Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners
Josh Davidson with Matt Meyer and dequi kioni-sadiki
Please join us as we celebrate the publication of Rattling the Cages with editor Josh Davidson in conversation with Matt Meyer and dequi kioni-sadiki.
We will also be writing greeting cards to those unable to join us.
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 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, Daniel McGowan, Linda Evans, Herman Bell, Jennifer Rose, Ed Mead, Jerry Koch, Michael Kimble, Bill Harris, Jaan Laaman, Jake Conroy, Marius Mason, Bill Dunne, Oscar López Rivera
Josh Davidson is an abolitionist who is involved in numerous projects, including the Certain Days collective that publishes the annual Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar and the Children’s Art Project with political prisoner Oso Blanco. Josh also works in communications with the Zinn Education Project, which promotes the teaching of radical people’s history in classrooms and provides free lessons and resources for educators. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Matt Meyer is an internationally recognized author, academic, organizer, and educator who serves as Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, the world's leading consortium of university-based professors, scholars, students, and community leaders. Meyer is the Senior Research Scholar of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst Resistance Studies Initiative, active also with the War Resisters' International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
The author/editor of over a dozen books on radical social change, Meyer has led seminars, trainings, conferences, and organizing talks in over 100 countries across five continents - including in his native Brooklyn, New York. His work on human rights, an end to all occupations and colonialism, and on behalf of political prisoners has gained him the respect and support of Nobel Peace laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina, and many others. Some of his work can be found here: https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/matt-meyer/
dequi kioni-sadiki is a Coordinating Committee member of the Spirit of Mandela Coalition, the former chair of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, and leader of the Sekou Odinga Defense Committee which waged a successful campaign for the release of her husband. A tireless coalition-builder and organizer, dequi is a radio producer of the WBAI-Radio/Pacifica show "Where We Live"; a retired educator with the NYC Department of Education; and a member of the Jericho Movement to Free All Political Prisoners. She co-edited Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st Century Revolutions (PM Press, 2019).
Eric King is a father, poet, author, and activist. He is a political prisoner serving a ten-year federal sentence for an act of protest over the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. He is scheduled to be released in 2024. He has been held in solitary confinement for years on end and has been assaulted by both guards and white supremacists. Eric has published three zines: Battle Tested (2015); Antifa in Prison (2019); and Pacing in My Cell (2019). His sentencing statement is included in the book Defiance: Anarchist Statements Before Judge and Jury (2019).