' attitudes does not stop rape, battering or the murder of reproductive health workers. There could hardly be a better way to fail to challenge the system of class and national oppression while making weak noises about gender oppression. The abysmal failure of Amerikan feminism even to resolve gender oppression can be traced back to the decision of many white pseudo-feminists in the 1960s to split from the more radical anti-war and anti- imperialist movements. At the time, the female activists claimed that the radical men were treating them poorly and that was their reason for forming a feminist movement that we call pseudo-feminist. Today, we continue to see the fruit of the decision of white feminism to go mainstream. Candlelight vigils are not enough in this kind of climate where reactionaries are murdering people for being gay or giving abortions. The pro-life movement's willingness to treat John Salvi as a hero for killing reproductive health workers in Brookline, Massachusetts and the pattern of attacks killing gays and abortion doctors proves that there will be those who require to be fought through armed struggle for the slightest of social changes. Just as it may be hard for feminists to imagine that some fought to defend slavery, feminists must also realize that the patriarchy resists real change with force. Notes: 1. CNN Web site www.cnn.com 2. NOW web site www.now.org * * * WORLD RAINFOREST WEEK by MC5 Home Depot--a hardware and lumber chain of giant stores--was the target of Rainforest Action Network (RAN) protests during World Rainforest Week that ended October 25th. The activists attempted to stop Home Depot from selling "old growth" lumber, by which they mean wood from trees up to 2,000 years old. RAN reported that Home Depot joined an organization (Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)) designed for corporate image cleanup, but most Home Depot stores don't sell any of the FSC products involved. Back in June, RAN declared partial victory when a logger in British Columbia moved toward environmentalist certification of its logging practices. On the other hand, RAN noted that there was still no complete stoppage of old growth logging and other companies were continuing the practice targeting "old growth" forests.(1) Meanwhile, the Greens' website put forward an explicit justification for its piecemeal approach titled, "Distinctions among Greens, Socialists, and Liberals" by Michael Christopher. According to Christopher, "The socialist response is to 'socialize' the waste-costs, i.e. to create a government program to clean up the wastes or regulate their disposal and then pass the costs on to the society as a whole with no regard for who benefited or was hurt by the unpaid waste-costs." "The solution proposed by ecological economists is quite different. They argue that waste-costs (and unpaid or undervalued resource-costs, such as resources taken from forests, lakes, oceans, and the atmosphere) should be 'internalized' rather than 'socialized.' This means that unpaid waste-costs and resource-costs should not be picked up by the community as a whole (which do not all benefit in the same proportion) but rather these costs should be internalized into the market prices of commodities, so that only those who purchase a commodity or profit from its sale pay the costs associated with it. The result is that cleaner and less socially disruptive forms of production end up being cheaper rather than more expensive (their current status) than polluting and socially disruptive forms of production. In other words, things like fossil fuel generated power could not compete with solar generated power. The goal of cleaning up the environment is therefore accomplished without government clean up programs that treat all tax payers as if they benefit equally from the programs. In this sense, internalization produces an emphasis on personal responsibility rather than the tendency to blame 'society.' The goal is a gradual transformation of society rather than the call for a revolution of society."(2) In practice, MIM would have to agree that the above paragraph by Michael Christopher is accurate about the Greens. The extensive emphasis on boycotts and lifestyle is the proof. Supposedly consumers will stop buying old growth wood products and then the loggers will be forced to stop their ways according to the Greens. The largest timber company in Canada is supposedly an example: "MacMillan Bloedel's president, Tom Stephens, told the company's annual meeting in April that many customers 'don't want wood from old growth clearcuts.' His comments attest to the changing attitudes and heightened awareness of the wood-buying public, and the extent to which Rainforest Action Network's campaign against old growth wood has penetrated the marketplace. "Rainforest Action Network has run an aggressive advertising campaign stigmatizing old growth logging with the line: 'The oldest living things on Earth, or tomorrow's lawn furniture.'"(1) The Greens are our friends because they organize the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie toward proletarian goals. The only difficulty is that their failures will frustrate the masses and clear the way to fascism. We must point out that they are uncomfortable with communism because of the prevalence of the deep-rooted labor aristocracy in this country, but there is no other way to be really Green than to be really Red. The petty-bourgeoisie being the middle-class tends to believe there is no real class structure, just people who try harder or less hard. That is why that class is inclined to lifestyle approaches avoiding the existence or analysis of a powerful class that runs production for profit at the expense of the environment. The real communists are greener than the Greens, because there is no way to individualize the environment--as if we could box up the air and water and put it on department store shelves. The Greens talk about tolerating polluting lifestyles without use of force or without "socializing" the costs of pollution clean-up. This latter part about "internalizing costs" is demagogy of the capitalist sort accepted even by George Bush. In practice, it does not happen and Green politics are a scientific- sounding excuse for continued environmental degradation. "Internalizing the costs" to make consumers pay for their polluting lifestyles is not possible unless someone puts a price on the right to pollution. To do that requires a scientific argument. At the very least it requires planning out how much it costs to clean something up or restore something to its environmentally sustainable state. So if a persyn uses a car that causes so much pollution, then that persyn should also pay for the clean-up of that pollution by Green reasoning. But to know how much that clean-up will cost and then include it in the price of the car is an act of socialist planning. Production guided by scientific planning for political goals and not for profit is socialism. Hence, production guided by scientific planning for the goal of ending clear-cutting of certain forests is a political goal and hence socialist. Similarly, setting the prices of fossil-fuels to include the price of cleaning up their pollution is socialist. Either the Greens are academically quibbling with the socialists here out of imperialist country fear of socialism or they are leaving open that some or all consumers have the right to place no value on the environment and that costs will not be "internalized" in practice. We communists are not afraid of the word "ban" applied in production. We also see no individual right to pollute. In fact, if the Green position is capitalist it results in no inherent environmental progress, because if a corporation were wildly profitable and could afford to bid higher for the right to pollute than anyone else, it could go on polluting. Moreover the wealthy consumers--perhaps making their money by polluting--may by themselves be able to degrade the environment with the full approval of naive Greens focusing on individual lifestyles. The proof is in these boycotts the Greens run. Some loggers move out of the "old growth forest" business, but others may move in to make higher profits than ever. The only real solution is political and hence socialist. Notes: 1. http://www.ran.org/ran/info_center/press_release/index .html 2. www.greens.org * * * RAIL A HIT AT CRITICAL RESISTANCE BERKELEY, CA - The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) received a warm response from many of the three thousand people who attended the "Critical Resistance" conference at the University of California - Berkeley in September. The conference focused on what organizers called the "Prison-Industrial Complex." As MIM investigated at length in MIM Theory 11, Amerikan prisons are part and parcel of national oppression in Amerika and are increasingly becoming a big business. Talks ranged from the musty corners of academia, to human rights reformism, to more revolutionary speakers who made the connection between imperialism, national oppression, and Amerikan prisons. Some speakers drew the important connection between white privilege and prisons, either by pointing out how rural communities profit directly from the prison-building craze or by explaining how imperialism benefits the entire white nation. The Free Books for Prisoners program drew special notice at RAIL's table, and in the weeks following the conference RAIL has received several donations from conference participants. * * * PROTESTERS DENOUNCE BRUTALITY IN CALIFORNIA PRISONS CORCORAN, CA - Over 400 protesters gathered in front of Corcoran State Prison on October 17th in order to protest the brutal treatment prisoners receive in California prisons, as well as the continued unjust expansion of prisons in California. The protesters shouted their defiance to the prison's warden and the local cops and guards who blockaded the road to the prison. Some of the marchers' placards denounced CA's "three strikes" law - one had a photo of a man and his daughter with the words "Larry Olin - Sentenced 25 years to life for two pairs of Levis." Others exposed the cruel and callous conditions in CA prisons, such as the poster which simply said "Alice Quihos was murdered by medical neglect." Between 1988 and 1996 guards at Cocoran staged daily fights between prisoners, sometimes even betting on the outcome and reviewing the videotapes for their sick entertainment. Many prisoners were injured by the 37mm wooden bullets used to break up the fights, and seven were killed by guards. Public pressure forced the FBI and the state Attorney General to launch investigations of Corcoran, but - although the gladiator fights have stopped - little has changed at Corcoran, let alone the 32 other state prisons. Speakers at the rally included anti-prisons activists and family members of prisoners. Bill Tate, the father of one of the prisoners executed by guards during the spate of "gladiator fights" at Corcoran, reminded the rallyists that his son's case has received exceptional attention, but there are many more prisoners tortured and killed in CA's prisons who do not receive media or bourgeois political attention. Indeed, a recent report by the LA Times reported that CA remains the only state to officially condone the use of deadly force to break up alleged prisoner fights, despite outrage over the incidents at Corcoran. Dozens of prisoners have been killed as a result. A speaker from the HIV/AIDS in Prison Project explained that Corcoran - one of CA's three control units, and referred to by prisoners as "the hole" - was recently designated as CA's AIDS treatment center. Supposedly all HIV+ prisoners were transferred there. However, the conditions of all of these 230 prisoners now allegedly receiving "special medical care" have worsened, and dozens of HIV+ prisoners in CA still receive no treatment at all. The protest was a mix of electoral reformists, human rights groups, and people who, like MIM and RAIL, view prisons as a part of a larger system of national oppression and genocide. The majority of protesters and speakers did not have illusions about either of the two mainstream candidates for governor reforming CA prisons or the criminal "justice" system. Republican Dan Lundgren is a big supporter of the get-tough status quo, and, as one speaker pointed out, his Democratic opponent Gray Davis wants to lower the age at which a person can be sentenced to death by the criminal injustice system to 14. Prisons are on the front lines of Amerika's war against its internal colonies, where men and wimmin are confined against their will - more and more often for "crimes" which their white counterparts get away with. Only by solving the broader problems of national oppression can the problem of brutality in Amerikan prisons be solved. The protest was initiated by the California Prisons Focus, a single issue organization which grew out the movement against California's first modern control unit at Pelican Bay. California RAIL chapters organized a contingent to participate as part of their ongoing campaign to expose the evils of California prisons and in order to build support for Serve the People programs like the Free Books for Prisoners program. For more information about anti-prisons work RAIL and MIM are doing in CA, write to the Los Angeles address on page 2 or e-mail larail@mim.org. Note: LA Times, 18 Oct 98. * * * MIM LEGAL NOTES MIM Legal Notes is a publication of the Serve the People Prisoners' Legal Clinic. Contact MIM for information on getting involved with this program. MIM Legal Notes is researched and written by our comrades behind the walls. We publish these articles and briefs because we believe that the legal research and arguments will be useful to other prisoners. But comrades should be aware that differences in laws between states, changes in laws and legal precedents over time, and different case circumstances all mean that even something that was successful for one person might not work for others. We print the best legal writing available to us with the understanding that this program will only grow stronger with increased exposure and participation. We encourage all prisoners and non-prisoners to contribute to this program with research, writing, and funding. There may be other legal arguments or cases or statutes which would better serve your purposes; what you find here should be useful as a starting point. If you can do your own legal work, you may choose to rely on a purely bourgeois legal argument, or also use political arguments to make your legal case. Double Jeopardy in Michigan: Double Standards submitted by a Michigan prisoner, member of the Political Prisoners of War Coalition The 1963 Michigan Constitution Art. I, 15 double jeopardy provision provides that: "No person shall be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy." Similarly, the United States Constitution Amendment V double jeopardy clause states "nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." Supposedly, the Michigan Constitution double jeopardy provision provides greater protection from double punishment for the same offense than the federal constitution double jeopardy clause does,(1) however, where Michigan prisoners are concerned, the state and federal proscriptions against double jeopardy punishment are illusionary and amount to nothing more than meaningless prose; the worst kind of free-vers doggerel imaginable. The Michigan Supreme Court and Michigan Court of Appeals have all but admitted that prison disciplinary hearings are kangaroo courts. Of course they don't come right out and say so, but anyone with a fourth grade reading level can see through the hyperbole in their unjust decisions and arrive at the proper conclusion. In People v. Powers, 272 Mich.303,307 (1935), the Michigan Supreme Court stated: "A person is in jeopardy when he is put upon trial in a court of justice charged with a violation of law." (emphasis supplied.) Twelve years later in the case of People v. Tillard, 318 Mich 619,623 (1947) the Court quoted the 'court of justice' language from Powers, supra. Needless to say, such lewd language does not bode well for the convict. The Court determined that a prisoner is not subjected to double jeopardy when his good time credits are forfeited after a criminal prosecution for escape in In re Evans, 352 Mich 185 (1953). It is interesting to note that the Evans opinion does not reveal whether the Court relied on the Michigan double jeopardy provision or the federal double jeopardy clause in reaching its holding. Evidently, the Court just took for granted that a convict is not entitled to state and/or federal constitutional protections when he is twice punished for the same offenses: something it should not have done. The Court had long held that litigants could not make a mere statement of position without an argument or citation of authority to support the issue. (See Neilands v. Wright, 134 Mich 77 (1903)).(2) A holding they should have applied to themselves. In People v. Wilson, 6 Mich App 474 (1967), the Michigan Court of Appeals held that a prisoner who escaped from the State Prison of Southern Michigan and had his good time forfeited, who was then charged with the criminal offense of escape was not subjected to double jeopardy. The Court held that under either the 1963 Constitutional Article I, 15 or the Fifth Amendment there are two elements in the prohibition against double jeopardy: (1) There must be successive subjection to 'jeopardy,' and (2) in each instance the offense must be the same. Id. at 476. The Court deemed escape as constituting a violation of prison rules evoking the relevant good-time statute forfeiture provisions in addition to being a punishable felony offense. "The Michigan Supreme Court has consistently held that 'jeopardy' requires criminal prosecution in a court of justice." Id. at 477 (citing Powers and Tillard, supra). The Court ruled that there was no successive subjection to jeopardy because "the defendant's good time was forfeited [as] the statute requires, in an administrative proceeding and not in a criminal proceeding in a court of justice." Id. In People V. Shastal, 26 Mich App347 (1970), a prisoner who was prosecuted for escaping from the Michigan Reformatory contended that he had been subjected to double jeopardy because his good-time was forfeited as a result of his escape and he was later convicted at a jury trial of the "same offense." Id. at 349. The Court of Appeals relied upon its holding in Wilson at 477 and found the defendant's jeopardy assertion meritless. Id. at 350. The Court of Appeals held in yet another prison escape case, People v. Alexander, 39 Mich App 607 (1972) that it was in complete accord with the Wilson, supra decision, i.e., good-time forfeiture and subsequent prosecution for the same offense do not constitute double jeopardy. Id. at 609. However, the Court also held that if the defendant was in fact illegally incarcerated due to an improper method of time computation at the time he escaped, then he should not have been prosecuted under People v. Hamaker, 92 Mich 11 (1892) (holding that one cannot be convicted of escape if the incarceration is illegal,) and remanded the matter back to the trial court for further fact- finding with respect to the "legality of defendant's incarceration." Id. at 610-611. Once again, the People v. Browns, 39 Mich App 424 (1972), the Court of Appeals relied upon In re Evans; Wilson; and Shastal, supra, in determining that defendant's contention that forfeiture of his earned good-time by Michigan Department of Corrections prior to his felony conviction for the same offense of escape amounted to double jeopardy was without merit. Id. at 425. Being convicted at a bench trial for carrying a concealed weapon, to wit: a homemade knife at Jackson Prison subjected him to double jeopardy because his accumulated good-time was confiscated for the same crime at an administrative hearing was the contention in People v. Lewis, 42 Mich App 121 (1972). The Court of Appeals found that nothing in the record disclosed that the defendant had in fact had his good-time confiscated, or if it was actually confiscated, whether it was for possessing the knife. Nonetheless, the Court relied on Wilson and Shastal and stated that "the forfeiture of 'good-time' in an administrative proceeding does not amount to double jeopardy. In order to violate the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy the double sentencing must occur in a criminal prosecution in a court of justice and not an administrative proceeding." Id. at 124. (See also People v. Bachman, 60 Mich App 682 (1973), Iv.den. 392 Mich 776 (1974) (same). All of the foul decisions cited supra were decided prior to the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 556-59; 94 S. Ct. 2963 (1974), which held that prisoners are entitled to safeguards of due process in disciplinary proceedings. The Court ruled that procedural due process affords prisoners facing forfeiture of statutory good-time to minimal precaution and identified five basic requirements prisoners are entitled to before they can be punished for violating prison rules. Id. at 563-71. (See e.g. Manville, Prisoners' Self-Help Litigation Manual (3rd ed 1995) (3) Ch. IV, D, pp.260-76; Columbia Human Rights Law Review, A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (4th ed 1995) (4) Ch. 27, C, pp. 829-32. However, the Wolff decision did not change the scope of the double jeopardy application, nor did a series of Michigan cases which hold that state prisoners receive far greater procedural protections than those mandated by Wolff. See e.g., 1963 Mich Const Art. VI, 28 (requiring judicial review of admin. Agency decisions); MCL 791.251 et seq.; MSA 28.2320 (51) te seq (statue for review of MDOC prison disciplinary hearings); Meadows v. Marquette Prison Warden, 117 Mich App 794 (1982); Campbell v. Marquette Prison Warden, 119 Mich Ap 377 (1982); Tocco v. Marquette Prison Warden, 123 Mich App 395 (1983) (standard of review requires "competent, material and substantial evidence on the whole record" to uphold prison disciplinary conviction), cf.with Superintendent v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 457; 105 S. Ct. 2768 (1985). Federal due process clause standard of review only requires "some evidence" to uphold prison disciplinary conviction. As far as prisoners are concerned, based solely on Michigan jurisprudence, laissez faire is the standard the courts really apply when upholding prison officials' violations of prisoners' rights, as evinced by post-Wolff double jeopardy cases, infra. In PFefferle v. Corrections Commission, 86 Mich App 366 (1976), plaintiff sought a writ of mandamus(5) to compel the Commission to restore two years worth of accumulated good-time credits which had been confiscated after his escape from Jackson Prison. Nine months after the Warden entered an order forfeiting Pfefferle's good-time, Pfefferle initiated grievance proceedings and was granted a hearing. The Court of Appeals granted issuance of the writ on the basis that the procedures employed by the Warden to seize Pfefferle's good-time failed to comport with the due process requirements erected by the United States Supreme Court in Wolff 418 U.S. at 563-70 and ordered defendants to conduct a hearing which conforms to Wolff. Id. at 371-72. The Court also noted that "because the issue may arise again, we note that plaintiff's double jeopardy and/or equal protection arguments concerning loss of good-time have been previously rejected" and cited to Bachman, supra, and cases cited therein. Id. at 373. Likewise, in People v. Bellafont, 105 Mich App 788 (1981), the Court of Appeals depended on Pfefferle and Bachman, supra, in finding that defendant's bench trial conviction for assaulting a prison guard after having already been required to relinquish earned good-time as a result of the very same offense did not constitute double jeopardy. Id. at 790. Prisoners George C. Couch and Ronald L. Jordan at the Marquette Branch Prison brought a tort action against prison guard Timothy P. Schultz, asserting that he defamed them when he filed a major misconduct report charging them with sodomy. See Couch c. Schultz, 193 Mich App 292 (1992). The sole issue on appeal was one of first impression in Michigan; whether a disciplinary proceeding is a 'judicial proceeding' in which witnesses are afforded an absolute privilege from liability for defamation? Id. at 293. As would be expected, the Court of Appeals easily answered the question in the defendant's favor, holding that: "a prison disciplinary hearing is a 'judicial proceeding' and statements made in relation to such hearings are absolutely privileged." Id. at 294. The Court cited to a leading treatise, Prosser & Keeton, Torts (5th ed 1984) 114 Defamation and footnotes cited therein at pp.816-21, as authority for the proposition that " 'judicial proceedings' may include any hearing before a tribunal or administrative board that performs a judicial function." Id. Further, the Court observed that the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Shelly v. Johnson, 849 F. 2d 288, 230 (6th Cir. 1988) held that in Michigan "prison hearing officers are in fact professional hearing officers in the nature of administrative law judges" and entitled to absolute judicial immunity. The Shelly decision was primarily based on five factors: (1)the statutory requirements that hearing officers be licensed attorneys under MCL 791.251(5); MSA28.2320(51)(5); (2)the hearing officer's duties and roles are explained in detail in MCL 791.252; MSA28.2320(52); (3)at the request of a prisoner upon a showing of bias or for legitimate reasons the hearing officer is required to recuse (disqualify) himself pursuant to MCL 791.252(i); MSA28.2320(52)(i); (4)a hearing officer's decision must be in writing and include findings of fact in accordance with MCL 791.252(k); MSA28.2320(52)(k); and, MCL 791.255; MSA28.2320(55) mandates that a prisoner is entitled to judicial review of a hearing officer's decision (as noted, this last determinant is required under the Michigan constitution.) After reviewing MCL 791.251 et seq,; MSA28.2320(51) et seq., the statutory scheme concerning Michigan prison disciplinary hearings, the Court found it supported the proposal that a prison disciplinary hearing is a judicial proceeding.(6) Id. at 296. If a prison disciplinary hearing is a "judicial proceeding" for liability purposes in the civil context, then why is it not "a court of justice" for double jeopardy purposes in the quasi-criminal context? Inquiring convicts want to know! The answer begs the question. Like its federal counterpart, the Michigan Constitution is not and never has been a static document.(7) Further, Michigan - like the other 49 states - is free to reject the method used by the U.S. Supreme Court and inferior federal tribunals in preference of a differentiated assay of its analogous constitutional guarantees, or to read its own constitutional provisions more expansively than the federal constitution is read by the U.S. Supreme Court.(8) Currently the Michigan courts make no pretense of being engaged in warfare on prisoners' rights as their vile published opinions indicate. One might justifiably assume the state tribunals are attempting to outperform the federal courts (who have long held there is no double jeopardy for disciplinary and criminal punishment for the same offense)(9) in divesting prisoners of their diminished constitutional rights. Perhaps one day an outstanding jailhouse lawyer will be able to convince the Michigan Supreme Court to expand the Couch decision to encompass disciplinary hearings in prison to be "a court of justice" for double jeopardy purposes. After all, "justice must satisfy the appearance of justice." In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133.136; 75 S. Ct. 623, 625 (1955). In the meantime - don't hold your breathe!!(10) Notes: 1. See People v. Carter, 415 Mich 588,582, n. 26 (1982) "Michigan unlike some other states, has its own specific constitutional protection against double jeopardy. Const 1963, art.1, 15. Although the language of the state provision is nearly the same as that of the federal constitution, there are certain important differences between the state and federal tests used to establish a constitutional violation. Significantly, the Michigan rules offer broader double jeopardy protection than do the federal standards. Compared to federal interpretations, Michigan is more protective of defendants' double jeopardy rights with respect to multiple prosecution as well as multiple punishment. See People v. White, 390 Mich 245; 212 NW2d 222 (1973)." 2. See also Dolby v. State Highway Commission, 283 Mich 609 (1938); Arrand v. Graham, 297 Mich 559 (1941); Mitchell v. City of Detroit, 355 Mich 182 (1959); Goolsby v. Detroit, 419 Mich 651, 655, n.1 (1984); Kuzinski v. Boretti, 182 Mich App 177, 180 (1989); Alpena FOC v. Durecki, 195 Mich App 635, 639 (1992). On this point the list is endless. 3. The Prisoners' Self-Help Litigation Manual (3rd ed 1995) costs $29.95 and is available from Oceana Publications Inc. 75 Main Street Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 USA (914) 693-8100. 4. A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (4th ed 1995) costs $13 and is available from Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Box B-25, Columbia University School of Law, 435 Wast 116th Street, New York, NY USA 10027. 5. See Michigan Court Rule (MCR) 3.305 and MCL600.4401 et seq.; MSA 27.4401 et seq. for court rule and statue on mandamus. As a general rule, mandamus will issue only to compel the performance of a ministerial act to which the plaintiff has a clear legal right and the defendant has a clear legal duty to perform. See e.g. Pillon v. Attorney General, 345 Mich 536 (1956); Lundberg v. Corrections Commission, 57 Mich App 327 (1975); Schweitzer v. Polygraph Examiners, 77 Mich App 749, 752-53 (1977) (collecting cases). See also Khan v. Warden, Jackson Prison, 128 Mich App 224 (1983) (good discussion on difference between mandamus and habeas corpus. 6. It should be noted that Michigan courts are not bound by a federal court's decision construing a Michigan statute. See Continental Motors Corp. v. Muskegon Twp., 365 Mich 191 (1961); Hardy v. Maxheimer, 429 Mich 422, 432 (1987). Michigan courts are not bound by U.S. Supreme Courts decisions. The Michigan Supreme Court is the final arbitrator in purely state questions. See Paley v. Coca Cola Co., 39 Mich App 379, 384 (1972). When there is no conflict, state courts are bound by the holdings of federal courts on federal questions; when an issue has divided the federal circuits, the state courts are free to choose the most appropriate view. See Schueler v. Weintrob, 360 Mich 621, 634 (1960); Kocsis v. Pierce, 192 Mich App 92, 98 (1991); Abdur-Ra'oof v. Dept. of Corrections, 221 Mich App 585, 589, (1997). 7. See Scholle v. Secretary of State, 360 Mich 1, 107 (1960) Black. J., dissenting). 8)See People v. Thompson, 424 Mich 118, 125 (1985); City of Mesquite v. Alladin's Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283,293; 102 S. Ct. 74, 81; 100 S. Ct. 2035 (1980). cf. With People v. Nash, 418 Mich 196 (1983); People v. Collins, 438 Mich 8 (1991); People v. Bullock, 440 Mich 15,30(1992); People v. Pickens, 446 Mich 298, 308-27 (1994); Sitz v. State Police (On Rem), 193 Mich App 690, 696 (1992). 9)See Manville, The Prisoners' Self-Help Litigation Manual (3rd ed 1995) Ch. IV, D, 1(s) pp.311-12 (collecting cases.) 10. See Couch, supra. I say this because there can be no doubt that a misconduct/disciplinary hearing which has been termed a "judicial proceeding" is not "a court of justice." See e.g. Trimble v. Morrish, 152 Mich 624, 627 (1908) where the Michigan Supreme Court stated "[a] communication absolutely privileged - as, for instance words spoken by a judge in his judicial capacity in a court of justice - is not actionable, even though spoken maliciously." (emphasis supplied) * * * SUPPORT THE REVOLUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES The u.$. supported the overthrow of its former puppet in the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, when it became clear that the dictator was isolated and an embarrassment. Despite all the praise the u.$. media heaped on Marcos' successor, Corey Aquino, for being a "true democrat," the fundamental nature of the Philippine government did not change under Aquino. It remained a puppet government of the u.$., beholden to foreign monopoly capitalists and local reactionaries. Human rights abuses even increased under Aquino, thanks to her declaration of "total war" in the countryside against the New People's Army led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The following two articles show that even the facade of change is crumbling away, as former Marcos cronies openly retake positions of power in the government and the economy. But while the government in Manila is exposing itself as reactionary-infested, the Communist Party of the Philippines is leading a revolutionary movement to set up a state which truly serves the people, and brings them true justice. - MIM The return of the Marcoses to Power Reprinted from "Ang Bayan," the newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, April-June 1998. Accompanying Joseph Estrada to Malcanang [the Philippine presidential palace] as the new reactionary president is a flock of minions and cronies of the former dictator Marcos. Leading the pack are his son Bongbong and daughter Imce who won as governor and congressional representative, respectively, of Ilocos Norte. Aside from them, Estrada plans to appoint prominent Marcos men to his cabinet. Estrada himself and Edgardo Angara who ran as vice president under Estrada's party, are other former Marcos minions. One of the top bankrollers and supporters of Estrada's candidacy is Eduardo 'Danding' Cojuangco, Marcos' number one crony. The return to power of Marcos' minions paves the way for their recovery of wealth sequestered by the government in 1986. First in line are Cojuangco's shares of stock in San Miguel corporation (SMC), the recovery of which would give him majority control over SMC. There is also the looming possibility that the Marcos family will be able to recover its ill-gotten wealth. Plans are already afoot to withdraw cases filed against Imelda Marcos in court. Once the Marcos family recovers this wealth compensation for victims of fascist abuse during the dictatorship will certainly be jeopardized. Despite fierce resistance from different sectors, Estrada insists on giving the fascist dictator a hero's burial. Not only does he want to bury in oblivion the fascist dictator's unprecedented crimes against the people and the thousands of direct victims of fascist abuse who have yet to obtain justice. He is also using the issue of the burial to revive and mobilize Marcos loyalists within and outside the military and civilian bureaucracy. - AB Arrest the dictator's minions! Reprinted from "Ang Bayan," the newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, April-June 1998. The Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army condemn the incoming Estrada regime for honoring, through an official burial, the despised dictator Marcos. This is a grave insult to the people who were oppressed by and suffered tremendously under, the fascist Marcos dictatorship, especially the thousands of victims of human rights abuses, who have long been crying for justice but continue to be denied it. The reactionary government in Manila has long abandoned the quest for justice of the hated Marcos fascist dictatorship. But it is now evident that the incoming Estrada regime even intends to surpass the criminal negligence of the two previous administrations. Not only does it want to bury in oblivion the crimes and savagery of the fascist dictatorship without rectification. It also plans to place in the centers of power and privilege the relatives and minions of the fascist dictator who remain unrepentant and unwilling to accept responsibility for their crimes against the people. Accordingly, the Party's Central Committee directs the New People's Army to form special units to undertake operations to arrest the relatives of Marcos, especially Imelda Marcos and Ferdinand Marcos Jr., along with the other minions of the late dictator and oblige them to face the people's justice and answer for their major crimes against the people. - AB * * * WHITE MAN GETS A VOTE ON INDIAN CASINOS by MC5 In California, November elections include a vote on Proposition 5, whether or not to allow expansion of First Nation casinos. The governor is currently tied up in court trying to stop the First Nations from running gambling enterprises in what the white man calls "California." As we go to press, some Indians are pandering to white stereotypes in order to win the vote. Ads for Indian casinos say that casinos will lift Indians out of the U.$. welfare system. While it is true that casinos have the effect of lifting First Nation people out of the U.$. welfare system, we believe that what the First Nations do is their own business. The United $tates would not dare to stop Canada or Germany from having casinos. The fact that white people will be the majority of voters on Proposition 5 shows what is wrong with imperialist so-called democracy. Democracy is majority-rule, but it ends up meaning a majority of white people decide what happens in all Third World and indigenous nations. Surely the world vote would have gone against the Vietnam War, but the white democracy in the United $tates sent half a million troops to Vietnam. Hence, the current imperialist democracy doesn't really count all the people that should be counted under majority- rule. Moreover, there is no way that a majority of any people should have a say over what happens within the First Nations. This is the second flaw of imperialist democracy as it is today. Not only are the broad masses of Third World people in the world not counted when the United $tates decides to tell other countries what to do, but also certain questions should not be decided by majority-rule in the first place. As soon as we think of white voters in the United $tates and the rights of small nations, it becomes clear why status quo democracy is an unstable system bound to lead to militarism and deathly strife. The system is logically incoherent. Deciding when majority-rule should apply and when "minority" or small nation rights should apply is an inherent conflict within a system of democracy. Traditionally, political science has spilled tons of ink on the questions of "rights" versus "responsibilities." Large nations and small nations both have rights and responsibilities toward each other: that is all that political science and the concepts of bourgeois democracy can tell us. For us communists, this is beating around the bush. What there needs to be is a system of cooperation, a stable one. That system as it was for hundreds of thousands of years when everyone lived in tribes is communism. It's the only system capable of uniting all the people in peace. In the short-run, we believe the First Nations should decide for themselves whether to have casinos on their territory. Moreover, under the socialist dictatorship transition to communism, we will see that the Amerikan people pay just reparations to the First Nations for the genocide against them carried out with majority- white-rule. The fact that this California vote is a choice between joblessness and welfare on the one hand and the evils of gambling on the other hand is a telling statement about U.$. capitalism. Under the rational system of socialism, everyone will have a job and we won't need gambling to provide for the people. Note: USA Today "California voters hold the cards on gaming initiative" 28Oct1998, p. 17a. * * * LENINGRAD CONGRESS SUPPORTS LENIN AND STALIN MIM sent this message to a meeting of youth in Leningrad who uphold Lenin and Stalin. Greetings comrades of the RYCL(b) on this occasion of your Congress, October 25th, 1998. Across the world, the communists look forward to the re-constitution of a genuine communist movement in the ex-Soviet Union. Already there are many stirrings in that direction. Many have shaken off the influence of Khruschevite revisionism and the old nomenklatura. This gladdens the hearts of communists everywhere. For this reason, any Congress of followers of Marx, Lenin and Stalin takes on exceptional importance. We bid you to hasten the ideological struggle. The battle against revisionism will not reach its next stage until the comrades there establish a party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In this regard, many see through Khruschev revisionism and few are fooled by Gorbachev or Yeltsin anymore. What remains to be done is reach a theoretical conclusion about the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. Crucial to re-orientation on a proletarian basis is to distinguish nationalism from communism. A recent speech by Victor Anpilov is an example. He correctly admits that revisionism is the key to understanding the debacle in the Soviet Union. He also gives Mao credit for being the first to try to stop Khruschev from going down the capitalist road and above all he admits that there were internal enemies of socialism in the Soviet Union. However, this is not enough. Victor Anpilov harkens back to 1977 in the Soviet Union. He gives credit to the revisionists in the GDR and Syria who opposed Gorbachev--as if opposition to Gorbachev were enough to establish one's credentials as a genuine communist! There were many in the world who opposed Gorbachev for their own geopolitical reasons having nothing to do with communism. Some of these non-proletarian allies of Soviet nationalism even pretended to be communist-- both inside and outside the former Soviet Union. Yet, if we look into the matter closely we can always tell apart the proletarian leaders from mere nationalist friends of the Soviet Union. The proletarian leaders aim their fire not just at U.$. imperialism but also at the internal class enemy. It is not just that Khruschev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin sold out to imperialism: they also implemented capitalism. Comrades, please check into this! There is still some confusion on this question internationally and if you disagree with us, you should enter into public polemics with us at once! We ask you to check: which of these, the Syrian "Communist Party", the GDR "Communist Party", Kim in Korea and the Workers World Party in the U$A, which of these admitted there was a bourgeoisie in the party? Quite the contrary, they all had a role in tolerating the world's Gorbachevs, Yeltsins, Alias etc. Comrades, we must understand that Mao and the "Gang of Four" were called "ultraleft" for talking about how capitalist restoration could come about and how it had to be fought. It is only Marxism-Leninism-Maoism that talks about the bourgeoisie in the party. The reason for that is that only Mao and the "Gang of Four" came up with an understanding of the appropriation of labor under socialism, an understanding of the Law of Value under socialism and what it meant for political struggle. These other variants of revisionism are a tad "left" of Gorbachev, but they are the variety that would have tolerated Gorbachev and Yeltsin in the party. They are the variety of revisionism that opposed launching Cultural Revolution as Mao instructed. At this time, we must not allow a re-grouping of revisionism. The decaying corpse of revisionism still fouls the air! To clear the air, we must look at this corpse internationally and take up Marxism-Leninism- Maoism as the solution. This is no time to be hiding our differences in the international communist movement. We are still in the stage of explaining to the proletariat the huge betrayals that have happened. We must do this in the open, so we urge you to take up the question of summing up the history of the international communist movement on the question of internal enemies, specifically a bourgeoisie in the party. It is not possible to have capitalism without a bourgeoisie! International Ministry Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * MICHIGAN PRISONS OVER THE EDGE: FACILITY CENSORS VIBE Prisoners, pro-prisoners advocates and critics of prison Security Threat Group policies have argued that these policies are nothing more than a thinly disguised attack on oppressed people. The STG policies vaguely describe aspects of Black and Latino nations' body and spoken language, and describe these basic building blocks of national identity as proof of gang membership. Now the Michigan prisons have come out and said that a Black prisoner cannot receive his subscription to VIBE magazine, which is devoted to "the hip hop, rap and R&B communities, not gangs."(1) In the most recent example offered by the Michigan prisons, a prison's mailroom staff found that the October, 1998 issue of VIBE "contained gang signs" and that this made the magazine "a threat to the institution." The prisoner's quite constructive response to this ridiculous charge was to suggest that any pages seen as a threat could be removed by the mailroom staff before the magazine was delivered to him. This not being good enough for the prison hearing officer, the officer decided that the prisoner could send his copy of VIBE home at his own expense if he wanted to save it from being thrown away.(2) The prison's decision on VIBE just goes to show exactly how rational the prisons will be when it comes to applying their STG policies: not at all. Before the October issue of VIBE ever showed up, the same prisoner's Fall, 1998 issue of Blaze was held up and censored for containing "gang signs, which are prohibited from entering the institution." On this earlier occasion, the prisoner attempted to enlighten the ignorant mailroom staff, and to dissuade them of the misconception that every pose a Black persyn takes is a gang sign. He answered the mail rejection notice quite simply: "these are not gang signs." But this wasn't good enough for the hearing officer who on this earlier occasion also told the prisoner he could send the magazine home at his own expense or have it thrown away.(3) This case goes down on MIM's list as proof positive that the Security Threat Group Policy is nothing more than an attack on the majority Black population of Michigan prisons, as well as on the Latinos and all prisoners who dare to become active against the system. Culture is a fundamental aspect of national identity, alongside territory, language, history and economy. That the Michigan prisons are openly attacking Black culture shows that they recognize Blacks as a nation that is oppressed by and will rise against the prisons system. If you are a prisoner who has had your literature censored under a Security Threat Group policy, write to MIM Notes and we'll publish your article about this censorship. Censorship is the oppressor's last resort -- a means of keeping people from organizing through physical restraint, and therefore a fundamental part of the prisons system. MIM works to expose censorship in prisons as we work to increase the flow of literature to and extend our work with prisoners. Notes: 1. A Michigan prisoner 19 October, 1998. 2. Administrative Hearing Report 22 September, 1998. 3. Administrative Hearing Report 4 September, 1998. * * * RAIL INITIATES RADIO PROGRAM ON PRISONS With the help of allies, RAIL has created a weekly radio program on prisons to be aired on one college radio station on the East Coast. We would like to distribute this program to stations across North America. If you can get this program on the air in your community, contact RAIL at the address on page 2. It will cost at least $5 to produce and mail a tape with 4 shows on it. Checks should be made out to MIM. The program consists of 15 minutes of news, commentary and prisoner letters. Contributions of money and equipment (tape decks, microphones, computer equipment) are needed to expand the program and make it self-sufficient. * * * GREEN POLITICS Fall 1998 PO Box 1134 Lawrence MA 01842 www.greens.org reviewed by MC5 A newspaper called "Green Politics" came out in a Fall, 1998 issue. Naturally the paper totes its 120 candidates in 22 states running in elections in November, 1998. We salute this periodical as progressive, especially because it does not claim to be Marxist. The same paper if it claimed to be Marxist would be too watery and reformist and would anger MIM considerably because it would mislead the people about the true nature of Marxism. The Green Party correctly identifies many central problems of our time and seeks to fix them with legal reform and investor social responsibility campaigns. As such, the Green Party has a good sense of goals but a poor sense of political reality. It is unquestionably bourgeois. Unlike some watery Greens, this publication makes the connection between militarism and the environment. It calls for a $198 billion cut in "defense" spending in the U$A in order to spend money to fix the environment The Greens point out that the U$ government spends $268 billion a year on the military while the next closest country is Japan with $39 billion. (p. 5) According to the Greens, "public investments of $75 billion a year for 10 years in ecological technologies would enable the U.S. to phase out almost all toxics in 10 years. Public investments of $25 billion a year over 20 years would enable the U.S. to replace fossil fuels with solar-based renewables in 20 years." (p. 3) The Greens do not advocate any reparations to the Third World with the $198 billion cut in "defense," but there is no doubt that the Third World would benefit most from a reduced Yankee military presence. For this reason, MIM considers the Greens our politically foggy friends. This issue of the paper correctly attacks the School of the Americas for its training of militarists and torturers and pointed to a Green resolution on the subject in July, 1998. 25 people received six month sentences protesting the School of the Americas, which has finally gained mainstream attention because Joe Kennedy in Congress sponsored a bill to close it. (p. 3) On the legal front, the Greens seek to make it impossible to patent new forms of life. Biotech companies have taken up genetic engineering. Without patents they would not be able to make profits from owning various forms of life. A conference in St. Louis's Fontbonne College in July discussed this matter. Companies seeking to produce alcohol have had the usual dialectically unintended consequence of mass producing a Klebsiella Planticola bacteria that kills all plants. (p. 7) Dr. Elaine Ingham is a soil ecologist who says that such bacteria can escape into the real world and destroy plants. MIM believes that most environmentalists fail to draw political conclusions from their own work. Here we see small private interests attempting to make a profit producing alcohol. Yet the result is something that can adversely affect the whole public. That is why production for profit should be illegal. However, the Green program called "Ten Key Values" (p. 12) mentions "decentralization" as one of the ten. Even if a community has made production for profit illegal, it might still undertake production harmful to neighboring communities: that is why "decentralization" is a recipe for conflict and environmental destruction. If it is true that the Klebsiella Planticola means of making alcohol is harmful it should be banned internationally, not just in one community. Whether through production for profit or production for barter, it would still be wrong. That is what the Titoites in Yugoslavia and the Spanish anarchists and other anarchists never understood - that the humyn species is truly connected, not just on occasion when activists make grandiose speeches for unity. What one community does affects others, as a matter of cause and effect and not some kind of spiritualist hokum. Acid rain is perhaps the best known proof of the environmental connectedness of the species. Recently, there has been much attention to how cigarettes are produced and marketed with global effects. There are many other aspects of production's organization that contribute to cancer. There are countless other examples that are a matter of environmental and production science. All the capabilities of modern science and production bring forward ever more conflicts that involve the connectedness of the humyn species. Even production under old technologies also had global effects, that were only more or less consciously understood. In fact, many of the older technologies revered through centuries are even more environmentally destructive than some of the more recent production technologies. In this day and age, there is no doubt about the need for the application of science to issues of biotech and the environment. Key production decisions should not be left in the hands of marketing executives. They should be the subject of socialist planning--openly politically determined production. This is an area where the growth of the productive forces--as Marx called the advance of the technology and economy--is placing the Greens at the center of a dynamic political sector. How to produce alcohol should be a subject discussed amongst scientists hired for the public good. We are much closer to the Greens politically than the economic Liberals--people still advocating laissez-faire for dogmatic reasons completely unconnected to the real world. We believe the laissez-faire people being individualists should live without government regulation and take unregulated drugs, drink privately polluted water and eat unregulated food. Within a year, they would all be dead and we would have socialism. The Greens have conceded to the Liberals with their "decentralization" plank. The Green plank for "personal and global responsibility" is also a dead give-away that the Greens still avoid the socialist implications of their work. The plank is for "personal lifestyles based on sufficiency and living lightly." The middle-class often has the illusion that there is no class system--no proletariat and no capitalist class. In the environmentalist context it means avoiding the implications that some profit from pollution and that production for profit should be banned, just as slavery had to be banned. The next unpleasant implication is that just as some people fought to keep slavery, there will be retrograde elements that fight to keep their right to make profit higher than the right of others to unpolluted air or food. Just as dictatorship had to be exercised over the slaveowning planters in the South in the U$A, there will have to be organized force used to keep people from trying to go back to their ideas of how to make private profit. The School of the Americas which the Greens are aware of is proof that there is in fact an international center of retrograde politics--the U$A. Hence, the Green plank for non-violence is also hokum equivalent to wishing slavery to go away with spiritual means. Instead, Greens like all petty-bourgeois activists talking about lifestyle believe change is a matter of individual choices. In essence, lifestyle movements by the Greens are a further concession to the laissez- faire crowd. The Greens will persuade some people to give up environmentally damaging consumption, but other people will be allowed to go on as before and ever more new and dangerous lifestyles will arise with the progress of the productive forces. In contrast, MIM does not believe in any hallowed right of the individual to introduce cancer-causing agents into other people's environments. Under proletarian dictatorship, such production will be minimized where irreplaceable and banned otherwise without regard to profit. In fact, the notion of investor responsibility unconnected to the exercise of political power is a typically fatuous idea of the petty-bourgeoisie. It shows an inadequate consciousness of how the economic world works. Under capitalism, if one investor pulls out of an area of production out of Green scruples, that just raises the profit rate for others to invest in that sector. Because the species is truly connected, only dictatorship of the proletariat is the answer for environmental protection. * * * AFGHAN LIBERATION ORGANIZATION CELEBRATES MARTYR'S DAY MIM sent this note to the Afghan Liberation Organization in connection to Martyr's Day, November 12th, 1998. The Islamic Party shot the founding leader of the A-L-O 12 years ago. Comrades of the A-L-O! For this November 12th of 1998, we remember your party and especially the blood sacrifices of your founding leadership twelve years ago. In twelve years it has already become apparent that the struggle against Soviet revisionism will emerge victorious and relatively soon. Comrade Dr Faiz Ahmad did not live to see the collapse of Soviet social- imperialism, but we followers of Lenin, Stalin and Mao all rest confidently that imperialism and social- imperialism will die one way or another. All of us communists die knowing that this is so and that the work will be carried on by the next generation. Even in the reactionary center of U.$. imperialism, this is true. The invasion of Afghanistan by the social-imperialists in 1979 created a pretext for President Jimmy Carter to re-institute the draft registration as a step toward conscription. Yet, such action had the dialectical consequence of politicizing the youth of the U$A. Thus the formation of our own organization and its predecessors owes very much to the invasion of Afghanistan. Not only did resistance arise in Afghanistan. The reverberations were global. At the time when the Islamic Party killed your founding leadership, the chokehold of revisionism was very much in force in the U$A. When we criticized the militarist actions of Soviet social-imperialism in Afghanistan and Eritrea, we were told that these cases were exceptions or we met with stonewalling and ignorance. The Trotskyists who never had anything good to say about the Soviet Union when it was socialist even said, "Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan!" We told them no Red Army invades another country, rapes its wimmin and imposes military-feudalism. Since that time, some have admitted at least being partly wrong about Soviet social-imperialism. However, what is more important is that we can be sure that the judgment of the next generation of communists will be harsh. While the older people still under partial sway of revisionism may not break completely from the past, especially in the imperialist countries where the majority of people is labor aristocracy, the newer comrades will see clearly the nature of the bourgeoisie in the party--the Khruschevs, Brezhnevs, Gorbachevs and Yeltsins, along with Alia in Albania, Castro in Cuba and Kim in Korea--none of which provided the necessary ideological and scientific aid to unmask revisionism when it needed unmasking. Equally certain is the destiny of Chinese revisionism. After the death of Mao in 1976, Hua Guofeng betrayed the international proletariat, ceased the campaign against Deng Xiaoping and eventually handed power over to Deng Xiaoping without a fight. Veteran Chinese comrades said they would like to ask Deng Xiaoping what he did that Chiang Kai-shek wouldn't have done. The blood of Chinese martyrs was not spilled to make China another capitalist country. In the huge vacuum left by Mao Zedong's death, the torch passed to the so-called Gang of Four, who were four leaders of the Cultural Revolution. Before we communists call for armed struggle, the proletarian leaders worldwide must sum this up as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union. Only in this way can we prevent mistakes and successful infiltration of the party by the new bourgeoisie, in the likes of Hua, Gorbachev or Yeltsin. Here in the U$A, the pro-Deng Xiaoping revisionists did raise their voices against the invasion of Afghanistan. However, by the late 1980s they were dovetailing with Soviet revisionism and the main pro- Deng organization dissolved in 1990. Thus, while there is a mountain of propaganda that communism is dead, there has never been a better chance to defeat revisionism since MIM formed. Always our revisionist critics told us the choice in Afghanistan was between Islamic reaction and social- imperialist reaction and always we told our critics that there were Maoists in Afghanistan and surely there is a proletariat which can provide the basis for emerging from all kinds of reaction. Today some of those who criticized us in the past on this question work with us. As Mao Zedong taught us, if the ideological line is correct, then success will eventually be ours. The blood sacrifices of the leaders and the people demand that we communists constantly renew our determination to hone the science of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism. It is by utilizing the science of revolution that the day of communism is brought nearer and the bloody sacrifice of the proletariat and oppressed people is reduced. Were the process of reaching communism a peaceful road, we could afford to be indifferent to the experiences of the international communist movement. However, reality in these years of the death throes of imperialism is violent. Martyr's Day, November 12, 1998 beckons us to hasten the end of imperialism and reaction. International Ministry Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * CULTURE PAGE review by MC5 MIM attended the Hollywood movie "Soldier" at its debut in theaters in October. The premise of the movie is the high-tech future of militarism in which soldiers run amok killing defenseless wimmin and children throughout the galaxy as part of "training." The premise of such an unmitigated evil allows the movie producers to come up with many excuses for gory action scenes. One retired soldier takes on 23 of the latest in high-tech soldiers and officers and wins thus saving the lives of refugee children on a planet used as a galactic dumping ground. In the movie we learn that the future equivalent of the Pentagon has untrammeled power including the right to kill or abduct anyone on the spot. We do not learn any of the motivations for the creation of ever more scientifically perfect fighting machines and soldiers in the future. Although such movies will be relatively clear even to the decadent thinking of imperialist country parasites because of the stark opposition of good and bad, the violence of the movie will not contribute in a straight-forward way toward the militarist climate in the United $tates. While the U.$. public is able to identify with the "rebels" against the "empire" in movies such as Star Wars, often the effect of violent movies is to justify violence in the minds of viewers. Certainly in "Soldier" the main character is justified in his violence, but by seeing so many movies where violence is justified in so many contexts, the U.$. public is bound to ad-lib its own justifications for violence and see them as equally righteous as what happened in the movies. Since Amerikan movies in particular glorify the individual hero against the rest of society, Hollywood ends up contributing to the climate of serial killers and militarism. The dialectical benefit of "Soldier" is that the only persyn capable of stopping the ultimate evil of the soldiers unleashed by the militarists was another soldier, in this case, an ex-soldier. "Soldiers deserve other soldiers" is one of the few things that the killing machine turned hero says. After decades of brain-washing and after his retirement, a soldier ends up fighting for his own life against the militarist machine that he himself belonged to that is running amok in the galaxy. This conflict within the soldier's life is a redeeming benefit to a movie otherwise typical in a country where action-violence movies are so popular. * * * FBI'S WAR ON BLACK AMERICA LOS ANGELES, CA - Students from Occidental College invited the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) to show the video "The FBI's War on Black America" and give a brief presentation on the Black Panther Party. The film showing was a success, introducing students to the history of the Black Panther Party and the FBI's campaign of violence against Black nationalists. The students also learned more about RAIL, its political agitation, and its Serve the People programs. During the lengthy and active discussion which followed the film, several students earnestly debated the merits of multi-culturalism as a strategy for change. Multi-culturalism is the latest variant of a theory which says that bad ideas (e.g. racism) are responsible for oppression. So to end oppression, people need to throw away their bad ideas, use politically correct language, etc. But oppression is a fact of material reality. For example, the oppression of Black people in the u.$. is the legacy of 400 years of slavery and the colonial conditions which persist in the Black nation to this day. Respecting Black culture [and which culture is that? Frederick Douglass or Booker T. Washington?] will not, by itself, change the material conditions of Black oppression. As the Black Panthers said, "A slave in a daishiki is still a slave." One student commented, "But if that's true, then everything we're doing here [at a university heavily influenced by multi-culturalism] is a waste of time!" Indeed, that's why political agitation and study are so important - history has shown that some strategies are better than others, and some strategies are complete failures. Choosing the correct strategy is a matter of life and death: To repeat past mistakes is a waste of precious time. "The FBI's War on Black America" is one of many films which RAIL and the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) show regularly in order to build public opinion against u.$. imperialism. If you are interested in hosting a similar event in your area, please contact your local RAIL or MIM representatives, or write to the addresses on page 2. * * * RUSH HOUR reviewed by MC17 Rush Hour was a reactionary movie about the virtues of Amerikan police officers with some good anti-British propaganda thrown in. The movie starts off with a scene in a conference room and the caption on the screen "Hong Kong prior to the end of British rule." This is a statement of fact but in the united snakes and throughout Europe we'd be more likely to see "Hong Kong prior to the beginning of Chinese rule" as if Hong Kong was a totally free country being taken over by China. But this promising beginning was quickly drowned out in the reactionary plot which pitted the FBI (portrayed as a bunch of bumbling idiots with fancy gadgets) and the LAPD (the only defense between the people and the criminals) against the bad guys. In another positive point to the movie, one high ranking British imperialist turned out to be the leader of the biggest illegal gang in Hong Kong. The imperialists are the leaders of the biggest legal gangs in the world. And their power far surpasses that of the the illegal gangs. The imperialist gangs have the power to steal, rape, plunder, exploit and murder with legal impunity. To capture the illegal gang leaders and foil their kidnapping plot the LAPD hero teamed up with the Hong Kong police hero. Although the pigs win in this movie, we look forward to the day when the masses will defeat the imperialist gangs and make the world a place safe for humanity to develop a peaceful and just society. * * * BLADE reviewed by MC5 "Blade" has received some acclaim, because "we have our first universally popular African-American cartoon character 'Hero'." The notion is that there are no Black superheroes, especially none with martial arts skills. Along comes Wesley Snipes to play a physically buff superhero. Reviewer Dana Chandler also finds N'Bush Wright a convincingly sexy Black female in true Hollywood, superhero movie style. For MIM, however, tokenism is not enough of a reason to acclaim this movie, so we delve deeper. The movie has some science fiction special effects that make it no "B" grade movie. However, despite the redeeming factor of having a Black superhero, the movie sticks to its vampires are evil premise to have an excuse for violence aimed at audience popularity. By establishing unquestionably evil vampires as enemies, the producer or director created excuses for gory scene after gory scene. Blade is named for how he kills the vampires preying on the humyn species. The movie does not make full use of its potential for political impact though. There is a pseudo-political struggle between the Black man and the Black womyn in the movie in which Blade must explain to the newcomer that the real world is ruled by vampire violence that requires a violent response. Police are portrayed as pawns of the vampires. When they barge in on a struggle with the bad guys, they shoot the wrong side. Later a white male cop is seen running errands for the vampires and the Black womyn is caught showing sympathy for the white cop, which causes a struggle that Blade eventually wins. Of course, what Blade must say to win the struggle is initially deemed as far-fetched, and in this communists see a glimmer of materialist self- recognition. What we communists say should be grounded in materialist reality, but sometimes the more grounded in material reality, the more far-fetched something sounds to the masses. Blade teaches us that it is important to continue with the struggle if we are scientifically correct but unpopular. Certainly Blade is scientifically correct in the movie and the masses are living in a dream-world or political stupor in which the vampires are feeding on them and murdering them. In fact, Blade also raises for us Maoists the question of People's War. Blade and his one old laboratory friend who makes vampire-killing weapons essentially fight the vampires alone. They have sealed themselves off from the masses, because the masses live in such a stupor. The vampires are so prevalent and powerful that trusting anyone simply leads to a chance for the vampires to kill Blade and his engineer ally. When Blade decides to trust the Black female character in the movie, he chides himself and his ally chides him for showing mercy to the enemy-presumably out of humanist concern for the injured female or highly repressed sexual drive. It turns out that the supposed mistake of trusting and struggling with the Black female hero was a good idea in the end, and so there should be some lesson in relying on the people. In Maoism, there is usually more of an emphasis on preparing public opinion for People's War, not the war of heroes. The war of heroes idea is more prevalent in the works of Che Guevara and Regis Debray, focoist military strategists who promote a losing strategy. In the context of the movie, Blade almost always has tactical military superiority over any combination of his enemies that he might come across. For this reason it is tempting to ignore the role of the masses and simply slaughter the vampire enemy. On the other hand, Blade and his friends both realize that the struggle would be lost if they were to die for some reason. Indeed, the engineer has cancer and Blade himself is getting older and is struggling with his own vampire side. Plus, there is always the chance that a vampire trick could result in the deaths of two or three fighters. Meanwhile, the vampire population is international and reproduces. Hence, ultimately, even in the fantasy situation where Blade has general tactical military superiority, he should have waged more of a People's War. If cultural work should be subtle, then this movie may be counted as a success because vampires seem to be far removed from the real world and thus the potential political expression in the movie is muted. The vampires control real estate and the city government, so the vampires can be taken as a metaphor for the bourgeoisie. The only problem is that all of this occurs at such a subliminal and fantasy-oriented level, that it becomes questionable whether it will offset its negative features in once again portraying "aliens"--this time vampires--as worthy of militarist hatred. There is a strong argument for this movie. The main counterargument concerns whether we believe that political cultural work should be directly and blatantly understood by the masses. The fact that the public views Archie Bunker as a hero and not as the object of satire in "All in the Family" should be a warning to cultural workers. What matters is not how Hollywood producers and intellectuals appreciate a movie but how the whole public viewing audience appreciates it. We are afraid the public will see in "Blade" another excuse for individual heroes who come up with their own reasons for violence. While Blade has good reasoning for violence, many viewers will come up with their own justifications for serial killing. "Blade" is not as bad as a Black "Rambo" would be, but it walks on a fine line. Certainly wherever we communists manage to reach the people in connection to this movie, we can turn it into a good thing by discussing the issues in this review. Note: The Boston People's Voice 4Sept1998, p. 12. * * * UNDER LOCK AND KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONS AND PRISONERS Mail withheld The prison administration is withholding my mail. Letters I send out often never reach their destinations and my incoming mail is often withheld without my knowledge. They're trying to isolate me from the outside world. They're trying to cut me off from my sources of emotion support and inspiration in order to demoralize me. -- An Arizona Prisoner, 7 July 1998 Brutal coercion On July 9, 1998 at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Inst. Div., Estelle High Security Unit, two lieutenants and at least nine other officers conspired to spray tear gas on me while I was in my cell. They brutalized me because I refused to go to the Brasoria County District Court to voluntarily indict myself. I told them prior to being brutalized that if the court don't like my non-appearance they could issue a writ of attachment to my body and re-subpoena me. If I still refuse to appear they could sanction me. I told them to look in the law library for the subpoena doctrine or call the attorney general for advice on what I tell them. I told them I have law that shows I shouldn't be brutalized even if I was refusing to transfer to another unit. I told them I was not going to court until my ineffective assistance of counsel filed motion for a special appearance to determine no indictment has been served on me. They forced me to go to the Darrington Unit. The Darrington Unit's lieutenant and eight officers coerced me to get on the van to go to court. Under same [above] circumstances except I was not brutalized, just threatened to do so. I was later taken off the van and placed on a special van to be immediately returned to my permanent unit of assignment. United We Stand, Divided We Fall, -- A Texas Prisoner, 20 July 1998 Denied medication, slandered, tossed in the hole I have been in the "hole" since June 30, 1998. I just got the hook-up yesterday from the brother next door to me. They took all my property and put it in storage. Everything! They claim I threatened to kill this guy that I know outweighs me by at least 100 pounds! It all started around April 7 or 8. I can't say exactly what happened but I heard that a brother from LA sliced a guard's face up. They say he tore his ass up! On the same day, I heard another brother beat down a guard. So they locked the whole place down. Even the other 4 or 5 yards that nothing happened on. They stopped everything for ten or more days. Visiting included. Then they came and tore everybody's cells up. I noticed that they stayed at least 15 to 20 extra minutes in black convict cells. After they finished searching all 7 buildings, (about two weeks later) they said everyone is off lockdown but the blacks. While on lockdown I was given the yearly "TB" test. I tested positive and an appointment was made for me to see the doctor. May 8 came around and two guards escorted me to the clinic. I was stripped first, then shackled. So the doctor made me sign a consent form saying that I was going to take "TB" meds Monday and Thursday for six months starting on May 11, 1998. When the 11th came around, nobody brought the medication, so I asked a guard to call the clinic. He said he would. Nothing came of that. So the 14th came along and I went through the same thing as I did Monday. Nothing came of that. A few days after that I decided to write up a "602." That's what the "grievance" form is called. I filed it May 18, 1998. Around the 1st of June, the head guard gave an order to let all "non-affiliated" blacks off lockdown. In other words, keep all the "Bloods" and "Crips" lockdown! An M.A.C. (means "Mens Advisory Council," but they never do shit for no one but themselves. Some are o.k., but the rest of them ain't about shit!) came to my door and read a memo that the head guard wanted read to all black convicts. I don't remember exactly what he said, but basically it was saying that the reason all the so-called affiliated blacks are on lockdown is because they're all conspiring to stab the guards. Even if a guy was not affiliated but was in the cell with a guy that was affiliated, he was also on lockdown. The LAPD made sure it was known that I was in a gang on every document in my file. On April 9th and 10th the guards came around gaffled brothers up left and right, claiming they were conspiring to stab guards. I know of 20 personally who got gaffled and as I'm writing you now, 5 of them are within earshot! They have let a few go back to the main line but, the majority of them are waiting to be transferred or are waiting to go to the "S.H.U." (the hole of all holes!). I'm liable to be going to the S.H.U. too! It is so many brothers in this hole. It's a shame! They let us off around the 16th of June. But 3 days later they locked the building down where I was housed at. They say this big ole guard's (he's over 6'5'' and a good 270 pounds) life was threatened. They took ten more guys to the hole. Six brothers, two Samoans and two northern hispanics. They let most of them go, but some of them are still in here. They let my building off lockdown officially about 8:30 a.m. June 25. Since I couldn't get my TB meds in the morning, I asked the sergeant guard to go get them for me. He went and got them and gave them to me. I was just about to take them but when I flipped them over, I found out that they had expired August 1997. So I gave them to this other guard and told him to exchange them up at the clinic. He came back and told me that whoever was in the clinic said that since I wasn't going to take the pills they were gonna write down that I refused treatment. So they did that. Five days later on June 30, 1998 I went down to the clinic and all hell broke loose. Basically, they started belittling me and when I responded verbally, they threw me out. Four hours later I was in the hole with nothing but state-issue clothing (1 set), 2 sheets, 1 blanket, 2 pieces of paper, a tow-up penfiller, 2 state envelops, 1 toothbrush sawed in half, 1 cup, a palm brush (which I can't even use because my hair is too long!), a bar of soap, a towel, a pair of "karate" shoes and a roll of toilet paper. I feel I'm in the hole because of the "anti-black" atmosphere in here right now. The brother next door shot me some literature that you all sent him. Everything you all sent me is in my property and I can't get it until I get out of the hole. Keep up the struggle! -- A Prisoner, 14 July 1998 State involved in petty theft The new law of deducting 22% from inmates pay numbers and trust deposits should be banned. For one, it is a burden for an inmate to make payments from his prison pay number when the average pay number is no more than $19.00 per month. Two, it is also a burden for an inmate's family to send extra money to make up for the theft of the state. Third, the sender of the money, whether on a fixed income or steady income pays taxes to the government from the start when the sender receives his/her income, and for the state government from the start when the sender receives his/her income and for the state government to tax the senders money a second time when it is in fact a gift to help support the inmate is unconstitutional. Another issue to focus on is the capitalism of the special purchase vendors that are owned by correctional officers and has developed into a monopoly of marked up prices and the only approved vendors that an inmate may order from. -- A California Prisoner, 22 August 98 Asian immigrants sentenced to life in prison for not having green card There is an issue that I really need help on and I'm kind of at a dead end. I'm an immigrant from Vietnam, and a lot of my Asian brothers who are locked up in Texas prisons are also in this situation. They had issued a detain for all those that don't have an American citizenship. Once we get released we have to go to one of them detaining facilities. A lot of my fellow Asian brothers wrote to me and said that the government will not let them go and they won't send us back to our country because our country won't accept us. So we have to stay there until our country change their mind or the law change. We are in a no win situation. I would like to know if you can help us or know something that we can do. Because it's hard for me and my people to just sit here and let these people do us any kind of way they want to. I really appreciate you taking your time to read this letter. -- A Texas Prisoner, July 98 MIM responds: The united snakes locks up many immigrants for the "crime" of not having Amerikan citizenship. Detaining facilities often have conditions even worse that prisons. While some legal battles can be won by immigrants in prison and detaining facilities, it is an even more difficult battle because they are not citizens. The illegitimate borders of the united snakes supposedly justify labeling immigrants as illegal. But this country was built on the backs of Third World peoples. The borders only serve to keep the white nation wealthy and the oppressed nations poor. One important way to fight this injustice is by exposing it. In addition we encourage our immigrant comrades to fight through the legal system and work with MIM's Prisoner Legal Clinic to share any legal information you have. We will also work with our immigrant comrades behind bars to engage the struggle from the outside. Ad-Seg hypocrisy Allow me to extend my revolutionary greetings and salutations. I would like to bring to you some news from deep within the belly of the rotten beast. I am in prison inside of prison, better known as ad.seg., and have been confined here for over six (6) years even though I am not an overtly violent person, gang related or on protective custody. My only problem is being outspoken and standing up for my rights--as any self respecting man should. Even though I am a prisoner, I refuse to lower my standards and morals as a man, much less a human being. This malicious treatment that I'm being subjected to is the most cruel and unusual that any man can endure because it not only affects me spiritually and physically, it is designed to destroy me mentally. All this talk about is a joke because recidivism means job security. [Without recidivism job security] becomes unstable for the hundreds of thousands racists peons who are willing to be pimped like whores by the state. How is it possible for a man like myself to get released from prison and keep from returning? I have no resources, I have no job skills, I have no college education, all I have is a bunch of pent up anger, hatred and frustration at the system for this oppressive treatment. I recently went to state classification on July 9, 1998. Even though I have not had any type of staff or inmates assaults in over twenty-three (23) months and I am not displaying the same behavior that got me placed in seg. July 4, 1992, I am being forced to remain in ad.seg. doing absolutely nothing. I was told by the classification officer to give him "2 years without a disciplinary case and he would then consider my release." I discharge my entire 10 year sentence in 29 months. TDCJ-ID policy states that ad.seg. is not to be used for punitive measures. If I am not being punished, then what do you call it? Giving me a vacation from working in the fields? At each and every classification hearing that I attend, my "past history" is brought up. Why am I steadily being punished for my past transgressions? I was punished when I went to disciplinary court. When you put a man in a position such as mine, he has no choice but to act out of desperation. For what other alternatives do I have? All that I have in the way of rehabilitation is seven and a half years of pent up hatred towards the system, its flunkies/subordinates and the government that controls it. The truth is that I don't want to return to prison. But what are my chances if I am kept confined to ad.seg. until my release? As a young black man the odds have been stacked against me since birth and are now being stacked higher. To prevent myself from self- destructing, I'm requesting you help. A Comrade in struggle -- A Texas prisoner, Summer 98 Drugs detract from revolution First, I want to attack all drug dealers and users that are incarcerated in prisons through the world. Drugs play no role in a revolution, period! Drugs are a pure detraction of what a revolution soldier should be concentrated towards. When a soldier is using or involved with drugs, you have just compromised your immediate purpose of the cause; and you have placed yourself to be a potential provocateur agent! Regardless of what illusion or scenario you may conclude, you are a weak-link to the chain. Also, if you were in China you would be executed by the people. -- A Prisoner, 3 August 1998 MIM Responds: Actually, the policy in Mao's China was to remove the social roots of drug use and the drug trade in order to "cure the disease and save the patient." Of course, there were strong penalties for those who were obstinate and continued to try to sell drugs and profit off of misery. Hungry for knowledge, hungry for change As you well know, education here in Texas prisons is non-existent and I'd like to address that for a moment. I'm confined in segregation and unlike most others around here I would like to receive, if possible some political material on the Maoist Movement or on socialism to gain a better understanding. Like it or not from the first day we had the cuffs placed about our wrists and/or ankles we were thrust into the political arena of which our incarceration is a continuing issue. I'm 22 and I'm a college dropout. Although I've kept up with major political issues for years, I've only been really politically conscious for the past 3 years. Of course it is impossible for me to obtain the literature I'm seeking by any other means and I have not read any comprehensive books on Maoism or even socialism; needless to say to sympathize with a certain political party or style of democracy is not the same as advocating the implementation of its doctrines. I really can't grasp the totality of those doctrines without having the vehicles that will lead me to the enlightenment which I seek. I'm part black, part Native American so of course I'm aware of our oppression. The reform, i.e., annihilation of capitalism must be completely understood as would its replacement and to be honest I don't have a clear understanding of everything this would entail. But I'm not ashamed to admit my ignorance and ask for clarification where it is needed. Whatever you can send will be used , not wasted, and passed only to those who crave that knowledge. I owe it to myself as well as my race and nationalities to discover the imperatives at work behind various ruling forms of government. I want the best for the world, all races, all nationalities, by any means necessary. I'm outta here. Keep up the fight and remember that some of us are behind serious reform. Give us the education to put those reforms into action and ultimately make change a reality. Peace. In Struggle, -- A Texas Prisoner, 6 August 1998 Exposing the Segregation Circuit I am housed in the brand newly built Supermax Control Unit Prison called TAMMS, in southern IL. I was brought here from another Control Unit Prison in Trenton, NJ where I spent my last four years. Before that I was on the "Segregation Circuit" in Illinois prisons for three years. (The "circuit" is a system where prisoners of consciousness are forced to live in segregation units in all of the prisons in the state of Illinois for more than 45 days at a time. Being transferred from prison to prison, but going straight to isolation segregation.) Before that I was housed was housed in all of the maximum security prisons in Illinois at one time or another. -- An Illinois Prisoner, 19 July 1998 The oppressed are not represented here There are over a million people locked up, and at every one's sentence there were three lawyers present, the judge, the district attorney, and the defendants lawyer. If you have a trial there are more lawyers involved, more judges, assistant attorney generals, and court appointed attorneys. The politician lawyers are the driving force behind all these changes. Most of these politician lawyers are former prosecutors and they are the ones who sit on the judiciary committees that make the recommendation, and actually write the law that is submitted to the rest of the legislative body. Who benefits? Why are there only a sprinkle of complaints by lawyer groups when these laws are being proposed and drawn up? What is the payoff for lawyers in general if hash laws are passed, if vague laws are passed, if rights are eroded? Who makes the money off the changes? Who are the ones who can interpret the laws? This is an area that the people need to look at. All the changes are lawyer driven. Governors are lawyers, the federal and state legislatures are full of lawyers. What is the payoff for a lawyer to run for a low level state office? What are the rewards? A judgeship, a governor. Look at all the lawyers in cabinet positions. What expertise does a lawyer have to be a transportation secretary? All the changes in the country are now lawyer driven. The treaty agreements with repressive regimes are made by lawyers. This is a mentality that is being passed onto their own citizens. I say they are using the unfortunate, the disenfranchised, the poor, the mentally ill, the illiterate, to feather their own beds. People are being sacrificed for the few. -- A Colorado Prisoner, 4 August, 1998 MIM Responds: You are asking some important questions. Who in this country benefits and who suffers? You are correct in that lawyers are reaping the benefits from criminal injustice system. But keep in mind that it is the system of imperialism who is the main enemy. The lawyers are just tools of the larger system. We as revolutionaries must work to build independent institutions of the oppressed. We need to educate and organize ourselves for revolution. Exposing the system of oppression is an important part of this process. Dear MIM Notes: The letter entitled "Gang Label Used to Oppress Prisoners" clearly shows the inward frustration that I feel ... The brother-man is right. We must set aside the small battles, for the bigger one. If we continue to fall prey to that century-old trick of Divide & Conquer, oppression will get deeper, and deeper, and deeper. So deep that they will no longer even attempt to mask it. ... Truly, it's time to unite and come together as one in this revolution. To that Comrade in Connecticut, and those everywhere, "I Feel Ya." --A Michigan Prisoner, 10/12/98