Join fight against prison censorship!

The latest seizure of the Militant by Florida prison authorities threatens the Militant with a broader ban. It is an attack not just on the constitutional rights of the Militant and our readers behind bars, but the rights of any publication the jailers don’t like.

Everyone who supports the Bill of Rights should join in demanding the censorship be reversed.

What material on the pages do prison officials cite to back their ban and the slander that the Militant “advocates or encourages riot, insurrection” and “physical violence?” They don’t say.

The three pages feature articles and ads calling on readers to join protests in New York opposing the U.S. economic war on Cuba and to join a rally of striking silver miners in Idaho.

If reporting on marches and rallies is barred in Florida prisons, then just about every paper in the country would have to be banned.

Not a single word in the Militant advocates physical violence, rioting or disrupting the prisons. On the contrary, the Militant advocates the right of prisoners to be part of the world, to think for themselves, to consider a wide range of views. And we defend the right of all those behind bars to be free from abusive and demeaning conditions, like rancher Cliven Bundy and other prisoners in Nevada who get no dental care except having their teeth yanked out.

The Militant is not the only paper that has been censored. Prison Legal News, The San Francisco Bay View, Workers World, other publications and thousands of books by a wide variety of authors have faced censorship by prison officials around the country.

Join us in this fight. Talk to your union, your church group, your tenants’ organization, groups that oppose deportations of immigrants, neighbors and co-workers. Ask them to write letters calling on the Florida prison authorities to reverse this attack on the rights of the Militant and workers behind bars.

Related articles:
New Florida prison censorship threatens broader ban on ‘Militant’
Frame-up trial of Bundy ranchers begins in Nevada
‘Everything we’re charged with, gov’t is doing to us’

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