Alabama prisoners endure unsafe conditions

Inmates housed at Holman prison on Alabama's death 
row and segregation unit are forced to stay in 5-
feet by 8-feet cells 23 hours a day. The cells 
have a wire mesh over the bars, with holes in it 
that are about a centimeter in size and air cannot 
flow through. The cells reach temperatures of a 
hundred degrees and we cannot have fans in the 
cells any more.

The maintenance tunnels behind the cells have 
water leaks and the inmates have water leaking 
into the cells from the septic system in the 
maintenance tunnels. The inmates have to eat and 
sleep in these cells, and there is mildew from all 
the water leaks. There have been times when the 
water from the sink was brown. The inmates have 
rats and roaches in their cells. Some inmates have 
found small snakes in their cells. 

These conditions pose a risk of harm to the health 
and safety of Holman death row and segregation 
inmates. State fire marshals also cited the prison 
for its failure to have a fire alarm system. 
Experts discovered the unsafe conditions of the 
kitchen equipment and numerous fire safety 
violations throughout the prison. The prison does 
not have a single operable fire extinguisher. The 
prison administration and staff are aware of the 
problems and nothing has been done to fix them.

--A prisoner in Alabama, 14 August 2001.

* * *

Welcome to the Revolution

ITAL We print the following article from USW 
leader, South Carolina Prisoner #1 on the 
rectification of MIM's Serve the People Books for 
Prisoners Program. In it, we find highly 
instructive lessons for other USW chapters and 
others in our circles. Out of MIM's mistakes, this 
USW chapter formed an internal structure to 
prevent some of the problems we found, 
particularly in follow-through and coordination of 
work among people receiving books from our 
program. Other USW chapters should follow these 
comrades' lead on the organizational front in 
order to maximize the resources of the 
international proletariat and better position MIM 
and USW to enact agitation campaigns against 
censorship, forced labor, and more. END --MIM


The United Struggle from Within comrades here at 
[X prison] would like to take this time to salute 
the MIM for its rectification of the errors and 
mistakes in the Serve the People Free Books for 
Prisoners Program. MIM's criticism of its error 
and victory over its rightist mistakes was 
instructive in helping us to develop our own 
political program. MIM Notes 223 is a jewel that 
should be used by all the United Struggle from 
Within comrades as a starting point from which to 
clarify and organize the prison movement. We take 
this time to do so.

On page 5 of MIM Notes 223 an article entitled 
"MIM Prison Ministry Advances, Overcomes Rightist 
Mistakes" gives an overview of MIM's prison 
ministry organizational work over the last year 
(2000). In a letter from MIM to one of our cadres 
dated 19 November 2000 MIM wrote, "The Free Books 
for Prisoners Program is unabashedly political. 
This implies: 1) The books we send out are chosen 
for their political value; 2) They are sent out in 
the context of political organizing."

To paraphrase the program's mission statement: The 
purpose of the Free Books for Prisoners Program is 
to help prisoners develop their politics and to 
struggle with us for an end to oppression. The 
Free Books for Prisoners Program is not a book of 
the month club. MIM sends out books expecting that 
the recipients will do some organizing work in 
return. For example, MIM asks comrades in prison 
to write book reviews, use the books to write 
articles for MIM Notes or MIM Theory, form study 
groups, etc.

MIM and its allies collect and send out political, 
legal and historical books. MIM also has a small 
supply of dictionaries and other reference that 
are useful for writers, which we reserve for 
comrades engaged in organizing work.

In MIM Notes 223 the party summed up its criticism 
of the Free Books for Prisoners Program by stating 
that "some comrades within MIM circles strayed 
from the Maoist principle of politics in command. 
Instead, they treated the BfP program as a 
bourgeois charity." MIM's correction of its 
mistakes helped us to resolve the contradiction 
between the need to politically educate our cadres 
on the one hand and a lack of revolutionary 
material by which to politically educate them on 
the other. Approximately 2 months ago our 
organization compiled a book list and made it 
mandatory under Democratic Centralism -- the 
system of majority rule - - for our cadres to read 
and write reviews of the books on the book list. 
At first, this book list was compiled from books 
inside our outdated prison library. This was 
mistake number one. After struggling in class over 
the self- criticism made by MIM comrades 
concerning the BfP program we realized the mistake 
we made in our own political education program, 
and utilized the self-criticism made by the MIM 
comrades to correct our mistakes. They wrote, "we 
spent time and money filling requests for books 
from prisoners who were not involved in building 
[revolution] or engaged in active political 
struggles, either with MIM, with other prisoners, 
or with others on the outside. We often sent books 
of questionable political value -- e.g. reformist, 
pro- bourgeois "histories" of the Black civil 
rights movement, persynal testimonials -- without 
guiding prisoners on how to make the best use of 
them politically. Even when we did send books with 
correct political perspective -- e.g. MIM Theory -
- there was more often than not no political or 
organizational follow-up ..." 

We corrected our mistakes by improving the 
political quality of the book list. We now require 
-- under democratic centralism -- our more 
seasoned comrades to 1) pool together in order to 
build the organization's library book list. 2) We 
require all our members to make a tour of duty 
through the organization's library. This entails, 
among other things, reading at least one book per 
month from the book list and last but not least 3) 
to write a monthly essay from the book selection.

These rules and regulations are binding upon all 
our members. After using this method we found that 
between our more seasoned comrades we had such 
books in our possession as "Blood in my Eye" and 
"Soledad Brothers" by comrade George Jackson, "To 
Die for the People" and "Revolutionary Suicide" by 
comrade Huey P. Newton. Though we have other books 
we prioritized the above listed books as required 
(first) reading materials for less experienced 
cadres and new recruits. All our members are 
mandated to build our revolutionary book list. 
Since MIM is the only organization with a 
consistent book program for prisoners [and we] 
also require less experienced cadres to request 
certain books from MIM and we require that they 
perform the work MIM asks in return for its 
donation (i.e. book reviews, essays, etc.)

Some comrades lost valuable reading material 
("Communist Manifesto", MIM Theory 2/3, "How 
Europe Underdeveloped Africa") because we had no 
security in our organization regarding the way we 
shared our materials. In a note under our paper 
entitled "Standards for Membership" we say "non-
members are not allowed to check out any books 
from the organization's library. Also non-members 
are not allowed to check out any other reading 
materials except by way of a voucher (i.e. a 
member).

Non-members are only allowed to check out 
materials such as MIM Notes, POW Journals from 
Spear and Shield, and we hold a member from their 
respective dormitory responsible for those 
materials.

We now require each member to read one MIM Notes a 
week. Most importantly, since MIM is the most 
effective organization at this time aiding the 
prison movement we here at X prison pledge to do 
more organizational work and to contribute such 
work to develop the Under Lock & Key section of 
MIM Notes. In short, we based our political 
program on organizational work. This work is to be 
done for Under Lock & Key. The Free Books for 
Prisoners Program is an independent institution of 
the oppressed that we challenge US prisoners to 
use and to develop it. Help the MIM to fight 
censorship of this program. Remember this is our 
program. Let's use our resources in a responsible 
fashion. We have provided also the Revolutionary 
Trigger Hand Salute article including the Marxist 
methodology of knowledge.[To be printed in the 
next issue of Under Lock and Key --MIM] Through 
trial and error we have found that the majority of 
our comrades responded better to literature from 
the BPP era than to books written about the 
Chinese Cultural Revolution. This is due to lack 
of political education.

We are attempting to raise the level of 
consciousness of our group at this time, because 
the bulk of the membership require the more 
rhetorical forms (perceptual) of revolutionary 
literature than the more scientific (rational) 
materials. We ask that MIM and the USW leaders 
take this analysis seriously. Many comrades 
complained that they could not comprehend even MIM 
Notes at first reading, let along the Four Essays 
of Mao. Prisoners are in need of political 
education concerning dialectical materialism. In 
fact we have found it necessary to compile a study 
paper entitled "Dialectical Materialism, 
Contradictions and the Methods for Resolving Them" 
in order to train our cadres in the study of 
contradictions in a materialist way. We challenge 
MIM and USW leaders to go one step further in 
their current analysis where they hold in MIM 
Notes 192 "At this time MIM and many USW leaders 
have agreed that intense study by prisoners is an 
essential aspect to building a successful anti-
imperialist organization and to determine what 
direction for organization will be successful. The 
practice of doing organizational work should be 
principal!

--South Carolina Prisoner #1

MIM adds: South Carolina Prisoner #1 and his/her 
comrades have recently been contributing a great 
deal to the progress of USW country-wide, and of 
course their own USW chapter's development. We 
thank these comrades for taking so much initiative 
and showing positive examples of developing 
genuinely revolutionary mass organizations.

The comrades mentioned in the above essay practice 
democratic centralism. This is a principle of 
organization that can be used (or abused) by any 
functioning group. The democratic part of the term 
defines the equal participation and voice expected 
from all members of the organization. The 
centralism refers to the mandate that all members 
uphold all decisions made by the democratic 
processes of the organization. Agreement with this 
principle and its practical application are 
required for membership to the Party, however, MIM 
does not make this a condition for USW members. It 
is fine that the USW chapter in South Carolina has 
chosen this as its organizational principle. That 
means that they are expecting a high level of 
discipline for their chapter. For other USW 
members and/or chapters, the hierarchy, method of 
voting or organization can be decided as USW sees 
fit. Just like with the Revolutionary Anti-
Imperialist League, members have varying degrees 
of agreement with the principles and beliefs of 
MIM. For more information on the founding of USW 
and requirements for joining, write to MIM.

* * *

WA prisoners denied adequate access to legal 
resources

Washington State Penitentiary has now further 
restricted prisoners access to the prison legal 
libraries. As of July 18, 2001 prisoners in both 
medium and close custodies will only have access 
to legal materials 2 days a week. In which to 
research, reflect, draft, and type their appeals 
or whatever other type of legal actions they might 
have. Which is totally inadequate in preparing any 
type of quality legal action that would stand a 
chance of prevailing in the courts.

No one is [crippling] the government access on how 
much time they can spend in their legal libraries 
countering the Washington State prisoners legal 
actions.

Allegedly this limited access to the prison law 
libraries was done as part of a budget cut. But it 
appears that the principal results will be to 
limit that mount of appeals being generated by 
Washington State Prisoners.

So much for democracy.

-- a prisoner in WA, 12 August 2001.

* * *

WRC WI Censorship update: expand the fight

In the last issue of MIM Notes we reported that 
WRC prison in Winnebago, Wisconsin censored a copy 
of MIM Notes and that prisoners there report 
censorship of even religious literature that is 
sent to them. Since then we have received a copy 
of another rejection notice for MIM Notes July 1 
and July 15 issues being sent to a different 
prisoner there. Again the reason cited was "Item 
concerns an activity which, if completed, would 
violate the laws of Wisconsin, the United States 
or the Administrative Rules of the Department of 
Corrections." 

As MIM has stated repeatedly in MIM Notes, in 
letters to administrators and in documents 
supporting lawsuits filed by our prison comrades, 
there is no legal justification for censoring MIM 
Notes as a threat to institutional security and 
order. We call on our readers to expand the fight 
against this censorship at WRC which now appears 
to be a systematic denial of MIM Notes as well as 
other literature.

Send letters to protest the censorship of MIM 
Notes and religious material to the security 
director at the address below. Send a copy of your 
letters to MIM as well.

Mario Canziani WRC Box 220 Winnebago, WI 54929

* * *

Latin King reports of theft by pigs in TX

I salute all komrades with a revolutionary 
greeting and a clenched fist! I have issues to 
bring to the table that concern the injustice 
system and how it operates.

One question I have is how do police, government 
officials, prisoncrats etc. who are supposed to 
uphold the law and be role-models NOT be sent to 
prison when they break the law? They should know 
far better than the rest of society since they 
write and enforce the same laws they break. Could 
it be because the u.$. government looks after its 
own kind in its giant organized crime family?

Recently my property was taken by the G.I. (Gang 
Intelligence) in which a few items were 
confiscated and numerous more were stolen. Some of 
the items confiscated were my Bible, a photo album 
which both contained names and numbers of other 
inmates I've met throughout prison. The reason 
given was that these other inmates were known 
Latin Kings -- which is NOT TRUE.  First off, 
Latin Kings is not among the 'security threat' 
groups here in Texas. We have caused no trouble 
and we do not go about acting unruly.

This leads me to the other items confiscated. One 
was a newsletter, Royal Rage, which I received in 
the mail and two scribes another brother wrote to 
me by mail. Among the things stolen were food, 5% 
of lessons and other historic materials along with 
business paraphernalia.

The government spends more time and money building 
prisons and funding anti-gang organizations than 
addressing real issues like homelessness and 
unemployment.

There are many people who don't see the negative 
these devils are doing. They try to fuck over our 
gente and those of color any way possible. It's 
time to wake up and fight back cops the only way 
it'll stop is if we stop it.

Knowledge is the foundation to all things in 
existence. We must learn their laws and fight fire 
with fire. The voice of the people is the voice of 
God.  Power to the people!

Lost in the struggle, -- A prisoner in Texas.

MIM adds:  Lots of people use the term "people of 
color", MIM doesn't. Some people do because it is 
"politically correct". Some people do it because 
saying "Black, Puerto Rican, or Mohawk nations" 
for example, seems too harsh, too 60ish. It's 
becoming part of Amerikan culture.

But Amerikan culture is based upon a system 
thriving on the exploitation of oppressed nations 
and the death of those nations' cultures. Amerikan 
culture bolsters support for its system of 
imperialist hegemony. Of course Amerikan culture 
is going to water down the reality that there are 
separate nations in this kkkountry. To recognize 
that fact might lead to dealing with the hegemony 
of one nation over other nations. Even among 
people who understand that the settler nation's 
drive is to 'integrate' (read: smash) oppressed 
nations' cultures, the Amerikan culture seeps in.

MIM emphasizes the existence of nations or groups 
of people and the reality that the white Amerikan 
settler nation causes havoc around the world, 
murdering, raping and stealing because these acts 
serve the vampire interests of that nation. We are 
for the liberation of all oppressed nations and 
the end to the domination of groups by other 
groups. We seek to express through revolutionary 
language our analysis and the fight that we're 
waging.