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 is episode number 13 of “B(A)D NEWS – Angry voices from around the world”, a news program from the international network of anarchist and anti-authoritarian radios, consisting of short news segments from different parts of the world.
or you can download it directly from archive.org here:
– A Radio Berlin bringing us an introduction to Vedeng a Rojava a new podcast project created by people on the ground in Northern Syria
– From A Radio Vienna we hear information about a demonstration against an upcoming EU summation Austria in September as well as a callout for an international week of solidarity with anarchist prisoners
– Words about the upcoming national prison strike in the so-called United States from our friends at The Final Straw radio
– Dissident Island Radio in the UK bring you short updates from around the country touching on the enclosure of public space, immigration control, animal rights, and the ongoing struggle to stop fracking taking hold.
Please send feedback and comments at the network email
More content is available at https://www.a-radio-network.org
“You may be nonviolent, but I’m not gonna let these white people kill you”. A presentation with Charles Cobb on This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed.
This week we are very pleased to present a presentation done some months ago at Firestorm Books with Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Charles Cobb is a journalist, writer, and current senior analyst at allAfrica.com, which is “is a voice of, by and about Africa – aggregating, producing and distributing news and information from over 140 African news organizations and our own reporters to an African and global public.” Cobb has had a long career full of landmark moments, for example being the first Africa correspondent for NPR and being the first Black staff writer for National Geographic Magazine, among many other achievements.
In this presentation, done on April 2nd 2018, Cobb talks about his 2014 book “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed”, which details his work from 1962 to 1967 for the SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), the most influential youth and student organization during the Civil Rights Movement. He also fills in a much overlooked gap in the understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, that is, the lived experiences of Black people living in the rural South at this time, gives his insights on embedding in communities for social justice purposes, and draws lessons from those insights as they pertain to the current Movement for Black Lives. In this talk he is being interviewed by Carol, who is a long time comrade and friend.
Announcements
Week of International Support in Lead Up to Nationwide Prison Strike
A call from a variety of groups to make some noise for the upcoming prison strike, kicking off on August 21st, 2018. This is a challenge to every anarchist, abolitionist, rebel and determined fighter against prison society and white supremacy in Amerikkka:
‘Between Monday, July 16 and Saturday, July 21, we’re calling on you to help unleash a concerted and spectacular array of solidarity actions before the upcoming prison strikes! Prepare now, bring mayhem everywhere! As you likely know, prisoners will strike from August 21st to September 9th. They anticipate guards and administrators to respond with violent reprisals, media distortions, and extended lockdowns. Defending the strikes from the outside is an essential component of its success. Don’t wait; retaliation has already started and as August 21st approaches we expect to see transfers, preemptive lockdowns, and more. Outside support efforts, in collaboration with imprisoned rebels, have already begun. Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, IWOC, and other organizations are building phone trees, publishing call-outs, and mounting pressure campaigns. Another thing outside supporters can do is promote and set a stage for the strike. From July 16-21, we want to make an opening act that warms up the public consciousness and media landscape.
If we’re successful, it will also be a loudspeaker for the prisoners’ call, blaring it past the censors, the mailroom pigs, and the dense walls of isolation and silence that prevent prisoners from knowing what’s cooking in other states or facilities until it’s already served up cold. The challenge before us is to do things so spectacular, creative, and unexpected that the mainstream media cannot neglect them. Hashtag: #prisonstrike2018. Use any means necessary to break that media blockade: take the streets, paint the town, disrupt the status quo, hack a site, get things lit, or go ahead and chuck your anarchist purity, resort to wooing celebrity endorsements, buying clever ads, or schmoozing your way into the news. Remember, the radical and independent outlets most likely to cover our activities exist mainly online.
We need to leverage that coverage to force the big old media (the kind that gets into prisons: TV, radio, print editions of newspapers) to report this news due to fear-of-missing-out. The goal: get the phrase “Nationwide Prison Strike: 8/21-9/9” printed or spoken on the largest platform so prisoners can see it and no one outside can ignore it. So get out there and surprise us! Overwhelm amerikkka’s hostile media environment and get the word into prisons large and small across the nation. ‘
Groups endorsing the 2018 Nationwide Prison Strike:
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee
The Fire Inside Collective
Millions for Prisoners
The People’s Consortium
Asheville Prison Strike Info Session
If you’re in the asheville area, Tuesday the 17th from 5-7:30pm at Firestorm, Blue Ridge ABC is holding an info session about the prison strike. There’ll be an introduction workshop to writing to prisoners followed by news about the strike, propaganda to take home and brainstorming on outreach methods we can take to get word flowing on the outside and support those rumblings on the inside. This event is open to anyone who’s interested in uplifting prisoner voices.
Intl Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners
In other prison-related news, here’s an announcement about the August 23- 30th 6th Annual Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners. From https://solidarity.intenational/ :
We are coming back with global week of solidarity with anarchist prisoners. Since last year, a lot has changed in our countries, but the general tendency is going in the worse direction with more repressions applied against anarchists not only in Europe but worldwide. With this in mind, we are calling for sixth annual week of solidarity!
Last year lots of people sent us their reports from different parts of the world and we hope that this year the tradition will grow even bigger. We need to support our comrades! Use this week to spread the information about anarchists behind bars. Don’t have prisoners in your country? No worry, support prisoners from other countries in your region or use those days to raise awareness of repression mechanisms and how anarchist communities can fight against them!
Build up security culture, support your local anarchist prisoners and fight back.
In other anarchist prisoner related topics, the partner of Eric King has just suffered some major tragedies in her life and could use some help. She was recently in a car accident from which she’s recovering but now lacks a vehicle for her day to day work life, the childcare of Eric and her two kids, and her weekly visitations of him in prison. On top of that and her partner serving a sentence on which he has 5 more years, Eric’s partner was also just diagnosed with thyroid cancer. If you have any extra dough you can toss to her, there’s a go fund me page where she’s soliciting donations. This can be found at gofundme.com.
The Texas prison system is trying terrorist-jacket politicized prisoner Malik Washington!
Politicized prisoner Malik Washington was cleared for removal from Ad-Seg by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s state classification committee last month. He has spent the past two years in solitary confinement on a bogus riot charge, which TDCJ has since admitted was not for actual rioting, but for organizing fellow prisoners to engage in work stoppages during the 2016 nationwide prison strike.
But as soon as Malik got to his new unit, he was informed that his clearance had been revoked, and that he was heading back to Ad-Seg. He was given no explanation of why, but his support network did some digging, and found out that the classification committee is claiming to have “received additional information” from the Fusion Center in Texas, causing a determination that “it was in the best interest of the department that he not be released from Ad-Seg.”
Fusion Centersbad news; they are based in the Department of Homeland Security and deal with anti-terrorism intelligence gathering, which, as we know, means manufacturing evidence to label people associated with the anti-authoritarian left, and others, as terrorists.
Fusion Centers are shadowy, unaccountable arms of the repressive state apparatus, and are quickly becoming one of state’s new favorite tools. What just happened to Malik is a signal that TDCJ is upping its repression of anarchist-identified prisoners, Muslims, and those engaged in black liberation struggle.
Please share this info with any media contacts you have; urge them to investigate Fusion Centers, and to ask questions about what kind of information they collect, how it is fact-checked, and how this data collection contributes to political repression–and urge them to dig into Malik’s situation!
Write to Malik at:
Keith H. Washington
#1487958
McConnell Unit
3001 South Emily Drive
Beeville, TX 78102
Sean Swain update
To check in about last week’s ask about Sean Swain’s condition, we have yet to hear anything back from Sean, the prisoner who has for the last 4 years been doing a weekly segment on our radio show. Sean had been missing from the ODRC database of prisoners and not showing up as a transfer to another prison but the day after last week’s episode of our show it was brought to our attention that Sean was now back in the Ohio database’s website. Anyone with clues about Sean’s condition and state of being, please drop us a line at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net.
In May, Michael “Little Feather” Giron was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison for actions taken to defend pipeline resistance camps from police assault. Several other water protectors still face federal charges, with potential sentences of decades in prison, stemming from their participation in the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.Indigenous Water Protector Red Fawn Fallis, a political prisoner arrested during the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, was sentenced today in federal court by Judge Daniel Hovland. Fallis was sentenced to 57 months (4.75 years) in federal prison. She will receive a credit of 18 months ‘time served’ taken off of her sentence, from time spent in North Dakota jails before trial proceedings began. Fallis is expected to serve a total of 39 months in prison followed by 3 years probation.
In January 2018, Fallis entered a non-cooperating plea agreement in which prosecutors agreed to seek a sentence of less than seven years. In exchange, she pleaded guilty to charges of ‘Civil Disorder’ and ‘Possession of a Firearm and Ammunition by a Convicted Felon.’
Red Fawn and her supporters had previously maintained her innocence, and had stated that Fallis accepted the plea deal under the assumption that she would not receive a fair trial due to prosecutors withholding evidence.
Judge Hovland had forbidden Fallis’ defense team from mentioning treaty rights or other issues related to her arrest at anti-pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation border.
The case against Red Fawn had centered around allegations she fired a gun during her arrest on October 27, 2016, when a massive police and military raid seized indigenous treaty lands on behalf of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The gun allegedly fired by Fallis was later revealed to have belonged to Heath Harmon, an undercover FBI informant who was romantically involved with Red Fawn at the time of her arrest.
Before she was sentenced by Judge Hovland, Red Fawn Fallis told the court,
“No matter where I go from here I am going to continue going forward…I wanted to move forward in a positive way away from Heath Harmon and the things he tried to put on me while I was trying to push him away.” – Red Fawn Fallis
Sharing Is Caring
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This week Bursts had two conversations, both focusing on the upcoming Prisoner Strike from August 21st to September 9th, 2018, one with a member of IWOC and one with a Amani Sawari, a media liaison for some of the prisoners who called for the strike.
The viewpoints expressed by the two guests are at time contradictory and at others redundant but it felt better to keep their voices mostly intact rather than weave them to create a streamlined narrative.
Amani Sawari
In part one, Amani Sawari will speak about the prison strike, the need to increase opportunities for release and civic engagement by prisoners and former prisoners in the face of historical disenfranchisement and she’ll also read some statements and demands from the prisoner-organizers. Her info on the upcoming strike and resources can be found at sawarimi.org.
Brooke, Oakland IWOC
Then we’ll hear from Brooke, an organizer with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee of the IWW. Brooke is based in Oakland, CA. He’ll talk about IWOC and their role and views of prison organizing, labor organizing, and the upcoming strike. More from IWOC can be found at inarceratedworkers.org.
announcements
J20 Update
As many listeners have no doubt heard, the remaining 38 j20 defendants got their charges dropped the other day without prejudice! This means that the cases could theoretically be opened again at any time, thought this is thought to be pretty unlikely. This is a historical moment, not only for the courts who were staggeringly unable to rise to this occasion – humiliating themselves at pretty much every possible turn – but also for anarchists everywhere. This whole long, difficult year and a half forged bonds that are all the more strong for having gone through the fire together, which can and no doubt will experience similar oppressions, difficulties, and tough breaks with the same finesse and resilience which was demonstrated here. To anyone listening who was personally affected by this, you are an inspiration. Now we get to celebrate, and now we get to feel the extent of our power.
Sean Swain?
If you’re missing the voice of Sean Swain like we are, Here’s a little plug with his voice to get those juices flowing.
Now, please consider giving a call to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Gary Mohr at 614-387-0588 or calling Warren Correctional Warden Chae Harris at 513-932-3388 (Fax: 513-933-0150) and asking about Sean’s whereabouts and restrictions to his communication. If you find out anything interesting, maybe that we haven’t learned yet about his silence, drop us an email at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net or at his support email, seanswain@riseup.net.Thanks a lot!
This week, we’re featuring two interviews. The first was an an interview from the IGDcast with someone affiliated with #OccupyIcePDX blocking the immigration detention center in Portland, OR. The second was a chat we had with a supporter of the J20 arrestees, from among the 230 people rounded up during the Inauguration protests of January 20th, 2017, in Washington, DC and still facing over 60 years in prison each.
Updates from #OccupyICEPDX blockade in Portland, OR
The first is an interview that our friends over at the IGD podcast, #ThisIsAmerica from the June 28th episode, number 14. It features a person involved in the occupation of the entry way of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon against the deportations of migrants by ICE agents that have grabbed headlines for ripping families apart across the country and throwing children into cages. The interviewee shares experiences of ICE and Homeland Security invasions of the space and the importance of opposing this imposition of borders on free humans. More about resistance to the ICE raids can be found at https://itsgoingdown.org and subscribing to their podcast is as easy as clicking here!
It’s worth noting that on Saturday the 30th of July, fascist street forces attacked the anti-ICE encampment with weapons, passing through a police line as a phalanx to do it, and the police stood by and let it happen. The police acted to protect the fascist Proud Boys, Patriot Prayers, ultra-right Nationalists and Nazi’s and only pushed back against antifascists when it was clear that our side was winning. Check out IDGcast #15 for Rose City Antifa talking about prep to resist the fash in Portland and keep an ear out for reportbacks on that medium and their website. Also, this good writeup available at crimethinc.com. Keep safe out there, wherever you are, and remember that the cops and Klan go hand in hand. Here’s a fundraiser for costs and charges related to resisting Patriot Prayer on June 30th.
Updates on the J20 Inauguration Arrest cases
Next up, I spoke with a supporter of the J20 Inauguration arrestees about how the case has been progressing (basically the prosecutors are getting their patookus’ handed to themselves), the pressures of facing felony charges and types of support folks can offer and other hijinks, including discussion of jury nullification. Don’t know what that is? Enter it as a search term in your favorite search engine. More info on the case can be found through the regular and on point twitter feed of Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) and as well as the handles @defendj20 and @dropj20 on twitter or at the website https://defendj20resistance.org.
Please stay tuned to the end of the episode for a couple of anarchist podcast suggestions from William Goodenuff plus some news about streaming services, the dangerous incarceration of political prisoner “Comrade Malik Washington”, & the Halifax Anarchist Bookfair.
Announcements:
The Final Straw Radio is now streaming on the internet station, Anon Global Radio.
Halifax (A) Bookfair
And here’s an announcement about the upcoming Halifax Anarchist Bookfair in Nova Scotia, so-called Canada
Brother Haroun in ATL needs support!
Black community activist named Brother Haroun Walik, the founder and CEO of the Streets Groomers group in Atlanta, Georgia, had his house ransacked by police and FBI while he was in hospital for a recurring condition. The police are following a claim of assault which Haroun claims is untrue and is being acted on in retaliation for doing street-level organizing against gentrification and attempting to divert youth away from gang membership and patrol the streets against police intimidation with his org. You can find out more about Street Groomers at their website, http://streetgroomers.org, you can donate to his bond and legal costs at https://gofundme.com/6f87oc/ and you can keep up to date on the harassment of Haroun Walik in the updates section of that site as well as the @the_streetgroomers instagram.
All Hands on Deck: Get Malik Washington out of Ad-Seg!
Several weeks ago, friends and supporters of incarcerated freedom fighter Comrade Malik Washington were overjoyed to hear that he was getting released, finally, from Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at Eastham Unit in Texas–until TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) pulled a fast one, falsely claiming that Malik refused the Ad-Seg Transition Program to get him released from solitary back to general population.
This is a complete lie, as well as patently absurd: Malik has been fighting to get out of Ad-Seg from the moment he was thrown in there two years ago on a bogus riot charge (which was, itself, retaliation for prison strike organizing and agitating against inhumane and discriminatory prison conditions).
Here’s what actually happened: Malik arrived his new unit, Ramsey I, on June 21, only to discover that he was being assigned to a top bunk, which is prohibited by his medical restrictions as a seizure patient. Then it got worse: TDCJ had failed to transfer his medical restrictions records, or had erased them, and were now claiming no record of these restrictions, which have been on file and in place for the past ten years. Malik wrote a detailed statement requesting to be placed on a lower bunk in order to avoid injury; later that night, he was abruptly transferred out of Ramsey, and was told that staff there said he refused the transition program!
This is blatant targeting of a prison rebel whose resistance has inconvenienced and embarrassed TDCJ time and time again; it is a continuation of the pattern of targeted harassment and retaliation Malik has experienced from TDCJ every step of the way.
Malik’s supporters are extremely concerned for his safety, and we urgently need the help of everyone hearing or reading this!
1. Please write to Malik at his new address — every letter he receives tells prison staff that Malik has people looking out for him, which is important protection.
Keith H. Washington
#1487958
McConnell Unit
3100 South Emily Drive
Beeville, TX 78103
2. Call Senior Warden Phillip Sifuentes at Malik’s current facility (McConnell) and tell them Keith Washington (#1487958) should not be in Ad-Seg!
Phone #: (361) 362-2300 (**048) 00 — ask to be connected to the senior warden’s office/receptionist–try to talk to someone, but also can leave a message.
Script:
Hello, I’m calling because I’m concerned about Keith H. Washington (#1487958) who was recently transferred to your facility. I understand he was transferred there from Ramsey Unit, because he supposedly refused to participate in the transition program there, but this is not the case. He never refused to be part of the program, and he needs to be transferred back to Ramsey and admitted to the transition program immediately!
This week on The Final Straw, we’re airing three international segments covering anarchist perspectives from the Rojava Revolution in Northern Syria, voices from the pirate radio, Radio Klaxon on the ZAD, a land occupation in western France, and refugee solidarity and struggle in on the border of Croatia and Bosnia in the Balkans.
Anarchism and Rojava
First, we’ll hear an interview with an anarchist recently returned from Rojava, the autonomous regions in North Western Syria where an anti- capitalist, ecological and feminist social revolution has been taking place while first fighting off Daesh or ISIS militants and now those fighters sent back in alongside troops from the fascist Turkish state under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The interview was conducted by comrades from Črna Luknja, comrades who first aired during the epic 8 hours of live radio from the 4th International Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Radio Gathering in May in Berlin, 2018. Črna Luknja, is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and airs their content (sometimes in English) can be found athttp://radiostudent.si/druzba/crna-luknja.
If you like what you hear, check out the monthly, English-language anarchist news podcast we in the A-Radio Network collaborates on called “BAD News: Angry Voices From Around The World.” Our latest episode can be found on our website or athttps://a-radio-network.org
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To hear more audios from anarchists engaged with Rojava, you might consider checking out the podcast Vendenga Rojava. And for more resources from this perspective, check outhttp://internationalistcommune.com and check out their Kurmanji (or Kurdish) learning resources, updates on the situation there, ways to donate and ways to get more involved in the struggle in Rojava.
Balkan Route
Next, we’ll hear from Riot Turtle, an audio-comrade involved in the
anarchist media project, Enough Is Enough, based in Europe, recorded
on June 17th, 2018. In this segment, we hear audios from Vileka Kladusa, a village on the Bosnian and Croatian border. You’ll hear the construction
of refugee tents in the background while people from SOS Team Kladuša, a local initiative to support refugees as they attempt to traverse the Balkan Route from the south of Europe and towards the north, facing violence from police and border officials day to day. You’ll also hear refugees speak about their journeys and the violence they’ve faced, as well as audio from tension on the border with authorities. Earlier this month, there were about 1,000 people in this camp and only 4 international volunteers, no NGO attention besides a weekly visit by Doctors Without Borders and is supported by local initiatives of the Bosnian neighbors. To find out about how you can donate to these efforts, as well as more articles, video and
audio by comrades at Enough Is Enough, you can visit their website
(https://enoughisenough14.org) and search for “emergency call sos team bosnia”. There you will find donation options for the efforts of SOS Team Kladuša as well as for Cars of Hope, which coordinates needs and haves to alleviate the suffering imposed by borders and move people.
Radio Klaxon
Finally, we’ll hear a conversation we recorded a week before the second
round of evictions at the ZAD in early May of 2018. The interview with Marcel and Camille (two names commonly used to anonymize folks speaking to the media on the ZAD), speak about the pirate radio station, Klaxon, that they have participated in for a long time. If you don’t know, the ZAD is a decades long struggle against the building of an airport in traditional swamplands and farm lands in Brittany in western France near the city of Nantes. In the last 10 years, anarchists & autonomists have occupied the land to stop the government and the corporation VINCI from building a new aerotropolis megaproject for Nantes. This occupation and surrounding social movement has been marked by violent clashes with police and the creation of a police-free zone, an inspiration to many around the world. This year the French state cancelled the airport and began the
process of legalizing some squats. With the end of the airport, less radical support in the movement drifted away and evictions began in earnest. Klaxon folks talk about the role their station plays in amplifying the voices of people on the ZAD who might intimidated in publishing their views on the website or in their newspaper or at public meetings because of intersections of class, race, gender, education, language access and such, as well as the role the station plays in resisting the evictions. You can hear Klaxon by visitinghttps://zad.nadir.org and clicking the listen link on the right side of the page. Ps, it’s in French.
This is episode 12 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:
*Dissident Island Radio out of the UK that gives us a report on far right demonstrations and other local news;
*The Final Straw Radio from the united states gives us an interview with a comrade from Yogyakarta,
Indonesia, regarding the situation regarding the riots on mayday;
This week on The Final Straw, we’ll be airing two interviews. In the first, Bursts spoke with author and activist Shane Burley about the state of street level fascism and anti-fascism in the U.S. Then about 45 minutes into the episode, you’ll hear Bursts speaking with two members of the Asheville branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW.
Shane also talks about essentialism in fascism and the creeping relationship between “identitarian” patriarchs and the trans-misogyny of TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) in Deep Green Resistance, such as Lierre Kieth and Derrick Jensen. The book mentioned by Bursts about essentialism, fascism and anarchism can be found in audio format on R.A.D., another member of the CZN. The original text can also be found on their tumblr.
The wobblies talk about the upcoming Service Workers Assembly they have planned for Tuesday, June 26th from 6-9pm at Kairos West, under Firestorm in West Asheville. Here’s a link to their fedbook.
If you are a service worker in the Asheville area and want to chat with other folks from the industries about how your conditions could improve, come on by. No bosses, snitches or scabs, please.
There’s no Sean Swain again this week, hopefully we’ll get the crossed wires fixed soon.
Announcements
Debbie Africa of MOVE9 released!
Debbie Sims Africa was paroled this week from prison after about 40 years inside for crossing the Philly PD and the Frank Rizzo administration! We hope that a push can happen to get the remaining 6 members inside. Welcome to the outside, Debbie! #FreeEmAll
Local Announces
In this run-up week to the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB2018), there’ll be a game of punk jeopardy on Thursday the 21st at the Lazy Diamond starting at 9pm. The venue is a bar, so it’s 21 and up only. On Friday, feel free to stop by the welcome table at Firestorm for an intro to the range of events over the weekend. Check out the calendar of events, including the schedule for the workshops and more!
This week we are airing a presentation that Margaret Killjoy gave at Firestorm Books on the release day of her new release The Barrow Will Send What it May. This is the second in her Danielle Cain series which highlights magic, anarchism, queerness, punk squatter subculture and a bunch more.
The presentation consisted of a brief intro, a reading, and to end up a q&a session. As a warning to listeners, the reading describes the events of a car crash. This occurs between 11 and 12 minutes after the presentation starts, it is not graphic but if you aren’t in a good spot to hear that please feel free to turn the volume down.
Also, we have transcribed and re-recorded the questions in the final section, not because anything said was sketchy, but just to not air people’s voices that may not have wanted to be broadcast.
To find copies of Margaret’s book you can go to tor.com and search her name or the title of the book, and to see more of her work you can visit birdsbeforethestorm.net
To hear an interview that we did with her on the release of the first novella in this series alongside other interviews with her, check out our website.
To round out the hour, we are presenting a much abridged version of the most recent Error 451, our sometimes weekly tech podcast that tackles tech as it pertains to anarchism, anarchists, and more generally, how to understand this strange, often terrible and sometimes alright world of tech!
Any aspiring techsters can find the full version of this podcast here, and if you wish you can keep up to date on these releases by either subscribing to our podcast feed by using “The Final Straw Radio” as your search or by keeping an eye on our website.
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Juneteenth and BRABC Event
This year incarcerated human rights activist Comrade Malik Washington put out the call for an international day of actions in solidarity with the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery on Juneteenth.
Juneteenth is a holiday celebrated on the 19th of June to commemorate and celebrate the end of legalized slavery in the United States. However, as prison rebels from Alabama to Texas to Florida and beyond have pointed out, the 13th amendment to the Constitution, which supposedly ended slavery, actually carves out an exception for people who have been convicted of a crime, meaning slavery was never fully abolished for incarcerated folks–a condition of exploitation and dehumanization clearly visible within the brutality of every aspect of the US prison system, and in the fact that incarcerated workers receive no meaningful compensation for their labor while in prison.
In response to this call for events, Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross will host a Juneteenth event at 5:30pm on June 19, at Firestorm Books. We will screen Ava Duvernays award-winning documentary “13th,” discuss how people can get involved in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery, and send some cards to prison rebels who need a little love and light right now! Hope to see you there!
Malik Washington’s Statement in Support of Sean Swain
Revolutionary Greetings, comrades! It’s me, Comrade Malik in Texas.
This June 11th I’d like to ask all of y’all to send some Love, Light, and Commissary CA$H to my brother in struggle Sean Swain in Ohio.
Sean has dedicated a lot of time and effort to supporting and sustaining the work done by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. Sean has edited our publications and provided much needed direction for our Abolition movement. Sean continues to make personal sacrifices for the good of all, and he never ceases to speak Truth to Power. In the following months I hope to work directly with Sean so we can tear this entire thing down!
Hopefully I will become an honorary 13th Monkey!!?
This week, Bursts spoke with Micah Lee. Micah is, according to his bio at The Intercept: ”
a computer security engineer and an open source software developer. He writes about technical topics like digital and operational security, encryption tools, whistleblowing, and hacking using language that everyone can understand, but without dumbing it down. An avid user of Qubes and Linux, he develops security tools such as OnionShare.”
Micah is kind enough in this conversation to break down the Efail scandal that rocked security-minded folks in mid-May. A weakness in the way that many email clients handled PGP & S/MIME came to light months after it was discovered by a team of security investigators. Micah explains how this encryption works, what was found out, safer approaches to encrypted messaging. We also talk a little about threat modeling and quantum computing.
Send encrypted text messages to Micah using Signal Messenger at (415) 964-1601. Here’s a link to a cool article Micah published at The Intercept about a method of cheaply creating a second signal account, so you can give out a signal # without giving away your personal phone number.
Check out past episodes of Error451 and hit us up if you have ideas for segments or guests you’d like to hear from. Check out our contact page!
featured track: “I Did It For The Kids But They’re Gonna PAY” by Spook Rat.
In the first Bursts spoke with two organizers of the Asheville Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB2018) taking place the 22-24th of June. To link up with this project and for aaall the information, you can visit the website here! To follow on social media, you find @acab.2018 on Instagram, and for email it’s acab2018@riseup.net. This segment begins at [11:46]
Then Bursts spoke with Tristan, an anarchist living in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, about the riot that took the streets for 3 hours there on May Day. They talk about anarchist in Java, the feudal Sultanate they suffer under, the New Yogyakarta International Airport threatening to displace a village and more. This segment begins at [40:02]
As Tristan says in the interview, much of the resistance of the Committee Against Feudalism that raged against the police on May Day in Yogyakarta was in order to damage government facility as well as to undermine trust of local and international investors in the building of a New Yogyakarta International Airport, or NYIA. The airport has already lead to the displacement of people in the farming village of Kulon Progo, destroying trees & livelihoods, and authorities cut power supplies to intimidate residents into selling their ancestral lands in this southern coastal village. In place of the farmlands where 11.5 thousand people live, cultivating peppers, eggplants and watermelons, the state would destroy the erosion and flood-defending dunes around this area with a 2,000 hectare “airport city” containing hotels, industrial zones, shopping centers & other tourist ventures. Here is a chronology of resistance up to late 2017.
The airport would be operated by Angkasa Pura (state-owned Airport Operator), and constructed by the U.S. company Landrum & Brown, with offices in NYC, Orlando, SF, Tampa, Cincinnati, Bogota, Boston, Chicago Alongside L&B is the India-based megaproject conglomerate, GVK. GVK is named for it’s founder, Gunupati Venkata Krishna Reddy, and is also active in the Australian coal mining sphere. A Czech corporation involved in designing the NYIA is AGA-Letiště, s.r.o. (based in Prague). Mott McDonald, an employee-owned consultancy firm, also plays a role in this mess. Finally, the Rajawali Corpora (a heavy hand in five star hotels and media ownership) is involved and is owned by https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-sondakh/.
The Sultan, Hamengkubuwono X, the second in his lineage to be given official governorship of Yogyakarta, is grabbing public and communal lands for sale and gifts to investors, selling it off for megaprojects like the NYIA and personally profiting, claiming a Feudal ownership. The real losers in this situation are the people of Yogyakarta, the real winners are the Sultan, the global rich and these megaproject proliferators who choose short-term profits over community autonomy and ecological health.
Since we didn’t get to it, I’d like to touch on what I understand of some of the racism that Tristan references. Among other things, the Sultan’s continued use of a 1975 law that is now in conflict with Indonesian national law against discrimination, is another tool at grabbing land and fueling ethnic populism. The law excludes ethnic-Chinese Indonesians (despite many having been in Indonesia for generations) and other non “pribumi” (or ethnically Indonesian) people from owning land and has been used to repress ethnic minorities in the archipelago in the past. This law also serves the Sultan, by denying property rights it allows his government (therefore him as feudal lord) to retain the rights to the land.
A few articles on resistance in Indonesia can be found at Agitasi, a site for Indonesian Counter Information and Analysis. If you can’t read it, learn Indonesian (or babelfish or googletranslate it). Some photos of solidarity can be found on InsurrectionNews. An article on resisting the airport from EF!Newswire, with more links inside. Indonesian embassies in the Americas can be found listed here.
Here is an update from the Appalachians Against Piplelines social media, which was posted two days ago:
Earlier this morning, on day 12 of the skypod on Pochahontas Road in the Hellbender Autonomous Zone (aka the Jefferson National Forest), fern was extracted and arrested.
Law enforcement began arriving to join the skypod’s existing 24 hour watch before 6am. For a couple hours, they discussed extraction, suited up in climbing gear, and attempted to coax fern down – but she refused to give in to their intimidation. Shortly after 8 am, a cherry picker drove up the road, by 8:30 fern was on the ground, handcuffed, and arrested.
Although the blockade of this pipeline access road has been removed, the fight is far from over. The Mountain Valley Pipeline remains a dangerous project, installed by force, and part of a network of dead end disasters for water, climate, communities, and ecosystems.
So before MVP and law enforcement even begin to breathe a sigh of relief, thinking they are one step closer to their goal of padding the pockets of executives at the expense of this forest and the lives of all along the route, let’s show them that they have not won.
Let’s remind them that this pipeline is not yet built, that it is not a foregone conclusion. Let’s prove that they have not extinguished the flame of resistance.
If you’ve been watching the efforts and sacrifices of the people confronting the MVP, if you’ve been grateful to know that this pipeline isn’t getting through without a fight, now is the time to move forward with actions of your own! None of us can do this alone.
And you can follow them on social media by searching Appalachians Against Pipelines on any platform you can think of.
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Following the recent murder of Roxsana Hernandez at the hands of ICE agents, the organization Familia TQLM (Trans and Queer Liberation Movement) is organizing a national day of action against ICE, to end trans detention, and to call attention to the dangers forced upon trans, gay, and queer people in detention on Wednesday June 6th. Roxsana Hernandez was a 33 year old trans woman from Honduras, and her passing is one of the most recent examples of the specific threats that Immigration and Customs Enforcement pose to LGBTQ people. A recent study found that LGBTQ people are 97 times more likely to face sexual assault and sexualized violence at the hand of ICE agents while imprisoned, as well as facing conditions akin to torture: being held in freezing cells, or ones that are dangerously hot, and being denied life saving medication, as in the case of Roxsana Hernandez.
If you would like to connect with this action on June 6th, you can follow the hashtag JusticeForRoxsana, or email info@familiatqlm.org
To read the full article on conditions facing LGBTQ detainees, you can visit the link here.
