activism, Anarchist, Anti-Civ, Earth & Animal Liberation, Earth First!, Grand Jury, North Carolina, PNW, Police, Prisons, repression, Security Culture, West Virginia, Will Potter

Grand Jury Resistance in PNW/ Mountain Top Removal in West VA

2013/04/03 The Final Straw Radio

This week’s show features a conversation with Will Potter about political repression against accused Anarchists in the Pacific Northwest. Later, we’ll speak with Bryan of Katuah Earth First! about his participation in a recent action in West Virginia against Mountain Top Removal.

Our first segment of this weeks show is a conversation with Will Potter, award-winning journalist, author and blogger at www.greenisthenewred.com about the JTTF & FBI raids on suspected Anarchists in the Pacific Northwest and the series of Grand Juries now being convened around participation in the May 1st protests in Seattle of this year.

Also, we’ll be speaking with Bryan, a member of Katuah Earth First!, based out of Asheville. Bryan was arrested on July 28th during a non-violent direct action under the banner of Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival (RAMPS). This action briefly shut down and brought attention to the Mountain Top Removal style of strip mining being used at the Hobet mine, operated by Patriot Coal in Lincoln County, West Virginia. We talk about the Katuah bioregion, Fracking in North Carolina and getting involved to save our landbase.

as re: Grand Jury Resistance:
Green Is The New Red
Pacific Northwest Grand Jury Resistance
Donate to Committee Against Political Repression

as re: Mountain Top Removal
RAMPS Campaign
Katuah Earth First!
Earth First! Journal
Dustin Steele of RAMPS speaking out before the action

Playlist for the show can be found at AshevilleFM.

activism, Anarchist, communization, Earth First!, General, Grand Jury, History, Labor, PNW, Police, Prisons, Quebec, repression, Security Culture, Student

Montreal Student Strikes (part 2)

2013/04/03 The Final Straw Radio

This week’s show features the second part of my conversation with Maria about anarchist perspectives on the student strikes in Montreal,
Quebec. Maria continues to draw the history of this last year of student strikes that have developed into a nascent social strike and talks about the call to help block the start of the next semester in early August of this year

The second half of this episode features music from and about the struggle of Miners against the bosses and the state and for survival and self-determination. The playlist can be found here.

Call Out to
block the next semester
Greve
Montreal

Anarchist, conspiracy, panel discussion, repression

NC Rising 2: Repression + Counter-Repression

2013/03/27 The Final Straw Radio

NC Rising 2 was a weekend of shows, workshops and panel discussions that brought folks from around the United States to Warren Wilson College, outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Below is the second half of the first panel discussion, on a Friday in 2010.

Repression and Counter-Repression brought together people from all over who had recently been coping with repression to discuss its current framework. Panelists spoke from a variety of perspectives from within “ecological,” “animal liberation,” and “anti-capitalist” struggles. The contributions of each will help broaden our understandings of how repression acts against revolutionary projects and how a practice of revolutionary solidarity can reduce some of the effects of repression and help us to construct an environment of counter-repression.

What is the framework of repression under which we are operating?
What is “Revolutionary Solidarity”? What is its function? What are its means?
How, in such a paralyzing condition of surveillance and political condition of weakness, can we move towards a practice of revolutionary solidarity?

panelists included:

Hugh, who just survived a long legal battle over I-69-related charges;
Katherine, of the Friends and Family Of Daniel McGowan;
Neil, a member of Internationalist Prison Books Collective and a supporter of the Asheville 11, defendants recently accused of 112 misdemeanors and 34 felonies;
Talia, a survivor of Minnehaha Free State repression, member of the Coldsnap Legal collective, worker for the NLG, and member of the Conspiracy Tour.

This panel was moderated by an editor of Rolling Thunder magazine.

The recording of part one was unusable.

General

‘Sup, world.

2013/03/27 The Final Straw Radio

Welcome to The Final Straw Radio Blog. This site will function, basically, to make for easier access to the content of the show without having to search all over the place and to continue following it. First, if you happen to be watching, you’ll see past episodes come up starting with our earliest until the site is populated. Afterwards, we’ll be posting the shows up on the site after they are no longer streaming on AshevilleFM. Be sure to check out the other great shows on AFM and support our local, independent media project!

If you have content suggestions, we welcome them. See our Kontact page.

Thanks to the folks at noblogs for hosting us!

Salud y Anarquia!

activism, Anarchist, Cleveland 4, May Day, Police, Prisons, repression, Security Culture

Gail Stevens, mother of Connor, Cleveland 4 defendant

2012/09/30 The Final Straw Radio

This week’s show features a conversation with Gail Stevens. Gail is the mother of imprisoned activist and anarchist, Connor Stevens, who is one of the four anarchists that the FBI is accusing of attempting to blow up a bridge outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Connor and two other defendants, Brandon Baxter and Doug Wright, have taken a non-cooperating plea deal in the case and face their sentencing hearing on November 5th & 6th of 2012. Joshua Stafford is currently undergoing psychiatric testing to see if he can stand trial. Anthony Hayne took a cooperating plea.

During the interview Gail talks about her son, Connor, and offers a different story than what the FBI and even Rolling Stone Magazine have proposed as to what happened leading up to the arrest of the 5 on April 30th of this year. Gail also rips into the poor journalism involved in “The Plot Against Occupy” and tells us what Sabrina R. Erdely got wrong.

For more info on the case, check out http://cleveland4solidarity.org

For a news excerpt with video of Connor at Occupy, check out:
http://youtu.be/DEpQwuTMALA

activism, ALKQN, Anarchist, Author, communization, conspiracy, CounterInsurgency, Earth & Animal Liberation, General, Grand Jury, History, Immigration, Occupy, PNW, Police, Prisons, repression, Security Culture

Life During Wartime: Counterinsurgency in the U.S.

2012/08/19 The Final Straw Radio

This week’s show features a conversation with William Munger, co-editor and contributor to the upcoming AK Press book, Life During Wartime (2013). We talk about the application of Counterinsurgency praxis by law enforcement domestically in the U.S. and what that looks like in it’s varying forms.

What is COIN (Counterinsurgency)? How is it being applied to movements and communities in the United States? How do we resist it? These are among the topics covered during the conversation.

Among other things, Will’s research has focused on the case study of the relationship and dialogue developed between law enforcement in Salinas, California and the Monterey, California-based Naval Postgraduate School. This relationship has allowed NPS to conduct the beginnings of a proxy-war on the local Latino populations with a focus on eradicating gang networks. Will’s essay, “Social War in the Salad Bowl” won a grant from the Institute for Anarchist Studies this last year.

U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency Warfare
NPS: Gangs and Guerrillas

The playlist for this show can be found at AshevilleFM

activism, Anarchist, communization, General, Police, Prisons, Quebec, repression, Student

STUDENT STRIKE! POPULAR STRUGGLE! / GRÃVE ÃTUDIANTE! LUTTE POPULAIRE!

2012/07/29 The Final Straw Radio

This week’s show features a conversation with Maria, an American-born anarchist and former University student living in Montreal, Quebec. Maria shares with us the context of the student and social strikes of earlier this year in this conversation.

Some more resources on the subject include:
Greve Montreal
Montreal Counter-Info
Bloquons la Hausse
Call Out to block the next semester
a good piece on the student movement
The blog of one of the neighborhood assemblies
Sketchy Thoughts

activism, Anarchist, General, North Carolina, Prisons, Racism, repression

North Carolina Prisoners Initiate Hunger Strikes

2012/07/22 The Final Straw Radio

This week’s show features a conversation with Francis Delaney about the Prison Hunger Strikes that were initiated on Monday, July 16 at three facilities in North Carolina. This action seems to have the potential to spread to other facilities because of the apparent universality of the demands (better/more food, access to legal literature, human contact, an end to torture, an end to mail tampering, medical care). We discuss some context for the strikes and how folks on the outside can get involved and show solidarity.

Chapel Hill Prison Books
Triangle Anarchist Blog
Down: Reflections on Prison Resistance in Indiana

activism, Anarchist, Cleveland 4, conspiracy, General, May Day, Occupy, Prisons, repression, Security Culture

The Case of the Cleveland 4: The FBI, Entrapment & the construction of Terrorists

2012/07/15 The Final Straw Radio

This week’s conversation features a discussion of the case of the Cleveland 4, anarchists arrested in Ohio on April 30th for allegedly attempting to blow up a bridge. But the case isn’t so simple as idealists independently taking direct and spectacular action against infrastructure. As members of Cleveland 4 Justice (the support group for the defendants) share with us information about the accused, what is known about the alleged infiltrator sent by the FBI to facilitate a terror case (Shaquille Azir), and the significance of the timing of the arrests to coincide with May Day celebrations worldwide and the reawakening of the Occupy Movement in the U.S., we see a widened scope of intrigue and entrapment that fits into a bigger picture of corrupt government and self-serving security services.

activism, Anarchist, Antifa, General, Klan, Nazis, Prisons, Racism, repression, TinleyPark5

The Tinley Park Five and Anti-Racist Action (July 1, 2012)

2012/07/01 The Final Straw Radio

The first half of this week’s show features a conversation with Telly of the Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement, an Indiana Anti-Fascist grouping. We’ll talk about the Tinley Park 5, five young men arrested in a suburb south of Chicago and accused of disrupting a white supremacist gathering in early May.

July 21st is the next bail hearing for the Tinley Park 5. July 31st is International Day of Action against Fascism.
The second half of the episode is atmospheric black metal and sludge metal.
https://tinleyparkfive.wordpress.com/
http://antiracistaction.org/

The Final Straw Radio Podcast