Advancing the Cause of Prison Lives Matter By Kevin "Rashid" Johnson
By Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, Minister of Defense, Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party
A number of existing and recently released political and politicized prisoners have come together to form Prison Lives Matter (PLM), a prisoner support and political development structure.
On the cultural front, this initiative envisions reviving the spirit and consciousness of the Prison Movement of the 1960s-70s, which has long since been lost. A culture of resistance that must be revived, because the struggles of decades past have been co-opted and through systemic infiltration of pig values into the cultures of the oppressed, the pigs have replaced it with a culture of collaboration, 'friendly' interaction, feeding information to and spreading divisive information for them, and overall submission to the pigs, while disunity and distrust have come to define the relations between prisoners. We have been effectively indoctrinated into loving and trusting the enemy and hating and distrusting ourselves.
On the agitational front, PLM aspires to unite prisoners with outside supporters and the communities at large into a country-wide support network and movement that can bring attention to and mobilize resistance against the oft-arising serious abuses that are inherent in U.S. prisons and which prisoners are generally left to contend with and suffer in isolation. Many lack any outside support and/or struggle with loved ones who generally disbelieve, blame the victims, or are reluctant (because isolated) to challenge these abusive conditions.
On the educational front, PLM will serve as a mass organization on both sides of the razor wire that will expose the oppressive and foul nature and purpose of imprisonment in the U.S., and provide political education to prisoners and those on the outside through study circles led and organized by PLM members.
The RIBPP wholly supports PLM and counts our own cadre among the members and its National Coordinating Committee.
Dare To Struggle! Dare To Win!
AP2P!