RATTLING THE BARS
Rattling the Bars puts the voices of the people most harmed by our system of mass incarceration at the center of our reporting on the fight to end it. The show was founded by the late Black Panther and political prisoner Marshall “Eddie” Conway, and is now hosted by Charles Hopkins, better known as Mansa Musa, who himself spent 48 years behind bars.
Rattling the Bars offers an honest look at the lives of prisoners, returning citizens, their families, and their communities. With Rattling the Bars, by presenting hard data and real-life stories, we examine and seek to shift public opinion around the misconception that incarceration, punishment, and increased policing make cities safer—the truth of which has been disproven by countless studies. The series examines the history and root causes of the current so-called justice system. It showcases individuals and communities nationwide who are grappling with real solutions to problems created by the prison-industrial complex.
Latest episode
New DC bill seeks to abolish solitary confinement
“Who would want to lock somebody in a room the size of your bathroom and leave them in there for three years…and expect them to come out in the same condition that they went in? That’s insanity.”
Recent episodes
2 million incarcerated people could vote on Tuesday. But for who?
Support for Trump is high inside prisons, but that’s not the whole story.
Prison abolitionists could score wins on election day, despite electoral ambivalence
Prison abolition itself won’t be on the ballot, but organizers are pushing demands that could change the lives of thousands if adopted by referendum voters or victorious candidates.
North Carolina failed to evacuate prisoners during Hurricane Helene
As the unprecedented storm barreled through the state, North Carolina prisoners were abandoned in their cells for a week as authorities fled to safety.
Under Prop 6, California voters could finally abolish forced prison labor
Proposition 6 would remove the exception for involuntary servitude in the state constitution, and explicitly ban punishment for incarcerated people who refuse to work.
‘I Am Maroon’: The life of Black Panther Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz
A veteran of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Shoatz spent 49 years as a political prisoner, escaping twice and leaving behind an archive of political writings.
Oakland prosecutors kept Black, Jewish people off juries to promote death penalty convictions
In Alameda County, documents reveal a practice going back decades of prosecutors manipulating juries to increase the likelihood of a death penalty conviction.
In 8 days, Missouri could execute an innocent man
Marcellus Williams is on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. A judge just upheld his conviction.
New report exposes DC police using arrests and tickets to score revenue for the District
DC police aren’t just issuing tickets and making arrests on the basis of justice. They’re doing it as part of the District’s fiscal strategy.
Invest in housing, not prisons: California’s war on the homeless
Rather than treating housing as a human right and committing to large-scale construction of accessible housing, states like California are responding with police raids of homeless encampments and imprisonment for unhoused people.
Will a new president revive the use of clemency?
Under Obama, more incarcerated people were granted clemency than ever before. Could a new president restore this trend?
It’s been 10 years. When will we get justice for Michael Brown?
A decade since Darren Wilson murdered 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, police departments across the US continue to kill and to abuse their power.
How poor and working-class voters navigate an electoral system that doesn’t serve them
The problem isn’t that poor people don’t care about politics, but that politicians don’t care about poor people.
The Supreme Court just made it easier to criminalize homelessness—and that’s a win for the prison system
The Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling found that arresting homeless people is not a violation of our Constitutional right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment.
Black woman dies in California prison from heat over 110 degrees
Prison guards at Central California Women’s Facility exposed Adrienne Boulware, 42, to extreme temperatures for 15 minutes, according to sources in the prison. Boulware passed away on July 6.
Slavery once split up Black families. Today, prisons do the same thing.
Let’s call the prison system’s use of family separation what it is—torture.
‘Survival pending revolution’: Dominque Conway on education, political abolition, and reform
Brought into the prison struggle by her late husband Eddie ‘Marshall’ Conway, Dominque Conway’s work in prisons continues through the ‘Friend of a Friend’ prison-based mentorship program.
Federal courts use ‘supervised release’ to doubly punish prisoners—it should be abolished
Supervised release replaced federal parole and probation decades ago, but it effectively extends punishments for people who’ve already served their time.
54 years later, this former Black Panther is still behind bars
First incarcerated in 1970, Thomas ‘Tahaka’ Gaither remains a political prisoner of the US. Gaither and his daughter open up about the impact this has had on generations of their family.
Prison deprived her of a father—she’s fighting to get him back
Alexia Pitter’s father was incarcerated when she was just three years old. Growing up, she never thought he would ever leave prison—until she started to fight back.
The prison system isn’t ‘broken’—it’s designed to traumatize Black people en masse
Traumatologist Dr. Da’Mond Holt discusses the ways mass incarceration inflicts deliberate trauma as strategy to oppress working class people of color.
The reality of Black historical trauma makes healing a form of justice
Trauma passed down through generations as a result of oppression is both a political and a medical question.
Leonard Peltier and the long fight for Indigenous liberation
Historian Ward Churchill frames Leonard Peltier’s imprisonment and fight for release in the context of the American Indian Movement and US settler colonialism.
‘FreeHer’ activists demand Biden release incarcerated women and girls ahead of Mother’s Day
Highlighting the cases of Michelle West and other incarcerated mothers, the FreeHer march called on Biden to use his clemency power to live up to past broken promises to help release incarcerated women.
‘Help us to get better’: Maryland is failing women released from prison
Instead of support and resources, formerly incarcerated women face surveillance, fees, and stigma.
The ‘Women’s Cut’—Maryland’s only women’s prison
Though state law upholds gender equality for incarcerated people on paper, the reality of limited facilities, services, and a byzantine bureaucratic structure.
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