Part one of our conversation with John, an anti-racist insurrectional anarchist who grew up in the U.S. South. John discusses the anti-klan rally that happened on July 18th in Columbia, SC, what he saw, implications, who was there and why. Next week’s episode we’ll discuss media representations of the rally, such as positing it as a showdown between the KKK and the “Black Panther Party” (meaning in actuality the New Black Panther Party, an organization unconnected to the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense around during the 60’s and 70’s).
This episode of The Final Straw is served in three portions, all concerning prisons and prisoners. Before the segments begin, a couple of announcements concerning upcoming events in Asheville, North Carolina for the days surrounding June 11th and the International Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist and Eco Prisoners. These events include a Books … Continue reading June 11th, inmate drugging at SECC Missouri & Sean Swain updates→
Operation Fenix in Czech Republic; announcements on the 30th anniversary remembrances of the bombing of the MOVE house in Philly; updates on Mumia’s health status; Dave Strano out on bail, injured by police in Denver; support for Baltimore arrestees; the silencing of Sean Swain.
This week, we speak with Jesse Cohn, author of the recent book, Underground Passages: Anarchist Resistance Culture 1848-2011, published by AK Press. In the book, Jesse explores trajectories in literature, cartoons, comics, music, poetry, drama produced at times by and or for or just conspicuously consumed by anarchists in europe, north and south america and … Continue reading Jesse Cohn on anarchist art, lit + resistance culture (1848-2011)→
This week we’re joined by Imam Siddique Abdullah Hasan, one of 6 prisoners who are almost a month into a solidarity hunger strike at Ohio State Prison in Youngstown to press the Warden about current conditions at the prison. Among the issues the hunger strike is protesting include the inability of all new/incoming prisoners to OSP and those currently on the highest level of security (5B) to attend congregational religious activities, also poor quality of food presented by Aramark (the company contracted to provide meals at OSP, and who’s food services sparked the hunger strike in January of 2014 at Westville Correctional Facility in Indiana) a lack of access to outside recreation for the prisoners and more.
This week’s show, we rebroadcast an interview from 2013 with Krow, aka Katie Kloth, followed by updates on the 2-week old hunger strike at OSP Youngstown, the release of the 5e3 prisoners in Mexico & recent metal, deathrock and punk from around the world.
We hear portions of our friend’s conversation with a young activist and her mother at a blockade on Skouries about some of the economic alternatives locals are trying to create to remove reliance on mining jobs that destroy their land, air and water. They also speak about the resistance as it’s developed over the years and some of the methods Eldorado Gold Corp has been trying to implement to drain the water-table in the mountain in order to aid the mining process. Finally our friend speaks with Heli and a friend about more of the history of resistance to the mining there, changes in organizing that’ve occurred, waves of repression by the Greek State.
This week we rebroadcast Neka’s interview with Keith Lamar, also known as Bomani Shakur, of the Lucasville5 about his recent book entitled Condemned. Find out more about his case and check out his book at his website, http://keithlamar.org
On April 6th of 2014, anarchist prisoner Sean Swain, who’s been kind enough to allow us to present his audio commentaries (available at http://www.seanswain.org) had his access to phone calls and email shut down by JPay corporation (which facilitates financial transactions between prisoners and their families and other corporations while skimming profit and also saving and mining the private user data) alongside of Global Tel* Link. This comes just after Sean was able to engage a new lawyer, Richard Kerger, who’s done work on the Lucasville Uprising death row prisoners.
