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March 31, 2002
Massachusetts spends $1.3 billion a year on "public safety," which means incarceration. That excludes money for the judiciary branch of government and child protective services and other aspects of "criminal law enforcement." Yet, MIM attempted to interview 8 candidates for Massachusetts governor, and none had anything to say about censorship and literacy in Massachusetts prisons.
Often times people ask MIM why we do not just use our knowledge of politics to lobby the government or run for office ourselves. Although thousands of people in Massachusetts read MIM Notes every week, all the candidates felt they could dodge the questions we asked. That in itself is an important lesson in power and politics to absorb.
Roughly half the budget goes to health-- tobacco and other sources of money that goes to stopping smoking and addressing various health ills. Not all states have such a huge medical complex in their state budget. There is money for Medicaid, AIDS and the like. Then another quarter of the budget goes to education. Finally, in Massachusetts, prisons are the third largest item overall. However, not a single candidate for governor includes prison conditions in his or her in-depth web page discussions of "issues," with the exception of the sensational "death penalty."
On March 20th, we sent the Democrats and Republicans the following questions and asked for answers by March 28th. By the end of the 30th, none had answered.
March 20, 2002
Dear Mitt Romney, Robert Reich, Shannon O'Brien, Tom Birmigham, Warren
Tolman & Steve Grossman:
Hello, we seek to interview you about prison conditions in Massachusetts. We are MIM Notes, a newspaper of a communist party that does not endorse candidates or run for state or national office. We have an especially strong readership in Massachusetts in the thousands.
We will be interviewing the candidates for governor in three parts. This part is about censorship in prisons. We guarantee to print in MIM Notes each candidate up to 2000 characters (possibly more at our discretion) verbatim and unedited. We guarantee to run all comments written in full on our website--verbatim. Unlike the Boston Globe and other major papers, we prefer unfiltered and uncut quotes. We regularly print and run unfiltered denunciations of our party as well, if you find it necessary.
1. Are you aware of the censorship of prisoners and Massachusetts citizens writing to prisoners?
2. Do you believe there is any possible just cause for withholding books, magazines or newspapers from prisoners? For instance, a very occasional prisoner will use a book as a weapon. Do you think that can be sufficient reason to allow regulations to deny prisoners books, magazines or newspapers?
3. Do you believe there are any regulations that prison officials should be able to make or have concerning prisoner receipt of magazines, books and newspapers? If so, what would they be?
4. Where do you stand on prisoner literacy and upgrading skills for the Massachusetts workforce? Do you agree with us that the content of what is being read should be up to prisoners: the important thing is literacy? Do you agree with us that withholding reading materials should never be a form of punishment?
5. What will you do to end censorship of prisoners and those publications censored by state authorities? The deadline for replies for the newspaper is March 28th. There is no deadline for unfiltered comments to be placed on our web page.
Sincerely,
bosmim@mim.org for MIM Notes
Mitt Romney:
On March 27th, Romney's office provided the most calculated answer of all
candidates: "Thank you for your interest in the Romney 2002 campaign.
Please visit www.romney2002.com for additional information and updates on
current events. We would also encourage you to sign up to receive our
email newsletter, which will provide information on the latest campaign
developments. Again, thank you for your letter; we look forward to hearing
from you in the future. Sincerely, The Office of Mitt Romney, Elisabeth
Calvert Smith "
Shannon O'Brien: No reply.
Robert Reich: No reply.
Tom Birmingham: No reply.
Warren Tolman: Warren Tolman's campaign mailbox is effectively down. After one week, the mail server bounced the message completely. Yes, ineptitude does play a role in politics, but it is not the excuse for all candidates. Humyn error is maybe 30% of the problem.
Steve Grossman: No reply.
Jill Stein: The Green Party candidate's web address was also effectively down and other Greens were unwilling or unable to help. Thus, at least 2 out of 8 candidates had the pure humyn breakdown thing going on.
Carla Howell: The Libertarian Party's refusal to answer (after being asked March 25th) is the most embarrassing to both MIM and the Libertarian Party. These questions should have been right up their alley.
With the Libertarians not answering and the five Democrats not answering, it is pretty safe to say that there is a political calculation that goes on why it is not possible to answer MIM's questions in public.
Although a big part of the governor's job is prisons, the candidates do not like to talk about them. None of them have any real clue how to advance rehabilitation in the event of prisoners who really did commit a crime. None of them care, because prisoners generally do not have money to pose a threat to gubernatorial candidates. Moreover, the petty-bourgeois majority of Amerikkka including in Massachusetts is generally hostile in an emotional and distorted way to the prison population, large as that population may be.
To blame these politicians as individuals for not answering the question when all of them refused is like trying to blame water when it flows downhill. These politicians have all calculated that they cannot afford to ruffle any labor aristocracy feathers.
To talk about prison censorship is too unpleasant. We the public have to understand that politicians in a dumbocracy only say what they find the public wants to hear. Those candidates who do not know what the public wants to hear will fail in electoral politics, unless of course they have sufficient money to run a powerful campaign themselves, and even then it is only possible to push so far. Ross Perot is the best example of what is possible with money. If a question is unpredictable, difficult to comprehend or would involve a difficult struggle of principle, experienced politicians will not involve themselves. That is up to others. It's one of the reasons that there has to be a vanguard party to speak unvarnished truth no matter how unpopular.
Nonetheless, we urge our Massachusetts readers to speak out, to write the Boston Phoenix and the candidates to make them answer the questions:
media@carlahowell.org --Libertarians
mitt@romney2002.com -- Republican Party
campaign@RobertReich.org, shannon@shannonobrien.com,
tom@tombirmingham.org, warren@warrentolman.org, steve@grossman2002.com --
Republocrats
adam@jillwill.org , info@jillwill.org --Green Party
letters@phx.com Boston Phoenix
Ask the candidates to answer the questions and forward answers to bosmim@mim.org.