MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
I have received two much-needed documents from you: “How to Form an
Effective Study Group” and the “Revolutionary 12 Step Program” during
the holy month of Black August. During Black August (B.A.) there were
three young neophytes who also embarked on the journey of Kebuka
(remembrance) by studying the works and examples of ancestors, comrades
and many of the beautiful souls that sparked the momentous flow of
resistance.
Prior to B.A., I was invited to a think tank class where the serious
minded men here can come into a space to talk, think and reflect on
solutions to problems that plague the prison population and society at
large.
After attending a few of the sessions I realized the class lacked a
starting point to build and grow on.
However, I shared the 12 Step Program with the facilitator, and the
brothers all agreed that the layout was a great format and that the five
principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons enumerated on page 2
of ULK should be the pillars that hold this class.
Thanking you for all the tireless work that’s being put in.
a communist attends a protest protesting the murder of Nasrallah by
I$rael in Sidon, in southern Lebanon
28 September 2024 – Protestors gathered across the world to mourn the
killing of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a founding member and leader for 32
years of Hezbollah (the Party of God) in Lebanon.(1) We know some
readers in U.$. prisons will be mourning as well. Nasrallah was the
strongest anti-imperialist voice among world leaders for a generation.
And the recent killings of Lebanese and Palestinian political leaders
have been significant victories for I$rael, at least in the
short-term.
Over 1,000 people have been killed, including Hezbollah’s top
leaders, and 6,000 injured by a series of attacks by I$rael on Lebanon
in the last couple weeks. These included exploding pagers and
walkie-talkies, as well as massive bombing strikes. Amidst these
attacks, the Communist Party of Lebanon has called for national unity to
focus on fighting I$rael, at a time when Lebanon faces its own crisis in
government. They pledged to not let I$rael (and the United $tates, we’d
add) separate the struggle of Lebanon in support of the Palestinian
struggle.(2)
Hezbollah, however, has been the lead party defending Lebanon and
Palestinians from I$rael for decades. They have proven there is still a
progressive role for bourgeois forces to play today, even in our
highly-developed imperialist world.
Nasrallah had a clear analysis of U.$. imperialism:
“America itself is the decision maker. In America, you have the major
corporations; you have a trinity of the oil corporations, the weapons
manufacturers and the so-called ‘Christian Zionism.’ The decision making
is in the hands of this alliance. ‘Israel’ used to be a tool in the
hands of the British, and now it is a tool in the hands of America.”
The Samidoun Palestinian prisoner solidarity network commented on
Hezbollah’s role in the liberation of political prisoners of I$rael:
“Sayyed Nasrallah’s leadership and struggle was also directly
connected to the prisoners’ movement and the liberation of the prisoners
of the Zionist regime. From the liberation of Khiam prison by the
victorious Lebanese resistance in 2000, liberating the torture dens of
the occupiers and their collaborators and turning it into a museum of
honour for those who struggled and sacrificed there, to the repeated
prisoner exchanges achieved by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Resistance,
including the 2004 prisoner exchange, which liberated 400 Palestinian
prisoners as well as 23 Lebanese, five Syrians, three Moroccans, three
Sudanese, one Libyan and one German-British prisoner jailed by the
Zionist regime. These exchanges, in which Sayyed Nasrallah himself
played a major role, illustrated once again that the only viable
mechanism available to liberate the prisoners in occupation jails is to
liberate the land and to achieve an exchange.”(3)
Hezbollah arose from the 1982 I$raeli occupation of Beirut. MIM
founders organized to oppose that 1982 occupation at a time when MIM was
just emerging.(4) The war in 1982 also forged the Joint
Leadership, in which the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine joined
forces and attempted to further unite the Palestinian liberation
movement away from conciliation.(5) During the 2006 war between Lebanon
and I$rael, MIM condemned RCP=U$A, various alt media, and the U.$. state
department for attacking Iran and Hezbollah using gender.(6) In 2024,
the imperialists are circulating clips of Nasrallah making comments
calling for punishment for adultery and homosexuality. We salute the
“Queers for Palestine” in the United $tates who recognize the children
being bombed in Gaza and now Lebanon are a lot more gender oppressed
than any of us are here in the belly of the beast.
The history of the anti-imperialist united front in the region is
beyond the scope of this article. But the region has certainly
demonstrated the expediency of uniting classes on the basis of national
liberation to fight imperialist occupiers. Hezbollah has remarked in the
past that their alliances are closer to some Marxist groups than certain
Islamist groups. This shows the emptiness of those in the imperialist
countries who want to pit Marxism against Islam on principle. Nasrallah
also wrote that Muslims have the duty to provide charity support to any
Palestinian taking up armed struggle – Marxist, nationalist or any other
shade.(7)
A Hamas spokespersyn responded to the death of Nasrallah say that it
will not make I$rael any safer:
“Is Israel’s problem with armed groups with limited agendas that can
be eliminated by killing their leaders, or with peoples who have rights
that they have been striving to achieve for decades and have not stopped
or surrendered despite the killing of many leaders? Has any resistance
group disappeared after the assassination of the leaders?”(8)
Despite these recent losses by the oppressed nations in the Middle
East, Hezbollah won the war with I$rael in 2006, killing as many
soldiers as I$rael did without all the civilian deaths caused by I$rael
in Lebanon. Just as the war on Gaza, one year out, has not been an easy
victory for I$rael, further escalations into Lebanon will certainly not
be either. Hezbollah and Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) in Yemen
continue to be the front line of the struggle against genocide in
Palestine and against U.$. imperialism in general.
You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the
revolution!
We hope those who have been following our series of articles this
week have been both angered by what is going on inside U.$. prisons and
inspired to action. (see campaign link below to read previous
articles)
MIM(Prisons) is in a period of growth, after some setbacks. In recent
years we’ve gradually reinstated our 3 different levels of
correspondence study courses for prisoners. Just this summer we put out
a long-planned Reference Guide that contains historical
timelines, maps and a glossary to provide background for many of the
things we talk about regularly. We’ve released the Revolutionary 12
Steps Program and Power To New Afrika, both written by
prisoners, in the last couple years. We continue to put out Under
Lock & Key every three months. And we’ve updated a number of
other study packs and resources. And we do it all out of our own pockets
and volunteer time. So if you can spare some money or some time to
support us it can go a long way.
By the time this series of articles reaches most of our readers
inside, in Under Lock & Key 87, the holiday season will be
approaching. In that spirit and inspired by all this talk about banned
books, we are pledging to mail out more books this winter than any other
winter in the 2020s so far!
Please see our get
involved page for ways to donate and other ways to help out. Outside
supporters can help us make this happen by sending cash or stamps,
helping acquire in demand books like dictionaries, Black Panther Party,
or Marxist classics, or by volunteering in various ways. All of the new
publications listed above have been censored in various prisons, even
the Reference Guide was censored in Michigan’s Thumb Correctional
Facility for being more than 12 pages long! So continued campaigning and
legal support is much needed.
Prisoners can help us get more books out by taking the steps to join
our Serve the People Free Political Books to Prisoners Program. Get
others to sign up for a subscription to ULK or become a
distributor of ULK in your prison. Let us know what organizing
work you are doing, what your local study group is discussing, what
questions are coming up for you and your comrades. By doing these things
you can receive books to help with your local work and studies. We have
books on Black/New Afrikan studies, Chican@ studies, First Nation
studies, gender, economics, history of Chinese socialism, the Soviet
Union, books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and more.
Sergeants here are not doing rounds and when they do they’re
not signing grievances, so my grievances don’t get signed and
they expire. We have to hold the shower or yard down just to get someone
down to sign something. Even that doesn’t always work.
The Lieutenants and Captains feel they’re too high in rank to sign
grievances, and they don’t make their Sergeants do anything. My question
to you is what do I do? I’ve wrote it up and all they do is deny my
allegation and find it without merit. I have a paper trail on the same
issue though.
Also, our due process is being violated at Disciplinary Court. 1) The
Serving Officer is refusing our court appearances because she doesn’t
like us or is trying to get done early; 2) The Disciplinary Hearing
Officers are not even trying to see if the prisoner is not guilty. You
can’t use the camera as a witness but they can to find you guilty.
They’re putting “staff eyewitness is accepted” but policy states they
cannot just put that, they have to list all “evidence relied upon.”
Finally, policy states you have to sign a waiver if you refuse court,
but they’re getting away without that.
We can’t get a notary here, no problem solver, so most guys end up
“bucking” and ultimately they lose. I know Arkansas is a little better
than other prisons, but it’s not all green down here. We’re one of the
few states that still do “hoe squad” for free, prisoners don’t
get paid to work in Arkansas. I’m here to fight and spread the word!
MIM(Prisons) responds: It sounds like the people held
at Tucker Max Unit have tried a number of different tactics to get
grievances heard and have begun to assess which ones work when and how
they might be improved. In that sense, you are in a better situation to
answer your question of “what do I do?” than we are.
We can offer some advice for how to approach this problem. All of the
tactics you mention above should be on the table. Tactics are things
that we must choose day-to-day based on specific situations, and there
will not always be a “right” answer. Strategy however, is our overall
approach, and this can decide whether we succeed or fail. Strategically,
we must rely on the masses to win. In other words, your real strength
comes from collective struggle, whether that’s holding down the yard or
filing 100s of simultaneous grievance petitions to state officials.
As this comrade recognized in their letter to us, there are often no
quick solutions. The grievance petitions that prisoners have developed
and that we distribute cannot solve the problem of oppression in
prisons. They can be a tool in getting state officials to support your
ongoing collective struggle.
As we recently reiterated, freedom
from oppression can’t be won through the courts. The law is a tool
of the oppressor. Keeping paper trails is part of the struggle to hold
them to their word, which can sometimes be done, and should be done to
advance the struggle of the oppressed.
Please continue to send us updates on the struggle there. We will
print them on our website and maybe in ULK. This is one more
tactic to expose what is going on and to share lessons with others
struggling in similar situations.
As a person who has been the target of long-standing censorship
campaigns, i would like to give my voice to the discussion around
censorship in this time of organizing against this tool of
counter-insurgency.
Recently, in Texas’ prison system, an anthology that speaks to the
torture of solitary confinement was censored. The reason given is that
it purportedly contains content that threatens the security of the
prison by encouraging prisoners to engage in disruptive behavior such as
strikes, etc. i took part in this anthology and to be clear there is not
any language speaking to the disruption of the prison system. There is
language that speaks to the dismantling of long-term/indefinite solitary
confinement, which is illegal in many places, is considered torture
internationally, and which the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
(TDCJ) itself admits may cause harm or damage to the mental health of
the affected person. So the thinking of the thought police is that it is
a threat to security to speak out against torture, but it is not a
threat to security to maintain torturous conditions. What sense does
that make?
This censorship is of the second volume of this anthology series
called Texas Letters (see: texasletters.org). Volume one, which
contains the same sort of content from many of the same writers, is
approved. So what happened between the time of January 2023 and May of
2024, the respective release of each volume? A one word answer: Success.
The first volume was released at the beginning of the last state
legislature session. A session where a coalition of people were behind
House Bill 812 (HB812), a bill intended to end indefinite solitary
confinement. As a way to increase the popularity of the bill the book
was distributed to all the law makers. Ultimately the bill didn’t pass,
however the promotion of the direct letters and experiences of those
incarcerated in solitary confinement in Texas grew. The prolific female
writer Kwaneta Harris, who has been in solitary confinement for years,
was featured in various high profile publications including The New
York Times, speaking to the experience of solitary confinement in
Texas, particularly how it is in prisons designated for women.
Al-Jazeera and NPR featured interviews on the book and the experiences
of Texas solitary confinement. Advocates continue to build momentum and
public opinion against the use of solitary Confinement, and it is upon
this back drop that when Texas Letters Volume 2 appeared, it
was censored throughout the state prison system.
This is a move tyrants use to quell social discourse; to control the
narrative and therefore evolution of the system never comes. This is a
move to quell any form of resistance. Even that which is peaceful
becomes a “threat to the security of the institution”, those who take
part in such actions become “threats to the security of the institution”
people known for “organizing and influencing other inmates” and
therefore are confined in solitary confinement or held in said
confinement if already there.
This process of events is no surprise. It is a reflection of the
practices coming out of the highest level of government in the state,
directly a representation of the tyrannical regime Greg Abbot desires
and runs himself.
See, in Texas, the Executive Director of TDCJ is appointed by the
Governor, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice is also appointed by the
governor, as is the parole and pardons board. The Director’s Review
Committee (DRC) is the body that governs censorship inside the prisons.
This committee is appointed by the Director. So what We end up with is a
DRC of political appointees, appointed by a political appointee, a gang
of political careerists, all kissing the ring of the top man, the
governor of Texas, all falling in line with his neo-confederate agenda.
As such We have a prison system that is over saturated with Christian
fundamentalism, stale reforms, faith-based programs, and because any
volunteer program has to go through the chaplaincy department there is
no secular, dissident voices, programs or activities. All because TDCJ
is in the business of cultivating ZOMBIES, those who talk when and how
they’re told, walk when and how they’re told, think when and how they’re
told. This is considered reform and anything outside of that is a threat
to security worthy of censorship.
This type of tyranny should be important to everyone because We
should want to stop this sort of government over-reach before it becomes
too extreme. Tyranny only becomes emboldened with time and a lack of
resistance of its subjects.
by a Tennessee prisoner September 2024 permalink
Tennessee is introducing JPay tablets to prisoners
I am lucky this far to have received my mail [including many
newspapers, study packs and books from MIM Distributors], but the
tablets are soon to arrive. As far as books go, I am unable to order any
as there seems to be some type of mystery in that realm. No books until
further notice, and nobody appears to be able to guide you in the proper
direction.
Their goal seems to be to stop the flow of contraband into the
prison. Yet, there seems to be more of it than food on your tray. People
are falling out and sent right back to the place they came out of to be
back in the same shape they left in: on drugs. They appear to do nothing
about the problem. A person on drugs can walk right past an officer and
he acts as if he doesn’t see him. The smell of something on fire stays
in the air. You are forced to sleep in a room with unbearable smoke
fumes in the air. All they want is for the alarm to not go off. Smoke
bailing out of some buildings isn’t that something.
Yes, we’re going to have to accept the tablets because they can solve
the problem of unbearable conditions - or so they say!
MIM(Prisons) adds: Despite word from prisoners in
Tennessee that there are new restrictions on books coming in, we have
not been able to confirm the new rules. We have heard from other Books
for Prisoners programs that they have stopped sending books to
Tennessee. The Tennessee Department of Corrections’ website hosts the
Inmate Mail policy dated 8 December 2023, which states:
“Printed materials may be received by inmates in an unlimited amount,
provided they are mailed directly from the publisher(s) or recognized
commercial distributor.”
Despite some censorship, and
mail gone missing, MIM Distributors has been able to deliver books
to TN prisoners prior to December 2023. And lately our biggest problem
has been with Tennessee rejecting manila envelopes because they think
they might harbor drugs!
As we’ve reported in Texas
and elsewhere, drugs in prisons have risen to all-time highs,
despite Covid-19 restrictions on visitations and new digital mail
policies. And science has proven that drug addiction is a product of bad
living conditions. So not only are prison staff bringing in drugs, they
are driving prisoners to use them through their repressive and
alienating conditions.
UPDATE 28 September from a TN prisoner: I’m
currently being held at Morgan County Correctional Complex and I need
your help/advice. Excluding religious books, I’m only allowed to receive
5 books, from only 3 vendors that prison officials have chosen! How can
I further my education if I’m only allowed to receive 5 books? I’m
working on my pending criminal and civil cases, and of course I’ll need
more than 5 law books, but with this restriction, that’s not possible!
This restriction is under the guidance of Warden Shawn Phillips who can
be reached at (423) 346-1300.
The comrade included documentation showing the only approved vendors
to be: Abebook.com [sic], bookshop.org and 21st century Christian
bookstore. And apparently prisoners can give books to mailroom to be
thrown away in order to receive additional books!
As we approach the end of Prison Banned Book Week we are pausing our
campaign, which has been going on over the last couple months, to
support prisoners in Pendleton Correctional Facility, Indiana.
Supporters should stop gathering signatures and mail out any remaining
postcards soon.
It was reported to MIM(Prisons) that 6 prisoners were threatened with
drug charges, and torture in long-term isolation, for mail received from
MIM Distributors. The mailroom claimed smudges of ink (that were
obviously from the printer) were indications that the mail was laced
with drugs. Of course, subsequent testing of the mail proved there were
no drugs on them. This type of treatment has earned Indiana state a
grade of D for their mail censorship, not an F because most letters do
get through as does some literature.
In response to these threats, comrades in Anti-Imperialist Prisoner
Support (AIPS) and other supporters hit the streets with a postcard
campaign. We told people about what was going on, and asked them to sign
a postcard and mail it to the administration. The postcards called out
the political repression and demanded that it be stopped. Dozens of
postcards were mailed to the Pendleton Administration, from near and far
away, over the last couple months.
In the midst of the postcard campaign we received news that the
threats had seemingly been dropped. But censorship has continued and a
lawsuit is still being pursued. One of the comrades targeted at
Pendleton says:
“I have not received Under Lock & Key 86 mailed out [1
month ago]. I’ve written the mailroom 2 times now and as of today have
not received it.”
“Thank you all for bringing this injust to light!”
Thanks to the comrades on the outside who supported this campaign. We
are declaring this phase over, but will continue to report on the
happenings in Indiana prisons.
Outreach Report
In one locale, over 35 petitions were collected alongside
distributing ULK 86 directly to passerbys. There was
substantial immediate enthusiasm for discovering a publication written
by prisoners, especially regarding solidarity with Palestine. Each
persyn AIPS met was interested both in receiving a newsletter as well as
signing a petition to mail.
AIPS also maintained a presence at Socialism Conference 2024 which
took place in Chicago during the end of August. Here, over 100 copies of
ULK were handed out and dozens of postcard petitions were signed by
those interested in the struggle of prisoners. It was also encouraging
to see those on the outside were interested in learning about the abuses
and injustices prisoners face, either through panels attending hosted at
the conference or by talking directly with passerbys.
While there was no negative reception, no recipients in either
location were familiar with ULK or MIM(Prisons). Only very few
recognized the MIM name from prior exposure. It is indicative of a low
tide in the movement here that most are completely unfamiliar with
anti-imperialist prisoners. This represents an opportunity and
responsibility to publicize our work and recruit more volunteers.
Among this small sample of the public, found tabling in busy urban
areas, at local leftist events, or at the aforementioned conference,
there were multiple people who were very enthusiastic about the
newspaper and our work in spite of lacking all prior familiarity. This
welcome enthusiasm also resulted in some “pig questions”: those which,
if AIPS answered publicly, would inevitably feed valuable information to
the pigs (in other words, agents of the state). The size of a political
group, their location, and their leadership structure are examples of
questions unnecessary to answer in order to work with others. That
information only helps enemies who wish to study, surveil or even
infiltrate anti-imperialist organizations. And we don’t say this to
pretend that we are a big organization but rather to encourage people to
do the work that they see as the most correct.
AIPS comrades encountered some popular confusion about MIM(Prisons)’s
line on (non)exploitation of prisoners. Some people thought MIM(Prisons)
was fighting against the for-profit prison system. Most prisons are not
private. And even companies like JPay, Securus, and GTL that are
profiteering off prisoners are making very small amounts of money
compared to the cost of running the criminal injustice system, which the
Prison Policy
Institute put at about $182 billion. MIM(Prisons)’s actual line is
that prisons are an immense cost to Amerika: a cost sustained for the
purpose of social control, especially for the national oppression of
First Nation, New Afrikan and Chican@ liberation movements. In the end,
this cost is worthwhile if Amerika is able to prevent the masses of
oppressed nations from fighting for autonomy in land and resources. But
still, the benefits yielded are not profits in terms of capital but the
containment and suppression of the internal semi-colonies within the
United $tates. Imprisonment is a form of absolute immiseration that we
think of in the realm of genocide rather than exploitation. The
suppression of rebellious groups helps the settler Amerikan nation
maintain its position on top. AIPS incorporates this understanding in
our prisoner correspondence and campaign work.
The Florida Department of Corrections has been on a censorship
tirade, which
serves as a nice compliment to their habit of banning books.(1). The
FDOC has a rule (Section 15 of 33-501.401) which authorizes the
impoundment or rejection of any publication which “depicts how to make
an instrument to apply a tattoo … describes tattooing techniques … or
contains a tattoo pattern or photograph …”
ULK’s have been censored because certain pages “Could be used as
tattoo patterns.” That is, the FDOC has the right to censor any
publication which contains anything which could possibly serve as a
pattern for a tattoo, and whether it could be a tattoo pattern is up to
their discretion. Their censorship “rules” say “censor whatever you
want!”
Not a single one of our publications has ever listed tattoo patterns.
We print the art that prisoners send us, and images that help express
the articles they accompany. We have a recommendation for the FDOC:
prisoners could use their cell bars as tattoo patterns. How about you
remove them?
In the last four years, of all the prison systems where we’ve sent 10
or more books, Florida has the highest rate of censorship at about 30%
of books or pamphlets (excluding our newsletter and letters to
prisoners). Meanwhile only 26% of books we’ve sent to Florida in that
time have been confirmed received by the prisoner. The week before
Prison Banned Books Week, JPay returned some articles we printed and
mailed to a reader after many publications we sent were censored. JPay
enclosed FDOC censorship forms in each envelope that were not filled,
therefore not providing any justification for returning our mail. We
give Florida a grade of D for their mail policies and practices. They
are one of the worst, but not as bad as states that block any piece of
mail we send in.
We will continue to be censored so long as we reveal the oppression
in the United $nakes. We will fight it until the oppressed have been
liberated.
1: Patricia Mazzei, 22 April 2023, “Florida at Center of Debate as
School Book Bans Surge Nationally”, The New York Times
There are 65 organizations who have signed on to the 2024 Prison Banned Books Week
campaign. What unites us is a belief that there is good in lifting
the restrictions on literature that U.$. prisoners have access to.
Without having asked all of the participants, we’d wager that we all
agree that by understanding the past and understanding the ideas of
others, that people can better understand our present and act on it in a
way that benefits humynity overall. There are certain ideas that we may
take from the Age of the Enlightenment that we all share.
Finding Truth in Books
Where many of the organizations in this campaign probably disagree
with us is in seeing that each piece of literature has a class character
to it. As part of our world view as Marxists, in a class society, we
recognize class character in everything that humyns create.
There is an adage that the truth is hidden in books. But as we’ve
discussed before, not all books
are true or based in materialist science.(1) In a sense, we go to
the library and read books to bury the lies within books and all around
us. We must understand different arguments and ways of thinking in order
to see their accuracy or fallacy.
Rather than think of the “marketplace of ideas” where a bunch of
people bring their individual thoughts to compete with others (the
individualist view), we see a war between two main class positions in
the realm of ideas (and elsewhere) – that of the bourgeoisie vs. that of
the proletariat. There is a reason why prisoners are the most restricted
readers in this country, and why New Afrikan, Indigenous and Chican@
literature are targeted as “Security Threat Group” material.
Cultural Revolution
If there is one phenomenon that defines Maoism, it is the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China (1966-1976) and the
lessons learned from it. But wait, didn’t they like burn books and
punish academics during the GPCR?
In essence, the GPCR was an unleashing of almost a billion people to
participate in the war between the proletarian and the bourgeois lines
in politics and production. Not only that, this was a people that were
more than 90% illiterate before the liberation of China by the Communist
Party in 1949.
“My conclusion… was that China had made greater progress in
liberating masses of people from illiteracy and bringing millions some
knowledge of scientific and industrial technique than any nation had
ever done in so short a time.
“…By 1960… about $2,600,000,000) was devoted to education and
science, or fifty percent more than the direct budgetary military
expenditure….
“In 1960 United States expenditure on education at all levels was
less than four percent of the national income, or slightly less than the
$18,000,000,000 Americans spent for alcoholic beverages and tobacco.
“In 1957 Premier Chou En-lai had estimated illiteracy over the whole
country at seventy percent. Mr Tsui said that by 1960 the percentage had
been reduced… to about sixty-six percent for the rural areas and
twenty-four percent in the cities.”(2)
By 1979, three years after the GPCR, illiteracy was down to 30%.(3)
Yet the GPCR is known in the United $tates for shutting down schools and
attacking professors. These things were central to the student struggles
on campuses across China. And in these struggles there were Red Guard
factions taking up different positions and political lines, fighting
against each other. Students were challenging the hierarchical roles in
the university and the traditional methods of study, without always
having the answers. There are even documented cases of Red Guards
burning religious books as a means of attacking reactionary ideas. But
this was not a coordinated effort by the state as is happening in
prisons and schools across the United $tates today, the so-called “land
of the free”. We can see parallels to the critiques of the Chinese
student movement in the United $tates today where “right to an
education” is being used to silence protests against U.$. arms being
used for a genocide in Palestine.
Interestingly, after praising Chinese literacy in the quote above,
Edgar Snow quotes a U.$. Library of Congress staffer stating that the
Chinese concept of education “is not distinguishable from
indoctrination, propaganda and agitation.”(2) This is where we would
again stress the class perspective, and how propaganda is in the eye of
the beholder:
“Westerners perceive Chinese education under Mao as”propaganda,”
because it encourages values and goals which contradict the goals of
capitalism. These values and goals taught in China during the Cultural
Revolution were consistent with the building of socialism. Education in
Western nations is not perceived as “propaganda” by those who,
consciously or not, agree with the goals of capitalism/imperialism and
patriarchy. Similarly, advertising for capitalist products, while
recognized as very influential on people’s opinions and actions, is not
perceived as “brain-washing” by those who benefit from capitalism and
have therefore decided to tolerate it.”(4)
The totalitarian control or corporations like Global Tel*Link, JPay,
and Securus over what prisoners read, write, listen to and communicate
with people outside is a good example of what our society accepts.
Allyn and Adele Ricket wrote about their experience as prisoners in
China for providing intelligence to the United $tates Government. This
is one of the best accounts of the Chinese socialist approach to
education/re-education. They were imprisoned during the early years of
the revolution and witnessed the change in approach, partially due to
changing conditions (the new government had been established and
prisoners were less rebellious) and partially due to lessons learned.
“By 1953… the authorities acknowledged that their former overemphasis on
suppression had been a mistake.”(5)
Their description of staff at their prison sounds unbelievable to a
U.$. prisoner:
“he always seemed to have time to listen to the troubles of one or
another of the prisoners or to do countless little things which showed
how serious he was in looking out for the welfare of his charges.”
At first Allyn Rickett thought this was a bit of a propaganda show,
but this incident changed eir mind:
“I looked through the crack in the palisade built around our cell
window to obstruct the view. There was Supervisor Shen patiently going
along the line turning every article of the prisoners’ clothing to make
certain they would be dry by the time we were to take them in after
supper.”(6)
Regarding censorship, the Ricketts also compare the news in China
over time and to the Amerikan press:
“Publication of news is determined by its usefulness in increasing
the people’s social consciousness and morality and furthering the
Communist Party’s program for the development of the country. Therefore
the content of the news is limited to what the authorities feel will
serve these ends.
“To our mind, no matter how sincere in their purpose the authorities
may be, in violating the principle of the right to know they are taking
a dangerous step. …One of the most encouraging recent developments in
China has been a liberalization of this concept of a controlled press.
[written in 1957]
“…Our experience in living in and reading the press of both countries
has led us to the conclusion that the Chinese today are still receiving
a clearer picture of what is happening here than the American people are
of what is taking place in China.”(7)
Ten years later the GPCR will begin and “big character posters” were
promoted as a way for the masses to express their grievances against
Party officials, or other issues they faced. The Chinese experiment in
socialism was unique in how it regularly attempted to open up mass
participation in ideological struggle and in organizing society as far
as could be tolerated without creating chaos. And even then there was
some chaos, which is what the GPCR is usually criticized for.
The press is a battleground for class struggle. In a condition where
all the books were bourgeois, the socialist government had a lot of work
to do to catch up. And this was done largely in face-to-face study
groups, whether on campuses, on farms or in prisons.
The ideas of the old system must be surpassed, but not erased. Marx
showed how different economic systems gave birth to subsequent systems,
and how the ideas evolved to reflect those new systems. This is all
important to the understanding of humyn history and to the development
and continued advancement of humyn knowledge.
Yesterday we published a recent prison
book ban list from North Carolina. Today we will analyze and publish
a banned literature list from the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections.
The state of Pennsylvania holds around 40,000 people in its prisons,
compared to 30,000 in North Carolina. Yet Pennsylvania has only 398
currently banned titles compared to North Carolina’s 480. The
Pennsylvania list is not refreshed each year, with some items being
banned as far back as 2012, so it seems that overall North Carolina bans
more books/publications. Across Pennsylvania school districts there were
186 banned
books in 2022/2023 school year. Again, we see that prisons are
banning more literature than schools are.
click to download the Pennsylvania DOC banned book list
There is a lot of overlap between Pennsylvania and North Carolina’s
lists. Pennsylvania seems more aggressive in banning sexual content,
which accounted for at least 130 of the 398 titles on their list. (Note:
On both lists we do not have reasons for the censorship, and we did not
confirm the actual content of each item.) Unlike North Carolina, we did
not see any “street novels” or “urban fiction” on the Pennsylvania list,
so this was the biggest difference, perhaps accounting for the shorter
list. Street novels rival pornography on the North Carolina ban
list.
The Pennsylvania list also differs in that it lists titles that were
permitted after being reviewed. There were 664 titles that were listed
as permitted, giving greater insight into how they implement their
rules.
Like North Carolina, Tattoo books/magazines were often banned, along
with topics like art, guns, hacking, drugs and martial arts.
Pennsylvania had more prisoner advocacy related materials on their ban
list (like Prison Health News), as well as newspapers that
cater to prisoners. They also had more reference books and business
related books for some reason (like Legal Forms for Starting and
Owning Your Own Business). The obvious political motivations of
censorship come through in items like Stop Law Enforcement Violence
Against Women of Color and Trans People of Color.
While North Carolina seemed to only target The Final Call
and Under Lock & Key there is a much broader list of
newspapers that have certain issues banned in Pennsylvania. At the top
of that list are The San Francisco Bayview, Workers
World, and Under Lock & Key. Other than Under Lock
& Key itself, there were no other items on the ban list that
MIM Distributors distributes to prisoners, though some were on the
permitted list. This mostly conforms with our records that show
Under Lock & Key is almost the only thing that has been
noted as censored or not received in recent years. The one item that
shows up on our list a couple
times for Pennsylvania censorship is our Maoist Glossary.
As mentioned previously, most of our mail is never confirmed received or
not.
Digital Mail Makes
Physical Mail Harder
Censorship is challenging to track in the state of Pennsylvania. By
law, authorities are required to send us notice of any censorship when
it does occurs, but in practice this is uncommon if not rare. The
overwhelming majority of our censorship cases in PA consist of mail
simply disappearing in the system. What makes tracking censorship so
challenging is that this missing mail includes letters that we send
prisoners detailing the history of mail we’ve sent to them and when we
sent it. Sometimes we have to resort to mailing the cellmates of the
prisoners we were trying to contact. It’s amazing how well anger at the
police can be communicated just through handwriting.
The fact that Pennsylvania seems to be quietly censoring our glossary
aligns with the fact that their tablets provided through GTL do not
offer any dictionaries among the 8805 titles available. Only 112 books
are free on those tablets. These numbers are from Freedom of Information
Act research by prisonbannedbooksweek.org, which also reveals that PA
has a contract for $50,000,000.00 with GTL that includes kickbacks for
“all annual revenues for music, e-messaging, games, lobby deposit fees
and ebooks up to $4,350,000” at 22.5%. While kickbacks are interesting,
note that at best the state is getting about 8% of the money back that
they are giving to GTL to run their prison tablets. State bureaurcrats
are motivated to balance budgets, but it’s not like the state is making
money on this deal. It is only GTL that is walking away with profits,
not the state, and definitely not the families of prisoners who are
paying exorbitant fees for these services. The comrade who sent us this
ban list wrote:
“I bought this GTL tablet model number TG0802 in January of 2019 for
damn near $160.00. But since ViaPath took over GTL a year ago or so, the
price has dropped down to $80. But these are refurbished tablets. When I
get released I will send it back to the company via the form paying only
shipping and handling. Then you get a brand new one without all the
D.O.C. settings and restrictions on them… Every song I bought will be on
it too.”
It is nice that they have an option to allow you to keep your
purchases after release from prison, but we wouldn’t recommend keeping a
tablet with a cellular data reciever, camera, GPS and microphone on it
from Global Tel*Link after your release.
Thanks to the new digital mail system, Pennsylvania DOC now has three
different addresses to send mail to requiring one to identify the type
of mail as either General Incoming Correspondence, Photographs,
Publications, Photo Books, Official Documents, Original Transactional
Documentation, Legal Mail (which can be either “For Attorneys” or “For
Courts/Court Entity”), or Miscellaneous.
Under Lock & Key 83 is the only recent issue on the
“DENIED” list in Pennsylvania for the reason “Information contained on
page 15 speaks of rising up against authority.” Yet every recent issue
has been censored for some prisoners, showing that this ban list is only
a piece of the censorship going on in Pennsylvania. In recent years this
censorship is a combination of mail just gone missing as mentioned
above, or mail returned and stamped “REFUSED: Go to WWW.COR.PA.GOV”,
implying that we are not following the mail rules. But when you go to
their website, the mail rules clearly state that newspapers go to the
facility, and many PA prisoners receive them this way. But alas some
mailroom supervisors disagree with the rules.
Despite all these confusing hoops that prison mail must go through,
like elsewhere, drugs are more widespread than ever in Pennsylvania
prisons. Rampant drug use and censored books and letters are just two of
many indications of the failure of U.$. prisons to do anything positive
for society.
