Keeping track of Amerikan censorship

By the MIM Prison Minister

The MIM 2001 Congress passed a resolution requiring the party to keep track of and report incidents where prisoncrats censor MIM Notes, correspondence between MIM and a prisoner, or revolutionary books MIM sends to prisoners. We will publish a list of states where such censorship takes place every six months.

The accuracy of these lists is limited by two main things.

First, the nature of state repression. For example, when the state censors MIM Notes, the state is not required to send notification. In order to distinguish between conscious censorship and bureaucratic SNAFUs -- prisoners are moved often, making it difficult to stay in touch, and some prisoners just stop writing -- MIM sends letters to prisoners who may have been censored explaining the situation and letting them know how they can fight to get their MIM Notes. More and more frequently, even these letters are censored.

Second, the accuracy of these lists depends upon MIM's own record keeping. For years, we did not record censorship well. Now, we have a method to do so, but not all records have been paid diligent attention. Starting with this report, we hope to inspire those working with MIM in correspondence to prisoners to keep track of the details of the state's repression better.

Because of these two things, it is possible that there are more cases of censorship than we currently can prove.

States which have censored MIM Notes or MIM Theory within the last year

Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Maryland
Michigan
Missouri
Mississippi
Montana
North Carolina
North Dakota
Nebraska
Nevada
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin
West Virginia

States where individual prisoners have fought and won battles against the censorship of MIM Notes or MIM Theory(*)

Iowa
Illinois
South Carolina
Pennsylvania
Kansas
Washington
New York

• This does NOT mean that censorship within the state has been stopped entirely.

States in which MIM has not recorded censorship of our materials for the last one year period

Alaska
Alabama
Hawaii
Idaho
Maine
Minnesota
New Hampshire
New Mexico
Vermont

It may seem that the above listing (of states that we have not recorded censorship in) shows that there is no censorship in those states. Unfortunately, that is not the likely conclusion. In many of these states, our records indicate that MIM Notes were being returned and that MIM lost touch with prisoners in those states. In fact, it may mean that states on this list actually censor more than states on the first list. Prisoners have just the paper and word of mouth to pass around MIM's information. If the paper is cut off, it is likely that our contacts eventually fade. We still consider this censorship, though not something that would qualify as evidence in court.

States that have prevented MIM from sending a book to a prisoner in the last year

Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Michigan
Montana

Our estimate is that this list is no where near exhaustive because of MIM's inaccuracy in records.

States MIM has given up on sending lit to

NONE

We continue to send literature to prisoners in any state when they write to us. If we find that our mail is not reaching prisoners, we then move onward to working with prisoners to end the censorship. At this point, no state has consistently stopped all literature from MIM as a matter of policy that we know of. Many of the states censoring MIM and prisoners do so inconsistently. For instance, one prison will allow an issue of MIM Notes, another will reject the same issue. Although annoying, this will help us demonstrate inconsistencies when cases reach the courts.

Federal prisons that have censored MIM Notes or MIM Theory in the past year

Florence-ADX
USP-Milan
USP-Leavenworth
USP-Lewisburg

Again, this list does not reflect the censorship of MIM and prisoners within federal institutions. For instance, USP-Marion has not censored MIM material for over one year, therefore it is not on this list. But, it is because Marion will not allow us to send literature to prisoners at all that we do not have censorship records for the last year. A study of federal prisons' censorship of revolutionary lit is needed. But it is difficult when those prisons have cut ties between MIM and federal prisoners.

The state of Michigan earned the dubious distinction of being the state with the highest proportion of prisoners whose MIM Notes were outright rejected. There are approximately 5 times as many prisoners taken off MIM's mailing list because of censorship in Michigan as the number of active prisoners on our mailing list in that state.