Boston -- MIM and RAIL celebrated the End the Amerikan Lockdown month hosting a film showing, a panel discussion and a protest.
The film, The FBI's War on Black America, was shown in Cambridge to an audience of 40 people interested in the history of the FBI's COINTELPRO program which was used to disable the Black Liberation movement in the united $tates in the 1960's and 70's. At this event we solicited the help of people watching to movie to put together our monthly mailing of MIM Notes to prisoners. While watching the film people helped put stamps on envelops and stamp return addresses. This makes our monthly mailing a lot easier and gave people a chance to learn from revolutionary history while helping to build for revolution in the future.
At the end of the event one former prisoner and supporter of RAIL urged other members of the audience to contribute money to pay for the room and advertising of the event. This show of support inspired others to contribute to the collection pot.
The panel discussion, a forum on prison struggles hosted by Boston University Friends of RAIL, included several former prisoners who are currently involved in activism on the outside as well as speakers representing RAIL and MIM. Attended by over 50 people the event even received favorable coverage in the BU student newspaper, the Daily Free Press.
One former prisoner who spoke at the event detailed the conditions he faced "[Maximum security prisons] are concentration camps for the poor, working class people who are victims of poverty," he said. "People use one word when they get out: horror. I did years in solitary confinement for challenging human rights violations ... the mental torture destroys people."
As one of the RAIL activists pointed out, "This entire system builds up to disproportionate incarceration; it shows in the numbers." She explained that the U.$. contains only 5 percent of the world population and yet it holds 25 percent of the world's prison population.
This forum gave the audience a chance to participate, engaging in discussion about the criminal injustice system and the system of imperialism that it serves. A lively discussion followed the presentations.
One student questioned prisoners' rights, saying that they gave those up when they committed the crime. RAIL pointed out the discriminating definition of crime, and that the people in the u$ gov't. who commit the most atrocious crimes usually also enjoy the greatest freedoms due to their positions of power. One speaker questioned the goal of restricting the freedoms of former prisoners stressing the need to provide support for a more successful life after prison.
The Boston-area End the Amerikan Lockdown activities culminated in a protest against the criminal injustice system on Saturday September 30th. The official continental day of action was October 1 but we decided that the Saturday before would be a better day for our protest.
MIM and RAIL activists and supporters gathered in a high traffic spot in Harvard Square with signs, banners, a table of literature and postcards protesting prison censorship for people to sign. Supporters who had learned about the protest at the film and panel discussion showed up to help make posters, hand out flyers and hold signs.
For over four hours we distributed hundreds of flyers and newspapers discussing the criminal injustice system and our programs building support for prisoner's anti-imperialist struggles with the many people who stopped to find out what we were doing. We gathered many postcard signatures protesting the censorship of revolutionary literature and mail in prisons and collected donations to support MIM's Books for Prisoners program.
Most of the people who stopped to talk to us were supportive of the work we were doing but a few anti-communists came up to the literature table to start an argument. One man, after claiming that Stalin was responsible for the rise of Hitler and that the U.$. was responsible for it's defeat, started complaining about how some Marxist professor of his in college had lowered his grade because he disagreed with the professor. His statements are typical of the bourgeois individualism that blinds people to historical reality. For him a grade in his college class was on a par with the life or death issues for the world's population that we were trying to discuss.
This inability to see the relative value of humyn life made this man readily believe the u.s. propaganda that the imperialists were responsible for the victory over Hitler. For him the Maoists were responsible for the deaths under their rule, the Stalinists were responsible for the deaths under their rule, but the Amerikan imperialists are not responsible for the murders they commit around the world every day. The reality of the tremendous sacrifices the Soviet people made to defeat fascism is ignored by anti-communists because this doesn't fit into their world view of Stalin as an evil murderer and the u.s. (which sat by and allowed the Soviet Union to fight Hitler hoping they would destroy each other) as democratic savior of the world.
Through the committed efforts of MIM and RAIL organizers who spent many days putting up posters, distributing newspapers, and talking to people on the streets, our End the Amerikan Lockdown activities in Boston were a success. But our work fighting the criminal injustice system will not stop with the end of this month of activism. We have a number of upcoming events that will build on our efforts this month.
MIM on EAL Month