Oregon censorship battle continues

It seems that the anarchist lawsuit has touched a nerve somewhere. I have seen a couple of minor changes in the way that anarchist symbols are being treated, i.e. they have gone from 100% rejection to, supposedly, unofficially, allowing them to be delivered if they do not promote the anarchist movement. Sounds like a catch-22 to me. They will try to impress the court with this policy. I will demand an "in writing" policy. Part of this lawsuit concerns due process in mail rejections and will, therefore, benefit MIM to some degree. I think I am making headway in this area. I am in DSU for "promoting an STG."

This brings me to the TRCI rejection of MIM Theory 11 for "STG related paraphernalia." This is bullshit, these people are not telling us what they actually are violating for. This, I am litigating, is a substantive, as well as a procedural due process violation. Unfortunately, as I get deeper and deeper into this, I see a pattern and practice of all the states going to these same measures, in exactly the same approach. This can only mean one thing, the feds are fanning the flames and providing the direction. When the feds do this bullshit, all the judges are generally afraid of them and eager to get on board to prove that they are "players." This is also true of prison administrators.

Perhaps TRCI was overzealous, or it was a department wide thing. STG paraphernalia is generally a gang symbol, or an "STG symbol", STG being "a group of 2 or more people, who share a common interest or goal and have an identifying symbol etc." This would encompass Republicans and Democrats! But this is how it is done here in Oregon. In the anarchist lawsuit I have gone after this regulation "as applied" to anarchists. I may go after it as void for vagueness, but this approach has been mostly gutted by Thornburg v. Abbott, which, by the way, overruled Procunier v. Martinez as to the way you presented it in your TRCI protest letter. TRCI is run by Hitler wannabee buffoons, the rejection may be a result of this only.

-- a prisoner in Oregon, March 2003