This week, we’re sharing a recent interview with Chloe Moore, a steward, farmer and educator at the Southside Community Farm, in the historically Black neighborhood of Southside in Asheville, NC. The farm has been serving the neighborhood and the region with free and inexpensive, fresh produce for a decade, providing educational opportunities, grocery deliveries, an herb garden and a BIPOC farmers market. The farm sits on land owned by the public Housing Authority of the City of Asheville (HACA) and there is currently a threat that HACA will destroy the farm. For the hour we talk about the work of the farm, the legacy of a community farm in the wake of government policies that destroy Black communities, and ways that community members can support the SCF and help it thrive.
We sat down with three local activists to talk about the proposed Asheville Business Improvement District, a model of service provision using public funding to increase policing in downtown by an unelected and unaccountable body of largely business and property owners. For the hour, Grace, Madison and Elliot talk about attempts to ram the BID through public process, some of the businesses and individuals behind it, how bids have panned out in other cities around the country and what space there is left to oppose this further privatization of public space in Asheville.
We didn’t mention it here, but there have also been rumblings of the BID model, a version of which was fought and never funded in 2012, being applied to other parts of Asheville, for example West Asheville. You can find more information and ways to get involved with folks organizing against the Business Improvement District at AshevilleBID.com and on Instagram at @NoAVLBid. This is our show for the week of May 12th.
As a quick note, there are a few acronyms frequently used in this conversation. One is RFP, which stands for Request for Proposals and is a process of contracting out an element of a project. Another acronym is ADA, in this case Asheville Downtown Association which is an independent pressure group made up of individuals, business and property owners. Not to be confused with the Asheville Downtown Commission, which was created by the City Council and contains appointed representatives from the ADA, city council, Buncombe County Board of Commissioners and few other community members including business owners.
This week on TFSR, we’ll be airing a presentation by Diane Stevens, a member of the Jane Collective in Chicago in the 1960’s. This presentation was recorded at the 2023 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville, NC.
The Abortion Counseling Service, now better known as Jane, started out as a referral service in Chicago in the late 1960s, providing counseling and support to women before and after their procedures. Members of the group learned to do the abortions and then were able to do the procedures for whatever the women could afford to pay. Seven women were arrested and charged with the felonies of abortion and conspiracy to commit abortion. These charges were ultimately dismissed. It is estimated that about 11 thousand abortions were preformed before the group disbanded in 1973.
Diane Stevens was born in Chicago. She went to school in the suburbs before moving back into the city where she joined the Abortion Counseling Service.
Following the Roe v Wade decision and dismissal of all the criminal charges, Diane went on to have a career in health care and worked as a nurse practitioner in a variety of settings. Her work for reproductive justice has resumed with joining the Reproductive Rights Coalition in Charlotte and being a clinic escort.
You can hear another presentation we recorded from the ACABookfair 2023 in this week’s IGD Podcast, which is sharing Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin in conversation with William C. Anderson.
First up, former co-host on the show Scott talks about the upcoming Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair happening the weekend of August 11 – 13th, some of the content and notes on access, as well as mentioning some new projects their involved with. You can learn more about the bookfair by visiting ACABookfair.noblogs.org , the project’s instagram, facebook or mastodon.
Then, Fern from the International Anarchist Defense Fund (AFund.Info) talks about the upcoming International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners from August 23-30th, taking place wherever you make it happen. You can find the call-out, materials, supported prisoners, some anti-repression groups involved and info on past actions and events at https://Solidarity.International .
Hybachi Lamar, an incarcerated Black, Kemetic anarchist being held at the Cook County Jail talks about the conditions in the jail in an audio message that is shared alongside links to his writings and info on how to help South Chicago Anarchist Black Cross support him. All of this can be found at https://southchicagoabc.org/helpcompa/
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Featured Track:
Everything In Its Right Place (by Radiohead) by The String Quartet from Strung Out On Kid A – The String Quartet Tribute To Radiohead
This week: a chat with Pip, a defendant in, and Grace, a supporter of, the Aston Park Defendants case which led to the arrest of 16 people, including 2 journalists for the Asheville Blade, many facing various charges of felony littering and conspiracy to felony litter. You can read some background to this in the words fo the Sanctuary Park defendants at AVLSolidarity.NoBlogs.Org by clicking the “Our Story” link and there’s a bunch more there, including how to support the defendants monetarily. We spend the hour talking about gentrification, police repression, mutual aid and resistance in this small, “progressive” mountain town in the US south. Trials begin April 10, 2023.
First up, we’re sharing a short interview with Beck of Pansy Collective, a queer DIY benefit booking collective responsible for Pansy Fest. Beck talks about the 2022 New Years Eve noise demonstration and bailout that Pansy helped to fundraise for (alongside the Asheville Community Bail Fund), as well as the Buncombe County Jail being reported by the Citizen Times newspaper as the deadliest jail in North Carolina as of January 2021.
Then, we you’ll hear Elliot of Asheville Survival Program (Instagram or FB), M of Asheville for Justice and Moira talk about the water crisis that started on December 24th, the city’s response, how mutual aid stepped up to distribute water and more. To read statements by the 16th people facing felony littering and other charges for mutual work and solidarity here in Asheville, check out AVLSolidarity.NoBlogs.Org, or check out our transcripts or episodes from (10/31/21, 12-26-21, 5-15-22) for more words from the groups involved.
This week on TFSR, we are presenting a conversation with three defendants who are in an ongoing legal battle with the city of Asheville. This group is collectively known as the Asheville Park defendants and is made up of 15 people, three of whom are speaking today. They are all facing felony littering charges in connection with a demonstration in December of 2021 against a targeted camp sweep in a local park adjacent to the downtown district. For this interview, we will talk about their case, the issue of the mistreatment of houseless people generally, camp sweeps and what they mean specifically, how the charge of felony littering is often deployed by the courts, the nationwide crackdown on mutual aid, their own activisms, and how to keep in touch with this situation and support the 15 defendants. You can read all about their case and keep up with this ongoing situation at avlsolidarity.noblogs.org.
To donate to these folks you can venmo @AVLdefendantfund. The defendants would also like to plug the venmos of another AVL based mutual aid group Asheville Survival Program (link shows an interview with participants of ASP with The Final Straw radio show in October 2021), which is @AVLsurvival, the local Anarchist Black Cross chapter Blue Ridge ABC and their venmo is @BlueRidgeABC, and Asheville for Justice (@ashevilleforjustice on Venmo) which is a mutual aid organization dedicated to combating systemic oppression by offering direct community support.
This week on the show, you’ll hear from Doug, Onion and Papi, three folks involved in the Aston Park Build, a daily event to hold space in Aston Park in downtown Asheville, creating art, sharing food and music and a wider part of organizing here to demand safer space & redistribution of wealth to care for houseless folks and relieve the incredible strains on housing affordability in Asheville. We talk about the park actions, the housing crisis and service industry wage woes, local government coddling of business owners and police repression of folks on the margins.
Asheville Survival Program is an autonomous mutual aid network formed in early 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in so-called Asheville, NC. They are building mutual aid with oppressed communities, promoting solidarity and sharing outside the bounds of State structure through their streetside camping gear, food and solidarity distro and their “Until We’re All Free” Store, holding a distribution space open a few days a week walk-up visits and delivering groceries through a network of drivers.
For the hour, I spoke with Fern and Ducky, two members of ASP affiliated with the Free Store, about the history of the group, challenges its faced, challenging charity dynamics and working to reach outside of subculture and across racial and cultural lines. You can reach ASP on Instagram at @AvlSurvival, on fedbook via @ASPDonate, find more links, including how to donate, at https://linktr.ee/avlsurvival. You can also reach them at their email if you have further questions at ashevillesurvivalprogram@gmail.com.
The city of Asheville likes to make headlines. The Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, or TDA, has been working alongside other tourism industry groups, to make an impression in the minds of people worldwide and entice you to visit this little mountain city with it’s big fuck-off estate, the Biltmore, the beautiful mountains for hiking, waterfalls for swimming, artsy and craftsy culture for consuming and rivers of beers for tourists to tube down. But in the last year, Asheville has, once again, let its “crisis in policing” also reach national and international audiences with two New York Times stories (1, 2, which are pay-walled fyi), one reaching the front page, which spoke about a 34% attrition rate of the Asheville Police Department since the George Floyd Uprising and renewed, local efforts to defund or decrease the police in Asheville in favor of social and restorative infrastructure. The article spoke mostly from official viewpoints. According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, to deal with the bad press, the APD hired a public relations firm called ColePro Media for $5,000 a month to shift narratives and bring the veneer of progressive policing back to our fair, “land of the sky.”
This week, we spoke with local journalist, activist, abolitionist and anarchist, Ursula Wren of the AvlFree.Press about Asheville’s “crisis in policing”, a brief blooper roll of Asheville police foibles over the last decade, homeless camp evictions, prior and current efforts to restructure public safety, the reactionary business effort to bolster the police with blue ribbons of support, housing issues and other fare.
