Across Amerika, prisoners write of censorship

St. Clair prison outlaws the study of law

Here's the memo from Officer Bailey at the St. Clair prison:

AS OF SEPTEMBER 22, 1999 THERE WILL BE NO LAW CLASSES TAUGHT AT
ANY TIME. ANYONE CAUGHT DOING SO WILL BE SUBJECT TO DISCIPLINARY
ACTION FOR DISOBEYING A DIRECT ORDER.

This is what one prisoner has to say about that:

Prisons are today's plantations. During chattel slavery, slave owners 
forbade the slaves to try to
learn to read and write. Any slave caught trying to learn to read
and write was severely punished. Today, at the St. Clair
Prison/Plantation, prisoners are forbidden to study the law and
assist other prisoners with the law. Prisoners caught studying the
law and assisting others with the law will be severely punished.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a suit pending in the Federal
Court in regards to the prisons' policy of depriving prisoners the
right to receive reading material.

What happened to "Reading is Fundamental"? Why are the prison
managers so adverse to prisoners studying the law and receiving
reading material from the outside?

Recently, there was a lot of ballyhoo about Honor Dorms in prison;
but the Honor Dorms are not to help prisoners. The Honor Dorms are
the cheese in the trap to destroy all of the prisoners' dignity
and self-esteem. If the prison managers sincerely want to help
prisoners, why forbid them to study law and receive reading
material of their choice?

The truth of the matter is that the rabid racism of right-wing so-
called Christians has invaded the prisons. These rabid racists
have infiltrated the prisons under the guise of religion and many
have successfully become DOC employees and moved up to the higher
echelon of the DOC administrators. As a result, the DOC policies
and programs have become much more racist.

Several months ago, one of the guards hung a noose inside the
window of the guard's station. A couple of weeks ago,
one of the guards call Afrikan prisoners a bunch of dumb
niggers. This racist behavior is common here at St. Clair.

If the prisons were still predominantly white, the conditions
would be better. However, the "ethnic cleansing" taking place
within the Afrikan community has changed the complexion of the
prisoners. America has never cared about how its slaves were/are
treated.

St. Clair is a prison and not a plantation and we are prisoners,
not slaves. We, the prisoners of St. Clair prison, appeal to the
public and the governmental officials for help in stopping the
racist abuse of prisoners here at St. Clair and to help assure
that the Constitutional Rights of prisoners at St. Clair are
respected.

-- St. Clair prisoners, 27 September 1999.


VOICE

2.7k
Texas prisons withdraw prisoner speech rules

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice recently proposed
changes in its rules regarding death row visitation which would
further restrict prisoners' access to media and squelch criticism.
In particular, the new code would define "news media" to exclude
"television stations or networks devoted primarily to advocacy
purposes or to a particular point of view" and newspapers with
limited resources and a specific viewpoint, such as MIM Notes.

Texas prisoncrats withdrew their proposals in July, largely due to
protests from prisoners, their families, media professionals, and
individuals from as far away as Italy and France. The state of Texas 
vowed to pursue their attempts to censor prisoners and those who expose 
the crimes of the prison system. "We are going back to the drawing 
board,"
said the general counsel for the Texas Board of Criminal Justice,
"We need to do a better job of drafting, better spelling out what
we want to do."

If the Texas prisons had their way, even the narrowly-defined news media
could interview death-row prisoners only "to the extent that such
access does not disrupt the safe and secure operation of the unit
or detract from the deterrence of crime." This clause typically
gives prisoncrats the ability to fabricate explanations and deny
prisoners priviledges. In the case of the proposed changes,
prisoncrats could claim an alleged security threat or detraction
"from the deterrence of crime" when articulate, politically aware
death row prisoners speak directly to the public. Under such a
policy change, the Executive Director of Texas prisons could
suspend "all [!!!] death row visitation for security reasons for a
period of up to 70 days."

Several mainstream television programs burned the Texas Department of 
Criminal Justice recently by
documenting conditions in Texas' control units and by giving
prisoners a chance to speak for themselves. These reports followed
the exposure and educational work which MIM and other anti-prisons
activists have been doing for years. Evidently the Texas prison system 
has had enough and wants to fight back.

Texas is not alone in trying to restrict prisoners free speech,
nor is it even in the lead. Pennsylvania changed its rules
specifically to prevent the eloquent Mumia Abu-Jamal from
publishing his critiques of Amerikan prisons. These attempts to
isolate prisoners from the public, in order slander them and
justify the barbarity of Amerikan prisons, further prove that
Amerikan prisons are a form of class rule and a tool for the
preservation of national oppression. In a truly rehabilitative
prison system, prisoners would have the same rights as the general
public to receive media and speak their minds in the press. Only
socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, can ensure such
rights.


VOICE



Montana guard calls MIM and RAIL "inflammatory"

I am impelled to write to you regarding some censorship issues. As
I'm sure you know from your Computer data base I am a Prisoner at
Montana State Prison. I have been on our mailing list now for
several months. I enjoy getting your newsletter. I find it
informative and useful.

However I have been having some serious trouble getting your
materials. It seems the Security Major, Major Woods here at the
prison isn't letting me have my Materials. He calls them
inflammatory and disrupting. For these reasons my RAIL and MIM
materials aren't being given to me. I have included my
Undeliverable Notice from the prison Mail Room, in this letter for
you records. I have also sent previous Undeliverable Notices to
you in the past. I would like to continue with your fine
organization, however if something isn't done with my mail
situation, I fear I will have to quit as I can no longer read and
participate in Organizational and group correspondence. I look
forward to hearing form you in the near future on this issue.

Respectfully,

-- a  Montana prisoner, 24 October, 1999.


[All Things censored CD,  track 26 De Profundis 3:30]

VOICE

Tough to educate yourself in prison

This is a letter and response  printed in MIM Notes in September. 

I'm a Death row prisoner in Indiana. I would love to receive your
newsletter.

I live off of $13 a month state pay, so I can't afford to survive,
let alone send any dough. I would truly be grateful if I could
receive your newsletter. It's just so hard to educate yourself
when you can't get your hands on the literature.

Thank you!

--An Indiana Death Row prisoner.

MIM responded:  MIM Notes is free to all people living under lock &
key, for the reasons this courageous prisoner explains. If you
have time to write, you can help to support your own subscription
by writing for MIM Notes. You can explain what conditions are like
on the death rows in your state -- both so that prisoners in other
systems and people on the outside can understand and educate
themselves about this facet of imperialism.

For our readers who are not in prison, it is important to
understand that prisoners are not "living off the tax payers" as
the reactionaries claim. $13 per month is not enough to live on
because prisoners must buy basic necessities like soap, aspirin
and vitamins, and sometimes even toilet paper from the prison
store. The prisons do not provide the basics and definitely do not
supply a full range of educational materials. This is why we run a
Serve the People Free Books for Prisoners program -- to organize
the resources and efforts of students, families and activists on
the outside to help serve the organizing needs of prisoners.




VOICE

Pigs continue to censor

Y'all had sent me a Mao book and it got here but the property
officer contrabanded it because they claim it did not come from a
publisher nor book store. I had already wrote MIM informing them
about this. In fact I sent the contraband form as well, letting
them know all they gotta do is send a typed out form or something
tell these pigs that the book is coming from "MIM" and that MIM is
a legitimate book program (publication) and they'll then let me
have the book.

I wrote y'all on this issue about two weeks back and I ain't here
nothing yet, I only got two more weeks before these people throw
away my book. But if worse comes to worse I'll have these pigs
send the book back to you so that then y'all can send
it back with more forms verifying it's all legitimate.

MIM responds: We did respond to the letter this person asks about
and we sent in documentation to the prison regarding the books we
sent being from a publisher and a bookstore but the prison still
maintains that we can not send in literature.


VOICE

Control unit treats men like meat

In mid-July a prisoner had an epilepsy seizure on the second tier.
It took 20 minutes for the nurse to get to the control unit. The
nurse could do nothing but stand at the door and attempt to calm
the prisoner.

According to the standard policy of the Fourth Reich the security
methods are that the keepers have to be dressed out in full riot
gear, shields, helmets, bullet proof jackets, riots sticks, mace,
etc. It took 15-20 more minutes for the keepers to suit up.

A stretcher was brought into the pod, the prisoner's cage was
opened and he was told to remain STILL. A man having a seizure is
old to remain still -- that's deep. The prisoner was handcuffed
and shackled in leg irons, placed on the stretcher, hauled out of
the pod as though he was a piece of meat.

This was a demonstration of what the hooligans think of the
dispossessed classes. Prisoners screamed and cursed, they were
visibly upset.

We see the wake up calls, however, we need to desperately wake up.
The prison movement has to regain the organizational functioning
of unity among ourselves.

On September 3, 100 and something New Mexican prisoners were
transported to Wallens Ridge State Prison. You know, the slaves
cannot be separated from one to the other, however, the state will
utilize every tactic possible to have the edge. If we're
transferred 2,000-3,000 miles from our roots what of it? The
slave-owners are doing no more than what they did during chattel
slavery.

How you grasp the realities of the world makes the difference.
When you don't see the realities, the ruling circle will have us
at each other's throats, still killing one another for reasons
which have no merits, other than our being manipulated to destroy
the outcasts, whether it's for drugs, turf disputes, because of
the color of one's skin, gang-banging etc. The deck of playing
cards have been stacked against the poor, word.

Solidarity forever!

-- A Virginia prisoner, 12 October 1999.