At 18, Jack Morris was convicted of murdering a man in South Los Angeles and sent to prison for life. It was 1979, and America was entering the era of mass incarceration, with tough sentencing laws ballooning the criminal justice system. As California’s prison population surged, so did prison violence.

“You learn that in order to survive, you yourself then have to become predatorial,” Morris says. “And then, you then expose somebody else to that, and it’s a vicious cycle.”

When California started aggressively targeting prison gangs, Morris was accused of associating with one of the groups. The punishment was severe: He was sent to a special supermax unit at the state’s highest-security prison, Pelican Bay.

The facility was designed to isolate men deemed the “worst of the worst.” Like Morris, most lived in near-total isolation. No phone calls, no meaningful physical contact with another human, no educational classes, no glimpses of the outside world. The only regular time out of a cell was for a shower and solo exercise in another concrete room.

Decades later, prisoners at Pelican Bay, including Morris, started a dialogue through coded messages and other covert communication. They decided to protest long-term solitary confinement by organizing a hunger strike. It would become the largest in US history and helped push California to implement reforms.

This week on Reveal, we team up with the PBS film The Strike to tell the inside story of a group of men who overcame bitter divisions and harsh conditions to build an improbable prison resistance movement.

Dig Deeper

Learn more: The Strike

Watch: Local screenings for The Strike 

Watch: California’s Prison Isolation Units: Necessary or Inhumane? (KQED News)

Read: Solitary Lives (The Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED News)

Read: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons. (Mother Jones)

Read: A Tale of Two Inmates in California’s Secure Housing Units (California Watch)

Read: The Plot From Solitary (New York magazine)

Credits

Reporter and producer: Michael Montgomery | Editor: Brett Myers | Filmmakers: Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz | Fact checkers: Kim Freda, Melvis Acosta, and Ruth Murai | Production managers: Steven Rascón and Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Legal review: James Chadwick | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs, Fernando Arruda, and Claire Mullen | Additional music: Dan Berggren | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson | Special thanks: David Ritsher, ​​Víctor Tadashi Suárez, Daniela I. Quiroz, and PBS’s Independent Lens

Support for Reveal is provided by listeners like you, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.

Transcript

Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.

Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. It’s winter 2015 and Jack Morris is on a bus that’s winding down California’s North Coast, along Highway 101. It’s not just any bus, it’s used to transport state prisoners. Jack says he’s with about 40 or 50 other men. They’re shackled and some are locked in small cages. Jack’s used to that. What he’s not used to is the vivid scenery rushing by, the rugged coastline, rolling Pacific, and the groves of towering redwoods.  
Jack Morris:I could see big, giant trees as we passed them. And some looked black and then some looked green. I mean, the colors were absolutely magnificent. And this was the first exposure I had had to this in so long.  
Al Letson:Jack is transfixed, almost like a child seeing an explosion of colors for the first time. And in a sense, he’s being reborn. Jack has just emerged from Pelican Bay, one of America’s first supermax prisons, where he spent nearly every hour of the day alone behind windowless concrete walls. Now he’s being transferred to a lower-security prison nearly 1,000 miles away.  
Jack Morris:The further we got, the less weight I had on my proverbial shoulders.  
Al Letson:Along the way, the bus makes some stops. One is at a prison in the Tehachapi Mountains, north of Los Angeles.  
Jack Morris:They put me in the cell by myself and they gave me a blanket and a sheet. And they took all my clothes, they left me with socks, boxers, and a T-shirt.  
Al Letson:It’s Christmas.  
Jack Morris:And Tehachapi has windows. I’m shivering cold, I’m freezing. I got the blanket wrapped around me and I’m standing at the window and it starts snowing. And bam, it hits me and I start singing Bing Crosby’s A White Christmas, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” And I’m watching the snow, big flakes fall onto the ground and I’m singing A White Christmas. They said, “Is that you singing down there?” I said, “Hell yeah, that’s me singing.” I was out of Pelican Bay, I was watching the world outside this little four-inch window, and I was heading to a general prison population after doing decades in solitary confinement, and I wasn’t crazy.  
Al Letson:I have a hard time putting myself in Jack’s shoes. What it would feel like to see snowflakes, real snowflakes after having spent half your life almost completely cut off from the outside world. What Jack experienced, long-term solitary confinement, is still a reality for more than 100,000 prisoners in America. But in recent years, public opinion has shifted and states like California have placed some limits on how long a person can be held in solitary. One of the reasons for that shift is a hunger strike, initiated by the men at Pelican Bay, including Jack, the largest prison hunger strike in US history. For this week’s show, we’re teaming up with the new PBS documentary, The Strike. Directors JoeBill Muñoz and Lucas Guilkey worked with Reveal’s Michael Montgomery. He’s been covering Pelican Bay for 20 years. Today, the inside story of how a group of men deemed the worst of the worst overcame bitter divisions and harsh conditions to build an improbable resistance movement. Here’s Michael.  
Michael Montgom…:When I first started visiting Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit, what most people call The SHU, it was bewildering, mind-bending. The thick cement walls are like a bunker and once inside you’re taken down a network of long corridors that lead to clusters of cells known as pods. The corridors are so long you can’t quite see where they end. Sort of like you’re staring into the abyss. You hear your own footsteps, maybe a prisoner being escorted in shackles, some muffled conversations, a toilet flush.  
Faruq Salvant:First thing you notice about Pelican Bay, it’s so quiet. It’s quiet.  
Michael Montgom…:Faruq Salvant spent 19 years locked up in isolation.  
Faruq Salvant:And then the loneliness. Man, that loneliness will kill you. That thing wrapped around you like a long blanket man.  
Richard Brown:It literally alters your perception of time.  
Michael Montgom…:Richard Brown spent a total of 14 years in the Security Housing Unit.  
Richard Brown:Short periods of time seemed to drag on forever, long periods of time fly by in an instant.  
Michael Montgom…:For Jack Morris, his time in isolation added up to nearly three decades.  
Jack Morris:I had resigned myself to death in a windowless concrete box. How do you fight that?  
Michael Montgom…:Like a lot of men who ended up at Pelican Bay, Jack’s journey began in his teen years. He grew up poor in Norwalk, a city in South Los Angeles. He didn’t like school and says he started running with a group from the neighborhood that did a lot of drinking and fighting.  
Jack Morris:I didn’t know violence had become a part of my life. It was just my life. I had no idea that fighting against somebody else in the park was an act of violence. It was just a daily activity or a weekly activity.  
Michael Montgom…:Jack was in and out of juvenile lockups and when he was 18 years old, he got into a fight after a day of heavy drinking and stabbed a man to death. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder and in 1979, sent to San Quentin State Prison. It was a time when incarceration rates and prison violence were surging.  
Jack Morris:You learn that in order to survive, you yourself then have to become predatorial. And then you expose somebody else to that and it’s a vicious cycle.  
Michael Montgom…:Beginning in the 1980s, America was getting tough on crime and stepping up the war on drugs. And California was leading the way with mandatory sentencing laws and one of the toughest three-strikes measures in the nation. It was the era of mass incarceration. The California Department of Corrections unleashed a prison-building boom.  
George Deukmeji…:Ladies and gentlemen, I am greatly pleased to have this opportunity to join with all of you as we dedicate this newest and most modern correctional facility, Pelican Bay State Prison.  
Michael Montgom…:In 1990, Governor George Deukmejian inaugurated Pelican Bay as one of America’s first supermax prisons.  
George Deukmeji…:California now possesses a state-of-the-art prison that is serving as a model throughout the nation.  
Priest:Let’s pray. Dear God, we have gathered today to yet dedicate this institution. Give wisdom to those who have been chosen to lead. Impart our political leaders with 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 a result of love for humanity, not as a result of anger and fear.  
Michael Montgom…:As it was opening new prisons, California was also aggressively targeting prison gangs. They’re different from street gangs and began as self-defense groups carved out of the racially divided prison population. Some grew into criminal organizations, controlling drugs and other contraband, and even ordering hits on the streets. There’s the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerrilla Family, and Latino groups from Northern and Southern California, Nuestra Familia and the Mexican Mafia. Some trained like soldiers. This video shows a prison gang leader running new recruits through a series of exercises called The Machine. Being a Latino man from Los Angeles, Jack hung out with the men he grew up around. He says in prison there really wasn’t much of a choice. Still he insists he was never an active member of a prison gang. And I’ve seen sworn statements from former gang leaders that support this. But it didn’t matter.  
Jack Morris:I’m in the general prison population in San Quentin and they found this picture and they said, “There’s other people in this picture that have been validated and you’re with them. Therefore, this picture also identifies you as being a gang associate.”  
Michael Montgom…:In other words, posing for a photograph with alleged gang members was treated as damning evidence that Jack was part of the group. He didn’t have to do anything tangible. It was guilt by association, and the punishment was harsh. Jack was placed in isolation and eventually sent to the Security Housing Unit, the SHU, at Pelican Bay for an “indeterminate term.”  
Jack Morris:When I got off the bus, they stripped me naked and they walked me down the corridor naked in handcuffs. They took me into three block and they walked me up the stairs naked and they put me in a cell and closed it. And they didn’t give me clothes until the following day.  
Michael Montgom…:To place men in the SHU, California cast a wide net and often relied on thin evidence of gang activity.  
Brian Parry:It wasn’t a complicated process at all and we validated a lot of people very, very quickly.  
Michael Montgom…:Brian Parry is a former assistant director of the California prison system who helped develop the department’s gang policies. Years later, he would try to reform the system.  
Brian Parry:There were fixed terms and there were indeterminate terms. Maybe possession of a weapon or stabbing another inmate, they would get a fixed term, maybe six months, nine 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.  
Keramet Reiter:The wrong letter, the wrong book, the wrong whispered conversation or telephone call-  
Michael Montgom…:Keramet Reiter is a professor of criminology at the University of California Irvine. She authored a book about the history of Pelican Bay.  
Keramet Reiter:… and you go to solitary confinement at Pelican Bay indefinitely for, it turned out, decades. With no recourse, no ability as that person who gets sent there to even see the evidence in your file. And no check on the system, no oversight to say, “Did we get it right?”  
Michael Montgom…:And the only reliable way to get out of the SHU was to agree to provide information about the gang, basically to become a snitch. Over the past two decades, I’ve spoken to dozens of men who were validated and spent years locked up in the SHU. For anyone who’s never done prison time, it’s hard to get your head around surviving such bleak conditions. Now initially, some of the men had cellmates, but after a rash of homicides, that ended and most lived in near total isolation. No phone calls, no meaningful contact with another human, no educational programs, no glimpses of the outside world. The only regular time out of your cell is a shower and exercise solo in another slightly bigger windowless concrete box. And the prison’s remote location makes it difficult for people to visit. What you have is a small television set and the mail, something that would prove vital for the eventual hunger strike. But that was still years away for Jack Morris.  
Jack Morris:What becomes time is delivery of the meals, eating and sleeping and eating and sleeping and using the bathroom and eating and sleeping. And 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.  
Michael Montgom…:To feed his brain, he learned math and read voraciously. He loved books about birds and their migration patterns to just fly away. And he wrote stacks of letters to his friends and family.  
Jack Morris:I told them, “Tell me the littlest detail. How did it feel turning the knob on the door to step out onto your front porch, to walk to your car so you could drive to the supermarket? I want to know what you saw on that drive.” Because being in isolation so long, you lose your memories. And this was a way of trying to remember something.  
Michael Montgom…:There were lots of strategies for survival. For some it was religion, others found meaning in the prison gangs. For Michael Saavedra, like Jack Morris, it was education. He was serving a 21-year sentence when he was validated and sent to Pelican Bay. He says he sustained himself by learning to draw, studying the law, and filing legal complaints.  
Michael Saavedr…:I never really felt like I was going to lose my mind. I never heard voices. And I think one thing that helped me get through that was just literally being (beep) off, being mad, every day waking up like, “I hate these (beep) guards. I hate this system.” Because I knew in my heart all that (beep) they were saying was untrue.  
Michael Montgom…:There were lawsuits that forced California to reduce prison overcrowding, improve medical services, and make accommodations for people with mental health diagnoses, but nothing that challenged indefinite solitary confinement at Pelican Bay. One person tried to overhaul the system from the inside. Brian Parry, who helped shape the department’s gang policies, started getting second thoughts when he saw how long some men were being held in the SHU.  
Brian Parry:I had visited prisons across the country and they were shocked that we were still holding people in SHU for so long without losing a lawsuit. It made me look at the system, what we were doing inside the SHU program. So I thought to myself, we can do better.  
Michael Montgom…:With funding from the legislature, Brian pulled together a team of national experts. They proposed policy changes like using the SHU to isolate gang members who commit assaults and other violence and then create a way out without having to snitch.  
Brian Parry:Well, the department looked at it and did nothing about it. 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, we all have our own culture. And CDC had a culture for a long time that 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.  
Michael Montgom…:In the SHU, prisoners could talk to each other through the perforated steel doors. Jack Morris says, officials tried to keep a lid on that by placing men from rival groups nearby.  
Jack Morris:And they believed, okay, now we’ve got these people in here, none of them get along with each other, it’s going to be easier for us to control them. Initially that was the case.  
Michael Montgom…:Because almost any conversation could be overheard and make you vulnerable. But Jack says, if it was the department’s plan to use racial animosities to keep men divided, it started to backfire.  
Jack Morris:What they didn’t realize is that we need contact with other human beings. We need to be able to talk to somebody else. We need to be able to stimulate our minds, stimulate our vision. So over time, I learned that whether you were from north or south or Black or white, you were cool if you were cool. And people started to treat each other with some humanity.  
Michael Montgom…:Jack says, a dialogue opened across racial and ethnic lines.  
Jack Morris:We all began to realize that our existence was being suppressed by the same person.  
Michael Montgom…:Influential prisoners started circulating ideas about organized resistance. There was a book about a group of men in Ireland who starved themselves to death.  
Jack Morris: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.  
Michael Montgom…:As they started to organize, they communicated covertly, sometimes using tiny handwritten notes called kites, that are tossed between cells with a makeshift fishing line. They would also shout messages through the pipes and vents.  
Jack Morris: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 Saavedr…:No matter where we’re at or the conditions we’re under, we find ways to communicate.  
Michael Montgom…:Michael Saavedra says, word of a protest was spreading around the SHU and through a letter writing campaign, they connected with human rights groups beyond Pelican Bay.  
Michael Saavedr…:Hey, this is what we’re trying to do. Will you all support us? Will you help spread the word?  
Michael Montgom…:The five core demands were clear, improve the food, allow educational programs, stop group punishment, provide ways out of the SHU other than snitching, and put an end to long-term solitary confinement. Now, any kind of collective action at Pelican Bay needed to have the gangs on board, and that was a challenge. Jeremy Beasley, a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood, talked with me about it.  
Jeremy Beasley:It was hard to get people on board. Some of the ABs protested. Some of them said, “Nah, this is a stupid hair-brain idea.” Some of them didn’t want to prey on the public’s sympathy. “We’re AB, we don’t beg to get out of here. We can handle this. Don’t show no weakness.”  
Jack Morris:There was so much opposition. I mean, nobody thought a hunger strike would work. It took about three years of people talking.  
Michael Montgom…:And finally, all the factions came together. On July 1st, 2011, more than 6,000 prisoners in California started refusing their meals. Three days later, Jack says, guards had a surprise.  
Jack Morris:It’s the 4th of July and it’s dinnertime. And then they brought in the food carts and it was stacked high with watermelon and chocolate milk, ice cream, and the guard rolled it in and he 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.  
Newsreel:Inmates in at least 11 prisons across the state’s troubled prison system have been on hunger strike for almost two weeks, protesting what some mental health experts say in is tantamount to torture.  
Jack Morris:We collectively struggled together and we started to realize that, hey, your life is no different than mine. 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  
Al Letson:At Pelican Bay, no one, not the guards and not the men refusing to eat had any idea that this protest was just the beginning of a long, grueling struggle.  
Michael Saavedr…:After seeing my neighbor pass like that, I thought I was going to die.  
Al Letson:That’s coming up next on Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Deep inside Pelican Bay State Prison, four men are seated at a conference table with a group of guards standing behind them. They’re dressed in wrinkled white jumpsuits, and their wrists and ankles are chained to their waists. They look exhausted. It’s July 20th, 2011, and the men are leaders of a hunger strike that’s entering its fourth week. Across the table, Scott Kernan has just arrived from Sacramento. He’s the number two at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and his mission is to convince these men to call off the protests. They’re allegedly leaders of violent and feuding prison gangs, but they’ve overcome bitter rivalries to launch a peaceful protest against indefinite solitary confinement. We’re producing today’s show in collaboration with the PBS film “The Strike.” Reveal’s Michael Montgomery picks up our story.  
Michael Montgom…:This most unusual summit is being secretly videotaped by prison staff through a one-way mirror. The stakes are high, but Scott Kernan appears relaxed, confident. He’s a former correctional officer and warden, his mother was also a warden, so he knows the ropes.  
Scott Kernan:Negotiate [inaudible 00:01:29] that we done what we think is right, what we think we ought to look at.  
Michael Montgom…:The recording is a little hard to hear, but Kernan says prison officials won’t negotiate that they’re going to do what they think is right. He concedes there are problems in the system, policies that aren’t completely correct.  
Scott Kernan:We know there are policies aren’t completely correct.  
Michael Montgom…:And he says the department is drawing up plans to fix them. He asked the men to end the strike and give him some more time.  
Scott Kernan:If in the shadow of a hunger strike, you’ve got to give us time to get it through those issues before somebody is dead.  
Michael Montgom…:Kernan says any major changes will require an administrative review and an agreement with the powerful guards union. In response, the men are respectful but emphatic.  
Todd Ashker:None of us ever wanted to have to take this move right here.  
Michael Montgom…:Todd Ashker is one of the top strike leaders.  
Todd Ashker:But we feel like we have no choice because we all know we’re dead already. We’re dead here, so what do we have to do?  
Michael Montgom…:Ashker says the hunger strike was the only way to call attention to their situation. He says they’d heard it all before, promises to fix the system, improve conditions, and nothing ever happened.  
Todd Ashker:That’s where we come to, and we had no other way of putting it out there and trying to expose what’s really been going on to the public.  
Keramet Reiter:That’s probably the closest physical proximity they’d had to someone like who wasn’t an officer in decades.  
Michael Montgom…:UC Irvine professor Keramet Reiter closely studied this meeting for her book on the history of Pelican Bay.  
Keramet Reiter:The incarcerated folks at the table, they’re in an incredibly vulnerable position and they’re cuffed and controlled, but they’re not in a cage, which is how most human interactions would have been expected to take place. That face-to-face conversation with Kernan, he’s talking to them like they’re humans and he’s honestly telling them why he feels so stuck. He’s not getting angry, he’s not threatening them. Maybe that’s an incredibly low standard, but I think imagining what that moment was like for those guys and the power of the human interaction they were experiencing for the first time in decades. If you really think about where they were coming from, it’s a haunting moment.  
Michael Montgom…:The men go back and forth with Kernan laying out their core demands, which include having a way to get out of the SHU without being required to snitch. In response, Kernan offers a memo that lays out longer term reforms and some immediate concessions, like allowing the men to have sweatpants, knit caps, craft supplies, and annual photographs to share with families. They’re small things, but for men deprived of them for years, they have meaning.  
Scott Kernan:Thanks you guys very much. [inaudible 00:04:20].  
Michael Montgom…:After about an hour, the meeting ends. Kernan says he’s got to get back to Sacramento. The men are escorted back to their cells and later that same day, they call off the strike. It turns out this protest is just a rehearsal for something a lot bigger. No one knew it yet, but another hunger strike was coming. A few months later, the department started moving cautiously to make changes. It began a pilot program that allowed a limited number of men, who were considered low security risk, to transfer out of the SHU and into mainline prisons. In 2012, at a prison in Corcoran, California, I met with a group of men who just arrived from Pelican Bay. We sat in a classroom in a semicircle and they were chatty but didn’t want me to use their names. They still had a distinctive look that I’d noticed on my visits to the Pelican Bay SHU. The skin on their faces was pale and washed out from going so many years without direct exposure to the sun.  
Speaker 1:You ever seen that cartoon where a little mouse comes out of a hole and they’re like, they’re all disoriented? That’s how we feel right now, still trying to figure out how to associate with people.  
Michael Montgom…:We strolled out into the prison yard where the afternoon sun was casting long shadows on the dusty ground. For the first time in years, the men were able to walk without shackles and hang out together in the open air.  
Speaker 2:They smell freedom. Even though we’re on the mainline, they still smell freedom.  
Michael Montgom…:Even though there’s concrete walls?  
Speaker 2:It doesn’t matter because these concrete blocks are further apart. In the Bay, there’s only 20-foot walls is all you see. It’ll show you in a large box here, you don’t see the walls.  
Michael Montgom…:Perhaps most memorable was feeling the soft, gentle touch from a visiting family member.  
Speaker 3:Amazing, tender, all the emotions that you thought were not there, resurface.  
Michael Montgom…:How long had it been since you held hands with your mom?  
Speaker 3:Over what, say 14 years? My sister’s like 20.  
Michael Montgom…:By this point, only a few dozen prisoners had been pulled out of the SHU. The men locked up at Pelican Bay, they were still waiting for the department to address their core demands. Meanwhile, the world was starting to take notice.  
Speaker 4:Good afternoon and welcome to the Assembly Committee on Public Safety.  
Michael Montgom…:In Sacramento, lawmakers began scrutinizing conditions at Pelican Bay and the department’s gang validation policies, and for the first time, the US Senate held a hearing to examine solitary confinement in America’s prisons.  
Speaker 5:The United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic nation. These are human rights issues that we cannot ignore.  
Michael Montgom…:There was also movement on the legal front. The Center for Constitutional Rights joined with men in the SHU to file a class action lawsuit challenging indefinite solitary confinement in California prisons. There was a growing protest movement on the streets that was sparked by the first hunger strike.  
Dolores Canales:On July 1st, 2011, the Pelican Bay prisoners began a hunger strike that spread across the state of California.  
Michael Montgom…:Dolores Canales helped organize a group of women whose sons and husbands were locked up at Pelican Bay. They had come together to lead rallies like this one near the capitol in Sacramento, where they brought along a full size plywood replica of a solitary confinement cell.  
Dolores Canales:I knew my son had already been a decade in solitary confinement. I knew this and before July 1st 2011, I didn’t give it a second thought. Now, I cannot stop thinking about it.  
Michael Montgom…:They flipped the script. Brian Parry is the former corrections official who tried and failed to get California to change course. He says the first hunger strike did more than just start a conversation about Pelican Bay. It helped spotlight a national issue.  
Brian Parry:It was solitary confinement, torture. All of a sudden, Congress was having hearings on solitary confinement. They want it in the press, it was this avalanche.  
Michael Montgom…:Brian says he gave state officials some new advice.  
Brian Parry:You need to settle this because if you take this and you lose it, you’re going to have a retired federal judge in here running this prison system.  
Michael Montgom…:He says the department wasn’t listening, at least not yet. One year after the first protest, strike leaders at Pelican Bay took another step to unify California prisoners. They announced a peace treaty between racial and ethnic groups. By this point, Jack Morris had been locked up in the SHU for nearly 25 years. He says it was a historic moment.  
Jack Morris:Everybody that the Department of Corrections said were warring factions of gangs. They collectively got together and they drafted a document that said, “Hey, we are not fighting against each other. We are not going to fight against each other. We have a non-hostility pact taking place here. We have no animosities.”  
Michael Montgom…:Jack says the men were aware that some changes were underway, but without more pressure, they believed the department would just backslide on its promises. The SHU would remain full. He says they started getting ready for another hunger strike, eating extra food to bulk up.  
Jack Morris: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 going to keep going until we start dying.  
Michael Montgom…:On the morning of July 8th, 2013, prisoners throughout California stopped eating.  
Michael Saavedr…:People were refusing and more people started refusing. Then on the mainlines, people didn’t even come out of their cells.  
Michael Montgom…:Michael Saavedra couldn’t believe what was happening.  
Michael Saavedr…:The guards were like, they started getting scared because they don’t know what the F is going on. To see this type of unity amongst people who usually are enemies fighting against each other to be on the same page at the same time, was super powerful and it scared the out of them.  
Jack Morris:A friend of mine yelled up to me and he says, “Hey, Jack, turn on the news.” I’m looking at it, and then I seen the ticker tape.  
Newsreel:On Monday, some 30,000 inmates spread across more than half of California state prisons refused to eat their breakfast.  
Jack Morris:30,000 California prisoners on hunger strike. Nowhere in the history of the United States had this ever taken place.  
Michael Montgom…:This hunger strike was five times larger than the first one, and it galvanized protestors. The Department of Corrections took a hard line. Officials alleged the protest was a power play by gang leaders trying to get out to mainline prisons. They started to limit the flow of information to hunger strikers and blocked some attorney visits.  
Jack Morris:Then the days started going by, one week, no one’s eating. Two weeks, there are still hundreds of prisoners on strike. My legs, my muscles. I felt weak, shaky, on shaky ground all the time. 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.  
Michael Montgom…:The department used another tactic. It began relocating some of the strikers to other facilities, officially for medical reasons. Michael Saavedra was moved to Corcoran State Prison where his neighbor was also refusing meals.  
Michael Saavedr…:He was a great artist and he was telling us that he was feeling really bad, and we told the nurse who would come by. We were telling him, “Hey, the homie’s not responding. The homie’s not responding.” 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, especially after seeing my neighbor pass like that, I felt I was going to die, like literally die.  
Newsreel:The death of a prison inmate is prompting calls for the governor to intervene in the prison hunger strike.  
Michael Montgom…:The authorities determined the man had hanged himself in his cell. Nearing the end of the third week, Jack Morris says he broke down and started to eat again.  
Jack Morris:I did not eat for 18 days and I feel bad that I could not eat for more.  
Michael Montgom…:A lot of men did the same thing, but Michael Saavedra and dozens of others, they kept going.  
Michael Saavedr…: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. To be honest, 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.  
Michael Montgom…:From the outset, California had deployed medical personnel to monitor the hunger strikers. Janet Mole-Boetani was a top medical official with the California Correctional Healthcare Services.  
Janet Mole-Boetani:People can survive without eating for two months, but they will start getting severe symptoms after about one month.  
Michael Montgom…:On day 43, citing concerns for the welfare of some of the strikers, a federal judge approved a request from state officials to begin force-feeding prisoners if it became necessary. The order was controversial since it covered men who had signed advance directives saying they didn’t want to be revived. On the streets, protesters were calling on Governor Jerry Brown to take action.  
Speaker 6:We are demanding the governor, the California Department of Corrections meet with the strikers, negotiate their reasonable demands.  
Michael Montgom…:At Corcoran State Prison, Michael Saavedra says, guards were spreading misinformation to get him to stop.  
Michael Saavedr…:We also had guards coming by and saying, “You know, the guys at Pelican Bay already stopped. Y’all are dumb. Y’all should stop now. Why do you guys keep going?” I said “No, that’s…”  
Michael Montgom…:Alone in his cell and facing possible death by starvation, Michael’s mind raced back to his troubled childhood and his road to prison.  
Michael Saavedr…:I started thinking about I brought my mom so much pain all her life, from coming to having to pull me out from juvenile hall to getting me out of jail. That’s a up way to see your child, right? Getting shot, going to the hospital, seeing your son shot. 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.  
Michael Montgom…:On day 60, things came to a quiet end. Michael got a visit from an attorney representing the hunger strikers.  
Michael Saavedr…:Literally, they had to take me in a wheelchair. I could not walk. The attorney was like, “Hey, how do you guys feel?”  
Michael Montgom…:That class action lawsuit, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, it was gaining traction. The attorney told him that lawmakers were now calling for new hearings to force the Department of Corrections to speed up their reforms.  
Michael Saavedr…:Everybody is in agreement to end. I didn’t think of anything else, but like “It’s over. It’s over.”  
Al Letson:The hunger strike, along with the class action lawsuit had put so much pressure on California that eventually the state agreed to sweeping changes.  
Newsreel: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.  
Al Letson:The settlement marked the end of indefinite solitary confinement in California prisons, and gave Michael Saavedra and Jack Morris a shot at rebuilding their lives.  
Michael Saavedr…:I didn’t submit, I didn’t conform, you didn’t break me so I could walk with my head high out here.  
Al Letson:That’s next on Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. The hunger strike that began at Pelican Bay State Prison and spread to lockups around California lasted 60 days. Under illegal settlement, men like Jack Morris were moved out of solitary to regular prisons. All of a sudden, Jack had a shot at freedom. Here’s Reveal’s Michael Montgomery.  
Michael Montgom…:After leaving Pelican Bay, Jack was transported to a prison almost 1,000 miles away near the Arizona border. Jack says it felt like freedom just to experience the light and colors of the natural world again, but adjusting from years in isolation had its challenges.  
Jack Morris:I had a headache that was just pounding behind my eyes because all this movement, all these sounds.  
Michael Montgom…:A few weeks later, Jack went before a committee to assess whether he posed a danger to the general prison population. For more than three decades, Jack had been locked in isolation based on allegations that he was affiliated with a prison gang. Now the committee was taking another look at the evidence.  
Jack Morris:That moment right there wrote down, “This man is not associated with any prison gangs,” and they told me, “We’re going to put you in the general prison population.”  
Michael Montgom…:Jack took full advantage over the course of 15 months. He enrolled in about 30 educational and rehabilitation classes from Alcoholics Anonymous and Victim Awareness to Bible study and Anger Management. Then Jack got another opportunity to go before the parole board. He’d been denied before, but this time his record said he was not involved in gang activity. At the hearing, commissioners cited progress with his rehabilitation and concluded Jack was at low risk to re-offend. They also found he showed genuine remorse for the man he murdered when he was a teenager.  
Jack Morris:His name was Julian Insignia. 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. After almost 40 years, they granted me parole and I walked out.  
Michael Montgom…:Out of prison and back home in South LA, Jack moved in with his mom in her small apartment.  
Jack Morris:I stare at the world as it drives past my mom’s balcony, and that’s part of my pleasures now.  
Michael Montgom…:Like Jack Morris, Michael Saavedra also left prison in 2017 and moved back to Southern California. He started applying to universities and was accepted at UCLA. In 2023 after a lot of hard work, he put on a cap and gown.  
Speaker 7:Michael Saavedra from Baldwin Park.  
Michael Saavedr…: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 able to make her proud for something good as opposed to all this bad that I’ve caused her.  
Michael Montgom…:For years, Michael and Jack were locked into prisons, specially designed to isolate men deemed to be the worst of the worst. And in those concrete boxes, they weren’t just isolated from other prisoners and guards, they were walled off from one of the core functions of prison itself, rehabilitation. Now, thanks in part to the hunger strike, they’re rebuilding their lives and becoming advocates for other people still behind bars.  
Michael Saavedr…:I didn’t submit, I didn’t conform, you didn’t break me so I could walk with my head high out here.  
Keramet Reiter:People who were in solitary for 30 years who are out in their communities doing good work, just living every day as an argument against these conditions and an example of how irrational they are.  
Michael Montgom…:Keramet Reiter is the UC Irvine professor who’s written extensively about Pelican Bay and the broader politics of solitary confinement.  
Keramet Reiter:I think the hunger strike was incredibly inspiring and I think it absolutely galvanized legislation, litigation. Dozens of states have passed legislation. There’s a nationwide conversation now about limiting solitary confinement.  
Michael Montgom…:In October 2023, our partners from the documentary film The Strike, visited the SHU at Pelican Bay where Jack and Michael spent all those years in solitary. The prison’s press officer, Lieutenant Serafin Leon, leads them down a long corridor to a steel door.  
Serafin Leon:We’re going to be going here. Cell block. We’re in unit six, pod section C, and here we have eight cells where the security housing unit was active and residents would be housed here.  
Michael Montgom…:The cells are empty. There are no prisoners here. In fact, it’s the same in most parts of the SHU, and the few men who are here can no longer be held indefinitely. Thanks to the hunger strike and litigation, the Pelican Bay SHU stands as a kind of museum to mass incarceration. Today, Jack Morris and Michael Saavedra are telling their stories across the US. They’re calling for an end to solitary confinement in America’s jails and prisons. In January 2025, in a packed auditorium at UC Irvine, they were on hand for a screening of The Strike documentary. Afterwards, they took questions from the audience.  
Speaker 8:Can you share what it was like seeing your personal stories represented on screen?  
Michael Saavedr…:Yeah, very weird. Very funny. I don’t like it. I remember back in the days when you’d do a recording for your phone voicemail and you would be like, “Dang, I sound weird.” Right? That’s how I feel.  
Jack Morris:I liked it. I’ve seen the film 30 times. I know what it’s like to live in a concrete windowless box, and I wouldn’t want anybody to have to suffer those same trials and tribulations as I did. And so when I watch the film, it reminds me of why I fly around this country and I go to visit prisons and I talk to people on the phone about it, plus it got my good side.  
Michael Montgom…:Sitting next to Jack was Dolores Canales. She organized some of those street protests in support of the hunger strikers. Jack had seen Dolores on television and admired her work, and after he came home from prison, they met, hit it off and eventually got married. Now they’re campaigning together for a bill that would limit solitary confinement in California to 15 consecutive days. Currently, the state allows for up to five years.  
Dolores Canales:When I see this film, it just reminds me every time of the importance of unity.  
Michael Montgom…:The audience was filled with students, professors, advocates, and others. Some were formerly incarcerated and had stories to share.  
Edwin:Good evening. My name is Edwin and I’ve just been released about 70 days ago, and…  
Michael Montgom…:Edwin says in prison, he joined the hunger strike, and though he was never in the SHU, he’d seen men come out traumatized by long-term solitary confinement.  
Edwin:Some of these men were in their 30 years just in the SHU alone. They still don’t talk. They’re from that generation. You guys know. You guys know, they’re from that generation, and this is like, nah, I’m cool, but they’re not.  
Michael Montgom…:As for the hunger strike, Edwin talked about the many positive ripple effects like that peace agreement between racial and ethnic groups. Reducing hostilities meant that instead of posting up at the prison yard in case a fight broke out, men could now spend more time taking classes.  
Edwin:Because of this, I was able to further my education. I was able to get involved in more pro-social activities as opposed to always being on the yard and me got to hold it down and do all these things. And that gave me the opportunity to present my case before a judge and who resentenced me and said, “All right, I’m going to give you that opportunity.” And here I am today.  
Michael Montgom…:Jack responds to Edwin with the same advice he gives to people who are still incarcerated.  
Jack Morris:Get into college, do programs, develop yourself intellectually and inwardly, and then let momentum move you forward.  
Michael Montgom…:Jack and Michael are both moving forward informed by their many years behind bars. Jack now works with people returning from prison to help them land on their feet. And Michael, who was once a jailhouse lawyer, has big plans for the next stage of his career.  
Michael Saavedr…:I just have one question before we finish any law students, law professors. I’m applying to law school this year, so any advice you can give me if you have time, I will gladly take it. Thank you.  
Al Letson:The PBS documentary, The Strike featuring Michael Saavedra and Jack Morris is streaming now. For links to watch the film and join an in-person screening near you, visit our website RevealNews.org.  
 Special thanks to directors Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz for working with us. Our lead producer for today’s episode is Michael Montgomery. Brett Myers edited the show. Special thanks to Víctor Tadashi Suárez, Daniela Quiroz, and the rest of the team at The Strike. Kim Freda, Melvis Acosta, and Ruth Murai fact-checked today’s show. Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production manager is Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando, my man, yo, Arruda. They had help this week from Claire Mullen. Additional music from Dan Berggren. Our interim executive producers are Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Comorado Lightning. Support for Reveal is provided by the Riva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.  
 I’m Al Letson, and remember, there is always more to the story.  

Michael Montgomery is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal who leads major collaborations and reports on America’s penal system, human rights and international trade, and labor exploitation. Previously he held staff positions at American Public Media, CBS News, and the Daily Telegraph, where he was a Balkans correspondent. Michael is a longtime member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a recipient of numerous national and international honors, among them Murrow, Peabody, IRE, duPont-Columbia, Third Coast, and Overseas Press Club awards. Contact him at mmontgomery@revealnews.org or @mdmontgomery.

Nikki Frick is a copy editor for Reveal. She previously worked as a copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and held internships at the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and WashingtonPost.com. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an American Copy Editors Society Aubespin scholar. Frick is based in Milwaukee.

Steven Rascón is the production manager for Reveal. He has also produced the KQED podcast On Our Watch: New Folsom, a serial investigation into the death of two whistleblowers inside California’s most dangerous prison. Their reporting has aired on NPR stations such as Capital Public Radio, WHYY, and KCRW. He also helped produce the Peabody-nominated Reveal podcast series Mississippi Goddam. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Zulema Cobb is an operations and audio production associate for the Center for Investigative Reporting. She is originally from Los Angeles County, where she was raised until moving to Oregon. Her interest in the wellbeing of families and children inspired her to pursue family services at the University of Oregon. Her diverse background includes banking, affordable housing, health care, and education, where she helped develop a mentoring program for students. Cobb is passionate about animals and has fostered and rescued numerous dogs and cats. She frequently volunteers at animal shelters and overseas rescue missions. In her spare time, she channels her creative energy into photography, capturing memories for friends and family. Cobb is based in Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, three kids, three dogs, and cat.

Jim Briggs III is a senior sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. He joined the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2014. Jim and his team shape the sound of the weekly public radio show and podcast through original music, mixing, and editing. In a career devoted to elevating high-impact journalism, Jim’s work in radio, podcasting, and television has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, IRE, Gerald Loeb, and Third Coast awards, as well as a News and Documentary Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Sound. He has lent his ears to a range of podcasts and radio programs including Marketplace, Selected Shorts, Death, Sex & Money, The Longest Shortest Time, NPR’s Ask Me Another, Radiolab, Freakonomics Radio, WNYC’s live music performance show Soundcheck, and The 7 and Field Trip from the Washington Post. His film credits include PBS’s American Experience: Walt Whitman, the 2012 Tea Party documentary Town Hall, and The Supreme Court miniseries. Before that, he worked on albums with artists such as R.E.M., Paul Simon, and Kelly Clarkson at NYC’s legendary Hit Factory Recording Studios. Jim is based in western Massachusetts with his family, cats, and just enough musical instruments to do some damage.

Fernando Arruda is a sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. As a multi-instrumentalist, he contributes to the music, editing, and mixing of the weekly public radio show and podcast. He has held four O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary abilities. His work has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, Edward R. Murrow, Gerald Loeb, Third Coast, and Association of Music Producers awards, as well as Emmy and Pulitzer nominations. Prior to joining Reveal, Arruda toured internationally as a DJ and taught music technology at Dubspot and ESRA International Film School. He also worked at Antfood, a creative audio studio for media and TV ads, as well as for clients such as Marvel, MasterClass, and Samsung. His credits also include NPR’s 51 Percent; WNYC’s Bad Feminist Happy Hour and its live broadcast of Orson Welles’ The Hitchhiker; Wondery’s Detective Trapp; and MSNBC’s Why Is This Happening?. Arruda releases experimental music under the alias FJAZZ and has performed with jazz, classical, and pop ensembles such as SFJazz Monday Night Band, Art&Sax quartet, Krychek, Dark Inc., and the New York Arabic Orchestra. He holds a master’s degree in film scoring and composition from NYU Steinhardt. Learn more about his work at FernandoArruda.info.

Claire Mullen worked at The Center for Investigative Reporting until September 2017. is an associate sound designer and audio engineer for Reveal. Before joining Reveal, she was an assistant producer at Radio Ambulante and worked with KALW, KQED, the Association of Independents in Radio and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She studied humanities and media studies at Scripps College.

Al Letson is the Peabody Award-winning host of Reveal. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, at age 11 and as a teenager began rapping and producing hip-hop records. By the early 1990s, he had fallen in love with the theater, becoming a local actor and playwright, and soon discovered slam poetry. His day job as a flight attendant allowed him to travel to cities around the country, where he competed in slam poetry contests while sleeping on friends’ couches. In 2000, Letson placed third in the National Poetry Slam and performed on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam, which led him to write and perform one-man shows and even introduce the 2006 NCAA Final Four on CBS.

In Letson’s travels around the country, he realized that the America he was seeing on the news was far different from the one he was experiencing up close. In 2007, he competed in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where he pitched a show called State of the Re:Union that reflected the conversations he was having throughout the US. The show ran for five seasons and won a Peabody Award in 2014. In 2015, Letson helped create and launch Reveal, the nation’s first weekly investigative radio show, which has won two duPont Awards and three Peabody Awards and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. He has also hosted the podcast Errthang; written and developed several TV shows with major networks, including AMC+’s Moonhaven and Apple TV+’s Monarch; and is currently writing a comic for DC Comics. (He loves comics.) When he’s not working, Letson’s often looking for an impossibly difficult meal to prepare or challenging anyone to name a better album than Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides.