Revolutionaries Do Not Support State Executions
Ali Khalid Abdullah October 1998
This peice was published in the British Anarchist magazine Black Flag in 1999.
https://libcom.org/article/black-flag-217-1999
In speaking with various prisoners abut their political views, beliefs and theories, I have found that there are a lot of very ignorant prisoners when it comes to the issue of $tate executions, aka “death penalty” murders.
To my shock I’ve discovered (in the Michigan death kkkamps) there are so-called “revolutionaries” and “Black Nationalist” prisoners who are in support of $tate executions when it comes to the $tate executing white supremacists, skinheads or nazis. They’ve also expressed their acceptance of $tate executions for child molesters, rapists and for crimes against the elderly. However, what they have failed to realise is that $tate executions are unjust because the $tate is unjust. These prisoners have overlooked the fact that, on the percentage, more non-whites have been executed by the $tate than whites, and that today more non-whites are sitting on death row than whites. They also do not realise that innocent people have been murdered by the $tate. That police officers, detectives, prosecutors and judges have allowed fundamental rights of the accused to be trampled over, evidence to be covered up, and have allowed inadequate $tate-appointed attorneys to railroad people in prison(death kkkamps) by giving them substandard legal representation. And that, due to the Effective Death Penalty Act and similar legislation (such as the Anti-Terrorist Act) passed by $tate and federal government officials, these inadequacies will affect death row prisoners rights even up to the appeal process.
These people who support $tate executions do not think of how many prisoners on death row have been denied judicial due process and have suffered/are suffering such violations as suppression of the U.$. Constitution’s first amendment rights; take for example Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black man on death row in Philadelphia, who is accused of killing a white police officer and is articulating the wrongs done to him and hundreds/thousands of others by prisonkkkrats and the U.$ “injustice” system.
These so-called revolutionaries and Black Nationalists, who support $tate sponsored executions for certain groups of people who’ve committed the acts I mentioned earlier in this piece, have not studied history and noted in the U.$. those on death row are predominantly poor people, the uneducated, mis-educated, the chronically unemployed or those employed at substantial slave wage jobs often earning less than $7,000 a year. Or they are those who stand on the left side of the nation’s ultra-conservative political sociological and religious spectrum. These are the ones who wind up on death row and are executed by the $tate.
They have obviously not taken into account that this system is corrupt and inadequate to properly administer JUSTICE – because justice in Amerikkkan kkkourts has many false faces. The judicial system is controlled not by the people, nor does it represent the people, but is controlled by big business, by the giant corporations who lobby politicians and spend multi-millions of dollars to support their lying campaigns for political re-election, professing to be “tough on crime” but in reality seeking private aggrandizement. They have become the dictators of political interests, seeing to it that heir own private and kapitalist interests are always represented. The politicians, in turn, run up huge taxpayer bills and advertise smear campaigns against other corrupt politicians, all of them trying to gain political position and power to do the nasty bidding of their corporate-kapitalist masters.
The media has successfully influenced not only the working class but also the prisoner class that languishes in prison death kkkamps as a result of the “lock ’em up” mentality that has this country in a frenzy for more cops, more $tate control over the lives of the people, more judges and more prison death kkkamps. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, coming form corporate-kapitalist control but suffering, corruption, lies and cover-ups, excessive spending, war plans for Third World nations and more zeal for power and dominance.
With this understanding, how can we justly support the $tate’s claim of administering justice, especially when it takes the lives of falsely accused citizens? We can’t, when we see that law enforcers (police, detectives and prosecutors) and the kkkourts themselves are negligent of the laws that are supposed to govern this society.
I am appalled that any person could or would dare support $tate executions regardless of whom the $tate has seen fit to murder. And it is even more shocking when Black prisoners and non-prisoners can stand up in support of a system full of racism, homophobia and the imbalance of justice. If we are going to talk about the administering of justice, then we must change the system all together and not reform bits and pieces of the system. The system can not be so simply reformed. We must have the existing order destroyed and then rebuilt by The People and let there be PEOPLE’S JUSTICE! No government or political leaders should make determinations of who lives or dies for the simple fact that government and political leaders do not have the interests of the people at heart. Not to mention the fact that the government and politicians are engaged in widespread global murders.
People, and especially those who have been and are vitimized by the $tate, should get out of the thought/habit of believing any form of $tate murder is justifiable, even if it is carried out against a particular person for committing what might appear to be a justifiable act. The mind-set should be that WE THE PEOPLE must administer justice, supervising and consenting to our own laws and rules. Any person who claims to be for revolution or autonomy for a particular group and who then turns around and claims support for any form of $tate execution/murder, is not a revolutionary.