Art as resistance. Poetry as political education. A vision of liberation forged behind prison walls.
The Art of People’s War brings together selected revolutionary art and poetry by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, author of Defying the Tomb and Panther Vision. Featuring more than 50 illustrations, many reproduced in colour, the collection draws on Rashid’s experiences of imprisonment and his commitment to revolutionary struggle to confront racism, capitalism, police violence, solitary confinement, patriarchy, and U.S. imperialism.
Organized thematically, the collection moves from Black liberation and the legacy of the Black Panther Party to women’s struggles, Palestinian resistance, love, and the possibilities carried by a new generation. Tributes to figures including Assata Shakur, Fred Hampton, and Huey P. Newton appear alongside pointed critiques of popular culture and the institutions that sustain oppression. Throughout, Rashid connects political analysis with the intimate costs of domination—and the solidarity needed to overcome it.
Featuring a preface by Jared Ball and an introduction by Joy James, The Art of People’s War presents art as an active part of collective struggle: a means of preserving memory, challenging power, and imagining a world beyond exploitation.
Due out in November 2026.
What People Are Saying
Rashid’s poems are weapons, but unlike those of the oppressor, they are honed with a fine sensibility, reflecting the lives of the people while at the same time informed by an understanding that rejects the fabricated divisions of “race.”
Victor Wallis, author of Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, author of the new book The Art of People’s War: Selected Revolutionary Art and Poetry, is one of the most storied prisoner activists in the United States today. His longtime courageous exposure of prison injustice has earned him the unbridled hostility of the prison authorities and the deep admiration of thousands of people both inside and outside the walls. His writings offer valuable insights into the prison system, as well as concrete steps that can be taken to reform and ultimately abolish it.
Phil Wilayto, Editor, The Virginia Defender
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is a Super Hero for the revolution. The guards put glass in his food, ship him from prison to prison, try to break his spirit. Each time he ups his resistance and hits them upside the head. His will is legendary. He wages people’s war through his poetry, what Fanon called “the literature of combat.” “The Panthers survived, this war of attrition, because the people themselves were its arms and ammunition.” The only thing better than his creative and incendiary poetry is Rashid himself. I wanna be like him when I grow up. His life and life’s work are an inspiration. Great book for young people and people of all ages.
Eric Mann, author, Comrade George: An Investigation into the Life, Political Thought, and Assassination of George Jackson
This book brilliantly, and beautifully, walks us through the various stages or building blocks of Johnson’s revolutionary intercommunalism.
from the Preface by Jared Ball, Professor of Communication and Africana Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. and author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power
Kevin Rashid Johnson (KRJ) is a gift-giver. His recent book The Art of People’s War is a textbook for meditation and analysis, and action. A pragmatic plan for resisting repression and opening discourse and study as to how best to free ourselves. This book presents a gallery of images and poetry from an artist and poet who has been in captivity for decades. From those repressive sites an organizer and strategist and truth teller emerged. In this artful book, KRJ uses his talents to study and portray repression and resistance to repression. From the bowels of the “belly of the beast,” the US empire and its penal colonies, The Art of People’s War brings insights about penal and captive communities in US prisons and dungeons, and the predatory wars that the US funds and generates beyond its prisons and civil society.
from the Introduction by Joy James, editor of Confronting Counterinsurgency, and author of New Bones Abolition
About the Author
Jared A. Ball is a Professor of Communication and Africana Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. and author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power (Palgrave, 2020 / 2nd Edition, 2023). Ball is also host of the podcast “iMiXWHATiLiKE!”, he can be found @imixwhatilike on most social media, and his decades of emancipatory journalism, media, writing, and political work can be found at imixwhatilike.org.
Joy James is the editor of Confronting Counterinsurgency, and author of New Bones Abolition.
Kevin Rashid Johnson: My life began in rebellion and in a broken home. My parents separated while I was an infant. Although my father took custody of my sibling and me, he was almost never in the home because of his commitment, bordering on obsession, with rising from poverty into Amerika’s Black middle class. My primary care thus fell to my dear paternal grandmother, who was powerless to rein in my rebelliousness - especially that against my absentee father. When he did find his way home it was usually to repress my behavior with violence, to no avail. In turn I’d act out my own limited violence against increasingly larger opponents outside the home, which became a tendency to challenge bullies.
My father accomplished his career goals and tried to steer me in the same direction, but I had no interest in ‘success’ and the empty trappings that came with it. Despite my father’s years of sacrifice, including absence from his family’s life, none of the people I loved outside our immediate household reaped the benefits from our rise in status, and wealth brought no happiness to our household. I wanted no part of it.
Though routinely praised as being particularly bright and talented, I never made much of a career of school. I was repeatedly suspended and expelled, leading to a lengthy incarceration at age 11, ‘arranged’ by my father. Shortly after my return to his home, he and I fell out completely and irreparably in what nearly became a fatal situation - we parted ways over the barrel of a gun. At that point I vowed to never again tolerate anyone’s attempts to control me with violence.
From then on my life was marked by living on the streets, resisting the Establishment, and learning the ways if the world. After living what seemed several lifetimes of experience, I found myself in prison for life at age 18. In prison, I relentlessly warred with guards in response to their organized oppression, terror tactics, and abuses targeted at me and my peers. My resistance consisted of counter-violence and ultimately litigation. I quickly learned the futility of seeking a savior in the Establishment’s institutions (the courts).
In 2001, my journey towards redemption began through exposure to and studying Communist revolutionary theory and history, beginning with the writings of George Jackson. I developed, refined, and contextualized my learning by applying it to the realities of my day-to-day life and experiences. I found my calling in the people’s struggle against capitalist imperialism and all its attendant oppressive features. I began compiling art and essays reflecting my ideological and political development, hoping to make what contributions I could from within these walls of confinement.
I co-founded several political organizations, wrote a few books , including Defying the Tomb and Panther Vision* and many articles, and met with many advances and setbacks in this work.
I spent over twenty years in solitary confinement and was, for ten years, interstate transferred between numerous states in retaliation for resisting, exposing and challenging abuses in Va and other states’ prisons, where I continued my resistance.
I continue to grow and develop an understanding encompassing methods of struggle towards building a world free of exploitation and division along lines of wealth, race, gender, age, sexuality, etc. A world where all life can co-exist as a community and interdependent whole. It’s my heartfelt desire to contribute all I can to help bring this world about. This new order can and must happen if we expect to exist even a few generations from now.
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!
_________________
Note:
* As I write this I am writing my full autobiography, Dying To Live For The People, in three volumes.
