This week Gil O’Teen spoke with Peter Gelderloos, who is an anarchist and an author. His books include “The Failure of Nonviolence”, “Consensus”, “Anarchy Works”, and most recently “Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation”, which is being released two days from now (January 10th 2017) from AK Press. Gil and Peter discuss the ideas in Worshiping Power, how states usually take root, the insidiousness of democracy, the concept of how salvation religions intertwine with the state, and much more.
Don’t forget about the presentation at Firestorm Books and Coffee entitled “Preparing for the Trump Era: An Anarchist Viewpoint” starting at 7pm on Tuesday January 10th. The presenters will explore various approaches to self-organization and self-defense, drawing on the principles of mutual aid and direct action. If you feel lost or uncertain about how to organize in these increasingly crazy times, come to this and get some ideas!
J20 in Asheville
And here in Asheville on January 20th (INAUGURATION DAY) there is a day of activities being planned starting with a meetup and march at Pritchard Park at 10am on the 20th. After that in West Asheville, there will be free food, healing space, workshops, and a dance party/benefit in the evening. To plug in and see the most recent info, you can visit http://j20asheville.noblogs.org or you can plug in on fedbook by searching “J20 Day of Resistance & General Strike”
This week, we’re replaying an interview that Bursts conducted with Ron Sakolsky in March of 2016. Ron had just recently published Breaking Loose: Mutual Acquiescence or Mutual Aid? From the original posting: “Ron is a poet, an anarchist, a surrealist, a pirate radio broadcaster and author and more. Recently, Little Black Cart published a small book by Ron Sakolsky entitled Breaking Loose: Mutual Acquiescence or Mutual Aid? The essay is an anarcho-surrealist critique in which Ron levels a challenge to readers to move past (or break free) from the limitations we internalize from engaging with and within (as well as with others within) the systems of domination. In the conversation, Ron revisits the essay, breaks down some terminology and eggs the listener on to exercise their imagination and act from places of inspiration to apply direct action against the status quo. The essay it’s built off of can be found in Modern Slavery #1.
During the hour, we discuss that book, we chat about radio and Ron’s 30 years of radio experience starting in college radio in IL, later involved in the pirate station called Black Liberation Radio, publishing and promoting the building of micro-broadcast transmitters, and currently with Radio Tree Frog in the forests of Coast Salish Territories AKA British Colombia. He contributed to and edited the titles Seizing The Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook (AK Press, 1998) and Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada (New Star Books, 2010). A sample of featuring mostly content from the “Old Pal” show on Tree Frog radio is found here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tree+frog+radio&t=ffsb&ia=videos&iai=CACQMFIi9Pk ”
To hear more of our archives, dating back to 2010, check out thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org
Announcements
Jerry Jai Williams
Later this week, District Attorney Todd Williams plans to announce whether or not he will be indicting Sgt. Tyler Radford for the murder of 35 year old Asheville resident Jerry Williams (no relation), who was a children’s book author and father of 5. The particulars of this meeting will hopefully be made public later this week. For those who are unaware of this case, Williams was murdered in early July this year at the Deaverview apartment complex after police were called regarding an unrelated domestic dispute. In response to Jai, or Jerry, being killed by law enforcement and the discrepencies between stories of witnesses and the police narrative, Asheville experienced its first of many vigorous protests under the auspices of Black Lives Matter. It is expected that the DA, who recently received a 900 page report on the case from the State Bureau of Investigation, will deliver a non-indictment announcement, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for calls for solidarity from the Williams family and for community responses. You can also call the DA’s office to express your opinion at (828) 259-3410.
KINETIC JUSTICE
There is urgent need for folks to call prison administrators at Limestone Correctional Facility, where Kinetic Justice (who was one of the main organizers of the September 9 #PrisonStrike) has been transferred in order to isolate and endanger him. He was brutally beaten on December 2, and continues to fear for his life.
WE NEED TO SHOW THE PRISON THAT THERE ARE MANY EYES AND EARS ON THE OUTSIDE KEEPING TRACK OF KINETIK!
Here are the numbers to call, and the script provided by IWOC:
Call Limestone Prison Warden Christopher Gordy 256-233-4600
Call Commissioner Jeff Dunn & Ass Comm Grant Culliver 334-353-3883 webmaster@doc.alabama.gov
Call Gov Robert Bentley 334-242-7100
Call Department of Justice 205-244-2001ussaln.civilrights@usdoj.gov
Say this, “I am calling to demand that you release Robert Early Council from solitary confinement and move him out of Limestone Correctional Facility immediately. He was brutally beaten on December 2nd and continues to fear for his life.”
You can read about Kinetik’s work at the Free Alabama Movement’s website freealabamamovement.com
GRAND JURY RESISTANCE AT STANDING ROCK
On or around December 3rd, 2016 a water protector at Oceti Sakowin received a summons to appear before a federal grand jury that has been convened in relation to the resistance of water protectors. What we know about grand juries is that they have a long history of being used to target those in resistance to the state and engaged in political or revolutionary movements. The purpose of this grand jury and all grand juries that target revolutionary people and communities is to cause division, manufacture prisoners of war, create paranoia and suspicion amongst comrades. We will not be intimidated and resistance to this is only strengthening our resolve to kill this black snake and all the others.
Water protectors stand in resistance to this grand jury and all tools of state repression, be it on the ground through Morton County’s violent tactics or in the shrouded secrecy of a grand jury courtroom.
Indigenous people, water protectors, legal workers, revolutionaries and comrades from across the camps are actively organizing resistance to this grand jury. Camp wide education efforts are already underway as well as reaching out through our networks of solidarity that know no borders in order to spread the word.
If you have been contacted by federal law enforcement or have been served with a subpoena related to water protector activities or the resistance at Standing Rock please contact the Water Protector Legal Collective at (605) 519-8180. Grand juries rely on the isolation and fear that can come with a subpoena. The first step of resistance is seeking solidarity and support!
And for many other fantastic resources regarding grand juries and grand jury resistance, you can visit itsgoingdown.org and search the article Grand Jury Resistance at Standing Rock #NoDAPL Grand Jury Resistance at Standing Rock
Oakland March in response to Gentrification & #Ghostship
In Oakland, there’s a call for a March on Monday entitled: Honor the dead! Fight for the living!
Resist the destruction of all that allows us to survive and sometimes thrive. Let us mourn and rage together against a world that tears us apart, slowly in the form of ongoing gentrification, development, deportation, and imprisonment – or swiftly through tragedy that could have been prevented.
From Libby to Trump, they don’t care about us, let’s show them we don’t need them! It’s not about the artists. It’s about all of us trying to survive in Oakland. Poor people, people of color and queer people have been fighting for their existence for decades.
Communal warehouses are only one of our most recent dwellings where sometimes we get to imagine what another life could look like.
Defend tent cities and takeover vacant buildings! Fight landlords! We demand a moratorium on all evictions and affordable housing for all!
Monday, December 12th, 6pm at Grand Lake Theater @ Grand Ave and Lake Park Ave next to Lake Merritt
FBI Spying & Rule 41
Also of note, the December 9th episode of On The Media, a podcast produced by NPR’s WNYC studios with a progressive focus on media production in the U.S. and politics, had a really good interview with Rainey Reitman, the Activism Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The OTM interview, the second interview of the episode, focused on the recently passed updates to Rule 41 of the U.S. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, giving permission for the FBI to hack computers outside the jurisdiction in which the warrant was granted, often specifically where encryption or another means of obscuring or securing the information is being used. Check out that episode at http://www.wnyc.org and more work and analysis of digital freedom and surveillance from our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be found at https://eff.org, alongside toolkits for staying safer in the interwebs
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. https://itsgoingdown.org/may-day-across-north-america/ https://itsgoingdown.org/bloc-party-fire-beltane/
This week’s episode features a conversation with Ron Sakolsky. Ron is a poet, an anarchist, a surrealist, a pirate radio broadcaster and author and more. Recently, Little Black Cart published a small book by Ron Sakolsky entitled Breaking Loose: Mutual Acquiescence or Mutual Aid? The essay is an anarcho-surrealist critique in which Ron levels a challenge to readers to move past (or break free) from the limitations we internalize from engaging with and within (as well as with others within) the systems of domination. In the conversation, Ron revisits the essay, breaks down some terminology and eggs the listener on to exercise their imagination and act from places of inspiration to apply direct action against the status quo. The essay it’s built off of can be found in Modern Slavery #1.
During the hour, we discuss that book, we chat about radio and Ron’s 30 years of radio experience starting in college radio in IL, later involved in the pirate station called Black Liberation Radio, publishing and promoting the building of micro-broadcast transmitters, and currently with Radio Tree Frog in the forests of Coast Salish Territories AKA British Colombia. He contributed to and edited the titles Seizing The Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook (AK Press, 1998) and Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada (New Star Books, 2010). A sample of featuring mostly content from the “Old Pal” show on Tree Frog radio is found here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tree+frog+radio&t=ffsb&ia=videos&iai=CACQMFIi9Pk
“Just moments ago, Albert Woodfox, the last remaining member of the Angola 3 still behind bars, was released from prison 43 years and 10 months after he was first put in a 6×9 foot solitary cell for a crime he did not commit. After decades of costly litigation, Louisiana State officials have at last acted in the interest of justice and reached an agreement that brings a long overdue end to this nightmare. Albert has maintained his innocence at every step, and today, on his 69th birthday, he will finally begin a new phase of his life as a free man.
In anticipation of his release this morning, Albert thanked his many supporters and added: “Although I was looking forward to proving my innocence at a new trial, concerns about my health and my age have caused me to resolve this case now and obtain my release with this no-contest plea to lesser charges. I hope the events of today will bring closure to many.”
Over the course of the past four decades, Albert’s conviction was overturned three separate times for a host of constitutional violations including prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense, racial discrimination in the selection of the grand jury foreperson, and suppression of exculpatory evidence. On June 8th, 2015, Federal Judge James Brady ordered Albert’s immediate release and barred the State from retrying Albert, an extraordinary ruling that he called “the only just remedy.” A divided panel of the 5th Circuit Court of appeals reversed that order in November with the dissenting Judge arguing that “If ever a case justifiably could be considered to present ‘exceptional circumstances’ barring re-prosecution, this is that case.” That ruling was on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court when news of his release broke.
On behalf of the Angola 3 – Albert Woodfox, Robert King, and in memory of Herman Wallace – we would like to sincerely thank all the organizations, activists, artists, legal experts, and other individuals who have so graciously given their time and talent to the Angola 3’s extraordinary struggle for justice. This victory belongs to all of us and should motivate us to stand up and demand even more fervently that long-term solitary confinement be abolished, and all the innocent and wrongfully incarcerated be freed.”
For our 2014 interview with Malik Rahim about the case of the Angola 3, check out our blog
This week, Bursts speaks with Lawrence Jarach. Lawrence is a co-editor of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. You’ll hear about that project, some of it’s history, Post-Left anarchy, individualism, mass society and more.
We also speak about conflict and resolution processes featured in the main article of this latest issue of AJODA (#76). The title of the article is “Against Identity Politics” and attempts to discuss methods of engagement or disengagement around issues of Identity and argues that some of the methods employed (call-outs, denunciation, crit-self-crit, accountability processes) developed out of Maoist practice with the desire to actually eschew and silence rather than open up room for debate and discourse. More on the project and article can be found at http://anarchymag.org
Over the hour, Hilary talks about her 7 years of living in Chiapas and recording the stories and experiences of women there, collecting stories on their behalf. The book covers the Zapatistas experiences before the EZLN uprising of 1994, during that period and after. Discussion address what gender, indigeneity and class looked like and how that’s changed in the Zapatista communities, the state of Chiapas and in Mexico. William and Hilary also explore the effects that the EZLN & La Otra Compaña have had on radicals and anarchists abroad, the origins of the EZLN, some parallels and distinctions between anarchism and Zapatismo and much more.
This week, we’re excited to present a conversation with Saralee Stafford and Neal Shirley, editors and authors of a new book out from AK Press entitled “Dixie Be Damned: 300 years of Insurrection in the American South”. The book is a study of Maroon, Indigenous, White, Black, worker, farmer, slave, indentured, women and men wrestling against institutions of power for autonomy and self-determination. All of this in a region stereotyped to be backwards, slow, lazy, victimized and brutal. The editors do a smash-bang job of re-framing narratives of revolt by drawing on complex and erased examples of cross-subjectivity struggles and what they can teach us today about current uprisings in which we participate.
Throughout the hour we explore some of the examples that became chapters in the book, critiques of narrative histories and academia and what new ways forward might be towards an anarchist historiography. Keep an ear out for Saralee and Neal’s book tour, coming to a bookspace near you.
This week, we speak with Jesse Cohn, author of the recent book, Underground Passages: Anarchist Resistance Culture 1848-2011, published by AK Press. In the book, Jesse explores trajectories in literature, cartoons, comics, music, poetry, drama produced at times by and or for or just conspicuously consumed by anarchists in europe, north and south america and asia during that time period. We talk about what Mr Cohn sees us as seeking to communicate, how we do that, and who we’re speaking to and how those questions change over time. More info on the book can be found at akpress.org
Jesse also puts out an invitation to listeners to share their stories of growing up in an anarchist household (what some might term “Black Diaper Babies”) or as the child of anarchists. The hope is to create a work that’d speak about what multi-generationality looks like or could look like. You can reach him at jcohn(aaat)pnc(d0t)edu with questions or stories.
As a quick update to last week’s episode about the hunger strike at OSP Youngstown by 6 prisoners: Hasan announced on April 15th, 2015 that he and 4 other prisoners stopped their hunger strike. Sedrick Tucker was continuing his hunger strike as of Friday, April 17th, 2015 due to private medical malpractice issues which he did not feel were being addressed by the demands that were met by the prison administrators. The support website, lucasvilleamnesty.org, stated in a recent post that the strike was a mixed victory, with some demands won and others not with the Warden conceding as little as possible. Hasan suggests that concerned people should contact that Ohio Medical Board and ask them to look into Sedrick Tucker’s treatment at the hands of Dr. James Kline. Hasan also suggests contacting ODRC Medical Service Administrator and ask to send another doctor to review Mr Tucker’s situation. It should be noted that Sean Swain also had issues with Dr. Kline during his last hunger strike. Have a pencil read to write this down if you want to contact ODRC’s Medical Admin.
Stuart Hudson Medical Service Administrator 770 W Broad St Columbus OH 43222
To reach out to Sedrick Tucker, here’s an address: Sedrick Tucker #117-137 OSP 878 Coitsville Hubbard Rd Youngstown, OH 44505
Writing to Sedrick or in concern for him has real effects in how the guards and doctors will treat him.
Download This Episode Jeremy Bentham (died 1832) on display at London College into the 1970’s. Note his mummified head between his feet…
This week William speaks with Emily Horne and Tim Maly about their book The Inspection House; An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance, which was published in October 2014 by Coach House Books in their Exploded Views series. This interview comes right before the authors book tour of locations in Canada.
From the book’s website:
“In 1787, British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham conceived of the panopticon, a ring of cells observed by a central watchtower, as a labor-saving device for those in authority. While Bentham’s design was ostensibly for a prison, he believed that any number of places that require supervision—factories, poorhouses, hospitals, and schools—would benefit from such a design. The French philosopher Michel Foucault took Bentham at his word. In his groundbreaking 1975 study, Discipline and Punish, the panopticon became a metaphor to describe the creeping effects of personalized surveillance as a means for ever-finer mechanisms of control.
Forty years later, the available tools of scrutiny, supervision, and discipline are far more capable and insidious than Foucault dreamed, and yet less effective than Bentham hoped. Public squares, container ports, terrorist holding cells, and social networks all bristle with cameras, sensors, and trackers. But, crucially, they are also rife with resistance and prime opportunities for revolution.”
In the interview, Emily and Tim talk about Jeremy Bentham’s life, the intended and actual uses of the panopticon, the dangers of the well intentioned, and more!
The book has a lot of good stuff in it, history and analysis and humor. For more info about The Inspection House and about the author’s Canadian tour, you can visit http://www.chbooks.com/catalogue/inspection-house
The Panopticam (live streaming & timelapse from the top of the cabinet in which Jeremy Bentham sits)
Metro.UK article on Jeremy Bentham’s attendence record at the University College of London since his passing in 1838.
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
