Thirty-thousand inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California have been refusing their meals since yesterday morning. The inmates are on a hunger strike to protest the use of isolation as a way to break the power of prison gangs. 

They claim that prisoners are kept locked in cells without any access to other inmates, school or work programs, sometimes for decades. 

KPCC's Julie Small has been following the story and she joins the show to tell us more.