MI Prisoner fights MIM Theory censor battle

I received your MIM Notes and MIM Theory on 5/25/06, or I should say the mailroom received the material and would not deliver it to me. They feel that the mail would cause a danger to the prison facility. I am going to file a grievance against the mailroom personnel, property officer and the inspector for withholding my mail. Mere antipathy, demonstrated by statements that are derogatory and offensive to the government is not sufficient to justify the suppression of political literature, even in prison. Nor does the mere speculation that such statements may ignite political or other disturbances in a penal institution warrant their proscription.

This newsletter edited by MIM presents a collection of writings from Mao Tse-Tung to the present on armed struggles for liberation and for communism. The writings in this newsletter draw heavily on world history as they relate to the communist and revolutionary movements. The MIM newsletter is also a periodical whose content can vary from issue to issue. Arbitrary confiscation or mail disruption violates my First Amendment rights.

When you mailed the MIM Notes to me back in February, I did not have censorship problems at all. This only started when you sent me the MIM Theory. Rather than have the MIM Theory destroyed, I will pay for the shipping and handling back to you. This matter has really been frustrating for me because I don't receive much mail at all. I was really looking forward to hearing from you, and was very happy when the property officer called me out, until s/he told me that the MIM Notes were not on the approved vendor list. A week later an officer handed me a sheet of paper saying that I should sign it so that the MIM Notes and Theory will be destroyed. I declined that offer and requested a hearing, I have not heard anything since that day.

Wish me luck, I am going to need it dealing with the MDOC. I will write to you again when the grievance process is over.

-- A Michigan prisoner, 5 June 2006

MIM responds: This is also a violation of MIM's First Amendment rights, our right to speak to prisoners, one of our most enthusiastic audiences. We would also like to point out the Michigan prison officials that they are violating not only prisoners' rights to read and associate freely, but the rights of MIM writers as people outside the walls. From MIM's position on prison censorship (http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/cong/censored01.htm):

"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.

"President George W. Bush is not being censored in prisons despite his philosophy of violence as demonstrated in his bombing of Iraq [and the carte blanche he has now allowed I$rael in its bombing of Lebanon]. 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."