MIM Distributors PO Box 29670 Los Angeles CA 90029-0670 Revolutionary greetings! This letter provides basic information about the Free Books for Prisoners Program. The program is unabashedly political. This implies: (1) The books we send out are chosen for their political value; (2) They are sent out in the context of political organizing. To quote from the Program's mission statement: "The purpose of the Free Books for Prisoners program is to help prisoners develop their politics and to struggle with us for an end to oppression. The Free Books for Prisoners program is not a book of the month club. We send out books expecting that the recipients will do some organizing work in return. For example, we ask comrades in prisons to write book reviews, use the books to write articles for MIM Notes or MIM Theory, form study groups, etc. "MIM and its allies collect and send out political, legal and historical books. We also have a small supply of dictionaries and other reference that are useful for writers, which we reserve for comrades engaged in organizing work." We prioritize politically active prisoners; we challenge prisoners to step up their political activity; we require the books we send be used in some form of organizing. This means the quantity of books we send out is not as high as it could be, but the quality of the Program is much improved. Many prisoners enthusiastically respond to our call for political work. They form study groups, write articles for MIM Notes, and even make financial donations. We encourage you to get involved with MIM and its allied organizations in the struggle against the Amerikan injustice system and all forms of oppression! In struggle, MIM * * * The following is an excerpt from an article that gives some additional background on the program. MIM's prison ministry advances, overcomes rightist mistakes Excerpted from MIM Notes 223, 1 Dec 2000. Over the last year, MIM's prison ministry continued to expand its programs and increase its professionalism. At the same time, it re-emphasized the importance of proletarian leadership. When building independent institutions of the oppressed for revolution, we must continually struggle against bourgeois ideology. Free Books Program: Revolution, not charity MIM's Serve the People Free Books for Prisoners Program (BfP) has grown tremendously over the last five years. But MIM is primarily concerned with the political outcomes of such institutions, not their size per se. Because of correct political organizing parallel to the BfP, prisoners expanded their study groups and their contributions to MIM Notes. More prisoners have also helped with MIM's outside organizing work, writing flyers, submitting revolutionary art, and struggling with people on the outside to take up revolutionary politics and work with MIM. Despite these correct examples, some comrades within MIM circles strayed from the Maoist principle of politics in command. Instead, they treated the BfP program as a bourgeois charity. They emphasized the numbers of books distributed and failed to make the reason for the BfP clear. After some struggle, these comrades came to realize their mistake and made self-criticism. They wrote: "We spent time and money filling requests for books from prisoners who were not involved in building [revolution] or engaged in active political struggles, either with MIM, with other prisoners, or with others on the outside. We often sent books of questionable political value -- e.g. reformist, pro-bourgeois 'histories' of the Black civil rights movement, persynal testimonials -- without guiding prisoners on how to make the best use of them politically. Even when we did send books with a correct political perspective -- e.g. MIM Theory -- there was more often than not no political or organizational follow up. These were rightist errors. We were doing charity work, not organizing independent institutions of the oppressed for revolution. "Of course there is a real need for books in Amerika's prisons -- and so much more. The cold reality is that millions of people around the world die every year from preventable causes, and millions of people from oppressed nations inside u.$. borders go without a decent education. But if MIM acts like a charity, it will be as effective as a charity -- which is to say not effective at all beyond a few token cases of filling specific requests in a sea of oppression and neglect." These mistakes were similar to those made by the former Serve the People Food Program. In 1997, in the context of rectifying these earlier errors, we wrote, "The Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army did not go to the countryside to hand out PB&J sandwiches, they went there to mobilize the peasantry to solve their pressing political needs themselves. In particular, the CPC organized the peasants into the armed struggle to seize state power. It was within the context of that struggle that Mao developed the slogan 'pay attention to the well-being of the masses.' The political line behind the STPFP was a combination of 'left' adventurism (running ahead of our current strength) and rightism (objectively downplaying the importance of revolutionary political struggle.)" Maoists are not interested in putting people on the dole, whether that is with food programs or book programs. When the Black Panther Party served breakfasts to children, they were meeting the masses' immediate needs, educating the masses on the need for revolution, and building independent institutions that could contribute to revolution. MIM's Serve the People programs are the same.