This week we get to speak with Amélie Trudeau and Fallon Rouiller. Amelie and Fallon, alongside Carlos Lopez Marin, make up the 5E3, who are being charged by the mexican state for an arson of a Nissan dealership and the neighboring ministry of communication and transportation in January of this year. We talk about prison, freedom, dignity, solidarity and more. For more info on the case of the 5E3, check out our episode of August 10th, 2014, where you can find links to sources of their writings and updates.
This episode features two conversations. The first is with Ben Turk, anarchist, playwrite and prison abolitionist. We chat briefly about the upcoming North American Anarchist Black Cross conference in Colorado, about what folks can expect if they go and how to support the event.
After that, a conversation with Alexander Abbasi. Alex is a Palestinian-American from Los Angeles, an activist in the BDS (that’s boycott, divest and sanctions movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine) and a student at Harvard’s divinity school. We talk about decolonization, the uprisings in Ferguson, the struggle to liberate Palestine from the occupation by Israel and what solidarity and liberation might look like.
Initially, when I (Bursts) contacted Alex for this conversation I was attempting to suss out what anarchists in Palestine had to say about the siege of Gaza by Israel, the national question, what Anarchism looked like to them and what how that might differ from the U.S. context. That’s a conversation I’m still looking to have. Alex was kind enough to have a conversation but it went in a different, albeit worthwhile direction as is clear when one listens to the questions that I ask. We hope that you enjoy it. The second half of it will be featured in an upcoming episode and will be linked here soon.
It’s been a week since the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. The images and sounds of the struggle in the streets have ripped open the mainstream media to dialogue around police use of force, discrepancies between how different races and classes in the U.S. experience that force and the lack of transparency and legitimacy on behalf of law enforcement. Solidarity has been expressed from communities around the world, even by folks in Gaza, with the people of Ferguson and the family of Mr. Brown who’ve suffered this loss and continually live under the gun of the state in Missouri.
This week we talk to Luka, a white anarchist from St. Louis who’s been going to Ferguson and meeting folks and being in the streets with them, building relationships. Ferguson is a majority black city whose police force is 94% white. Luka talks about their experience of conversation with and struggle alongside of folks from a personal more than political standpoint, across racial lines. Luka gives a narrative of the days between the shooting of Mike Mike through Friday evening (08/15/14), when we spoke. There’s discussion of police and protest tactics and how they’ve changed in the face of a week of gassing and rubber bullets met with molotovs and rocks.
This week, we have two conversations to share with y’all.
First, an update on the case of Luke O’Donovan and a quick conversation with a support person of his. Adam talks about the last-minute announcement of a change of the beginning of Luke’s trial to Tuesday, August 12th and gives a brief synopsis of the case. More info and updates can be found at http://letlukego.wordpress.com, including how to help to pack the courtroom in support of him.
Following that, you’ll hear a conversation with a supporter of the 5E3 and friend of Amélie Trudeau and Fallon Rouiller, the two Quebecois anarchists who, along with Carlos López Marin, make up the 5E3. The 5E3 are 3 anarchists arrested on the 5th of January and accused of taking part in a molotov cocktail attack on the Ministry of Communication and Transportation and a neighboring Nissan Dealership in Mexico City. We’ll talk about the mexican prison system, the political context within which insurrectional anarchism in mexico is traversing, about Prisoners’ Justice Day in Canada and abroad and much more. We’ll also touch briefly on the case of Nyki Kish, an anarchist convicted of stabbing and killing a college student while among a group of college students who were attacking homeless folks in Toronto. More on Nyki’s case can be found at http://www.freenyki.org
More on the 5E3 can be found at http://www.abajolosmuros.org
Donations to the 5E3 can be found here: http://www.clac-montreal.net/mx#_1 (make sure to include a note that it’s for the 5E3)
Many of their letters can be found at: http://www.sabotagemedia.anarkhia.org/tag/5e/
Also, more updates to come here: http://waronsociety.noblogs.org/?tag=5e-case
This week’s episode is LITERALLY packed solid. We start off with an announcement about the case of Luke O’Donovan’s trial beginning on August 11th at 9AM at the Superior Court of Fulton County, 136 Pryor Street, S.W., Suite C-640, Atlanta, GA. Luke’s support is asking for folks who want to get his back to show up in court attire and be present for the court date. Luke is facing 5 attempted homicide charges stemming from injuring the 5 men attacking him as he was being queer bashed in Atlanta on New Years of 2013. More info and the callout can be found at http://LetLukeGo.wordpress.com
Next, a quick announcement about an upcoming benefit for and presentation about the 5E3, three anarchists (Amelie, Fallon and Carlos) accused of using molotov cocktails to damage a Nissan dealership and the Ministry of Communication and Transportation in Mexico City on the 5th of January. A supporter of the 5E3 will be speaking about their case on Sunday, August 10th at Rosetta’s Kitchen (Upstairs) at 8pm. August 10th is also known as Prisoner’s Justice Day and witnesses yearly hunger strikes across the convict race serving time across Canada in remembrance of all prisoners who’ve died of unnatural causes while incarcerated. More info at http://fuegoalascarceles.wordpress.com/in-english-information/
Our first segment (after Sean’s words of wisdom) is a conversation with D, an anarchist and prison abolitionist from West Virginia to update us about the Elk River chemical spill from January of this year. We talk about the West Virginia Clean Water Hub and the project it recently spawned, Voices From South Central WV. Voices from South Central is working to amplify the voices of prisoners at the main jail in Charleston, WV. The project began as a way of gauging and presenting (in prisoners own words) the effects of the water crisis on those incarcerated and how the administration dealt with health effects it caused and worked (or didn’t) to provide clean water to those they jailed. http://storiesfromsouthcentralwv.com/
For our past coverage of the spill, check out: http://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/?s=west+virginia
Finally, we air another great segment from Anarchistisches Radio Berlin. This time A-Radio speaks with members of the Greek political Hip Hop group Social Waste. The discussion ranges from chat about the development of Hip Hop in Greece, where it overlaps with politics, immigrant solidarity, anti-capitalism and anti-fascism as currently practiced in Greece.
Calais is a port city in France that sits as the major nexus of migrants attempting to leave the French (and thus European) mainland to reach the U.K. in seek of asylum. These migrants are fleeing the effects of imperialism (sometimes war, always capital) in their home countries. They hail from Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan and many other places and seek peace and stability in the EU. The irony is that the EU, like the U.S., is a major exporter of the troubles the migrants seek to escape. In many ways, the “immigration crisis” in the U.S. mirrors the reality of the “immigration crisis” in the EU.
This week’s episode of the Final Straw features a conversation with Greta, a No Border Activist living in the UK about struggles of immigrants in Calais, where over the last 2 months there have been raids that have netted hundreds of migrants seeking to leave the mainland and land in the UK with expectation of receiving a refugee status. Greta tells us about the immigration structure of the EU’s Shengen Zone (of which the UK is not a part), about the recent raids and squat evictions in Calais, and the new squat “Impasse de Saline” outside of the city. She also touches on the plight of immigrants in the UK. http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/
The second half of the episode features a segment recorded by our audio-comrades at A-Radio Berlin, entitled “Europe and beyond: the resistance against mega-projects”. From the A-Radio blog:
“We present an interview with Bogdan, an activist from Rumania. The main topic is the recent 4th Forum against unnecessary imposed mega-projects, a network of major struggles against infrastructure, mining and fracking projects (in Europe an beyond). The last meeting took place in May in Rosia Montana, Rumania. The preparation, the subject of the involvement of political parties in such movements as well as the future perspective of this particular coordination are at the heart of the interview, but it also gives a quick overview of the development of the local struggle against the proposed biggest open-cast gold mining project in Europe.”
More at http://aradio.blogsport.de/
This week, Olga and Kuba speak with William about anarchism in Poland and their experience of living in Canada. Olga is from Poznan, a city in Western Poland where anarchists have been able to open 2 squats in the city center, and a member of the musical network, Rhythms of Resistance. Kuba is a member of Tektura collective, Autonomous Social Center “Cicha4″ collective and Rhythms of Resistance Lublin, based out of Lublin.
The conversation, sprouting from Olga and Kuba’s presentation at the 2014 Montreal Anarchist Bookfaire, ranges from talking about squatting, resistance to the rise of nationalism, intersections of anarchism with feminism and queer existence, and homogeneity all within the context of modern Poland.
Due to the length of the conversation, it didn’t make sense to include Sean Swain’s commentary for this week, however his Bastille Day message to the world can be found here: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/76396
This week’s episode features the rest of a conversation with Layla AbdelRahim about her recent book, Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Civilization and the Birth of Education. We played the start of this conversation near the end of last week‘s show and continue it throughout this hour. Layla talks about education, domestication, patriarchy, capitalism, instrumentalism, empathy and much more. More of her writings can be found at http://layla.miltsov.org/
Sean Swain’s segment this week talks about ISIL/ISIS, the crisis in Iraq and revisits the stupidity and cruel ignorance of U.S. intervention into Iraq since the 1980’s.
2nd, “On March 21st, 2012 Higinio Ochoa III aka w0rmer, was arrested and charged with hacking law enforcement agency websites and posting the personal information of police officers online, as well as being accused of defacing a government website in Alabama. Hig was part of an Anonymous crew called the Cabincr3w.” (Anon-Sweden support page). w0rmer will be released into a halfway house after 2 years of incarceration this August, however he’ll be forced to live in Austin, TX, 4 hours from where his wife and now-1-year-old son live. Support folks are trying to raise $6,000 to help cover the move and some living expenses until both find gainful employment in Austin. More info at: http://www.youcaring.com/other/help-the-ochoa-family-to-reunite/190052
Before we announce the show, we want to announce our presentation of
Sean Swain’s voice on our show for the first time in 8 weeks. Sean’s
GTL (GlobalTelLink, privatized prison phone company) and JPay (private company Sean’s critiqued before which handles, among other things, emails/commisary and other profitized elements of incarceration) accounts were suspended by the OSP administration, the office of Governor Kasich & the Ohio Highway Patrol/State Police. During those 8 weeks, Sean’s segments on The Final Straw (which were ostensibly a reason for his blackout) never stopped, as Sean smuggled scripts out of the Super-Duper-Uber-Mega-Ultra-Max in Youngstown. Congrats, Sean!
This week we play part two of Mel Bazil’s presentation from the 2014 Montreal Anarchist Bookfaire. He covers an array of concepts. He talks about the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Decolonization, infrastructure, false alternative energies and capitalism.
Mel also touches on the ideas around self-knowledge, Free Prior and Informed Consent between individuals and communities (http://unistotencamp.wordpress.com/free-prior-and-informed-consent-protocol/), and the framework of human/indigenous Rights versus Responsibilities to
the earth and to each other and to ourselves. This broadcast comes on the day that Mr. Bazil and other people struggling with the Unist’ot’en Action Camp expected an injunction against the action camp by the B.C.
government. Anarchists have been invited over the years to build relationships and struggle alongside this community and project, which brings interesting questions of overlaps and differences between anarchism(s) and indigenous cultures in resistance.
Warrior Publications has been publishing informative and beautifully illustrated works on decolonization, resistance and anarchism for over a decade now: http://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/
Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network is a gateway for outside anarchists and activists to get involved in helping at Unist’ot’en: http://forestaction.wikidot.com/
This audio is from an almost hour and a half presentation that Mel gave on Saturday the 24th of May at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfaire, entitled “Anarchy, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Decolonization.” Many thanks to CKUT Radio in Montreal for sharing this content with the Final
Straw. More info on CKUT can be found at www.ckut.ca
This week’s episode features a workshop by Mel Bazil, an indigenous Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en organizer, sovereigntist, and anarchist of the Unist’ot’en Action Camp. For folks in the listening audience, Unist’ot’en is located on unceded native lands in so-called British Colombia, Canada. More about the Unist’ot’en Action Camp can be found at unistotencamp.com
This audio is from an almost hour and a half presentation that Mel gave on Saturday the 24th of May at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfaire, entitled “Anarchy, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Decolonization.” Many thanks to CKUT Radio in Montreal for sharing this content with the Final Straw. More info on CKUT can be found at www.ckut.ca
This week we’ll be presenting the first of two parts of Mel’s presentation, the second will be aired in coming weeks and linked together on the Final Straw website soon.
Firstly though, an announcement about the health of longterm political prisoner, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson. The following text was found at http://rashidmod.com, where one can seek further updates on the situation.
