The Final Straw Radio is a terrestrial radio show and podcast started in 2009 featuring information by, for and about anarchists and other anti-authoritarians. The show airs weekly on Sundays from 2-3pm EST out of Asheville, NC, USA.
This week, we’re taking a break from new content and sharing with you content from the May 2026 episode of B(A)D News: Angry Voices from Around The World. B(A)D News is a collaboration of members of the A-Radio Network of anarchist and anti-authoritarian radios and podcasts with member projects from Europe, the US and Chile at this moment.
Each month, a project takes responsibility to put together audio segments form other radio and podcast projects in the A-Radio Network. About the time that we’re releasing this, the June 2026 episode should be released, so keep an eye out at A-Radio-Network.org and clicking the link for B(A)D News to see the monthly episodes as they are released.
From the notes of episode 102:
This is episode number 102 of “B(A)D NEWS -angry voices from around the world”, a news program from the international network of anarchist and antiauthoritarian radios, consisting of short news segments from different parts of the world.
Content of this episode
Črna Luknja with a contra-report about the situation on borders of greece and migrant struggles. They discuss this with a member of Open Assembly Against Pushbacks in Athens and also active in Notara (migrant) squat.
Frequenz A with an interview of a comrade from Santarém, Brazil about indigenous struggles. They spoke with Raphael about anarchist organizations in the region, the main threats for indigenous communities, Indigenous struggles and how anarchists can support them.
First up, a long sharing of perspectives from occupied Kumeyaay [Kum-ee-aih] land, the Mexico-US border. Devi Machete from Contra Viento Y Marea in Tijuana in the Mexican state of Baja California about the history and activity of that project and journalist and activist James Stout speaks from San Diego in the US state of California about desert conditions north of the border wall. For this chat, you’ll hear third-hand accounts of border crossings, imprisonment, and deaths in border regions but also about solidarity, organizing, and resistance among those on the move as well as the communities they encounter.
After that, at roughly one hour and forty six minutes in, you’ll hear this year’s statement for the June 11th Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and long term anarchist prisoners which will include perspectives of organizers, updates in folks struggles and conditions of confinement and reflections on solidarity and insurrection. Check the show notes for a few links and the time stamps of where this section begins. [ 1:46:45 ]
Many of you have been asking for an update, so here’s where things stand.
While at Scotland Correctional Institution, Shine was helping organize political education among prisoners and speaking out about conditions and serious medical concerns inside the facility. As many already know, he had a contraband cell phone. According to Shine, that phone contained recordings and information documenting conditions inside Scotland, including prisoners begging for medical attention. Not long after, Shine and others around him were transferred and separated across different facilities.
In mid-April, Shine was transferred overnight from Scotland to Granville Correctional Institution in what he described as one of the fastest transfers he had seen in 17 years of incarceration. Upon arrival, he was immediately placed on HCON (High Security Maximum Control). Shine maintains the placement was arbitrary, requested a grievance regarding that placement, and to our knowledge has yet to receive a meaningful opportunity to challenge it. He has been on hunger strike ever since.
Over the past few weeks, many of you participated in Calls to Action, making phone calls and sending emails seeking answers about his health, communication, property, grievances, and HCON status. Those efforts led to direct conversations with Assistant Regional Director Timothy Jones, who assured us that concerns were being reviewed and investigated.
Here’s the problem.
We have now confirmed through official records that Shine was already housed at Central Prison on the same date we were being given information that appeared to place him at Granville. We still don’t know whether that means the Regional Office had outdated information, didn’t know where he was, or something else entirely. What we do know is that the answers we were given don’t line up with the timeline we can now verify.
At this point, we have no direct communication with Shine. Updates are coming through fellow comrades who have been able to get word out through prison channels.
What we know right now:
Shine remains on HCON.
Shine remains on hunger strike.
Shine is housed in Central Prison’s medical unit.
Communication remains extremely limited.
Questions about his mail, property, grievances, and classification remain unanswered.
The transfer changed the address. It did not answer the questions.
This week we are launching another Call to Action. Supporters will once again be contacting Central Prison, the Regional Office, and NC DAC leadership seeking answers and accountability.
If Shine’s status remains unchanged and these concerns continue to be ignored, we are preparing for an in-person demonstration later this week.
If the goal was to make people stop paying attention, it didn’t work.
This week, as the 2026 FIFA World Cup looms across Turtle Island, we’re pre-sharing an interview with Jules Boykoff about one of his latest books about international sports spectacles, the upward money flow and authoritarian political power they facilitate but also a bit about the folks that are fighting back entitled Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine (O/R Books, 2026).
This conversation falls into the same series as the recent interview with Kristian Williams and Sam Schmidt as regards evacuation of public spaces and attacks on community by the state and capital in the aid of police state capitalism.
This year has felt like there’ve been a series of large sports mega events and summits planned and taking place in cities across the USA. For instance, starting in June the FIFA World Cup will be hosted in cities across the country (as well as a few in Mexico and Canada). Also a few cities are hosting meetings and an eventual summit related to the G20, or group of 20 economies, a gathering between large capitalist industries, banks, para-governmental neoliberal international institutions, government ministries and heads of state that share policy decisions effecting immigration, wars, trade policy and the climate. In 2028 Los Angeles will host the Olympics.
This episode will feature two discussions about some of the security impacts of hosting large sports or political events and the ways that the state and capital work to change the landscape and norms of the locations they take place. First up, Kristian Williams speaks about National Special Security Events like the G20 or World Cup, how they change local police and surveillance landscapes and work to turbocharge gentrification and displace working and poor people, making our cities more hostile to anything but commerce and control. Then, you’ll hear from Sam Schmidt at Our Streets Collective to speak about homeless sweeps in Pittsburgh, PA in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2026 NFL Draft taking place in that city.
Prosfigyka coverage by Pyrias of Athens appears on this episode of B(A)D News podcast
Announcement
Marius Mason
Longtime listeners to The Final Straw Radio will be familiar with the yearly June 11th Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and other Longterm Anarchist Prisoners. Well, stay tuned for an announcement from the June 11 crew in coming weeks with a recording of this year’s call. We are happy to announce here that Marius Mason, a long standing ecological, animal rights and trans prisoner rights activist will is on his way out of prison, currently in a halfway house having served out his sentence,
Past interviews on Marius’ case, other prisoners supported on the day and June 11th yearly event
Here’s our recent chat with two members of The Peoples Want Network, an attempt to build an Internationalist movement from below and to the left. For this chat, Rindala and Doxie speak about sharing lessons from movements and uprisings of the recent past from around the world among participants and those hoping to create movements in their own lives, organizing in exile, the enriching practice of building solidarity and the recently published English booklet of The Peoples Want manifesto, Revolutions Of Our Times (Haymarket 2026). At the end of the chat, Rindala announces the upcoming, June 2026 project Mujawara for networking local movement sites with those around the world to further increase intercommunication and solidarity and support such spaces in conflict sites in the SWANA.
We’ve covered a number of the uprisings, migrant struggles, and internationalist organizing topics and movements discussed in the episode since we started in 2010, so feel free to pick through our website if you want to dig a little deeper and hear some views from the times.
This week, we’re sharing an interview with Andrew Krinks, author of White Property, Black Trespass: Racial Capitalism and the Religious Function of Mass Criminalization from NYU Press, 2024. For the chat, we speak about taking a theological lens to the question of what ties exclusive private property, white masculinity, police impunity and mass incarceration in the US. We discuss aspects of Christian thought, employ concepts borrowed from the Black Radical tradition and try to get closer to the root of the sickness in our culture that flourishes from others pain.
During the chat Vicky talks about intellectual property and how it overlaps between entertainment and other elements like technology and medicine, the shaping and limiting effects IP has on popular culture and imagination, the film industry and more.
To hear Vickys past appearances on our show check out:
This week, we’re sharing two segments: the main feature is an interview with the recently released anarchist organizer and writer Hybachi LeMar; but first up you’ll hear Aarohi of the Xinachtli Freedom Campaign about the elder political prisoner’s medical condition and the phone zaps to pressure the TDCJ to alleviate his medical neglect
Xinachtli is an elder, Chicano communist activist and political prisoner 30 years into a 50 year sentence for disarming a sheriff’s deputy. Of that 30 years, he’s spent 23 in solitary confinement. At age 73, Xinachtli has and continues to face medical neglect at the hands of the Texas prison system, with outside supporters having to apply pressure to get him things like a wheelchair or a proper diet. You’ll hear Aarohi of the Xinachtli Freedom Campaign talk about his case and about the phone zaps about Xinachtli’s condition as well as how to get in touch with the comrade.
First up, an interview that’s been a long time in the making. Hybachi LeMar is an anarchist who grew up in Chicago and began considering anarchism thanks to a letter he received from Anthony Rayson of the South Chicago Anarchist Black Cross Zine Distro during over a year in solitary confinement years ago. Since that time, Compa LeMar has been organizing with projects like IWOC, IWW IU613, the self-organized Liberation School in Englewood, food distribution mutual aid, the Chicago local organizing committee of the Black Autonomy Federation and is now the author of three collections of essays (listed at his website) as well as numerous zines.
The majority of this chat has difficult audio quality because it was over prison phones. Happily at the end of the chat, we speak with Hybachi following his recent release, having maxed out his sentence and returned to his organizing and life in the streets of Chicago. There is a fundraiser ongoing to support Hybachi in his post-release life.
To hear Hybachi’s spoken piece On The Powers of Self-Reflection, produced by Slug, check it out at the end of the chat.
There are a few mentions of mental distress and suicide in the chat, just a headsup. Compa LeMar mentions a few names in the episode of people that we’ve had on the show in the past, and we’ll link those episodes where we can (Brianna Peril of IWOC, Sean Swain, Anthony Rayson of South Chicago ABC Zine Distro, True Leap). You can find ways to support Casey Goonan at their support site.
Announcements
B(A)D News Episode 100!
If you’re looking for more anarchist news beyond the Channel Zero Network podcasts, check out B(A)D News: Angry Voices from Around The World from the A-Radio Network (of which we are also a member). The March 2026 episode features:
FrequenzeA presents an interview about environmental struggles in Russia.
A-Radio Berlin presents a satiric piece called “Weird politics” where they talk about German military, AfD, and the wolf.
Parias radio-show presents an interview about the repression the Community of Squatted Prosfygıka in Athens.
The last contribution is from Radio Ausbruch that was visiting feralcrust, an Eco-anarchist Infoshop and Social Center close to Davao City, Philipines. The first of a series.
An interview with Tom Goyens, professor of history at Salisbury University and author of Johann Most: Life of a Radical, out last year from University of Illinois Press speaking about the life and times of the atheist and propagandist (notably through his journal, Freiheit) and his development from social democrat parliamentarian to socialist revolutionary to anarchist. For the chat we talk about Mosts’s life, development and legacy, from the mid-1800’s in Bavaria up to his death in 1906.
First up, an interview that’s been a long time in the making. 