MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Click to download a PDF of the North Carolina grievance petition
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.
Secretary, Division of Prisons 4201 Mail Service Center Raleigh,
NC 27699-4201
Director of Prisons 831 West Morgan Street Raleigh, NC 27626
ACLU of NC PO Box 28004 Raleigh, NC 27611
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
Jennie Lancaster, Deputy Secretary of DOC 4201 Mail Service
Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4201
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
PDF updated May 2012, July 2012, January 2013, and October 2013
Click on the pdf to download and print the petition
Enclosed is a document which has been generated for circulation within
the Nevada DOC. The purpose of this correspondence is to raise awareness
and begin a resistance campaign which transcends all lines drawn. It is
to respond to the Nevada Department of Corrections’s increasing
inhumanity, malevolence and brutality being forced upon prisoners.
They are starving and abusing us on a record scale. There have been more
than 11 prisoners shot since January 2012 in Protective Segregation
alone. I know of several more in surrounding units with at least one
fatal. Prisoner-on-prisoner violence is rising due to forced housing
even amongst enemies. We also suffer from sexual assaults by pigs on
prisoners, and coordinated retaliation and attacks on prisoners at the
behest of the hats. Is this what we will allow ourselves to be reduced
to?
This petition addresses the inadequate, contaminated and sometimes
nonexistent food we are being served in Nevada. It is already in
circulation where I am. Originally the petitions were sent to the
facility Warden and Director. A few of us sent copies to the Department
of Justice and Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC referred me to
the Nevada Health Division. The Warden, to create an illusion of
propriety, referred the matter to the Nevada Department of Corrections
Inspector General. I contacted the Health Division who apparently also
contacted the Inspector General within two weeks of notice of referral.
An investigation was begun and is ongoing. In addition to these above
noted, a copy was also sent to Nevada CURE and the United States
Inspector General.
The campaign for proper handling of grievances, started in California,
keeps spreading! This time it touched down in Florida, where Under
Lock & Key is regularly censored across the board.
Mail the petition to your loved ones 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, which are also on the petition itself. Supporters
should send letters of support on behalf of prisoners.
Warden (specific to your facility)
Office of General Counsel, Secretary FDOC 501 S. Calhoun
St. Tallahassee, FL 32399-2500
Inspector General, FDOC 501 S. Calhoun St. Tallahassee, FL
32399-2500
Governor Rick Scott The Capitol Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, PHB, Washington, DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington,
VA 22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Both fliers are double sided featuring the 5 principles of the United
Front for Peace in Prisons. The first one is two fliers per 8.5”x11”
piece of paper and is recruiting students to volunteer with us. The
other is just the 5 pts and is four fliers per 8.5”x11” paper as quarter
sheets.
Supporters on the outside can use these two-sided, quarter sheet fliers
to let the people know about the Day of Solidarity being organized
across U.S. prisons for September 9, 2012. Just click the image above to
download the PDF, print them out, cut them up and hand them out. Don’t
leave it to the bourgeois media to report on and define this movement.
by MIM(Prisons) July 2012 permalink
Click to download PDF of Nevada grievance petition
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 of support on behalf of
prisoners.
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
by MIM(Prisons) July 2012 permalink
Click to download a PDF of the Montana grievance petition
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 of support on behalf of
prisoners.
ACLU of Montana PO Box 1317 Helena MT 59624
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Often we hear or read quick quotes which are taken to mean something, or
infer something different from the intended meaning. Marx’s quote on
religion is just such an example.
We have all heard or read Marx’s “statement” that “religion is the
opiate of the masses.” This is not an accurate quote of what Marx wrote
in his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.”
This quote has given rise to the belief that Marx did not take the issue
of religion seriously and dismissed it as folly. This is not true.(1)
Let’s review in context what Marx did write about religion:
“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress
and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the
spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is
required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions
about conditions is the demand to give up a condition that needs
illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the
criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism
has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man will
wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will
shake off the chain and cull the living flower.
Clearly Marx is not discussing the seriousness of religion, or the role
it plays in the lives of oppressed peoples. Marx realizes the power of
delusion that religion holds over people. I disagree with MIM(Prisons)
that religion “is simply a belief in authority.”(2) Perhaps that is true
for some people. But I believe it is a panacea for woe and oppression –
a search and hope for a better life than the one believers currently
lead. It is the oppressed’s answer to the question of existentialism.
Due to the anxieties of existence – anxieties people experience as the
result of natural causes like floods, famine and earthquakes, or
man-made causes such as enslavement, exploitation or oppression – that
make people feel powerless, they often resort to magical thinking, or
beliefs in supernatural agents as a plea for the anxiety to end. Thus
was born religion, its roots in anxiety.
Religion is a potent tool of capitalism and imperialism. To eliminate
one, all must be eliminated if the people are to experience true freedom
and liberation.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Overall, we have great unity with what
this comrade writes about religion and Marx’s view of it. But eir
disagreement with something we wrote is a bit of a strawpersyn argument.
First, it is ironic to use Christopher Hitchens to criticize us as too
dismissive of religion. Hitchens was popular for his atheist ideas among
the Amerikan petty bourgeoisie. His attack on so-called “Islamo-fascism”
was better received than his allies on the left (led by Bob Avakian) and
right (epitomized in David Horowitz). All three represent the spectrum
of white nationalist thinking that uses religion as an excuse to attack
the oppressed nations, primarily in the Islamic world today. In this attempt to critique, we think this comrade takes the quote
from the
Fundamental
Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons
out of context. The article presents the religious view in a discussion
on science, correctly stating that it is simply a belief in authority,
rather than a belief in one’s own ability to study reality and find
truth.
The MIM article also discusses pre-scientific thinking, addressing
religion’s role as a “panacea for woe and oppression.” In pre-capitalist
times, such thinking was the norm and religion was more than just an
attempt to deal with the bad times, it was an attempt to explain all
aspects of reality. Once scientific thought was developed and
popularized, it has been the class interests of the oppressors that have
kept religious ideology alive to serve their interests, as this comrade
alludes. But that doesn’t mean everyone who is religious is a dupe.
Muslims are currently striking some of the greatest blows against U.$.
imperialism, so they must have a pretty good grasp on how to actualize
their own interests in a world that throws many horrors in their
direction.
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure, or mandatory polygraph
testing. 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.
Mr. Tom Clements, Executive Director Colorado Department of
Corrections 2862 S. Circle Drive Colorado Springs, CO 80906
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Petition updated July 2012, October 2017, September 2018
The downloadable grievance petition for Texas has been updated to
consolidate the recipients to those who respond to prisoners, and to
comply with current Texas policies and procedures. Please download it
here.
Click the link below for more information on this campaign.
