The
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is attempting to ban
the Workers
World(WW)
newspaper for its coverage of the Florida prison strike. According
to WW,
“The immediate reason given in the DOC’s Jan. 29 letter is that
‘information contained on pages 1 and 6 calls for action that may
advocate criminal activity within the correctional facility.’ The
title of the offending article by J. White in the Jan. 18 Workers
World issue
was ‘Fla. prisoners launch strike against slave labor.’”
Socialist
Action rejects
this egregious act of censorship and urges all of our readers to act
to defend the First Amendment and the right of prisoners to read
ideas that are critical of state repression and the capitalist
system. Prisoners have the right to know how this system, which is
based on white supremacy, functions. They have the right to know that
millions of people are struggling to end police brutality, mass
incarceration, and racism.
Workers
World has
the right to publish these ideas and to advocate for an end to
oppression and exploitation. The principle of unconditional
solidarity must be upheld with those targeted for state repression.
“An injury to one is an injury to all” is more than a slogan; it
is a bedrock principle of the workers’ movement.
Last
year, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections tried to ban
multiple issues of Workers
World.
One issue was withheld because it advocated a May Day general strike.
In another instance, the August 2017 issue of the newspaper was
“denied to all inmates” due to the inclusion of “articles that
call for people to join the fight against white supremacy.”
According
to a DOC statement, they interpreted a call to fight white supremacy
as a “literal call to violence.” In a statement at the time, the
Philadelphia branch of the Workers World Party refuted this notion by
saying, “It is difficult to fathom how a statement that advocates
opposing white supremacy can be interpreted as promotion of violence,
particularly given that the overwhelming violence in our society, now
and historically, here and abroad, is and has been fueled by notions
of white supremacy.”
In
January, the New Jersey prisons lifted a ban on the book “The New
Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander at two facilities after a complaint
from the American Civil Liberties Union. “The New Jim Crow”
details how mass incarceration has eroded the gains made during the
Civil Rights era.
The
Texas Department of Criminal Justice bans more than 10,000 books,
including the dangerous “It’s a Charlie Brown Christmas” but
allows the Nazi bible, “Mein Kampf,” authored by Adolph Hitler.
In December 2017, the socialist newsweekly The
Militant won
a victory after issues of the paper were held back from
prisoners. The
Militant reported,
“The Oct. 30 issue was banned for an article reporting that the
Literature Review Committee had reversed four and upheld three of
seven previously impounded issues of the paper in Florida prisons.”
Mass
pressure to support free expression is necessary. We can’t rely on
the capitalist courts, politicians, or even the mainstream media to
defend First Amendment rights. Socialist
Action urges
all of our readers to contact Department of Corrections, 1920
Technology Parkway, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050, as well as
717-728-2573 and crpadocsecretary@pa.gov.
Demand that they cease attacks on Workers
World and
on press freedom. Demand the rights of prisoners to read and learn.
>> The article above was written by Steve Xavier, and is reprinted from Socialist Action newspaper.
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