New Clear Vision


constructive commentary for the chronically farsighted


The Color Maroon

April 29, 2013 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Guest Author, Politics

Lessons on Life, Liberation from Imprisoned Activist Russell Shoatz

Russell Maroon Shoatz is a former leader of the Black Panthers and the Black freedom movement, born in Philadelphia in 1943 and originally imprisoned in January 1972 for actions relating to his political involvement. With an extraordinary thirty-plus years spent in solitary confinement — including the past twenty-three years continuously — Maroon’s case is one of the most shocking examples of U.S. torture of political prisoners, and one of the most egregious examples of human rights violations regarding prison conditions anywhere in the world. His “Maroon” nickname is, in part, due to his continued resistance — which twice led him to escape confinement; it is also based on his continued political analysis, including recent writings on ecology and matriarchy that are found in his recently published book: Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz.

This interview was conducted via correspondence by Lisa Guenther, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

Lisa Guenther: What does “maroon” mean to you?

Maroon Shoatz: Historically a maroon was a fugitive slave of the 16th, 17th, or 18th centuries Americas — and even on the west coast of Africa, where most enslaved Africans were shipped from.

In Latin America they were generally referred to as cimarrones in the Spanish speaking colonies, marrons in the French colonies, the Dutch word for Bush Negroes in their colonies, and in the British colonies of the Caribbean and the southern areas of what would become the USA, either outliers or maroons. Yet maroon is an accepted generic name for all of these fugitives.

The word is sometimes capitalized when it’s used to identify an ethnically adopted designation: like the Jamaican Maroons, or the Boni Maroons.

Usually it’s assumed that all maroons were of African origin. In fact, for centuries all over the Americas there were many, many maroons of both European and indigenous/Amerindian origin.

Maroons differed from the runaway slaves who tried to blend-in or fully integrate themselves within the otherwise “free” societies. And that’s where the true distinction lies between maroons and the other fugitives! Whether the maroons term their communities quilombos, ladeiras, palenques, cumbes, Nanny Town, Trelawny Town, or one of the scores of other designations we know of, they all were clear on the fact that direct integration into the surrounding oppressive settler colonial communities was something they did not desire.

One could argue that their fugitive status militated towards making that choice. Yet the historical record clearly shows that for centuries thousands of runaway slaves and indentured servants successfully integrated themselves within the free communities. Among those of European origin, untold numbers blended-in to join the periodic expeditions that were mounted to explore, exploit the riches of, conquer or settle vast areas that had previously only been inhabited by Amerindians.

Among the Amerindian runaways, they most often could find refuge and protection among kindred or other sympathetic Amerindian ethnic groups.

Those fugitives of African origin could at times find “free black” communities — who themselves were in league with sympathetic anti-slavery abolitionists — who would offer them a certain amount of refuge and protection.

And it’s known that these things were generally known and understood by the maroon communities in their regions. And by definition a rejection of these attempts to integrate oneself within the mainstream of either of these free communities — while establishing one’s own maroon communities — meant that such maroon efforts accepted the idea that their former owners would aggressively seek to return them to enslavement, or kill them if that failed. This was primarily because all maroon communities represented a direct threat to the idea and practices of slave and indentured labor, in other words, a threat to the engine that made the colonies in the Americas exploitable and fantastically profitable for the ruling elites.

Thus, in essence, all maroon communities — men, wimmin and children — were communities at war with their former masters. We know this to be true because for centuries various settler colonial regimes sought to violently stamp out numerous maroon communities all over the Americas. Even going so far as to sign peace treaties — which came with autonomy and land grants and material subsidies — in return for these maroon communities’ promises to reject any further acceptance of new fugitives into their ranks, as well as their aiding the slavers in capturing the latter (a stipulation that was not always followed through on).

More convincingly, till our times, the direct descendants of some of these maroon societies in South America (Surinam), the Caribbean (Jamaica) and the USA (among the Negro Seminoles of Texas and along the Mexican border, and in Oklahoma; and the Amerindian Seminoles in Florida) still stubbornly cling to the remnants of their ancestral ways and speech.

So it must be recognized that — in spirit — a maroon was one who not only rejected oppression, but went further to help establish an alternative, even though such an effort could be avoided by simply removing themselves from the direct effects of that oppression. While at the same time being fully conscious that seeking to establish such an alternative will mean being attacked by those who benefit from the rejected oppressive arrangements.

Lisa Guenther: How can we learn from the history of maroon communities to “escape” from the prison industrial complex? This must be a different process for prisoners, for their families, and for others who have no personal connection to prisons. I’m interested in sketching out a kind of “escape manual” for those who want to build on this tradition of resistance.

Maroon Shoatz: The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a modern day form of slavery! Michelle Alexander says it’s a part of “the New Jim Crow,” and she’s correct in saying that. Yet we must recall that the original Jim Crow itself was simply a way to continue to derive the benefits from the exploitation of a segment of society that chattel slavery earlier provided. Similarly, the PIC serves to benefit segments of today’s society at the expense of others. It’s held up by those who derive these benefits as a necessary social mechanism to control the criminal elements in society: so much of the “tough on crime” posturing can be found here.

When one gets past that scare tactic and simply follows the money trail, it’s easily recognized as the giant con game that it is. A tool that helps the economic and social elites — the “one percent” (if you will) — to use the PIC to serve as a lid to keep the most volatile economic and social elements from boiling over, in reaction to the dysfunctional and exploitative policies the one percent have set in motion and oversee. At the same time, using the police power associated with this drive to construct a — not so subtle — terroristic police state in order to also keep in check the other “ninety nine percent” who do not find themselves to be direct victims of the PIC, but are, nevertheless, indirectly terrorized into feeling they too must accept the economic, political and social policies put forth by the one percenter’s advocates. If not, they too will fall victim to the terrifying specter of themselves becoming prey to the paramilitary police and spy agencies; the unaffordable legal system and the dreaded jail/prison archipelago that they’ve all seen on reality TV shows, and which are fodder for pop culture comedians.

The ninety nine percent are living in a fool’s paradise. One that cons them into subsidizing their own oppression by allowing the one percent to yearly spend billions upon billions of their tax dollars to support this police state and its PIC. Most will object to my terming the USA a police state for one simple reason: They periodically get a chance to vote for whichever politician the one percent’s massive outlay of money propels to the front of the — otherwise — easily recognized millionaires voting club… The give-away is that whoever is voted into office, the one percenter’s interests are always given preference over the ninety nine percenter’s.

Still, there is hope of using the “maroon spirit” to help us find our way forward. Even so, as Michelle Alexander points out in her “New Jim Crow” book, such an effort demands a collective type of energy and creativity in order to form a movement that is capable of getting the job done. And any process to accomplish this must be launched, refined, protected and sustained simultaneously among the prisoners within the PIC, the parolees and probationers, their collective families and loved ones, and by other members of the ninety nine percent who are not personally (bodily) connected to the PIC and its supporting police, spy, and court arms. An effort consciously directed towards building on the maroon tradition of resistance to oppression and exploitation.

Ironically, the segment of the population that presently has the most potential to effect change in the PIC is those who usually have no direct — bodily — connection to this system. That is the taxpayers among the ninety nine percent. Without their massive yearly outlays of billions in taxes (taxes they’ve been bamboozled into believing serve a good purpose, but instead serve [to] keep active a police state machine) the whole house of cards would collapse!

These taxpayers have allowed themselves to be painted into a corner — as already pointed out — and must be broadly encouraged to join an effort to construct a national campaign to vote out of office any and all politicians who will not pledge to help us abolish the PIC and its supporting police state terror arms, while simultaneously using their tax dollars to prepare the millions of prisoners, parolees, probationers, prison staffs, police/spy and court arms for new lives.

Such an effort will help educate these taxpayers to the extortion con game that the “tough on crime” political hucksters have been playing on them, as well as help reign-in the out-of-control police/spy state apparatus, which will allow this taxpaying public to feel less terrorized in order to more aggressively pursue all of the other pressing problems the one percenter’s policies have allowed to collect in their living rooms.

Among the prisoners, parolees and probationers — at the same time — they must spearhead a campaign to educate their peers to the fact that their pursuit of the gangsta lifestyle and its petty crimes must be abandoned, for the simple reason that they’re being played for fools; when they kill and are killed to make money and gain status, only to lose the money, their freedom and all too often their families as well — while going in and out of the PIC.

Their only hope rests with organizing themselves and using their time and creativity to develop intelligent ways to get the taxpaying citizens to recognize that they must demand that their tax dollars be used to prepare them to fully join their communities as productive individuals — in a win-win situation for both groups.

The families and loved ones of prisoners, parolees and probationers are dying to become a part of such an effort, as already laid out. Moreover, the adult members of these families are themselves voters and taxpayers. As such they will form the nucleus to lend a backbone to a nationwide effort to get other taxpaying voters to force the politicians to pledge to work on abolishing the PIC, while initially channeling their tax dollars into programs designed to really prepare prisoners, parolees, probationers, prison staffs, police/spy and courthouse workers for their new lives.

Here the academic community must be brought into this undertaking. We must get them to see that it’s also in their interest — as taxpayers and voters — to forcefully interject themselves into such a movement because — nationwide — colleges and universities are progressively being sidelined and hollowed-out in favor of the neoliberal education for profit model; one that most administrators will be forced to pursue, because they are being starved of tax dollars that presently are being shoveled into the PIC.

Where else will the prisoners, parolees, probationers, prison staffs, police/spy and court workers find individuals who are able to perform such a Herculean task?

Further, it’s abundantly rational to fight for such a initiative, seeing how the material aspects are already in place: The archipelago of jails and prisons can serve as learning quarters. There are millions of people who need to be prepared for new productive lives — or remain negative tax burdens. Tens of thousands of unemployed or underemployed college and university graduates. And, finally, it all can be accomplished by intelligently using the billions of tax dollars that today are being wasted on prisons, jails, parole, probation, police/spy and court activities that only serve to terrorize and keep in check the ninety nine percent.

All that’s missing is the clarity that such an effort is needed, and the political will to struggle to build such a movement. The same way that the historical maroons set theirs sights on being free from chattel slavery, then developing the will to run away and struggling to stay free.

Lisa Guenther: One of the things I love about your work is that it reveals another history of the Americas underneath the story of “discovery” and colonization. This is a history of struggle and resistance, which is as old — if not older — than colonial domination. What can we learn about political resistance from our own history, read “against the grain” in this way?

Maroon Shoatz: One cannot fully appreciate the history of the maroons without first taking the time to read about them. Even then one cannot gain this knowledge by reading a single book on them. For myself, I began to seriously study them after escaping from a Pennsylvania prison and living in the surrounding mountains and forest in 1977. After a month I slipped-up and was captured and returned to prison. It was at that time I was given the nickname Maroon by an older prisoner who had studied maroon history. Up until that point all i knew was that the “maroons were escaped slaves in Jamaica….” Nothing more.

Nowadays I can say that I’ve read many books about the maroons, even though it took a bit of an effort to locate the material, since I had no access to the internet and was in prisons that restricted the books that i could get. Yet I’m still learning more about them as enterprising scholars and researchers are making that history available.

Jane Landers, a professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee recently provided me some fascinating original research and publications surrounding the maroons she’s contributed. Further supporting what I’ve long ago discovered: The various maroon communities and a number of Amerindian communities stand alone as the only peoples who’ve withstood the crushing and absorbing effects of the colonial, “manifest destiny” imperialist and genocidal movements that have overwhelmed most of the rest of the Western hemisphere.

Though considered “backwards” by most people, it’s becoming clearer everyday that such elements — like the maroons and Amerindians spoken of — people who’ve learned to live alongside of the environment without destroying it, show the rest of our civilization as those ‘who are backwards’! Moreover, the remnants of these Amerindian and maroon communities steadfastly resist efforts by outsiders to co-opt or submerge their communities within the complexities of the modern state.

Even though the jury is still out on their choices in that matter, it’s also becoming crystal clear that the huge and complex undertakings like the old Soviet Union, the European Union, the USA and China and India are in for some truly rough sailing, as their ruling elites lose more and more of their ability to use the state to exploit and oppress/repress. This level of resistance was almost impossible to accomplish prior to modern technological wizardry, which is serving to demystify the “why’s” and “how’s” of what being done to the global ninety nine percent by this elite minority.

Indeed, I believe there are things that can be learned by studying how the maroons and certain Amerindian societies have been able to navigate their way forward until now. That knowledge and wisdom is sorely needed because we’ve allowed the global ruling elites to place us on a runaway train, that if not arrested, will present a clear existential threat to our existence!

Lisa Guenther: What’s the relationship, in your view, between anarchism and the decentralized structure of maroon communities?

Maroon Shoatz: The historical maroons, as well as the anarchists, have many things in common. Both also have many variations that have to be studied in order to prevent any errors in addressing this question. Nonetheless, they all share a deep-seated rejection of oppression/repression emanating from any state structure.

That said, the maroons differed from most anarchists — at least during their classical “fighting maroon” stage — because unlike most anarchists, they lived their ideal of rejection. Most anarchists, on the other hand, aspire to protect that ideal — short of what’s needed to realize it on a higher level.

Of course much of that has to do with the extreme level of oppression/repression the maroons had to confront. That’s usually missing in the case of the anarchists. The notable exceptions being the anarchists involved with struggles during the period of czarist/revolutionary Russia and during the Spanish Revolution and Civil War of the 1930s. There one cannot distinguish any difference between those anarchists and the earlier fighting maroons.

Those instances also highlight another striking difference between the two camps — other than during the Russian Revolution and with Spain during its own struggles — and that is the premium the fighting maroons placed on always developing and maintaining a high level of organization! Forms of organization that were usually highly decentralized, creative and organically connected to those it served. Yet one that was sophisticated enough to be able to coordinate various decentralized formations in order to give the coordinated collective a critical mass when needed. Sorta like a swarm of bees.

Usually anarchists have not been confronted with the level of threat that the fighting maroons always had to live with, and that has hindered them in developing a need or desire to organize on such a high level.

Lisa Guenther: In “Black Maroons in War and Peace,” you write about the difficult relationship between maroons and slaves, and the many examples of betrayal and complicity, where slaves were used as pawns by both the colonizers and the maroons. What can we learn from these struggles about the possibilities for solidarity and community-building today?

Maroon Shoatz: I’ve read a lot in this area but am hard pressed to recall any instances of fighting maroons betraying other slaves. In fact, take Suriname; there they even had a “Code of the Forest” that strictly militated against such betrayals. And in the fighting maroon formations in Jamaica, Mexico, Haiti and the United States (southern colonial areas) we see the same practices. Such betrayals were not in their interests, seeing as how solidarity with all slaves generally served to increase their numbers and ability to avoid capture and death.

That’s not to say that the fighting maroons always got along with each other. They didn’t. But that was usually settled by agreeing to go their separate ways.

The treaty maroons were the parties that indulged in such betrayals! Such treachery was the fruit that their cooptation by their former enslavers yielded. The European imperial and colonial enslavers discovered after generations of all but useless wars designed to capture or kill maroons that the most sophisticated fighting maroons could not be overcome by warfare. They therefore settled on a broad strategy of cooptation, a more subtle way to both neutralize the fighting the maroons and turn them into another auxiliary to help their other forces hunt, capture and kill new runaways.

In Mexico the Spanish slavers successfully implemented the cooptation of the famed and feared Yanga and his followers among the fighting maroons; and even today “Yanga the African rebel slave” is lauded in Southern Mexico.

In both Jamaica and Suriname the British and Dutch slavers (respectively) also came to adopt the same methods and had success doing that. In each case the cooptation of the most sophisticated and powerful fighting maroons worked to the detriment of those still fighting maroons and the new runaways as well.

One lesson we can draw from that is a need to be more vigilant in our efforts to both identify and struggle against cooptation. And we know from the maroons’ experiences as well as more contemporary experiences brought about by struggles within the global anti-colonial struggles, the US Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s (in particular), that those in power will resort to cooptation against strong movements they cannot defeat otherwise. One rule of thumb is we must continue to struggle as long as the most adversely affected have not been relieved of the causes of oppression and repression they suffer under.

Lisa Guenther: In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon writes: “The party must be decentralized to the limit. This is the only way to revive regions that are dead, the regions that have not yet woken up” (128). This made me think of your hydra model. What is the influence of Fanon on your thought and practice?

Maroon Shoatz: Franz Fanon had for decades been one of my guiding lights. His writings that highlight both his “revolutionary” theories and practice still hold much truth. Yet I’ve come to learn that Fanon also was in need of a worldview that was not shaped by the patriarchal fixation on a malignant ego-based form of violence, a type of violence that he conflated with the otherwise necessary defensive revolutionary violence that the best of his theories and practice uphold.

This is a shortcoming that I outline in an essay in the upcoming anthology of my writings. The essay entitled “The Question of Violence”, and a subsection labeled ‘Towards a Matriarchal Prefigurative Praxis in Controlling Male Violence’, contain my thesis that separates ego-based violence from defensive revolutionary violence, and how and why Fanon and others have conflated the two. As well as my theory about how to arrest that shortcoming.

Lisa Guenther: The connection between prisons and capitalism is clear. But can you spell out the connection between prisons, capitalism, and environmental issues such as food security, climate change, respect for animals, and so forth?

Maroon Shoatz: As was pointed out in answer to question #2, the ruling one percent has constructed a police state — with prisons at its core. Thus it follows that without that and the threat of the paramilitary police/spy networks, backed up by a awesome array of weapons, military vehicles, helicopters, drones, reality police and jail TV shows — which daily sow terror in the minds of the ninety nine percent — the bulk of the citizenry would more seriously question all of those things. But they fear that if they go beyond voting (where that is allowed), or peacefully demonstrating (where that is allowed), they could easily wind up in a prison hellhole or be gunned down in the streets!

In the USA a huge segment of the ninety nine percent own firearms — allegedly for hunting or to simply exercise their rights to do that. In reality, so many millions owning these weapons is itself a testament to the fear felt by them; a fear that they cannot rationally understand is grounded in their inability to understand the complexities of a society that otherwise point to the bankruptcy of the one percent’s accumulation mania, and the ninety nine percent’s inability to stay afloat in this game. Thus the owning of weapons is a way to achieve a small amount of psychosocial relief from the everyday fears and terrors that torment them.

Periodically one of these tormented individuals will snap under the strain and shoot and kill another one of the ninety nine percent over a minor dispute, or more dramatically, shoot and kill as many as possible — before the feared paramilitary police SWAT team shows up…

The global ninety nine percent would also act in a similar fashion — being subjected to similar pressures — but mostly weapons are not as available; unless you are willing to be cannon fodder in some drug or resource warlord’s army…

Lisa Guenther: You write about matriarchy, and suggest that it is a better word than “feminism” to describe your own approach, which you share with Fred Ho and Stan Goff. Could you explain what matriarchy means to you? I must admit, the word makes me uneasy for a number of reasons. For example, it is possible to admire and even worship mothers without actually granting them social or political power. Mothers are often romanticized as wonderfully caring, responsible, even self-sacrificing people — which creates an impossible standard for most women to live up to. And not every woman wants to become a mother; feminists have worked hard to distinguish between being a woman and having to be a mother, so it seems like we risk backsliding if we suddenly replace feminism with matriarchy. But at the same time, much of the history of feminism has been dominated by white, middle-class straight women who still have a lot to learn about the many different ways of being a woman, being powerful, and working with others in solidarity. For these reasons and more, I prefer to focus on the promise of “global feminisms” rather than matriarchy. But I’m interested to hear more about why this term appeals to you.

Maroon Shoatz: My outlook on this is a work-in-progress. For most of my life I was a male supremacist, faithfully following the patriarchal paradigm that permeated all areas of my life, even after becoming what i thought was a “revolutionary”, someone struggling to achieve an egalitarian social order.

Then about eight years ago I was introduced to radical feminist writings by another former male supremacist. And since that time radical feminist ideas and practice have turned my worldview upside-down! Nowadays I too consider myself a radical feminist, but one who believes our worldview and practices are better served by drawing a line in the sand by opposing everything that patriarchy champions! In the words of Fred Ho, “the goal is not gender equality, but the abolition of gender as a social differential completely, and the restoration of Mother Right: procreation and nurturance of humans and Nature, not ownership and domination of people and the earth for private property”.

The use of the much misunderstood and maligned word matriarchy is a way to present that revolutionary challenge to the age-old ruling patriarchal order. A clear line in the sand!

The word feminism is also maligned, misunderstood and attacked, but I believe — in the long run — it would serve us to do the hard work of returning to the source of the birth of both words (matriarchy and patriarchy) in order to better grasp the essence and ramifications surrounding the need to do battle on this front. Something we’re much less likely to do by shying away from a word (matriarchy) that has a lineage and pedigree that cannot be fully or properly understood without such an intense struggle.

My use of the word matriarchy is no attempt to either directly or indirectly romanticize mothers, set any “impossible standards for most women to live up to”, or demand that all wimmin become mothers. All of which are patriarchal ideas, which a struggle over these words will make clear. Ideals that were introduced in order to help defeat the then-prevailing matriarchal order, during what Frederick Engels wrote was the era of “the overthrow of mother right [which] was the world-historic defeat of the female sex” in his neglected and little-studied The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. A work that has stood the test of time.

Though a work-in-progress, like all “new believers” I too am zealous about confronting, struggling with and ultimately helping to defeat the patriarchal worldview, which I’ve termed “the father of oppression”.

So I ask you to bear with me as you weigh and examine my positions.

Lisa Guenther: How have you managed to stay sane and clear-headed after 21 consecutive years of solitary confinement?

Maroon Shoatz: Perhaps my ego will not allow me to be destroyed by this experience (smile). In the sense that my captors can kill my body, but as long as I breathe air they’ll never kill what all I’ve learned about the nature of oppression and repression and why I must stand against both.

Lisa Guenther: In “Liberation or Gangsterism,” you explain how the black radical resistance of the 1960s and 70s gave way, under the pressure of police oppression and programs like COINTELPRO, to gang violence in which young black men fight each other for power and money, rather than joining together in resistance to the system that oppresses them. What do you think of the growing movement within prisons to put aside racial differences and gang affiliations in order to increase pressure on prison administrators through hunger strikes (as in California) and labor strikes (as in Georgia)? Are we witnessing a rebirth of radical political resistance within prison? How might this affect possibilities for addressing street violence within communities, and creating alternatives to police surveillance through policies such as Stop and Frisk?

Maroon Shoats: I’m thrilled to know that the actions of the prisoners in Georgia, California and elsewhere have been taking steps to end the monstrous conditions they face. For them to be able to overcome the decades of bloody prison staff provoked and sanctioned violence between the various ethnic, racial and regional affiliations is truly historic, and points to the potential to move forward.

That said, I fear that the prisoners’ overseers will take steps to derail this growing movement by reducing the potential for the prisoners to continue providing much needed direction on their end. The way the prison staffs usually do that is by separating and transferring the most sophisticated thinkers amongst the prisoners to other prisons, while allowing most of the prisoners a measure of relief from their present harsh conditions. While at the same time replacing them with a new, younger, less savvy group of prisoners. While not initially making the mistake of treating the new prisoners so bad until they too will be forced to come to grips with the primary contradiction, which is: the PIC and the prisoners “gangsta culture” are two sides of the same coin; a giant con game that ultimately serves the one percent’s accumulation pursuits, as I’ve already pointed out.

Consequently, we must return to question #2 [above] and my comments. My view is that the “manual” you would like to produce is something that would be very valuable in helping prevent the prison staffs in places like Georgia and California (and elsewhere) from continuing to use the PIC as a tool of repression. Your use of the word “escape” in such a manual, however, will certainly guarantee that it will not reach most prisoners! Think along the lines of producing something free of inflammatory anti-PIC catchwords, but still drives home the organizing points i suggested in my answer to question #2. Though you first must make direct contact with a savvy prisoner or two in each state’s isolation units in order to solicit their advice on how to fine-tune your message to their area, and for advice on the best way to circulate such a manual in their area and region.

More importantly, such a manual must be small, free, and mass produced! Seeing how they will have to flood the prisons in order to assure enough of them reach their destinations.

Such an effort will benefit prisoners throughout the USA, but the prisoners in isolation in California and Georgia should have priority because they are the most advanced in their broad based organizing and resistance at the present time.

Things have the potential to develop into “a rebirth of radical political resistance within the prisons.” Also, the “possibilities for addressing street violence within communities…,” etc.

My view, however, is that the main problem here is not the resistance that will come from the prison staffs and their supporting police/spy/court arms but from our own continued failure to adopt to a worldview and practices that are capable of fully unleashing the wimmin and girl half of the ninety nine percenters, that the bulk of even the most committed and advanced males on our side don’t realize they’re holding back. Primarily because these males are still wedded to the patriarchal worldview, which leads to patriarchal thinking, planning, actions and results. All of which — sooner or later — will (again) alienate the wimmin and girl half of the ninety nine percent, who will not benefit from such an arrangement, except for a minority of coopted individuals.

In order to overcome that problem, along with everything else we must do to immediately better combat the PIC, we must also introduce the male prisoners and the males in the streets to our radical feminist/matriarchal views, literature and ideas — along with also introducing all of that to the wimmin and girls they’re associated with… in case the latter is not familiar with the same.

There is no other way I can imagine we can fully tap into the necessary creativity and energy needed to tackle this problem.

For more information, visit the Free Russell Maroon Shoatz website, and consult the new anthology: Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz.

8 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. MAY 1, 2013 UPDATE/ACTION ALERT | Free Russell Maroon Shoatz! U.S. Prisoner of War 01 05 13
  2. @klellyLITZ 01 05 13
  3. @ScientificSoul 01 05 13
  4. @angola3news 07 05 13
  5. @endsolitary 08 05 13
  6. Russell “Maroon” Shoatz Files Lawsuit Protesting 22 Consecutive Years in Solitary Confinement  Dark Politricks 11 05 13
  7. Protesting Solitary Confinement 13 05 13
  8. New Clear Vision | Organize Some More 15 05 13

  • Welcome to NCV

    A (relatively) NEW blog filled with (generally) CLEAR intentions and a (positive) VISION for the future.
  • Latest Posts

  • GONE, NOT FORGOTTEN

    Since launching in 2010, we featured many inspiring writers on cutting-edge issues. In times of escalating crises, we sought to remain proactive rather than perpetually reactive, to not give more power to those who would co-opt the agenda, and to try turning visions in practice. We can critique what is and offer insights into what could be, without becoming embittered in the process. We weren't partisan, but we'll always stand on the side of those who desire peace with justice. We're not posting anymore new content as of 2017, but our archive will remain up and you can still find us on social media. We'll see you in the interwebs...
  • New! Thematic ‘Zines

  • Tags

  • Archives

  • NCV Bookmarks

    Peace Ecology
  • Green by DreamHost

    carbon neutral * renewable energy
    Green Web Hosting! This site hosted by DreamHost.