Under Lock & Key

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 Abbott desires and runs himself.

See, in Texas, the Governor appoints the Executive Director of TDCJ, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, and 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.

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, we recognize that, in a class society, there is class character in everything 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 of 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.

<sup>Notes: 1. Melo X, August 2022, Are Ideas in a Book Materialist?, Under Lock & Key 79.
2. Snow, Edgar, 1970, Red China Today, Random House: New York, pp.229-231.
3. MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT POSITION PAPER ON VIOLENCE, PART II, 26 August 1992
4. MC5, November 1999, Myths About Maoism.
5. Ricket, Allyn & Adele, 1973, Anchor Books: New York, p.235.
6. Ibid., p.236-7
7. Ibid., p.331</sup>

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.

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 bureaucrats 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 receiver, 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.

A North Carolina prisoner writes: Dear comrades, I’ve enclosed a banned book/publications list put out by our prison.

I can’t get or make copies. Nobody can help me with copies. North Carolina prisons want all non-legal mail sent to Phoenix, MD for electronic scanning that takes up to two weeks to be done. Yet legal mail, books and newsletters are sent to the prisons themselves. Any idea what a burden that is? Our people got to remember two different addresses. Organizations have to mail us letter replies to one address and books to another.

This prison blocks almost all sexual mags, even non-nude, even though NC-DAC policy approves such books. Not Harnett Correctional Institution.

Notice the date? This is the banned book list I was given in June 2024. Any book past a year is supposed to be re-reviewed. They aren’t.

Analyzing NC Ban List

Some famous titles on the list include Where the Crawdads Sing and the often-censored in U.$. schools, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Other notable items include multiple self-help books, including ones specifically for prisoners preparing for release, and prisoner resource lists. There are multiple legal resources on the list, one our comrade mentions. And there are books like Gender Studies, Qigong and Tai Chi, and an astrology book that can’t possibly violate any rules. Clearly censored for its political content is Our Enemies in Blue, a critique of policing.

Under Lock & Key is the second most censored newspaper in North Carolina, after The Final Call, which appears 14 times on the list (it also comes out a lot more frequently than ULK). Both are clearly censored for political reasons.

The book list that this comrade received in June 2024 is dated 10/06/2023. Since October 2023, the following items have been rejected by NCDPS: Under Lock & Key 82 and ULK 84, and a comrade reported not receiving Under Lock & Key 85. A prisoner appealed ULK 82, was denied, and then MIM Distributors appealed and it was removed from the Master List of Disapproved Publications. Most states have a central administrative office that oversees the local mailroom decisions to censor, so it is always worth appealing to these offices. There are no rights that you don’t fight for. Years ago many comrades went further and engaged in lawsuits over the mail in North Carolina, which seems to have brought improvements in their practices in recent years.

By our count, at least 100 of the 480 items on the ban list contain sexual content, most of them containing pornographic photos. While this comrade points out that sexual content is not a reason for banning per the law, North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections policy Chapter D 0.0109(f)(11) does prohibit “Sexually explicit material which by its nature or content poses a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution, or facilitates criminal activity.” It is not clear how any of the materials in question fit this criteria. Curiously, right after the release of this ban list, Under Lock & Key 79 was censored for the reason “naked woman’s breast”, which just isn’t true at all, but should also not have been allowed by their own rules.

The only topic to rival pornography on the ban list was “street novels.” We counted at least 100 examples on this list (we did not look up every title so these are likely undercounted). Most likely these are censored for (f)(10) related to promoting “gang activity.”

The third most common topic on the ban list appeared to be tattoo-related, with at least 20 examples. Other themes that appeared more than a few times, in order of frequency, included: art, history of famous criminals, cars, guns, survival, hacker, legal, and martial arts. Unfortunately we have no real information on the literature that was not put on the ban list to compare to.

According to the PEN America Index of School Book Bans, there were 58 books banned in various school districts across North Carolina in 2023. While the news reports more on banned books in schools, we can see that banning literature is much more frequent in prisons. And while the titles on these two lists appear to have no overlap, the motivation behind most of the banned literature seems to be an effort to not expose people to books that depict things the censors don’t want them to do.

North Carolina’s Overall Rating

Overall, we have to give North Carolina a decent grade of C+ on their mail policies and practices.

It’s unacceptable that almost every issue of Under Lock & Key seems to either be censored, or at least not delivered to some subscribers in NCDAC. This includes the recent example where they censored ULK for art depicting actions that their department describes in their own rules. However, some subscribers in North Carolina have received every recent issue of Under Lock & Key. There has been a major improvement since 2012-2017 when censorship was so rampant in North Carolina that we couldn’t even get a letter in telling a prisoner what mail we’ve sent them.

And yes, the multiple addresses are a burden as our comrade says. Pennsylvania has three! You can see our list of mail censored in North Carolina prisons over the last couple years and see that even when newspapers and pamphlets were sent to the facility they were sometimes returned stating, “This facility DOES NOT accept friend and family mail directly.” And there were times where mail printed on 8.5”x11” paper was returned from TextBehind stating: Refused “TextBehind, INC does not process privileged/legal mail”. It is clear these systems are confusing to all involved.

Assuming those were honest mistakes, there hasn’t really been any censorship of books or pamphlets from MIM Distributors in recent years (just our newsletter), including some of our most censored literature in other states. And this would not likely be the case if it weren’t for the prisoners who fought censorship with appeals and lawsuits less than a decade ago.

Over the last month I have made several requests to the mailroom staff McCann and Internal Investigator Mason Kierznowski about ULK 86. After over a month of waiting McCann said that Investigations and Intelligence (I.I.) was reviewing it.

Well, tonight I finally received it. They were holding onto ULK and Prison Legal News from last month. I know if I wasn’t on top of it they would have discarded it. I told Mason K. that he was clearly in violation of the correspondence policy. You cannot hold onto one’s mail for weeks without giving a confiscation slip.

Prior to all this, something bad happened indicating that they are out to harm me.

On 22 July 2024, while under a lockdown I was taken to an upper level secluded shower area to shower. I was left in this small stainless steel shower with no ventilation. I could not breath. After yelling, screaming, and kicking to be let out of the torture coffin, I was finally let out. I almost died.

Then the officer cuffed me up and gave me the order of “let’s go.” I went down the flight of steps and into my cell so I could get to my inhaler and fan.

The officer filed a class B offense of “fleeing & resisting” when he claimed he gave me a command to stop and I never heard him tell me this. [MIM(Prisons): This comrade also sent us copies of written statements from others affirming that the C.O. did not order em to stop.]

On 9 September 2024, the same person that dismissed the frivolous conduct report on your letter for allegedly being laced with drugs, found me guilty. This is a serious offense. She took my commissary and phone for 30 days. I lost my job and my place in line for the honor dorm. I will be forced to stay where I am, which is a 6’ by 9’ cell that is close to isolation conditions.

It’s a sad situation comrades. I cannot give up. They are beating me down. I have to keep pushing on.

Everyone is counting on me. The reports on Pendleton in ULK 86 were awesome! I have supporters in you all.

Today is the first day of Prison Banned Books Week 2024 (PBBW). This year the campaign will be focusing on how companies selling tablet services to the state have exacerbated the problem of censorship in prisons. MIM(Prisons) is one of dozens of organizations participating in PBBW. You can view the full list at prisonbannedbooksweek.org, where you can send letters to your legislators and letters to the editor to call on prisons to allow donated books from organizations like ours, as well as free digital books through local libraries. Also look for #prisonbannedbooksweek on various social media platforms this week (you can now follow us on Mastodon).

Each day this week we will be publishing stories related to censorship in prisons, and we ask our supporters to share them with your networks using the hashtag #prisonbannedbooksweek. Censorship in prisons has been at the heart of what we do since day one and is a daily struggle for us and for our readers, as we must fight for our First Amendment rights in this country. We will give you an overview of what this looks like in this first installment for PBBW.

We hope this campaign encourages people to support our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program with donations, to engage in activism and legal advocacy in support of prisoners receiving a variety of reading materials, and that it spreads awareness about the growing control of information that these state/corporate partnerships are bringing to our lives.

Our Books Program

While the MIM Free Political Books to Prisoners Program actually began in 1988, our organization formed in late 2007, taking over the duties of the MIM Prison Ministry. This work involves publishing a regular newsletter for prisoners and corresponding with prisoners through the mail, in addition to sending other forms of literature.

As we celebrate 17 years of existence, we approach the 200,000 mark for the number of pieces of mail we have sent to prisoners over those years. For all that mail our overall confirmed censorship rate is only 6%. However, 73% of our mail is never confirmed received or censored. This is some combination of prisoners never writing us back, mail being illegally censored and mail just being lost. While the percentages of each are certainly in that order, we have no way of knowing what the actual breakdown is of the fate of that 73% of mail we send out. For the 27% of mail that we can confirm, 4 out of 5 items do make it to their recipients.

About 40,000 pieces of mail we’ve sent are letters to prisoners, while over 6000 are books and zines by other authors. The remaining almost 150,000 pieces of mail are literature that we publish, the majority of it being our newsletter Under Lock & Key, but this also includes many MIM Theory journals, Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán and various other pamphlets and study packs.

Interestingly it is the other books and zines that are censored at a higher rate (8.2%) than our own literature and letters (both less than 6%). The fact is that books and magazines do face a higher level of scrutiny than newspapers and letters, and are often censored for superficial reasons like the condition of the book or the publisher of the book not matching the sender, etc.

Anyone can browse through the incidents of censorship of our mail on our website. Numerically, Under Lock & Key accounts for most of our censorship, since that is most of the mail we send to prisoners. After ULK, you’ll see that some of our most censored pieces of literature in the last couple years are: Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton, Power to New Afrika by Triumphant, Revolutionary 12 Step Program by a USW comrade and our very own Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. You’ll note that most of the reasons given for these books are clearly politically motivated, claiming the literature will cause disruptions and riots, even the 12 Step Program, as we reported in ULK 78.

Another common appearance on the list is, ironically, our Guide to Fighting Censorship in Prisons, which we send to any prisoner facing censorship at their facility.

You’ll also see in the list of censorship the occasional overturned decision. This is due to the persistence of our comrades inside as well as our volunteers on the outside who appeal as much of the unreasonable censorship as they can. This is one of many tasks that we could use your help with.

Prison and jail systems across the country continue to move to digitize letters to read on tablets, and restrict books from more and more sources, under the guise of fighting drugs. While drugs have not decreased, our problems getting mail to prisoners have increased, as you’ll read in the series of articles we’ll be publishing this week.

Missouri now has the strictest paper literature policy ever implemented in a state prison system. People can ONLY obtain paper literature by purchasing it themselves, in consultation with their prison caseworker, with money drawn from their own commissary account from a small selection of “approved vendors.” We’re finding that many of our subscribers in Missouri cannot receive Under Lock & Key because they have not paid for it.

Missouri is now contracting with Securus to serve all mail digitally on tablets. Their contract includes a 1% administrative fee on “all payments received by the contractor for all products and services provided under the contract.” However, not all prisoners have tablets, and some are anxious to get the privilege of paying $0.25 to send emails to family.

Below are reports from Missouri prisoners in August 2024.

Censorship is real here at Crossroads Correctional Center. They are trying to find ways to stop Under Lock & Key newspapers from coming to Crossroads any way they can. Most of the time they have no real reason to stop it. It’s hit or miss. And me and the brothers really really need the info and good news that you bring knowing that the fight is still on.

They stop our catalogs, they stop our books. It’s hard with this K2 taking our young minds and no one really there to push the fight. Most of us find our fight to be few in numbers.

Here in the hole, they keep our tablets from us. Every prison except for Crossroads Correctional Center has tablets. They charge us $0.79 a stamp and really force us to buy them knowing that’s the only way to reach our families seeing that they won’t give us our tablets in Ad-Seg. Emails only cost $0.25 on tablets.

They won’t let us order reading books or magazines in Ad-Seg either, saying we have to be on the yard to order books/magazines.

MIM(Prisons) adds: It is criminally absurd that people being tortured in isolation are deprived of some of the few things that can keep them sane in such conditions like reading material.

A comrade at Jefferson City Correctional Center wrote: I’ve ordered books with donation checks to free services. At first they denied them in May due to “No free books.” I fought that and paid a donation. Then their excuse was “wrong order month.” They proceeded to deny (in March, July, November) the free book services with donation payments. Then I sent $400 to a bona fide vendor on the precise month of orders. Now they’re saying we can’t have books in Ad-Seg and that I have to send them home and my people won’t be able to send them back to me once I’m out of seg (if I ever get out).

They’re making up arbitrary rules on the premise of punishment and denying educational and recreational books to long-term segregation people.

I had the check approved per the Functioning Unit Manager, and approved with Business Office. Now I’m unable to get them cuz property denied them.

I’m on hunger strike now at 7 days, 21 meals. No medical has attempted to assess me, they’re denying legal access (property paperwork) and staff don’t do rounds. If possible, I need assistance with legal. I’m filing on medical for neglect/deliberate indifference. I’m working on the §1983 in the mail but if ya’ll can help or put me into contact or on a list of pro bono/after win lawyers it would be much appreciated.

Another Jefferson City prisoner wrote: This prison policy infringes on my right to receive free religious material, which is considered “special mail, and can never be censored.” Prison officials took the regular mail, now books, magazines, and newspapers that were free, saying that drugs are coming in through the mail! That is the worst lie I have ever heard. It is a fact that drugs are being brought in by the prison staff themselves, not the other way around. I am here to help fight this injustice, let me know what you need me to do.

MIM(Prisons) adds: Unfortunately, now that this new policy is already in place we will need a concerted campaign and likely a lawsuit to reverse course. As the comrade above says, if any lawyers want to get involved, we can help facilitate. It’s hard to give Missouri a grade until we get a clearer picture of how this new policy plays out, but we might have to give them an F.

i wanted to take this opportunity to lend my voice to this ongoing discussion around so-called “snitching”, as this is a serious topic of principle and ideology which affects Our ability to succeed in Our tactical and strategic approaches.

As MIM(Prisons) pointed out, this question was originally raised due to captives organizing around police terrorism inside prisons and other captives refusal to participate in the paper trail aspect of the resistance. However, the issue raised in ULK 83’s article putting forth the slogan “Stop Collaborating” and the response in ULK 86, “Stop Snitching on Pigs”, need to be discussed as they all derive from the same source and it needs to be spelled out.

The California Prisoner in ULK 86 opens by saying “Let’s look at this from a practical perspective and not from an ideological one.” Then says “Snitching is telling on people. It’s giving information on someone else to a higher authority to act on it. We can all agree on that definition.”

i begin by stating: NO! We cannot all agree on that. It is a fallacy that telling on someone and snitching is always the same. See, snitching necessitates that We’ve had some sort of prior bond, or understanding. If your co-defendant “snitches on you” it is different from the old church lady down the street “telling on you.” It may produce the same result, but these are two different things. And it is indeed an ideological question, We can’t get around that. The co-defendant has an understanding with you, usually an unspoken one that each of you are equally committed to the morals and principles of the criminal subculture, which means no cooperation with law enforcement even if it means saving your own skin. When the co-defendant goes against that they have snitched on you, not only because they told but because they violated your trust by going against a principle each of you swore to uphold. The presence of the betrayal factor and the deceit, the inability to honor a commitment, these are the key factors that represent the phenomenon We call snitching. These are indeed universal principles that virtually no one likes when people go against. Regardless of walk of life, We as humyns want to have assurance that commitments will be honored, that sacrifices will be made, and that trustworthiness will be present in those We associate with. It is for this reason real snitching is universally frowned upon.

However, when We bring the old church lady into the equation, she, while frowning upon the Judas in her bible and those who exhibit those same traits in her world, will tell on you for whatever perceived slight or transgression you’ve committed against her. She hasn’t swore to any principles of the criminal subculture, she has no bond with you other than being a community member, and that bond was broken by you in your antisocial act against her. So she cannot possibly “snitch” on you, even while proceeding to tell on you. There is a significant difference, and We cannot hold people to standards that they have never acknowledged.

As MIM(Prisons) said, abuses must be exposed by so-called authorities and this goes towards undermining the legitimacy of their authority.

A crooked cop is not an ally to a revolutionary prisoner simply because they are crooked or they bring something in. This question has to really be worked out on a case-by-case basis, but i’ll just say that in most cases the crooked cop isn’t an ally and the situation is just transactional, there’s no understanding either way of the intentions behind either the taking or bringing of illicit things: it’s only a transactional relationship like most in a capitalist society. So, to say the pig (the profit-driven crooked cop) is my ally because they bring me phones and dope is to say that i am allowing myself to be bought off by these items. As a NARN i stand on the principles put forth in the FROLINAN Handbook for REVNAT Cadres: Standards 5: “Potential members must have outgrown the lust for coveting things or material goods.” And from the Codes of Conduct 4: “No member of the revolutionary cadre organization will place any material commodity above or before the organization, the people, or the NAIM.” 6: “No member of the revolutionary cadre organization is permitted to use, produce, distribute, process, fund, or take part in the sale of heroin, cocaine (in any form), LSD, PCP, or any hard drug, nor will they take any pill for the purpose of getting high and no member will distribute such pills or take part in the sale of such pills or other illegal drugs.”

i share to illustrate the standards and codes of conduct We should be upholding, even when no one else is, or even when it benefits Us to do otherwise. So if We follow this as spelled out it would limit Our dealings with that crooked pig anyway. We have a mandate to liberate political prisoners and if they believe in the principles of the revolutionary movement, then maybe that rare individual is an ally. But We all know there aren’t many who are willing to put their life and freedom on the line to liberate Us, even if they’re willing to help Us saturate the pen with distractions. So this says “i am willing, as a crooked pig who is profit driven, to help you distract yourself and others while in prison, but i am not willing to help you get out of prison.” i don’t think that’s a real ally and it’s because of the profit motive itself.

This brings me to my next point. The California Prisoner uses the terminology that We all use. “Our struggle.” But i think We need to define exactly what “Our struggle” means to us, because it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone at all times. Some think the struggle is for power and influence within the prison, some think it’s to tear down all prisons right now, some think it’s to reform the criminal mentality in order to produce good law abiding citizens of the corporate states of amerika and all these and other trends coexist to make up what Our struggle objectively is, but what is Our struggle subjectively, to Us? The Dragon pointed this out the best when it was said, that the whole point of the prison movement, the underlying motive for all the actions is to develop the capacity to field a People’s Army. i am paraphrasing. So in my experience, and something i lament to cats around although i can’t speak for cats here or elsewhere, but those who have “plugs” are not using them for any sort of dissent activities. Those who have plugs and dope are usually those policing the cats doing the dissident actions, whether those actions are paper trial related or organizing direct action.

Rarely is it the cats who have plugs and dope doing anything for the movement, and even when these are comrades with knowledge and experience and proven track records of struggle, while they have access to those plugs and dope their activism and commitment to it either ceases or severely lessens. Why? Because these are not only distractions but are corrupting influences. It is no coincidence that usually the prisons with the least amount of “motion” are those with the highest level of rebel activity and ideological training going on. So although plugs could theoretically be used for a lot of good they are by and large not being used in that way. [MIM(Prisons) adds: This is our experience as well.]

So, while I would agree with the Cali Prisoner about not throwing the baby out with the bath water, i do so largely because We cannot do so anyway. The prison system creates its black market economy through its laws of prohibition. Therefore there will always be some pig somewhere itching to take advantage of the unique economic opportunity to provide distractions and corrupting influences to those that want them and want to provide them. i am not advocating telling on crooked cops, but let me be clear they’re not allies to revolutionary prisoners, unless they themselves support the revolutionary principles We uphold. Let me also be clear that those who decide to tell on these crooked cops, here meaning specifically those who are driven by profit, those acts are not snitching, even though they are telling as explained at the top of this writing.

The two main things that hold the revolutionary prison movement back are gangs/gang mentalities and the drug trade. Therefore, anyone who perpetuates the latter is holding back the movement. On the gang question, there are those who are solid revs and come from this cloth, i am one of them. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the introduction of and expansion of gangs, particularly street gangs inside prison, at least in the case of Texas, coincides with the downward slope of revolutionary consciousness and commitment within the walls.

Gone are the days where L.O.’s are built upon revolutionary and progressive principles. Gone are the days of traditional groups spreading knowledge and going at the system. They’re only spreading dope, gangsterism, and discord amongst each other. The exceptions to this rule become obsolete within their groups, and the revolutionary prisoners who really stand on revolutionary bizzness are not the cool cats with all the luxuries, they’re usually the ones outcast, not liked, shunned, isolated, because everyone wants to be crime bosses in here. In order to bring the proper orientation and programs back to the prisons, revolutionary and progressive prisoners have to make allies and build up institutions to help those who need and want it. It won’t be too many who want it, and that’s just the sad and true reality we’re in these days. Capitalism + dope = genocide.

These MF’ers are preventing us from building the People’s Army and We are talking about protecting them and their interests and that they are allies? Come on homie, what wrong with that picture!?

In the history of the prison movement the most effective tactic of changing conditions has been inmate litigation. In order to litigate you must create a paper trail. How can we do that if we are not filing any complaints? i encourage comrades, those who live by revolutionary codes of conduct to be mindful of exactly how you implore the enemy institutions. Not because it is or isn’t snitching, but because, again, Our point is to build a People’s Army and We still have to do that even though We complain about the reactionary notions a lot of Our peers have, these are still the peers We have to organize with and among, and therefore like any shrewd politician We must be mindful of the landscape and the dominant ideologies and ideals, even those we disagree with, and navigate the terrain in a way that doesn’t neutralize Our effectiveness at organizing people under Our umbrella. We won’t be able to build the army if they all distrust Us because they think we are snitches. We won’t even have the time or space to argue otherwise because credibility has been lost.

For this reason, it is not politically correct to tell internal affairs on the crooked pig about profit driven acts, whereas documenting acts of pig brutality where people can see and understand the negative intentions behind the pig’s actions and therefore are less likely to side with the pig against you either directly or ideologically, that is an action that is politically correct. Be mindful comrades, and stay focused on the ultimate objective. Don’t snitch, and i mean really snitch (betray you honor and commitments) and don’t collaborate with the state.

We just wrapped up our Fourth of You-Lie annual fundraiser. The results so far aren’t great. We’ve only received about a third of the number of donations we got from comrades inside for all of 2023, and less than a third in the amount received. That means we need to get twice as many donations in the next 6 months as we got in the first 6 months of this year to maintain where we were. And ideally, we want to be increasing the percent of funding that comes from donations from prisoners. The amount of donations we receive from prisoners is one way we measure mass support for our work and whether we should keep doing it.

Our education programs continue to develop. We’ve mailed out the first group response to our University of Maoist Thought study group on the Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army. We’ve completed an update to our study guide for The Fundamentals of Political Economy, a must-read text. Comrades on the outside also completed a study of MIM Theory 14: United Front that is reflected in the content of this issue. We will likely continue this theme in ULK 87, looking at the united front in Palestine more and printing your reports on building united front for the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.

We are also entering Black August as this issue hits the cell blocks. And soon after that, the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity. Besides the Runaway Slaves Coalition statement on the United Front for Peace in Prisons, we did not get any submissions on these topics. But as always we have our September 9th Organizing Pack that prisoners can request to get more information on the history of this day, and countless books and pamphlets on the Black liberation struggle that you can get from our Free Books to Prisoners Program in exchange for political work.

The week of December 6-13 has been marked as a week of solidarity by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. Over the years comrades have suggested a boycott of any activities that financially benefit the prison system. This is the tactic being implemented in December, with the campaign focusing on ending prison slavery and overall abolition of prisons in general. Our next issue will be out in early November. So if you are organizing for this week of solidarity, send in art or articles to share for ULK 87.

This issue features content produced by United Struggle from Within comrades as part of our campaign to connect the prison struggle to the student movement for Palestine. Some of these materials were also used in a pamphlet put together and distributed on the streets, to get these messages into the hands of students and outside supporters.

As we finalize the content for this issue, reports are coming in of the disproportionate deaths of prisoners in the recent heat waves. Prisoners and prisons are being excluded from new worker protection laws dealing with heat. This June was the hottest on record. And yet the imperialists still aren’t getting serious about reducing CO2 emissions to slow global warming. We welcome your reports on heat and climate change, especially organizing efforts and how to build a united front around these campaigns, for the next issue of ULK.

Amerikan Elections

Finally, i thought we should say a few words on the upcoming U.$. presidential election. For those that don’t know, our slogan is, “Don’t Vote, Organize!” We aren’t too interested in who becomes president because there is no anti-imperialist option.

As has become the trend, the Democratic Party wing have been campaigning hard to “stop fascism”. Our line has not changed since 2016, when we argued that Trump was not instituting fascism as president then either. But that does not mean we should not be vigilantly looking for the emergence of fascism and opportunities to combat it.

Comrades in Texas have reported on lumpen gangs being used by the state as enforcers in Coffield Unit and Allred Unit. Another reader in Allred more recently reported that staff using drugs to bribe prisoners has continued:

“The prison administration here at Allred Unit have been getting away with killing prisoners for so long with the help of these so-called gang members that they fear not the possibility of accountability.”

The use of gangs to police prisoners is not new in Texas history. However, in the past this role was filled by the euro-Amerikan prisoners who enjoyed privileges in exchange for enforcing discipline on the oppressed nation prisoners.(see Robert T. Chase’s book We Are Not Slaves) While we have written extensively on the revolutionary potential of the First World lumpen, and even lumpen organizations, these organizations also have this reactionary potential, making them an unreliable ally of the proletariat.

In fact, it is quite damning that these L.O.s are consciously working for the imperialists to violently repress other oppressed nationals. We address this further in this issue with the ongoing campaign (and debate) around “Stop Collaborating!” Of course we see the same thing in Third World countries around the world where the imperialist have built death squads by bribing various lumpen and military men. And we do recognize such death squads as a form of exported fascism with no real base in the Third World itself.

Here in the heart of empire it is more typical to see the euro-Amerikan petty bourgeoisie play the role of fascist foot soldiers. We saw a glimpse of this in the attacks of bands of young white men on the UCLA encampment for Palestine as cops idly stood by. And we’ve seen it in various street clashes over the last decade with groups like the Proud Boys attacking radical left demonstrators or gender-non-conforming events.

But these remain fringe events. While Trump represents a certain heightening of contradictions in this country, the U.$. state is still very stable. No one can become president of the United $tates without support from the imperialists. The current support of the ultra-rich for another Trump presidency has been pinned largely on the possibility of Trump era tax cuts expiring if Biden wins a second term. So this is hardly a sign of the imperialists recognizing the need for a strong man to move this country into a more authoritarian direction. On the contrary, it is a sign of a further eating away at the stability of the United $tates by undercutting state funding through neo-Liberalism. Yes, the contradictions are heightening, no it is not time to join in united front with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever ends up being the more status quo option they give us in November.

This topic keeps coming up again and again and now I see it listed in the USW campaign list. Let’s look at this from a practical perspective and not from an ideological one.

Snitching is telling on people. It’s giving information on someone else to a higher authority to act on it. We can all agree on that definition. The more important question is to what INTENTION is someone snitching, and this is what we should analyze as it pertains to our struggle.

I’ve been reading in ULK about these “comrades” who snitch on other prisoners because they claim it’s for the good of our struggle. I call Bullshit. If you really care so much about the health of the population, become a drug counselor or start a campaign to fight drug addiction. But you’re not doing any of those things, which actually involve WORK. Instead you sit in your cell and file these papers to internal affairs or whoever using the same system you claim to be opposing, and then you beg them to protect you. Disgusting.

The cops you are snitching on are not part of some larger conspiracy to keep inmates addicted to drugs or control the population. That’s absurd. These cops are actually our allies, and though they may be motivated by profit, they are still facing the same risk and fate we now find ourselves in. If it weren’t for these allies, we would never have phones in prison which allow us to contribute to the struggle in ways we otherwise could never do, not to mention the obvious connections with our loved ones without police invasion of our privacy.

I understand you who snitch probably can’t afford a phone, and this makes you angry and spiteful so you wish to do your “public service,” right? Or maybe you are simply envious of the power and influence of those who have the plugs. Sorry for that; prison is rough. But don’t sit here and claim you do it because you just care about us all so much.

That being said, are drugs beneficial to the population? No, but unfortunately sometimes that comes with it and we should spend our efforts to make sure the right things are coming in and not the wrong things. We don’t need to throw out the whole baby with the bathwater. In fact, a lot of marijuana comes in too and personally this helps a lot with my service-related PTSD. Shame on you or anyone trying to shut down these precious lifelines using the guise of our struggle. Getting more people locked in prison because of your personal misery does not help the movement. You are not fooling me or any of the real ones out there.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This comrade is largely responding to an article in ULK 84, CA Silences Reports of Drug Trade in Prisons. We can acknowledge the added nuance in this situation. However, most of the articles we’ve printed on this topic are comrades trying to get people to file grievances against political repression or physical abuse by staff, and other prisoners refusing because they “don’t snitch.” Such cases are cut and dry. While we can’t rely on the imperialist state to police itself, grievances and lawsuits are tactics that contribute to building power. We must expose abuses of the state to combat them. So to say “Stop snitching on pigs” as this comrade does is truly a reactionary statement equivalent to saying “don’t resist oppression”.

What the comrade above says about running programs to fight drug addiction is right on. Just reporting things to the imperialists is never gonna change things on its own. We must build our own power and our own independent institutions of the oppressed. That is when the imperialists will really start to make moves to out compete us by reforming their own institutions. As far as the state conspiring to spread drugs, we need to understand the levels at which such things happen. Just because every C.O. didn’t come together and discuss these plans doesn’t mean it’s not intentional. To put it another way, if the state wanted to stop drug use in prisons they could. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Whether prescription meds or illicit ones, we know this is a common tool of pacification in prisons, as is digital media as the comrade from Pennsylvania discusses.

We discussed with this comrade the loosening of old hierarchies, staff shortages, and the opening of opportunities in prisons today. Some of the old ways are going away. Mostly this has led to negative things like more drugs and neglect so far. But it does create new possibilities. And that is why we are printing this response. We do want comrades to be trying to understand the changes where they are imprisoned and thinking about how our goals can expand and work within the existing motions of change. United fronts and temporary alliances are necessary strategic tools.