Prisoner Account of Wisconsin Food Strike

What follows is an account of the 2017 food strike at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin. The account was written by an anonymous participant, a member of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), itself a part of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and was sent to the Milwaukee IWOC chapter: 

“Earlier this year Unit 2 had to be locked down because there was a food strike. Dissatisfied with the new rule that we could no longer choose where we sat for meals, inmates unified and refused to eat.

Several other units chose to follow suit to some degree. For days on end administrative staff had to be present on the units to ensure that inmates were adjusting to the new rules.

Warden Bitmann redid the rule book. As a result a push back occurred. People were protesting the assigned seating and other smaller causes. Staff had no sense of what the new rulebook stated but yet they tried to enforce it. Unit 2 started the protest. No one was coming out to eat or they were tossing their trays.

When the whole strike started they had at least 20 staff on the unit. Every high up, white shirts, and a lot of officers. They were on high alert. After everything was done and over with the warden said he didn’t think anyone was going to do anything (they underestimated our resolve).

The unit 2 hunger strike led to units 4 and 5 then 8 and 9. No one held out very long and staff just locked down the units who were involved.“

For more information on the Milwaukee IWW and to support there work, go here.