MIM Notes 210                   May 15, 2000

LETTERS

Revolution versus reform work

Dear MIM Notes,

I don't know if you remember me but up until about the middle of 
last year I was one of your prison subscribers. Due to the 
problems of having your newspaper constantly censored and the cell 
searches due to being a subscriber I let my subscription run out. 
I'm now happy to tell you that I am no longer in prison and would 
like to start receiving MIM Notes again so would you please send 
me the price for subscribing. I would also like any information 
you might have on any prison reform groups because now that I 
don't have to worry about any retaliation on the DOC's part I'd 
like to do what I can to help those I left behind in prison. Being 
on what the state calls intensive parole I'm still on a short 
leash but I believe I can still be of some help.

After all the years I did in prison I think I've seen it all and 
the corruption that goes on behind the walls and fences of the 
prisons in this state is beyond belief. ... I'll close by saying 
stay strong and keep up the fight.

-- a former Michigan prisoner, 9 February, 2000

MIM responds: Great to hear from you, and we're very happy you 
contacted us from your new street address. You asked about prison 
reform groups: you should let us know more about what your idea of 
reform is if this is off the mark, but we would suggest that you 
continue to work with MIM either as a RAIL organizer, or as a 
facilitator for United Struggle from Within (USW -- the MIM-led 
organization of anti-imperialist prisoners that does work like the 
Prisoners' Legal Clinic, prisoner study groups, and other prison-
related work). 

Many people who work with MIM are also unaffiliated with any 
organization and only want to take part in pieces of the work that 
we do. This is also a fine and honorable way to approach activism. 
In terms of prison reform there will be a fund raiser for MIM's 
Serve the People Free Books for Prisoners program (the program 
through which we send MIM Notes & MIM Theory among other things) 
in the beginning of April in your area. A single event like this, 
or regular work like typing up prisoner letters to go in Under 
Lock & Key, or distributing MIM Notes in your area so that more 
people can read about prisons and imperialism generally, all of 
these are ways that you can work with MIM to educate more people 
about prisons.

If you are really seeking a reform group -- a lobbying 
organization or one that works in a more conciliatory way with the 
Michigan prisons, there are many groups which do different levels 
of lobbying/prisoner & prisoner-family support/research and 
education. 

The reason we suggest you continue work with MIM is the same as 
what we print in our newspaper every month. We believe that the 
prisons in this country are not going to be reformed into decent 
institutions practicing a genuine form of rehabilitation. This is 
evidenced in the repression you experienced as a result of being a 
MIM Notes subscriber, the fact that prisoners who subscribe to MIM 
Notes are now being targeting as STG members. Some have said MIM 
should tone down its language for these reasons, but that's not 
really the issue here. The issue is what is the mission/what is 
the function of these institutions? What laws would you change to 
make them a more productive part of society? MIM has worked and 
will continue to work with reform oriented organizations on the 
issues on which we have unity. We believe they make substantial 
concrete contributions to exposing the workings of the prison 
system, and this is a very important facet of the overall struggle 
against prisons. But we do not do this sort of educational work 
outside the context of advancing independent institutions of the 
oppressed.

You will have noticed from reading our paper that we have 
certainly spent time and organizing energy on certain reform 
struggles, we're not purists about that and don't believe it's 
productive to be. The Massachusetts prisoner transfers are one 
issue around which MIM and prisoners' families galvanized people 
for years, with some success in getting the prisoners brought back 
to Massachusetts from Texas. But throughout the MIM comrades who 
were leading this work emphasized that the Governor's ploy of 
overclassifying prisoners to dramatize the crowding problem would 
simply change to some other facade that would allow him to get 
money from the legislators to build more prisons. Similarly, the 
Prisoners' Legal Clinic comrades have done some great work laying 
out the legal issues surrounding censorship of prisoners' reading 
materials. Censorship is an important battle for us as it can mean 
the difference between organizing with prisoners and not. At the 
same time we do not tell prisoners or their supporters on the 
outside that if we can only do away with x, y or z repressive law 
the prisons will be a better place. We believe this is a form of 
selling out prisoners for the purpose of making liberals feel good 
about limited activism. 

MIM opposition is not racial

Dear Comrades, A copy of MIM Theory #7 [Proletarian Feminist 
Revolutionary Nationalism on the Communist Road] you recently sent 
me was kidnapped by Sgt. Pennington before it reached me.

He says it is "inflammatory toward whites and the corrections" -- 
as though some of the militant Muslim literature they allow into 
the institution is not.

MIM is not against white people. I am about half white and I 
embrace the MIM comrades. What MIM is against (correct me if I'm 
wrong) is the capitalistic, imperialistic, historically 
oppressive, political and societal system that has given birth to 
innumerable atrocities of which the alleged "corrections" gulag is 
but one example. This system happens to be (and to have been) 
predominantly white. We are against this system and its allies. 
But we are not people who would condemn someone solely on the 
basis of her or his skin color.

--an Ohio Prisoner.

MIM responds: We agree with your last paragraph entirely. We have 
an overall analysis based on history and ideology, and through 
that analysis we make tactical and strategic decisions about how 
to best push the revolution forward.

We do not judge individuals on the basis of "race," but we do 
analyze groups of people in this country based on class, nation 
and gender. On average oppressors in the u.s. are more likely to 
be from the white nation, and members of the labor aristocracy are 
less likely than prisoners to be revolutionary or anti-
imperialist. This comes from an analysis of the white Amerikan 
nation and its role in imperialism (for more on this see MIM 
Theory 1 and 10). So, we spend a lot more time working with 
prisoners than we do recruiting outside auto factories, for 
example, based on this analysis of national oppression.

We must also add we know that militant Muslim literature is often 
suppressed by prison officials (alongside the MIM literature that 
is censored). The system has some arbitrariness built into it, but 
one of the main principles behind prison censorship is the 
suppression of anti-imperialist nationalism of any kind, which 
includes a lot of Muslim literature as well as MIM literature.