In victories for workers behind bars to get the news they need, the Florida Department of Corrections Literature Review Committee has overturned recent bans on four issues of the Militant. These victories can now be used to win support for the fight to overturn the suppression of six other issues of the Militant by Florida prison authorities since January.
The impoundments of the Militant are blatant violations of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects “freedom of speech” and of the press for both the Militant and its readers behind bars. This is especially true because prison authorities refuse to give even one example to justify their charges that the banned articles are “dangerously inflammatory.”
This fight began when authorities at Taylor Correctional Institution in Perry, Florida, banned issues nos. 4, 5 and 6 for reporting on the controversy over the large-scale deployment of ICE agents in Minnesota, the arrests and deportations of immigrant workers and the confrontations that took place there — like almost every other newspaper across the U.S.
The Militant called for amnesty for immigrant workers without papers. The articles opposed the confrontational and provocative actions by some of those who opposed ICE and counterposed the need for disciplined, peaceful, trade union-backed protests.
The review committee upheld the ban on those three issues on March 26, with no explanation.
Officials at Taylor also banned issues nos. 8, 9 and 10 for articles reporting on the fight against the impoundments. The Literature Review Committee reversed those three impoundments in late March and early April. It also overturned the impoundment by officials at Lancaster Correctional Institution in Trenton of issue no. 7 for an article calling for “US hands off Cuba!”
Prison authorities claim that each of the banned articles is “dangerously inflammatory in that it advocates or encourages riot, insurrection, rebellion, organized prison protest, disruption of the institution, or the violation of the federal law, state law or Department rules” and “presents a threat to the security” of the prisons.
New bans for fighting earlier bans
Lancaster authorities then banned issues nos. 11, 12 and 14 for exactly the same reason given for 8, 9, and 10 — writing about the impoundments — even though the review committee had overturned those earlier bans!
This “needless cycle of reporting, censorship appeal, review, reporting, censorship appeal, review, reporting, etc., can be laid to rest,” wrote David Goldstein, the Militant’s attorney, in the paper’s appeal of the latest three bans.
The Militant is currently mailed to some 360 subscribers in 168 federal, state and local prisons in 35 states, including 135 in Florida. “No other state or federal facility outside of Florida” has banned those issues of the paper or claimed the cited articles “as constituting a threat to prison security,” Goldstein noted.
Under Florida prison rules, any time officials at one prison impound a paper, other Florida prisons are supposed to ban that issue. A prisoner at Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City, Florida, wrote to the Militant April 1 reporting that his copies of those issues had been blocked. “This makes 4 in a row they have stopped. When I asked them why they were impounding my paper, they only said ‘because we can.’ I have received the Militant for almost 10 years,” he wrote.
“I know you have stopped this from happening quite a few times,” he wrote a week later, after another issue was withheld. “Please help stop this illegal and unconstitutional impounding of my papers.”
The bans by Florida prison authorities have drawn strong protests from prominent political rights groups in Florida and across the country. These include the Reporters Committee for Freedom for the Press, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, PEN America, and the Florida Press Association.
The American Civil Liberties Union Florida and its National Prison Project noted in their letter to the committee that they have written about similar “improper censorship of the Militant multiple times before.” The Militant has confronted bans by Florida prison authorities dozens of times since 2013, succeeding in overturning most of them.
More letters are needed now to urge prison officials to reverse the bans and to ensure that the unconstitutional impoundments cease. Send them to the Literature Review Committee, Florida Department of Corrections, 501 South Calhoun St., Tallahassee, FL 32399-2500, or email Melvin.Herring@fdc.myflorida.com and Saritza.Legault@fdc.myflorida.com with a copy to themilitant@mac.com.