Letter from a Prisoner

“Can you imagine the transformation the prison population can cause on society if we were to all get into the vital work of Bob Avakian?”

June 26, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

An Appeal to Those the System Has Cast Off

Here I am speaking not only to prisoners but to those whose life is lived on the desperate edge, whether or not they find some work; to those without work or even homes; to all those the system and its enforcers treat as so much human waste material.

Raise your sights above the degradation and madness, the muck and demoralization, above the individual battle to survive and to “be somebody” on the terms of the imperialists—of fouler, more monstrous criminals than mythology has ever invented or jails ever held. Become a part of the human saviors of humanity: the gravediggers of this system and the bearers of the future communist society.

This is not just talk or an attempt to make poetry here: there are great tasks to be fulfilled, great struggles to be carried out, and yes great sacrifices to be made to accomplish all this. But there is a world to save—and to win—and in that process those the system has counted as nothing can count for a great deal. They represent a great reserve force that must become an active force for the proletarian revolution.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:16

Revolutionary Greetings.

These days my former life perspective seems to of become utter non-sense. I am turning thirty in a little under a week, and it is becoming harder and harder for me to relate to the crazy shit I felt was necessary in my teens and early twenties. Can you imagine any one making a norm of murder, violence and drug peddling? See, but that normality and open praise of the ruffian life style staggered my early years so that I felt that it was the only life style suitable for my kind: a ghetto raised person of color. Cognizant, or at least I try to be, of this poisonous doctrine that enslaves my kin from the earliest ages and on. I can’t help but feel pain in my heart when I hear about the ugliness of the circumstances our children are forced to develop from.

Since I’m aging, and I’ve learned the hard way, (I’m serving life without the possibility of parole for murder), I can’t help but feel obligated to do all I can to stir my gente in the right direction whenever I can. Sometimes I hear homies, or camarados, glorifying the hood and its inner workings, and I get it but I also don’t condone that shit. I feel like telling mothafuckers to wake up to the nightmares of mass incarceration and systemic self-genocide. But, really, I understand them no matter how twisted and deranged they appear to be.

When you’re a child, your mind is like a sponge, and when all around you, you see and experience friends murdered, police running amuck and gangs pushing drugs on women, it leaves a lasting imprint on your mind. See and in the hood, the gang bangers are the heros and the cops are the ones despised. Then comes all the violence, which at first stings until one finally accepts the necessity to surviving the ghetto is to get with it, and a part of ones essence dies―their hearts callous. When you really see the big picture, you can’t help but realize that for so many of the children programmed by the circumstances of the hood, their futures look bleak and hopeless. It’s a despised by the system embraced by the thug scenario that swallows so many whole.

I’ve been incarcerated for ten years already. I experienced a death of a friend, Jesse, who was killed by L.A.P.D. in South Central, the Trayvon Martin murder trial and all the other hate crimes that have been going down by the hands of the police officers whom one side of the country abhor and the others they can do no wrong by. I’m living the bullshit every day. I was in LA county during the reign of the Three Thousand Boys¹ and their assaults and murders on inmates. Experience daily the corrupt and crooked doings of these correctional officers no matter where, what penitentiary I am at.

I made it a personal endeavor to understand the cause of the loathsome seeds of the ghetto. I, because of prison rules, hardly have an opportunity to endulge with men of Afrikan descent, but when I can I do because their prison culture is entrenched in Revolutionary ideology. Not to undermind the Chikanos whom take up the narrow path of understanding the obstacles we people of color face. Anyway, I’ve been led down many roads from Anarchism, Maoism and finally B.A. who has the most useful and insightful material out there. I’ve been reading all the books from the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, and I must admit I am stuck. With all this Donald Trump racism, bigotry and mysogyny, I can’t help but emphasize the importance of the prison population becoming more Knowledgable, through B.A. about what exactly is Revolution.

I mean, for too long the prison ideology has decayed by accepting the backwards and moralless indoctrination forced upon by the system. It’s foul as fuck. But one thing is certain in which we owe a debt of gratitude for Donald Trump exposing is that all this liberal We Love Everybody bullshit is a front, a front that kept us snoozing in mind. Can you imagine the transformation the prison population can cause on society if we were to all get into the vital work of Bob Avakian? All this shit from the children murders, poverty stricken neighborhoods, police brutalities, mass incarceration and every other foulness perpetrated by the system can change with a concentrated movement grounded in the thinking of B.A. But reality first must be approached before we can learn to see it. So I Urge all those who hold sway over others, within this prison system to pick up a Revista or libro. Become informed so we can become leaders of something righteous and not just the whole gang bullshit.

1. “Gang” of LA County Sheriff’s Deputies working at the Men’s Central Jail; have own tattoos, language, turf, etc. [back]

Prisoner from California
May 12th, 2017

We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The views expressed by the writers of these letters are, of course, their own; and they are not responsible for the views published elsewhere in our paper.

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