A struggle on two fronts
Prisons & imperialist war
By Monica Moorehead
After a war waged by the U.S. military against
Vietnam which took the lives of more than 3 million Vietnamese
people and more than 58,000 GIs, the U.S. finally withdrew in
1975. It had suffered its first official major military defeat
by a united peoplestruggle led by the Vietnamese, along with a
mass U.S. anti-war movement.
Four years earlier, another heroic struggle of resistance
had taken place inside the U.S. The battlefield was in upstate
New York at the notorious Attica prison. Hundreds of
prisoners--African Ameri can, Latino, Native and
white--organized a united front and took over the prison for
four days in September 1971.
These prisoners exposed to a largely uninformed U.S.
population and to the world that U.S. dungeons were nothing
more than concentration camps for the poor. The demands they
made of the prison officials and the ruling-class governor,
Nelson Rockefeller, reflected both the daily inhumane treatment
that exists for prisoners along with concerns for the worldwide
problems caused by racism, capitalist greed and imperialist
war.
Among the prisoners' demands was the right to be unionized
to win a decent wage with benefits like other workers. Anoth er
demand was for willing prisoners to be granted political asylum
in socialist Cuba.
The political consciousness of these prisoners was inspired
by the writings of anti-imperialist Vietnamese leader Ho Chi
Minh as well as other revolutionary figures like Che Guevara,
Karl Marx and George Jackson.
This rebellion was drowned in blood as Rockefeller ordered
the National Guard to open fire, resulting in a slaughter that
left 29 prisoners and 10 hostages dead. What this uprising
showed was that economic and political repression gives birth
to social consciousness, solidarity and class struggle.
U.S. terrorism at home and abroad
Fast forward to what is happening now. The names may have
changed but the struggle is the same. This time the U.S.
military has carried out another brutal war against Iraq and is
bogged down in a racist occupation of that once sovereign
country. Like the Vietnamese, the Iraqi people are putting up a
heroic resistance. This occupation is part and parcel of Bush's
so-called war on terror.
The economic and political repression inside the prisons has
deepened over the past 30 years.
During the era of Attica, there were an estimated 300,000
prisoners in the U.S. Today U.S. prisons and jails are now
filled with over 2.1 million poor and working people, more than
any other industrialized country.
Women prisoners, many of them single mothers, constitute the
fastest-growing prison population. It has been documented that
at least 70 percent of imprisoned women and men were convicted
of non-violent, drug-related "crimes." Many suffer from
HIV/AIDS, other disabilities and illit eracy. Amnesty Inter na
tional and other groups have accused the U.S. prison system of
violating many international laws, especially the racist,
anti-poor application of the death penalty.
The building of private prisons, including juvenile
detention centers, has been one of the most profitable markets
for Wall Street investors. Prison slave labor has enriched the
coffers of U.S. corporations to the tune of over $1 billion
annually. This super-exploitation lowers the wages of many
workers and undermines the campaign to organize the
unorganized. Unions should make it a policy to organize
prisoners as they are doing with immigrants and other low-paid
workers.
One of the main reasons such blatant exploitation and
oppression exists inside the prisons is institutionalized
racism that permeates throughout the entire criminal justice
system. According to Mother Jones.com, in 2000 some 66 percent
of those incarcerated were people of color. This is hugely
disproportionate to their numbers in the population. There were
more Black men in prison in 2001 than in college. (Justice
Policy Institute)
People of color, especially youth, are demonized and
criminalized in the media to help drive an invisible wedge
between the multi-national and multi-cultural com munities, who
have common interests.
This same divide-and-conquer tactic is a cornerstone of U.S.
foreign policy as leaders like Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe
and Fidel Castro are portrayed as "tyrants" and "dictators" by
the mainstream media and U.S. government to justify imperialist
aggression.
Repression & political prisoners
The U.S. government likes to ostracize other countries for
having political prisoners--especially those countries that
favor a different economic system such as Cuba, North Korea and
China.
The truth is that there are U.S. prisoners who have been
victims of illegal frame-ups because they have a history of
being outspoken opponents against racism, imper ialism and
colonialism. The more well-known political prisoners include
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin
(formerly H. Rap Brown), the Cuban 5, the Angola 3, the Puerto
Rican independentistas, members of the MOVE 9 and many
more.
The repressive U.S. Patriot Act since 9/11 has sanctioned
the illegal detentions and torture of thousands of unidentified
South Asian, Middle Eastern and Muslim immigrants within these
borders and on a U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Palestinian detainees such as Professor Sami Al-Arian, Amer
Jubran and the Los Angeles 8 are being threatened with prison
and/or deportation for defending Pales tin ian resistance
against Israeli occupation.
The movement for social change has important political
allies locked away who must never be forgotten in the heat of
battle. While fighting French colonialism, Ho Chi Minh wrote
from his prison cell, "People who come out of prison can build
up the country... Those who protest at injustice are people of
true merit... When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon
will fly out."
Reprinted from the Oct. 30, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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