A Community Collaborations Event
Presented in partnership with the Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry Group, with a post-screening panel discussion with Phil Beck, Sue Hutchins, Gina Hausknecht, and Michelle Heinz.
Amidst the redwood trees on the California-Oregon border sits one of the most infamous prisons in US history. Pelican Bay is a labyrinthine construction of solid cement blocks – a supermax prison – opened in 1989 and designed specifically for mass-scale solitary confinement. For decades, it held men alone in tiny cells indefinitely. Then one day in 2013, 30,000 prisoners went on hunger strike.
The Strike weaves together, thread-by-thread, a half century of personal and criminal justice history into a single, compelling narrative around the drama of the 2013 hunger strike to end indefinite isolation. Grounded in testimonies from the hunger strikers themselves, the film details how the protest was conceived from a whisper inside the halls of Pelican Bay to a colossal feat across California prisons. With unprecedented access to state prison officials and never-before-seen footage from inside Pelican Bay, The Strike reveals the panic that gripped the highest echelons of state government.
Told through the stories of the men who bore the brunt of this practice, The Strike goes beyond making a case against solitary confinement; it illuminates the power of organizing and prisoner-led resistance, and in doing so, flips the true-crime genre on its head.
Gina Hausknecht is a professor at Coe College in the English Department and Social & Criminal Justice program. She directs the Justice Learning Initiative at Coe as well as a new college-in-prison program at Anamosa State Penitentiary. She is the co-editor of Shakespeare in the Age of Mass Incarceration, volunteers at Inside Out Reentry Community and is working on a professional certificate in Restorative Justice.
Michelle Heinz, MSW, is the Executive Director of Inside Out Reentry Community, a nonprofit based in Johnson County, Iowa which supports individuals after incarceration.
Sue Hutchins is the founder of Living Beyond the Bars of Iowa, Co-chair of Iowa Justice Action Network, VP of Iowa CURE and has the Youtube channel entitled Iowa Prison Perspectives. Sue has authored six books of incarcerated individuals stories as well as the stories of loved ones and other concerned person's experiences with the system.
