Vol. 76/No. 37      October 15, 2012

Below is an excerpt from A Packinghouse Worker’s Fight for Justice: The Mark Curtis Story by Naomi Craine, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for October. The book relates the eight-year battle to defeat the frame-up of Mark Curtis, a union activist and member of the Socialist Workers Party sentenced in 1988 to 25 years in prison on trumped-up charges of attempted rape and burglary. Curtis was released in 1996. Copyright © 1996 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY NAOMI CRAINE  
“The schools and big-business media, the politicians, and the churches teach people to look at prisoners as scum of the earth. But we’re almost all working-class people, human beings with an interest in fighting for human rights,” said Mark Curtis, explaining what a socialist worker does behind bars. “We have common interests, and the only way we’re going to protect our rights is by our actions and our unity.”

Sitting in the visiting yard of the John Bennett Correctional Center at the state penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa, in the summer of 1993, Curtis described the many people he had met in prison since beginning to serve his time in late 1988.

“I’ve met meatpackers and truck drivers, some who’ve been involved in union fights,” he said. “There are veterans from [the U.S. wars in] Panama and Vietnam, and many people who’ve been touched by the civil rights movement.” …

Curtis explained one of the biggest challenges prisoners face is that “we have to keep in contact with the outside.”

This isn’t easy. The prison system is designed to cut inmates off from the rest of the world and discourage them from looking beyond the prison walls to broader struggles.

Soon after his conviction, Curtis ran into some of the hundreds of rules and regulations used to accomplish this when the administration at the Iowa State Men’s Reformatory in Anamosa refused to allow him to receive literature and letters in languages other than English. …

The defense committee helped mount a campaign against the language rule. The prison warden was flooded with hundreds of letters protesting prison officials’ refusal to allow Curtis to get the Spanish-language material. The fight was covered in Iowa newspapers, and eventually the administration backed off and allowed him to receive the literature. …

From within the prison walls, Curtis “tried to participate in different battles in the class struggle,” mostly through the mail. The jailed unionist sent letters of support to machinists on strike against Eastern Airlines, coal miners in Britain, the United Farm Workers of Washington State, striking steelworkers at Trinity Industries in Bessemer, Alabama, and others. Curtis also wrote to victims of police brutality and political prisoners around the world. …

Visits from other political fighters are part of how Curtis kept in touch with the rest of the world. In 1992, for example, he met with Andile Yawa, a leader of the African National Congress Youth League. “That visit was a big thing. Other inmates asked me to pass along questions about the struggle in South Africa, and some still ask me what’s happening there.” …

In the 1993 interview, Curtis described a typical day for him in prison: “I work full time in the printshop here” for about fifty cents an hour. “After work I exercise, spend time talking with people, have dinner. In the evening I do a lot of reading. And I set aside time to study Spanish.” He pointed to how Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, James P. Cannon, and other revolutionary leaders who have gone to prison used that time to study and learn. …

Soon after his incarceration at the Anamosa prison, Curtis joined the Martin Luther King Jr. Organization, a group of “inmates interested in the civil rights movement and fighting for better conditions in prison,” as he put it. …

Curtis described the first meeting of the organization he attended in January 1989. “They had an open microphone. The bombing of Libya [by the U.S. military] had happened not long before. So I spoke about that, about how Martin Luther King had spoken against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and about how the fight against racism has to be tied to events in the world. I got a very good response.” The group brought in outside speakers and kept a library of political books. …

Prisoners have the same kinds of discussions about politics and world events as workers in a packinghouse or auto factory, Curtis noted. Leading up to the Gulf War in late 1990 and early 1991, for instance, “there was a lot of sentiment against the buildup.” Several inmates signed a letter to the Des Moines Register opposing Washington’s war moves. Once the bombing started in mid-January and U.S. troops were engaged in combat, he said, most prisoners shifted to a position of support, albeit grudging, for the U.S. war. …

Curtis also had numerous discussions with other inmates about the U.S. government’s embargo against Cuba. …

Curtis wrote in the Militant about many of the discussions and struggles at the prisons where he’s been. He and John Flowers, who is Sioux, wrote about the fight of Native American inmates in Anamosa to be allowed to practice their religion and culture. …

Other prisoners at Fort Madison had various views about Curtis’s defense campaign. “A lot of people are interested,” Curtis said. “They like to see someone fighting back against the type of railroading that happened to me. When I won my lawsuit against the cops who beat me, they really liked that.

“Not everyone supports me, because of the nature of the [sexual abuse] charge,” he added. “There are people who believe whatever the state says someone did. And some people don’t like me being a communist. But most people judge you by what you do—if you take the inmates’ side, join in fights, and stand up for what you believe, people respect you.”  
 
 
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