Politics for the Imprisoned

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Politics for the Imprisoned:

A self-awareness, self-empowerment

& self-defence handbook

By

Craig W.J. Minogue


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First Edition - 2012

This is a not-for-profit publishing initiative which is aimed at community education and personalempowerment. This book is not for sale and it will be distributed free to people in prison. The publishing of

this book is made possible by private donations.An electronic version of this book as a PDF is freely available on Craig Minogue's website at:

www.craigminogue.org for printing and distribution by and to any person.

A Red Triangle Production, Melbourne Victoria which is published and distributed by:

Dr Craig W.J. Minogue PhDPO Box 273

CORIO VICTORIA 3214.

Copyright Craig W.J. Minogue. 2012

Craig Minogue asserts his right to be identified as the author of this work.

Minogue, Craig 1962Politics for the imprisoned: A self-awareness, self-empowerment & self-defence handbook.

Bibliography.ISBN :000000000

1. Imprisonment. 2. Politics. 3. Australia. 4. Autoethnographic account and analysis of imprisonment andpolitics. 5. Memoir. 6. Craig Minogue. 7. Political activism.

ebook by EBooks by Designwww.ebooksbydesign.co
http://www.craigminogue.org/http://www.ebooksbydesign.co/http://www.ebooksbydesign.co/http://www.ebooksbydesign.co/http://www.craigminogue.org/


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Contents

Forward

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - The situation you find yourself in

Chapter 3 - How you can help yourself?

Chapter 4 - Engaging with the system and talking with the screws

Chapter 5 - What is prison politics?

Chapter 6 - What has politics got to do with you?

Chapter 7 - What's 'Right' and what's 'Left'?

Chapter 8 - The difference between Right and Left in AustraliaChapter 9 - Political issues in Australia

Chapter 10 - The role of the Church and religion in politics

Chapter 11 - Blaming others and not the system

Chapter 12 - Voting in State and Federal elections

Chapter 13 - Political prisoners in Australia

Chapter 14 - What is the story with Unions

Chapter 15 - What is the story with jailhouse lawyers?

Chapter 16 - What is the story with men in prison who think Nazis are "a good go"?

Chapter 17 - The politics of pushing in line Feedback and future versions of this book

Appendix A - How to Benefit From a Prison Sentence

Appendix B - How to address an issue in writing

Appendix C - 'Concept Unity' by Yskari Yero Douglas and 'How Consensus Works' fromCritical Resistance

Appendix D - What level of political knowledge do prisoners have?

Appendix E - Craig Minogue v The Public Sector Union - a sad story of stupidity

Glossary of terms and words used

Further reading

About the author

Why the images?

References


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Forward

This book is written from the point of view of Craig Minogue who is a prisoner in Victoriaand it relies on Craig's personal experience to show how politics is relevant. When the textsays: 'I have done', or 'my experience is', then the 'I' and 'my' is Craig's voice.

This book has a wider relevance than just what happens in Victoria since politics and theunderlying issues for prisoners are much the same everywhere. There are, however, somedifferences from State to State. Craig hopes that in future versions of this book, men andwoman from every Sate and Territory in Australia will make a contribution with Chapters oftheir own.

What this book is about is made obvious by the title, Politics for the imprisoned: A self-awareness, self-empowerment & self-defence handbook.

Why is this book published as an ebook when prisoners don't have access to the internet? Theshort answer is because of the cost. Craig does not have the funds to have this book printedand distributed in the normal way, and there is no incentive for a publisher in a free book. Ifthe small individual cost of printing and postage is born by people who have family andfriends in prison then there is a greater possibility of this book been read. So, if you knowsomeone in prison, please feel free to print a copy of this book from the PDF version andsend it to them. If you are thinking of having it bound, then please have it bound in a plasticspiral spine, and not a wire spiral spine as some prisons, especially high securitymanagement/punishment units do not allow the wire versions.


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Chapter 1 - Introduction

With the exception of asylum seekers and refugees who are kicked around like a politicalfootball, politics makes more of a difference to our lives as prisoners, than to any other groupof people in the community. Issues of crime and punishment are significant parts of most

political campaigns because they are emotive issues which attract attention.

Politics is important for our lives, but the best way to learn about it is not in a text book.Rather this book has been written with examples that are relevant for the prisoners who arereading it. This book is also a personal account of the things I have done in prison. Peopleshould write about what they know best, and that is their lived experience and the lessonsthey have learned from that experience. This is what I have done in this book.

Our sources of knowledge about the world and our place in it are dumbed- down by themedia and the politics of a sound-bite statement on the TV news. The media has us waiting to

be spoon-fed knowledge and understandings about the world and our place in it, in little bite-size pieces that we don't have to chew, but just swallow. This easy to swallow diet leads us toliving a fast food existence which has no substance. This is one of the reasons many prisonersthink politics has nothing to do with them. And look where that's got us?

Although this is not a text book like you would find in school, you are going to have to do alittle bit of work when you read this book. There will be stuff that you will need to chew andnot just swallow. You may not understand some words, but if you read the sentence it shouldmake enough sense for you to go on. It is unreasonable for anyone to expect to know theexact meaning of every word in a book, but if you put in a little effort you will understand themeaning of what is being said. There is a list of words and their definitions at the end of this

book called a Glossary which you can look up it there is a word that you don't know.This book, like everything else in life, will only benefit you if you put some effort into it.You will only get out what you put in. The more you put in, the more you will get out of itand the more empowered you will become.

The titles of the Chapters say what they are about, it's not complicated so there is not going tobe a long introduction talking about what the book is about or how it is laid out. Let's just doit! So, just start reading and working your way from one Chapter to the other and it will allmake sense and come together. And hopefully be the end of the book you will become

politically aware and empowered with knowledge to defend yourself and others.


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Chapter 2 - The situation you find yourself in

This book aims to help you understand your situation, and with that understanding it is hopedthat you will be able to improve your own situation. This book is all about helping you stand-up for yourself and to defend yourself. But there needs to be a willingness to take up what isoffered, there needs to be a sense of social, political and human entitlement which says that itis possible to stand-up for yourself and defend your dignity.

Human entitlement is about your rights as a person, rights which should be the same for youas they are for everyone else. Your dignity as a person is about you feeling that you areworthy of respect, and you having a sense of pride in yourself which others can and shouldrespect. But we all know that we in prison don't get treated like everyone else. Of course weare in prison as a punishment, but this does not mean that we should be treated like shit.Human entitlement and dignity is about not taking shit. And let's face it, shit is not good,

that's why they call it shit, because it is shit.No-one can give you a right not to be treated like shit. Personal rights need to be asserted bysaying: "I am not taking that shit." You assert your rights by speaking-up and standing-up foryourself and saying: "You can't do that because ...." And you need to have an argument forwhy they can't do whatever they want to do to you. By doing some work and learning aboutthe political, social and legal system in which you are trapped, you will be able to argue foryour rights, your entitlements and your dignity.

If you are willing to learn and to stand-up for yourself, or not, is all about the attitude youchoose to have. "Do you think you should be treated better? Do you think the political, prisonand social systems are unfair to you?" If "Yes", then the next question is: "Are you willing to

do something about it?" If you do not think you should be treated lawfully and fairly, thenyou may was well just give-up and stop complaining because no-one is going to help youunless you show a willingness to help yourself. There is a lot of personal power associatedwith the attitude you choose to take about your situation, and this can be a negative or

positive power in your life.

In his book,Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl tells of his experiences as a prisonerin a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. He says that: 'Everything can betaken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude inany given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way' (Frankl 2004 p.75). Victor Franklsays that there is a potential in life for an inner victory, even under the most miserable

conditions; like being in a concentration camp where the guards are trying to kill you (Frankl2004 p.81). Even in a Nazi death camp people had a choice about how they behaved, if theyhelped their fellows or if they only looked after themselves, if they survived, or if they died.All this depended in part on luck, but also it depended on their attitude and the choices theymade every day. It's the same for you. Choices can always be made to help yourself and yourfellows, or just vegetate and wait for the end of the sentence.

Here is something to chew: If I quote from a book I will put single 'quote' marks around itand put a note in the text like the one I have just used about Viktor E. Frankl's book. If youlook at the end of this book you will see a list of books and other documents which I haveused in writing this book. In this way I am not passing off what someone else has written asmy own work. However, you can read the book and just ignore the notes in the text - that iswhat most people do anyway. If you like the sound of the quotes and want to get the book


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yourself, the details are in the list. The 'Frankl 2004 p.81' may look confusing at first, but it'sreally not.

In some places in this book I will suggest "how" you should do something, but I will writemore about "why" than "how." My thinking is that if you know "why" you should be doingsomething and what you will get out of it, then you have enough street smarts to work out"how" to do it for yourself. And this book is about self-empowerment, and self-empowermentis about you having the strength and the confidence to defend yourself, not have someoneelse tell you how to do it.

There is an old saying, that if you give a person a fish and he or she will eat for a day, but ifyou teach the person how to fish, then they will eat for life. But this saying presumes a lot, forexample, it presumes that the person has:

a. the fishing equipment;b. the cognitive skills to handle the equipment;c.

a sense of social or human enfranchisement which says that it is possible for them tostand by the water and fish without being moved on by a person in a blue uniform;

d. the will and motivation, and the opportunity to take several hours to learn and to allowsomeone else to teach them how to fish; and

e. have the patience to fish, rather than just steal a fish, or wait for a handout or gohungry.

Social or human enfranchisement is about feeling that you belong as an equal person in asociety.

An old meaning of the word "enfranchise" means to free a slave. Nowadays the word means

to have the right to vote and it's called "the political franchise". Having the right to vote isseen as acknowledging that a person has control over their own mind and their own affairsand is entitled to have a say. If you have a vote you have a say in the Government whichmakes the laws. In the past women did not have the right to vote because male dominatedsociety treated women like children who had to be told what to do - kind of like the way

prisoners are treated to day.

But to get back to the fishing example. In my experience many people in prison don't havethe equipment or the skills they need to look after themselves. And they don't, because for anumber of different reasons those things have been withheld from them, like the vote beingwithheld from women and certain people were held as slaves in the past. But women got thevote and slaves were freed because people fought for those rights.

The situation prisoners find themselves in needs to be seen in light of the fact that many of usin prison have been told (one way or another) throughout our lives that we will never amountto anything. Many prisoners lack a sense of social or human enfranchisement. And this isreinforced every day by the way they are treated. And who can blame them? As a localexample, look at the way the Ombudsman in Victoria behaves. The Ombudsman is the maincomplaints authority for prisoners, but the Ombudsman finds only one complaint about the

prison system substantiated each year. If it is 600, 700 or 800 complaints in any given yearmade by prisoners - still only one token complaint is substantiated. By comparison, about23% of complaints about police are substantiated (Minogue 2002). This does not mean that

prisoners should not complain, or that their complaints are nonsense. It means that we have to

press harder when we make a complaint. It means that we have to present as many facts aspossible and say who the witnesses are, who will support our complaint and so on. And when


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the Ombudsman writes back and says: "Prison staff are lovely blokes doing a great job", weneed to write back and say that is bullshit and point out how the Ombudsman has got itwrong. All this is hard work, I know. And many of our fellow prisoners think: "What is the

point in complaining?" The point is the attitude which is being demonstrated - that you arenot going to take shit. The point is that you are fighting for your rights. But many people in

prison do not fight for their rights. Why is that?In ancient Rome, the lowest class of citizens were called the "proletariat." In Marxist politicaltheory the term "proletariat" is used to refer to the mass of ordinary workers or working-class

people. The political radical Karl Marx thought that there was a lower and more miserableclass of person than the proletariat, he called these people the "lumpenproletariat." The Greekword "lumpen" means "rag." So what Karl Marx was saying is that the lumpenproletariat area political limp rag, people who are pushed around by their economic, social and politicalcircumstances without fighting back, without trying to improve their own conditions. Thelumpenproletariat are people who are so miserable and so oppressed that they don't have thewill to stand-up for themselves, or even to join with attempts by others to improve their own

conditions and change society for the better.Every day we can see other prisoners who can't be bothered to complain or to fight for a

better deal. These prisoners get pushed around by the system as if they are a lip rag, even ifthey work out in the gym every day and are quick to use violence on their fellow prisoners.Many prisoners have had their heads knocked off their shoulders so often, that they are afraidto stick them up again. Some prisoners think: "If we complain about that, they may take whatlittle we have now." My answer to that is: "Well let them take it and we will complaint aboutthat as well." If something is being held over your head to blackmail you, then that thing isnot worth having.

Some prisoners want someone to complain, but many of them are not willing do it

themselves, because they don't have the skills or the belief in themselves that they can do it.Many prisoners behave like members of the lumpenproletariat. And these prisoners are dealtwith by those with power over them as if they are no more than a dirty rag. That this situationexists, is not surprising when there is no popular effort to defend prisoners or to help themassert their rights. There are no prisoner rights movements in Australia like there are in somecountries, and the prisoners themselves are not very organized because they don't have a

political understanding of their situation. So, we can see the situation we are in. Now we needto think about how we can help ourselves.


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Chapter 3 - How you can help yourself?

The situation which prisoners in general find themselves, has been outlined, so let's now lookat how you can help yourselves. (If you are reading this book and you have got this far thenyou are well on the way to helping yourself).

So, how can you help yourself and how can you become politically active? First, you need toinform yourself about what is going on in society as that relates to the criminal justice systemand the prison. Then you need to take a position on what is happening, support what youagree with and oppose what you don't agree with. In other words, do something about it.Don't be passive. Speak-up, help others to speak-up and complain, stand-up for yourself andothers. Of course it is not easy to speak-up and stand-up, it is not because the system isagainst you doing that. How many times have you heard the system tell prisoners to do theirown time and keep their heads down?

Unfair political relations, and the things you have done, have you positioned as the bottomrung of the social ladder. The political conversation that goes on about you is always aimed attrying to talk you out of sticking your head up. This is why Prison Officers are always telling

prisoners they should keep their heads down and do their own time. Don't listen to them.When has the system, the ruling-class and their agents of law-and-order ever done the rightthing by you? Why should you be giving them a free pass by not complaining, by not stickingyour head up and defending yourself and others like you? When a Prison Officer tells you to"fly under the radar" and to "keep your head down and do your own time", do you think heror she is telling you that for your benefit, to make your time easier, or for their benefit and the

benefit of the system?

Does the system want prisoners who are complaining, and making waves, and sticking-up foreach other as a group, or do they want isolated individuals doing their own time? I don't needto answer this question because the answer is obvious to every prisoner; you know theanswer. Isolated individuals who are flying under the radar and not sticking their heads up,are politically limp rags who are being pushed around. Prisoners who make waves and stick-up for each other as a group are acting politically and they are not pushed around as easy as alimp rag.

Prison Officers don't fly under the radar when it comes to their union making demands forincreased wages and better working conditions. Prison Officers stand together when they goon strike or run industrial action, or in any number of other situations. But they never stop

telling prisoners not to stand together because they know that collective action is powerful asthey use it all the time - that's one of the reasons they are all dressed in the same uniform. Butwe have a uniform as well, so we too can look to our common interests rather than beingselfish and not politically engaged with trying to make our situation better.

I said in the introduction that I was not going to tell you what to do, but despite that you mayhave expected more from a Chapter headed "How you can help yourself?" This book isdesigned to provide the opportunity for you to think about the ideas associated with politicalawareness, self-empowerment and self-defence. And once you start thinking for yourself youwill develop your own ways of acting without being told what to do. But there are a few

pointers about what to do, like that which is the subject of the next Chapter.


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Chapter 4 - Engaging with the system and talking with the screws

The culture of violence and interpersonal terrorism which is directed at us by the prison andits staff is real. It may not seem like that from day to day and it does not look like that to

people who are taken on guided tours around the more modern prisons by the staff. But we allknow that we can be bashed and gassed (nearly to death) in a Management Unit at any time.If you don't believe it, then think for a moment of what would happen if you punched aPrison Officer in the face. The fact is, as we all know, that 'most prisoners wouldn't think ofhurting a prison officer', but the use of interpersonal violence against prisoners by the by staffis accepted by most prisoners without formal complaint (Goulding 2007 pp.62,99). Most

prisoners respond to the violence and interpersonal terrorism of the prison system by not'talking with the screws' and 'minimising contact' saying: 'I don't like them and they don't likeme' (Goulding 2007 pp.66-67). How prisoners interact with prison staff is a political and

class issue. It is because poor and socio-economically disadvantaged prisoners don't have amiddle-class sense of entitlement, they don't look on the prison staff as public servants andthemselves as members of the public - albeit temporarily imprisoned. Many prisoners think:'there is an invisible line ... there's an apprehension of actually approaching an officer andasking them for something' (Goulding 2007 p.68).

That prisoners don't seek welfare or any other assistance from the staff must make the staff'sday a lot easier. We all know that many prisoners think: 'prison officers aren't welfareworkers ... how could an officer be a welfare worker when the next minute he could turn akey on you or put you in shackles ... it's a conflict of interests' (Goulding 2007 p.66). That isright, there is a conflict of interests between the role of the custodial officer, turning the key,using force and putting a prisoner in chains, and the welfare role. But prisoners have a choicein relation to how they deal with Prisoner Officers. Prisoners can let Prison Officers off-the-hook by not dealing with them in the welfare role, so the Officers can do their custodial roleand turn the key and all the other stuff without feeling the embarrassment of the conflict ofinterests. Or on the other hand prisoners can deal with Prison Officers about welfare issues,and make their custodial role more difficult.

Prisoners should make it personal. Prisoners should ask for help and for access to supportservices and the assistance they need. Prison Officers work in a prison for the benefit of the

prisoners. They have a legal responsibility for prisoners call a "duty of care." It is their job toprovide access to services and support for us. Prison Officers are public servants and a bigpart of their role is to serve "the public", which includes us prisoners. Prison Officers are here

for our benefit, we are NOT here for their benefit so they can have a job sitting on their arseall day.

Accepting the "us and them" division between Officers and prisoners, and refusing to engagewith Prison Officers in a welfare role, as most prisoners do, is counterproductive and leaves

prisoners without the support that they may have needed. Why excuse the welfare role, soPrison Officers can fulfil their custodial role without an internal conflict? I don't get it. PrisonOfficers should feel conflicted when they do bad shit to other people, and this conflict can behighlighted by your engagement with them about personal and welfare matters. When

prisoners get in their faces, and ask for personal help it makes it hard for them to treat thatsame prisoner like shit the next day.

In some prisons in Victoria, prisoners are encouraged to call staff by their first names. Thereare prisoners who don't like this, they think it is crossing the line that should divide Prison


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Officers and prisoners. Let's think about this. If there is an interaction between me and aPrison Officer, my calling him "Mr Freeman" and him calling me "Minogue", then it is aninteraction which lacks a personal element. Mr Freeman and Minogue are the objectifiednames of the social roles we occupy. But if I say: "Henry can you phone the property storefor me and ask Graham if...", it is a more personal request made of the man and not the

Officer. It is easier for a Prison Officer to be a hard-arse if he or she can hide behind the maskof: "I'm only doing my job" or some other excuse.

I think this is a really important point for us all to think about. I believe that making itpersonal makes it more difficult for Prison Officers to do the wrong thing to us. This is not tosay that prisoners and Officers should get too close, but being too distant makes it easier forthem to act in the role of a sniper and take your head off your shoulders. It is more difficultfor them if they are up close and personal with you and then to take your head off yourshoulders while you are looking them in the eye and addressing them in the same way as theirfriends do.

If you are making the effort to read and understand this book, you are in a good position to

start working for yourself and for others to improve your conditions and change yoursituation for the better. Let me say again that this is not a "how to" book that will tell youwhat to do, rather it is a "why to" book which explains why you should be doing somethingrather than vegetating or cave dwelling and just waiting for the time to be over. This chaptercan be a good starting point for a conversation between prisoners. Make a photocopy of thischapter if you can, or lend the book to others and have a conversation about it.

There are politically aware prisoners in the system. People who make complaints all the time,jailhouse lawyers, people who do a lot of education and who can be seen doing a lot ofreading. If you are not one of these people, then you can ask one of these types of people ifthey will help you, and it is my guess that you will find that they will help you if you ask

them. The work you can do, like the work I do, is not going to change the world but it is agood start. It is work 'on a minor scale' as I have called it, but it will make a positivedifference to your life and the lives of people you help (Minogue 2010). If you are not willingto do anything, if you think you don't have long enough and you are just waiting until you getout, or you have some other reason, or is it an excuse, for not doing anything. Then there isone thing you can do, and that is please don't make life hard for the people who are doingsomething. Don't make life hard for people who are standing- up for themselves and others.We all have different ways of coping with our time in prison, and some people need to agitateand stand-up for themselves and for others; this is how they survive. So, please don't makewhat it takes to survive for others harder than it needs to be - if you do that, then you areacting much like a Prison Officer who makes life hard for people.

Just because the work prisoners do can be called political or being a jailhouse lawyer, doesnot mean that it is not personal. Feminists have a saying that: "the personal is political and the

political is personal." Feminist academic Joanna Russ rightly says: 'whenever people talkabout the difference between politics and personal life, I'm dumbfounded. ...I can't imagine a"political" stance that doesn't grow out of "personal" experience' (Russ 1985 p.37). And so itis political and personal when defending yourself and others in prison. Doing political workor being a complainer or a jailhouse lawyer is not a hobby, it's not something people do to fillin the time, it's personal, it's about who the person "is", not what they "do."

I engage every day with the Prison Officers and the management here in prison, and a lot ofmen criticise me for that. When I was at Barwon Prison I was in what is called a 'long term

honour unit' (that name is a bit of a wank) but I was with older men with longer sentencesthan most who had better living conditions in that particular unit. I heard some of the men say


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of me and my activities: "That fucking bloke is talking to the screws again!" But if there wasan issue which impacted upon them, the same men would ask me to talk to the Officers, findout what the situation was, or if it could be resolved, and let them know what was happening.But, the next day it will be: "That fucking bloke is talking to the screws again!" At Barwon in2007 one such instance arose and one of the loud-mouth thugs who made my life difficult,

asked me as I was walking away from the Officers in the unit, if I had found out about theissue of the moment. I had, and I said: "Yes mate I have, but there they are (pointing to theOfficers) you can go and ask them yourself, they don't bite." I thought his response was goingto be violence and I had to watch my back for the next week or so. This man, and people likehim, are members of the lumpenproletariat, they will not do any work to help themselves, butthey want to benefit from my work, and to add insult they will not support my political work,in fact they shit-can me, and if I withhold the results of my work from them, then I'm aneven-worse arsehole.

These members of the lumpenproletariat do not have the communication skills, or the self-esteem or the confidence to speak-up for themselves or for others. The can't engage with the

staff and management of the prison to defend themselves and others. So these members of thelumpenproletariat cover their lack of skills, self-esteem and confidence with their professedhatred of the screws and not engaging with them. More often than not, the lack of skills, self-esteem and confidence is covered with violence and big muscles. Communication skills, self-esteem and confidence can all be learned. It just takes the strength of character to admit thatone needs to learn new skills and then to ask others for some help.

And while I am talking about the issue of not breaking each others balls, lets get over thewhole: "Do you think you are better than me because you use big words" bullshit. Knowledgeis a tool to be used, and people should ask themselves how that tool is being used, rather than

being jealous or resentful because they are too lazy to do the work to learn to use the tool forthemselves. If a prisoner is willing and able to do political work for themselves and for other

prisoners, if they are able to engage with Prison Officers and management on a level that isover the heads of the average prisoner, then that prisoner should be supported in that workrather than being judged as putting others on show by using big words.

People who have so very little education and learning, like most prisoners, see education andlearning, books and computers in a cell, as representing what they don't have. For many

prisoners education represents their exclusion from a better life which education and learningcan bring. But rather than realising that anyone can get on the educational band-wagon withsome personal effort, and then asking how they would go about doing something forthemselves, they wrongly blame the educated political prisoner. In other words, we see thelumpenproletariat in action again, they are not going to help themselves, and they are even

going to make it hard for people who are trying to help their fellow prisoners. Generallyspeaking many prisoners are not able to help themselves because of the attitude they adopt(Minogue 2008c).

And with this, we are back to the issue of the attitude we choose to have. It is worth repeatingwhat Viktor E. Frankl said of his experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration campduring the Second World War: 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; thelast of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,

to choose one's own way' (Frankl 2004 p.75). Even in a Nazi death camp people had achoice about how they behaved, if they helped their fellows, or if they only looked afterthemselves. If they survived or if they died, depended on some luck, but also on their attitude

and the choices they made every day. The same is true for people in prison here and now!


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Despite the difficulties, the prison system, the ball breaking fellow prisoners trying to dragyou down so they can raise themselves up, those prisoners who are able to help themselves,are morally obligated to try to help and educate others. But they also have a right not bedragged down to the miserable depths of the lumpenproletariat.

If you have read up to this point, then you have well and truly taken the first step. The nextstep is up to you. This book can be photocopied and given to others. You can write to the

publisher and get more copies free of charge. Or you can get someone on the outside to printa copy from my website and send it in to you or others. And you can start a conversation withyourself, or better still with others and talk about what you can do to improve your situation.You can get yourself a copy of Viktor E. Frankl's amazing little bookMan's Search for

Meaning, and see how the lessons he learnt about how to survive in the Nazi death campapply to your situation in prison today.

As part of thinking about the next step, ask yourself what issue is important to you and to thepeople around you, and how can you chip away at that issue? What contacts can you make tohelp you in your work on the inside and on the outside? How can you learn more? How can

you make yourself more aware? How can you empower and defend yourself and others for abetter life?

You will find some answers to these questions for yourself if you read on and continue toeducate yourself on politics for the imprisoned.


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Chapter 5 - What is prison politics?

If you are reading this book in prison, then you are in a highly charged political relationshipwith the society in which you live. Crime and punishment, what is judged to be right andwrong conduct by the law, and the reasons for your situation, are all political in one way orthe other. With the exception of your family and ex-prisoners, the way in which every other

person in society views you and treats you is shaped by the politics of crime, imprisonmentand punishment. Of course, there are also many personal issues associated with why and howyou ended up in prison, but they are for you to deal with since this book is about the politicsof your situation.

One thing needs to be put straight from the outset, and that is what prison politics in NOTabout.

Prison politics is NOT about one prisoner not liking another, and shit-canning the otherbehind his or her back. Prison politics is NOT about a crew of prisoners who have a conflictwith another crew of prisoners who are both trying to get on the same rort. Prison politics isNOT about who is getting what job, or ongoing arguments about access to the washingmachine, or someone being a phone hog, or who goes in the gym at what times, or any

bullshit like that.

These petty issues are about interpersonal relationships, not politics. Fighting with each other,stabbing each other in the back (some times literally) gossiping, and spreading rumours, issome-times called prison politics. But this is not right. Politics is associated in the minds ofmany prisoners with this petty crap and for this reason politics has a bad name in prison.

What prison politics is really about, is thinking through and then acting on the issuesassociated with the moral and legal relationship with the society in which you live. It is abouthow prisoners are treated by the media, the Courts and the prison system and how they reactto that treatment. When prisoners stand together and say to the system: "We are not takingthat shit", then this is prison politics in action. When prisoners don't stand together, don't talkamongst themselves and don't try to form a consensus and try to make something happen to

benefit all of them, then this is a failure of prison politics. A failure of prison politics happensbecause people don't understand the political theory associated with the fact that our societyshould be one in which everyone is treated fairly, and they don't understand that because theyhave not been treated fairly.

If society and our relationships with others and the community in general is seen as "every-

person for themselves", then what happens is that everyone ends up on their own andoutnumbered by the gang of people in the blue or black uniforms. If there is no solidarity,then you can't defend yourself and you will get done-over by people with power over youevery single time. And after they have done you over once, they will be back time and timeagain because you become an easy target. You become someone who can be blamed for allthat is wrong with society; people don't feel safe in the street because the media is beating upthe risk of crime - so it's time to kick the prisoner's head in; insurance premiums are beingincreased because of crime - so it's kick the prisoner's head in. And on it goes, this is prison

politics in action and you are the one getting your head kicked-in !

To think that politics has nothing to do with you means you are failing to engage with the

wider circumstances of your life and what is happening to you. Not understanding orengaging with politics because of the petty crap that some people carry on with in their


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interpersonal disputes which they call "politics" is a cop-out, and let's face it, anything thathas the word 'cop' in it can't be good.

So, what politics is not about is now really clear. What politics is and what it has got to dowith you is what the next Chapter is about.


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Chapter 6 - What has politics got to do with you?

Politics is personal, but it is personal in a significant sense and not in a petty sense. Politics ispersonal in that it is about our relationship to our society and how we ethically (or otherwise)respond to Otherness. The term 'Other' and 'Otherness' with a capital 'O' is used to indicatethat what is being talked about is that which is seen as making another person different fromus. We are all individuals, we see and understand the world from our own points of view.Then there are Others who stand with us, or next to us or in opposition to us. The mostobvious form of Otherness is gender. Men and women are obviously different, we have adifferent biology and a different psychology. The problem with differences is that they cancause conflict if they are given too much importance by someone who is looking at the Otherto find a difference, and then use that to defend or assert their sense of Self.

When I write about a 'sense of Self with a capital 'S', I am referring to that thing which makes

you who you are as an individual person. For some people this is the soul or the mind,whatever you call it, Self is that thing which is expressed when a person says "Iam ...". In theway I am using the term, having a sense of Self is more than saying who and what you are, itis about having a confident and centred sense about who and what you are as a person, as a

being who exists with Others.

Issues of Self and Other are moral and philosophical issues, and they are about theunderstandings we have about ourselves and our attitude towards Others, and how we bringthose understandings and attitudes to our judgments about Others. And the judgments wemake about our own actions as they effect Others and ourselves. Moral and ethical

philosophy basically says that if we look hard enough, the differences of the Other are really

not that different after all. We all feel pain and we all suffer. We all want to be free fromunnecessary pain and suffering. We all want to live good lives and have the company of goodpeople around us, people who support us and who we love and who love us in turn. These areimportant common interests in life which are the same for all of us.

I have used the term 'moral' a few times up to this point. When I started to study philosophy Idid not like the words 'moral' and 'morality' because I thought it was an out-of-date term thatwas 'mainly designed to stop people having fun' (Singer 1993 p.l). But the time has come toclaim the term morality back from those that have a world view focussed on prohibitions,mostly to do with sex. I have up to this point used, and I will continue to use, the term and theconcept of that which is 'moral' and 'morality' to be a mental activity which gives aframework to the making of judgments about the actions of moral agents, as those actionsmake a difference to the significant interests of Others. The consequences of actions as theyimpact upon Others are those which are in the moral realm and can be judged to be good or

bad.

Along with avoiding pain and suffering, the moral philosopher Peter Singer has identified inhis Practical Ethics, the 'significant interests' of 'developing one's abilities ... in enjoyingwarm personal relationships, in being free to pursue one's projects without interference' asrelevant moral considerations (Singer 1993 p.31). The concept of 'interests' is used by PeterSinger in a significant sense and not in the sense of the interest that one has as a supporter ofa particular football team. From these significant interests it can easily be imagined how

being put in prison makes a negative difference to a person being able to fulfill their interests.

But there is always a balancing act required when considering what is right or wrong, or goodor bad. Being in prison is bad, but so too is being the victim of a crime. The person who


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commits a crime has, by the very nature of what is generally agreed upon to be a crime, donea wrong. The past bad of committing a crime however, does not change the present or future

preferences and significant interests of a person, or the quality of pain and suffering that aperson is capable of suffering.

But what has all this got to do with politics?

Politics is the way in which we manage our society so that everyone's significant interests areconsidered and given as much weight as they are due.

If our society was not managed like this then it would be every person for themselves and"might would be right." An example of might is right is the way in which the prison treats

prisoners. The prison has the legal and the moral authority to do pretty much whatever it likesto prisoners. Life threatening levels of force are used against prisoners whenever the prisondecides that such violence is needed (Minogue 2005). The prison uses violence on prisoners

because they can. The prison has the power to do what they want because of the politicallypowerful position of the prison and the politically powerless position of the prisoners.

So far, the focus has been on politics of crime and punishment and how that is applied to you,and how it effects you here in Australia, but it is not just local politics which is important.The American invasion and occupation of Iraq is an important political event for prisonershere in Australia. Let me explain. The Iraqi people are "the Other" to the "us" of theAmericans and their allies like Australia, and prisoners need to pay attention because when

people are talking about those Others, the enemy, the blacks or the Jews, they are talkingabout the marginalised people of a society; and that's you.

It is important to understand that what happens in prisons today, is transferred out to warzones, and then back again with more extreme violence than before. The American Armytortured all of their Iraqi prisoners in Cell Block 1A in the Abu Ghraib Prison, and they even

killed some of them. It turns out that the American Army Reservists who were in the MilitaryPolice Unit running the prison, were Prison Officers in their civilian lives. One of soldierswho was convicted of torturing prisoners, a man named Chip Frederick, said: 'The Christianin me knows it's wrong, but the Correctional Officer in me just loves to make a grown

man piss himself' (Greene 2004 p.l). So, what has politics go to do with you? Everything.

In his bookBlack Skin White Masks, Frantz Fanon wrote

At first thought it may seem strange that the anti-Semite's outlook should also berelated to that of the Negro-phobe. It was my philosophy professor, a native of theAntilles, who recalled the fact to me one day: "Whenever you hear anyone abuse theJews, pay attention, because he is talking about you." And I found that he was

universally right - by which I meant that I was answerable in my body and in my heartfor what was done to my brother. Later I realized that he meant, quite simply that anti-Semite is inevitably anti-Negro (Fannon 1967 p. 122).

The point that Frantz Fanon is making is an important and relevant one for people in prison.And that is, the person who talks of "the Jew", or "the blacks", or "the rag-heads", or "sand-niggers", is asserting their sense of Self by oppressing another person, so they can suffer intheir place. This is about Otherness. And it is about politics.

The racist is an anti-Semite, that is a person who hates Jews, the same person is a bigot or aracist, that is a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of

Others. When people talk about Others as being the problem, watch-out because they will be


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talking about you next. People in prison are marked as the troublesome Other who should bemade to suffer.

This book is a self-defence manual against the rising tide of racism and fascism, and peoplewho are looking for Others to blame. And the Other who is going to be blamed is you, the

prisoner, the criminal offender. So, the people who are going to need to defend themselvesare prisoners, because prisoners are at the sharp end of oppression in the name of security,

public safety and order. When political leaders in the Government and community leaderstalk about "law-and-order" they are really talking about kicking the prisoners's head off his orher shoulders, and it's your head that is being lined up because you are an Other. The general

public will be made to feel good it your head is kicked-in and this will be a political win forthe person doing the kicking, but it wont be good for you.

Blaming the Other is an easy answer, even we do it. The cops set-me-up, my co-accusedgave-me-up, or "the lawyer fucked me" as Andy Dufresne says in The Shawshank

Redemption (1994). Blaming the Other is a clichd moment that we all buy into at somestage. In The Shawshank Redemption as each man joins the table in the mess hall, they are

asked: "What happened?" The answer, from one man to another is "The lawyer fucked me."Oppressed people have been misled to believe that some Other person or group of Others isto blame - "If it were not for the Jews, or rag-heads, or blacks getting everything, then therewould be more for me." People who hold the power in society are happy to respond to that

bigoted nonsense, and take more away from those minority groups and make more repressivelaws. But what always happens is that this 'taking away' from Others and making of new lawsdoes not stop with those Others. It works like this:

You don't support child sex offenders, do you?

No.

Of course you don't. So you would agree that they should be kept in prison after theirsentence ends because we think they are a danger to the community?

Yes.

Good. Now, lets look at people who have committed violent offences and serious drugoffences, perhaps they should be kept in prison as well if we think they are a danger to thecommunity?

It is difficult for you to disagree with keeping violent and serious drug offenders in prisonpast the end of their sentence, when you have agreed in the case of the danger supposedlyrepresented by sex offenders. The same issue is at stake, does the person represent a danger?

In criminology it is said that if a person would do a burglary on a family home, then thisviolation of social norms and privacy and the sense of Self that is represented by the sanctityof one's home would mean that they would most probably commit rape, and if they wouldcommit rape then they would most probably commit murder. A person's home is their castle.The "sanctity" of one's home means that the personal safety and security it represented it hasthe "ultimate importance" to individual people and society as a whole. So, it is argued bysome criminologist and law-and-order lobbyists that a person convicted of burglary on afamily home represents a danger to the community in much the same way as a convicted sexoffender does.

Almost every State in Australia now has some type of preventative detention laws, or Parole

laws which allow people to be paroled to an accommodation that is inside a prison. Whenpeople talk about the Other, the sex offender, the Jew, the person of colour or the rag-head or


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any other group or individual, and they want that persons head kicked-in, then pay attentionto this political discourse as your head is the next to be kicked-in.

If you point the finger at the Other, and blame the Other, it will come right back at you. Thisis why politics for the imprisoned is important, because all this stuff about the Other is

politics in action. When people blame Others, rather than seeking to improve themselves andtheir situation, they are engaged in a self-destructive exercise that will lead to their owndownfall. As a prisoner you are the Other, you are the victim of your own actions which havegot you to this point and what you need to get yourself out from under this situation, is a

political understanding. And the first place to start to get a political understanding is to knowwhat's 'Right' and what's 'Left' in politics which is the subject of the next Chapter.


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Chapter7 - What's 'Right' and what's 'Left'

It is important to understand the Right and Left of politics.

Lets start on the Right. The "Right" in politics is also know as "conservative" and as"reactionary."

The term "conservative" means a person who does not like to change their ideas and whobelieves in traditional values of personal and social conduct. Conservatives are opposed tosame sex marriage, decriminalising drug use, safe injecting rooms, needle exchange programsas so on. Conservatives favour free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservativeideas which look back to previous generations for ideas of a better life.

The term "reactionary" is a person who opposes political or social progress or reform.Reactionaries look back to a supposed golden age, usually of the 1940s or 1950s. The

conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who was a dominating political forcefor over a decade, made it very clear that his sense of a national and political identity, wasfocussed on the First World War (1914-1918) as the defining event.

The Right focuses its economic and its social policies towards improving the conditions forindividual people and businesses to increase the profits people gain from their activities. Thethinking of the Right goes like this:

If wealthy individuals and businesses receive tax cuts and favourable conditions tomake more profit, then they will employ more people thus giving the working-classemployment so they can pay their own way. If people can pay their own way then the

State will not need to provide as many social welfare services like public health,public transport, unemployment benefits and so on. And if not as much social welfareis needed, then wealthy individuals and businesses will be able to get even more taxcuts, and the size of Government can be cut back as well. In short the economy willrun things if Government let's it.

The Right thinks that big business is better at making a profit and running things thanGovernment, so if there are few regulations of business activities then big businesscan get on with the job of what it does best and then there will be more jobs infactories and shops and service industries (waiters, cooks, cleaners) as people withmoney will spend it, which will in turn create more jobs.

This is called "trickle down economics." If the wealthy business people are looked after, thenit will gradually benefit the poorest as a result of the increasing wealth of the richest who willspend their money and this will trickle down. This can be seen as poor people waiting for thescraps from the rich person's table, but that is a Left-wing view.

Trickle down economics is a pretty tough way to go about things. In the process of getting onwith the job of big profit-making business, some workers will be sacked when a machine is

built to do their job, or an overseas worker is imported from China to do the job at half thewages, or the executives of the company want to pay themselves millions of dollars a year in

bonuses. Yes, workers will be injured and sacked and have their lives ruined, but you have tobreak a few eggs to make an omelet, and it will benefit everyone in the long run as the money

trickles down.


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The people serve the State in Right-wing politics and the State serves big business. And bigbusiness is ruled by "the free market." The "market" is the world economic system. For theRight, the market is in the best position to decide what is a good practice and not Government

policy, or regulation or the people through their elected representatives. If big business ismaking a profit, then it must be a good practice. But as was seen with the ongoing Global

Financial Crisis, big business like banks and stockbrokers, get up to all sorts of tricks anddishonesty like turning a debt into an asset and borrowing money on the debt like they didwith the sub-prime housing crash in the USA.

When the amount of profit which is made each financial year is the sole motive, time andtime again we see companies being run into the ground and workers sacked to keep the

profits high. Maintenance work on infrastructure to keep the enterprise running eats into theprofits, so it is not a priority. Then the trains break down because the system has not beenmaintained, or the power lines spark together and cause fires which kill people and destroythousands of homes. The private companies which now own and operate the public transportnetwork and the power lines, then ask the Government for hundreds of millions of tax payers

money to prop-up the crumbling infrastructure, with the threat that they will walk away fromthe public services like transport and power because they are not profitable enough. Theinsanity of this was demonstrated when ticket sellers and railway station staff were sacked inVictoria and replaced by a ticket machine with a security guard standing next to it all night soit did not get vandalised; this is a Right-wing idea in action. Fewer jobs for people, but more

profits from big business. And when the big business goes bad, the Government bails themout because they are too big to fail and vital social service are tied up in the businesses. Whenover a billion dollars was spent on a new electronic ticketing system for public transport thatdoes not work in Victoria; this is a Right-wing idea in action even though it was a Left-wingGovernment who did this. Rather than jobs for people selling tickets for the public transportsystem, private companies are given bucket-loads of money for the sake of economic

progress; this is a Right-wing idea. Rather than jobs for people staffing the public transportsystem and providing a service, those people are sacked and police are deployed with gunsand other weapons to police the transport system which is unsafe because no-one is staffingthe stations. These are Right-wing ideas in action.

The Right-wing State provides the conditions and laws for employment and propertyownership, and then the people are free to take care of themselves in the capitalist free marketsystem, so in times of trouble, the people are obligated to help the State; not the other wayaround.

The Right is not the friend of the imprisoned person or the working-class person. The Rightof politics is harder on law-and-order issues than the Left. Most of the vocal members of the

law-and-order-lobby are politically of the Right, but if they are not Right-wing, then there is apersonal issue which is a driving force for their law-and-order stance. More police powersand longer prison sentences are all worse under a Right-wing Government that a Left-wingGovernment. The Right will spend $80,000 a year to keep a person in prison rather thanspend $8,000 on drug rehab or mental health services, because the ideology of the Right saysif people have a problem they should get a job and pay for these services and take care ofthemselves. And let's not forget there are private prison operators who make a profit out oflocking people up. Are you starting to get the picture and where you fit into this politicallandscape?

The "Left" in politics is also know as a "progressive" political outlook.

The term "progressive" is used to describe someone who favours social innovation and socialreform. The Left can also be referred to as "socialism", but the political and social reality, and


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the hold that capitalism and the free market has on most people's thinking means thatsocialism is effectively impossible, but it is important to know what the term means.Socialism is a political and economic theory which seeks to organise society so that themeans of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned and or regulated by thecommunity as a whole. The term "the means of production, distribution, and exchange"

means the trade and commerce (the making of consumable items), business, banking andfinance. And these things should all be controlled by the people as a whole.

Remember that the Right-wing thinks that there should be the very least amount of controland regulation over business, banking and finance by the people through their representativesin Government. The Right thinks private individuals and companies should be given a freehand to do what it takes to make profits.

The Right works from a "top down" or "trickle down" approach which looks after the wealthyso they will look after the working-class with jobs and buying their labour through servicesthey use. The Left, in theory, should do the opposite of this. If working-class people are well

paid for their work, if they of good health and with leisure time on their hands, and not

burdened by high prices for the basic necessities of life, then they will spend their money andstimulate the economy, and big and medium size business will do well catering for them asthe working-class are the largest group in society. The thinking of the Left goes like this:

The State serves the people by regulating the economy and big businesses so that thelarger mass of people and their interests in having a good life, are not put ahead of the

personal wealth of a few mega-rich people and companies.

If the State serves the people, then the people will be willing to help the State in timesof trouble.

The mass of working-class people in society will be catered for by the dominantsocial system, so there needs to be laws and policies which protect the human, socialand economic rights and significant interests of minority groups. This thinking is alsocalled pluralism, and it is also referred to as majority rule while respecting minorityrights.

The term "pluralism" is used to describe a political and social system of power-sharingamong a number of political parties and the existence or tolerance of a diversity of ethnicgroups or differing cultures and views within a society.

Of the Right-wing, I said they were not the friend of the imprisoned person or the working-class person. The Left-wing is not necessarily a friend, but at least we are not the enemy tothe same degree as we are to the Right. The Left of politics should not be as hard on law-and-order issues as the Right of politics is, but there is not that much difference these days. Oncriminal justice issues the Left believes individual rights and the natural differences between

people and their circumstances should be considered and taken into account by judgeshearing a matter. The Right-wing favours mandatory sentencing.

The people who are involved in social justice and human rights work which is concernedwith imprisoned people, not that there is very many of them in Australia, are mostly

politically of the Left, and if they are not Left-wing, then it is their personal motivation forthe position they take.

But what is real difference between the Right and the Left in Australia? This question will beanswered in the next Chapter.


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Chapter 8 - The difference between Right and Left in Australia

What is the difference between the Right and Left in Australia? Answering this question isgoing to be the shortest Chapter in the book. The answer to this question is: Not very much atall. In the 2007 election campaign, Kevin Rudd, the Left-wing Labor leader, did not offer'different' leadership from the conservative leader John Howard. Kevin Rudd made it veryclear that he only offered "new" leadership, "younger" leadership, but basically it was thesame leadership. In early 2012, during leadership turmoil in the Labor Party, Julia Gillard, asupposedly progressive Prime Minister, said she drew on John Howard's example of

psychological toughness to get her through the tough times. John Howard is a Right-wingconservative and his political model has become the measure in Australia.

Politics in Australia is mostly a politics of the "centre" where the major parties try to appealto as many voters as possible by sitting either side of the political fence. The best way to

illustrate this is with a diagram.

The difference between the major political parties in Australia is very small, it is thedifference between the Centre Left and the Centre Right. Within each party there are smalland sometimes large groups called factions. The supposedly Left-wing Labor party inAustralia is dominated by a faction called the NSW Right.

In Australia, the progressive Greens are the only political party which offer a real politicalalternative to the centre version of popular politics which we have today.

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Chapter 9 - Political issues in Australia

My motivation for writing this book is found in:

a desire to empower people; the lack of political awareness and analysis by my fellow prisoners; and the troubling fact that many prisoners can be heard talking far Right- wing political

rhetoric about kicking-in the head of the Other.

I hear my fellow prisoners talking about refugees and asylum seekers who arrive by boatwithout valid travel documents, they say: "People who arrive here illegally should be loadedstraight on a plane and taken back to where they came from, and thrown off the plane at theother end." And worse things are said, I have heard men say that refugees and asylum seekers

who are trying to come to Australia: "Should be machine-gunned to death by the navy andhave their boats burnt at sea, because that would stop them coming!" What is this about?

Prisoners who speak-out against refugees and asylum seekers who arrive by boat withoutvisas, seem to be saying that the administrative provisions of the Immigration Law in relationto the need for valid travel documents must be respected and enforced without mercy andeven with a murderous level of force. If men, women and children don't have validdocuments then they should be given short-shrift and dumped back where they came from, orsummarily killed by the border protection police. This is an extraordinary extreme Right-wing position. Even if people don't really mean this, why are they saying it?

Prisoner who talk of deporting and dumping people or killing them, don't, however, talk in

the same terms of hard-arsed law enforcement when it comes to the crimes they commit. Ihave never heard prisoners talking about the need for people like them who commit actualcrimes to be forcibly transported to another country and dumped there, or shot and killed onthe spot by the local police if they are suspected of committing a crime. It needs to beappreciated that entering Australia without valid travel documents is not a "crime" atAustralian law. At international humanitarian law every person has the right to leave theircountry and seek asylum in another country if they are being persecuted, and they can do this

by arriving on a Qantas 747 with or without a passport or by a leaky boat with no passport.But of course the political discourse on this issue is dominated by John Howard who said:"This is our country, and we decide who comes here, and under what circumstances theycome." Read between the lines, what is really being said here by a conservative politician?What thinking and what political ideas are being appealed to about who these people are?

An aside: John Howard left politics in 2007, but his conservative and reactionary viewsagainst refugees and asylum seekers who arrive by boat without visas, remains a powerful

political force in Australia and Left-wing Governments have tried to outdo John Howardhard-arsed policies ever since. They have tried so hard that the High Court of Australia hasfound the hard-arsed laws they have tried to make to be constitutionally invalid. This issue isabout "Otherness", they are not like "us", so they can have their heads kicked-in to score afew political points.

Judged by international standards, Australia has a very low intake of refugees and asylumseekers. Many more people arrive by plane with travel documents and overstay their visasand become "illegal" than have ever arrived by boat. But of course, most of these "illegals"are white or English speaking people. There are over 100,000 foreign students in Australia


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every year, and there are hundreds of thousands of tourists, and tens of thousands of peopleon working visas, but no-one notices them. But a few thousand desperate people seekingshelter, help and respite from persecution who arrive by boat are presented and perceived inthe political and social consciousness of this country as a crisis which threatens the nation.This is a political issue and these people have had their lives turned into a political football to

be kicked back and forth to score a few points. This is a shitty way to treat people.Issues of crime, punishment and the criminal justice system is also a political football whichis kicked back and forth to score a few points - and our heads are the football. The status ofthe prisoner is not that different from the refugees and asylum seekers who arrive by boatwithout visas. If fact the prisoner is worse off than the refugees and asylum seekers as thereare social movements in Australia which seek to advocate for their rights. When refugees andasylum seekers are treated "like prisoners" it is seen as an outrage that human being can betreated in such a way. If a single prison van transports refugees and asylum seekers in onecompartment and prisoners in another compartment, the treatment of one group is an humanrights violation, and that other group get the human rights abuse they deserve. I don't need to

tell you which group prisoners belong to, do I?Australia can very easily absorb the small number of refugees and asylum seekers who seekto come to this country. And their applications for asylum can be processed in the communitylike most other developed countries do. Locking-up traumatised people who have risked theirlives to escape terrible circumstances in mandatory detention for years is an unjust andunnecessary act of bastardization which panders to racist and bigoted elements in Australiansociety. Fear of the Other, fear of the "yellow peril" as Asian people were called 40 yearsago, fear of the so called "rag-head" and "sand- nigger" terrorist today, is the politics offearing the Other. (The events of September 11 demonstrated that terrorists arrive in businessclass with valid travel documents, not by leaky boat). Refugees and asylum seekers are anOther, they are different from us, they represent a threat to the "us" of the dominant cultureand the only way to deal with them, for us to be safe, is to put them in prison camps.

Putting people is prison camps can never be the right answer to any problem. The reality isthat over 95% of the people who do arrive without valid travel documents by boat are foundto be genuine refugees and resettled here or in New Zealand or some other country. So only avery small number of people who arrive by boat, that is a few hundred at most, areconsidered not to be genuine refugees. All of the effort, the billions of dollars, and all of thetime that is taken up in a national debate about a few hundred people every year is ridiculousand completely out of touch with the reality of the situation. But it does score political points,and there are points in kicking the heads of people who arrive by boat was started by theconservative politician John Howard - the man with a persona, political and social frame of

reference which was founded in the First World War (1914-1918).In Chapter 6, I wrote about Frantz Fanon and the time his philosophy professor said to himthat 'Whenever you hear anyone abuse the Jews, pay attention, because he is talking aboutyou' (Fannon 1967 p. 122). The same applies here. When a person is talking about refugeesand asylum seekers, and how they should be sent back to where they come from and dumpedout of the plane, or they should be shot and killed, or they should be locked-up in prisoncamps for years and years, these people are also talking about you. Because you are an Other

just like the refugee and asylum seeker is an Other, your Otherness comes from your being inprison for committing a crime.

The refugee and asylum seeker is the differentiated Other, just like prisoners are. If the

refugee and asylum seeker is thought to be so very different in some way, or because theyhave arrived without travel documents, then they can be abused. Today it's the "the Jews", or


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"the blacks", or "the rag-heads", or "sand-niggers", or any Others, but tomorrow the samereasoning can be used against you the prisoner because you are also the Other. This is why Ihave called this book a "self-defence manual", because when a rising tide of racism, bigotryand fascism infects public and political life, it is not long before people are having their headskicked off their shoulders by Government policy and their various police and law

enforcement agencies. And make no mistake, your head is in their sights. So, it is in yourown self- interest not to buy into the Right-wing political ideology and rhetoric aboutrefugees and asylum seekers.

The short history of Australia as a modern nation State, which is only 220 odd years old, isone of immigration. The first poor white people arrived here by boat as the outcasts of theirsociety. And after that, wave after wave of people from other countries and ethnic groupscame here, but the country has never been swamped, and it will never be swamped. After aninitial social resistance towards the newcomers, the Others who seemed so different at first,who it was said would never integrate, came to be part of the mainstream social fabric.

People who leave their extended families, their culture, their language, their national history

and everything they have ever known to move to a totally foreign country are highlymotivated people who want to make a better life for themselves. If these people arrive afterrisking their lives and the lives of their families, then they are even more highly motivated toescape the circumstances which are making their lives miserable. And on arriving in a safehaven they will be grateful for being rescued and they will be motivated to build a better lifefor themselves and will contribute to the life of the wider community and economy. These

people are an asset to this country and the more of them we give a fair go to, the richer all ofour lives will be. At first, these people are found working the 11 at night to 7 in the morningshift in the Qick-E-Mart. They are found working all the crappy jobs with long hours and low

pay. But within a generation they find social mobility and before long they are an integratedpart of society and the prejudices against them when they first came here are shown to befounded in an irrational fear. I have experienced this in my own life in relation to theVietnamese people. But still the politicization of the issue continues because of the Right-wing politics of Self and Other, us and them can be used to manipulate peoples feelings.


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Chapter 10 - The role of the Church and religion in politics

When people talk about "the Church" they are talking about the wider institution of theChurch and the position which it takes on social issues rather than matters of religion as such.For example, some individual parishes run programs for homeless people, drug users,alcoholics and so on, but others do not run such programs. The leaders of these parishes maycome out and support safe injecting rooms for drug users as a public health and social justiceissue. When they do these activities they are acting in the wider social justice role of "theChurch." The role of the Church in a secular (that is a non religious) society is to be separatefrom Government and to keep a watching brief on the Government and the impact of its

policies on what should be a just and fair society for all. Australia is a secular society becauseelected politicians run the country rather than religious leaders. A theocratic society on theother hand is one where religious leaders run the Government or have a strong influence over

Government, like they do in Iran and they did in Afghanistan under the Talaban. (As anaside: The influence of religious leaders over American politics, especially on Right-wing,conservative and reactionary politics, is much more significant than in Australia where it isvery unusual for politicians to talk about their religious faith).

The role of the Church in a secular society is not to join with Government or to be silent ofGovernmental wrong doing. But of course the Church, or elements of it, can be Right-wing orLeft-wing. In the past, conservative Right-wing Governments which turned into totalitariandictatorships, like those in Nazi Germany, went about their business of genocide with littlecriticism from the Protestant or Catholic Church. This silence at the time of the crimes of

Nazi Germany is a historical fact, which the Catholic Church is still embarrassed about. But itis not just the Catholics who did not speak up. A German Protestant minister of religionnamed Martin Niemoller, famously said:

When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. Andwhen Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was notconcerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialist, I was not amember of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and theProtestant church - and then there was nobody left to be concerned.

The loudest voice in the public discourse in Australia is the Right-wing convicted racist, andmost widely read columnist in the country, Andrew Bolt. A tactic of the Right-wing is not toallow space in the public discourse to talk about issue of concern. The public discourse is the

way in which political issues are spoken about in public.As an example of not allowing space in the public discourse through the use of ridicule,Andrew Bolt writes in a column headed 'Labor's God Squad', that if we

Mix conservative politics with religion and we're told the sky's falling in. But whenthe church spruiks for the Left, its progress (Bolt 2005 p.23).

Convicted racist Andrew Bolt is using ridicule here, because we all know the sky can't fall in.Ridicule is an empty argument. He is making fun of people in the Church and the Left whenthey become involved with progressive causes. Andrew Bolt is also saying that it is a

problem if the Church becomes involved in criticising conservative Right-wing Government.There is a good historical reason for being concerned about this type of discourse, but ofcourse Andrew Bolt is not interested in history.


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To say a person is afraid the sky is falling in, is to make a reference to the cowardly cartooncharacter "Chicken Little." But who is Chicken Little and why does he think the sky is fallingin? The character Chicken Little had its origins in the United Kingdom in the 18th century,where the expression Chicken Licking meant that a person was lacking in courage. Youngchickens are known to be extremely timid, and they return to the hen or coop at the slightest

alarm. The phrases "chicken-hearted" and "chicken-livered" also came into usage and havecurrency with children as a schoolyard taunt to this day.

The modern currency of the chicken who is afraid the sky is falling in at the sight of the firstcloud, was coined on 17 December 1933, when the Right- wing ratbag Walt Disney releaseda cartoon directed by Clyde Geronimi, as part of Disney's support for Nazi Germany and hisfascism ain't so bad propaganda campaign. The character Chicken Little was born and has

become synonymous with cowardliness. In the cartoon, Chicken Little would peer out fromthe coop with part of its still wet shell on its head, which incidentally looks like a yarmulka,the cap worn by Jews, and on seeing a cloud cries out: "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"and darts back into its coop to hide from the world.

The December 1933 cartoon needs to be put in context. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor inJanuary 1933. On 23 March 1933 the Enabling Actestablished a dictatorship which meantthe Nazi Government could make laws without the Parliament. On 10 May 1933 the first andmost public of the book burnings were held in Berlin. On 14 July 1933 the Nazi Party was theonly legal political party in Germany. So by December 1933 it was very clear what type ofregime Hitler and the Nazi Party were going to bring to Germany, and then the world - aRight-wing fascist dictatorship.

The Chicken Little character was drawn by Walt Disney from the use of the expression byRight-wing politicians in Britain, who were at the time defending Hitler and the Nazis andmaking fun of people who were warning of the dangers of Nazism. The use of the term was

very clearly meant to suggest that those who were foretelling of the horror of the murderousNazi regime in Germany, were Chicken Little type cowards who lacked moral resolve to dowhat needed to be done to restore economic prosperity to Germany. In the years after 1933,those who were explicitly warning of the Jewish holocaust were derisively referred to byRight-wing politicians and commentators as "Chicken Little's" who were claiming that "thesky is falling in."

The insult that another's concerns about a situation amount to "the sky is falling in" is apersonal attack suggesting the person making the claim is cowardly; it is a tactic designed toundermine the issues raised as being so ill- founded that it is not worth discussion. Thehistorical fact of the coinage of this phrase in 1933 to apologise for the Nazis, needs to bekept in mind when a commentator today uses the phrase to suggest that things ain't so badafter all, in defence of Right-wing social and economic policies against criticism from theChurch and progressive politicians.

The Right-wing racist nonsense of Andrew Bolt's position is found in his own words, wordsthat were coined, used, and given currency, by people who were apologists and deniers of

Nazi mass murder.


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Chapter 11 - Blaming others and not the system

When a person blames the Others and not the system, they are over personalising theirproblems and not politicizing them, and when people do this, they are letting the system offthe hook.

A good example of blaming others is found in the anti-Semite, the person who talks about"the Jews" and claims that "the Jews" run the world and are responsible for all of the

problems in the world. For a start, there is no such things as "the" Jews. An old saying goes,if you have 2 Jews in a room you will have 3 different opinions. Jewish culture is centred onlearning, interpretation of sacred texts like the Bible and their relevance in the live's peoplelead. Like Islam, Judaism has no central person or institution which decides on issuesassociated with the interpretation of the sacred texts and the lives people live. There is noPope in Judaism, there is no organized Church like the Catholic Church. So to talk of "the"

Jews is nonsense.As I have said a few times now, when the anti-Semite is talking about "the Jews" you should

pay attention because he or she is talking about you. Just like when the racist is talking abouta particular race he or she does not like; he or she is talking about you. The anti-Semite andthe racist has an "us and them" world view, and they want to join with some all powerful "us"against the Other. Working-class people feel as if they are the Other in a culture whichmeasures the personal value of people by their accumulation of financial wealth and thestatus symbols of that wealth. Being the Other is not a good feeling, and so powerful is theideology of Otherness, that it is used as a self-defence strategy.

What happens is that people who have some attribute of difference, like being a prisoner,

which singles them out as being a problem for society, defend themselves by turning thatback on some other minority like the Jews, the blacks, the Asians, the rag-heads and so on.Blaming the Other and putting people down to raise oneself up, is a strategy which the Rightof politics does not discourage. It does not because some attribute of difference can always beidentified and used as an excuse for oppressing people. A classic example of this is the lowlystatus of sex offenders in the community and in prison. The public discourse accepts that sexoffenders are liable to be the victims of assault and worse in prison. Many people on theinside and the outside say that a sex offender gets what is coming to him if he is bashed in

prison, and it is mainly a "him". This does not prevent the person who bashed or killed thesex offender being charged, convicted and sentenced for their crime. The contradiction isobvious: "Thanks for doing that to the sex offender, but now there is the issue of the seriouscrime you have committed." The working- class people and prisoners are co-opted by theRight-wing political discourses of Otherness, and in effect, they are willing to put on the blueor black uniform and do the bidding of the powers that be, as long as they are not on thereceiving end. But when the prisoner does the bidding of the powers that be, they do soagainst a person who is singled out as the Other. We saw how this worked against sexoffenders in Chapter 6 and it is worth repeating.

You don't support child sex offenders, do you?

No.

So you would agree that they should be kept in prison after their sentence ends because wethink they are a danger to children?


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Yes.

Good. Now, lets look at people who have committed violent offences and serious drugoffences, perhaps they should be kept in prison as well if we think they are a danger tosociety.

And before you know it, the preventative detention laws include you. This situation comesabout because of a lack of a political analysis and because there is also no space allowed foralternatives in this politic discourse. In their self-interested ignorance, prisoners and working-class people are sucked into the role of assisting in the system which is oppressing them.Every time one prisoner bashes or kills another, it is a victory for the Right-wing system, andit supports a political ideology that would like to see all of us killed.

In reality the person who is a vocal anti-Semite, racist, sexist, or bigot, is most often theOther of the dominant society, and they are trying to get themselves out of that position by

joining with the same type of unjust political ideology that made them the Other. The anti-Semite, racist, sexist or the bigot is usually a marginalised person who is trying step on and

over Others to advance themselves socially, rather than fighting against the idea of steppingon Others. This is politics in action.

Some of the thinking goes like this: "If I only had more money. If only those Others can beput down, then things would be better for me, and I'm just the person for the job." In thisway, the victim of an oppressive and unfair social system looks to the way their oppressorsoperate for a solution. Rather than oppose the unjust system, they go for more of the same.The anti-Semite and the racist thinks: "Perhaps if the Jew or the rag-head is seen as the causeof what is wrong with society, then I will be treated better, perhaps I will be given a gun, the

baton, instruments of restrain, the chemical and eltro-shock weapons, and then I will be theperson exercising power, and not having it exercise

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Politics for the Imprisoned