At the age of 18, George Jackson was condemned to a prison sentence of one year to life for the alleged robbery of $70 from a Los Angeles gas station. Jackson spent the remainder of his short life behind bars, but it was from the confines of prison that he became one of the most powerful revolutionary voices and one of greatest living threats to the American capitalist system. Jackson’s autobiographical book of prison letters, titled Soledad Brother, would become a touchstone of Black revolutionary thought for generations of radicals within and outside the prison-industrial complex. As Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party and one of the organization’s principal thinkers, Jackson’s philosophy and strategy for revolution lit the path to armed struggle taken by the Black Liberation Army and other organizations. On the 52nd anniversary of his killing by prison authorities, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez joins Rattling the Bars to speak with host Mansa Musa about Jackson’s towering life and example, and about the impact Jackson’s work had on Mansa, on our departed mentor and fellow political prisoner Marshall “Eddie” Conway, and on their incarcerated comrades.

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