The topic of solitary confinement was the focus of a recent episode of John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on HBO. Thanks to the hard work of activists organizing against solitary confinement for decades, awareness of the brutality of this practice has begun to enter the mainstream. Its history as a counterinsurgency tactic, however, has yet to be fully examined in the light of day. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez joins Rattling the Bars to speak with Mansa Musa, who spent 48 years behind bars himself, a number of which were spent in solitary, to discuss the cruel truths about solitary co ..read more

The death of Khader Adnan in Israeli detention during a hunger strike on May 2 of this year sparked mourning worldwide and a general strike in occupied Palestine. The 45-year-old Adnan was on his 87th day of hunger strike while serving a sentence for his 12th arrest by the Israeli state at the time of his death. A baker by trade and a father to nine children, Adnan was the first Palestinian to die of hunger strike in an Israeli prison since 1992. As a spokesperson for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Adnan first captured the world's attention when he launched a hunger strike from behind bars in 2011 ..read more

The call for prison abolition has been popularized over the last decade of popular movements against police violence, many of which have operated under the banner of Black Lives Matter. But what does abolition mean, and who gets to define it? Thus far, much of the conversation has been steered and curated by mainstream media. A new initiative from Scalawag Magazine tentatively titled 'Project Abolition' seeks to disrupt the dominant narrative by platforming voices from within prisons themselves. Scalawag Editor-At-Large Da'Shaun Harrison joins Rattling the Bars to explain Project Abolition. D ..read more

Click here to read the transcript Marshall "Eddie" Conway was framed for the murder of a police officer and incarcerated for 44 years—but even behind bars, he continued to organize. In the early 1970s, Maryland's state prisons were overcrowded and lacked education opportunities for incarcerated people. As a form of intervention, Eddie organized a university-level education program with fellow prisoners known as "To Say Their Own Word." The program not only raised the level of literacy among inmates; it also forged stronger solidarity between prisoners, and catalyzed other organizing and trans ..read more

Marshall "Eddie" Conway joined the ancestors on Feb. 13, 2023 after a yearlong battle with illness. Born in Baltimore in 1946, Eddie joined the the Black Panther Party in 1968. The Baltimore BPP chapter, with Eddie’s support and leadership, built strong community ties through efforts like a free breakfast program, a system of robust internal political education, and an increasingly widespread local distribution network for the national BPP newspaper—despite near constant police harassment, and even high-level infiltration of the branch. In 1970 Eddie was framed for the killing of a Baltimore p ..read more

The new one-woman play 'The Road to Damascus' reinterprets the biblical story of Saul and the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as an allegory for white complicity in the US prison system and the possibility of redemption through anti-racism. Creator and performer Kathy Randels joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her new work. Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Read the transcript here: https://therealnews.com/the-road-to-damascus-uses-theater-to-confront-white-supremacy Help us continue producing Rattling the Bars by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer: Donate: https://therea ..read more

Across the US, some 50,000 incarcerated people are kept under conditions of solitary confinement. Advocates and prisoners have pushed to define the practice as a form of torture, pointing to the devastating psychological and physical effects it has on victims. In Texas, dozens of prisoners are now hunger striking against the use of solitary confinement in the state's prisons, which they say disproportionately targets Latinos. Jorge Antonio Renaud, National Criminal Justice Director of Latino Justice, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the hunger strike and conditions of solitary confinement in ..read more