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, The Final Straw is featuring two segments from Anarchistisches Radio Berlin. Our friends at ARB recently conducted an interview with 3 members of the athens-based group of libertarian communists about the election of the leftist Syriza party in Greece, giving a anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist perspectives on what they’ve seen from Syriza and what they expect in the future.
After that ARB talked to members of the Slovenian radio collective, Crna Luknja, as well as Radio Libertaire from Paris and Vrje Bond of the Netherlands about upcoming anarchist bookfaires, the Pinksterlanddagen Camp, the imminent anarchist radio conference in Slovenia and more! Check out the work of A-Radio Berlin at aradio.blogsport.de
After those interviews we’ll hear some recent neo-crust from Russia, some recent death rock from France, punk from the U.S. and more.
“The main portion of the episode features an interview with Alvaro Luna Hernandez, a Chicano political prisoner serving a 50 year sentence in Texas for disarming a Sheriff who pulled a gun on him, and then fleeing. Mr. Hernandez speaks about his case, his legal history, his political development, and his imprisonment. Special thanks to the Central Texas Anarchist Black Cross for this material. More info on Alvaro can be found at”: https://denverabc.wordpress.com/prisoners-dabc-supports/political-prisoners-database/alvaro-luna-hernandez/
After that, we hear recent metal releases by Mar and Soror.
This week on The Final Straw, we feature an update from Sean Swain, who’s just been moved along with other people in his security level at Ohio State Prison in Youngstown to SOCF Lucasville. Information on his new call-in campaign can be found at: http://seanswain.org/support-sean-resisting-harassment-at-socf/
His new address is:
Sean Swain
243-205
P. O. Box 45699
1724 State Rt. 728
Lucasville, Ohio 45699
For the majority of the episode, a comrade in Greece has provided us with interviews concerning the resistance to the gold extraction and refining destroying Mt Skouries in Chalkidiki, Greece. The mining and refining are going to line the pockets of the Vancouver-headquartered company called Eldorado Gold Corporation. Resistance to this mining in Northeastern Greece has been in it’s current phase since 2006.
First, we’ll hear portions of our friend’s conversation with a young activist and her mother at a blockade on Skouries about some of the economic alternatives locals are trying to create to remove reliance on mining jobs that destroy their land, air and water. They also speak about the resistance as it’s developed over the years and some of the methods Eldorado Gold Corp has been trying to implement to drain the water-table in the mountain in order to aid the mining process.
Next, our friend speaks with Heli and a friend about more of the history of resistance to the mining there, changes in organizing that’ve occurred, waves of repression by the Greek State. They’ll also touch briefly on expectations (or the lack thereof) among the residents of that region of the current leftist Syriza regime’s political will to stop the destruction of the environment around Skoures. The Syriza Party’s Energy Minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, has pledged to do everything it can within the law to block the Skouries mining by Eldorado Gold Corp.
This week William talks with Peter Werbe, a long time editor of Fifth Estate magazine based in Detroit, MI for now. Fifth Estate is an “anarchist, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-profit project” which is published cooperatively three times a year, and this year marks its 50th year of publication. The magazine tackles current events, issues, theory, and praxis which would be of interest to an anarchist audience. To find out more about this project, and to subscribe, you can visit http://www.fifthestate.org
Peter and William talk about the magazine’s historical trajectory, from its inception in 1965 as a weekly, less political periodical, to its takeover by anarchists in 1975, to what it is today. They talk about the Eat The Rich Gang and its associations with Fifth Estate magazine, as well as directions the project could take. For more on Peter Werbe’s radio work, you can visit http://www.peterwerbe.com
This entire episode’s music is from The Layabouts, which is a Detroit based anarchist ska punk project (not to be confused with the London based techno-house project of the same name). Many of its members did or do work on Fifth Estate. For more on them you can visit http://www.thelayabouts.com
This week: Sean Swain announces that he’s escalating his hunger strike and will begin denying his hypertension medication this evening. This could put him in dire danger, he could die within a few days. This protest is in response to the administration at OSP & ODRC selectively denying his access to communicate with his supporters, in particular with Ben Turk via the jpay video chat. From his support page:
“Sean needs support right now. Rick Kerger, his lawyer is filing a restraining order preventing the ODRC from cancelling future video visits. There are three things you can do.
1. Call OSP Warden Forshay and demand that he meet with Sean in good faith and negotiate a reversal of the ODRC policy of f**king with Sean on flimsy pretexts. 330-743-0700. Ext. 2006.
2. Write Sean a letter, or even better, request a video visit yourself. The first step is getting approved as a visitor, using this form. The more communication we send Sean’s way, the more of their time they’ll have to waste f**king with him. Sean often says “they’ll get tired of killing me before I get tired of dying.” Let’s make sure he’s right.
3. Call ODRC Investigator Paul Schumacher, who cancelled Sean’s video visits, and say whatever you want to his voicemail. 614-728-1152”
Script suggestions for the conversation can be found at http://seanswain.org
Then, we hear from Andrew Hoyt about the upcoming North American Anarchist Studies Conference in San Francisco during the 20th through the 22nd of March, 2015. He talks about the network, which was created to link researchers with activists and assist dialogue to spread anarchism in society. If you’re interested in putting on a workshop, the deadline is coming up on February 14th, so hurry up! Info on the network, the upcoming (free) conference, past conferences, how to join the email list and more can be found at http://naasn.org
Finally, we get an update from a comrade in Barcelona about Operacion Pandora, the Spanish government’s series of raids and arrests on December 16th, 2014, of anarchists around the country. The Spanish government, according to the guest, is trying to link those 7 remaining with charges of connection to the GAC (Coordinated Anarchist Groups) which published a rather dry book criticizing Democracy and it’s uses by existing governments to justify VERY undemocratic actions. The Spanish government is then proposing that GAC is aligned with the Informal Anarchist Federation Tendency (FAI/IAF). The text, which will be distributed for free on February 14th in protest around Spain, can be found here in Spanish and portions have been translated into English. The guest speaks about La Ley Mordaza (Gag Law) recently passed in Spain and how this operation appears to be a first step of illegalizing effective protest tactics (such as protesting at religious institutions or setting up barricades) and branding them as terroristic in order to choke off resistance within Spain.
More on the case and shows of resistance against it can be found at http://efectivopandora.wordpress.com
Prior to the main portion of this week’s episode, we hear a Sean Swain segment and also Ben Turk comes on to talk about difficulties Sean’s currently facing (for instance beginning a hunger strike on Monday due to shenanigans by officials at OSP, where Sean is being held, and possibly JPAY (the company that contracts communication with Ohio’s DRC) that have limited his communications again.
The majority of this week’s episode is a conversation with incarcerated members of the Free Alabama & Mississippi Movements. The FAMMC (now including inmates in California as well) is an inmate-drive non-violent, civil disobedience movement with the goal of bettering the situations of prisoners, challenging the profits of prison corporations and departments of correction, ending the impunity of wardens and guards and abolishing the “new slavery” of mass incarceration in the U.S.
Due to the poor connection with the guests, some of the audio is difficult to hear, so a transcript should be posted in a few days at ashevillefm.org/the-final-straw where this post can be found and later at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org (oh yeah? where is that, now?)
Melvin Ray (aka Bennu Hannibal Ra(y)-Sun) at St. Clair Correctional Facility/SCCF and R.EARL (aka Kinetic Justice Amun) at Holman/HCF near Atmore, AL, two founders of the Free Alabama Movement along with a member of the Free Mississippi Movement break down mass incarceration, the forms of struggle they’re taking, the economic underpinning to prison labor and prison privatization, issue of sanitation, diet, cost to inmates and family of incarceration, assault and rape in Women facilities, networking across state borders… M & Kinetic also talk about the recent lock-downs at their facilities.
An upcoming way for folks around the country to get involved in this movement is to share the information of the FAMMC with folks on the inside and try to help them to get involved in the movement. Keep up on the upcoming pushes to protest at and outside of prisons around Alabama, Mississippi and more by checking out their facebook and twitter pages. These groups are planning to focus demonstrations and campaigns against McDonalds Restaurants (which use prison labor to make it’s burger patties, uniforms and more) and other businesses that are all around us that contract prisoner labor to make a profit.
These folks run a weekly (often up to 3 times a week) podcast-radio show called The People’s Platform that can be listened to and called into when live or found as archives. More on this show can be found at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/freealabamamovement
A recent report about the violence (sexual and otherwise) perpetrated by officials against the prisoners at the Juliet Tutwiler Women’s Facility in Alabama (at which the current warden of St. Clair, Curtis Davenport, who’s overseen this rise of violence was once an official), check out this US DOJ report from January of last year: http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/tutwiler_findings_1-17-14.pdf
This week’s episode features a conversation with Candace Falk, founder and main editor at the Emma Goldman Papers Project in Berkeley, CA.
A quick introduction. Emma Goldman was born in what is today Lithuania in 1869, moving to the U.S. at the age of 16. As a Jewish woman immigrating from Eastern Europe to New York city, she was not alone in the struggles she would face in terms of racism, patriarchy, nativism capitalism and so more. But Emma became involved in the Anarchist movement after the Haymarket Massacre and subsequent show trials of the next year and would grow to become known for a time as the most dangerous woman in America (J. Edgar Hoover). Her agitation and writing in support of free love, athiesm, the abolition of state and capitalism, contraception, beauty, literature, gender parity and more made tidal waves in her day and have continued to inspire people since she died in 1940. She aided would-be assassins, was jailed for agitating against World War I, was exiled to Russia, preached against the corruption of the Soviet Government, did propaganda work on behalf of the Spanish Anarchists in their Revolution, loved, lived and lost.
For the hour we talk about how Candace came to love Emma Goldman, the creation of the EGPP archives, what they provide, their relationship with the University of California at Berkeley and what the future may hold for the project. Candace also shares stories of how curating a history of Emma has bled into including bits of related and overlapping history and the rewards of this sort of seeking.
This week, we spoke with Artnoose. Artnoose is a zinester, author, printer, parent, anarchist and more. She gives a brief history of her relationship with art, her long-running personal letter-pressed zine entitled Kerbloom!, how she became an anarchist, the Berkeley Anarchist Study Group, the Cyber Punk Apocalypse fiction-writing house in Pittsburgh, erotica and more!
Later in the conversation we discuss Letters of Insurgents, an epistolary novel written by Fredy Perlman. The book is a series of letters between two characters separated by two decades and a continent and discusses politics, intentions, memory, age, communication, deception and more. There is a free audio version of the book that Artnoose helped to narrate, it’s available in pdf form for free on theanarchistlibrary.org and was just recently reprinted and made available for sale via Left Bank Books. This episode also features a recording of Aragorn!‘s introduction to the new edition of the book.
Artnoose and Aragorn! both participated in the 2010 internet-based reading group of Letters of Insurgents known as Insurgent Summer.
“On Saturday, January 10th 2015 Phil Africa, revolutionary, John Africa’s First Minister of Defense, and beloved brother, husband and father, passed away under suspicious circumstances at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas, PA. On Sunday, January 4th Phil Africa wasn’t feeling well and went to the prison infirmary. Though he wasn’t feeling well, other inmates saw Phil Africa walking, stretching and doing jumping jacks. Hearing that Phil was in the infirmary MOVE members drove up to visit him and were denied a visit by the prison. While they were visiting with Delbert Africa, Phil was secretly transported to Wilkes Barre General Hospital where he was held in total isolation, incommunicado for five days.”
from OnAMOVE.com’s statement on the death of Phil Africa. More can be found by following that link.
This week, The Final Straw spoke with Kevin Price about the medical emergency that William Phil Africa of the MOVE9 was undergoing and lack of transparency on the part of his captors at SCI-Dallas in Pennsylvania. Phil Africa was suffering from diarrhea and vomiting and his supporters and family were not being clearly communicated with in terms of his whereabouts or his state of well-being for days on end. Phil was moved to Wilkes Barr General Hospital and his supporters were told he wasn’t there for days until public pressure on the prison officials and hospital employees forced them to acknowledge his presence there. Arguing HIPPA, they refused to comment on his status or allow him to call his wife (Janine of the MOVE9) or the MOVE organization until enough calls and twitter pressure occurred that Janine was allowed to speak with Phil on Thursday. This conversation was recorded on Saturday, January 10th 2015.
Just before The Final Straw airtime (January 11th, 2015), we caught wind of the news that Phil had died. Our sympathies go out to his supporters and loved ones.
We’re deciding to air a slightly modified version of this episode for a few reasons. Though this effort won’t bring attention to help save Phil’s life from the horrors of prison, it stands as a testament to his work and that of the other defendants in the MOVE9 case. It discusses the corruptions of the police, prisons and courts (particularly in PA in this case) and the struggles and injuries suffered by the MOVE organization over the years. The fact of Phil’s death brings extra weight to the argument that prisons kill, that imprisonment is a political punishment, that aging prisoners have special needs that prisons (even if they were to work “humanely”) don’t have the infrastructure and don’t function to sustain the healthful life of prisoners, particularly those who’re aging and have special needs. This is, among many others, a case of Medical Injustice, torture and murder.
Firstly, though we announce that Eric McDavid, long time anarchist prisoner of the Green Scare in the U.S. has been released after 9 years in prison. His petitioning of the courts and activists on the outside have revealed information that the prosecution denied him information that may have exonerated him of his accused “crimes”. More info at http://supporteric.org/eric-is-free/
Also on this episode, we feature audio from Črna Luknja (Black Hole), an anarchist radio show from Slovenia and airing on Student Radio in which they speak to “P” in Barcelona, Spain, about the recent series of raids and repressions against anarchists around that country. The raids and repression has been dubbed Operation Pandora and has ostensibly centered around the publication of a book entitled “Contra la Democracia” (Against Democracy), which breaks an arcane law against the current order which remains on the law books from the era of Francisco Franco’s dictadura. https://efectopandora.wordpress.com/category/english/
More from Black Hole at: http://radiostudent.si/dru%C5%BEba/%C4%8Drna-luknja/
Finally, we air audio from A-Radio Berlin. In this segment, A-Radio interviews a member of Belarus Anarchist Black Cross about current situations for radicals and refugees in Belarus, Ukraine, & Russia, as well as how those ABC’s work together. More from A-Radio at http://aradio.blogsport.de
This week, The Final Straw takes pleasure in re-presenting a conversation with Layla AbdelRahim about her book, “Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Narratives of Civilization and Wilderness”. She is an anarchaprimitivist who explores ideas of education, domestication and civilization in terms of childhood development and overall human health. In these excerpts from the conversation we define some terms and talk about instrumentalization of living things and symbolic thought and how they are used to shape the child’s mind into the civilized and non-empathic perspective. Info on the book can be found at http://www.fernwoodpublishing.ca
