How a Massive California Prison Hunger Strike Overhauled Solitary Confinement

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2013, inmates at Pelican Bay, a supermax California prison designed to hold large numbers of inmates in isolation, went on a hunger strike to protest indefinite solitary confinement. The hunger strike grew to include nearly 30,000 California prisoners, and led to an overhaul of prison policies. A new documentary “The Strike” chronicles the prisoner-led resistance and features interviews with men who spent decades in confinement in tiny isolated cells. We talk about the historic hunger strike and the evolution of solitary confinement policies in the state and country. Guests: JoeBill Muñoz, director and producer, The Strike; award-winning documentary filmmaker; former KQED video intern in 2018 Lucas Guilkey, director and producer, The Strike Jack Morris, former prisoner in Pelican Bay; program manager, the Re-entry Integrated Services, Engagement and Empowerment Program (RISE) at St Johns Community Health (SJCH) in Los Angeles, where he serves the formerly incarcerated community Dolores Canales, director of community outreach, The Bail Project Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, commemorating 40 years of educating people who learn differently, with programs on campus and online for both students and professionals.
0:12.0	Learn more at landmark.edu.
0:14.8	Greetings boomtown.
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0:29.6	From KQED.
0:32.6	You. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:47.8	Pelican Bay was perhaps the apex institution of mass incarceration.
0:52.4	Built to hold people that the California Department of Corrections had deemed too dangerous
0:57.0	to other incarcerated people and facility staff, it was designed to imprison huge numbers of people
1:03.0	in solitary confinement.
1:05.0	While the United Nations has recommended banning solitary for longer than 15 days, some men at Pelican Bay were held there for more than 30 years.
1:12.6	A new documentary, The Strike, tells the story of their battle
1:16.6	to hold on to their humanity and end prolonged solitary confinement.
1:20.6	We'll talk with directors and two subjects of the film right after this news.
1:36.9	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:43.9	In the 2010s, Pelican Bay became shorthand for describing the horror of California's approach to mass incarceration. Built with the
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