Tamms C-Max censors MIM, MACS, and more April, 2001 -- Tamms C-Max (Control-Maximum Security) is censoring MIM Notes. The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) is engaged in a coordinated effort to isolate Tamms prisoners. Earlier policies included a total ban on reading materials from friends and family. Control units like Tamms are prisons under permanent lock down, designed to isolate prisoners.(1) Prisoners typically spend 23 hours of every day alone in a 6' by 8' cell. Stopping contact with the outside increases prisoners' isolation. In this particular case, the IDOC wants to split MIM from some of the most revolutionary prisoners in the state. The prison staff has censored pieces of select prisoners' outgoing mail to MIM, and some or nearly all of MIM's letters to other prisoners. For all of this censorship, MIM has never received a single piece of mail from the staff at Tamms informing us that our letters and publications are not allowed into the prison. The IDOC facilities overall have a practice of censoring our press without informing us and Tamms excels at this. In many cases, the facility also will not inform prisoners that we have sent them a piece of mail. Instead the staff will simply throw away the MIM Notes or our letters. This is in violation of official procedure, which says that MIM should be informed when our publications are censored -- not to mention the bourgeoisie's own laws, which ostensibly protect "free speech." The point of withholding notification is clearly to stymie our ability to wage an effective battle against censorship. The prisoncrats throw our mail in the trash and wait for our prisoner correspondents to assume the worst: That MIM has abandoned the struggle or abandoned them as individuals. The mailroom will send out letters from prisoners who are not receiving our mail -- letters saying "I don't have money to be wasting on sending letters to MIM if you are not going to respond." Comrades in prisons must be able to recognize these plots defeat them. If you get this newspaper, pass on the news to others who may have been censored. If you've been corresponding regularly with MIM and suddenly we "stop writing," keep in mind that the guards may be withholding your mail. Whatever happens, don't let the pigs convince you that you are alone. That's what they want; they want to break your spirit. Tamms censorship has hit the organization Men Against Control Segregation (MACS) especially hard. MACS is a prisoner organization that educates prisoners and people outside on the abuses of the control-Supermax facilities and whose members do legal work to stop these abuses. MACS is inspired by the examples of self-sufficient agitation by the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Party. Much of the censored MIM material has been theory journals on the struggles of the oppressed nations against u.$. imperialism. Also censored have been copies of Palante, a book of writings by the Young Lords Party, and books by Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton. These are books MIM distributes through our Serve the People Free Books for Prisoners program, but they have also been rejected or delayed even when prisoners have ordered and paid for them. In Illinois right now, prisoners are waging a class action lawsuit against censorship in the state's prisons. The suit is the latest development in a series of prisoner-won court orders granting access to certain types of publications from assorted sources. The court orders have often been met with or violated by IDOC policies that place unconstitutional bans on literature for no good reason. An earlier battle addressed the situation at Tamms specifically as an Illinois prisoner wrote in MIM Notes: "At the super- maximum security prison in Tamms, we learned that there existed a total ban on the receipt of reading material from friends and family members, and a near-total ban on the possession of hard-bound books. We also learned that the prison's "library" does not subscribe to a single newspaper or magazine. As these men exist in a condition of near total isolation, extended exposure to such deprivation surely would seem to rise to a level of a constitutional violation against cruel and unusual punishment. "In January [2000] we succeeded in getting these overly-restrictive rules overturned, which provided at least a little relief for those being psychologically tortured by the isolation which confronts those confined indefinitely in Tamms."(2) There is a higher proportion of politically active and revolutionary minded prisoners at the Tamms Supermax than at the lower security prisons. So it is no surprise the IDOC draws a bullseye around our work with these prisoners. Organizers in MIM circles must recognize this censorship for what it is: An attack on the proletarian-led united front. Learning to recognize and expect such attacks is part of being a revolutionary in Amerika. The united snakes government is willing to back military regimes which murder those fighting for a better life, like the peasant organizers in Hacienda Looc in the Philippines. These are organizers who have done nothing but work to hold on to the land that is their livelihood. The united snakes directly killed millions of Vietnamese, and shot down Black Panthers like Fred Hampton in cold blood. Will they have any qualms about throwing out a few newspapers? No schoolyard bully takes kindly to being exposed. It angers the bully when the bullied get together to defend their lunch money and themselves. The same prisoner who has reported to MIM on his legal work against censorship in the IDOC has suffered segregation confinement in retaliation for his work. It is MIM's job to unite all people willing to oppose censorship of our press to use their lunch money to expose and stop these anti-democratic practices. As the state of Illinois prepares to build a new $140 million maximum-security prison for 1,600 prisoners (plus 200 in an adjacent minimum-security one) we must fight for our rights to educate, organize and communicate. In announcing the new facilities Governor George Ryan sneered "I've said many times before that I'd rather build schools than prisons. But if people continue to break the laws of society, then we must be prepared to deal with them."(3) MIM thinks Governor Ryan should concern himself with the law- breakers who are running the existing prisons in his state. MIM is calling on all readers to protest the censorship by Tamms officials and throughout the IDOC. You can address complaints to: *Warden George C. Welborn 200 East Supermax Road P.O. Box 400 Tamms, IL 62988 *Director Donald Snyder, Jr. Illinois Department of Corrections 1301 Concordia Court Springfield, IL 62794 *Governor George Ryan Office of the Governor 207 Statehouse Springfield, IL 62706 Please send MIM a copy of all protest letters you send. Notes: 1. Prison Activist Resource Center page on control units: www.prisonactivist.org/control-unit 2. "MIM Legal Notes: Prisoner testimony to Amerikan censorship and retaliation," MIM Notes 217 September 1, 2000. 3. "Governor Ryan announces site of state's new $140 million maximum security prison," http://www.idoc.state.il.us/Press/GRAYVILLE_announce.htm 12 April, 2001