Corresponding with Prisoners
A large part of our prison work is centered around our direct correspondence with prisoners in the U.S. These letters coincide with our work we do to support the Free Books for Prisoners Program, the Prisoners' Legal Clinic, and our efforts to build solidarity with our comrades in prison in the anti- imperialist struggle.
RAIL holds weekly meetings in the Boston area to do this prison letters work. The meetings are at 5:30 on Sundays at the location(s) listed below. It's a great way to get involved and get an idea of what RAIL's work around prisons is all about. It is also a great opportunity to really help people out in tangible a way. All who are interested in getting involved are welcome to show up.
Meeting Locations:
Boston University Sundays 1/21/01 thru 4/29/01CAS 312
725 Commonwealth Ave.
Free Books for Prisoners
The Free Books for Prisoners program is a program that is led by the Maoist Internationalist Movement(MIM), that sends in free political, historical, and reference materials to prisoners who can't afford to buy them. At BU we have been collecting book donations during finals week of each semester outside of the bookstore. Each year we collect hundreds of books. We sort out the political, historical, and reference books that would be useful to prisoners. Most (esp. textbooks) are not useful for the program themselves, but we try to sell them to various places to make money for postage to send in the other books. Postage is a huge expense for the program.
The prisoners that we correspond with write to us because they are interested in the political work we are doing, and this book program is one way we try to organize people in the struggle. Since our resources are quite limited we do not send in general literature without political value, however when we receive these books we pass them on to another book program who sends in those kinds of materials to prisoners.
We are always accepting donations of money and books, so get in touch with us to help out. Students can help out by collecting books at the end of the semester.
Prisoner Legal Help
A major problem we face in our correspondence with prisoners and with the Free Book program is censorship. We are currently seeking people with legal experience who can help us fight this battle. With the assistance of MIM and RAIL prisoners are working on building the Prisoner's Legal Clinic, through which jailhouse lawyers can pass on legal information to others trying to work on their own cases. But outside assistance is desperately needed as well, not just in censorship cases, but in cases of brutality and other denials of human rights as well.
Education in Prisons
In the past we have shown the video "The Last Graduation," which tells the story of the ending of government funding for pell grants for prisoners to get a college education. RAIL is currently working on building a program for correspondence courses for prisoners. The goal is to someday allow prisoners to receive a degree while in prison like many people had done in the past. We are especially looking for professors who would be willing to work with us on this project.
UPDATE: We began offering classes in January 2000 with a revolutionary poetry class. Since then the instructor of the class has made two presentations with RAIL to discuss the sucesses and failures of the project and to present poetry produced by the class. The instructor is also trying to produce an anthology of the poems and has summed up her experiences. In 2001 we have started a class in sociology. For more info on how the program is structured read some documents from the Boston RAIL site. We will continue to work to make this project grow. Please get in touch if you can help.