Vol. 81/No. 1 January 2, 2017
Attica prison censors ‘Militant’ for third time
The prison’s Media Review Committee claims that the image of the cover of the Oct. 3 issue of the Militant, which accompanied a Nov. 21 article on the fight against censorship, “could incite violence against prison staff.”
The Oct. 3 issue had a front page article on the 1971 Attica prison uprising. The headline reads “Fight Continues 45 Years After Attica Rebels Said, ‘We Are Men, Not Beasts.’”
Attica officials also impounded the Oct. 31 issue, pointing to an article reporting on the Militant’s appeal of the unconstitutional impoundment.
New York State Department of Corrections regulations say that publications should not be banned because of “different political philosophies” or “criticism of Governmental and Departmental authority.” The rules say literature may not “incite violence” or “disobedience. ”
The rules were put in place after a court ruling in 1970 that prisoners do not lose their constitutional protections just because they are behind bars.
The Militant’s attorney, David Goldstein of the well-known civil liberties law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, wrote in his appeals to the impoundments that none of the articles in the Militant can be construed as inciting disobedience, much less posing a risk of rebellion. He is preparing to appeal this latest censorship.
Attica officials have also sentenced the subscriber, Jalil Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom), to four months of solitary confinement, twisting and taking out of context comments he made while teaching a class on Black history to fellow inmates.
“I have been suffering intense harassment,” Muntaqim wrote in a Dec. 14 letter published on the freejalil.com website. “First messing with my mail, trying to put me in SHU for writing to I Am We Prison Advocacy Network, then denying me receipt of the Militant newspaper, now succeeding by taking comments of a 1 and a half hour lecture and cobbling them into a narrative to fit rule violations, removing them from the original context and intent.”
Muntaqim is a former member of the Black Panther Party and a founder of the Jericho Movement, which promotes amnesty for political prisoners in the U.S. He has been in solitary confinement in Attica’s Special Housing Units since Dec. 6. Muntaqim has been in jail since he was 19, accused of killing two police officers in 1971, and has repeatedly been denied parole. His supporters have been campaigning to get Gov. Andrew Cuomo to commute his sentence.
Prison authorities had authorized Muntaqim to teach the Black history class. In his letter, Muntaqim says that in the class he contrasted the Black Panther Party with the Bloods gang, “stating they need to get organized, get away from criminal behavior and tribal warfare. … I was asked how to make that possible, and I answered they need to get a universal newspaper together that they could collectively contribute to. They interpret this that I was trying to organize them.”
A broad range of groups and individuals have issued statements calling on prison authorities to reverse the censorship of the Militant. They include American Friends Service Committee; the Gathering for Justice and Justice League NYC; Mothers and Families, New Market, Alabama; National Lawyers Guild; New York Civil Liberties Union; Pen America; Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five; San Francisco Bay View monthly; and Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.
“Jalil, like other prisoners, has a constitutional right to read newspapers and other literature, to form his own opinions and to express them without retribution,” said Militant editor John Studer. “We will keep fighting this until we win and Attica officials give Jalil all the previously impounded issues.”
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