San Quentin State Prison (Justin Levy/Creative Commons)

The strike began on July 8, when over 30,000 inmates began refusing meals to protest the use of solitary confinement in California prisons on nearly 4,000 inmates, with another 6,600 in temporary isolation. A statement from the inmates accused the state prison system of using "practices in which serious physical and psychological harm is inflicted on tens of thousands of prisoners as well as our loved ones outside."

The remaining participants in the hunger strike began taking meals Thursday when two Bay Area Democrats, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and Senator Loni Hancock, called for public hearings in Sacramento to address current practices in state prisons including solitary confinement.

"To be clear, our Peaceful Protest of Resistance to our continuous subjection to decades of systemic state sanctioned torture via the system's solitary confinement units is far from over," the prisoners said in a statement. "With that said, we clarify this point by stating prisoner deaths are not the objective, we recognize such sacrifice is at times the only means to an end of fascist oppression."

Read Neon Tommy's report on the conditions inside California prisons.

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