Working

W
Working
ki to
t Extend
E t d Democracy
D
to
t All 
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V
Volume
V l
Volume
3, N
3
Number
b 11
11


November
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N
N
November
b 2014
2014

DIALECTICAL & HISTORICAL
MATERIALISM: THE SCIENCE OF
REVOLUTION
The tool of analysis is for us a further
development of the historical materialist method, the dialectical method.
We will not even waste our time debating the values of Marxism with those
who are essentially hung up on white
people – hung up to the point of ideological blindness. We understand the
process of revolution, and fundamental to this understanding is this fact:
Marxism is developed to a higher level
when it is scientifically adapted to a
people’s unique national condition,
becoming a new ideology altogether.
Thus was the case in China, GuineaBissau, Vietnam, North Korea, the
People’s Republic of the Congo and
many other socialist nations [during
the revolutionary era of the 20th century]. For Black [New Afrikan] people
here in North Amerika our struggle is
not only unique, but it is the most sophisticated and advanced oppression
of a racial [and] national minority in
the world. We are the true 20th [and
now 21st] century slaves, and the use
of the dialectical method, class strug-

CONTENTS
Dialectical Materialism .............1
News From the Front ...............6
Editorial ....................................7
Book Review: David Gilbert .....9

gle and national liberation, will find its
highest development as a result of us.
This dialectic holds true not only for
Marxism, but for revolutionary nationalism as well; it holds true for concepts
of revolutionary Pan-Afrikanism; it is
true on the theoretical basis in developing revolutionary [New Afrikan]
culture. All of these ideological trends
will find their highest expression as a
result of our advanced oppression.
- Message to the Black Movement:
A Political Statement from the Black
Underground – CC – BLA
By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, 2006
Introduction
arl Marx developed the scientific
method of analysis, which came to
be called Dialectical Materialism
(DM) by those who came after him. As an
analytical tool, DM provides a method for
understanding the laws of material existence and for changing material conditions
by acting within these laws. Historical Materialism (HM) is the application of DM to
the study and understanding of social devvelopment and history.

K

Marx’s Teachings
Marxism developed during an era of
struggle between the philosophical schools
oof rationalist versus materialist thinking.
Marx was able to merge the best of both
M
schools, drawing dialectics (study and
aanalysis) from the rationalists and materiaalism from the materialists.

The most advanced rationalist thinker
during Marx’s time was George Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, and the most advanced
materialist then was Ludwig Feuerbach.
But both schools of thought were tied up
in and hindered by traditional idealistic and
theological influences.
Marx’s Dialectics
Hegel saw the “idea” as an absolute and
as the creator and center of the material
world. From Hegel’s thinking Marx seized
on the pertinent role of the “idea,” but
found it to be “nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind,
and translated into forms of thought.”
Marx understood that the brain – the very
medium of our thoughts and ideas – is itself
a material construction, it grows and develops with and as a result of material conditions without which it would cease to be
and could not generate thoughts. Purged of
metaphysical influences, dialectics regards
nature as a connected and unified whole, as
a combination of organically bound phenomenons that are interdependent and affect each other’s development. Therefore,
no activity in nature can be understood if
it is isolated from surrounding phenomena.
Metaphysics teaches that nature exists in
an absolute and unchanging state. The dialectical method teaches that nature remains
in a state of constant change, development
and renewal. This can be seen through scientific and even general studies of nature
and natural processes. Nothing remains the
same.

Everything is in a state of either growth,
relative equilibrium or decline, but is never
stagnant. All matter is in a state of constant
motion through increases or decreases in
quantity.
But dialectics doesn’t merely see things
in a state of motion where there is only increase or decrease in quantity without fundamental changes in quality. This means
that phenomena moves and develops not in
straight lines but in spirals. These qualitative and overlapping changes are seen as
leaps. An example of change from quantity to quality can be seen in how all matter
changes in quality, according to the quantity (increase or decrease) of temperature,
from gas to liquid to solid.
In recognizing the continual growth and
development of all material processes,
dialectics recognizes that at the root of all
motion are internal contradictions – opposite forces operating inside of things,
pulling back and forth between their poles
for control. Such polar forces can be seen
competing, merging and changing positions in everything; negative and positive,
light and dark, sickness and health, hot and
cold, birth and death, pain and pleasure, advancement and decline, old and new, contraction and expansion, electron and proton
and etc.
This is the unity of opposites that operates within all phenomena large and small,
known and unknown. Without one, the other could not exist, nor could the matter or
phenomenon exist that they combine into.
Because of the constant struggle between
such opposite forces, everything remains in
constant motion. Because of this constant
motion and resultant change, dialectics recognizes that that there are no unchangeable
absolutes, and therefore continual study
and experience of these material processes
is the only source of proofs, “truth,” and
understanding.
Many people today see, in an abstract
and unconscious way, the value of studying the history and development of things
in order to determine and understand how
they reached their present state, in order to
attempt to determine what their potential
for future change and development might
be. But in order to really accomplish these
ends, they must understand and practice
this method in the comprehensive manner
of Marxist dialectics.
Without proper analysis of material
conditions and their internal and external
contradiction, it is impossible to develop
a proper understanding of them. Lenin
2

stated:
“…in order really to know an object
we must embrace, study, all its sides,
all connections and “mediations.” We
never achieve this completely, but the
demand for all-sidedness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.”
This scientific method of all-sided analysis, which is not the method of lazy or idealistic minds, can be applied to all areas of
existence; mental, emotional, social, physical, etc. Dialectics “…takes things and
their perceptual images essentially in their
interconnection, in their concatenation, in
their movement, in their rise and disappearance.” (Marx and Engels)
The term dialectics comes from dialego
(Greek) which means to debate or discuss,
and was in times past the pastime of philosophers, who would engage in debates
to overcome the arguments of their opponents that contradicted their own. The ancient philosophers who practiced this “art”
thought such introspection and debate conducted without practice and experiment in
the material world was the best method of
discovering “truth.”
Most social, economic, political, cultural and historic theorists today continue in
this tradition to a greater or lesser degree.
However, the Marxist approach advanced
dialectics as a method of understanding reality in relation to existing phenomena and
its internal and external contradictions, allowing “truth” to be determined and proved
through the test of material practice. In essence, Marx’s dialectical method is the opposite of conjecture, idealism and metaphysics.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point, however, is to change it.”
“Hitherto men have constantly made
up for themselves false conceptions
about themselves, about what they are
and what they ought to be. They have
arranged their relationships according
to their ideas of God, of normal man,
etc. The phantoms of their brains have
got out of their hands. They, the creators, have bowed down before their
creations….”
“One has to “leave philosophy
aside” … one has to leap out of it and
devote oneself like an ordinary man to
the study of actuality, for which there
exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to
the philosophers.”
“The question whether objective

truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is
a practical question. Man must prove
the truth, i.e.: the reality and power,
the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of
his thinking, in practice. The dispute
over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a
purely scholastic question.”
— Karl Marx
Marx’s Materialism
Feuerbach’s materialism, rather than perceiving physical phenomena simply as it is,
was, like Hegel’s concept of the “idea,”
marred by traditional metaphysical idealism. But as Engels pointed out, Marxist
philosophical materialism “…means nothing more than simply conceiving nature
just as it exists, without any foreign admixture.”
Idealists claim only our consciousness
really exists and the real world, therefore,
exists only in our minds. However, Marxist materialism recognizes that the world
of matter, nature and being is an actual
world that exists independent of our consciousness. Matter is primary, since it is
the source of all we know, feel and think,
whereas consciousness is secondary, since
it is a product of and reflection of matter
that actually exists in the physical world.
The brain is of material construction. Without it, we’d have no thoughts and no mechanism with which to process thoughts into
physical actions – so how can we separate
or raise our consciousness above matter?
“It is impossible to separate thought from
matter that thinks. Matter is the subject of
all change,” – Marx
On a grander scale, there is a dialectical
relationship between universal consciousness and physical matter. In physics, this
unity of opposites was proven by the physicist, Albert Einstein, (who was a Marxist),
in his famous formula E=mc2, or that energy is matter moving at great speed; light,
electricity, magnetic force, etc. are examples of this. Indeed our brain signals, which
communicate thoughts or messages – and
can transmit them to be acted upon in the
physical world – are electrical impulses of
matter in motion.
Marxist materialism solved the problem
that philosophers had long disputed – the
relation of thinking to being, spirit to nature. “Matter is that which, acting upon our
sense organs, produces sensations… Matter, nature, being, the physical – is primary,
and spirit, consciousness, sensation, the
psychical – is secondary.” (Marx)
Rock!

“Is there such a thing as objective
truth, that is, can human ideas have a
content that does not depend on a subject, that does not depend either on a
human being, or on humanity? If so,
can human ideas, which give expression to objective truth, express it all
at one time, as a whole, unconditionally, absolutely, or only approximately, relatively? This second question is
a question of the relation of absolute
truth to relative truth. …for dialectical materialism there is no impassable
boundary between relative and absolute truth.
“From the standpoint of modern
materialism i.e., Marxism, the limits
of approximation of our knowledge
to objective, absolute truth are historically conditional, but the existence of
such truth is unconditional, and the fact
that we are approaching nearer to it is
also unconditional. The contours of
the picture are historically conditional,
but the fact that this picture depicts an
objectively existing model is unconditional. When and under what circumstances we reached, in our knowledge
of the essential nature of things, the
discovery of alizarin in coal tar or the
discovery of electrons in the atom is
historically conditional; but that every
such discovery is an advance of “absolutely objective knowledge” is unconditional. In a word, every ideology
is historically conditional, but it is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance,
from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction
between relative and absolute truth is
indefinite. And I shall reply: yes, it is
sufficiently “indefinite” to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the
bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified;
but it is at the same time sufficiently
“definite” to enable us to dissociate
ourselves in the most emphatic and
irrevocable manner from fideism and
agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the followers
of Hume and Kant. Here is a boundary,
which you have not noticed, and not
having noticed it, you have fallen into
the swamp of reactionary philosophy.
It is the boundary between dialectical
materialism and relativism.”
– V. I. Lenin
Volume 3, Number 11

Holding that thought is a product of matter, Marxist materialism understands that
the material world and its laws are fully
knowable. That by testing our knowledge
of nature by experiment and practice, we
can learn and know objective “truth.” Nothing is unknowable. There are only things
that are as yet unknown, but which we can
learn through the scientific approach of dialectical experiment and practice.
Marxist materialism therefore opposes
idealism, which believes that the world is
beyond our ability to know, and therefore
we can never really grasp objective truths
or change conditions. This idealist view
is non-dialectical and non-materialist. It
ignores the proofs of developing physical
science and provides only a method of abstractly interpreting the world, but none to
change it. It therefore ignores, avoids and
fails to understand in worldly social relations the importance of “revolutionary,
practical – critical activity.”
In essence, idealism leaves people feeling helpless to understand and change
conditions. We can see the importance of
Marxist dialectical and materialist philosophy to those who aspire to change and
improve social conditions. It provides the
fundamental approach for developing revolutionary theory based upon physical reality, instead of attempting to interpret the
world idealistically, based upon creations
of the mind and imagination that are unrelated to material reality.
Dialectical Materialism
DM is a scientific tool that allows us to
consciously understand and change material conditions by coming to “know” the
laws governing the physical world, and
prove or disprove our knowledge by applying it through practice and experiment.
As the scientist knows, it is the result of
physical experiment that ultimately proves
or disproves the “truth” of his/her theory –
“the rat is always right!”
How indeed do scientists approach
studying and solving problems in the material world? They begin with using their
perceptual senses to observe some phenomenon and its internal properties as it
interacts with its environment and other
phenomena, and then they analyze the
data accumulated from these observations.
Through this process of observation, scientists accumulate a quantitative amount of
perceptual knowledge about the object(s)
of their study, and at some point, a qualitative leap takes place, and they begin to

make conceptual connections and develop
theories, ideas and predictions about the
observed thing(s), its development and its
nature.
In order to prove or disprove these theories, ideas and predictions, the scientists
begin to design and perform experiments
that will add to their conceptual knowledge. It is only by acting out their ideas
in practice that “truth” can be determined.
The science surrounding particular things
or phenomena is then advanced. This is the
essence of DM, the scientific approach to
study and practice.
Likewise, any genuinely revolutionary
people and/or party must base their revolutionary practice on study and application of the laws of social development, and
not upon the conjecture, morals, reason or
good intention of individuals. This is because social life in this material world is a
material thing. And just as with all material
phenomena it is knowable and changeable
according to correctly understanding and
acting within its governing laws and contradictions.
“Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract – provided it is
correct – …does not get away from the
truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature,
the abstraction of value, etc., in short,
all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely.”
– V.I. Lenin
DM realizes that, like all processes,
social development repeats stages previously passed through, but on a higher
level – in spirals not circles. These leaps
in cycles of development are the dialectical transformation of quantity into quality,
namely revolution. They are the result of
the contradictions within a thing or process
that act on and are acted upon by external
contradictions. It is the law of motion expressing itself. By understanding this law,
we can act upon and within the internal
contradictions of a thing – our society –
to bring about fundamental changes in its
quality – through revolution. As Mao Tsetung observed: “Marxist philosophy holds
that the most important problem does not
lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain
it, but in applying the knowledge of these
laws actively to change the world…”
Historical Materialism
HM is DM applied to the study and un3

derstanding of social development and history. Marx saw that the past philosophical
approaches to understanding history and
social development were not scientific but
were inconsistent and incomplete. He therefore applied DM to the study and analysis
of society and history. In doing this, Marx
saw that the very core of human society is
the struggle for survival, which expresses
itself in the systems of social production.
These are the relations that a given people
engage in to work up and extract survival
necessities from nature for social consumption and use. In these productive processes,
people become involved in definite relations that are necessary and independent of
their will. These relations are the economic
basis, the foundation, and root of every
society. It is upon these economic foundations that the society’s social institutions or
superstructure (political, legal, religious,
ethical, cultural, etc.) are built.
“The application of materialist dialectics to the reshaping of all political
economy from its foundation up, its
application to history, natural science,
philosophy and to the policy and tactics of the working class – that was
what interested Marx and Engels most
of all, that is where they contributed
what was most essential and new, and
that was what constituted the masterly
advance they made in the history of
revolutionary thought.”
– V. I. Lenin
Based upon advances in the technologies
used to extract survival necessities from
nature, the quantity of production increases
(or has the potential to do so) and this creates a conflict with the existing social institutions, which have become a fetter on further development and represent outmoded
social relations. This dialectical relationship (contradiction) between the developing productive forces and decadent relations of production and distribution creates
a revolutionary situation.
In other words, when the economic foundation advances and changes while the
social institutions and those running them
attempt to remain conservative, and rigid,
there inevitably develops a social-economic demand for overthrow of these old and
outmoded institutions and those running
them. New and progressive institutions
and leaders are called forth which will be
compatible with the changes in the mode
of production.
Based upon these processes of socialeconomic development, HDM holds that
4

humyn societies have developed through
several transitional stages, beginning with
the primitive communal, to the slave, to
the feudal, to the wage-slave or capitalist
system. Modern imperialism, or monopoly
capitalism, is the highest stage of capitalist
development. From here, society is ripe to
make the leap to communism, or classless
society, by passing through the transitional
stage of socialism.
“[T]he history of one human group
or of humanity goes through at least
three stages. The first is characterized
by a low level of productive forces –
of man’s [and womyn’s] domination
over nature; the mode of production is
of a rudimentary character, private appropriation of the means of production
does not yet exist, there are no classes,
nor consequently, is there any class
struggle.
“In the second stage, the increased
level of productive forces leads to
private appropriation of the means of
production, progressively complicates
the mode of production, provokes
conflicts of interest within the socioeconomic whole in movement, and
makes possible the appearance of the
phenomenon ‘class’ and hence of class
struggle, the social expression of the
contradiction in the economic field
between the mode of production and
private appropriation of the means of
production.
“In the third stage, once a certain
level of productive forces is reached,
the elimination of private appropriation of the means of production is
made possible, and is carried out, together with the phenomenon ‘class,’
and hence of class struggle; new and
hitherto unknown forces in the historical process of the socio-economic
whole are then unleashed.
“In politico-economic language,
the first stage would correspond to the
communal agricultural and cattle-raising society, in which the social structure is horizontal, without any state;
the second to feudal or assimilated agricultural or agro-industrial bourgeois
societies, with a vertical social structure and a state; the third to socialist
or communist societies, in which the
economy is mainly, if not exclusively, industrial (since agriculture itself
becomes a form of industry) and in
which the state tends to progressively
disappear, or actually disappears, and

where the social structure returns to
horizontality, of a higher level of productive forces, social relations and appreciation of human values.”
– Amilcar Cabral
Class Struggle
Each of the social-economic systems,
after the primitive communal and preceding communism, are distinguished by class
divisions, and consequently class struggle.
“Freeman and slave, patrician and
plebian, lord and serf, guild master and
journeyman, in a word, oppressor and
oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight,
a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary reconstruction of society
at large, or in the common ruin of the
contending classes…
“The modern bourgeois society that
has sprouted from the ruins of feudal
society has not done away with class
antagonisms. It has but established
new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of
the old ones.
“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possess, however, this distinctive feature: It has simplified the class
antagonisms. Society as a whole is
more and more splitting up into two
great hostile camps, into two great
classes directly facing each other –
bourgeoisie and proletariat.”
– (Marx & Engels)
The Communist Manifesto
This basic contradiction within the capitalist system, between a small exploiting
class that privately owns the socially produced wealth and means of production
(land, tools, factories, railroads, natural
resources, and the labor power of the workers), and the exploited majority (who must
sell their labor power to survive) who are
the producers of society’s wealth, is the basic contradiction in capitalist society, manifested in the class struggle.
However, as Lenin pointed out, the capitalist class consolidated its forces and began to exploit the whole non-industrialized
world to feed the industries of the imperialist countries with cheap raw materials and
capture markets for their products, transforming the class contradiction into an international one.
Imperialism, as the highest form of
capitalism, represents the concentration
of the fundamental contradiction within
capitalism; with the people and nations
Rock!

exploited and oppressed by the system at
one pole and the monopoly capitalists and
their henchmen at the other. Within the 3rd
world countries, the struggles against colonialism and neo-colonialism take the form
of national or “New-Democratic” revolution.
Whereas, in its ascendancy the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) was revolutionary, sweeping away pre-capitalist forms of
exploitation and their accompanying superstructure through “Liberal Democratic
Revolution,” under imperialism the bourgeoisie becomes thoroughly reactionary,
promoting fascism and defending the remnants of feudalism, even slavery, under the
banner of “Anti-Communism.” “Democracy” is no more than a window dressing
to conceal its deeply reactionary essence.
Therefore, the proletariat must lead the
fight to continue to sweep away feudalism
and patriarchy along with imperialist domination in order to set the stage for socialist
reconstruction.
This has application as well for the internal colonies and oppressed nations and nationalities within the imperialist countries.
Inside Amerika, the struggle against national oppression by New Afrikans, Indigenous People and others, is revolutionary
class struggle and part of the international
struggle to overthrow imperialism.
But even after socialist revolution, class
struggle continues and in fact intensifies.
Because socialism is a transitional stage
from capitalism to communism, the class
struggle can go forward or backwards to
capitalist restoration. The continuance of
aspects of the bourgeois mode of production and bourgeois social relations and
culture regenerate the bourgeoisie, most
particularly within the upper ranks of the
Party and State.
These elements, together with the overthrown bourgeoisie, will stubbornly resist
the advance towards communism as “going
too far” and will attempt to rig up a new
capitalist system under the cover “socialism.” Mao Tse-tung was the first MarxistLeninist to truly recognize this phenomenon. This is what actually occurred in the
post-Stalin Soviet Union, in other socialist
countries, and in China after Mao’s death
in 1976. But, Mao pointed to the Chinese
Communist Party headquarters as the
place where the most dangerous capitalistroaders lay hidden and through which they
could easily rig up a new capitalist system
if not stopped.
This leap in historical and dialectical
Volume 3, Number 11

materialist understanding was the basis of
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
in which Mao urged the Chinese people,
and particularly the youth, to “Bombard
the Headquarters!” and continue the march
towards communism.
Mao made several advances in Marxism by applying HDM to the particularities of his own country and the struggle
of a colonized people against imperialism.
While he acknowledged that the contradictions of capitalism made the proletariat the
only class capable of leading genuine allthe-way revolution against the bourgeoisie,
he saw that China was an overwhelmingly peasant society with only a very small
proletariat. Therefore, he reasoned that
the peasants must be the main force in the
revolution but led by a revolutionary proletarian party. This approach deviated from
earlier applications of Marxism-Leninism,
which focused solely on organizing the urban workers.
Based upon the material reality of
China’s prevailing mode of production
(broadly semi-feudal with small capitalist enterprises under foreign imperialist
domination), he led the Chinese people’s
struggle for national liberation as a “New
Democratic” revolution to achieve national
independence and free the peasants from
semi-feudal domination. Then with political independence achieved, he led the
workers and peasants in the socialist reconstruction of People’s China.
Mao’s advances of Marxism-Leninism,
which included developing the theory
and practice of waging “People’s War,”
are still relevant today. In Nepal, India,
Peru, and the Philippines and other 3rd
World countries, Maoist parties are leading
“New Democratic People’s Wars” against
imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and
the remnants of feudalism. All around the
world, anti-revisionist communist parties
and organizations basing themselves on
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, as the concrete application of HDM in this epoch, are
struggling to develop revolutionary theory
and practice as part of a growing international united front against imperialism.
“The fortunes of the African revolution are closely linked with the worldwide struggle against imperialism. It
does not matter where the battle erupts,
be it in Africa, Asia or Latin America,
the mastermind and master-hand at
work are the same. The oppressed and
exploited people are striving for their
freedom against exploitation and sup-

pression. Ghana must not, Ghana cannot be neutral in the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor.”
– Kwame Nkrumah
Like every existing thing, imperialism
exists as part of and within a dialectical
relationship: that relationship being characterized by overdevelopment and underdevelopment, by a new world order and a
new level of chaos and disorder. Wealth
is drained from the exploited 3rd World
countries which lack an autonomous and
independent infrastructure and are made
dependent through debt to U.S-dominated
structures like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While
the U.S. itself has become the world’s
greatest debtor nation and continues to borrow to finance its military aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mao characterized this period as one of
“Great disorder under Heaven,” but he also
predicted that “The future shall be bright.”
Whatever setbacks that have or will occur, revolution is still the main trend in the
world today.
We must therefore arm the masses with
the correct and scientific method – HDM
– so that they can analyze and determine
how to arrive at that bright future, becoming the masters of their own destiny. Armed
with this knowledge, they will become that
conscious social force capable of taking
history into their own hands and bringing
an end to this epoch of exploitation! ●
“Theory becomes a material force as
soon as it has gripped the masses!” —
Marx and Engels
“Thought without practice is empty
– action without thought is blind!” —
Kwame Nkrumah
Dare to Struggle – Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!

Art by Chris Garcia [There were 104
American's killed by police in August.]

5

NEWS FROM THE FRONT
INNOCENT
WOMAN FREED
AFTER 17 YEARS
IN PRISON
A Los Angeles County judge,
calling the case a failure of
the criminal-justice system,
threw out the murder conviction of 59-year-old Susan
Mellen, convicted on
testimony of a witness later
known for giving false tips to
law enforcement.
By Linda Deutsch, Associated Press
woman who spent 17 years in prison after being convicted of murder
in the death of a homeless man was
exonerated on Oct. 12th by a Los Angeles County judge who said she should not
spend another minute behind bars.
The courtroom audience applauded after
Superior Court Judge Mark Arnold overturned the conviction of Susan Mellen.
Mellen, 59, had entered the courtroom in
tears, and her children also cried. The judge
said Mellen had inadequate representation
by her attorney at trial.
“I believe that not only is Ms. Mellen not
guilty, based on what I have read I believe
she is innocent,” he said. “For that reason
I believe in this case the justice system
failed.”
“Thank you, your honor; thank you so
much,” Mellen said.
“Good luck,” the judge told her.
She was released Friday evening from a
Torrance courthouse. She said she did not
feel anger despite her ordeal. “I don’t understand how they kept me — how they put
me away,” she said. “It’s crazy. It was cruel
punishment.”
Mellen’s case was investigated by Deirdre O’Connor, head of a project known as
Innocence Matters that seeks to free people
who are wrongly convicted.
O’Connor said earlier that she found that
Mellen was convicted in 1998 of the 1997
killing based solely on the testimony of a
notorious liar.
Mellen, a mother of three, was sentenced
to life in prison without possibility of parole.

A

6

The witness who claimed she heard Mellen confess was June Patti, who had a long
history of giving false tips to law enforcement, according to documents in the case.
Patti later moved to northwest Washington state, where she was involved in more
than 2,000 police calls or cases in the county before her 2006 death. Patti as a credible
witness was a “laughable” idea, the director of the Skagit County public defender’s
office recently told the Los Angeles Times.
Three gang members subsequently were
linked to the 1997 killing, and one was convicted of the crime. Another took a polygraph test and said he was present at the
bludgeon killing of Richard Daly and that
Mellen was not there.
In a habeas corpus petition, O’Connor
said the police detective who arrested Mellen was also responsible for a case in 1994
that resulted in the convictions of two men
ultimately exonerated by innocence projects.
Mellen’s three children, now 39, 27 and
25, were raised by their grandmother and
other relatives. They said they never told
friends where their mother was or that she
had been convicted of a crime she did not
commit.
Asked if Mellen planned to sue anyone,
her attorney said she had some legal
recourse, but they hadn’t decided whether
they would take action. First, they planned
to file to have her declared factually
innocent. ●

THE U.S. SOLDIER
WHO KILLED
HERSELF AFTER
REFUSING TO
TAKE PART IN
TORTURE
By Greg Mitchell
lyssa Petersona was a young soldier who died eleven years ago last
month. Appalled when ordered to
take part in interrogations that involved
torture, refused, then killed herself a few
days later. Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Arizona, native, served with C Company, 311th
Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne.
Here's what the Flagstaff public radio sta-

A

tion, KNAU: Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners.
She refused to participate after only two

... she had been "reprimanded" for showing
"empathy" for the prisoners.
nights working in the unit known as the
cage. Army spokespersons for her unit
have refused to describe the interrogation
techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all
records of those techniques have now been
destroyed. The official probe of her death
would later note that earlier she had been
"reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for
the prisoners. One of the most moving parts
of the report, in fact, is this: "She said that
she did not know how to be two people;
she... could not be one person in the cage
and another outside the wire." On the night
of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself
with her service rifle." ●

PA STATE
LEGISLATION
TARGETS
MUMIA’S ABILITY
TO SPEAK!
By Noelle Hanrahan, Prison Radio
he Pennsylvania Senate will soon
vote on House Bill HB2533 and
Senate bill SB508. The Governor
has pledged to sign it. This bill will make it
illegal for prisoners to speak publicly AND
allow the AG or DA to sue prisoners and
the folks that assist them. This legislation
was fast tracked in direct response to the
positive support Mumia received for his
Goddard College commencement speech.
This legislation was created to silence
political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, Bryant
Arroyo and Russell Shoatz whose can be
heard around the world, in spite of their
physical captivity. Consider how much
their voices have contributed to our intellectual heritage and collective growth.
Consider all that we have learned about
prison conditions and prisoner rights viola-

T

Rock!

tions from those imprisoned.
This repressive legislation could set farreaching precedents severely limiting freedom of speech and our collective ability to
take on the state. We need supporters go to
Harrisburg to show physical support and
accompany members of the MOVE family
as they meet with legislators. If you can attend and/ or volunteer as a driver, please
respond to this email or call 267-259-1740.
With enough support, we will rent vans
from Philadelphia and NY .Tentative Philadelphia departture 7:30am.
Pennsylvania legislators are trying to
stop prisoners from speaking about their
ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb introduced a bill
(HB2533) & SB508 called the “Revictimization Relief Act,” which would allow
victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue people who have been
convicted of “personal injury” crimes for
speaking out publicly if it causes the victim
of the crime “mental anguish.”
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College,
and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and
other prisoners and formerly incarcerated
people. We believe that this legislation is
not actually an attempt to help victims, but
a cynical move by legislators to stop people
in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.

"The bill was written in
response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s
commencement speech
at Goddard College..."
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately
the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear
to agree, and they have fast-tracked the
bill for approval and amended another bill
(SB508) to include the same language. The
legislation could be voted on as early as
Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow
to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading
role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential
to our work. Incarcerated and formerly
incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our
Voices from the Inside section would run
the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas. ●
Volume 3, Number 11

EDITORIAL 3-11
"Wrongfully convicted man cleared after
28 years in prison." Too often I read some
variation of this headline. In this case David
McCallum termed his mid-October release
in a "bittersweet moment" after 28 years in
prison. In October of 1986, McCallum and
his friend Willie Stuckey were sentenced
to 25 years to life for the kidnapping and
murder of a 20-year-old man. There was no
physical evidence at all in the case. Willie
died in prison, an innocent man.
Of the thousands of prosecutor's offices
in the U.S., only 12 of them have set up
procedures to go over old cases to search
for injustices. This is how Mr. McCallum
was found to be innocent. The prosecutors
from one office took thirty old cases and reviewed them for critical errors; ten of those
convictions have since been overturned—
yeah, a third of the cases they reviewed
were bogus convictions.
The Money
When the history of the California prisoners’ rights struggle is eventually recorded, let it be known that the death of the
Rock newsletter was caused by only one
thing—a complete collapse of prisoner
contributions. For the October issue, which
was mailed out to readers in mid-September, I received one $15 subscription and a
total for the month of 17 stamps—worse
than even the previous month.
Today I spent $294 for postage (600
forever stamps). I’d already spent $156
for printing this issue. Now toss in some
address labels, sealing dots, and a couple
of other things and we are well over $500
as the cost of my putting this issue of the
newsletter in to your hands. I’m going to
give you the December Rock, and if after
that contributions don’t’ pick up I’m done.
You’ve tapped out the last of Mark
Cook’s money (he has spent over seven
thousand dollars of his own money supporting your struggle, and he recently had
to give up his apartment move into a tiny
assisted living space because he’s broke),
and now you’ve about emptied my pockets.
Dear friends, this November issue and
next month’s December issue represent the
last thousand dollars I have to give you.
There is no more. There will be no January
2015 issue of Rock unless you in there step
up money and stamp contributions considerably, and then keep them coming all the
way until this struggle is finally resolved,
one way or the other.

I am so done begging you for money each
month. If the money is not here, neither will
be the newsletter. Instead of putting the
Rock out monthly, I'll just wait and send it
out when you've finally paid for an issue.
It may come out only every six months, or
never again. Outside readers, please do not
contribute. I do not want your money. Prisoners must pay for this newsletter or I let it
die. Prisoners must learn total self-reliance
in all areas--Juche in our revolution.
On Materialism
On the front page of the very first issue of
Rock (Volume #1, Issue #1) was an article
by a California prisoner named C. Landrum
titled “The Road Ahead.” The article applied the science of dialectical and historical materialism to the prison construct as
it existed within the California prison system at that point in time, and indeed, today.
Here we are, some three years later, and it
is time to once again revisit the subject of
dialectical and historical materialism. This
time the analysis of this important political
and philosophical topic will be presented
by a Texas prisoner named Kevin “Rashid”
Johnson.
As most of you already know, slavery is
legally sanctioned in America today. The
13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
abolished slavery for all except those convicted of a crime. As a result of this 2.3
million of U.S. citizens have been held in
a condition of state sanctioned slavery, systematic disenfranchised, and worse.
How big a deal is it? This is how big it
is. If ex-prisoners in just Florida alone had
been permitted to vote in the 2000 presi-

Emiliano Zapata by Chris Garcia

7

dential election, George W. Bush would
never have been president—millions of
Iraqi civilians would still be alive, not to
mention the tens of thousands of dead and
wounded Americans. If prisoners had the
vote, not just absentee ballots but the right
to vote in the communities where their census is taken, where they are incarcerated,
then the local politicians in these remote
areas would be seriously wooing the prisoners’ ballot. When that day comes there
will be some measurable change.
In this day and age who in their right
mind would oppose a peaceful mass
struggle by prisoners against the scourge
of slavery? Who is against giving all ageeligible citizens their human right to vote?
Talk about having justice on our side! But
where is our struggle for these basics of democracy? It is lost in the alienation that has
been conditioned into us.
Every time you turn on your radio, television, or pick up a newspaper, magazine,
etc., on some level you are being told what
to think. The cumulative effect of this incessant bombardment is adjustment oriented politics. Yes, even as you read this I
too am working to twist your thinking in a
certain direction, to wrap your mind around
the concept of prisoner empowerment and
progressive change. This is what I do, I am
a propaganda officer for a non-existent revolutionary prisoner rights movement.
Yet the article on page one does not attempt to teach you what to think. Rather,
its purpose is to start the process of teaching you how to think—how to apply the
science of dialectical and historical materialism to the prison construct. Rashid's
article is an introduction to that science; a
jumping off point from which you can start
implementing the process of constructive
personal and social change.
Like any science, the content in this article will require some study on your part.
The information is not going to passively
wash over you, like some television program or fiction novel, you are going to have
to do some actual mental work.
Unlearning old idealist thinking patterns
and replacing them with materialist methods and analysis is not easy. But the reward
of being in touch with the material realities
around you, and in finally understanding
the world, the whole global construct, is the
reward at the end of the rainbow. There is
also the additional satisfaction of being on
the side of justice, democracy, and truth—
on the side of poor and oppressed people
everywhere.
8

Newsletter Stuff
My original plan for this issue was to include an "Essay on Strategy” in this space.
I pulled the article because I felt it was a
minor variation on the theme “you out
there fight my battle for me.”
We out here in minimum custody are to
amplify your collective voices, not replace
them with ours. It’s your struggle, you fight
it. We’ll support you.
Instead of trying to organize us, how
about you all organize yourselves in there?
From that will flow a peaceful struggle, and
from that struggle will grow the needed
outside support.
I’ve been trying to educate prisoners on
this point for a long time. In Prison Focus
#37 (Summer 2011, p 29) I said, “Your
struggles in there should in no way rely
on those of us doing volunteer work on
the outside. If you’re going get it together,
do it without any thought to prisoner-support organizations. Indeed, outside support is something that you should plan to
grow from scratch, starting with your own
friends and family members on the streets.”
As a direct result of your struggles on the
inside, the support for your struggle on the
outside has grown. If you want that outside support to grow even more, you must
struggle even more—not merely delegate
the work we should be doing out here in
order to fight your fight for you.
Back in 2011 (Prison Focus #36, Winter
2011, page 2), in response to a letter from
a white gang member in California’s prison
system, I said:
“Over the last thirty plus years the
prison gang shot callers, black, white,
and in between, have led prisoners to
their knees. They’ve destroyed what
generations of prisoners before them
fought and often died for, and replaced
it with artificial divisions and internecine warfare—with drugs and thugs,
and oh yes, the SNY yards. And now
you ask me how we can come together against our common oppression
if I disagree with what these terrible
wrongs have done to the prisoner’s
movement?
“A part of me believes that California prison history has passed beyond
the old shot callers, and that if there is
to be any rebirth of resistance to oppression on the inside it will come by
others who see the bankruptcy of the
path of artificial divisions and narrow
self-interest. On the other hand, a part
of me feels it may be possible for the

old guard to enter into common cause
with other races and ideologies for the
greater good. But to do so they would
have to follow the words of Malcolm
X, ‘What you and I need to do is learn
to forget our differences...We have
a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator....
once we all realize that we have a common enemy, then we unite on the basis
of what we have in common’.”
The gang leaders did come together in
what has since become known as The First
Great Hunger Strike. The conditions are
still ripe for prisoners to make gains on all
fronts. The existing bad economic situation
on the streets is yet another ally. With right
on our side, and some 25 million friends,
is there any reason why prisoners cannot
build a national struggle aimed at rectifying
this terrible situation on the inside?
Is the color of some ass-hole’s skin or the
region he comes from more important than
our common cause—is it more important
that what is right and just? These artificial
divisions are all that stand between you
and the unity needed to start this glorious
work. It is time to set aside those old childish games, time to stop playing at being the
man’s fool. It is time for you to put on your
big girl panties. It is time to implement All
for One - One for All.
The system has stolen your sense of responsibility; to take it back all you need do
is exercise it! The process starts by talking
with each other. Then studying, together or
separately. Planning and peacefully implementing soon follow. Take what is yours,
take responsibility! We are indeed our
brother’s keeper. ●

Rock!

BOOK REVIEW: DAVID GILBERT'S "OUR COMMITMENT IS
TO OUR COMMUNITIES"
By Ed Mead
“Many humane and thoughtful people recognize that mass incarceration
is not an effective strategy for fighting
crime: the whole approach reinforces
the might-makes-right values that generate violence; demeaning and often
brutal prison conditions undermine
prisoner ‘rehabilitation’; resources
that should go to positive programs for
the youth get siphoned off by the prison industrial complex. But the current
system is definitely not ‘misguided’;
it’s very successful in its actual goal:
keeping oppressed communities in a
perpetual state of chaos and agony.”
nd so begins David Gilbert’s pamphlet “Our Commitment is to Our
Communities,” which I will review for you here. Like most of readers, I
try not to be too judgmental. Yet being less
judgmental is a goal I rarely reach. There
are people I look down on and others I look
up to. Although I’ve never met David Gilbert in person, he is a progressive political
prisoner who I’ve looked up to and admired
for more than forty years.
First a little confession. Mark and I were
at the print media conference in Portland,
OR, last month where we were pimping the
Rock and doing education on the three California prison strikes. On the drive from Seattle down to Portland I learned of David’s
new pamphlet and discovered that I could
download it from Amazon.com for free if
done within the next two days. I downloaded the pamphlet in Kindle format and read
it to my comrades during the drive.
At the conference, when Mark and I were
not speaking (we had one small workshop),
we’d be working behind the prisoner support propaganda table. And next to our table
was the table of a leftist publishing company. I told the person at that table about the
new David Gilbert pamphlet, and that he
could download it for free from Amazon.
This guy, a book publisher, gave me a look
of disgust. I could see the wheels turning
inside his head, “He downloads free litera-

A

ture from the enemy Amazon rather than
paying for it? What kind of progressive is
he?” I didn’t tell him that I bought twenty
other copies at retail and have since sent
them in to some of the prisoners I correspond with.
I am not going to go into all of the areas the pamphlet covers, suffice it for me
to just focus on just one of the many areas
this pamphlet touches upon—prison statistics on the number of prisoners confined in
the U.S. In 1970 there were about 300,000
prisoners in the U.S. Today there are over
2.3 million Americans lockup in U.S. prisons and jails. Another 7.3 million on some
sort of judicial supervision, like probation
or parole, and 14.7 million citizens who are
formally convicted individuals who have
lost some or many of their rights as a result of said conviction.1 Yet in some places
those numbers are contested. Here is just
one area in which David’s pamphlet is such
a delight. He addresses these issues.
He points out that “readers should be
alert to a possible confusion between the
numbers given for those in prison and those
incarcerated, and also between numbers
and rate. I think the best readily available
statistic to indicate the scope of the problem is to compare the numbers of those incarcerated—people in prisons and in jails—
on a given day, which is the comparison I
provide in my article. And, the number behind bars is even a bit higher; we also care
about the 70,000 in juvenile facilities, the
34,000 being held in immigrant detention,
and those incarcerated in military brigs, on
Indian Reservations and in U.S. territories.
That brings the total up to 2.4 million.”
David notes that there are over a hundred progressive political prisoners in the
U.S. and defines them as “anyone who’s
incarcerated as a result of her or his political positions or actions, usually as part of
an explicitly political group. There’s quite
a range, including people we refer to as
“Prisoners of War” because they were captured as a result of the just struggles for
Black, Native American, Puerto Rican, or
Chicano liberation; ex-Panthers who were
framed (some are still in from the 1970s);
anti-imperialists fulfilling our responsibility under international law to oppose racist and repressive regimes; working-class
1. For a list of the rights lost as a result of a criminal
convicƟon read “The New Jim Crow” my Michelle Alexander.

Volume 3, Number 11

militants opposing capitalism; more recent
environmental and animal liberation cases;
nonviolent civil disobedience against nuclear weapons and/or drone attacks; grand
jury resisters; those who expose government surveillance; people imprisoned for
militant demonstrations (such as against
the G-20 meeting in Toronto); those entrapped by agents trying to undermine such
protest; those being framed or entrapped
due to the prevailing Islamophobia.”
David’s new pamphlet touches on a number of important issues. For example, the
Occupy Movement. He says: “…the Occupy movement was a breath of fresh air. It
broke through a media juggernaut that totally mis-defined the issues. After 30 years
of mainstream politics totally dominated
by racially coded scapegoating—directing people’s frustrations against criminals,
welfare mothers and immigrants—finally a
loud public voice pointed to the real source
of our problems. Their efforts to be more
democratic and less sectarian than earlier
movement generations were important, if
uneven.
“At the same time, a spontaneous and
predominantly white movement will inevitably have giant problems of internalized
racism and sexism. That will undermine us
if we don’t take it on in a conscious and
open-hearted way.”
When the interviewer asked how people
can best contribute to radical social change
today, David responded in part by saying:
“I salute those who are out there organizing and protesting. They’re grappling with
many issues—how to have both democracy
and effective organization, how to build
coalitions and deal with the plethora of
urgent issues, how to best deal with internalized racism and sexism … and a whole
lot more.” The pamphlet deals with a number of issues of importance to prisoners.
I would suggest that you order a copy of
your very own. The pamphlets can be ordered by sending five bucks (plus three dollars for Canadian shipping2) to:
Kersplebedeb Press
CP 63560l
CCCP Van Home,
Montreal, Quebec
Canada
H3W 3H8 ●
2. You can probably save on shipping costs by ordering from Amazon or some other U.S. book outlet.

9

The Rich Get Richer!

Free Electronic Copy

On October 14th Fed Chair Janet
Yellen said that "Income inequality in
the United States is near its highest
levels of the past 100 years." If the
growth of inequality were to proceed
at last year's rate, the richest one
percent would control all the wealth
on the planet within 23 years.

Outside people can read, download, or print current and back issues of the Rock newsletter by going to www.rocknewsletter.com and
clicking on the issue of the Rock
newsletter they'd like to read.
Outside folks can also have a
free electronic copy of the newsletter sent to them each month by way
of e-mail. Have them send requests
for a digital copy of the newsletter to
ed@rocknewsletter.com.

Important Notice
Articles and letters sent to the
Rock newsletter for publication are
currently being delivered and received in a timely manner. Please
do not send such materials to third
parties to be forwarded to Rock as it
only delays receiving them and adds
to the workload of those asked to do
the forwarding.
Letters sent to Rock (located in
Seattle) in care of Prison Focus (located in Oakland) can take over a
month to reach us. Send Rock mail
to this newsletter's return address.

NO SHOUT OUT BOX
To all readers, who together
during the month of October,
donated a total of seventeen
stamps and one $15 check.

We can't "Rock on!"
Not on that.

Ed Mead, Publisher
Rock Newsletter
P.O. Box 47439
Seattle, WA 98146

FIRST CLASS MAIL