Rattling The Bars

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the American Revolutionary War. While the national mythology behind the “America at 250” celebrations focuses on the 18th-century battle between Patriot and Loyalist elites, what does the story of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States look like through the eyes of enslaved people? In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa spea...

Former political prisoner Mahmoud al-Arda was first arrested by Israeli occupation forces in 1992 due to his involvement in the First Intifada and his membership in Islamic Jihad. Since then, for the past three decades, al-Arda has been incarcerated in different Israeli prisons, and he made international headlines in 2021 after leading a daring, successful, but short-lived escape from the maximum-...

While international attention has decreased in recent months, the horrors Israel continues to systematically unleash on Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank have not. In this episode of Rattling the Bars , host Mansa Musa—a former Black Panther and political prisoner—speaks with renowned scholar-activist Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi about Israel’s apartheid system of incarceration and the urgent...

When state violence and systemic denial of full citizenship by the state makes true belonging impossible for Black people, Black anarchists have envisioned and fought for a free life beyond the state. In this episode of Rattling the Bars , author William C. Anderson explores the rich, radical tradition of Black anarchism and its connection to prison abolitionist movements. Guests: William C. Ander...

A new report from The Marshall Project reveals that the daily number of kids in ICE detention has increased sixfold under the second Trump administration. In this episode of Rattling the Bars , host Mansa Musa speaks with Shannon Heffernan and Anna Flagg of The Marshall Project about the the human cost of Trump’s mass deportation campaign, and about the horrifying reality inside the South Texas Fa...

The term “mass incarceration” is inaccurate and misleading, Distinguished Professor and author Dylan Rodríguez says: “The masses are not being policed, targeted, and incarcerated; it's a targeted war with asymmetrical casualties.” In this episode of Rattling the Bars , Rodríguez speaks with former political prisoner and Black Panther Mansa Musa about the horrifying truth behind the US prison-indus...

How did the promise of Black wealth become a tool for white elites? In this Black History Month special of Rattling the Bars , Mansa Musa speaks with UVA Professor and author Justene Hill Edwards about the tragic history of the Freedman’s Bank. They dive into the economic intelligence of enslaved people and how they navigated the inherent violence of the slave economy. Professor Hill Edwards also...

From the very beginning, the United States of America has been at war—not just abroad, but domestically. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with scholar and author Dylan Rodríguez about how the US operates as a nation in a perpetual state of internal war, and how the white supremacist legacy of domestic warfare has reached terrifying new heights in the Trump era. Resource...

Judge Brian Jackson of the U.S. District Court has certified a class action lawsuit against Angola Prison on behalf of men forced to perform punitive farm labor under unconstitutional conditions and in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under this ruling, the court certified two specific groups: a primary class encompassing all persons currently or potentially assigned to the...

Non-unanimous jury verdicts were a Jim Crow–era policy designed to silence Black jurors and secure convictions even when the state failed to prove its case. In 2026, over 1,000 people remain imprisoned in Louisiana after being convicted by non-unanimous juries. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Erica Navalance, Associate Director of Strategic Criminal Litigation at the P...

Returning citizens are being funneled into exploitative temp jobs that pay poverty wages, deny them basic labor protections, and deepen the state’s control over their lives long after they’ve served their time. This week, Mansa Musa speaks with Katherine Passley and Maya Ragsdale, Co-Executive Directors of Beyond the Bars, about how Florida’s temp industry traps the most vulnerable workers and ope...

Prisons have frequently been presented as a “solution” to the economic woes and employment needs of rural communities around the US—but that doesn’t mean residents of these communities want them there. In Franklin County, Arkansas, for instance, residents are banding together in opposition to the state’s plans to build a mega-prison in their area. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa M...

For incarcerated people and their families, the holidays are the most painful time of year. In this episode of  Rattling the Bars , host Mansa Musa and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speak frankly about what it’s like to be locked up during the holidays, why inmate suicides, violence, and depression spike this time of year, and about the life-saving and society-improving steps we can tak...

Fifty years into the era of mass incarceration, states like Arkansas, Montana, California, and Colorado are pushing to build new prisons and expand immigrant detention. In this episode of  Rattling the Bars , host Mansa Musa talks with Nicole Porter of The Sentencing Project about how federal and state governments are doubling down on new prison construction and ICE contracts to expand the prison-...

ICE raids and the expanded use of expedited removal are tearing apart immigrant families and neighborhoods in Baltimore. In this episode of  Rattling the Bars , host Mansa Musa speaks with Baltimore reporter Kori Skillman about how lack of democratic oversight and collusion between local government and federal law enforcement have enabled ICE’s lawless tactics and left Baltimore’s immigrant commun...

In this episode of Rattling the Bars , host Mansa Musa speaks with Miami-based organizer Katherine Passley about how prison labor, temp agencies, and the 13th Amendment have created a system that traps formerly incarcerated people in unending cycles of cheap, hyper-exploited work. Passley, Co-Executive Director of Beyond the Bars, also talks with Musa about how her organization is fighting to win...

Wisconsin’s much-touted prison overhaul plan promises to close crumbling facilities like Green Bay Correctional Institution, but people locked up inside these facilities may have to wait years for relief they desperately need now. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, formerly incarcerated organizer Sean Wilson joins host Mansa Musa to discuss whether Wisconsin’s bipartisan prison plan will delive...

The Alabama prison system functions like a modern-day plantation: overcrowded, understaffed prisons like Bullock Correctional Facility run on forced labor, violence, and deliberate neglect. In this episode of  Rattling the Bars , host Mansa Musa speaks with journalist Matthew Vernon Whalan about his book  Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison , and about the systemat...

Rattling the Bars's Mansa Musa explores how a one-woman play, The Peculiar Patriot, reveals the human cost of mass incarceration and the enduring ties between slavery and the prison system. The artist behind the play, Liza Jessie Peterson, has worked with incarcerated youth for decades, bringing their stories to the stage and to national audiences. Performed in more than 35 US prisons and filmed a...

From chronic overcrowding and inmate deaths to systematic abuse and lawbreaking by corrections officers, prison conditions in the state of Alabama have reached a crisis point. And yet, state leaders continue to push an “Alabama solution” that involves building more mega-prisons and expanding qualified immunity for officers. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with Dakarai...

Calling from a prison phone in Nebraska, Nicholas Ely joined his wife, Julie Montpetit, for an episode of Montpetit’s podcast, “More Than an Inmate’s Girlfriend,” which aims to destigmatize relationships like theirs. Afterwards, Montpetit lost all contact with her husband. Now, Ely is suing several employees in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, alleging that he has faced unlawful r...

In the USA, so many Black parents have seen their children killed by police that, now, growing numbers of those same parents are building a grassroots movement for accountability and justice. On Oct. 14—the birthday of George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020—a coalition of parents, allies, and community organizations gathered in Washington, DC, for a rally to remember those wh...

President Trump repeatedly promised that his mass deportation efforts would target “the worst of the worst” criminals, yet the government’s own data reveals that immigrants with no criminal record are the largest group in US immigration detention today. How can the Trump administration justify its deployment of federal agents, and even the military, to US cities based on the factually disprovable...

Eric King is a father, poet, activist, and anarchist who was imprisoned in 2014 for acts of solidarity with the Ferguson, MO, uprising in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown. While locked up, King endured years of documented physical and psychological torture, spending the last 18 months of his sentence in the ADX supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. In this episode of Rattling the B...

There are two primary federal agencies tasked with immigration detention: ICE, which is well known, and the US Marshal Service. Under the Trump administration, the US Marshals have dramatically increased their role in detaining and incarcerating undocumented immigrants, using their federal power to override restrictions on immigrant detention in local jails around the country. In this episode of R...