IN CINEMA

THE STRIKE
Tickets: $15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price 
Thursday, October 3rd at 7PM
Presented in partnership with the International Documentary Association (IDA)

Joebill Muñoz & Lucas Guilkey, 2024, 86 min.

Amidst the redwood trees on the California-Oregon border sits one of the most infamous prisons in US history. Pelican Bay is a labyrinthine construction of solid cement blocks – a supermax prison – opened in 1989 and designed specifically for mass-scale solitary confinement. For decades, it held men alone in tiny cells indefinitely. Then one day in 2013, 30,000 prisoners went on hunger strike.

THE STRIKE weaves together, thread-by-thread, a half century of personal and criminal justice history into a single, compelling narrative around the drama of the 2013 hunger strike to end indefinite isolation. Grounded in testimonies from the hunger strikers themselves, the film details how the protest was conceived from a whisper inside the halls of Pelican Bay to a colossal feat across California prisons. With unprecedented access to state prison officials and never-before-seen footage from inside Pelican Bay, THE STRIKE reveals the panic that gripped the highest echelons of state government.

Told through the stories of the men who bore the brunt of this practice, THE STRIKE goes beyond making a case against solitary confinement; it illuminates the power of organizing and prisoner-led resistance, and in doing so, flips the true-crime genre on its head.

Post-screening discussion moderated by Johnny Perez, Director of U.S. Prisons Program! Additional panelists TBA!

About Solitary Confinement

An estimated 122,000 people are in solitary confinement in the United States today. 

In 2023, The Department of Justice began to investigate the rising population of prisoners in solitary confinement in federal prisons following an executive order signed by President Biden, but federal prisoners only make up for 145,000 of the 2 million people in US prisons, jails and detention centers, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Each state has its own prison system and the federal government has little oversight in how they operate or over prisoner’s rights. In 2024, the population of prisoners only continued to increase, including those in federal prisons, according to the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan DC think tank. 

The film focuses on California’s particular brand of solitary confinement, but the story of how prisoners came to start a movement that would radically change policy serves as an inspiration for what’s possible in other states. 

Solitary around the country: 

● In New York solitary confinement is a pressing issue, where, according to the HALT Solitary coalition, “solitary confinement is almost exclusively inflicted on Black and Brown people, who make up over 90% of all people in NYC jails.” The city council has recently passed legislation to limit the use of solitary, but Mayor Eric Adams has vetoed it. 

● In Pennsylvania in 2023, state legislators proposed a bill to stop isolating incarcerated people with diagnosed health problems and mental illness. But the practice still affects most incarcerated Pennsylvanians, prompting a recent class lawsuit against the state’s Department of Corrections. 

● In recent years, Massachusetts passed the Criminal Justice Reform Act to limit the use of solitary confinement, but the state’s prison system has been hesitant to implement reforms. Just last October, prisoners at the state’s maximum security prison in Lancaster went on a hunger strike. WGBH reports that one in five state prisoners go directly from solitary confinement to the street and many struggle to adjust. 

● Texas leads the country with an estimated over 5,000 people in solitary confinement. In 2023, The Houston Chronicle reported that incarcerated Texans recently waged a hunger strike of their own, leading Texas legislators to propose limits to the use of solitary. 

Language: States like New York have passed legislation to no longer use the word “inmate” when referring to people serving time in prison. According to a poll done by the Marshall Project, people incarcerated prefer “incarcerated person/people” or “prisoner.” 

You can learn more at Solitary Watch: Solitary Confinement in The United States: The Facts