Dear Friends, 

The Strike is a new feature documentary that tells the story of a generation of California men who endured decades of solitary confinement and, against all odds, organized to make lasting change through the largest hunger strike in U.S. history. At its peak in 2013, 30,000 incarcerated people across California prisons joined in the hunger strike. NRCAT invites you to join us for the nationwide premiere of The Strike on PBS’ Independent Lens on Monday, February 3rd and to share our resources with your faith community in the coming weeks.

The Strike will be available for free streaming on the PBS YouTube channel starting at 9am PT/12pm noon ET on February 3rd, and it will be available on PBS Independent Lens, PBS YouTube, and PBS Passport through the end of April. Check local listings of your PBS affiliate for broadcast airings.

We encourage you to organize and host a watch party of The Strike for your congregation or house of worship, whether on Feb. 3 or in the months to come. To support this, NRCAT is offering $250 mini-grants to support event expenses and community advertising – go to the mini-grant application here. Additionally, NRCAT has prepared a detailed viewing and discussion guide, including a guide for faith communities, available here. NRCAT staff are available to help you design your watch party around the study guide and the status of solitary in your state - please contact Laura Markle Downton, NRCAT's Director of Faith and Community Engagement, for more information.

We are especially proud that the film features Jack Morris and Dolores Canales, who both played key roles in the hunger strikes and are members of the NRCAT U.S. Prisons Program Advisory Council and Board of Directors, respectively.

More about The Strike film: The Strike is an 86-minute documentary by directors JoeBill Muñoz and Lucas Guilkey. The film paints a portrait of California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, a prison built in 1989 that was designed for mass-scale solitary confinement. It tells the stories of the men who were held in this torture chamber for decades. The film centers on the experiences of hunger strike participants, who organized on the inside with strategy, self-sacrifice, and across racial lines – which the system had long exploited to both incriminate and divide them. Their goal was to end the brutality of long-term solitary confinement. Despite the horror of solitary confinement, and the shadow it casts over the lives of all impacted by it in the film, The Strike is not only engrossing but hopeful and inspiring, showing the power of nonviolent action and the changes that can be won even in the face of some of the harshest conditions in our society. 

We'll be watching on February 3rd, and we hope you and your faith partners, both locally and nationwide, will join us! And don't forget to check out our Viewing and Discussion Guide.

The NRCAT Team