by Mansa Musa | Mar 2, 2026 | Politics and Movements: US, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Rattling the Bars, video
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-industrial complex—and about the “pseudo-abolitionist” politics that often dilute the power of radical movements trying to dismantle it.
Guests:
Dylan Rodríguez is a teacher, scholar, organizer, and collaborator who has worked at the University of California-Riverside since 200. He is a Distinguished Professor in the recently created Department of Black Study as well as the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. He is the author of three books: Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime; Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition; and White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, which won the 2022 Frantz Fanon Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.
Additional links/info:
Mansa Musa, Ratting the Bars / TRNN, “Manifest Destiny never ended: the domestic war for white supremacy”
Credits:
Producer, Videographer, Editor: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Talk about what is your critique on mass incarceration and how it is a narrative for white reconstruction.
Dylan Rodríguez:
So it’s important that I start from this statement, which is that Mansa, you’ve heard me say this before, I think in other context we got to stop using the phrase mass incarceration. We got to stop using it. And there’s a couple reasons why. One
by Mansa Musa | Feb 27, 2026 | Economy, Economy and Inequality, history, Politics and Movements: US, Racial Justice, Rattling the Bars, video
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 breaks down the betrayal detailed in her book, Savings and Trust, revealing how a bank built for the formerly enslaved was redirected to fund D.C. infrastructure and white elite interests.
Resource Links:
Get the book at this link on bookshop.com
Professor Hill Edwards’ website
Follow Hill Edwards on X
Reviews of Hill Edwards’ latest book:
“This is a revealing history of banking innovation and experimentation, the financial acuity of Black men and women, corruption among powerful trustees, and the failure of Congressional oversight that feels all too familiar in our own era of bank failures, governmental dysfunction, and financial malfeasance. Justene Hill Edwards argues convincingly that the Freedman’s Bank debacle that lost millions of dollars earned and saved by hardworking, self-sacrificing, recently enslaved people is another little-known cause of the contemporary racial wealth gap.” – Tiya Miles, National Book Award-winning author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
“Savings and Trust, in beautifully written and accessible prose, is a must-read that offers crucial context for understanding the economic plight of formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, racial capitalism, the racial wealth gap, and contemporary calls for reparations.” – Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in
by Mansa Musa | Feb 23, 2026 | ICE, Minneapolis, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Rattling the Bars, video, White Supremacy
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 Rodriguez 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 Links:
Purchase Dylan Rodriguez’s book White Reconstruction
Revolt against the carceral world
COVID-19 pandemic illuminates anti-Chinese racism and xenophobia
Why corporate media doesn’t talk honestly about racism
Credits:
Producer / Videographer / Editor: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. In this country, in the United States of America. If we was to put alongside of Germany or any other fastest totalitarian government, it would not be no difference in comparison in this country. Today, we find ourselves in a place where we’re in the constant police, in the form of what they call ICE or any other police force. We find ourselves in a situation where all the institutions that’s in this country right now is being dismantled to the point where people don’t have no jobs, people can’t afford medical people are being forced into homelessness. In the face of all this, we find ourselves at the crossroad of making analysis of what this is and how do we go forward. Joining me today is a Dylan Rodriguez, professor of Media and Culture Studies and UC Riverside and one
by Mansa Musa | Feb 18, 2026 | baltimore, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Rattling the Bars, video
A coalition of more than 31 organizations—including the Legal Defense Fund, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Maryland Justice Project, and the prison guard union AFSCME—are uniting to oppose Maryland’s proposed $1 billion “therapeutic” jail. If approved, the project would be the most expensive in state history, according to reporting by Ben Conarck and Pamela Wood for The Baltimore Banner. Coalition advocates are urging lawmakers to halt the project and instead invest in a long-overdue women’s pre-release center in Baltimore. Monica Cooper, founder of the Maryland Justice Project, highlights that the decade-long fight for a transitional space for incarcerated women remains unresolved, calling the state’s inaction a violation of law and gender equity. In a 30-minute documentary report, Rattling the Bars host and former political prisoner Mansa Musa speaks with coalition members and Baltimore residents about alternatives to the $1 billion jail.
Resource links:
How Maryland discriminates against women prisoners
‘It is torture’: Women in Maryland’s prisons have nowhere to turn
Thinking Outside the Box: Do More Humane Prisons Exist?
Credits:
Producer/Videographer/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars with host Mansa Musa. We’re standing outside of Brentwood and Eagle Street, which behind me is the grounds for building a new detention center that’s going to house many and women. The name of this detention center, according to legislators, is therapeutic. The problem with this is one, it’s a detention center, but the more important the problem is, it’s going to cost a billion dollars if built. This will be Maryland’s most expensive project
by Mansa Musa | Feb 3, 2026 | Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Rattling the Bars, video
Judge Brian Jackson of the US District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana has certified a class in a 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 Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) Farm Line, and a specialized subclass for those with disabilities assigned to the same labor. In his findings, Judge Jackson noted that nearly every individual arriving at the facility is assigned to the Farm Line upon entry, with the majority remaining at risk of reassignment as a disciplinary measure.
Guest:
Samantha Pourciau is a Senior Staff Attorney at The Promise of Justice Initiative based out of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Credits:
Producer/Videographer/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Resource links:
Incarcerated Men Forced to Work on Angola Prison’s Farm Line Win Class Certification
‘Purposefully simulating chattel slavery’: Prisoners sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions on Angola’s brutal Farm Line
‘Prisons are akin to chattel slavery’: Inside the big business of prison farms and ‘agricarceral’ slave labor
Louisiana still imprisons people convicted by ‘Jim Crow juries’
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. We’re doing a followup on the story that we did earlier about a class action suit that was filed in Louisiana dealing with they call a farm line. And basically it’s a suit that’s talk about the inhumane conditions that prisoners are subjected to that serving
by Mansa Musa | Jan 26, 2026 | Politics and Movements: US, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Racial Justice, Rattling the Bars, video
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 Promise of Justice Initiative, about the case of Lloyd Gray and why the state of Louisiana continues to uphold unconstitutional convictions.
Guest:
Erica Navalance has worked with both Capital Appeals Project and Promise of Justice Initiative (PIJ) since 2015, but joined PJI full time in 2021 as a senior staff attorney for the Strategic Defense Litigation project, focusing on combatting excessive sentences, capital punishment, and other injustices in the criminal system.
Additional links/info:
Richard A. Webster, Verite News / ProPublica, What one man’s 45-year-old case tells us about the “Jim Crow juries” haunting Louisiana
Promise of Justice Initiative, Swastika found on DA file introduced into court, judge grants hearing for PJI client incarcerated for 45 Years
Credits:
Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to Rattling the Bars. This is the court of public opinion. And when justice fails to show up in America’s courtroom, we bring the truth here before the people convicted in 1980 at the age of 19, Lloyd Gray was sent to prison even though prosecutors failed to meet their burden and two black jurors refused to vote guilty in almost any other state that would have meant a hung jury,
