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Let's Get Educated

I liked the PLN's proposal concerning getting outside people and prisoners together to lobby the legislature to change the laws in that state. I have done similar work here (in New York), to the point of actually writing a legislative bill and having it sponsored in the N.Y. Assembly.

What is also extremely important, and (a subject) I would like you to address in the newsletter, is the report that Black males are more rapidly entering prison than enrolling in college. I would very much appreciate it if you would make a call to all progressive elements, both inside and out, to encourage and demand Black and all other "correct thinking" prisoners get their GEDs and enter college programs and studies.

Our future depends on having well educated and literate comrades, capable of building and sustaining progressive political movement. We need those who will be able to establish alternative education programs, a new generation of revolutionary and progressive lawyers, folks who will challenge status quo politicians in the political arena, and social scientists and economists who can help to evolve a new world economic order.

We must be able to recognize revolutions take years, and sometimes generations to accomplish the task. That reforms and survival programs (pending revolution) must develop into a tactical equation within a revolutionary strategy. Our task is to save those who can be saved and to evolve a new generation with the intelligence and mental acumen to lead the masses to national liberation and salvation.

In these days and times, ignorance, drugs and poverty are the malignant ills of a society spawned by racist capitalism. And these ills make the efforts of revolutionaries that much more difficult. In their ignorance and level of abject poverty, the masses are more apt to fight amongst themselves for the few spoils of the system. They must be educated as to who the real enemies are, and this ultimately means such education must be calculated in a formula for revolution.

It is incumbent upon revolutionaries to ensure our young and impoverished are in fact educated. Unfortunately, we do not have in place an alternative educational process, but we are capable of using what we got to get what we need. We should be in the forefront of compelling prisoners across this entire country to not come out of prison the same way you came in.

Like your computer (ownership) program for prisoners serves a purpose to make prisoners computer literate, and with psychological motivation for development, we may produce ex-prisoners capable of building the programs necessary to off-set the levels of suffering people are confronting in the Black and poor communities.

Therefore, while it may be reported more Black men are entering prison than those entering into college, in four years we want to be able to report more men in prisons have earned college degrees than all colleges across the country. Let's turn these prisons into universities of learning, and produce a new generation of progressive activists and revolutionaries. We will have fighters with the complimentary street wisdom, academic know-how, plus penitentiary survival technique to challenge the system on a new level of struggle!

-- Jalil M., Attica

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