Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA
Please note: this page is intended for quick printing of the entire issue. Some of the links may not work when clicked, and some images may be missing. Please go to the article's permalink if you require working links and images.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/editorial-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
Special Issue on Prisons and Prisoners in the U.S.
The United States—the richest and most powerful nation in the world—has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners. 2.3 million people languish in prison in the country that brags of being the "leader of the free world."
| The Criminalization of a Generation and the Oppression of African-American and Latino People For many Americans, the astronomical rates of incarceration are statistics. But millions of Black and Latino youth grow up in an environment where they see many of their older friends going into, and coming out of, prison. For whole communities, the prospect of prison looms ominously over people's lives. If you live in a poor Black urban neighborhood, whether New York or Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta or some other city... ten percent of the children you know have a father in prison or jail. One out of every five adults you know can't vote because at one point in their life they got a felony conviction. These same people are banned from having a government job and can't get many types of assistance—including financial aid for college. You feel it and see it all around you—from the politicians, the TV news, the police waiting to jack you up on the corner. Young Black men are degraded and treated like criminals, with no future other than prison, some shit job or the military. In the first six months of 2009, the NYPD stopped and frisked 163,118 Black people in New York City. Almost none were charged with crimes—91 percent were neither arrested nor given a summons, but they were criminalized and entered into NYPD databases. African-Americans are 13 percent of the general population, but over 50 percent of the prison population. Nearly 60 percent of all young Black men born between 1965 and 1969 who dropped out of high school went to prison at least once on a felony conviction before they turned thirty-five. The incarceration rate of Black male high school dropouts is nearly fifty times the national average. ("Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?" by David Cole, The New York Review of Books, November 19, 2009) Black people in particular have always filled the prisons in greatly disproportionate numbers compared to whites. But as the forms under which Black people have been subjugated in this country have evolved, the forms of the enforcement of their subjugation have evolved as well. And the massive numbers of African-Americans in jail concentrate that—in terrible ways with ominous implications. In the 1950s, when segregation was still legal, African-Americans comprised 30 percent of the prison population. Sixty years later, African-Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of the incarcerated population—at a time when that population has skyrocketed. (Cole) In earlier eras, the slavemaster's whip and the lynch mob enforced the super-exploited, and all-around subjugated state of Black people. Today, those forms of violent oppression have been replaced by policeman's taser and gun, and the prison cell. Poor Black people and Latinos in the inner cities are at ground zero for police terror and the threat of prison. But Black people of all classes are enveloped by the brush of demonization, humiliation, and repression—witness the recent arrest of the prominent Harvard professor and public intellectual Henry Louis Gates, arrested for refusing to scrape and bow when accused of "breaking into" his own home. From within this nightmare, a prisoner wrote to Revolution: "I am no stranger to struggle and hardship. I grew up in just one of the many, many slums in Chicago. I ended up in prison by the age of 13. I am 30 now. I have been raised by cold steel and concrete which I do not wear as a Scar of Honor but as an indictment against a system that has been built on genocide and slavery, and has continued to insist on throwing away its "undesirables" generation after generation. However, let me be clear, I am in search of the truth and not pity. My struggle is linked with the struggle of millions across the globe." |
These prisons are hellholes. Prisoners are subjected to maddening, mind-crushing torture in the form of isolation chambers. This kind of mental torture is considered a war crime when carried out against prisoners of war, but the U.S. inflicts this on tens of thousands of ordinary prisoners within its penal system. Prisoners are manacled, maced, tasered, and chained. They are set against each other, gladiator-style, in gang wars for the amusement of the authorities. Rape is used as a means of social control on prisoners, both women and men.
All this is intended to break the spirits of millions for whom this system offers no future.
It's not getting any better, either. On the contrary. The rate of imprisonment has skyrocketed over the past several decades—in 1980 about a half million people were in jail in the United States; by 2006, that number was 2.3 million—an increase of over 450%. This explosion has cut a particularly devastating, defining swath through African-American and Latino communities, especially among poor young Black men. African-Americans are 13 percent of the general population, but over 50 percent of the prison population. They are incarcerated at a rate eight times higher than that of whites.
And this has had a devastating impact on Black people overall, with whole generations in the inner cities growing up expecting to end up in prison. While African-Americans have always been the victims of discrimination in the justice system, this has gotten far worse in the past 50 years—yes, far worse than the days of Jim Crow and open segregation. At the same time, the numbers of Latinos being incarcerated is also growing dramatically and is likewise out of proportion to their share of the general population.
Meanwhile, the authorities foment widespread gang and racial clashes in prisons as a means to divide and conquer, and then use what they have incited as a rationale for further brutality and torture. "Association" with a gang, which can mean almost anything, is invoked to lock prisoners down in special isolation units that quickly create such extreme psychological trauma that over and over again prisoners lose their minds. In many prisons, inmates are required to declare allegiance with a gang by the prison authorities under the pretext of segregating gangs.
And increasingly, within the prisons—as throughout society—the so-called "alternative" to the dog-eat-dog mentality fostered by the prison system is reactionary Christian fundamentalism. In this way, shock troops are recruited from among the ranks of the oppressed—to reinforce the very system that oppresses them. (See "Recruiting for Christian Fascism—Inside the Prisons.")
So let us say here to the people who rule this society: if you can do no better than to assign millions of Black and Latino youth to a future of crime and punishment in conditions of high-tech barbarism... then get the hell out of the way! Because this wholesale destruction of human lives and potential is not only terrible and tragic but totally unnecessary as well. With revolutionary state power, we could build a society where the energy and creativity of these youth—whose spirit today is suppressed and mutilated and channeled into self-destruction and self-hatred—could be part of a vibrant new revolutionary society aiming to eliminate every last vestige of exploitation and oppression.
And let us also say to those who are ruled by this system: if there were no other crime of this system than this—and there are of course many other horrific crimes carried out by the powers-that-be—that would be reason enough to make revolution. And reason enough to get with the revolutionary movement today, to begin actively hastening the day when such a revolution could be made.
But it is important to dig more deeply into how we got into this situation, in order to see why this is so, for real.
| Rape in Prison: A Concentration of Patriarchal Mentality & A Tool of Social Control One particularly horrific abuse of prisoners is rape. Rape is done by prison guards—particularly in women's prisons—and it is also carried out by inmates against other inmates. At the age of 18, Dorothy (her last name has not been publicized by her supporters), a Native American woman from upstate New York, left the reservation where she grew up, and married a much older man. Her husband beat her for years, even when she was in advanced stages of pregnancy. When she tried to run away, he broke her ribs and put a pistol to her head threatening to shoot her. At the age of 22, Dorothy began a life sentence for killing her abusive husband. Shortly after her arrival in prison, a guard began demanding sex. She refused, and he began to withhold about half of her ration of food, and her soap and toilet paper. One day, the guard found Dorothy alone in the laundry room. He locked the door from the inside, and although Dorothy fought back, he raped her. When she tried to gain access to the prison's mental health services for counseling, she was turned away, eventually offered Thorazine, a dangerous and mind-numbing drug. Defying threats if she spoke out, she reported the rape to the prison superintendent and a counselor in the mental health unit, and to the state's investigative office, to no response. After over a year, she joined a lawsuit filed against the guard and the prison. The suit was dismissed without even addressing the merits of the case, based on laws that make it almost impossible for inmates to sue prison guards. ("Words From Prison: Sexual Abuse in Prison," ACLU) Among men, rape is widespread. In one sense, this is a concentrated expression of the predatory and patriarchal mentality inculcated in males by this society, in a situation in which there are no women to dominate. At the same time, it is a tool of social control manipulated by the authorities. The widespread rape in U.S. prisons inflicts severe physical and emotional pain and trauma on the vulnerable young men who are its victims, as it does to women. It carries great risk of infecting victims with HIV/AIDS. In sensationalist "news" programming about prison life, and TV dramas, prison rape is depicted as a product of a prison population of predators and psychopaths, carried out despite the best efforts of authorities to stop it. But, if prison authorities are trying to prevent prison rape, under conditions where they monitor and control prisoners' every move, then why is it that, according to a 2003 Congressional study, over a million inmates had been raped over the previous 20 years. A million inmates. An ABC News report in April of 2009 quoted a former prison guard, Johnny Vasquez, as saying that when prisoners came to guards with complaints of being raped, they were told, "You need to grow some and defend yourself. Quit coming in here crying. Get out of my office. Don't bring this to me." That, in essence, is an expression of the depraved kill-or-be-killed (and relatedly, macho male supremacist) values and morality of the system that runs the prisons and uses rape as a tool to promote and enforce those values. Harvard University criminologist Dr. James Gilligan told ABC that authorities use rape as a "bribe or a reward" to powerful inmates "to cooperate with the prison authorities." "As long as they cooperate, the prison authorities will permit them to have their victims." The ABC report summed up: "Experts say some prison officials quietly permit rape as a way to control the population." |
The prison population in the U.S. mushroomed in the early 1970s. Before that, the United States sent people to jail at about the rate of industrialized countries in Europe—around one in every one thousand Americans were in jail. Starting in 1975, the incarceration rate in the U.S. increased dramatically. Today 7 out of every 1,000 Americans are in prison, a ratio greater than any other country.
This explosion in the prison population was not due to an increase in crime in the U.S. In immediate terms, it seemed to be a result of the so-called "war on drugs." And it is true that from 1980 to 1997, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses increased by 1,100 percent (Race, Incarceration, and American Values, by Glenn C. Loury, with Pamela S. Karlan, Tommie Shelby, and Loïc Wacquant). Now these were not the fabled "drug kingpins" of TV fantasy, or even the street corner sales force. By 2008, four of five drug arrests were for possession, and only one in five was for distribution; fully half of all drug arrests were for marijuana offenses. (FBI, Crime in the United States, 2008, Arrest Table, available at fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/arrests/index.html)
Yet while official propaganda whipped up the vast use of drugs as the most serious threat to society, this "war on drugs" actually had a deeper source than some supposed concern over the widespread desire of people living under this system to numb themselves. Indeed, this "war on drugs" was engineered from the highest offices, at a time when the system was facing great challenges around the world and on the home front.
This was put succinctly and bluntly by Richard Nixon, who was president in 1969. At that time, Nixon's top assistant wrote in his diary: "[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." (The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, p. 53, by H.R. Haldeman, cited in Smoke and Mirrors: the War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, by Dan Baum)
Indeed, the struggle of Black people in that era, and the revolutionary forces and sentiments within that, resonated throughout society, and intersected with a wide range of grievances and struggles, from the oppression of women to the war in Vietnam. It literally shook the system to its foundations, calling its very legitimacy into question among millions and millions of people.
So the system lashed back with a vengeance at revolutionary forces and the masses of people who were rising up. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed by police and national guard during the uprisings of the mid to late 1960s. Hundreds of Black Panther Party members were jailed. A number of key Panther leaders like "Bunchy" Carter and George Jackson were assassinated; the most horrific example was the murder of Fred Hampton, while he slept, by a heavily armed tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office (SAO), in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No one was ever convicted for any of these crimes; though scores of Panthers and sympathizers were sent to prison for decades, as a result of blatant frame-ups and trumped up charges.
At the same time, in the face of massive rebellion, the rulers of the U.S. opened some doors to some sections of Black people, lowering some barriers to employment and education. The rulers intended through doing this to develop a "buffer section" among Black people—a section of people that, even as they continued to suffer discrimination and bitter forms of oppression, would also begin to feel more of a material stake in the status quo.
| Recruiting for Christian Fascism—Inside the Prisons Prison authorities push the Bible and in particular virulently fascist fundamentalist Christian cults inside the prisons. Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, is currently in the process of placing Christian fascist programming from Pat Robertson's Trinity Broadcast Network into all 65 of its state, federal and juvenile facilities in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. Beyond that, there are now special prisons, or prison wings, for Christian fundamentalists. Former Nixon crony Chuck Colson did time after pleading guilty to felony obstruction of justice for his attempts to smear Pentagon Papers defendant and anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg. Today Colson is a reactionary Christian fundamentalist who sets up "faith-based prisons." And Christian fundamentalist groups run some of the few programs for re-integrating prisoners into society on their release. Through the widespread promotion of Christian fundamentalism (in blatant contradiction to the supposed separation of church and state), prison systems program captives to blame themselves (and other prisoners) for their conditions, and enlist as "Christian soldiers"—both in prison and when they get out in service of a Christian fascist movement being unleashed in society as a whole. |
Coinciding with these developments were major changes having to do with globalization. Factories producing goods were moved first from the inner cities to the suburbs and then to other countries—while the masses of Black people remained locked in those urban cores due to continued housing segregation and deprivation. Simultaneously, the inner cities were deprived of funds and allowed to become economic and cultural dead-zones. The drug trade and the gangs involved in that trade to a certain degree arose spontaneously—but they were also systematically manipulated and in some cases promoted to fill the economic and political void left in the ghettos and barrios by economic abandonment and counter-revolutionary suppression of the movement. That escalated in the 1980s, as the CIA orchestrated the funding of pro-U.S. Central American terrorists (the "Contras") through the sale and distribution of drugs through gangs in the inner cities of the U.S. (See "The CIA/Crack Connection: RW Interview with Gary Webb," at revcom.us, and Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, by Gary Webb).
The rulers used all this, along with other attacks, to create a "pariah class"1 in the inner cities—that is, social outsiders for whom normal considerations and rights did not apply. And they in turn used the presence of that pariah class as an outlet and target for the resentments building up among a large section of white people, many of whom were also facing economic setback and instability, re-fitting and reinforcing the "tool" of white racism for these times.
This whole horrible situation today that we document in this special issue—the massive explosion of incarceration and the criminalization of two generations, now, of African-American and Latino2 youth—did not come about because these youth stopped wearing belts in their pants. It came as a result of how those who run this system responded to the revolutionary challenge of the 1960s, along with the ongoing economic and political changes in society overall.
| Divide and Conquer vs. Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution One prisoner wrote to Revolution: "Today California prisons in particular have passed a regulation where as the state is now housing prisoners of all social groups & races together in cells, this new regulation is creating conflict between prisoners, it is basically pitting prisoners against one another in gladiator style fights as before only now confined to a cell." And, that prisoner poses: "[T]here is a remedy to situations like this and it will take the vanguard in each prison to find this remedy & bring it to fruition, we will not be used as roosters at a cockfight! This is a classic case of the state trying to take heat off themselves and direct prisoners rage upon one another rather than the proper direction." |
This has been a continuation, in new and extremely twisted terms, of the centuries of oppression and white supremacy developed by, and built into, this system. (See "The Oppression of Black People, the Crimes of This System and the Revolution We Need," Revolution #144, for a detailed analysis of this history, its legacy, and the ongoing systematic oppression of Black people in this society.) This system, as Bob Avakian has pointed out, had two chances to "make it right" in regard to its historic criminal oppression of the African-American people: after the Civil War, and after the titanic struggles of the 1960s. After the Civil War, following the brief period of Reconstruction, instead of bringing justice, the system answered by re-enslaving, in new forms, the masses of Black people on plantations in the South, in a cruel and dehumanizing system of sharecropping and segregation, enforced by the lynch mob. (See "How This System Has Betrayed Black People: Crucial Turning Points," by Bob Avakian.)
And after the struggles of the 1960s, faced again with the demand for justice, the system again responded viciously—with the counter-revolutionary suppression we have detailed here, and the ongoing discrimination, inequality and oppression—concentrated in the mass incarceration of Black youth in hellholes.
| A Supermax Death Sentence A 2001 Amnesty International report detailed the death in prison of David Tracy, sent to jail for minor drug charges at age 18. After five suicide attempts, and with just a few months remaining on his sentence, he finally killed himself at age 20 in a supermax isolation cell at Wallens Ridge State Prison (WRSP) in Virginia. Amnesty described conditions in that unit: Prisoners "are routinely abused with electro-shock stun guns, subjected to racial verbal abuse by guards, fired on with painful pellet guns, and placed unnecessarily in five point restraints [strapping a prisoner down to keep him from moving his arms and legs]." Conditions in this typical supermax are "contrary to international standards prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including those set out under the International Covenant on Civil or Political Rights and the Convention against Torture—treaties ratified by the USA." In other words, in addition to being inhumane and immoral, the conditions in U.S. prisons are illegal by U.S. and international law. ("United States of America: Abuses continue unabated? Cruel and inhumane treatment at Virginia supermaximum security prisons.") |
In other words, each time the answer to the quest for justice came back from the system: a resounding NO. (The existence of a Black president at the head of this system—one who studiously avoids taking on any manifestation of the particular oppression faced by Black and other minority people and who indeed lectures the masses of Black people on their supposed bad habits—does not change this in any fundamental way.)
Now is time, and past time, for the people to respond to this answer given by the system. It is time, now, to get with the real revolution—a revolution that aims to do away with all oppression. To fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution. To get with the revolution we need—and to get with, and promote, the leadership we have, Chairman Bob Avakian.
In doing this, we can all draw inspiration from those prisoners who have responded to the call of the revolutionary movement, some of whose letters appear in this issue: those who have defied the locked-down conditions imposed by the authorities and ruptured with the dog-eat-dog "gangsta" values that pervade prison and who instead aspire to be emancipators of humanity.
There is another way. Time to get with it.
1. The concept of the targeting of Black people and Native Americans as a "pariah class," dating back to the early days of the U.S., and the overall way in which white supremacy has served to blunt class-consciousness in the U.S. since then, has been drawn on and further developed by Bob Avakian in the important work, Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy. (Available in print [2008, RCP Publications] and online at revcom.us) [back]
2. The term Latino takes in many different distinct nationalities whose roots are in Latin America but who occupy a subordinate, oppressed position within U.S. society. While the forms of oppression differ in certain important ways, there are also forms in common among these nationalities, and between them and the African-American masses (as well as other immigrant communities). And one particularly important form of oppression that is shared is the brutal and unjust treatment by the criminal justice system—from the cops on the street to the courts to the prisons. [back]
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/criminalization-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
For many Americans, the astronomical rates of incarceration are statistics. But millions of Black and Latino youth grow up in an environment where they see many of their older friends going into, and coming out of, prison. For whole communities, the prospect of prison looms ominously over people's lives.
If you live in a poor Black urban neighborhood, whether New York or Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta or some other city... ten percent of the children you know have a father in prison or jail. One out of every five adults you know can't vote because at one point in their life they got a felony conviction. These same people are banned from having a government job and can't get many types of assistance—including financial aid for college. You feel it and see it all around you—from the politicians, the TV news, the police waiting to jack you up on the corner. Young Black men are degraded and treated like criminals, with no future other than prison, some shit job or the military. In the first six months of 2009, the NYPD stopped and frisked 163,118 Black people in New York City. Almost none were charged with crimes—91 percent were neither arrested nor given a summons, but they were criminalized and entered into NYPD databases.
African-Americans are 13 percent of the general population, but over 50 percent of the prison population. Nearly 60 percent of all young Black men born between 1965 and 1969 who dropped out of high school went to prison at least once on a felony conviction before they turned thirty-five. The incarceration rate of Black male high school dropouts is nearly fifty times the national average. ("Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?" by David Cole, The New York Review of Books, November 19, 2009)
Black people in particular have always filled the prisons in greatly disproportionate numbers compared to whites. But as the forms under which Black people have been subjugated in this country have evolved, the forms of the enforcement of their subjugation have evolved as well. And the massive numbers of African-Americans in jail concentrate that—in terrible ways with ominous implications. In the 1950s, when segregation was still legal, African-Americans comprised 30 percent of the prison population. Sixty years later, African-Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of the incarcerated population—at a time when that population has skyrocketed. (Cole)
In earlier eras, the slavemaster's whip and the lynch mob enforced the super-exploited, and all-around subjugated state of Black people. Today, those forms of violent oppression have been replaced by policeman's taser and gun, and the prison cell. Poor Black people and Latinos in the inner cities are at ground zero for police terror and the threat of prison. But Black people of all classes are enveloped by the brush of demonization, humiliation, and repression—witness the recent arrest of the prominent Harvard professor and public intellectual Henry Louis Gates, arrested for refusing to scrape and bow when accused of "breaking into" his own home.
From within this nightmare, a prisoner wrote to Revolution: "I am no stranger to struggle and hardship. I grew up in just one of the many, many slums in Chicago. I ended up in prison by the age of 13. I am 30 now. I have been raised by cold steel and concrete which I do not wear as a Scar of Honor but as an indictment against a system that has been built on genocide and slavery, and has continued to insist on throwing away its "undesirables" generation after generation. However, let me be clear, I am in search of the truth and not pity. My struggle is linked with the struggle of millions across the globe."
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/prison_rape-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
One particularly horrific abuse of prisoners is rape. Rape is done by prison guards—particularly in women's prisons—and it is also carried out by inmates against other inmates.
At the age of 18, Dorothy (her last name has not been publicized by her supporters), a Native American woman from upstate New York, left the reservation where she grew up, and married a much older man. Her husband beat her for years, even when she was in advanced stages of pregnancy. When she tried to run away, he broke her ribs and put a pistol to her head threatening to shoot her. At the age of 22, Dorothy began a life sentence for killing her abusive husband. Shortly after her arrival in prison, a guard began demanding sex. She refused, and he began to withhold about half of her ration of food, and her soap and toilet paper. One day, the guard found Dorothy alone in the laundry room. He locked the door from the inside, and although Dorothy fought back, he raped her. When she tried to gain access to the prison's mental health services for counseling, she was turned away, eventually offered Thorazine, a dangerous and mind-numbing drug. Defying threats if she spoke out, she reported the rape to the prison superintendent and a counselor in the mental health unit, and to the state's investigative office, to no response. After over a year, she joined a lawsuit filed against the guard and the prison. The suit was dismissed without even addressing the merits of the case, based on laws that make it almost impossible for inmates to sue prison guards. ("Words From Prison: Sexual Abuse in Prison," ACLU)
Among men, rape is widespread. In one sense, this is a concentrated expression of the predatory and patriarchal mentality inculcated in males by this society, in a situation in which there are no women to dominate. At the same time, it is a tool of social control manipulated by the authorities. The widespread rape in U.S. prisons inflicts severe physical and emotional pain and trauma on the vulnerable young men who are its victims, as it does to women. It carries great risk of infecting victims with HIV/AIDS. In sensationalist "news" programming about prison life, and TV dramas, prison rape is depicted as a product of a prison population of predators and psychopaths, carried out despite the best efforts of authorities to stop it. But, if prison authorities are trying to prevent prison rape, under conditions where they monitor and control prisoners' every move, then why is it that, according to a 2003 Congressional study, over a million inmates had been raped over the previous 20 years. A million inmates.
An ABC News report in April of 2009 quoted a former prison guard, Johnny Vasquez, as saying that when prisoners came to guards with complaints of being raped, they were told, "You need to grow some and defend yourself. Quit coming in here crying. Get out of my office. Don't bring this to me." That, in essence, is an expression of the depraved kill-or-be-killed (and relatedly, macho male supremacist) values and morality of the system that runs the prisons and uses rape as a tool to promote and enforce those values.
Harvard University criminologist Dr. James Gilligan told ABC that authorities use rape as a "bribe or a reward" to powerful inmates "to cooperate with the prison authorities." "As long as they cooperate, the prison authorities will permit them to have their victims." The ABC report summed up: "Experts say some prison officials quietly permit rape as a way to control the population."
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/christian_fascist-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
Prison authorities push the Bible and in particular virulently fascist fundamentalist Christian cults inside the prisons. Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, is currently in the process of placing Christian fascist programming from Pat Robertson's Trinity Broadcast Network into all 65 of its state, federal and juvenile facilities in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. Beyond that, there are now special prisons, or prison wings, for Christian fundamentalists. Former Nixon crony Chuck Colson did time after pleading guilty to felony obstruction of justice for his attempts to smear Pentagon Papers defendant and anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg. Today Colson is a reactionary Christian fundamentalist who sets up "faith-based prisons." And Christian fundamentalist groups run some of the few programs for re-integrating prisoners into society on their release. Through the widespread promotion of Christian fundamentalism (in blatant contradiction to the supposed separation of church and state), prison systems program captives to blame themselves (and other prisoners) for their conditions, and enlist as "Christian soldiers"—both in prison and when they get out in service of a Christian fascist movement being unleashed in society as a whole.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/divide_conquer-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
One prisoner wrote to Revolution: "Today California prisons in particular have passed a regulation where as the state is now housing prisoners of all social groups & races together in cells, this new regulation is creating conflict between prisoners, it is basically pitting prisoners against one another in gladiator style fights as before only now confined to a cell."
And, that prisoner poses: "[T]here is a remedy to situations like this and it will take the vanguard in each prison to find this remedy & bring it to fruition, we will not be used as roosters at a cockfight! This is a classic case of the state trying to take heat off themselves and direct prisoners rage upon one another rather than the proper direction."
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/supermax-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
A 2001 Amnesty International report detailed the death in prison of David Tracy, sent to jail for minor drug charges at age 18. After five suicide attempts, and with just a few months remaining on his sentence, he finally killed himself at age 20 in a supermax isolation cell at Wallens Ridge State Prison (WRSP) in Virginia. Amnesty described conditions in that unit: Prisoners "are routinely abused with electro-shock stun guns, subjected to racial verbal abuse by guards, fired on with painful pellet guns, and placed unnecessarily in five point restraints [strapping a prisoner down to keep him from moving his arms and legs]." Conditions in this typical supermax are "contrary to international standards prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including those set out under the International Covenant on Civil or Political Rights and the Convention against Torture—treaties ratified by the USA." In other words, in addition to being inhumane and immoral, the conditions in U.S. prisons are illegal by U.S. and international law. ("United States of America: Abuses continue unabated? Cruel and inhumane treatment at Virginia supermaximum security prisons.")
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/awakening-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
From a Former Prisoner:
We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The viewpoints expressed here are those of the writers and not Revolution newspaper.
The following is from a reader of Revolution newspaper who spent many years in prison:
Revolution newspaper is very important to those locked up. When you read the letters from prisoners you can see how this paper is a catalyst that is opening up minds and these people are thinking about things you don't normally be thinking about in prison. That is what is so good about it. Reading this paper, especially the articles by Bob Avakian, make things clear and it will change you. That's what's happening with me. This is very good.
These cats (prisoners) are individuals, very different in ways, but when they start reading that paper and spreading it to other inmates, they are in a process that can build up a revolutionary movement and change their lives. You can see it in their letters. The paper has an awakening effect on people. They start struggling against the old ideas they use to have and they start seeing the world in a different way. The newspaper gives you the idea that the world can be changed and you can change.
****
When I first tried to understand what Bob Avakian was talking about with the two outmoded ideologies and systems, Islamic Fundamentalism and Imperialism, I said "Damn!" this is something. And Islamic Fundamentalism, I really didn't understand what that was until I started reading Revolution. The oppression of women, backward ideas, fighting to go back not forward, reading what was in the paper really helped me. This is not a national liberation struggle or something good. It's not part of any solution for humanity. And, imperialism is not only no better, it's even worse. We need to put communism and real revolution on the map. This is something way different from Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism. Where are you going to find out about this, not in the Daily News or the New York Times, or these other movement newspapers. People, and not just people locked up, need Revolution and Avakian's leadership. I felt I can explain it to people. It's clearer now.
****
People think about all kinds of mad crazy shit in prison. Believe me. The newspaper gives people humanity to think about, it helps you understand what's going on, and gives you something to grab hold to. Is this system really doing this shit to people and it doesn't have to keep going like this? If yes, then we should stop it. One person is saying (in his letter) that he has learned that everything is interconnected. That is in the letter by the cat who likes science. Well that is science what he's saying. Everything is interconnected. In prison they give you nothing good to think about. But this brother is reading Bob Avakian and Stephen Hawking, in prison! This is real hope for the future.
****
I read a few books on Mao. I read all this crap, "Mao killed 50 million, 70 million," it was confusing. It kind of made me lose my faith in a way, my belief that communism could work. I don't mean faith in a religious way. I mean hope that we could change things. I came into contact with people outside of prison who call themselves socialists and they didn't have answers. They did not see that we need a new wave of communist revolution. I don't think they think real revolution can be made. I was thinking about how do you argue against people who say that socialism can't work—it failed in the Soviet Union—it failed in China. You hear this and you start questioning yourself. Is this true? It made you feel like throwing your hands up sometimes. I was influenced by this stuff. I guess my Marxism was eclectic.
Not too long ago, in the last year, there were these articles about China and Mao in Revolution and that helped me a lot. I learned that revolution did not fail, it was defeated, and there is a big difference between the two, but if you are not reading this paper, you won't know this. You will get pulled backward. I started reading Conquer the World?, and From Ike to Mao, Ruminations, and the new Manifesto. I've learned a lot. Now I feel like I can answer some of the shit people have been brainwashed to believe.
****
I used to always have trouble with leadership and I was influenced by other lines there too. One of the most important things I've learned from Revolution is that you need leadership. I heard people say there was a cult of personality around Bob Avakian. I'm thinking, that's not good. I mean that is what some people say. But I started reading the paper and talking to people with the RCP, and looking at the world, and watching the DVD, and reading BA, and looking at what other political lines have to say, and I came to the conclusion myself. This dude Bob Avakian is more knowledgeable than the average cat on the streets, or the average leader. He really is on a different level. No bullshit. He's into it, he learned from the BPP, he was digging into all about Mao and past revolutions, and how communism can go even higher this time. He's in a better position than me and anybody I know to lead a real revolution. He went from Ike to Mao and he stayed with this shit. One of the key points to putting Bob Avakian on the map is that people have to see that there is leadership. And we are not talking about that "slave feet" leadership that marches people in circles to let off steam and then go home. Avakian is about trying to figure this shit out. There is no denying that this brother's got a handle on what's going on and he can make it clear to you.
If communism is hanging on by a string in the world right now, if it is that serious and I believe it is, it's the RCP and Bob Avakian that can get us in a stronger position so we can have more revolution. I can see that.
****
I used to think revolution and communism was inevitable. It's gonna happen someday. All I got to do is lay back for the right time... But if you are reading From Ike to Mao, Ruminations, and the newspaper, you can see that this ain't a waiting around kind of party. You have to fight for revolution. You can't sit back. You got to wait like a crouching tiger. The RCP got a group of dedicated people, really, really working hard for this. I think that is part of the scaffolding for revolution too. More people got to join this or it could be lost. That's scary.
I spent a lot of time reading, studying, and thinking about all this. It has been a long journey from the first political book somebody handed me in prison, Soledad Brother, to now and I have to go further.
****
I want to say to all prisoners as somebody who has spent a good portion of his life behind bars, and as somebody who reads this newspaper every week, study this newspaper, spread it, be around revolutionary minded people while you are inside. Get even more into revolution when you get out. I know for a fact if you don't get more into revolution this system can pull you back into the very shit you don't want to do or be. Get with the organization that is providing real leadership when you get out. Get with the Party. And for humanity's sake, let's make revolution as soon as we can.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/ex-prisoner-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The viewpoints expressed here are those of the writers and not Revolution newspaper.
By the time I was 17-years-old, I was serving a 20 year sentence in an adult maximum security prison. My family faced the difficulties of survival under this capitalist system, and when I was a teenager we ended up homeless because the mortgage was foreclosed on our home. I got involved in a street organization (AKA "gang") and participated in small time drug deals, robbing, and stealing to try to survive on the streets. I had no vision or hope for the future, because I didn't know where I was going to sleep or if I was going to eat that day or the next, or if I was going to get blown away in a confrontation with the pigs or a rival gang.
Once I was locked down behind the walls, I soon started to question what brought me—and all the other people there with me—to prison. And as conditions became more and more repressive, I began to resist—and to develop more of an understanding of the historical forces that led all of us into the horrendous conditions of the hellholes of the American prison system.
I was placed in segregation—solitary confinement—for an indeterminate period of time for resisting an officer, and faced the prospect of languishing in isolation devoid of human contact for numerous years in a concrete tomb. It was in the midst of this—the daily salvos of pepper spray choking the whole cellhouse, the tac team stomping down the gallery to drag someone out of their cell and beat them down, the constant agony of men straining against the solitude crying out for some kind of conversation or contact—that I first read Revolution newspaper.
Revolution began to open my eyes to a whole other way that society could be organized and a whole other way of thinking. Instead of focusing intently on revenge and my own personal oppression or wrongs, I began to see that this capitalist-imperialist system is fundamentally based on the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority of humanity at the hands of the few within the ruling class who own and control the means of production. And that the basis exists to emancipate all of humanity from the oppressive relations of class society, and unleash people to flourish in ways undreamed of under the confines of this capitalist system.
Once I was released from prison, I continued to develop my understanding. Comrades struggled with me to break out of looking at things quite often still from the perspective of my own experience of oppression. The question of the oppression of women is something that really challenged me to rupture with being caught up in that and the broader degrading, patriarchal social relations of capitalism. Think about what its like to be locked up in the repressive conditions of a prison cell for years on end—and then think about what it's like to be a woman in this society, subjected to harassment and sexual objectification while just walking down the street and where one in three women is subjected to sexual abuse. This is bullshit! Why should half of humanity be treated as less than full human beings? The special issue of Revolution, A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity, really inspired me. And seeing the outpouring of women and hearing their stories after the assassination of Dr. Tiller showed me how vital the fight for abortion rights is.
There is a deep desire among prisoners broadly to understand the world. Revolution newspaper is a vital resource that not just allows prisoners to understand the world, but to become part of changing it as they change themselves—to become part of putting revolution and communism back on the map, to popularize the pathbreaking work in reenvisioning communism that Bob Avakian has done, and to bring forward a core of people dedicated to building this revolutionary movement. The prisoner's letters that are published in this issue capture a glimpse of their eloquent struggle to strain against the enforced dehumanization and degradation of their circumstances and rise up to become emancipators of humanity.
We have a responsibility to these men and women—to support them in their struggle, to make sure that they continue to get Revolution newspaper and other revolutionary literature such as that provided by the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund. To make sure that they can continue to further develop a communist understanding and approach—and that while they are still held captive in the dungeons of the belly of the beast of this imperialist system, and even more so when they are released from prison, that they can be actively involved in building this revolutionary movement to liberate humanity.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/ex-con-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The viewpoints expressed here are those of the writers and not Revolution newspaper.
Dear Revolution,
When I read that Revolution #183 would be a special issue about prisons and prisoners, it took me back to the '70s, when I was in the penitentiary and in a study group with a few other women.
Even though the revolutionary movement was no longer at its height, big questions were up in society and the world, and those of us in that little circle were trying to figure out the way forward. I sent away to every revolutionary organization I could find an address for asking for literature. Another woman in the circle had a subscription to Peking Review. We all read and argued over George Jackson's Blood in My Eye. We were fond of quoting Ho Chi Minh, "When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out," because we wanted to be "real dragons," people who would fight for a brighter future for all of humanity.
Then one of us got a visit from relatives who had begun to hook up with the Revolutionary Union. I'd heard of Bob Avakian and the RU before, but I had no idea what their line was. I just knew that the line I'd been following was not going to lead to revolution. I'd read some Marx, Lenin, and Mao, but it wasn't until I was locked up that I looked to revolutionary theory in earnest to find a better way. The connection to the RU was life-changing. Every time my friend's relatives visited her, she talked with them about what they had been learning from the RU/RCP (the Party was founded during this time) and conveyed what she and I had been discussing with each other and with other prisoners we were corresponding with. When her visitors left, my friend and I met and discussed and struggled some more.
From the beginning, the RU's scientific attitude impressed me. The RU's analysis of the Black national question stood out from that of other organizations. My friend and I had read Lenin's and Stalin's writings on the national question, and like many people in the movement at the time, we were pretty sure that Black people in the U.S. were a nation. However, we didn't have a very deep understanding. The lines of groups like the Black Workers Congress and the Communist League either proceeded from the point of view of the Black nation itself rather than from the international proletariat, or were bizarre attempts to shoehorn the Black national question into Stalin's definition of a nation with little or no "concrete analysis of concrete conditions." The RU came at this question scientifically. Guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, it analyzed the history of Black people in the U.S. from slavery, through Reconstruction, and on through the great migration to the cities in the 20th century, and developed not only a scientific explanation of this question, but a program for the revolutionary movement and for the future socialist society.
We analyzed everything: from the way we'd begun to ourselves adopt some of the misogynist attitudes that prevailed among us convicts (we vowed never to refer to anyone as "bitches" or "broads" again), to how to look at the contradiction between cities and rural areas in the U.S., to the nature of the state and the role prisons play within that. We followed what was later called Mao's Last Great Battle in the pages of Peking Review—when the censors let it come through—and tried to figure out what was going on.
I hooked up with the RCP for real as soon as I paroled. I heard Bob Avakian's speech, "The Loss in China and the Revolutionary Legacy of Mao Tsetung," at one of the Mao Memorial Meetings in 1978. This, too, was a landmark experience. Avakian figured out—for the whole world—what had gone on in China, how socialism had come to be overthrown and capitalism restored there, and why. Striving to be a "real dragon" a la Ho Chi Minh was no longer good enough: I dedicated my life to being one of Mao's successors.
Today there are more women in prison in the U.S. than ever before, and even bigger questions are up in the world. The world has been without a socialist country for more than 30 years; we still need revolution and communism and we have the leadership we need to get there. Read the March 8, 2009 issue of Revolution, A Declaration: for Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity and The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have (#170, July 19, 2009). Think about what it would mean for women prisoners to get hold of that! We can't squander this revolutionary potential. Contribute all you can to the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/years_of_terror-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The viewpoints expressed here are those of the writers and not Revolution newspaper.
Dear RCP:
Greetings and a clenched fist comrade salute to all you brothers and sisters. I write you from a dungeon known as California's supermax prison "Pelican Bay." This country is undergoing a dramatic "facelift" in its political arena, the blatant disregard for humanity that Bush II displayed forced the ruling class to dig deep in its trump chest so that once more the people can be corralled into their Bourgeois politics with all the false hopes and empty promises that come with it. Thus the need to bring to light the cold truth is needed now more than ever.
First, I speak from the inner core of the nation of prison, from deep within the Beast's Rancid innards known as the Security Housing Unit (S.H.U.). I know first hand the bottom end of oppressive U.S. Imperialism, I have been state raised since age 11. Juveniles, Boys Camps, Reformatory schools, then Prison and now control unit. The streets of the Barrio were everything to me, and the broken home-life would be the fuel for the anger I always feel for growing up with empty hands and constant harassment from the police, because I was Latino in a poor neighborhood, dressed a certain way, hanging out with other poor kids my age, no direction and hungry as ever. These are the conditions of millions of youth across this country who turn to petty crime as they don't understand why their circumstances are so bleak, or any other alternative to changing these conditions.
As I began to become caught in the prison trap, time spent in the "hole" began to be time to read, learn and study. I began to read my own history of Latin America and the many Revolutions and struggles; this led me to take up Revolutions worldwide and realize that every Liberation struggle for the most part was fought against U.S. backed Regimes. This was eye opening! as I thought, "I never read about this in Jr. High or elementary classes." I began to want more because I realized this history had been kept from me all my life as Bob Avakian says I had "been locked out of politics" and so naturally wanted to learn more! It was at this point that I realized that my lumpen lifestyle was time lost with misdirected anger and it was at this point that the years of police terror of night sticks, mace and the heel of the boot finally gave painful birth to a Revolutionary! And as I began to study the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao and develop my understanding of dialectical materialism, I realized my situation of being raised in gulags and solitary confinements enduring the degradation and humiliation of being left in bare concrete cells at times with nothing but toilet paper, shackled every time I left my cell like a wild animal, strip searched and left in phone-booth-like mesh cages for hours on end, it was through living a tortured life in U.S. Gulags that rather than allow my treatment to crush my spirit and any concept of why this occurs or of a better world that I chose rather than lay down and become the self hating criminal "worst of the worst" I began to develop consciously! I began to study and do all I could to obtain reading materials, papers, books, literature from my concrete cage for intense study, a Revolutionary classroom that was open 24 hrs a day! This is when I realized what I was seeing develop in myself and others held in repressed holes, solitary, control units (supermax) was Marxism, It was Dialectical Materialism in practice! I was using the very tools of repression from the state to psychologically and ideologically beam me down to strengthen my resistance and sharpen my political line! I then see the beauty of Dialectical Materialism and it was then that I knew that the ideas posed by Marx were indeed applicable to all levels of society, even to prisoners.
My awakening to Revolution has led me to challenge the state on numerous lawsuits, protests and other actions while in prison. This has unleashed the state to take me out of general population and be housed indefinitely in a control unit (S.H.U.). This has only strengthened my understanding of this society's repressive nature and my belief that another world is necessary!
Today Obama is used on the one hand to corral Black People into bourgeois politics while on the other hand Latinos are now being brought into bourgeois politics by the appointing of Sotomayor to the supreme court, the truth is Sotomayor will continue upholding the laws of the ruling class and burying Latinos, Blacks, and others in the vast network of their prison palooza. If Sotomayor or Obama were true "representatives of their ethnicities" or even had a smidgen of concern for people of color, why have they not spoken about the disproportionate amount of Latinos and Blacks in the prison system? Why has the racist three strikes laws not been an issue worth addressing? Because they support and uphold this rotten system! These are the "representatives" that the people have to choose from in Capitalist America, these "representatives" that say nothing when fascist militia groups kick down the door of proletarian families and gun them down in cold blood as minutemen did on May 30, 2009 in Arivaca, Arizona, murdering Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia Flores. Yet these "representatives" don't utter a word! When Oscar Grant is executed in Oakland, California, by the Gestapo like police again no word uttered! These are not "representatives" of the people they are Imperialist running dogs as Mao liked to say! The truth is that the facets that compose the Capitalist American society such as repression on Latinos and BLACKS will never truly be challenged by members of the U.S. Government. It is solely up to the people to build and strengthen these contradictions. The capitalist culture fuels the prison boom and Incarceration of vast multitudes of Latinos and Blacks; they work hand in hand to compliment and feed off one another. On the one hand Government complains of prison overcrowding while at the same time increasing penalty and stiffer repressive laws like the three strikes. But isn't increasing longer prison time for petty crimes (i.e. life in prison for stealing a candy bar) increasing prison overcrowding??! The Prison Phenomenon we are witnessing is doing far more to Latinos and Blacks that will not be felt fully for generations to come.
The incarceration of large numbers of people of color is not simply a matter of taking people's freedom, but this also affects whole communities in general and families in particular. This ripping parents away from their family smacks of the days of slavery when families were split up and households broken, the family unit was destroyed then and is being destroyed again! This weapon of chronic incarceration being unleashed on the people, this low intensity warfare being waged on the masses is worse than flooding the neighborhoods, barrios and ghetto projects with vast amounts of drugs as not everyone in these economically depressed areas do drugs or sell drugs, many commit petty crimes to eat and support their family when no other resource is available so these repressive racist laws work to target these other elements in the poor communities. The children left behind, being nothing more than residue in the mind of the capitalist ruling class, will serve to be the future reserve army of incarcerated, this does the same job as flooding poor neighborhoods did in the 1980s only this is "legal," and there will be no Iran Contra Scandal. It will all be supported by the courts. This Mass incarceration wreaks havoc on the oppressed communities and the millions of potentially revolutionary people are warehoused in prisons and broken down further resulting in suicide, drug addiction, religion or political coma.
The struggle for a better world should not be exclusive to a struggle of poor people. I write from the vantage point of the oppressed as this is the condition I was born and raised from, but there is also a need from those with very opposite lives who have never felt the pain of having a childhood friend gunned down in the street or the pain of being a child and watching as your home is raided by police and your family members dragged off to jail; there are those who have lived different or even sheltered lives yet through circumstances in life have come to identify with the people's struggles and have seen the racism that has plagued America since the first settler arrived, these are the people that we also need who stand by the people for what is morally correct.
In building public opinion there is a need to create a new culture outside the spheres of capitalist society. We need to enculturate or rather re-enculturate in some cases people to experience the world in a revolutionary viewpoint in all levels of society, from art, music, literature, poetry, media, etc. This will take people from all backgrounds to engage and radically alter culture and thinking in this society. Newspapers such as Revolution is one such vehicle to teach the people truth. I have been receiving Revolution/Revolutionary Worker for about 8 years now, this has been possible through the PRLF and people's donations—power to the people! Thus the people themselves have made it possible to send me Revolutionary nutrients. I in turn have shared my papers over the years with all I've come in contact with in all the prison general populations, holes and control units and planted hundreds if not thousands of revolutionary seeds, so please do not feel as if your efforts/donations are a waste in any way as Revolutionary shoots are sprouting, though sporadic, they are consistent! I am living example of this development!
La Lucha Continua
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/some_thoughts-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The viewpoints expressed here are those of the writers and not Revolution newspaper.
Dear RCP
Revolutionary greetings! I just received issue number 170 and so I wanted to express some of my thoughts of this issue, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have."
First what was powerful was when I opened up the paper and seen the vivid uncut portrayals in the pictures of America's dirty work. To see the collage of horror all together was a powerful message. And I could relate to many of the pictures, the picture of the police smashing a Black youth's back with his knee. I have been in that exact position more than once, out in society and here in American gulags. In the barrios or ghetto projects, police brutality is a fact of life and begins as a right of passage to youth of color, police brutality is used as a mechanism of control to the potentially rebellious youth of color and it is taught at an early age, it becomes an unwritten rule that the lumpen know all too well, like the rule that if you run from the police if caught you will get beat.
The picture of the Iraqis being rounded up and arrested by blatant military force is a perfect example of a "police state," we experience the same thing here in the U.S. However instead of outright military uniform, the captors dress in police uniform, but most have witnessed groups of youth being thrown against the wall or told to sit on curbs while police rummage through their belongings or gather intelligence on them to put on "field cards" for later harassment. These are the constant harassments that you see on TV/Internet going on in Iraq with U.S. military "patrolling" and engaged in a harassment offensive. This is what Latinos and Blacks go through in their neighborhoods! The only difference is the uniform the oppressor wears. Latinos and Blacks get their doors kicked down and their house "cleared" just as in Iraq, Latinos and Blacks get sprayed with bullets, shot dead by the same security forces, with the same excuses—"he was reaching for his waistband."
The picture of the L.A. Rebellion always puts a smile on my face, pride for the people rising up on that day. When the '92 riots kicked off over the Rodney King verdicts I was in California's "C.Y.A." (reformatory school) and I remember when the riots began the guards put us on lockdown with no movement in the whole institution for fear of all of us rebellious youth at that time raising shit to our captors. I was already in the hole at this time for other mischief but I remember being in this dungeon and talking about the riots in L.A. As we had heard about it and even though at that time none of us had studied revolutionary struggles or theory, we didn't know the root cause of why the ruling class cast us off—we didn't even know what the ruling class was! But we did know we were happy and excited, we knew instinctively that what was taking place in L.A. was not only right it was a beautiful thing and we wanted in! I always look back to that situation and it solidifies the position that should a revolution reach these shores the millions of youth such as we were in that dungeon would rush to partake in the struggle, even without being fully immersed in political science they would instinctively know that the people were correct.
But getting to the main article of issue 170, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"... well first of all, being not only held in one of America's gulags, but also held in the California supermax known as Pelican Bay. I really appreciate all the literature I am able to receive particularly from PRLF as I have used this time in the dungeon to really develop my revolutionary line and see the U.S. for what it really is and identify all the horror that's wrapped up within the inner workings of this capitalist system that is basically machinery of death. But this article sounded much like a conversation I had with one of the people here in which we were just discussing this whole sham of land of the free! And having cookouts on July 4th and all that Americana mumbo jumbo but in reality there is not a damn thing to celebrate about this racist country or its genocidal birth! The so called "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo" that called for the theft of half of Mexican land, as well as all Native land they call America validates this country not as "land of the free," rather the land of the thieves! Not to mention the slavery instituted to create an economy on this stolen land. This system is rotten to its core; "democracy" is but a cheap coat of shellac, it looks glossy and nice but when you flip it over you see its underbelly is mere rancid innards. Those of us in prisons across the U.S. understand the dialectics with this country's so-called democracy very well, we learn of its mechanics through our painful introduction to its injustice system. The flooding of drugs into our communities, little to no jobs or training and a capitalist culture that everywhere we look we see luxury items on billboards, movies, T.V., magazines, newspapers, on clothing, in art form and in our music. We are born and raised in the economically depressed neighborhoods where even walking to the corner store is a cat and mouse game with police, not knowing if today is the day we go to jail or worse. I have felt the boot, the stick and the mace more than a few times but the blow from the nightstick was my painful birth into a revolutionary! For I no longer continued to see this society we live in through cozy blinders but I seen the uncut reality that millions of people live under here and the horrors inflicted around the world by this country.
And those who can fight their way through this madness out in society as well as the 2+ million held in concentration camp like dungeons supermax gulags and endure the psychological torture and not only "stay strong," but go past that and learn the history of this country's vileness as well as the theoretical sciences that can change the political landscape and the relations we have today. Our revolutionary spirit can flourish in even the most draconian deprivation tanks—this is dialectical materialism! Marxism in action. Those of us in prisons need to manipulate our confinement to build revolutionary minds! We cannot sit around waiting for the state to help us understand how to struggle for liberation, we must find ways to teach ourselves and then teach others!
As the article says, "Fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution." What this means is the power is the ruling class, the imperialists, and transforming the people is changing this bling bling society, the slave mentality, the heavy chain of religion, the self destruction that is planted in our minds as youth, the defeatism. All this needs to be shown to the people and not only telling them "that's wrong" but showing them why that's wrong thinking, and then showing them what a better, more revolutionary way of going about it is needed. Where does this culture come from? And who benefits more out of it? These questions need to be grappled with so the people can see the truth, the righteousness of where you're coming from and in this way you will transform the people so that revolution is possible.
In the article it speaks of, "For a revolution, there must be a revolutionary people among all sections of society but with its deepest base among those who catch hell every day under this system. " We have nothing to lose but our chains. But even here it takes transformation to grasp the true nature of our conditions. I have come to see over the years that this newspaper is an excellent educational, people building organizational tool within the prison system, with it dialogue has opened, seeds have been planted and lines have been sharpened on many fronts.
The thing about what I have been able to study of Bob Avakian is I not only see the chairman of the RCP in his writings but I see a genuine revolutionary. I remember reading his memoir From Ike to Mao and Beyond and I seen of all the people he struggled with over the years and many setbacks and targeting by the police as well as the feds, where many have fell off out of exhaustion, police harassment or incorrect political line, Avakian has remained firm in his struggle for the people, and this article that came out in issue 170, it said how Avakian has given his heart for these struggles and how he's studied and developed scientific theory for making revolution. But something this article does not say is that Avakian did not have to take the revolutionary road, the strenuous trek to struggle with the oppressed. Avakian grew up with a father who was a judge, he was going to premed school and could have easily stayed in school got the plush doctor job, the Corvette, the model wife and lived high up in the suburbs tucked away safely free from the "crime ridden" areas, street people and "criminal elements," basically the downtrodden and castoffs. But he chose to struggle with the people, those who grew up in dramatically different living conditions and so he was in turn harassed with the people, jailed with the people, and he continues with the people. So there are lots of contributions Avakian has made to the International movement—but this is what stood out to me as someone I should and have looked into more deeply.
A prisoner
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/circulating_revolution-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The viewpoints expressed here are those of the writers and not Revolution newspaper.
Excerpt from a letter received several years ago:
Before I get into these issues, I'd like to express and extend my appreciation towards Bob Avakian for speaking directly to us in Revolution No. 11 and really motivating, inspiring and orientating us to develop ourselves ideologically and politically as not merely "revolutionaries" but communist revolutionaries. He noted the crucial role prisoners need to be playing in spreading the message of communist revolution and MLM [Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought] throughout the prisons and getting the word out to our homeboys and homegirls and families on the streets as part of raising class consciousness and helping build and strengthen the revolutionary movement and contributing to the resistance. Those of us who are trapped under the gun, and those loved ones who are connected to us on the streets ensnared in the barrios and ghettos, need to get with the revolution, study MLM and learn about and promote the leadership of Bob Avakian.
I'm currently in one of the three Security Housing Units (SHU) in California. I can't imagine any deeper, darker, or more desolate pits in the U.S. than these. Every day I'm circulating the light of Revolution and other illuminating literature by Bob Avakian, the PRLF and Revolution Books stores have provided me among the captives I can reach and communicate with. The SHU "just so happens" to be where they isolate and slam down the most progressive, revolutionary, intelligent and indomitable elements of the prison population. When, by word of mouth or by my political activity on the tier, these cats learn I'm a communist revolutionary with revolutionary literature available for all regardless of race, group, etc., a lot of them are interested in taking advantage of this opportunity to use this lit to either acquaint themselves with or enhance their understanding of the political ideology and science our class enemies malign and slander so vehemently. Contrary to what ignorance gets poured on into people's minds through the bourgeoisie's political propaganda agents, in prison 99% of us are seeking an alternative to living and dying like this. So, after reading a coupl'a newspapers or a book or two, the first question I'm asked before the wrangling and unity-struggle-unity begins is, "Who is Bob Avakian?" In response to this inquiry, I've adopted a updated version of the line Eldridge Cleaver used to describe the identity and significance of Mao in the '60s to you, Bob Avakian. I reply, "Bob Avakian is the baddest motherfucker on the planet earth! He is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. He has re-envisioned the whole idea of communist revolution by summing up the weaknesses and shortcomings and, more importantly, the great achievements and advances of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionary movement internationally. He knows the way out of all this shit and into a completely new society and world. If you have any desire to be free and to liberate humanity and change the world into a place we got a shot at surviving in and will actually enjoy living in, then learn about him and what he's reppin." I state this with complete confidence, and it's refreshing and invigorating to introduce yet another to this leader who is so genuinely committed to the people. Sadly though, over 500 years of imperialism, colonialism, oppression, degradation, murderous brutality and betrayal, and the very real and all too present history and culture of white supremacy is expressed so poignantly and succinctly in their very next question: "Oh yeah? Dog that's straight! But what IS Bob Avakian?" Most cats get the impression from his writings that he's Black or Latino, or even Asian. They're astonished to learn that Bob Avakian is white. Almost automatically Avakian's ethnicity acts to disqualify him as a revolutionary in the minds of even a lot of revolutionary minded individuals. So let me get into some of my thoughts on Bob Avakian's credentials as a communist leader.
This is a theme that has come up very sharply while popularizing the leadership of Bob Avakian and I think they've come a long way towards dispelling the notion that there can or should only be particular nationalities from specific socio-economic status (basically excluding whites and legitimizing poor Blacks, Latinos or Native Americans) at the helm of any revolutionary movement in the U.S. since only one from among the oppressed nationalities will and can truly act in the interests of the oppressed nations and resist betraying the people or succumbing to certain race and/or class privileges the bourgeoisie will attempt to entice them to steer the upsurge back within acceptable boundaries or abandon it all together. I have only one thing to say in regard to this, and that's that it flies in the face of history.
How many Black/Latino/Native/etc. leaders and/or nationalistic revolutionary movements have failed to grasp or understand where the masses need to go, or either been co-opted by the bourgeois political "left-wing" or other imperialist forces or simply and subtly turned revisionist throughout history? Now, I don't call our attention to history to propose or argue that "minorities" in the U.S. or non-white people internationally are incapable of leading movements or a revolution to fruition, for history overflows with examples of just that and more! Nor am I seeking to lend credence to the erroneous idea that only white people and so-called "white movements" have been largely successful when they've risen on the stage of history, and therefore should be imbued with leadership positions or given the reins outright to ensure success because of their supposed prowess in struggle, superior intellectual, cultural and genetic disposition for the opposite has a abundance of historical and scientific precedence.
What we all need to be raising is the reality that the "right" nationality does not qualify and should not sanctify revolutionary leadership, because even if a particular man or woman with an ample amount of melanin comes to the fore, his/her leadership will ultimately serve to sap the initiative of or misguide or even destroy the mass movement or revolution if the LINE is wrong. The correct line is the principal aspect of the contradiction between communist revolutionary leadership and the basic masses, and only by following whoever has the right line can we accomplish our world historic mission.
* * * * *
I think Clyde Young summed it up very well when he appeared on KPFK in L.A. He was asked "...how revolutionary it is to have an older white man from upper middle class economic background leading a revolutionary organization?" Clyde replied straight up, "I think the crucial question here is not that he is a white leader but that he is a communist leader. I think that's a very important point to be emphasizing." Yes, Sir! And this is exactly the point I've been emphasizing with these cats around here and encourage others to do wherever they're at with those who believe that communist revolution led by the proletariat and its vanguard party is on the historical agenda but haven't gotten beyond the narrow nationalism and other expressions of unscientific and unmaterialistic and undialectical thinking. This is not Black or Brown or Red or Yellow revolution. This is international revolution, it's the proletariat getting where it needs to go....
I'm a 23-year-old "Blaxican" from San Jose, CA and there are those who seriously wonder why I be running around extolling this white dude I don't even know personally and who doesn't know I exist. Well, it's simple really. First, I know what I need to know about Bob Avakian and I respect and admire him on that basis. Second, he does know me, for I am one amongst the masses and he knows the masses very intimately. Third, I wanna be free to live my own life, not suffer and die to enrich a few muthafuckers, not when we're at the stage where it's entirely unnecessary. We can't invest our ambitions into leaders who don't know the way to bring them to fulfillment. And we definitely can't wait around expecting some "savior" to emerge who fits the finely calibrated criteria—racially, socio-economically, sexually, culturally, etc.—then launch the revolutionary struggle behind that person. We can't wait for someone deemed with leadership potential now to start investigating and analyzing everything necessary to develop line and when they "got it!" rally the masses into action. Not only can "we" not wait, "THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT!" Like Avakian says all the time, communist revolutionaries must be leading the masses to where these interests truly lie, infusing their spontaneity with class consciousness, MLM and communist morality, not trailing behind them or sitting on the sidelines cheering them on. Rather, we gotta be right there in the thick in their resistance, soles on the pavement, roaring a resounding "NO MORE."
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/women_prisoners-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
In 1995, a young boy named Phillip Gaines wrote a letter to the President of the United States.
"Dear President Clinton," Phillip wrote. "I hope you can free my mom .I need her. Because I am just a little boy! I am just ten year old. I need my mom very much. Please get her out I need her."
Clinton granted Phillip's desperate wish, and freed his mother Dorothy from prison—more than five and a half years later. But you can't blame Clinton for taking his time letting Dorothy Gaines back on the street. After all, she was a dangerous, hardened, cold-blooded criminal.
Or not.
Here is how the journalist Nell Bernstein described the circumstances of Gaines' arrest and imprisonment, in a July 2000 article for Salon.com (See Salon.com, July 20, 2000 at salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/07/20/conspirators/index.html):
"Gaines, 42, was dating a drug user who was part of a crack ring in Mobile, Ala. When the state came down on the ring, Gaines was caught in the net. At trial, she testified that she was unaware of any drug activity... Gaines was convicted in federal court solely on the word of witnesses who received sentence reductions in return for their testimony. Her sentence is longer than that of any other member of the conspiracy, including the so-called kingpin, who will be released eight years before she will. [Dorothy's] boyfriend, who refused to testify against her, told the judge that he had heard his codefendants, who were all kept in the same jail cell, 'trying to get their stories straight' on Dorothy's supposed involvement." [emphasis added]
Dorothy Gaines was ULTIMATELY granted clemency in the twilight of Clinton's presidency, on December 22, 2000, and released from prison. But this act could never give back the six years of Gaines' life that were stolen from her and committed to the living hell of federal prison. And her story is a window into the circumstances and conditions faced by more than one million women in this country.
Between 1977 and 2007, the number of women in U.S. prisons mushroomed by 832 percent, twice the also staggering increase in the male prison population during that same time period. There are currently more than 200,000 women in jail or prison in this country, nearly one million on probation, and almost 100,000 on parole.
Like Dorothy Gaines, huge numbers of them are women of color—as of mid-2008, more than 32 percent of women in U.S. prisons were Black, even though Black women represent only 7 percent of the U.S. population; Latina women, who constitute 6.5 percent of the total U.S. population, represented 16 percent of those locked up in this country's women's prisons.
Like Dorothy Gaines, a great many of these female prisoners have children —more than 65,000 women in prisons are mothers, collectively leaving behind more than 147,000 minor children.
Like Dorothy Gaines, about two-thirds of these women are locked up on convictions for non-violent offences—primarily drug and property crimes. As of the end of 2005, 28 percent of women in state prisons were sent there for drug convictions. Drug busts of women increased by 29 percent from 2003-2007, almost double the rate of increase for men's drug arrests during that time span.
Unlike Dorothy Gaines, the overwhelming majority of these prisoners are not granted their release by the President of the United States.
Once arrested and convicted, women in this country are often hit with heavy sentences for very light involvement—or no involvement at all—in the drug trade: Huge numbers of women in this country are serving long sentences for "crimes" such as taking a phone message for someone who ends up accused of a drug crime. And many women are sentenced to a living hell despite not having done a damn thing. This observation from Bernstein's article about Dorothy Gates hits like a ton of bricks:
"Under mandatory-sentencing laws, the only way a person charged with a drug offence can get a sentence reduction is to help prosecutors build a case against someone else. Many women who wind up serving time on conspiracy charges are doing so because of the testimony of boyfriends or husbands who won sentence reductions for themselves on the basis of this testimony. The less involved a woman actually is, the less she has to offer prosecutors—and the more likely she is to do serious time." [emphasis added]
What kind of system are we living under if being innocent of a crime could actually make you more likely to be punished for it?
Rape and sexual abuse against female prisoners by male guards is a widespread occurrence in U.S. prisons. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report found that, in New York state alone and just between the years 2001 and 2003, 15 female prisoners reported being sexually abused by male prison guards. According to the report, "The alleged abuse included sexual assault, harassment, forcible rape, sexual intercourse, anal intercourse, oral sexual acts, sexual touching, voyeurism, invasion of personal privacy, demeaning sexual comments, and intimidation to deter women prisoners from reporting sexual misconduct." (hrw.org/en/news/2007/11/07/proposed-revisions-prison-litigation-reform-act-hearing-house-judiciary-subcommittee)
And those are just the women who braved the prospect of vicious retaliation from prison guards, as well as a daunting set of legal hurdles, in order to speak out. Undoubtedly, many women who are raped and abused in prison never come forward.
The 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act signed by Bill Clinton established several unique requirements that prisoners—and only prisoners—must meet in order to file lawsuits. Among the most outrageous aspects of the PRLA: 1) Prisoners must file a grievance within the same prison system that abused them, and take their complaint all the way through that system (with several deadlines and complex procedures involved in this), before their case can be heard in court. And 2) Prisoners alleging sexual assault must show evidence of physical injury.
This is nothing less than a license for guards to rape and abuse prisoners. And in case that weren't clear, the courts are happy to clarify this. In 2004, a male prison guard at the Illinois Youth Center raped a teenage girl. He eventually pled guilty; that is, he admitted to raping the girl. The teenage victim then filed a federal lawsuit. But earlier this year, a Federal Judge dismissed her lawsuit on the grounds that the victim had not filed a formal grievance within her prison system.
In addition to pervasive rape and sexual abuse, incarcerated women consistently face many other horrific forms of abuse. One of the most shocking to the conscience is the practice of shackling pregnant prisoners—while they are giving birth. In the year 2009, this remains legal in more than 40 out of 50 states in this country. An October 14, 2009 New York Times editorial condemning the shackling of pregnant prisoners discussed the case of Shawanna Nelson, a 29-year-old non-violent offender whose legs were chained to a wheelchair as she gave birth.
"Ms. Nelson testified that the shackles prevented her from moving her legs, stretching or changing positions during the most painful part of her labor," The Times wrote. "She offered evidence that the shackling had caused a permanent hip injury, torn stomach muscles, an umbilical hernia that required an operation and extreme mental anguish."
Women in prison are also frequently deprived of basic and urgently needed medical care. This is a crime perhaps committed with particular frequency and vengeance against immigrants, the fastest-growing section of the U.S. prison population; there were more than 300,000 people in U.S. immigration custody in 2008, and roughly 10 percent (30,000) of them were women. A 2009 HRW report revealed that female immigrant detainees were frequently denied cancer detection and treatment services; diabetes care; and items such as breast pumps and sanitary pads.
The savagery of the U.S. prison system does not spare even the youngest members of society. A 2006 HRW report found that girls in New York State juvenile facilities— some as young as 12 years old—are systematically and routinely subjected to physical brutality, humiliation, and sexual abuse by male guards. In addition to being frequently strip-searched and shackled at the hand, foot, and waist and, girls in these facilities are very often beaten and seriously injured by prison staff. One of the most commonly employed forms of abuse—used to punish girls for "violations" such as refusal to go swimming, waving a comb, or improperly making a bed—is the "face-down restraint." Here is how HRW described the face-down restraint:
In a restraint, staff seize a girl from behind, and in a face-down posture, push her head and entire body to the floor. They then pull her arms up behind her and hold or handcuff them. We found that the procedure is used against girls as young as 12 and that it frequently results in facial abrasions and other injuries, and even broken limbs [emphasis added](See HRW, September 24, 2006, hrw.org/en/node/11152/section/3)
One juvenile prison in New York averaged 10 of these restraints per child per year.
The confinement and brutality girls and women face in U.S. prisons is a particularly extreme concentration of the confinement and brutality they face every day in our society and around the world.
Put these facts, statistics, and quotes in a mental blender for a second and mix them together:
"It was very exploitative in there," Ebony V. said. "I was living better than I was on the street but I was still living street life in there. I was still being sexually exploited by the staff there." [emphasis added]
Let those words echo—"Living better than I was on the street." Given everything that Ebony V was forced to endure in juvenile prison, what does it tell you that her life outside the dungeon walls was even worse?
How many women could you find outside the prison walls that have not been called at least one of those names?
When you put all this together, here's what you get: Women's prisons in this country both reflect and reinforce a system of capitalism-imperialism, and a culture that stems from this system, in which women in the U.S. and around the world are treated as nothing more than property to be policed — as commodities literally or figuratively traded for the pleasure and profit of many men, or as breeders of children bound to the bedroom and kitchen of one man.
Is it any surprise that a society tightening the chains of forced childbirth on women —by steadily stripping away their access to abortions—is also chaining them to the bed as they give birth?
Is it shocking to discover the usage of the "face down restraint" in the same country where a woman is battered every 15 seconds?
Women in our society, whether incarcerated or not, are told pretty much the same thing: "Shut up, look pretty, and make yourself sexually available." And if you don't, prepare to be beaten, raped, insulted, humiliated, and locked down.
The mass imprisonment of women in the U.S. also represents the intersection of many different forms of oppression that are intertwined with capitalism-imperialism in the U.S. Is it a mere coincidence that huge, disproportionate numbers of girls and women locked away in America are also Black or Latino Americans, or immigrants? Of course not. This reality betrays the combined warehousing of entire sections of society that have been criminalized, exploited, and denied any worthwhile future in this society.
Any system that systematically confines, brutalizes, batters, humiliates, and rapes entire groups of people...and then throws them into cages and does it all over again.... is a truly sick system that should be put of its misery. It cannot and should not be reformed; it must be done away with.
Getting rid of capitalism-imperialism will take a revolution. And earth-shaking revolutions have happened before.
In communist revolutions in Russia (1917) and China (1949), the fury of women was unleashed in ways that had never been witnessed. Millions and millions of women in these societies—who for centuries were regularly beaten, raped, and traded like animals—became front-line fighters in revolutions that created radically new socialist societies. In these societies, women gained the right to abortion, and divorce. Campaigns were organized against domestic violence and prostitution, and these evils were essentially eliminated. Men and women worked together, under the leadership of a communist party, to produce the necessities of life, and society was organized to serve people rather than exploit them. The masses debated politics, philosophy, and how society should be run. In China, women danced in revolutionary ballets and fought in the revolutionary army, which both reflected and accelerated a monumental transformation in the ways women were portrayed and viewed in society.
Bai Di, a college professor in the U.S. who grew up during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China (1966-1976), had this to say recently about the status of women in that society: "The dominant ideology was that women hold up half of the sky; what men can do, women can do... I lived through that period really believing in myself, in my ability in bringing about changes in my own life and the lives of other people." (See revcom.us/a/161/Bai_Di_interview-en.html.)
Soon after the death of Mao Tsetung in 1976, capitalists came back to power in China and begin reintroducing the horrors of the old society. Today, prostitution in China is rampant, as is the deliberate killing of female babies and the all-round devaluation of young girls and women.
And, for the last three decades—the very time when the female prison population in the United States was going through the roof—there have been no socialist countries serving as a model for a radically different system and society.
Well, it's long past time to make revolution again. And we have the revolutionary leadership to do just that.
Since the defeat of socialism in China 30 years ago, Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), has devoted his life to making revolution. He has identified, analyzed, and popularized the unprecedented achievements for humanity of previous revolutions, and he has also confronted and wrangled with the secondary weaknesses of these societies. And he has consistently, and with tremendous richness and depth, spoken to the key world events and ideological questions facing revolutionaries in this country. In the process and as a result of all this, he has developed the vision and strategy to make revolution right here in the U.S. and liberate the literal and figurative prisoners of the entire planet.
While the revolutions of the past achieved amazing things never accomplished before or since, Avakian's leadership is not about trying to replicate the past. It's about advancing on the past and doing even better in the future—by getting to a socialist society that fosters debate and criticism and the battle of ideas on a level far higher than we have ever seen, as part of getting to a destination humanity has never before reached: a communist planet free of all exploitation and oppression.
Through the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF), hundreds of people locked away in this country have been introduced to Avakian, his leadership, and his writings. Many of these prisoners have been inspired to write letters to this paper (you can see some of these letters throughout this issue), and many of them have also taken it upon themselves to begin spreading the line of Avakian and the RCP throughout this nation's dungeons as vital part of building for revolution.
We call on those inside and beyond the prison walls to follow the inspiring example of these prisoners—to engage, and spread, Avakian's leadership and his pathbreaking new synthesis of communism.
And know this: we cannot, and will not, make revolution and emancipate humanity unless women are completely liberated from the chains of misogyny and patriarchy, and unless their fury and creativity is fully unleashed as a force for revolution. Avakian has put it like this:
In many ways, and particularly for men, the woman question and whether you seek to completely abolish or to preserve the existing property and social relations and corresponding ideology that enslave women (or maybe "just a little bit" of them) is a touchstone question among the oppressed themselves. It is a dividing line between "wanting in" and really "wanting out": between fighting to end all oppression and exploitation—and the very division of society into classes—and seeking in the final analysis to get your part in this.
And so, in the spirit of Avakian's words, let us conclude with a question, and a challenge. directed not exclusively—but especially—to men: Which role will you play? Will you be a women's prison guard? Will you fasten, and tighten, shackles to half of humanity, even as you seek to throw off your own?
Or will you struggle to sever, and forever cast off, the chains that bind women, as part of emancipating all of humanity?
Will you dare to dream, and fight, for a real and total revolution?
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/isolation-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
You're supposedly alive... but you're trapped in a tiny, bare, silent tomb-like cell for 23 hours a day, robbed of sensory stimulation that human beings thrive on.
No window to the outside world, no way to see if it's day or night, winter or summer.
Bland, barely edible meals get passed through a slot in the door.
No contact with anyone... except when the guards, wearing gloves, shackle and cuff you and cavity-search you before you can take a shower or "exercise" in a bare concrete space—by yourself, every move under close watch.
A heavy glass barrier cuts you off from family members during the few visits allowed.
This goes on for months... years... even decades.
They haven't killed you... but even if you somehow manage to hang on to your sanity, they have assaulted the very core of your humanity.
This is torture by long-term isolation—torture officially sanctioned and carried out by the state and federal authorities all around the U.S., against tens of thousands of prisoners. It is happening in "Supermax" prisons—using the latest in high-tech surveillance and prisoner-control methods—that go under various names: secure housing units (SHUs), special management units (SMUs), closed maximum security (C-Max), and so on.
As a 2007 report from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) on Arizona's prisons describes it, "Solitary confinement in supermax units is characterized by holding prisoners alone at least 23 hours per day for months or years. The cells are generally the size of a small bathroom and are outfitted only with a toilet, a sink, and a slab of metal protruding from the wall as a bed. Many such cells have no windows and no way to tell if it is daytime or nighttime. Prisoners describe either an eerie silence or a deafening wall of constant noise 24 hours each day. Prisoners eat alone and most human 'interaction' occurs through a small slot in a steel door. Shakedowns, or cell searches, by guards and strip searches are common. These prisoners have extremely limited access to prison programs. They are forbidden from holding jobs or attending most rehabilitative or educational programs."
Long before the U.S. began to use near-total isolation as a deadly form of torture against detainees in Guantánamo and other CIA and military prisons after 9/11, isolation torture was carried out in U.S. prisons. In the early 1970s, three young Black men at the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana were the target of vengeful retaliation by the authorities for organizing protests against the conditions there. Known as the Angola 3, they spent over 30 years in solitary confinement.
The first Supermax was built in 1972 at the Marion Federal Penitentiary in Illinois. The Marion "management control unit" held about 60 prisoners, and through the 1970s and mid-1980s, there were a handful of such Supermaxes.
Then came a dramatic increase in the use of isolation in the late 1990s, at a time when the overall number of people incarcerated in the U.S. was spiking up. According to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, during those years "the growth rate of the number of prisoners housed in segregation far outpaced the growth rate of the overall prison population: 40 percent compared to 28 percent."
These units have grown even more since—exact numbers are difficult to come by, but according to a recent article in the New Yorker, there are now over 25,000 inmates in Supermax prisons. Mississippi alone has 1,800 prisoners in Supermaxes—12% of the state's total prison population. An additional 50,000 to 80,000 prisoners in the U.S. are held in restrictive segregation units, and many of them are also in isolation—but the government does not release those figures. Most U.S. prisoners held in solitary confinement today have been there for more than five years.
Straight-up physical forms of brutality and torture against prisoners are rampant in American prisons. A British film, Torture: America's Brutal Prisons, includes horrifying surveillance camera clips from Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California of prisoners being severely beaten—and several being killed—by guards who also use tasers, stun guns, attack dogs, chemical sprays, and dangerous restraining devices. At the Pelican Bay SHU in California, "extraction teams"—each with five guards and a sergeant—disable the prisoner, helpless in the isolation cell, with batons and mace, and then forcibly "extract" him as punishment, often for minor infractions like not returning a meal tray. In 2003, the world saw horrifying photos of American guards brutalizing and sexually assaulting prisoners at the U.S. prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Many of the torturers at Abu Ghraib used to be guards at U.S. prisons—including Charles Graner, who was known for brutalizing prisoners at the SCI Greene maximum security prison in Pennsylvania.
But what is so devastating about prolonged solitary confinement is that the mental abuse of prisoners has profoundly disturbing effects. Many prisoners are driven insane (if they were not mentally ill to begin with) or into committing suicide by this inhumane punishment. In California, about 5% of the total prison population is locked down in isolation—but close to 70% of inmate suicides occurred in those units in 2005.
Craig Haney, a professor of psychology, reported that "there is not a single published study of solitary or Supermax-like confinement in which non-voluntary confinement lasting for longer than 10 days where participants were unable to terminate their isolation at will that failed to result in negative psychological effects. The damaging effects ranged in severity and included such clinically significant symptoms as hypertension, uncontrollable anger, hallucinations, emotional breakdowns, chronic depression, and suicidal thoughts and behavior."
Tyrone Dorn, an isolation prisoner at the Tamms Supermax in Illinois, said, "This place takes a toll on your entire body from a physical and mental standpoint." Dorn, who was originally sent to prison for a car-jacking, said, "The hardest part is the isolation. It's like being buried alive."
Makini Iyapo, whose husband Leonard Alexander was sent to California's Pelican Bay SHU, said, "There are people who had psychological trouble before they went there. Sometimes they wheel them out of there in straightjackets. Imagine being in with guys who are banging their heads and screaming. It's mental torture."
Long-term isolation and sensory deprivation violate international anti-torture laws. In its May 2006 report on the United States, the UN Committee Against Torture wrote, "The Committee remains concerned about the extremely harsh regime imposed on detainees in 'supermaximum prisons'. The Committee is concerned about the prolonged isolation periods detainees are subjected to, the effect such treatment has on their mental health, and that its purpose may be retribution, in which case it would constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
How do prisoners end up in a Supermax? In the California system, for example, prisoners are sent to a SHU for alleged violence against guards or other inmates, for drug or weapons violations—and for something called "gang validation." This is not based on anything a prisoner may have actually done but on the say-so of the authorities that the prisoner is a gang member or has associated with gangs. According to Charles Carbone, a lawyer with California Prison Focus, "You can do something as simple as talking to an alleged gang member in the law library about the ordinary incidents of prison life, nothing to do with gang activity whatsoever. You can talk about the weather. That association alone is enough to use as a source document [for a validation]."
About half of the 3,000 prisoners in California's SHUs are so-called "validated" gang members. And they are primarily young people and/or people of color. Being thrown into a SHU because of alleged gang association can result in a prisoner being held in solitary indefinitely. According to prisoners, once "validated," the only way a prisoner can get out is to "renounce [that is, snitch on others], parole, or die."
The AFSC points out that many prisoners are sent to the SHU for explicitly political reasons: "As the term 'terrorist' is applied very broadly today, particularly to people of Arab descent, prisoners labeled 'threatening,' 'dangerous,' or simply 'disruptive' can find themselves in long-term isolation. An argument can be made that the first security housing units in the federal prison in Marion, and later in Florence, were created to punish political activists caught up in COINTELPRO, organizing for Puerto Rican liberation, sovereignty for First Nations peoples, and other forms of self determination. Though political prisoners make up a small portion of the 2.3 million people currently imprisoned in the U.S., in AFSC's experience over the years, they make up a disturbingly large percentage of the control unit population."
****
Given the incredible horrors of America's isolation torture chambers, it is deeply inspiring to see prisoners who have not only survived but are resisting the system responsible for these crimes.
In a letter to the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, a Latino prisoner wrote that when he was thrown behind bars, he was one of "millions of youth across this country who turn to petty crime as they don't understand why their circumstances are so bleak, or any other alternative to changing these conditions." Then his eyes were opened up as he began to read and study about the world and get into communism. "My awakening to Revolution," he wrote, "has led me to challenge the state on numerous lawsuits, protests and other actions while in prison. This has unleashed the state to take me out of general population and be housed indefinitely in a control unit (SHU). This has only strengthened my understanding of this society's repressive nature and my belief that another world is necessary!"
Sources:
"Brave Resistance at Pelican Bay SHU: Prison Hunger Strike Against Supermax Torture." Revolutionary Worker (now Revolution). Issue 1176, November 24, 2002. Accessed at revcom.us/a/v24/1171-1180/1176/pelican.htm
Gawande, Atul. "Hellhole. The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?" The New Yorker. March 30, 2009.
Grassian, Stuart, MD. "Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement." Statement submitted September 1993 in Madrid v. Gomez. Accessed at prisoncommission.org/statements/grassian_stuart_long.pdf
Haney, Craig. "Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and 'Supermax' Confinement." Crime and Delinquency, 2003.
Isaacs, Carolyn and Matthew Lowen. "Buried Alive: Solitary Confinement in Arizona's Prisons and Jails." American Friends Service Committee-Arizona (May 2007).
Johnson, Kevin. "Inmate Suicides Linked to Solitary." USA Today. January 11, 2007
Magnani, Laura. "Buried Alive: Long-term Isolation in California's Youth and Adult Prisons." American Friends Service Committee-Oakland (May 2008)
Marx, Gary. "Tamms: Illinois' Highest-Security Prison a Study in Isolation." Los Angeles Times. February 28, 2009.
Torture: America's Brutal Prisons. BBC Channel 4 program originally aired March 2, 2005. Accessed at youtube.com/watch?v=7tJ9V_7mO-E
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/ICE_detention-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
The number of undocumented immigrants who are detained by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has tripled since 2001. This year ICE is on a pace to imprison approximately 440,000 immigrants. These are people held, in most cases, without criminal charges. They are overwhelmingly denied access to attorneys—or even telephones. They are transferred from prison to prison without notice or warning, making communication with attorneys, doctors, friends and family impossible. And all this is covered up, out of public sight –in private detention centers that provide filthy and unhealthy food, beatings, and criminally negligent medical care.
One hundred six people have died in these immigration detention centers since 2003. They were human beings, whose alleged violation of immigration rules became a torturous death sentence.
Boubacar Bah came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 1998 and stayed on illegally, working 10-hour days, 6 days a week as a tailor. He sewed elaborate and beautiful gowns for a Manhattan boutique. He sent money back home to Guinea, West Africa, to support his sick mother, his family and to put his sons through school. On his return from a visit (approved by the INS) to his family, who he had not seen for eight years, he was stopped at the airport and told he could not re-enter the U.S. His green card application had been denied while he was out of the country. He was held in detention while friends and relatives frantically sought ways to reopen his application and assure his well-being.
Bah spent nine months trapped inside a detention facility in New Jersey. Then one day he was found unconscious on the floor of the bathroom of his dorm; he'd fallen and struck his head. After he came to he was shackled with the approval of the medical assistant on call. When he was heard screaming and howling, and vomited on the floor, he was thrown into solitary confinement. He was left there for over 13 hours without treatment. Eventually, after he was found unresponsive on the floor, lying in his own urine and "foamy brown vomitas was noted around the mouth," an ambulance was called and he was rushed into emergency brain surgery. No one was notified: not Bah's lawyer, his friends nor his family, until five days after this happened. Boubacar Bah lay in a coma for four months before dying.
• • •
Francisco Castaneda came here at age 10 with his mother who was fleeing the war in El Salvador, a war in which the government and death squads, funded and directed by the U.S., were responsible for over 100,000 deaths. He was picked up on drug possession, served four months and then put in line for deportation. He was 35 years old. While in detention Castaneda went untreated for cancerous lesions that developed on his penis. A doctor at the Otay Mesa detention facility where Castaneda was held thought the lesions might be cancerous and sought approval for a biopsy, but the Division of Immigration Health Services headquarters in Washington denied the procedure for 10 months. An outside oncologist told her that Castaneda should be hospitalized immediately for a biopsy, but the detention center refused because, they claimed, Castaneda was not in imminent danger of dying. He was released from detention without having received any treatment. Soon after his release his penis was amputated to prevent the cancer from spreading. He died a year later.
• • •
Rev. Joseph Dantica, the 81-year-old uncle of well known writer Edwidge Danticat, was fleeing a repressive Haitian regime set up in 2004 after the U.S.-sponsored coup that removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Rev. Dantica escaped gang warfare and threats to his life in Haiti and fled to Miami. He had a valid multiple-entry visa, but when immigration officials at Miami International Airport asked how long he'd be staying in the United States, he explained that he would be killed if he returned to Haiti and that he wanted "temporary" asylum. He was immediately arrested and taken to Krome detention center, where his medication for high blood pressure and inflamed prostate was taken away. He died five days later.
There are over a hundred more stories like these—people who have died due to neglect and brutality in ICE detention centers.
Beyond those killed in detention, over 400,000 people spend time in these horrific prisons each year. They come to the U.S. for all kinds of reasons... as refugees from political repression—often fleeing regimes put in power by, and in service of U.S. imperialism. Many are driven to cross the U.S. border to escape starvation, poverty and war that are a result of the workings of the capitalist-imperialist system. Others are professionals, experts, dissidents in their home countries, or just people who have come to this country in search of what they hoped would be freedom and a better life. Or they are seized at work, on the streets, or even at home, after living in this country for months, years, decades or even longer. And, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, some 90,000 unaccompanied minors are apprehended each year by U.S. immigration authorities, most of whom are immediately deported, with 10,000 detained.
What the U.S. does to undocumented immigrants in U.S. detention centers is cruel, inhuman, and illegal. Amnesty International's report, "Jailed Without Justice," charges that the U.S. policy of indiscriminately detaining undocumented immigrants is in fundamental violation of international humanitarian law. These immigrant detainees are deprived of even the most basic rights supposedly guaranteed to everyone who is in the United States.
And it is immoral. What kind of a system treats millions of people who are escaping the horrors of poverty, of starvation, of war and repression, or who just dream of a better life, as criminals to be hunted down and held in conditions so foul that they have led to death for some? And on an even more fundamental level, what kind of system is it that makes it impossible for people to live in their own countries, drives them here from around the world, and then subjects them to inhuman detention and even death when they arrive?
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/political_prisoners-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
It's Right to Fight Against Oppression!
The U.S. rulers go around the world masquerading as opponents of injustice and political repression. But inside the U.S., there are political prisoners who have been incarcerated, many for decades, for standing up and resisting against the crimes of the imperialists around the world and here in this country. Most of them are Black and Latino, some are white. Hundreds of activists with the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary organizations were targeted by the COINTELPRO political police in the 1960s and early 1970s. Some were assassinated, and many others were locked down in America's dungeons.
Two of the U.S. political prisoners known internationally are Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier.
Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row since 1982 when he was railroaded for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. December 9, 1981, Mumia was driving his cab in downtown Philadelphia when he saw a cop viciously beating his brother. Mumia rushed to help his brother, and there was a confrontation. When the smoke cleared, Mumia had been shot in the chest and was lying on the sidewalk in a pool of his own blood. A cop lay on the street nearby, dying from bullet wounds. The police charged Mumia, who was well known to them as a revolutionary journalist and a former Black Panther, with the murder of the cop.
At the trial, Mumia was denied the right to serve as his own attorney and was barred from the courtroom for half his trial. Months after the incident, cops "remembered" a supposed confession by Mumia. Witnesses were coerced into giving false testimony. Key evidence was never seen by the jury. A court reporter overheard the trial judge saying that he was going to help the cops "fry the n****r." Mumia was convicted and sentenced to death.
A determined mass movement prevented the state from executing Mumia in 1995, and the fight to win his freedom has become an international cause. He is held at the SCI Greene Supermax prison in Pennsylvania, and the fight for justice for Mumia continues. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court upheld a lower-court decision overturning Mumia's death sentence, but let stand the original conviction on murder. Mumia's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on this decision has been turned down. But there has not been a ruling on the state's appeal that aims to have Mumia's death sentence reinstated—these are serious and dangerous developments.
Mumia has held firm through 27 years in solitary confinement and repeated threats of execution. Indeed, he has spoken out powerfully from Death Row in several books, regular radio commentary, and written essays. News about Mumia's case is available at the website of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal at freemumia.com. Mumia's radio essays can be found at Prison Radio, prisonradio.org/mumia.htm.
Leonard Peltier was framed by the U.S. government for the killing of two FBI agents who attacked an American Indian Movement (AIM) camp on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Peltier and others were in the camp helping protect people on the reservation from the "Reign of Terror"—a campaign by the U.S. government, led by the FBI, that led to the murder of 64 AIM members and supporters. This campaign of terror was punishment for the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee—during which hundreds of Indian people and their supporters stood up against the U.S. government-backed murder and intimidation of AIM.
It was during the Reign of Terror that two armed FBI agents were killed. In 1977 Peltier was framed up and railroaded for the killing. He has been held behind bars ever since, under two consecutive life terms. all his appeals were denied and parole repeatedly turned down, the latest time this summer. Peter Matthiessen's 1992 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI's War on the American Indian Movement,provides a gripping account of what happened at Pine Ridge and Peltier's frameup. The story is also told on screen in the documentary Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story (Robert Redford, executive producer and narrator; Michael Apted, director), and inspired the dramatized film Thunderheart (starring Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard; directed by Michael Apted).
In recent years, Peltier has suffered from serious and painful health problems. But throughout all the years of the government railroad and unjust imprisonment, Leonard Peltier has remained unrepentant and unbroken. The stark injustice of Peltier's railroad and his strong stand has inspired widespread support.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/attica-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
On September 9, 1971, enraged prisoners seized a New York prison called Attica, and surrounded by the armed authorities, held it for four intense and liberating days. "The entire incident that has erupted here at Attica is . . . [the result] of the unmitigated oppression wrought by the racist administration of this prison. We are men. We are not beasts, and we do not intend to be beaten and driven as such... What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed..."
L.D. Barkley, 21-year-old spokesman for the rebelling prisoners in Attica prison.
Three weeks earlier Soledad Brother and revolutionary prisoner George Jackson had been murdered by California prison guards. Attica prisoners saluted him by fasting and wearing armbands. As word spread of the imminent beating of two prisoners in lockdown, a group pushed over a gate and seized 40 guards as hostages, and 1,300 prisoners flooded into D-Yard. Leaders stepped forward, demands were formulated and popularized, and an invitation was extended to the press and sympathetic observers to join them. As the TV cameras rolled, people around the country were riveted to their screens. Many people who had been taught to fear such prisoners learned of the organized destruction of human beings known as the prison system. Millions came to know and embrace the humanity and courage of the prisoners and the justice of their rebellion and their demands.
Like those in the yard, the leadership included Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans and whites. They organized a security force, mainly to protect the hostages, who received the best of the diminishing supplies, and teams to handle food, medicine, and other needs. Debate and discussion flourished in small groups and mass meetings. An observer from the New York Times wrote, "The racial harmony that prevailed among the prisoners... was absolutely astonishing,"and a prisoner reflected,"I actually cried, it was so close, everyone was so together." The rebels issued a statement "To the People of America" and they struggled over huge questions like exacting revenge for all they had suffered. "These things [previous grievances with hostages] became obsolete in my mind because something much higher was at stake."
These prisoners inspired millions...and it was THIS – potentially a blow against the legitimacy of the whole system – that the government could not allow to go on and decided to violently suppress. Even though the Attica prisoners were not engaged in any violence after their takeover, the armed forces of the government attacked with massive brutality. In the morning of Sept. 13, helicopters dropped a choking cloud of CS gas. Then in 6 minutes, state troopers fired 2,200 rounds into the crowd that had no guns. The sharpshooters murdered 29 prisoners, some—like L.D. Barkley—by deliberate assassination, and 9 hostages. Another 89 prisoners were wounded by gunfire. And 319 more were injured as the troops ordered all prisoners to strip naked and crawl through mud and broken glass, and forced some to run a brutal gauntlet of club-wielding guards. The state tried to cover their crimes by claiming to the press that the prisoners had slit the throats of the hostages and even castrated one. But the next day the Medical Examiner bravely exploded their lies by announcing that ALL the dead prisoners and the guards were murdered by the state police snipers.
All this sparked widespread outrage and outpourings of protest—in major cities, especially New York, but also in small towns and throughout the prison system—as people raised the cry "Attica is All of Us" and "Attica means FIGHT BACK!"
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/stupak-pitts-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
A Vicious Attack On Women's Rights
As the House version of the "Affordable Health Care for America Act" drew to conclusion, a fateful Friday night vote took place. Suddenly a debate over health care turned into a last minute up or down "compromise" vote about the future of abortion. The so-called compromise titled the "Stupak Pitts Amendment," backed by anti-abortion Democrats, has done more to set back and effectively wipe out the right to abortion than anything the religious right was able to accomplish during 8 years of the Bush regime.
The amendment, which will be carried over to Senate versions of the bill, delivers under the guise of health care a monumental assault on the right of women to determine whether and when they wish to have children. Obama's promise of health care reform, when all was said and done, has come to be the vehicle through which ideologically driven attacks on women and immigrants are dispensed. The deal has been struck: "For Cultural Liberals, it was ugly. They had better get used to it" is the way one pundit speaking for the Democratic leadership put it.
This devastating development has shocked and angered many who put their hopes in the Obama presidency to bring change from years of war, repression and Christian fundamentalist onslaught and who now feel thrown under the bus instead.
This is a moment that carries a heavy challenge to anyone who values the lives of women and believes that they should have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy—to fight for it NOW! People who are outraged by this need to decide that it's time to stop surrendering the interests of women to a political process that requires the enforcement of traditional values and patriarchal oppression for its continued existence. Anyone with a conscience needs to vigorously reject the twisted rationale that throwing women back to the days where they are forced to have babies whether they want them or not is somehow incremental progress! (See the accompanying box for what you can do right now to fight this.)
It's important that people understand the breadth and depth of the attack embodied in this amendment. The Stupak-Pitts Amendment mandates that no federal funds can be used to pay for an abortion or "cover any part of any health plan" that includes coverage of an abortion, except in cases where the mother's life is in danger or the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.
The first part of the amendment isn't new. The 1976 Hyde Amendment already prevents the use of federal dollars to pay for most abortions. But the second part would significantly limit the availability of private insurance plans that cover the procedure. The amendment designates two areas where abortion coverage could not be offered—the public option, and on any plan receiving subsidies in the exchange. Because insurance companies would have to take all comers and not deny anyone coverage under the new bill, they would not be able to restrict customers who receive subsidies. So effectively, every plan in the exchange would not allow abortion coverage.
So the Stupak Amendment doesn't just apply to the public option—the lower-cost plan to be offered by the government. The House health care bill will also provide subsidies to help people and small businesses purchase plans on an exchange. This represents a lucrative new market for insurers: anyone earning less than $88,000 for a family of four qualifies for assistance, as well as certain small companies. But to gain access to these new customers, insurers will have to drop abortion coverage from their plans.
About 87% of insurance plans cover abortion (though not all employers choose to actually include it). But under the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 21 million people will participate in the exchanges by 2019 and that 18 million of them will do so via government subsidies. Over time, the goal is for many more people to join the exchanges—the bigger they are, the more effective they'll be. Not only will this put greater numbers of women in the same bind, it could affect abortion coverage in private plans outside the exchanges too. "How big will exchanges have to be in an insurer's business model before they decide it's easier to standardize their coverage?" asked Adam Sonfield, senior public policy associate of the Guttmacher Institute, a policy and research organization that focuses on reproductive health.
The Stupak Amendment says that women are free to buy an optional rider to their plans that would cover abortion, as long as no money appropriated by the bill is used to pay for it. But critics of the amendment have pointed out that this is unreasonable. People don't think they'll need coverage for most medical procedures until the day they actually need it; as critics of the amendment have pointed out, no one plans for an unplanned pregnancy. Imagine if all insurance plans worked like a smorgasbord, in which you tried to guess the operations and medicines you might require sometime in the future. How many procedures would you actually pay for in advance? Many women who do get abortions may think that they even oppose the procedure, at least for themselves, until they are faced with the prospect of being forced to bear a child that they don't want.
And why should this medical procedure needed by many women at some point in their lives, be singled out and prohibited? How is it that in the 21st century superstition and unscientific notions of fetal development and religious institutions can dictate that one of the more common minor surgical procedures in modern medicine cannot be practiced or provided to half the population?
And it's not just those with unintended pregnancies who will be stripped of coverage. The Stupak Amendment includes exemptions for rape, incest, and threats to the life of the mother but not threats to her health or cases of severe fetal abnormality. Women with pregnancies that go horribly wrong will either have to pay for expensive, late-term terminations out of pocket or carry them to term against their will. This means that many women would be forced to continue a doomed pregnancy even if the fetus has no chance of survival and even if it endangers her ability to have children in the future.
By making abortion even more difficult to get than it is now (which is already very difficult), by virtue of legislation that is based on and enforces religious doctrine, it will add to the whole social momentum where fewer doctors are willing to risk their lives to perform this essential service. A procedure that is already not taught in most medical schools will become not just rare but practically unavailable.
(We note in passing that the amendment will also deny coverage to undocumented immigrants even if they use their own money to buy coverage for themselves and their families' insurance coverage—as well as preventing them from receiving subsidies, or Medicaid assistance. Plus legal immigrants and residents are banned from accessing public health benefits for the first 5 years they are in the country—even though they are paying taxes and working. We will cover this in more depth in future issues.)
One significant element of this entire attack is its author, Bart Stupak. Stupak is a former state trooper who was elected to Congress in Michigan. He co-chairs the "pro-life" caucus in Congress, and calls himself a "pro-life Democrat."
Stupak has also resided since 2002 at the C Street facility for the "Family"—an influential and secret association of powerful theocrats who organize "prayer cells." These Christian Fascists are striving, as author Jeff Sharlet described it in a Rolling Stone article, for "a government led by Christ's will alone." Senators and Congressmen currently living at the C Street headquarters of the "Family" include both Democrats and Republicans. This Washington insiders "skull and bones" type organization's motto is "Jesus plus nothing," and it has had a long list of influential members—from Sam Brownback and John Ashcroft, to Strom Thurmond (an infamous racist senator) and Chuck Colson who played a key role in Nixon's repressive regime. The "Family" hosts an annual prayer breakfast which last year featured Joe Pitts, co-author of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, calling for a "God-Led Government." Pitts is an evangelical and a 20-year veteran of the Christian Fascist movement against abortion.
Stupak's amendment picked up momentum after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced that they would fight the bill unless restrictions on abortion were added. The USCCB distributed flyers to every parish across the U.S. and instructed priests to address the legislation at Sunday Mass, organizing parishioners to contact their congressman to support the Stupak Amendment. And Stupak advised Nancy Pelosi that if she wanted a health care bill, then she had better take a late Friday night meeting with the Bishops—which she did before allowing a vote on the amendment.
The USCCB has funded anti-gay marriage initiatives in California and Maine and pushed abstinence in Global HIV policy, opposing the distribution of condoms, despite the fact that this means certain infection and likely death for millions of people. In recent years the Catholic Church has worked to install the social teachings of the Catholic Church in government—an example being Nicaragua and El Salvador which have in a period of counterrevolution in Central America put into place especially medieval laws on abortion that criminalize abortion even when the life of the mother is in danger—resulting in the deaths of at least 82 women in Nicaragua. Conservative Catholic colleges in the U.S., for instance, have removed coverage of birth control from employee health care plans, and criminalizing birth control is part of the political agenda of both evangelicals and theocrats in the Catholic Church.
(Sources: "The Democrats' new "Family" values," Jeff Sharlet, salon.com, November 10, 2009; "When Congress Sells Out Women," Francis Kissling, salon.com, November 9, 2009; "Do Catholic Bishops Run the United States Government?" Jodi Jacobson, RHRealityCheck.org, November 7, 2009)
So one year into Obama's "new day" the Democratic Congress has delivered a more decisive setback to abortion rights than anything the Republican party or the Roberts Supreme Court has yet accomplished. And what has effectively confused and immobilized the opposition to this has been the rhetoric and method of "seeking common ground." Just listen to Nancy Pelosi herself on why she let this amendment into the bill:
SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: We have sought, in the course of the development of this bill, common ground in many areas, this being one of those. We did not reach the common ground yet that we hope to achieve; therefore, we had an amendment on the floor. We will continue to seek common ground." (From transcript of Democracy Now!, November 9, 2009)
Common ground with those who would condemn women to forced childbirth has been the mantra of the Obama White House. He has preached this on the campaign trail and at a critical speech at Notre Dame University on abortion [see "The Deadly Illusion of 'Common Ground' on Abortion: Response to Obama's speech at Notre Dame on common ground and abortion," by Sunsara Taylor, Revolution issue #166, online at revcom.us, on this]. But as Revolution pointed out at the time, when Obama speaks of common ground he is not standing on some neutral ground. Obama has gone further in legitimizing the terms of the Christian Fascist movement as "points for discussion" and in hammering those terms into the Democratic Party's political framework. (In this, Obama continues and carries further the ugly tradition of the Clintons and Al Gore.)
This has the appearance of reasonableness while adopting and legitimizing an archaic biblical and patriarchal view of women. This has served to push the political and moral goal posts in this society even further to the right. And it has served to bring the morality and political program of the Christian Fascists more securely into the mainstream of American political, ideological and moral life—and now to write it into an extremely far-reaching law.
This common ground ends up not being open-minded or tolerant but enforcing the utterly depraved "morality" of those who would force women to bear children against their will and who are increasingly bringing the power and policy of the state to bear in this compulsion, as they have done with this health bill.
The intervention by Catholic Bishops in how this "compromise" was crafted is very important. They actively lobbied and brought significant pressure, including advocating that Democrats who are not opposing abortion be refused Mass and purged from the church. (A serious question: why is the tax-exempt status of this church not being investigated?!)
This is part of a larger offensive. This November the Catholic Bishops are producing a new pastoral letter on marriage—one that puts as a priority addressing what they see as the four main challenges against marriage: contraception, same-sex unions, divorce, and cohabitation. The draft pastoral letter quotes the late Pope John Paul II in the introduction—today "the family is the object of numerous forces that seek to destroy it or in some way to deform it." This revanchist form of traditional morality sees any assertion of independence by a woman against her husband and the church as an existential threat. The pastoral letter, for instance, cites contraception as "an intrinsically evil action." Think about that for a minute! And this is the kind of counterrevolution in the realm of social issues and morality that the political forces arrayed around this health care bill intend to impose on society as a whole.
This is actually the essence of an outmoded Dark Ages morality that is being upheld and enforced: one that sees birth control, abortion and marriage that is not between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation as a threat to the traditional family. The traditional family and the institution of marriage emerged first not as romantic partnering but as economic and social units—basic cells of social organization that cemented relations of wealth and power within society where lines of inheritance that maintained property and power from one generation to the next ran through male lineage. It has been a very short period of human time where women and children were not legally the property of their husbands, and the customs and ideas that sprang from this basic legal and economic arrangement and that served to reproduce these social relations are not only still present but still dominant.
The decision when and if to have children, to see love and sexuality as an expression of affection and a bond among equals, to have the freedom to leave or break off marriage especially by the woman, to partner with someone of the same sex—these are all social relations among people that are relatively new. While emerging out of traditional social relations, these new ways go against and beyond them.
Since the '60s, millions of women have assumed that equality would gradually become more the norm—and millions of youth today see the fight for gay marriage as part of that natural progression. But this is colliding with something very different that is being imposed from the top of society. Religious institutions are carrying out an active "counterrevolution" under the aegis of the ruling class in this country and—as is clear from these developments around the health care bill—are aggressively and brutally reimposing traditional forms of morality and doing so by actively mobilizing and unleashing backward, racist and reactionary sections of the masses who have themselves been thrown into an uncertain future as a result of major changes in the world economy and deepening economic crisis.
During the Bush years the religious right increasingly took hold of the Republican Party. The Bush administration itself was a contentious alliance of neo-cons and religious fundamentalists with theocratic ambitions. But it has not just been the Republicans who have adopted and given support and haven to conservative and fascist forms of Christian fundamentalism. There are now 20 anti-abortion Democrats in Congress, most of whom are Catholic and participants in Democrats for Life, and who have pushed for this stealth attack on abortion in the battle around health care. Howard Dean, when he was Party chair, initiated outreach to integrate anti-abortion Democrats into the Party. Over the next period the Democratic leadership adopted the language of anti-abortion Democrats calling them "pro-life."
In 2008 Democratic Party operatives told pro-choice activists, "If we can get a Democratic majority we can save choice," while Rahm Emanuel actively courted anti-abortion Catholics to run for office. Now these same activists are being told that they should stop complaining and work for passage of the health care bill. They are being told that they are "narrow" and "selfish"—for daring to uphold basic and fundamental rights of over one-half of humanity!
Bob Avakian sums up the reasons for this in Preaching from a Pulpit of Bones: We Need Morality But Not Traditional Morality (1999, Banner Press), which we will briefly quote here but which merits fuller reading and study. Avakian points out:
At the same time, many of these same factors, together with the struggle waged by the women's movement, have resulted in a situation where large numbers of women have not only the necessity but also the possibility of working outside the home. All this has been accompanied by a great deal of turmoil and upheaval, and one of its most important consequences has been that, from a number of angles and among various sectors of the population in the U.S., the basis of the traditional patriarchal family and the "traditional family values" associated with it has been significantly eroded. And yet all these changes are taking place within the confines of the same system—on the same foundation of capitalist economic relations.
This is potentially a very explosive contradiction, and in many aspects this explosiveness is already erupting. On the one hand, it is vitally important for those who preside over this system to "contain" this contradiction and not to allow it to produce a polarization that could threaten to tear society apart. In particular, they must try to avoid fundamentally alienating great numbers of women and driving them into radical opposition to the status quo—including many professional and other middle class women. At the same time, it is crucial for the guardians of the status quo to fortify patriarchal relations, while adjusting them to the realities of the present situation.
The polarization and bitter struggle around the right to abortion has been a concentrated expression of this. Clearly, the essence of the anti-abortion "movement"—which from its inception has been led and orchestrated from "on high" (I am referring to the role of powerful ruling class figures, not the alleged inspiration from god)—has been to assert patriarchal control over women, including to insist on the defining role of women as breeders of children. The fundamentalist foot-soldiers of this "movement" make this very clear.
The following prayer offered at an "Operation Rescue" rally, cited in Life magazine (July 1992) typifies this: "Oh please, Lord, break the curse on women's hearts that says we don't need our men. Break that independence."...
If the Senate passes a health care bill that effectively prohibits abortion, women will be cast back to the days when only the very rich could determine the course of the rest of their lives. While birth control and abortion by themselves have not liberated women, they have made possible enormous change in the participation of women in many aspects and realms of society previously closed to them. It has changed modern life to the point that now the majority of those employed are women. That in turn has also brought with it tumultuous change in families, in women's view of themselves and their relative independence from men. That simple measure of control—for millions and millions of women to delay motherhood and get an education, or start a career, or to just discover and experience life before having to subordinate their whole being to the needs of a husband and children—just that has been a seismic change for much of humanity. And this has undermined the ground that thousands of years of tradition have rested on.
It has not changed the fact that women have the primary responsibilities for domestic life and it has certainly not changed the reality that women are still judged and evaluated by their benefit to men, as mothers and wives and objects of sexual gratification. But it has sprung centuries of tradition into the air. If you watch the TV show Mad Men you are reminded that until a few decades ago a woman who wanted to leave a marriage in "enlightened New York" did not have the right to divorce unless she could prove adultery—and if she left her husband most state laws threatened that she would lose her children.
A few short years later, the women's movement led millions to repudiate obedience to one's husband, docile domestic servitude and unplanned pregnancies. The social fabric that depends upon "a woman's place is in the home" has been drawn taut and is shearing apart. The question is, to paraphrase Avakian, will all this result in a radical reactionary resolution of this where women are forcibly put back in their place, or will there be a radical revolutionary resolution that finally can liberate women?
For anyone who values women, not just as mothers but as full human beings, there is really one overarching moral question. Women must be free to determine their lives, including whether and when, if at all, they will have children. For women to be liberated this is a foundational and fundamental right. No woman should have to live in fear of a period missed. No woman should have to go through what women in 87% of the counties in the U.S. go through now—where abortion is not available. No woman should have to travel hundreds of miles and then have to endure waiting periods, which sometimes include scripted vicious mandatory lectures designed to make her feel guilty. No woman should be denied an abortion—by religious scripture, or the needs of the capitalist marketplace or by state institutions. And no woman should have to feel any form of remorse or guilt because she chooses to make conscious decisions about the rest of her life.
Enforced motherhood is not "moral," it is an outrage—and it should be a bygone barbarity. There is no longer any need for a woman's role in society to be dictated by her biological role in childbearing. And there is no need for humanity to be retarded and hemmed in by patriarchal traditions and oppressive religious morality. Today this is as cruel as it is unnecessary. For the first time in human history it is possible not just to theorize and dream about getting beyond centuries of women being subjugated—it's actually possible to break these chains and to overcome the oppressive division of labor that squanders the abilities and aspirations of half of humanity to participate in society as full human beings. It's actually possible to move toward a future of generations of men and women being raised equally, and with society as a whole increasingly taking on much of the enslaving domestic duties that have been the exclusive domain of women for thousands of years.
This is a future that is not possible under the property-defined social relations of a capitalist system. This future takes making revolution and setting up a new state power that consciously undertakes the transformation of society towards getting beyond oppression and inequality and age-old division of labor—that backs up women to take part in every aspect of society as full human beings. A society guided by communist morality. As the Revolutionary Communist Party's "A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity" states:
Women are not breeders. Women are not lesser beings. Women are not objects created for the sexual pleasure of men. Women are human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every realm of human endeavor. When women are held down, all of humanity is held back. Women must win liberation, and they can only be liberated through the revolutionary transformation of the world and the emancipation of all of humanity, and through being a powerful motive force in that revolution...
Today there is an important fight to wage. In the name of common ground the health care bill is becoming the burial ground for the lives and rights and aspirations of women to be treated as full human beings.
Here we are on the brink of legislation that would for all practical purposes be an overturning of what was won by Roe v. Wade, and the most infuriating thing is that only the fascists and reactionaries are full of passion and energetic mobilization. For months now a few thousand racist tea baggers have been allowed to frame the terms of political discussion and debate. Meanwhile, despite facing a real attack, not a single pro-choice leader with resources and means is willing to call the millions of people outraged and in anguish about the future of abortion into the streets. Instead we get the same old "make them pay at the polls – elect more women—be realistic and don't make too much noise—don't get hysterical, just be patient and wait for another day when we can...what? Oh yes...elect even more Democrats." Some even say that maybe in Obama's second term he'll get in touch with his inner progressive....
We'd say keep dreaming if doing so was not so harmful to people for generations to come. But this is no time for cynical realpolitik, for shrugging your shoulders and retreating further into passivity. There is still time to mobilize people, to mount a groundswell to expose, oppose and defeat this law and in so doing to fight for the initiative in re-framing the terms of debate—in putting the liberation of women at the center of all this, and making that the standard of judgment and the focus of discussion.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/needed-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
Why should the "Tea-baggers" and racist lunatics
be the only ones in the streets?
Why should the right-wingers in Congress
set the terms for women's lives?
The World Can't Wait National Meeting, New York City, November 21/22
will feature a special panel & planning session:
Abortion, Women Lives, & the
Democrats' Woman-Killing Abortion Ban
featuring
Sunsara Taylor & National Organization for Women representatives
2:00 pm, Saturday, November 22
The World Can't Wait National Meeting is 9:00 am - 6:00 pm Saturday, with a special showing of the film, "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo" 8:00 pm. Details at salsa.democracyinaction.org.
On Wednesday, December 2, women will be in Washington demanding that the Stupak Amendment be withdrawn. Plans are still in formation for local protests around the country that day. Stay tuned at worldcantwait.net.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/183-readers_respond-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
| Previous Posts: September 6, 2009 June 28, 2009 May 24, 2009 February 1, 2009 December 6, 2008 |
We received the following comment online:
The Report from Li Onesto on the National Equality March in issue #181 was great. The NEM was a righteous and bold action. And it was right for the RCP to join in this call for LGBT rights. But Li's article and my own experience also underscore how much work needs to be done in getting people to see the connection between the righteous demand for LGBT rights and the larger struggle for the emancipation of humanity. Much needs to be done around getting LGBT people to understand how certain forces like Christian fascists play a powerful role in the continued marginalizing and demonizing of LGBT people and further how and why this system we live under allows this to continue.
I'm writing this the day Obama has signed a piece of legislation that includes attacks on LGBT people as hate crimes. I have many emotions about this. One of which is incredulous anger. What does it say about this system we live under when we have to have a piece of legislation that will double the sentence of those convicted for killing a person for being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, Black, Latino, Muslim, and so on. It is an indictment of this system. Why? Because people are not born into this world hating other people. A system that upholds backward and outmoded beliefs instills this hate in people—that's why. This is why a revolution is necessary—one that changes the way people think and view the world and the people in it.
The second thought is this: This piece of legislation passed because it had an over 600 billion dollar military spending bill attached to it. Think about this for a minute. Someone like me, a lesbian, is supposed to have the satisfaction of knowing that the person who might attack and kill me because I happen to be a lesbian will get double the time in prison. Meanwhile the money attached to this legislation is being used to allow the continued rape, torture, and murder of a people half way around the world in this so called "war on terror." I'm not satisfied—I'm sickened. How many LGBT people know that this spending bill was attached to this hate crimes legislation? I bet not many. Many do not know and see how this capitalist-imperialist system pits one section of people against another. And for those who know about this spending bill—well, what this does is reinforce "my rights, my comfort, my life before anyone else's" attitude so dominant under this system. This is why we need a revolution so that people don't have to make these horrible and deadly choices and instead work to create a world where everyone acts in the interests of humanity.
**************************************
We received the following comment online:
Sunsara Taylor's letter (An Open Letter to NYU Students From Sunsara Taylor—The Furthest Thing From Your Minds) is a very coherent and illuminating analysis of what is happening to students on a college campus—but it is not only to students.
ALL OF US are suffocating. The workers at big box stores, the laborers in fields, the clerks in office cubicles... it is not just students.
Perhaps students, due to their relative youth, have the most possibility of escaping the mind prison Ms. Taylor describes.
But all of us, the workers, the immigrants, the unemployed, the elderly, etc. are in this same, stifling environment that daily, hourly shrink our human existence, our human potential.
I agree with everything Ms. Taylor says, but only wish to expand it to ALL OF US. And she is right... because many of us are suffocating. Communism is the furthest thing from our minds.
Avanti, camarati!
**************************************
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/sunsara_weekend-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
From Libros Revolucion in Los Angeles
"Common Ground" is Killing Ground: Abortion, Morality and Christian Fascism in the Age of Obama
On Oct. 2nd & 3rd the bookstore tabled at the Atheist Alliance Int'l 2009 Convention in Burbank. The annual event was in partnership with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and this year highlighted "Darwin's Legacy." The convention was the largest ever—700 people (due to high demand, they re-opened registration after initially closing it at 500). Speakers included Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher, among other major voices in the field. Very significant was the inclusion of Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper, who spoke twice at the conference. And what a difference it made.
She first spoke at the morning podcast of "Dogma Free America" which kicked off the conference, so several hundred people heard Sunsara, along with PZ Myers and actor William B. Davis ("The Cigarette Smoking Man" from the X-Files). In the afternoon, she presented a workshop "'Common Ground' is Killing Ground: Abortion, Morality and Christian Fascism in the Age of Obama." People engaged with her throughout the weekend, including a tearful young woman who said she'd gotten an abortion a year ago, and after hearing Sunsara for the first time she felt fully confident of her decision. A speaker from Mexico told us of the abortion battles there, where abortion is legal in Mexico City (though not throughout the country), but the ideological chains of religion weigh very heavily and dangerously on women.
Many participants came by the book table to talk, get literature and t-shirts (equal numbers of Atheist shirts and Fuck Capitalism ones). At times there were 3 discussions going on at once with our 3 staffers. There were some who didn't agree with us about communism, revolution, or abortion, but a number were very attracted to the radicalness and science of what Sunsara and the book table put forward. Atheists generally are critical thinkers and pride themselves on being open-minded and rational, and in some cases "out there" without great concern for social approbation, but our communist atheist line was challenging to mainstream atheists and compelling to many there.
It was great to reconnect at the conference with some of the authors who have spoken at our bookstore, including PZ Myers, Charles Belser and Donald Prothero, and we met others whom we are planning to host in the future. The range of people was itself fascinating -- a truck driver, the manager of extreme sports (athletes he said tend to be religious, but not their trainers), artists, teachers including a couple moms who homeschool, & professors, many of whom came by themselves and seem to be rather isolated in, and not vocal about, their atheism, but were invigorated to be at the convention. The Secular Students Association booth reported a 283% increase in clubs over the past 3 years, and we met some secular students from a religious university!
The opportunity to sit in on the multi-media presentations delving into new scientific discoveries, and philosophical wrangling with a spirit of critical thinking over the course of the weekend was a glimpse into the future when people all throughout revolutionary society will be able to engage in the search for truth to transform the world.
On Oct. 4, we had a booth at the 8th annual Book Fair in the small, progressive city of West Hollywood. Across from our booth was the Good Reads Pavilion (one of 7 stages) where Sunsara Taylor and Rev. Eric Lee, president of the LA Southern Christian Leadership Conference and author of Marriage Equality, spoke on the panel "Resisting the Right-Wing Assault on Gays, Women and Others: The Morality We Need to Change the World, With or Without Gods." Both speakers have been sharply criticized for their outspoken opposition to these assaults. The panel was moderated by Michael Slate, writer for Revolution newspaper and host of KPFK's Tuesday edition of Beneath the Surface. 30 people attended, filling the chairs in the outdoor pavilion (the highest attendance of these first panels of the day). There was some lively discussion and debate about whether it is a need or a danger to work to repolarize society around the morality of support for gay marriage, women's right to abortion, the liberation of Black people and the rights of immigrants around which the current negative polarization is weighing heavily on people. Sunsara Taylor read from several sections of Bob Avakian's book Away with All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World in addressing the liberating communist morality that opposes traditional, patriarchal norms.
Throughout the day at our booth people took the Set the Record Straight quiz and checked out other literature to dig into questions (and lies about socialism and communism) that came up regarding the upcoming Raymond Lotta tour that we were promoting. Most of the young people who took the quiz got the majority of answers wrong, not surprising given the ideological offensive that "this is the best of all possible worlds," but were open to learning the history of socialism that they'd never heard before, especially since they see the economic crisis, the environment, the unending wars, and wonder what's going on.
Libros Revolucion
(Revolution Books)
312 W. 8th Street,
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(213) 488-1303
librosrevolucion.blog.com
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/teacher_letter-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
Dear Teachers,
We are writing as supporters of Revolution Newspaper. We are inviting you to engage with this special issue of the newspaper (Special middle school/high school issue, #176, September 13, 2009). Many of you may be unfamiliar with this newspaper. We want to tell you why we as teachers see Revolution newspaper as trustworthy and important resource to us who are teachers just like you.
Here is what we know about ourselves and so many well intentioned teacher colleagues: We got into the field of education looking to change the world, we felt a strong desire to work with children and offer them what so few are offered. In the beginning, we were hopeful; we had our objectives clear and the future was in our hands. It did not take long, however, for us and so many other teachers to hit the glass ceiling. Standards, testing, administration, bureaucracy, the list goes on and on. Many teachers leave the profession disillusioned, burnt out, and hopeless. The reality is, teachers within this system have a very difficult job. We come into this profession wanting to ignite curiosity, teach these young people to be critical thinkers and scientists. We want to teach them how to understand the world they live in and how to change it. But, we also know that we and our students are up against so much.
Here is a quote from the recent statement "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have") in Revolution Issue 170 that speaks to this:
"And, despite the good intentions of many teachers, the educational system is a bitter insult for many youth and a means of regimentation and indoctrination overall. While, particularly in some "elite" schools, there is some encouragement for students to think in 'non-conformist' ways—so long as, in the end, this still conforms to the fundamental needs and interests of the system—on the whole, instead of really enabling people to learn about the world and to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, education is crafted and twisted to serve the commandments of capital, to justify and perpetuate the oppressive relations in society and the world as a whole, and to reinforce the dominating position of the already powerful. And despite the creative impulses and efforts of many, the dominant culture too is corrupted and molded to lower, not raise, people's sights, to extol and promote the ways of thinking, and of acting, that keep this system going and keep people believing that nothing better is possible."
Teachers often struggle with this idea of enabling their students to learn about the world and to pursue the truth wherever it leads and struggle with teaching for critical thinking and scientific curiosity. Look at what is happening around us: evolution and creationism are being coined as opposing scientific theories in science classrooms. Media pundits are spinning their opinions and flat out fabrications as nightly news. Where do we even go for the "truth"? How do we know what is true to teach? There are fewer and fewer places to look for critical analysis of what is going on in the world, nonetheless actual recounting of the events unfolding around us. There is a serious need for new resources with fresh and honest perspectives.
The courageous choice to use a resource like Revolution newspaper in your classroom can provide the sharp fodder for debate. It can show students another side to a story, another take to the next false arrest or bloody battle in Afghanistan.
Our students deserve teachers who teach them the truth, not the mainstream false beliefs. Let Revolution newspaper be a place for you to start or continue to challenge the status quo that our children are forced into believing or thinking. There is a way for people to understand the world, and in turn begin to change it. Far too many youth feel powerless. Far too many teachers feel powerless. Let's break that cycle: bring Revolution newspaper into your classroom as a rare resource of truth.
Some of you might be thinking, wait, Revolution??? Communism??? This must not be right?! But listen, the perspective taken in this newspaper is worth reading and deliberating. The stories covered and the fresh take on our current events will be refreshing to any reader. You don't have to be a communist to read, learn from, and wrangle with the ideas presented in this newspaper. If the truth is what we are looking for, then it is worth seeking it where you can.
Read this newspaper. Read this issue and write to us. We are looking forward to hearing what you think. We are particularly interested in how you use this newspaper in your classroom. Break the chains! Unleash the power of teachers! Unleash the power of our youth!
[Letters to authors of this letter: NYC Teachers, c/o Revolution Books, 146 W. 26th Street, New York, NY 10001.]
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/richmond_rape-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
From a reader:
Dear Readers
I sat in the front of the TV for a couple of days getting so angry, as CNN turned the news of the Richmond Rape upside down. They kept asking why she would go to the back of the school with a male friend, to a place were there were no security cameras. Is the first question they ask a shooting victim: "Why did you get in front of the bullet?" No! Asking why she walked to the back of the school, is putting the blame on her! As if it was all her fault, she asked for it! My blood was boiling as they kept going at this point while at the same time they kept calling it a tragedy.
I do not know the particular reason why she walked to the back of the school, but I do know she did NOT walk there to be viciously gang raped and humiliated.
I know why I walked to the house of my brother's friend years ago. I walked to his house, because he said I was beautiful. No one else had said that to me before that day.
I walked to his house because he said I was beautiful, not because I wanted to be violently raped, as every time I tried to yell he said his parents would find me in his bed and call me a whore, not because he laughed and violently went in deeper when I asked him to stop, and not because after it was over he said I should get out, because it was not good for him, and I was worthless as a woman in bed.
I did what the writer of the Richmond Rape article in Revolution newspaper said, I closed my eyes and tried to image what she felt..... I felt violated, humiliated all over again. Being afraid of what people would think of me after that evening. How I would be viewed as a whore, and "damaged goods." How my life was not going to be the same again. How I could not go back to school, because everyone would know. How I could never tell anyone because I knew they would blame me for walking to an unsecure location.
But then I kept reading, and I made the connection.... The first people I told about my rape, were Revolutionary Communists, and they never asked why I walked to his house. They never blamed me. Was it because they were very nice people and knew how to talk to rape victims? No, it was much deeper than that; they understood where the oppression of woman comes from, how rape is not sex, and how it was not my fault. I wanted to let this young woman know, it was not your fault!!!!
Understanding where all this comes from and getting that is not your fault is the first step. But the most unleashing is knowing that there is a solution to this, that there is a whole other way you can live your life for, that all that anger, sadness, and self hatred can be guided towards fighting for a whole new society, where women are not seen as commodities. Where a woman's worth is not tied up with her sexuality or how many babies she can have. Where you can go to a dance, and get your "dance on"! And where you do not have to hear about rape, and the first thought that comes into your mind is, it can easily happen to me!
I want to invite all young woman and men to make the connection! Read "A Declaration: For Woman's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity." But let's not stop there, have a discussion about it with friends, get it out to others, struggle with people to see the connection and fight to emancipate all of humanity.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/lotta_tour-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
Raymond Lotta Campus Tour at University of Chicago:
From a reader:
On Wednesday, November 11, the University of Chicago stop of the Raymond Lotta campus tour, "Everything You've Been Told about Communism is Wrong! Capitalism is a Failure, Revolution is the Solution," was about to begin. The 290 seat lecture hall was filled, with an additional 30 to 40 students on the floor and in the aisles. Seats of anyone who left early were quickly filled. The audience was overwhelmingly students from the University of Chicago, joined by a smattering of alumni, Hyde Park residents and those on Revolution Books email lists. It was even reported that students from a college campus in downtown had taken a cab to be there.
This was really a fantastic and sharply joined event. This gave a glimmer of what it looks like when we begin to crack open the atmosphere on the universities ... when the debate starts to rip around "you have been lied to about the real history of revolution and actual promise of communism...and we can prove it." One goal of this whole Tour has been to issue a provocative challenge—and at the University of Chicago a large number of students seemed both provoked and challenged!
A front page story in the campus newspaper, the Maroon, was headlined, "Lotta asks students to reconsider communism," and captured themes of the presentation: "Lotta said he wanted to 'clear away confusion' about socialism and communism. It's amazing what passes for intellectual rigor on communism." The article quoted moderator Sunsara Taylor that the tour is meant to "challenge the conventional wisdom that communism is a failed project" and quoted from Lotta's presentation, "We need a different system—a total revolution. Exactly at a time when capitalism is in crisis, at this moment we are told we can't go beyond capitalism but can only tinker around the edges. It's as if there is a warning label affixed to the discourse on human possibility."
People got a substantive, hard to dismiss, and stirring-to-their-best-aspirations talk.
The Q&A was substantive, lively and at times heated. There was contesting of Lotta's presentation from students who strongly disagreed with the summation that the socialist experience thus far was mainly positive. One questioner alleged that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 30 million during the Great Leap Forward. At least one audience member held up a sign "citations" addressed to Lotta, while other students expressed their dismay at the failure of student questioners to back up their claims with citations. There were students arguing for a theoretical model of "pure capitalism" (i.e. one that has not been put in practice) while others were much more critical of capitalism but could not envision how socialist planning could possibly be responsive in a timely way to the constant changes and demands of complicated, modern societies.
Lotta lived up to the billing of taking on all comers. He worked out of the framework of the new synthesis of Bob Avakian and used that to frame the discussion of big questions like overcoming the historical division between mental and manual labor while fostering the role of intellectuals in socialist society; solid core with a lot of elasticity; the role of dissent and critical thinking; etc. He took the student's questions at their best, addressed not only the questions, but a lot of the premises and material reality underlying them. He left people with a lot they couldn't dismiss and will likely be buzzing about, investigating, and trying to either shore up or open up in their thinking.
At the Revolution Books table afterwards, a student came up and his first question was, "If I am going to read one thing by Bob Avakian so I can learn more about his new synthesis, what would it be?" Since he didn't have any money, he took down the title of the Manifesto from the RCP,USA—Communism: The Beginning of A New Stage—to read online.
On the way out of Lotta's speech, those who stopped to talk expressed appreciation for the presentation and conveyed in different ways that they were intrigued/provoked but still not convinced—not surprisingly. One Chinese student who said he grew up mainly in the U.S., explained that he visited China a couple of years ago and there was a lot of nostalgia for Mao, but he couldn't figure out why ... until he heard this presentation. A student from China noted the irony that she had to come to a lecture in the U.S. to learn about the Cultural Revolution.
The University of Chicago is an elite institution which gives weight to the transformative power of ideas. Students are trained to value theory, critical thinking, and the role of intellectual challenges and rigor. The campus has a 2 to 1 ratio of grad students to undergrads and academic life is all consuming, especially for the undergrads. This posed some short term obstacles in getting to know students, but overall the intellectual rigor was and is a strategic strength for the Communist project.
This IS a campus that takes ideas very seriously. When we told these students that they have been lied to, they both genuinely cared if that was indeed the case and they were indignant at the suggestion that they could be being had intellectually. What do you mean? All undergraduate students at the university study Marx and Engels as part of the core curriculum, so how could anyone say that what they knew about communism was wrong?
University of Chicago is also the home of the infamous Chicago School of economics, now institutionalized in the Milton Friedman Institute—so the macro questions of capitalism are very much in the air here and in conflict with a growing crisis of confidence in capitalism even among a few of its intellectual adherents. A professor said a year ago that students were not anxious to study Marx but now they are eager.
There are also a large number of Chinese students—from the U.S. as well as abroad, including from China—who are attending the university and who made up an important section of the audience. Judging from some of the discussions and their responses to Lotta's speech, the event tapped into some openness. The University of Chicago is opening a branch in Beijing in 2010.
The campus was saturated (flyering at class change, large classes) and with the new materials that were developed throughout the tour, itself an application of theory/practice/theory. The new leaflet developed after the NYU stop outlined the four points of the speech and the questions asked at NYU and was widely used. The students recognized the need to hear the best proponent for this position. Thousands of copies of Lotta's open letter to Tony Judt and Sunsara Taylor's letter to students ("The Furthest Thing From Your Minds") were distributed. Students read these and periodically commented on what it provoked in their thinking to event organizers.
When students were asked "how did you hear about it?" more than a few replied "how could I NOT have heard about it?" There were secondary forms utilized in the run up to the event—like short pithy quotes posted up all over (including inside bathroom doors). There were full color posters lining the walks from the dorms and "table tents" on all the dining and study tables throughout the campus advertising the event, etc. One short quote with particular resonance came from the message and call of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have":
And, despite the good intentions of many teachers, the educational system is a bitter insult for many youth and a means of regimentation and indoctrination overall. While, particularly in some "elite" schools, there is some encouragement for students to think in "non-conformist" ways—so long as, in the end, this still conforms to the fundamental needs and interests of the system—on the whole, instead of really enabling people to learn about the world and to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, education is crafted and twisted to serve the commandments of capital, to justify and perpetuate the oppressive relations in society and the world as a whole, and to reinforce the dominating position of the already powerful. And despite the creative impulses and efforts of many, the dominant culture too is corrupted and molded to lower, not raise, people's sights, to extol and promote the ways of thinking, and of acting, that keep this system going and keep people believing that nothing better is possible.
There were a number of people who told organizers that they watched Lotta on youtube, including some workers who were unloading trucks on campus said they had been discussing it too.
Revolution #177, September 27, 2009, "The Raymond Lotta Campus Tour: A Very Big Deal Indeed!" put it this way: "If on this foundation we can open up debate, if we can open up ferment, if we can spark thinking on those terms—and the sharper the debate, the better—then we can begin to fight for this. If we can engage students in really thinking about all this, then—but only then—we have a fighting chance."
This fighting chance was brought to life and must now be further seized.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/183/kunstler-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
Check It Out:
From a reader:
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe is a damn good documentary about a legendary people's lawyer and great defender of the oppressed, civil rights activists, radicals and revolutionaries.
Kunstler's daughters, Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler, have made this biographical film about their father's life, told through the lens of their own struggles to appreciate his life's work. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, has received much critical acclaim, and is now hitting theaters across the U.S. this month.
The film very powerfully captures on screen some of the historic moments the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960's, when millions in the U.S. yearned to change the world in fundamental and revolutionary ways. It brings to life through Kunstler's story and through the voices of many participants in those movements and battles a lot of what is now really "stolen history"—events the rulers of this country would prefer be forgotten. We see the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention Chicago—the government's murder of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton—the Attica prison uprising—Wounded Knee. These are all "inconvenient history" for the American ruling class.
Bill Kunstler too comes to life, as someone who was both impacted by the revolutionary currents then sweeping through society in the U.S. and the world—and was deeply influenced and transformed by the defendants he represented. We see how his understanding of U.S. society, the law and the courts, and of the meaning of justice was transformed and radicalized.
In the early 1960's, Bill Kunstler was an ordinary "armchair liberal" attorney in private practice. But he was searching for more—and more certainly came when he answered a call to assist with legal support for the Freedom Riders, Black and white civil rights protesters daring to challenge racial segregation in the South. Kunstler was moved by the courage of the Freedom Riders, "breaking the law, to change the law" and risking arrest and brutality at the hands of police and white mobs.
By the late 1960's Kunstler was representing activists protesting the war in Vietnam. This included the Jesuit priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan who, along with 7 others, had broken into a government office in Maryland. The Catonsville Nine dragged the draft board files outside the building and publicly burned them. They knew they would be charged with destroying government property, but they saw their criminal trial as an opportunity to explain their beliefs about the war to the jury and the world. From this trial, Kunstler learned that the courtroom could be used as an arena to expose the immorality and injustices of the system.
But this film isn't just about the past. It raises deep questions and challenges for people today. This society is full of notions that people can't change and won't do anything except out of narrow self interest—for example, the idea that people are just the way they are, so middle class and more privileged people will not risk anything to fight the system because they are too bribed by their privilege. But here was William Kunstler—who saw other people putting themselves on the line, and stepped forward to join them.
In 1968 millions of Americans saw live TV coverage from Chicago, when thousands of anti-Vietnam War protestors outside the Democratic National Convention were attacked by police and National Guard troops. Eight activists including Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale were charged with conspiracy to riot and Bill Kunstler became their lead counsel. The trial of the Chicago Eight galvanized even more of the determined protest and resistance of that generation than it was intended to suppress. When Bobby Seale protested in court being denied legal representation, the judge ordered him to be chained and gagged—for many people then and now, that image of a Black revolutionary bound and gagged in an American courtroom, is one of the most enduring and iconic images of the 60's.
For their relentless defense during this historic trial, Kunstler and his co-counsel Leonard Weinglass were found guilty of contempt of court. Kunstler's sentence of forty months was the longest contempt sentence ever received by an attorney in U.S. history. Kunstler's defiant response: "I am in a way proud to be convicted because I think too long lawyers have been immune to the slings and arrows that oppress their clients, and I think it important that at least some lawyers now feel the oppression that their clients feel."
Unforgettable footage—some of it never before publicly seen—floods the screen. We see a dynamic 21 year old Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton speaking at a rally—shortly before he was murdered by Chicago police and the FBI, who shot him to death as he lay asleep in his bed.
We go inside the 1971 Attica prison uprising in upstate New York where thousands of prisoners rose up and took over the entire prison. The prisoners in America were becoming influenced by the revolutionary currents pulsing through U.S. society. The Attica prisoners were especially outraged by the murder of Black revolutionary prisoner George Jackson three weeks prior and by racist and degrading conditions at Attica. And they revolted!
Kunstler was called to the prison as a negotiator for the inmates. Bill told his daughters later about having to confront his own middle class prejudice and fears about these prisoners—but when he came to see theirs as a courageous and organized stand for their rights, and stood with them, those sentiments were transformed into respect and love. After three days of negotiations Governor Nelson Rockefeller sent armed troops, police and guards to drown the Attica rebellion in blood. Thirty-two prisoners and nine hostages and were killed.
The legacy of the Attica uprising is of tremendous importance. Asking why don't more people know about the history of the Attica prison uprising is like asking why do people know so much about the crucifixion of Jesus and not about the crucifixion of Spartacus, the rebel slave leader in ancient Rome. You watch this film, and are struck by how conscious and organized the Attica prisoners were. And it makes you think about the more than two million in U.S. prisons today and the importance of prisoners in any movement about fundamental societal change.
In 1973 Kunstler was called into action again, this time to defend leaders and activists with the American Indian Movement for their heroic takeover of Wounded Knee to protest the treatment and oppression of indigenous people by the U.S. government. Kunstler assisted in the negotiations on behalf of the Native Americans and was the attorney for AIM leaders during their criminal trial after the siege. Again, Kunstler's legal strategy was to put the government on trial for what it had done to Native Americans. The defendants and Bill won the trial, exposing the governmental misconduct and oppression of the Native Americans.
Through these fiery years, Kunstler is shown growing, changing, learning more and more and giving his heart to the struggles of the times—especially where the outrage of national oppression was at the fore. He carried on with many criminal defense cases including the defense of Larry Davis, a Black man accused of shooting six police in the Bronx. And again, when Kunstler represented Yusef Salaam, one of five Black teenagers who, in an atmosphere of racist mob hysteria, were railroaded on false charges in the so-called "Central Park jogger" rape case. Yusef Salaam and all the other defendants in the case were eventually exonerated.
In 1989 Kunstler again took a case that caught his eye because it concentrated political speech and protest against the government. Kunstler represented revolutionary Gregory "Joey" Johnson, arrested for burning the American flag at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. Kunstler argued the flagburning case before the U.S. Supreme Court. But he also leapt into the controversy over this case by speaking publicly everywhere he could at law schools, protests, and in the media.
Joey Johnson has said about the film, "I think this film is very good. Especially for its ideological challenge that people make their lives be about living for something larger than themselves and making whatever sacrifices it takes for that. And through the example of Bill's life there is a call for people to take a stand in the face of real odds and to stand with those under attack from the system. I was proud to be part of the film. I definitely felt a real affinity with other activists and criminal defendants that Bill represented. When you are a political defendant, you want an attorney that has your back politically. And who respects you politically, even if they do not agree with everything you say or do.
"Bill saw a lot of the hypocrisy that the America flag flies over in the U.S., and for that matter the farflung American empire. And he hated the hypocrisy, all the 'liberty and justice for all' talk when he knew otherwise: his experiences in the South with segregation and civil rights, knowing that this same flag was carried by the Seventh Calvary when they massacred the Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee. And the same flag that was stenciled on the planes that bombed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"So I could say these things when I spoke out about the case, and with Bill Kunstler I had an attorney who empathized with my views and respected defiance against the government."
The film brings complexity, questions about sticking to one's principles, and also a lot of humor to this telling of a lawyer who found his life's mission in "disturbing the universe." The New York Times once named William Kunstler "the most loved and hated lawyer in America." The people did love this rambunctious, courageous fighter for justice—as much as the powers that be did hate him. This is a movie not to be missed.
Check it out.
Permalink: http://www.revcom.us/a/174/demarcations_ad-en.html
Revolution #183, November 15, 2009
| Current Issue | Previous Issues | Bob Avakian | RCP | Topics | Contact Us |
Inaugural issue now online! demarcations-journal.org
Demarcations: A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic seeks to set forth, defend, and further advance the theoretical framework for the beginning of a new stage of communist revolution in the contemporary world. This journal will promote the perspectives of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. Without drawing sharp dividing lines between communism as a living, critical, and developing science serving the emancipation of humanity, on the one hand, and other perspectives, paths, and programs that cannot lead to emancipation, on the other—whether openly reformist or claiming the mantle or moniker of "communism"—without making such demarcations, it will not be possible to achieve the requisite understanding and clarity to radically change the world. Demarcations will contribute to achieving that clarity.
In the wrangling spirit of Marxism, Demarcations will also delve into questions and challenges posed by major changes in the world today. The last quarter-century has seen intensified globalization, growing urbanization and shantytown-ization in the Third World, the rise of religious fundamentalism, shifting alignments in the world imperialist system, and the acceleration of environmental degradation. Demarcations will examine such changes, the discourses that have grown up in connection with them, and the ideological, political, and strategic implications of such developments for communist revolution. Demarcations will also undertake theoretical explorations of issues of art, science, and culture.
The inaugural issue of Demarcations opens with an extensive original polemic against the political philosophy and thought of Alain Badiou.