Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther and long-time prison and housing activist, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the conditions faced by prisoners at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, more commonly known as “Angola.” Rahim also delves into the necessity of environmental justice in the face of a future where climate collapse and fascism will come hand-in-hand.

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

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Transcript

Mansa Musa:  Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Joining me today is Malik Rahim, an activist, member of the Black Panther Party, and environmentalist, to talk about all things Angola, all things Louisiana, but more importantly, all things struggle. Welcome, Malik. One thing I was looking at was your work on the environment, and what really got me looking at that was, that I remember me, Eddie, and Dominique, in North Carolina, we were having a conversation. Eddie said that he felt and believed that the direction that the young people would take in terms of organizing and mobilizing would be around the environment.

And when he said it, I was saying to myself, that really doesn’t make sense. But as I thought about it, it does make a lot of sense because they’re the ones it’s going to hurt, the environment, and they’re the ones that do a lot of interaction with the environment in terms of going out, boating, picnicking, or taking a walk in the park. And if the environment is so polluted that they can’t do that, then that’s problematic for them, for the country, and for the world.

Malik Rahim:  Oh, yes.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah. When I saw your work on the environment, I was saying to myself that that’s a good place to start. Why did you think that’s an important thing out of everything that’s going on in the world? What does the environment play in our struggle?

Malik Rahim:  My brother, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing more important than us working to save our environment. We could have as many rights as any Caucasian, we could be as rich as Trump or any of the other billionaires; It won’t mean a thing if we can’t breathe this air or drink this water. There’s nothing more important than that. Listen, I’ll be 76 in December. What it is, 50 years from now when those kids ask their parents, what was so important that you didn’t act to save this environment? What are you going to tell them?

Look at the legacy we going to leave; Right now we’re over $30 trillion in debt, we cause at least one-third of the world’s pollution, and we have an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that will be antiquated in 50 years. Where are you going to put them? You can’t put them all on the Navajo Nation, so what are you going to do with them? If nothing will happen today, how much toxins are going to be in the environment in 50 years? Our rivers, lakes, and streams; think how polluted they’ll be. How much plastic is going to be in our oceans if we refuse to act? And you see, the responsibility is right now in our hands. There’s no place on this planet that has more institutions of higher learning than we have here in America. No place.

Mansa Musa:  Okay, let me ask you this here, Malik. We recognize that in Flint, Michigan, we still have issues with the water in the community and we know that the Love Canal gave birth to EPA, Environmental Protection Act. We know that to be a fact. Prior to the Love Canal and them dumping toxic waste and getting caught – Not dumping it but getting caught doing it – Did we get the environmental protection. But why do you think that we have such resistance when it’s self-evident what the end is going to be? It don’t make no difference what capitalist, fascists, and imperialists think; In the end, you’re either going to be in the spaceship in another hemisphere or another atmosphere or you’re going to be subjected to the same thing as everybody else. So why do you think we have this resistance to, whenever we raise environmental issues in this country, we have a pushback from fascists saying, oh no, there ain’t no such thing as global warming. No, that’s fake news, fake –

Malik Rahim:  Because of our arrogance. Our arrogance. Nobody wants to admit that they were wrong. And listen, there’s enough blame to go around for everyone. How can you blame BP or Shell when you’re using their product? So, there’s enough blame for us all. The time now has long passed for the blame game. Now we got to act, we got to put down all our differences and come together to save life as we know it on this planet, because that’s what’s at stake. If we don’t do anything in the next 50 years, how much pollution is going to be in the atmosphere? And where are we going to get drinkable water? Listen, this is the only time in human history that I have ever heard when man has been able to flush down his feces with clean, drinkable water. We do it in America and don’t think a thing about it. You dig? So what’s going to happen in 50 years? Even in prison?

Mansa Musa:  – Yeah, I got you.

Malik Rahim:  We flush down our feces like it ain’t nothing with drinkable water and that’s what almost a third of our planet’s population is dying for. So again, we have to get our act together. As I said, bro, we have too many institutions of higher learning that if we could come together and form some solidarity movement on how we’re going to work together to save our environment, then we could be leading the world in recovery on what can we do? I don’t think we’re going to stop climate change. I believe that we tipped the scale too far to stop it, but we could slow it down. We could slow it down and maybe our children or our grandchildren can find a way.

But right now, it is time for us to act because I’m going to tell you something, you’re going to explain to your child why you didn’t do anything but you were able to run to a Baltimore Ravens football game that you thought that was a little bit more important than saving our environment. Or a Beyonce or Taylor Swift concert was more important than saving our environment. Because one day, we will all have to be accountable for it. And one thing about social media is it gives you the opportunity right now while nobody is in control of it, of saying not in my name. The oh no, uh-uh, you ain’t going to tell me that I’m going to sit next year and elect the most powerful person on this planet, and not care about his agenda as it relates to saving life as we know it.

Mansa Musa:  Okay, let’s look at this here then. Before we go to another subject matter, we know that in terms of this conversation, former Vice President Al Gore – And you can weigh in on this – He carved that out as his territory in terms of educating people about the environment and the importance of the environment. And he had a worldwide platform. He was able to do a documentary on the environment and the impact of it. Why do you think that didn’t have an impact in terms of making this a priority? Even today as we hear about what’s going on in the world and the upcoming presidential election, or we hear about state and local elections, the environment is not on the radar.

Malik Rahim:  I’m going to tell you, we missed a golden opportunity with our Al Gore. But that’s an opportunity missed. Why are we like this? Because in America, we’re so drunk on prosperity, that we can’t see anything else. We would ride in a car with a person that’s more drunk than us. We’re electing a man who’s drunk on power. So if you got somebody that’s drunk that’s driving the car and you knew he was drunk and you got in the car anyway, then you have to accept the consequences. But again, it is up to us to say hey, we missed the opportunity with Al Gore, but now in 2024, we have a chance to rectify that. We have a chance to make sure that the environment is not second, third, or fourth on any political agenda. It is first because, without that, everything else is mute. Listen, I have grandkids and 23 great-grandkids and I don’t want to see them living in an environment where they cannot go outside and breathe fresh air.

I don’t want them to be known as maybe the last generation of mankind. I don’t want this for them. I don’t want them to be living on a planet that’s so polluted and radioactive, it’s so contaminated that life expectancy is nowhere near 76 years. I don’t want to leave that to them, where they got to clean up our mess. I don’t want to see that because I’m going to tell you either they’re going to love us or curse us. And it’s up to us to decide whether we want to be loved by them saying, well, at least they tried to clean up the mess that they had made, or they going to curse us by saying that we stayed drunk and allowed this to happen to them, and now they got to try to clean up our mess.

Mansa Musa:  And speaking of mess, let’s talk about what’s going on in Baton Rouge and more importantly, what’s going on with Proposition 3. Are you familiar with them trying to build this new jail that’s glass-enclosed, circular style?

Malik Rahim:  And it’s something that not even the sheriff wants. But we’re going to force this on. Why? Because it’s holding us, because you got to remember, Dixiecrats are alive and well in Louisiana. I call it Lousy-ana. So in Lousy-ana, it is alive and well. Listen, this year we had a $200 million surplus that we could have used on crime abatement, on establishing a reentry program. We could have used it on any of the pressing problems that we face in this state, but we chose not to. We chose to give it to different politicians for their pet projects. So again, we have to change that here. We elected a governor, he won in a landslide because we didn’t get out there and vote.

But then you ask yourself, why should we vote? In order to make a person do something, you have to give them a reason to do it, either out of fear or out of hope. We didn’t supply either, so nobody would go. So again, when you have a state that has a 30%-plus African-American population, which adds up to about a third, but we only have one congressional seat when we should have two, when living in a state that has a $50 billion budget in this state of less than 5 million people, and close to 35% is living below the poverty line, something is wrong.

Mansa Musa:  Something is wrong with that pitch.

Malik Rahim:  How can you justify that? Listen, the actors just came off a strike. So now, once again, they’re going to be making movies in this community, because we got three movie studios right here in the African-American community that have priced our community out of our reach. We’re already not making anything but half of what the average white person makes. Then they came into our community and now you can’t even pay rent. You can’t even afford to rent on the average Black salary. They took to our community and they don’t do anything for us. Listen, you would have had movies that come here that if you would add how much they earned combined, they have made, I would say close to about $15-$20 billion.

Mansa Musa:  Ain’t never going back to the community.

Malik Rahim:  Ain’t giving a dime. You know what it’s like, my brother?

Mansa Musa:  What’s that?

Malik Rahim:  It’s like you telling me you think that you are going to come into my house and sell drugs and then you don’t even want to get me high.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah.

Malik Rahim:  You are telling me that –

Mansa Musa:  You got to pay for yours, you got to pay for yours.

Malik Rahim:  – But you’re in my house.

Mansa Musa:  Your house, yeah, but you got to pay for the product.

Malik Rahim:  Right, and that’s something that doesn’t compute. Either you’re going to kick the table over yourself or you’re going to set me up, but you’re going to do something because you ain’t going to let nobody abuse you like that. That’s what we are doing. That’s what’s happening. See, they coming off a strike, and as soon as they come off strike – Because while they were on strike, we had a reprieve – Now the clock is ticking again. They’re coming back. They’re coming back because that’s all they got to do, is move in and say that now they’re a citizen of Lousy-ana and they get all the benefits of being a citizen of Lousy-ana. And that means that it pushes us out of this city, and that’s their plan, to push us out to New Orleans East. In New Orleans, that’s our Soweto, because we couldn’t stay in Johannesburg, we could stay in Soweto.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, township.

Malik Rahim:  But see, that’s the first place that’d be hit if a hurricane came.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah. So they make sure one way or the other, they’re going to get rid of us, huh?

Malik Rahim: We’re out there.

Mansa Musa:  Let’s move forward, let’s talk about the biggest plantation probably in the country; Angola. What’s going on down in Angola? We shouldn’t hear anything about Attica. We shouldn’t hear anything. We shouldn’t be hearing anything about them renovating San Quentin. That’s like them saying they’re renovating Alcatraz and turning it back into a plantation on the island. We shouldn’t be hearing about these places other than they’ve been abolished, but now we’re hearing that men of Angola have got to a point where they have to actually literally file a lawsuit against the inhumane treatment of the work conditions and more importantly, the living conditions in Angola. We’re talking about 2024. You never hear about this until it gets to a critical mass. Why is that?

Malik Rahim:  Again, it is very hard to wake somebody who’s pretending to be asleep. They get away with it because we allow them to get away with it. Listen, my brother-in-law just got out of prison. He did 50 years. I have a friend of mine that I was raised with, he just came home from doing 47 years. So I know too many guys that went in as young men and are coming out as old men. What they say is well, we allowed them out now because now they’ve entered criminal menopause. They ain’t going to commit no more crime. So we will let them out, and when we let them out, they cease to be a state problem, but now they could become a federal problem. Why? As soon as they get out, the first thing we do, we hook them up on SSI so that they can get food stamps.

Mansa Musa:  And a stipend.

Malik Rahim:  Yeah, and the Section 8 housing and the old debt camp, but now that’s all on federal. And then Louisiana, you got to pay a parole supervision fee. So you find that these old guys will pay that parole supervision fee. These youngsters are telling them, man, I ain’t paying you no fee for you to watch over me, but these old guys will pay it. And so again, it is no longer a burden on this state, and this state doesn’t care what’s a burden on this nation.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah. Death by a thousand cuts, huh?

Malik Rahim:  Oh, yes. But see, that’s upon us because we allow this to happen. I’ll tell you what, it couldn’t have happened in our fathers’ generation. And if they could have stood up, then we should stand up. We need to get our act together, but we’ll never get our act together as long as we are surviving on basic instincts. That’s all we want to do, is make money. If you don’t think that’s a problem, let a person pass and see how the family squabbles on their resources. So again, it’s upon us. It’s upon us to get our act together, and it doesn’t take everybody. See, many of us are under the concept that it takes everybody, but it doesn’t. It will only take a few of us to become the nucleus of change and that’s what we got to develop. Now, again, that nucleus, we had it when the UNIA, the Universal Negro Improvement Association under the Honorable Marcus Garvey, we had it then, and I’m not talking about back to Africa.

I’m talking about how to survive American fascism because you got to remember, that after World War I, we had the most racist president that ever held the office in America, and I’m talking about Woodrow Wilson. Look at the summer of 1919 and see what they thought when we were battling the Spanish flu and they said that Black veterans were coming back infected with the Spanish flu. Look at what we were going through. And then in 1925 when they had the crashed market, when that happened, but we was able to survive it. Why? Because we were able to come together and organize. Now, they wouldn’t give the Honorable Marcus Garvey any credit. They ran him out of the country after they had imprisoned him. But he was the reason why we survived the depression.

Mansa Musa:  Let me ask you this here – I see where you at with your analysis – But how do you address that fascism is more advanced, it’s more fluid, it’s more deceiving, it’s more deceptive that, just like you said earlier, we find ourselves in gentrified neighborhoods, that we find ourselves below the poverty level? It’s systemic. What do you say about the pressure and oppression that’s being inflicted on people in this generation, this time of day, is far more severe and more cunning, it’s designed to keep people in an ignorant state. It’s designed to keep people in a drug stupor. It’s designed to keep all people below the poverty level. You can be Black, white, red, or indifferent, it’s designed –

Malik Rahim:  Understand this, my brother. It’s no longer having an impact on the majority. The majority is reaping the benefits. I would say less than 30% of the American population is doing bad, that 70% is doing good, and they ain’t worrying about what’s happening to that 30%. And then that 30% helps support that 70% because if you look at where a person is located… There aren’t that many in San Quentin, like San Quentin in the country, because San Quentin is located in one of the richest counties in California: Marin. But you don’t find that in most places. In most places, they’ll put a prison in a place that is struggling. And next thing you know, the prison becomes the economic anchor in that community that’s fueled by outsiders. And it’s not their children going to prison, it’s our children going to prison, so they love it.

But we need to remember though that the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery always had that exception clause, and that exception clause is the reason why right now we could be enslaved. Right now, especially as African-Americans, because when you look at us as the African-American male population, it’s almost 40% of us are caught up in some way in the criminal justice system. So again, that’s the way we are caught up, and we haven’t looked at… Listen, if a person tells me, hey, man, I ain’t got no money to help you get on your feet but if you commit a crime, I’m going to throw the book at you and I’m going to spend whatever it takes to lock you up for the rest of your life, and then he has his hand out in friendship, you’ll be a damned fool if you shake his hand.

Mansa Musa:  – Yeah, throw the rock and hide the hand now.

Malik Rahim:  Yeah. Man, listen, we got to do better than this. That’s the thing that the Black Panther Party was built around. That’s what it was centered around. You think we have to build that same… It not only happened with the Honorable Marcus Garvey because you got to remember, he and a sister named Henrietta Davis came together and formed the Black Cross nursing corps, which saved us during the Spanish flu. All right.

And then when you go back in time and you look at what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad did to help save our community, to help us start seeing, these are our successes. Not failures. These are successes where they took the bottom core, that 30%, that 10% of us that was living in abject poverty, and gave us hope by giving us something to stand on. Then you go up to the Honorable Minister Farrakhan, I’m seeing him go to LA and made the Crips and the Bloods sign a truce that they were going to end this nonsense of killing each other over colors and allowed us to lose Los Angeles because we had Los Angeles, but we Cripped our way and Blooded our way out of it. So again, when you see a man that’s doing this and they won’t give him a venue that has proven success in public housing. Now again, I always look at this, and I know I might step on somebody’s toes when I say it.

Mansa Musa:  If they out there, they might get them out the way then.

Malik Rahim:  In Chicago, that’s where President Obama came from; the most powerful man in the country, one of the most powerful men in the world if not the most powerful man in the world when he was the President of the United States. Oprah Winfrey is out of Chicago, one of the richest Black women in the world and one that has more influence than any other Black woman in the country. And you have Minister Farrakhan and all of them in this coming out of the same community of Chicago, and it’s the murder capital.

Mansa Musa:  You left one out. They were killed for a pair of tennis shoes.

Malik Rahim:  Oh, yeah. Listen, if you have that much power and influence in one city, it shouldn’t be anything but a model of success. Now if it’s failing there, then why should I take the time when those three then found some reason that they can’t work together? Two of them can, but they ain’t from public housing. They ain’t dealing with the projects. But then you have somebody that has success in going and ending the violence, not only in public housing but in this country, and you don’t want him to come to the table. Now I’m saying, I’m not a member of the nation [inaudible 00:31:15] but I got to always give credit where credit is due.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah. What’d Conrad George say?

Malik Rahim:  I will not allow a brain surgeon to work on my car. If we get down to my car, I want a mechanic.

Mansa Musa:  Conrad George said –

Malik Rahim:  You think I’m coming to the hospital… Huh?

Mansa Musa:  – I said, Conrad George said settle your qualms.

Malik Rahim:  Oh, yeah.

Mansa Musa:  As we close out, what are you doing now? What’d you want our audience to know? Some of the work, what you’re doing there, and how they can participate in your endeavors.

Malik Rahim:  Oh, my brother, listen, one of the things that I completed, a successful 57th celebration of the Black Panther Party.

Mansa Musa:  All right, all power to the people.

Malik Rahim:  We completed that because in October, we call it Black Panther Month, and so for the 57th anniversary we gave a celebration here at five different venues that was successful. So, that’s what we are doing right now. General Rico Forbes, the former president of the Republic of New Africa, and I have come together and we have formed a group called Global Solidarity Network where we’re willing to network with anybody that’s talking about environmental peace and justice. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at four o’clock, I do a podcast on Facebook. I do a Facebook Live for an hour from 4 to 5, and that’s every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday where I speak about these things. So they could listen in.

But the main thing is to get involved in your community wherever you’re at. That’s how you could help me, by doing something wherever you’re at. I don’t say that you got to wait till you get in touch with me, because you might never get in touch with me, for you to act. Do something in your community and then we can network. We can network because we have this medium and right now this is the only medium that nobody can control. I’m going to tell you, every day they trying to figure out a way that they could shut this down.

Mansa Musa:  You better know it.

Malik Rahim:  They don’t want to hear anybody talking about rattling the bars. When you rattle the bars, that means them folks coming out. So again, they don’t want to see this. They don’t want to see this so what we got to do, we got to take advantage of it, while it’s alive. We got to beat the iron while it’s hot. There’s an old street saying that we say here: The shade of a toothpick beat the hot, burning sun. So we got to start off in that little shade until we work our way up, until next thing you know, we under the tree, but we got to get there. So the thing that I’m doing and will do all the way up until the most high calls me home, is to ring the bell. It’s to be a seed planter. Let them know, hey, man, listen. I work under the premise, my brother, that you can overcome any obstacle if you do three things: Put your faith in God, your confidence in yourself, and be willing to make a sacrifice.

Mansa Musa:  There you have it.

Malik Rahim:  If you do those three, you have it because if you’re laying up there on somebody else’s morals, you’re living off a handout from somebody else, then one day that handout ain’t going to be there, so you got to learn how to do for self. That’s why in the party, we used to call it a self-sufficiency program, a survival program. That’s why I was saying, if you look at the example, the UNIA, how it saved us from a Great Depression, from dealing with a pandemic. We was able to do it by doing it for ourself.

So we have that ability, we got to start doing it. Like I said, it ain’t going to take everybody. As a survivor of the Civil Rights and the Black Power Movement, I know that it was less than 5% of us that actually participated in the Civil Rights Movement. You hear today everybody talking about, yeah, man. I was in the Civil Rights Movement, and I say, wow, if you were, what happened? And then when you get to the Black Power Movement, less than 2% of us actually participated in the Black Power Movement.

Mansa Musa:  No, I got you. As we close out right now –

Malik Rahim:  But now you find thousands of Panthers. My daddy was in the Panther Party, my uncle was in the Panther Party, my auntie, my mama, everybody was in the party. But if everybody would’ve been in the party, we wouldn’t have lost, we would’ve won. So again, what we have to do, we got to give our life some meaning. And I’m going to tell you something, ain’t nothing more meaningful than to say that I fought on the cause of saving life as we know it on this planet. There’s nothing more noble than to say that I was involved in the struggle for environmental peace and justice.

Mansa Musa: –  There you have it. You had the last word on that, Malik. Thank you for joining me in this political conversation and educating our audience on the environment, social injustice, and the necessity for us to come together. Conrad George said settle your qualms. Too many of us are dying already, how many more have to die before we can come to a conclusion or come to some consensus? We appreciate you coming on today, and thank you.

Malik Rahim:  Oh, yeah. And my brother, in the memory of Eddie, I’m going to leave it with all power. All power, all power, all power.

Mansa Musa:  All right, there you have it with The Real News and Rattling The Bars. We ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling The Bars. It’s only on The Real News and Rattling The Bars that you get a sage like Malik Rahim, someone who’s really knowledgeable about all things going on within our struggle, but more importantly, who has put the work in and has the experience. So he’s operating from a point of view of not what somebody told him but what he actually experienced. We bring these types of experiences and this type of insight to you on Rattling The Bars and The Real News. It’s only on Rattling The Bars and The Real News where you will get this. We ask that you continue to support us, and thank you very much.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.