* * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * - MIM Notes 109, February 1996 - RAIL AGAINST MASSACHUSETTS PRISON EXPANSION On January 3 and January 15, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) held rallies in Boston to protest the expansion of prisons in Massachusetts. On January 3, opening day for the Legislative session, a small group braved a bad snow storm to gather in front of the State House. They held signs, handed out flyers, and chanted slogans. On January 15, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, more than 30 people including ex-prisoners and families of prisoners, rallied at the Boston Commons. This rally included a speech from the mother of one transferred prisoner and an anti-imperialist song composed for the occasion by a prison activist from a local church. Both rallies drew the interest of several mainstream media papers and TV stations. The rallies had 3 main demands: RETURN THE PRISONERS SENT TO TEXAS NO MORE OUT-OF-STATE TRANSFERS NO PRISON EXPANSION As MIM Notes has reported, Gov. Weld asked the Massachusetts State Legislature last fall for $705 million to expand prisons in Massachusetts. The Legislature didn't respond right away, so in November Weld took 299 prisoners hostage and sent them to Texas as a publicity stunt to demonstrate overcrowding. (Weld would have sent 300, but guards beat one prisoner so badly he couldn't travel.) The House responded by approving $289 million, and the Senate $303. Before a bill can be sent to the Governor for approval, the House and the Senate must negotiate differences between their two bills. They did not do this before leaving for recess. They returned on January 3, and high on their agenda is finishing this prisons bill. At the January 15 rally, a RAIL activist gave an introductory speech, describing the deterioration over the last five years of already deplorable conditions in Massachusetts prisons. Pointing to such repressive measures as phone-monitoring and arbitrary lockdowns, she called on the ralliers and bystanders to work in solidarity with the prisoners struggling against oppression. The mother of a prisoner sent to Texas, who has been working with the American Friends Service Committee for her son's return, spoke about the conditions there. She traveled to see her son (but not to touch him--visits in the Dallas jail are non-contact) and learned that the prisoners are being kept in control units meant for short-term holding and are being denied heat and sufficient food. When her son was escorted past the cells for Texas prisoners, he noticed that they had heat. He asked the guard the reason for the discrepancy and was told that Massachusetts does not pay enough. She explained how her son had been a model inmate, and had followed all of the rules and was attempting to rehabilitate himself. The Department of Correction's response to this contradiction is "Overcrowding." A representative of Latinos Against Abuse of Prisoners exposed this lie. There is a surplus of prison beds in Massachusetts at the minimum security level because prisoners are over- classified into higher security ratings. He further explained that the prison style in Texas is "small group isolation." Prisoners are locked in small "tanks" with a few other prisoners. They are allowed no contact with friends, family, or even the guards. This allows the prison to deny that it is isolating prisoners. But the effects are the same as solitary confinement, and Amnesty International considers small group isolation to be torture. The lesson for prisoners is pretty clear: trying to get along doesn't work. Do what you are told? Get sent to Texas. Resist? Get beaten or sent to higher security prison, but at least you stay hundreds, not thousands of miles away from your friends and family. Weld and both parties in the Legislature are quick to oppose crime and to argue for the incarceration of more young people. Their anti-crime rhetoric is an attempt to hide the real criminals: the people running and funding the big business of torture. As Gov. Weld admits, prisons are capital investments. Rates of imprisonment have been rising in Massachusetts, but there is no relationship between increased incarceration and stopping crime. The brutality of the Massachusetts prison system has also increased. This is not surprising to prisoners and their friends, as the Massachusetts Commissioner of the DOC is Larry DuBois, architect of the control unit systems at Marion, IL and Lexington, KY. Both facilities were cited by Amnesty International as violating international standards for the treatment of prisoners. DuBois has applied his Marion model to the Massachusetts prison at Walpole. Massachusetts doesn't need more prisons, it needs to lock up it's real criminals: Gov. Weld, Larry DuBois and the rest of the proponents of spending millions of dollars on the torture of human beings. The rallies were sponsored by RAIL, MIM, Latinos Against Abuse of Prisoners, Committee to Free Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and POWs, LIBERATE! all Black and New African Political Prisoners and POWs, and other organizations. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material. Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail or e-mail. Send cash, stamps or check made out to "MIM Distributors." Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@nyxfer.blythe.org.