Free speech victory! Florida prisons reverse ‘Militant’ ban

BY SETH GALINSKY

In a victory against censorship and for First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of the press, Florida prison authorities have rescinded the impoundment of the May 30 issue of the Militant.

At least two prisons in the state, the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution and the Northwest Florida Reception Center, had refused to give subscribers that issue of the paper because of an article titled “Prisoners Strike to Protest Abuse and Little or No Pay in Alabama,” claiming that it was “a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the correctional system.”

The Florida Department of Corrections library administrator informed the Militant’s attorney David Goldstein July 22 that the prison Literature Review Committee had reversed its decision.

On a similar pretext and an absolutely baseless charge of “hang/gang signs,” Santa Rosa banned the June 13 issue, citing a page that included an article on the fight to free Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López. After Goldstein — from the law firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman — wrote to the review committee, they said the impoundment of that issue had been an “error.”

“Literature is not what causes disruption,” a prisoner in Santa Rosa said in a letter to the Militant, after the impoundments. “Nowhere do I recall literature causing physical violence.”

“This is not just a victory for the Militant,” said the paper’s managing editor, Naomi Craine. “It’s a victory for all those who believe that prisoners have the right to read anything they want, to keep learning about the world and being part of it, regardless of the prison bars. We will never stop defending that right.”

The prison authorities gave “baseless justification that images of prisoners or their supporters asserting their rights would lead to prison chaos,” said Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, president of the National Lawyers Guild, in a July 21 statement calling for reversing the impoundment. “The National Lawyers Guild works closely with prison communities and our jailhouse lawyer members to ensure wide dissemination of engaging reading material, and calls for the full distribution of the Militant.”

“Stop Prison Abuse Now, a prison reform organization located in Miami, Florida, believes that the First Amendment rights of prisoners should be respected, including having access to The Militant newspaper,” said a statement from the group. “We do not believe that this access conflicts with operating prisons in a manner that will protect the safety of both prison staff and prisoners, which all fair-minded citizens support.”

Benjamin Stevenson, staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, wrote to the Literature Review Committee opposing the impoundments. Florida-based Prison Legal News spoke out against them, as did the San Francisco Bay View, a national Black newspaper.

The July issue of Bay View was recently banned from prisons in Pennsylvania for an article about the possibility of prisoners participating in a work stoppage. The issue was also banned at the Menard Correctional Institution in Illinois. “We call on prison authorities in Pennsylvania and Illinois to lift the ban on the San Francisco Bay View,” said Craine.

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