Legal Slavery, Campus, and Organizing Committees

IWOC, and how it’s about so much more than a couple uncomfortable chairs

By Quinn McClurg

Have you ever felt comfortable on campus? How about while sitting? Once you learn that some on-campus furniture was made using slave labor, there is no comfortable seating anywhere. And this isn’t imported slave labor from a developing country—this is slave labor on American soil, as enshrined in our very own constitution.

“13th Amendment, Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

And there have been none pointing to this amendment more than the student activists in the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (TCIWOC), an extremely new student sect of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC).

You may have seen its posters that ask, “Did you know the U gives one student’s entire tuition to slavery? IS IT YOURS?” But the University’s complicity and their lump sum of $20,000 is just the tip of the iceberg.

I learned this when I attended a TCIWOC meeting Nov. 3, joined by nine other students, four of which were IWOC organizers. Not only was David Boehnke, one of the founders of IWOC, in attendance, but so were Barbara Currin and Dwight Bowers, two formerly incarcerated people (IP) who were forced into slave labor while in prison.

Speaking at the meeting, Bowers recounted how he was initially excited to be put to work. While he was locked down 23 hours a day for two years in Oak Park Heights, all he could see from his window were other IPs exercising in the recreation yard.

“They have a thing called ‘No Work, No Play’… so the incentive of getting out to work is real empowering. Not only that, but I had two little kids I was still responsible for, y’know? And I was figuring out how I could take care of them from in here,” Bowers said. “And the first place I went to start work was at MINNCOR.”

On the books, MINNCOR seems inoffensive: an offshoot of the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) dedicated to the training and “meaningful employment,” of IPs. Through producing furniture and other products, MINNCOR’s mission statement claims that IPs are granted “financial self-sufficiency” and “flexible” positions as well as “expertise” applicable to the outside workforce.

However, “financial self-sufficiency” is far from the truth—both Bowers and Currin say that MINNCOR started them at only 25 cents an hour. It took Bowers five years of constant work to make $1.25 an hour. He says that every time he moved from one expertise to another (assembling, upholstery, shipping), MINNCOR started him over at 25 cents.

“One of the tragedies is,” Bowers said, “I kept seeing they paid me, on book, minimum wage. But, on book, they use housing, room and board, so they take a big chunk of that money.”

Unsurprisingly, Currin was subject to much of the same while incarcerated at the all-women prison in Shakopee. She says that, even at her maximum, she was only making $20 a week; she was working 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week—even being mandated to work nights and weekends.

During her time there, she often manufactured and repaired police uniforms: “[It] was very, very hard, especially when they’re killing a lot of my people… but we was still forced to make their uniforms,” Currin said. “Folks would urinate on them, rip them on purpose, hide ‘em, and the whole facility would get locked down for one shirt.”

“I understood their anger, but what will happen to us is everybody gets punished. So you actually have to learn how to… how do I say it? Learn to accept abuse? Being belittled? Dehumanized?”

For Currin, it was impossible to be released on parole: her $20 weekly wage wasn’t near the $100 the prison demanded every other week. She had to reach out to her family on the outside—they paid for her restitution, her food, and any other carceral fines, despite the fact that they were struggling even before Currin (and her income) left their household.

“Prison labor—who do it benefit? It benefits private contractors with DOC, it benefits the state, it benefits federal,” Currin said. “Inside, when you do slave labor, it’s called ‘convict leasing;’ we are leased to the state of Minnesota—we have no rights.”

Bowers vehemently agreed with Currin when she said this, especially since he spent a majority of his time inside studying the carceral system.

He said it first occurred to him one night he was laying in his cell, reading the 1712 Willie Lynch letter. “‘A foolproof plan that will keep them in slavery for hundreds of years,’” Bowers paraphrased. “I said, ‘Hold up…a foolproof plan…’ It takes a fool to continue to live in that state; they try to brainwash you to think… ‘this is who you are, don’t try to change nothing.’”

“It makes sense to me: … if I got a multi-billion dollar enterprise… [and] I’m making it off the backs of slaves…, why would I do anything to pit against me?” Bowers said.

Though I wasn’t able to corroborate Bowers’ estimate, the official Minnesota 2022 to 2023 Departmental Earning Summary lists upward of $17 million for the Department of Corrections’ annual revenue. Additionally, several reputable equity services list MINNCOR’s annual revenue as upward of $21 million.

And MINNCOR is just one of the thousands of corporations that profit from IP’s slave labor. In fact, as outlined in Worth Rises’ Prison Industry Corporate Database, corporations like Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Microsoft, and 3M all profit off of the exploitation of IPs. Worth Rises’ marks each aforementioned corporation as guilty of human rights violations.

Knowing this, imagine you are Bowers laying down in his prison cell, just having learned of the scale of his exploitation. What could you do? Bowers tells me if you write a grievance or try to send letters about the prison’s conditions, the prison will open your mail and threaten you with solitary confinement.

Barbara agreed: “Two people inside is considered a ‘gang assembly’… If I get with you and say, ‘Hey, what they’re doing is wrong, we’re gonna write a grievance.’ They say… ‘We understand… but this is gonna get you locked up.’ So what's the point? And most people inside… are afraid anyway when you start talking like that; nobody wants to go to segregation.”

This is where organizations like IWOC step in; change needs to come from the outside.

Toward the end of the TCIWOC meeting, Boehnke said, “The outside is what there’s never enough of. It is not hard to convince a slave to be free; what is hard is having people outside who care, who are willing to be consistent, who are willing to fight with people on the inside to change the balance of power.”

I spoke with Boehnke after the meeting. He told me that nine years ago, a friend of his came out of prison and told him it had to change. Boehnke responded with “Ok, how do we do that?” Thus, IWOC was born.

After providing resources, media attention, and organizing the 2016 U.S. prison strike—the largest prison strike in United States’ history—it was clear that IWOC had potential.

Boehnke says IWOC’s first campaign “No New Crime, No New Time,” helped halve petty parole violations. “There’s more than 750 less people in prison on any given day in Minnesota because of that campaign,” Boehnke said.

In 2020, IWOC’s second campaign supplied Minnesota prisons with COVID-19 safety protocols and research. Although the state promised 1,600 medical releases, Boehnke said they only got 450.

“And now we’re on our third campaign,” Boehnke said, referring to the Minnesota Rehabilitation and Reinvestment Act (MRRA).

Although it was passed into law this legislative session, the MRRA will take time (and accountability) to implement. If executed as planned, the DOC will cut a large percentage of released folks from active supervision on parole. IWOC projects that a quarter of the prison population could be released too.

TCIWOC may play an integral part in raising awareness of IWOC’s third campaign.

Eleanor Donohue, a student organizer who helped create TCIWOC, believes that volunteering with IWOC is a great entry point for activism and organization. “You just have to get through the ‘I don't know what I'm doing’ part of it,” Donohue said. “[But now] I feel very comfortable and safe.”

Other student organizers like Paul Goff seem to agree too, describing TCIWOC as “grassroots,” and “very organic.”

Goff said in an interview: “In order for change to happen, you need to start at the at the bottom, where you think, ‘we're not really doing much.’” He says making efforts, no matter how small, are better than being complacent.

TCIWOC seems as if it is here to stay, continuing to host fundraisers, organizational trainings, and storytelling events, sometimes working with former IPs like Bowers and Currin.

Bowers ended his speech with an appeal to dignity, just how he opened it: “In this time and day, all we want to do is be treated with dignity… even me, dying in prison—I wanted to have that dignity.”

“We have slavery right here in America, not in our backdoor, but our front door. Right here,” Currin said before the meeting concluded. “A lot of people may say that one person is not going to make a difference, but it makes a difference within you, within your circle, within the truth that you’re planning on bringing into this world, because we have to stand for something. [We] have to.”

If you’re interested in volunteering or learning more about IWOC, consider keeping your eyes peeled for their December action.

SOURCES:

  • Corrections Annual Revenue: $17.6 Million

    • https://mn.gov/mmb-stat/documents/budget/operating-budget/gov-rec/jan21/jan21-gov-rec-departmental-earnings-summary.pdf

  • MinnCor Annual Revenue: $21.6 million

    • https://www.konaequity.com/company/minncor-industries-4397932539/

    • https://rocketreach.co/minncor-industries-profile_b5fb9e9bf6425de3

  • 2016 Prison Strike

    • https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/the-largest-prison-strike-in-u-s-history-enters-its-second-week/

  • William Lynch Letter

    • https://app.formspal.com/pdf-editor/willie-lynch-letter-the-making-of-a-slave?DocumentUID=d47ff050-d49a-489c-96c7-51c1e638f428

  • MRRA Info Page

    • https://mn.gov/doc/about/legislative-info/mrra/mrra-faq.jsp

  • MINNCOR Website

    • https://www.minncor.com/history

  • Worth Rises’ Prison Industry Corporate Database

    • https://worthrises.org/theprisonindustry2020#block-5bc4c1200a7eaff4fcef

  • MN 2022 - 2023 Departmental Earnings

    • https://mn.gov/mmb-stat/documents/budget/operating-budget/gov-rec/jan21/jan21-gov-rec-departmental-earnings-summary.pdf

  • MN DOJ Incarceration Records

    • https://coms.doc.state.mn.us/publicviewer/OffenderDetails/Index/110475/Search

    • https://coms.doc.state.mn.us/publicviewer/OffenderDetails/Index/246770/Search

  • Misc. Conceptual Research Articles

    • https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-american-prison-system

    • https://workdaymagazine.org/an-update-on-prison-labor-in-minnesota/

  • Currin Contact Information

    • 763-259-8686

  • Donohue Contact Information

    • donoh186@umn.edu

  • IWOC Contact Information (Boehnke)

    • tc.iwoc@gmail.com

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