Bullock Correctional Facility, Alabama — On November 20, 2025, Kenneth “Swift Justice” Traywick started starving himself. Known to the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) as prisoner 00177252, the 50-year-old had recently been transferred from Limestone Correctional Facility to Bullock Correctional Facility — and quickly observed “excessive force” used by the guards, particularly against those held in the ‘mental health dorm.’ 

As documented by Alabama Political Reporter, his hunger strike began after the “prison reform activist” started speaking out; as confirmed by ADOC, an altercation occurred November 20, 2025, between Traywick and a corrections officer, “resulting in an administration of chemical spray to the face.” Traywick was “contained and escorted” to the healthcare unit, where his strike began. He was prepared; this wasn’t his first strike.

Unicorn Riot spoke with Traywick — at ADOC-enforced 15-minute intervals — about his most recent protest, and how it connects to the larger historical and current movements to improve prison conditions and reduce recidivism in Alabama and across the United States. During our conversations, he spoke at length about his fellow ‘inside’ activists Melvin Ray, Robert Earl Council (aka Kinetic Justice) and Raoul Poole, three incarcerated whistleblowers featured in the Academy Award-nominated documentary “The Alabama Solution.” The “bombshell investigation” “exposes a hidden world of violence and corruption” that Traywick says he has witnessed and experienced for the last 16 years. 

For Traywick, the goal has always been solidarity and change across institutions, though the November hunger strike was ignited by first-hand violence.

The Hunger Strike, and Ongoing Resistance

The official response to Traywick’s hunger strike may support his claims of “an ongoing pattern of violence and threats toward inmates” — along with “retaliatory practices” and “separat[ion]… from our loved ones.”

As such, Traywick’s strike came with three demands: 

• For him to be transferred to a facility where his safety could be ensured.
• For the ADOC staff to cease retaliation against “outspoken” individuals, like himself.
• For there to be a full investigation “into officers Glover and Bowen, as well as any other officer accused of excessive force or retaliatory discipline.”

Instead, Traywick told us, he was held “naked in a cell with no possessions or bedding,” received two additional disciplinary reports and a citation, and lost access to all communication methods and even ways of telling time. 

Traywick has a litany of pre-existing conditions, including cardiac, kidney and liver issues, joint deterioration and prolonged malnutrition, but his wife was left to wonder about his health conditions, both during and after the strike. Although ADOC officials claimed they received no requests for information or welfare checks from Traywick’s wife, she provided Unicorn Riot with numerous audio recordings of her phone calls with ADOC in which staff members refuse to perform a requested welfare check, decline to share any information on Traywick’s condition, and/or tell her to call another time.

During the strike, Traywick’s wife requested information on his vital signs, the state of his ongoing monitoring, the frequency of welfare checks, the concerns of medical staff, and the “plan for the reintroduction of nutrition in a safe manner to prevent fatal conditions,” including refeeding syndrome. 

According to a statement from Unheard Voices of the Concrete Jungle (UVCJ), however, ADOC merely advised Traywick “to avoid certain items” from the mess hall and commissary, without medical explanation, and provided no substitutions. As Traywick reiterated in our conversations, he was never placed on a therapeutic diet, received no recovery plan, and experienced only sporadic monitoring. He ended his hunger strike when he started urinating blood. 

But Traywick hasn’t ended the advocacy that prompted the incident that inspired his hunger strike in the first place. For Traywick, founder UVCJ, taking on injustices in the justice system is nothing new.

A History of Protest

In 2019, as reported by Perilous Chronicle, Traywick was the first of five men incarcerated at Limestone to go on hunger strike. He and his co-organizers aimed to stop a $1 billion prison construction plan and demand the US Department of Justice take action against the state of Alabama for documented violations of the Eighth Amendment. Responding to a call from the Free Alabama Movement, Traywick maintained his strike for two weeks, highlighting the institution’s “rampant violence, dangerous conditions, and absence of programming and services.”

Importantly, Traywick told Unicorn Riot, the mobilization was designed to show the world “what these prisoners experience and let the prisoners know that [people] are fighting for them from the outside, while they fight for their rights inside.”

An abolitionist with the long-term goal of replacing prisons with non-carceral institutions, Traywick has focused on in-prison reforms that “work to reduce the power of the system” and “reduce recidivism.” Collaborating with activists outside the prison walls, he says, ensures “the health and safety of incarcerated people are not forgotten” in the movement to close — and halt new construction of — prisons, jails and cop cities.

In 2016, Traywick worked with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS) and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) to organize nationwide prison strikes. On the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riot, September 9, 2016, tens of thousands of incarcerated people in dozens of prisons across 22 states joined the general strike to end prison slavery. 

Incarcerated workers earn an average of $0.86 per day, making products for megacorps like Target and Walmart, as reported by Vera Institute, The Marshall Project and countless other research and media organizations. The Abolish Slavery National Network created the #EndTheException campaign to change the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlaws slavery “except as a punishment for crime.”

To coordinate the nationwide strikes, JLS and IWOC helped connect incarcerated people using family prison visits and “illicit calls between inmates at different prisons using smuggled cellphones.” 

This type of “ingenuity,” Traywick told us, is commonplace behind the walls, where incarcerated people are forced to find creative ways to improve health and safety, as well as communication inside and out. The Atlantic has reported on it. Formerly incarcerated people have confirmed it. And Traywick demonstrates it through his ability to ensure his — and others’ — voices are heard.

The JLS and IWOC-led 2016 strike helped inspire a national movement and annual prison strikes, including a 2018 strike that produced demands including repealing sentencing guidelines and improving the conditions in prisons. Four years later, Traywick helped lead an historic three-week long work stoppage in Alabama prisons, with legislative demands. 

Following his November 2025 hunger strike, Traywick has been active in proposing legislative changes regarding transparency in correctional institutions, including the use of body cameras for officers.

About the author: Phil Mandelbaum is an award-winning journalist, a co-creator of the content services division of The Associated Press, a nonprofit and political strategist, and an organizer and artist, also known as awkword.

Cover image contributed by Phil Mandelbaum.

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Further coverage involving Kenneth ‘Swift Justice’ Traywick:

Alabama Prisoners Explain Why They’re Striking

Protesters Converge on State Capitol in Solidarity with Alabama Prison Strike

Alabama Prison Strike on Hold After 3 Weeks

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