Who is being censored? We are.

ITAL This resolution passed unanimously at the 2001 MIM Congress. END

It is our newspaper, "MIM Notes" that is the most censored newspaper in 
Amerikkka; yet, many of us in MIM and MIM circles continue to speak of 
this as only censorship of prisoners. While it is true that prisoners 
are being censored, it is also true that anyone who has written for MIM 
Notes is being censored.

Usually in fact, the word "censorship" applies to the persyn trying to 
speak, not the persyn listening. Hence, when a prison administration 
does not allow MIM Notes into the prison, it is MIM Notes writers--people 
outside the walls--who are being censored in that instance.

Many of us writing for MIM are in fact tax-payers essentially being 
told that we do not have a right to speak with prisoners while others do. 
We who write for MIM are often less interested in suburban, conformist 
people who could not think a radical thought if they tried. That is one 
reason why we want to speak to prisoners. We have something to say to 
prisoners. If a suburbanite picks up a MIM Notes and has no reaction 
that is not surprising. However, when prisoners pick up MIM Notes and do 
not get to read it because prison administrations take it away, this has 
a disproportionately negative effect on MIM speakers.

MIM has something to say to everybody, but the social groups most 
interested in our line are oppressed nations, students and the 
lumpenproletariat. People in prison generally count as lumpenproletariat and this 
group has few illusions about the state. Indeed, many of the writers in 
MIM Notes belong to these groups that also read the MIM Notes.
President George W. Bush is not being censored in prisons despite his 
philosophy of violence as demonstrated in his bombing of Iraq. 
Censorship of newspapers quoting Bush or endorsing him or his opponent who also 
favored the war in Iraq--Gore--these papers and television stations are 
not so often censored. Hence when prison wardens say we should be 
censored for threatening "security" through our "philosophy of violence," 
they are attempting selectively to oppose violence of the oppressed and 
exploited. In addition, prison wardens are contradicting the stated 
beliefs of the authors of the "Declaration of Independence" and Abraham 
Lincoln, who said explicitly in his first inaugural address that the 
people have a "revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow" the 
government. (www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html) Prison wardens are not being 
censored and MIM has not heard of free bible societies being censored in 
prison. In fact this censorship is inherent to the injustice system as the 
Mumia Abu-Jamal case proves. The prosecutor against Mumia named Joseph 
Farill pointed to Mumia's quoting from Mao Zedong that "political power 
grows out of a barrel of a gun" as evidence against Mumia in his court 
case. Meanwhile, MIM has yet to hear of anyone being accused by 
prosecutors of distributing the New York Times despite its backing of numerous 
wars and coups and quoting from people like George Bush Sr. and Jr. who 
bombed Iraq. Quoting Mao can be used against someone in a murder case, 
but reading, quoting or re-distributing violent bourgeois rulers is not 
ever used as evidence. As a matter of compromise, MIM would agree not 
to send its present literature to a prison if a prison warden concerned 
with rehabilitation only allowed pacifist literature into prison. We 
would accept that as a principled compromise, but there is no prison 
warden proposing or implementing such a policy.

The failure to recognize the attack of the state is not acceptable 
amongst communists and anti-imperialists. Failure of MIM and affiliated 
people to say that both we outside the walls and the people inside the 
walls are being censored is an example of anemic activism guided by 
mistaken observer status. We should not be observers in our own repression. 
It is we who should be striking back at the state aggressively and 
taking a leadership role in fighting censorship of MIM Notes.