A Call for Unity to Dismantle the Legalized Slavery of the Prison Industrial Complex by Timothy Farrell

2020 brought a resurgence and unprecedented support of #BlackLivesMatter through the much-publicized murders of Black men and women, and video evidence of the always pervasive police violence against Black bodies. True revolution comes through attacking one of the favorite tools of a white supremacist, capitalist society: mass incarceration. Any meaningful support of Black lives must include support of incarcerated individuals.

Prison Lives Matter serves as a united front for political prisoners, prisoners of war, and politicized individuals who seek to abolish legalized slavery. Section 1 of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States clearly states that slavery has not been abolished, only refined:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

To come together to upend, not “reform” a system set up to uphold white supremacy that can never be reformed, it is imperative to listen to those who are or have been incarcerated. As Prison Lives Matter national spokesperson and New Afrikan Liberation Collective (NALC) co-founder/chairman Kwame Shakur and NALC co-founder Shaka Shakur point out, “For decades, WE have been screaming about the Fergusons, Balitmores, and the like behind the prison walls of amerikkka. For decades, we have screamed about the legal and illegal lynching, the daily beatings while handcuffed behind our backs, the aggravated assaults where our heads ‘just happen’ to attack billy clubs, steel bars, and concrete floors.’”

Kwame’s mentor Jalil Muntaqim, who was released in 2020 after nearly 50 years of being a political prisoner, has been setting the foundation for national unity since his ‘We Are Our Own Liberators’ was first published in 2000. This is not a call for faux national unity proposed by politicians who will never shut down their own self-interests in maintaining a white supremacist system, but a unity that uses a national and regional structure that uses the powerful work of those incarcerated to develop structures and alliances of those who oppose mass incarceration and support the liberation of political prisoners.

We need to support those who are incarcerated, but also listen to their words as no one knows the truths of mass incarceration and what revolution looks like the way they do. Muntaqim was infected with COVID-19 while he was in prison, yet he was denied a compassionate release. A system with no concern for Black lives which falsely claims not to hold prisoners for political reasons is incapable of providing any sort of compassion without being challenged. We see the work of activists like Haki Kweli Shakur and others seeking compassionate release for revolutionaries like Dr. Matulu Shakur, who has been incarcerated since 1986 for his political beliefs and has life-threatening bone marrow cancer, and Sundiata Acoli, who has been incarcerated for more than 47 years and who was hospitalized when he contracted COVID-19. 

Earlier this month, Kwame organized a “Call to Action” to stop illegal, inhumane restrictions on the Secure Housing Unit (SHU) at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. In addition to being in the SHU Earlier this month, Kwame organized a “Call to Action” to stop illegal, inhumane restrictions on the secure housing unit (SHU) at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility where he is being held. In addition to being in the SHU (solitary confinement) for 23-24 hours a day, he has no access to video visitation, so he has not seen his family in any way since the pandemic began. Since the SHU does not even allow commissary purchases, Kwame has not been able to even send his family an updated photo since he went into the SHU on July 31, 2018.

Muntaqim has recently revised his “Three Phrase Theory for National Independence,” the theoretical foundation for the Front For The Liberation Of The New Afrikan Nation (FROLINAN). Consistent with the work of Prison Lives Matter, the first phase is “Class Struggle for National Unity.” For PLM, that means implementing a national strategy geared toward creating Regional Organizing Committees (ROCs) on both sides of the wall. That means each and every one of us has the opportunity, and even the responsibility, to be part of building and sustaining this revolutionary movement.

What Can Each of Us Do? The most important work of PLM inside and outside of prison walls is EDUCATION. Not the force-fed learning of the U.S.’s test- and white-centered educational system, but the political education taught to us by those who are, or have been, held captive, and revolutionary comrades. As Muntaqim says, supporting Prison Lives Matter and its national and regional structures will help incarcerated people in becoming their own liberators!

Resources:

Prison Lives Matter: https://www.supportprisonlives.org/

New Afrikan Black Panther Party: https://www.facebook.com/NewAfrikanBPP

Republic of New Afrika: https://pg-rna.com/info/

Hella Black Podcast (Founders of #PeoplesBreakfastOakland, Delency Parham and Muntaqim’s nephew Blake Simons): https://www.hellablackpod.com/