Starving for Freedom (The Pelican Bay Prison Strike That Transformed Solitary Confinement)

A groundbreaking, insider account by the attorney who represented the prisoners who risked their lives to end an inhumane form of punishment—with lessons for resisting government oppression

“The obstacles to organizing a statewide hunger strike seemed insurmountable. Their only means of communication was to shout through cell doors, drainage pipes and vents, and then only to the eight other men in their pod.” —from the Introduction

Starving for Freedom tells the stirring story of a group of California prisoners in America’s toughest supermax prison, who successfully waged a series of hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013 to protest their incarceration in solitary confinement, often for decades on end. Their hunger strikes radically reduced the use of indefinite solitary confinement in the United States—a practice considered a form of mental torture in most of the world —leading to the release of 99 percent of the so-called “secure housing” population (or 160,000 people) to general population units in California alone.

Published to complement The Strike, an award-winning Netflix documentary, Jules Lobel, the attorney who represented the Pelican Bay prisoners, recounts how men from warring gangs forged interracial solidarity to pull off a massive strike involving more than thirty thousand prisoners, despite conditions of extreme isolation where eating, talking, or recreating with another person was strictly forbidden. That solidarity led to a historic gang truce that has virtually ended gang violence in California prisons to this day.

Starving for Freedom includes lively examples from the civil rights movement and other human rights struggles, allowing Lobel to draw parallels between the Pelican Bay strike and today’s rise of authoritarianism. He outlines the lessons that the men incarcerated at Pelican Bay hold for strategically using nonviolent strategies to resist government repression.