“The Strike” documentary on PBS shows the fight to end solitary confinement in California prisons

“The Strike (on the PBS app and PBS YouTube channel), directed by JoeBill Muñoz and Lucas Guilkey, is on its surface a documentary about the practice of solitary confinement in America. It centers on a series of hunger strikes organized by incarcerated men at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, beginning in 2011, in protest of conditions in highest-security prisons. This included protracted periods of isolation for individuals suspected of being in gangs, during which, inmates said, they were given inadequate food, denied meaningful contact with the outside world and held for periods that could last for decades. (Under the ‘Mandela Rules,’ the U.N.’s standard for solitary confinement is 15 days; more time is regarded as a form of torture.)

“The inmates also objected to a policy requiring them to ‘debrief’ — that is, to provide information about gangs to the authorities — in order to be released from solitary. Some of the formerly incarcerated in the film say they were identified as gang members simply because of the materials they read, or because of their race, without proof. And once you were in solitary, it was almost impossible to get out.

“The Strike focuses on a number of former inmates who spent prolonged periods in solitary and participated in the 2011 hunger strikes. Two years later, with little to no change occurring, inmates called for another strike — and at the start, nearly 29,000 inmates refused food, across two-thirds of the 33 California prisons and four private out-of-state prisons holding California inmates. The 2013 strike lasted for two months, and by the end 100 prisoners were still refusing food.

“In 2013, nearly 4,000 [people in California prisons] in long-term solitary confinement (for decades, in some cases) went on what would become a months-long hunger strike. The collective action was designed to get the attention of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and protest the conditions of those in extended solitary confinement. At the negotiating table, the corrections department was met by a united front of [incarcerated people] who, understanding the injustice of their dire circumstances, decided they would try to change the very policies that had left them ‘buried’ in concrete cells.”

Read this free gift article at NYTimes.com.