In the spirit of Black August Memorial, Faruq talks about the conditions of Black prisoners, the need to break race divisions between them and white prisoners, and the quest for the Idea of Freedom.
George Jackson
Thoughts from the Outside: What is needed for prisoners to remain sane
October 7, 2023A recent response to Faruq’s essay on Black August and George Jackson: Deep in the ‘hole,’ Jackson went to theory to maintain his sanity. Subjective reason, or revolution in permanence, is necessary to prevent falling into fixed moments in our liberation. What is granted by the legal arena can be taken away again by new laws.
Prison and structural racism
November 12, 2022Prisoner Comrade Easley argues that structural racism and the prison industrial complex thrive on over-policing and racial profiling Black and Brown communities.
Thoughts from the Outside: ‘If We Must Die’
November 11, 2022Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” spoke to hunger strikers at Pelican Bay. We were dying anyway and had nothing to lose with our movement to end perpetual solitary confinement in California prisons. “If we must die,” let us fight back with Marx’s universal of what makes us human, freedom.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2022, Part Two
September 13, 2022Readers’ Views on Hegel’s Third Attitude; Capital, Fascism & Revolution, Grasping the Spirit of the Times, and Voices from Behind Bars
Thoughts from the Outside: A way out of no way
July 19, 2022Faruq takes up “Civil,” a new documentary about human rights champion Benjamin Crump. To do right in this world, Crump, a lawyer, filed suits in a variety of civil and human rights cases including winning large settlements for the families of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Thoughts from the Outside: The idea of freedom
March 19, 2022Dr. Martin Luther King’s reference to the Promised Land was his way of talking about the irrepressible idea of freedom. That idea reaches beyond an individual’s life, and beyond the Civil Rights Movement. KIng was confronting the inhumanity of the economy as well as the war in Vietnam.
Thoughts From the Outside: Fred Hampton and the Idea of freedom
May 8, 2021A recent movie, “Judas and the Black Messiah,” tells the story of the state execution of Fred Hampton. The state terrorists were so interested in finding a Judas within Fred Hampton’s circle because Hampton was a powerful new young voice for human solidarity between various groups in Chicago.
Thoughts from the outside: Black August, an evolving Idea
August 29, 2020For many New Afrikan Revolutionaries August has a profound significance. For me Black August attempts to set forth a new humanism.
Essay: Black August, from 1971 to 2011-13
November 17, 2019In the spirit of Black August Memorial, Faruq talks about the conditions of Black prisoners, the need to break race divisions between them and white prisoners, and the quest for the Idea of Freedom.
Essay: Black August, from 1971 to 2011-13
September 4, 2019Ex-prisoner Faruq takes up the revolutionary history of Black August Memorial and relates it to his life and the historic Pelican Bay Hunger Strike.
World in View: U.S. prisoners strike
September 26, 2018Prisoners in at least 17 U.S. states, and one Canadian prison, took part in a nationwide strike beginning Aug. 21, 2018. The strike presented a list of 10 demands that have been pushed into the national and international consciousness.
Voices from the inside out: ‘Agreement to End Hostilities’ 5th anniversary
September 5, 2017Prisoner Faruq writes about the meaning of the fifth anniversary of the historic “Agreement to End Hostilities” that continues to challenge the racism imposed on prisoners in the California prison system and elsewhere. .
Shared journey inside solitary
November 27, 2016Excerpt from part 2 of “Shared Journey inside the Tombs of California’s Solitary Confinement Torture Chambers” by Baridi “X” Williamson.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2016
May 17, 2016Readers’ Views on Women as Reason; Harriet Tubman; Racism and Internationalism; Bisexual Health; Trans Liberation and Feminism; Chinese State vs. Workers; Nuclear Arms Threaten All; Ireland’s Red Banner; Remembering Olga Domanski; Haggard but Not Tired; Voices from Behind the Bars.
Hugo “Yogi” Pinell (1945-2015)
September 3, 2015On Aug. 12, Hugo “Yogi” Pinell (1945-2015) was killed in the California State Prison-Sacramento. Pinell was a comrade of George Jackson, W.L. Nolen, James Carr, and other founders of the modern prison movement.