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. We’re doing a followup on the story that we did earlier about a class action suit that was filed in Louisiana dealing with they call a farm line. And basically it’s a suit that’s talk about the inhumane conditions that prisoners are subjected to that serving town in Louisiana State Prison. Join me today is Samantha. Samantha, introduce yourself to our audience.

Samantha Pourciau:

Hi, my name is Samantha Pourciau. I’m so happy to be back here again to update on our farm line litigation. I’m a senior staff attorney with the Promise of Justice Initiative based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Mansa Musa:

Promise of Justice Initiative is definitely one of the vanguard organizations out front and dealing with all things prison related mainly into Louisiana. And so we want to start by unpacking the latest developments in the farm line litigation. So last time we talked, we was talking about whether or not y’all will be successful in having the court certify the litigation as a class action. Talk about the current developments and what that means.

Samantha Pourciau:

Yeah, so since we last spoke in early summer 2025, the court has ruled and certified this case as a class action. The court found that there was a general class of all people at Angola who either are currently on the farm line or could be assigned to the farm line, which is nearly everyone at Angola. So that’s over 4,000 people who are incarcerated there. And then there’s what’s called a subclass, which is kind of a group within the general class related to the Americans with Disabilities Act and our claim around that the prison isn’t accommodating people who have disabilities around their ability to thermoregulate or basically get their body temperature to a safe place based on either medical conditions they have or certain medications that they take that make it hard for their body to do that. And so we have a subclass of people with disabilities related to that, which is also in the thousands at Angola as the state has acknowledged that it’s at least 18,000 people that they’ve identified as heat sensitive. And we are arguing that it should be even more than that.

Mansa Musa:

Let’s talk about what the farm line is for the benefit of our audience that may not have seen the previous interview we had with you. Talk about what the farm line is.

Samantha Pourciau:

The farm line is really a tool of punitive social control at Angola, which is a prison that sits on a former plantation named Angola and was named that way because the plantation owner thought the best slaves came from that country. And the farm line is basically the continuation of that history to modern day. It’s men being forced to labor on that land with their hands picking harvesting crops for the benefit of other people within the prison to feed, but all under the watchful eye of armed guards and under the threat of violence, they will be sent to solitary if they refuse or if they don’t work efficiently enough. And so we are arguing in this case that the farm line as it’s operated at Angola today is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the eighth Amendment.

Mansa Musa:

And speaking on that, once you sentenced to Angola, you are going to wind up on the farm line. Is that the case?

Samantha Pourciau:

Yeah, so it is for the majority of people who arrive at Angola, it is the first work assignment that they are given. And we are putting on, in our case this idea that it is meant to break you. It is meant to make men understand when they enter the prison that they do not have any autonomy over their physical body, that they are now belonging to the state. And so we’ll have class members will have named plaintiffs who have recently been on the farm line, explain what it was like for them as they first got Ola, to have that as basically the orientation. And one of our named plaintiffs, Joseph Guillory explains eloquently how he felt like they were trying to break horses and that it felt very similar to that when he arrived many years ago. And will have people who arrived more recently who will similarly echo the same sentiment.

Mansa Musa:

You said earlier that you going to go to the farm line or they’re going to put you in solitary confinement.

Samantha Pourciau:

Yeah, so if you refuse to work, you get a disciplinary writeup that’s known in Angola as a rule 27 or Rule 28 is a work offense and one of the sanctions for that could be sent to disciplinary segregation. Oftentimes people will make the conscious decision to say, I don’t want to go be a slave for the state. I’m going to go to lockup, I can’t do this. But other people, people need to continue being in contact with their lawyers, with their loved ones and they say, I’m just going to suck it up and go out there because I can’t take the alternative. And so it’s not a choice, it is not voluntary. It is a coerced work assignment.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. So we know that we are at a junction right now that we getting ready to go to court and had this adjudicated. In your knowledge, do you know of any suits that had been filed contestant or was this the first time that this ever happened?

Samantha Pourciau:

To our understanding? This is the first litigation attacking the farm line as a whole and it’s a really novel claim, but we think we have the evidence to put it on and it’s time for this practice to end once and for all.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. So let’s take a deep dive into the litigation and when y’all filed it and what is the expectation? How are you going forward? What are some of the things that you all going to be looking at in terms of strategy wise?

Samantha Pourciau:

Sure. So we filed the litigation in September, 2023, and over the past two years we’ve been working to get to this point, which is a trial that’s coming up starting on February 3rd in Baton Rouge in the federal District courthouse. There we have been litigating in between that time to make it officially a class action, which we have now succeeded. And we also have been litigating over the past two summers, emergency protections for the men who are forced to work there to ensure that during the summer they have at least some protections that ensure their physical safety. And now that we’re going to trial, we’re going to try to make some of those permanent instead of just temporary, but we also broadly want to end the farm line once and for all. And so that claim is related to it being cruel and unusual punishment. We intend to prove that it really attacks the dignity of man, the fundamental dignity of man.

And we have evolved as a society. We evolved past slavery, we evolved past convict leasing and we’ve evolved past this new form of this farm line. And so we’ll have expert witnesses. We have a doctor from Hartford, a doctor from Colorado. And when I say doctor in that capacity, I mean an academic doctor, like a PhD doctor. So we have a sociologist. We have someone who’s a historian of science and medicine and history of African-American studies who are all going to speak to that, to the psychological harm to the dignitary, harm attendant to the farm line, how what is happening at Angola is really not happening anywhere else. There is a lot of farming labor happening in prisons across our country. And one of our experts, Dr. Josh Ika, he has a whole, he created an entire lab. He calls the Prison Agriculture lab to study that issue where he has surveyed nationwide what is happening in our prisons in terms of producing food.

And he has now studied the farm line at Angola and will testify in court at trial that this is unlike anything else he’s seen. It really is clearly designed just as punishment and it’s not about producing food in the way that other farms around the country are. And so we’ll have that evidence. And then obviously most importantly, we’ll have the people who are impacted directly testify about their experiences. We plan to have a couple of named plaintiffs who have been fighting this fight since before 2023. They have not been on the farm line since then because the prison took them off with the farm line when we filed the lawsuit to try to moot out the case. So we will also have class members who have been on the farm line this past summer, last summer to be able to testify to current conditions about what’s going on right now out there and why it’s still cruel and unusual

Mansa Musa:

When you file a litigation — and I want you to walk our audience through how hard it is and how difficult it is to get certified as a class act. So talk about that, how hard it was and what the court had to find in order finding to certify as a class don’t mean that we won, it just says that the court recognized that the issues that’s being complained about affect by variety of people.

Samantha Pourciau:

Well even stepping back before getting certified as a class, I also want to acknowledge how hard it is as a person who’s in prison to be able to file a lawsuit. The Prison Litigation Reform Act, which is something congress passed over 30 years ago to curtail prisoner litigation, requires people to go through an administrative grievance procedure that the state can set up and put any guidelines around before they’re allowed to enter the court. And so all of the seven individual named plaintiffs in this lawsuit had to go through that grievance process, which is very difficult. It contains multiple steps in order to be able to file. And so they’ve been working with us for even more than years now. It’s been three years at this point. And so they did that to sue on their own behalf, but then with the knowledge that we were going to be trying to make this a class action.

And that meant that they were not just suing on their behalf, they were asking the court to let them represent every single person at Angola. And in order for the court to come to that decision, we had both an oral argument on the law and an evidentiary hearing that was essentially a mini trial about the case to ensure that it can be considered a class action. And what really it breaks down to is whether or not the policies that affect people are why are consistent and everyone is treated under the same policies and procedures such that the court can really assess this as a systemic issue. And that is what the court ruled in favor of us finding that this is a systemic issue. It isn’t just these seven people that are being harmed by this. It is the entire prison is being operated under the same system that needs to be examined as being cruel and unusual punishment.

Mansa Musa:

How does this resonate with the population at like I did a lot of time and the practices in prison is when information come out, we got the best way of disseminating information ever once something come out that affect everybody, it spreads like wildfire. How did they receive it?

Samantha Pourciau:

So the order came out on December 23rd, 2025. So it was a Christmas present.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, come on.

Samantha Pourciau:

And unfortunately because of that, it was hard for us to be in touch with our incarcerated plaintiffs immediately because the prison was shut down for the holiday. But we were able to get in touch with them and a lot of them had seen it on the news before we were able to tell them first, which I mean I was happy that the news was covering and that they saw them. They saw it, but the news did cover it. And that’s how it initially spread within Angola and people were really excited to hear about it. We also have a plaintiff, an associational plaintiff named Vote, which stands for Voice of the Experience. And they have been instrumental in getting the word out because they have currently incarcerated members. They were founded by formerly incarcerated men who came home from Angola. And they are in constant communication with their currently incarcerated members through JPay. And so they were able to use that network that they have to get the word out and to make sure folks knew, okay, now this is a class action. We’re going to trial in February and this affects everyone. There’s nothing you have to do to be a part of it. It is automatic, but this will now affect everyone at Angola. Without any question.

Mansa Musa:

As we wrap up, talk about the impact this is going to have on that system because how important is the farm line to Angola?

Samantha Pourciau:

The defendant’s position is that it saves them millions of dollars in food that they don’t have to otherwise purchase to feed the population. And so that is the position that they are taking. We are saying that, okay, the way you operate the farm line doesn’t have to be unconstitutional. The way you are operating it right now is, and you can’t cite saving money as a reason to harm someone’s inherent dignity and treat them the way they are being treated and run this as a punitive program. And so I think it really puts a spotlight on recognizing the humanity of each person within our criminal legal system and making sure the system does uphold the constitutional rights to do so.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, thank you. And tell our audience how they’re on top of what’s going on with this and stay in touch with you and your organization.

Samantha Pourciau:

So yeah, we’ll be going to trial, like I said, on February 3rd, we’ll be reporting updates on our social media and vote will also be updating as the trial is happening. We plan to have a press conference on February 5th that hopefully will get a lot of media coverage. And so I ask folks to just kind of stay aware and check in on the news as the trial’s going on. We’re not going to get a ruling. It is incredibly unlikely we would get a ruling at the end of the trial because this will be a trial before a judge, not a jury. And so the judge has already indicated he, in that instance, it is the standard for the judge to ask the parties to brief the issue after the trial is over. And so we’ll be doing that. But the judge has, I wouldn’t say promised, but has acknowledged that we really need a permanent injunction in this case as soon as possible so that we aren’t getting into the next heat season without some kind of protections. And so he has indicated his understanding of that and will endeavor to try to get a ruling out before the next heat season. And so we’re hoping for a ruling as soon as possible once the trial is over. But I would just encourage folks to sign up at the Promise of Justice Initiative’s website for our newsletter and to follow us on social media and all of the platforms wherever you seek your news.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Thank you. And thank you very much. You heard it. Promise of Justice Initiative. They take an initiative to ensure that people are treated like humans. We have Angola, Louisiana Prison. That’s a former plantation. The light is being shined on it for all the inhumane conditions that they’ve been subjecting people to, mainly as it relates to work. When you see any footage on Angola, the first thing you see is prison guards on horseback with shotguns and the people picking whatever crop is in the same color uniform. The only difference between slavery and now is they justifying what they’re doing under the pretense of the 13th Amendment. We ask that you continue to support the Real News and Rattling the Bars because guess what? We are actually the real news.