Maoist Internationalist Movement * PO Box 29670 * Los Angeles CA 90029-0670

Our point of departure is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a 
moment divorce ourselves from the masses, to proceed in all cases from the 
interests of the people. -- Mao Zedong, "On Coalition Government," April 1945 

Dear friend,

MIM receives many requests for legal assistance from the prisoners we correspond 
with. The purpose of this letter is to explain why we are unable to provide 
individual legal assistance, and explain the legal work that we are able to do.

MIM believes that all prisoners in the u.$. criminal INjustice system are 
political prisoners because the system of imprisonment is political. This is 
evidenced in the disproportionate weight of prison terms on the oppressed 
nations, in laws that hold theft of a rich person's property to be a more 
heinous crime than theft of a poor nation's land, and in the overwhelming 
presence of physical and mental abuse coupled with the absence of physical or 
mental enhancement in the so-called Corrections systems.

The denial of adequate legal assistance is one of the most important mechanisms 
for enforcing the injustice of the Amerikan legal system. As all prisoners know, 
and as has been shown in comprehensive studies, people with court-appointed 
legal assistance are much more likely wind up in prison, on worse charges and 
for longer sentences. Appeals are an especially important arena in which unequal 
access to representation results in unequal treatment by the system. So 
obviously there is a great need for legal assistance, and that need results from 
the systematic oppression perpetrated by the injustice system. 

So, if that is the case, why doesn't MIM devote our very limited resources to 
providing legal assistance to the oppressed?

The answer is that MIM's mission is to build a revolutionary movement to end 
imperialism. If we are distracted from that larger goal, our work falls short in 
the long run. Just as MIM cannot generally feed the hungry or provide medical 
care to the sick at this stage of the struggle, we cannot provide lawyers and 
legal assistance to the oppressed who are denied the representation they 
deserve. Our goal is to build a movement that will do all this and much more.

That does not mean we cannot address the pressing needs of the political 
prisoners under Amerika's lock and key. Providing assistance even in a limited 
manner is essential both to the individuals involved and to the overarching goal 
of building the movement -- the question is the political form that such efforts 
take. To that end MIM has launched several programs in the tradition of the 
Black Panther Party's Serve the People programs. These efforts provide some 
limited assistance, while building the movement, and they show what can be done 
when the people create their own institutions devoted to serving the people 
instead of serving the system.

One of those programs is the Prisoners' Legal Clinic, founded in 1998. The 
Prisoners' Legal Clinic (PLC) is organized around prisoners combining their own 
legal knowledge and skills to meet their own needs. Prisoners who work as part 
of the legal clinic write articles for publication explaining the major legal 
issues facing prisoners today, and back those articles up with legal briefs that 
will be available to all prisoners who need them. PLC work is featured in MIM 
Notes articles as MIM Legal News, and/or is distributed over the Internet or 
sent to individual prisoners.

There are two principal missions of this legal clinic: (1) Organize prisoners 
with legal skills into producing both a legal arsenal for politically active 
prisoners to use in defending their "rights" to organize politically, and (2) 
educate prisoners and people on the outside that in the criminal injustice 
system there are no rights, only power struggles. This program builds up MIM's 
file of legal assistance we can offer prisoners and advances the level of 
reporting on prisons in MIM and RAIL publications. 

The program is centered around political goals, specifically using the law to 
facilitate political work of politically conscious prisoners in Amerika and 
educating about prisons through coverage of prisoners' legal concerns. This 
means that the types of legal questions prisoners tackle in this program are 
those most directly related to organizing: censorship, property, library access, 
Security Threat Group policies, etc.. This also means that MIM is responsible 
for synthesizing the work of the prisoners into cohesive lessons about what the 
principal legal struggles are for prisoners today. This includes the possibility 
that MIM could reform and advance its ideas of what the most pressing legal 
issues are for prisoners.

Prisoners with legal training and skills should get in touch with us about 
submitting briefs for the program. We are also recruiting people on the outside 
to help with typing up articles for comrades under lock & key who do not have 
typewriters. You do not have to be a lawyer or know anything about the law to 
volunteer for this work. Many comrades in prisons have taught themselves law and 
are now ready to do work with others who do not have the background they do.

When MIM has greater resources we will be able to provide more legal assistance 
in the service of the people's revolutionary struggle. At present, we are doing 
the hard nitty-gritty work of building the movement: building public opinion in 
support of revolution and building the independent institutions of the oppressed 
that are the building blocks of the movement and the future society that will 
replace this imperialist hell-hole. We urge you to work with us to that end.

In struggle,
MIM