MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
letter to Media Review Chairperson requesting explanation
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Sharon Benson-Perry, Media Review Chairperson
Clinton Correctional Facility
PO Box 2000
Dannemora, NY 12929-2000
January 7, 2007
Dear Sharon Benson-Perry:
In August I had sent you a response to your most recent letter to Us with a copy of the third issue of Our publication the Party Bulletin for your review. You had requested a copy so that it could be reviewed and (hopefully) approved to avoid the long standing policy of the Clinton mailroom of returning, and now apparently discarding, any mail from Our organization. I never received a response from you about the Party Bulletin that was sent.
Just recently it was brought to my attention that Issue 5 of the Party Bulletin was then censored at Clinton Correctional Facility in September of last year. We were never notified of this censorship, the materials were not even returned to Us. Is it now the policy of Clinton to destroy any mail from NAMP that is sent to prisoners at the facility?
I am requesting a response to this inquiry explaining the justification for censorship of Our publication at Clinton. We have also begun mailing Our literature delivery confirmation in hopes that staff will be encouraged to follow the standard administrative procedures in handling mail and media review procedures.
We are aware of certain individuals at Clinton who have taken it upon themselves to spearhead the campaign against prisoners who receive literature from Our organization. We hope it is within your ability to rein in these individuals so that they adhere to NYS DOCS policy as well as the United States Constitution.
Please respond at your earliest convenience so that we may resolve this issue.
lttr to Media Rev Chair reiterating violations of policy
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Sharon Benson-Perry, Media Review Chairperson
Clinton Correctional Facility
PO Box 2000
Dannemora, NY 12929-2000
February 3, 2008
Dear Sharon Benson-Perry:
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my previous letter and explaining why media is not always returned to the sender. However, a brief look at the handling of literature from NAMP at Clinton will make it clear where my confusion may have come from.
As you?ll recall, the first time I wrote you was in response a stack of copies of one of our newsletters that were all stamped ?Contents Prohibited? and sent right back to us. When I wrote to inquire about the reasoning for this you claimed that there was no record of the newsletters arriving or being censored.
In the most recent incident I wrote you about neither our office nor Mr XXXXXX XXXXXX, who we had sent our newsletter to, had received any notification of censorship, yet the newsletter was not received. Hence, my inquiry into whether it is now Clinton Correctional Facility?s policy to discard any mail from NAMP to avoid having to deal with justifying the censorship of our mail. Since it clearly is not, I would hope that this practice ends immediately.
In your January 22 letter you write, ?If a portion of reviewed material is disapproved, each individual inmate is notified and given an opportunity to have the material sent home, or redacted (if under 8 pages) and sent to him? Nothing is destroyed unless it is done so at the inmate?s request.? And ?media is sent to individual inmates and would not ordinarily be returned to sender unless the inmate so requests.? Our experience has shown none of these statements to be true in practice. So you can see why we had expressed the hope in our last letter that you can get Clinton CF staff to adhere to NYS DOCS policies. Seems that would make both of our lives a bit easier.
As you are aware, there is a lawsuit pending regarding the handling of our mail and prisoners in possession of our literature in the NYS DOCS, specifically Clinton Correctional Facility. We continue to document the unsubstantiated incidents of censorship that are occurring at Clinton as part of this case and hope that we can convince staff to adhere to department policies in the near future.
