Writing articles for MIM Notes -- a few tips

MIM Notes is a political newspaper. Our purpose is to build public opinion
against imperialism and for revolution. There are lots of sources of
information out there, and MIM Notes is not competing to be the best place
to get raw facts. What we want to do is use today's information to impress
on people how important it is to get with the revolutionary tide, and to
give them the tools to do that effectively. This is important to realize
because it means that politics, not writing style, vocabulary, or grammar
is the most important thing in deciding what goes into the paper.

Good MIM Notes articles usually take some recent information -- such as
the growth of prisons, a U.$. war somewhere, or an economic trend -- and
explain how that fits into a revolutionary world view, and why it is
important for MIM Notes readers.

We try to make sure that every article in MIM Notes says something that
only MIM Notes would say. Otherwise the article could be published
somewhere else. If we had unlimited resources, we would like to be the
people's source of general information, too. But we don't, and we have to
use our resources to focus on what's most important. The best thing we can
do is provide leadership, and we do that with our politics. To say
something that only MIM Notes would say usually means that it has
something about one of these topics, which are outlined on page 2 of every
issue of MIM Notes:

* How national oppression is a big part of imperialism, including
oppression of the neocolonies in the U.$. and oppressed nations around the
world.

* How the majority of people in the imperialist countries are not
oppressed or exploited. Even if we think they lead stupid, meaningless, or
frustrating lives, as materialists we know that economics are the biggest
part of what makes people tick, and if people are getting paid for it,
usually they will support the system.

* We're not just against imperialism: we have a better idea, socialism and
eventually communism. So in addition to criticizing imperialism was often
take the opportunity to uphold the leading examples of socialism: China
(for the years 1949-1976) and the USSR (for the years
1917-1953). Socialist efforts in other places have led to many valuable
things, but these are the best examples, and the models for
revolutionaries today.

If you are writing for MIM Notes, it's a good idea to have a copy of MIM
Notes handy, or a copy of MIM Theory, or the Party Program, and make some
reference in the article to the main points MIM makes over and over.

When you submit your article be sure to include information about all of
the sources you use (mainstream news articles, books, past issues of MIM
Notes, etc.). You should look at recent MIM Notes articles if you are
unsure how to do this. 

When you submit an article, there are several possible outcomes, which are
partially dictated by the time lag and difficulty communicating with
prisoners efficiently. These decisions are made by the comrades you
correspond with, but also by the MIM Notes staff. We may print the
article, with minor editing. We may add to it, or cut parts of it. We may
publish it more or less as is, but add a comment or response from MIM. We
may decide to send it back to you with comments and work with you more on
it, especially if it is not on a rush subject in the news. Finally, we may
decide we don't want to publish an article on that subject for some
reason, and communicate with you to move onto something else. We urge you
to be patient as we try to work with a large volume of submissions. We
also urge you not to be disappointed if the first thing you send in
doesn't turn out the way you hoped. We are all learning as we go
here; feedback and criticism is all part of the process of improving our
work for the good of our common purpose. Similarly, your feedback and
criticism of our work is also very valuable.