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INSIDE THE MODERN-DAY PLANTATION: HOW THEATER CONFRONTS INCARCERATION
 
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Mansa Musa
November 10, 2025
real News Network
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_ The power of having a film, having this play filmed is that I want
to show that art and activism is a blueprint for liberation. And to
show how an incarcerated population can become a powerful voting block
through their family. _

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attling the Bars host Mansa Musa explores how a one-woman play, The
Peculiar Patriot [[link removed]],
reveals the human cost of mass incarceration and the enduring ties
between slavery and the prison system. The artist behind the play,
Liza Jessie Peterson [[link removed]], has worked with
incarcerated youth for decades, bringing their stories to the stage
and to national audiences. Performed in more than 35 US prisons and
filmed at Louisiana’s Angola Prison—once a plantation, now a
maximum-security facility—the play became the basis of the
documentary, Angola: Do You Hear Us?
[[link removed]] (Paramount Plus /
Amazon Prime). As the fight for abolition and prison reform gains
momentum, this story reminds us that art is not decoration—it’s a
tool for awakening, organizing, and freedom.

Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

_The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A
proofread version will be made available as soon as possible._

MANSA MUSA: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your
host, Mansa Musa. In African tradition, we have what is known as the
griot. The griot is a storyteller, but more importantly, the griot is
one that translate our oral history into telling events, activities,
and monumental accomplishments of African people. Today we have a
griot, but more importantly, we have a revolutionary griot. We have a
woman that has been inspired to take and tell the stories of African
people that’s under the 13th Amendment, but more importantly to
educate people about the humanity of these people that we call
prisoners and to give them a space so their voices can be heard and
the value can be turned up. Liza Jessie Peterson is an activist and
actress, playwright, poet, author, and youth advocate who has worked
steadfast with incarcerated populations for more than two decades. Her
critically acclaimed one-woman show, The Peculiar Patriot, was
nominated for a Drama Desk Award, Elliot Norton, and a recipient of a
Lilly Award. The play is also available on Audible. Liza performed a
peculiar patriot in 35 prisons across the country, and a documentary
ain’t to do you hear us voices from a plantation features her
historical performance of the play at Louisiana State Penitentiary,
also known as Angola. The documentary is in streaming on Paramount
Plus and Amazon Prime and made a prestigious shortlist for an Academy
Award. Welcome to Rattling the Bars, Liza.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Thank you for having me.

MANSA MUSA: Okay, so let’s start by introducing yourself to our
audience and tell ’em how you got in this particular space. I know
you got a lengthy bow and we’ll get into that later on, but tell our
audience a little bit about yourself and how you got in this space.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: I, I’m a writer, actress, a poet. I like to
call myself an artivist because I’m an artist, but I use my art as
activism. So the two intersect, and I started, I really got into,
I’ve always been an artist, but my activism in the car spaces
dealing with incarcerated populations started in 1998 when I started
teaching poetry and creative writing to incarcerated adolescent boys
at Rikers Island in 1998, and they were 16, 17, 18 years old. And when
I first got the assignment, I had never been to prison or jail. I
didn’t know the difference between prison and jail. Again, this is
in 1998, so mass incarceration was not even a term that people were
using at the time. And I went in, not for any other reason, but to
teach poetry as a teaching artist for three weeks, and then you get
assigned to another school. So the first school that I was assigned
was called Island Academy. An Island Academy happened to be at Rikers
Island. And so my three week workshop turned into three years because
all the teachers kept passing me around.

The workshop was so effective. And when I walked in the doors of
Rikers Island in 1998, I knew nothing about the prison industrial
complex outside of just kind of a little bit what I heard about. I
heard about Mia, and I’m from Philly, so move, but I didn’t have
an intimate understanding of the system. And it was literally a
correctional officer who said to me in my first week there, he said,
you don’t know where you are, do you? And I said, yeah, I’m at
Rikers Island.

He said, no. He said, you’re on a modern day plantation. And he
pointed to the boys who were in uniform who were 16, 17, 18 years old.
He said, that’s the new crop. They’re the new cotton. Come on. And
I said, Ooh, I never heard that. And he saw the shock look on my face,
and he said, yeah. He said, when you go home, he said, you put prison
industrial complex into the computer, see what you find, and next time
I see you, we’re going to have a conversation about it. And I
literally was boot kicked down the rabbit hole of all this
information. So as I’m learning information, I’m becoming an
evangelist because it’s new to me.

It’s shocking. It’s new and shocking. So I’m bringing that
information into my classroom. So my poetry workshops became political
ciphers with the boys. And so that’s why the workshop became so
popular. And I became the poet in residence at Rikers Island.

MANSA MUSA: And in every regard, unpack the impact that they had
seeing out young men. How did that make you feel as you became more
conscious? Because like you said, he made you aware of this industrial
complex, but your consciousness was there beforehand, but this put you
in a specific space of how did you see the relationship between the
prison industrial complex and the new crop?

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: So when I first was at Rikers Island, and I’m
looking at the boys, and they’re all black and brown, black and
brown adolescent boys, and I could feel something, I knew something
was, I said, this doesn’t feel right. It was a feeling, but I
couldn’t articulate what I was feeling.

It’s like when you walk into a spider web, you can feel something on
you, but you can’t see the web. So I knew I was in something, I
could feel something, but I couldn’t articulate what it was until I
did the research and I understood the intentionality of what I was
seeing was an intentional web that was entrapping our young people and
was criminalizing normal adolescent behavior because in 16, 17, 18
years old, their prefrontal cortex is still developing, right? So
they’re challenging, they’re bucking up against authority. I mean,
that’s the nature of adolescent development. But black and brown
adolescents are criminalized for adolescent behavior and criminalize
harshly and not given second chances most times.

MANSA MUSA: Right? Yeah. The fact that we here in America was the one
chance we had was taken away from some movies born here has chatter.
But to your point, I think it was like a spiritual awakening that led
you ultimately to where we at now. And without giving out too much
information about the peculiar patriot, and it embodies so many
facets, so much knowledge and so much emotion, so much information.
Talk about that without giving it away. We want our audience to go see
it. Can you talk about some of the characters and some of the
different moving parts?

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: So The Peculiar Patriot is about a woman whose
name is Betsy, Betsy Laquanda Ross. And it’s a play on Betsy Ross,
who claims she sewed the flag, but we know that one of her enslaved
women sewed the flag. We know that she took the credit for it. And so
the main character is going to visit her best friend, Joanne, who’s
incarcerated. So the play takes place over a course of visits on the
visiting room floor of a women’s correctional facility. So the
audience is eavesdropping in on an intimate homegirl conversation
between two friends on the visiting one floor of prison.

MANSA MUSA: And you know what, the interesting thing about that, and I
was listening, looking at some of the clips, because you visit so many
different prisons, I think over 40 and jails, and I was listening to
some of the response that you was getting from the oils when you
opened the floor up.

And one that stuck out to me the most was when I said something to you
off camera when the guy said, you did a bit. And he said it was so
much intentionality, almost like, what was your jail number? Where did
you do your time at? That’s what we do when we locked up. You say, I
was locked up. Where was you locked up at? But when he said that you
did a bit able, why did you think he had that kind of perspective
about that coming out, looking at that space and saying the
resignation with this is, I can identify with this, but why you think
he, wow, wow. I’m curious if that took you by surprise when he said
it.

Or did you really think that it was going like, okay, I know the
impact it’s going have. Wherever I go at, I know the impact it’s
going to have on terms of awakening people’s conscience or giving a
common identity?

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Well, I never know the impact it’s going to
have, so I never know what the impact is. But because I started
working at Rikers Island in 1998 and worked there in many different
capacities, and because I had traveled with the show and over 35
prisons in penitentiaries across the country, and I had a loved one
who was incarcerated. So I’m on the visiting room floor. So all of
that time that I spent in those carceral spaces professionally,
personally, I had the jungle on me. And you could smell the jungle.
That’s the simplest way I can put it. You know what I mean? I got
you. I’m not writing from outsider who’s a spectator. I was in it
and I wasn’t just a teaching artist, I was going to court dates, I
was doing court advocacy, I was a counselor. So I’m in the day room
playing spades in the, I’m in it, I’m on the top of the slave
ship, and then I’m in the bows of the slave ship in an intimate
level. So the only way I can, like someone said to me, he said,
who’s incarcerated? He said, yeah. He said, you got the jungle on
you and we could smell the jungle on you. So there’s an authenticity
that just resonates, that is nothing but a feeling. It’s not
anything that I can tangibly say. It is like when I went to Angola,
they could smell the jungle on me. As soon as they saw me, they could
smell the jungle on me.

MANSA MUSA: And you know what I did 48 years prior to being released?
And one of the things that, so we always imprison, always stro to have
a connection to the community with the visiting aspect of the visiting
floor. As you talk about, and you got long-term, the family members
come in. So in the visiting room, the extended family is established
in the visiting room. I see you every time I come because you going to
see your brother, your mother, your husband, or somebody. So we
visited the same time. Eventually we developed a relationship in terms
of communication, but I know your loved one inside. So when you come
in, I see, oh, he, that’s my man. We on the tier together. Then he
introduce me to you. That’s my sister. Right? Okay, cool. This is my
mother. But ultimately, as the years go on, we become like family. And
that part of this, the story is people can identify with because they
know the relationships that come out of that space, but that you
always, when did you get to a point where you say, I got to do
something with this experience. I got to put this experience in a
package that to take it on the road to educate people, to let people
feel my spirit, to merge with other spirits. When did you get to that
point where you say, alright, this is where I’m at with this now.
I’m going in writing a play, or I’m going to find some people that
can help me. I’m going to build this out because it’s what the
spirit do with the ancestors is called me to do.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: It was a combination of two things. So when I
was teaching at Rikers Island, I was in it. So I didn’t go to Rikers
Island thinking, oh, this will be a cool story to write about as a
job. It was a gig. I’m thinking, I’m just going to be there for
three weeks. I mean, I’m out and I’m going to another school. And
I wound up being there for three years. And then when I was in Rikers
Island, at no point did I say, oh wow, this would be an interesting
story. Because remember now I’m an evangelist. I’m learning about
all this about the prison industrial complex. So I’m on fire. So
I’m there bringing this information that I’m learning, this new
information I’m bringing directly into the classroom. So as I’m
learning, I’m teaching this information to my students. So I’m
deep in the trenches of it. And I remember going the first time I went
to go visit my boyfriend at the time who was upstate, and in New York,
they have this area called Columbus Circle. And at Columbus Circle,
you have to go there at 12 midnight because that’s where all the
fleet of buses to take the family members to the different
correctional facilities upstate. And this is my first time.

So I get down there and I see all these men, women, children with
bags. It looked like people were going on a casino trip, and it was
maybe about seven or eight fleet of buses, and they’re all going to
travel to the upstate correctional facilities to visit their loved
ones. And I remember thinking to myself in that moment, I said, this
is the greatest love story. Never told. I said, because it’s nothing
but love getting on these buses, traveling for eight hours to sit with
their loved one for however many couple hours come on, and then get
back on that same bus. And then we’re just walking through this city
on the subway. We have no idea who we’re sitting next to or who
we’re passing by on the street that was on that bus the night
before. So I knew that that was the greatest love story that needed to
be told. And that was the first instinct, the first time it hit me.

Because I’m teaching, I’m with the boys every day on the weekends,
I’m going to visit my man. And I remember calling my best friend
who’s a writer, because mind you, I’m an actress. So I’m still
trying to pursue that dream as an artist. And I called her up one day
and I said, I didn’t sign up for this. My whole life is in prison.
I’m teaching in prison. I’m learning all this stuff about this
industry. On the weekend, I’m going to go see my man. I said, I’m
an actress, I’m supposed to be acting like, what is this? And I just
broke down. I started crying. I was like, I did not sign up for this.
I didn’t want this. And she literally, she laughed in my face on the
phone and she said, are we allowed to curse from here? Yeah. She said,
bitch, you got a story to tell click and hung up the phone. So I just
got my journal out. And remember, I had been doing all this research,
I’m with the boys, so I have relationships, personal relationships
with my students. I’m on the bus, so I’m meeting the other women.
That’s right. And family members. So I have relationships with the
familiar faces of going to the same facility. And seeing the women and
how’s your man doing? How you doing? How the kids, so there’s
relationships in the building with the family members who are trooping
to go see their loved one and then being the vision room floor. So I
had all this in me and my cup just runneth over. So it really just
took my best friend saying, you got a story to tell and hanging up on
me. And I said, oh. And it just came out of me.

MANSA MUSA: And the story you have told, because like I said earlier,
we was talking off camera, the prison industrial complex is so vast,
everybody got a story. But it’s how the story’s being told. And in
this regard, this story never been told. It’s been told, I know from
being locked up, the guy next door to me, I know his story in
isolation. I know the relationships I built over 48 years in prison. I
know individual stories, but you telling if it’s 2.5 million people
in the prison industrial, you telling our story, every time you talk
about this, you telling the story of somebody’s family in
California, in Philadelphia, in Mississippi and Alabama. They get on
these buses, they go through all this crazy hardship to visit their
loved one. They endure unimaginable things in order to spend a little
time with their family. That’s right. That’s right. And when they
leave, they leave hurt. Happy, elated, but they never leave full
filled. But now they got a story that’s being told that can give
them some fulfillment because now I can say like, oh, that’s me
right there. But okay, so now you find yourself in Angola. Alright, we
going to go to the clip.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Because of the significance of the land I was
on, it was more than a performance. It felt like a calling. It felt
like a mission. Angola was a plantation. Just because you see prison
with your physical allies, what do you see beyond that? Start
questioning. Why do we send people to prison? And who’s actually
here? My best friend, she said, you got a story to tell. Write that
shit down. I just put the rage on the page. I’ve had to do
something, man, we need help. I’ve been to 35 prisons across the
country, but this I knew was historical. To be on a prison plantation,
not just to perform, but to activate everybody, clung on to every word
that she said. I’m telling you, that place erupted. You jumpstarted
our hearts in our minds. Here was some truth that somebody couldn’t
handle. Everybody knew why it was being shut down.

When I walked out on stage, I didn’t even give it any thought. It
was instinctive. I said, babe, I was in the presence of a whole bunch
of sleeping giants. And I said, oh, they awake now.

MANSA MUSA: Okay, so talk about this experience and you call it rage
on page, right? Revolutionary storytelling. Why was it rage on page?
What made it rage on page? And is that a misnomer?

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: No, because when I started doing the research
about the prison industrial complex, the information was so
horrifying. The profiteering off of human suffering, it made me angry.

And then I’m literally seeing the outcome, seeing our children being
warehoused. So I’m not just reading about it. I’m showing up every
day at Rikers Island and I’m seeing our children 16, 17, 18 years
old being warehoused. And so not only was the prison industrial
complex warehousing the mothers and fathers, but now I’m seeing it
warehousing the children in real time.

So that’s where the rage came from. I was incensed that this human
rights atrocity was happening in our front yard. And it seemed to me
like nobody was ringing the alarm outside of small academic circles.
But I was like, we are the artists. This needs to be amplified. What
artists do we amplify?

That’s our role. That’s right. And so the rage came from just the
indignity, the injustice and the correlation with the similarity of
the slave industry to incarceration, mass incarceration industry. And
I said, oh, wow, they’re still enslaving us. So I mean, as a human
being, you have to be enraged when you’re faced with injustice, when
you’re reading about injustice, and then when you’re witnessing it
in real time, I’m seeing it every day. I go to work, I’m looking
at it, I’m reading about it, and then I go to work and I’m seeing
it. So that was the rage. I put the rage on the page.

MANSA MUSA: And so talk about when you went down in Angola and they
shut you down, they shut down the play. And before then you had been
to different places. So one this two part question. Did you ever get
that response from any other institution? And then how did that make
you feel when they did what they did In Angola, mainly when we know we
on big Masters Plantation, this is one of the largest plantations,
they still riding on horses with shotgun. They crop dusting with the
windows open and killing out people. So we know where that background
is, but talk about how shut you down when they came in and did what
they did, what was your reaction and how did you process that?

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: So it was so interesting. I knew, well, first of
all, I have to give a shout out to Norris Henderson. He is a triple
og, deserves so much praise and credit. And he’s the one who brought
me down. So I was there on his invitation and on his reputation.

MANSA MUSA: Right, which is impeccable.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Yes, absolutely. So when I had the opportunity
to go to Angola, I knew, and as I said in the documentary, which I
hope the audience will have an opportunity to go and watch that I was
on sacred ground because it was Angola, which is Angola Prison, which
is Louisiana State Penitentiary. That’s the official name. But the
reason why it’s called Angola is because it used to be a plantation
and the majority of the enslaved Africans were from Angola in Africa.
So they called the plantation Angola because the enslaved people were
from Africa. And when it transferred into a prison, they kept the name
of the plantation as a nickname for the prison. They called it Angola.
So-

MANSA MUSA: That’s a history lesson.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: So that’s why they call it Angola. So I knew I
was on sacred ground. I knew, and I did some research prior to me
going to Angola, even before I even knew that I was going to have an
opportunity. When I first wrote the play in 2001, 2000, I had read
about the Angola three and did like 45 years in solitary confinement
just because they were Black Panthers. And so I had had a little bit
of background information about Angola. So to have opportunity to
actually go to Angola I knew was special because of the land that I
was on. I knew it was sacred ground. I knew my ancestors had toiled,
that land had suffered in that land, their bones and their flesh was
in that land.

So that’s what made it special for me. They had a resonance, but I
didn’t know what was going to happen. I had no idea what should be
down. I went down there with the intention to have my play filmed
while I performed it. We had gotten permission to film it.

MANSA MUSA: Right, right. And in terms of once they came in and said,
shit is over with, Donald Trump was on 60 minutes of day Leslie Stall,
and he got a question that he didn’t particularly key to say, oh,
I’m finished. I’m out here. How did that make you feel in terms of
what you leaving behind? Like you say, I got permission to come down
here to film this. I’ve been doing this everywhere I’ve been
going. So it’s not like you don’t know what’s coming. And like
I’m saying, get a gun and kill all the police in the prison. I’m
doing my piece. What did you feel when they shut you down though? And
they said like, yeah, this old what? And I didn’t let you finish.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: I was really hurt and angry because Norris came
backstage and he said, we have to shut it down. There’s been an
emergency. But standing right behind him was a white correctional
officer. So I knew that. I knew it wasn’t Norris. Norris was just
delivering the message. He was just a messenger. And so I looked at
him and I said, oh, and I immediately knew what it was. I said, oh,
it’s the information they couldn’t handle with the information
about the play. And I was really upset because I had planned to talk
back. I wanted to talk to the brothers afterwards. I have dialogue. I
was going to go visit. They have a drama group. So I was going to go
visit the drama group and just make a day of it, really having
dialogue about art and just this art and storytelling. So I was really
angry. I was very, very angry.

MANSA MUSA: And you know what? And the George Jackson got a quote
where he talk about the real dragon and he say, and this is what I got
out of it, and I haven’t seen the piece yet, but my background in
this space and being in the presence of artists. And like I told you,
we had this activity where they was beating the drums and everybody
was like, every time you had that boom, but they seen from the
beginning that the veil of these guys’ eyes are going to be taking
off. They seen from the beginning that, oh, we can’t teach ’em how
to read because if we teach ’em how to read, they’re going to
become informed. And they become informed. They’re going to be
turner. They seen her Tubman spirit being ready to be generated. So
yeah, they had to get you out here. It ain’t had to do with nothing
other than that because of that environment and because just like you
say, it’s sacred ground, it’s hollow ground. And because hollow
ground, they experienced the same thing we experienced. They
experienced from the other side. It was your ancestors that did this.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Absolutely.

MANSA MUSA: And you should be in internal fear all the time. So when
you come to work, you come to work with, am I going to go home
tomorrow? Not because somebody, you got that kind of instinct that
something going on in the environment, but you know that at any given
moment this thing could flip. So when somebody come down, you
diffusing the fabricate. But talk about, because you talked about the
transformative aspect of being an actress, and we know that like Amir
Barack, we have Austin Wilson, we have people that wrote plays that
later became movies and came in a theater. Fences. Talk about in this
regard the transformative aspect of it from your perspective in terms
of being an actress and the transformative aspect of the theater and
things of that nature. If I’m clear on my question, when you say
transformative aspect, you’re talking about me personally or the
transformative aspect that it has on audiences? On audiences. Well,
the beauty of theater and the power of theater is that audiences are
seen. They can see themselves. And when people can see themselves, art
touches the heart. And when you can touch the heart, then you can
transform and change consciousness. And when you can change
consciousness, that can transform and change action. But it starts,
but art goes to the heart. You have to touch the heart. So that’s
the power of theater. And even in film is to, when you see yourself,
there’s a power in seeing a reflection of yourself or an aspect of
yourself being dramatized that has a healing and inspiring capacity.

MANSA MUSA: It relates to that. Let’s talk about the black culture
production as a vehicle for black liberation in terms like that, the
theater and the transformative. Can you make a connection between that
and liberation, black people’s liberation, raising people’s
awareness that they become a space where they start looking at
self-determination. They start looking at taking control over their
lives. Because I seen, oh yeah, I seen Liza, I seen a play. And the
guy told you, go back and research this. I said, oh, I seen that. I
just came on the whim. Somebody said, oh yeah, let’s go down and see
that. And I go down and see, now I could leave. I said, I heard her
say something about plantation, prison, industrial complex. Next thing
you know, I’m a social activist. I done been moved enough to say,
I’m looking for places to put my energy. I want to be involved much
like yourself. Do you see that coming out of this space?

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. Art or the kind of art
that I create, my intention is to activate, to activate inspiration,
to activate healing, to activate consciousness. And again, I never
know what the activation is going to look like, but all I have, but
when I’m writing and I’m creating, I’m performing… My
intention is to activate. And I’ll share a story about what happened
after Angola. Brother Norris shared this with me, brother Norris
Henderson. So after my experience at Angola Penitentiary, which I hope
the audience will go and watch, go watch that documentary.

MANSA MUSA: We watch and we watch.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Watch Angola. Do You Hear Us? Is streaming on
Paramount Plus and Amazon Prime. So after that experience, about two
years later, our short documentary, 26 Minutes comes out. So Norris
Henderson, he had a screening of the documentary of Angola for his
community at his vote, voices of the Experience down in Louisiana. He
does outreach work with the community. So maybe about a hundred people
were in the audience. And so he said, of the people who are sitting in
the audience watching the documentary, he said, how many of you all
were in the chapel the day she performed, about seven men raised their
hand, their home. So the men who were home started giving testimony.
And this is what blew my mind, talk about activation. One man said, he
said, after you left, because it created an uproar, not just in the
chapel, but throughout the entire plantation because they were live
streaming it. So the men who were not in the chapel, they were
watching it on the tv, in the housing area.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Listen, listen, listen. So the whole plantation
was activated. So he said the lines for the phones was the longest we
ever seen them, right? I said, Ooh. And he said, prior to that day, he
said, maybe one or two men will be released a year. That’s it. He
said, but you had activated the whole plantation to the point where
Norris, now he had already done the groundwork, A community activist.
So he had already identified candidates in the upcoming election who
were for prison reform. So all he did was take that electric energy
from the show. And he just steered it. And he said, okay, y’all want
to do something? He says, you tell your family members to vote for
these judges. You tell your family members to vote for this
prosecutor. You tell your family members to vote for this sheriff. And
so as a result, through their family members, now, the men couldn’t
vote, but their family members could. They elected two black female
judges. They unseated an incumbent sheriff.

And they elected a progressive prosecutor. So cases that were ignored
and were just languishing, when you go to appeal, they can ignore the
appeal. That’s right. The two black female judges who were in the
audience at the screening, they said, well, at least let’s give
these appeals redressed. Let’s at least look at them. Yeah, let’s
look at, they may not have merit, but at least they deserve to be, get
a second chance to at least be seen.

MANSA MUSA: Right. Get a second chance.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Exactly. 300 men came home. So my director, the
director of the film, and we looked at each other, we said, wait a
minute, this is not because of us. They said, oh yeah, it was a
combination. You, your art activated, created this electricity of
awakening, the sleeping giant. The infrastructure of the political
framework was already there. So Norris just said, he just steered it,
said, we put all that energy, you put it right here. And that’s what
they did. And they were able to liberate themselves.

MANSA MUSA: That’s a powerful story right there. And like I said, I
interviewed Norris, I interviewed his collective down there, him and
another guy. So I know

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Chico.

MANSA MUSA: Yeah. So I know their attitude and I know how intentional
they are about doing things. And they’re doing some remarkable work
in Louisiana

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: In the Jim Crow South.

MANSA MUSA: Oh yeah. That’s a thick layer that he’s navigating.
And like she said, he was able to get some essential places changed
because of his activation, his activities. But more importantly, you
ignited the energy that made people want to do something. Yeah, want
to do, I was locked up always. This was something that we always try
to do when we locked up. We always try to get legislation changed. We
always try to mobilize our family. So this is a common practice in the
prison industrial. This is our response to what’s going on in
prison. Industrial comp. This is our response. And I try to impact
policy to make a change. Whereas though now, like in Maryland, the
doors is being opened because of our activism. So it’s like Lord has
been passed that now people can stand up and get another chance. But
talk about what’s the future of the peculiar patriot? Are you
planning on expanding it, add more to it, bring other people in it?
Where you at with that? Talk about that.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: So the future of the Peculiar Patriot. Well, I
started the prison tour in 2003, and my first tour was at Rikers
Island, and I toured it in 35 prisons in penitentiaries across the
country. And then in 2017 was when it got its first traditional
American off-Broadway theatrical production. So from 2003 to 2017,
theaters were not fucking with me. Right.

But in 2017, the National Black Theater in Harlem, they opened up
their doors, showed to production, loved. Absolutely, absolutely. I
love the National Black Theater, Barbara and Tears Legacy Theater and
with her daughter and is now running with Jonathan. So I’ve done
several productions of it in different theaters. So now I’m at the
point because when people see the play, they’re seen not only are
incarcerated population scene, but the family members of the
incarcerated are seen, told from their perspective. So many and
students are learning, family members are seen. And there’s so many
communities that want and need to see this play. I’m one, it’s a
one woman show. I can’t be everywhere. I can’t go to, there are
other incarcerated populations who I want to see this play as well. So
what’s next is the dream is to film the peculiar patriot play so
that it can have a life outside of me physically being on stage. I
don’t have the capacity to. It’s gone after I leave Baltimore. The
play is going to New York. It’s going to be a New York Theater
workshop at an off-Broadway theater at the end of April. It’ll be
there for six weeks. So the goal, the dream, the vision is to film the
play so that it can be a network special that people can watch.

And then it can go to all the communities. And I don’t have to be
there in person to perform it. I cannot do that.

MANSA MUSA: And you know what? In every regard, that’s exactly what
need to be done. Because the conversations that come out of it is, it
kind of reminds me as you talked about it, when Jesse Jackson ran for
president. He didn’t win. But what happened was he went all across
the country and everybody registered voters. And in the black
community in particular, Maxine Ward got elected to a position because
after he left, they was sitting back saying like, well, we got all
these elected registers. What’s the next thing to do? The next thing
to do is to start taking over these offices, these places, on all
levels. So this is the same conversation that’s going to come out of
this. Okay, we look at this, our money’s going into building these
bohemoth places we call prisons. Taxpayers money is being misused and
misrepresented. You got people that’s hungry. So now you have a
conversation about what this is. And now the family member say like,
you know what? I can change this and get my family member out.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: And that’s the other part of it too, that if
this play activated the incarcerated population and then the men
activated their family members. And there are a lot of community
activists who are doing the same work that Norris is doing all over
the country. So art has the ability to activate and to get the
attention. You were talking about you and your comrades when you were
down. It might’ve been like a small community circle of y’all. But
you see a play and you have more of the general population kind of
awakening to maybe things that you had already been saying. But then
you have artist coming to reiterate what you were saying and go, oh
wow. You know what? That’s right. What you were saying is right. So
it’s just kind of that affirmation of what the groundwork. And so
the power of having a film, having this play filmed is that I want to
show that art and activism is a blueprint for liberation. And to show
what Norris, he already had the groundwork done, laid down. He already
had the candidates targeted, targeted of who to vote for, and then how
an incarcerated population can become a powerful voting block through
their family.

MANSA MUSA: And in DC, speaking of that, in DC, we got the right to
vote return census. No matter where you at, you can vote. If you’re
a DC resident, no matter where you at in the country, you can vote. So
we in the process of trying to do something with that. But is there
anything you want to talk about before we close out? Anything you want
to say? I really appreciate this. I was sitting back thinking that
when we was talking about the youth in Rikers Island, I was saying,
how would I describe that? Would that be maternal? Would it be a
maternal? Then I said, nah, that ain’t maternal. That’s the
matriarch. That’s what that is. It shows itself in maternal ways,
but it’s really the matriarchal aspect of what goes on with our
women. And no matter what they tell you say when a woman present is
present, I’m talking about being present and understand where she at
in terms of who she are, who she is. Everybody falls in line.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: Oh, they were my sons. Yeah.

MANSA MUSA: Everybody falls in line because I know this is what I
know. And you said it said this is a love story, but you represent the
love. So it don’t make no difference how we look at it. When we see
you in this role, we see love. And my Conrad, she just got a
doctor’s degree and she did a part called Black Love. And when she
explained it, and she was representing her thesis, representing her
doctoral, like when she started explaining black love, they was like,
everybody was in awe because she was saying like, this is exceptional.
So when as a black woman, you express an exception. But I digress. Is
there anything you want to say before we close?

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: No, I’m just grateful for this conversation
and I hope that the audience will watch the documentary and you, if
there’s anybody out there that can support filming The Peculiar
Patriot and making the dream a reality, holler at me.

MANSA MUSA: Holler at you. Girl. We want to thank you, Liza, for
coming in and engaging us in this conversation and ushering our
ancestors. We love our ancestors. Absolutely. And we love that our
ancestors are proud of us for representing what the spirit that they
generate throughout this country.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON: That’s right.

MANSA MUSA: Liza is the epitome of that in terms of identifying the
spirituality of our ancestors and putting it out there in a manner
that anybody can relate to that got a brain. And if you’re in the
DMV, come check out The Peculiar Patriot at the Baltimore Center
Stage. This is the closing weekend for it. And we ask that you
continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Guess what?
We are actually the real news.

 

_THE REAL NEWS NETWORK (TRNN) MAKES MEDIA CONNECTING YOU TO THE
MOVEMENTS, PEOPLE, AND PERSPECTIVES THAT ARE ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF A
MORE JUST, EQUAL, AND LIVABLE PLANET. We broaden your understanding of
the issues, contexts, and voices behind the news headlines. We are
rigorous in our journalism and dedicated to the facts, but unafraid to
engage alongside movements for change, because we believe journalism
and media making has a critical role to play in illuminating pathways
for collective action. _

_Rattling the Bars puts the voices of the people most harmed by our
system of mass incarceration at the center of our reporting on the
fight to end it. The show was founded by the late Black Panther and
political prisoner Marshall "Eddie" Conway, and is now hosted by
Charles Hopkins, better known as Mansa Musa, who himself spent 48
years behind bars._

 

* Art Activism
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* African American theater
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* Rikers Island
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* Mass Incarceration
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* voting rights
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