* *  The Maoist Internationalist Movement  * *

     -   MIM Notes 109, February 1996  -


RAIL AGAINST MASSACHUSETTS PRISON EXPANSION 

On January 3 and January 15, the Revolutionary 
Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) held rallies in 
Boston to protest the expansion of prisons in 
Massachusetts. On January 3, opening day for the 
Legislative session, a small group braved a bad 
snow storm to gather in front of the State House. 
They held signs, handed out flyers, and chanted 
slogans. 

On January 15, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, more 
than 30 people including ex-prisoners and families 
of prisoners, rallied at the Boston Commons. This 
rally included a speech from the mother of one 
transferred prisoner and an anti-imperialist song 
composed for the occasion by a prison activist from 
a local church. Both rallies drew the interest of 
several mainstream media papers and TV stations. 

The rallies had 3 main demands:

RETURN THE PRISONERS SENT TO TEXAS
NO MORE OUT-OF-STATE TRANSFERS
NO PRISON EXPANSION

As MIM Notes has reported, Gov. Weld asked the 
Massachusetts State Legislature last fall for $705 
million to expand prisons in Massachusetts. The 
Legislature didn't respond right away, so in 
November Weld took 299 prisoners hostage and sent 
them to Texas as a publicity stunt to demonstrate 
overcrowding. (Weld would have sent 300, but guards 
beat one prisoner so badly he couldn't travel.)

The House responded by approving $289 million, and 
the Senate $303. Before a bill can be sent to the 
Governor for approval, the House and the Senate 
must negotiate differences between their two bills. 
They did not do this before leaving for recess. 
They returned on January 3, and high on their 
agenda is finishing this prisons bill.

At the January 15 rally, a RAIL activist gave an 
introductory speech, describing the deterioration 
over the last five years of already deplorable 
conditions in Massachusetts prisons. Pointing to 
such repressive measures as phone-monitoring and 
arbitrary lockdowns, she called on the ralliers and 
bystanders to work in solidarity with the prisoners 
struggling against oppression.

The mother of a prisoner sent to Texas, who has 
been working with the American Friends Service 
Committee for her son's return, spoke about the 
conditions there. She traveled to see her son (but 
not to touch him--visits in the Dallas jail are 
non-contact) and learned that the prisoners are 
being kept in control units meant for short-term 
holding and are being denied heat and sufficient 
food. When her son was escorted past the cells for 
Texas prisoners, he noticed that they had heat. He 
asked the guard the reason for the discrepancy and 
was told that Massachusetts does not pay enough. 
She explained how her son had been a model inmate, 
and had followed all of the rules and was 
attempting to rehabilitate himself. The Department 
of Correction's response to this contradiction is 
"Overcrowding."

A representative of Latinos Against Abuse of 
Prisoners exposed this lie. There is a surplus of 
prison beds in Massachusetts at the minimum 
security level because prisoners are over-
classified into higher security ratings. He further 
explained that the prison style in Texas is "small 
group isolation." Prisoners are locked in small 
"tanks" with a few other prisoners. They are 
allowed no contact with friends, family, or even 
the guards. This allows the prison to deny that it 
is isolating prisoners. But the effects are the 
same as solitary confinement, and Amnesty 
International considers small group isolation to be 
torture.

The lesson for prisoners is pretty clear: trying to 
get along doesn't work. Do what you are told? Get 
sent to Texas. Resist? Get beaten or sent to higher 
security prison, but at least you stay hundreds, 
not thousands of miles away from your friends and 
family.

Weld and both parties in the Legislature are quick 
to oppose crime and to argue for the incarceration 
of more young people. Their anti-crime rhetoric is 
an attempt to hide the real criminals: the people 
running and funding the big business of torture. As 
Gov. Weld admits, prisons are capital investments.

Rates of imprisonment have been rising in 
Massachusetts, but there is no relationship between 
increased incarceration and stopping crime. The 
brutality of the Massachusetts prison system has 
also increased. This is not surprising to prisoners 
and their friends, as the Massachusetts 
Commissioner of the DOC is Larry DuBois, architect 
of the control unit systems at Marion, IL and 
Lexington, KY. Both facilities were cited by 
Amnesty International as violating international 
standards for the treatment of prisoners. DuBois 
has applied his Marion model to the Massachusetts 
prison at Walpole.

Massachusetts doesn't need more prisons, it needs 
to lock up it's real criminals: Gov. Weld, Larry 
DuBois and the rest of the proponents of spending 
millions of dollars on the torture of human beings.

The rallies were sponsored by RAIL, MIM, Latinos 
Against Abuse of Prisoners, Committee to Free 
Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and POWs, 
LIBERATE! all Black and New African Political 
Prisoners and POWs, and other organizations. 


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