A Liberation reader reports from inside Rikers Island, the world’s largest prison complex.
In “State and Revolution,” comrade Lenin admonished that the state is an “organ of class rule.” The corporate-fascist class that rules in the United States exploits racial differences in the lower classes through the creation of special socio-economic zones that “ghettoize” the lower classes along racial lines.
Urban structures rely on production centers that employ their inhabitants for sustenance. Black and Latino youth who inhabit the city-state sustain over 50 percent of unemployment. Their sustenance, therefore, becomes increasingly reliant on an “alternate” economy. The “alternate” economy often includes the sale of drugs, forcible seizure of money and property, bootleg vending and the underground economy. Their participation in this alternate market makes them targets for police patrols—modern-day slave catchers—who are a constant presence in the city-state ghetto.
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky once analyzed, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” When one walks into any of the facilities of Rikers Island, located in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York, you are immediately struck by the fact that the majority of its captives are Black and Latino—at least 90 percent! Rikers Island is renowned as the world’s largest prison. This number is proportionate only to the national and racial identity of the prison guards who secure the island.
Rikers Island Gang Intelligence is the unit of the security apparatus designed to monitor and control gang activity. Contrary to its stated purpose, however, Gang Intelligence ensures that gangs are commissioned and evenly distributed through the housing units.
These gangs include the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, ?etas, Dominican Power, Dominicans Don’t Play, Patria and some lesser units. Each gang is responsive to the Gang Intelligence unit officers who grant them special privileges—house-gang jobs, pantry, special sanitation and so on. They are permitted to control a set of the telephones where “neutrals”—those not involved with gangs—are granted “slot time.”
They are granted the power to exploit and oppress with impunity. In return, gang leaders act as a second tier of security, demanding that prisoners lock into their cells, and maintaining control and order over prisoner activity.
Of course, this commission of power is contingent on the gang’s loyalty to their captors. If they fail to act in a desirable manner, individual “gangsters” are often packed up and sent to a rival gang’s domain where they are subject to attack and subordination if they are exposed or known as rivals.
Karl Marx analyzed in “The Communist Manifesto” that society’s lumpen elements—dispossessed and displaced individuals—are susceptible to becoming bribed tools of “reactionary intrigue” and not necessarily trusted instruments of revolution. This is because they have little sense of allegiance to anything other than their own individual interests. The destructive nature of capitalist society has impacted their class outlook.
They often identify more closely with their bourgeois oppressors than the exploited toiling class, which they hold in contempt. Here, gang members very often brag about how they were “blinging” and on the outside; they openly admire the Trumps, the Bloombergs and the Hiltons. Their heroes are Italian gangsters and infamous thugs. Is it no wonder that they form a natural alliance with the security apparatus of the state—the protector and guarantor of bourgeois property rights!
There are instances in which street gangs join and support the struggle for the people’s liberation. This is usually the case when some charismatic personality among their ranks joins the revolutionary movement.
We know that Mark Clark and Fred Hampton (of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense) came out of gangs and were successful in recruiting among their ranks. When the state realized the potential danger of this phenomenon spreading, they were “neutralized.” The less conscious elements in their ranks were often forcibly transformed into “agents of reactionary intrigue,” acting as “provocateurs” and informants.
How do we transform the criminality into the revolutionary mentality? This task requires rigorous training and discipline; they must become humbled and self-critical; they must learn we share a common enemy who is merciless and who will use them and, when finished, spit them out to the dogs. Mostly they must be brought back trained into the working class to end their parasitic tendencies, to be productive.
This is my report from Rikers Island … inside the fascist insect that sucks the blood of the people!
