On Shaka N’ Zinga
The Anarchist Rain [1998]
anarchistrain PDF (Imposed)
Made Crazy By You / Driven Sane By Myself [1997]
Featured in Claustrophobia magazine, number 8, page 7.
https://archive.org/details/claustrophobia-no-8-summer-1997/page/7/mode/2up?view=theater
Writings from The Anarchist Rain [2001]
Featured in THE DEFIANT: Prisoners in the Global Resistance
On the Prisoner Solidarity Committee [1998]
The following was based on a letter written to a comrade of Moncton ABC, a support group of the ABC Federation. Shaka gave us the letter to be printed here as a contribution to dialogue on these questions.
The hand between the candle and the wall
Grows large on the wall…
It must be that the hand
Has a will to grow larger on the wall
To grow larger and heavier than
the wall…
–Wallace Stevens
May 10, 1998
10:30 pm
Dear Scott,
I hope that this letter finds you well. I be still here, in chains, trying acutely to remain sane. The vile psychological and emotional effects I must endure, caused by this prison/neoslavery existence, is one of the most feared weapons in our enemies arsenal of pestilence and genocide. These years and days spent in isolation and exile, separated from family, from friends, from freedom; forced to miss the struggle of my family in that same society that separated us; the dehumanizing scars inflicted on the minds of those of us who are reduced, negated and equated to the subhuman status of our forbears who were made the victims of European economics (capitalism); made to submit to a repressive situation supposedly designed to correct so-called criminal behavior, while in fact what is occurring is the further erosion and deforming of the naturally ordered social inclinations endowed in the marrow of all human beings. The question of my humanity, my right to life, liberty, and the quest for human purpose has been answered by the call of the monopoly capital to destroy such human rights for their bestial lust to accumulate super profits via the criminalization of my kind of human being.
Such blatant and insidious disregard and discard are the incessant realities that I must daily confront, combat, and conquer; such insanity chips away at the resolve of the strongest of my kind… Simply put… I am doing okay simply because I am alive, still struggling to become more fully human, in spite of the situation.
As to your proposal to reactivate the PSC [Prisoner Solidarity Committee], I think that you should continue to push it, however, I don not wish to become involved in it. My reason for not wanting to be involved is because I do not agree with the idea of any New Afrikan being a social prisoner. I have (and many other revolutionary New Afrikans as well) long ago come to recognized the political reality that each and every New Afrikan in this settleristic-imperialist nation is in fact prisoners of war, and once we are shoved in this situation of acute repression we become political prisoners of war. Historically speaking, the war that I am indirectly making reference to began when european capital launched its first slave ships and began its free market system with the trade of my Afrikan forbearers. At the conclusion of the amerikkkan war for independence, the present capitalistic nation-state called the USA was founded for euroamerikkkans, but my kind remained in chains.
The constitution was written by and for euroamerikkans’ right to determine and govern themselves as human beings. But my kind, my forbearers, remained the chattel of settleristic amerikkka. In this constitution our subhuman status was affirmed and reaffirmed by those who wrote it. They defined us as being three-fifths of a person in this very constitution that is hailed as being the greatest ever written. In 1857, the highest court of law in the USA (the supreme court) again affirmed the status of “subhuman slaves” of my kind, in the court’s Dred Scott decision. U.S. Chief Justice Roger Brooks Taney said: “A Negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect.” To show their correctness and legal grounds for denying the slave Dred Scott’s petition for freedom, the United States Supreme Court turned to the Constitution written by their fathers for their freedom to oppress and profit from the genocide and enslavement of the Native and Afrikan slave, and said:
When the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written, Africans were perceived as three-fifths of a person. When one speaks of ‘we the people,’ we were not speaking of you. And therefore we cannot now give you the rights and appurtenances that apply to ‘we the people.’ The constitution has no relevance to you and your kind, or to your descendants should they ever become free.
The whole system/institution of slavery was an act of war that was committed against the nations within Afrika which the european slavers (from europe and the amerikkkas) captured, bought, and sold their victims. The nations of europe waged this war in the name of capitalism, civilization, and Christianity. These Afrikan human beings had never before encountered such a foe that came in the disguise of a friend and trader of pretty and shiny products, thus they were not prepared for the deceit, betrayal, racism, greed, and hate that moved these pale men.
New Afrikans were supposedly freed on December 6, 1865 by the 13th amendment of the US constitution, which reads: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” And almost three years later on July 9, 1868, we were compelled to accept the paper citizenship ratified via Congress in the 14th amendment of the constitution, which reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
With the ratification of these amendments came much fanfare and praise by those Kneegrows who claimed to have been the representatives of the New Afrikan masses whose true desire was to be liberated from the Nation-State that held them captive as slaves, a country that had robbed them of their human right to self-determination and independence as a Nation. The student of history will surely see that all these laws that have been enacted and ratified by the capitalist and white supremacist body of the us government, for the sham freedom granted to New Afrikans, were in reality no more than political ploys used to further the interest of capital and white supremacy. Thus through the 13th and 14th amendments we recognize the fact that over 130 years ago the ground for the PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX was laid. In both amendments the person could not be made a slave or deprived of life and liberty, unless they have been duly convicted of a crime. As the children of the only people who were brought to this settleristic-imperialistic nation in chains, we (I) realize that as the victims of this undeclared war, and that history is not a dead thing for all that is today is but a continuation of what has occurred those 130 years ago, that we are a colonized people. We have been bounded to this decadent nation through the laws, miseducation, and acute genocidal repression that has been waged against our nation.
I am simply trying to give you an idea of why I refuse to ever be a part of anything done by the ABCF. As a New Afrikan I do not accept or respect or recognize the legitimacy of the US government, nor the definition of the United Nation of what or who is to be defined as a PP/POW. My people, no matter how much they have been brainwashed, are all PP/POWs, simply because their continued exploitation and oppression is perpetuated by and through the political system of this capitalistic nation. The conditions that give life to the so-called social crimes are created by this government. The Iran/Contra drug smuggling and CIA crack cocaine pipeline into South Central LA are but two very minute examples of how these situations are created via the government for economic forces/capital. I will not be confined to the definitions handed down by my oppressors, the very european nations that have created the blighted conditions that are killing millions of the world’s people daily.
The Definitions that the ABCF are using do not take into account the present anti-colonial/revolutionary struggles that are being waged throughout this settleristic-imperialist nation. The new form and shape of our struggle is not even taken into consideration by this ABCF. They look to the comrades who have been locked down for over 20 years, who were engaged in the movement 20-30 years ago for insight into that which they could not possibly understand. the conditions that gave rise to the New Afrikan revolutionaries of my generation, are conditions that are quite different from those that gave life to the brothers and sisters from our revolutionary struggles of the 60s and 70s. The government had effectively razed the revolutionary movement of that period in time. My generation was raised without the knowledge of that phase in our struggle for a full and complete freedom: self-determination and independence from decadent capitalist nation-state.
My friend, the fact that the ABCF is made up of middle-class white folk is another reason for me and the Spirit collective not wishing to be involved in such federation. For to allow such a federation to set the terms of how we are to view who is to be considered PP/POWs is to sanction FALSE INTERNATIONAL-ISM. and we will not be a part of this sort of endeavor.
Though we agree that the support of those brothers and sisters who have been targeted and framed by the government, for the active roles they played in attempting to make revolution, should receive the full support of the movement; we, however, simply do not see them as the only political prisoners and prisoners of war, solely because they made a conscious effort to engage this system of white supremacy and monopoly capital that oppresses and exploits and murders its internal and external neocolonies.
I hope that you will keep on struggling in the name of humanity and revolution. Though I do believe that we should create a UNITED FRONT for the making of the revolution for a better tomorrow, however, I will not be a part of any front that does not address the reality of white supremacy, the blight of all humanity.
take care.
DARE TO STRUGGLE,
DARE TO WIN!
RELENTLESSLY,
SHAKA N’ZINGA