Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz PDF
Preview Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz
Praise for “This book, Maroon the Implacable, is that very funky instruction manual on how to make revolution against Imperialist America.” Maroon the —Amiri Baraka, poet, essayist, and activist; former poet Implacable laureate of New Jersey “The occult history of America concerns a space where Black, Red, and white together produce the culture of resistance—and the permanent uprising against hegemonic power and alienation. This space could be called the hideout of the Maroons, those few who have made the revolutionary exodus from the world of slavery to the ‘inaccessible’ wilderness of an alternate universe. If the Great Dismal Swamp is no longer a refuge, nevertheless the message of the Maroons lives on, and Russell Maroon Shoatz is today its untamed voice. Free Maroon the Implacable!” —Hakim Bey, author of TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone “Russell Maroon Shoatz wrote the essays in this book during thirty cumulative years of solitary confinement under conditions that international law would consider ‘cruel and inhuman.’ The essays trace a remarkable political trajectory, starting with involvement with the gang world of Philadelphia, leading to membership in the Black Panther Party, and ending with full-hearted support for ecofeminism and a repudiation of the patriarchal violence he once embraced. At the core of the book is the theme of marronage—the will to escape from conditions of enslavement at any cost. This is what Russell Maroon Shoatz has done, not only physically, but in the world of ideas by escaping from the rigid patriarchal framework he inherited and revaluing and promoting the role of women in the history of liberation. This book is a document of this transformation carried out against tremendous odds and told with searing honesty.” —Silvia Federici, author of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle and Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation “Russell Maroon Shoatz’s life reads like fiction composed by Victor Hugo. But this Jean Valjean for our time is the living truth, and his writings are a beacon for a new, revolutionary age. What a treasure has here been uncovered!” —Joel Kovel, author of White Racism: A Psychohistory and The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? “The message of Russell Maroon Shoatz, the message of the revolutionary maroon, is a message that we ignore only at our own peril and that of our world. Prison is designed to crush the soul, deaden the mind and destroy the spirit, but it becomes for some, like Maroon, a place for new awakening, deeper insights, and expanded solidarity. As Maroon shows, the awakened prisoner understands the contradictions of the state, capitalism, and patriarchy in a way that most of us, living in our larger and more comfortable prisons, can hardly begin to understand. We are living in Babylon, and Babylon must be destroyed. Our brothers and sisters in prison are uniquely gifted to help lead us out of captivity. The message of the revolutionary maroon is that ‘exodus is the primary form class struggle takes today.’ This idea, that we must learn to create and to live together in communities of liberation and solidarity, communities that openly defy and negate the brutal oppression of capital, state and patriarchy, is the precisely correct message for our time.” —John P. Clark, professor of environmental studies and philosophy at Loyola University, author of The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism “He escaped from custody two times, and although recaptured and imprisoned under horrific conditions, Russell has not relinquished his spirit of resistance. He is the ‘Maroon.’ If more young men emulated his lifestyle, the liberation of Black people would be very near at hand.” —Herman Ferguson, friend and comrade of Malcolm X in the Organization for Afro-American Unity “In describing human traits, it has been said that they come in two types: one, a thermostat, the other, a thermometer. These two objects look identical, and oftentimes confuse people. They can be identical in size and shape: equipped with mercury, allowing both to reflect temperatures, thus making it even harder to distinguish between them. The one big difference, however, is that the thermostat is equipped with a mechanism that not only allows it to reflect temperatures but also allows it to control temperatures. If I had to describe Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz (besides giving him his props for being a man of substance, courage, and principles) he—without doubt—would be a thermostat: Possessing the ability to not only reflect but control temperatures as well. This book, Maroon the Implacable, enforces and gives credence to this concept . . . a compelling read!” —Robert Hillary King, prison justice activist, author of From the Bottom of the Heap, and former prisoner in solitary confinement in the Angola prison in Louisiana “Many people will be astonished to discover the perspective of Russell Maroon Shoatz when they finally read his work. Though he’s been inside for forty of his sixty-nine years on earth, the problems he raises about the justice movement are amazingly up to date; for example, what to do about the organizations that claim to represent the movement but work overtime to control it? And he writes without jargon and even without rancor, though there is plenty to be bitter about. He asks not why we struggle—we should know that by now!—but how we organize to struggle. He is dedicated without being dogmatic and I know from experience that his mind is open and very keen for the views of others. Above all, he thinks organizationally, rather than in mangled, arrogant, academic rhetoric. He is always trying to work out what to do. Where he looks for answers is the only sensible place: not in ideas but in the historical experience of the grassroots. His ‘Dragon and the Hydra’ provokes and invites a dialogue with activists—a pleasure I for one look forward to.” —Selma James, author of Sex, Race, and Class: The Perspective of Winning, and coordinator of Global Women’s Strike “For twenty-seven years I visited four prisoners, one of whom was Russell Shoatz, who we called Maroon. From him I always got a lesson in politics that fortified me and made me understand just what was happening in our country and what I should be doing about it. Just before Mumia was moved out of SCI Greene, he was able to talk with Maroon for two whole days. He told me that those two glorious days were more important to him than all the years he was unable to communicate with Maroon. Maroon never lost his faith in the people, nor his ability to cut through the lies fed to us by the media. He trusted the truth of ‘power to the people,’ and it kept him focused and hopeful. His body was incarcerated but his mind soared. My mentor!” —Frances Goldin, publisher of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Barbara Kingsolver, and Adrienne Rich “Wow! I have been an organizer during the Great Slave Rebellion of the 1960s, to the urban bus riders of today, to the prison rebellions of tomorrow. Shoatz, combining George Jackson and W.E.B. Du Bois, is a fine historian behind bars who writes like a novelist. Whether the maroons were real (which they were) or superheroes (which they also were), the tale of free Blacks, runaway slaves, Amerindians, and working-class whites building a revolutionary army in the swamps is exciting stuff—and just the level of imagery and imagination we need to rebuild the revolution today.” —Eric Mann, author of Comrade George: An Investigation into the Life, Political Thought, and Assassination of George Jackson “More than ever, I am convinced that the answers to human society’s dilemmas will come from the margins of our society, from those people who have been excluded or who have chosen the path of exodus, and who are building alternatives in whatever isolated place they can make a stand. As Russell Maroon Shoatz shows us, even someone locked away in solitary confinement for decades, can utilize his imagination to show us ‘ordinary citizens’ the way forward. This exciting collection of writings explores paths of action for all of us: feminists, revolutionaries, community activists, ecosocialists, human rights campaigners. Extraordinary hidden histories of resistance combine with a vision of the future and a strategic challenge to every one of us to take action to change the world, wherever we are situated. To have your freedom denied to you is a terrible thing. To be held in solitary confinement is torture. No government should be allowed to abuse its citizens in this way, whatever their actions or beliefs. But not only should we support the call to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz—we should be proud to associate with his ideals and his activism, and we should take up the challenge he is setting us from his prison cell, to establish a unifying ‘mosaic’ movement based on the principle of intercommunal self-determination.” —Janet Cherry, South African activist and historian, former political detainee, and researcher for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “With the little that I understand of English, I have been impressed to read of the life of Maroon and what he has written. I was also in prison, when the military tribunal that judged me didn’t dare to sentence me to death, which some were calling for. In the various prisons where I was held, in Peru and Argentina, I was treated worse than ordinary prisoners, even though from afar, much better than what Maroon suffers. I respect his fortitude and am grateful for his historical teachings. “In Latin America, the slaves that escaped were called ‘cimarrones’ and their organizations ‘palenques,’ ‘quilombos,’ ‘cumbes,’ ‘rochelas,’ ‘ladeiras,’ etc. Among the most famous was the ‘Quilombo de Palmares’ in Brazil. With a population of 15,000 rebel slaves, it lasted for almost the entire seventeenth century. The Portuguese intervened with 6,000 soldiers and it took two years to conquer it. The communitarian democratic organization that it had is not strange; after all this characteristic is maintained by indigenous people all over the world. Where there are indigenous people, the indigenous community exists. Another common characteristic of these peoples is their great love and respect for Mother Earth. There is also a characteristic that has been called ‘Buen Vivir,’ which consists in a happiness that does not come from a quantity of money, but from a satisfied life. A great solidarity exists, together with a respect for differences. “These characteristics in their strongest form exist in the most ‘savage’ people, those who are least domesticated by civilization. “Now that the ruling capitalist system, in its most ferocious form ever, attacks nature (and thus the human species), ‘civilized’ people are beginning to take note of the ‘ecosocialist’ consciousness of these populations, because they emerge with strength in defense of nature, and because (among these peoples) it is the society that makes decisions. This universality of indigenous consciousness shows us that it is not an ethnic characteristic, but that it was the form of human existence since the beginning. “We have arrived at a crucial conjuncture: Either humanity recovers its primitive ethics or it extinguishes itself, crushed by the egotistical voracity of the great transnational corporations. “To return to primitive ethics does not mean to disdain all of the positive contributions of civilization. It will be societies themselves that determine which contributions of civilization we can continue enjoying and in what form, without putting the subsistence of the species in danger. “In terms of matriarchy I am in complete agreement; it will not mean the oppression of men. Also in this we will return to the original ethic, which fortunately we can still see in the Mosuo of the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, a society free of machismo. “In the common struggle for ‘a world where many worlds fit’ (which is not only necessary but urgent, before the system exterminates the species), one of our fundamental tasks is to struggle in ever more widespread ways for the freedom of Maroon. We will bring together ever more voices to get him out of prison. We can do it.” —Hugo Blanco, former political prisoner, leader of the Campesino Confederation of Peru; editor of the journal Lucha Indígena MAROON THE IMPLACABLE THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF RUSSELL MAROON SHOATZ Edited by Fred Ho and Quincy Saul Editors’ Note The essays in this volume represent the prison writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz up until the year of publication. Prior to this book, these essays were scattered far and wide across pamphlets, zines, and websites. We did our best to collect everything, but it is possible that some slipped through our net. In addition, Maroon is certain to keep writing, and readers are encouraged to follow the continuing evolution of his thought by reading his blog at www.russellmaroonshoats.blogspot.com. These essays do not appear in exact chronological order but are pre- sented thematically in a way that we hope will demonstrate the breadth and evolution of Maroon’s thought. In some of his writings, following the lead of many feminist activists and scholars, Maroon uses alternative spellings, for example “womyn” (singular) and “wimmin” (plural). These, along with some other alternative spellings (“amerikkka”/“Amerika,” etc.) and some slang/colloquialisms which appear throughout the text, have been left unchanged from Maroon’s original texts. Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz Edited by Fred Ho and Quincy Saul © PM Press 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org Cover design by John Yates Cover illustration by Carlito Rovira Layout by Jonathan Rowland ISBN: 978-1-60486-059-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2012955003 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to express our love and gratitude to the following people and organizations, who all contributed and made possible this very impor- tant collection of writings by Russell Maroon Shoatz, which we believe will become an iconic text in the years to come: Russell Shoatz III, Sharon Shoatz, and Theresa Shoatz; Kanya D’Almeida; Iyanna Jones and the Black Waxx crew; Carlito Rovira (for the beautiful painted cover image); Steve Bloom (for copyediting); Matt Meyer and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge; Bret Grote; everyone in Scientific Soul Sessions and Ecosocialist Horizons; special gratitude to Lutie Spitzer (whose munificent generosity and matron support is unmatched); our friends at PM Press (Craig O’Hara and Ramsey Kanaan); all of the activists who’ve been supporting political prisoners in the United States; and to everyone who, over the years, has kept Maroon’s writings alive and circulating, without whose efforts this book would not have been possible; but most of all to Maroon himself for his graciousness, inspiration, and leadership to all of us! Note that a major new book, Maroon’s autobiography (cowritten and edited by Kanya D’Almeida with Fred Ho), will be forthcoming in 2013. Everyone, please join the Campaign to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz and all U.S. political prisoners! Fred Ho and Quincy Saul CONTENTS Foreword: To the Outer World from xi Within: The Ferocity to Be Free • Chuck D Introduction: The Revolutionary Maroon 1 Quincy Saul Prelude: Fire in the Hole!: Why Russell 13 Maroon Shoatz Is Important to Creative Revolutionaries! • Fred Ho About These Writings: Author’s Note 21 Russell Maroon Shoatz (2012) I Am Maroon! (1995) 29 Message from a Death Camp (1997) 37 Twenty-First-Century Political Prisoners: 43 Real and Potential (2002) Taxpayers and Prison: A Fool’s Paradise 49 (2011) Death by Regulation: Pennsylvania Control 55 Unit Abuses (1995) The Black Liberation Struggle in 63 Philadelphia (2006) Black Fighting Formations: Their Strengths, 79 Weaknesses, and Potentials (1994–1995) The Dragon and the Hydra: A Historical 101 Study of Organizational Methods (2006)
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