In an important victory for freedom of speech and the press, Missouri prison authorities have overturned the ban on Militant issue no. 28, dated Aug. 11, at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking. It will be delivered to the paper’s subscribers.
The Missouri Department of Corrections told Militant attorney David Goldstein that the department will review the impoundment of issue no. 36, dated Oct. 13, and would either let Goldstein know what was objectionable or perhaps avoid a need for the appeal. The MDOC extended the time the Militant has to appeal to Nov. 24.
“The overturn of the first ban is important for the rights of prisoners and for the right of the Militant to reach its readers,” John Studer, editor of the Militant, said. “We will continue the fight for the release of issue no. 36.”
To join the effort to overturn the ban on issue no. 36, please send letters from unions, organizations, defenders of free speech and others. Letters should be sent to: DAI Director, Department of Corrections, 2729 Plaza Drive, P.O. Box 236, Jefferson City, MO 65102. Please email a copy to the Militant at themilitant@mac.com.
“The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that ‘[p]rison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution,’” wrote David Fathi, director, and Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, along with Luz Maria Henriquez, executive director and Gillian Wilcox, director of litigation, of the ACLU of Missouri.
“Unless The Militant advocates violence — and it does not — it may not be censored simply because it espouses viewpoints with which prison officials disagree,” they wrote.
“MDOC’s censorship of The Militant — a publication in print for nearly [a] century that is widely read in prisons — is unconstitutional. We urge MDOC to reverse the censorship decision, and to refrain from such unconstitutional censorship decisions in the future.”
The Militant has nearly 350 subscribers in at least 163 state, federal and municipal prisons in 33 states. Every time the paper is denied to its subscribers, Studer said, “we challenge it and win broad support. In most cases we’ve won.”
Prison authorities claim Militant issue no. 36 “Contains information which can be used to instill violence or hatred among the offender population.”
Another group that wrote urging prison authorities to overturn the ban is PEN America.
Timothy Frankland, a member of the American Postal Workers in St. Paul, Minnesota, also wrote, “No substantive reason has been given for the ban, which is a clear violation of prisoners’ constitutional rights and the right of the Militant to reach its subscribers who are currently incarcerated.”