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 spoke with Firehawk, who is an anarchist and anti prison/anti carceral state organizer based out of Colarado. In this interview we talk about her zine “Governing Bodies, Governing Souls: Female incarceration, ‘rehabilitation’, and promising radical strategies”, which came out of her experiences conducting research into increasing rates of incarceration in women’s prisons in the US. We talk about those experiences, about the zine in general, and about possible ways to be a support to incarcerated people and to anti-carceral struggles. We also talk about the various ways in which incarceration of transgender people are represented or thought about, a topic not necessarily included in the zine.
If you have any opinions about how we discussed this topic, we would love to hear them. Additionally, if you have a take on this issue that we did not touch on, or more information that we didn’t consider, please don’t hesitate to drop us an email at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net, or you can email William Goodenuff at stormwater(a t)riseup.net, *or* you can email Firehawk at firehawk666(aat)riseup.net.
There will be a volunteer interest meeting for the Asheville based group the Tranzmission Prison Project, Wed June 29th at 7pm sharp in the upstairs room of the west asheville Izzy’s at 373 Haywood Road. The Tranzmission Prison Project is a volunteer run group which sends books and zines to LGBTQI prisoners, all free of charge. To get in touch with them, you can email them at tranzmissionprisonproject@gmail.com or search for them on facebook.
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ANTIFENIX
This was communicated to The Final Straw from our comrades in the so called Czech Republic, who have been facing government and police oppression in the form of an initiative called “Operation Fenix”, which specifically targets anarchists.
“As “Czech” Anarchist Black Cross and the AntiFenix Collective, we call for international solidarity actions against the repression of anarchists in the so-called Czech Republic. This repressive wave is labeled Operation Fenix – 8 people are accused or charged, some with possible life sentences, and with many more harassed by police, interrogated, raided, devices confiscated.
Our call for international solidarity is to support all of charged and affected, but also in particular to support Martin, an anarchist who was entrapped and accused of preparation of a terrorist attack, all planned by two state infiltrators. He has been locked away already almost 14 months in terrible conditions, and in response, he has just gone on hunger strike. Especially in places where you have Czech embassies or consulates, you can show that borders can’t stop anarchist solidarity.”
The sentencing date for vegan anarchist prisoner, Eric King has been set for Tuesday, June 28th at 11:30am at the US District Court House in Kansas City, Missouri. Eric accepted a non-cooperating plea to federal arson charges. He was convicted of attempting to set fire to a congress-member’s office. If you’d like to attend his sentencing, it’s suggested that you arrive by 11am to Courtroom 8A at 400 East 9th St in Kansas City with a valid, state-issued ID and plan to go through a metal detetctor. There is a request for fund-raising for his expected 8-year sentence, support t-shirts, his current mailing address, details on his case and more that can be found at http://supportericking.org
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Call in to Waupun CI in Wisconsin
The Industrial Workers of the World Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee is requesting folks to email and call Waupun Correctional Institute in Wisconsin on today and Monday, June 20th. The hunger strike involving at least 5 prisoners is focused on an end to the practice of long term solitary confinement in the state of Wisconsin. As of Sunday, today, people have been on hunger strike in Waupun for 13 days. One of the hunger strikers, Cesar De Leon, announced 6/15/16 that he is now also refusing water because Waupun’s water supply is contaminated by lead, he vomits up their water and experiences stomach pain and heart-burn when he drinks it.
If you wish to write to participating prisoners to make message of support to hunger strikers, please write to: Cesar Deleon #322800, Lamar Larry #293906, Rayshun Woods #390831, LaRon McKinley #42642, at:
Waupon Correctional Institute
P.O. Box 351
Waupon, WI 53963
Norman Green #228971 has recently been transferred to Columbia, and can be written at
Columbia Correctional Institute
P.O. Box 900
Portage, WI 53901
This week’s show features a conversation with Arianna Staiger, daughter of long term eco-anarchist prisoner in the U.S., Marius Mason. Marius Mason is serving 22 years for destruction of a GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) research facility at the University of Michigan as well as pieces of logging equipment. Marius was a part of the so-called Green Scare, the FBI and U.S. government’s hunt and repression of eco-activists. In Marius’ case his ex-husband, Frank Ambrose, was coerced into snitching on Marius about their eco-defense activities in exchanged for a partially deferred sentence. Marius is also a trans man, who transitioned while incarcerated, and is being held in women’s facility. Marius is frequently put into isolation for his continued organizing around issues of trans prisoners and access to vegan food.
This conversation is taking place on the weekend before the annual June 11th day of Solidarity with long term Marius Mason and other long term eco and anarchist prisoners. June 11th, formerly the day of solidarity with Jeff “Free” Leurs, has for years now been an opportunity for discussion, organizing, fundraising and active solidarity with those on the other side of the bars, in hopes of continuing their struggles towards a world without bars and without cages. More on June 11th, the prisoners involved and the like can be found at http://june11.org/
In this hour, Arianna, who was 16 at the time of Marius’ arrest, talks about her relationship with him, about activism, music, incarceration, family and time. We’ll hear some of Arianna’s music in this hour, but if you want to hear a more complete interview, including more of Arianna’s music, check out our podcast version of the show . If you’d like to check out Arianna’s music, you can visit http://soundcloud.com/ariannastyger
This week in Asheville, there will be 2 June 11th events. On Friday, June 10th at French Broad River Park at 6:30pm there’ll be a potluck bbq with some free and benefit materials available, plus food and conversation on prisons, longterm prisoners and solidarity. And probably tempeh.
On Saturday, June 11th at 6:30pm at Firestorm Books and Coffee there will be a showing of the Critical Resistance documentary, “Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to a New Way of Life” followed by a discussion of the prison industrial complex and prison abolitionism. This event is free, bring some friends.
If you can make it to Washington D.C., this week there will be actions against the Bureau of Prisons and other targets, as well as community gatherings in parallel with June 11th against the ecological and health damages caused by prisons, in particularly focusing on actions against the construction of a prison on a Kentucky former mountain top removal site. For more info, check out our interview with folks from Fight Toxic Prisons or check out http://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com
Announcements
Before we get going with our Sean Swain segment and the interview, a few quick announcements:
Update on Detroit Eviction Defense
On June 2nd, we released a podcast episode with folks from Detroit Eviction Defense about the situation of Jennette Shannon, a single mom from Detroit who was facing eviction and which DED hoped to stave off through active solidarity. Sadly, on June 4th the house was overwhelmed by Sheriffs, movers & Bailiff and the ground was lost. To check out the podcast, follow this link.
More updates to come on how to support Jennette and those injured during the defense as well as plans for the future at http://detroitevictiondefense.org
Fundraising for Jennette & her son can be found here: https://www.youcaring.com/jennette-shannon-and-her-16-year-old-son-580529
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Alexander CI in Taylorsville, NC
Several inmates being held at Alexander Correctional Institution in Taylorsville, NC have recently gone on hunger strike in protest of their conditions of confinement. They are on strike due “the denial of medical treatment, the denial of food and officers spitting in food trays, the denial of adequate materials to clean their cells, the denial of recreation, sexual and racial discrimination against African-Americans in restrictive housing (seg), and the constant denial of incoming mail.”
The prisoners on strike are Stanley Corbett, Jr., Jermaine Spellers, and Andrew S.
The inmates are also protesting the recent beatings of prisoners in facility “blind spots,” areas where no cameras are present. This includes the beating of Brian K McKoy on 2/3/2016, Johnathan Toolin on 3/22/2016, Karl Covington on 1/5/2016, Devin Hyman on 2/4/2016, and Robert McFadden on 4/1/2016.
This protest comes at a time of increase prisoner organizing, which includes recent riots at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, mass hunger strikes in Michigan facilities, work stoppages at multiple
facilities in Texas, and the announcement of a national, coordinated prisoners’ strike on the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising on September 9th.
A National Mobilization is being planned in Sacramento in several weeks and we need your help to make it possible.
In the past year, the anarchist movement has seen the rise of the far-Right and the growth of white nationalism and fascism, not only in the US but throughout the world. From Neo-Nazis marching to support the police in Olympia, mass shootings carried out by white nationalists, to people almost getting shot in Minneapolis outside of a protest encampment, to everyone from the KKK and the militia movement coming back in a real way.
On Sunday, June 26th, the Traditionalist Worker Party, headed by white power rising star Matthew Heimbach will be leading the Neo-Nazi gangs that make up the Golden State Skinheads (GSS) in an “Anti-Antifa” rally at the State Capitol. They will be joined by members of the KKK, the National Socialist Movement, and skinhead groups such as Blood and Honor. We believe that this will be the largest west coast white power mobilization in many years. As Heimbach stated on a recent podcast, “If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.”
In response, there is a call for people to shut down the rally starting at 9 AM sharp on the west steps of the state capitol in Sacramento. The permit for the fascist rally starts at 11 am and they are planning on arriving at the West steps of the capital at 12 Noon.
If you are not able to attend, we ask that we please help us by:
1.) Share this with trusted comrades and tell those that might want to be a part of such a mobilization.
2.) Helping spread the word on social media and on any media project you have, by sharing online flyers and images about the upcoming showdown and also inviting people on the facebook event, for which the guest list is private. The event will be linked in our blog post at ashevillefm.org.
3.) Look out for opportunities to donate to the bail support fund and convergence space, to help those that may be arrested.
This summer is looking like it is going to be a hot one. From Native blockades against fracking, bloody battles outside of Trump and Hilary rallies, the upcoming RNC and DNC, and the ongoing local struggles happening all around us. We hope that the mobilization on the 26th is another part of a wider push towards becoming more of a force against capital, the State, white supremacy and patriarchy, and industrial destruction.
This is a special podcast release from The Final Straw Radio, airing weekly on WSFM-LP in Asheville, North Carolina and elsewhere.
On June 1st, 2016, Jennette Shannon and members of Detroit Eviction Defense held a block party in a neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. Jennette, a resident of this neighborhood for decades, and her teenage son have been in immediate danger of eviction due to legal wrangling and financial violence done by the vulture fund sometimes known as Thor Real Estate. Jennette has paid tens of thousands of dollars in fees to cover the company’s tax debts and to lawyers, has had her backyard parcelled and mortgaged by the company multiple times over and has been offered potentially fraudulent deeds and other paperwork. The block party was well attended by neighbors and activists from a plethora of community organizations from around Detroit to kick off the defiant struggle against eviction.
Today, June 2nd marks the beginning of that occupation, in which community members and folks from Detroit Eviction Defense are holding the space in solidarity. More on this house defense and the work of Detroit Eviction Defense can be found at http://detroitevictiondefense.org.
Portions of this content will air in the episode of The Final Straw Radio for Sunday, June 5th, alongside part of an interview with Arianna Staiger, daughter of eco anarchist prisoner Marius Mason. In the interview, Arianna talks about her father, his incarceration, their relationship, about activism and shares some of her music.
**Update** On June 4th, after struggling, the Bailiff kept good on their promise and overwhelmed the resisters with Sheriff’s and movers. A few defenders were injured in the process and Jennette and her son were dislodged from the house. A fundraiser is online to get her and her teenage son into a new house here: https://www.youcaring.com/jennette-shannon-and-her-16-year-old-son-580529
This week we feature an interview with Freddy, who is a member of the autonomous youth collective in Belgrade, Serbia known as Koko Lepo. We speak about the origins of the collective as growing out of a self organized kindergarten primarily for Roma children, about solidarity between anarchists and Roma people in Belgrade, about some history of the region, and about the complex nature of solidarity itself.
It should be mentioned though, that due to a very unfortunate technical error, we lost the final 13 or so minutes of this interview, many apologies both to you – dear listeners – and to our guest. Just to give you a broad picture of what we talked about, we touched a bit more on the complex nature of actual solidarity, and made the point that sometimes so called “real” solidarity can look somewhat ordinary or boring. We also spoke more about the tour that Freddy just concluded with a stop in Asheville, and about challenges that the various audiences brought to the talks he did, in particular the question of race, racism, and ally complexes. Our guest brought up the point that there have been various conversations about this topic in the US that have not happened – or have not happened in the same way – as they have in Belgrade. He was particularly excited to engage with American audiences about this issue, and said a lot of really cool and poignant things which we are unfortunately unable to share with you. Though if you would like to write to this project you can email them at kokolepo(aat)riseup.net and get in touch with them on facebook by searching kokolepoav
However, all of this perhaps gives us the opportunity to share more in depth than we may originally have been able some of the musical projects that our guest recommended. It also bears mentioning that mutual aid in the form of money donations most often happen for this project in the form of music shows, punk, metal, hardcore, or other varieties. If you feel so moved to, please feel free to make a solidarity show in your town!
The first project we’ll share is a Roma language hip hop project called Lord Kastro with Djelem Djelem. The next is a track from a hardcore project called Katma, the singer of which is one of the co-founders of the original kindergarten. The third is another track from Gipsy Mafia (an antifa Roma hip hop group, a track from which opened up the show as well) with “Ava Kari”.
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Announcements
Operation Fénix
Here is an update from comrades in Czech Republic:
On Friday 5-27-2016 in Pankrác remand prison anarchist Martin Ignacák accused of terrorism went on hunger strike. He did this because on 4-29-2016 the City court in Prague ruled in favour of his release from remand and the state’s attorney appealed this decision to the High court in Prague. On friday 5-27-2016 the High court in Prague extended the remand. Therefore the anarchist has decided to protest by going on hunger strike and has stopped taking in nutrition and liquids. This type of hunger strike threatens the life of the hunger striker after a week.
During the year long investigation of the preparation of a supposed terrorist attack the imprisoned anarchist has exhausted all legal options, to achieve objective procedure of the respective organs active in the criminal proceedings. None of them were taken into account. This is why he now chose this radical form of expression, to draw attention to this manipulated police case. “I consider the approach of the investigators and the police to be very problematic, it is a threat to the freedom of every human being, a threat to freedom of speech, a threat to activism that tries to lead to a better world , and this doesn’t just involve anarchists.”
Martin has been prosecuted in the so called Fénix case since April 2015, in which 5 people altogether were accused of the preparation and the failure to notify of a terrorist attack on a train. Martin is the only one who has been in remand prison this whole time and his detention has now been extended after the intervention of the state’s attorney. As a reason for the extension of remand the state’s attorney used the testimony of a police agent who infiltrated the anarchist movement in 2014. From his testimony the state’s attorney drew the conclusion that Martin might attempt to escape to Spain. Another reason, according to him, was that Martin “is connected to the so called Sít revolucních bunek/ The Network of Revolutionary Cells (SRB) and therefore also to similar organizations abroad.” The police spoke about SRB when they began Fénix and provided information to the media.” Any connections between the 5 attacks ascribed to SRB and all the detained and accused have been refuted. The investigators themselves have ruled it out” says Martin.
At the moment Martin is the second longest detained prisoner in the Pankrác remand prison. For 13 months he has been living there under conditions that negatively affect his psychological and physical state. For example he has been refused food free of animal products, which means he practically doesn’t have access to hot food. Friends, who have come to visit him have been mentioned by name in the indictment. Police from the Department for combating organized crime have started to collect information on Martin’s sister, only because she tries to support her brother in whichever way she can.
For Martin parole would mean that after 13 long months he would again see his friends, family, nature, that he wouldn’t be exposed to emotional deprivation and physical hardship.
Update Sunday, May 29th: Martin’s sister Pavla B. joined her brother in the protest and this morning she has started hunger strike herself as well.
This week Bursts spoke with Imam Siddique Abdullah Hasan, one of five defendants in the Lucasville Uprising case from 1993 facing the death penalty known collectively as the Lucasville 5. Hasan, calling from Ohio State Prison supermax in Youngstown, Ohio, took the time to talk about the newly formed Free Ohio Movement, a prison organizing movement based on the Free Alabama Movement which centers on the claim that prisons in the U.S. are the current site of a continuation of slavery supposedly abolished but really upheld by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Hasan talks about prisoner labor & recidivism, claims of rehabilitation by the state and the organizing towards the September 9th nationwide prisoner strike on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971. More on Hasan’s case can be found at http://lucasvilleamnesty.org and you can hear our previous interviews with Hasan here.
After that you’ll hear a conversation with a member of Istanbul Anarchist Black Cross, in Turkey, that Bursts conducted. The conversation talks about the political prisoner situation in Turkey, the work of IABC, and the case of vegan anarchist prisoner Osman Evcan, who
recently succeeded to win rights from the state after a 45 day hunger strike. More on IABC, in Turkish, at http://abcistanbul.blogspot.fr/
Announcements
Stanley Corbett at Alexander CI, NC
At the request of prison organizers in North Carolina, we’d like to share the following information:
Politically active prisoner Stanley Corbett (0716025) has been repeatedly harassed by COs at Alexander CI, in Taylorsville, NC, and is being denied full food portions. Upon Corbett complaining, one CO said, “Y’all n-words always complaining about something.” Then later, after filing a grievance, a different CO yelled, “Suck my (BLEEP) n-word, write that up!” Please call in to the prison at (828) 632-1331 and request the administration to feed Corbett and stop this harassment.
Again, that number is 828 632 1331 and Stanley Corbett’s number is 0716025, held at Alexander CI in Taylorsville, NC.
Save Our Roots
Here is a brief announcement from Save Our Roots: An Indigenous People’s Campaign to Protect the Sacred Biodiversity of our Natural Forests:
“[Genetically Engineered] trees pose a very real and significant threat to our natural forests and all Life on … Earth. It violates Indigenous peoples’ fundamental rights to live in harmony with nature and to practice our cultural and spiritual beliefs … The propagation and use of GE trees as a natural resource and commodity for increased pulp and energy production will compromise and destroy the delicate regenerative biodiversity and life-cycles of [the] Earth . The growing of GE trees is a risk towards: the Rights of the Earth; land tenure and subsistence rights of Indigenous Peoples; depletion of precious ground water reserves; increases the use of deadly herbicides and pesticides; continues the release of greenhouse gas emissions and microscopic pollutants; and are a false solution towards mitigating climate change.”
To learn much more about this topic, for updates on current situations and campaigns, and for interview opportunities for your media project, you can visit http://saveourroots.org/
Koko Lepo Solidarity Tour
On Thursday, May 26, 7-9pm Firestorm Books & Coffee (610 Haywood Road) will host the Anarchy & Anti-Fascism in the Balkans: Koko Lepo Solidarity Tour!
Suggested Donation (no one turned away) to help presenter with travel costs. During this time, a member of Koko Lepo autonomous youth solidarity program in Belgrade, Serbia, attendees can hear from a Koko Lepo member who is visiting the U.S. on a tour to spread awareness of autonomous, anarchist and anti-fascist/anti-racist projects and organizing going on in Belgrade and beyond!
The presenter will narrate the evolution of Koko Lepo from a free kindergarten in the defunct InexFilm squat to a broader youth program. The discussion will focus on issues of anti-ziganism (a term for prejudice against Roma/gypsies), autonomous solidarity efforts in Belgrade, the difference between charity and mutual aid, and the struggle against hierarchy; the presenter welcomes challenges and suggestions for continued solidarity and new connections.
Koko Lepo youth solidarity collective is a mutual aid program working with the residents of “the Dump”, a ‘favela-type slum’ in Belgrade inhabited by people usually referred to as “Roma” or “Gypsies”. The collective is founded on the principles of equality and mutual aid. It is closely tied to the anarchist and antifascist scene in the Balkans and beyond.
Koko Lepo began in 2013 as a free kindergarten program in the InexFilm squat in the Karaburma neighborhood of Belgrade. Its students were picked up three to five days a week from their homes in the settlement and walked to the kindergarten where we had a three to four hour program with them before walking them back home. The program was focused on autonomy, respect for others, and making a safe space for the young children to explore their identities. We placed a strong emphasis on undermining ‘traditional’ gender dynamics and breaking down other divisions in the settlement. Over time, we developed very strong ties with our families in the settlement which allowed us to start a broader program for older children. This was called Školica and began as a weekend study program. This quickly expanded however and started to host film nights, excursions, and other activities.
When the squat was taken from us in October last year, we lost our ability to do the kindergarten so we redoubled our efforts with Školica. Now Koko Lepo occurs at least once a week all over the city with either our younger group (aged 7-10) or our older group (11-14) totaling around 50 kids (the kindergarten had another 20 or so). All of our funding comes from anarchist and antifascist groups in Europe as well as some odd individual donations here and there.
We are very happy to announce that, for the 8th year running, the Wild Roots Feral Futures (WRFF) eco-defense, direct action, and rewilding encampment will take place in the forests of Southwest Colorado this coming June 18-26, 2016 (exact location to be announced). WRFF is an informal, completely free and non-commercial, and loosely organized camp-out operating on (less than a) shoe-string budget, formed entirely off of donated, scavenged, or liberated supplies and sustained through 100% volunteer effort. Though we foster a collective communality and pool resources, we also encourage general self-sufficiency, which lightens the burden on communal supplies, and which we find to be the very source and foundation of true mutual sharing and abundance.
We would like to begin by acknowledging that Wild Roots Feral Futures takes place on occupied/stolen indigenous territory, primarily of the Nuutsiu (occasionally spelled Nuciu or Nuchu, aka “Ute”) people, as well as Diné [“Navajo”], Apache, and others. In recognition of this reality and as a first step in confronting it, we seek to establish proactive working relationships with those whose stolen land we gather upon, and open the space we temporarily gather in to the centering and amplification of indigenous voices and struggles. Our understanding is that any community of resistance that doesn’t center the voices of indigenous people and put their leadership in the forefront is a movement that is part of the problem. [Read more here…]
We would like to invite groups and individuals engaged in struggles against the destruction of the Earth (and indeed all interconnected forms of oppression) to join us and share your stories, lessons, skills, and whatever else you may have to offer. In this spirit we would like to reach out to frontline community members, local environmental groups, coalitions, and alliances everywhere, as well as more readily recognizable groups like Earth First!, Rising Tide North America, and others to come collaborate on the future of radical environmentalism and eco-defense in our bio-regions and beyond.
We would also like to reach out to groups like EF!, RTNA, and the Ruckus Society (as well as other groups and individuals) in search of trainers and workshop facilitators who are willing to dedicate themselves to attending Wild Roots Feral Futures and sharing their skills and knowledge (in a setting that lacks the financial infrastructure to compensate them as they may have come to expect from other, more well-funded groups and events). We are specifically seeking direct action, blockade, tri-pod, and tree climbing/sitting trainers (as well as gear/supplies).
Regarding the rewilding and ancestral earth skills component of WRFF, we would like to extend a similar invitation to folks with skills, knowledge, talent, or specialization in these areas to join us in the facilitation of workshops and skill shares such as fire making, shelter building, edible and medicinal plants, stalking awareness, tool & implement making, etc. We are also seeking folks with less “ancestral” outdoor survival skills such as orienteering and navigation, etc.
Daily camp life, along with workshops, skill shares, great food, friends, and music, will also include the volunteer labor necessary to camp maintenance. Please come prepared to pitch in and contribute to the workload, according to your abilities. We encourage folks who would like to plug in further to show up a few days before the official start of the event to begin set-up and stay a few days after the official end to help clean up.
Site scouting will continue until early June, at which point scouts and other organizers will rendezvous, report-back their scouting recon, and come to a consensus regarding a site location. We are also planning on choosing a secondary, back-up site location as a contingency plan for various potential scenarios. Email us for more info on getting involved with scouting and site selection processes.
WRFF is timed to take place before the Earth First! Round River Rendezvous, allowing eco-defenders to travel from one to the other. Thus we encourage the formation of a caravan from WRFF to the EF! RRR (caravans and ride shares can be coordinated through our message board at feralfutures.proboards.com.
We are currently accepting donations in the form of supplies and/or monetary contributions. Please email us for details.
Please forward this call widely, spread the word, and stay tuned for more updates!
And now the call-out for this year’s June 11th: International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners
The podcast version of this episode includes a reading of the June 11th Statement for 2016, a rather lengthy one at about 20 minutes, prior to us playing the interview with Hasan. The text from that announcement can be found here.
This week’s show we’re airing two recent interviews that The Final Straw conducted with other anarchist radio folks for our 6th anniversary, on May 8th 2016. The first you’ll hear is with a member of Anarchistisches Radio Berlin, the second conversation is with 2 members of Dissident Island Radio, based out of London. For longer editions of these conversations, check out this link.
Prisoners at Holman Correctional Institution have ended their ten-day shutdown of the State of Alabama’s auto license plate plant. Their work stoppage, initiated on May Day, spread to Elmore, St Clair, Donaldson and Staton facilities over the following week shutting down Alabama Department of Correction’s (ADOC) canning plant, fleet services, and chemical industry as well as the license plate plant. “That was our leverage, that was our power to negotiate with” said Kinetic, a member of both the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union and the Free Alabama Movement (FAM). In an interview with media representatives of the IWW-Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee he explained how the strike achieved one objective but was broken by the unexpected employment of work-release prisoners as strike-breakers.
The strike achieved its first objective after only two days when the Alabama State Legislature killed the $800 million “Prison Transformation Initiative” that would have greatly expanded Alabama’s prison system, which is plagued with overcrowding, violence, deteriorating buildings and budget shortfalls. The defeated law tried to allocate ADOC $800 million to build four 3500 bed super-max facilities. Prisoners initiated their strike to draw national attention to ADOC’s problems and propose other solutions. On May 1st the prisoners stopped reporting to their work stations, and activists organized rallies and solidarity protests according to journalists who interviewed the prisoner’s spokespersons via clandestine cell-phones. On May 3rd, the ADOC’s new prison bill died on the state senate floor. Prisoners contend that their strike tipped the scales against the bill.
The solidarity efforts on the outside were spearheaded by the Mothers and Families of FAM with the support of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Pastor Kenneth Glasgow of the Ordinary People’s Society also represented the prison strike before politicians in Montgomery.
This morning (Thurs. 12 May 2016) the prisoner’s labor action ended. After eleven days enduring harassment and being fed starvation rations, a practice the prisoners call “bird feeding” the strike was ended by ADOC sending in work release prisoners as strike-breakers to take over the industry jobs. Work release prisoners are typically sent out of the prisons to work for either private companies or state institutions at reduced wages. The program is supposed to help prisoners transition back into society. Instead ADOC sent these minimum security prisoners into the prison factories to replace the striking inmates. Work release prisoners were first sent to Elmore’s canning and recycling plants last Thursday, then to Holman Monday afternoon. Without the economic leverage of shutting down the prison industries, the striking prisoners worried that ADOC could starve them out indefinitely and they slowly trickled back to their job assignments.
“If someone is performing the job,” Kinetic explained, “then the DOC is getting what they want, even though we locked down and going through all other hardships, our objectives ain’t being met.” By Thursday morning the strike had officially ended.
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Prison Strikes
In the state of Texas, multiple prisons had participation in work stoppages last month. Starting on April 4th and then spreading, incarcerated workers in seven units, including Lynaugh in Fort Stockton, Mountain View in Gatesville, Polunksy in Livingston, Roach in Childress, Robertson in Abilene, Torres in Hondo, and Wynne in Hunstville refused to be called out for work. Much of this organizing involved outside and inside members of the Industrial Workers of the World and it’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. For a new pamphlet on the subject as we draw nearer the 45th anniversary of the September 9th Attica Prison uprising, which is the date of a nationwide prison strike callout, check out the new pamphlet at unityandstruggle.org entitled Incarcerated Workers Take the Lead: Prison Struggles in the United States 2008-2016
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Thanks to fundraising efforts and donations from people like you, Oso Blanco was able to receive a partial assessment from a law firm. Through this, and help from an awesome volunteer, we were able to figure out that Oso Blanco must file his appeal by June 25, 2016! As you may have heard, the “residual clause” of the armed career criminal act (ACCA) was declared “unconstitutionally vague” by the u.s. supreme court in Johnson v. u.s. Just last month, in April 2016, this ruling was declared “retroactive”, meaning that in can apply to old cases like that of Oso Blanco. However the deadline for appeals based on the Johnson decision is approaching.
What this means for Oso Blanco and his outside family and community is that he has a chance to reduce his sentence and he has just under two months to do it. Meanwhile, he has very limited funds and USP Hazelton is basically holding him incognito pending transfer, with few letters getting in or out, despite all of our emailing in protest.
To find details about his current legal and funding needs, check out his support site. This last minute push to get his legal ducks in a row could help get this brother out of a medically dangerous situation, meaning his incarceration as he ages and is regularly denied correct medical treatment.
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More Political Prisoner Updates
Here are a couple of legal updates from ItsGoingDown.org’s regular feature called The Bloc Party :
Joseph Buddenberg
Joseph Buddenberg was sentenced to 2 years for conspiring to free mink from their cages. Joseph was charged along with his co-defendant Nicole Kissane, under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Nicole will be sentenced in June. As we posted last week, he already has an address you can write to. Please let him know you support him, and his fight for the wild:
Joseph Buddenberg #12746-111
MCC San Diego
808 Union Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Josh Williams
Ferguson rebel Josh Williams is in need of support while doing his 8 year sentence. For info on how to write to Josh and everyone serving time for being involved in the uprising, check out antistatestl.noblogs.org and at Sac Prisoner Support
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Janye Waller
In more sad news, Oakland rebel Janye was sentenced to two years for his crime of being a black revolutionary involved in the uprising in the wake of the Ferguson verdict in the bay area. As of this date, Janye has received the longest sentence of anyone involved in the revolt. Please support Janye here and stay up with how to write him on his support page.
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Casey Brezik
Casey Brezik is an incarcerated anarchist in Missouri and is currently raising funds for college courses on the inside. In the interest of his supporters getting to know him a bit better, he also wrote this pretty amazing proposal titled Anarchists in Space. While IGD certainly has some misgivings about the potential for this to actually happen, they fucking love that Casey takes the time and thought to write shit like this. Anarchists have always been a little unrealistic anyway, yeah?
This week on the show we feature an interview with Panagioti, who is an organizer with the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons. From their website:
“The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) is a collaboration with the Abolitionist Law Center. FTP’s mission is to conduct grassroots organizing, advocacy and direct action to challenge the prison system which is putting prisoners at risk of dangerous environmental conditions, as well as impacting surrounding communities and ecosystems by their construction and operation. At this time, FTP is focused on opposing the construction of a new federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky.
FTP is inspired by the abolitionist movement against mass incarceration and the environmental justice movement, which have both been led by the communities of color who are hardest hit by prisons and pollution.Both these movements also have long histories of multi-racial alliances among those on the front lines of the struggle and those who can offer support and solidarity, which we aim to build on.
FTP has been informed by the ongoing research and analysis of the Human Rights Defense Center’s Prison Ecology Project, as well as the work of the Earth First! Prisoner Support Project and June11.org”
You can see much more about this project, learn about the convergence, and donate or register for the event at https://fighttoxicprisons.org
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Ben Turk on Sept 9th Nationwide Prison Strike
The second segment in today’s show is an interview with Ben Turk conducted by members of The Prison Radio Show collective at CKUT, on the campus of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada about the prison strikes across the U.S. and the buildup towards calls for a general prisoner strike on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising on September 9th.
From the website, It’s Going Down dot org, the regular segment called Bloc Party is a great source for recent uprisings in the streets and in prisons around North America. We’d like to highlight a few of these items. First off, the article summarizes a number of the May Day
disturbances that took place last Sunday, including brief report-backs from May Day noise demos and street parties in NYC, Hamilton (Ontario) & Chicago, riots in Seattle and prison work strikes in Alabama at Holman, Elmore, and St Clair facilities. More details and photos from those prison strikes and solidarity protests, including ones in Minneapolis & Milwaukee plus arrestee support links can be found at http://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org
Also from that post are announcements of the June 12th birthday of Jay Chase of the NATO3 who’s been struggling with some health and legal hurdles of recently as well as information on the upcoming June parole dates for longstanding Black Liberation political prisoners Robert Seth Hayes and jalil Muntaqim with links to their support campaigns and also a new mailing address for Joseph Buddenburg, recently sentenced to 2 years for a non-cooperating plea for releasing thousands of minks from
fur farms. We spoke about his case alongside that of Nicole Kissane.
Finally, we’d like to share a part of the crowd sourcing request for the U.S.-based, English-language insurrectional anarchist journal, Fire To The Prisons which is asking for help in the publication of it’s 16th issue. In the request, FTTP describes the sorts of content it’s covered
and plans to cover, including wanting:
“to expand our coverage, scope, and the reach of the publication while remaining true to the spirit of Fire to the Prisons. We will continue with our long term commitment to counter-information, original writing and content, and the amplification of the anti-authoritarian/anti-prison/anti-repression struggle that you have come to expect from us.
We will have both a domestic and international voice this issue. While remaining true to reporting on repression and anti-prison resistance across the states, Canada, and Mexico, we have committed articles from abroad promising insight on struggles and happenings that will help to bridge and unify an array of social tensions through a mutual awareness and solidarity.
We truly want FTTP to become a global publication and one that links anarchists and other autonomous combatants together in a dialog about the commonalities that we all face, as well as a discussion on the actions and struggles that we can all engage in.
We will be covering the resurgence of fascism in mainstream American politics, as well as updates on communities resisting further eco-devastation across the states. We have committed articles from prisoners domestic and international. We have commitments from NYC Anarchist Black Cross to use the project as a resource for raising awareness on repression and prisoner status in North America. We will also focus on the pacification of favelas in Brazil, the current reality and history of anarchist struggle in Chile, and the refugee situation in Greece. We will have further reports on anti-police struggle across the
United States, and will be continuing a tradition of news on broader prisoner strikes across America since our last issue. We are also intent on original articles on indigenous resistance in western Canada. Plus accounts and updates of the struggle in Rojava and general Kurdistan. Also all our featured articles will be available in Spanish for free on our website.
We are a committed collective. We are prepared to invest a lot of time and energy into producing this project, but we ask any and all sympathetic readers to help us with printing and distribution. by donating to our funding page. To print 10,000 copies of this it will cost us $2,000 dollars. While in the past we have had to ask people to pay the postage to our distributor, we would like to be able to send out more copies for free, to encourage broader distribution. We are asking for another $2,000 dollars for this. With maximizing our distribution efforts through contacts and friends across the world, we can distribute and mail out almost all of the new issues to anyone interested in distributing it. This leads us to asking for $4,000 dollars. We know this is an ambitious amount, and most likely those supporting us aren’t very wealthy, but it will absolutely secure this project, and help with the expansion of our readership. We hope that reaching out this way will put a dent into that fiscal goal, as our collective members are all working people.”
To friends we’ve met, and to those we have yet to meet, I’d like to wish everyone a happy May Day. As we’ll hear in the following hour, this day has a long celebrated history. From its many European pagan roots as a celebration of fertility as the fruits of the spring planting season began to… uh, spring forth. Then on to the repressive winter that fell early on May 3rd and 4th of 1886 in Illinois with, first, the killing of workers striking for an 8 hour work day at the McCormick Works and then the repression of anarchist and socialist workers and organizers following the bombing at Haymarket Square in Chicago of that same year. From there to the taking up of May 1st as International Workers Day by struggling groups around the world and the U.S. adoption of a sanctioned Labor Day in September of the year.
To divide an international working class, The U.S. government, oppressors of that May Day 1886 sanctioned a Labor Day to be celebrated in September, declared the first of May both Law Day (an obvious testament to Irony in respect to the Haymarket 8, all jailed and 4 executed) and, for some, it’s celebration as Americanism Day. Whatever that means. In 2006 & 2007, immigrants rights marches were seen on and around May Days that, for many, re-sparked the importance of this day. The protests and festivals swelled to numbers nearly unmatched in the history of protest on Turtle Island, and were accompanied by school and work walkouts and boycott days.
This hour we’ll be hearing Peter Linebaugh, author of the recently printed book “The Incomplete, True, Authentic & Wonderful History of May Day” to present some of his meditations from the last 30 years but covering ancient times, through the first May Pole on Turtle Island, through to today.
The rest of the hour will feature songs that made myself and William, cohost of The Final Straw, feel a bit in the spirit of the day. Whether you’re out there today taking direct action, in repose from the horrors of wage slavery, resisting the carceral state, gardening, dancing around a May Pole or otherwise celebrating the possibilities of this year to come when, hell, we might as well end this system of exclusion and extraction: We wish you a fire on your tongue, love in your heart and free land beneath you.
TFSR: I’m speaking with Peter Linebaugh. Mr. Linebaugh is a Marxist, a historian, and an author. His most recent book is a compilation of essays called The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, out from PM Press. Peter, thanks for taking the time for this chat.
Peter Linebaugh: You’re welcome.
TFSR: So May Day is this coming Sunday, when we’ll be airing this episode of the show. For listeners that are out there who may not know can you sketch some of the history of this great and widely celebrated day?
PL: Yes! I like the way you say that it’s great and widely celebrated because for so many American years, it was never celebrated. The ruling class just hated that day. Because it was a day of no work. It was a day to enjoy the springtime. It was a day to go outside. Hooray, hooray! The first of May! Outdoor loving begins today. That’s the spirit of the day. It goes back to the first agricultural civilizations around the great rivers, the Neolithic Revolution. It’s springtime. It’s a time for fertility. I’m speaking from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the whole world is budding and flowering right now. I imagine that’s somewhat past in North Carolina.
TFSR: It’s a very sexy place here in North Carolina. There’s there’s pollen in the air and a lot of people are suffering from it, but…
PL: So anyways, it was a major pagan festival and survived through years of dominant religions. The State of England, under the Tudors, they forbade it. They made it criminal to hoist a maypole because people would dance around the maypole as part of community celebration and fertility, as you say.
For us in North America, the date to remember is 1627 when Thomas Morton set up a maypole in Quincy, MA, and Native American people and runaway servants and former slaves and antinomians from England, they danced around that maypole. The first poem ever made in the USA was there. I’ll quote it “with the proclamation that the first of May, at Marymount shall be kept a holy day.”
So that’s 1627. The Puritans from Boston came down and shut it down with force of arms. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a wonderful story about it, thinking it was the crossroads of American history. We could have gone one way and been happy with the maypole and the spirit that it represented among different kinds of people. Multicultural we’d say today. Or it could have gone the other way, the way of domination, hierarchy, endless war, and endless work.
That brings us to the second major aspect of the day, which we need to celebrate with a different kind of seriousness, and that’s the struggle for the eight-hour day and the massacre of socialists, anarchists, white, indigenous and African Americans in Chicago, back in 1886 at the famous scene at Haymarket. That came as a direct result of a police shooting of workers at the McCormick works. McCormick made the mechanical reaper that brought industry and machines to the earth, to the plains, to cutting grass, cutting grain. Those workers had gone on strike for an eight-hour day, and the police shot them and killed one. In response, the people of Chicago called for a meeting to discuss the issue at Haymarket, where farmers brought in hay for the horses. At that meeting, just a few days after May Day, 1886, a stick of dynamite was thrown. To this day, no one knows whether it was a police provocateur or a misguided anarchist or what. But anyway, there was casualties, including demonstrators, as well as the policemen.
As a result, tremendous repression came down all across the US, not just in Chicago. Seven people were found guilty after a kangaroo trial, and four of them were actually hanged on the 11th of November 1887. We should remember their names: Albert Parsons, we know him especially because of his wife, Lucy, who went on living and carrying the message of the eight-hour day and a workers struggle right into the 1930s. August Spies, before he hanged, he said, “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangled today.” That’s been the case. Their silence is powerful, and all of us around the world celebrate and remember those workers, those martyrs, as they’re called in Mexico.
The ruling class of the United States tried to put an end to the celebration right away. They made made an into Law Day. Eisenhower did that. Then they made the workers’ holiday, Labor Day, in September to get it far away from May Day, when workers all over the world celebrated. They wanted to divide US workers from world workers.
I have to admit that they succeeded. People forgot May Day except for a few anarchists in the 1920s. Then in the ‘30s and ‘40s, the Communist Party kept up the tradition of May Day. But the Communist Party, worldwide anyway, associated the day with militarism, and it became something in the Cold War. This gives another reason why, in the United States, we’ve tended to forget that day. Until 2006, when tens of thousands of undocumented workers, most Spanish speaking, flooded the streets of Chicago again, and of Los Angeles and other towns, calling for justice for this new underclass of people denied basic rights as workers or citizens.
While I should also say, my book is called incomplete, because the hope of May Day has not been realized. We still are fighting not only for the eight hour day, but for equality, not equality of opportunity, but equality of economic conditions. I think we should fight this year to own the whole economy, not leave it just to the 1%. It should belong to us all, and we need to reconstitutionalize ourselves, reconstitute ourselves. But now I’m going off on my own views. I hope that gives your listeners some idea of the importance of May Day in the past, especially as it concerns North America.
TFSR: That was a really lovely outline that you just offered. I love the way that in the book you connect themes such as the displacement of indigenous people prior to the period, the Gilded Age of the Haymarket, when the Haymarket affair occurred, the clearing of the pastures, the killing off of buffalo and other residents of the great grasslands of the Midwest, then the connection to the McCormick works creating the reaper that just decimated the grasslands themselves.
PL: Yeah, just produced a buzz cut, didn’t it? Then as a result, we had the Dust Bowl because it was so bad for the soil: monoculture.
TFSR: The essays in the book range from 100 years after the Haymarket, basically 1986 to 2015. From the oldest to the newest, you make the claim a few times that May Day has both a green and a red side. What do you mean by this, and why do you think it’s important to remind people of that?
PL: Well, the green side now, as we’re talking in 2016, with the melting of the ice caps, the pollution of the Pacific Ocean, the destruction of species has a greater meaning, I think, than it did when I first conceived of the idea in the ‘80s. The notion of the green is the notion of photosynthesis, now that I think about it, the relationship of the sun to vegetation. Of course, vegetation is the basis of animal life, so really, all of life depends on… Well, I’m not a biologist, but a great deal of life depends on the green, depends on photosynthesis and chlorophyll. So there’s a literal meaning of green, but there’s also a symbolic meaning of green, which is the joy of living, the joy of life. In contrast to the red. Red I used signify blood and to signify struggle, especially class struggle, and thinking of the red flag of battle.
May Day is a holiday that spans both these notions. It can be both a family day of picnicking, outdoors preferably, and of dancing, and it can be a day of marching and a day of militants, a day of taking back the world that has been dis-commoned and dis-greened (if I can use that phrase), turned into asphalt, turned into concrete. So it’s had both the green and the red. I mean, the green has led to the Anthropocene. It’s led to geological changes of the planet. I think we can restore it, not to the way it was, but to the way it could be, only by a red struggle, only by a mass struggle. I believe people are are interested in that and see the necessity of it all over the world.
Anyway, so that’s kind of the red and the green, but I think it’s up to your readers and listeners to give to these symbols their own meanings from their own experience.
TFSR: Yeah, definitely you leave it with a lot of space for interpretation but draw out some lovely conclusions of your own.
How have you seen the celebration of the day change throughout your lifetime? You mentioned that the through the ‘20s it was remembered by a number of anarchists activists, and through the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s communists in the United States… Just to interject right here, my first May Day that I celebrated was in San Francisco in 2000 during the anti-globalization era, as people call it. There was a giant maypole that was raised and a number of speaker and at the same time a big open-ended pagan celebration and picnic that led to a march eventually. It was really beautiful tying together what you seem to describe as the green and the red. And the marches of 2005 and 2006, as you mentioned.
Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve seen May Day in the popular imagination during your life?
PL: Yeah, I just know my own part of it. I love to hear about that San Francisco May Day. That sounds grand and beautiful. And I love to hear about the immigrant ones, the undocumented worker ones in 2005 and 2006. For me, May Day, an important day is always May 2nd because then I tune into the radio or read the newspaper, or now I guess we have the internet, to see who else in the world has turned out. May Day was so important in bringing down apartheid in South Africa and is still a major day of struggle in South Africa. It’s that way in so many parts of the world. On May 2nd it’s just a good time to check in and see what’s going on.
But for me, it began as a historian in Rochester. We thought let’s try to have a picnic and make it a family day and have some speeches and then sing songs. That’s the way it worked there. Then later, I moved to Boston, and we had different forms of May Day. I remember in Jamaica Plain on May Day we joined a festival called Wake Up The Earth. So on all these occasions I would meet people, old timers who had participated in Union Square in New York, for instance, and in May Day celebrations of the ‘40s. Then here in Washtenaw County, in Southeast Michigan, ever since I’ve lived here, we try to have a picnic, or we have a commons, or we teach children how to dance around the maypole. This year, I think, folks for Black Lives Matter and folks from other social change outfits will probably go to Detroit to join a picnic and march in so called Motor City, which now I guess is known, not as a rust belt, but as a place of urban gardening.
It’s important to do that because the powers that be have been poisoning the waters, as you perhaps have heard of, up in Flint, MI. It’s just a crime what the rulers of our country are doing. We need to bring them to justice to pay for their crimes. Not by long prison sentences. I’m certainly not in favor of that because we need to open the prisons, if anything. But we need to find other ways of making them pay. That is, we need reparations. The main reparations that must come must restore equality. So the riches, the ill gotten gains of the 1%, either they must voluntarily turn them over, or they must be made to do it. That can only be done I think with justice and mass mobilization.
At the moment our mobilizations can’t be that great, but it’s growing. It’s growing bursts. People are wondering, “What is anarchism? What is socialism? What is the political revolution?” These are questions raised by Bernie Sanders, and not to support him, but the questions are important. The discussion that results from them is important, and May Day should be a day to have those discussions. May Day is a day when we need to think deeply about this and to do it with our neighbors. To do it with all kinds of folks, everybody, all workers, all working people who belong to our class of the precariat, students, servers need to be involved in this discussion, as well as farmworkers and undocumented workers. Undocumented workers are so important because they bring the experience of other countries, and they bring also revolutionary experience from other countries. So we have a lot to learn from them.
Anyway, so I’m hoping to learn something myself by meeting some new friends this coming Sunday in Detroit. By the way, I was asking you about the lunch counter sit-ins in North Carolina. I asked you that for a purpose because I think there was an earlier lunch counter sit-in for the same goal of integrated lunch counters here in Ann Arbor, MI, in the 1920s led by Lenore Smith from Mississippi. We learned this by studying May Day in our own locality. I urge all your listeners to study May Day in your locality, to talk to old timers, to search out the old records, even to consult the occasional historian and see what they know and what they remember to bring this back to life.
One way of doing this is a wonderful book by Dave Roediger called the Haymarket Scrapbook, which I recommend. James Green wrote a very good book too called Death in the Haymarket. These are essential readings for those who want to go back to that, those crimes at Haymarket, when the police and the state came down so heavily on the workers, their press, their leaders, and their families, and jailed and hanged so many. In some ways, it’s a sad day.
TFSR: In the Ann Arbor experience that you’re talking about, in the second to last essay you wrote between 1923 and 1928, the Negro Caucasian Club was involved in some of these strikes, right? If listeners want to pursue further.
PL: Right, just get a friendly competition going between your state and Michigan.
TFSR: Competing for who gets the title of first lunch counter sit-ins?
PL: Yes, against segregation. Because of course, the North is so full of Jim Crow, even worse in many ways.
TFSR: Yeah, just kind of a different accent…
PL: They’re not poisoning the waters down in North Carolina, as far as I can see.
TFSR: Well, I don’t know, when you get coal ash ponds that are overflowing into the rivers, or the leaking of chemicals from coal production. Or in Louisiana with cancer alley. I mean, they’re doing it to us everywhere.
PL: Yes, thank you.
TFSR: As a historian, much of your written work has focused on the idea and the history of the commons, or at least that’s an idea that you seem to have played with a lot and documented, from which we draw May Day is a pagan holiday in the European context. Can you talk a bit about what the commons were and the enclosure of that and what you think May Day opens up in terms of the opportunity of the commons?
PL: Yeah, the basic thing about what May Day opens up is that the earth belongs to all. I talked about skipping and dancing on May Day, but the Earth as our sacred habitat, the Earth as Turtle Island, the earth as a place of abundance and joy to share with all kinds of creatures. The way to celebrate that is to climb over the fence, or to go under it or around it or through it, because the enclosures, the privatization of the earth, to produce the incredibly weird fiction that a person can own the earth, or part of it, this needs to change. It’s only in the United States, really, that private property is like this and is enforced with weapons. “Keep Off” and “No Trespassing” signs. Anyone who’s flown, you look down from the air, you see that the whole land is turned into squares or rectangular grids. This is what the founding fathers did. They privatized the common, they privatized the free land where people had lived, hunted, farmed, and gathered for for centuries.
That is the commons in terms of North America, in terms of Europe, and especially England, which which I studied carefully because, well, I grew up in England, and thats what I studied and taught. The enclosure of the village commons, the enclosure of common field agriculture, became the basis of the capitalist mode of production, as we say. It began under Henry the Eighth, who everybody knows because he killed his wives. But he’s the one who took a fifth of English land and sold it off, privatize it, just the way George Washington and them did several hundred years later in the 1790s to North America. They surveyed it with a theodolite and the tools of the surveyor, laid down their lines, and said, “This is mine,” and threw off everyone else who had lived on it. Thus creating the proletariat, as well as agribusiness.
But the commons are a basis of community. People long for community, they long for useful work, so they long for the commons, to share the earth and to share the means of subsistence, the means of production. This is what I meant earlier, when I said, “We demand the whole economy.” Because we really need to rest, to stop being quite so busy, to stop driving for profit, stop driving for “development,” to stop driving for “progress.” Progress for whom? Progress for the 1%. The rest of us need to rest. This is why Sunday and May Day is so important. There used to be hundreds of holidays every year, but the capitalist enterprise and puritanical beliefs shut down those holidays. We’re lucky to have… I was gonna say one a weeK——Sunday, but that’s not even true anymore.
So, community, time of work, is all tied to the commons. It’s not an accident that Henry the Eighth was a wife beater, wife killer. According to documents of his own age, he killed 78,000 people on the gallows. This isn’t the demonize him particularly, but it’s to show at the birth of the modern British state, its project was misogynist, it was enclosing, and then it became slaving. These are the basis of capitalism as we know it. Misogyny, or patriarchy, enclosure, or destruction of the commons, and privatization and slavery. I hope everyone has a great May Day.
TFSR: I really hope so too. Well, thanks for the inspiring conversation. I guess we should maybe get out there and start commoning, right?
PL: Well, people are doing it all over. We have to do it just to survive. Whether we like it or not, whether it’s ideological or not. Poverty requires us to. Either that or suicide. On that happy note… [laughs]
TFSR: Well, Peter, thanks a lot for talking. I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more of your stuff. Have a great time up in Michigan.
But first, an announcement from Georgia:
As of around 20 hours ago, the cops have arrested at least 9 anti-racist protesters who went out to resist the KKK at Stone Mountain in Georgia. By all accounts, it seems like the protests were a definite win for anti-racists and anti-fascists, but as usual we still have to contend with police repression. Hopefully we will have more of a report for you about this event in coming weeks. Support folks for those who were arrested are working hard to get them free, but they desperately need funds for bail. If you can, please contribute by following this link: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/legal-support-for-anti-kkk-protesters
Zine Fest
The Asheville Zine Fest will take place Sunday May 1st, 2016 from 11-4pm at the Grey Eagle in the River Arts District, Asheville, NC. Makers of zines, minicomics and small press from around the region will be in attendance to sell, trade & show off their works. The festival is free and open to the public. Come shop independent works of literature, politics, strangeness, art, and all kinds of unique publications. The Grey Eagle is at 185 Clingman Avenue, in Asheville.
Nationwide Prison Strike
If you, dear listeners aren’t in Seattle or some other urban center planning a stellar May Day for this year, a suggestion is going around that people plug in to the site supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org where you can find ideas and materials for distribution where you live and work to support the prisoner hunger strikes ongoing throughout Texas and Alabama and try to build dialogue and solidarity towards the September nationwide prisoner strike on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prisoner uprising. Alongside prisoners in AL and TX, incarcerated folks in Michigan are planning to begin a food protest and hunger strikes are slated to begin in Louisiana.
We open with an announcement from Asheville Anti-Racism, which is a far-right-watch group here in Asheville. There is a benefit show tonight (4/17/2016) at the Odditorium in Asheville, NC to raise funds for an anti-fascist, anti-KKK march just outside of Atlanta, GA next Saturday the 23rd. Every year, fascists march on Stone Mountain in Georgia, and every year there is anti-fascist presence. Let’s make this a year to remember!
Announcements
A few prison updates from the U.S.:
Since April 4th, prisoners in at least 4 Texas prisons have been on strike for better conditions and an end to slavery and human rights abuses. This strike is but the latest in a nationwide mass movement inside prisons for dignity and freedom. Minimum wage in Texas prisons is 00/hr. Access to medical care requires a $100 medical copay.
Striking prisons have been put on lockdown in an attempt to “conceal the strike” and the battle of wills is being daily tested by the inhumanity of the administration. No lights, two peanut butter sandwiches a day, no phone, mail or visitation from the outside world. And likely far worse.
Since the strike’s inception, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice TDCJ) has been trying to contain the strike and paint the strikers as causing harm to inmates and families. Threatening additional lockdowns, forced transfers, violence. Even a statewide lockdown.
The Incarcerated Workers Organzing Committee, IWOC, believes TDCJ’s actions to be an intentional, routine tactic. “They are trying to change who the enemy is,” said Nick Onwukwe, Co-Chair of IWOC and a former prisoner. “Trying to get you believe the enemy isn’t the slave master, it’s the slave who sits down and says – enough.”
Increasingly lockdowns are becoming reality. Already there are additional lockdowns at Jester III, Dalhart, and Beto, partial lockdowns at Coffield and Allred, and a confirmed order for lockdown at Michael for this morning, April 16th. Is the strike spreading? Will TCDJ’s tactics backfire? We may be at a tipping point.
IWOC and prisoners, family & supporters are requesting shows of solidarity from the outside. If you hate slavery in the U.S. under the guise of the Prison Industrial Complex there are a few suggestions on getting involved: contact family and friends in prison and clue them in to the strikes; organize a local group to engage folks in jail and prison and hear their concerns; talk to your neighbors, church-mates, schoolmates, coworkers who may have folks on the inside and talk about what’s going on; join the call in campaigns or demonstrate outside a facility.
More info from the IWW Incarcerated Workers’ Organizing Committee (IWOC) can be found at their webpage, iwoc.noblogs.org, and they can be reached at : 816-866-3808 or iwoc@riseup.net Visit the site to find phone numbers and addresses to direct grievances about the treatment of Texas prisoners and continued conditions of enslavement in the U.S. prison complex
In related news, on April 9, 2016 3 prisoners at David Wade Correctional Center in Homer, Louisiana went on hunger strike. The three were also on what is called “extreme suicide,” which is where they place you in FULL RESTRAINTS (chains) – that is, shackles and handcuffs attached to a waist chain. This is done for days at a time. They are also on “strip” –dressed only in a paper gown.
The torturous punitive conditions here at David Wade Correctional Center have gone on long enough. The sadistic practices by security and the administration are a violation of human rights and decency.
The administration has admitted to the infliction of corporal punishment against prisoners on lockdown. Just now as I write, they sprayed a prisoner while he was on his knees and struck him several times. They also sprayed and beat another prisoner who is mentally ill and has been on . for over a year. He has also been on food loaf for a long time.
A letter from a prisoner at DWCC in Homer suggested “Please call if you can – just a phone call will spook them. Thank you!:
Department of Corrections Secretary James M. LeBlanc, 225-342-6740
Deputy Secretary Eugene Powers, 225-342-6744
Undersecretary Thomas Bickham, 225-342-6739”
Finally, notes from 2 prisoners in the North Carolina prison system requesting help:
Kevin Cox is a politically active prisoner struggling at the moment just to be able to receive mail and contact from the outside. He asked that this statement be shared with anyone who might care to help call in to the prison. Since he wrote this, he’s been transferring to Marion CI,
but is still facing the same issues.
Greetings, Shalom Aleyka, Salaam Alaykum, Amani,
My name is Kevin Cox #1217063. I’m a political prisoner who’s being housed in Bertie Correctional Institution, in Windsor, NC. Since my incarceration I’ve dedicated my life to the struggle by fighting for the rights of prisoners, human rights for all oppressed people and rights for LGBTQ. Also I’m a dedicated member of the Black liberation movement and a member of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party [distinct from the New Black Panther Party], which is a legal aboveground political organization. At Bertie Corrections, I’m being treated like a ‘slave’ because of my political beliefs, my continuous activism in educating prisoners and my refusal to be submissive to Bertie Correction’s oppressive rules and regulations, which correlates to division, miseducation, provoking Black on Black violence, and racism.
As a result of my resistance, they [officers and staff] have stopped the flow of mail that comes from outside support such as family, friends, and comrades, have prevented me from recieving books, pamphlets, and newspapers, and have even denied me my “due process right” to be notified of the censorship of my property. The SRG [Security Risk Group] intelligence officers read my mail, that is stamped “legal,” without my being present, when my legal mail usually refers to my criminal case, law suits, etc. And the SRG officers are trying to “SRG” me, after I adamantly disavowed and denied any affiliation with any SRG group.
I’m telling you this because I need your help. I want to start a telephone/fax campaign to the administration demanding that they quit these egregious tactics that violate my constitutional rights.
Marion CI (Ask for Lt. Daniel Merrill and Cpt. Michael Long)
(828) 659-7810
NC Director of Prisons
George Solomon, (919) 838-4000
Jimmy Milton is an active voice in prison struggle at Bertie Ci, and has faced repeated violation of religious rights as a Hebrew-Israelite. He has not been provided Kosher meals, was not allowed to participate in Passover, and has not been able to order relevant religious materials. According to Jimmy, “I’ve already filed my grievance here at the facility and my next step is my hunger strike. The people I need for you to call and speak to are as follows:
Bertie CI Superintendant Herring or Asst. Superintendant Clark (252) 794-8601
Also, for a first hand account by anarchist prisoner Michael Kimble who’s warehoused in the Alabama prison system, on the recent riots and ongoing struggles of prisoners there as well as organizing by the Free Alabama Movement, check out http://anarchylive.noblogs.org
This week we air an interview which was recorded at the latest international anarchist radio conference in Berlin this year. This interview is with an anarchist who is very active in LGBTQI struggle in that city, and we speak about the history of feminism and trans activism in Berlin as well as the problem of trans-misogyny in feminist and queer scenes, plus many more topics. You can see more about what our guest is talking about at http://www.transinterqueer.org/
This audio was made at a long standing leftist and anarchist space called Friedel 54, which is gearing up to fight an impending eviction. You can see more about this at https://friedel54.noblogs.org/, which is in German but gets run through a translator pretty well.