They're still at it, over a month later.

Here's a quick sum-up from the Guardian:

California's prison hunger strike is pitting hundreds of inmates against authorities in a battle of wills largely invisible to outsiders.

A mass protest which has just entered its second month is playing out in the solitary confinement units of maximum security jails where an estimated 400 prisoners are refusing food to demand an end to what they call inhumane conditions.

Some have been hospitalised as their bodies, stripped of fat, now consume muscle, a point when health can be permanently damaged.

You can read a more detailed explanation of their demands in the original Slog post, but it boils down to the arbitrariness of solitary confinement—the reasons prisoners get sent there, how long they stay there (sometimes decades), and the process of getting out. But the strikers have the attention of the NYT editorial board, which summed up the problem neatly this weekend:

The state claims that releasing any more inmates would be a threat to public safety, as if the problem were too little prison space. In fact, California’s problem is not excessive crime, but excessive punishment.

Meanwhile, the folks at Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity noted that California prisoners got a little good news late last week:

... the Federal Communications Commission agreed to limit how much companies can charge for phone calls made from behind bars. But this welcome reform does not affect SHU [solitary] prisoners. Why? Because SHU prisoners in California are not allowed to call home. Lack of family phone calls is one of the reasons why California’s SHU cells are characterized as solitary confinement – the harsh deprivation of family and social ties.

Meanwhile, the head of California's corrections system has written in the Los Angeles Times that the strike is an attempt by gang leaders "to restore their ability to terrorize fellow prisoners, prison staff and communities throughout California."

Whatever you think of the strike, it's succeeded in at least one fundamental way—it's shining a light into the deeply murky world of what goes on behind bars.