Industrial Workers of the World - Incarcerated Workers Industrial Union 613

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

IWW.org Editor — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 00:46:48 +0000

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.

In Wake of Death, Minnesota Prisoners Speak Out

IWW.org Editor — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 00:59:24 +0000

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.

Want to Stop Violence in Minnesota Prisons? Free Our People

IWW.org Editor — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:23:48 +0000

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 am endment 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!

First Incarcerated Worker Industrial Union Branch Forming

IWW.org Editor — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 01:02:37 +0000

By IWOC - It's Going Down, January 18, 2018

The following article from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) announces that the Mandingo Warriors & Associates has put in an application to be the first union branch to be chartered inside of prison.

The Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) is excited to announce our first Incarcerated Workers Industrial Union 613 branch application. The charter is currently being reviewed by the IWW's General Executive Board. When approved, this will be the first ever IU613 Branch in IWW history. In fact it will be the very first Incarcerated Workers union branch period. Below is their announcement of the formation and a riveting history of prison organizing over the past few decades.

REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS & FELLOW WORKERS,

On behalf of “Mandingo Warriors & Associates—IWW/IWOC,” we would like to express our most sincere gratitude and appreciation regarding the valuable time, efforts and sacrifices that you, along with the entire IWW/IWOC revolutionary family of this Struggle, have put into this difficult and complex “dilemma” of pursuing the necessary steps required to “effectively” assist in the organizing of those of us, whom are incarcerated within the numerous “Business Corporations” disguised as “Reformative Institutions” (Aka Prisons), around Unifying Principles and a Universal Philosophy that is inclusive of all of Humanity (this is definitely a Struggle Rooted in Equality for all of Humanity and not just the Few & Wealthy!)….

We shall hope and pray that all of our Comrades, in the “Semi-Free Society,” are doing well and are enjoying the best of health possible. Your most recent communication (dated: 10/20/’17) was well received and we look forward to receiving future communications from any and all IWW/IWOC members (with a robust invitation to the African People’s Caucus) in the near future.

Before We/I begin to address your most recent letter, Comrade it is our responsibility to inform and make you guys aware of the latest developments concerning the Movement of our Branch… You guys will have no doubt noticed the change in name/title—“Mandingo Warriors & Associates—IWW/IWOC” (M.W.A.—IWW/IWOC), from the previous name--

A meeting was held, 10/27/’17, in response to your letter and concerning IWW/IWOC’s agenda in general. Amongst the few issues that were discussed and resolved, included the uncertainty of some, as-to whether IWW/IWOC represent the realities of True Revolutionary Movement, or, will the Tribe (another name used to describe the entirety of the M.W organization)—as a Revolutionary organization in-and-of-itself, be bounding itself, by mutual agreement, to Honor, Respect, Uphold and abide by the Constitution, By-Laws, Principles and General Philosophy (whenever related to IWW affairs) of a bunch of “Armchair” Revolutionaries, who pontificate upon revolutionary concepts, but, fall far short of actual Revolutionary Movement (The Tribe has been “burnt” by such “revolutionary organizations” before, in which “they talk a good game,” but, when the “heat” is turned-up they are nowhere to be found…)…

Inmates Launch Month-Long Strike to Protest 'Slavery Conditions' in Florida Prisons

x344543 — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 02:14:46 +0000

By Julia Conley - Common Dreams, January 14, 2018

Inmates in Florida's prisons launched a month-long strike on Monday in protest of the state's use of "modern day slavery" within its correctional facilities.

In a statement released by the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, one of several advocacy groups supporting the movement, the state's prisoners urged the prison population to refuse all work assignments during the strike:

We are encouraging prisoners throughout the DOC to band together in an effort to demand payment for work performances...Our goal is to make the Governor realize that it will cost the state of Florida millions of dollars daily to contract outside companies to come and cook, clean, and handle the maintenance. This will cause a total BREAK DOWN.

African-Americans make up about a third of Florida's prison population, despite accounting for only about 17 percent of the state's overall population. Calling their movement Operation Push, after Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1970s campaign to improve the economic status of African-Americans, the state's inmates are fighting against the Department of Corrections' price-gouging practices and Florida's elimination of parole as well as its use of unpaid labor by prisoners.

Florida is one of five states that offers no payment to inmates for their work—from washing prison uniforms and cooking meals to completing maintenance work and serving on cleanup crews after Hurricane Irma hit the state last September.

"There's a word for that, it's called slavery," Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, told the Guardian. "Some states might say they pay 10 cents a day, or 15 cents an hour, or whatever, but here they make it pretty clear they don't pay prisoners anything, they're not going to, and prisoners are totally enslaved at every level."

On top of receiving no compensation for their work, inmates—and their families—have to come up with money to afford food and other items sold in prisons.

"We can no longer allow the state to take advantage of our families' hard earned money by over-charging us," wrote the inmates in their statement. "Take for example: one case of soup on the street cost $4.00. It costs us $17.00 on the inside. This is highway robbery without a gun. It's not just us that they’re taking from. It's our families who struggle to make ends meet and send us money—they are the real victims that the state of Florida is taking advantage of."

Black Lives Matter, several local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Florida State University's NAACP chapter are among more than 100 groups that have announced their support for the movement. Many of the groups planned to hold a rally with inmates' friends and families at the state's Department of Corrections on Tuesday.

“Destroy All Prisons Tomorrow”: IWOC Responds to Jacobin

IWW.org Editor — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 22:57:13 +0000

By IWOC - It's Going Down, September 11, 2017

The weekend of August 19 2017, amid the second nationwide inside/outside mass protest against prison slavery in as many years, Jacobin Magazine published an article against prison abolition entitled How to End Mass Incarceration by Roger Lancaster. Lancaster argued that returning to an ideal of puritan discipline and rehabilitation is more realistic than pursuing the abolition of prison entirely.

Jacobin caught a lot of deserved flack from abolitionists on social media for it. Numerous scholars, organizers and journalists decried Lancaster’s article, creating such an online storm that Jacobin decided to publish a response article entitled What Abolitionists Do penned by Dan Berger, Mariame Kaba and David Stein. Unfortunately, this response fails to fully critique Lancaster’s arguments and instead sells other abolitionists out. Their thesis paragraph reads:

Critics often dismiss prison abolition without a clear understanding of what it even is. Some on the Left, most recently Roger Lancaster in Jacobin, describe the goal of abolishing prisons as a fever-dream demand to destroy all prisons tomorrow. But Lancaster’s disregard for abolition appears based on a reading of a highly idiosyncratic and unrepresentative group of abolitionist thinkers and evinces little knowledge of decades of abolitionist organizing and its powerful impacts.

The Lancaster article levies the typical straw-man critique of abolition as an unrealistic “heaven-on-earth” vision. He presents Michel Foucault’s vision of a carceral society from Discipline and Punish as an alternative aspiration and argues that “we should strive not for pie-in-the-sky imaginings but for working models already achieved in Scandinavian and other social democracies.” He accuses abolitionists of being “innocent of history” and “far out on a limb” when comparing prison to chattel slavery.

These arguments expose a poverty of Lancaster’s analysis, and they are easily refuted. The idea that the US could adopt a Scandinavian style prison system through simple public awareness campaigns is desperately naive to the history of racial capitalism on this continent. The idea that a Foucauldian carceral society could exist here without massive quantities of racially targeted violence and coercion is far more pie-in-the-sky than the abolitionist recognition that prison depends on and cannot function without abominable levels of dehumanization and torture. Lancaster is the one with a utopian vision divorced from history, his prisons without torture or slavery can only be imaged by someone who hasn’t honestly grappled with the history of the US as a settler colonial nation that has always been existentially dependent on putting chains on Black people.

Incarcerated Workers #7

IWW.org Editor — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 22:51:27 +0000

By IWOC - It's Going Down, September 11, 2017

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), part of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), organizes prisoners into unions and support organizing efforts of incarcerated people. Check out their latest newsletter below.

Issue 7 includes an important announcement of IWOC’s restructuring, theory and strategy from incarcerated workers, exposés on conditions in the prison industrial complex and more.

The Incarcerated Worker – Issue 7 (Printable)

The Incarcerated Worker – Issue 7 (Readable)

Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Supports Industrial Workers of the World

IWW.org Editor — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 01:25:25 +0000

By X357058, X383824, X373817, X387362 - Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, August 7, 2017

May 24th – 29th CBTU International Convention – New Orleans: The recent work by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) has caught the attention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), bringing their support to the effort to unionize incarcerated workers. At their recent convention in late May the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists voted to support the IWW in the struggle, growing the prisoner unionization movement that has, until now, been overlooked by trade unions. The CBTU brings with it support for the implementation of collective bargaining and a minimum wage for prisoners, which can be viewed as a step toward prison abolition in regards to near-slave labor which prisoners currently perform.

Dee, an IWW member in prison, explains in an interview, “Labor unions can give prisoners more unity and more power to challenge the system that's exploiting prisoners as well as a structure to give prisoners power to resist collectively.The union has a role to play in building the sense of collective power, so that's why George Jackson thought prisoner unions were necessary,” Dee states. “The demands are many and varied based on conditions in different states and facilities, but take for example the demand for minimum wage, if they're forced to pay prisoners, and we can force their hand, it'll break down the prison system, because the prison system was not based on anything except exploitation of prisoners.” Prisoners are currently making between $0.90 and $2.00 per day. Furthermore, the prison population is largely comprised of People of Color currently (~ 66.7%), who make up only 36.3% of the US population.

Within the IWW, the abolitionist oriented Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) is on the cutting edge of the prison labor movement. CBTU’s support brings a newfound solidarity to the union, and substantially expands the support base of the union and its project. Brianna Peril, IWOC outside organizer, responded to the news: “This is really exciting. One of our strengths as a union is our ability to explain to other union members how important it is that we start recognizing prison slavery as a labor issue. Receiving support from the CBTU is a huge step toward this overarching goal that we had from the founding of IWOC.”

Mark Maxey, an IWW member from Oklahoma says, “Within the IWW, members seek not only to organize the workplace, but also organize the working class. Whether they are currently employed or not. Many members view this approach as crucial to unions regaining relevance in a rapidly changing job market. The root cause is capitalism and its use of slavery, unemployment, underemployment, and human trafficking. A remedy is to look outside traditional workplaces and outside the box creatively in aspects of the struggles of the working class. This will lead to members of the working class who are jobless or completely alienated from their jobs seeing unions as an answer,” Maxey stated.

This remedy could take the form of organizing tenant unions, anti-hate support, clean water coalitions, all sorts of different types of community self-defense networks inside the working class, and especially in the prisons. The CBTU, self-described as “the fiercely independent voice of black workers within the trade union movement, challenging organized labor to be more relevant to the needs and aspirations of Black and poor workers”, fits well with these ideals of IWW members. IWW proudly calls itself One Big Union. The work of IWOC, aided by CBTU, will ensure that it really is One Big Union.

IWOC was formed in 2014 as a letter-writing program to speak directly to prisoners. Since then, it has already seen a successful National Prisoner Strike on September 9th, 2016. This year, the Millions for Prisoners March on August 19th will mark the anniversary of George Jackson's death, an early prison organizer whose death lead to the Attica uprising.

CBTU, which was founded in 1972, is the largest, independent voice of more than 2.2 million African American workers in labor unions today. With more than 50 chapters in major U.S. cities and one in Ontario, Canada, CBTU is dedicated to addressing the unique concerns of black workers and their communities. CBTU is a strong supporter of low-wage workers who are fighting for respect and the right to have a voice on their jobs.

Voices from Behind Wisconsin’s Prison Gates #3

IWW.org Editor — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 00:49:10 +0000

By staff - Milwaukee IWW, August 8, 2017

Download PDF Here

This is a newsletter for people incarcerated in Wisconsin, based as much as possible on what they are saying. It is edited and printed by the Milwaukee branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, (IWW) Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC). Please write us back if you have updates you’d like to give to people on the inside and the outside. The more that people talk together the less isolated we are. We are in contact with networks of prisoners in areas inside and outside of Wisconsin, and can help build connections. Let us know if there are other people inside jails and prisons that we should contact.

Write to us at:
PO Box 342294,
Milwaukee, WI, 53234.

Our national hotline:
816-866-3808.

Final Straw: August 19th Day of Action, “Millions for Prisoners”

IWW.org Editor — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 22:49:12 +0000

By Final Straw - It's Going Down, June 20, 2017

Listen and Download Here

This week, Bursts spoke with Ben Turk about the August 19th call out for solidarity with prisoners. The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a project of the Industrial Workers of the World (or IWW) syndicalist labor union is one body organizing the inside and outside actions, and Ben is a member. Ben’s also affiliated with Lucasville Amnesty

Last year was a huge time for radical organizing around the U.S. Prisoners from around the country participated in the September 9th national prisoner strike, the first of it’s size and scope that we’ve seen. This event mobilized individual prisoners and also sprang from groups like the Free Alabama Movement and it’s sister pushes in other carceral states, Anarchist Black Cross chapters, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, or IWOC, of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union and also by just lots of unaffiliated prisoners.

Now, we have what could be called a hard Law and Disorder administration in the White House talking about increasing funding and support for cops, further militarizing the border and terrorizing residents, reviving the 1980’s style war on drugs and other repressive actions. In this context, it feels necessary for those who have a different vision of the world to push back and keep pushing as we were under Obama, under Bush & before.

This August 19th there is a call for another prisoner-led show of resistance supported by folks on the outside as well.

More on IWOC can be found at https://incarceratedworkers.org and more about public call for the strike can be found at IAmWeUbuntu.com