Censorship victory in New York

Revolutionary Greetings, After a month and 5 days of my current MIM Notes (Nov 1st & Nov 15th) being with-held from me in [this facilities] Media Review, I finally get my 2 issues. After a month of writing continuous letters to the chair person of this jail's media review and about 4 grievances I finally got a response. Once something goes to media review they(pigs) have to send you a "referral notice" letting the prisoner know his property is being with-held. As soon as I got this notice I wrote back to media review's chairperson telling him I wanted my MIM Notes as soon as he finished looking over it- since my last issues (Oct 1st & Oct 15th) were not censored. Both, notice to me and letter sent out was on the same date of Dec. 4th 2001. Not until yesterday [Jan 9 2002] did I receive November's issues. The chairperson to media review declared I never sent him a letter in regards of the notice. The notice states that if a prisoner does not submit a written report to support the admission of the publication within 10 business days, my issues will be destroyed. If I did in fact not answer back within 10 days then my MIM Notes should have been destroyed by now, but it is not. After writing and grieving I finally got a response telling me I either give permission to media review to censor the MIM Notes for "Anti- jail/Anti-government" articles or be sent back to the sender or they be destroyed if a response is not given. I wrote back quickly and argued the censoring, but gave them permission to cut out at most 2 articles- if more than 2 was to be cut out I would then send it to my house on the outside. The pigs sent me my 2 issues with only 2 articles cut out in which I hope to be let known of what they pertained to because the 2 issues were such attention grabbing that I read both issues without stopping until both were done... On the Nov. 15th issue #246 in page #10 topic: Censorship in Amerikkka, the pigs ripped out the "MIM Adds:" report on the article. The pigs censored the article on censoring. Obviously, they want to with-hold information that could be a tool for comrades building their political education...

One struggle, One war against imperialism,
--A New York prisoner

MIM adds: This is a show of the pigs weakness on the issue of censorship. MIM's comments that were cut from this comrades MIM Notes addressed the lack of legal basis for censoring MIM and pointed out that our work helps unify prisoners rather than promote violence or rebellion as the pigs claim. This comrade demonstrated that these arguments are effective, despite the long delayed response, in his letter (not printed here) arguing against the censorship of his MIM Notes. The Media Review evidently knew that these were solid grounds for opposing their censoring since they made the effort to prevent prisoners from reading the arguments. We commend this comrade for making these points in his protest letter without having the benefit of MIM's advice, and for continuing to fight this battle.


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