On June 11, 2025, there was a demonstration of hundreds of people in Spokane, Washington to defend two young asylum-seekers, Cesar Alexander Alvarez Perez and Joswar Slater Rodriguez Torres, who were kidnapped by ICE while appearing for a scheduled check-in. The next day, the Trump administration’s DOJ sent out a memo to all districts to prioritize prosecution of anti-ICE protestors and publicize the repression. Months later, 9 people were brought to Federal trial, with 6 of them taking a non-cooperating plea deal. The remaining 3, refused to back down and were taken to trial and were convicted of conspiracy.
For this episode we’re joined by Hadley, a member of the Spokane 3 Support Committee to speak about those defendants ( Justice Forral, Bajun Mavalwalla II, and Jac Archer ), their case and struggle for justice. A great, local media outlet named Range Media has been covering this case in detail, check it out at https://www.rangemedia.co/spokane-9-protests/ . Finally, stay tuned for a press conference this coming week after some next legal steps are taken by the defendants.
First up is a conversation with two activists of Appalachians Against Uranium in eastern Tennessee about the expansion of a nuclear weapons development in Jonesborough in the Tri-Cities near the border with North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For the interview we speak about the legacy of the nuclear industry in the region, health impacts on locals, some of the companies (like BWXT) involved, concerns of pollution and building off the work of past and ongoing civic activism in the region. Find our guests online at their website or find them on bluesky for further information.
If you missed our prior interview talking about other and related elements of the nuclear industries in the US, check out the chat with M.V. Ramana from our July 19th episode, found at our website.
Eastern TN Nuclear Links
Scott Perez article on “economic hostages” available thanks to Dine CARE
A book about the Transform Now Plowshares action in Oak Ridge, TN
The Ulm 5 Case in Germany
[00:50:00]
After this, you’ll hear a recording from May 14th, 2026 of journalist Roser Garí Pérez speaking in Freiberg, Germany, about the the case of the Ulm 5: five activists from various countries held in pre-trial detention since September of 2025 in Germany on charges of taking action against an Elbit Systems Deutschland factory in that country. Elbit Systems is an Israeli arms manufacturer whose products bring death to people in Palestine. The defendants have experienced long term isolation, extraordinarily long pre-trial detention without the option of bail. This segment appears in episode 104 of B(A)D News from the A-Radio Network, and was submitted and recorded by Radio Ausbruch from Freiberg
As a note for US listeners, the use of the term protocol in this segment can be translated to mean taken notes. You can keep up on the case, find how to write letters or send support, at https://ulm5.info/ and find updated writings on the case by Roser Garí Pérez on their instagram or their author page at The Left Berlin
Announcement
Support Request by 2020 Uprising Prisoner Khalif Miller
We received correspondence from Khalif Miller who was arrested in Philadelphia. Acording to his GoFundMe, “Khalif was held on pre-trial detention for 2 years and eventually sentenced to 5 years in Federal prison. As he was on probation at the time of his indictment he was additionally given a 1-10 year state sentence for probation violation.” According to his page on UprisingSupport.org, Khalif had this to say:
“I was working, I was trying to get my business up and running, I was going to school. I was doing things not just to help my family, I was trying to help communities. The day that I went to the protest… the night before when I was even making my signs. I spent 4 hours just making signs and writing down a bunch of people who were unfairly killed by police officers. This is something I really feel passionate about.
People say all the time, you can do anything you want in America. You can be whatever you want to be. Growing up, I heard it but I never really believed it because I felt like my resources were limited. The world has so many possibilities. I would like to teach that. That’s one of the things I would like to be able to pass along to the younger generations when I come home.”
Check the show notes for links to how you can write to Khalif and how you can offer him support during this long period of repression.
Write letters:
Smart Communications / PA DOC
Khalif Miller / #QQ9287
SCI Forest
PO Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Send books:
Khalif Miller
#QQ9287
268 Bricker Road
Bellefonte, PA 16823
This week, we’re taking a break from new content and sharing with you content from the May 2026 episode of B(A)D News: Angry Voices from Around The World. B(A)D News is a collaboration of members of the A-Radio Network of anarchist and anti-authoritarian radios and podcasts with member projects from Europe, the US and Chile at this moment.
Each month, a project takes responsibility to put together audio segments form other radio and podcast projects in the A-Radio Network. About the time that we’re releasing this, the June 2026 episode should be released, so keep an eye out at A-Radio-Network.org and clicking the link for B(A)D News to see the monthly episodes as they are released.
From the notes of episode 102:
This is episode number 102 of “B(A)D NEWS -angry voices from around the world”, a news program from the international network of anarchist and antiauthoritarian radios, consisting of short news segments from different parts of the world.
Content of this episode
Črna Luknja with a contra-report about the situation on borders of greece and migrant struggles. They discuss this with a member of Open Assembly Against Pushbacks in Athens and also active in Notara (migrant) squat.
Frequenz A with an interview of a comrade from Santarém, Brazil about indigenous struggles. They spoke with Raphael about anarchist organizations in the region, the main threats for indigenous communities, Indigenous struggles and how anarchists can support them.
Here’s our recent chat with two members of The Peoples Want Network, an attempt to build an Internationalist movement from below and to the left. For this chat, Rindala and Doxie speak about sharing lessons from movements and uprisings of the recent past from around the world among participants and those hoping to create movements in their own lives, organizing in exile, the enriching practice of building solidarity and the recently published English booklet of The Peoples Want manifesto, Revolutions Of Our Times (Haymarket 2026). At the end of the chat, Rindala announces the upcoming, June 2026 project Mujawara for networking local movement sites with those around the world to further increase intercommunication and solidarity and support such spaces in conflict sites in the SWANA.
We’ve covered a number of the uprisings, migrant struggles, and internationalist organizing topics and movements discussed in the episode since we started in 2010, so feel free to pick through our website if you want to dig a little deeper and hear some views from the times.
This week, we’re sharing an interview with Andrew Krinks, author of White Property, Black Trespass: Racial Capitalism and the Religious Function of Mass Criminalization from NYU Press, 2024. For the chat, we speak about taking a theological lens to the question of what ties exclusive private property, white masculinity, police impunity and mass incarceration in the US. We discuss aspects of Christian thought, employ concepts borrowed from the Black Radical tradition and try to get closer to the root of the sickness in our culture that flourishes from others pain.
During the chat Vicky talks about intellectual property and how it overlaps between entertainment and other elements like technology and medicine, the shaping and limiting effects IP has on popular culture and imagination, the film industry and more.
To hear Vickys past appearances on our show check out:
This week, we’re sharing two segments: the main feature is an interview with the recently released anarchist organizer and writer Hybachi LeMar; but first up you’ll hear Aarohi of the Xinachtli Freedom Campaign about the elder political prisoner’s medical condition and the phone zaps to pressure the TDCJ to alleviate his medical neglect
Xinachtli is an elder, Chicano communist activist and political prisoner 30 years into a 50 year sentence for disarming a sheriff’s deputy. Of that 30 years, he’s spent 23 in solitary confinement. At age 73, Xinachtli has and continues to face medical neglect at the hands of the Texas prison system, with outside supporters having to apply pressure to get him things like a wheelchair or a proper diet. You’ll hear Aarohi of the Xinachtli Freedom Campaign talk about his case and about the phone zaps about Xinachtli’s condition as well as how to get in touch with the comrade.
First up, an interview that’s been a long time in the making. Hybachi LeMar is an anarchist who grew up in Chicago and began considering anarchism thanks to a letter he received from Anthony Rayson of the South Chicago Anarchist Black Cross Zine Distro during over a year in solitary confinement years ago. Since that time, Compa LeMar has been organizing with projects like IWOC, IWW IU613, the self-organized Liberation School in Englewood, food distribution mutual aid, the Chicago local organizing committee of the Black Autonomy Federation and is now the author of three collections of essays (listed at his website) as well as numerous zines.
The majority of this chat has difficult audio quality because it was over prison phones. Happily at the end of the chat, we speak with Hybachi following his recent release, having maxed out his sentence and returned to his organizing and life in the streets of Chicago. There is a fundraiser ongoing to support Hybachi in his post-release life.
To hear Hybachi’s spoken piece On The Powers of Self-Reflection, produced by Slug, check it out at the end of the chat.
There are a few mentions of mental distress and suicide in the chat, just a headsup. Compa LeMar mentions a few names in the episode of people that we’ve had on the show in the past, and we’ll link those episodes where we can (Brianna Peril of IWOC, Sean Swain, Anthony Rayson of South Chicago ABC Zine Distro, True Leap). You can find ways to support Casey Goonan at their support site.
Announcements
B(A)D News Episode 100!
If you’re looking for more anarchist news beyond the Channel Zero Network podcasts, check out B(A)D News: Angry Voices from Around The World from the A-Radio Network (of which we are also a member). The March 2026 episode features:
FrequenzeA presents an interview about environmental struggles in Russia.
A-Radio Berlin presents a satiric piece called “Weird politics” where they talk about German military, AfD, and the wolf.
Parias radio-show presents an interview about the repression the Community of Squatted Prosfygıka in Athens.
The last contribution is from Radio Ausbruch that was visiting feralcrust, an Eco-anarchist Infoshop and Social Center close to Davao City, Philipines. The first of a series.
This week we spoke with AC and E, two members of the DFW Support Committee about the recently finished federal trial for 9 defendants in the terrorism case around the Prairieland Detention Center noise demo in July of 2025.
To recap the case, in the midst of increased racist and nativist rhetoric, ICE and CBP snatch squad deployments ripping apart communities across the US in the first year of Trump 2.0, and the buildup of immigrant rendition and imprisonment in the southwest there was a July 4th noise demonstration called for to happen outside the infamous Prairieland Detention Center outside Alvarado, Texas. During the protest, meant to be loud enough for people held there to hear that they were not forgotten, participants used bullhorns, shouted, shot off fireworks and painted slogans. In response the staff called the Alvarado police and upon arrival the cop drew his weapon and aimed at dispersing protestors. At this point the state narrative and that of the defendants diverge: on the one hand the state argues that this whole event was a planned ambush for law enforcement by a north Texas Antifa terrorist cell in black bloc meant to draw police into a fight and then liberate the prison; on the other side the defendants claim the event was escalated to targeted gunfire by defendant Song meant to deter deadly violence by the cop and allow the crowd to disperse without bloodshed.
For the hour, you’ll hear folks from DFW Defense Committee talking about what evidence and arguments were presented in court, what evidence and arguments were suppressed, the strange decisions of the judge in jury selection, venue and other elements effecting the ability of those facing decades in prison to mount and defense and where we’re at now with the case. This case cannot be disconnected from the Trump administration’s call to name Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, to tie in projects and movements they consider to be enemies (ranging from Democrats to civil liberties groups, queer folk and immigrants rights advocates to anti-fascists, communists and anarchists and everyone in between) with the goal, some speculate, of more fully capturing the federal government under a white, christian nationalist and fascist regime. More on the case at PrairielandDefendants.Com
Next week, keep an ear out for a chat we plan to release with Nina of Anarchist Black Cross Dresden about the impacts of naming German antifascists as terrorists by the Trump Regime on the ability of various leftist, anti-repression groups there to do their work, to hold bank accounts for sending money to prisoners or pay for lawyers and about the shift towards the right electorally and politically that is being experienced in that country. You may be surprised about the parallels with the situation in the US.
This week on The Final Straw Radio, we’re featuring an interview with three participants in the feature length documentary Wood Street, about the community that formed in a parking lot at 1707 Wood Street in Oakland. The location was a destination for people evicted from encampments around the city, who either refused or were denied the low number of shelter beds available, or didn’t fit into the city lots for camping or recreational vehicles aka RVs. Over the course of 10 years at a few spots on the street, as guest John Janosko explains, residents got to know each other and build bonds to the place and each other as neighbors. The north portion of what became known as the Wood Street Commons was evicted by the city to build transitional tiny homes managed by a services organization called BOSS and residents at the south side of the Commons ramped up organizing with outside supporters to stop the city’s eviction plan in 2023 through lobbying politicians and proposing alternative plans. The film shows this work, snippets of the lives of residents and the eventual eviction of the Wood Street Commons in 2023, with over 300 people losing their homes in the end.
Since the eviction, the tiny home camp funding ended and it was vacated, the mayor Sheng Thao was recalled and indicted for corruption and the site became a parking lot for a minor league baseball park next door, but people have taken their energy and experience to keep advocating for themselves and other Oaklanders around issues of houselessness. For the hour we speak with John Janosko, a featured face in the film, as well as our past guest Freeway and the film’s director Caron Creighton. The Wood Street Movie is touring a number of film festivals and looking to feature elsewhere, in hopes that the film can act as a support and inspiration for other homeless organizing in communities across the country.