This week on the show, William and Scott are presenting an interview with Alice and Dolly, who are two people working toward Disability Justice and Mad Activism (among other things), about the prevalence of movement misogyny in antifascist currents, world building as antifascist and as community defense, ways to rethink harmful patterns in movements, and some things we can do to make each other safer. The show initially got in touch with these guests based on a Twitter thread that they co-authored about these issues. Check out our podcast at our website later today for a longer conversation.
You can follow Alice on Twitter @gothbotAlice, and to read Tema Okun’s work which Dolly was referencing on unmasking and addressing white supremacy culture you can follow the link in our show notes – or – search “White Supremacy Culture” on your search engine and follow the results to the pdf on the dismantlingracism.org page.
also our recent interview with them: https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2021/02/14/adrienne-maree-brown-on-cancellation-abolition-and-healing/
This week we re-air an interview done with Aishah Shahidah Simmons, who is a writer, community organizer, prison abolitionist, and cultural worker who has done just an immense amount of work over the years to help disrupt and end the patterns of sexual abuse and assault within marginalized communities. In this interview we talk about a lot of things, her background and how she came to be doing the work shes doing right now, how better to think about concepts like accountability, what doing this work has been like for her as an out lesbian woman, and about her book Love WITH Accountability, Digging Up the Roots of Childhood Sexual Abuse which was published in 2019 from AK Press.
This interview feels very important right now, because we are in a time of overturn, tumult, stress, and uncertainty, and I think that in order for us to really be able to knuckle down and go in this for the long haul itll be imperative for our radical communities to take solid care of ourselves and of each other. I hope you get as much out of hearing Aishah’s words as I did conducting and editing this interview.
Before we get started, as a content notice: we will be talking about some difficult topics in this interview. I will do my best to repeat this notice at regular intervals, but please do take care and treat yourself kindly (however that looks).
This week on the show, we bring you the audio of an activist panel from the recent Queer Conference held online by University of North Carolina, Asheville, in March of 2021.
The conference was titled Fitting In and Sticking Out – Queer [In]Visibilities and the Perils of Inclusion. From the panel’s description for the conference:
This panel brings together 4 local (Asheville, NC) and regional groups working at different intersections of queer community support. We will learn about the work these groups do, the particular issues that affect southern queers, the changes in visibility and inclusion for queer community, and the building of larger coalitions of liberation. Representatives from four organizations will be part of the panel:
Youth OUTright (YO) is the only nonprofit whose mission is to support LGBTQIA+ youth from ages 11-20 in western North Carolina. Learn more about their work on their website, and support them financially here.
Southerners on New Ground (SONG) is a nonprofit aimed at working towards LGBTQ liberation in the south. Find out more about their work on their website, and support them financially here.
Tranzmission Prison Project (TPP) is a prison abolition grassroots organization that provides literature and resources to incarcerated members of the LGBTQ community. Learn more about their work on their website and donate here.
Pansy Collective is a decentralized, DIY, queer, music and arts collective that created Pansy Fest, an annual queer music festival showcasing LGBTQ musicians from the south and rural areas, prioritizing reparations for QTBIPOC artists and community members, and community education and organizing around the principles of autonomy, mutual aid, antifascism, love, and liberation for all. Learn more about their work on their website, or donate here.
This week on the show, I spoke with Comrade Chux, a member of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. JLS is an autonomous network of incarcerated activists from across the so-called US. They have been engaged in organizing and calling for the 2016 & 2018 Nationwide Prison Strike activities. Chux and I chat about the call for this year for folks on the outside to engage for Abolition on August 21 and September 9th, we talk about Abolition, Black August and other topics.
You can learn more by following JLS on Twitter and Instagram or checking out their website, Jailhouse Lawyer Speak, lawyer is singular in this, dot wordpress dot com. You can also find out there about their fundraising, the JLS Mothers Day fundraising effort through Blackstone Career Institute to sponsor paralegal courses for people in Women’s Prisons, prisoners they’re supporting and more.
Also, another podcast that was a great listen with JLS members speaking about the strike, other initiatives and realities of incarceration, check out this Millenials Are Killing Capitalism.
Chux mentions:
Reverand Joy Powell, incarcerated Black feminist activist and political prisoner in the interview. You can learn more about her at FreeJoyPowell.Org.
Comrade Chux also mentions Amend The 13th. From JLS’s website: “Amend the 13th: Abolish ‘Legal’ Slavery in Amerika Movement” is an all-inclusive, coalition-based national campaign and community-based organizing effort which is determined to remove the “legal” and social basis for the dehumanization of those subject to the judicial machinery of the United States – and finally abolish slavery in Amerika once and for all. “ More can be found at AmendThe13th.org.
1 Million Families for Parole, April 3rd, 2021
Another prisoner initiatives similar to JLS that have been mentioned and supported by the group that are worth checking out include the National Freedom Movement, which is calling for an April 3rd “1 Million Families for Parole” rally across the country to extend the following demands:
We demand that federal parole be immediately reinstated.
We demand the creation of a mandatory parole criteria and curriculum based on the specific educational, rehabilitative and re-entry needs of every parole-eligible person.
Sean speaks about supporting Dimitris Koufantinas, prisoner from the 17 November group in Greece who just ended a hunger strike. You can read a translation of his statement ending his hunger strike at EnoughIsEnough14.org. To hear an insightful interview by a comrade in Greece and another in the diasporic Greek community about the situation with Koufantinas and the aftermath of his hunger strike, check out episode #254 of Dissident Island Radio.
It’s been nearly half a decade since thousands of indigenous water and land defenders and their accomplices and allies weathered a difficult winter and attacks by law enforcement and private security attempting to push through the Dakota Access Pipeline through so-called North Dakota. The DAPL was eventually built and has already, unsurprisingly damaged the lands, waters and sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux and other people native to the area. Resistance has also continued to this and other extractions and pipeline projects across Turtle Island and the defense against DAPL surely inspired and fed many other points of opposition in defense of the earth and native sovereignty.
On one night in November, 2016, as government goons leveled fire hoses and “less-lethal” armaments at water defenders in freezing temperatures, Sophia Wilansky suffered an injury from an explosion that nearly took her arm. An Indigenous and Chicano former employee of another pipeline project named Steve Martinez volunteered to drive Sophia to the hospital in Bismark. For this, he was subpoenaed to a Federal Grand Jury, which he refused to participate in. Now, almost 4 and a half years later, Steve is being imprisoned for resisting another FGJ in Bismark. For the hour, we hear from Chava Shapiro with the Tucson Anti-Repression Committee and James Clark, a lawyer who works with the National Lawyers Guild, talk about Steve’s case, the dangers of Grand Juries, and why it’s imperative for movements to support their incarcerated comrades.
The last year has been a trying time for everyone. Among the hardest hit have been prisoners who have seen increasing infections of the covid-19 virus brought in by guards who live off site or other prisoners transferred in from other institutions, prisoners who don’t have the luxury of free movement during the incessant lockdowns their wardens employed as a band-aid measure to limit transmission, prisoners who don’t have effective healthcare in non-pandemic times and who across the board have had limited to no access to personal protective equipment. In many cases, incarcerated people have had their lives put on hold, the hard-fought programs they rely on to earn earlier releases paused during this emergency situation, access to the outdoor for exercise and socializing with others in their institutions unavailable because of under-staffing or concerns of spread. This sort of situation, hearing about the spread and deaths on the outside and being unable to defend yourself or loved ones, undoubtedly has a lasting impact on our psyches.
For this hour, Bursts spoke with a member of the Perilous Chronicle about their report “First 90 Days of Prisoner Resistance to COVID-19” concerning the spike in measured prisoner resistance in the forms of work and hunger strikes, fights with guards, riots and escapes from facilities ranging from county jails, state prisons, ICE detention facilities and federal prisons across the so-called US and so-called Canada. The report begins coverage of events on March 17, 2020, when protests occurred at facilities on either coast naming concerns of the approaching pandemic as impetus. Our guest speaks about the data they’ve been able to gather, their approach and specific incidents. The report, published November 12, 2020, will soon be followed with more information concerning the trend as it spread, including overlaps with the Rebellion for Black Lives of the summer of 2020.
You can find the report and more writings as well as how to support them or get involved at PerilousChronicle.Com. Their podcast is available there and wherever you get podcasts, they’re active on twitter via @PerilousPrisons, can be emailed at info@perilouschronicle.com and they can be written at:
Perilous
P.O. Box 381
Tuscon, AZ
85702
Soon after this conversation was recorded, on February 6th 2021, prisoners at the St. Louis so-called Justice Center, aka The Workhouse, engaged in an uprising, taking over the fourth floor of the facility, flooding toilets, setting items on fire, busting out windows of the facility and waving banners. This was the 4th and 5th protest at The Workhouse since December and had escalated after mismanagement, lack of proper PPE, covid-19 screenings, warm clothing, access to recreation, price gouging, people awaiting trial in the postponed court hearings for months because they lacked money to pay the bail, filling meals and the lack of medical care of prisoners known to currently have the novel corona virus among other reasons that echo a lot of what our guest today talked about. You can find a good summary, including prisoner statements, in an article entitled “This Is Genocide”: St. Louis Inmate Issues Statement on Horrific Conditions Behind Revolt on It’sGoingDown.org
This week on The Final Straw, we feature a conversation between our occasional host, Scott, and adrienne maree brown. For the hour, Scott and adrienne speak about “We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice”, her latest booklet available through AK Press, as well as sci-fi, abolition, harm, accountability and healing.
adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World and Octavia’s Parables podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit. More of their work can be found at adriennemareebrown.net
If you like Scott’s interview style, check out their interviews with Kristian Williams on Oscar Wilde and Eli Meyerhoff on higher education and recuperation. Also, to hear an interview with Walidah Imarisha, who co-authored “Octavia’s Brood” with adrienne.
This week, we’re presenting three segments, all related in some way to prison. We hear an essay by an anarchist prisoner in Chile about a prison massacre on it’s 10th anniversary, the voice of David Easley reporting from within a covid outbreak in an Ohio prison, and the voice of someone who’s protest against nuclear weapons was leading her to incarceration.
And Sean Swain. If you want to cast a vote for one of his nicknames, you can send an email to us at TheFinalStrawRadio(at ) riseup( dot) net, with ‘Nickname’ in the subject header until January 10th.
[00:05:05]
David Easley on Outbreak at Toledo CI
[00:11:03]
First up, Comrade David Easley at Toledo Correctional Institution in Ohio talks about the covid-19 outbreak there, which he is still recovering from, that has knocked out one in five guards and forced the state to bring in National Guard to act as screws at the prison. The administration hasn’t been proactively testing prisoners and so doesn’t have data on infections besides symptomatic cases. When prisoners have tested positive, the only treatments they get are non-asprin Tylenol and cough drops, unless their health degrades to the point of getting onto a ventilator.
David also talks about his inside/outside abolitionist study group he’s been working with over instagram. Comrade Easley is seeking outside supporters to help run the Abolition Study Group instagram and also his personal social media so he can report to the outside world on the conditions in Toledo CI. He is also seeking lawyers in Ohio that can help sue the ODRC on behalf of prisoners for the negligence and harm that has led to so much sickness and death, inside and outside of the barbed wire. You can reach him via mail at:
David Easley
A306400
Toledo Correctional Institution
2001 East Central Avenue
Toledo, OH 43608
and you can email him by creating an account on jpay.com and reaching out to him by his facility and number, David Easley A306400 at Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.
Martha Hennessy of Kings Bay Plowshares 7
[00:30:46]
Next up, Tali Moon from the occupied land in the PNW of the so-called US shares with us a conversation of Martha Hennessy of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, 7 white, Catholic anti-militarism activists who just went to prison for trespassing and symbolic damage to Trident nuclear missiles at a military base in Georgia. Hennessy, aged 62, is an anarchist and the grandaughter of the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day. You can find out more about the Martha and others from her case at KingsBayPlowshares7.Org. You can write to Martha at:
Finally, you’ll hear a segment from the December episode of Bad News: Angry Voices from Around The World from the A-Radio Network, magnificently produced this month by Crna Luknja in Ljublana, Slovenia. The Anarchist Assembly of Valparaiso (so-called Chile) presents a text about the 10 year anniversary of the massacre of 81 prisoners at the San Miguel Prison in Santiago de Chile written by anarchist prisoner Mónica Caballero. This was but a small portion of the audio in this months’ episode.
Announcements
Land Project in Davao, Philippines
Comrades from Feral Crust collective in the province of Davao in the Philippines (aka Maharlika) are requesting monetary support to purchase a minicab or small truck to help transport people and materials to their land project in the forests of Marilog in Davao where they are working on implementing ideas and practices related to permaculture, rewilding and nature restoration/conservation. The project has a fedbook page and you can hear an interview from July of 2015 that we conducted with folks from FC.
Surgeries for Activist Returning from Syria
There is also a fundraiser for surgeries for Autumn, a transgender comrade from the US who volunteered in Syria, and suffered injuries during the civil war while doing solidarity work there. They are trying to raise $10k.
This week on the show I’m speaking with three folks engaged in organizing in the rural Alamance County, North Carolina, and it’s capital of Graham. All three work with the 501c4 political non-profit, DownhomeNC which in Alamance has been working on a range of engagements including running local candidates for office, doing get-out-the-vote work, sparking conversations with rural residents of the county, running a bail fund and working on bail reform, rent relief and operating food distribution. Dreama Caldwell, one of our guests, ran on a platform of bail reform to be the first Black woman elected to the County Commission, though she was not elected, is a mother, and as an Abolitionist has been working to abolish cash bail and change the condition for people of Color and poor folks as relates to the Alamance courts and jail. Sugalema is an organizer, a mom, and the daughter of undocumented parents from Mexico who’s been living in Alamance for the last decade. Gwen is a mother from a white, working class background who has also worked to support Alamance organizers through Downhome on a number of campaigns. You can learn more about the organization at DownhomeNC.org and their various social media pages.
As a side note, the folks who produce The Final Straw do not endorse electoralism as a strategy for lasting change or community power. We are anarchists. There are plenty of places you can go to find anarchist critiques of engaging in electoral politics, sometimes with anarchists or anti-authoritarians advocating limited engagement in elections but usually calling for abstention. Even though DownhomeNC is not an anarchist organization, we do feel like the experiences of Sugalema, Dreama and Gwen are important to share because they talk about the work of changing minds and building relationships in the rural south where an autonomous left or anarchist movement doesn’t exist… like most of the world. They are intelligent and impassioned women doing hard work to grow community resistance and engagement. Abolition also includes the complicated work of decreasing the harm caused by systems of oppression like the police, courts, borders, white supremacy and capitalism while simultaneously building discourse against those institutions that impose harm. We really hope that listeners will get a lot from this conversation.
Announcements
Eric King updates
Anarchist and antifascist prisoner Eric King caught covid at FCI Englewood, alongside over a hundred other prisoners, thanks to the ineptitude of his captors at the BOP who have been moving staff between Englewood and FCI Florence where an outbreak had been ongoing. His trial for defending himself from an attack by a prison officer has been pushed back to April of 2021. In good news, his mail ban appears temprorarily lifted and his website hosts his book list again. He’s been able to receive letters, magazines and books for the first time in years. Check out the update at SupportEricKing.org and send Eric some love.
To hear our interview with Eric from last year, visit our website.
Xinachtli Parole Support
“Xinachtli,” as. many of you know, means literally in English, “Seed,” or, as Comrade “X” likes to phrase, it from a prisoner’s perspective, “Germinating Seed” and s/n Alvaro Luna Hernandez, is a Chicano/Mexicano-Anarchist Communist and Anti-Imperialist Internationally-recognized Political Prisoner, has suffered long enough from a (50-year) bogus Aggravated Assault conviction rife with racist civil rights abuse and judicial misconduct.
The contrived & trumped-up Aggravated Robbery charge brought by Sheriff McDaniel without the authority of a warrant, was thrown out later at trial, but through prosecutorial chicanery, allowed the assault charge to stick being a paroled felon.
The so-called Aggravated-Assault charge, which should’ve amounted to a ‘misdemeanor,’ occurred with his near-term pregnant wife nearby in their own front yard, as he, showing no demonstrative violent aggressive behavior, correctly disarmed the Sheriff as he drew his service revolver in anger as “Xinachtli” challenged his authority to attempt an arrest in a situation that could’ve proved lethal for all three, mother, baby, and most surely “Xinachtli” himself. The local authorities hated him and his family and his labor organizing in Brewster County, Alpine, Texas.
Many of you already are familiar with this abuse of authority yarn, but, does bear repeating, as he is still held captive for this injustice in ‘STG’ (Security Threat Group) status, studying law and assisting other prisoners with their appeals, while continuously sharing, and germinating his revolutionary thoughts and ideals in cocoon-like solitary confinement, at the repressive TDCJ-CID James V. Allred Unit, ‘Supermax’ Gulag, in Iowa Park, Texas, marooned in the North Texas’ Red River Valley. Texas prisons are now one of the nation’s COVID-19 virus’ ‘hotspots,’ and the courts are refusing to intervene, WHILE PRISONER DEAD BODIES PILE UP IN LOCAL MORGUES. “XINACHTLI” is an elderly person, with his life in danger.
Presently, “Xinachtli” is preparing for his (1st) upcoming ‘Parole Review Hearing,’ on July 18, 2021. We are in need of help with a groundswell of support from the Prison Abolitionists, Human Rights, Indigenous, and Prison Activist Movement communities. TBPP suggests that FEW, clear & concise letters are preferred, to place in his case-file for review; lazy eyes is a disguise with TBPP Parole Panels. So, let’s blast ’em with a barrage of letters to help us ensure that his ‘Review’ is an impartially-heard (Hearing?) by traditionally ‘parole-stingy’ Texas Board of Pardons & Parole Commissioners; and is a successful one.
Try to include in the letter, that”Xinachtli,” though, he has tested ‘COVID-19 – negative,’ and in recent months received a ‘flu shot,’ he has hypertension that’s medicated, and is ostensibly cured of Hep-C, he nonetheless will be 69 years old next May 12th, 2021; so the Corona Virus danger rages on!
Also include, a solid confirmation that there’s a solid support system waiting, available opportunities of employment, residence, and transportation, as well as psychological/coping support and a period of adjustment, are all important – he’s been in a solitary ‘time-capsule, the worldwide ‘spider’ web has exploded on the social scene since his conviction in June of 1997.
Please address all your Letters of Support for “Xinachtli” with his registered name, ALVARO LUNA HERNANDEZ, and prison number, TDCJ-CID#00255735
You can mail the letters to his lawyer:
Allen D. Place
Attorneys at Law
109 S. 7th Street
Gatesville, TX, 76528
To hear Xinachtli telling his story in his own voice, check out our website.
“Hannah was also the creator of the documentary “Shelter: A Squatumentary”. We talk about squatting in the U.S., homesteading, market values, views on squat resistance in other countries from the U.S. and more. The latter half of the show features a musical selection from the metal and gothy end of the spectrum.”
