I have recently learned about your movement through a comrade here with me. Your agenda and goals caught my eye [as they match up with] the political work and ideas that I reflect on daily.
The type of political work I'm interested in is community organizing and exposing this vicious, corrupt and hypocritical system. I have been in this concentration camp for 12 years. I came in here at the age of 15, and I am going on 28 this year. I have a few more years left.
As for the free books program, I would like to take part in that if possible. In return I'll work in any political position that you would need me to. I'm very much interested in learning about Mao and Marxism-Leninism. I would like to start a prison outreach program for inner-city youth centers on the real politics of the real prison system. I would like to tell the youth the proper steps to secure and protect their rights against bogus frame-ups and swine abuse. There are so many things I would like to do, and I know through you and your political education and organizing, my ideas can become a reality. Thank you for your continuous work and political education to awaken people to the beast.
-- an Illinois prisoner, February, 2005
MIM responds: We are happy to get this letter from a prisoner who knows what kind of organizing s/he wants to do, and wants to use Under Lock & Key as a venue for doing it. Our pages are always open to activism that is both anti-prisons and anti-imperialist. That's what we're here for, and that's just the sort of work the Free Books for Prisons program is designed to promote.