Join ‘Militant’ fight to overturn ban by Florida prison officials
https://themilitant.com/2020/09/12/join-militant-fight-to-overturn-ban-by-florida-prison-officials/
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Vol. 84/No. 37
September 21, 2020
Rally in Florida in October 2018 backing Amendment 4 to restore voting
rights to over 1 million former prisoners. It passed by 64%. Militant
covers these struggles for prisoners’ rights.
FLORIDA RIGHTS RESTORATION COALITION
Rally in Florida in October 2018 backing Amendment 4 to restore voting
rights to over 1 million former prisoners. It passed by 64%. Militant
covers these struggles for prisoners’ rights.
Florida prison authorities continue to ban issue after issue of the
Militant, most recently for articles that report on these impoundments
and the efforts of supporters of political rights to get them to reverse
this.
They banned four of the five issues dated in August — nos. 30, 31, 33
and 34 — preventing 61 subscribers in 24 state prisons in Florida from
getting the paper. If the impoundment of an issue is not overturned, the
paper then will be banned in all of the state’s 143 prison facilities.
The prisoners want their Militant. “I need you to help me, I need my
paper,” one subscriber wrote from the Santa Rosa Correctional Institute.
Readers of the Militant can help defend the constitutional rights of the
Militant as well as its subscribers behind bars by getting co-workers,
church groups, union officials and locals, and other organizations to
send letters to the Florida prison system’s Literature Review Committee,
calling for them to lift the bans.
Officials at the Florida State Prison in Raiford say the reason they
banned issue no. 34 is because of the article headlined “Fight to
Overturn Florida Prison Officials’ ‘Militant’ Impoundment.” It describes
growing support for overturning the ban and reports on letters being
sent to the Literature Review Committee in defense of prisoners’ rights.
The American Civil Liberties Foundation Florida, Amnesty International
USA, Florida Press Association, Reporters Committee on Freedom of the
Press, and PEN America are among the organizations that have sent
letters to the Literature Review Committee calling for lifting the ban
on the Militant. A growing number of individuals have done so as well.
Similarly, issue no. 33 was impounded for an article headlined “After
Pennsylvania Prison Ban Is Revoked, Florida Prison Bars ‘Militant.’”
Prison authorities erroneously claim that all four of the issues were
impounded because they contain reporting that is “dangerously
inflammatory” and “advocates or encourages riot insurrection, rebellion,
organized prison protest, disruption of the institution, or the
violation of the federal law, state law, or Department rules.”
The first in this series of banned issues, no. 30, was impounded for an
article “Prisoners Demand Release from Overcrowded Jails.” It describes
the protests to alleviate dangerously overcrowded prison conditions in
California amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The topic has been widely covered
by the media.
Issue no. 31 was barred because Florida state prison authorities found
objectionable the article, “Workers Oppose Federal Cops, Antifa Violence
in Portland.” What prison officials find “dangerously inflammatory” in
this article, which opposes looting and violent attacks by groups like
antifa in Portland, Oregon, and explains how this is an obstacle to
building a broad-based movement to press for prosecution of cops who
brutalize and shoot working people, is impossible to grasp.
“Prison officials are targeting the Militant because of its political
viewpoints,” Militant attorney David Goldstein explained in the paper’s
appeal of the banning of issue no. 30, “in violation of the First
Amendment rights of both subscribers and publishers.” The Literature
Review Committee has initially upheld the bans on issues no. 30, 31, and
33. Goldstein is preparing to file appeals for issues 31, 33 and 34, on
top of the appeal of issue 30 already filed.
“They are fabricating up stories to cause the Militant not to be able to
enter into the prison system,” writes another inmate in Florida. “This
judicial system down here in Florida is so corrupted and doesn’t like
the truth to be exposed about anything. They try and deny the prisoners
their constitutional rights to the First Amendment.
“Thanks to organizations like yours that stand up for the prisoners’
rights and don’t look down on us like we are the barbarian outcast of
society,” he wrote. “Your newspaper has opened my eyes to a lot of
things that were hidden from me due to lack of information.”
“In most cases where the Militant has been impounded, we’ve fought
successfully to have them overturned by the Literature Review
Committee,” said Militant editor John Studer.
“The deepening capitalist economic, political, health care and moral
crisis of capitalism today is as much of concern to workers behind bars
as to workers anywhere else,” Studer said. “Inmates have the right to
read different viewpoints, to think for themselves and form their own
opinions on political questions.”
Send letters to Dean Peterson, Literature Review Committee, Florida
Department of Corrections, 501 South Calhoun Street, Tallahassee, FL
32399 or via email at Allen.Peterson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, with a copy to
the Militant.
Front Page Articles
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Mine workers in Belarus say, Join protests against gov’t
Solidarity with Dominion grocery strike in Canada!
SWP campaigns to build workers’ fight for jobs, control over job safety
Join ‘Militant’ fight to overturn ban by Florida prison officials
Feature Articles
Violent course of antifa, Black Lives Matter threat to working class
Also In This Issue
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Turkish, Greek rulers’ rivalry heats up in the Mediterranean
Train deaths in Scotland show boss scorn for safety
Debate over road forward to win justice for Breonna Taylor
Mongolians protest Beijing attack on language rights
‘Cop killed Cesar Rodriguez for not paying $1.75 fare’
Free Ed Poindexter!
Books of the Month
1877 strike foretold growth of ‘serious workers party’ in US
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___
Robert G. Ingersoll
“Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never
inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the
Church does neither.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll,