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A Brief History of the Minnesota Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC)
A Brief History of the Minnesota Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC)
Founded in July 2015
Started when someone left a Minnesota prison & connected with fellow activists to make change
Initial vision: abolish the carceral system by partnering with those inside to create a labor union for the incarcerated.
The vision was partially inspired by partnership with the Free Alabama Movement, who called two national prison strikes in 2016 and 2018. (IWOC was heavily involved in promoting the first strike.)
Started grievance work with those inside, learning how to win what has now been hundreds of successful grievance fights through outside pressure.
Participated in Black Lives Matter actions.
Joined in a successful fight to end a new “youth super prison” that Ramsey and Hennepin County were conspiring to build. After exposing the project and forcing discussions, our Youth Prison Blockade took over a meeting and said “no way!” The project was cancelled.
No New Crime, No New Time
No New Crime, No New Time
In early 2017 we launched our first campaign, “No New Crime No New Time” - working to end technical violations, which send people to prison for non-crimes like missing appointments, failing drug tests, or failing to find housing.
This began with a series of community gatherings, in partnership with other organizations aligned with the prison system.
This began with a series of community gatherings, in partnership with other organizations aligned with the prison system.
We also created a powerful podcast showcasing the stories of those sent back in on such violations and many other issues as well.
You can still find that podcast on Soundcloud.
"Home For Good"
"Home For Good"
The “Home for Good” campaign started as a campaign to expand work release -- a program we learned about during COVID which allows people to be placed in supervised housing to work or go to college or vocational classes when still in prison.
We began by targeting Hennepin County, bringing electrifying testimony at a Board meeting, then returning to shut down an end-of-year budget meeting.
In 2018 we began to focus our efforts on then-new Commissioner Paul Schnell.
Over the next year, we showcased the stories of incarcerated people and their loved ones. We overcame significant attempts at repression -- including sending four inside organizers to solitary confinement, transferring one, and banning a key outside organizer -- to win a policy change in December 2018 which required consideration of how violations would impact a person’s safety net.
This change has resulted in a 50% reduction in technical violations of parole in December 2018 -- roughly 770 fewer people on any given day.
We've got more work to do to help fix probation violations.
The Struggle Continues
The Struggle Continues
After that, we began a long series of mostly unsuccessful negotiations with the DOC around policies like ending the “no work no play policy”, getting elected inmate reps, and more. But we did have some wins, including ending the exile of male prisoners to county jails, changing the victim designation policy so victims not the DOC could determine their contact level with those in prison, and people in prison never stopped organizing.
Antonio Released from Solitary
Antonio Released from Solitary
In Rush City, a policy requiring two weeks to receive canteen was quickly defeated after prisoners popped off a strike in response to organizer Antonio Williams being sent to the hole. The strike and outside phone calls got him out, with relatively little retaliation.
Yet Shakopee Prison was perhaps the change making capitol, with two separate mini-campaigns, the first to end the racist exclusion of women of color, particularly Black women from the Challenge Incarceration Program, an early release bootcamp. Angela Hooks, an inside activist identified the , and IWOC teamed up to get more people involved, many people stepped up and nearly all got into, and succeeded, the program.
That wasn’t all. Despite being better behaved women in prison are more targeted for petty rules than men, and Shakopee had a long standing “no touch policy”, that was particularly used to target Lesbian and Trans-Prisoners. One of them, Zhi Kai Vanderford, finally home from exile in Oklahoma and California, got people organized, and an online petition blew up into a news story. Leaders on the Taskforce on Incarcerated Women and Girls pushed to end the no touch policy and expand trans rights, writing out beautiful policies that were ignored.
Victory! Joe got his hormones!
Victory! Joe got his hormones!
However, Zhi Kai and the prisoners at Shakopee refused to stand down, and on Pride, nearly half the prison wore their blue clothes, “their blues”, in support of ending the no touch policy, expanding trans-rights and getting him accessing to hormones. The next day the DOC publicly canceled the no touch policy, and after months of enforcement struggles, Zhi Kai had his hormones and the new policy was real in the prison.
A few years later, Angela Jackson, a Shakopee inmate, reported a sexual assault by a guard in solitary confinement, prompting three others to report sexuals by medical personnel. While Angela did not get justice despite filing a restraining order, she did succeed in getting the body scanner used to prevent strip searches in most instances for all women in the facility, and through an Ombuds complaint help secured body cameras for all prison guards. A female doctor was also fired after constant complaints of medical neglect was compounded with a report of strange touching to a long abused incarcerated person.
Much was accomplished by these brave women speaking out.
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