[From food justice to energy to housing, the freedom of political
prisoners should be a demand, and organizations should create time to
take action on behalf of political prisoners. ]
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TAKING LESSONS FROM BLACK POLITICAL PRISONERS DURING BLACK AUGUST  
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Jomo Muhammad and Justin A. Davis
August 22, 2023
Waging Nonviolence
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_ From food justice to energy to housing, the freedom of political
prisoners should be a demand, and organizations should create time to
take action on behalf of political prisoners. _

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From local police outfitted with military-grade equipment, to
nonviolent protesters jailed on terrorism charges, the spectacle of
state repression has become an increasingly visible part of the Black
liberation struggle in U.S. cities. Police and prisons have long
served as a conduit for stamping out Black-led protest movements,
especially when those movements openly challenge capitalism and state
power. Between the 1960s and 1980s, for example, local, state and
federal law enforcement coordinated massive campaigns to dismantle
radical groups like the Black Panthers, Republic of New Afrika and
Black Liberation Army, using long prison sentences to take their
members off the map. In the wake of COINTELPRO and similar programs, a
generation of Black organizers and activists faced incarceration,
often continuing their organizing efforts inside prison as they fought
for release.

It’s within this context that inmates at California’s San Quentin
State Prison celebrated
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first “Black August” in 1979. Throughout the month,
“participants refused food and water before sundown, did not use the
prison canteen, eschewed drugs and boastful behavior, boycotted radio
and television, and engaged in rigorous physical exercise and
political study.” Black August became a way to memorialize those in
the Black liberation struggle who’d been jailed or killed at the
state’s hands — like the communist writer and activist George
Jackson
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who was killed by San Quentin guards in August 1971. More broadly, it
became an opportunity to reflect on the long arc of Black resistance
in America, and its many watershed moments that have taken place in
the month of August.

Since the 1970s, a number of organizations have kept up the Black
August tradition, like the Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, an
abolitionist, anti-capitalist network of Black-led political groups
formed to “co-create a shared movement-wide strategy” for Black
liberation. Part of this network is the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
[[link removed]], or MXGM, a 33-year-old national
organization dedicated to “New Afrikan” self-determination,
community defense and opposition to white supremacy, capitalism and
patriarchy. 

Throughout this year, MXGM’s nine chapters have supported Rukia
Lumumba’s campaign for Mississippi state legislature, the
#StopCopCity movement in Atlanta, and political education programs on
Black radicalism — but the bulk of its current work focuses on
campaigns to free political prisoners. MXGM played a central role in
efforts to secure the release of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, a radical health
justice organizer who’s most well-known as the stepfather of rapper
Tupac. After an extensive career with groups like the Black Liberation
Army and Republic of New Afrika, Shakur spent more than 35 years in
federal prison before getting paroled last year. He passed away in
July from cancer at the age of 72
[[link removed]],
seven months into his release.

As Black August commemorations continue across the country, I spoke
with MXGM organizer Jomo Muhammad about the broader context of Black
August, the underrecognized work of Black political prisoners, and how
social movements can address anti-Black state repression in the
current moment. 

SINCE THE FIRST BLACK AUGUST IN 1979, MANY BLACK ORGANIZERS HAVE USED
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HISTORY OF RESISTANCE” AND TO “HONOR THE LEGACIES OF FREEDOM
FIGHTERS WHO LANGUISH IN CAGES OR HAVE BEEN KILLED BY THE STATE.”
WHY DID THE MXGM START COMMEMORATING BLACK AUGUST, AND HOW DOES IT
COMPLEMENT YOUR ONGOING WORK?

[COINTELPRO poster]

COINTELPRO poster (Twitter/@MXGMNational)

A founding member of the Oakland chapter, Mama Ayanna [Mashama]
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was one of the founding members of the Black August Organizing
Committee back in 1979 — so we have been a part of Black August
since its beginning, and part of the set of organizations that were on
the outside. We weren’t the MXGM in 1979, but many of the elders
that helped found the MXGM were connected to the formation of Black
August. Our founders were part of liberation struggles that were
targeted by COINTELPRO, forcing many of them to go underground, to
figure out ways to defend themselves. 

That includes the recently-transitioned, former political prisoner Dr.
Mutulu Shakur, [who’s] seen as a founding member of the MXGM;
and Chokwe Lumumba
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who becomes a lawyer to defend political prisoners, and goes on to
defend Mutulu, Geronimo Ji-Jaga [Pratt], Assata Shakur, a lot of the
political prisoners who were targeted by COINTELPRO. Founding member
Watani Tyehimba (who’s featured in the Tupac and Afeni Shakur
documentary series “Dear Mama
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prisoner: he was detained for a year and a half
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his refusal to give any information on the whereabouts of Mutulu
Shakur. 

So for us as an organization, we’re rooted in that movement, and in
some ways, the organization is the child of those political prisoners.

IT’S NOTABLE THAT THE BLACK AUGUST TRADITION STARTED WITH
INCARCERATED PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN ORGANIZING WITHIN THEIR OWN PRISONS.
HOW HAS THIS HISTORY OF RADICAL ORGANIZING WITHIN PRISONS SHAPED BLACK
LIBERATION MOVEMENTS ON THE OUTSIDE? 

In so many ways. I think the first and most immediate is just in the
example: once these people struggling for liberation were
incarcerated, that did not stop their organizing. They continued to
organize wherever they were — even though many of them were kept
separated from the general population, kept in solitary confinement 23
hours a day, under heavy surveillance — and really started a
movement within the United States penal system that was organizing for
immediate improvements in the conditions of all prisoners, as well as
preparing them to, once released, enter into struggle and join
organizations. That model of organizing, that level of unbreakable
spirit in the face of state repression, is awe-inspiring for me as an
organizer not facing that level of state repression. I think also,
their work as organizer-scholars. [Political prisoners] have written a
lot of work while incarcerated, continuing to struggle for ideas even
while their bodies were incarcerated. 

What we’re learning, too, is this beautiful comradeship that existed
between all of them and this real sense of what it means to have
revolutionary love. One of our favorite quotes
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the #FreeMutuluNOW campaign
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struggle for liberation because they love people” — that was
Mutulu Shakur. Chokwe [Lumumba] has a quote where he says, “The
heart of any movement to free political prisoners … is a
revolutionary heart.” There’s such an example around what it means
to love, to love revolutionarily. As George Jackson says
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“to discover your humanity and your love in revolution” is one of
the powerful, sometimes understated, lessons and messages of Black
August.

I THINK A LOT OF THE TIME, THE ROLE OF THESE FOLKS ONCE THEY ARE
INCARCERATED SORT OF BECOMES DOWNPLAYED. ORGANIZERS GET CAGED, BUT
THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT THE WORK STOPS ALL OF A SUDDEN. IT’S STILL
THERE, YOU’RE JUST NOT SEEING IT.

And that’s by design, that’s why they got pulled up off the
street: so that their work would be hidden and unseen, because it was
a powerful work.

One of the things I remember hearing from Dr. Mutulu Shakur was how
other prisoners would lament that their people were not writing them,
their people weren’t coming to visit them, and they needed love and
support too. What we know about political prisoners and their
relationship to mass incarceration in this country is that oftentimes
psychological control and isolation are tried out on them first before
it’s passed on to the general population. So it’s not surprising
that the alienation, the separation, the disconnection that political
prisoners can have from movements is intentional. That was COINTELPRO
—  “disrupt, discredit”
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it’s right there. 

That’s, then, what makes Black August such an offer and an opening
to heal that disconnection: to take a month to focus our energy and
our attention to those behind bars — to write them, to do the things
that they practiced in order to try to transform themselves [and]
prepare themselves for movement, as we are actively in movement. 

M4BL IS EXPLICITLY ABOLITIONIST AND WITHIN ABOLITIONIST THOUGHT AND
PRACTICE THERE’S A WIDE SPECTRUM OF APPROACHES TO STATE POWER. WHERE
SOME GROUPS WORK TOWARD SO-CALLED “NON-REFORMIST REFORMS
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OTHERS BELIEVE THAT APPEALING TO THE STATE TO TRANSFORM ITSELF CAN
LEGITIMIZE THE HARM THAT IT COMMITS. AS PART OF A BROAD COALITION LIKE
M4BL, HOW OFTEN HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DEBATE PLAY OUT IN YOUR OWN WORK?

It’s a constant struggle, and to be somewhat anticipated. It’s
even in the current work around Cop City and the referendum
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Sometimes folks have a sense like there’s going to be a perfect
strategy. With each particular strategy or tactic comes a particular
risk or care or cost that we always try to tend to — but often, we
don’t necessarily fully control the game. Our oppressors have a vote
in the process, and the exchange, and the conversation. 

For us as the MXGM, Malcolm said, “by any means necessary,” and we
take that to be “by any means necessary.” One of our grand elders
says, “a revolution has to be a master of all forms of struggle,”
including legal and electoral struggle. But I think there’s always
then the question of, “For the sake of what?” And sometimes that
can get lost in these efforts. Or we have the other approach, where we
go into these things expecting to lose, and that can also be harmful.

THE VARIABLES ARE ALWAYS CHANGING. YOU MIGHT COME IN THINKING,
“ALRIGHT, I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE,” AND ALL OF A
SUDDEN, THE CONDITIONS SHIFT ON YOU.

I think we’ve experienced that in the MXGM. Many of our folks moved
to the South hoping to organize for a Black nation. And 25 years
later, you have Chokwe running for city council and then mayor
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Jackson, Mississippi]. And part of that was keeping the same
objective, but understanding that time, place and condition begin to
suggest what tactic or pathway might get us where we need to go. 

Sometimes where we don’t have clarity with our movements is having
that conversation of where does this end, what is the end of abolition
for you. Oftentimes we’re responding to these social crises so much
that we’re just in response mode. So there’s often very little
time to actually have that level of conversation when you gotta get
100,000 signatures or press the city council to do something in three
weeks. Sometimes it’s in the wake, then, that we find that we might
have agreed on what we’re against — but what we’re for, we still
need to struggle to connect and be with one another for those things.

AS RECENTLY AS 2019, THE FBI USED THE TERM “BLACK IDENTITY
EXTREMIST” IN COUNTER-TERRORISM REPORTS, AND MANY PROTESTERS AND
“FOREST DEFENDERS” IN ATLANTA’S #STOPCOPCITY CAMPAIGN ARE BEING
TRIED UNDER GEORGIA’S ANTI-TERRORISM LAWS. HOW DO YOU ADDRESS
CONCERNS ABOUT THE PERSONAL IMPACT OF STATE REPRESSION WHILE TRYING TO
BUILD A STRONG, SUSTAINABLE MOVEMENT?

That’s difficult, and probably something we really can’t control
for at the end of the day. I think that’s why, for many of the
organizations in the M4BL, consent is a real leadership principle. We
have to be clear around the risks we face when we confront the state,
and I think that’s one of the lessons of Black August and political
prisoners. When you take a step back and assess what they were up to
and what brought on state repression, it’s not very different than
the organizing that we’re doing today. 

Understanding the history of policing tied to slavery … to stand up
and defy the ruling class whites in your particular community brought
with it its risks, and often just being Black [brought risks]. It’s
like that Fanon quote
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he talks about, “you’re rich because you’re white, you’re
white because you’re rich” — we’re Black because we’re
brutalized by the police, and we’re brutalized by the police because
we’re Black.

For many folks, organizing becomes this offer of resilience, of
community defense, if you will: where folks are building community
with one another, centered in the principles of consent and collective
accountability. One of our oft-said phrases in the M4BL is, “Who
keeps us safe? We keep each other safe.” We understand that police
have never kept us safe, that it’s always been community that has
kept us safe, it’s always been our organizing that’s kept us
safe. 

COINTELPRO has never stopped: I think we should be clear that it
hasn’t stopped, it’s only changed form. This label of “Black
Identity Extremist” is part of that new age COINTELPRO. The M4BL
did a report
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looked at the federal persecution cases of Black organizers, and noted
that Black organizers were sentenced and charged with harsher crimes
compared to whites who were arrested for their political activity —
pointing out a very clear racist application of that practice.

HOW CAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS BETTER SUPPORT BLACK POLITICAL PRISONERS AS
THEY FIGHT TO RE-ENTER THEIR COMMUNITIES, BEFORE AND AFTER THEY COME
HOME?

One, I freedom dream of a day when every Black organization — from
our churches to our Greek organizations to youth organizations — has
a Black political prisoner that they are in correspondence with. I
think the first act is making a connection. Organizations can make
time to do letter writing — it’s a great activity to do when
you’re on the bus ride to your next protest, something to do in the
lone moments of your organizing. I’d love to see that as a practice:
Black organizers writing a political prisoner once a month.

The second thing is for organizations to actually demand the freedom
of political prisoners. From food justice to energy to housing, the
freedom of political prisoners should be a demand, and organizations
should create time to take action on behalf of political prisoners.
We’re not asking folks to drop everything, but I do think an
intentional, deliberate contribution by many will really bring a lot
of solidarity and support, and help generate the energy and momentum
and pressure needed to call on local governments to do justice by many
of these political prisoners.

_Jomo Muhammad, Tupac Shakur's stepfather, is an organizer with the
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM)._

_Justin Davis is a writer and labor organizer. His poems are published
or forthcoming in places like Washington Square Review, Anomaly,
wildness, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Apogee Journal. He’s
published non-fiction with Scalawag, Science for the People and Labor
Notes._

_Waging Nonviolence is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to
providing original reporting and expert analysis of social movements
around the world. With a commitment to accuracy, transparency and
editorial independence, we examine today’s most crucial issues by
shining a light on those who are organizing for just and peaceful
solutions.  _

_Waging Nonviolence depends on reader support. Become a sustaining
monthly donor today!  Donate
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* Political Prisoners
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* Mass Incarceration
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* Racism
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* COINTELPRO
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