In late February 2025, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the editors of Rattling the Cages, Josh Davidson & Eric King. Rattling the Cages is an anthology of oral histories of North American political prisoners released through AK Press in 2023. The following is a transcript, edited for clarity, of that conversation where we discussed the process of compiling RTC, Eric’s experience as a political prisoner, and the state of the U.S. prison abolition movement today.

It was such a gift to get to learn more about the two friends in the process. Thank you both for your time and contributions to our movement!

DISSONANT TIMES: Tell me about the process of developing this book, from start to finish. How/when did the idea for creating something like Rattling the Cages first develop? What were some initial challenges in getting this project off the ground? How was it trying to find a publisher and when/how did you get a deal to publish through AK Press? How did you come up with a list of folks to talk to?

ERIC KING: So from my perspective. I was doing lots of SHU time waiting to get prosecuted for the second case, and I was feeling really powerless and kept trying to think of ideas of like what I could do to give back to the political prisoner movement and abolitionist movement and like at one point, I wrote Josh about like starting a political prisoner museum and shit like that. Josh, I don’t know if you remember that. If you don’t, [it was] July 2018, check your records. Check your letters.

But Josh and I had connected on a lot of like really deep levels. But especially politically and like empathetically and…We’d read, like, we read enough things that like each other would read sometimes at the same time. And I don’t know if I came up with it, if Josh came up with it or whatever. But from my recollection, it was like originally a zine and it was just going to feature Elder black prisoners that I thought maybe didn’t have the same level of support, like people that Josh was teaching me people that we were just sharing interest in. And then over time, like it became like maybe an online project…And then a combination of Josh and Rochelle [Eric’s partner] I believe, like, popped up with the “Maybe it should be a book,” and then that was the end of my contributions, really. Everything else was Josh.

JOSH DAVIDSON: Yeah, I can fill in some of those blanks, but that’s pretty much the gist of it. We were reading this one book, Say Nothing, about the IRA and people telling their stories of their lives during the struggles… And recording that history. And it was really that really capturing of history of radical direct action history that really interested both of us. And we were also just writing back and forth about Black Liberation Army and Black Panther political prisoners who were serving decades and decades in prison. And initially there were like four or five of them that we thought it would be great to talk to and to interview and share their stories. And unfortunately, all of them died like within a four or five year period. And it took us many years to come up with this book. And Eric did more than he than he suggested. He did come up with a lot of the questions. There were like 25 questions that Eric came up with, and my partner Danielle and I kind of modified and changed around. And then Rochelle, Eric’s partner, helped as well.

And I sent those 25 questions to as many political prisoners as I could, current or former. And I had the benefit of being a member of the Certain Days Collective, so through that calendar project, I had a lot of connections with current and former political prisoners. But once Eric and I realized that we were getting not just the responses from like older black radicals, but from people from different movements and different generations and different parts of the struggle, I think then is when we realized there was more to it and then we could create this book.

I was living in Baltimore at the time, was friends with a member of AK Press and pitched the idea to them and they loved it. It went from there.

EK: The big thing, and this came from Say Nothing, was finding out about the actual lives of the people. Because there are so many books that we read that talk about their politics, like has essays by them about whatever, and I think we both wanted to know like what drama did they have? What did they do on a daily basis? What are their lives like? And Tom Manning died in either late July or early August 2018. And… Thinking about like the history that he took with him. Like what was what was left behind from that like we’ll never know what his life was like. We’ll never know the friendships he made or what he was feeling if he was angry, happy, whatever. And so for me and I think, Josh, too… That was crucial, knowing who the actual people are, not the tokenized image of them. And I think it turned out really beautifully.

DT: That’s one of my favorite parts about the entire thing. Like Josh, you were just getting at how the scope expanded from talking to older black radicals and also like Eric, what you were just saying. You know, getting into like the actual like details of their lives that aren’t just like them as…for lack of a better term, I guess like political martyrs, people who…stood up for a cause and became incarcerated. Who are they like around all these politics and of course I believe the personal is political you know so these personal details like intersect with that, but..it was a really special part about this book. And I agree. It’s like different than other writings about this.

EK: I felt tokenized a lot and I wasn’t like a big name. I’m not Leonard or David or one of these guys…And like, if I felt it, like in my moderate like amount of support, then I had to imagine that those dudes like were objects and I don’t know how often they got to talk about their actual feelings or experiences.

DT: That’s what’s so interesting too because for a while, like I first found out about you a few years ago … [through] the free Eric King campaign, [and] I mean, it was really incredible to see like all this support for you. But…it’s like one of those things where it’s [discussed] in like this kind of abstract way, I’m like, okay, like, yeah, I know the name Eric King. I know the face Eric King. I know what Eric King is going through as a political prisoner, but I don’t know anything about Eric King really aside from what’s accessible via zine…so..that’s what’s cool about you being out now man is like there’s like a lot more opportunity for you to just share about yourself.

EK: That’s the best part is just being able to talk about me all day. That’s partially what I respected so much about Josh early on. Is that he humanized me very quickly. And instead of just… talking to me about bullshit, like he would respond back quickly and then would like send things to keep my mind fresh about those topics. Like we’re talking about Sundiata, we’re talking about the Irish, we’re talking about whatever, Josh would take the time not only to type or write long-ass letters, but to also print things off that will engage my brain and that was such a kind gesture to send me things I actually wanted to read. As opposed to just the same bullshit from eight different people like whatever the latest zine or book was. So it just made me feel really, really like this dude respects me as a human. And that made it even easier to become a friend and trust them.

DT: Were there any other ways that you came up with all the folks that you wanted to reach out to or was it just kind of like sending [questions] out blindly like to every political prisoner you could think of? Or what was the process there?

EK: So I don’t know if you know this about our bro [Josh], but he has like an encyclopedic knowledge of essentially every person ever to be locked up for ethical charges…It doesn’t matter the movement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 1892 in Haymarket or… Or yesterday, Josh knows them, knows what they’re into and knows someone who actually knows that person. So I’ll let you [Josh] answer the rest because you actually did it, but… His depth of knowledge about prisoners and like who they are as people is astounding.

JD: Well, I appreciate that. But no, we were wide ranging... but we were also pointed and deliberate about who we asked. And we wanted a wide range but we also wanted to avoid having a bunch of white men explaining what it was like…

I tried really hard to get trans people and luckily we got two of them to participate. Initially, we casted an international net, I reached out to IRA people, I sent a letter to Carlos the Jackal, two or three letters to him actually…We tried to invite Ted Kaczynski to participate, not necessarily because we agreed with his politics, but because we thought he had a unique perspective to share. But…also a lot of it came from… like one SLA [Symbionese Liberation Army] member participating and then telling other former SLA members like, hey, this is a worthwhile endeavor. You might want to check this out. Probably the most difficult…person that we got to contribute was Oscar Lopez Rivera. I never wrote to him while he was in prison. I didn’t have a lot of contacts in the Puerto Rican independentista movement. But we found someone who was an original supporter of theirs during their time in prison in the 80s and 90s. And he agreed to interview Oscar for us and we included that. So that was really great to be able to include him there.

EK: Josh touched on this, but what we don’t want is the same goddamn monolith from 12 or 13 different people, and then like people that fought and gave their lives to the movement are all of a sudden like left out of a project…But there was also pieces of shit that are considered political prisoners that I kind of, I don’t want to say boycotted But said, like, I don’t want this motherfucker in this project…

DT: Was it all oral histories? Were y’all recording conversations with folks? Did anybody like write anything in? That was something I was thinking about when I was going through the book.

EK: So something Josh did… was like he printed off this questionnaire and mailed it to people inside…So I think there was like 15 or 20 people included that were still inside… But then he had to patiently wait for them to respond and then patiently wait for them to respond to follow-ups, patiently send them like release forms. Like just all this like… soul-sucking work of sending out just countless things.

And so then the prisoners had to like decide what level of risk they wanted to take. Because we can get fucked up inside. You say the wrong thing. Like…You know, it happens … Josh was very delicate. He didn’t ask like leading questions to get people hurt or get them in trouble. And yeah, that’s how that went down. I think he did an amazing job of like maintaining that balance.

JD: Sure. Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s something I wish I had been more um open about within the actual book itself. I wish I had specifically said how each one was done. A lot of times, specifically for people in prison, it was either letters that they hand wrote out, that were dozens of pages long and mailed to me and Danielle and I would type them up. Sometimes they would have the opportunity to email their answers, which was a little more helpful in terms of ease and getting it done more quickly. For people that were outside of prison, I was luckily able to interview about 15 of them via Zoom. And then transcribe all those interviews and cut and leave some things out.
There were a few people who also had since been released and decided to write their answers out just because they thought it would be easier that way.

And then for the interviews I did via Zoom, I was able to add follow up questions and kind of change things here or there to allow them to elaborate on certain stories. And for people who wrote their answers, I would write back follow-up questions or get confirmation on certain things that were unclear. So it was a really long process. I do wish that I had included that in the book of how the person was interviewed, how the interview was conducted. And I also kind of wish we had included the questions in the book just so people could get an idea.

DT: What would you have done differently?

EK: If we had more time and resources I would have wanted to dive into the stories…There’s a lot of follow-up questions I had. And then like personal questions of like shit that I knew about these dudes from in prison, that I would have liked to ask them. I could have never got those to Josh without jeopardizing people. The shit that he said about including how they communicated, and then I would’ve made mine better. Like I initially didn’t want to have a chapter and Josh kind of talked me into it. And so I purposely made mine, I don’t want to say shitty, but… small. I don’t want to say lazy either, but I minimize myself which I have never done since. And so those are the things. …I would have also wanted more pictures.

DT: How long about were you actually working on the book before you had it in your hands?

JD: Five years.

EK: Yeah, so there was a delay because I went through that mail ban. And we weren’t able to write about it, so we weren’t able to talk about it and advance it…I got my set of questions to him, I’m pretty sure via either legal mail or just a random prisoner I paid to mail them…I might be wrong… [actually] It was through Rochelle. Because I was allowed to write her only…so there was that little delay and then that then Josh has really put like three or four years straight of work into that.

JD: Yeah, it was a long process. It was a COVID project. I think it started around the time of COVID, like when COVID first hit. But yeah, it took about five years from inception to when it was actually published and then you know, I’d never published a book before so i figured once it was published, our work was done, but now it’s a year and a half later. We’re working harder than before. Which is good that people like the book. So I’m not complaining about that. But it was a long process.

EK: It had a very long gestation period.

JD: It did. Yeah. I went through three jobs and moved across the country. I got married. Luckily, Eric was able to get out and like perform our wedding and participate in all of these talks so yeah, it’s worked out really well. The book came out the same month he got out of prison so we couldn’t have timed that any better.

DT: The hard work paid off. I don’t know about financially, but spiritually it must feel good.

EK: Financially, it’s paid off for no one except for AK, I think. Those prisoners are still waiting for the check. They’re going to be waiting for years, I think.

DT: Oh, yeah. So did you financially compensate people?

EK: Josh donated his half of the proceeds to the ABC war chest…I did not. I have a wife and two kids and just got out of prison. But no, no one was compensated. I wanted Josh’s money too, but he wouldn’t give it to me.

DT: Josh, come on!

JD: But, no, no one that participated. And yeah, not me, not Angela Davis, who wrote the foreword, not Sarah, who wrote the introduction or two friends who helped us edit it. It was all voluntary work it was all an act of love and solidarity.

EK: I can’t believe you didn’t get paid to be an editor or nothing like that is scandalous, dude.

JD: I also would feel bad, though. Like I, you know. None of these other people are making money for the service they put into our movements you know and all I’m doing is helping to elevate their voices. So I would have felt really weird.

DT: RTC encompasses political prisoners across such a breadth of time, movements, identity backgrounds… Did you notice any themes or similarities as you compiled folks’ contributions? Any major differences that stuck out to you?

EK: So one of the things that I know, like, there was like common themes that stretched like almost everyone and most of those themes are like love for people, that like their actions and their spirits… They didn’t act out of rage. They didn’t act out of like, sociopathy like they acted out of like a deep, immense empathy for like what was happening to other people and they cared so much that they could no longer not act. And so, just getting to like see their hearts like that was a common theme for me, like seeing how much love people had… A lot of us wrote like how much joy we got throughout the day by bucking on these prisons…

JD: Yeah, no, I think there are a lot of themes. And, you know, we did ask the same questions of everyone and I tried to, there’s three different, like each interview is set up in three different type of themes. So I tried to make it as accessible as possible as well, but i think like Eric was saying, the empathy the love and also the fact that like it wasn’t a decision to act. It was it was who they were and who they were as political prisoners, as activists, as organizers like they had to act. So I think seeing that. And the motivation that it inspires in other people one of my favorite themes.

EK: Some of the people didn’t answer like some of the questions I wanted as thoroughly as I wanted. Some of them kind of evaded kind of some of the more vulnerable or emotional answers.

But for the most part, I think there was a common theme of like, this is our life and it’s fucking hard. But we’re still loving as much as we can…Yeah, I wish I would have heard more about friendships and shit like that. Because like some of these dudes were in prison for like 30 or 40 years like, tell me about your friends. Tell me about like times you were hurt. Tell me about times you celebrated and stuff like that. But we did get a lot of those and it was really nice…

That’s what made Rebecca’s chapter so great. Is that she really dived into the vulnerability, really dived into like what made her days special, what made them hard, what gave value to her life at that time…Jake Conroy did an amazing job too. That’s how I got introduced to Jake. Like, we’re great friends now, but that’s how we became introduced to each other. So people like that did a really great job of like this is what my life is like. And I’m doing the best I can.

DT: I believe you stated that you (Eric) began working on RTC while still incarcerated. Did you encounter any difficulties compiling the book when incarcerated and communication was restricted? How did you manage this collaboration in and out of prison?

EK: Yeah, I can say like that mail ban lasted two and a half years, and it wasn’t just mail, it was phone calls and visits as well...And I felt so sad that I wasn’t able to help. In our perfect world, Josh and I would have been mailing back and forth every chapter. I would have been writing notes and shit like that and just celebrating. But instead, like, I’ve carried a lot of guilt being like, man, this dude carried everything, and I got my name on a book. God damn it. But like that was the difficulty for me was the emotional part, that not only am I missing out on talking to these people that I admire, which we’ve we’ve rectified now…I was missing out on helping like be an equal participant in our project. And I didn’t think it was fair to Josh. So I still joke about now his friends taking advantage of him 24/7, but like. I’m one of them. Like, I was one of those people who benefited from his selflessness.

DT: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Josh, how did that feel for you?

JD: It was a lot of work, but for me you know I learned so much and it built so many relationships that I didn’t have before: People that I didn’t necessarily write to when they were in prison or I’d read their books maybe but had never like communicated with them... so I don’t look at it like Eric does. I know that he was in the hardest spot possible, you know…I don’t hold that against him at all. There’s no more that he could have done from where he was… I wish that I had more money so that I could have printed off chapters and sent them to him, but you know it was a 500 page book so just going to the library every day and printing the free 20 pages that I could get was… sometimes the best I could do.

But no, I have no regrets in terms of how that went. For me, the whole thing was a learning experience and it’s brought so many just really amazing relationships into my life now that I didn’t have before. So I love that…

Eric’s done his part since he’s gotten out. It’s been over a year now and he’s been equally doing all these talks and organizing all these things and and having like monthly radio talks on different channels and things like that so he’s definitely done his part in publicizing the book.

DT: Eric once wrote in a poem about clicktivism… in what ways do you think online advocacy helped your case (eg publicity and public pressure) and in what ways (if at all) have you been frustrated by what you’ve seen online since your release?

EK: So when I first got locked up there was people that there was people place themselves into my “support” team who didn’t actually give a shit about me. They weren’t interested in this, kind of like what we talked about earlier. They were not interested in me as Eric. They were trying to find ways to make me the most palatable so they could basically sell me as a prisoner to other people. And I never wanted that. I just wanted to be Eric. They [the "justice" system] took so much. I just wanted to at least have myself. You know what I mean? And they caused a lot of divisions. It caused a lot of problems that are still going on kind of today, forreal.

But when Rochelle finally took over the support page --because it was ran by someone else for a while and they basically used it as a promotional tool for themselves and for others but not for themselves for me. They wouldn’t post my writings. They would edit things if they did post it. They would change photos and like block things out and shit. So it was hurtful. Like it really hurt my feelings. Because it made me feel like I’m… I’m trash. I’m not good enough to even talk-- And so when Rochelle took it over…and Josh got involved. Brian got involved. Badger got involved, then like not only did I see significantly more support come, it was like support for me. People were writing me about Taylor Swift. They were writing me about soccer. They were writing me about the Chiefs. They’re writing to me about Ireland and Palestine and elder black fighters and like the things that really like moved the needle for me. They were sending me like funny jokes and puns and pictures of Kansas City, shit like that.

And… How do I word it this way? It increased donations a lot. And you need that. Like when you’re inside, like this is a gross part about prison, but like everything’s expensive… So like… Stamps. If I’m getting 50 letters a week, I have to write those people back. And I can’t do that if no one’s like looking out for me that way. And so the more visibility we got online, like…the more I felt seen, the more I felt loved, the more I felt protected.

And that presence like made a huge difference. And I like, I thank God that these people like came into the team and took over, because especially for that second trial and then ADX, like we would have been lost like we would have got lost in the shuffle and no one would have known or cared.

So it was a difference in my mind. Because also, there was the call-in campaign when I was at Lee, like on the way back to Lee. And that was led online and that got tons of traction that probably kept me alive. So when people got involved that way digitally it It makes a difference dude like it can save you.

JD: Do you want to talk about the flip side of that, Eric, though, with the “clicktivism” that led to the New Year’s Eve demonstration?

EK: Yeah, yeah. So the flip side is that the flip side is people don’t always do what’s best for you. They do what’s best for them. They’ll post your things in ways that you don’t like. They will put words in your mouth. They’ll claim you. And then they will do things that are reckless without thinking of the consequences.

So when I was on my first mail ban, some of the comrades in Colorado want to do New Year’s Eve demo, and they did. And it was videotaped live. It was live streamed. And I would have said yes either way because I didn’t understand the consequences fully either. But that led to two more years of a mail ban and it led to me being called the leader of Antifa. They thought I organized that. And that was my ADX referral. So I got sent to the worst prison in the country because of their actions, that I literally had no idea about, didn’t even know it was going to happen.

They were embarrassed, like embarrassed the BOP, and so like when I see people doing that shit for Luigi without talking to him, when I see people doing it for anyone… I always think like we need to remember that our actions on the outside can hurt people on the inside.

We could have a negative impact like We can get people fucked up if we’re not careful. And so that’s why consent like informed consent with the prisoners, like talking to them and seeing like, what do you actually want? What sort of support will make your time easier and make you feel more fulfilled as a human? Because otherwise, it’s just a bunch of posturing and like performative art basically.

DT: Well put.

EK: It wasn’t that well put. Let’s be honest with each other. We’re just three pals sitting in our front rooms. Like, let’s be honest.

DT: …No, I mean, informed consent is the is the theme for that type of stuff, especially prisoner support, but really any movement work. I’ve seen forest defense shit go down on native land without asking the native community who it belongs to…

EK: Right. And that goes back to the tokenization I was talking about where they’re doing shit for themselves because you’re not a real person…“Political prisoners should want this political prisoners are revolutionaries who only want to struggle and fight” and like, man, I haven’t held my kids in six years. Like, goddamn, stop. Like, please ask me, please talk to me first. There’s consequences.

DT: Do either of you have thoughts on how to get more eyes on political prisoners and prison abolition in general?

EK: Yeah. Yeah. So something like that I think about sometimes is that sometimes in America, even amongst like the activist left I think there’s still a stigma about prisoners. I think in the back of people’s minds, they’re still like, “Burn prisons. Well, except for rapists or murderers” and so they still buy that government line that like only some people should be freed. Only some people should… get out of prison.

And I feel that, like, I feel that when I talk to people, because I was around like the most infamous killers in American history just about like and I still didn’t feel like that was the solution. This sort of like crushing imprisonment, and so I think people think and this might be a fact. I don’t know. I’m very smart, I think people… what they do with their actions indicates what they care about. You can say anything, but what you do shows like where your heart’s really at and the lack how do I say this? The lack of direct action, protest, and creativity in the abolitionist circle, which would draw in more people indicates that not that many people care like they say they do.

We saw with the Palestinian stuff, people were mobilized. Like hundreds of thousands, it seemed like globally, and I thought to myself, if we had half of this for the political prisoner movement…You don’t see people on the streets for Oso. Maybe 10. You don’ see people marching so that Kojo can go home...because they’re abstract ideas. They’re not people. They’re abstract. And if you’re one of the few people who do see them as a human, you also recognize like how alone you are in that, because Josh can’t take to the streets and start shooting wardens and like expect anything to change. But if 30, let’s say 3,000 people in Eugene rolled up on Oregon State Prison and sat down in that parking lot so the guards couldn’t show up, that would start a discussion. That would bring new people in because they would hear perspectives they’d never heard. It would bring eyes and ears and that brings action. So we don’t see a prison BDS movement…We don’t see it. No one cares. And so like this lack of creativity and lack of like, large appeal, I think shows that like we are still buying the government sign on prisoners and that’s why it’s still like a niche topic and still like a moderately small movement, forreal.

JD: With rattling the cages, I’ll just say we tried to make it as accessible as possible. It was difficult because I wanted to like I wanted my parents to read it who have no idea what like what I do you know or supporting political prisoners, that doesn’t mean anything to them really, so I wanted them to be able to read it and like have some understanding of what I spend the majority of my time doing. But I also wanted like David Gilbert Herman Bell or Susan Rosenberg, these people who have been involved in this movement for decades and decades. I wanted them to read it and learn something or find something new in there as well. So I think just making these things as accessible as possible is is only going to benefit us. One of the first book talks I did was in Baltimore and a friend’s daughter came up and said,

“Great book talk,” She was like nine years old and she was like, “that was a great book talk. Do you have any books that would like help me understand what political prisoners are?”

And there aren’t, you know, there’s not really that stuff out there. But if there were, you know, if people understood from a younger age, like the connections of movements and people fighting back in the history of resistance then I think that we would have like you see in Ireland or Palestine, greater levels of support for political prisoners and also people realizing the just the centrality of political prisoners within any movement for liberation.

EK: Your answers are always so much better than mine. I hate you.

DT: It’s not a competition.

EK: No, it is.

DT: You all get participation trophies at the end.

EK: I better. Just real quick, like my mom didn’t take, like, she didn’t understand my situation at all, until my wife had to teach her basically. When the book came out like she felt pride, I think, in me, for that. For doing something that she recognized as an accomplishment. And then now like she watches every rattling in the cages. She’s there live… And so like that goes to the accessibility. Like if nothing else at least one like MAGA lady sees prisoners as humans and so that’s a small victory in itself.

DT: Totally. I mean, it’s hard, especially with like going back to your earlier point where it’s not visible and then like the visibility that you do get around prisoner issues is like so often very tokenizing, and, I mean, it’s part of the function of the prison is to make it so concealed, to like actually understand what’s going on in there. And like, I think that’s why we’ve seen such mass mobilization around Palestine since October 7th in 2023 because like it is the atrocities going on there are like on every news network, basically. And you don’t get that type of coverage and you don’t get that type of like publicity for prisoner issues. And I think that’s like why we need to like really in our media and our grassroots media like have like dedicated space for just platforming incarcerated people.

EK: If only there was a newspaper that could do that. Someone needs to get on that.

DT: People need to get off their lazy asses and get to work..hey, if we had it my way but… anyways, Josh, you kind of segued into this point [with] the [bringing up the] firestorm talk with James Kilgore. When James was talking about the book he worked on, the Warehouse and Visual Primer on Mass Incarceration and how like a big intention behind that book was to create more visibility and make the realities of inside prisons more accessible to people, I thought that was really awesome…But yeah, I was just kind of curious like if you guys wanted to dive in a little bit more into like your intentions behind Rattling the Cages, if there’s anything that hasn’t been touched on so far. Or your own like personal motivations and like hopes and like publishing this work, whether it’s like, I just want my mom to understand, I want everybody to understand who reads this book, or whatever.

EK: I touched on it earlier, of course, but the number one thing for me was the humanization and honoring of our elders. Like Josh made it a full compass thing of like every generation ever to but for me, I was desperate for people to see the humanity behind our elders so that like they could have that. I wanted them to be honored when they were here and when they’re gone. And I wanted them to be honored for who they were, not what they did. Because we see those people, we see them and I don’t know if every single person in the abolitionist movement understands what Laura did, like who they were. I don’t know if every single person understands like what makes Linda happy, or what David lost by doing the Brinks thing, like what was lost? And then what was gained? And so that was like radically important to me that just for posterity’s sake if nothing else, like my grandkids can know that like Herman Bell was fucking amazing as a human.

JD: Yeah, I think for me, a lot of it was the same. You know, it’s just like, these are amazing people that are more often than not overlooked and neglected, whether they’re inside or outside you know and and whatever we can do to help raise their voices, not only to benefit them and to like help people understand the significance of their part in the struggle, but also to motivate people, to make people realize that these are humans just like you or I, you know that like it’s not something special that they have that like enables them to stand up and fight back, but it’s something that we all share. But I think that was really important. And also, yeah, came through in all the different interviews.

EK: Man, I wish that God, we could have got Maroon. Maroon and Dr. Shakur.

JD: Yeah, Mutulu. I wish, yeah, same here. Eddie Conway, I think, would have been amazing.

EK: When I think about the elders we lost like leading up to it, Tom, Seth, Eddie. Like these dudes that like carried with them hundreds of years of history and loves and feelings and hurts. They just would have added so much. It would have been so great to hear their stories.

JD: That’s true. And one interesting aspect that I think probably most people don’t have when reading Rattle in the Cages, but I definitely do is that each chapter for me reminds me of a prison visit. It humanizes it for me but it also like every prison visit I’ve had has just been like this amazing, humanizing and also just like insanely historical and inspiring story. Every time. It doesn’t matter which political prisoner I visit. You know, just like having face-to-face contact and sharing these stories that weren’t known before, it’s really amazing. And for me, I, yeah, I just kind of see it as an extension of that.

EK: The last prisoner you visited, that was the QAnon shaman, you said?

JD: No. The last prisoner I visited was a trans prisoner here in Oregon, which was an interesting visit.

EK: God damn it, don’t do that to me. Don’t do that to me.

DT: One-upping you with goodness.

…

EK: I love spending time with Josh. Me and Josh have spent so much time like doing these different talks and interviews and some shit in person, most of it over the computer, and it’s just given me a chance to like really appreciate the value that some people have and like the heart they put into the movement. And also into their friends. So I love these things for that reason.

DT: I know I actually almost like didn’t want to have like my camera on at all for this because like I don’t want to be public facing at all with this work but I was like, Josh knows what I look like, but like [for you] Eric, it’s nice to put like faces to name. So I was like, let’s do it.

EK: Can I talk about something you just said and…you can do whatever you want with it…But I feel like we should do the exact opposite. I think we should put more faces…I think the more people have visibility, either as an activist or as a prisoner the more we humanized it becomes. The more it becomes like, oh, yeah, there’s… Josh from Certain Days, just seeing this picture… I think the more we see… I’m not talking about like making spokespeople or like making heroes out of anyone, but I wish we saw more abolitionist faces in the media or anywhere. Because the more visibility we have, the safer we are. So please, please get your face out there. Please get Josh’s face out there. Wheatpaste it all over all over town.

DT: I was boutta say, I’m gonna to go wheat pasting. Josh, it wasn’t me!

… No, I do really love that point too…And I, yeah, I don’t know. I’m really good with like faces and names, like probably better than a lot of people. So I think I sometimes freak people out. But I’m like, I always remember who the comrades are, you know? I’m gonna say what’s up to you if we run into each other at the grocery store, you know?

EK: You should.

DT: Yeah, that’s how we build community and build movements.

DT: Personally, RTC gave me a much better understanding of the internal dynamics of the prison system and the difficulties of navigating it as a prisoner who was sent there for acting on behalf of a cause. Across many folks’ stories I noticed a tension many had with the rest of the prison population (social prisoners), and having differing experiences with navigating their political beliefs alongside their fellow prisoners. Do you think affecting change on the inside is possible when prisons are filled, as described by many in RTC, with so many at best apolitical folks and at worst white supremacists? Can there be a prisoner-led movement towards abolition or do you think outside forces are needed to topple the prison system? Maybe both?

^I don’t expect an easy answer on this one, but curious to hear your thoughts on this as this is one that’s stuck with me from the book, and from reading the transcript of y’all’s conversation with Hector “Bori” Rodriguez and Farhan Ahmed.

EK: So if you look back on some of the shit from the 60s and 70s, there was so much solidarity inside prison. Like there was like a righteousness going through it. People like David Gilbert never had fights in prison, whites or blacks. You read about like what Herman said, what Jalil says, like there was like a unity amongst these people that we know who the enemy is we’re not going to waste time with each other.

And what you see now today is the exact opposite. Almost everyone is more concerned with who’s in the next cage as opposed to who locks the cage. And it’s a psyop. Like, it’s a tactic that they do, and it works. It works drastically. I had so many like in prison, if you’re not a sex offender, you’re not a rat, you’re not supposed to have problems.

I never stopped having problems, because of the “racetraitor” shit. Because I would not bash trans people. I would be friends with the gay prisoners. And this shouldn’t matter if we were wise and we… we hip to what was happening.

But because there’s so many people in prison that have never had solidarity. Never had anyone care about them. They never learn to care about other people.

They never learn impulse control… Taking care of yourself became the number one priority. And you’re going to do whatever it takes to build up your safety, but also your ego. Because they take so much from us, we do everything we can to build our selves up, which comes out as violence and predatory behavior inside…So, at least in federal prison, I can’t imagine, even for a day, Black, white, and Mexican prisoners coming together.

Because it’s not just the white supremacist, like. The surenos hate black guys. The black guys hate native guys. All of them hate gay guys. It is just like this circle of hate. And you can’t escape it. I didn’t have a single day inside where I didn’t hear the worst things you can ever hear in your life. Every day, about women, especially women. And gays, people are obsessed with them. Obsessed with like building themselves up because they’ve had their manhood taken by the prison so they got to reclaim it.

It’s got to be an inside-outside revolution. It’s got to be coordinated and it’s got to be people on the outside doing things to bring attention and hurt the wallet, and it’s got to be people on the inside somehow garnishing solidarity with each other. Somehow convincing these white supremacists that instead of smoking meth and K2 all day, maybe you should ride with these other prisoners and stand up for something. And that’s hard. I can’t describe to you how hard, like imagine every Proud Boy you’ve ever seen in your life in the same place. They’re just so… they can be so shitty. So it would have to be inside, outside. It would have to be based on a common goal, like there would have to be a game plan and I don’t… I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but no, I don’t think it’ll ever happen now. I think we’re in too deep, I think they know how to control us too well. They know how to divide us too well.

SIS knows when to slip in drugs, if things start looking like they’re going too good, they know when they take people off the yard, if they’re being too influential. Like, there’s a reason why Larry Hoover is in ADX, it’s because he knew how to bring people together. He’s been in prison fucking 50 years, man. He’s 80 years old and they have him in ADX. Because he still has that ability to unify. And they won’t let them out because of that. And if you do try to do that in the federal system, if you don’t get killed by one of the prisoners, you’ll get locked up by the system. So, no.

JD: I don’t want to sound pessimistic either but I kinda feel the same way. But I do feel that we do need outside support. Without outside support people are are locked away in every sense of the way. They have no way of getting their voice, their art, their intentions out there. So I don’t know that it’s going to necessarily bring the walls tumbling down, but whatever inside-outside support can be made I think is going to lead the way.

EK: The more knowledge and information and access you have to joy, I feel the less likely you are to be hateful. And one of the great things prison does is take away all sense of community and joy. Because like you said, we’re behind the walls we’re buried, no one sees us. But so we don’t see no one else either. We only see this hate and this violence. And to survive, people will adapt to that community. But if like everyone was getting letters from loved ones and everyone had that dopamine increase and everyone had access to paint and music and art and sports, like, the violence would decrease so much because now you have something to live for that isn’t your rep on the yard. But when all you have is like the respect from these other people, you’re going to do what it takes to get it. Or to maintain it. Love and support can tear down walls inside and outside. Inside our hearts.

…
The guards have gotten much worse in the last 40 years. I can tell you that right now. Those prisoners in the 60s and 70s and 80s did not have militarized police. They had racist police that were horrible but they did not have cops walking around with six different weapons on them, ready to fuck you up. They only have the one weapon and they used it. But the cops nowadays are all ex, like they’re all veterans it seems like, and they all come back with his vicious trauma and they’re going to have an enemy. And it’s going to be you. And like the rights that prisoners used to have, like, to be able to wear their own clothes, to have people mail them in food, to have unlimited visits and like countless phone calls. That shit’s dead. Like, I don’t know a single penitentiary in America right now in the federal system that isn’t a split yard to where they lock you down half the day. And there’s no consequences to the government for doing that. But so these humans are just existing in a small bubble of misery.

DT: Yeah. Yeah, I could see that from my brief experience...

EK: Did you have outside time?

DT: People there did, obviously like we didn’t. We were supposed to, I was actually in the men’s unit in a solitary cell When I was in there. So, yeah. And I never got my hour out. So I was just in the cell for… Like 30 hours or whatever it was after I got put in the unit after holding.

EK: What did that 30 hours feel like? As someone who did a very short time but impactful time, what did that feel like for you?

DT: It sucked. I’ve never missed everything more in my entire life. And you really realize how much power these people have to take it all away from you. So yeah, it’s disempowering... And it’s, yeah, I mean, it’s terrifying, especially like when you first get in. I mean, I’m sure you you acclimate and the fear dissipates, but I mean, it’s one of those things and like just hearing people’s screams from like units away..

EK: All. Day.

DT: And all night. Like I just kept telling myself, it’s just an ambient black metal record. Like, just go to sleep. Like it’s somebody like losing their fucking mind somewhere and I’m just going to have to try and sleep through this, you know?

EK: It sucks. It makes you feel like you’re going insane. Like I did seven and a half years like that locked down. And I don’t think I ever got like used to it and it takes away a lot of joy from your life. Your world becomes this box. And like small things become huge things, like I was throwing piss at cops if they didn’t have like a grape Kool-Aid pack on my tray. Because that’s all I had to look forward to. So you’re robbing me, you’re basically coming into my house and robbing me. It makes you it can it can shape you in a very negative way.

I’m glad that you did a short time. I’m glad that you had such powerful feelings with it because it’d really suck if you got out and you’re like, oh, it was easy. Could do it on my head. I’ll do it tomorrow. I hate that shit. So thank you. Thank you for the honesty and vulnerability.

…

DT: Do you have tips on how the public can expand our focus? And I kind of got into this with the last question, but we didn’t answer it much. So I’m curious if you have any other ideas how the public can expand our focus from not only political prisoner support work, but also to supporting social prisoners; people who may not benefit from the same publicity and activism as political prisoners. And obviously mass incarceration makes it hard to get to everyone, there’s so many people to support but, it gets to your point that you’re making, Eric, about how if people felt loved and cared about from the outside maybe the problems that are existing inside of prison in between people in the population wouldn’t be so prevalent. So do you have any ideas as to how to like integrate social prisoners a little bit more into [existing] political prisoner support work that’s more prominent?

EK: So it’s tricky because the abolitionist movement is so small… We don’t have mainstream appeal except for like Mumia. And Luigi, and Leonard. And what we didn’t do was parlay Leonard’s support into other people. We didn’t parlay Chelsea Manning’s support into other people. And the same thing I fear is going to happen to Luigi because we’re not making those connections with like non-abolitionist people we’re not reaching out to people and like making these connections, and so I don’t know how to expand because our movement is so small and you only have so many spoons, you know? Like what if you can only have the mental energy to write one person you’re going to write someone you connect with. And most likely you’re not going to know who the social prisoner is.

So I know there’s places like Mongoose that give platforms. I know Books Through Bars send things to social prisoners. But I don’t know if they do anything else to lift them up or to encourage people to write them. Like, Books Through Bars, if you did it globally, probably has 20,000 prisoners, and we don’t know their names. There’s no list of those prisoners. Like there is a political prisoner list and the state succeeds in burying them even more. Sorry, how the fuck would you know about him? How would you know about Abdul Shahid who’s done 19 years in ADX? You’ve never heard of them. You’ve never heard of Randy Platt. So I think political prisoners need to do a better job of taking the support we get and magnifying it with other people. And I think the abolitionist groups could possibly, man, make a fucking directory or something. I don’t know. Find a way. Make a directory is all I could think of because I’m not creative either. But it’s hard because we have limited resources and if it comes down to Johnny Nothing or… Oso Blanco, I’m repping Oso. So it’s tricky. Josh, you would know this better than me.

JD: It is tricky…And I’ve been trying to write more of them…One reason for that is because there are fewer political prisoners in prison now. They’ve either died or they’ve aged out or yeah, so there are fewer political prisoners than when I started writing to people. So one thing I do anytime I write to a new political prisoner, I also write to a social prisoner. That’s just like something that like motivates me to write to more social people and like learn from them and with them. So anytime I’m like, oh, let me write to this World Trade Center bomber, I’m also going to write to someone who didn’t, you know, who was in there for a completely non-political action.

I’ll raise up Garrett Felber’s work with the Mississippi Five. Garrett Felber is a historian, former academic who has a new book coming out that I was lucky enough to interview him about on Martin Sostray. And Garrett started this Mississippi Five campaign for five women imprisoned in Mississippi who have each been up for parole nearly 10 times and they’ve been denied every single time. They’re now all in their 60s and 70s. And they’re just some of the most amazing and beautiful women. I write to them, they send me pictures of their cats. And I do the same back. So it’s a whole new relationship, but it’s also about building community and learning from them. And with them. I convinced one of the Mississippi five to write something for the certain days calendar next year so hopefully that’s hopefully accepted and hopefully then more people that are politically oriented by the calendar then become more aware of these social prisoners. So I think making those connections is really important.

That’s something I work with Oso Blanco on too. He and I make these cool greeting cards with indigenous artwork made by prisoners, indigenous prisoners in prison with Oso Blanco, they’re not necessarily there for political reasons, but we make these cool greeting cards with this beautiful artwork and we sell them and send all the money down to the Zapatistas. So people get these cool cards, but they also get to learn who the Zapatistas are and what this radical movement in Mexico looks like and means for us today. So I think there are ways to get to get involved with social prisoners and make those connections. It is difficult but think about, you know, there’s nearly 2 million people in prisons across the US, so it shouldn’t be that hard to find someone who knows someone that is currently in prison.

EK: Two things real quick, so like there’s a lot of times where I’ll see someone going through a hard time or someone I care about and I’ll bring them up to Josh. And Josh will immediately write them. So he does that with social prisoners and I think political prisoners need to do that more. I don’t want to put that like onus on us, but like we’re the ones inside. We’re the ones knowing people…And I also… Not to sound like a pessimist, but I feel like there’s a lot of gatekeeping with radical news…Leftist news doesn’t talk about prisoners unless there’s a big riot and they want to try to capitalize off of it. You’re not seeing Democracy Now talk about other prisoners. You don’t see this on radical media as much as we could. And I don’t know, it just feels like… if we’re going to keep people in these boxes like we’re just forfeiting the movement. Like we might as well just quit because if you only care about political prisoners, then you don’t care about prisoners.

…

DT: ...I think why so many of my questions, I’m like, yes, like the political prisoner movement, and also social prisoners because that’s especially what I want us to be doing with this column…a lot of our contributions will probably be from social prisoners and people who aren’t famously incarcerated

EK: There’s only like one or two at least federal prisons in that area in the Northwest. I don’t know how many state prisons there are but you guys have a plethora of social prisoners. And people forget, goddamn, he’s not a prisoner. This person’s a mom. This person’s an artist. This person’s a baker. This person does really great knitting. This person has a dad that died and needs help. Like, we’re talking about people. We were talking about the same humans we want to radicalize and put in our movement, and if we’re going to throw them away because they robbed a… fucking gas station or like to smoke crack then we are not abolitionists. We’re not anarchists we are…I don’t know what we are. I don’t know what the term for that is. But we’re not shit. So we have to include everyone. All means all. And if it doesn’t, we’re fucking phonies. I’m sorry for that.

What’s Next:

Josh and the Certain Days Collective are currently accepting submissions for their 2026 Calendar. The deadline is May 31st.

Eric is releasing a new book, called A Clean Hell: Anarchy and Abolition in America’s Most Notorious Dungeon.

He’ll also be coming to Eugene to speak on May 30th!