Call to Illinois prisoners and allies: fight censorship!

30 May, 2001 -- In April, MIM Notes published an article 
calling out censorship of our press and our letters at the 
Tamms C-Max prison in southern Illinois and in the Illinois 
prisons in general. We have begun writing letters of protest 
to the officials at Tamms and now to the state prison in 
Pontiac as well. We are also providing prisoners with the 
examples from which to write their own letters to defend 
their right to read MIM Notes. Since we published this 
article, we have learned of a new tactic employed by the 
Tamms mailroom and by the staff at one other Illinois 
prison. Every month, the two issues of MIM Notes are mailed 
together to our prisoner subscribers. Now some of the 
Illinois prisons have started to deliver one paper in the 
mailing while holding the other for review. Maybe this 
tactic is designed to confuse or defuse the protest, or 
maybe it is random game-playing by the officials. Either 
way, prisoners should be aware of this tactic and fight it. 

MIM is still sending you both issues of the month together, 
if you receive only one that is because the mailroom is 
holding the other. At root, censorship of MIM Notes is a 
problem of Maoist organizing under imperialism. Our 
newspaper's internationalist perspective connects prisoners' 
struggles in this country to the oppression of the Third 
World proletariat by the u.$. military. For this reason the 
prison officials see our newspaper as a threat to their very 
jobs. But in Amerika today, prison officials' disagreement 
with the political message of a newspaper is allegedly not a 
legitimate reason for censorship. Minority ideas and their 
expression are supposed to be protected for the health of 
the whole society. In Amerika the supposed guarantees of 
"free speech" and a "free press" are upheld as a beacon of 
justice. And the United Nations' Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights affirms these rights internationally: "Everyone 
has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this 
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference 
and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas 
through any media and regardless of frontiers." In Amerika, 
we can use these Liberal ideals to defend our efforts. 

Surely the UNDHR does not exclude the frontier of barbed 
wire and brick that separates Amerika's prisons from the 
"free world" from its proposed protections. And surely 
Amerika cannot deny its formative role in the UNDHR a mere 
53 years after the Declaration's approval. The furtive 
activities of the Illinois prison officials skirt the issue 
of rights altogether and make opposing censorship that much 
more difficult. A rejection notice is the prison's notice of 
accountability both to the prisoner and to the persyn or 
organization on the outside whose mail is being rejected. 

The officials are supposed to explain their reasoning for 
denying our rights to communicate with prisoners, and we are 
supposed to have the opportunity to respond to and contest 
this reasoning. But it is standard practice for prison 
officials to disregard this "right" with no cause and no due 
process. To this day, MIM has never received a notice of 
rejection from Tamms. And in many cases the mailroom staff 
there do not tell prisoners that their mail is being 
withheld. In this way the officials try to keep MIM from 
noticing and protesting the censorship of our stuff, as they 
hope the prisoners will assume the worst: that MIM has 
abandoned them and the struggle. MIM continues to 
investigate the censorship of our press and letters in the 
Illinois prisons in general and at Tamms C-Max in 
particular. If you are a prisoner, please tell us your 
experiences with receiving mail or being denied. We are 
especially interested in political mail, but other types of 
censorship are important too. If you are an ally of Illinois 
prisoners -- an organization or individual -- we are 
interested in comparing notes and joining forces against 
censorship. Have you noticed patterns in the mail you send 
to prisoners, what is censored and what is not? Have you 
filed protests against censorship in the past, either 
successful or not? We encourage all people who believe in 
the right to freedom from government interference in 
correspondence to join us in protesting the censorship by 
Tamms C-Max and the Illinois Department of Corrections. You 
can address your protests 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. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 
www.udhr.org 2. "Tamms C-Max censors MIM, MACS and more," 
MIM Notes 234 15 May, 2001.