MIM Notes # 222       Nov 15, 2000

Build independent institutions of the oppressed and serve the 
people:

MIM's Free Books for Prisoners Program 

Attention Prisoners: Books available for study groups & review

Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese People, by Roger Howard (New 
York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 361 pp., hb. * This book is 
only available in hardcover. To request this book you must be 
permitted to receive hardcover books, please make a note of 
this in your request.

Sisterhood is Powerful: an Anthology of Writings from the 
Women's Liberation Movement, Robin Morgan, ed. (New York: 
Vintage Books, 1970), 565 pp., pb.

The Political Economy of Growth, by Paul A. Baran (New York: 
Monthly Review Press, 1957), 300 pp., pb.

The Theory of Capitalist Development, by Paul Sweezy (New 
York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 378 pp., pb.

MIM's Serve the People Free Books for Prisoners program has 
multiple copies of the above books. We will send them out 
first come, first served to prisoners looking to lead study 
groups and write essays or articles based on the books. We'll 
give you pointers on how to study and review the books when we 
send them out, and will provide MIM literature to give you a 
Maoist line against which to measure the books as appropriate.

Our books program was founded along the lines of the Black 
Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren. Besides 
meeting one of the masses' pressing needs, the Free Breakfast 
program was a vehicle for socialist education and provided a 
focal point for the Panthers' organizing.

The Panthers saw that Black children were going to school 
hungry and linked this to the deeper problem of national 
oppression. So Party branches took over or rented community 
spaces and provided breakfast for young children. But this was 
not all the Panthers did. They taught the youth revolutionary 
thought, revolutionary songs, and Black Power salutes. The 
adults who participated were expected to set a revolutionary 
example for the youth through direct participation in Party 
activities and disseminating revolutionary ideas to the youth. 
Some youth even sold the Panther Newspaper on the streets as a 
way to build for revolution.

This illustrates the essence of a Serve the People program. 
Through revolutionary education and direct action, the 
Panthers were building for a society where the oppressed would 
not have to rely on the oppressor. Today, breakfast for 
schoolchildren programs have been co-opted by various state 
and city governments. These programs, while they still provide 
breakfast to hungry kids, are not revolutionary because the 
programs do not teach or show examples of ways the oppressed 
can take control of their own society and no longer rely on 
the oppressor for a few crumbs in an otherwise oppressive 
system. Independent institutions of the oppressed are 
essential to MIM's strategy for revolution  a revolution which 
will end national, class, and gender oppression.

Donations of money to be used to buy and send books like these 
to prisoners can made out to "Books for Prisoners," a non-
profit corporation. (Prisoners requesting books should write 
to the Ann Arbor address on page 2.)

Books for Prisoners

770 Massachusetts Ave. #213

Cambridge, MA 02140