Saturday, July 20, 2-4 PM: Josh Davidson, Editor of “Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners”
Meet and Greet, Book Talk, Reading, Signing
Join the Willamette Valley Abolition Project and abolitionist Josh Davidson, editor of the new book Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners, to discuss the book, the concept of abolition, and the urgency in supporting those incarcerated for political actions. With a foreword by Angela Davis, Rattling the Cages contains interviews with over 30 current or former North American political prisoners. This wide range of voices come together to embody what bell hooks called “a legacy of defiance.” Learn more about this legacy of defiance, find out how and why you should write to those incarcerated, and join in this conversation about abolition, activism, and accountability. Admission is free. Books available for purchase, provided by Tsunami Books.
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Rattling the Cages Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners
Josh Davidson (Editor); Angela Y. Davis (Foreword); Sara Falconer (Introduction); Eric King
Dispatches from behind bars. Political prisoners speak out.
“Calls upon us to imagine agents of history very differently from the ways we have been encouraged to think of powerful individuals as the motors of change.” —Angela Y. Davis, from the foreword
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.
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
“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
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).
Angela Y. Davis is Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.
Sara Falconer is a writer, editor and digital strategist who works with nonprofits. She has been creating publications with prisoners since 2001. Sara lives with her awesome family in Hamilton, Ontario—the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas.
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.
