Comrades in SCI-Muncy came together to draft a petition for people imprisoned by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. The petition demands that the state ensure that grievances be addressed by PADOC staff in a timely manner, and that people do not face retaliation for filing a grievance. The comrades ask for additional contacts to add to the list to send the petition to, and any other edits from others in Pennsylvania.
MIM Distributors has been targetted in Pendleton Correctional Facility in Indiana for promoting “Security Threat Group” information, usually with no justification. Sometimes they will also add “New Afrika”, as if the whole nation of New Afrika is a Security Threat Group. This has been used to censor our newsletter and communications with prisoners at Pendleton. More recently, staff have accused MIM Distributors of lacing mail with drugs and threatened to throw the intended recipients of that mail in long-term isolation torture cells as a result! The charge against at least one prisoner has been dropped, but the political repression continues.
Comrades in Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support have taken up a campaign to get Pendleton staff to follow their own rules and stop this baseless persecution. You can see in our Amerikan Censorship Documentation Project that we have been appealing the censorship for the last couple years with little progress. Therefore we are expanding this campaign to build public opinion in support. You can help by using these postcards to talk to people about what is going on in Pendleton and getting them to send a postcard of protest to let the Indiana Department of Corrections know that people are not okay with their political persecution tactics.
A comrade in Indiana has drafted the attached petition to address relevant state officials listed at the end regarding failures in the grievance system in the Indiana Department of Corrections. Outside supporters are encouraged to share the petition with contacts inside and to write the contacts in support of the issues faced by their friends, comrades and family. Prisoners in Indiana can write us to get copies of this petition as well as our Federal appeal petition in the case that the state petition is not effective.
[UPDATED August 2024 to include contacts at Wabash Valley CF]
We Demand Our Grievances Are Addressed!
UPDATE FOR AUGUST 2022: Now that Juneteenth 2022 has passed, please use this updated flyer and these updated postcards now address the censorship across the state of Texas in recent months. We need your support to keep increasing the pressure to fight this censorship of political speech.
Download and print this flyer to hang or hand out.
We are also asking others to join our letter writing and postcard campaign in support of the rights of MIM Distributors and activists in Allred to freely communicate. There has been a rise in mail censorship as organizing has progressed.
With just a month remaining before the first series of actions around the Juneteenth Freedom Initiative, we have received reports of repression of activists by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice(TDCJ).
One of the hearts of this campaign comes out of the brutal Allred Restrictive Housing Unit(RHU) where people have spent decades in isolation. We’ve recently learned that one organizer at Allred hasn’t received half a dozen letters we’ve sent em over the last few months. Eir outgoing mail is also delayed or gone missing. This mail tampering is illegal. We wrote the warden of Allred to stop this censorship.. If he doesn’t stop it, we know this political repression is intentional from the top of the TDCJ to suppress our boycotting of Juneteenth.
We are asking others to join our letter writing and postcard campaign in support of the rights of MIM Distributors and these activists in Allred to freely communicate. The pdf below can be downloaded, printed on card stock and cut into four postcards. Then you can ask people to sign them, put a postcard stamp ($0.40) on them, and drop them in a mail box. Over the next couple months we want to show TDCJ that people outside are paying attention and supporting the Juneteenth Freedom Initiative. This is one way to do that. You can also call Warden Jimmy Smith @ (940) 855-7477 (**069).
Stevenson Unit in Texas has also stepped up censorship related to materials about the Juneteenth boycott. The TX Team One Primer was censored for the reason:
“Page(s) 4 contains information advocating prison disruption.”
Prisoners are very limited in what they can do when their grievances are ignored. Most actions will lead to repression. A boycott is the most passive action. There are no calls to violence nor do the plans threaten security in any way. Just a peaceful demonstration of solidarity, demanding some basic humyn rights be applied in Texas prisons. Yet this is being outlawed by the state.
Even worse, in eir most recent update, one comrade in Stevenson reported that:
“last night I was placed in handcuffs and marched off to solitary confinement, the place from where I currently write. I woke this morning to find I’m being charged with 2 new rules violations: 1) Attempt/threat to assault a correctional officer and 2) Assault of a correctional officer.”
There was no assault. In fact this comrade is not even supposed to be housed on the second floor because of eir health conditions. Ey believes this is retaliation for the appeals ey filed against the censorship of literature sent by MIM Distributors. Meanwhile, MIM Distributors was not given the opportunity to appeal, and only received the final decision from TDCJ.
As our comrade in Stevenson Unit so eloquently concluded,
“They will never succeed in snuffing out my flame and their attempts to silence the truth only causes it to roar even louder! They cloak themselves in legitimacy and the trappings of power because deep down they know they are weak and the system is crumbling – to be swept aside along with all the silly liberal reformers and we build a better world over their ruins, a new society based on equality and respect and compassion and truth and justice and”love” – a human society fit for fully involved and determined human beings at peace with themselves, each other, and the world around us.”
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are experiencing issues with their grievance procedure. Send them extra copies to share! For more info on this campaign, click here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the addresses listed on the petition, and below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!Acting Commissioner, Anthony J. Annucci<br> The Harriman State Campus <br> 1220 Washington Ave<br> Albany, NY 12226-2050<br><br> New York State Commission of Corrections<br> 80 Wolf Rd, 4th Floor<br> Albany, NY 12205<br><br> United States Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division<br> Special Litigation Section<br> 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, PHB<br> Washington, D.C. 20530<br><br> Office of Inspector General<br> HOTLINE<br> P.O. Box 9778<br> Arlington, Virginia 22219<br><br></blockquote>
MIM(Prisons), USW
PO Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are experiencing issues with their grievance procedure. Send them extra copies to share! For more info on this campaign, click here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the addresses listed on the petition, and below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!Legislative Corrections Ombudsman Office<br> PO Box 30036<br> Lansing, MI 48909<br><br> United States Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division<br> Special Litigation Section<br> 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, PHB<br> Washington, D.C. 20530<br><br> Office of Inspector General<br> HOTLINE<br> P.O. Box 9778<br> Arlington, Virginia 22219<br><br></blockquote>
MIM(Prisons), USW
PO Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140
When state-level petitions fail, we now have this petition to appeal to the Department of Justice. This federal level appeal may help put pressure on the state corrections departments ignore our appeals
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are experiencing issues with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies to share! For more info on this campaign, click here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Section Chief – Special Litigation Section, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20530
ACLU National Prison Project, 915 15th St NW, 7th floor, Washington DC, 20005-2112 (for those ready to bring class action lawsuits)
Office of the U.S. Attorney General, 1425 New York Ave. NW, Washington DC 20530-0001
Director/Commissioner/Secretary of Corrections (for your state)
Agency or Facility Grievance System Director or Coordinator (for your state)
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW
PO Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are experiencing issues with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies to share! For more info on this campaign, click here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
John Baldwin, Acting Director, 1301 Concordia Court, PO Box 19277, Springfield, IL 62794-9277
US Dept of Justice, Civil Rights Div, 950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, PHB, Washington, DC 20530
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW
PO Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140