As a collection of oral histories, Davidson’s Rattling the Cages provides an essential archive on both the breathtaking cruelty of American prisons and on the courage and humanity of those locked away. To heed the critiques of its contributors is to accept that all imprisonment is political. But something in these pages throbs even louder than critique. Here, too, one finds love and the joy born from struggle. Those serve as the foundation of this book’s brilliant contributions, of the world they — and we — hope to build. — N. D. B. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University
The official story is that the United States has no political prisoners. The reality is that there are hundreds of people rounded up, placed behind bars, and kept there for inordinately long sentences because of their political beliefs and activities. A project of abolitionist Josh Davidson and political prisoner Eric King, this book is filled with the experience and wisdom of over thirty current and former North American political prisoners. It provides first-hand details of prison life and the political commitments that continue to lead prisoners into direct confrontation with state authorities and institutions. The people Josh Davidson has interviewed include former radicals and Black liberation militants from the sixties and seventies, current antifascists, nonviolent Catholic peace activists, Animal and Earth Liberation Front saboteurs, and more. Their stories are moving, often tragic, yet deeply inspiring.
Collectively, these people have spent hundreds of years behind bars, and their experiences speak directly to the cruelty and immorality of our prison and so-called criminal justice systems. Although their sentences and the conditions they have endured vary dramatically, this wide range of voices come together to embody what bell hooks called “a legacy of defiance.” It is this legacy — of tirelessly struggling to right today’s wrongs and create a better tomorrow — that the prison system tries, yet fails, to extinguish.
Royalties from book sales are split between the Anarchist Black Cross Federation’s Warchest, which provides financial support to currently imprisoned political prisoners, and the family of former political prisoner Eric King.
Contributors include: Donna Willmott, James Kilgore, Mark Cook, Rebecca Rubin, Hanif Shabazz Bey, Chelsea Manning, Oso Blanco, Ann Hansen, Sean Swain, Martha Hennessy, Jalil Muntaqim, Jeremy Hammond, Kojo Bomani Sababu, Laura Whitehorn, Eric King, Rattler, Ray Luc Levasseur, Elizabeth McAlister, Malik Smith, David Campbell, Xinachtli, David Gilbert, Susan Rosenberg, Linda Evans, Herman Bell, Jennifer Rose, Ed Mead, Jerry Koch, Michael Kimble, Bill Harris, Jake Conroy, Marius Mason, Bill Dunne, Oscar López Rivera, and more.
With a foreward by Angela Y. Davis and an introduction by Sara Falconer. [Adapted from publishers’ description.]
ISBN: 9781849355216 | AK Press
Find book talks with editors and contributors here and watch panel talks with editor Eric King and various former political prisoners, via Firestorm Books, below. You can also find zines of each of these panel talks below.
Praise
Prison can’t win, Huey Newton famously said, because walls and bars cannot hold back ideas. And this book is brimming with ideas from survivors of political repression. Rattling the Cages is an intimate intergenerational dialog with movement activists representing sixty years of struggle and too many years of incarceration. In conversations both hopeful and heartfelt, intense and inspiring, they share how they live to fight another day. — Dan Berger, author of Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey
Rattling the Cages brings the term ‘political prisoner’ into sharper focus by providing outstanding oral accounts from a wide range of North American political prisoners. In the finest tradition of oral history — ‘the poetry of the everyday,’ the literature of the streets — this book takes us to the source, and shines a bright, illuminating light into the shadowy world of our peculiarly American gulag. Rattling the Cages dives head-first into the wide world of direct personal experiences and human meaning-making, offering an important antidote to propaganda, dogma, and stereotype. — Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days and Public Enemy
Rattling the Cages has more wisdom, harder-earned, per page than any other book I’ve ever read. It is the kind of wisdom most people hope to never know, the kind of wisdom that comes from facing the true nature of our state and what it does to those who resist its power. The lessons of this book force those of us on the outside to ask whether we are walking the way we believe. Rattling the Cages will be essential reading for years to come. — Baynard Woods, author of Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness
Rattling the Cages pulls off a virtual prison break. It brings so many of my favorite people together, all in one place, to share their incredibly powerful perspectives on life, politics, and dynamics as political prisoners, and to talk about what the future holds. — Leslie James Pickering, author of Mad Bomber Melville, former Earth Liberation Front spokesman, and co-founder of Burning Books bookstore
Firestorm Books Rattling the Cages Panel Talks and Zines
Find printable and readable zines for each of the panel talks below here.
Political Prisoners, Mass Incarceration, and Abolition — Eric King with Susan Rosenberg, David Gilbert, and Herman Bell
Continuing the Struggle Inside and Out — Eric King with Ashanti Alston and Ray Luc Levasseur
Antifascism Behind Bars — Eric King with Alissa Azar and David Campbell
Black August and Prisoner Support — Eric King with dequi-kioni sadiki and Harold Taylor
Visualizing Carceral Repression — Eric King with James Kilgore
Post-Prison Activism and Archiving Resistance — Eric King with Claude Marks and Jake Conroy
Until All Are Free — Eric King with Jason and Jeremy Hammond
Revolutionary Women Behind Bars — Eric King with Linda Evans, Laura Whitehorn, and Nicole Kissane
Becoming Politicized in Prison — Eric King and Josh Davidson with Hector “Bori” Rodriguez and Farhan Ahmed
How We Did It and How You Can Too — Eric King with Sara Falconer and Josh Davidson
Abolition Is a Family Affair — Eric King with Sharon Shoatz, susie day, and Rochelle Bricker
Looking Back at the George Jackson Brigade — Eric King with Janine Bertram and Mark Cook
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