♪ ♪ Jack: Through life we develop memories.

About our childhood.

About our friendships.

About our family.

Imagine reaching a point... where your memories start to fade.

♪ And you have no way of creating new ones.

♪ [Door clanging] ♪ [Handcuffs locking and doors opening] ♪ ♪ Deukmejian: Ladies and gentlemen, I am greatly pleased to dedicate this newest and most modern correctional facility, Pelican Bay State Prison.

[Applause] Don Novey: This is the finest prison, I think, ever built in the world.

♪ Deukmejian: California now possesses a state-of-the-art prison that is serving as a model throughout the nation.

♪ Jack: I had resigned myself to death in a windowless concrete box.

♪ How do you fight that?

♪ [Door opening] Faruq: The first thing you notice about Pelican Bay?

It's so quiet.

It's quiet.

And then the loneliness.

Man.

Man, that loneliness will kill you.

That thing'll wrap around you like a long blanket, man, and you just be... you be dealing with it.

You be hoping maybe you get a letter or something.

You ain't going to get no letter.

You know, you just be... You just be in there, alone.

Paul: My name is Paul Redd.

I spent 25 years in Pelican Bay solitary confinement.

Michael: My name is Michael Saavedra and I spent close to 20 years in solitary confinement.

Ernesto: My name is Jorge Ernesto Lira.

Faruq: I would prefer to be called Faruq.

Dadisi: I go by the name of Dadisi and the word "dadisi" means inquisitive.

♪ Faruq: I was in the SHU for 19 and a half years.

Ernesto: I spent 9 and a half years right there in the hole.

Dadisi: Now, I did 44 years in prison, 31 of them I did within solitary confinement.

Michael: It's like a prison within a prison.

But it's more of an underground prison.

Ernesto: You got a gunner on top with a rifle, a mini 14 just following you.

You start thinking about where in the hell am I at?

♪ Faruq: It's a mental battle.

Very intense mental battle.

♪ My mom was about 18 or 19 years old right there.

[Background voices] My name is Jack Morris and I was in solitary confinement for 30 plus years.

I've been here now with my mom two years and I stare at the world as it drives past my mom's balcony.

And that's part of my pleasures now.

All of us that were in the Security Housing Unit, we grew up together from juvenile halls... and into the prison system.

♪ Over the years, all of us were placed in solitary confinement.

And there we stayed for decades.

[Honks] Michael: My name is Michael Montgomery.

I'm a reporter with the Center for Investigative Reporting and Reveal.

I started reporting on prisons, this was almost 20 years ago.

And I became very interested in the conditions at Pelican Bay and what men needed to do to sustain themselves in this very long-term isolation.

Pelican Bay State Prison is California's highest security lockup.

And it was essentially designed to house what the prison system has determined as the most dangerous inmates.

Bob: When I was a warden in Pelican Bay, the department policy was, "We're gonna give you the worst of the worst."

The determination was made to identify prison gang members and get them off the general population through a validation process because they're a danger to the safety of others and the security of the institution, so they have to be isolated.

We had an intelligence unit that basically did all of the validations.

Validating prison gang members was pretty... gathering the evidence was pretty easy.

There were fixed terms and there were indeterminate terms.

Possession of a weapon or stabbing another inmate, they would get a fixed term, you know, maybe 6 months, 9 months, 18 months.

And the indeterminate term was saved for the prison gang members, because our policy said, if you're identified as a prison gang member, you're validated as a prison gang member, you pose a threat to the security of the institution.

♪ It could have been your correspondence was read and gang investigators felt that that was gang related.

So that would be one point.

We search your cell and we found drawings that indicated that you were a gang member.

So now you haven't committed an overt act yet, but we have 3 pieces of evidence that we identify you as a gang member.

I ain't no gangster, you know?

I'm just in prison doing my time.

Why you guys gonna throw me in the hole and say I'm a gangster?

Well, a gang validation, that's the worst thing you can get in prison.

'Cause you ain't getting out of the hole.

Being identified as a gang member or associate, even if you weren't, it had lasting impact.

It didn't just put you in the SHU, it made it harder for you to get parole.

And this is what was kind of evil about Pelican Bay.

Once you got placed in the SHU, you couldn't get out.

In 2012, there were about 3,800 people serving indefinite terms of solitary confinement in California.

♪ So it wasn't a complicated process at all and we validated a lot of people very, very quickly.

[Honks] Dolores: When I first started organizing around the use of solitary confinement, I carried around a little folder everywhere with me.

So, like, if I'd be in line at the grocery store, if I'd be in line at the bank, I would turn to the person and say, "Do you know that we use solitary confinement "in the state of California?".

They were like, "We don't do that to people in America."

And then it... and then I would even get, "Certainly not in California."

You know?

And when they tried to say it didn't exist, I had my 8x10 pictures to show that it did.

♪ When I first started visiting Johnny in Pelican Bay, I had not seen my son in 17 years.

♪ Having this solitary confinement unit all the way up north at the border of California and Oregon.

Most folks are from Los Angeles or down south.

It's very difficult for family members to be able to afford to travel all the way up there to see you.

And then it's only for an hour behind glass.

Dolores: You sit in a little booth.

It has a phone and a glass.

There's no human contact at all.

The only human contact that they have in there is by the guard holding their arm and escorting them out.

♪ [Door locking] ♪ Jack: When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I swing my legs over the bed and I put on my shoes.

You wash your face, put water in your hair, brush your teeth.

And I'd clean the floor.

I worked out to burn time.

Ernesto: I wake up in the morning, I roll up my mattress.

Do your one-handed burpees, 2000 push-ups.

What becomes time is delivery of the meals.

Eating and sleeping and eating and sleeping and using the bathroom and eating and sleeping.

There were times that I would lay there on my bunk for days and weeks at a time doing nothing, just staring at the TV, not even seeing it.

[TV in the background] By 9 o'clock, "Democracy Now" would come on the radio and I sit there and I get an hour with Amy Goodman.

I used to watch news religiously to see what's going around the world.

You get bored of TV, you know what I mean?

I mean, you just can watch so much "Seinfeld".

I like to play chess because I felt chess was a mind game.

♪ Jack: I started drawing to burn time.

Michael: You know, I would get very deeply involved in my drawing, in my artwork.

I could get lost for days in my artwork.

They push a button, you come out your cell, and you go to your yard.

You go to yard for 90 minutes.

And with the walls, all surrounding concrete walls, maybe about 30 feet high.

So you're in a box, a concrete box.

And that's your yard activity.

Ernesto: I exercised till my palms used to bleed sometimes on the yard just to feel, you know, feel something.

Michael: When you sign up for the library, it's one of the few ways to get out of your cell and go see other human beings and be able to read books and just get out of that cell, right?

And I just started reading case law, reading case law, then, before you know it, oh, your one hour of library time for the month is up.

Let's go.

You wouldn't get a letter from your... your kids or from your lady or from your mom for about a month, two months.

So time will pass by.

You're waiting for the letters that you sent out to be answered.

Jack: I used to think about my loved ones every single day.

But, as time goes by, you know, weeks, months, years, decades, it starts to have an impact on you.

You wash your face, brush your teeth, clean the floor, two, three times.

Ernesto: Roll up my mattress.

2000 push ups.

Dadisi: Pace in a cell, all day.

Jack: Eating and sleeping.

Faruq: "Democracy Now" would come on the radio.

[TV on the background] Jack: You wash your face, clean the floor.

Michael: Get lost for days in my artwork.

Ernesto: You go to yard for 90 minutes.

Jack: Eating and sleeping and using the bathroom.

Dadisi: I like to play chess.

Jack: Think about my loved ones.

Reading case law, reading case law.

Ernesto: Roll up my mattress.

Dadisi: Pace in a cell.

Faruq: "Democracy Now."

Jack: Eating and sleeping.

Michael: Get lost for days.

Jack: Clean the floor.

Ernesto: For 90 minutes.

Dadisi: Concrete box.

Jack: Clean the floor.

Ernesto: 2000 push ups.

Jack: Memories fade.

You're trying to tell your mind you're not losing your mind, when your mind is telling you you're losing your mind.

And your world shrinks.

♪ ♪ [Birds chirping] They believed, "OK, now we've got these people "in here.

"It's going to be easier for us to control them."

Initially, that was the case.

But we're human beings.

And human beings need interaction with other human beings.

I used to go out to the yard and talk to a dude on the drain.

You know, you find a spot in the door, put your ear up there, and you can actually have a conversation.

You know?

You might get a pass to go to the legal library.

While you're in the legal library, somebody from another building might slip you a message.

So, when you see that, you see people putting themselves in jeopardy like that, that feeds you, that feeds that resistance, man.

You know?

Yeah.

That feeds it.

♪ Jack: Over the years, a dialogue started to develop.

♪ We all began to realize that our existence was being suppressed by the same person.

♪ So then you started having people like, "Man, we need to do something to make a change."

Folks inside started thinking about ways to protest.

Jack: Somebody started reading about Bobby Sands and the Irish hunger strikers that took place in the early 80s.

And this understanding started to permeate the walls of Pelican Bay.

Anchor: His hunger strike was an index of the depth of feeling among the province's Catholic population for the struggle of the IRA prisoners in Belfast Maze prison has become a symbol of anger for many of Northern Ireland's half million Catholics.

They're used to punitive measures to stop ...

But you can't force a person to eat.

There was so much opposition.

Nobody thought a hunger strike would work.

I thought it was a good idea, but I didn't know...

I didn't think it was going to be effective.

You know?

Because...

Us in the SHU starving ourselves is no big thing because they brought us there to get rid of us anyway.

I'm already dying inside of the SHU, so what do you have to lose?

Let's do a non-violent act.

Let's... let's do a hunger strike.

It was decided, the day was decided, the word was spread.

"Hey, Faruq, come here, man.

Let me tell you this."

So I get up on the vent.

Jack: We would empty out the water from the toilet and yell down into the commode and the sound would travel through the pipe system.

Michael: Men in the Security Housing Unit had very little contact with the outside world at all.

But one thing they did have is the mail.

And mailing letters was critical to how they organized themselves.

♪ Michael: People started really talking about it more and more and spreading the word.

Jack: It took years of people talking.

♪ [Radio on] Dolores: They couldn't get a lot of radio stations or even a lot of TV channels to know anything that was going on.

But there was a radio station, and it was Sister Soul, KHSU.

And they could hear her station inside.

She often had me on the show to convey communication inside so they could know what was being, you know, organized.

Michael: So word is spread, you know, whether it be through the inside through various ways of communication or through the outside or both.

[Crickets chirping] Woman: That was a prisoner held in a Security Housing Unit at... ♪ Jack: We're into the fourth day of the hunger strike.

It's the 4th of July.

And it's dinner time.

And then they brought in the food carts.

And it was stacked high with watermelon, chocolate milk, ice cream.

And the guard rolled it in and they said, "All you guys that are on the hunger strike, "if you want to get off, let me know.

"We can give you as much food as you want right here.

"You can have all this food you want."

But there wasn't a single taker.

♪ ♪ We collectively struggled together and we started to realize that, "Hey, your life is no different than mine.

"Uh, you've... lived the same life "I've lived in a different area, different players, "but it's basically the same thing I've lived."

I grew up in the city of Norwalk.

It was suburbs.

I did not see it develop because, when I went to prison, it was still strawberry fields and cow... and cow pastures.

My father is white, he's from West Virginia.

He was born out in the mountains.

He was 17 years old when he enrolled into the military and that was his out of poverty at that time.

My mother was out working and earning a living and extra money to bring into the home.

In those days it was difficult for a Mexican woman to get any types of jobs other than field work.

I grew up with a group of boys that I hung around with daily.

The people I was running around with, most of us were poor.

And it was a revolving joke amongst all of us.

"You're just some bum, poor kid, you can't afford this."

That's how we played with each other.

You push back harder than you were being pushed against.

I didn't realize that then, but this was an indoctrination into hardening oneself in order to survive in our environment.

I started drinking when I was 12 years old.

I don't know how that happened, how that started, you know, other than we were all collectively doing it and encouraging each other.

It's only upon reflection that I realized, every time I was arrested, I was under the influence.

[Sighs] I was in an alcoholic blackout state.

I was functioning with a weapon on me and I wasn't even aware of what was going on no more.

And this guy stepped on somebody else that was there's foot and that guy told him, "No, ..., step's on my foot."

And he pulled his knife out and he stabbed him.

And, at that point, I ran around and I grabbed him and threw him down to the ground and stabbed him several more times.

His name was Julian Eseña.

Every day I say his name.

I've had nightmares about him.

And I could feel the fear, the sorrow, the pain, the regret.

I could feel him in my soul.

♪ As a result of the death of Julian, I was tried and convicted and sent to San Quentin State Prison in 1979.

[Incarcerated people murmuring and whistling] They walked me through the door, they opened it up, I stepped up and they closed the door behind me, and I found myself standing on the upper yard with about 2,000 other men as they lined up for chow.

And I was 18 years old.

♪ [Applause] Duekmejian: In 1983, California had just 12 state prisons to house dangerous criminals.

Since then, we have built 14 new prison facilities and that has enabled us to remove an additional 52,000 convicted felons from our neighborhoods and send them to state prison.

[Applause] John: John Campbell, I'm retired from the California Department of Corrections and, at one time, I was the Chief of Design and Security for planning the construction of the new prisons.

The department had people in headquarters that did population projections and they would look at what was coming because of legislation or the laws on the books.

Based on what was happening, they're going, "There's a tsunami coming here."

[Sirens wailing] Shane: Through the 1980s and the 1990s, we saw a massive boom in the population of our prison system.

Deukmejian: We do have a situation where we have overcrowded prisons right now, but personally I'm very pleased that we've got as many people in the state prison system as we do.

Jack: The War Against Drugs brought an explosion of incarceration into the institutions.

You're talking about people bumping into each other's shoulders more often.

You're talking about people stepping on people's feet.

It became much more volatile.

A much more volatile situation.

Michael: Such a small thing as a little fist fight can ignite a whole racial riot.

Paul: It was hard to try to diffuse a lot of that stuff.

There was no unity amongst the other races.

People had unity, but they had unity within their own groups.

Michael: California is one of the few states that segregates its prisoners by race.

The first thing they ask you when you come off the bus from the county jail is, who do you run with?

Okay, you're a Mexican.

You're White or you're Black, Who do you run with, Crip or Blood?

Jack: You learn that in order to survive you yourself then have to become predatorial.

And it's a vicious cycle.

Michael: Prisons really weren't built to accommodate this many people.

It was almost a war zone, really.

And that led some people to say, "Hey, we've gotta get a lid on this violence.

"How can we do that?"

Parry: As the violence inside the prisons increased, we started this massive validation system.

You didn't necessarily have to stab somebody to become validated.

We can put you in a Security Housing Unit just because you've been identified as a prison gang member.

[Jiggling chains] Shane Bauer: The evidence used to put people in solitary sort of depended on their race, because prison gangs are racially based.

Black prisoners who are politicized, get kind of swept up.

Literature about the Black Panthers or about what they call Afrocentric ideology, could be evidence that a person is connected to a prison gang.

George Jackson: Of course, here in prison, we see the repression, the exploitation, the victimization of lower class peoples.

Shane Bauer: For Latino prisoners, it could be Aztec history for example or symbolism of the United Farm Workers.

Michael: I had a drawing of an Aztec warrior and they said this was a symbol of a prison gang.

Parry: So we decided what we're going to do is build these Security Housing Units and isolate these people.

John Campbell: So they said, "OK, let's build "a true maximum security prison.

[explosion] "Let's build one."

♪ Deukmejian: I am greatly pleased to join with all of you as we dedicate this newest and most modern correctional facility, Pelican Bay State Prison.

Pastor: Let's pray.

Dear God, we have gathered today to dedicate this institution.

Give wisdom to those who have been chosen to lead.

Impart our political leaders the courage to do right.

Grant strength to those who have been given the responsibility to control the lives of so many.

And lastly, help the inmate to understand that this prison is the result of love for humanity, not as the result of anger and fear.

John Campbell: The big thing about Pelican Bay was the design and what it allowed us to do because of this T-design.

There's an officer in a control booth that controls everything.

You push a button and he can let the individuals out of their cells, they can go to the yard, he can let them into the showers.

The days of officers running around with big sets of jail keys, those days are gone.

Deukmejian: California now possesses a state of the art prison that is serving as a model throughout the nation.

♪ [laughter] ♪ [Prison door opens] ♪ Parry: For the next 15 years, I spent a lot of time going around prisons across the country.

And they were shocked that we were still holding people in SHU for so long.

It made me look at the system, and what we were doing inside the SHU program.

So I thought to myself, you know, "We can do better".

I wrote a position paper or a white paper and I said, "We should change how people get into SHU.

"It shouldn't be label-based."

I felt that to get into SHU, you should have at least one overt act.

Well, the department, uh, looked at it and did nothing about it.

OK. And did that surprise me?

No.

It probably ended up on a shelf someplace where most reports end up.

But you have to understand large agencies, whether they're correctional agencies or police agencies or... we all have our own culture.

And CDC had a culture for a long time that this is, this is the way we're going to do business.

This is how we do business.

So don't try to rock the boat too much.

Which led to people being in there 20, 30 years.

[Birds chirping] Juan Gonzalez: Inmates in at least 11 prisons across the state's troubled prison system have been on hunger strike for almost 2 weeks protesting what some mental health experts say is tantamount to torture.

Michael: I got a call from a prison official in Sacramento who was sympathetic to the idea that there needed to be reforms.

And this person gave me this video that the department had recorded of these conversations with four of the hunger strike leaders, from different races, from different ethnicities.

These are men who, in the eyes of the prison system, would never come together to do anything.

These are the men who are always trying to kill each other and all of a sudden, they're united.

Jack: We're talking about men who generationally have disliked each other, not because they knew each other, but because of the past.

There was a non hostility pact signed.

That meant everybody that the department of Corrections said were warring factions of gangs, collectively got together and they drafted a document that said, "Hey, we are not fighting against each other, "we're not gonna fight against each other."

Michael: And that's a show of force, an expression of force that I don't think the department of corrections was prepared for.

Kernan: What happened with you guys that caused you to take the position you guys took?

Todd: We feel like we have no choice because we all know, we're dead already.

We're dead here.

None of us are going nowhere.

So what do we have to lose?

Michael: On the other side of the table you have Scott Kernan, who's flown in from Sacramento.

Scott Kernan was the number two in the department of corrections.

He had been a prison guard, he had risen up the ranks.

He had been a warden.

His mother had actually been a warden and he spent some of his youth growing up on the grounds of San Quentin.

♪ Kernan: The secretary of the department asked me to go up there and meet with the inmates directly and see if I could rectify the situation and get the inmates to stop the hunger strike.

Jack: The collective let the Department of Corrections know that we had 5 Core Demands.

When you're in the SHU, those are non-contact visits.

Paul: We constantly being what they call "group punishment."

Michael: They give you a very minimal amount of food.

Debriefing is a process that CDCR uses to extract information from people and then use against other people.

So it's basically a form of turning a prisoner into an informant.

So we're going to send you to solitary confinement until you either debrief or you die.

And then we wanted to end solitary confinement so that our people, you know, after us, don't have to go through what we went through.

Jack: There were also supplemental and smaller demands.

Simple things.

Kernan: They wanted something tangible to provide to the other inmates.

So I'm sure they had some of their internal pressures that they had to deal with.

We were willing to consider anything.

We just knew that we weren't gonna change the SHU validation process overnight.

Broll: So we focused on some of the smaller issues, things like handballs, beanies and colored pencils and stuff like that.

And we told them we will continue to work on reforming the SHU system.

That ended the hunger strike.

♪ ♪ I left with the feeling that we absolutely adhered to what we said we were going to do.

They gave you a beanie cap and a handball.

That's an insult.

We doing a hunger strike for human decency, for, you know, basic... basic rights and you want to give us a handball and a beanie cap?

♪ ♪ Ammiano: Good afternoon and welcome to the Assembly Committee on Public Safety, and our policy review of the California Dept of Corrections and Rehabilitations Secure Housing Unit, otherwise known as SHU.

The purpose of this hearing is to help educate us as Assembly members on the issues surrounding SHU at our prisons.

Kernan: The legislature conducted hearings related to the hunger strikes of which the department had to go testify.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Mr. Scott Kernan, Under Secretary of Operations.

Kernan: That was pretty challenging.

It was not always the most friendly thing going over to the legislature and testifying on corrections issues.

Dolores: I remember, you know, the family members really feeling as if our legislators were gonna step in and help us, that finally something was gonna get done.

Kernan: Thank you, Mr.

Chair and members for having us.

The SHU was created in response to a serious security threat of gangs in our system.

The department's gang policy is intended to protect the safety of the inmates that we're charged with, our staff, and the public.

And I think that we got it right.

I think the 3,000 inmates or so that are in SHUs throughout our system are the ones that are perpetuating the gangs, they're the generals, they're the ones that are discipling inmates who don't stab staff or inmates on sight.

At the hearing, I remember the chamber being filled with the advocates and family members of the inmates.

So it's a show, it was a show.

And he was certainly playing to the audience that happened to be in the room.

Ammiano: You have your perspective, you have a lot of experience under your belt, but there's still something wrong.

But, you know, we're trying to come up with something that would be impartial and would meet some of these, uh, would meet some of the reasons, as I see it for, for that hunger strike.

Kernan: I guess I'll tell you what I told the inmates, is that we are gonna continue to make our, our policy we're gonna make it as fair as we possibly can.

Holly Mitchell: Uh, Mr. Kernan, I just want to follow up on a couple of the questions.

Who makes the decision in terms of how long a gang validated inmate stays in the SHU?

Clearly if I am in the SHU, I am gang validated which I certainly could be based on your three point standards, you identified, which probably makes me hypersensitive to the issue.

[laughs] Who makes the decision about how long I stay there?

Kernan: The department does based upon your threat to public... you know, to the safety-- Holly Mitchell: And what's the kind of checks and balances system?

Is it one individual in the department who decides I am a threat to myself and society and I should stay there for 30 years plus?

Is it a...?

Kernan: No, the prison staff develop the process and it comes up through a process including the chief of our Office of Correctional Safety who review and make sure that it meets that standard.

Holly Mitchell: So that's amazing, Mr.

Chair.

I think that those individuals have greater power than members of the bench who are governed by decisions we make in this body every day in terms of the length of sentences they can issue a person to be incarcerated and yet we have this administrative only kind of process that decides how long someone can stay in the SHU.

Thank you for very much, I appreciate your response.

Ammiano: Thank you, Ms. Skinner.

♪ Belva Davis: Good evening, I'm Belva Davis and welcome to "This Week in Northern California."

Michael: When the hunger strike was over in July, the inmates say they have been given an agreement to have winter caps, calendars, maybe one photo a year for their families, possibly telephone calls.

It's a little unclear what was really agreed to and we're waiting to get a little more clarity on that.

♪ Kernan: As I recall, we told them we would get a warden's advisory group together and we would start working fervently on these policies.

And then I will say, I retired at the end of 2011.

You know, I was...

I had hit retirement age and had certainly worked hard for a long time and felt like that was the best thing for me personally.

I hope I was helpful.

♪ The Department of Corrections had a revolving door of directors, acting directors, interim directors.

I worked for seven directors in six years.

So there was no consistency to policy making, to policy changing.

Any major change while I was there was litigation driven, meaning lawsuits forced us to take a look at the policy.

♪ ♪ Gabriel: I take full responsibility for my crimes, you know, even though I disagree with the sentence I received, it was the law.

I understand that.

Jeffrey: I've been subjected to long term sensory deprivation.

I've been removed from nature and life.

[Buzzing sound] Blocking certain things out becomes like a wrestling match in my head.

So it's like, pretty much, in my mind I try to fight it, the fact of, I might have to die here.

How do I prepare for that?

♪ ♪ [Traffic sound] Dolores: OK...

The lawsuit had been going on for years and you know, when comes the realization of CDC has no intention of ending this policy or ending these practices.

Us family members were like desperately trying to figure out what can we do?

I was wondering if when you come today, if you'd be willing to speak for, you know, just for like a minute.

Man: Most definitely, yeah.

Dolores: And I would get on the phone and we would literally plan events like at a moment's notice.

Like, we should go to Sacramento.

You know, just in desperation that somebody had to do something.

My name is Dolores Canales and my life changed on July 1, 2011 when the Pelican Bay prisoners began a hunger strike that spread across the state of California, to bring awareness to their conditions of confinement.

And before July 1 2011, I didn't give it a second thought.

I knew my son had already been a decade in solitary confinement.

I knew this and I didn't give it a second thought.

Now I cannot stop thinking about it.

And the next time there will be more of us out here because you will get other people involved.

Unity inside!

Woman: Hi, I recognize you.

You've been at our previous hearings.

Dolores: Yes.

Ammiano: We're going to move into our second panel.

And this is the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

We're going to have Mr. Michael Stainer, Deputy Director and Kelly Harrington, Associate Director.

Welcome, gentleman.

Stainer: Over the past 18 months, as a result of the commitments made as the conclusion of the July 2011 hunger strike, CDCR has made several steps to enhance delivery of services to all SHU offenders.

By May of this year we anticipate that exercise equipment will be installed in all of the small management yards, as well as phones will be available for annual phone calls for all inmates housed within the SHU facilities.

Ammiano: Aren't you using the same exact kinds of evidence or information to make a finding about being a gang member or not, you know, the books, the tattoos, etc?

Stainer: Throughout history of the process, these are the indicative items, the different types of identification that have been utilized by us as well as other agencies to identify affiliates of security threat groups.

Ammiano: You are giving me the impression that this is good, this is improvement and this is different and then from the outside, some of this seems the same to me.

Jack: In a two year period of time, we were deceived in regards to having the 5 Core Demands met.

So when they didn't adhere to their promises, another hunger strike was called.

♪ But it was going to be difficult because this time they were talking about not stopping at all.

Not giving up, not listening to the Department of Corrections.

We're gonna keep going until we start dying.

♪ And people were preparing for it, eating additional food, bulking up, just to put body weight on, however you can.

Michael: We can go on this hunger strike by ourselves, but if we don't have everybody joining us, we're not going to be very strong and we probably will be broken.

Dolores: My son wrote a letter and he said that they were gonna all be going on a hunger strike together.

Then I posted on social media that they were gonna be organizing around the hunger strikes.

Now, all these family groups are now organizing and raising up.

Protesting families: Meet the 5 demands!

Meet the 5 demands!

Dolores: We were wearing orange to try to get media attention and so that everyone could hear about it and so they in there could see what was going on.

♪ ♪ Sista Soul: This is KHSR 91.9 Crescent City.

I just want the guys up in Pelican Bay State Prison to know you are not out of sight, out of mind.

[Keys jingling] ♪ Michael: People are refusing, and more people start refusing.

And then on the main lines, people didn't even come out of their cells.

They open the "yard, yard" and what the [...]?

♪ Jack: A friend of mine yelled up to me and he says, "Hey, Jack, turn on the news."

And I'm looking at it, and then I see the ticker tape.

30,000 inmates spread across more than half of California state prisons refused to eat their breakfast.

30,000 California prisoners on hunger strike.

Nowhere in the history of the United States had this ever taken place.

Michael: People that weren't even in the SHU, people that were in other prisons hundreds of miles away also joined in on that exact time and date.

Which was beautiful.

Dadisi: Even though a lot of us was older, there was a lot of youngsters in that hunger strike.

When I say youngsters like 20, 30 years old.

And to see how we empowered them youngsters empowered me even more.

Because they was some of the people that we was fighting for.

That younger generation that was destined to replace us in them SHUs.

♪ Parry: It caught on like wildfire.

CDCR's in some serious trouble here.

They better address these issues.

News anchor: Correction spokeswoman Terry Thornton downplayed the situation.

She says hunger a strike doesn't really describe what's happening.

Terry: Many of them are just refusing a meal or two.

Some are refusing for a day to show some kind of sympathy or not even stating why.

Jack: Those that were-- what they were perceived to be the leaders of the hunger strike were separated.

Michael: They tried to separate all of us that they figured was trying to organize.

They started transferring everybody, spreading everybody around.

I ended up at Corcoran.

Jack: They're not letting newspapers in.

They're not letting articles out.

There's a collective effort to keep any information or flow of information in or out of the institution regarding the hunger strike because of what is starting to happen in the free world in terms of support for the hunger strikes.

We're here to bring an end to long-term solitary confinement.

And we will not stop!

What are we going to do?

Shut down the SHU!

What are we going to do?

Woman: The use of solitary confinement is torture and abuse!

Michael: The strike has sparked protests throughout California led by inmates' families.

Man: The whole damn system is?

Protesters: Guilty, guilty!

Michael: Associate Director Kelly Harrington says the department has already made the changes that the hunger strikers are calling for.

The department's view is that we've met those demands.

Michael: But protesters say that they want men held in the security units for more than 10 years to be led out of isolation within 6 months.

Man: Guantanamo to Pelican Bay!

Protesters: Hunger strikes all night, all day!

Michael: With both sides digging in, inmates say they are prepared to starve themselves to death.

Protesters: Justice!

Man: When do we want it?

Protesters: Now!

♪ Jack: The days started going by.

One week, no one's eating.

Two weeks, there are still hundreds of prisoners on hunger strike.

My legs, my muscles, I felt weak, shaky, on shaky ground.

When I moved, I had to move slowly, because I would get dizzy.

Soon my brain realized it wasn't getting food.

And I started to feed off myself.

♪ Janet: The medical team was identifying rapidly those who would be at risk of compromise from fasting for even a short period of time.

And that we received from them their advance directive choices, meaning what type of life support they would accept if they stopped breathing or if their hearts stopped.

People can survive without eating for two months.

But they will start getting severe symptoms after about one month.

Jack: You're left with nothing else but your muscles, the blood in your veins, the heart that you're pumping.

And it was a struggle just getting up for the mail.

I used to lay on my bed and tell the guard, "Just slide it in.

"Just push it as far as you can across the floor, "and I'll get it in a little while."

I did not eat for 18 days.

And I feel bad that I could not eat for more.

♪ Woman: Meet the core demands of the prisoners!

Danny Glover: One of my nephews served in Pelican Bay and was in solitary confinement.

So I know what that experience is, because we all have loved ones somewhere along the way, no matter how successful we think we are, there's someone that is close to us who's experienced this inhumane treatment.

Man; We are demanding the governor of the California Department of Corrections meet with the strikers, negotiate their reasonable demands.

Dolores: We had numerous petitions to the governor, emails, letters.

And, you know, he remained very silent on the hunger strikes.

There is no state whose solitary confinement practices are more under the microscope right now than California.

News anchor: The list of supporters now includes Palestinian prisoners who are also hunger striking in Israeli prisons.

Man: There are rallies happening in Oakland, in Los Angeles, in Philadelphia, in Mississippi, in London and in Germany.

[Protesters shouting] Dolores: And now, as they enter the 23rd day of the hunger strike just so that they can be heard, just so somebody will realize the conditions of confinement and that solitary confinement is torture.

Michael: After the first month, you don't think about it no more.

You're just trying to stay awake.

You're just trying to be alive when your whole body is just shutting down, shutting down.

[Slow breathing] Paul: I went 36 days without eating.

And I lost about, you know, a little over 40 pounds, you know.

I had high blood pressure.

I was a diabetic.

So I had to be conscious of what I was doing.

♪ Michael: We also had guards coming by and saying, "Hey, you know, "the guys at Pelican Bay already stopped.

"Y'all are dumb.

Y'all should stop now.

"Why you guys keep going?"

Nah, that's bull.

♪ Dadisi: I drank my water and I didn't do no exercise.

I did a lot of meditation.

I couldn't afford to waste no energy.

I was planning on doing 3 days, then I decided I'm going to do two weeks.

And then the two weeks wind up leading to a month.

And then the next day I said, "I'm going to stay on it as long as I can."

Michael: I had this neighbor, Billy Sell.

He was a great artist.

We used to share stuff.

We used to try to, like, look out for each other, bang on the wall, just do wellness checks, right?

"Are you there?

Are you good?"

And, you know, he was telling us that he was feeling really bad and we told the nurse who would come by, "Hey, the homie is not responding.

"The homie is not responding."

And sure enough, I guess a guard came by and was telling him, "You got to move for count."

And he wasn't moving.

And then they came in with riot gear, handcuffed him, took him out.

And he was lifeless.

He wasn't moving.

In fact, he was dead.

He died.

After seeing my neighbor pass like that, I felt I was going to die.

Like literally die.

♪ Like I don't really remember everything, because I wasn't, like, able to think about things, but in the back of my mind, like not giving up.

Like I'm not going to give up.

They really feared me at the beginning.

They're going to really fear me now.

We just kept pushing, pushing, pushing, protesting.

[Waves crashing] ♪ ♪ Michael: At this point, I started thinking about, you know, I brought my mom so much pain all her life.

From coming and having to pull me out from juvenile hall to getting me out of jail.

And that's a [...] up way to see your child, right?

Getting shot.

You know, going to the hospital, seeing your son shot and-- ♪ [Leaves rustling] News anchor: The death of a prison inmate is prompting calls for the governor to intervene in the prison hunger strike.

State officials say they're investigating his death as a suicide.

♪ ♪ I think at that point my mind was so blank and everything was just so fuzzy and dark that-- I didn't even think about anything.

I just tried to sleep as much as possible.

I was so weak, and they came to my door and were like, "You have an attorney visit."

Literally, they had to take me in a wheelchair.

I could not walk.

And the attorney was like, "Hey, how do you guys feel?

"This is what's going on.

We're in negotiations.

"Everybody is in agreement to end."

I didn't think of anything else, but like, "It's over."

"It's over."

♪ ♪ Al: This strike is over today, Joey.

Essentially because the prisoners believe that their voices are finally being heard.

Two state lawmakers announced that they would start taking up public hearings on the issue of solitary confinement.

The hunger strike has brought these issues to the forefront.

Something has to change now.

And it cannot be business as usual anymore.

Dolores: The agreement of ending the hunger strike was the legislative hearings.

The legislators were going to oversee CDC and ensure that these changes were made.

♪ ♪ Amy: On Tuesday, California reached a landmark legal settlement with a group of prisoners held in isolation for a decade or more at the Pelican Bay State Prison.

♪ Michael: The lawsuit forced the department to make changes and really empty out the SHU.

So now prisoners can't spend more than 5 years in solitary and can't be sent to the SHU simply for having alleged gang ties.

It fundamentally changed the way California uses solitary confinement.

♪ They came up to my cell one day and they told me, "We're going to be releasing you from Security Housing Unit.

"We're going to be shipping you to Ironwood State Prison."

♪ Jack: The further we got, the less weight I had on my proverbial shoulders.

I had... survived, and I was going to a general prison population.

In that confinement, I felt a freedom.

♪ And in 7 days, when I went to classification committee, that moment, right there, wrote down: "this man is not associated with any prison gangs."

And just like that... [Snaps fingers] 35 years were wiped off my files.

And they told me, "We're going to put you "in the general prison population."

♪ [Murmuring] Men: Oh!

Jack: I had a headache that was just pounding behind my eyes because all this movement, all these sounds, were coming at me.

[Wings fluttering] [Distant chattering] Dadisi: Everybody got out the SHU.

Everybody went to the main line.

Everybody was able to embrace their family once again, restore some family ties that maybe was lost.

I met nieces, great nieces, and nephews that I never met before.

Michael: I think that's when I first cried.

You know?

I tried not to 'cause we're in the ... visiting room and people are looking, but it was beautiful, man.

Jack: I had waited a lifetime, you know, two lifetimes, for that moment.

Not only did my mom come, but three of my sisters and we all sat in the visiting room, and we talked and they told me about the family.

It was incredible.

After almost 40 years, within 17 months, uh, they granted me parole.

And I walked out.

What's up, bro?

Woman: Welcome home.

Welcome home!

[Indistinct chattering] Hey!

My goodness!

Yeah, I'm here now.

I know.

Michael: Coming out to the real world, to the streets, it was just a whole new environment.

Everybody was walking around with their head down.

What the ... is going on?

What's wrong with these people?

I had to get a phone.

How do you turn it on?

How do you...?

What is an email?

Excuse me, do you know how do I get to 174?

Girl: Sorry, because we're also first years.

Me too.

[Cheering] Michael: My gift to my mom is being able to walk down that stage and get my diploma and have my mom there and finally I'm, like, able to make her proud.

♪ Faruq: You're so used to keeping people at a distance.

Then it's almost like, you got to learn how to feel again.

Mm?

That's a process.

♪ Finally, they let you out.

Ernesto: You're a butterfly, you can go out and fly around.

Where you gonna fly to?

[Laughter] You don't know where to go.

You gotta get over this whole drama that you went through, and that takes years.

Dadisi: Currently I've been out a whole year right now.

But I ain't gonna ever forget where I came from.

I ain't never gonna forget what I endured.

I'll see you in a couple weeks, Lucas.

Lucas: All right.

OK. Dadisi: If it wasn't for the hunger strike, I wouldn't be here right now.

If it wasn't for the hunger strike, I would still be in the SHU, doing an indeterminate SHU.

♪ Jack: I have to learn how to be social again.

You have to learn how to put that experience away and learn to be human again.

Be careful.

OK.

I love you, Mom.

I love you, my baby.

♪ Jack: Me, I've been in jail since I was a young kid, so I've never had a relationship.

Hey.

Woman: Hi How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Good.

Good?

[Murmuring] [Romantic song playing] Jack: But I know that having somebody there with you that you can get comfort from or give comfort to, I know those things, they make me a better person.

And that's what she does for me.

♪ I knew the name Dolores because of the radio and the support she was giving us as hunger strikers.

I had no idea that I would later meet Dolores in the free world and we would fall in love and get married.

♪ Dolores: You're perfect, you're perfect for me.

And I love you, and this is just more than I would have ever imagined.

[Applause] When I first got out you had heard the stories of what I thought freedom was going to be all about, the things that I wanted to do with it, things I wanted to experience with it, and it was you that allowed me to understand that those were just fantasies made up and that the reality of it was, seeing love through your eyes, experiencing life with you at my side and looking at a future forever with you in my life is the reality that I want to live.

And I'm glad that you chose me and allowed me to live it with you.

[Cheering and applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪