## ## ### ## ## # # ### ### ### ### # # # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ## ### # # # # # # ## # # # # # # # ### # # # # ### # ### ### THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT MIM Notes 83 December 1993 Electronic Edition * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get MIM Notes 83 from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), and get the latest in Maoist news and analysis - put a revolutionary weapon in your hands. This issue features an in-depth look at national oppression as perpetrated by Amerikan imperialism: the spread of Supermax prisons designed to control revolutionary prisoners; the case of Fred Hampton, Jr., framed and in jail; the politics of population transfer in San Francisco housing projects; the fraudulent injustice system and the LA4+ case; reviews and more, including monthly prison news in Under Lock & Key. 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. Struggle with it and write for it. MIM Notes is available to subscribers of New York Transfer (write: nyt@blythe.org). Or get a subscription from MIM in e-mail or snail-mail form - $12/year for 12 issues. Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. (Send only cash or check made out to "ABS".) Send questions, responses or submissions to: mim@blythe.org. This issue features: 1. FIGHT THE SREAD OF SUPERMAX 2. FREE FRED HAMPTON, JR.! 3. THE WHITE HOUSE IS THE CRACK HOUSE 4. LA4+ VERDICT NOT VINDICATION OF THE SYSTEM 5. POPULAR JUSTICE WILL RIGHT FUJIMORI'S CRIMES 6. CRIMES OF THE BUTCHER KENYO FUJIMORI 7. D.C. WANTS MORE PIGS TO REPRESS THE PEOPLE 8. LEONARD PELTIER'S DEFENSE PANDERS TO PIGS 9. ANTIOCH POLICY DEFENDED 10. EMMETT TILL WAS A MAN 11. KIDS AT WORK 12. LETTERS TO MIM 13. MIM DISTRIBUTOR WINS TACTICAL VICTORY 14. ON MAO'S 100TH BIRTHDAY 15. "SORRY ABOUT THAT" 16. FILM REVIEW: FRAMED: THE STORY OF GERONIMO PRATT 17. OVERHEARD: HOW MANY MAOISTS? 18. UNDER LOCK & KEY * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - FIGHT THE SREAD OF SUPERMAX At the end of October, 300 protesters gathered to further the campaign opposing the proliferation of Supermaximum Control Units. They targeted Amerika's newest and most advanced unit in Florence, Colo. which is rescheduled to open in the Spring of 1994. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) intends to transfer the most politically conscious prisoners and those that have filed lawsuits exposing torturous conditions to Florence. Amerika increasingly advances the technology of repression and torture. Control Units isolate the prisoner for 23 hours a day in an 8-by-10 cell where the only human contact is with the three pigs that shackle and drag the prisoner to the exercise cage. Strip status in 50 degree cells, limited access to reading and writing materials, rare visitor privileges are normal torture tactics for the pigs. The new Florence prison has perfected and added to this system of repression. There, automatic solid steel doors, cameras and loudspeakers increase sensory deprivation and make communication between prisoners impossible.(1) The Florence federal prison is modeled after the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) in California. There, 2,500 prisoners have filed a class action suit against the Department of Corrections (DOC) for using excessive force, failing to provide adequate medical treatment, and deliberately using isolation conditions that are cruel and dehumanizing, among other violations.(2) The Florence Supermax is also sited near the Cotter Uranium Corp., a Superfund site that has a class action lawsuit pending because of the contamination in the area.(3) Erica Thompson, an attorney for the People's Law Office in Chicago and a member of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), told MIM that Control Units, now in 36 states, have a trend of being located next to Superfund sites because there is no other use for the land and there is not enough support for prisoners for their health to be considered. STOPPING "REVOLUTIONARY ATTITUDES" A lawyer for the prisoners said that the DOC has turned the Control Units into a tool for prisoners to wage war amongst themselves because the only way out is to snitch to the pigs. The SHU officials say that the threat of confinement has helped them to dismember gangs such as Nuestra Familia, the Black Guerrilla Family, and the Aryan Brotherhood.(2) A former warden of Marion said, "the purpose of the Marion Control Unit is to control revolutionary attitudes in the prison system and the society at large."(3) Thompson said that the prisoners - mostly from Marion, Amerika's original permanent lockdown dungeon - are currently being transferred between prisons awaiting confinement at Florence. The law allows inmates to be segregated for disciplinary problems and requires a hearing if the transfer is a punitive measure. However, the warden can order transfers without a hearing if it is an administrative measure - the tactic used to control political organization. The pigs can ignore their due process procedure under the pretense that the transfer and isolation of a specific prisoner will make it safer for the general population. For example, when women at the federal Lexington facility refused to return to their cells in protest of continuous racial and sexual harassment, administrative transfers were used to send the 12 perceived leaders to Marianna prison, the highest level security torture chamber for women in Amerika.(1) The Bureau of Prisons claims there is a need for more Control Units because the isolation allows less restrictive conditions and enables rehabilitation in the general prison population. The CEML points to the Westville, Ind. Supermax as more proof that the BOP lies. In prisons close to Westville, record long lockdowns have occurred to control the prisoners protesting the inhumane conditions at the Supermax. Waples, the Indiana Civil Liberties Union attorney said, "the correction department violates state law in the method used to assign inmates to Supermax, and violates inmates' constitutional rights in the way it treats them once they're there."(4) The beatings and torture at Westville forced the prisoners there to stage two major hunger strikes.(5) This pressure resulted in the resignation of James Aiken, Commissioner of the Indiana DOC. The prisoners filed a lawsuit because the "segregation tortures prisoners by depriving them of the basic necessities of human existence."(1) The lawsuit seeks an injunction against assignments to the Supermax until the department devises new guidelines. PUBLIC OPINION THROUGH PROTESTS The CEML was founded in 1985 to monitor and oppose the brutal conditions of Marion, to fight against the proliferation of Supermax prisons, and to publicly expose the racist nature of these prisons.(6) The CEML demands that the Congressional subcommittee that oversees the BOP hold hearings on the future of Florence. Two years after Marion opened, such hearings showed that 80% of the prisoners did not have the security rating appropriate for them to be incarcerated there.(3) The subcommittee members that received the CEML's demands and accounts of human rights violations have ignored the situation entirely. Another goal is to stop the construction of the Supermax in Jackson County, Ill. Tamms - a desolate and economically depressed area - got the bid two weeks ago. The advocates promised jobs, but the CEML argues that all positions at the proposed Supermax will be filled by the present DOC personnel.(6) Thompson said that they will try for a legislative veto. She said that will be nearly impossible, but the legislative process is mostly for publicity and education. Amerika justifies the proliferation of Control Units across the country with the myth of incarcerating the "worst of the worst."(7) The targets of the concentration camps are transferred because of their political beliefs and most Control Units are 85% black.(3) The Supermax Units serve the interests of the capitalist class and the only way to stop the massive torture is to build a vanguard party inside and the outside the walls of the prison system. The genocidal fanatics do not stop when we protest, they do not stop when we petition, they do not stop when prisoners die, they must be stopped by stripping them of control! Notes: 1. Walkin' Steel Fall 1992. 2. The Bay Guardian 9/23/92 p. 26. 3. Walkin' Steel Fall 1993. 4. The Indianapolis Star 5/2/92. 5. Southbend Tribune 7/12/92. For more information see MIM Notes 59. 6. Letter from CEML to Jackson County Board 9/3/93. 7. Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, Vol.4. No.2, 1993, p.10. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - FREE FRED HAMPTON, JR.! December 4, 1993 marked the 24th anniversary of the 1969 assassination of Fred Hampton, Sr., Chief of Defense for the Chicago Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Hampton was shot dead by FBI agents as he slept next to his wife Akua Njeri - who was eight and one-half months pregnant with Fred Hampton, Jr. On May 19, 1993 Fred Hampton, Jr. was sentenced to eighteen years in prison in Chicago, Illinois after being framed for "aggravated arson" by Chicago police in the aftermath of the Rodney King rebellions in 1992. The lying finger of the state was pointed at Mr. Hampton, a former local president and an organizer for the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (NPDUM) in Chicago.(1) Hampton was charged with "firebombing" Lee's Mens Fashions, a Korean-owned business still standing and operating on Chicago's South Halstead Street.(1) At Hampton's trial the state was not able to present a shred of evidence implicating Hampton in the fireless "arson." A bottle filled with gasoline and black-eyed peas was found intact inside the store. No fingerprints were presented as evidence in the trial; there were no eyewitnesses; there was no physical evidence; there was *no fire.* The sole content of the government's case against Hampton was that he had a "predisposition" to commit arson.(2) Initial bail was set at $1 million.(1) Despite mass demonstrations organized by NPDUM to protest the Gestapo-snatching of Mr. Hampton, an Amerikan court system rubber-stamped his capture - because a politically conscious Fred Hampton, Jr. is much too dangerous to live. Hampton's defense attorney failed to raise a single objection at the trial. As a captive whose life is constantly imperiled inside an Amerikan gulag, Mr. Hampton has refused to bow down to the oppressor. He was immediately thrown into maximum security solitary for helping to organize a hunger strike and greeting his prison comrades with the salutation Uhuru, meaning freedom in Swahili. An international call-in campaign organized by NPDUM was successful in ending Hampton's solitary confinement. Upon release from The Hole, Hampton was immediately reprimanded for wearing red, green, and black beads. These colors are universally recognized as symbolizing African liberation. According to Hampton's captors: red, green, and black are "gang colors." On this ugly pretense Hampton was stripped of basic prisoner "rights." Visits from his mother and his lawyer were denied. Amerika's overlords fear the revolutionary power surrounding the fearlessness of the Hampton family. At the age of sixteen, Fred Hampton, Jr. was acquitted of a trumped-up murder charge. When Hampton and his mother Akua Njeri, national president of NPDUM, joined NPDUM upon its founding in 1991 by the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) - they laid their lives on the line. On February 15, 1993 Hampton narrowly escaped death as three ski-masked assassins opened fire on him while he was driving his van on a Chicago street.(3) According to the APSP's newspaper The Burning Spear: "NPDUM is a national mass organization whose function is to expose the U.S. counterinsurgency and unite the great masses of African people in pushing back the U.S. government attack upon the U.S. front of the African Liberation Movement ... [NPDUM's] aim is to ... create the conditions which will allow for the completion of our revolutionary struggle for national liberation."(4) A spokesperson for the NPDUM comments: "The murder of Fred Hampton, Sr. effectively ended the revolutionary activities of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was militarily defeated by a massive government operation - but its revolutionary legacy has proven to be politically impossible to destroy." More than 700 BPP cadres were shot down or imprisoned from 1967 to 1969. Nor did the U.S. government act alone. Its lethal terrorist campaign against the Black Panther Party (BPP) was sanctioned by millions of white settlers squatting on the stolen lands of North Amerika. It was suffered in silence by scores of highly-paid Black integrationists in service to imperialist careers. It was tolerated by most of the "new left" - which lip-synched to colonized people's armed self- determination movements - while actually dancing to the tune of white working class demands for more Third World super- profits and increased national oppression. As Fred Hampton, Jr. rested inside Akua Njeri's womb, Amerikan bullets rained down on the Hampton's marriage bed. Fred Hampton, Jr. entered the revolution as a warrior before he was even born. Now he struggles in the very belly of the beast. MIM calls upon all class, nation, and gender conscious revolutionaries to join the fight to free Fred Hampton, Jr. from his prison and - ultimately - to free all oppressed groups from Amerikan guns and capital. Notes: 1. The Burning Spear Sept./Dec. 1992, p. 4. 3. The Burning Spear Sept./Dec. 1992, p. 4, 22. 4. The Burning Spear May/June 1993, p. 4. Send mail, telegrams, and faxes to the officials listed below with the following demands: 1. We demand the immediate release of Fred Hampton, Jr. 2. Stop the harassment of Fred Hampton, Jr. in prison. 3. We demand an immediate investigation of all government agents and agencies involved in the kidnapping and conspiracy to murder Fred Hampton, Jr. 4. We demand reparations from the government for Fred Hampton, Jr. and his family for his illegal arrest and detainment. 5. We demand that the bond paid to obtain Fred's release be returned to him. Warden Mary Hardy-Hall Big Muddy Correctional Facility Ina, Illinois 62846 (618) 437-5300 fax: (618) 437-5627 Director Howard Peters Dept. of Corrections 1301 Concordia Court Springfield, Illinois 62702 (217) 522-2666 Fax: (217) 522-2666, Ext. 7016 Jim Edgar Gov., State of Illinois 207 State House Springfield, Illinois 62706 (217) 782-6830 Fax: (217) 782- 3560 Mayor Richard J. Daley City of Chicago City Hall, Room 507 121 N. LaSalle Chicago, Illinois 60602 (312) 744-3300 Fax: (312) 744-2324 Roland Burris Atty. General 500 Second St. Springfield, Illinois 62706 (217) 782-1090 For more information contact: NPDUM National Office P.O. Box 368255 Chicago, Illinois 60636 (312) 924-7072 Fax: (312) 788-7544 Write to Fred: Fred Hampton Jr./aka Alfred Johnson B42954 P.O. Box 900 Big Muddy Correctional Facility Ina, Illinois 62846 MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - THE WHITE HOUSE IS THE CRACK HOUSE SAN FRANCISCO - On Halloween, the colonial occupation forces at Geneva Towers saturated the two 20-floor Towers with a Red Ribbon propaganda cloud. Red banners proclaiming the Towers to be a "drug-free zone" went up in the lobbies and tenants were given red ribbons to wear in support of this completely hypocritical campaign. There are no drug free zones anywhere in Amerika; and Geneva Towers is not a crack house: it is a prison. Armed pigs accosted children demanding that they sign "pledges." Rembrandt Security men fondled female children as they forcibly pinned red ribbons to their blouses. Mr. Elzie Lee Byrd, 58 year-old co-chair of the Geneva Towers Tenants Association (GTTA), objected to these molestations and was assaulted by two gun-toting pigs who cornered him in a crowded elevator and karate-chopped him. WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS Two years ago, 3,000 people lived in the HUD-owned Geneva Towers. Now, after two years of forced evictions; 24 hour-a- day armed occupation by a 40-goon terror-squad; and a concerted attack by criminal HUD bureaucrats and "non- profit" poverty pimps: 800 people are left. HUD plans to rid the decayed and toxic buildings of all the people within the next several months. GTTA predicts that the Towers will then be torn down as San Francisco's Department of City Planning continues to coordinate population removal attacks which are forcing Black people out San Francisco's 49 square miles at the RATE OF 9.5% EVERY 10 YEARS.(1) Wiping out Geneva Towers *alone* eliminates 3.92% of the City's 76,463 person Black colony in one fell swoop. MIM has covered and materially supported the self-organizing efforts of the oppressed peoples at Geneva Towers for the last 18 months. During this time, long lists of felonious crimes committed by HUD and its managing agents have been submitted to bourgeois authorities in City Hall and in Washington D.C. These criminal actions range from guard-rape to embezzlement of federal funds. One by one, every bourgeois institution with the power to easily remedy these violent attacks by bureaucrats and other slugs - has either denied that the criminal actions occurred - or falsely claimed an absence of jurisdictional authority. GTTA organizers recently won a legal victory when lawyers associated with "minority" business interests were able to beat back eviction proceedings initiated against tenants flying protest banners from their balconies. The lawyers are being paid by local Black contractors who have an interest in allying with tenant organizations on the off-chance that these organizations will one day be in a position to spend money with the contractors. Black contractors are systematically cut out of government and corporate bidding contests - and in desperate need of work. A baseball team of Black lawyers would not be enough to handle the arsenal of illegal hardballs HUD is throwing at the tenants. Residents are now being charged hundreds of dollars for flood damage repairs caused by obsolete plumbing inside their apartments. Non-payment is "grounds for eviction" in this militarized community - where the only law is the law of real-estate speculators enforced on the spot by $22-an-hour robopigs. Unless a tenant has a battery of lawyers - s/he will be evicted on the slightest pretense. The good news is that management is painting apartments for the first time in 20 years! The bad news is that tenants will receive unpayable $1,000 painting bills on their monthly rent statements. HUD inspection teams surrounded by gunslingers search units for "illegal" washing machines - and other minor lease "violations" - in buildings where the ventilation shafts are chock full of friable asbestos and the elevators lurch like drunken dinosaurs. FATAL ATTRACTIONS The bottom line is that the armed goons at Geneva Towers do not really work for one lousy managing agent or another - they are a colonial occupation force mirrored everywhere in Amerika's internal colonies. The goons serve corporate Amerika and the class, nation and gender interests of the 190 million Euro-Amerikan settlers garrisoning the continent. GTTA has built strong alliances in the Black community and created floods of local public opinion exposing capitalism's particular form of attack on Geneva Towers. Recently, GTTA criticized itself for neglecting to continually mobilize the mass of remaining tenants *inside* even as it has been successfully waging small legal and media battles *outside*. GTTA has consistently brought the plight of the people to the public attention of the very groups responsible for waging capitalism's war against Blacks, Latinos, Samoans, and the Indigenous trapped in the Towers. Through bitter experience, GTTA has learned the fruitlessness of appealing to the sentiments of the City Hall apparatus, federal District Attorneys, all politicians - and the major media. GTTA is now working to turn its organizing campaign inwards and to organize resistance door-by-door - hoping to appeal to the group interests of the embattled prisoners in HUD's jail. Constant terror in the hallways and fear of eviction has kept most of the tenants from raising their voices and joining *en masse* in GTTA political actions. An additional factor holding back the political development of many tenants is that even poor people in Amerika have "something to lose" - whether it be a car, VCR, minimum-wage job, or AFDC check. When MIM compares the economic status of even the poorest people in Amerika to the economic status of the majority of exploited people residing in the enslaved Third World - MIM sees that even proletarians in North Amerika benefit from imperialist super-profits. Frankly, oppressed people are disarmed *politically* when we organize to grab "a piece of the pie" and agitate to "share" in white Amerika's miserable orgy of imperialist plunder. Building independent power of the oppressed nations inside North Amerika - while necessarily depending upon the international proletariat to fatally weaken Amerikan imperialism abroad - is not the easiest or the most glorious task for romantic - or impatient - revolutionaries. MIM is eager for the day when the construction of liberated revolutionary socialist base areas in North Amerika becomes possible. But Rome did not fall in a day - and neither will Amerika. In the meantime, it is the duty of North Amerikan communists to actively support all wars against imperialism; while using our angry hearts and scientifically-guided minds to arm the people with class, nation, and gender consciousness. Imperialism only needs to die - but once. Notes: 1. Citywide Summary of 1990 Census, San Francisco Department of City Planning, 1991. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - LA4+ VERDICT NOT VINDICATION OF THE SYSTEM By MC11 When a Los Angeles jury acquitted Damian Monroe Williams in October of attempting to murder white trucker Reginald Denny during the 1992 L.A. rebellion, the white nation reaction was twofold: rage and relief. The unabashed reactionaries spouted racist rhetoric and bought guns in record numbers, even as their liberal counterparts proclaimed vindication for the justice system and a happy ending to the closely-watched saga that began with the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King by white cops more than two years ago. Both reactions underscore the imperialist war beneath the monotonous sham of court trials and jury deliberations. There is some dissension among the white nation regarding the best way to wage it, but the goal is a unified one: keep the Black nation down. Like the trial of Rodney King's police assailants, whose initial acquittal sparked the L.A. rebellion, the prosecution of Williams and Henry Keith Watson - two of the four Black men accused of beating Denny - was viewed as a litmus test of exactly how just Amerika's criminal justice system is. The media reported in breathless detail on the ups and downs of jury members' morale. One juror, it seems, was anxious to get back to her boyfriend. Another was eventually dismissed for being too soft in the head to make rational judgments. And much concern was voiced over the ability of the jury to be fair given the fear that their decision might set off another rebellion. MIM hopes they were scared, if that's what it took. In a sense the verdicts were a victory for the people. The violent attack by Blacks and Latinos on white property and power in the summer of 1992 shook the white nation's confidence in its ability to perpetrate blatant injustice and still maintain control. Subsequent mobilization by the Black community to support the "LA4+" helped keep Amerika's double standard for justice in the public eye. But if it took a mass-scale rebellion to eke out a one-count acquittal (Williams still faces two to 10 years in prison for convictions on four counts of assault and one of mayhem; the jury deadlocked, but did not formally acquit Watson on the final count of assault) MIM would venture to say that's not a resounding triumph for anyone. And while we recognize trials like those of the LA4+ and the LAPD pigs as significant symbols around which good political organizing can take place, it's important to realize that such symbols are easily twisted and co-opted by those in power (i.e. the white nation). The re-trial and conviction of King's beaters in federal court after the rebellion that marked their acquittal is a case in point. Pacification is a useful tool in the imperialist arsenal. So to base an analysis of nation relations in Amerikan society on the outcome of a particular trial is bogus and misleading. It's far more important is to look at the stark pattern of injustice burned into the fabric of Amerika's social structure in county, state and federal courtrooms, in city jails and maximum security prisons throughout the country every single day. Blacks account for one-eighth of Amerika's total population, and one-half of the population in its prisons. Forty-nine percent of Black men in major U.S. cities are under the control of the criminal justice system. The rate of imprisonment for Black and Latino women has increased dramatically over the last several years. In prison, they are beaten, gagged, shackled, hosed with freezing jet-streams of water, forced to eat rotten food, isolated in dark cells 24 hours a day and sometimes outright murdered by the state. Check out MIM Notes' prison pages for more details. Such facts would stand as a condemnation of the "justice system" regardless of the outcome of any one, well- publicized trial, all too vulnerable to state manipulation. All that said, the disparity in the state's treatment of the white cops and the Black youths accused of virtually the same crime is utterly disgusting and well worth holding up as an example of the gross apartheid structure under which many Amerikans like to pretend they don't live. So is the white reaction to the LA4+ verdicts. Rodney King's police assailants were charged with violating King's civil rights. The charge holds a maximum penalty of 10 years. Watson and Williams were charged with "attempted murder, aggravated mayhem, assault with a deadly weapon and robbery." Maximum penalty is life in prison. Bail for the LAPD cops Koon and Powell, found guilty in a second federal trial, was set at $5,000. Their 30-month sentence will be served at "Club Fed," the Dublin, Calif. prison camp renown for its video collection, salad bar and gardens. Williams and Watson's bail was set at $500,000 and $580,000. They spent 18 months in maximum security holding cells without being convicted of any crime. As for the reaction, one need only have listened to a few samples of the endless outpouring of white rage on radio talk shows to realize where the sympathies of the white working class lie. "I'm so angry, I can hardly talk," said Bob, one of hundreds of angry white callers gracing the airwaves in the days following the verdict. "The justice system is dead. It's open season on white people. I never thought I'd say this, but I went out today and bought a gun." "They should ship you back to Africa," said another. Liberal white political figureheads took a different tack, preferring to use the "lenient" verdicts as a way to buy off the Black nation and the anger - bred from years of economic oppression - stirred up by the whole Rodney King episode. "We ask you all to follow the lead of Reginald Denny himself, who has asked the people to put their anger aside and look to the future of this city," said L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. Too bad for the Bobs and Richard Riordans of the world. The reaction from much of the Black community was one of moderate cheer without illusions. Pressed by a talk show host to answer the question of whether justice had been done, a woman who had organized in support of Williams and Watson responded: "Justice was not done. Under the Amerikan criminal justice system, that would have been impossible." MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - POPULAR JUSTICE WILL RIGHT FUJIMORI'S CRIMES From the pages of El Diario, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), MIM reprints the text of the "Crimes of the Butcher Fujimori." Here the PCP denounces the vicious campaign of terror and impoverishment waged by Peruvian President Fujimori, against the Maoist PCP and the people of Peru. Revolutionaries in Amerika must continue to support the valiant revolution in Peru. The Amerikan government sends tens of millions of dollars to the Peruvian government in overt military aid ($35.9 million allocated in 1990),(1) and most likely sends a good deal more in covert aid. This money goes to counterinsurgency operations against the PCP under the guise of the "war on drugs." At the time of Fujimori's coup in 1992, there occurred a temporary suspension of $200-300 million of foreign economic assistance, and the postponement of $500 million in credits from a "special support group made up of ... among others, the United States, Japan, Spain, and Germany."(2) So Amerika does admit to pouring hundreds of millions into Peru, all to prop up some pathetic dictator whose sole qualifications for his job are ruthlessness towards the masses and groveling to the imperialists. We can only speculate that this money is being put in the hands of the military and the ruling class, because it is certainly not benefiting the people. Imperialist multinationals from around the world are flocking to Peru in order to cash in on the poverty of the people. Nabisco, Occidental Petroleum, Owens-Illinois, Asarco, Amax and Phelps Dodge, are just a few of the names of companies who are opening operations there; these are U.S. and British based companies. Mitsubishi is in there too.(3) In Peru, official unemployment has remained at nearly 80% for the last four years! High unemployment means low wages, for people are willing to work for any amount, and there is high competition for very few jobs. Annual incomes in Peru are estimated at just over $160, a figure which has doubled over the last five years. But inflation in Peru climbed as high as 8,000% between 1987 and 1991, which means that the meager increases in income are not increases at all, because they didn't even remotely keep up with inflation.(3) There is very good reason for the multinationals to be flocking to Peru: *labor-power can be purchased at dirt- cheap prices.* "Foreign executives" are "pouring hundreds of millions of dollars" into Peru, and Amerikan imperialism stands to profit from the deal.(3) "New York super-investor" Gerard Manolovici says of investing in Peru that "it's when you go from disaster [chaos - ed.] to bad [order with massive poverty - ed.] that you make the most money" MIM's job is made so much easier when shameless, blood-sucking capitalists simply admit to being what they are, like Manolovici did. While the difference between "disaster" and "bad" may mean something to First World capitalists, to the masses the two mean only misery.(4) Along with all these other bigshots, AT&T, GTE, and Southwestern Bell are going to bid for Peru's two phone companies, which are being sold off to imperialists along with all of the other state-owned companies there.(3) So next time you pick up the telephone, remember that your call is being subsidized by the brutal exploitation of the Peruvian masses. Revolutionaries must defeat imperialism. Only popular justice, not bourgeois law, will right the wrongs of the butcher Fujimori. The People's Liberation Army will drive out the imperialists and liberate their factories, mines and fields. The Communist Party of Peru will lead the Peruvian masses to victory. Notes: 1. David Scott Palmer, "Peru, the Drug Business, and the Shining Path: Between Scylla and Charybdis?," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, p. 72 2. Ibid., p. 79, p. 67 3. NYT 11/2/93, p. A1 and p. D2. 4. NYT 9/28/93, p. A19 CRIMES OF THE BUTCHER KENYO FUJIMORI Crimes against humanity, war crimes, criminal acts by his death squads, and high crimes in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the American Convention on Human Rights, International Law, the Constitution of Peru and laws made in pursuance thereof. Traitor to the Nation of Peru. An imperialist lackey. RESPONSIBLE FOR: 1. Turning Peru into a concentration camp for political prisoners and prisoners of war who are being kept in inhuman conditions. 2. Imposing martial law, which resulted in thousands of victims killed by the Army, illegally imprisoned or persecuted. 3. The proliferation of mass graves and political assassinations. The genocide of 100 prisoners in the jail of Cantogrande-Lima. The genocide of 20 unarmed civilians in San Gabriel, the killing of one student and two children in La Peria, the killing of 16 defenseless Los Barrios Altos, the killing of a professor and nine students at the University of La Cantuta-Lima and other crimes still not reported as well as the killing and persecution of the relatives of political prisoners. The imprisonment or persecution of lawyers who dare to represent political prisoners. 4. The hunger of millions of Peruvians who are living in extreme poverty and lack basic needs. The proliferation of cholera, the chronic neglect of the education and health of the people. The end of free education for the people. 5. The permanent recession of the economy. The brutal cut of salaries and wages. The destruction of the national economy. The retailing of state enterprises to multinational corporations. The sellout of our natural resources to imperialist countries. The introduction of an outdated neo- liberalism in the national economy. 6. The military coup. The abolishment of the parliament and the judiciary. The creation of a subservient "Democratic Congress" to act at his behest as a means of securing power to commit crimes. The waging of a vicious low-intensity war against the people. 7. The compulsory use of peasant communities to serve as cannon fodder or a buffer for the military in its fight against the rebels. The killings of indigenous Ashaninkas by the Army and then blaming it on the Shining Path. The organization of the peasantry in paramilitary rondas, with striking similarities to those reported recently in Guatemala and in the 1960s in Vietnam. 8. The organization, control and manipulation of a fraudulent SI-NO "plebiscite" in an attempt to legitimize his crimes. The legalization of the extra-judicial executions by imposing the death penalty against political prisoners. The rampant number of rapes against women in areas under military control. 9. The systematic manipulation, gross misinformation, and censorship of an impartial press and media coverage. Only view supporting the regime and the military are allowed to exist. Even papers close to the loyal opposition are severely censored. 10. Misleading the world public opinion with cheap demagoguery and blatant lies: "Peru is already reinserted in the world economy", "the country is pacified," "95% of the terrorists are in jail," "Sendero will be finished by 1995," "I respect human rights," "most Peruvians support me," "human rights abuses by Sendero," "Guzman has capitulated/repented," "I am courageous with imprisoned terrorists," "I would kill Guzman with my own hands." ONLY THE PEOPLE WILL TRY AND JUDGE THE GENOCIDAL! MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - D.C. WANTS MORE PIGS TO REPRESS THE PEOPLE Things are escalating in the belly of the beast. Although Washington, D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly's plan to deploy the National Guard on the streets of the capital has been temporarily delayed, President Clinton supports the use of the Guard in D.C.(1) Mayor Kelly's original plan was to get the President to delegate his power to call out the National Guard to her. Governors of all 50 states can call out the Guard in their states at will.(1) While the exact details of the Mayor's plan are still unclear, early reports stated that the plan would include army helicopters over the city at night and guards in battle gear patrolling the most violent areas alongside the D.C. police.(2) Kelly later denied this, and stated that the Guard would be used to do technical and administrative jobs.(3) Of course, once she has the power to deploy the Guard, her story may change again. Most opposition to Kelly's plan has centered around the potential violations of civil rights, and the negative effect that deploying the Guard would have on tourism and big business in D.C. The twisted idea is that it would be bad to have the National Guard out, not because it would add to the oppression of the masses in D.C., but because opponents don't want "the nation's capital" to look like "some dictatorial banana republic."(4) Hey, if the shoe fits, wear it. Many of the opponents to the plan aren't much better than the proponents. The opponents have suggested that D.C. should hire more cops, increase foot patrols and put more cops around schools and public housing projects.(5) Even though Clinton told Kelly that he could not delegate the power to call out the Guard by an executive order, he said that he would support her efforts to get Congress to give her the power by changing the law.(6) Eleanor Holmes Norton has said that she will introduce the legislation to change the law.(6) Clinton also pointed out that the National Guard is already used for drug interdiction activities and suggested that she increase D.C.'s participation in that program to get more Guardsmen on the street.(6) So, watch your back in D.C.: As the contradictions of imperialism grow more intense, martial law may be just around the bend. - MC255 Notes: 1. Washington Times 10/26/93, p. A1. 2. Vancouver Sun 10/2/93, p. A1. 3. Washington Post 10/23/93, p. A1. 4. Houston Chronicle 10/3/93, p.3. 5. Washington Post 10/22/93, p. A1. 6. Washington Post 10/26/93, p. A1. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - LEONARD PELTIER'S DEFENSE PANDERS TO PIGS MIM recently learned, along with other observant progressive activists, that the November 21 March on Washington in defense of Leonard Peltier has been "postponed" until next June! While there have been many nice brochures and fliers advising people to get in touch with Clinton to ask him for executive clemency for Peltier, the March was not widely publicized. This is not the reason, however, for the delay. The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee told MIM that "it would not be prudent to march at this time," because Peltier is eligible for parole sometime in early December. The Defense Committee does not want to appear too "militant" around that time by being "angry" in Washington. Instead, they want to quietly send thousands of letters and faxes to the White House to get Clinton on their side. The Defense Committee is hoping that Peltier will get parole, and at the same time is begging Clinton for clemency. MIM opposes alliances with the state, but we also understand that Peltier's supporters want him out of prison. So does MIM, but MIM wants to unlock the gates of all prisons in Amerika. Peltier happens to be one of the more famous political prisoners of today, but all prisoners locked up in Amerika are politically, economically, and socially oppressed. MIM has long thought that the problem with the Peltier campaign is its approach.(1) The Defense Committee argues that there is not enough proof to show that Peltier pulled the trigger, but MIM argues that Peltier, if he did shoot those FBI pigs, was justified in defending his home and his nation. If he didn't then someone else did. MIM doesn't want to see someone else sold down the river to save Peltier. Whoever shot those pigs should be free, because they were righteously defending the people. - MC31 Notes: 1. MIM Notes 66, July 1992. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - ANTIOCH POLICY DEFENDED MIM's critique of the Antioch college sex code policy last month sparked a lot of Internet debate. In response to MIM's claim that the policy was paternalistic, one critic wrote: First Critic: "Making rape a crime is 'paternalism'? You may prefer to keep police and campus authorities out of such encounters, but that just leaves male violence in the bedroom as the only authority.... I usually call myself a socialist, but if liberalism is attacking rape and ending patriarchal oppression, then call me a liberal." Another reader countered: Second Reader: "I call myself an anarchist. Getting police involved in this will probably stop a few rapes, yes. But it will do bad things as well. What if a woman fights off a man while he is trying to rape her, injures him and the police arrive? 'You're being charged with assault, bitch.' Is that too hard to imagine happening? After all, police are there to support a mostly male and white power structure. And maybe there are other ways to stop rapes than getting police involved." MIM responded: This is also MIM's point. Police are never neutral. An analysis of patriarchy as a structure acknowledges that police enforce patriarchy even when they break up individual rapes. And in oppressor-nation Amerika, the police also enforce the subjugation of whole internal colonies. Thus, even when the laws designed to protect privileged women from rape do help to protect them, they strengthen the establishment that oppresses the majority of the world's women. Thus MIM calls them "pseudo-feminist": feminist in word, but not in deed. First critic: "Promoting self-defense is great, but saying that 'until the revolution' women are on their own as far as dealing with rape and sexual violence is a stupid position." Second reader: "But in many situations a woman will be on her own when she realises that she's going to get raped soon." MIM: In fact, women as a group are largely on their own. Women have only themselves to thank for any true support they get from men. MIM has no problem saying oppressed people are on their own to end their oppression. Only the chivalrous will object to an argument that leaves women's liberation in women's hands. First critic: "The whole MIM position is a typical ultra- left sanctimonious position that condemns any form of reform in the name of revolutionary purity." Second reader: "Well my position is based on mistrust of police authority. Is that unreasonable?" The first critic sunk lower: "When 'the left' refuses to take rape seriously, I place them in the same category of 'states rights' Southerners who refused to support anti- lynching laws." MIM: This is highly misleading and untruthful. MIM takes rape so seriously that it finds rape in all forms of non- consensual sexual relationships, whether physically forced or not. MIM takes rape so seriously that it refuses to accept piece-meal approaches that while not solving the problem even in the short run, also hurt oppressed women in the short and long runs by increasing the strength of the repressive state apparatus. For example, MIM opposes mandatory-arrest laws that increase the national oppression of the Black and Latino colonies without decreasing the level of violent rape at all. This does not mean MIM does not take rape seriously. MIM takes rape more seriously than those who do not do their best to eliminate rape altogether by eliminating its material basis: partriarchy. The critic who claims to oppose lynching but supports patriarchal police powers is on very thin ice. The states' rights Southerners who opposed Federal lynching laws were white pseudo-feminists who argued that police should take over the job of keeping Black men away from white women, so lynching would not be necessary. And that's just what happened. From 1930 to 1967, after illegal lynching significantly declined, the courts legally lynched 405 Black men on rape charges. That's 89% of all those executed for rape!(1) Would the critic argue that Black men committed 89% of rapes in Amerika in those years? And in 1992, Black men were 42% of those over 18 arrested for rape. Does the critic think Blacks commit almost half of all rapes today? But perhaps the critic thinks that arresting 12,000 Black men for rape last year is reducing rape overall? Wrong. The number of rapes per year has increased 18% since 1988. And rape arrests have risen right along with the rate of rape overall; arrests do nothing to stop rape.(2) - MC12 Notes: 1. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1991, p. 197. 2. 1992 Uniform Crime Reports, p. 237. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - EMMETT TILL WAS A MAN In response to MIM's review of _Your Blues Ain't Like Mine_ by Bebe Moore Campbell, a Florida critic argued on the Internet that MIM was wrong to call Emmett Till a "man" because he was only 14 years old when he was lynched. The critic wrote: "Marvelous are the Minds of the Maoists. A 14 year-old male person is properly characterized as a boy regardless of his race or ethnicity. Not to do so provides yet another fertile ground for making the entire left look ludicrous." MIM countered: What is "proper" about that? Most 14-year-old males are old enough to procreate, thus by one definition they are men. More importantly, whether male or female, they are fully capable of participating in such "adult" activities as war, revolution, wage labor, etc. In Palestine, Eritrea and Peru (to name a few recent examples) they are old enough to fight and die for their people. The critic had also written: "Much more important however is the fact that Emmett Till was a CHILD which made his lynching an even more egregious crime against humanity." And MIM chimed in: But this is more serious. What is your point? If Emmett Till was a grown man when he was lynched for being Black and male in Amerika, it would have been less egregious? We are sure you know that thousands of Black men (Till included) were lynched for the charge of rapes of which they were innocent. Do you need them to be "boys" for you to believe that they were not guilty of their alleged crimes? MIM is still waiting to hear from the critic as to why exactly it is important to consider Emmett Till a "child" instead of a "man." But instead we heard: "Apparently MIM has to hide behind anonymity ... in order to write this absurdly banal self- satire.... You are an embarassment [sic] to the entire left community in your efforts to give the right wing ammunition with which to ridicule us all." MIM has often responded to the allegation that our views are somehow less credible because we don't put our names on them. This is a bourgeois-liberal political position for which revolutionaries have no use. Revolutionaries know that the content of the argument is the decisive factor in the worth of the argument and that the individual's name is irrelevant. Revolutionaries also know that the Amerikan state suppresses revolutionary politics through coercion and force. Anonymity is one tool of resistance to that reality. - MC12 MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - KIDS AT WORK On the Internet, one supporter of the Socialist Labor Party expressed support for MIM's right to distribute at Los Angeles City College. S/he said: "I support their civil liberties, definately [sic] not their ideas (i've seen the mim paper and it looks like grammer [sic] school kids put it together)." If our critic meant to imply that MIM is put together by young children, we take that as a compliment. MIM points to the Palestinian children of the Intifada as an example of the revolutionary potential of young children. They are in fact much more revolutionary than the North Amerikan white working class, which the Socialist Labor Party upholds as the most revolutionary force in Amerika. MIM appreciates the support of many different organizations in the fight to distribute our literature, but we will not sacrifice material analysis in the process. If our critic meant to imply that MIM consists of students of grammar, MIM takes that as a compliment. We study grammar, spelling and capitalization in order to make our message easier to understand, but our principal subject of study is the most effective revolutionary ideology - the science of Maoism. - MC234 MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - LETTERS TO MIM TO HELL WITH MIM! I was reading the article in your paper on the riot at Lucasville. I was there! And it was all evil! From what they did (the INMATES) and also what made it come about (the SYSTEM) and by reading what you had to say, *you* promote the *two!* I myself promote the Lord Jesus and God the Father. So stop putting people to sleep with your white-washed truth! And start waking them up with the truth that is real! In the name of the Lord Jesus, - an Ohio prisoner September 1993 MIM responds: Let's look at only some of the atrocities committed in the name of the Lord Jesus and God the Father: war for conquest and profit (Crusades), genocide for profit in the "old world" (Spanish Inquisition), war for conquest and profit (30 Years War), 501 years of genocide for profit here in the "new world" (Manifest Destiny and spreading smallpox), war for conquest and profit (Mexican-Amerikan War, Spanish-Amerikan war, Philippines, Vietnam), the number of priests and pastors using their pulpits to preach jingoism dwarfs those preaching peace. Etc., etc. This is not to say that all Christians are mass-murderers or that Christians can't be revolutionaries. Just that one needs some material analysis to understand why people who preach "love thy neighbor" spend so much time killing theirs. Christianity, since it places ultimate truth beyond the material world and scientific knowledge, is not the most effective revolutionary ideology. MIM agrees that the system which makes riots inevitable is evil. MIM believes that the Amerikan prison system is an instrument of repression which will be smashed by a victorious revolution. MIM is working toward communism: the elimination of the national oppression and economic exploitation that make such tools necessary. So MIM challenges the writer to defend the claim that MIM supports this system. MIM supports prisoners' struggles against those who would destroy their minds and bodies. DO DEMO MAN RIGHT! And what about all the plot-gaps in the movie? [Demolition Man -ed] If spicy food has been made illegal, then how can Taco Bell be the only remaining restaurant? Are people supposed to get by with mild sauce? Come on!! But seriously, you had to at least like the scene where Phoenix knocks those seven hippy/new-age kkkops on their asses. That was great!! If only Jean-Claude van Damme were an anti-sexist urban guerrilla... - Revolutionary Internet reader in the East November 1993 MIM responds: MIM tries to provide revolutionary analysis of popular culture. This is a good vehicle for talking about all sorts of things, and a chance to play out many scenarios. In its haste, MIM sometimes has to leave out important elements of the products we review, such as the plot lapses noted by this reader. Our apologies. As for liking the scene where Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) knocks out new-age kkkops: sure, it was fun. Still, call us kill- joys, but MIM prefers scenes of real kkkops going down in defeat over the fantasy images of unarmed pigs dropping like flies. Real kkkops carry guns. They're the ones who bite it in our favorite scenes. We are open to competing fantasies. Why not send us your own revolutionary reviews? IS PERU SAFE? Next year a journey to Peru is under consideration, but many are afraid here that this country is not safe due to the insurgency. In MIM Notes 81 you ask those who want to know "what is really going on in Peru" to write to you. Any comments, in particular regarding the safety of foreigners and tourists, would be greatly appreciated! - European Internet reader October 1993 MIM responds: Here is some information we make available on Peru. It is not geared toward tourists, however. We are not a travel agency! Peru is not "safe" for most Peruvians. MIM does its best to provide information about Peru to further the cause of the people's struggle, to build a movement of support outside Peru, including resistance to imperialist aggression in the war. We offer a variety of literature on the revolution in Peru, including: 1. "Support the People's War in Peru," pamphlet. A series of articles and polemics from MIM Notes on the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the revolution. Refutes many widely espoused myths. $3 post paid. 2. Interview with Chairperson Gonzalo. The text of a complete interview with PCP leader Presidente Gonzalo. Treats main theoretical issues of the Peruvian revolution. 100-plus pages. $6 post paid. The revolution in Peru receives regular coverage in MIM Notes. We also sponsor occasional public events; contact us for information about possible events you could organize. ANTIOCH: NO CONSENT AT ALL? I have no major opinion on the Antioch policy. It sounds from your news release (MIM Notes 82) that it didn't make any distinction between sexual assault and touching, so probably was too broad. However, I disagree with the statement that as long as women and men are unequal economically, militarily and politically, that real consent is impossible. There are some situations where this certainly is true: women who are totally economically dependent on their husbands, for example. But I firmly believe that I can give real consent or withhold it even in the context of this society. I am an adult. Even under capitalism I am not helpless. Not all sex is rape (Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon to the contrary). I do not favor statements that take away from women the power that we do possess and that we fought hard for. I also think that things are more complicated than simply saying no real consent is possible until "after the revolution", which seems to be the logical outcome of your statement. - Coalition-building activist November 1993 MIM responds: Thanks for writing. We say that there is no true sexual consent under patriarchy because even when people say "yes" to sex, they are not consenting to be in the system that sex is a part of. Thus, "yes" means less than it's supposed to. At the same time, of course, some women have more power than others. Those women who have more power are mostly oppressor-nation women whose privilege comes at the expense of the majority of women. MIM's line stems exactly from its belief that you are NOT helpless. Those would-be feminists who try to tell you that you can't overthrow patriarchy are the ones telling you that you are helpless. They tell you to spend your time trying to pick just the right people to have sex with - and if you can't find the right person, check out a psychiatrist. The practice of subjectively picking sex partners to minimize inequality relies on bourgeois-patriarchal socialization that tells us who it's best to screw. MIM calls this adapting to oppression, instead of getting rid of it. Yes, things are more complicated than just saying real consent will only be possible after revolution. The communist-led masses in China seized power and constructed a socialist state beginning in 1949, only to find that patriarchy survived, though in significantly weakened form (foot-binding was eliminated and divorce permitted, for example). To deepen the revolutionary change they had begun, the masses launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Again, many advances were made. Women took more control in politics and the economy, advertising that objectified women was banned, and so on. Nevertheless, in 1976 counterrevolution succeeded in taking the revolution back, and the current system of state capitalism took control. Even though things are complicated, revolutionaries still have to boil them down enough to take a stand and put theory into practice. If we're not willing to do that, we'll never learn from our mistakes in order move on in the work of human liberation. VIOLENCE IS VIOLENCE IS VIOLENCE? "Never trust the state" (MIM Notes 80) is wise advice indeed. After all, the state is defined as that which has a near-monopoly on the violence in its geographical area. As everyone knows, one of the ways it uses its near-monopoly is to kill people - en masse in war and individually in street murders by policemen and in executions. So why be surprised when a *murderer* lies to you? However, elsewhere in the same issue you say "...government... is there to stay unless overthrown by revolution." If you mean violent revolution (there are other kinds!), the problem is that even if it is successful, we will be left with people in charge who are even more ruthless, brutal, better at violence, and bloodthirsty, and who have even less of a conscience and even fewer reservations about killing people than those who are in charge now. They would * have * to be, because otherwise they could not win the violent battle - could not successfully overthrow the present regime by violence. All who wish to discuss this with me, or question me about it, may address me as: Applied Philosophy c/o MIM Notes. MIM Notes will forward your letter to me. - Philosophy buff November 1993 MIM responds: Philosophy Buff makes the mistake of arguing only from logical premises instead of historical investigation. They assume that revolutionary violence must attack the bourgeois state on the bourgeois state's terms. This overlooks the fact that the goal of revolutionary violence is the overthrow of the conditions which make violence necessary, while the goal of the bourgeois state is the preservation of those conditions. This difference makes revolutionary violence inherently stronger; revolutionaries need not be bloodthirsty or conscience-less, just because the reactionaries are. There were officers in the Chinese Red Army who thought the study of the technical aspects of war alone would ensure the communists victory. Mao criticized this line heavily. For him, the Red Army was principally a political organization; the use of arms was subordinate to its political tasks. When not engaged in battle members of the Red Army worked to help peasants organize against the Japanese invaders or their local exploiters, the landlords. Army members explained communist struggles and goals. Because the Red Army made serving the people its goal, while its enemies blatantly oppressed the people, the people supported the Red Army. The masses' allegiance to the Red Army deprived the capitalist and imperialist enemies of intelligence and logistics they needed, and made every step they took outside of their strongholds a dangerous one. The Chinese people and the Red Army together were strong enough to defeat their enemies without using the same scorched-earth tactics to which the Japanese and Kuomintang stooped. The author also hints that revolution can be accomplished non-violently, but does not mention any successful or even attempted non-violent revolutions. MIM compares the development of India, a country which was granted its independence after a non-violent struggle, with the development of China, which booted the imperialists and installed socialism by force of arms. They started at more or less the same level, but 40 years later China's infant mortality rate was one-third that of India's, and China was feeding and educating its people much better than India. Why? Because the Chinese recognized the institutionalized violence of capitalism and did not shy away from the violence necessary to destroy it. (Send $1 for MIM Notes 39 which contains the article "Violence and Mao: Who are the real butchers?") The writer begs the question on this point: what is violence and can you lump all violence together? The writer implicitly accepts the bourgeoisie's claim that any action which defends capitalism and bourgeois right is justified and strikes against capitalism are "violent." MIM uses China and India as two important examples for the majority of the world's people. MIM would have a hard time pointing to "pacifist" starvation in India and calling that less violent than revolutionary violence which ends in better health care, education and food distribution in China. The author does recognize that the bourgeois state has arms and has no scruples about using them to defend its interests. MIM agrees with this, and that's why we uphold Mao's analysis: "We are advocates of the abolition of war. We do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun." IMPERIALIST "AID" IS NOT AID In MIM Notes 81, a friend who had written a letter made a mistake regarding the word "aid," something we hear about often from the media. Many people believe that Amerikan "aid" is really a sort of money give-away. People have been encountered asking "Why does the government give the aid to Somalians?" and things like that. This is a very common misunderstanding. Even some "progressive" music bands have made such mistakes. For example, the group Club Nouveu had this mistake in an album called "Listen to the Message" (1988). In the first song called "It's a Cold Cold World," which is a talk about a "lady used to be very pretty... searching for some food" and "they refuse to give her money because she have no address" the "president sends money just to help another country while people on the streets are going hungry every day." Great! Now we know that there is a relationship between "help"ing another country and not giving food to the homeless. Well, some people claim that the "aid" stuff is basically something like a loan with interests, or something of that sort. There was a brief description in the response to that letter as well. I was wondering if it is possible to give a little more descriptive explanation regarding things like "military aid," "financial aid," "food aid," and things like that, or perhaps MIM comrades could propose a book or pamphlet to be read regarding this issue. - Eco-Socialist Friend from the West October 1993 MIM Responds: Thank you for writing! We share your frustration with those on the left who do not recognize that WWIII is happening now, today, in the Third World. The number of victims of Amerikan military attack is small compared to those killed by the institutionalized violence of starvation and miserable health care. Check out Susan George's book _How the Other Half Dies_ for an exposition of how food-product imperialists deprive the majority of the world's population of food. She also gives good statistical data (e.g. 10,000 people die of malnutrition every day). MIM believes that there is a reason so many Amerikan "revolutionaries" have trouble seeing the Third World's struggles. They are so busy recruiting the established white working class that they have eliminated the Third World from their theoretical models. Trotskyism is still powerful dogma among First World radicals; groups organize on the assumption that revolution will only come to the United States if they can mobilize the majority of Amerikans, and that revolution must start in the highly industrialized countries. The Trots are so busy gettin' down with the white working class that they fail to see that the imperialists have thoroughly bribed them, turning them into a labor aristocracy. At this time the labor aristocracy has a material interest in defending imperialism. We recommend MIM Theory 1, "A White Proletariat?"($4, 32pp.), which addresses the question of exploitation. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - MIM DISTRIBUTOR WINS TACTICAL VICTORY LOS ANGELES CITY COLLEGE - In response to persistent harassment by one anti-communist, MIM launched a small petition drive that successfully convinced him to drop his attempts to stop MIM Notes distribution. On Oct. 26, MIM gathered 100 signatures in a period of three hours to a petition stating simply, "I support the right of MIM distributors to hand out MIM Notes in front of Los Angeles City College." The petition drive convinced the anti-communist to stop calling the cops. Last month, MIM Notes reported on an incident here on Sept. 15 in which a MIM Notes distributor was forced to relocate after somebody called the cops and falsely accused the distributor of "harassment." The distributor had been handing out copies of the paper, asking for donations and discussing revolutionary communist politics with interested passersby. On Oct. 21, MIM confirmed that the person who called the cops was an anti-communist student with whom the distributor had previously argued. The anti-communist made it clear he thought that communists have no "right" to free speech: "Not here; not while I'm around," or for that matter, anywhere that anti-communists work to suppress that "right." This is why MIM says that there are no rights, only power struggles. MIM's persistence, politeness and reliance on the masses won this battle. There will be many more to come. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - ON MAO'S 100TH BIRTHDAY December 26, 1993 is the hundredth anniversary of Mao Zedong's birth. Mao brought into focus the actions and ideas of the Chinese people and their revolution. His deepening and extending of Marxism and Leninism is that body of practice and thought that we now call Maoism. After the Chinese revolution, we can say that without Maoism, Marxism and Leninism are inadequate tools. To pay tribute to Mao Zedong is to pay tribute to the great accomplishments of the Chinese people and the oppressed people everywhere who looked to China for leadership, and who still look to Maoism and the Chinese revolution for inspiration. Great revolutionary leaders are the products of the people's struggles, as Mao reflected in 1971, when he was almost 80 years old: "Someone has said that to oppose genius is to oppose me. But I am no genius. I read Confucian books for six years and capitalist books for seven. I did not read Marxist-Leninist books until 1918, so how can I be a genius? It is not that I do not want to talk about genius. To be a genius is to be a bit more intelligent. But genius does not depend on one person or a few people. It depends on a party, the party which is the vanguard of the proletariat. Genius is dependent on mass line, on collective wisdom." With the restoration of capitalism in China after 1976, after Mao's death, revolutionaries lost a great battle in the war to end all oppression in human society. The revolutionary life of Mao Zedong is a beacon that shines through the mists of time to the present, symbolizing the heroic struggle of the Chinese revolution, and revolutions of the oppressed everywhere. It is that legacy that MIM honors today. WINTER CLOUDS December 26, 1962 Winter clouds snow-laden, cotton fluff flying, None or few the unfallen flowers. Chill waves sweep through steep skies, Yet earth's gentle breath grows warm. Only heroes can quell tigers and leopards And wild bears never daunt the brave. Plum blossom welcome the whirling snow; Small wonder flies freeze and perish. Notes: Chairman Mao Talks to the People, Stuart Schram, ed. Pantheon: New York, 1974. Mao Tsetung Poems. Foreign Languages Press: Peking, 1976. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - "SORRY ABOUT THAT" "The Senate voted, 65 to 34, to issue a formal apology to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of their island kingdom by U.S. agents a century ago .The resolution now goes to the House."(1) - MC49 Notes: 1. Los Angeles Times 10/28/93, p. 20. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - FILM REVIEW: FRAMED: THE STORY OF GERONIMO PRATT by Dennis Mueller and Masimo Pillow 1993 approx. 30 min. This short video gives a brief glance at the foundations and formation of the Black Panther Party (BPP), focusing on the FBI's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) against the party and specifically COINTELPROs aimed at dividing the party from other Black nationalist groups. The information on COINTELPRO is given as the framework within which Geronimo Pratt was framed, convicted and sent to prison. The video brings out the fact that the FBI wanted to put Geronimo away permanently once he succeeded John Huggins and Bunchy Carter as head of the Los Angeles BPP. The LA branch was both very active and central to the BPP's organization - being geographically and politically close to the party's Oakland, CA headquarters. Shortly after conducting raids on the BPP office and on the apartment where Pratt stayed, the LAPD found a case in its unsolved murders file to pin on Pratt. The video gives a solid picture of the extent to which the local police department worked together with the FBI to destroy the BPP chapter. This point is important because consistently throughout the COINTELPRO era the FBI and local law enforcement denied the existence of any national coordination in their work against the Panthers.(1) The film also goes into the depth of FBI interference with the BPP. It describes how a local informant provided the FBI with a cardboard model of the LA-BPP apartment in preparation for the raid, including directions as to where Pratt and other members of the chapter slept. The layers of infiltration become clear as we find out that the government also had an informant participating in Pratt's legal defense strategy sessions once his trial for the murder began. *Framed* includes interviews with Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), BPP Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, Panther Chief of Staff David Hilliard, other BPP members including Communications Secretary Kathleen Cleaver, attorneys who worked on the case and one of the jurors in the case. MIM saw this film at the Midwest Radical Scholars and Activists Conference at Loyola University in Chicago. An audience member there pointed out one of the biggest weaknesses of the film. This person did not know much about the BPP and asked after the film what the Panthers' program consisted of - was it just people wanting to carry around guns and shoot people? You could easily get this impression from watching the film, because the only references to the organization were about why it is justifiable for Black people to use guns to defend themselves. This actually becomes a major problem with the film, whose argument revolves around demonstrating how and why the FBI became so intent on putting Geronimo Pratt away. The overwhelming military force the FBI and local police used against the BPP cannot be attributed as a response to the Panthers' own military power at that time. The BPP was not principally a military organization and the FBI Director noted that often enough. The most talked-about reasons for governmental attack on the BPP were the Survival Programs which the FBI knew were used for "indoctrination."(2) Much of the FBI's talk about the military threat posed by the BPP was an over-excited reading of what it meant that the Panthers were organizing in Black communities based on socialist principles. J. Edgar Hoover exhorted local FBI offices to put a stop to the "nefarious activity" of feeding Black children free breakfasts before school in the morning. The government cared so much about the BPP because of their power and dedication to organize the Black community. The FBI did what Mao called "putting 10 against 1" in its actions against the BPP. In the Community Survival programs and rallies the government saw a scary potential for organizing Black people in an armed rebellion against the state. So rather than just take action to cut down these specific programs, the FBI worked through a campaign to take out the Panthers as an organization. The FBI saw the BPP's influence on public opinion as a military threat, and launched an "appropriate" attack. Progressives popularizing the BPP today share the responsibility to accentuate the real strengths of BPP work - *The Black Panther*, the party's newspaper; the Community Survival Programs, etc. - and the way these activities educated the Black community about political and economic repression and the importance of socialism. MIM doesn't deny the time and money the BPP spent discussing the right to bear arms. In discussing the repression of the BPP we try to keep a clear perspective on the fact that the BPP was not a direct military threat to the U.S. government, and that the FBI used exaggeration of this threat - to the point of falsification - to excuse its campaign against the party. Notes: 1. This denial was essential to the picture the FBI painted of the BPP as aggressive, terrorist, etc. The intricacies of FBI and local police coordination reveal a thoroughly- organized campaign to harass, provoke, agitate and intimidate the Panthers. This campaign dug into all levels of internal party work, work with other progressive organizations and the private lives of BBP cadre. For a detailed history see _Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement_ by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. MIM distributes this book for $16. 2. This is the same idea as saying that the Viet Minh or the Communist Party of Peru "bribes" people with food in exchange for support. Feeding people could only be seen as a bribe in an economy which deprives people of healthy food and calls that good business. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - OVERHEARD: How many Maoists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? There are four answers to that question: 1. That's a pig question. 2. All of them. One to hold the bulb, the rest to make a world revolution. 3. It's a pragmatist question. It shouldn't matter how many, if the line is correct. 4. It's a reformist question. It's not the bulb, but the whole lamp. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org. * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - Under Lock & Key LUCASVILLE UPDATE: PRISONER FACES THREATS, SLURS, BEATINGS, COVER-UP AND DENIAL OF MEDICAL CARE Dear MIM, I hope that this letter finds you and everyone there in the best of health and spirits. As for myself, I'm doing my best to remain strong in my struggle for freedom. MIM, I would appreciate very much if you would forward this letter to your Editor. If the word about Lucasville does not get out, convicts may lose their lives at the hands of the prison guards. On Oct. 12, 1993, Officer Howard came to my cell and told me to turn my music down, although the volume was already set on #1. I unplugged my radio, and the officer moved on, only to return moments later with threats. He told me that he has 23 more years to work here and that he was going to bring me down. At this time, I asked him why he is always fucking with me. His partner, Commanding Officer (C.O.) Carter called down from the top range and told Howard to take my radio. Howard told me to put my hands out the bars so that he could handcuff me. At this time, I asked him to get me a Sergeant to take me to the hole, J-2, because he had just threatened me. His partner, C.O. Carter, called the D.C.T. Team. The D.C.T. Team are common criminals acting like correctional officers. They have on all black with riot gear. I put my hands outside of the bars to be cuffed. I was cuffed with my hands behind my back. As they were walking me down the hallway, one of them said, "why ain't you talking now, Nigga Boy?" I said nothing, because I just wanted to get back to the hole. At this time, one of them took his black riot helmet and hit me on the left side of my head. The others joined in, kicking me and hitting me in my face and head. I was taken to the gate of the control center and was beaten again and asked, "Why can't you stand on your own two feet, Nigga Boy?" Once inside J-2 strip cell, I was told to put my hands through a food slot. Once my hands were through the food slot, I was beaten again, receiving kicks and hits to my face and head. My wrist was cut by the handcuffs, and the feeling has not returned to part of my hand. My face is swollen and I have lost sight in my left eye and lost my hearing in my left ear. When the nurse made out her report, she asked me if I fell, and I told her that five officers had jumped on me. She then asked where it happened. When I told her that it started on K-side, she said, "Oh, you fell on K-side." Again I told her that I did not fall. She still wrote in her report that I fell. The beating took place Oct. 12. Today is Oct. 21, and I still have not seen a doctor. MIM, on Sep. 20, 1993, I sent in a complaint on C.O. Carter and C.O. Howard for harassment and threats. No action was taken. MIM, I thank you for putting the word out, and I appreciate the time you took to read this letter. Thank you. Sincerely yours, - an Ohio prisoner, 10/21/93 MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - Under Lock & Key SKELETON BAY PRISON'S GANG-IN-GREEN Skeleton Bay Prison (Pelican Bay State Prison), the new, high-tech control unit/torture facility, is located in remote Crescent City in the extreme northwest corner of California. This is where the California Department of Corrections sends prisoners - ostensibly due to their alleged prison gang membership, association with such prisoners, proclivity for extreme violence, incorrigibility or supposed threat to the safety/security of the institution. On September 12, 1993, Mike Wallace, on "60 Minutes," covered the Skeleton Bay torture issues. Mike Wallace appeared awe-struck as he interviewed a prisoner named Vaughn Dortch and viewed the horrendous scar tissue all over the prisoner's body, caused by prison guards and medical staff who literally cooked him in boiling hot water and scrubbed him with a scouring pad until his skin peeled off. The prison officials, while perpetrating this reprehensible inhumanity on prisoner Dortch, tormented Mr. Dortch further with racial epithets like, "We're gonna scrub all the blackness off you" and "When we're done, you won't be Black anymore." Prisoner Vaughn Dortch was sentenced to prison for the crime of stealing a car, commonly referred to as GTA (Grand Theft Auto). Basically, prisoner Vaughn Dortch is a petty criminal who, after approximately nine months in the Pelican Bay SHU (Security Housing Unit), began suffering from severe mental deterioration, smearing his body with his own feces. This is the alleged reason he was chained with restraints and forcefully held under boiling water, cooked and scrubbed until the black color of his skin was gone and only the bloody white epidermis of his skin remained. Only one correctional officer/employee was discharged from employment for the action taken against prisoner Dortch. Of course, numerous prison officers, medical personnel, and supervisors should have been fired and charged with both state and federal criminal charges, but they weren't. But this is how the California Department of Corrections prison officials, in collusion, from head administrators to low- ranking underlings and employees, ignore blatant inhumanities and violations of laws committed by those in green (standard guard uniform color). They are called upon to investigate themselves and my 15 years' experience has been that it takes extremely exceptional circumstances for them to admit any wrongdoing. Prisoner Dortch is but one of many prisoners who are brutalized and victimized by the Gang-in-Green. Not every such prisoner subjected to the reign of terror by the Gang- in-Green can show physical scars, and often only other prisoners witness such events. (In Dortch's case, a couple of prison employees came forward to affirm the facts). Also, psychological torture can be just as intense, odious, malicious and unforgivable as physical torture. The Gang-in-Green exists in every prison, but not every guard or prison official is in the gang. To be in the gang, you must commit crimes against prisoners while wearing a badge and while on duty. You must not inform on your brother gang members. You must lie for fellow employee gang members. You must cover up the wrongdoings of other gang members and assist in retaliations against all who attempt to oppose you or the gang's action, even to the point of murder. If caught, you must deny everything and plead loss of memory. Although Vaughn Dortch is African American, the Pelican Bay Prison SHU houses 59% Mexican mestizos and the vast majority of abuses are inflicted upon them. I myself have been relegated to this isolation/sensory deprivation/control- unit/torture facility, based solely on prison officials' malicious retaliatory effects against me for being a jailhouse lawyer for myself and many other prisoners, for collaborating with the news media, for writing articles to document my innocence in crimes I was convicted of and for exposing the internal reality of the corrupt prison system as well as other injustices against the poor and oppressed. - by a California prisoner, 10/18/93 MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - Under Lock & Key PRISON LETTERS: STUDY GROUP, RECRUITING HIS MOM, DRUG PUSHING AND CENSORSHIP Dear MIM, How you be? I hope peaceful, for the time being! Long live the struggle. I received all the material you've sent me. And I truly appreciate it. I should say we, because we (the convicts) in here have a a study group going on. I get the material you send me and let all the comrades in here read, study and put it into practice. So I would like to stay on your mailing list. Can you send me some more material in here? I already received MIM Theory #2/3 and #4 and several recent issues of MIM Notes. We will keep our study group active! Also, I sent my mother a photocopy of MIM Notes. She said she liked it and that she didn't know they had organizations out there like that. So we brought her out of the darkness in which she once lived! She said she is going to get a subscription as soon as possible. That makes me feel proud of myself and makes me want to keep up my studying. And I will! If you print this, please list me as an associate from California. That's because I'm from California. Just held hostage in Indiana. Write back. - a Californian prisoner in Indiana, 9/14/93 PRISONER WINS A SMALL VICTORY OVER PRISON CENSORSHIP Beloved comrades: I've noticed that my MIM Notes were frequently missing essential elements, such as follow-up pages! This was not in every issue, but some. So I had enlightened the warden to this and, out of coincidence or because of my awareness, thus far ALL of the pages of my MIM Notes are intact. - a Maryland prisoner, 7/21/93 SUBJECT: DRUG PUSHERS I hear so much about drug pushers. It seems to me that the best definition of a drug pusher is when after the victim has said "no," the criminals then assault the victim and hold the victim down and injects the victim with toxic chemicals. Now, this type of criminal is what I would call a true drug pusher. These criminal assaults occurred to me for 10 1/2 years, from 1976 to 1987, yet NONE of these criminals has ever been arrested (although I was awarded $1,500 as a token for the abuse), and now these criminals still pull in fabulous sums of money at taxpayers' expense. These criminals currently live in nice homes and drive nice cars. - an Oregon prisoner, 9/20/93 MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org * * * * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * * * - MIM Notes 83, December 1993 - Under Lock & Key: Prison Poetry THE TRUTH If you let the White Man pay you to Kill ya Brotha. Man you ain't nothin, and ain't goin no further. Pay you 10 Grand to make a Hit, If you go for that man you ain't-- Shit, on ma shoes let me wipe it off, Man clean it good, throw away the cloth. To me you ain't nuthin but a dud, You think you slick but yo name is mud. Cause these are the days fo retaliation, and The Brothers of the World gonna end this humiliation. Taken our Sisters and turnin em out, Walking round acting like you got Clout. Um a tell you somethin man, you ain't cool, All I see is a silly fool. Helping the White Man destroy our Nation, Making it impossible for the next generation. Now--look at our people, strung out on crack, Keeping Mothers and Sisters dressed up in Black, Goin to funerals wasting our time, Killing for corners, selling vials for a dime. Thinking you doin something that's really Slick, But Whitey got you caught up in "his" trick. Making Millions of dollars, buying houses and Cars, Investing dope money in Clubs and Bars. But before it's over you Bound to get caught. And all that pretty new stuff you Bought. Goes to Whitey. And you get time. Saying man this White dude is really good, Cause he gave me a package when no one else would. He helped you put poison in your own Community, To destroy Black Men, Women, and children, you see? But you thought that was good, cause you ain't thinking, Men n Women turning tricks, Smoking Crack and drinking. Selling their Babies to the dope Man, Getting money for crack, any way they can. The Bad part about it is we robbing each other, Bashing, and stabbing, and shooting Black Brothers. Maiming and Killing like it's the latest style, While Whitey takes ya money, locks ya up with a smile. But I be wondering how all this will end, We must help ourselves, we're our only friend! All this struggling for that cursed green stuff, soon American money, won't be enough. Where will we spend it when this Nation's destroyed, And this paper we killed for is null and void? I feel for you all my Ancient Black Brothers, Uplift our People, Save the Children, and their Mothers. I know what's in you cause it's in me, too, We sailed the Oceans lookin for somethin to do. But now there's no time for Procrastination, We got to Be About--African Liberation! --by an Illinois prisoner "FROM A GENOCIDAL CHAMBER": POEMS BY AN INDIANA PRISONER: DE BEAT GOES ON I lie down to rest Thinking somehow de world Would be different How wrong I was A young sister died today Of a back-alley abortion An elderly mother was gunned By de same people she called To protect her De governmental police A young man was beaten To death Because he wandered in de wrong Neighborhood How about de man That died of his injuries Because de medical staff Refused to come to his aid What day was this? You don't know? Aw, sure you do Yesterday, today, tomorrow Every day De beat goes on De only victors Are de supporters Of this one-sided racist system They systematically come up With slogans To disguise de fact that De beat goes on Until a people Identify, recognize That de evil ones on top Are perfectly happy De ways things are How else do you explain De same old spit >From communities to communities Coast to coast Day in 'n' day out Yes, de beat goes on Unfortunately, de gap Of life Is becoming shorter As de beat goes on... LABELS THAT DEFINE? They called me Schizophrenic Paranoid when Very young. Said I was "preoccupied with Aggressive Fantasies," "Obsessive Compulsive." Whatever dey call me, Ah know um tired of dis mess. Living like a Bird trapped in an Oil Spill. Huh! You'd be Schizophrenic, too! Bein able to change who you Is, Be a Necessary tool for survival, where I come from. You know, Come from, like, in da past. You'd be Paranoid too, if Yo eyes Seen what mine done seen. And bein "Preoccupied With Aggressive Fantasies," ain't nuthin but anticipating that attack That's been so, Heretofore Prevalent. Obsessive Compulsive? Well, let's not Prevaricate, Three out of four, ain't bad. --by an Illinois prisoner "FROM A GENOCIDAL CHAMBER": POEMS BY AN INDIANA PRISONER: CONSUMPTION OF LIFE It's said Everything's defaulting From Medicare to child's care Isn't that strange Wouldn't you say? Day in 'n day out Commercials, commercials Hundreds a minute Buy me, buy me Credit or cash Come as you are We don't care With all those slogans Doesn't that just make you wonder How it is that we can buy As we are But can't for the life of us Get adequate emergency care No matter whom you are Without credit or cash Deficit, deficit But for whom Let's stop and look Is it in military spending? Is it in governmental pay? Is it in courts or law agencies? You had three guesses 'N struck out on all three Those above three are key elements Of repression that's thriving More than ever remember Their slogan Buy me, buy me We don't care Until we realize this Our true crisis It's mentally more than facts It's an illusion less than reality We don't have to live Just like this We can control de future Once we demand With true unity and convictions We must take a stand >From this you know False consumption of life... OUR INFLUENCE Another generation Is out in de streets Tonight Cause it's Friday 'n Saturday Nights Fighting a Battle As did us before Thinking it's de thing To do Another generation Is out in de streets Tonight Worrying de elders Physically sick We de elders are at fault For setting a pattern A cycle of false illusions We too Refused to listen As hopes 'n dreams Are shattered tonight Dealing with this A false society You 'n I Who've been through It all Know what's happening On Friday 'n Saturday Nights! It's time for us De generation past To teach this now Our newest generation's De truth of this A Double standard system Way before Even our birth To be able to stop This term... MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send only cash, stamps or check made out to "ABS." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org