ICYMI: From Marcellus Williams to the Palestinian Prisoners Movement
Connecting the dots.
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✌🏾Quote of the week:
"To colonial settlers, peace is essentially pacification and quiet. To oppressed people, peace means restitution of justice, removal of oppressive regimes, and living on our lands as we did before the invasion. In its wider and more logical nature, peace means harmony with ourselves, harmony between people and also harmony with nature. Achieving that is imperative and existential."
~ Mazin Qumsiyeh
🤔 This week’s topic:
Connecting the Dots: From Marcellus Williams to the Palestinian Prisoners Movement
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting the effort to save Marcellus Williams to succeed. Even with DNA evidence proving his innocence, the U.S. "justice" system moved forward with deadly determination, unmoved by his innocence, because it’s not actually about justice.
The death penalty was my first social justice issue. I was in high school and it was the topic of our model congress debate that year. Back then, I naively believed the death penalty could be ended through evidence of its cruelty. I’ve since realized it’s part of a much larger system of domination. The case of Marcellus Williams, like so many others before him, is not an anomaly—it's yet another reminder of how deeply entrenched racial injustice is in American society.
The death penalty in the U.S. has always been a tool for preserving racial and economic power. Though Black Americans make up only 13% of the population, we comprise 42% of death row inmates. Over 1,500 people have been executed since 1976, largely from poor, marginalized communities, and the U.S. leads the world in incarceration, with 2.3 million people behind bars. For every nine people executed, one innocent person on death row is exonerated. In other words, it’s likely that 11% of the people we have killed were innocent. We knew they were innocent, and we killed them anyway. Given these numbers, the death penalty, like the broader U.S. prison system, cannot be viewed as about justice; it is best understood as an extreme system of maintaining "white democracy" through fear, punishment, and extreme state-sanctioned violence.
Mass incarceration follows the same logic. Black Americans are imprisoned at a rate five times higher than white Americans, with the “War on Drugs” disproportionately targeting Black and Latine communities. Prisons have developed as modern-day plantations—as an essential component of maintaining a society rooted in racialized economic oppression.
And while this system may seem uniquely American, unfortunately it's not. The U.S. prison-industrial complex is now a global export, with its logic being adopted by many other countries from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East. Israel, America’s closest ally and our outpost in the Middle East, has refined this strategy, wielding mass imprisonment as a key tool in its colonial control over Palestinian territories—exploiting, oppressing, and maintaining dominance through systematic incarceration.
Since 1967, Israel has imprisoned over 1 million Palestinians—a staggering number for a population of just over 5 million. Today, 21,000 Palestinians are held hostage in Israeli prisons, many held without charge or trial under administrative detention. And even if they have had a military trial, with a 99% conviction rate and secret evidence, what does that really mean? The Israeli system of administrative detention, where individuals can be held indefinitely based on secret evidence, echoes the way Black men (and other racialized bodies) in America are commonly caught in a cycle of pretrial detention, unable to post bail, and subjected to long sentences for minor crimes.
The parallels between these two systems run deep: both systems are built to preserve power, under the illusion of justice.
Exporting the Racialized Logic of White Power
The U.S. prison-industrial complex is a global model. Through U.S.-Israel training programs, law enforcement agencies from both countries exchange tactics on crowd control, surveillance, and counterterrorism. Israeli security forces share strategies tested on Palestinians in the occupied territories, while U.S. police refine and export their methods of controlling Black and Brown communities here at home. These exchanges reinforce shared systems of racialized domination, allowing both countries to perfect techniques of repression that can be deployed against dissent and resistance, whether in Ferguson or the West Bank.
This cooperation is part of a broader militarization of policing, a trend that emerged in the U.S. during the civil rights era and expanded during the War on Drugs. Black communities in America faced heavy surveillance, over-policing, and mass imprisonment. Israel adopted similar tactics in its control of Palestinian territories, using imprisonment to suppress political dissent and maintain its occupation. They were looking to understand how the U.S. (and also South Africa) maintained social order by ensuring racial stratification, allowing a white population to exploit Black labor without much resistance.
The so-called War on Drugs in the U.S. set the stage for mass incarceration and aggressive policing, disproportionately targeting Black and Latino communities. Policies such as mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes, and stop-and-frisk fueled the rapid expansion of the prison population, with Black men bearing the brunt of these policies. Israel applied many of these same tactics to its management of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Under the guise of security, Israel criminalizes Palestinian resistance—whether violent or nonviolent, using prisons to keep dissent in check.
The U.S. and Israel share deeply intertwined approaches to imprisonment. Both systems criminalize entire populations to sustain dominance, using prisons as tools for economic exploitation and political control. Incarcerated people in both countries are exploited for labor, while being monitored through militarized policing and surveillance. These systems reflect a broader racialized logic, designed to suppress resistance and maintain social hierarchies.
The Palestinian Prisoners Movement
The use of imprisonment as a tool of state power is a defining feature of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Since 1967, Israel has used mass incarceration as a means to suppress Palestinian resistance and maintain control over the illegally occupied territories. But what Israel didn’t account for was how prisons would become an incubator for political consciousness and resistance. The Palestinian Prisoners Movement—born behind bars—has become a central pillar of the broader Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Israel’s reliance on imprisonment to manage and suppress Palestinian resistance dates back to its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem following the 1967 Six-Day War. Under military law, Israel gained the authority to detain Palestinians without formal charges, setting the stage for the mass imprisonment of an entire population.
Administrative detention is not unique to Israel, but the widespread use against Palestinians marks it as a tool of political suppression rather than genuine security enforcement. The majority of those detained are not armed fighters or individuals who pose an imminent threat; they are often community leaders, activists, students, or organizers who simply challenge the illegal occupation. Detention is a way to neutralize these figures, keeping them isolated from their communities and unable to mobilize political resistance.
The military court system that governs the occupied territories is notorious for its lack of due process. The conviction rate in these courts exceeds 99%, with Palestinians often convicted based on coerced confessions or secret evidence they cannot challenge.
These tactics mirror the way the U.S. uses pretrial detention and heavy sentencing laws to incapacitate and isolate Black activists and poor communities. In both systems, imprisonment functions less as a response to crime and more as a mechanism of social control.
But while Israel tries to use imprisonment as a way to break the Palestinian resistance, it has inadvertently helped forge one of the most powerful movements within the broader struggle. Prisoners in Israeli jails are often the moral and political leaders of the Palestinian national struggle. The Palestinian Prisoners Movement is built on several key pillars: collective resistance, political education, and solidarity across factions. Despite their physical confinement, Palestinian prisoners remain deeply connected to the broader liberation movement through smuggled messages, writings, and hunger strikes.
For example, Yahya Sinwar, a leader of Hamas, wrote several influential books while imprisoned, outlining strategies for resistance and shaping the political consciousness of Palestinians both inside and outside the prison walls. (Unfortunately, these books are banned in the U.S.) Similarly, Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Fatah leader known as Palestine’s Nelson Mandela, regularly issues statements from his prison cell, calling for Palestinian unity and nonviolent resistance.
One of the movement’s core elements is its ability to transcend political divisions. While Palestinian society is often fractured along factional lines—between groups like Hamas, Fatah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—prisoners have consistently worked to maintain unity. Inside Israeli jails, where political factions are forced to coexist, prisoners forge solidarity by focusing on the common goal of resisting occupation. This unity strengthens their role as leaders of the broader Palestinian national movement and amplifies their symbolic significance.
One of the most powerful tactics used by Palestinian prisoners is the hunger strike. Since prisoners are largely cut off from direct political action, they use their bodies as tools of resistance. Hunger strikes have been deployed time and again to protest the conditions inside Israeli prisons, the use of administrative detention, and the broader system of occupation.
Perhaps the most well-known hunger strike was led by Khader Adnan, a Palestinian baker who, in 2012, went on a 66-day hunger strike in protest of his detention without trial. His strike became an international rallying point and forced Israel to release him after months of imprisonment. Despite the physical toll, hunger strikes remain one of the few forms of nonviolent resistance available to those behind bars, and they have been effective in securing the release of prisoners and improving prison conditions.
Why Not a Black Prisoner Movement in the U.S.?
In contrast to the Palestinian experience, the U.S. prison system has largely succeeded in preventing this kind of political mobilization. Many Black men in U.S. prisons—though disproportionately incarcerated and victimized by a racist legal system—do not identify as political prisoners because they have been convicted of crimes. COINTELPRO and targeted repression prevented the rise of a Black political prisoners movement. Surveillance, assassination, and the deep fragmentation of Black resistance have hindered collective mobilization.
Frantz Fanon argued that the mind of the colonized must be liberated alongside the body, emphasizing that colonialism's most insidious weapon is its ability to reshape the colonized's self-understanding. In the case of Black Americans, centuries of enslavement, dehumanization, and systemic racism have worked to internalize the notion of inferiority. A Palestinian friend once remarked that Palestinians, despite their oppression, still see themselves as fully human, unlike many Black Americans. It takes generations to strip away a people's sense of humanity to the point where they no longer perceive themselves as deserving of full freedom and dignity. This psychological colonization may help explain why many Black men in the U.S. prison system don’t see themselves as political prisoners—even though their imprisonment stems from structural racism. The internalization of guilt, shame, or criminality, imposed by a racist society, obscures the political nature of their incarceration.
There are numerous Black activists who have been imprisoned in the U.S. specifically for their political beliefs and actions. A key example is the recent case of the Uhuru 3—members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), who were indicted in 2023 under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for allegedly conspiring with Russia to "sow discord" in the U.S.. Of course, their real “crime” was their activism in exposing systemic racism and promoting Black liberation.
Another well-known example is Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and journalist who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 1981 under highly contested circumstances. Mumia has spent decades on death row, becoming an international symbol of the struggle against the U.S. prison-industrial complex. His case highlights how the state criminalizes radical Black voices, even when the evidence of guilt is shaky at best.
Additionally, there has been important organizing within U.S. prisons. Jalil Muntaqim, a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army (BLA), spent nearly 50 years in prison for his involvement in the killing of two police officers. During his time behind bars, Muntaqim was involved in advocating for voting rights for incarcerated people and Black communities. His decades-long imprisonment, though linked to political repression, also reflects how Black prisoners have used their confinement as a platform for continued activism.
Historically, figures like George Jackson and the Attica Uprising demonstrate the potential for resistance from within U.S. prisons. Today, prison organizing continues, but it faces immense barriers, including solitary confinement, constant surveillance, and the deliberate isolation of leaders. Despite these obstacles, there remains a legacy of organizing that challenges the systems of oppression both within and beyond the prison walls.
A Call for Global Solidarity
The murder of Marcellus Williams was not an anomaly but a clear reminder that incarceration is inherently political. Both in the U.S. and in Israel, prisons serve to neutralize dissent and suppress resistance. Justice demands that we see these connections—not just to analyze them but to take action. The Palestinian Prisoners Movement shows us that walls will never contain a people’s will to resist oppression. The fight against mass incarceration is inseparable from the broader struggle for human rights and from the struggle against all forms of racialized domination.
📚 This week’s reads:
“More than a year after the Supreme Court restricted race-conscious admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a clearer picture is starting to emerge of how some incoming classes have changed. MIT announced a sharp drop in its number of Black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islander students, and other elite schools are also experiencing drops.”
Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court ruling outlawing “affirmative action” programs has impacted the diversity of top schools.
“At Columbia, the share of Black students fell from 20% to 12%.
At Amherst College, the share of Black students fell from 11% to 3%.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the share of Black students dropped from 15% to 5% and the share of Hispanic students fell from 16% to 11%.”
From: Black enrollment falls at Columbia, top schools after affirmative action ruling. Now what?
One of the critical yet often under-discussed issues is that Ivy League and other top-tier schools typically offer grants and scholarships that allow their students to graduate debt-free.
Students from middle- and lower-class backgrounds often come from school districts that lack the competitive academic standards needed to demonstrate their potential to succeed at the top academic levels. When I briefly taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, I found that about 15% of my students could have excelled at any Ivy League school. Yet, they were not part of a cohort that allowed them to recognize just how exceptional they were. I am confident that had any one of my top students been admitted to Harvard, they would have been successful.
Now, as fewer Black and brown students are admitted to elite schools, we will inevitably see an increase in student debt for minority students. Since 1968, the number of Black college graduates has increased by over 300%. But, one of the key reasons the racial wealth gap keeps growing is the burden of student debt. This, coupled with reduced career opportunities since corporations are also no allowed to factor race, exacerbates the problem.
Without agreement that 1) reparative measures are necessary, and 2) an agreed-upon strategy for implementing them, Black Americans will continue as a permanent underclass.
X And Telegram Forced To CENSOR & SPY?
The battle over who will control the internet has entered a new phase.
Using the classic playbook Naomi Klein lays out in The Shock Doctrine, governments used the pandemic to legitimize their role in censoring information shared online via social media.
Based on the plethora of evidence available today, it’s likely that when we look back on the kinds of information governments labeled “misinformation,” we will find that much of it was accurate. This is the same scenario as with the Hunter Biden laptop emails, which were authentic. We need to grapple with the reality that had they been released to the public, it’s likely that Biden would have lost the election, given the narrow margin.
Information has consequences. It seems impossible to imagine a functioning democracy in a world where governments have the right to curate information fully. Yet, that is where we are. Glenn Greenwald’s reporting on this topic is ongoing and should be on your radar. He concludes his latest report on X and Telegram submitting to Brazilian and French censorship demands with this alarming statement:
“And once we fall into that trap where the entire Internet has been controlled fully, not partially as it is now, but fully, by governments around the world, by ruling class power centers, the one weapon that exists to dissent from them, to work against them, to organize in opposition to them will be completely destroyed. That is absolutely the path they’re on and the cases of Brazil and the EU with Telegram and X absolutely reflect that.”
🔔 Other links to explore:
Unfortunately, Israel’s aggression toward Lebanon has not lessened the massacres in Gaza. For now at least, they have increased: In Gaza, all eyes are on Lebanon
It’s no longer a time for equivocation: Your Crisis of Faith is not My Concern (There’s a Genocide Going on)
The BRICS economic alliance has weighed in clearly: BRICS condemns Israel war on Gaza in signal to the West
There’s a new translation of Marx’s Capital out at a perfect moment as we continue to ponder how “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
“We have to recognize many of the struggles we face are very intersecting and very connected.” NYC Climate Week: Climate Activist Kumi Naidoo on the Need for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and Opening Ceremony Speech - 2024: It’s Time – Key Principles For Climate Action
Here is what Iran has to say about Israel’s aggression in Lebanon: Iran, Hezbollah's sponsor, reacts to Israel's strikes on the militant group
Whenever I hear the argument that we should vote for genocide because of Project 2025, I wonder why something the right has been working on for so long is just becoming urgent: Project 2025 was in the works for decades. Why did the mainstream media fail to inform readers of its threats to democracy?
Thanks for reading! Please like, comment and share. See you next week!
Absolutely true, all of what you wrote...I have addressed this issue with legislators and Congress people, with my perception of "justice" not meaning simply criminalizing people to get votes from scared, angry constituents, but to make effective solutions to the problems so they go away...and by now, racism should be a crime, but we are still living the Middle Ages ideology because it benefits white authoritarians...