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, you’ll hear Ruchell Magee speak about his struggle over 57 years to be heard in the California court system and appeals to US Federal courts. Ruchell is the lone, surviving prisoner-participant of the August 7th, 1970 Marin County Courthouse Rebellion, lead by Jonathan Jackson and including prisoner rebels William Christmas and James McClain. Ruchell took the name of Cinque (aka Sengbe Pieh), the Mende man who justified for his right to resist unjust enslavement aboard the slave ship Amistad in 1839. Over the years Ruchell has become an accomplished jailhouse lawyer, helping many other prisoners and yet still languishing in prison.
For the hour, Ruchell talks about his case and strategy, the George Floyd Uprisings, corruption of the racist US legal system. We’ll also hear from Claude Marks, former political prisoner from the Puerto Rican independence movement and co-founder / director of the Freedom Archives in San Francisco, which in August 2020 memorialized the 50th anniversary of the Marin County Courthouse Rebellion.
Ruchell’s name appears on the California Courts Vexatious Litigants LIst, which bars filing in the CA system without permission from a presiding judge.
Court Documents:
Here is Ruchell’s August 6, 2020 Pauperis petition to the US Supreme Court concerning the requirement of $500 to file his Habeas Petition;
Here is Ruchell’s August 10th, 2020 Habeas Corpus Petition to the US Supreme Court, including case law and documents such as former jurors statements on Ruchell’s behalf.
“Hannah was also the creator of the documentary “Shelter: A Squatumentary”. We talk about squatting in the U.S., homesteading, market values, views on squat resistance in other countries from the U.S. and more. The latter half of the show features a musical selection from the metal and gothy end of the spectrum.”
This week, we’re airing a presentation by Mark Cook from Burning Books bookstore in Buffalo, NY. This was recorded on February 18th, 2016. From the announcement on Kersplebedeb.com for the event:
“Mark Cook is a former Black Panther, member of the George Jackson Brigade, and political prisoner. Twenty four years in prison could not break his spirit or commitment to Black liberation and Mark Cook is as active an organizer now as ever. These events will be worth traveling for, as Cook will only be speaking on these two dates while on the east coast, before heading back to the Pacific Northwest”
As usual, we invite listeners to check out the slightly longer podcast version online for free. To hear the questions and answers from the end of the presentation, you can check out the podcast. You can find more presentations from Burning Books plus audio from Mark presenting at the 2015 North American Anarchist Black Cross Conference in Denver, CO (pt 1, pt 2) at our website and find more and longer videos of the presentations on youtube. You can learn more about the bookstore venue, including books about the George Jackson Bridge at BurningBooksBuffalo.com.
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Jalil Muntaqim
It’s notable that at the start of this Jalil Muntaqim is mentioned being visited in prison. Last week, he was announced that Jalil will be released on parole after 50 years! Congrats to him! Free Them All!
This week on The Final Straw, we present a conversation that I had with Lorax B. Horne, a non-binary writer and journalist from Canada, Ecuador and the United Kingdom who is currently the Editor-In-Chief of the data transparency collective, Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDOSecrets. In June of this year, the collective released roughly 269 gigabytes of hacked information from 251 law enforcement agencies, dubbed BlueLeaks. The data comes from the shadowy hacker group, Anonymous, and was retrieved from Federal Fusion centers which facilitate information gathering and dissemination between high level agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the FBI with state and local law enforcement and are situated around the so-called United States.
For the hour, Lorax talks about the development of fusion centers, the contents of the #BlueLeaks trove, insights drawn by journalists who have used the data to cover things like far-right conspiracy theories entering law enforcement bulletins, their editing process, social media and governmental attempts to cover up the contents and the persecution of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.
To check out a collection of the articles written about the BlueLeaks collected by Lorax, check out the article up on medium.com entitled “What is BlueLeaks”. For some useful links to their work, you can check out our show notes at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org. To dig into the data itself and see other collections released by Distributed Denial of Secrets and other groups like Unicorn Riot, you can visit ddosecrets.com, see the #AssangeLeaks at AssangeLeaks.org, their Project Whispers is a searchable database of fascist discord logs at Whispers.DDOSecrets.com, and you can support DDOS with recurring payments at their OpenCollective.com page. You can also keep up on their work by following them on Mastadon, fedbook, Telegram, InstaGram and SubStack NewsLetter, many of which links and more show up on their Linktr.ee.
You can find Lorax’s writing on MuckRack and follow them on twitter at @BBHorne.
Sean Swain
As a quick update on Sean Swain’s situation, he’s still stuck without phone or email access, but he appears to be getting his mail. This is a hard situation for a presidential candidate and surely some listeners have pull with the Federal Elections Commission to correct this injustice. A couple of ways to help out Sean from where you’re at include contributing to the fundraiser set up to help raise legal funds for him or you can contact the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections director Annette Chambers-Smith by calling: 614-387-0588
or writing to:
4545 Fisher Road, Suite D, Columbus, OH 43228
Sean’d probably appreciate you asking why Sean Swain (Ohio number A243205) is being denied access to jpay services, what happened to his hundreds of dollars of music and other items that didn’t transfer over to him in Virginia and why his phone services are currently shut down.
New Episodes of “Live Like The World Is Dying”
The Final Straw is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here’s a jingle from another member of CZN, Margaret Killjoy. We suggest listeners check out the recent practical episodes of ‘Live Like The World is Dying’, covering topics of how to treat gunshot wounds, good approaches to masking up against chemical agents, body armor, open source medical chemistry and a more…
This week we had the opportunity to connect with Delee Nikal, who is a Wet’su’weten community member, about updates from the Gidimt’en Camp that was created to block the TransCanada Coastal GasLink pipeline (or CGL) that Canada is trying to push through their un-ceded territory. In this interview Bursts and Delee speak about ways folks can get involved, both in so called BC and elsewhere, how the covid pandemic is affecting their work, and many other topics.
The Struggle for Likhtsamisyu Liberation Continues, Updates from Delee Nikal
Before the segment from Sean Swain, we would like to draw attention to a fundraiser in order to get Sean proper legal representation. As we all may know by now, there is nothing restorative about the prison system, its only reason for being is punitive and capitalist. Sean Swain has been in prison for the past 25 years, for a so called “crime” of self defense and radicalized to being an anarchist behind bars. He has been targeted by numerous prison officials for his political beliefs, so much so that years were added to his sentence. If you would like to support this fundraiser, you can either visit our show notes or go to gofundme.com and search Restorative Justice for Sean Swain.
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You can write to Sean Swain at his latest address:
Sean Swain #2015638
Buckingham Correctional
PO Box 430
Dillwyn, VA 23936
You can find his writings, past recordings of his audio segments, and updates on his case at seanswain.org, and follow him on Twitter @swainrocks.
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In Solidarity with Italian Anarchists Facing RepressionWe send you our solidarity call with anarchist in Italy and some introductory words, asking you to spread it in the way you prefer. Thanks!
“From 2019 to today the Italian State has carried out many repressive operations and inflicted a series of restrictive measures on anarchist comrades, limiting their freedom of movement and forcing them to remain within the limits of their city or to move away from the city or region where they reside.As recipients of these kind of minor measures, together we want to relaunch our solidarity with the more than 200 comrades involved in the various trials in Italy that are starting this September and that shall continue throughout the autumn.In particular, the appeal trial of the Scripta Manent Operation will resume at the beginning of September: this trial involves 5 comrades who have been in prison for 4 years (two of them for 8 years) and which has resulted in 20+ years of sentence in the first grade.During this trial the prosecutor Sparagna gibbered of an “acceptable” anarchism and of a “criminal” one, statements that contain the punitive strategy that the State wants to carry out, based on dividing the “good” from the “bad” within the anarchist movement and the ruling of exemplary sentences.”---------WHO ASPIRES TO FREEDOM CANNOT BE “MEASURED”We are anarchists subject to restrictive measures following a series of investigations that have crossed the Italian peninsula in the last year and a half.They would like to isolate us, but they cannot. They would like to prevent us from supporting our comrades in prison, but their repression can only strengthen our solidarity.With these various investigations, measures and prison detentions they want to wear us out and divide us, but we remain firm in our ideas and our relations, also thanks to the strong and sincere solidarity that has never failed us and that is increasingly under attack in the courtrooms.They want to divide us between “good” and “bad”, between an anarchism they call "acceptable" and one they call "criminal". We are aware that it is our ideas that have been put on the stand in the latest inquiries, all the more so when these ideas find the way of being translated into action, because as we’ve always believed, thought and action find their meaning only when tied together. And it’s not surprising that a hierarchical system of power such as the State is trying to knock out its enemies by playing dirty and reviewing history, precisely when social anger is growing everywhere.We don’t intend to bow down to their repressive strategies and we reaffirm our full solidarity and complicity with all the anarchists who will be on trial from September: we stand side by side with the comrades under investigation for the Scripta Manent, Panico, Prometeo, Bialystok and Lince Operations, with the anarchist comrades Juan and Davide and with those who will be tried for the Brennero demonstration; we assert our solidarity with Carla, an anarchist comrade arrested in August after living more than a year as a fugitive, following the Scintilla Operation.We know very well who are the enemies that imprison our comrades and against whom we are fighting and every anarchist knows in his/her heart how and where to act to demonstrate what solidarity is.Even if not all of us can be present in the courtrooms alongside our comrades on trial or where solidarity will be manifested, we want to express all our affinity, our love and our anger to them and to all anarchists in prison.Let’s continue to attack this world of cages. Solidarity is a weapon, and an opportunity.-Anarchists “with measures”, exiled and confined
I found this interview extremely illuminating, perhaps like many other people who might not have strong ties to either academia or popular education models of learning, I had sort of written Oscar Wilde off as this kind of white dead rich guy who carried little to no relevance apart from a model of queerness that we could look back on. This interview very much proved that this isn’t the case, and that he and the circumstances around him very much influence how we as queers and as anarchists can sense historical threads that pull on our lives very tangibly today. Thanks a million to Scott for researching and conducting this interview!
You can learn more about the author, Kristian Williams, who is most known for his book Our Enemies in Blue, which is a critical history of American policing and police, at his website kristianwilliams.com.
Help Charlotte Jail Support Rebuild!
One announcement before we begin from our comrades at the Charlotte Uprising, Charlotte Jail Support has been getting extremely targeted harassment for some months from CMPD and the sheriff’s department. In times of rebellion or revolt, it is the support infrastructures that are often the most vulnerable to repression and violence. All of their supplies have either been seized or destroyed by the police, if you would like to support them re upping their much needed materials, you can Venmoing them @Ashwilliamsclt or Cash App $houseofkanautica.
We talk about how reform and so-called ‘more humane’ ‘alternatives’ to incarceration such as electronic monitoring, drug courts and probation in fact extend the carceral net. We also talk about alternatives to the ‘Punishment Paradigm’ in responding to harm, police and prison abolitionism and resisting recuperation in our struggles to imagine and birth a new world.
We got word that Sean Swain has had his email, phone and mail blocked, likely in response to his “An Open Letter to Annette Chambers-Smith,” available via DetroitABC, as well as his soon-to-be-published book, “Ohio” (parts 1-3 of the first half available here in zine form, soon via LBC). Pass it on…
This week we are airing a conversation that we had a few weeks ago with Aric McBay, who is an anarchist, organizer, farmer, and author about his most recent book called Full Spectrum Resistance published by Seven Stories Press in May 2019.
This book is divided into 2 volumes, and from the books website [fullspectrumresistance.org]:
“Volume 1: Building movements and fighting to win, explores how movements approach political struggle, recruit members, and structure themselves to get things done and be safe.
Volume 2: Actions and strategies for change, lays out how movements develop critical capacities (from intelligence to logistics), and how they plan and carry out successful actions and campaigns.”
This interview covers a lot of ground, with topics that could be of use to folks newer to movement and ones who have been struggling and building for a while. McBay also talks at length about the somewhat infamous formation Deep Green Resistance, some of its history, and tendencies within that group that led him to break with them.
Links to Indigenous and Migrant led projects for sovereignty and climate justice, and some for further research:
Wet’suwet’en Strong [groundworkforchange.org/wetsuweten-strong.html], which includes extensive educational material on allyship, racism, settler colonialism, and decolonization.
Interview on TFS with Smogelgem, a Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief of the Likhts’amisyu clan, on ongoing struggles against pipelines and moves to create a Wet’suwet’en lead climate change research facility on their lands at Parrot Lake.
Its not uncommon to hear pundits and regular folks making comparisons between the crises we are now facing and other historical moments, such as the 1920s in Germany or the global rebellions of the 1960s. But is this an effective approach for gauging the potential of now?
For the hour, anarchist author and activist Peter Gelderloos shares some of his thoughts on those comparisons, on the revolutionary potential of this moment were living in and some lessons from past movements that we might keep in mind now to make the most out of these dire times. You can find many of Peters writings on TheAnarchistLibrary.Org, available through AK Press and independent bookstores. You can hear our past interviews with Peter by visiting our website.
This week, I speak with JN, an anarchist who works with the decolonial, leftist HongKonger platform, Lausan, talks about where the uprising against Chinese integration in Hong Kong stands, the National Security Law, tankie and rightwing narratives and international anti-authoritarian solidarity and resistance.
The interview about Belarus that I mentioned before was from a recent episode of Elephant In The Room, from Dresden, Germany, which is a member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts.
I’d like to remind folks that the 2020 Republican National Convention is going to partially be held in Charlotte from August 20-24. One group that is doing anti-repression work in the area is CharlotteUprising, which can be found on twitter at @CLTUprising, where you can find info about the protests at the event as well as their jail support, including how to make donations. You can learn more by following the hashtags #CharlotteUprising and #ResistRNC2020
To all in solidarity with the Prisoners Human Rights Movement:
We are reaching out to those that have been amplifying our voices in these state, federal, or immigration jails and prisons, and to allies that uplifted the national prison strike demands in 2018. We call on you again to organize the communities from August 21st – September 9th, 2020, by hosting actions, events, and demonstrations that call for prisoner human rights and the end to prison slavery…
On August 21 – September 9, we call on everyone in solidarity with the prison class struggle to organize an action, a panel discussion, a rally, an art event, a film screening, or another kind of demonstration to promote prisoners’ human rights. Whatever is within your ability, we ask that you shake the nation out of any fog they may be in about prisoners’ human rights and the criminal legal system (legalized enslavement).
During these solidarity events, we request that organizers amplify immediate issues prisoners in your state face, the demands from the National Prison Strike of 2018, and uplift Jailhouse Lawyers Speak new International Law Project…
The prison strike demands were drafted as a path to alleviate the dehumanizing process and conditions people are subjected to while going through this nation’s judicial system. Following up on these demands communicates to the world that prisoners are heard and that prisoners’ human rights are a priority.
In the spirit of Attica, will you be in the fight to dismantle the prison industrial slave complex by pushing agendas that will shut down jails and prisons like Rikers Island or Attica? Read the Attica Rebellion demands and read the National Prison Strike 2018 demands. Ask yourself what can you do to see the 2018 National Prison Strike demands through.
SHARE THIS RELEASE FAR AND WIDE WITH ALL YOUR CONTACTS!
We rage with George Jackson’s “Blood in my eyes” and move in the spirit of the Attica Rebellion!
