EDITOR'S NOTE
EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild The Prison File Stories come to The Progressive in a variety of ways. Most we assign, others float in, still others arrive by query or referral. The idea for our...
...Write Prison Legal News, P.O...
...Major Sergeant, U.S...
...Please mend your wajjrf Givhan signed the letter, "Lieutenant R| Leg, a Vietnam War veteran...
...Box 1684, Lake Worth, FL 33460...
...A hardened criminal himself, Sam has spent a lot of time behind bars in the last decade for protesting the nuclear arms race...
...Jack Clark of Morgan...
...In his note to us, he mentioned that another nuclear protester, Helen Woodson, had sent him a document she found alarming...
...My favorite part was when Mona Charen parroted the usual prejudices about people on welfare, and Ruth said it reminded her of one of Will Durst's lines: "If you give people food stamps, they'll get addicted to eating...
...appeared on C-SPAR This was a little coup for us, and a prime opportunity to get leftwing ideas out into the mainstream...
...We'd heard about abuse behind bars before, but this account was something new and chilling...
...Georgia, sent six stenciled fliers, red on white, that said: Niggers will Destroy America...
...The white male: He made America great...
...Ricky Davis is incarcerated at the Farm-ington Correctional Center in Missouri, and in January he sent us information about a bill that had recently passed in Missouri, giving the state the power to take a percentage of ex-prisoners' wages...
...The idea for the remaining piece in the package, "Sexual Abuse," came directly from the writer...
...Sam thought it might make for a good story in The Progressive...
...The Fund is one of the few organizations in America that supports investigative reporting, especially of the kind we do, and we're grateful for its assistance...
...But it's the intensity of the crudity, thj flood-level bile, that I can't get awayfroni I can only conclude that hate rises early ir| America...
...action has been so friendly...
...He also added a personal scrawl: "Niggers have destroyed every U.S...
...from abortion to gay rights, and at least for this hour, C-SPAN's audience got to hear an articulate, alternative voice...
...We gave her the green light, On all three stories, we made use of an invaluable resource: Prison Legal News...
...Early in the morning of May 20, the Managing Editor of The Progressive Ruth Conniff...
...His letter began: "It is amazing how such a young person could gets stupid in such a short period of life...
...It was a waiver form that prisoners were required to sign allowing guards to use the "stun belt" on them...
...Ail Force, Retired, of Longview...
...John P. Givhan of Andalusia, Alabama, wrote: "I would rather be called a traitor than a socialist...
...Maw you were born with a muted gene likef rest of the East European immergijf [sic...
...Billy Shivers...
...We gave the story to our Associate Editor, Anne-Marie Cusac, who went to great lengths—including getting shocked, which was her idea, not mine—to report the piece...
...Texas, sent his letter in with an "atomic-veteran" inf signia...
...Bobbie Stein, who blew the whistle on an outrageous story for us last year ("Cops Make Crack in California," April 1995), called up a few months ago and told us an equally outrageous story about guards letting male prisoners into women's cells for rapes...
...We hadn't heard about this, either, so we made a few calls to the ACLU, verified the information, and put freelance writer Christian Parenti on the trail...
...And many peoj pie wrote warm notes of appreciation with the positive responses outnumbering the negative ones...
...debating rightwing columnist Mona Charen with skill and aplomb...
...Ruth made the most of the opportunity...
...We're also indebted to the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Inc., which gave us a grant to defray some of the cost of these three pieces...
...The idea for our prison series began several months ago with a handwritten note from editorial-advisory-board member Sam Day...
...Sure, there were rational letters from people who disagreed with Ruth but main} tained a level of decency...
...This monthly, edited by prisoners Paul Wright and Dan Pens, provides a rare window on the prison world...
...For anyone interested in criminal justice, it's indispensable...
...Subscriptions are $12 for individuals, and $50 for institutions and professionals...
...We agreed, even though we'd never heard of the "stun belt...
...Ruth's performance was exhilarating for those of us on staff, and the phones lk up with people calling to praise her orsubj scribe to the magazine...
...The idea for the story on prison peonage also came to us from behind bars...
...He added that "your jew we| system does not work...
...city...
...and he was e cialiy agitated about gays and lesbl "Hitler had the right solution: Make soap out of them...
...But not all there...
...The sui jects ranged from welfare to immigration...
Vol. 60 • July 1996 • No. 7
