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Vol. 81/No. 14 April 10, 2017
‘Militant’ fights prison censorship in Illinois
BY JOHN HAWKINS
CHICAGO — The fight against censorship of the Militant at the Illinois
River Correctional Center in Canton is winning support after prison
authorities denied a long-term subscriber three issues of the socialist
newsweekly last fall.
Officials at the 2,000-inmate prison wrote the Militant last December
that they would review the censorship.
They claimed the three issues — each of which contains articles
reporting on the Militant’s fight against censorship at the Attica
Correctional Facility in New York — are “detrimental to security, good
order, rehabilitation, or discipline or it might facilitate criminal
activity or be detrimental to mental health.”
Since David Goldstein, the Militant’s attorney, filed a Feb. 16 letter
urging an end to the censorship, nothing further has been heard from
Illinois prison authorities. Goldstein is with the prominent New York
civil liberties firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman.
“The Campaign to End the Death Penalty, CEDP, is an organization that
has been in operation for 17 years and has provided services to over
5,000 inmates incarcerated within the Illinois Department of
Corrections,” wrote Mark Clements in a statement supporting the
Militant’s efforts to get the ban overturned. Clements spent more than
two decades in prison in Illinois based on a false confession elicited
through torture by Chicago cops.
“Based in Chicago, we published a quarterly newsletter, The
Abolitionist, which carried stories like those in The Militant,”
Clements wrote. “We believe that your facility’s Publication Officer
acted out of bias when he refused to allow three issues of The Militant
into the facility.”
“At no point in the history of the Illinois Department of Corrections
that I can recall,” he said, “has violence nor rude behavior by inmates
been the result of a publication.”
Prisons in Illinois — from Chicago to those run by the statewide
Department of Corrections — are well known for their inhumane treatment
of workers behind bars.
After the brutal repression of the Attica rebellion by prison guards,
state troopers, local cops and the National Guard in 1971, prison
authorities across the country began forming special tactical squads to
be ready for use against protests, and to conduct mass “cell
extractions,” searches and other special operations.
In 2015 a prisoner filed a lawsuit in federal court against the
Department of Corrections and prison officials at the Illinois River
Correctional Center, charging a special “Orange Crush” tactical squad
conducted a brutal mass shakedown there. They berated hundreds of
inmates, strip searched them, forced them to march in a degrading
formation unit members called “nuts-to-butts” to the gym and held them
shackled in torturous positions for hours while guards searched their
cells, taking personal items, including legal papers.
The lawsuit charges similar attacks were carried out at three other
Illinois prisons — Menard, Big Muddy and Lawrence.
“I am deeply troubled by your decision to deny incarcerated men at the
Illinois River Correctional Center copies of the periodical entitled The
Militant,” wrote Bruce Levine, J.G. Randall Distinguished Professor
Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“This act strikes at the heart of fundamental rights of U.S. citizens
and at rights that should be enjoyed by all human beings.
“To attempt to silence The Militant’s voice represents a danger to
anyone who cares about freedom of thought, inquiry and expression,” he
said.
“I have taught in prisons and houses of detention during my long career,
and I know how important access to materials of diverse viewpoints is to
the rehabilitation of prisoners,” Levine wrote. “Censoring reading
materials because they contain articles about censorship at other
prisons seems to me particularly wrong-headed.”
“Although the articles do refer to national and local issues of concern
to prisons, they do not promote rebellion of any kind,” Zoe Franklin, a
professor at Olive-Harvey College in Chicago, wrote on behalf of the
Chicago Council on Black Studies. “These articles simply share a unique
world view on current and past events that are relevant to the lives of
its newspaper’s vast readership.”
Censorship of “the Militant articles is a violation of prisoners’ rights
to freedom of expression,” Franklin said, and “should be reversed.”
The Militant is still involved in a fight with New York state prison
authorities over censorship of the original articles reporting on the
anniversary of the Attica rebellion.
To send a statement of support or make a financial contribution to the
Militant’s fight against censorship, contact themilitant@xxxxxxx or
write the paper at 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor, New York, NY 10018.
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