Unknown - Imprisoned Intellectuals (Transformative Politics Series, ed. Joy James)

Divisive debates over who qualifies as a U.S. political prisoner, and what means should be used for liberation, have been raging for decades; obviously, they will not be resolved here. Still, deeply held views influenced my shaping of this project and the editing of many of the essays presented here. First, I find that definitions commonly used to discuss U.S. political prisoners tend to be overly inclusive and simplistic. Therefore, I reject the following as inherently limited designations for political prisoner: any incarcerated individual who self-defines as such; anyone the state labels as a criminal or terrorist; and anyone the state politically discriminates against through differential enforcement of laws, racially and economically driven sentencing regimes, and prison treatment. Of course, the above categories apply to many of the writers in this volume. Yet that in itself is not what qualifies them as progressive political prisonersfor the question of political agency for a greater democracy remains to be addressed.

The refusal to politically romanticize criminals reflects narrow self-interest and broader communal goals. Regarding self-interest, the criminal for profit or entertainment (your neighbor, nephew, stockbroker, or statesman)with less fervor than the white supremacists who engineered the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing or the religious extremists who executed the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center bombingsfurthers the demise of me and my kin. Black women demanding political, economic, intellectual, and sexual freedoms are considered legitimate targets by various insurrectionists of varied ideologies. Personal interests are compatible with political goals: Any group or individual seeking dominationwhether racial, religious, and sexual or economic, political, and internationalis the enemy of a liberated society.

Unlike progressive radicals and revolutionaries (politically, radical is not synonymous with extremist), reactionaries are restorersrather than transform the current order, they seek to reimpose or reinvigorate old orders of supremacy. Reactionary political prisoners or prisoners of war (apprehended by the state, they can also be classified as unlawful combatants and so denied the protection of international or national norms) are not the subject of this volume. In fact, the volumes contributors are designated not only enemies of the state but also enemies of the reactionaries at war with the state.

As progressive political prisoners or prisoners of war, revolutionary enemies of the state differ from reactionary enemies of the state. The former expand, while the latter oppose, democratic freedoms. (Centralizing power with corporate and military elites and violating human rights, the state has also proven itself an adversary to democracy.) Progressive combatants who resisted state repression in self-defensive or offensive acts that inadvertently caused the loss of life cannot be easily dismissed as terrorists by confining themconceptually or physicallywith racial, ideological, or religious supremacists.

One need not argue that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It is reasonable to refuse friendship to a protective imperialist state expanding police and war powers, a fearful society with slight regard for civilian losses or collateral damage that are not white or American. Likewise, it is more than reasonable to condemn an insurrectionary terrorist (alter ego to a state terrorist?) who targets civilians in asymmetrical warfare.

The following writings by progressive political prisoners as intellectuals function as documentary history/political manifesto/theoretical treatises. This work chronicles the turbulent liberation struggles in the United States beginning and ending with spiritual prophets: respectively, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lakota warrior and artist Leonard Peltier. The discussion (debate) of what constitutes a U.S. political prisoner is best understood within a larger historical context of repression and resistance. That context, unfortunately, cannot be adequately developed within the confines of this book. However, we can note four key aspects about the historical trajectory of rebellion from oppressed peoples within the United States.

First, throughout American history, criminals are racially invented in the public mind; thus, entire communities or peoples are criminalized. Criminality is considered to be nonconformity; nonconformity is often determined not merely by behavior but also by biology or appearance. Bodies that fail to conform to whiteness are treated differently under state or police gaze. Greater obedience is demanded fromand greater violence is used againstthose whose physical difference marks them as offensive or threatening. Racially driven policing and sentencing for both social crime and political rebellion mean that African Americans dont do white time. Compared to their European American counterparts, they disproportionately serve longer sentences under more severe conditions.

Second, the tradition of armed slave insurrections and maroon societies of indigenous and African fugitives in the Americas established a historical consciousness that would, a century later, infuse the women and men in the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, and the white anti-imperialist movements. Likewise, the military resistance of indigenous peoples and leaders such as Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo imprinted the American Indian Movement.

Third, as did the nineteenth-century slave and indigenous rebellions, twentieth-century anticolonial struggles tempered both pacifists and armed combatants. During the post-World War II era, traditional imperialism unraveled as the oppressed in Africa, Asia, and Latin America waged insurrections in national liberation movements that reverberated into the United States. Consequently, Indias Mohandas Gandhi influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., while the Congos freedom fighter and president Patrice Lumumba influenced Malcolm X. U.S. domestic rebellions were international in scope and effect as well. The U.S. government understood this as it developed its response through infamous and assassination-prone intelligence programs such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations COINTELPRO and the Central Intelligence Agency; both police institutions were used to destabilize domestic dissent.