Working
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W
Working
ki to
t Extend
E t d Democracy
D
to
t All 
Volume
Volume
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V l
4, N
4
Number
b 4
4

April
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A
A il 2015
April
2015

SERVING THE PEOPLE AND THE
RETALIATION BY THE OPPRESSORS!
By Keith ‘Comrade Malik’ Washington,
Deputy Chairman, New Afrikan Black
Panther Party (Prison Chapter)
United Panther Movement - Texas Region
“The Vanguard party must provide
leadership for the people. It must teach
the correct strategic methods of prolonged resistance through literature
and activities. If the activities of the
party are respected by the people, the
people will follow the example. This is
the primary job of the party…”
- Dr. Huey P. Newton, Minister of
Defense of the Black Panther Party, an
excerpt from: The Correct Handling of a
Revolution.

CONTENTS
Serving The People .................1
The Law of Slavery ..................3
Rapper Faces Life in Prison.....4
The Balance of Terror ..............4
Oligarchs Fear the World .........5
Quote Box ................................5
Beyond Reform ........................6
Vietnam war: 50 Years Later. ...7
Ed's Comments........................9

Revolutionary greetings!
e have finally reached the point
at which the oppressors who
operate the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice can no longer lie and
misinform the public when we, the lumpen
underclass prisoners, shed light on the ongoing acts of abuse and inhumanity perpetrated against us.
In June 2013 the Minister of Defense
for the New Afrikan Black Panther Party
(Prison Chapter) Comrade Kevin ‘Rashid’
Johnson was brought to Texas. Rashid was
taken to the ultra-abusive Estelle High Security Unit located in Huntsville, Texas.
Rashid was attacked three separate times
while handcuffed and told by prison employees that he would either be broken or
killed. While housed at Estelle Rashid began to report on the long-established culture of abuse, racism, and terrorism practiced by TDCJ employees at Estelle. Only
a year earlier I too had witnessed and was
victimized by TDCJ employees at Estelle
who would create circumstances in which
to abuse human beings. TDCJ prison officials would conspire with each other and
boldly lie to the media claiming we were
just
j a bunch of disgruntled Black Nationalist Extremists. This was the label placed on
us in order to sabotage our effectiveness.
This is a tactic frequently used against activists who many times assume the role of
investigative journalist or whistleblower,
mainly because of their close proximity to
the abuse.
Neither Rashid nor I succumbed to the
ploys of TDCJ prison officials to silence

W

our voice of protest. Rashid was transferred
to the Bill Clements Unit in Amarillo, Texas which is commonly known as the Klanhandle of Texas. Rashid suffered a bout of
acute hypertension and prison employees
at Bill Clements used this as an opportunity
to attempt to kill Rashid by refusing him
adequate medical care! This is how serious
Texas prison officials are about silencing
the voice of any prisoner who sheds light
on the true nature of their methods and
practices of abuse and premeditated murder! And yes I did say murder!
I do not want to digress to the point of
losing focus on the purpose of this essay.
You see even though Rashid and I reported
aggressively on the abuse happening on
Estelle, no authoritative entity would step
in to investigate or stop the abuse, but recently something changed. On January
27, a prisoner rights organization located
in Austin, Texas finally shed a discerning
light on some of the abuse at Estelle.
The Prison Justice League released a 20
page report entitled: Cruel and Usual Punishment - Excessive Use of Force at the
Estelle Unit. For a digital download of the
report, visit: http://www.prisonjusticeleague.org. The report actually isn’t focused
on the Estelle High Security Unit. The
Prison Justice League didn’t have much access to prisoners housed there. The report
describes violent physical assaults by staff
against blind, deaf, and elderly prisoners
housed at Estelle.
Rashid and I both were transferred away
from Estelle but one New Afrikan Black
Panther was left behind to face the racist

and sadistic TDCJ employees who beat
and target the most vulnerable prisoners.
Comrade Oliver Eshman Lister AKA Ben
Ammi spent approximately 2-1/2 years organizing prisoners housed at Estelle in order to stop the abuse. Comrade Ben Ammi
wrote grievances, the media, countless letters to state legislators, and prisoner rights
organizations, in an attempt to garner support. For months and months no help or
support came.
Secret Societies and Racist Gangs
What did come, was a collusive and
concerted effort from a secret fraternity of
ultra-racist TDCJ officers. There are many
white male TDCJ employees at the Estelle Unit who are members of a local Masonic Temple in Huntsville Texas. These
men have close fraternal ties with a white
supremacist gang known as the White
Knights. These racist TDCJ employees
targeted Comrade Ben Ammi for months
and attempted to make his life a living hell.
Comrade Ben Ammi was baited into physical and verbal confrontations, and he was
given bogus and fabricated disciplinary
reports. He was housed with known white
supremacist prisoners and when Comrade
Ben Ammi broke his hand while defending
himself against these racists, he was withheld from obtaining adequate treatment,
not for days, but for months! Permanently
damaging his hand for life!
And this, my respected brothers and sisters, is how business is done on many TDCJ
units located in rural sections of Texas!
This is a closely guarded secret among the
upper echelon of TDCJ prison administrators, who hold dual membership as “honorable” members of the local Scottish Rite
Lodge is a covert allegiance to groups like
the White Knights, Aryan Circle, and even
the infamous Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.
This is the secret war being waged against
our esteemed Minister of Defense Kevin
‘Rashid’Johnson.
I can tell all of you from personal experience not all Masonic organizations condone and sanction the abuse of the elderly
or disabled human beings whether they are
free citizens or wards of the state. My days
as a Free-Mason ended when I became a
convicted felon. Like Comrade Ben Ammi
and Comrade Rashid, I am now a servant of
all the people.
Transformational Change!
Anyone who is engaged in serious social
justice work will tell you that repression
2

and abuse come with the territory when you
assume an adversarial stance against the
agents of oppression. In September 2014 I
met a remarkable prisoner named Nannon
M. Williams. Nannon served 10 years on
Texas’ Death Row. I was referred to Nannon by another remarkable former Texas
death row prisoner, Thomas Miller-El.
While housed on death row Nannon witnessed the execution of 300 human beings
he had come to know. Nannon is a human
rights activist, he has written five books
and in May 2014 Nannon teamed up with
Dr. Betty Gilmore to release: The Darkest Hour: Shedding Light on the Impact of
Isolation and Death Row in Texas Prisons.
The book is phenomenal! I not only read it,
I studied it.
On pages 208 and 209 I came across
some incredible information concerning
transformational change and some of the
tactics the state of Texas uses to hinder
change. I will quote a passage verbatim
with the hope you will grasp this golden
nugget of knowledge:
“We also need to examine the reason
why Texas has been so resistant to change
despite the known consequences to these
inhumane and degrading extreme forms
of punishment. In his book Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and
Terrorism, Kenneth Cloke identifies ways
by which systems resist change. He says,
‘Systems may benefit, for example, by
encouraging adversarial communications
and chronically conflicted relationships,
isolating critics and dissenters and punishing transformational change efforts. These
forms of systemic resistance may fuel hostility and magnify conflicts over change, if
they also divert attention from transformational change.’”
Hear lies the motivation behind numerous attacks on political and politicized
prisoners across Amerika. For decades,
Mumia Abu-Jamal has been an ambassador
of change. Mumia’s voice has motivated
an entire generation of human rights and
civil rights activists. Right at the pinnacle
of brutal executions of people of color by
police in Amerika all of a sudden Gov.
Tom Corbett signs Senate Bill 508 into
law! This bill was written to silence Mumia
Abu-Jamal! This bill was orchestrated by
the Fraternal Order of Police which doesn’t
want to stop murdering young Black and
Brown people on Amerika’s streets. The
last thing the cops want is transformational
change, and if the system can’t silence us,
they will murder us!

Look at the case of our beloved fallen
comrade and brother Phil Africa! Agents
of the state of Pennsylvania conspired to
murder Phil Africa - period! Thirty years
ago the US government along with local
police agencies in Philadelphia bombed
the MOVE house on Osage Avenue. Phil
Africa was a beautiful brother who was a
committed revolutionary who believed in
transformational change. I urge all serious
human rights activists to contact Ramona
Africa at: onamoveLLJA@gmail.com and
ask her how you can help as the 30th anniversary of the bombing of MOVE approaches on May 13, 2015!
And what about the recent ploy by the
California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation to block newspapers such as
the San Francisco Bay View or Turning The
Tide from being received by prisoners held
at Pelican Bay? You hear right-wing fanatics screaming about free speech but I never
hear pundits such as Bill O’Reilly or Sean
Hannity championing the constitutional
rights of those Black, Brown or poor white
men and women trapped in America’s prisons! Never!
It Is A Class Struggle, Dammit!
I wrote this piece on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X at
the Audubon Ballroom. It is very interesting how comrades like Malcolm, MLK,
and Fred Hampton weren’t exactly marked
for death until they started preaching unity
of the downtrodden working-class. Unity
which transcended race, religion, or national origin. The enemy being the capitalist ruling class, and it was the capitalist
ruling class which orchestrated the activities of COINTELPRO. And it is the capitalist ruling class which has sanctioned and
condoned the murder of prisoners in Texas
who toil in factory slave shops for the State
of Texas. Journalists in Texas have been
bribed and threatened to keep them silent.
Thank goodness there are media groups
such as Roots Action who will expose the
inhumane activities in Texas. Ask yourself:
“Am I an oppressor or am I oppressed?”
These are the only two types of people in
the world. Labor aristocracy, proletariat,
lumpen, and Petit Bourgeoisie are groupings present today in America, but at the
end of the day, you are either oppressed or
the one doing the oppressing - which are
you?
Our struggle is a protracted international
Serving The People .Continued on page 7
Rock!

THE LAW OF PRISON SLAVERY
Both A Political Struggle And A Judicial One?

I

By Ed Mead
n the early 1990s Prisoners in various
Minnesota correctional facilities filed
a class action suit in an effort to secure
minimum wages for the work they performed in the many prison industries. The
industries in question produce items such
as furniture, truck and auto body products,
mattresses, textiles, and notebooks; they
also provide services such as data entry,
assembly, market research, and printing
to private companies with whom the state
has contracts. The plaintiff prisoners also
alleged that prison officials sell prison industry products in interstate commerce to
governmental entities and to the private
sector. The plaintiffs alleged that in 1991,
total sales for prison industries exceeded
$11 million, and forty percent of the sales
were in the private sector.
The prisoners were being paid between
fifty and seventy-five cents per hour, and
they may earn good time credits on those
days they work. The substance of their
complaint consisted of an alleged violation
of their statutory and constitutional rights
by the state’s failure to pay them minimum
or prevailing wages for the work performed
in prison industries, and by punishing
prisoners who refuse to work in industries
by depriving them of good time credits.
This case, like so many others filed on
the prison employment issue, boils down
to the thirteenth amendment’s1 sanctioning
of slavery for this segment of society.
Regarding prisoners, the district judge said,
“they are in fact engaged in involuntary
servitude, not employment.” “The law is
clear,” the court continued, “that prisoners
may be required to work and that any
compensation for their labor exists by the
grace of the state.” The bottom line, it was
held, is that “the Thirteenth Amendment’s
exclusion of prisoner labor from the
prohibition on involuntary servitude is a[n]
economic reality”
The prisoner-plaintiffs argued that Title
18 U.S.C. § 1761, the Ashurst-Sumners
Act, provides that: “[w]hoever knowingly
transports
in
interstate
commerce
any goods, wares, or merchandise
manufactured, produced, or mined, wholly
1. SecƟon 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime … shall exist
within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdicƟon.

Volume 4, Number 4

or in part by convicts or prisoners shall be
fined or imprisoned or both.” Even though
it was alleged that prisoners working in
prison industries produced products sold
in interstate commerce, the court ruled that
prisoners could not enforce the provisions
of the law.
The prisoners raised the Fair Labor
Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201219, which requires employers to pay their
employees a minimum hourly wage. The
Act defines “employer” as “any person
acting directly or indirectly in the interest
of an employer in relation to an employee,”
and defines “employee” as “any individual
employed by an employer.” Courts were
ordered to construe these terms expansively
in order to further the congressional goal of
outlawing from interstate commerce goods
produced in violation of the Act.
Where the employee/employer status
is uncertain, the law requires that the
economic realities of the relationship, and
not technical concepts of employment,
are to control. The court in the instant
case ruled that “[w]here inmates work in
the prison pursuant to penalogical work
assignments, the economic reality is that
they are not employees.” The district judge
then launched off into some technical
concepts (ignoring the economic realities)
to justify his ruling that the FLSA does not
apply to prison industrial workers.
The court of course grant the state’s
motion to dismiss.2
The ultimate solution must be a political
one because the judicial system cannot
rule that a portion of the constitution is
unconstitutional. The government will,
howerver, recognize political strength.
Strength is gained through a nation-wide
organization of rights and class conscious
prisoners and their supporters. And this
organization must, at the very least, be
prepared to wage an ongoing fight for the
abolishment of the thirteenth amendment
to the U.S. constitution. As long as that
amendment exists, prison slavery will
continue to be a reality. And from that
reality will flow additional generations
of needlessly destroyed or damaged
individuals. It is not in the interests of
any society to maintain such a failing
and destructive approach to crime and
2. See: McMaster v. State of Minnesota, 819 F.Supp.
1492 (D. Minn. 1993)

punishment.
As you can see, there is little to be gained
by continuing to knock on the judicial door
in an effort to secure relief in this area.
Even if one were to educate the courts on
the futility of expecting some good to come
from maintaining a segment of society
in a perpetual state of irresponsibility,
dependency, and slavery, their hands are
tied by the constitution.
I can see only one possible avenue
for judicial relief in this area. The U.S.
constitution, Article Six, Clause 2, states
in full: “This Constitution, and the Laws of
the United States which shall be made in
pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the authority
of the United States, shall be the supreme
law of the land; and the judges in every
state shall be bound thereby, anything
in the constitution or laws of any state to
the contrary notwithstanding.” (Emphasis
mine)
The International Declaration of Human
Rights, a treaty the U.S. is a signatory to,
states that we, as human beings, have the
right to peacefully organize ourselves.
Article 4 of said declaration states in
part “No one shall be held in slavery or
servitude….” Article 5 says “No one shall
be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Article 19 states “Everyone has the right
to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through
any media and regardless of frontiers.” And
lastly, and getting to our point, Item 4 of
Article 23 guarantees that “[e]veryone has
the right to form and to join trade unions
for the protection of his interests.”
These basic rights should be enforceable
as the International Declaration of Human
Rights is a treaty and the U.S. is a signatory
to that treaty. And while judges cannot
overturn the thirteenth amendment, they
must honor the supreme law of the land
which, as we’ve noted, proclaims “judges
in every state shall be bound thereby,
anything in the constitution or laws of any
state to the contrary notwithstanding.”
For the rights conscious prisoner, here’s
your shot. For the class conscious prisoner,
it is long term political organizing on the
inside. ●
3

$7M VERDICT
AGAINST COPS
UPHELD IN DNA
EXONERATION

T

wo former Miramar police officers
who framed a mentally challenged
15-year-old boy for the rape and
murder of a woman must pay him $7 million for the nearly 26 years he spent in prison, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
Anthony Caravella, now 46, of Pembroke Pines, was freed from prison in September 2009 after DNA testing exonerated
him of the rape and murder of Ada Cox
Jankowski, 58. His conviction was re-examined after a series of Sun Sentinel stories
on the 1983 case.
Caravella, who works doing clean-up at
his uncle’s construction sites, said he was
happy and relieved —though he could still
face a long, difficult path to try to collect
the money.
The same DNA tests that exonerated
Caravella linked another man to the vicious crime — Anthony Martinez, the
victim’s neighbor and the last person seen
alive with her. Martinez and Jankowski
left a bar together shortly before she was
raped, stabbed more than two dozen times,
strangled and left on the grounds of Miramar Elementary School.
Martinez, who was 17, was the detectives’ prime suspect, but they dropped him
when he stopped cooperating. Martinez
died of natural causes in upstate New York
in November 2010, two months after the
Broward State Attorney’s Office and Miramar police named him a “person of interest” in the murder. ●
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/
crime/fl-anthony-caravella-dna-7-million20150122-story.html

RAPPER FACES
LIFE IN PRISON

T

he San Diego-based rapper, whose
real name is Brandon Duncan, faces 25 years to life in prison if he is
convicted under a little-known California
statute.
Duncan faces nine counts of criminal
street gang conspiracy. Prosecutors say that
even though they know he never committed
any crime himself, he “increased his stature
and respect” after a rash of shootings in the
4

city in 2013. They aren’t blaming his lyrics
for the shootings, they are saying he made
CD sales due to the fact that gang violence
was up. That, in and of itself – prosecutors
claim – is a crime.
CNN Legal Analyst Mark Geragos says
that there is no question that this is all about
the district attorney trying to send the message “that you shouldn’t glorify or glamorize gang activity.” ●
http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/01/
media-tunes-in-to-rap-artist-with-whofaces-life-in-prison-for-album/

THE BALANCE OF
TERROR

Walter Edmund Bond #37096-013
By Support Crew
ver since I arrived in this counterterrorism prison unit known as the
CMU (Communications Management Unit) in January of 2012 I have heard
a couple of things that I don’t feel are accurately portrayed to the outside world.
When these units were originally opened
they housed an overwhelming amount of
Arab Muslims (and still do) to balance out
the equation and not appear racist or biased
it is believed that many non-Muslim, nonArab people were brought to the CMU’s
specifically to “balance” and give diversity
to these prison units. However true this
may have been several years ago. This is
not the reality of the CMU’s today.
The reality is that Animal Rights activists (and others deemed to have threatening
or subversive beliefs) such as myself that
have been branded terrorists by the federal governments “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act” (AETA for short) are actually
viewed as “domestic terrorists”, “violent

E

extremists” and “fanatical activists” by the
system. It’s not a joke, a ruse, or a tactic
to demonize the movement. It is actually
how the US government views groups such
as the Animal Liberation Front. We are not
kept on these units merely to fill a quota in
a government office. I cringe every time I
see mention of the CMU’s in the media and
then hear of the “balancers” that are also
placed here, even though some of these
‘balancers’ have been here over 7 years
now!
The truth is that when it comes to the
AETA and the CMU if you are convicted
of it, or housed in it (whichever the case
may be) you are deemed, considered and
treated as a domestic terrorist threat. Not
as a paper dragon or an extremist in the
governments new anti-terrorist affirmative
action program. I live here and could very
possibly spend my entire prison sentence,
a decade straight, in this prison within a
prison. Where I have my every breath and
movement monitored and analyzed scrupulously. I don’t say this to frighten or sound
severe, but I don’t want those in the forefront of speaking out against these secret
prison units or against the AETA to make
light of it as if it’s all a government charade. Nor should they think that accounts
of what it was like in the CMU years ago
explain accurately what it it like today.
And the fact is I am not a terrorist. I think
that people, anyone, that murders, maims or
kills innocent bystanders to make a point,
protest, or create fear and panic in the populace is wrong. I think terrorism is sick and
evil and I have never, would never, and will
never, agree with it. No matter what the US
government labels me as, or any other freedom fighters for social justice!
We live in a world that is currently teeming with human indignity, or rather the indignity of humans. I don’ have all the answers. Honestly, on most days I don’t have
any answers. But I know as time progresses
and world events unfold that there are a lot
of problems I don’t want to be a part of.
War, corporate greed, imperialism, racism, police brutality, religious intolerance,
Animal abuse, Earth’s exploitation and
devastation are all problems that holding
signs and signing petitions are not going to
change. But brutality, violence, intolerance
and the specter of terrorism are not only the
wrong way to address the ills of the world
but are, in fact, simply new forms of the
same sickness of the soul that has plagued
mankind since the beginning. ●
Abdul Haqq, ALF POW
Rock!

OLIGARCHS RIGHT TO FEAR THE WORLD THEY’VE MADE
Escalating inequality: work of a global elite that resists every challenge to its vested interests
By Seumas Milne
he billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this week
are getting worried about inequality. It might be hard to stomach that the
overlords of a system that has delivered
the widest global economic gulf in human
history should be handwringing about the
consequences of their own actions.
But even the architects of the crisisridden international economic order are
starting to see the dangers. It’s not just the
maverick hedge-funder George Soros, who
likes to describe himself as a class traitor.
Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive,
frets about the “capitalist threat to capitalism”. Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, fears capitalism might indeed
carry Marx’s “seeds of its own destruction”
and warns that something needs to be done.
The scale of the crisis has been laid out
for them by the charity Oxfam. Just 80 individuals now have the same net wealth as
3.5 billion people – half the entire global
population. Last year, the best-off 1%
owned 48% of the world’s wealth, up from
44% five years ago. On current trends, the
richest 1% will have pocketed more than
the other 99% put together next year. The
0.1% have been doing even better, quadrupling their share of US income since the
1980s.
This is a wealth grab on a grotesque scale.
For 30 years, under the rule of what Mark
Carney, the Bank of England governor,
calls “market fundamentalism”, inequality
in income and wealth has ballooned, both
between and within the large majority of
countries. In Africa, the absolute number
living on less than $2 a day has doubled
since 1981 as the roll call of billionaires
has swelled.
In most of the world, labor’s share of national income has fallen continuously and
wages have stagnated under this regime of
privatization, deregulation and low taxes
on the rich. At the same time finance has
sucked wealth from the public realm into
the hands of a small minority, even as it has
laid waste the rest of the economy. Now
the evidence has piled up that not only is
such appropriation of wealth a moral and
social outrage, but it is fuelling social and
climate conflict, wars, mass migration and
political corruption, stunting health and life
chances, increasing poverty, and widening

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Volume 4, Number 4

gender and ethnic divides.
Escalating inequality has also been a crucial factor in the economic crisis of the past
seven years, squeezing demand and fuelling the credit boom. We don’t just know
that from the research of the French economist Thomas Piketty or the British authors
of the social study The Spirit Level. After
years of promoting Washington orthodoxy, even the western-dominated OECD
and IMF argue that the widening income
and wealth gap has been key to the slow
growth of the past two neoliberal decades.
The British economy would have been almost 10% larger if inequality hadn’t mushroomed. Now the richest are using austerity
to help themselves to an even larger share
of the cake.
The big exception to the tide of inequality in recent years has been Latin America.
Progressive governments across the region
turned their back on a disastrous economic
model, took back resources from corporate
control and slashed inequality. The numbers living on less than $2 a day have fallen
from 108 million to 53 million in little over
a decade. China, which also rejected much
of the neoliberal catechism, has seen sharply rising inequality at home but also lifted
more people out of poverty than the rest of
the world combined, offsetting the growing
global income gap.

Just 80 individuals now
have the same net wealth
as 3.5 billion people – half
the entire global population.
These two cases underline that increasing inequality and poverty are very far
from inevitable. They’re the result of political and economic decisions. The thinking person’s Davos oligarch realizes that
allowing things to carry on as they are is
dangerous. So some want a more “inclusive capitalism” – including more progressive taxes – to save the system from itself.
But it certainly won’t come about as a result of Swiss mountain musings or anxious
Guildhall lunches. Whatever the feelings
of some corporate barons, vested corporate
and elite interests – including the organizations they run and the political structures
they have colonized – have shown they will

fight even modest reforms tooth and nail.
To get the idea, you only have to listen to
the squeals of protest, including from some
in his own party, at Ed Miliband’s plans
to tax homes worth over £2m to fund the
health service, or the demand from the onetime reformist Fabian Society that the Labor leader be more pro-business (for which
read pro-corporate), or the wall of congressional resistance to Barack Obama’s mild
redistributive taxation proposals.
Perhaps a section of the worried elite
might be prepared to pay a bit more tax.
What they won’t accept is any change in
the balance of social power – which is why,
in one country after another, they resist any
attempt to strengthen trade unions, even
though weaker unions have been a crucial
factor in the rise of inequality in the industrialized world.
It’s only through a challenge to the entrenched interests that have dined off a
dysfunctional economic order that the tide
of inequality will be reversed. The antiausterity Syriza party, favorite to win the
Greek elections this weekend, is attempting to do just that – as the Latin American left has succeeded in doing over the
past decade and a half. Even to get to that
point demands stronger social and political movements to break down or bypass
the blockage in a colonized political mainstream. Crocodile tears about inequality are
a symptom of a fearful elite. But change
will only come from unrelenting social
pressure and political challenge. ●
The Guardian

Art by Mark Makinson

5

BEYOND REFORM: ESSAYS CALL FOR A SWEEPING
REASSESSMENT OF INCARCERATION
Edited by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Johanna
Fernandez, Socialism and Democracy,
Vol. 28, No. 3, November 2014
By David Gilbert
rison populations have exploded
in the United States, with a nearly
eight-fold increase in the number
of people behind bars from 1970 to today.
In the initial decades of that breathtaking
ascent, Black radical organizations, along
with other groups spearheading systemic
change, were devastated by, among other
things, government counter-intelligence
operations.
One result is that today there are dozens
of political prisoners incarcerated for their
stands against repression. Some are Prisoners of War (POWs) from the just liberation struggles of Black, Native American,
Puerto Rican and Mexican people. Some
of these prisoners have been held for more
than 40 years. The cancerous growth of
mass incarceration and the lethal repression of revolutionary groups are neither accidental nor unrelated.
The scandal of mass incarceration in the
United States is finally getting some public attention, with a few damning statistics
frequently cited: The United States, with 5
percent of the world's population, holds 25
percent of the world's prisoners; and while
African Americans constitute 15 percent
of illicit drug users, they are 75 percent of
those in prison for drugs. While this new
exposure is welcome, the mainstream discussion fails to get at the roots of the problem and therefore can't begin to address the
depth of the changes needed.
In the November, 2014, special issue of
Socialism and Democracy, "The Roots of
Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up
Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor,"
provides a penetrating analysis of a range
of the issues involved and points toward
the steps that are needed to turn around
these horrors. Not surprisingly, the most
trenchant essays in this collection come
from those who have been in the trenches those who have been fighting this monster
for decades, especially the several pieces
written by political prisoners and ex-political prisoners. This publication couldn't
be more timely and relevant, as the mighty
river of the Black Lives Matter movement
flows across and brings new life into the
country.

P

6

"The Roots of Mass Incarceration in
the US" was edited by scholar/activist Johanna Fernandez and Mumia Abu-Jamal,
the political prisoner who has been held in
Pennsylvania since 1981 (and is a stellar
journalist and superb writer). Their introduction is a brilliant essay: Right in the first
paragraph, they hit the nail on the head,
writing that in the wake of the advances of
the 1960s, the US launched "the frenzied
reaction to the black freedom struggle that
set the stage for today's hyper-incarceration
of poor urban black and brown communities." They go on to elaborate on a number
of key, but rarely highlighted, issues - including the deleterious impact on the children and communities of those ripped away
to jail, and the ways in which the system
dehumanizes people at home while similarly invading, torturing and killing abroad.
Fittingly, the first piece in the issue is an
interview with Angela Y. Davis ("Deepening the Debate Over Mass Incarceration:
An Interview"). Davis has been an outstanding voice - both as author and as activist - around both mass incarceration and
political prisoners since her own time in jail
in 1970. As always, she's completely clear
about how these travesties are grounded
in the foundation of white supremacy and
capitalism. Also, in welcome contrast to
many commentators, she underscores the
impact on women. Even though they make
up only a small portion of the incarcerated, the number of women in prison has
been increasing at a much faster rate than
that of men, with over 200,000 women behind bars today. Davis links that rise to the
shredding of the social safety net, while she
also critiques the virulent attacks on black
women's roles in keeping their families together.
The racist character of the "justice" system is stunning. The rate of incarceration
for black males is nearly eight times that
for white males; and for women, the ratio
is almost 3 to 1. Black men are incarcerated at a higher rate in the United States
today than they were under apartheid in
South Africa. Sociologist Loic Wacquant
("Class, Race, and Hyperincarceration in
Revanchist America") also reminds us not
to forget class: He shows that the poor/rich
ratio within each racial group is even steeper than the ratios between races.
While class is always an important basis

for how policies are applied, the dynamics
leading to mass incarceration flow from
an epic political battle. Kevin "Rashid"
Johnson is a courageous fighter for prisoners' rights who's been in prison for over 20
years. He's also a keen analyst of society
and clearly states what set off the cancerous growth of prisons along with the lethal
political repression. In "Racialized Mass
Imprisonment: Counterinsurgency and
Genocide," he writes:
The US mass imprisonment model developed as yet another disguised system
of racialized social control and counterinsurgency in specific response to the
New Afrikan/Black Liberation movement
[which] catalyzed the various rebellious
social movements of that day (including
the Women's, anti-Vietnam War, Native /
American, Gay-Lesbian, etc. movements.
Johnson also exposes how the system
manipulates poor and working-class whites
by deflecting what should be anger against
capitalism to various racially coded scapegoats, including welfare recipients, immigrants and those accused of street crime.
From inside prison walls, I regularly observe the sad irony that many white prisoners are heavily invested in white supremacy
as a way for those prisoners, disdained by
society, to feel that they are "better" than
other people.
Despite their lower rate of incarceration, the mushrooming of the total population has meant that a much greater number
of whites are locked up today than in the
1970s. Those invested in their racism fail to
see how the advances for prisoners' rights
came only in the context of the Civil Rights
and the Black Power movements.
A core analysis of mass incarceration is
powerfully presented in two essays in the
middle of this volume (both by friends of
mine). The first of these is by dedicated
organizer dequi kioni-sadiki and Sekou
Odinga, a political prisoner/POW who was
still inside when this essay was written and
was recently released after doing 33 years.
In "'We Reserve the Right to Resist': Prison
Wars and Black Resistance," they provide
a sweeping sense of the history of mass
incarceration, tracing it back to the resistance to slavery and the repression to enforce it. The attacks on the modern Black
Beyond Reform...... Continued on page 10
Rock!

struggle against imperialism. We will not
allow the state to deter us from our mission.
We draw knowledge, wisdom, and understanding from those who struggled before
us. Even Mikhail Bakunin has something
relevant to offer for those with ears to hear.
Listen to the relevance of Bakunin’s argument in this excerpt from a letter he wrote
to the editorial board of La Liberte in October 1872:
“There is only one law binding all
the members… Sections and federations of the International… It is the
international solidarity of workers in
all jobs in all countries in their economic struggle against the exploiters
of labor. It is the real organization of
that solidarity through the spontaneous
action of the working classes, and the
absolutely free Federation… Which
constitutes the real, living unity of the
International. Who can doubt that it
is out of this increasingly widespread
organization of the militant solidarity
of the proletariat against bourgeois exploitation that the political struggle of
the proletariat against the bourgeoisie
must rise and grow?” - Mikhail Bakunin
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due!
Comrade Rashid has said: “Revolution is
a birthing process, the new society forming
in the womb of the old one. Through struggle we create more favorable conditions for
greater struggle. Nothing comes instantly.
Changing social and economic relations
must proceed and develop from a lower to
a higher level.”
The New Afrikan Black Panther Party
(Prison Chapter) would like to thank the
director of the Prison Justice League Erica Gammill and her colleague Kate Spear
for their work on the Estelle report, which
shed much needed light on the abuse of
prisoners. We would like to thank PJL special counsel Attorney Brian McGiverin for
lending his legal expertise to PJL. The state
of Texas desperately needs independent
oversight over their prison system. However it will take a national outcry to get the attention of Texas state legislators, who don’t
think there is a problem with the status quo.
Not my son or daughter up in there - who
cares? I do!
You see, brothers and sisters, there is a
media propaganda war being waged against
those who expose injustice in Texas. The
media in Texas basically have bought the
narrative given to them by professional liVolume 4, Number 4

ars such as Jason Clark, the spokesperson
for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I encourage you all to join our online
campaign #PleaseStoptheKilling. I must
personally think Prof. Victor Wallis of
Berklee College in Boston Mass, and Prof.
Justin Adkins of Williams College in Williamstown Mass for their work in promoting our #PleaseStoptheKilling campaign.
Truthfully nobody would have ever heard
our cries for justice if it wasn’t for Sis.
Mary Ratcliff, the editor of the San Francisco Bay View or Carole Seligman and
Bonnie Weinstein of Socialist Viewpoint.
However special thanks must be extended
to comrades Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio, Michael Novick of Turning The Tide,
Comrade Twitch of Central Texas ABC,
and Alina Dollat in France! Thank you.
Dare to struggle, Dare to win! All Power
to the People!

SOURCE LIST
1. US Prison Practices Would Disgrace a
Nation of Savages: Texas - A Case on
Record by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
2. Odyssey of a Prisoner-advocate From
Virginia to Texas by Karl Kersplebedeb,
Socialist Viewpoint, volume 13, number
5.
3. The Darkest Hour: Shedding Light on
the Impact of Isolation and Death Row
in Texas Prisons by Dr. Betty Gilmore
& Nannon M. Williams, Good Media
Press, 2014.
4. Press Release by Prison Radio Critical
Action Alert: Fraternal Order of Police
Attacks First Amendment-Silencing
Mumia, November 2014.
5. Press Release by Ramona Africa, Saturday, January 10, 2015: Phil Africa dies
under suspicious conditions!
6. Socialism and Democracy volume 28
number 2 (July 2014), page 33, “A Letter to the Editorial Board of La Liberte”
by Mikhail Bakunin
7. Right On! #10 Newsletter of the New
Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison
Chapter, page 37, Promoting Proletarian
Consciousness as Prisoner Rehabilitation
by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson(M.O.D.)
8. 8. Cruel and Usual Punishment - Excessive Use of Force at the Estelle Unit a
report by the Prison Justice League written by Erica Gammill & Kate Spear.
HTTP://www.prisonjusticeleague.org
9. Huffington Post http://www.HuffingtonPost.com/justin-Adkins/please-stop-thekilling-b-6538064.html

FRANKENSTEIN’S
MONSTER
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
very generation for the past 200
years can vividly picture the Frankenstein monster.
Tall imposing, usually mute, this creature
is alive and not alive; mobile, but haltingly
so, that we, the more nimble can escape his
perilous embrace.
Yet, who is the real monster; the one who
designed and constructed this being? – or
the one who was built?
One wonders of such things when we see
the sudden slaughters, bombings and beheadings – happening in many parts of the
cities of Europe and the Middle East – and
beyond.
We hear of ISIS – and of Nigeria’s ‘Boko
Haram’.
But guess where it all began?
In the 1970s – 1979, in fact – an Afghan
warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was hired
by Pakistani intelligence as a gift to the
U.S. CIA. Hekmatyar was a ruthless dude,
who hated both the U.S. and the Soviets.
His Pakistani backers told him his job
was to kill Russians – Communists actually – who want to back Najibullah, the
Afghan president. While the CIA was quietly calling the guy a “fascist: and “scary”,
then President Ronald Reagan called them
“freedom fighters”, and invited them to the
White House.
Hekmatyar, then head of something he
called the Islamic Party, built a military
machine he called Mujahiddin.
This would be the seed of the Taliban,
al Qaeda, now ISIS, and hundreds more
across the world: trained, armed and aimed
at Western targets and now –aimed at the
West itself.
Mary Shelly Wollstonecraft, the author
of the 1818 science fiction novel, Frankenstein, had the scientist say the following
words: “I beheld the wretch – the miserable
monster whom I had created.”
Who was the real monster – the maker –
or the made? ●

E

7

THE VIETNAM WAR:
FIFTY YEARS LATER
from a deeply contested and unpopular
“Those who do not learn from history are
war filled with disillusioned soldiers.”
doomed to repeat it.”
Younger readers might be wondering
-George Santayana
how the American war against Vietnam
By Ed Mead
t was some fifty years ago that the started. Well, for many decades the U.S.
American war against Vietnam was be- government proclaimed itself the global
ing waged, yet how many remember or defender of democracy, where in actualhave retained anything other than the gov- ity it has consistently fought against deernment’s version of things regarding that mocracy in places like Central and South
conflict (as it was called in those days, as America, Africa, Asia, etc.
The short version is that the Vietnamese
the Constitution requires a declaration of
war by Congress for it to be an actual war). people had successfully kicked out the JapProfessor Christian Appy teaches history anese imperialists from their nation. Then
at the University of Massachusetts, he is the French came in and occupied them and
the author of three books about the Vietnam they too were forcibly ejected. In 1956, in
War. A recent article of his corrected me on what was then called the global communia statistical error I’d made in these pages. ty, there was an agreement reached in GeI had always used the number three point neva that mandated reunification elections
two million Vietnamese citizens killed by be held in Vietnam to decide the nation’s
the American military in Vietnam, this was fate.
The United States then conducted a poll
the figure used by former U.S. Defense
of the Vietnamese people and concluded
Secretary Mr. Robert McNamra.
Professor Appy pointed out that in fact that communist Ho Chi Minh would be the
“more than four million Vietnamese, overwhelming winner. Before the elections
Laotians, and Cambodians” were murdered could be held the U.S. invaded Vietnam.
by the United States in that war. What The logic was that if Vietnam fell the rest
was the attitude of the American people of Indochina would “fall like dominoes”
about that war? Appy goes on to note, “In into communist hands.
Just like the Japanese and French impe1971 a remarkable 58% of the public told
pollsters that they thought the conflict was rialists before us, the foreign invaders from
‘immoral,’ a word that most Americans had the U.S. were also forcibly driven from
Vietnam. Of course no dominos fell (just
never applied to their country’s wars.”
as there were no WMDs in Iraq). One last
Professor Appy goes on:
note, in Geneva the U.S. formally agreed
“Vietnam veterans had ... been
(read promised) to pay Vietnam billions in
horribly ill-treated. Their chief abuser
war reparations. The Vietnamese never got
... was their own government, which
a cent. Does the American Government lie?
first lied to them about the causes and
You don’t have to travel to Vietnam to get
nature of the war, then sent them off
an answer to that question. Just ask a Nato fight for an unpopular, dictatorial
tive American. ●
regime in a land where they were
widely regarded as foreign
invaders. Finally, on their
return, it failed to provide them
with either adequate support or
benefits.
“And corporate America was
also to blame. Employers were
reluctant to hire or train them,
in many cases scared off by
crude 1970s media stereotypes
about wacko, drug-addled, and
violent vets. Nor did traditional
veterans’ organizations like the The My Lai massacre in which American ground
American Legion or the Veterans troops killed, at close range, more than 500
of Foreign Wars provide a warm unarmed, unresisting, South Vietnamese civilians -most of them women, children, and old men -- over
welcome to those coming home a four-hour stretch on March 16, 1968.

I

8

Quote Box
"The press is so powerful in its imagemaking role, it can make a criminal look
like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is
the press, an irresponsible press. If you
aren't careful, the newspapers will have
you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are
doing the oppressing."
- Malcolm X, Audubon Ballroom,
December 13, 1964
"The ruling class has the schools and
press under its thumb. This enables it to
sway the emotions of the masses."
- Albert Einstein - (1879-1955)
Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize
“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to
be bought and sold are legislators.”
- P. J. O'Rourke - (1947- ) humorist,
journalist, & political commentator
“The abuse of buying and selling
votes crept in and money began to play
an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption
spread to the law courts. And then to the
army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.”
- Plutarch (46 A.D.-127 A.D.)
Historian of the Roman Republic
“Money becomes evil not when it is
used to buy goods but when it is used to
buy power... economic inequalities become evil when they are translated into
political inequalities.”
- Samuel Huntington,
Political Scientist
Democracy is the antithesis of capitalism! But capitalism is the product the
U.S. government, the Pentagon, and the
commercial media are marketing to us as
democracy.
- Charles Sullivan, Author
"When a man is denied the right to live
the life he believes in, he has no choice
but to become an outlaw."
- Nelson Mandela

Rock!

Violence - The Oppressor and the
Oppressed
ver the years you have listened to
me prattle on and on about the necessity for peaceful protest on the
inside, that violence in the prison struggle
only serves the interests of the state, and
that those advocating violence are provocateurs who will give the Green Wall exactly
what they need to put an end to all forms
of resistance to prison slavery. I’m not a
pacifist, but I am somewhat of an amateur
strategist (or maybe age has allowed me to
develop some common sense). Prisoners
and ex-prisoners must not use violence in
the furtherance of the struggle. Period. If
you feel you must implement some form
of protest beyond the confines of bourgeois
law, then take those impulses to another
struggle, not the prisoners’ movement.

O

The test of the morality of
a society is what it does
for its children. The U.S.
ranks first in GDP and the
number of world's billionaires, and second worst
in child poverty rates—
just behind Romania.
As long as the capitalist state exists there
will be violence between the oppressors
and the oppressed. Often, as demonstrated
in the rash of recent police killings of unarmed poor people who did not even rise to
the level of “suspect” in a crime. The person killed can be a 12 year old child with
a toy gun. This is police terror. One of the
dictionary definitions of the word “terror”
is to rule through the use of fear.
We have a Black man sitting in Seattle’s
jail charged with stalking and shooting two
police officers while they sat in their patrol
car, one cop was killed the other wounded.
He too was responding to the police killings of Seattle’s youth.
This morning I picked up the Seattle
Times newspaper and on the front page
was an article titled “2 NYC Police Officers Shot Dead in Patrol Car” with a subtitle of “Gunman vowed online to retaliate
for chokehold death of Eric Garner.” Just
as the Seattle suspect was responding to
police terror, so too was today’s case in
NYC. As George Jackson wrote “If terror
is going to be the choice of weapons, there
must be funerals on both sides” [Blood in
My Eye, p. 26]. Those jailed for killing law
enforcement officers said their acts were in
Volume 4, Number 4

ED'S COMMENTS
response to police terror. Prisoners do not
have that luxury in that the use of violence
on the inside is a tactical and strategic error
that will set the movement back another 40
years (after the killing of Fey Stender) and
prisoners spiraling to ever deeper levels of
prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
Police terror is a national problem in
America’s poor and minority communities.
One might understandably respond to such
provocations in a violent way. But prisoners cannot stoop to engage in revenge.
The prisoners’ struggle must be peacefully
waged, both inside and out. Today, to one
extent or another, that movement exists on
the inside of California’s prisons. Remember, without mass struggle there can be no
revolution. Our job is to build that mass
movement on the inside, without provoking additional repression in the process. I
can envision a world in which every GP tier
has an elected representative, one accountable to those who elected him or her, not
to the prison administration, and dormitory
and other open housing units would similarly elect prisoner representatives.
Police, Courts, and Prisons: The
State’s Apparatus of Repression
Author Dave Lindorff writes: “I’m disgusted that according to the Prison Policy
Initiative, the US has at any given moment some 2.4 million people locked up
(only two-thirds of whom have even been
convicted of a crime, with most of the rest
awaiting trial because they can’t post the
excessive bail set by our corrupt court system). And no wonder: Just between the
late ‘80s and 2008, the number of federal
laws for which someone can end up being
jailed has soared from 3000 to 4450, and it
keeps rising as charlatans in Congress keep
passing laws to create ever more “crimes”
to punish. And that doesn’t count state and
local governments, which explains why
the US, with 5% of the world’s population,
accounts for 25% of the world’s prison inmates. … We live in a punishment-obsessed
society, overseen by cops who seem to derive pleasure in lording it over the public.”
While recent killings by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City receive
national attention, the fact is that from 1999
through 2011, American law enforcement
officers killed 4,531 people, 96 percent by
firearms and 96 percent of them men, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. African Americans, 13

percent of the population, are victims in 26
percent of police shootings. Law enforcement kills African Americans at 2.8 times
the rate of white non-Latinos, and 4.3 times
the rate of Asians.
Hundreds of police killings have been
left out of a nationwide database that keeps
tabs on these acts, according to an investigative report published by the Wall Street
Journal (WSJ). The newspaper collected
information from more than 100 police
agencies across the country [out of tens of
thousands] all among the largest departments in the US. According to the report,
more than 550 killings by police had not
been included in the national data kept by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
In its report, WSJ took data from the FBI
and compared it with information provided
to the media outlet by 105 police agencies.
The paper tallied 1,800 deaths at the hands
of police between 2007 and 2012, which is
45 percent more than the number of “justifiable homicides” recorded by the FBI in
the same time period.
Putting It In Perspective
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist
(1821 - 1881), wrote that “The degree of
civilization in a society can be judged by
entering its prisons” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
wrote, "The test of the morality of a society
is what it does for its children." The United
States ranks first in Gross Domestic Product and first in the number of billionaires,
and second worst in child poverty rates
- ahead only of Romania. Today, March
10th, the United States was singled out by
a United Nations expert on torture for being the only country in the world that continues to sentence children to life in prison
without parole.
How do we treat women in the areas our
military occupies, how have women fared
under our occupation of Iraq, for example?
Under Saddam Iraqi women benefited from
state subsidized childcare and education;
they once formed about half the public sector workforce and 50 percent of the country's doctors. Today the women of Iraq are
forced to stay inside or wear full burkas
when out. How do our friends in the region
handle women’s issues? Our best ally in the
area (other than Israel) is Saudi Arabia. A
Saudi woman who had fallen victim to a
violent gang-rape has just been sentenced
to 200 lashes and six months in jail after
being found guilty of speaking to the media
about the crime. Yeah, women are not even
allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. ●
9

Beyond Reform.... Continued from page 6
Liberation movement are best exemplified
by (but not limited to) the government's illegal COINTELPRO (counter intelligence
program) of disruption, imprisonment and
assassination. That went hand-in-hand with
mass incarceration to control and contain
the ghettos.
Kioni-sadiki and Odinga give a sense of
the range of political movements that have
produced the dozens of political prisoners
being held today. The campaigns to free
political prisoners and for decarceration are
not competing arenas, but rather, they form
a joint struggle. All of this is based on the
nature of the system: "The politics of mass
and political imprisonment must never be
separated from the fight against capitalism,
colonialism, racism and classism [and]
gender oppression," they write.
That understanding points to the necessity of fighting for deeper, overall political
change.
Drawing on the experience of the Black
Panther Party and its programs for survival
pending revolution (Odinga was one of
the Panther 21 of 1969, one of the most
notorious frame-ups in US history), they
emphasize the role of grassroots organiz-

ing based in a class analysis to meet social
needs and move toward self-determination
and economic vibrancy for oppressed communities.
The second of these essays is "Black
Power Incarcerated: Political Prisoners,
Genocide, and the State," by Laura Whitehorn. Drawing on her own years as a political prisoner from 1985 to 1999, she presents a poignant snapshot of the realities
"under the unrelenting psychological and
physical attrition those [prison] conditions
cause." Pointing out that the United States
holds 33 percent of the world's incarcerated
women, Whitehorn relates that to the history of genocidal violence and disruption
against black people in the United States.
She underscores the international nature of
the system of imperialism and the vital legitimacy of anticolonial struggles.
In that context, Whitehorn writes, the
central question about political prisoners/
POWs in the United States is not "guilt or
innocence" of the criminal charges in each
case, but rather people's rights and responsibilities to resist racism and colonialism.
While reforms are desperately needed to
stop what we can of pervasive and persistent harm, "any reforms have to be viewed
through the lens of the longer-range goal,

abolishing the imperialist prison system."
In addition to emphasizing how mass
incarceration and the locking up of dissidents are used to enforce an oppressive
system, this collection includes analyses
of resistance. The inclusion of several current and ex-prisoner activists as authors
speaks volumes in itself. In addition, historian Heather Ann Thompson contributes
an essay, "Lessons from Attica: From Prisoner Rebellion to Mass Incarceration and
Back," that gives a gripping account of the
1971 Attica prison uprising and the state's
response with a brutal massacre that killed
39 human beings and tortured many more.
She explains that government officials
knew that to achieve full control over the
criminal justice system they would have to
crush the prisoners' rights movement.
Thompson mentions a recent resurgence
of struggles, with mass prisoner hunger
strikes in California, Georgia and other
states - a development worth a major essay
in its own right. Given the pivotal role of
state repression in maintaining overall social control, "what happens in our nation's
prisons happens, ultimately, to all of us."
Thompson calls on all who want to achieve
social change to actively support prison
struggles. ●

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

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