This week on The Final Straw, we’re presenting two conversations. The first was a chat with workers from the local, plant-based protein company ‘No Evil Foods’. The company has been getting flack for using social justice imagery while working to undermine unionization efforts at it’s factory here in Asheville, NC. Then we speak with Garrett Fitzgerald of Pipeline Legal Action Network about their new, free workbook for legal strategies in resisting the Line3 pipeline and more.
Jason Goudlock, an Old Law prisoner in Ohio, speaks about his case, struggles with sentencing disparities and the parole board. Then, Comrade Easley talks about his recent hunger strike against the torture of neurodivergent prisoners at Toledo CI and the transfer out of state faced by he and other prison rebels for their protests and lawsuits.
This week Bursts spoke with Matt Meyer about a new edition of Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier’s Story (PM Press), which details the life of Black Panther and anarchist Kuwasi Balagoon, They talk about Kuwasi’s life, his approaches to anarchism, and his queerness among many other topics.
A conversation with incarcerated IWOC activist David Easley and an outside supporter, Jasper of the Free Ohio Movement, about resistance and repression inside the Ohio prison system.
Gord Hill is an indigenous author, anarchist, antifascist and militant, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation living in so-called British Columbia, Canada. Gord is also graphic artist and comic book author who most recently published The Antifa Comic Book, out from Arsenal Pulp Press, and runs the website Warrior Publications and sometimes publishes under the nom-de-plume of ZigZag. For the hour we speak about his writings documenting indigenous resistance history in the so-called Americas (mostly with a focus on Turtle Island), antifascist organizing, intersections of indigenous struggle and anarchism and critiques of Pacifism. Plus, Sean Swain critiques “public servants.”
Donald Rooum is most known for his longtime illustration of the wily, bomb-throwing, firebrand anarchist cartoon character, Wildcat. In this episode, Donald talks about his early political trajectory and development from childhood involvement during World War II in a Communist Party front group into anarchism via the speakers corner in Hyde Park.
This week, Bursts spoke with Ben Turk about the August 19th call out for solidarity with prisoners. The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a project of the Industrial Workers of the World (or IWW) syndicalist labor union is one body organizing the inside and outside actions, and Ben is a member. Ben’s also affiliated with Lucasville … Continue reading August 19th Solidarity with Prisoners: Ben Turk of IWOC→
This week Bursts spoke with Imam Siddique Abdullah Hasan, one of five defendants in the Lucasville Uprising case from 1993 facing the death penalty known collectively as the Lucasville 5. Hasan, calling from Ohio State Prison supermax in Youngstown, Ohio, took the time to talk about the newly formed Free Ohio Movement, a prison organizing movement based on the Free Alabama Movement which centers on the claim that prisons in the U.S. are the current site of a continuation of slavery. Then we spoke with members of Istanbul Anarchist Black Cross about anarchist prisoner support, including Evcan Osman.
This week The Final Straw is airing some audio from the recent Anarchist Black Cross Conference which took place outside of Denver. This is a panel discussion which was hosted by the Denver ABC and includes a number of folks who had been formerly incarcerated and were speaking on the importance of supporting prisoners, among other topics. The panelists we’ll be hearing this week include: Lynne Stewart, Jihad Abdulmumit, Kazi Toure, Eric McDavid and Mark Cook.
This week William speaks with Ruddy Turnstone of the Global Justice Ecology Project and BJ Mcmanama of the Indigenous Environmental Network about the issue of Genetically Engineered trees, their ecological and social impacts, and of the Action Camp to take place just outside of Asheville NC on September 24th-27th.
