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         THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT

     MIM Notes 127                DECEMBER 1, 1996



MASSACHUSETTS PRISONERS STILL STUCK IN TEXAS

On the one year anniversary of the transfer of 299 
Massachusetts prisoners to Texas, Governor Weld 
announced that he is extending their stay another 8 
months. He said he saw no compelling reason to 
bring them back. This news came as a hard blow to 
the friends and families of these prisoners and 
those of us who have been fighting all year to 
bring them back. While we have been successful in 
bringing back the sick prisoners, 250 remain in 
Texas, far from their families, and in a prison 
system even more repressive than the one we have in 
Massachusetts.

These prisoners were transferred to Texas in the 
middle of the night, as a part of Weld's prison 
overcrowding crisis hoax. He took these prisoners 
hostage and shipped them off to Texas in a budget 
stunt that successfully got him $500 million for 
prison expansion in Massachusetts. Weld got his 
money months ago, but still the prisoners in Texas 
remain there. It's become easier to pay Texas to 
house these men than to fly them back home where it 
will be exposed that the overcrowding crisis was 
really a DOC fabricated problem of 
overclassification of prisoners so that those who 
commit the slightest infraction of the rules (like 
looking at a guard wrong) are stuck in maximum 
security.

MIM and RAIL held our regular monthly petitioning 
rally the weekend after Weld's announcement and 
continued to educate people about the injustice 
system and why these prisoners should be brought 
back to Massachusetts where their families live and 
where there can be some accountability for their 
lack of care. The number of people aware of these 
transfers is increasing and we will continue to 
keep this issue alive and keep the voice of 
opposition to the criminal injustice system loud. 
Bringing these prisoners back will be a victory, 
but this is only one battle and fundamental changes 
in the criminal injustice system will not be 
achieved until we overthrow the system. We must 
always keep that message clear while we are 
fighting for small reforms to improve the lives of 
our comrades behind bars and give them more room to 
carry out revolutionary organizing.

To protest this anniversary and the extension of 
the prisoners' stay in Texas, the American Friends 
Service Committee held vigils outside of the 
Governor's house every night for a week. At one of 
these vigils MIM talked to a woman who said her 
phone bill was $600 last month from talking to her 
son. This is the expense that Weld forces many 
families to endure if they want to stay in contact 
with their family member in Texas. A man read a 
letter from his brother, one of the inmates 
transferred to Texas, which described the nightmare 
of a year this has been, from the roundup and 
transfer in the middle of the night, to being held 
as budget hostages in Weld's political game in a 
prison system in Texas that is devoted to profit 
and torture.

We hope this article will let our comrades in Texas 
know that we have not forgotten about them and that 
we will continue the fight to bring them back while 
fighting the larger battle to overthrow the 
criminal injustice system. 

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