Fighting censorship and repression in Tennessee

Dear MIM,

I received your letters about appealing he returned magazines and the steps to take. I never received a notice. I'm thankful that you wrote a letter to the warden here. I've been catching hell, for the last 28 days I've been in the seg. unit pending investigation. They say I'm the ringleader. Here at WTSP there's 3 sites all separate, and I'm at site #2 and 28 days ago at site #3 something went down and I didn't have any knowledge of it, but anyway while I was in the seg. unit Internal Affairs came to visit me. They asked me did I give the ORDER for the inmates at site #3 to go on a hunger strike. That was the first I heard of it. They put me on administrative lock up, they say I pose a threat to staff and inmates and the good order of this institution. All this has been a decision by Warden Westbrooks.

-- a prisoner in TN, August 2002

Please send letters of protest to:

Warden Bruce Westbrooks
WTSP
PO Box 1050
Henning, TN 38041-1050

Below is the protest letter MIM sent Warden Westbrooks

July 27, 2002

Mr. Westbrooks

We recently received two envelopes back from you containing magazines we had sent to prisoners at your institution. The magazines were sent to XX and YY. The envelopes stated "Return to Sender due to the contents", "Not allowed due to contents" and handwritten on them was "STG Material". The magazines in question were copies of the theory journal published by our organization, the Maoist Internationalist Movement. They contain articles about revolutionary theory and history.

Nowhere in these magazines is there anything related to any security threat groups. Nor is there any information that could be legally considered a threat to the security of your institution. MIM runs a books for prisoners program with the goal of educating prisoners. According to Procunier v. Martinez, the Supreme Court upholds the right of prisoners to receive mail, regardless of the prison official's opinion of the mail content, as long as there are no legitimate restrictions from the prison related to correctional purposes. The envelope you returned does not provide any evidence to demonstrate that MIM Theory presents a danger to institutional security or has any relationship to any STGs and we believe the claim is unfounded.

Further, we note that your rejection of these magazines violates your own mail policy (TCA 4-3-603, TCA 4-3-606) updated as of February 1, 2002:

If the warden determines that mail sent to an inmate could reasonably present a threat to the security, order, or programs of the institution, he/she shall notify both the inmate recipient and sender of his/her intent to reject the mail and return it to the sender, except bulk rate mail covered in Section VI.(D). This notice shall be in writing, dated, and include:

  1. The name and address of the sender
  2. The name of the inmate recipient
  3. The date the mail was received at the institution
  4. The reason the warden intends to reject the mail
  5. A statement that either the recipient or sender may appeal this decision to the Assistant Commissioner of Operations within fourteen (14) working days and that a failure to appeal will result in rejection of the mail and its return to the sender.
  6. The name and address of the Assistant Commissioner of Operations to whom an appeal may be sent.

We know that XX was never notified of this mail being rejected. And neither XX nor MIM received any of the above information in writing, dated, and containing a statement that we may appeal the decision, as per the policy above. We are, therefore, requesting an appeal of this rejection, by the Assistant Commissioner of Operations, to whom we will expect you to forward a copy of this letter since you failed to send his/her address and name with the mail rejection.

We look forward to a swift resolution to this problem and expect notification in writing that we will be allowed to send the magazines back to XX and YY.

Sincerely,

MIM


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