End the Amerikan Lockdown month a success 

Boston -- MIM and RAIL celebrated the End the Amerikan Lockdown 
month hosting a film showing, a panel discussion and a protest.

The film, The FBI's War on Black America, was shown in Cambridge 
to an audience of 40 people interested in the history of the FBI's 
COINTELPRO program which was used to disable the Black Liberation 
movement in the united $tates in the 1960's and 70's. At this 
event we solicited the help of people watching to movie to put 
together our monthly mailing of MIM Notes to prisoners. While 
watching the film people helped put stamps on envelops and stamp 
return addresses. This makes our monthly mailing a lot easier and 
gave people a chance to learn from revolutionary history while 
helping to build for revolution in the future.

At the end of the event one former prisoner and supporter of RAIL 
urged other members of the audience to contribute money to pay for 
the room and advertising of the event. This show of support 
inspired others to contribute to the collection pot.

The panel discussion, a forum on prison struggles hosted by Boston 
University Friends of RAIL, included several former prisoners who 
are currently involved in activism on the outside as well as 
speakers representing RAIL and MIM. Attended by over 50 people the 
event even received favorable coverage in the BU student 
newspaper, the Daily Free Press.

One former prisoner who spoke at the event detailed the conditions 
he faced "[Maximum security prisons] are concentration camps for 
the poor, working class people who are victims of poverty," he 
said. "People use one word when they get out: horror. I did years 
in solitary confinement for challenging human rights violations 
... the mental torture destroys people."

As one of the RAIL activists pointed out, "This entire system 
builds up to disproportionate incarceration; it shows in the 
numbers." She explained that the U.$. contains only 5 percent of 
the world population and yet it holds 25 percent of the world's 
prison population.

This forum gave the audience a chance to participate, engaging in 
discussion about the criminal injustice system and the system of 
imperialism that it serves. A lively discussion followed the 
presentations.

One student questioned prisoners' rights, saying that they gave 
those up when they committed the crime. RAIL pointed out the 
discriminating definition of crime, and that the people in the u$ 
gov't. who commit the most atrocious crimes usually also enjoy the 
greatest freedoms due to their positions of power. One speaker 
questioned the goal of restricting the freedoms of former 
prisoners stressing the need to provide support for a more 
successful life after prison.

The Boston-area End the Amerikan Lockdown activities culminated in 
a protest against the criminal injustice system on Saturday 
September 30th. The official continental day of action was October 
1 but we decided that the Saturday before would be a better day 
for our protest.

MIM and RAIL activists and supporters gathered in a high traffic 
spot in Harvard Square with signs, banners, a table of literature 
and postcards protesting prison censorship for people to sign. 
Supporters who had learned about the protest at the film and panel 
discussion showed up to help make posters, hand out flyers and 
hold signs.

For over four hours we distributed hundreds of flyers and 
newspapers discussing the criminal injustice system and our 
programs building support for prisoner's anti-imperialist 
struggles with the many people who stopped to find out what we 
were doing. We gathered many postcard signatures protesting the 
censorship of revolutionary literature and mail in prisons and 
collected donations to support MIM's Books for Prisoners program.

Most of the people who stopped to talk to us were supportive of 
the work we were doing but a few anti-communists came up to the 
literature table to start an argument. One man, after claiming 
that Stalin was responsible for the rise of Hitler and that the 
U.$. was responsible for it's defeat, started complaining about 
how some Marxist professor of his in college had lowered his grade 
because he disagreed with the professor. His statements are 
typical of the bourgeois individualism that blinds people to 
historical reality. For him a grade in his college class was on a 
par with the life or death issues for the world's population that 
we were trying to discuss.

This inability to see the relative value of humyn life made this 
man readily believe the u.s. propaganda that the imperialists were 
responsible for the victory over Hitler. For him the Maoists were 
responsible for the deaths under their rule, the Stalinists were 
responsible for the deaths under their rule, but the Amerikan 
imperialists are not responsible for the murders they commit 
around the world every day. The reality of the tremendous 
sacrifices the Soviet people made to defeat fascism is ignored by 
anti-communists because this doesn't fit into their world view of 
Stalin as an evil murderer and the u.s. (which sat by and allowed 
the Soviet Union to fight Hitler hoping they would destroy each 
other) as democratic savior of the world.

Through the committed efforts of MIM and RAIL organizers who spent 
many days putting up posters, distributing newspapers, and talking 
to people on the streets, our End the Amerikan Lockdown activities 
in Boston were a success. But our work fighting the criminal 
injustice system will not stop with the end of this month of 
activism. We have a number of upcoming events that will build on 
our efforts this month.

Upcoming events

Shut Down the Control Units Thursday, November 9, 7:00 PM  Pearl 
St. Public Library, Central Sq. Cambridge Film about the recent 
craze in high security prison construction, chocked-full of 
shocking facts on the prison-industrial complex. Not only can you 
learn about the prison system, but you can help prisoners at the 
same time as we put together our monthly mailing of MIM Notes to 
prisoners around the country.

Poetry from Prison 101 Wednesday, November 15, 7:00 PM  Boston 
University, College of Arts and Sciences Building 725 Commonwealth 
Ave, Room 216 Last year RAIL helped initiate U.B.A.R.S (University 
of Boston Activists for Revolutionary Schooling) which is a 
program that organizes professors, students, and others 
knowledgeable in certain subjects to offer correspondence classes 
to prisoners that we already work with. At this event the 
instructor of a Revolutionary Poetry course offered this past year 
will report back on the course and many of the pieces that were 
produced by students.

Prison Letter Writing and Organizing Sundays at 5:30 Boston 
University, College of Arts and Sciences Building 725 Commonwealth 
Ave.,  Room 312 Weekly meeting to respond to prisoners' letters, 
organize book mailings, coordinate our anti-censorship campaign 
and come up with more ways to support prisoner struggles and fight 
U$ imperialism.