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 operates as a profitable and punishing extension of the prison system.

Guests:

• Maya Ragsdale is the founder and co-executive director of Beyond the Bars, a worker center in South Florida building the social and economic power of workers with criminal records and their families.
• Katherine Passley is co-executive director of Beyond the Bars. Passley was named the 2025 Labor Organizer of the Year by In These Times magazine.

Additional links/info:

• Beyond the Bars website, Substack, and Instagram
• Beyond the Bars, The Temp Trap Report

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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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 Musa speaks with Lauren Gill, a staff reporter from Bolts magazine, and Natalie Cadena, executive director of the Arkansas-based rural advocacy nonprofit Gravel & Grit, about the fight in Franklin County and rural America’s changing relationship to the prison-industrial complex.

Guests: 

• Lauren Gill is a staff writer at Bolts. She previously worked as a reporter for The Appeal, Newsweek, and the Brooklyn Paper. Her reporting on the criminal legal system has also appeared in ProPublica, Rolling Stone, The Intercept, Slate, The Nation, and The Marshall Project, among others.
• Natalie Cadena is a seasoned education professional and writer with over 15 years in public education and 5 years of experience in professional writing. She is also the executive director of Gravel & Grit, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit dedicated to transparency, accountability, and rural advocacy in the state of Arkansas.

Additional links/info:

• Gravel & Grit website and Instagram
• Lauren Gill, Bolts, “The prison next door”
• Caroline McCoy, Oxford American, “Arkansas’s faulty plan to build a mega prison”

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino 

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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 take this holiday season to help prisoners maintain contact with the outside world.

C/W: Discussion of suicide and depression

Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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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-industrial complex, what sets the US criminal justice system apart from other countries around the world, and how organizers are fighting for real prison population reductions instead of more cages.

Guest:

• Nicole D. Porter, named a “New Civil Rights Leader” by Essence Magazine for her work to challenge mass incarceration, manages The Sentencing Project’s state and local advocacy efforts on sentencing reform, voting rights, and confronting racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Since joining The Sentencing Project in 2009, Porter’s advocacy and findings have supported criminal legal reforms in several states including Kentucky, Maryland Missouri, California, Texas and the District of Columbia. Porter’s areas of expertise include research and grassroots support around challenging racial disparities, felony disenfranchisement, in addition to prison closures and prison reuse. Her research has been cited in several major media outlets including Salon and the Washington Post, and she has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and on National Public Radio and MSNBC.

Additional links/info:

• The Sentencing Project website, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Lisa Armstrong, Essence, “The new Civil Rights leaders”

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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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 communities living in constant fear, economic precariousness, and social isolation.

Guest:

• Kori Skillman is a Report for America Corps Member covering justice and accountability for the Baltimore Beat. Skillman investigates policing, incarceration, and civil rights in Baltimore. Most recently, she worked on ABC News’ assignment desk, covering breaking news and editing for live broadcasts. A Bay Area native, Skillman holds a dual B.A. in journalism and international business from San Diego State University, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa, and an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School.

Additional links/info:

• Kori Skillman, Baltimore Beat, “Indiscriminate ICE arrests have left Baltimore’s immigrant communities in a constant state of fear and anxiety”
• Kori Skillman, Baltimore Beat, “Lack of ICE oversight shows how Baltimore has long been at the mercy of outside powers”

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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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 free jail phone calls, erase millions of dollars in fines and fees for systems-impacted people, and build powerful bridges between the prison abolition movement and the labor movement in Florida.

Guest:

• Katherine Passley is Co-Executive Director of Beyond the Bars, a worker center in South Florida building the social and economic power of workers with criminal records and their families. Passley was named the 2025 Labor Organizer of the Year by In These Times magazine.

Additional links/info:

• Beyond the Bars website, Substack, and Instagram
• Kim Kelly, In These Times, "Building bridges and erasing jail debt: Katherine Passley"
• Mansa Musa, The Real News Network, "America is built on prison labor. When will the labor movement defend prisoners?"

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rattling-the-bars--4799829/support.

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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 deliver real transformation to a broken justice system, or if it simply amounts to a construction project that leaves that system intact.

Guest:

• Sean Wilson is the Senior Director of Organizing and Partnerships at Dream.Org. In his role, he is responsible for overseeing capacity building, leadership development programs, and grassroots partnerships. Over the past two and a half years, Sean has led the team in building one of the most transformational training programs in the nation - The Dream Justice Cohort, as part of the Justice program. Sean was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and has organized at the state and local level around policy change related to youth justice, voting rights, police reform, and criminal justice.

Additional links/info:

• Sean Wilson, Wisconsin Examiner, “I lived inside Green Bay Correctional. Wisconsin can’t wait another four years”

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rattling-the-bars--4799829/support.

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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 systematic corruption and inhumane horrors endured daily by incarcerated people in Alabama.

Guest:

• Matthew Vernon Whalan is a writer and oral historian living in New England. He is the author of the book Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison, and his work has appeared in Counterpunch Magazine, Alabama Political Reporter, Scheer Post, Jacobin, Eunoia Review, New York Journal of Books, The Brattleboro Reformer, and elsewhere. He runs the publication Hard Times Reviewer.

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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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 at Louisiana’s Angola Prison—once a plantation, now a maximum-security facility—the play became the basis of the documentary, Angola: Do You Hear Us? (Paramount Plus / Amazon Prime). As the fight for abolition and prison reform gains momentum, this story reminds us that art is not decoration—it’s a tool for awakening, organizing, and freedom.

🎥 Watch the full interview on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcDuOs80ya0


Resources

• Official site — https://www.lizajessiep.com
• Angola: Do You Hear Us? Voices from a Plantation Prison — Paramount+ / Amazon Prime
• Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/lizajessiepeterson 
• Voices of the Experienced (VOTE Louisiana) — https://voiceoftheexperienced.org
• National Black Theatre (Harlem, NY) — https://www.nationalblacktheatre.org

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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 Larriett, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Alabama, about about the true cost of Alabama’s carceral crisis and his vision for an alternative vision of criminal justice. Guest:

• Dakarai Larriett is a community leader, entrepreneur, and Democratic candidate for US Senate in Alabama

Credits:

• Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rattling-the-bars--4799829/support.

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