The Strike, a documentary by JoeBill Munoz and Lucas Guilkey, provides the viewer with an enthralling and engrossing look at the unyielding flame that burns at the heart of the human spirit. Even when it is locked inside the most dehumanizing of places.
The story focuses on the infamous Pelican Bay correctional facility, or more specifically, those inmates living out confined and silent sentences within the SHU (Special Housing Unit). The brainchild of the Californian Department of Corrections, as a means to foster compliance from selected offenders, identified as individuals holding sway over gang factions within the penal system.
The central narrative comprises directly from the testimony of former inmates like Gabriel Reyes, Richard Wembe Johnson, Luis Esquivel, and Danny Troxell as to the nature of solitary in a Supermax. The silence, the loneliness, the coming of mealtime—one of the only ways to mark the passage of hours that bleed together in a fever dream of push-ups, mind-numbing TV watching, and sleeping.
We’ve become accustomed to thinking of isolated detention occurring in dark dungeons similar to those depicted in the numerous Hollywood prison films. However, The Strike shows us the actuality is far more psychologically destructive, with one of the primary elements leading inmates to the breaking point being the simple lack of any human contact or interaction.
“…speaks to the nature of solitary in a Supermax…”
But the plan to break these inmates by crushing them mentally is thwarted when one of them reads, during the hour of library time allowed per month, about Irish prisoners using a hunger strike to protest against the egregious conditions of their incarceration. So, after months of careful planning via limited communication, those inmates housed in the SHU plot and execute their own hunger strike, coupled with family members alerting the press to draw attention to the horrific ordeals prisoners are subjected to inside.
This is the point at which this story, which starts out as a look at the Californian prison system and the life of darkness and despair spent under its care, evolves into a story of redemption and hope as the inmates and their loved ones fight on in the face of overwhelming opposition to bring change to the rights and conditions that should be provided and observed.
The Strike provokes a gamut of emotions. Though the former inmates do not deny their criminal pasts, the price they each paid for their wrongdoings in many ways exceeds the crime. They are convicts by society’s definition, but Pelican Bay’s stance was pushing conformance by force, leaving no room or chance for those under its tyrannical rule to heal and fortify their fractured spirits, with the hope to live in the free world again. This is another important documentary that shows the callous core at the heart of yet another system of control, being opposed and defeated by the triumph of human will.
"…another important documentary that shows the callous core at the heart of yet another system of control"
