By repurposing food as an entryway to discussing politics and prison conditions, the Angola Three followed the blueprint of the Black Panther Party whereby “food served a double purpose, providing sustenance but also functioning as an organizing tool.” Woodfox understood that access to better food was a common desire among prisoners. In turn, he utilized that desire as an opportunity to discuss the links between food and related systems of oppression, such as poverty and hunger. This was an avenue to discuss the teachings of the Black Panther Party and build solidarity between incarcerated people at Angola. Throughout his incarceration, Woodfox used food and sites of food production to encourage collective resistance. During his time working in the kitchen, he encouraged workers to petition the warden to reduce their sixteen-hour workdays. Woodfox told his fellow prisoners that the long work hours in the kitchen, paid at mere cents an hour, were “slave labor.” He also made conscious efforts to disrupt racial segregation by discussing with white kitchen workers the mistreatment of all prisoners at Angola.10
Woodfox’s interracial outreach efforts were not unique. On the streets, the Black Panther Party made alliance with other racial and ethnic groups, including those represented in the United Farm Workers. In prisons, groups such as the Nation of Islam (NOI) worked with Latinx and white prisoners to demand change. Through methods such as hunger strikes, legal action, and sit-ins, NOI members challenged poor food and beatings of prisoners by correctional officers, and secured important legal victories that expanded constitutional rights for prisoners.11
When Woodfox was not engaging in his assigned duties, he made a commitment to furthering the anticapitalist teachings of the Panthers that he had learned while incarcerated at the Tombs. From the party, “I learned that the best way to reach each man on the yard was at his own level of consciousness. I started to talk a lot about the food and how bad it was.” Long before Woodfox’s incarceration, however, prisoners at Angola had voiced opposition to the food quality there, describing it as “bad—hardly fit for a dog.” Food was an ongoing site of contestation at Angola, one that could serve as an effective site for unifying people based on a common grievance. One way that the Angola Three unified prisoners was by staging hunger strikes.12
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The Angola Three initiated a forty-five-day hunger strike that forced the prison administrators to structurally alter cells. “A hunger strike is probably the most effective form of protest in prison, but they’re the most brutal because you’re attacking yourself,” Woodfox recalled. Prisoners sought to have food slots cut into the cell bars to improve hygienic conditions and alleviate the physical and emotional degradation of receiving their food trays below dirty cell bars. The strike did not end until prison officials guaranteed that they would cut slots into cell bars. Woodfox and King initiated the strike because “they’re sliding the food across the dirt to us like we’re dogs.” The installation of food slots meant that prisoners would no longer have to consume food contaminated with debris and bacteria. Yet, this change did not come to Closed Cell Restriction for eighteen months.13
During this time, prisoners in that area continued to eat their food in a modified fashion, imagining solutions to maintain their standard of eating. Some designed slings in their cell bars to hold their food trays while they ate. Others held the tray with one hand and fed themselves with the other. In the end, the strike led to slots cut into cells throughout all of the prison, and the entire population benefited from the sacrifices of the strikers. Their practice of modifying eating practices even while waiting for the guaranteed changes demonstrates how even under constant surveillance and control by carceral regimes, incarcerated people assert their autonomy in everyday life.14
After the strike, prison guards and imprisoned workers at Angola delivered food to prisoners through specialized food slots. Though they put their health on the line during the hunger strike, food was not only significant for nutritional purposes but building community among incarcerated people. Prisoners on other Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) tiers, an extended lockdown area of the prison with nine-by-six-foot cells where the Angola Three were confined, signed a letter supporting the strike. Everyone in CCR agreed to participate. In consulting others before initiating a hunger strike and turning it into collective resistance, prisoners increased the severity and urgency of the strike.15
This hunger strike at Angola was so successful that it inadvertently resulted in the prison offering foods (such as fried chicken) that were otherwise deemed contraband to motivate strikers to eat. Wilbert Rideau, former editor of the prison-based newspaper the Angolite, detailed in his memoir that food was the most common form of contraband. Precisely because food was vital to material being and because securing the food prisoners desired gave them some measure of control over their lives, food served as a critical site of prisoners’ resistance. Where unseasoned spinach and boiled potatoes were common, prisoners with money could secure contraband such as bacon and pastries, which may have been brought into the prison by employees with access to outside food. The Department of Corrections used sought-after foods to entice prisoners to end the forty-five-day hunger strike in which Woodfox participated.16
During this strike, the most determined strikers did not eat for forty-five days. Woodfox himself skipped the first meal after the strike, breakfast, because he did not enjoy eating oatmeal. The Department of Corrections countered by going as far as offering what under usual circumstances was considered an illicit market food, fried chicken, to hunger strikers. This was a common practice that prison officials used to encourage people to eat. Prison officials also attempted, unsuccessfully, to weaken the strikers by informing them when a person agreed to eat. These tactics were unsuccessful in terminating the strike. While other tiers came off the strike before prison officials met their demand, tier A (where Woodfox and King resided) and tier D (where Wallace lived) continued to strike. The lengthier strike on the A and D tiers could be attributed to the strong influence of the Angola Three, who made conscious efforts to inspire and politicize those in their proximity.17