Happy 61st birthday to Scalawag Contributing writer, @freemichaelkimble ! 🎂 For Prison Banned Books Week, we encourage yall to read Michael’s piece for Abolition Week 2026: rePRESSion, “Censorship Beyond Book Bans in Prison: A Slave Master Mentality.” In it, he writes: “In recent months, the Prison Industrial Slave Complex (PISC) has begun censoring all books from outside publishers, vendors, book clubs, etc. This is nothing new. The PISC has always refused to allow prisoners to receive certain books that they (the prisoncrats) deem a “threat to institutional security” and the smooth functioning of the prisons. What is new is that ALL BOOKS are now being censored, rejected, and denied in ALL PRISONS across the U.S., and this move on the part of the PISC of denying prisoners any and all books is said to be necessary in order to stop the smuggling of drugs into the prisons. Well, to do that, they would have to fire all Alabama Department of Corrections employees because every week, we are seeing correctional officers and police being arrested for smuggling drugs and other contraband into the prisons. Books are being censored not because drugs are being smuggled into prisons via books, or because these books are full of falsehoods; they censor and reject books because they know that they contain the truth. The reason why books, especially those on Black and radical history, are being censored is very clear: Education means the beginning of the demise of the prisons—the institution of caging human beings—and prisoncrats take great care that caged slaves of the state remain caged.” Michael Kimble is a 61-year old native of Alabama, a Black queer anarchist, and prison strike organizer. He has been held captive by the state for over 40 years and is serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison.