Comics, Collage and Anti-Copaganda with Johnny Damm
This week, a new contributor, Ian, talks to cartoonist and educator Johnny Damm about his recent releases I’m a cop, featuring dialogue from Police Union speeches and Riot Comics: Tompkins Square Park, which explores the 1988 Tompkins Square Riot in which Police evicted an unhoused encampment in the park on New York’s Lower East Side. They discuss the collage technique by which Damm assembles his comics, how his work dovetails with the larger work of abolition, and the role of propaganda in movement-making. Listeners can follow Johnny Damm on twitter @dammjohnny (with two m’s) and on IG @johnny.damm. His website is JohnnyDamm.com
Also notable, are Damm’s influence by Jack Halberstam‘s ideas that became the book The Queer Art of Failure ala the Failure Biographies book, and Damm’s representations of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, a similar but smaller trans and queer uprising in San Francisco in 1966, preceding the more famous Stone Wall Riots of 1969 in New York City.
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Featured Track:
More Light by J Mascis and The Fog from More Light
Our interview with journalist and community organizer, Kit O’Connell (of the Texas Observer), and anarchist and activist lorén (of QTPIE or Queer and Trans People Illuminate Everything). Both folks are trans folks in Austin, Texas, and we speak for the hour about the increasing legal and social oppression of trans and gender non-conforming folks in that state as well as across the so-called USA, some of its impacts on trans children and children of trans parents, organizing, allyship and community defense.
It’s also worth nothing that Ms. Bandit is being harassed with doctored photos by conservative groups playing up the fearmongering concerning children, as you can see in this tweet here: https://twitter.com/BrigitteBandit/status/1654503599345377280
DDOS Secrets leak of American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), an homophobic, anti-abortion and transphobic group run by Christian fundamentalists behind the lawsuit attempting to illegalize mifepristone as an abortion pill and that is confusingly named something like the American Academy of Pediatrics (a legit medical organization). The leak was the feature of a recent article in Wired.
Welcome to 67th edition of BAD NEWS, Angry Voices from Around the World, which is a monthly news program produced by international network of anarchist and anti-authoritarian radios.
This month we have contributions from three radio projects. A-Radio Berlinspoke to a comrade from the anarchist feminist anti-prison alliance, who organizes the annual protest rally in front of the women’s prison in Chemnitz, a small town in Eastern Germany. The focus of the conversation were: hardships of unionizing inside German prisons and the importance of building connections and creating empowering moments together.
The second piece is from Kilavo Seme, a show on Radio Študent Ljubljana, which spoke with an activist from Quelili collective about their interesting and a bit crazy idea to buy a ship which would connect europe and latin america to fight, among other things, for climate justice and against colonization.
Finally The Final Straw Radio is sharing a portion of a new interview with supporters of 4 people facing up to 12 years in US federal prison for alleged after-hours graffiti at a fake abortion clinic near to Miami in the state of Florida in the wake of the Supreme Court removal of the protection of legal right to choose abortion, laws limiting access for trans people to health care and public participation, and other regressive steps across the so-called USA.
This Bad News has been put together by Črna luknja in Ljubljana.
Call in for anarchist prisoner, Noah Coffin #1795167
Noah Coffin, a Texas prisoner was granted parole six months ago (November 2022), but has not been released from Texas Correctional and has not been given a reason why.
Call/Email the Texas parole board and voice concern as to why Noah has yet to be released, you can reach them at: (512) 936-6351 or bpp_pio@tdcj.texas.gov (call script and email script to follow).
Call Script:
Hello, I am calling to voice my concern about a prisoner at the Ellis Unit Detention Center, Noah Coffin 01795167. He was granted parole six months ago and has yet to be released from prison, I am just wondering why that is? I am urging you to release him.
Email Script:
Dear Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles,
I am contacting you on behalf on Noah Coffin 01795167, a prisoner who is incarcerated at Ellis Unit in Texas. Noah was granted parole six months ago, but has yet to be released from prison, I am emailing you to inqure why that is? I am urging you to release him immediately as he has been granted parole.
Upcoming
We are planning a number of other chats in coming weeks that will take a while to find their way into our main podcast stream including: an interview with one of the authors of We Go Where They Go, a history of Anti-Racist Action around the millenium; an interview with comic artist and collagist Johnny Damm; an interview with transfem anti-fascists in the UK about the recent violence in Liverpool as fascists attempted to attack refugees held up in a hotel; Devi Machete of Contra Viento y Marea Comedor mutual aid space run by refugees and anarchists in Tijuana, Mexico; and more.
We’ll be releasing those interviews listed above as we can to our patrons subscribed at a level of $3 or more per month. The patreon funds go to pay for our basic operations cost like web hosting and PO Box as well as to the transcription work that allows our material to be translated into other languages, accessed more easily by folks with hearing difficulties and search engines. The transcripts also get made into zines that can be shared with people behind bars or in person! Check out the growing list of zines at https://tfsr.wtf/zines and consider supporting us at https://patreon.com/tfsr or by other methods at https://tfsr.wtf/support
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Featured Track:
If You Go Down (I’m Going Down, Too) by Kelsae Ballerini from Subject To Change
We’re happy to share another past episode, this time from May Day 2016, about 4 months before the start of our rss feed for our podcast. I feel it’s notable that this show approaches it’s 13th birthday on the May 9th of this year.
To friends we’ve met, and to those we have yet to meet, I’d like to wish everyone a happy May Day. As we’ll hear in the following hour, this day has a long celebrated history. From its many European pagan roots as a celebration of fertility as the fruits of the spring planting season began to… uh, spring forth. Then on to the repressive winter that fell early on May 3rd and 4th of 1886 in Illinois with, first, the killing of workers striking for an 8 hour work day at the McCormick Works and then the repression of anarchist and socialist workers and organizers following the bombing at Haymarket Square in Chicago of that same year. From there to the taking up of May 1st as International Workers Day by struggling groups around the world and the U.S. adoption of a sanctioned Labor Day in September of the year.
To divide an international working class, The U.S. government, oppressors of that May Day 1886 sanctioned a Labor Day to be celebrated in September, declared the first of May both Law Day (an obvious testament to Irony in respect to the Haymarket 8, all jailed and 4 executed) and, for some, it’s celebration as Americanism Day. Whatever that means. In 2006 & 2007, immigrants rights marches were seen on and around May Days that, for many, re-sparked the importance of this day. The protests and festivals swelled to numbers nearly unmatched in the history of protest on Turtle Island, and were accompanied by school and work walkouts and boycott days.
Whether you’re out there today taking direct action, in repose from the horrors of wage slavery, resisting the carceral state, gardening, dancing around a May Pole or otherwise celebrating the possibilities of this year to come when, hell, we might as well end this system of exclusion and extraction: We wish you a fire on your tongue, love in your heart and free land beneath you.
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Featured Tracks:
The International by Ani DiFranco & Utah Philips
The Earth Is Our Mother by Oi Polloi from Fuaim Catha
Surrounded by Matador from Taken
I Wish That They’d Sack Me by Chumbawamba from The Boy Bands Have Won
Addio a Lugano by Pietro Gori (performed by Gruppo Z on Canti Anarchici Italiani)
“It Did Happen Here” with Mic Crenshaw and Moe Bowstern
This week, we’re sharing an interview with 2 contributors an amazing history of anti-racist organizing in the late 1980’s through the mid 1990’s in Portland, Oregon, and with ripples across the so-called USA & beyond. In 2020 KBOO radio released a serialized podcast which became the basis for the book.
Mic Crenshaw was born and raised in Chicago and Minneapolis and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Crenshaw is an independent hip hop artist, respected emcee, poet, educator, and activist. Crenshaw is the lead US organizer for the Afrikan Hiphop Caravan and uses cultural activism as a means to develop international solidarity related to human rights and justice through hip hop and popular education. Crenshaw was a founding member of the Minneapolis Baldies and Anti Racist Action. He was a coproducer and narrator of the podcast version of It Did Happen Here. Moe Bowstern is a alum of the anarchist space in Chiacgo known as the @-zone that lasted from 1993 to 2003. She’s also a writer, laborer, Fisher Poet, and DIY social practice artist. Moe is the longtime editor of many publications, including the commercial fishing zine Xtra Tuf. She contributed to the writing of the book version of It Did Happen Here and lives in Portland, OR.
For the hour, we talk about the book and podcast, the reach, the resonance to anti-racist struggle today in Portland and beyond. We also talk about the toll of the violence faced and engaged by folks pushing back the organized white supremacy of the day, police and institutional violence and other, related topics. If you would like people featured in this book to come and speak at your institution, you can reach them at ItDidHappenHerePodcast at gmail dot com, through PM Press, or via the IDHH instagram.
This book was published by PM Press as a part of the Working Class History series. Another featured title in that series that was recently released was a similar documentary history with a really good narrative on the history of Anti-Racist Action in the 1990’s and early 2000’s throughout the midwest of Turtle Island, both in so-called Canada and the USA, and bits of other areas. Hopefully we’ll feature a chat with one of the contributors to that book entitled We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action soon on this show.
First up, a chat with two members of the South Florida Anti-Repression Committee doing solidarity for the 4 queer activists facing up to 12 years in Federal prison on charges related to graffiti at a Pregnancy Crisis Center, aka a building funded by church and state to dissuade people from getting abortions. The Department of Justice is charging them under the FACE Act, a criminal law passed in the 1990’s to stop threats, violence and blockades against health clinics that offered like abortions, screenings, contraception and other services under attack by religious extremists in the USA. There are also Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, known also as a SLAPP suits being brought by a Miami-based Christian anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center called Heartbeat of Miami as well as the state of Florida against the accused apparently intended to have a chilling effect and minimize their ability to defend themselves against the Federal indictments.
Oso and Hunter of SFLARC talk about the arrests, about the defendants and the rising tide of gender fascism and war on bodily autonomy in DeSantis’ Florida and around the country.
Following this, we’re sharing audio from the February 2023 episode of Bad News, a monthly English-language podcast from the A-Radio Network. In this segment, you’ll hear comrades from Črna luknjashow on Radio Študent speakin with an activist inSofia, Bulgaria about theantifascist mobilization known as Anti-lukovmarsh, which will take place on 25th February under the slogan “No Nazis On Our Streets” – Thisis amanifestation against one of the biggest international neo-nazi gatherings(Lukov March). You can find moreinfo at: http://antifa-bulgaria.org.
Announcements
Support Parole for Sundiata Jawanza
Political prisoner and activist Sundiata Jawanza in South Carolina has an upcoming parole and is looking for support. You can learn more about his case at https://www.sundiatajawanza.com/
Here’s a chat we just had with 4 radicals in France. Rather than introduce them, I’ll let them do that themselves. We talk about the recent protests and riots in France concerning reforms to the pension system that would push back the age of retirement and increase the amount of years someone has to work in order to retire, the legal manipulation by Macron’s neoliberal government to get it passed, the composition of the demos, the recent ecological demonstrations violently repressed in Sainte-Soline, police violence more widely, Darmanin’s upcoming immigration and asylum law, antifascists in Lyon, work and austerity.
The conversation is a bit informal and though we cover a lot there is so much more to talk about. For folks who want to learn more, I suggest checking out recent articles on the protests by crimethinc and a recent video from Unicorn Riot and a transcript will be available soon.
You can find our past interview with David Campbell here
This week, we’re sharing part of our April 26th, 2020 interview with Barry Pateman. Barry, born in the early 1950’s, grew up in a working class coal mining town of Doncaster in the UK and became an anarchist in the 1960’s in London. He is a longstanding member of the Kate Sharpley Library which covers histories of little-known anarchists and events in history. Barry has also contributed to and edited numerous books including “Chomsky on Anarchism”, a two book document collection with Candace Falk and many more titles, many on AK Press. We talk about anarchist history, community, repression, defeat, insularity, popular front with authoritarian Marxists, class analysis and how to beat back capitalism. Find Kate Sharpley Library at KateSharpleyLibrary.Net
Anarchist Filmmaking with The Elements of Mutual Aid
We’re happy to share this chat with Leah and Payton, directors of the upcoming documentary series “The Elements of Mutual Aid”. You can find previews of the film on their social media and links to those and more in our shownotes at our website. The series is about to enter post-production once they’ve gotten JUST a little more footage to add to their 5 years of work. For the hour, we talk about the series, their concepts of mutual aid, the process of radically respectful film making and some of their inspirations.
Feminist Anti-War Resistance to the Russian Invasion
This week, we’re sharing an interview with Leo, an anarchist and eco-feminist from Russia who has temporary relocated to Europe after facing political repressions. Leo is a co-organizer with the Feminist Anti-War Resistance movement (Facebook in English, Telegram in Russian, LinkTr.Ee), a network of activists in and outside of Russia involved in struggling against the war in Ukraine and the Putin regime.
For the hour we speak about Russians facing repression for speaking out against the war inside the country, supporting anti-war initiatives such as sabotage and counter-recruitment, Imperialism and anti-Imperialism, forefronting the voices and experiences of Ukrainians experiencing the invasion, Ukrainians who’ve been forcibly re-settled into Russia and supporting Ukrainians resisting the Russian military within their own country, growing hetero-patriarchy within Russia and more.
We have quite a few interviews with Russian anarchists, antifascists, queer folks and ecological activists over the years of increasing repression by Putin’s regime at our website as well.
Initiatives that you can support with donations or with reposts (from Leo):
Вывожук (Vivozhuk) – grassroot initiative helping with emergency evacuation to Russian activists in danger and political prisoners https://t.me/vyvozhuk/48
Золотой Ключик (Golden Key) – grassroot intiative providing help to Russian anti-war activists who is in current danger https://zolotoykluchik.org/
Идите Лесом (Go by the forest) – initiative that helps russian citizens escape mobilization and conscription https://iditelesom.org/en/
International:
• Квiр Свiт (Queer Svit) – a black queer-run independent team of volunteers from all over the world helping LGBTQ+ and BAME (Black, Asian & Minority Ethnicity) people affected by the war in Ukraine and/or political repressions get to safety by providing consultations, purchasing tickets, finding free accommodation and providing humanitarian aid. https://queersvit.taplink.ws/
From Us:
Avtonom.Org is an online portal in a few languages (including English) with participation of various antifascist and anarchist groups from Russia (many now in diaspora) and it’s a great way to find information on prisoners in Russia (via Moscow ABC). [The content in Russian is pretty easily translated these days by copying the URL address, visiting google and pasting it into the google search bar. Then you just click the “translate this page” link.]
There is a Russian language podcast from Belarusian anarchists in exile in Warsaw that you may want to share with Russian-speaking folks called “Dogma. Uncomfortable talks about war”
“This podcast presents conversations with anarchists from across Europe about the war in Ukraine. We will discuss uncomfortable issues of unreflected coloniality, imperialist sentiments, lack of solidarity in the international anarchist movement, as well as the weakness of anarchist theory and practice in the face of the war.”
South Florida Anti-Repression Committee Launches Solidarity Campaign
In an unprecedented use of the FACE Act (a law intended to protect abortion access and abortion clinics), two pro-choice community activists in Florida have been charged under the FACE Act. In addition to the two charged, community members across Florida have been the target of FBI harassment that has included showing up at people’s places of employment, approaching family members, and even executing a “No Knock Warrant,” with armed agents raiding the home of a family with children in the home.
The FACE Act has been used to prosecute individuals who murdered abortion providers, physically threatened or attacked those seeking reproductive healthcare, barricaded abortion clinic entrances, and other anti-choice actions that have served to limit lawful access to abortion and other reproductive health care. Prosecuting two community activists for alleged graffiti is a shameful and disgusting use of the law.
In response, community members have formed the South Florida Anti-Repression Committee (SFLARC) and are launching a solidarity campaign and defense fundraiser. The funds raised will go to support those facing state repression, both those charged and those who experience harassment by law enforcement.
Call for International Solidarity with Jorge from Mexico City Anarchist Black Cross
Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel is a beloved compañero of the punk community, and a long-time participant of the Okupa Che Guevara. He was arrested on December 8, 2022 by plainclothes police as he was leaving the campus of the Ciudad Universitaria (of the UNAM university) in Mexico City as part of a campaign of criminalization against the Okupa. He was framed up on drug charges in 2016 and Jorge was re-arrested on in a related case in 2022. CNA-DF is fundraising to cover his needs inside the cartel run prison he’s housed in as well as his legal fees. Go Fund Me
Atlanta Forest / Stop Cop City Fundraising
The struggle to support folks facing ridiculous domestic terrorism charges in Atlanta in a clear situation of state over-reach continues to escalate and they need support. One easy way to kick in is with a donation to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. You can learn more at ATLSolidarity.Org
Four Comrades in Greece
Finally, there is a fundraiser online to support four anarchists accused by the Greek state of participation in a terrorist group the state is calling “comrades”, a case which has stretched out for nearly 3 years now, and they’re still in pre-trial. Learn more about how to support them at Firefund.net/4pretrial
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Featured Tracks:
Human Being by Erik Truffaz and Murcoff on Being Human Being
Под прицелом by JESUS SISTER from Место для всякого гадкого
This week: a chat with Pip, a defendant in, and Grace, a supporter of, the Aston Park Defendants case which led to the arrest of 16 people, including 2 journalists for the Asheville Blade, many facing various charges of felony littering and conspiracy to felony litter. You can read some background to this in the words fo the Sanctuary Park defendants at AVLSolidarity.NoBlogs.Org by clicking the “Our Story” link and there’s a bunch more there, including how to support the defendants monetarily. We spend the hour talking about gentrification, police repression, mutual aid and resistance in this small, “progressive” mountain town in the US south. Trials begin April 10, 2023.