"...there will be no revolution without the participation of the youth!"

The following letter from a prisoner was sent to the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund:

Pelican Bay, 6-24-11

Greetings an upraised fist goes out to you all!

I recently received the new book BAsics and really dug its content. Over the years while reading Revolution newspaper I have been able to build my understanding of the society we live under here in America. While growing up in the 'hood all one knows is being poor broke and hungry is "just the way it is," gangbanging becomes a release for the anger that consumes those in the ghetto, and ultimately prison is where we end up and yet don't know why we got here. The truth is this society is not set up in our interests and it doesn't have to be this way, it's this way because too many people are focusing on "coming up," on hanging on the street corner or chasing that high and taking their eye off the prize and not creating a Revolutionary environment wherever they are at!

I call on the youth to imagine an environment where over the dinner table parents and children discuss Lenin's contributions to today's struggles. Imagine going to school and your class is studying Karl Marx in economics class and learning to apply a Marxist analysis of today's current economic crisis. Imagine after school all those spots, street corners, parks and parking lots where young people hang out holding up the wall, imagine those spots being transformed into places where you discuss and learn about those groups back in the days like the Young Lords, Black Panthers and Brown Berets who were mostly people from the 'hood who grew up just like you who made that leap to fight the oppressive society and transform their hoods into Revolutionary zones. Imagine a whole generation in a 'hood gathering to learn about Revolution and being apart of building Revolution today. Nobody is going to force you to grasp Revolution it must be one's own choice to make that leap but the time is here for the second wave of homegrown Revolutionaries, a wave like we seen or read about back in the 60s. Young people today have so much more resources at hand that were not in existence in the 60s, things like the internet and technology needs to be harnessed to help the youth capture their moment in history.

So many people hook up for all the wrong reasons that amount to nothing whether in relationships or to engage in negative behavior but young people should be hooking up for Revolution and show the older generation how it can be done today!

The same Rage and Determination spent on repping your hood or turf should be put into repping the revolution.

The same knack for spitting them verbs to holla at that female or male should be used to bring more folks into Revolution, the same energy and gift of gab you may have thought you had to 'come up' and 'hustle' on the street corner should be used to raise money and create projects toward building the Revolution. Young people come with so many naturally gifted abilities that have been learned and honed from necessity of being born into a "sink or swim" thinking society and it is these survival tools that will contribute and make it possible for Revolution to be successful in Amerika. Because to honestly say how important the young people are I will say there will be no revolution without the participation of the youth!

Those youth who find themselves on college campuses will go on to enter all levels of this society's work force and it is through your energy and input that will rebuild this society into a socialist one built in the people's interest. College students have always been at the forefront, Mao himself came out of the student movement and Blossomed to a Revolutionary. College campuses like prisons are places where people are often exposed to ideas outside the normal American Imperialist view for the first time in their lives and so colleges like prisons are fertile grounds for Revolution. It is in colleges like prisons where people first start paying attention to World events and how everything they been told about this country being land of the free etc are lies. But college students shouldn't just "go with the flow" but should do all they can to raise the conscious of their college campus and not wait for others as being a leader sometimes amounts to who stands up first in a situation.

College students today face the effects of Imperialism with student tuition costing so much. Some will be paying off student loans for decades after graduation making some students to be forced to take two jobs to survive and gain an education in America. But what kind of system makes it next to impossible to be educated? What kind of system will end ethnic studies which is basically classes that teach history of minorities in America as is being done in the Southwest? And what kind of system fires college professors who speak truth of the history of America as was done to Ward Churchill the Native Professor?

This is a system that only operates and was built to uphold the future of the white ruling class, this handful of wealthy elite sets the agenda for America domestically and its foreign policy, this bloody policy is what college students should not be going along with and it is precisely this reason that young people should get ahold of Revolutionary literature, study it, discuss it with others and contribute to building a movement for Revolutionary society to take root in America.

I do this from within the penitentiary and the "hole" where I was placed years ago for Revolutionary activity while in general population, for this the prison singled me out and unleashed the repression that must have existed in Nazi Germany and still I rise. So if I can continue my efforts even while being placed in chains every time I leave my cell and held in an ossuary [depository for the bones of the dead] for 23 hours a day, if I can continue I ask the youth to show that there is one receptive ear out there and that our efforts are not in vain!

Liberate your mind and hook up with the Revolution! Power to the people!

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