Vol. 77/No. 41      November 18, 2013

“We’re pleased that the Florida prison authorities have reversed course,” Benjamin Stevenson, the Florida American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the Militant in its fight against censorship in Florida state prisons, said in a phone interview.

The fight opened Sept. 9 when authorities at the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution in Milton, Fla., notified the Militant that they had impounded the July 22 issue, claiming a front-page news report on the decision of 30,000 California prisoners to launch a hunger strike to protest solitary confinement and other abuses “presents a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the correctional system.”

The ban was automatically extended to all Florida state prison facilities. With the help of the ACLU, the Militant appealed and won Oct. 11.

An inmate at Lake prison later wrote the Militant to say his papers had been blocked for several weeks. The paper has 32 subscribers in state prisons and three in federal lockup.

After the Florida fight began, the paper received word from an inmate in Washington state that a number of issues with articles on the California hunger strike were taken from him. The Militant is working with the ACLU there to get the newspapers returned.

“Excellent news,” Mary Ratcliff, editor of the San Francisco Bay View, told the Militant when she heard about the new Florida victory.

The Militant’s fight against censorship is part of a broader, nationwide battle. Prison authorities have worked overtime to bar publications that cover the fights of prisoners against harsh conditions and abuses, including Bay View and Prison Legal News.

“We’ve faced a lot of censorship,” Ratcliff said, “ever since we took the paper over and put out our first issue in 1992. We got interest from prisoners right away because we left issues outside the county jail in San Francisco and they made their way inside.

“We also began getting articles from prisoners,” she said. “It’s a big challenge to deal with the censorship. I’ve written letters to wardens and pressed to get the paper released through the internal review process in a number of prisons.

The Bay View has received and published statements by leaders of California prisoners incarcerated in the Security Housing Units who initiated a series of hunger strikes in 2012 and 2013.

“They talk about what’s wrong and what should be done. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation hates it,” Ratcliff said. “We were very pleased to publish the ‘Agreement to End Hostilities’ from the SHU Short Corridor Collective at Pelican Bay State Prison.”

“Now is the time for us to collectively seize this moment in time and put an end to more than 20-30 years of hostilities between our racial groups,” the agreement, signed by Black, Latino and Caucasian prisoners, said.

“This agreement has held in the prisons,” Ratcliff said. “It’s taken the biggest weapon the authorities had out of their hands, because they can’t divide and conquer the prisoners.

“Sometimes the censorship almost appears random,” Ratcliff said. “The paper will get in for a while, then get rejected, with no notice or reason. Then it will start again.”
 
 
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