MIM(Prisons) barely has the staff time we need to run the institutions that we run (a website, newsletter, free political literature program, an educational program, and budding legal work and post-release support). Yet we are not looking to form more branches of MIM(Prisons) on the outside. Instead we are focused on building organization behind bars, and looking for supporters on the outside to help with campaigns and other necessary legwork to build the anti-imperialist prison movement.

We work with prisoners to develop campaigns that meet the needs of the oppressed being targeted by imprisonment. We are limited in our ability to carry out these campaigns to the extent that they often need to be. We usually send one letter to protest an instance of censorship. We should have dozens of letters from that state or region. In many of the states where we are working with prisoners on campaigns, we do not have people distributing fliers, literature and petitions or talking to people on the streets and doing presentations. We could and should.

The functionality of the campaigns section of our website is still not complete, and it is still very short on content. The campaigns we do have up there are important ones that have been initiated by prisoners who are active members of our movement. But in most cases, these campaigns cannot be successfully executed without some real outside support and legwork. People on the outside should be contributing to the campaign pages just as much as prisoners are. We welcome your reports and organizing materials. It is not for lack of issues needing to be addressed that most states don't have active campaigns listed yet, so let us know if you want to get one started in yours.

We won't necessarily get behind any old campaign that has to do with prisons, but figuring out what issues are out there is part of the process for us all to become more effective in our work. In prioritizing prison related struggles, we have focused on censorship and isolation as two of the most important issues threatening politically active prisoners and the future of prison-based organizing, without which, the struggle against oppression in prisons will have no power.

We have put a lot of effort into this website as a tool for documenting and tracking censorship in u$ prisons and are currently working with prisoners in many states to address problems where they are consistently bad. Some comrades are also working hard to develop new research and materials related to the struggle against control units and so-called gang units. For those who are interested in this topic, you may want to look into the upcoming StopMax Conference being sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (May 30 - June 1).

There are a lot of easy ways to get involved in supporting the work of MIM(Prisons). We need help with typing, writing protest letters, doing research, and from lawyers and law students we need help around legal battles. All of this work can be done from wherever you live, in many cases without leaving your computer. Local prison rights organizers can also help us get the prisoner-initiated campaigns that we promote on the streets in their area and building concrete alliances between prisoners and communities on the outside.