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Tag: Zines
Midwest Prison Censorship Update 2025: Exposing the IDOC Mail Scanning Scam
Originally published on https://chicagoantireport.noblogs.org/post/2025/06/09/midwest-prison-censorship-update-2025-exposing-the-idoc-mail-scanning-scam/
View the zine: Screen PDF – Printable PDF
View the Prison Censorship Survey results
Individual articles:
- “Stop Mail Scanning in Illinois” by Anthony Ehlers
- “The Censorship of Ideas is a Form of Psychological Warfare: A Message from the Diversionary Treatment Unit” by Hybachi LeMar
- Mail Scamming: IDOC’s Own Data Exposes how Politicians and Guard Unions are Lying about Drugs in the Mail
Download the FOIA request data (zip): 2023-2024 IDOC Drug Confiscations, 2024 Drug Exposures
Prison censorship is a front in the fascist american project. For the millions buried by the largest prison system on the planet, we know that access to communication and reading materials remain one of the only ways people behind bars can maintain humanity. Prison is censorship, a system of walls and borders that criminalizes people and ideas: a system we are determined to break by building bridges of solidarity – through sharing books and publishing zines.
Coinciding with the fascistic expansion of police and cop city projects, the prison censorship machine has rapidly marched on, consuming the majority of local, state and federal facilities. Played-out “war on drugs” fear mongering is why most people behind bars no longer receive physical mail: books are banned under cover of “content-neutral” and “publisher-only” restrictions, and private monopolies experiment with dystopian tablet technologies to monitor and profit from all communications.
Illinois has been one of the last holdouts until last year when prison copagandists began another all-too-familiar disinformation campaign. Guards are staging drug exposure hospitalization stunts to take away physical mail – incidents easily disproved as impossible by medical experts and according to IDOC’s own confiscation and exposure data. Unlike other states, this battle is being waged at capitol: multiple bills for and against mail scanning are being debated in Springfield. IDOC has not made any announcements yet, but has signed a new phone/email/tablet contract with ICSolutions: Illinois could fall to all-digital mail unless we organize now to stop it.
One voice that has not been heard from are those behind bars who are bearing the brunt of their draconian machinations. We made sure to share their plans to thousands of our incarcerated correspondents throughout IDOC, asking for comments and strategies on how to fight back and providing information on the bills and the addresses to write congress. Throughout these pages you’ll hear directly how mail censorship affects life behind bars: and special appreciations to the brave souls writing us, refusing to be silenced.
We are determined to stop mail scanning and book bans in Illinois: we share these tools and updates, seeking comrades to help break down the panopticon through underground networks of paper and print. Free the books, free the mail, free the people – free them all!
New Zine: Birds of a Feather, Destroy a Flock Together
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WHAT IS FLOCK?
Flock Safety is a mass surveillance start up based in Atlanta, Georgia that promises law enforcement and private business AI surveillance, license plate reading (LPR) technology, and real time alerts. Founded in 2017, the company now claims presence in 4,000 cities across 42 states. Flock LPRs compile unique identifying car information – License Plate, Make and Model, Color, Unique Alterations, and Frequency of Visits – then stores this data for 30 days. LPRs are leased to police, businesses, property managers or Home Owner Associations; these clients receive up to date hardware, maintenance and custom applications such as Hot List Alerts which allow them to track any vehicle(s) they desire in real-time. Flock boasts about its ability to identify a “vehicle fingerprint” which it claims includes color, make, model, bumper stickers, roof or bike racks, after market wheels, major scratches or dents, etc.
Standard Flock cameras cover 1.5 lanes of one-directional traffic up to a distance of 75 feet. They use a 16mm 1/2” lens with an IR filter, meaning the field of view is quite large but low-resolution. For night surveillance, they are outfitted with 6 LEDs that flash infrared light into the field of view. They use solar panels for power and an LTE modem for sending and receiving data.
Continue reading “New Zine: Birds of a Feather, Destroy a Flock Together”
New Zine: How To Do It Anyway: A Guide to Self-Managing an Abortion at Home
This zine is a love letter to anyone who finds themself hungry for the information contained in these pages, no matter the circumstances that lead to this booklet coming into your hands. This resource was diligently compiled and written with care by a few clinic workers in the midwest for the patients we can’t see anymore, in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
In this zine, we’ll talk about the process of making a decision, getting ready, what to expect after taking the pills, taking care of your emotions, safety planning, and how to move forward after your abortion. It contains evidence-based recommendations and anecdotally-informed best practices for self-managing a medication abortion through the end of the 12th week of pregnancy. Throughout these pages, we’ll share some wisdom, care, and hot tips from our experiences. We hope you’ll find it informative, interactive, and comforting.
Find more information here: https://www.tangledwilderness.org/zines/how-to-do-it-anyway-a-guide-to-self-managing-an-abortion-at-home
With love,
Hazel A and Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness
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New Zine: The Responsibility of Criminals
A new short zine (The Responsibility of Criminals) questioning how one acts under political persecution and certain risks of being a political criminal.
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Not Liking Someone Doesn’t Mean They’re a Cop: On Bad-jacketing
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Read the full text, including visuals, online as a PDF.
Find the full text ready for printing as an imposed PDF.
Since the commencement of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, millions around the world have taken to the streets in support of Palestine against the genocidal Zionist entity. We are, globally, in an unprecedented moment of anti-imperialist mobilisation, which threatens not only the Zionist occupation but the colonial powers that uphold it.
This text was written through the summer and early autumn of 2024 from Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory (so-called Southern Ontario, Canada), where people, many new to the left, have been facing intensified violence and harassment from both police and Zionists. Protests are regularly met with arrests and other attacks, which have created a climate of fear among attendees and organisers.
At the same time, that fear, combined with a disconnect from previous generations of struggle and an often-unchallenged fear of militancy, has led to practices that end up putting our comrades in more danger. This text hopes to address one such recurring issue.
Continue reading “Not Liking Someone Doesn’t Mean They’re a Cop: On Bad-jacketing”
New Zine: An American Anarchist’s Guide to WW3
EDIT:
Links to p. 5 suggestions
https://lib.anarhija.net/library/conspiracy-of-cells-of-fire-communization
https://lib.anarhija.net/library/conspiracy-of-cells-of-fire-lone-wolves-are-not-alone
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New Zine: Power Punch
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[ print ]
Below is the text of the attached zine, Power Punch: An Essay on Antifascism. The essay was originally published in Teeth, a print-only anarchist journal. Please print and share!
– Working Stiff
Reformatted Classic Zine: Why Misogynists Make Great Informants
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[ Imposed ]
[ Imposed Alternative ]
A reformat of the classic text Why Misogynists Make Great Informants.
Cover illustration contained within the PDFs is around 11×17″ 300 DPI and can be remixed for politically aligned projects.
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New Zine: Red Flags: Before You Join That Org…
Screen reading [here]
Imposed for printing [here]
Ever since October 7th, authoritarian communist groups and vanguard parties have had a fresh crisis to use for their predatory recruiting and fundraising. More experienced people know to avoid them, but this doesn’t matter much. They depend on recruiting newly radicalized people, energetic and inexperienced, and without existing connections to other radicals that could warn them off.
This zine is an intervention. Written for people newer to radical politics, it outlines red flags to look out for, provides some history of the most well-known authoritarian communist groups’ harmful behavior, and offers a few alternatives to joining them. Give this to the new people you’re seeing join movements, it could help them avoid lots of grief and serious harm.
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