Twin Cities GMB

New Prisoner Audio Confirms “Humanitarian Crisis” at Stillwater Prison: Prisoners and Families Demand An End to the Lockdown

Submitted on Wed, 08/22/2018 - 7:46pm

By Joanna Nuñez - Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, August 10, 2018

The lockdown at Stillwater Prison is now in its 27th day. As families and prisoners demand an end to the lockdown the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee is releasing audio from inside Stillwater prison to showcase the urgency of the lockdown’s immediate end and to expose the lies being spread by the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC). The audio, shared by Stillwater inmate Tony, last name removed due to concerns for retaliation, was received on August 11th.

This audio interview - along with other independent reports from prisoners in Stillwater - document human rights violations, the power of the media’s impact in changing conditions inside, and, as Stillwater prisoner Carlos Smith says, that the “[DOC] spokesperson is not being truthful.”

Multiple independent reports from prisoners contradict the claims made by the DOC in an August 10th statement to KSTP. A DOC representative said prisoners are receiving “showers every 3 days and were given hygiene bags as well as fresh linens”. Yet, prisoners report not having received more than three showers in 24 days of being locked down. Nor have Smith or Tony received clean clothes. Smith shared, “Our clothes are mildewed because we have only had the chance to wash them once in the last 24 days.”

Conditions inside Stillwater sound nightmarish. A prisoner who wishes to remain anonymous reports “the stench in the units from the garbage is gagging. Fruit flies are abundant and everywhere. Toiletries are not passed out daily. Some days you find yourself having to ask your neighbors for toilet paper... [which] is prohibited”.

During lockdowns prisoners are supposed to be in cells a brutal twenty three hours a day. Yet Tony reports they were “locked in their cells...for 20 days straight” without proper medical supervision, and when displaced for searches prisoners were surrounded by staff “with automatic weapons and several canines”.

A prisoner who wishes to remain anonymous says he “can't stand by and allow the DOC to lie to the public, bolstering their own image to request more money off my pain and suffering. I am paying my dues to society and now the DOC's the one victimizing me for their own personal gain.” He asks that “[you] report the truth to the public. Open their eyes to our plight and the problem of warehousing over reintegration.”

Some prisoners see progress being forced by stories in the news, including their first hour out of their cells during the day. “A lot of change has occurred as people understand what is going on inside the prisons [from the TV]” Tony reports.  

The DOC says they are “transitioning off of lockdown” but it is “a process without a definitive end date”. Prisoners and their families are not willing to wait. The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee is circulating a petition demanding the DOC immediately end the lockdown at Stillwater. IWOC is calling for an emergency meeting this Sunday at 7pm for family and friends of prisoners in Stillwater to end the lockdown. “The DOC is preventing prisoners from speaking out so we will do whatever is necessary to make their conditions heard”, says Joanna Nuñez of the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.

• Twin Cities GMB
• Incarcerated Workers Industrial Union 613
• IWOC

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In Wake of Death, Minnesota Prisoners Speak Out

Submitted on Mon, 08/13/2018 - 7:59pm

By the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, August 10, 2018

As the Minnesota Department of Corrections ends its lockdown at all prisons except Stillwater, prisoners there are speaking out against human rights abuses and calling for the lockdown to end.

According to Carlos Smith, a prisoner at Stillwater, “we are currently without any basic humane treatment here... We still have not received any showers nor are we any closer to seeing any end to this nonsense.” Stillwater has been locked down since a lone prisoner killed a guard on July 18. When facilities are on lockdown, prisoners receive no more than one hour a day outside their cells.

Smith says prisoners are being held hostage in a struggle between the DOC and AFSCME prison guards, some of whom are calling for the resignation of the commissioner.

Beyond the lack of laundry and showers, the 1600 men inside Stillwater are facing humiliation during the lockdown. “They took two sections, about sixty of us, handcuffed together, naked. Then we sat like that in the gym for an hour and a half while they ransacked our cells,” Smith reports.

AFSCME, the prison guard union is looking for a bigger budget for staffing but David Boehnke of the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee doesn’t believe staffing alone will reduce violence. “If you don’t give respect, you won’t get it. Overcrowding means reduced programming and inhuman conditions - violence which begets violence,” Boehnke says. “The solution is there. Release the thousands of people locked up for petty parole violations and reinvest that money into improving conditions.”

A 2017 study from California prisons notes a robust relationship between reducing overcrowding and lowering prison violence. Minnesota prisons are already above maximum capacity, resulting in hundreds of people being housed in county jails while the prison population is projected to be more than 1,300 people over maximum capacity by 2022. As of July 2018 35.6% of Minnesota’s prison admissions, 2771 people, were incarcerated for crimeless technical violations of parole.

Beyond the recent killing, both guards and prisoners are facing increasing violence inside Minnesota’s prisons. Without changing conditions, it is hard to see an end rising violence. But right now, Smith hopes the public will speak up to end the lockdown and its human rights abuses. “We are just sitting in these cells smelling like billy goats,” he says.

• Twin Cities GMB
• Incarcerated Workers Industrial Union 613
• IWOC

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Want to Stop Violence in Minnesota Prisons? Free Our People

Submitted on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 7:23pm

By IWOC - It's Going Down, July 31, 2018

Editorial from the Twin Cities chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) that links horrific conditions inside with ongoing violence. 

On July 18, the first prison guard in Minnesota’s history was killed, on top of recent violence in Oak Park Heights and Stillwater prisons. Yet all the DOC does is ask for more money on top of their 1.2 billion dollar budget. We need a new approach to change in Minnesota’s prisons. Stop putting money into a violent institution that is not correcting anyone. Free our people, and reinvest savings into reentry and rehabilitation.

For those of us who have been incarcerated or in regular contact with Minnesota’s prisons, recent violence is not a surprise – it’s an inevitability due to the behavior of the prisons system itself.

• Minnesota’s prisons have gotten progressively worse. Lip service to rehabilitation has little application to daily realities, while harsher parole practices, sentencing, and increased criminalization of our communities have manufactured an overcrowding crisis. And our people are dying. Between 2000-2013, 280 people incarcerated in Minnesota prisons were killed – 75% of them due to medical neglect. Yet we spend $41,366 per incarcerated person each year.
• Many prison guards in Minnesota are racist and abusive. The day before the killing at Stillwater, a prisoner reported that the man killed was telling everyone that “guards can do whatever we want to you and you can’t do anything about it”. Last year the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee released a podcast just scratching the surface of guard abuse in Minnesota’s prisons.
• It is well documented, including by the MN DOC, that increased community connection reduces recidivism. Yet the MN DOC regularly prevents mail delivery, makes visiting miserable, and represses prisoner and community attempts to build bridges with each other. Results are predictable: 48% of people released on parole end up back in prison, a shocking 88% of them for minor “technical violations” of parole, not new crimes. Even DOC employees are saying low staffing in overcrowded conditions are creating extreme dangers for prisoners and staff, while a rash of quitting has followed the recent killing.

There’s an easy solution to these violent conditions – free our people. Instead of putting yet more money into prisons we should immediately release all people in prison for crimeless “technical violations” of parole and nonviolent crimes, at least 40% of the population. Savings should fund successful reentry and rehabilitation programs. The parole system must be changed to ensure everyone has the opportunity to earn a life worth living. (Learn more about this fight on Saturday August 25th, 1-3pm in North Minneapolis – flier and facebook).

Nor can conditions be improved without prisoners having real power and community connections. Prisoners should be allowed to form their own unions and represent themselves. Community groups and family members should be welcomed. Visiting hours should be expanded, while mail censorship must end.

This August 21st – September 9th, prisoners around the country are going on strike against inhuman conditions confirmed by prisoners’ legal status as slaves under the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. Will Minnesota’s prisons join other systems in regular deadly violence between slaves and their cagers? Or will we treat humans like human beings, stop senseless incarceration, and use savings for rehabilitation and community? We say slavery must end – free our people!

• Twin Cities GMB
• Incarcerated Workers Industrial Union 613
• IWOC

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The Fourth Star: The New Junior Wobblies and the Next Generation of Union Militants

Submitted on Tue, 07/18/2017 - 8:36pm

By Sadie Farrell and M.K. Lees - Institute for Anarchist Studies, July 10, 2017

Several factors played into our collective decision not to run a print issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory for the current year. We sincerely thank all inquiries and submissions sent for what was hoped to be an issue on Play. A call out for submissions for a Beyond The Crisis print issue of Perspectives (2018) will be announced shortly. 

This is an article written by two Wobblies in response to our call for Play essays. These organizers bridge the gap between play and the practice of organizing skills via educational skits and fun activities led by the New Junior Wobblies, the young members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

The IWW globe logo holds three stars representing Education, Organization and Emancipation. This article looks at Recreation – a  fourth star – from challenging uneven relations of power, to making joy central to organizing against capitalism, regardless of age. 

Shortly after a wave of government repression and internal splits nearly destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as a functioning labor organization, a group of Wobblies felt the immediate need to find new ways to raise the next generation of revolutionary unionists.  As a part of solidarity support for striking IWW coal miners in Colorado, children of union members were invited to join an IWW organization of their own.  These Wobbly kids formed “locals” to organize support for their striking parents, and alongside them, develop a rudimentary understanding of the world and how they might soon be a part of organizing to change it.  To the IWW tripartite motto, “Education, Organization, Emancipation” they added “Recreation,” and in 1927, the Junior Wobblies Union was born.

This effort to formally carve out a space for children in the IWW was lost as the union fell into obscurity, but with the IWW revival of the past few decades, old traditions have been revived.  In 2011, the Twin Cities branch of the IWW reconstituted both the self-educational institution, the Work People’s College, as well as the Junior Wobblies.  It began as a combination of IWW members coordinating childcare to enable parents to attend trainings, panels, and other IWW events.  But as the network of Wobblies with kids grew, so did the desire to provide concrete ways for kids to engage with union activity.

In July, 2012, the Twin Cities put on the first Junior Wobblies summer camp in decades, hosting IWW children ages 2 through 12 at Mesaba Park campground for a week of games, outdoor play, and structured learning activities.  The camp has continued annually ever since, drawing a larger crowd from across the US and Canada each year.

• Twin Cities GMB
• News - All Departments and Unions

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Militant Tactics in Anti-Fascist Organizing--Interview Transcript

Submitted on Fri, 04/28/2017 - 5:23pm

By Matthew N Lyons - Three Way Fight, April 26, 2017

This interview with longtime anti-fascist activist Kieran (who was one of the founders of Three Way Fight thirteen years ago) covers a wide range of topics: from the work of Anti-Racist Action in the 1980s and 90s to the IWW’s General Defense Committee today, from the politics of wearing masks to the dangers of relying on the state for protection, and from engaging organized labor to building community-based self-defense against the far right.

The interview was conducted for KPFA Radio’s Against the Grain by the program’s co-producer Sasha Lilley and was broadcast on February 14, 2017. The audio recording is available for download or online listening here. The following transcription, by Clarissa Rogers, appears with the permission of Against the Grain and the participants.

Kieran was one of the founders of Anti-Racist Action, a youth-based direct action movement that organized against Nazi skinheads, the Ku Klux Klan, and the white power music scene from the 1980s to the 2000s. He’s now chief steward in a local union of telecom workers and is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World’s General Defense Committee, which has taken on anti-fascist work in a number of cities. In late January, a member of the General Defense Committee of the IWW was shot at a Milo Yiannopoulos event in Seattle. Against the Grain, a program of radical ideas originating from KPFA Radio, spoke with him after demonstrators closed down Yiannapoulous’ event at UC Berkeley on February 1st.

ATG: Kieran, many liberals and leftists believe that the right of free speech is paramount. As you know, protestors using militant tactics shut down a Milo Yiannopoulos event at UC Berkeley, which is the home of the Free Speech Movement. Why don’t you think that the right of free speech should be extended to fascists and the far right?

Kieran: There are a couple points to this. I think there’s both a question of strategy and tactics. I think that all of this is with the understanding that what we’re opposing is not the free speech of fascists, or the speeches of fascists. What we’re doing is opposing the organizing of the fascists. So, for instance, in my workplace, I work with workers with a whole range of opinions on all different kinds of questions. And occasionally you’re going to run into people who are influenced by far right politics. In those circumstances it doesn’t make sense for me to start a fight, a physical fight with a coworker since they raised some perspective that comes from that background.

But that’s totally different than a situation where you have an organization or a personality who’s using the framework of a public speech or an event, a forum, in order to advance political goals. And so the way we look at it is the way we would look at any kind of organizing done by that group with those aims.

In the case at UC Berkeley, this outright celebrity and provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, very clearly is trying to advance a certain kind of politics and more and more is trying to shape it into a movement. Our understanding is that he was planning to out undocumented students at Berkeley for the sole purpose of putting them under attack by Trump’s immigration forces. And, so, in that circumstance, we can’t let that attack go unchallenged. And I think that when you look at it from that perspective, it makes sense to try and oppose it.

If we just wait until they’ve created the groundswell, or created the base of support for these aggressive actions to take place, it can be too late. And so the way we approach fascist organizing or right wing organizing is not really focused on the question of free speech but is focused on whether or not we’re going to let them organize to implement their program. And our perspective is that we’re not. We’re going to challenge it. We’re going to try to stop it. We’re going to try to stop them.

• Twin Cities GMB
• General Defense Committee

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