TW: sh, suicide

The Strike examines how solitary confinement in California prisons strips people of basic humanity by removing stimulation, color, sound, and, most importantly, meaningful connection. The documentary shows how incarcerated men organized a hunger strike after years, and sometimes decades, of being trapped in small, bare cells where even a moment of conversation became a form of survival. Many describe how isolation pushed them deeper into despair rather than keeping them “safe,” and how the lack of basic human rights made their mental state deteriorate.

While watching The Strike, I was struck by how closely some of those experiences mirrored something I went through this past September. I was placed in an anti-suicide room for six hours completely empty, colorless, and silent. There was no stimulation, no clock, no comfort item, nothing grounding at all. I remember crying and begging the nurses just to talk to me for even a few seconds, and no one responded. I had to use a makeshift toilet, and the combination of isolation and humiliation ended up making me feel worse, not safer. Similar to what people in the documentary describe, my thoughts spiraled in that environment, and I began thinking of ways I could harm myself using the room around me.

The documentary helped me understand that what I felt was not “overreacting”. It was a human reaction to a dehumanizing environment. No one should have to die in order to have basic human rights, and it’s appalling that someone did in order for the government to take the incarcerated people seriously.