Category Archives: Author

William C. Anderson: On Blackness and Anarchy

William C. Anderson

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This week on The Final Straw, we are super pleased to present a talk given at the most recent Asheville Anarchist Bookfair by William C. Anderson, who co authored the book As Black As Resistance with Zoe Samudzi. The talk he is giving here is based heavily on the first chapter of the book called Black in Anarchy, and in addition to laying the groundwork of how he and Samudzi wrote the book, he speaks about the truly conditional nature of so called “citizenship” that many people living in the US face, the continuing evolution of race and the reliance of white supremacy to Black subjugation, and he places Blackness in proximity to Anarchy, and much more.

From the back cover: “As Black As Resistance makes the case for a new program of self-defense and transformative politics for Black Americans, one rooted in an anarchistic framework that the authors liken to the Black experience itself. This is not a book of compromise, nor does it negotiate with intolerance. It is a manifesto for everyone who is ready to continue progressing towards liberation for all people.”

We hope you will enjoy this talk, and if you are curious about the book As Black As Resistance by Zoe Samudzi and William C. Anderson, you can head over to AK Press to learn more!

Announcements

Phone Zap for Prisoners at McCormick CI

IWOC announces that prisoners at McCormick CI in South Carolina are being forced to march around the square in only their boxer shorts, including in front of female staff.  Among these prisoners are the Muslim prisoners whose religion demands that they cover their bodies.

Check out the above link for a number and call script.

Charlottesville Solidarity

There has been a request for legal support for an anti-racist comrade who was arrested on August 12th, the year anniversary of the resistance to the United The Right rally on A12 in Cville in 2017.  This trans comrade was arrested with the help of active doxxing efforts of a far-right troll this month, he was “genital checked” (read fondled and assaulted) by police without any non-police witnesses, and arrested and could use funds to help in court-support.  You can donate to the legal support via a friend at https://paypal.me/lara757 , request that the police and city remove the comrades dead name and photo from their website and follow @SolidCville for future court support in September for this person.

There is also a call up to support Toby & Veronica, two anti-racist organizers from Cville in court on August 23rd at 9:45 AM at the Charlottesville General District Court at 606 E. Market St, Charlottesville, VA.

If you want to see analysis on antifascist events that have occurred thusfar, in DC and Cville, you can head to crimethinc.com and read interviews done with folks who were on the ground there, as well as listen to the most recent Hotwire episode which deals with these topics.

Maya Little Solidarity in Chapel Hill

On Monday, August 20th at 7pm at Peace & Justice Plaza at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, there will be a demonstration in support of Maya Little, an anti-racist activist who faces charges for allegedly throwing paint and her own blood on a confederate statue on UNC campus known as “Silent Sam.”

#August21

AAAnd DO NOT FORGET that in just a few days will kick off the 2018 Prison Strike, scheduled for August 21st thru September 9th. Coming just two years after the largest prison strike in US history, this one has the potential to be even bigger. If you would like more resources and ideas on how to get engaged with this strike and to learn about the striker’s demands, go to prisonstrike.com, and additionally you can listen to the Rustbelt Abolition Radio episode entitled Prelude to the 2018 Prisoner Strike done with two members of IWOC Oakland.

#August21 meetup in Asheville

On Tuesday, August 21st from 5pm to 7 or so at Firestorm Books & Coffee, join Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross for a series of updates and discussions concerning the Nationwide Prison Strike from August 21 – September 9th, 2018.  BRABC will talk about the repressions that have already occurred as prisons around the country ramp up in fear of prisoners flexing their collective muscles by putting down their tools, educating each other, organizing and refusing meals.  They’ll provide you with some tools and knowledge to help you amplify the voices of those on the inside.  For a list of events around the country to support #August21, check out igd or PrisonStrike.Com.

Hunger Strike at Sterling Correctional in Colorado

Denver ABC passed on information about a hunger strike that’s started at Sterling CI in Colorado.  The demands of the prisoners and updates can be found at the DABC website.

NAABC Conference Fundraiser in AVL

Also, on August 29th at The Odditorium in Asheville, BRABC will be hosting a benefit concert to raise funds for travel costs for formerly incarcerated folks and former Political Prisoners attending the North American Anarchist Black Cross conference in Colorado this fall.  The show will feature performances by Too Bad (from Florida) and the local talents of Autarch, Good Grief & Harsh Mike.

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Playlist pending

Charles E. Cobb, Jr, on “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed”

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“You may be nonviolent, but I’m not gonna let these white people kill you”. A presentation with Charles Cobb on This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed.

This week we are very pleased to present a presentation done some months ago at Firestorm Books with Charles E. Cobb, Jr.  Charles Cobb is a journalist, writer, and current senior analyst at allAfrica.com, which is “is a voice of, by and about Africa – aggregating, producing and distributing news and information from over 140 African news organizations and our own reporters to an African and global public.” Cobb has had a long career full of landmark moments, for example being the first Africa correspondent for NPR and being the first Black staff writer for National Geographic Magazine, among many other achievements.

In this presentation, done on April 2nd 2018, Cobb talks about his 2014 book “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed”, which details his work from 1962 to 1967 for the SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), the most influential youth and student organization during the Civil Rights Movement. He also fills in a much overlooked gap in the understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, that is, the lived experiences of Black people living in the rural South at this time, gives his insights on embedding in communities for social justice purposes, and draws lessons from those insights as they pertain to the current Movement for Black Lives. In this talk he is being interviewed by Carol, who is a long time comrade and friend.

Announcements

Week of International Support in Lead Up to Nationwide Prison Strike

A call from a variety of groups to make some noise for the upcoming prison strike, kicking off on August 21st, 2018. This is a challenge to every anarchist, abolitionist, rebel and determined fighter against prison society and white supremacy in Amerikkka:

‘Between Monday, July 16 and Saturday, July 21, we’re calling on you to help unleash a concerted and spectacular array of solidarity actions before the upcoming prison strikes! Prepare now, bring mayhem everywhere! As you likely know, prisoners will strike from August 21st to September 9th. They anticipate guards and administrators to respond with violent reprisals, media distortions, and extended lockdowns. Defending the strikes from the outside is an essential component of its success. Don’t wait; retaliation has already started and as August 21st approaches we expect to see transfers, preemptive lockdowns, and more. Outside support efforts, in collaboration with imprisoned rebels, have already begun. Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, IWOC, and other organizations are building phone trees, publishing call-outs, and mounting pressure campaigns. Another thing outside supporters can do is promote and set a stage for the strike. From July 16-21, we want to make an opening act that warms up the public consciousness and media landscape.

If we’re successful, it will also be a loudspeaker for the prisoners’ call, blaring it past the censors, the mailroom pigs, and the dense walls of isolation and silence that prevent prisoners from knowing what’s cooking in other states or facilities until it’s already served up cold. The challenge before us is to do things so spectacular, creative, and unexpected that the mainstream media cannot neglect them. Hashtag: #prisonstrike2018. Use any means necessary to break that media blockade: take the streets, paint the town, disrupt the status quo, hack a site, get things lit, or go ahead and chuck your anarchist purity, resort to wooing celebrity endorsements, buying clever ads, or schmoozing your way into the news. Remember, the radical and independent outlets most likely to cover our activities exist mainly online.

We need to leverage that coverage to force the big old media (the kind that gets into prisons: TV, radio, print editions of newspapers) to report this news due to fear-of-missing-out. The goal: get the phrase “Nationwide Prison Strike: 8/21-9/9” printed or spoken on the largest platform so prisoners can see it and no one outside can ignore it. So get out there and surprise us! Overwhelm amerikkka’s hostile media environment and get the word into prisons large and small across the nation. ‘

For downloadable Sticker and Poster Graphics:
https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/nationalprisonstrike2018/

Groups endorsing the 2018 Nationwide Prison Strike:
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee
The Fire Inside Collective
Millions for Prisoners
The People’s Consortium

Asheville Prison Strike Info Session

If you’re in the asheville area, Tuesday the 17th from 5-7:30pm at Firestorm, Blue Ridge ABC is holding an info session about the prison strike. There’ll be an introduction workshop to writing to prisoners followed by news about the strike, propaganda to take home and brainstorming on outreach methods we can take to get word flowing on the outside and support those rumblings on the inside. This event is open to anyone who’s interested in uplifting prisoner voices.

Intl Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners

In other prison-related news, here’s an announcement about the August 23- 30th 6th Annual Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners.  From https://solidarity.intenational/ :

We are coming back with global week of solidarity with anarchist prisoners. Since last year, a lot has changed in our countries, but the general tendency is going in the worse direction with more repressions applied against anarchists not only in Europe but worldwide. With this in mind, we are calling for sixth annual week of solidarity!

Last year lots of people sent us their reports from different parts of the world and we hope that this year the tradition will grow even bigger. We need to support our comrades! Use this week to spread the information about anarchists behind bars. Don’t have prisoners in your country? No worry, support prisoners from other countries in your region or use those days to raise awareness of repression mechanisms and how anarchist communities can fight against them!

Build up security culture, support your local anarchist prisoners and fight back.

Do not hesitate to continue sending your reports to tillallarefree@riseup.net!

Nobody is free till all are free!

Eric King’s Partner Needs Help

In other anarchist prisoner related topics, the partner of Eric King has just suffered some major tragedies in her life and could use some help. She was recently in a car accident from which she’s recovering but now lacks a vehicle for her day to day work life, the childcare of Eric and her two kids, and her weekly visitations of him in prison. On top of that and her partner serving a sentence on which he has 5 more years, Eric’s partner was also just diagnosed with thyroid cancer. If you have any extra dough you can toss to her, there’s a go fund me page where she’s soliciting donations. This can be found at gofundme.com.

The Texas prison system is trying terrorist-jacket politicized prisoner Malik Washington!

Politicized prisoner Malik Washington was cleared for removal from Ad-Seg by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s state classification committee last month.  He has spent the past two years in solitary confinement on a bogus riot charge, which TDCJ has since admitted was not for actual rioting, but for organizing fellow prisoners to engage in work stoppages during the 2016 nationwide prison strike.
But as soon as Malik got to his new unit, he was informed that his clearance had been revoked, and that he was heading back to Ad-Seg.  He was given no explanation of why, but his support network did some digging, and found out that the classification committee is claiming to have “received additional information” from the Fusion Center in Texas, causing a determination that “it was in the best interest of the department that he not be released from Ad-Seg.”
 
Fusion Centers bad news; they are based in the Department of Homeland Security and deal with anti-terrorism intelligence gathering, which, as we know, means manufacturing evidence to label people associated with the anti-authoritarian left, and others, as terrorists.
Fusion Centers are shadowy, unaccountable arms of the repressive state apparatus, and are quickly becoming one of state’s new favorite tools.  What just happened to Malik is a signal that TDCJ is upping its repression of anarchist-identified prisoners, Muslims, and those engaged in black liberation struggle.
Please share this info with any media contacts you have; urge them to investigate Fusion Centers, and to ask questions about what kind of information they collect, how it is fact-checked, and how this data collection contributes to political repression–and urge them to dig into Malik’s situation!
Write to Malik at:
Keith H. Washington
#1487958
McConnell Unit
3001 South Emily Drive
BeevilleTX 78102

Sean Swain update

To check in about last week’s ask about Sean Swain’s condition, we have yet to hear anything back from Sean, the prisoner who has for the last 4 years been doing a weekly segment on our radio show. Sean had been missing from the ODRC database of prisoners and not showing up as a transfer to another prison but the day after last week’s episode of our show it was brought to our attention that Sean was now back in the Ohio database’s website. Anyone with clues about Sean’s condition and state of being, please drop us a line at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net.

Red Fawn Fallis sentenced to 57 months in jail

In May, Michael “Little Feather” Giron was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison for actions taken to defend pipeline resistance camps from police assault. Several other water protectors still face federal charges, with potential sentences of decades in prison, stemming from their participation in the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.Indigenous Water Protector Red Fawn Fallis, a political prisoner arrested during the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, was sentenced today in federal court by Judge Daniel Hovland. Fallis was sentenced to 57 months (4.75 years) in federal prison. She will receive a credit of 18 months ‘time served’ taken off of her sentence, from time spent in North Dakota jails before trial proceedings began. Fallis is expected to serve a total of 39 months in prison followed by 3 years probation.

In January 2018, Fallis entered a non-cooperating plea agreement in which prosecutors agreed to seek a sentence of less than seven years. In exchange, she pleaded guilty to charges of ‘Civil Disorder’ and ‘Possession of a Firearm and Ammunition by a Convicted Felon.’

Red Fawn and her supporters had previously maintained her innocence, and had stated that Fallis accepted the plea deal under the assumption that she would not receive a fair trial due to prosecutors withholding evidence.

Judge Hovland had forbidden Fallis’ defense team from mentioning treaty rights or other issues related to her arrest at anti-pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation border.

The case against Red Fawn had centered around allegations she fired a gun during her arrest on October 27, 2016, when a massive police and military raid seized indigenous treaty lands on behalf of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The gun allegedly fired by Fallis was later revealed to have belonged to Heath Harmon, an undercover FBI informant who was romantically involved with Red Fawn at the time of her arrest.

Before she was sentenced by Judge Hovland, Red Fawn Fallis told the court,

“No matter where I go from here I am going to continue going forward…I wanted to move forward in a positive way away from Heath Harmon and the things he tried to put on me while I was trying to push him away.” – Red Fawn Fallis

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You can find our stuff up on twitter, fedbook, instagram, mastadon, youtube & reddit, plus our most recent show is always up on soundcloud.

Shane Burley on Fascism Today + Asheville’s Service Worker Assembely

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This week on The Final Straw, we’ll be airing two interviews. In the first, Bursts spoke with author and activist Shane Burley about the state of street level fascism and anti-fascism in the U.S. Then about 45 minutes into the episode, you’ll hear Bursts speaking with two members of the Asheville branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW.

Shane Burley on Fascism today

Shane is the author of numerous articles on the subject as well as a the 2017 book from AK Press, “Fascism Today: What It Is And How To End It.” The conversation ranges from talking about specific groups like Atomwaffen, The Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), to the Unite The Right 2 (UTR2) having been announced by Jason Kessler for either D.C. or Charlottesville, VA.

Shane also talks about essentialism in fascism and the creeping relationship between “identitarian” patriarchs and the trans-misogyny of TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) in Deep Green Resistance, such as Lierre Kieth and Derrick Jensen. The book mentioned by Bursts about essentialism, fascism and anarchism can be found in audio format on R.A.D., another member of the CZN.  The original text can also be found on their tumblr.

Shane Burley is touring on the east coast, currently, and can be seen tonight (June 17th) at The Wooden Shoe in Philadelphia and on Tuesday the 19th at Potter’s House in Washington, D.C.

Asheville IWW on Service Work

The wobblies talk about the upcoming Service Workers Assembly they have planned for Tuesday, June 26th from 6-9pm at Kairos West, under Firestorm in West Asheville.  Here’s a link to their fedbook.

If you are a service worker in the Asheville area and want to chat with other folks from the industries about how your conditions could improve, come on by. No bosses, snitches or scabs, please.

There’s no Sean Swain again this week, hopefully we’ll get the crossed wires fixed soon.

Announcements

Debbie Africa of MOVE9 released!

Debbie Sims Africa was paroled this week from prison after about 40 years inside for crossing the Philly PD and the Frank Rizzo administration!  We hope that a push can happen to get the remaining 6 members inside.  Welcome to the outside, Debbie! #FreeEmAll

Local Announces

In this run-up week to the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB2018), there’ll be a game of punk jeopardy on Thursday the 21st at the Lazy Diamond starting at 9pm. The venue is a bar, so it’s 21 and up only. On Friday, feel free to stop by the welcome table at Firestorm for an intro to the range of events over the weekend. Check out the calendar of events, including the schedule for the workshops and more!

Playlist

“If you stay up all night you owe it to yourself to watch sunrise, every time”; A Presentation with Margaret Killjoy about her new book The Barrow Will Send What it May, anarchist subculture, and representation.

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This week we are airing a presentation that Margaret Killjoy gave at Firestorm Books on the release day of her new release The Barrow Will Send What it May. This is the second in her Danielle Cain series which highlights magic, anarchism, queerness, punk squatter subculture and a bunch more.

The presentation consisted of a brief intro, a reading, and to end up a q&a session. As a warning to listeners, the reading describes the events of a car crash. This occurs between 11 and 12 minutes after the presentation starts, it is not graphic but if you aren’t in a good spot to hear that please feel free to turn the volume down.

Also, we have transcribed and re-recorded the questions in the final section, not because anything said was sketchy, but just to not air people’s voices that may not have wanted to be broadcast.

To find copies of Margaret’s book you can go to tor.com and search her name or the title of the book, and to see more of her work you can visit birdsbeforethestorm.net

To hear an interview that we did with her on the release of the first novella in this series alongside other interviews with her, check out our website.

This episode is scored with Nomadic War Machine’s new release, which is Margaret’s solo music project, called The Fields Lay Fallow off of her new album Always//Forever.

To round out the hour, we are presenting a much abridged version of the most recent Error 451, our sometimes weekly tech podcast that tackles tech as it pertains to anarchism, anarchists, and more generally, how to understand this strange, often terrible and sometimes alright world of tech!

Any aspiring techsters can find the full version of this podcast here, and if you wish you can keep up to date on these releases by either subscribing to our podcast feed by using “The Final Straw Radio” as your search or by keeping an eye on our website.

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Juneteenth and BRABC Event

This year incarcerated human rights activist Comrade Malik Washington put out the call for an international day of actions in solidarity with the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery on Juneteenth.

Juneteenth is a holiday celebrated on the 19th of June to commemorate and celebrate the end of legalized slavery in the United States. However, as prison rebels from Alabama to Texas to Florida and beyond have pointed out, the 13th amendment to the Constitution, which supposedly ended slavery, actually carves out an exception for people who have been convicted of a crime, meaning slavery was never fully abolished for incarcerated folks–a condition of exploitation and dehumanization clearly visible within the brutality of every aspect of the US prison system, and in the fact that incarcerated workers receive no meaningful compensation for their labor while in prison.

In response to this call for events, Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross will host a Juneteenth event at 5:30pm on June 19, at Firestorm Books. We will screen Ava Duvernays award-winning documentary “13th,” discuss how people can get involved in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery, and send some cards to prison rebels who need a little love and light right now! Hope to see you there!

Malik Washington’s Statement in Support of Sean Swain

Revolutionary Greetings, comrades! It’s me, Comrade Malik in Texas.

This June 11th I’d like to ask all of y’all to send some Love, Light, and Commissary CA$H to my brother in struggle Sean Swain in Ohio.

Sean has dedicated a lot of time and effort to supporting and sustaining the work done by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. Sean has edited our publications and provided much needed direction for our Abolition movement. Sean continues to make personal sacrifices for the good of all, and he never ceases to speak Truth to Power. In the following months I hope to work directly with Sean so we can tear this entire thing down!

Hopefully I will become an honorary 13th Monkey!!?

In Struggle 4 Life,

Malik

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Playlist here.

Post-Scarcity, Privilege and Walking Away: A Chat with Cory Doctorow

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow on Post-Scarcity & Sci-Fi

This week, we present an interview that Bursts conducted with the sci-fi and picture book author, technologist and social critic Cory DoctorowCory is an editor of the blog BoingBoing, a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and his most recent book is entitled Walkaway, out from Head of Zeus and TOR books.  The novel plays with themes of open source technologies, class society, post-scarcity economics, ecological remediation, drop-out culture and liberatory social models. It was released a few days ago in paperback, along with matching re-issues of his other adult sci-fi novels.

For the hour, they chat about themes from the book, sharing, trans-humanism, imagination and monsters.  To find more work by Cory, check out his blog craphound.com.  You can also find him on twitter, free writings on Project Gutenberg, his content on archive.org, or his podcast.

Due to technical difficulties, we have no Sean Swain segment this week.  We hope this will be remedied next episode.

For a slightly longer version of this episode, make sure to check out the podcast version.

Stay tuned mid-week for a podcast special interview with an anarchist from Indonesia about May Day in Yogyakarta and the repression that has followed.  Also, if you haven’t been checking our podcast feed, you’re missing out.  We have been regularly releasing extra content mid-week including our 8th Anniversary episode with interviews of hosts of two Channel Zero Network podcasts.  You’ll also find two episodes of #Error451, our sometimes-weekly tech security podcast from an anarchist perspective.

Announcements

If you’re in Asheville this week, consider attending the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair benefit show at the Odditorium on Haywood Road on the West Side. The show starts at 9pm, it features the music of Kortriba, Mother Marrow, Lynathrope and a special battle set of the project Fatal Comfort versus the stylings of FUNK JAMz. If you visit the ACAB table, you could be one of the first one of your friends to grab an ACAB2018 poster hot off the presses or ACAB2018 tshirt, both designed by super awesome local artists. Proceeds from the entry, shirts and posters go to pay for the local anarchist bookfair taking place between June 21st and 24th. More info on the bookfair at acab2018.noblogs.org

Also, this Friday Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross will be hosting it’s monthly presentation of the short documentary series, TROUBLE, by sub.Media. This month we’ll watch the second episode of two on the topic of gentrification and resistance to it. The film will be 30 minutes and then followed by a discussion with prompt questions suited to the Asheville’s specific brand of problems. The show starts at 6:30 and will last roughly an hour. Invite your friends!

playlist

scott crow on Liberatory Community Armed-Defense

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This week we share as our main feature an interview with longtime anarchist, musician, anti-racist & organizer from Texas, scott crow. scott is the author of numerous books, including “Black Flags & Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective” & “Emergency Hearts, Molotov Dreams: A scott crow Reader“. At the end of 2017, PM Press published “Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense“. Bursts caught up with scott about a month later and they chatted about his experiences of an abusive household, his anti-racist organizing and engagement in community self-defense from white supremacist militia in the Algeirs neighborhood of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. scott also chats about the text, about community armed self-defense, violence, militarism, masculinity, patriarchy, the chilling effect of displayed weapons and more. To find more of scott’s writing and other interviews, please check visit scottcrow.org .

Announcements

Check out the April episode of B(A)DNews from the A-Radio Network, just released! For more of the episode, check www.a-radio-network.org .

Support for Those Arrested in Newnan GA!

This weekend there were large counter presences to a national socialist movement rally in the small town of Newnan Georgia, about 45 minutes outside of Atlanta. This group, which was formerly known as the American nazi party, has been called one of the most active white supremacist groups in the US, and was gathering to celebrate the birthday of one dead white power a-hole. Despite the protesters outnumbering the wp group by as much as 10 or 20 to 1, militarized police heavily repressed the diverse coalition of anti racist activists by using extreme physical force resulting in over 10 arrests.

From the support page:

As feared, cops attacked and arrested people with absolutely no justification – particularly people of color and other marginalized individuals. So far, we’re aware of up to 13 arrests, some of whom are dealing with serious medical conditions while in jail.

We need to get them out as soon as possible, and we need a lot of money to do it. Together we have the power to free them!

From an update posted this morning:

We have several protesters free already thanks to bail contributions! We have contacted everyone still in jail, and have learned some concerning things: Some protesters are being given trumped up felony charges, despite video evidence showing they did nothing. We believe the charges are intended to make it longer/more expensive to get them out.

We have also learned that some protesters have been put in the same cell block as NSM members (a Nazi group). This makes it even more urgent that we get folks out as soon as possible.

To donate to those still in custody and for contributing legal support, you can visit the support webpage here.

From the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective in Eugene, Oregon

“For this May Day, the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective will be hosting an International Workers’ Day Solidarity Share Fair on Tuesday, May 1st!   The event will be at First Christian Church* from 2-6PM.   This free market is a project organized by NAC to provide free goods and services from local organizations and community groups to the unhoused and working class communities in need of these basic necessities, along with food, live music, and a chance to know other folks in the community – and it’s all free!

The collective is also still accepting donations and volunteers! If you or your group, business, or organization would like to provide goods or services at this event or lend a helping hand, please contact  resources@neighborhoodanarchists.org  to get connected. Your contributions are greatly appreciated!

Check out our Fedbook event page or our website at neighborhoodanarchists.org for more information.  ”

For info on May Day events in Santa Rosa, CA & in Asheville, NC, stay tuned for the April 29th , 2018, episode of The Final Straw for interviews with organizers of events in both of those places.

Certain Days Calendar

For any artists or folks in touch with artists out there, heads up reminder on this:

The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar collective is releasing its 18th calendar this coming fall. The theme for 2019 is ‘Health/Care,’ reflecting on the overlapping topics of health, care/caring, and healthcare. We are looking for 12 works of art and 12 short articles to feature in the calendar, which hangs in more than 3,000 homes, workplaces, prison cells, and community spaces around the world.

Deadline is May 18, 2018 (and June 8 for prisoners) and submissions can be sent to info@certaindays.org or check out certaindays.org for more information.

ACAB 2018 pushes back it’s deadline

For anyone interested in giving a presentation or looking to table at the 2018 ACAB, or Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in Asheville from Thursday, June 21- Sunday, June 24, 2018, there’s been an extension of deadline. Sign up for either or both of those things or find more information at https://acab2018.noblogs.org

And now a couple of repression announcements:

Herman Bell back on track to parole!

In some good news, the lawsuit to block the release of political prisoner Herman Bell, former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army POW in New York State, has been thrown out by a judge, so he should be released on his scheduled parole after nearly 45 years inside. Thanks to everyone who sent letters & emails, made phone calls and spread the word about Herman Bell’s case. We wish him a welcome back to the outside. Free Them All!

In some not as good news from Hamilton, Ontario, so-called Canada:

As some of you may have heard, our beloved friend, Cedar (Peter) Hopperton has been arrested and charged in relation to the property damage that occurred on Locke Street in Hamilton.

In the very early morning hours of Friday, April 6th, the Hamilton SWAT team broke down the door of Cedar’s house, threw in a flash grenade, and entered with assault riffles drawn. Cedar was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable offense (unlawful assembly while masked). While a publication ban is in effect that prohibits us from sharing the details of the crown’s flimsy case, we can say that this is clearly a political prosecution: Cedar is being targeted because they are a visible face to anarchist organizing in Hamilton, and because of their self-affirmed and proud anarchist politics. As we learned from the G20 in Toronto, and again more recently with the J20 defendants in the US, conspiracy charges are ambiguous and deeply political. This is no different.

On Tuesday, April 10th, having already been in custody for 5 days due to stall tactics used by the crown, Cedar was, devastatingly, denied bail. Despite the fact that they have no history of violence and have never been charged with a violent crime, Cedar will remain indefinitely in jail, a place that is profoundly violen t and leaves lasting trauma. In addition to the routine violence of jail life, Cedar, as a gender nonconforming person, faces additional harm from the institution, the guards, as well as the other prisoners.

Please visit https://hamiltonanarchistsupport.noblogs.org/ for more information or to make a donation to Cedar’s legal defense fund. Also consider writing Cedar. Keep in mind all correspondence will be screened by guards. Use ink only – no glue, fragrances, glitter, stickers, etc. Sending books is prohibited. Staples are also not allowed.

Peter (Cedar) Hopperton
c/o Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre
165 Barton St E
Hamilton, ON L8L 2W6

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Show playlist is here.

“Between The Bullet and The Lie”: Kristian Williams on George Orwell

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Kristian Williams on George Orwell

This week on The Final Straw, Bursts presents a conversation with Kristian Williams about his recently published book, Between The Lie & The Bullet: Essays on Orwell, published by AK Press. Kristian is maybe best known for authoring Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America.

For the hour we speak about Kristian’s reading of Orwell, the importance of intellectual honesty, weaknesses in modern Anarchist engagements with ideas and facts on the ground and other topics stemming from the book.  A slightly longer version of this conversation will be available in our podcast, which can be downloaded from our website.  More writings & interviews by
Kristian can be found at KristianWilliams.com.

Hear Bursts prior interviews with Kristian on the writings & anarchism of Oscar Wilde as well as on Kristian’s book, Our Enemies In Blue.

We’d like to apologize for the strange sound during most of Kristian’s portions.  This’ll be present in upcoming interviews, it’s a technical difficulty that hopefully we’ll have sorted quite soon.  Thanks for bearing with us!

Jalil Muntaqim on Revolution, Spirituality & more + Remembering Le Guin

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This Week’s Content

First, we air a portion of Ursula K. Le Guin’s acceptance speech from the 2014 National Book Awards, where she received the Lifetime Acheivement award.  Ursula K. Le Guin, wrote fantasy and sci-fi for 77 years of her life, contributing many books such as The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest & The Earthsea Series.  She died on Monday, January 22nd at the age of 88.  Her fiction touched on many themes, including anarchism, taoism, gender, environmentalism, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Her official website is here. The full video this was pulled from, including the introduction by Neil Gaiman can be found here.

The third and fourth portion of CKUT’s Prison Radio Show interviews with former Black Panther and BLA Political Prisoner of War Jalil Muntaqim. In the third segment, Jalil speak about being incarcerated during the Attica Uprising, the ideas of Intercommunalism, Internationalism and Nationalism, as well as the idea of revolution.  In the final portion, Jalil speaks on spirituality and politics, ISIS and a message to rappers.  More of his writings and info on his case can be found at freejalil.com

Support Kevin Rashid Johnson!

We are nearing the end of the second week of #OperationPUSH!, which is described in a statement released by participants, as a work stoppage or “laydown” in at least eight prison facilities around the state of Florida. The beginning of this plan coincided with Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday on January 15th 2018, in protest of the deplorable conditions in FL prisons. This comes hot on the heels of the September 9th prison strike which took place in 2016 on the 45th anniversary of Attica, and disrupted operations in dozens if not hundreds of prisons across the country. This is being called the largest prison strike in US history, and was followed by several subsequent strikes all over the country. It has been difficult to get information about OperationPUSH!; FL prisons are being predictably recalcitrant and have also been imposing communication blackouts for even suspected participants.

However, there has been one major insight into this situation in the form of an article by Kevin Rashid Johnson entitled Florida Prisoners are Laying It Down. In this article, Rashid (who is a prison journalist and self taught paralegal) describes conditions within Florida prisons in detail, including the high cost of goods in the commissary coupled with the fact of forced and unpaid labor, up to and including a culture of abuse and neglect by prison staff. In retaliation, Rashid has been thrown into an unheated cell, with no working toilet and with a window that cannot properly close, making the temperature equal to the subzero environment outside.

This is a clear sign of retaliatory torture, and surely is what Rashid calls “a true emergency”. It is urgently requested that people call the prison to advocate for and demand the immediate cessation of this abuse on the part of the prison!

Please call:

Warden Barry Reddish
Florida State Prison
Raiford, FL 32083
904-368- 2500

The demands are:

  • Move Johnson (#158039) to a properly climate controlled cell with working toilet
  • Immediately allow Mr. Johnson to make phone calls to his attorneys
  • Stop retaliating against him for reporting on conditions within your prisons.

You can keep up with this situation by visiting fightoxicprisons.wordpress.com or go to Kevin Rashid Johnson’s support website at rashidmod.com

Interview on Afrin from It’s Going Down

A little heads up about media worth checking out. This week, It’s Going Down aired a podcast interview with an anarchist in the U.S. who’s from Turkey about the Turkish assaults on Afrin, one of the cantons of Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Syria. Afrin is administered by the Democratic Confederalist PYD and defended by the YPG & YPJ militias. The interview covers some of the history as relevant to anarchists, some of the developments of Rojava through the Syrian Civil War, their alliance with the United States and Rojava’s relationship with Turkey and other states involved in the proxy wars in the region. This interview is well worth a listen, and hopefully can aid you in organizing reading groups, fundraisers or demonstrations in your area in support of Rojava and it’s tenuous experiment.

An Update from Us!

Just a little heads up, too, we’re messing with our podcast a little bit, not so much in format but more so in distribution. So, we set up a soundcloud with the three latest episodes and all of the episodes in our podcast stream are now up youtube though the videos only plays our show as you’d hear with the episode image as the background. If those platforms are your deal, swing by and follow us. I’d also like to remind y’all that we’re up on itunes. If you go into that blasted program and rate our content and write reviews, it fucks with the algorithms and will make the show visible to wider audiences.

Also, I’d like to reiterate what we say in the introduction to the show, that we have a free edition of the show that’s 59 minutes in length and falls within the requirements of the FCC here in the U.S. for radio broadcast. If you have a community or college radio station in your area and you’d like to hear us up on the airwaves, getting into folks’ cars, houses, jail cells, work places or whatever by the magical accident of radio science, check out our Radio Broadcasting link at our website, hit us up on social media or email us to get the ball rolling. In addition, we suggest getting some friends together to petition the local radio overlords to get us on their station.

Finally, just to remind y’all, we love hearing feedback and show suggestions. Finding a different person or persons every week to fill an hour with interesting content is hard work, and cues from y’all really helps us plug away at this volunteer endeavor. As always, you can email us at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net

Playlist

Walidah Imarisha on Angels With Dirty Faces, Accountability Processes, and more

Walidah Imarisha on Angels With Dirty Faces, Accountability Processes, and more

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This week William and Disembodied Voice had the chance to interview Walidah Imarisha, who is an Oregon based writer, educator, public scholar and spoken word artist about her book Angels With Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption, her 2016 book out from AK Press and IAS, which highlights three distinct experiences that are all in different degrees tangential to the realities inherent to the prison industrial complex.

This book just won the Creative Non-Fiction Award in the state of Oregon earlier in 2017. In this interview we got to touch on a wide array of topics, mostly centered on Angels With Dirty Faces but also on accountability processes and what might have to change in order for them to feel more effective, her relationship to anarchism, and some upcoming projects and appearances.

We also get to touch on the book Octavia’s Brood, a compilation of speculative fiction that Imarisha co edited with Adrienne Maree Brown, who also wrote the book Emergent Strategy.

More about Imarisha, her work, and upcoming events can be found at http://www.walidah.com/

Resist Package Restrictions for Those Incarcerated in New York State!

The thugs who run the NYS prison system (NYS DOCCS) has issued a new directive (4911A) that describes new, draconian package rules that they are testing in 3 facilities as a ‘pilot program’.

Currently, at most facilities, family and friends can drop off packages at the front desk when visiting- packages that include fresh fruit and vegetables that supplement the high carb/sugar, meager diet provided by DOCCS.

These new rules are problematic in a lot of ways including:

1) Packages can be ordered only from approved vendors.
2) Fresh fruit and vegetables are not allowed.
3) Family and friends cannot drop off packages while visiting. All packages must be shipped through the vendor.
4) Each person is limited to ordering three packages a month for him or herself and receiving three packages a month from others. Each package cannot be more than 30 pounds. Of the 30 pounds per package, only 8 pounds can be food.
5) Allowable items will be the same in all facilities. (No more local permits.)
6) There are far fewer items allowed than before and of the items that are allowed, far less variety. This includes additional restrictions on clothing.
7) The pilot rules are not clear about how books, media, religious items and literature, or other items subject to First Amendment protection will be treated. This could mean that groups like NYC Books through Bars will not be able to send free books to the 52,000 people in the prison system.

The pilot program implements an “approved venders only” package system. This means that only packages from approved vendors will be accepted. The vendors appear to be companies that specialize in shipping into prisons and jails. There are currently five approved vendors identified on the DOCCS website. This amounts to a cash grab for these companies.

The pilot program is starting at three facilities: Taconic, Greene, and Green Haven. Those facilities will stop accepting packages from non-approved vendors on
January 2, 2018.

We have to make this package directive unworkable. These new rules are cruel- eliminating fresh fruit and vegetables and creating massive profits for the vampire companies that will fill the niche.

WE CAN ORGANIZE TO ROLL THESE RULES BACK.

Some ideas how:

1-Sign the petition- share it with your address book, share it on twitter, share it on Facebook. It takes two seconds.
https://diy.rootsaction.org/…/no-package-restrictions-for-n…

2-Get in touch with your people in NYS Prisons and let them know about this. Inform them, send them the info. Massive non-cooperation on the part of NYS prisoners will play a huge role in this.

3- Flood the electeds with postcards. Send one to Governor Cuomo and one to Anthony Annucci, the acting commissioner of DOCCS. It costs 34 cents.

Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor of New York State
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224

Acting Commissioner Anthony Annucci
NYS DOCCS
Building 2, State Campus
Albany, NY 12226

Some sample text:

Dear Governor Cuomo,
This holiday season is about giving, not taking away. I object to the new DOCCS package rules.
From,
(Your Name)
(Your relationship to people in prison, if applicable)

Dear Acting Commissioner Annucci,
The new DOCCS package pilot punishes innocent families. Having a loved one in prison is already expensive and difficult—the new rules make it worse. Rescind the package pilot!
From,
(Your Name)
(Your relationship to people in prison, if applicable)

4) Write a letter to both of these people (address above)

5)Call Cuomo’s office and leave a message about it. You won’t have to talk to anyone. Just leave your message.
518-474-8390

6) Email
Cuomo: http://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form
Annuci anthony.annucci@doccs.ny.gov

7) Tweet at Cuomo
@NYGovCuomo

8) Write your NYS Senate and Assembly reps as well:

9) Get media to cover it especially outfits like Democracy Now and the Marshall Project.
stories@democracynow.org
pitches@themarshallproject.org

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Show playlist here.

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Transcription

This week, I and sometimes contributor & commentator Disembodied Voice had the chance to interview Walidah Imarisha, who is an Oregon-based writer, educator, public scholar and spoken word artist, about her book Angels With Dirty Faces, which came out in 2016 `out From AI and AK Press, [and] which highlights three distinct experiences that are, in different degrees, tangential to the realities inherent to the prison-industrial complex. This book just won the creative nonfiction award in the state of Oregon earlier in 2017. In this interview, we got to touch on a wide array of topics, mostly centered on Angels With Dirty Faces but also on accountability processes, and on what might have to change in order for them to feel more effective her relationship to anarchism, and some up-coming projects and appearances. We also get to touch on the book Octavia’s Brood, a compilation of speculative fiction that Imarisha co-edited with Adriene Marie Brown, who also wrote Emergent Strategy. More about Imarisha, her work, and up coming event can be found www.walidah.com.

TFSR-William Goodenuff: So, we are here with Walidah Imarisha, author of Angels with Dirty Faces, and co-editor of Octavia’s Brood. Thank you so much for coming on to this show. Would you introduce yourself a little bit more and talk a little about what you do?

Walidah: Sure! Thanks for having me. My name’s Walidah Imarisha and I’m an educator, and a writer, and I work in a number of different areas. I see my work all tying together as trying to claim a right to the future and trying to be able to move folks toward imagining and then creating better and more just futures. 

TFSR-WG: Will you talk more about your experience as an educator who is also involved in movement work, and also maybe more broadly about the role of the academy in movement? 

W: Sure. I think I’ve been very lucky to teach in places and positions that have allowed me to shape and to have as much autonomy as possible around the content of my classes and the subject material. I think that intellectualism is incredibly important in movements for change. I think its important to have spaces where we are thinking about theory, and we’re thinking about larger frame works and questions. To me all intellectualism should be public intellectualism, which is, in my definition, intellectualism not in service of the powers that be, but in service of the people, and in service of creating new just worlds. And, to me, the distinction that is very important is about, “Who are you accountable to, and who is your work accountable to?” And I’m very proud to call myself a public scholar, because, to me, that means I am accountable to those communities who are marginalized, who are oppressed. I’m accountable to making sure my work reflects them, making sure my work is centered in their leadership and their resistance, and that my work inherently attempts to support changing the structures that created that oppression in the first place. 

TFSR-WG: That’s really cool. Sometimes I find in far left, at least the strains of the far left that I find myself in, that there’s this kind of anti-intellectualism that happens. Do you find that that has been the case for you, or do you have a different experience with that?

W: I think I’ve seen, you know, both sides of the extremes, and I think that’s part of the problem — is that it’s extreme. So I’ve definitely seen folks who are anti-intellectualism and focused only on practice. I’ve also seen folks who have only immersed themselves in theory and are not engaged with or thinking about how that moves on the ground. And I think that both of those extremes ultimately keep us from being able to create the kind of change that we want, so there has to be a balance. And I also think it’s important, again, that intellectualism and the engagement with thinking about the future is really not only rooted in oppressed communities, but includes the imaginings of oppressed communities. So I think it’s important that we’re not just looking to public scholars to just articulate these ideas, but we’re looking to public scholars to help and hold space for communities to articulate these ideas and these imaginings for themselves.

TFSR-WG: Yeah, definitely. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah, the acknowledgment that intellectual theory comes from so many different places and not just out of academies or whatever — though there is a lot of super useful stuff coming out of academies too. So, you’ve done a lot of lectures, and you say you’re an educator and a writer, and you wrote this book Angels with Dirty Faces a couple of years ago. Would you describe this book for anyone who hasn’t read it yet?

W: Sure. It’ Angels With Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption. It’s a creative nonfiction book that looks at the criminal legal system, at prisons, and at the idea of harm and accountability through the narrative and the stories of three people. My goal in putting the book out was to create spaces here we can have conversations about the idea of what happens when harm is done. So when there’s been harm done in communities, when folks have hurt each other, then what happens? And the book doesn’t answer that question, but what I realized in doing my work as an a prison abolitionist is that we needed to humanize those folks who are incarcerated, and also folks who have done harm, and they actually aren’t necessarily the same people, because those folks have been dehumanized. And we can’t begin to have conversations about how to heal communities when we’re imagining folks in the communities not as human beings who have, in some cases, made incredibly atrocious mistakes, but as monsters. 

TFSR-WG: Yeah, that resonates a lot with me, and one of the questions that we were really interested about, is kind of this disposability mindset that the world at large seems to have for so many people, and that that’s certainly conditioned on forces of classism and racism and anti-Blackness.

W: Absolutely. I think that when you live in a capitalist society, everything becomes a commodity, including human beings, and I think that, you know, it’s very clear that, you know — and I think there`s been a lot of amazing scholarship work done about this, the connections between system of racial oppression, like slavery, and the prison system. And recognizing that the prison system is not about safety, it’s not about reducing crime – it’s about exploitation and control of potentially rebellious communities. You know, folks like Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, and Michelle Alexander have moved these conversations in the public. And so I think it’s important to have a historical and larger frame work around it, so that we can see its not just that people are being thrown away – it’s that certain folks especially are being thrown away, because they were never wanted in the first place.

TFSR-Disembodied Voice: Absolutely, yes. What you just said about that there are particular folks who tend to become dehumanized and disposed of in our society is very much true, but what I appreciated about your book and the stories that you tell in it, is that you’re really approaching it from a space where you’re talking about people…who we actually care deeply for who create harm and hurt us, and that is something that has often been an conversation in the community that I’m in, and that we’re in, with things like accountability processes and different ways of trying to address harm at the community level, that – where we don’t want to throw people away, right? And we’ll talk more about that question a little later on in the interview, but I’m curious because you mentioned prison abolitionism. What do you feel, when we talk about the end of prisons, what would need to be true of our society, in order for us to stop throwing people away?

W: Yeah. I think, you know, it’s important to talk bout what abolition is, and I think that Angela Davis has a great short book that she wrote called Abolition Democracy that’s based on the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois, and him talking about the fact that, you know, calling ourselves “prison abolitionists” is specifically and directly linking back to abolitionists who are fighting against slavery. and Du Bois was writing about slavery and said that, you know, abolition is not just the end of slavery – it is the presence of justice for those who were enslaved. It is the ability to participate fully in society, so it’s not just the tearing down; it’s actually a replacement and a building up of those folks who had for so long been exploited and brutalized and terrorized. And I think that that’s a very important and useful framing when we’re talking about prison , because when we talk about prison abolition, often folks think only of tearing down the walls. They think of an absence. And the question becomes, well then, you know, if you wanna tear down the prisons, then what? And I think that for many prison abolitionists, we believe that abolition as a mind set is about ending this carceral mentality, this idea that punishment and retribution that prisons are founded on, but it’s also about creating systems that actually focus on keeping communities whole and safe, and when harm is done, to healing those communities. And so I think it’s important to recognize that abolition is not just about destruction. It’s also about creation. And Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who is an amazing Black Feminist visionary thinker, wrote “What if abolition is a growing thing?” and I think that that idea, as abolition as growing, as a garden, as a plant, rather than as a wrecking ball, is a really powerful one.

TFSR-WG: Yeah, definitely. It seems like yeah, I – it’s hard for me to grapple with this question, super, like — what might need to be true of our society in order for us to stop throwing people away is a really huge question that I sometimes don’t really have great foot holds in — the carceral state, and capitalism, and all of these things like patriarchy, anti-blackness, misogynoir – all these things build walls between people, and you know, take the element of caring out of the human equation, which is a super huge shame. So I think approaching it like that makes a lot of sense to me.
Just to get back to the book, I was really taken with the style that the book was written in, the narrative or creative nonfiction, and I’m really interested in about the evolution of this book. Would you talk a little bit about how it changed stylistically throughout the writing process?

W: Sure. So, Angels With Dirty Faces  focuses on three people stories: myself, my adopted brother Kakamia, who is currently incarcerated in CA, and James McElroy, also known as Jimmy Mac, who was a member of the Westies, which was the Irish Mob that ran Hell’s Kitchen in NewYork from the 1960s to the 1980s, and also served as hit men for the Gambino family, for John Gotti, for the (???). And the book actually began because Jimmy Mac and my brother were incarcerated in the same place and got to know each other, and Jimmy Mac had never done an interview with any journalist, but, because of my brother, he agreed to do an interview with me. And through doing that process, he, you know, was like, do you want to write my biography? And I was like yes, this would be fascinating. But as I began to write the biography, I realized that it was something that was growing. I had been doing work around prisons and justice within prisons for, you know, 20 years or more then. I couldn’t help but want to bring that into talking about Jimmy Mac to give it a framework and to be able to give a full picture of these ideas of crime, of violence, of prisons, of justice, that are so racialized, that are so much about class and gender and sexual identity, and are so much used as a method of social control. And so the book just grew from there to include my brother, to include myself, and then to include the work that I’ve done that has been a lot around Black Liberation political prisoners.

And so, I really began to realize that i think the best way to change folks’ minds is through stories. And I think that what really causes a deep shift within a person is being able to emotionally connect with someone else’s experiences, and I think that is p of the reason that this system works so hard to dehumanize those who it is scared of, because if we are not people, if we are things, then there is less of a possibility of other folks in society empathizing, connecting, and then seeing the ways that the system functions. And so I felt like sharing those stories would be an important way to create a shift. So, the creative nonfiction genre is kind of a giant snatch bag with a lot of things in it. But, you know, my book definitely — it includes statistics, it includes history, it includes analysis. It also includes personal narrative. I’m  a poet, so some of the writing incorporates the aesthetic of poetics. So, it definitely is a hybrid creature. But I think that actually how we live our lives is seeing everything as connected rather than in these neat boxes.

TFSR-DV: Yea, and that is one of the most remarkable aspects of the book. I can imagine that this is something that people comment on to you frequently about it — the way you just charted that evolution of kind of talking about Jimmy Mac and then realizing that more stories needed to be included sounds very natural and organic, and yet the stories that you chose to include about yourself and your brother were highly personal, and I was wondering because, I suppose, you could have chosen to talk about some other folks who are incarcerated who you had learned about or corresponded with, but you chose to speak about yourself and your relationship with your brother and your family. I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on the choice not just to widen the scope of the book from one story to multiple stories, but specifically to those stories.

W: Sure. Well, as I was working on what I thought would by the biography for Jimmy Mac, I came to feel that I was really connected with Jimmy and with this process. I mean, the reason Jimmy spoke to me was because of my brother and, you know, Jimmy was calling me his niece, and said I was an “ Westie,” which I was like, “I don’t know that I want to do that, but thank you,” um, [laughter] and I felt like I was very much a part of the story. I think that any idea of objectivity is a fallacy in human beings. I don’t think that you can be objective. And I think that folks who say they’re being objective in their writing, in their creation, in their education, teaching — they are either lying to you or to themselves. I think that the most principled things is to be clear about your subjectivity, and to be clear about how your subjectivity affects the information you’re presenting, and then to allow the reader to engage with it on that level.

And so that’s what I began doing. And as I was doing that, I was realizing that these conversations around harm, around crime, around violence, were things that I was also grappling with personally. And so, you know, my brother was arrested and tried — at the age of 16 tried as an adult and has served almost 30 years in prison at this point. And then, you know, I had actually gone through a failed accountability – a community accountability process with my partner at the time who had sexually assaulted me. And really recognizing that these stories are not stories that are easy to discuss, these are not stories that there is a neat simple ending that can be created, but these complicated, messy, difficult, painful stories are the ones we have to talk about, because if we don’t talk about them, then any conception of justice we’re creating will eventually derail when we get to places like that. And so I think that, for me, we have to go into those places that make us uncomfortable, that make us scared, that are painful, to be able to sit with the complexities and contradictions of humanity. And I think that’s the only way that we can build new systems of justice, new processes to address harm, new ways to keep communities safe, that will actually both be effective and will embody the values and principles that we have and that we want for this new world.

TFSR-WG: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more, and I think that that point just can not be overstated. There’s no amount of times when, you know, having that information will ever be too much.

TFSR-DV: I wanted to say that one of the things that really challenged me in the book, when you talk about sitting with that complexity, you speak about how — I’m sorry, can you pronounce your brother’s name for me again?

W: Kay-kuh-mee-ah.

TFSR-DV: Kakamia. That you talk about how Kakamia really resisted becoming an informant, and really didn’t want to play that role, but eventually did, and that was really painful for him, it was difficult for you, and it really made me sit with the complexity of that because I think in the circles that I run in there’s like this anti-snitch kind of thing, and it’s this very knee jerk, kind of all of nothing kind of approach that can just be so harsh toward people who do that. And on the one hand, yes, it’s a decision that we can condemn, but on the other hand, it’s also — you capture the horrible choice of that so well in the book. So I just wanted to say that, just for me, that was a moment where the story really forced me to sit with that complexity, so… thank you [laughs].

W: Yeah…thanks. I think that I just wanna be, I mean, Kakamia is anti-snitch, and, you know, hates himself for debriefing. And also probably wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t debriefed. And that both of those things that are in seeming contradiction with each other is absolutely true. I think it is important to take in to account context. I think that one of the things, one of the many things that is so flawed with the criminal legal system is the idea that people fit neatly in to categories, and human interactions fit neatly into categories, and so we can predict what needs to happen when a situation occurs. And I think one of the things that’s really powerful about the idea of transformative justice, which is you know, prison abolition is a part of that, is the idea of saying, as we are living the values we have for this new world, how are we respecting that every human interaction is different, is unique, and how are we responding to that and creating situations that address that moment? I think that’s on e of the things that is so both challenging and powerful about transformative justice — is that it accepts that each situation is unique.

TFSR-WG: I’m wondering about what the reception of the book has been, either critically or, if you’ve done book events, how have people received the book?

W: Well, the reception has been really good for the book. I think I definitely was very nervous about putting out the book for many reasons. Because the book is so deeply personally for myself, and for Kakamia and for Jimmy Mac, as well as other folks who’s stories are partially told in the book, I wanted it to be as honest as possible, and I tried to be honest and accountable to those folks– Jimmy & Kakamia read different versions of the book, they got to see the book and give feed back on it. I felt that was very important, especially writing about folks who are incarcerated, where so much has been taken from them. I did not want tot take their stories and their experiences from them as well, and use it to my own end. So, even though I worked to try and make the book as honest and as real as possible, that also meant that all of us are kind of laid open for the world, which was you know a very scary idea, I think. And the response to the book has been really incredible and powerful. It’s – I think what has honored me the most is when folks who’s family members are incarcerated, people who have been incarcerated, and folks who are survivors of sexual assault all say they felt like they saw themselves and their experiences reflected accurately in the book, and that the complexities of that which they live with every day, was something that was in the book. And that to me was the highest honor that I could receive in relationship to the book.

But the response has been powerful from all sectors and I won the creative nonfiction award for the Oregon Book Awards in 2017, and that has kind of given a new round of interest in the book, so it’s been really powerful to use the book as a way to have conversations in communities, and as a way for communities to begin having that dialogue of saying, “Well than, what do we do? And what can we create now that can be ready when harm happens in our community?”

TFSR-WG: Definitely. And congratulations for the award, and speaking for my own self, one of the most powerful aspects of the book, which seemingly I’m not alone in this, the fact that you name all these really difficult complexities that are just inherent to human interactions, and you know, the question of snitching and the question of the accountability process — those were really, really powerful, powerful moments, and like very, very real. And I’d love to hear, has — so the reception has been good, but I’d love to hear, has Kakamia or Mac’s or even your situation, has have there been any material changes to any of y’all’s lives or situations because of Angels With Dirty Faces?

W: Well, unfortunately, Jimmy Mac passed away before the book came out so, it is one of my biggest regrets that he didn’t get to see the book out in the world. And I worked hard with Kakamia – because he is still trying to make parole and get out of prison – to, you know, protect his identity as much as possible around that. But he has shared the book with folks who are also incarcerated with him and that has meant a lot to me because the book is very personal about him as well, and he has felt comfortable enough to hare that with folks who have all given positive feedback to him about it.

TFSR-WG: That’s awesome. You touched on accountability processes several times and I – they are kind of the thorn in, you know, kind of a thorn in the side of the far left in a way, and they probably don’t work as well as we like to believe that they work. I was wondering if you cold reflect on accountability processes a little bit and kind of talk a little bit about – can we boil down the failure of these processes to individual flaws or is there some sort of structural component, structural aspect to their consistently lukewarm results?

W: I think one of the biggest things, and I talk about this in Angels, I think a lot of the problem is what we consider to be failure and success, and how we are judging community accountability process, especially when it has been serious harm that’s been done around, especially intimate violence and sexual violence. And I think that we have the idea that has been, is very much a product of this capitalist society that we can find a quick fix for these things. And that we can create something that ,at the end of the day, everyone will feel healed and will feel whole and will move on from. And I think that those are fairly unrealistic expectations. I think that there is no quick fix to healing, and there is no quick fix in the process of transformation. And so, for me, what I have really come to think about is, are the individuals and is the community, at the “end” of the accountability process, healed enough that they are able to continue their healing and growth and accountability in a less formal structure afterwards? And I think that if that was one of the criteria we may see accountability processes very different.

But I think that we have to begin shifting the ways we talk about harm that is done, the ways we talk about who is doing this harm, because I think that, you know, and I think that things like the #MeToo campaign, and this response to individual men who have committed sexual assault and sexual harassment, is you know, we have to see that it is pervasive, that it is something that happens. We often talk about how many women and gender nonconforming folks have experienced sexual assault, but we don’t talk about how many folks are assaulting, right? And I think that we have to talk about that, because that is where it is most awful and uncomfortable, to think about people in our lives, people we care about, people we respect, who are committing this harm. And yet, that is the case. And if we don’t talk about that, we cant begin to actually transform our communities. And then we just rely on these individual instances and our response to them, which will continue to feel inadequate, unless we really begin to shift how we’re thinking about it, and have these larger conversations about the culture, and the pervasiveness of intimate violence and sexual violence.

TFSR-WG:: You touched on #MeToo and other initiatives which highlight survivors of sexual assault. I was wondering if you had any more reflections on how much they break from normative narratives, or alternatively do they uphold narratives, or is that not really a helpful framework for thinking about that?

W: I mean, I’m of the mind — my co-editor for Octavia’s Brood, Adrienne Maree Brown, talks a lot about growing possibilities, and so I think that there is no one right way to do things. I think that there are actually, – we live in a quantum universe so there infinite possibilities, and to me, infinite ways to create justice. And so for me, as long as folks are holding on to their values and principles, I think that the work can and should move in many different ways. So when we do Octavia’s Brood, we do workshops, and we ask folks to say practicing “yes, and” rather than “no, but.” I think that we live in a ‘no, but…” society. There is one right answer, so all the rest must be wrong, right? This dichotomy which creates hierarchy. Rather than saying yes and all these things can be true and therefore there is no hierarchy, it’s all decentralized, its all here and accessible. So, you know, I am thankful for the campaign, I am thankful to the Black woman visionary who created and held that campaign for 10 years before it’s — this kind of mainstream resurrection . I’ve seen many positive things come out of the campaign and I think there are great conversations that are happening, and I think that to me, it is about capturing moments. And so I think that this is a moment that we can be using to ask these bigger questions so that it becomes about, “How do we fundamentally change a rape culture. how do we fundamentally shift the ways that institutionalized oppression have been ingrained in us, and how do we envision and begin to build something different?”

TFSR-DV: Absolutely, and I’m not surprised that in speaking with you, that I hear you asking all these questions, and really posing kind of how you think about the world in question form, because that really came across in book, in a way, that it really feels like the whole book is about posing questions. And certainly for folks who are familiar with your other work, that also questions is very much a through-line in the way that you do your work. And to us, we felt that questioning and kind of like seeking out more conversation and not seeking closure is very much like an intrinsically anarchist thing, and we wondering if you would talk a little bit about your relationship to anarchism.

W: Sure. Yeah, I definitely think that asking questions is incredibly important for may reasons. And you know — a number of folks have been disappointed by the book, because they are like, “You just asked questions, you didn’t give us the answers.” [Laughs] Like, boo, if I had the answers, I would have done something along time ago. But I also think even more importantly than that is the understanding and importance, and the value of collectively, and recognize that no one person is going to have the answers, and anyone who says they have all the answers is lying to themselves or to you. And I think that the recognition that is part of that collective process that will ultimately help us build different futures, and come up with new questions. Because this movement for change, there’s no end point. It’s a continual revolution in the fundamental sense of that word, in continual movement. And you know, I think some folks could feel depressed about that. I choose to feel incredibly hopeful, because it means that we continually have the opportunity to ask ourselves is this the world we want to live in? And we continually have the opportunity to re-envision the part, as we grow, that we also want to grow.

And so, to me, those are a lot of my principles and values, and I do believe that the idea of anarchism can be useful and helpful. I identify politically closest as an anarchist. I also think that to me, if a label is useful in encapsulating ideas in a way that helps move work forward, then use them, and if it doesn’t, then keep the values and principles and move on. And also, as a Black woman, I want to recognize that a lot of what we call anarchism, which we think of as being created by these old european white dudes, are actually principles and values and ways of being and ways of knowing that communities of color have practiced for eternity. And so, I also think it important to acknowledge and recognize that this information is not something that is separate from oppressed peoples, it is something that actually comes from oppressed peoples and that, in may, ways it’s about time traveling and having those values and principles help us to inform and envision different futures.

TFSR-DV: I love what you said about the label being useful only if it moves the work forward, and that actually reminds me a lot of things that I’ve heard people, particularly who do prisoner support, say, because it is a space where you’re offering solidarity and you’re offering support, and sometimes you’re offering it to people who aren’t ideologically on the exact same page as you, and it becomes an evolution of your relationship to that person and the reasons that you’re in relationship to them. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, beyond just about yr brother, and how you write about, your experience with supporting incarcerated people, and maybe, like, your best practices around that.

W: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know that I have a checklist, but I think for me I have been incredibly lucky and honored to learn and be mentored by many different folks who have been and are incarcerated, and to work in solidarity and as compañeros with those folks. I would not be the person I am as a human, as someone involved in change or as an artist without the mentorship and guidance and leadership of folks who are incarcerated. So for me, I think it’s important to see folks who are incarcerated who you are engaging with as, A. Part of the community, because they absolutely are; and B. As folks you are working with rather than helping or working for. I think that a lot of folks who get involved come in and are often white folks. They come in with a savior mentality, and folks who are incarcerated and more, broadly, POC don’t need saviors, they need allies.

Because some of the most courageous, innovative, incredible organizing work is happening in prisons, behind these walls, in some of the worst conditions possible. And we on the outside have so much to learn, and we need the wisdom – we need that leadership, we need that ingenuity and creativity, and bravery. And so, I think it’s important to come from that perspective, rather than coming from the perspective of, “I’m doing this to help this person,” rather than coming from the perspective of saying, “I’m doing this because we are both in shared struggle, and this person has a lot to share with me about that, and I want to be in communion and in conversation with this person to be able to make our communities and make our world better.”

TFSR-DV: Absolutely, thank you for that.

TFSR-WG: Yeah, definitely. Perhaps to veer off topic just for a moment, you’ve mentioned Octvia’s Brood throughout this interview, and this is an anthology of speculative fiction that you co-edited. Will you talk  little bit about how this project compared to Angels With Dirty Faces? Like similarities, differences..?

W: So Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements is an anthology of fantastical writing by activists, organizers, and change-makers. So it’s science fiction created by people doing work on the ground to envision different futures. My co-editor, Adrienne, and I created the anthology with the premise that all organizing is science fiction, and therefore all organizers are creators and visionaries of science fiction, because these worlds — they are trying to imagine a world without borders, without prisons, a world without sexual violence — that is science fiction, because we haven’t seen that world. But also recognize we need imaginative spaces like science fiction, where we can explore beyond the boundaries of what we’re told is possible, because we cant build what we can’t imagine. Imagination is the first step to new worlds.

So we have to have spaces where we can throw out what we’ve been told is realistic and possible, and instead start with the question, “What do we want? What is a world we want to live in? “ And I’ve – yeah. This project has been incredible. It’s something – we spent five yeas putting the book out, and it is something that has helped me be more visionary in my life and in my work, and I very much see Angels With Dirty Faces as connected with that. It was funny because I worked on Angels With Dirty Faces for ten years. So I started it well before we even had the idea of Octavia’s Brood, but it came out after Octavia’s Brood. And so, when I would tell people, “I have a book coming out,” and they would be like, “Oh, is it science fiction?” and I would be like, “No, it’s a creative nonfiction book about prisons and harm,” and they’re like, “Whoa, that’s really different.” I’m like, “Is it?” [laughter]. Because in my mind, again, they’re intimately connected because the reason I think it’s important to put Angels With Dirty Faces is to create the space so that we can imagine diff futures. And to me, you know, Angels With Dirty Faces is about helping to cultivate the values that will allow us to build a different world. And so for me, all of my work is connected. And I understand why other folks are like “You just jump around a lot,” but I feel strongly that, I’ve hoped that my work is able to embody sort of a visionary ethos and aesthetic that allows to create space for more possibilities, as my co-editor Adrienne says. 

TFSR-WG: That’s so excellent. You mentioned you write poetry. do you write  speculative fiction as well?

W: I do, yes. And I write science fiction poetry as well.

TFSR-WG: Excellent. How can people get their hands on that?

W: I’m still working on it. So I’m working on a book of science fiction poetry that is called Tubman’s Uncertainty Principle and looks at Black women’s liberation movements through the lens of quantum physics. [laughter] So nerdy. I do love the project because when I tell people, I find my folks real quick. Cause most people’s reaction is “Um, what now?” But the folks like you who are like [audible gasp] [laughter] — there my people are. [inaudible due to laughter] So I’m working on that, and I’ve been working on some science fiction short stories and projects as well, so I have some sci-fi stories that have been put out in various places, but I’m still sort of working on putting out more work on that. But right now, my main project is actually a nonfiction historical book on Oregon Black history, because I live in Oregon. So yet again, you’re jumping to something new and I’m like, I don’t really see it a being different, but I feel you.

TFSR-WG: Yeah, for sure. That all sounds super super exciting. I remember seeing just a YouTube talk that you did, or a talk on YouTube that you did about the racist history of Oregon and I definitely learned a lot. I think you did it anywhere between 3 and 5 years ago, or something like that, and I got a lot out of it.
Those are all of the questions that we had. Is there anything else you wanted to add a a part of this interview? 

W: I don’t think so.

TFSR-WG: Well, Walidah Imarisha, thank you so much for coming on to this show for an extremely thought-provoking and incisive interview. Yeah, thank you so much for your time, and your energy, and for this book you’ve written. It’s been great to have you on.

W: Well, thanks so much for having me, and for creating spaces to have these conversations. There aren’t enough, so I’m thankful for the space that y’all are holding.

TFSR-WG: Yeah, absolutely.

TFSR-DV: It’s been wonderful.

W: Thank you.

TFSR-WG: Thanks for listening to our interview with Walidah Imarisha. Again, more can be found from er at www.walidah.com

Author interview: Margaret Killjoy on “The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion”

Download This Episode

For a 59 minute long, radio clean version for syndication purposes, please visit the archive.org collection. For a full version, click the link under the picture on the left.

Interview

This week I had the opportunity to speak with Margaret Killjoy about her new novella The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, which is coming out on August 15th from Tor.com. In this interview we will talk about how she got into writing genre fiction, how writing has shaped her politics, about the book itself, and about fighting a battle on a cultural front, among many other things.

If you are interested, you can come to a book release event that Killjoy will be doing at Firestorm Books and Coffee on August 15th at 7pm! You can pre-order a copy of this book from your local bookstore or from Red Emmas, an online anarchist source.

You can find more of her writings at her website, Birds Before The Storm, alongside some of music and artwork!

Announcements

NC Resists a Grand Jury, Solidarity with Katie Yow!

On Monday, July 31st, people will gather in Greensboro at 9am at the Federal Courthouse, 324 W. Market St in order to support Katie Yow, who is refusing to comply with a Federal Grand Jury convening there to which she’s been subpoena’d.

And here’s an update from Katie on what she’s learned about the fgj:
“We have now learned more from the Assistant US Attorney about the subject of the federal grand jury to which I have been subpoenaed. This grand jury is looking into what the government has described as a bombing at the GOP headquarters in Hillsborough, NC this past fall. The AUSA has also indicated that they are interested in “other people” and “other events.” I don’t know anything relevant to a criminal investigation of the alleged incident at the GOP headquarters. The broad nature of the government’s interest in other information makes clear the way that this and other grand juries are used as fishing expeditions to attempt to coerce testimony on 1st amendment protected information. This is one of the many ways grand juries are used to repress social movements, and one of many reasons why we resist them.

Whatever new information we may learn about this grand jury, I will continue to refuse to cooperate. We didn’t have to know what this grand jury was about to know what we are about. Our values are long held, they are nurtured through both triumph and incredible loss, and they cannot be compromised. My resistance to this grand jury is the easiest decision I have ever made, even if the consequences may be difficult. I will continue to refuse to comply with this subpoena, and I have every faith in my community’s ability to support me in doing so.”

If yr feeling it, show up in Greensboro on Monday to show support!

More information can be found at NC Resists the Grand Jury

Did you say “Grand Jury”? What the heck is that??

If you are in Asheville on Wednesday, you are invited to attend a workshop at Firestorm Books and Coffee (610 Haywood Rd) at 7pm entitled “What Is A Grand Jury?” The discussion will be presented by the Scuffletown Anti Repression Committee.

Smashing the Fash, Every Day

Keep your eyes on your favorite anarchist news source for updates on resisting AmRen in Tennessee, which is going on today and tomorrow (7/30 and 7/31). For context, you can hear an interview that Bursts did about this resistance by searching “AmRen” on our blog. Also, keep your eyes peeled for information on resisting the far right in Charlottesville on August 12th by following the #NoNewKKK

Playlist here