A REVOLUTIONARY OBITUARY: IN MEMORY OF ED MEAD (2025) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Ed Mead passed away on Nov 6, 2023 – his 86th birthday. I wanted to write a few words in his memory.

I have never written an obituary, so I hope to do Ed’s memory justice.

The thing is, he did so much that was of historical importance it’s impossible to capture everything. I also realize that I don’t know many of the historically significant things he did that should be remembered.

But I am aware of one little-known but major thing he must not be forgotten for. That being his role as a material force behind the three historical California prisoner hunger strikes of 2011 and 2013, where 6000, 12,000 then 30,000 California prisoners went on strike protesting the abuse of solitary confinement in the Cali prison system, which initiated the international campaign against solitary confinement in Amerika. His work also led to the formal agreement between Cali prisoner groups to stop racial violence that followed in 2012.

I remember how it all happened.

When they were in prison together in Washington state, Ed and Paul Wright created PRISON LEGAL NEWS, a self-published newsletter that grew to become an invaluable critical legal and political information magazine for prisoners, our supporters, and movement activists alike.

Once released from prison, Ed continued to self-publish newsletters aimed to assist, educate and politicize prisoners. One was PRISON ART, which enabled prisoners to generate much-needed personal funds by selling their artwork and was also an educational media.

A persistent theme that Ed pushed in his newsletters was to build unity among prisoners across lines of race, gender orientation, and tribal (gang) affiliation. Cali prisoners were deeply divided along these lines and the prison pigs kept violence festering between them based upon these divisions, which they used as ammunition to vilify the prisoners and justify the abuse of indefinite solitary confinement, the operation of SHUs, and to generate funding for prison expansion and intensification of harsh conditions and more guards. In his newsletters, Ed constantly pointed out to the prisoners how they were being manipulated to make their own conditions worse and benefit the pigs. I also wrote in Ed’s newsletters pressing the same issues.

These efforts began to take effect and Cali prisoners began uniting in hunger strikes, smaller isolated ones at first, challenging abuses.

Then came the call led by prisoner leaders who had been isolated in the Short Corridor of the SHU at Pelican Bay, for prisoners to unite in a statewide protest against the use of solitary to indefinitely lock away anyone profiled as a gang member, as most of those in the Short Corridor had been, many for decades, and compelling prisoners to snitch (or “debrief”) as the only avenue out of solitary. Ed’s newsletters served as a medium for their uniting the protest and ending group conflict across the Cali prison system. And so the strikes began, which Ed created specific newsletters for, ROCK, BASTA YA!, and others.

I helped enlist prisoners in my own state of Virginia and other states to join the Cali prisoners on the hunger strikes. I also drew the image that became the logo for the strikes. These strikes put the movement against the abuse of solitary confinement on the international map and led to the reform of its use across the U.S. A struggle that continues.

Ed’s autobiography, LUMPEN, has also been a valuable and inspiring tool in multitudes of prisoners’ political awakening. We share the same publisher, and Ed had me sent an advanced copy of the manuscript when it was named, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS. He asked me to draw the cover graphic for the book.

I wasn’t able to get the drawing to the publisher in time and suggested he use a prior drawing I did of him standing with one of his dogs. He declined to use it sending word that the particular drawing looked too “cartoonish.” He went ahead and used a photo of himself for the cover and ended up calling the book LUMPEN.

Ed and I were close friends and Comrades. I met him during the earliest days of my own political development (around 2001). Up until his passing in 2023, he told me over and again that he considered me the only person he knew who was “still” a revolutionary. We exchanged political views and critiques often, even as he endured an almost superhuman prolonged battle with advanced cancer. Which he never allowed to take him away from his work for the oppressed.

I knew many people who worked with Ed. Not many knew how to relate to him. He was a straight shooter who said what was on his mind. He came from the lower sector of society and spent many years in prison based upon LIVING his politics, not merely talking them. He engaged in armed struggle against the state, while others merely paid lip service to it. He respected and embraced Black revolutionary leadership. He wasn’t like many white leftists who have messianic complexes and act to control our movements and work, nor presume to speak for us or choose or validate (or not validate) our leaders based upon their own value judgments and telling us how to engage in our struggles. He didn’t try to make us feel as if we owed him something for forsaking his skin privilege or bestowing the benefits of his assistance and access to resources based on that privilege. Ed joined us and lived, suffered, loved and fought alongside us, even when the chosen tactics were unsuited to existing conditions. Ed was a genuine anti-imperialist revolutionary.

In thinking of him, I am reminded of another sorely missed white Comrade who also passed away several years ago, Karen Smith. Both of their lives and work alongside the marginalized and oppressed, especially prisoners, should serve as examples to the left of what genuine camaraderie looks like.

I can’t say enough in praise of Ed Mead. He was exemplary. And he died as he lived, in struggle.

Rest in power Comrade!