Rattling The Bars The Real News Network

In 1977, American Indian Movement member Leonard Peltier was convicted of the murder of two FBI agents, and has remained a political prisoner of the US ever since. Peltier's conviction has long been contested by activists and legal experts. Despite the recantation of three key witnesses, his case has never been brought back to trial. Peltier has been eligible for parole since 1992, and the federal government has ignored calls to free him for more than 30 years. Rachel Dionne Thunder joins Rattling the Bars to discuss Peltier's case and the radical vision of the American Indian Movement which the federal government has sought to repress through Peltier's incarceration.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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Despite now spending 47 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Leonard Peltier continues to be denied parole by the federal government of the United States. Why has the US so obstinately refused to free Peltier, despite decades of international outcry? The answer lies in the threat posed by what Peltier represents—the demands of the Indigenous liberation movement for sovereignty and justice after centuries of US settler colonialism. Historian Ward Churchill joins Rattling the Bars for a discussion on Leonard Peltier, the American Indian Movement, COINTELPRO, and more.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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The oppression of Black people is more than just a historical or political question. The accumulated harms of centuries of slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, and racism in all forms have a psychological and medical effect, in addition to political and economic ones. Trauma, after all, describes the physical injury of the brain as a result of harmful experiences. At the scale of communities and generations, such trauma can be passed down and reproduced for decades, and even centuries. In the first of a two-part conversation, traumatologist Dr. Da'Mond Holt explains the medical reality of Black historical trauma, and what kinds of interventions and solutions are required to promote healing as a form of justice.

Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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Critics of the prison industrial complex have long noted the system's failure to properly rehabilitate those who are locked away in its bowels. Christina Merryman and Ameena Deramous return to Rattling the Bars for the second part of a two-part interview on the reality facing prisoners in Maryland's only women's correctional facility.

Click here to listen to Part 1

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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For decades, prisoners' rights advocates have called on the State of Maryland to address its flagrant discrimination against prisoners housed in the state's sole women's prison. As The Real News has previously reported, conditions in the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women are akin to "torture," and the lack of resources and services dedicated to incarcerated women amounts to state-sanctioned, gender-based discrimination. Christina Merryman and Ameena Deramous, both former inmates in the MCIW—or the "Women's Cut"—join Rattling the Bars, explaining the conditions faced by incarcerated women in Maryland, and what advocates inside and outside the prison walls are doing to fight for justice, in the first half of this two-part panel.

Click here to listen to Part 2

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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The prevalence of sexual violence in the US prison system is so widespread and accepted that it's often made the butt of jokes in popular culture. Yet the reality is that countless survivors of the prison system carry the scars and traumas of sexual abuse—and for many, the perpetrators of these crimes were the very prison staff charged with their protection. Juvenile victims of the prison system are no exception. In Maryland, several adult survivors of sexual abuse as juveniles in state custody have filed a class action lawsuit demanding justice. Lawyer and former DC Council Member LaRuby May joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the class action suit, and the systematic nature of sexual violence in prisons as a form of racial oppression.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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