EDITOR'S NOTE
Rothschild, Matthew
EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild Barring the Doors On July 4, Grayling Mitchell, an inmate at the California Correctional Institution, Tehachapi, wrote me the following letter: "I thought I'd...
...We do not appreciate having our rights violated here at The Progressive, but wilre not alone...
...I just thought I'd inform you of this terrible denial of our First Amendment...
...EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild Barring the Doors On July 4, Grayling Mitchell, an inmate at the California Correctional Institution, Tehachapi, wrote me the following letter: "I thought I'd bring to your attention an issue that may be of interest...
...He was elected as a Democrat to serve in the House of Representatives...
...She was carrying a small Puerto Rican flag and was stopped by a Capitol Police security guard as she and her father tried to go through the main visitors' entrance...
...I am a prisoner and have been receiving your magazine for quite a while now...
...The only way you can call from the outside is if it's a family emergency," the switchboard operator told me...
...You know what the rules are," he said...
...i "At least three states—California, Illinois, and Virginia—have recently made moves to keep . . . journalists out of state prisons as much as possible," writes Pia Hinckle in the July/August issue of Extra!, the invaluable newsletter of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting...
...Thus does the war on crime become a war on our most cherished freedoms...
...Who are you that you know what the rules are...
...Why that piece...
...I then called the prison officer in charge of the mail room, Sergeant J.S...
...Gutierrez was born in Chicago...
...He also said the article by Bobbie Stein, "Sexual Abuse," violated the regulations...
...He fingered the piece by Associate Editor Anne-Marie Cusac, "Stunning Technology," which investigated the stun belt, a new tool prison guards could misuse on inmates...
...This prejudice reached an absurd apex earlier this year when Luis Gutierrez was barred from the Capitol...
...Those flags can't be unfurled," the guard told them...
...Berkshire, who suppressed the magazine in the first place and then rejected Mitchell's appeal...
...They've disallowed your July issue...
...Someone in Sacramento came up with this framework that we're required to use...
...Representative Gutierrez scolded his daughter...
...Our hands are tied...
...Needless to say, I am appealing their decision...
...the guard asked...
...This is what we have to do...
...Because," said Sergeant Berkshire, "the inmates will look at this and say, 'The guards are doing this and that to us with an instrument that's like a Nazi torture device,' and that'll tend to incite action against officers, guards, and administrators...
...Why don't you and your people just go back to the country you came from...
...On July 3, I was called to the sergeant's office to be handed a Notification of Disapproval— publications...
...Gutierrez produced it...
...Illinois wants to permanently ban face-to-face interviews with death-row inmates," Hinckle reports...
...It must be a fake," said the guard...
...Prisoners, and journalists who write about prisoners, today have gags in their mouths...
...Virginia has barred prison tours, photographs, and face-to-face interviews...
...I'm just totally indifferent," Sergeant Berkshire told me...
...I don't think so," said the guard, demanding identification...
...A Puerto-Rican American, Gutierrez had taken his sixteen-year-old daughter to a tribute for Puerto-Rican veterans of the Korean war...
...These days, Latinos can't get into the Capitol—even if they are duly elected...
...But on March 29, he had a little trouble reporting to work...
...I asked what in our July issue was inciting inmates to murder, arson, riot, or other acts of violence...
...Afterward, he wanted to take her to see his office...
...I asked him why he wouldn't let our subscriber receive the magazine...
...If my wife was in prison, and I was in prison, I'd be inflamed to action by an article that says prison guards are letting male inmates rape the women inmates...
...I am Congressman Gutierrez...
...The current wave of xenophobia is crashing down most heavily on immigrants from our southern border— and on anyone who is Latino...
...I told him that I believed his actions constituted a gross violation of Grayling Mitchell's First Amendment rights—and of our First Amendment rights...
...He said that the California Code, Title 15, Section 3136A, instructs prisons not to allow inmates to receive "any matter of a character tending to incite murder, arson, riot, or any form of violence or physical harm to any person or any ethnic, gender, racial, religious, or other group...
...The scapegoating of immigrants, which we cover this month, is one of the most disturbing developments in recent years...
...I tried to call Grayling Mitchell, but the prison wouldn't put me through...
...And] California wants to permanently ban face-to-face interviews and eliminate confidential mail privileges between inmates and the media...
Vol. 60 • September 1996 • No. 9
