The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Michael Fox: It’s good to see you, Mansa.

Mansa Musa: It’s good to be seen.

Michael Fox: I want to start us in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial.

Michael Fox: I’m standing inside the mausoleum of the Lincoln Memorial. President Abraham Lincoln sitting on his chair, staring out, looking down across Washington over the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument in the Capitol.

Michael Fox: So early last fall, I went down to the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall and I wanted to go because this is, for me, it’s kind of one of the most iconic places I can think of for free speech in the United States.

Speaker 4: As the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Michael Fox: Clearly, like the images of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s, I have a dream speech and hundreds of thousands of people covering the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, running all the way back along the reflecting pool. And I went there to ask people what free speech meant to them. Excuse me, sir.

Speaker 5: Yes.

Michael Fox: My name’s Mike Fox. Yes, sir. I’m a freelance reporter and I’m working on a podcast about free speech. And so I spoke with one guy named Ric. He’s retired. He’s from Arizona. He came there with his wife. They were in town for the day. He actually works as a pit line firefighter for NASCAR. And he told me –

Speaker 6: The freedom to say what you feel, to express what you have in your heart and to just be open and honest.

Michael Fox: I asked him what he thought about free speech rights in America today and he said –

Speaker 6: Well, with who’s in charge, it seems like it’s kind of controversial that if you say something against him that he will retaliate against you, which I think is totally absurd.

Michael Fox: Working on a story about free speech and what it means today in the United States.

Speaker 7: I don’t want to make any comments about the free speech in US.

Michael Fox: I understand. Thank you so much. No, no, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Yeah. People are nervous to talk.

Speaker 8: I think I’m good. Thank you though. It’s

Michael Fox: All good. Thank you so much. Take care. Oh yeah. I wonder if I could interview you real fast. I’m not today.Thank you Devin. It’s okay. I love your camera buddy. Thank you very

Speaker 8: Much.

Michael Fox: Take care. Thanks. I’m wondering if I could interview you guys real quick. No. Okay. It’s all good. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Speaker 9: I don’t even know what beach is.

Michael Fox: What does free speech mean to you?

Speaker 6: That you could be able to say what you want to do what you want as long as it’s not rude or disrespectful to anyone else.

Michael Fox: I spoke with Ronald Jackson from Birmingham, Alabama and to Mia Nash from Las Vegas. They were in town for a funeral. I feel like anyone can say whatever they want to say.

Speaker 10: See, what free speech is, we could say what we want to say, but we have consequences behind that. Really, we don’t have free speech because they always want to kill you, take you out and do whatever. So basically we don’t have no free speech.

Michael Fox: They too are really concerned about free speech rights today. There was an interesting conversation I had with this one gentleman from Ghana. He’s actually a military officer there.

Speaker 8: Whenever we have to talk of states that promote free speech, the first state that comes in your mind is the United States, then other societies or other countries.

Michael Fox: But that it’s recently become, again, really complicated. Some people are trying to take advantage.

Speaker 8: To bring any kind of chaos or especially when it has some issues of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Michael Fox: I think one of the things that’s interesting is that almost everyone I spoke with across the political spectrum, because I spoke with people on the left and on the right. And for everyone, everyone was kind of concerned about this moment for free speech in the United States.

Speaker 11: I don’t feel like we’re as free to speak our minds as we were in the ’90s.That

Michael Fox: Was my other question. Where do you think we’re at today with free speech in America?

Speaker 11: Well, I mean, you’ve got people getting shot on college campuses over it, so it’s kind of hard to say that we’re moving in the right direction, but something’s going to have to change.

Michael Fox: It’s this kind of mixed bag, but in general, people, of course, standing up, people we need to defend it, but very concerned about where we are today and the state of free speech today in the United States. Man, so where do you see free speech in America today? Where do you see the state of free speech today in the United States?

Mansa Musa: In the United State, we see that freedom of speech is not really free no more. It’s heavily regulated. It’s sectarian. You do a lot of shift shaping. Free speech, you say fake news. So I undermine your speech by characterizing as fake news, but when I characterize it fake news, I take an action against it. And that’s our reality we confronted with. Free speech is not really free no more. It comes with a price and I say that non-earnest. It comes with a praise. It was never free for no press people. It was never free for indigenous people. It was never intended for us to have a voice. It was never free for Tecan or Mexican Americans, migrants that come to this country that later on become a part of the problem. It never was free. It was always designed for a specific class of people and where it’s free to do what I want when I want and how I want and say what I want.

Michael Fox: This is The Battle for Free Speech, a multi-part narrative podcast brought to you by The Real News. In this series, we take you on a journey to understand the important role free speech has played in US history and the fight being waged over it today. I’m your co-host, Michael Fox, and I’m so excited to be joined today by Mansa Musa. He’s a longtime social activist and a former Black Panther. He’s the host of the real news show, Rattling the Bars about the US system of mass incarceration. And this is something he knows a little bit about because Mansa, you spent 48 years and nine months in prison, right?

Mansa Musa: Yep, that’s right.