2020 Here we go again

Imperialism-Destroying-the-entire-world-to-enrich-a-tiny-few-by-Rashid-2016, 2020 Here we go again, Abolition Now!
“Imperialism Destroying the Entire World to Enrich a Tiny Few” – Art: Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, 264847, Pendleton Correctional Facility, G-20-2C, 4490 W. Reformatory Road, Pendleton, IN 46064

by Shaka Shakur

This isn’t a system that is broken. This is a system that does exactly what it was built and designed to do and that is to oppress, to kontrol, to destroy, to facilitate genocide and national oppression under the guise of maintaining law and order. Within the history of amerikkka, when has maintaining law and order not meant the victimizing, the lynching, the murdering, the castrating and destroying of Black and Brown bodies?

All of my life I’ve been in prison. I’ve never felt free in this kountry or this society. As a New Afrikan man and as part of an oppressed nation, all I’ve ever felt and known is oppression, struggle and resistance.

I get tired of hearing how the system is broken when it comes to the so call kkkriminal (in)justice system. That all We need is to put someone in office that is going to do the right thing, who is fair, who cares, who is progressive, who is a Democrat etc. Can We please stop?! Can We plz get off of this every two-year, four-year merry-go-round?

There is no falling through the cracks in the system for us. We are shoved through holes, into holds … like modern day holds of slave ships. Stacked in cells on tiers and so-called pods, the racks in the belly and hulls of ships sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.

As a 16-year-old kid, given a 30-year sentence for attempted robbery, I used to think that maybe I just fell through the cracks, that I could have been saved as a kid and rehabilitated. Then I was educated, then my consciousness was raised and I realized that it wasn’t meant for me to be saved or rehabilitated.

It was meant for me and other boys and girls, men and women to be victims of the school-to-prison pipeline. To be modern day chattel that big businesses and the state make huge profits off of. That it was meant for my Black body to become a commodity that is traded on Wall Street with other shares, stocks and bonds. You see it’s the system that needs to be rehabilitated, to be revolted against.

Seriously, how is it that in 2019, We can live in a kountry where over 2 million of its inhabitants are under some form of captivity, where people of color disproportionately represent those held under these conditions and it’s not a national outrage? It’s not an outrage because Black life has no value in amerika other than for profit.

Kapitalism must have people and classes’ labor to exploit in order for it to survive as a system. It must kolonize women and try to control their bodies and ability to reproduce in order to survive as a system. A system of domination, of exploitation, of control, of selfishness, of me first, of GENOCIDE and wage slavery … while creating the mirage of freedom through that of privilege and vulgar materialism.

If We want to agitate and try to rally the people around popular issues and put some of these politricians (like magicians who make the truth disappear) on the defense, why don’t We call for the repeal of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and the Anti-Death Penalty Act that was passed under the kkklinton administration during the 1994-96 era of kkkrime bills and so-called anti-terrorism bills?

There is no falling through the cracks in the system for us. We are shoved through holes, into holds … like modern day holds of slave ships.

These laws shut the doors on tens of thousands of prisoners for federal habeas review, appeals, introduction of newly discovered evidence. Laws that disproportionately affected poor folks and people of color sitting in these kkkoncentration kkkamps and on genocide/death row.

These are laws that the Obama administration refused to repeal while giving lip service to the negative impact the kkklinton policies had on mass incarceration and New Afrikans. Had these laws been repealed, it would have saved the lives and opened the door for thousands of Us, even more so than the bait and switch done around the crack and cocaine laws.

For people, groups, movements that support engaging with these mainstream politricians and this 2020 neo-kolonial bourgeois democracy electoral process, perhaps this is a position, issue, question that can be pushed. Where do you stand on repealing these laws? You claim to want to address and rectify the impact of these laws on Us and so-called mass incarceration, then do something other than window dressing and cosmetic changes.

New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist and New Afrikan Communist forces KNOW that “mass incarceration” is just a euphemism, a code word for national oppression, for genocide, for ethnic cleansing. This is what imperialisms does, people. It socially kontrols its perceived threat populace, this is even more so with leaps in technological development and the escalating threat of disposability confronting the New Afrikan “working klass.”

As the empire becomes more ethnically diverse and the eurocentric settler population has nightmares of minority status and loss of privilege … All throughout the course of Our story and Our national contact with the settler imperialist state, they have carried out all kinds of policies and practices, from medical experiments to outright murder designed to kontrol, regulate, instill fear, prevent rise of movements, leadership, etc. The state and its representatives have always had lofty names and acronyms but when it’s all said and done, people, it is a result of Our national oppression, Our current and historical relationship to the state, the denial of the right to self-determination as people.

The attempt by various elements to make Our struggle about so-called “race” is an attempt to confuse and distract. We who represent the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) are clear it’s about opposing kolonialism and imperialism in any form.

We as a people have a particular historical development and relationship to the u.s. government. Our means of production and ability to produce and be self-determining has been seized. The bulk of Our people were and are dispersed throughout the empire, forced into refugee status out of the National Territory of the South, on land where Our people and ancestors slaved, bled, died and fought wars of INDEPENDENCE. Land and territory where, as a result of government policies, Our people were terrorized and genocided out of, just as they did the Native Indigenous Nations all over this north amerikan continent.

They ethnic cleansed whole nations and populations then as they do today and could have used the same terminology then that they use today. You can substitute a donald trump for an andrew jackson and it’s essentially the same policies and practices. New Afrikans, Native Americans, Mexicans … the names and euphemisms change, but the policies, historical relationships and oppression remain the same.

You do not amend a people into a kkkonstitution and impose second klass citizenship on Us. You do not imprison Political Prisoners of War for 40 and 50 years because they engaged in political acts, resistance or political dissent … if it was simply about so-called “race.” No, the government carried and carries out such acts of national repression when a nation of people has a particular historical and political relationship to the oppressive state.

These acts of terror and repression are not the acts of bad apples and bad people. These are government policies and military strategies and tactics being carried out and implemented by those who represent and pledge allegiance to the imperialist united states empire.

Again, we aren’t confused and remain clear.

All Power to the People!!

ReBuild!

Shaka Shakur on behalf of NALC

Send our brother some love and light: Shaka Shakur, 1996207, Sussex SP 1B-33, 24414 Musselwhite Dr., Waverly VA 23890.