Amerika denies prisoners education; MIM announces University BARS 
Serve the People Program

University BARS (Boston Activists for Revolutionary Schooling) is 
a new Serve the People Program offering education opportunities to 
prisoners within the context of revolutionary struggle. Initial 
UBARS classes, created by the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist 
League (RAIL) and Life After Framingham (LAF), start March 2000.

Despite prisoners having given their lives to fight for 
educational programs, these and other basic needs are continually 
denied throughout Amerika. MIM and RAIL fight for better prison 
conditions within revolutionary struggle. We have long provided 
prisoners a means to educate themselves and to publish ideas 
through MIM Notes and the Serve the People Free Books for 
Prisoners Program. UBARS demonstrates that a few comrades working 
with the masses can build an independent and proletarian 
institution and serve the masses' needs better than the current 
imperialist system.

Current and former prisoners of MCI-Framingham formed Life After 
Framingham. LAF serves wimmin's needs during and after their 
imprisonment at Framingham. LAF also serves as an advocacy group 
for the wimmin, including lobbying the state legislature. MIM and 
RAIL are working together with LAF to offer both men and wimmin 
access to educational programs in prison. We welcome other similar 
progressive organizations with disagreements on basic ideology to 
help build proletarian institutions to serve the people.

UBARS addresses the need for positive activities in prison to 
assist prisoners in developing skills needed while incarcerated 
and after release. Education is necessary for survival, to end 
oppression and to seize power. The state's trend to cut access to 
education must be fought.

We urge those sympathetic to prisoners' struggles and those who 
believe that everyone should have access to education to help 
build this program. In particular, UBARS needs facilitators to 
teach useful job-training courses that are needed to curb 
recidivism. To emphasize that reforms and re-integration into the 
workforce will not end the exponential growth in U$ incarceration, 
all materials will be supplemented with revolutionary literature.

University BARS has the long-term goal of offering college credit 
to prisoners. As a first step in offering greater access to 
education, we offer correspondence courses. Initially, courses 
will be limited as we try out the first semester.

What you can do to help UBARS grow

Prisoners:

Contact us and indicate your interest. Outside of "enrolling" in a 
course, help avoid administrative blockades by informing us of 
potential problems and ways to avoid censorship. The more 
successes we build, the more facilitators will join in.

Prisoners working with MIM already organize revolutionary study 
groups regularly. If you would like to organize a class for UBARS, 
outside of the regular study groups, contact MIM. The turn around 
time for prisoners organizing a course will be longer and need 
extra preparation compared to courses prepared by outside 
facilitators.

Teachers, grad students & academics:

Help by signing up to facilitate a course. The courses will cover 
12 weeks worth of material in 18 weeks to avoid mailing and 
administrative problems. UBARS is interested in offering all types 
of courses from writing to biology and marketing.


Students, activists& advocates:

Help by raising funds, publicizing and doing the leg-work for 
UBARS. We need to contact more potential course facilitators, 
distribute flyers, write grants, make photocopies and other such 
tasks.

UBARS Revolutionary Poetry course description

This is a free course provided by a RAIL comrade. This class 
starts in March 2000. If you are interested in signing up, write 
to us by March 20th!

This course will introduce students to the realm of a writing 
workshop from a political viewpoint. Poetry will be discussed as a 
way to expose oppression, envision an ideal or victory, to educate 
people through appealing to the senses, through metaphor, through 
witness.

We will study a few different forms of poetry but the focus will 
be free verse. Suggested topics and exercises will be given but 
you may write about other topics.

Students will learn how to critique each other's poetry in both 
political content and artistry. You will also be expected to 
revise your own work and you may send revisions in before the 
final portfolio project for comments. You don't have to share with 
the whole class if you don't want to (although it's encouraged).

Students will write at least two poems a month to be 'workshopped' 
by the class. It is strongly encouraged that you write as much as 
you want and send in poetry you would like comments on. The 
comrade facilitating will comment on everything possible, this 
will depend on the number of people interested in the course.

The final project for each student is a collection of h/h poetry, 
minimum 10 pages, and 1 critical essay about a specific poem or 
one particular poet and his/her work (we will discuss this further 
into the semester).

Each student should contribute at least one poem to an anthology 
which will be put together at the end of the class and each 
student will receive a copy of the anthology.

Please respond with a letter of interest in the course in order to 
register as soon as possible. Indicate the level of experience you 
have, as a writer, in poetry workshops. No experience is necessary 
to enroll in this course. The first lesson will be sent out around 
April 1. Lessons will be sent out every (3) weeks along with 
copies of the class's poems. All suggestions on how the course is 
run, about the selection of readings, etc. are welcome. The 
readings will be selected and sent in a packet with each lesson.

The works produced from the course may be submitted to the 
revolutionary art and literature journal that comrades are 
building for the future.

Poems selected from: Jimmy Santiago Baca, Gwendolyn Brooks, Dennis 
Brutus, Rita Dove, Martin Espada, Caroline Forche, Langston 
Hughes, Etheridge Knight, Dick Lourie, Mao Tse-Tung, Pablo Neruda, 
Patricia Smith, also Against Forgetting (edited by Carolyn 
Forche), ITAL For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm 
X END (ed. Randall and Burroughs), ITAL In Defense of Mumia from 
the Wars END (ed. Bowen, Ba Chung and Weigl), ITAL Poems from 
Black Africa END (ed. Langston Hughes), ITAL Poetry like Bread-
Poets of the Political Imagination END (ed. Martin Espada)