First up, Ian chats with Tasha of Project Mayday, a harm reduction project operating in so-called West Virginia. They discuss harm reduction strategies and the political framework of their approach to mutual aid. The conversation also touches upon co-existing in the public health and non-profit space without compromising their radical values and some of the many ways that drug policy and pharmaceutical marketing affect people who use drugs. Listeners can contact Project Mayday at the links below and should watch those spaces for news about the benefit show coming up on April 28th.
Then, I spoke with Toby from Appalachians Against Pipelines and Madeline Ffitch, an activist recently arrested for locking down to a drill threatening to move the Mountain Valley Pipeline through Peters Mountain at Jefferson National Forest. We talked about the recent days of solidarity, direct actions against the MVP, repression of activists and related topics.
We’re sharing a recent chat with Andrew Lee (instagram / tiktok), author of the book Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War, released by AK Press on February 6th 2024. Andrew and I talk about gentrification, speculation and financialization of houses, the destruction of communities by racial capitalism and the state, and some methods used to fight back and stay put. Andrew shouts out Decolonize Philly as a project to pay attention to.
Weekly, we work to bring you and our wider audience, including over the radio waves, conversations that you won’t hear many other places. And we operate at a minimal cost, paying for transcription, printing, mailing, web hosting to make sure that information is easier translatable and accessible, including to our comrades behind bars. The most regular way that we fund that is from the patreon.
Our patreon is currently below supporting our monthly operating costs of around $500, so we’re asking folks on the fence of supporting this project who have a patreon account to kick in and help at $3 or more a month. If you don’t have a patreon, we do have a liberapay you can psuedonymously kick us money from or set up a recurring payment from paypal and we also can take money via venmo or stripe.
If you haven’t supported us before or haven’t for a while now and can afford to, we’d really appreciate the help. And if you’re already supporting us or have in the past in various ways, thank you.
This week, we’re featuring a conversation with Mohammad Hureini (twitter / instagram), a young activist from Masafer Yatta, an area in the hills south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. Mohammad is a member of a non-violent group called Youth of Sumud that struggles to hold on to the sites and lives of Palestinian villages despite displacement by the Israeli military occupation as well as the illegal zionist settlements (like the neighboring Havat Ma’on) and their routine violence and impunity. For the hour, Mohammad speaks about the work of Youth of Sumud, their recent report co-published with The Good Shepherd on increased settler violence entitled Indigenous Erasure: How the zionist movement is using state sanctioned violence to eliminate the Palestinian communities of the West Bank, the South African genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice and other topics.
Check out the January 2024 episode featuring updates on support for antifascists facing charges in Budapest from February 11, 2023; reflections from an Autonomist on the ’80s-’90s journal “Radikal”; a portion of our interview with Israeli refuser Yuval Dag; and an interview from Solidarity Zones on the case of accused Russian war sabateur, Ruslan Siddiqui
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Featured Track:
Building Steam with a Grain of Salt by DJ Shadow from Entroducing….
First up, you’ll hear an interview with Shupavu wa Kirima, General Secretary of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party, comes on to talk to us about the ongoing hunger strike among prisoners at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia protesting the abuse of solitary confinement and the medical status of hunger striker Kevin “Rashid” Johnson. More at https://RashidMod.Com [00:01:18 – 00:25:47]
Then, Yuval Dag, an Israeli anarchist member of Mesarvot recently imprisoned for publicly refusing conscription, talks about draft refusal, opposing the war on Palestinians and the occupation and undoing zionist ideology. More at https://linktr.ee/meaarvot [00:27:31 – 01:06:13]
This week on the show, you’ll hear part of our conversation with Eric King and Josh Davidson. Josh has been on a few times to talk about collaborative inside-outside projects he works on such as the Certain Days calendar, the greeting cards he helped make of Indigenous political prisoner Oso Blanco’s artwork to benefit Zapatista schools in Chiapas, and the Rattling The Cages book that he co-edited with Eric King.
Eric was just released in December 2023 into a halfway house in Colorado after nearly 10 years in Federal prisons across the country. Eric is an anarchist who was incarcerated for an attempt to molotov the office of a Democratic Party official in Kansas City in solidarity with the then-going Ferguson Uprising following the murder of Michael Brown by police there. An antifascist and antiracist, Eric was moved around a lot during the 10 years he was inside and pitted against nazi prisoners in fight scenarios in a few instances, and near the end of his bid he was accused of assaulting an officer and successfully defending himself from a possible 20 year addition to his time inside but suffered intense isolation, insecurity, mail / phone and visitation blocks, moves across the country and physical restraint, ending up at the federal prison system’s most intense prison, the supermax ADX in Florence, CO.
For the hour, the guests speak about prisoner support, putting the book together, the implications and effects of long term isolation related topics. You can find more of Erics thoughts and updates at SupportEricKing.Org and similarly named social media accounts.
Prisoners at the Red Onion State Prison in Virginia have been on hunger strike since December 26th against the illegal and cruel use of solitary confinement at the facility in spite of procedures put into place last summer by the Virginia government. Here’re some words from the support site for Minister of Defense of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson. From rashidmod.com :
“On Tuesday, December 26, 2023, several prisoners confined at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison began a hunger strike to protest the continued use of long-term solitary confinement within the institution.Despite critical concern, outcry from the public and prisoner populations in the state, incarcerated people are still subjected to this brutal practice which has been renamed “restorative housing” since July 1, 2023 when measures were passed to limit its use in the state.
Leading these prisoners in this effort is longtime prison activist, revolutionary writer and artist, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson. Rashid has stated that no one will take any food at all until demands are met. Some of the strike participants have underlying health concerns that make the undertaking of such a demonstration particularly risky. Rashid, himself, is recovering from multiple rounds of radiation to treat prostate cancer as well as suffering from untreated heart disease/congestive heart failure. This is why the public’s support is especially needed. We are asking that calls, emails, and letters be sent to the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) officials as well as Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s office voicing support for the strikers and condemnation for the inhumane use of long-term solitary confinement/restorative housing.”Red Onion Hunger Strike Participants:
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson – 1007485
Jason Barrett – 1092874
Rodney Lester – 1429887
Charles Cousino – 2213403
Eric Thompson – 1208012
Joe Thomas – 1193196
Who To Contact:
VADOC~ Central Administration; USPS—
P.O. Box 26963
Richmond, VA 23261
This week on the show, you’ll hear an interview with Lala an anarchafeminist in the Azerbaijani group Feminist Peace Collective about the recent war against and expulsion of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, about the Aliyev regime and patriotic elements in Azerbaijan’s reaction against anti-militarist voices, conspiracy theories and real critiques of non-profit NGO’s versus grassroots lgbtq+ and feminist organizing, and other topics. You can learn more about Lala’s group at FeministPeaceCollective.Com.
On December 19th at 8pm Caucasus time / UTC+4 (or 11am Eastern Standard or 8am Pacific Standard time) Feminist Peace Collective is hosting an online discussion with Dr. Chiara Bottici via zoom called “Anarchafeminism in troubled times” and with a focus on antifeminist and anti-queer backlash and war in the South Caucasus, central Asia, Turkey and Russia. There’s a registration link here.
Links from Lala
Antidoqma, posts in English, Russian and Azerbaijani
This week’s show features four segments: an announcement from IGD Podcast; an anti-Zionist Jewish voice from Palestine; an interview of two anti-repression activists on the harassment of two antifascist activists in Budapest, Hungary; Sean Swain’s segment.
Reflections of a Jewish Anti-Zionist from Palestine
First up, we’re featuring the voice of a Jewish anti-Zionist anarchist living in lands occupied by the Israeli state. We speak about some of his experiences of trying to resist the ongoing war against Palestinians, collaboration with Palestinian comrades against the occupation, the silencing of dissent during the escalation by the Israeli state and other topics. [ 00:07:28 – 00:50:13 ]
For a very thoughtful series of podcasts about the situation in Palestine, check out the two recent episodes of the Its Going Down podcast (1st and 2nd).
Following this, you’ll hear a segment by A-Radio Berlin (a co-member of the Channel Zero Network as well as the A-Radio Network with The Final Straw) about repression of antifascists recently under the far right Hungarian administration of Victor Orban. This also appeared in the November 2023 episode of Bad News, the monthly English-language podcast of the A-Radio Network. [ 00:52:10 – 01:05:53 ]
This week, Ian talks to Sean Carleton of Graphic History Collective and Labor historian and activist Iain McIntyre about the recent release of Mr. Block: The Subversive Comics and Writings of Ernest Riebe by PM Press. After some background on their respective projects, they talk about the legacy of the IWW cartoonist, the origins and process of putting the book together, and what aspects of his work are still relevant today. Here’s a hint: just about all of them are.
Ian speaks with journalist Shea Hennum about their article on #comicsbrokeme, in which workers in the comics industry shared their stories of tight deadlines, unreasonable workloads, and low pay following the death of cartoonist Ian McGinty. For the article, which appeared at solrad.co, they applied an analysis that synthesized communist and anarchist traditions in order to identify a multitude of sites of political struggle, challenge systems of domination and violence, and chart possible ways forward, similar to analysis applied in the movement to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex.
They discuss past efforts to organize within the comic book industry as well as current organization efforts, such as the formation of the United Workers of Seven Seas, a union of workers at Seven Seas Entertainment, Comic Book Workers United, a union of workers at Image Comics, and Cartoonist Cooperative, a cohort of cartoonists committed to mutual promotion, skill and info sharing, and efforts to make industry wages and practices more transparent. They also discuss possible ways for comic book readers to offer support.
Further reading and archived documents referred to in the chat:
Anarchists At War: Critical analysis of solidarity in context of war in Ukraine (RIA 2023)
The following is a presentation by anarchists from Ukraine and Belarus, alongside a question and answer portion with the audience, conducted in part via live translation services. This panel is facilitated in part by Nina of Anarchist Black Cross Dresden, and features presentations by Masha (Belarus) an anarchist in Warsaw, Nastya is a member of Solidarity Zone (not speaking on behalf of that group), Mira from Anarchist Black Cross Kyiv and Solidarity Collectives and Boris of Belarus Anarchist Black Cross.
The discussion, much like previous discussions by anarchists supporting anti-authoritarians joining the armed defense against the Russian invasion, was interrupted a number of times by pacifists or others who didn’t want a discussion of the complexities of joining the territorial defense forces to have space. Those interruptions were mostly not recorded as they happened off-mic, but you’ll hear the reactions to them. I felt like this audio was important to share here with the audience, particularly in spite of their silencing.
I recorded this at the 2023 St-Imier anarchist gathering on the 151st anniversary of the first anarchist and anti-authoritarian Workers International, following the purges by Marxists and Blanquists. Like the first one in 1872 hosted by the Jura Federation, this gathering was hosted in small village of St-Imier with a population of 4,000 being nearly doubled in size over the course of 5 days of workshops, concerts, discussions, food, film showings and tablings.
You can find reflections from some folks at crimethinc.com, alongside a link to recordings from the live, multi-lingual radio broadcast throughout the event and the website for the gathering where you’ll see lists of happenings from the week. Hopefully in the near future you’ll be able to find the recordings of the presentations that got recorded such as this one, some in video and some in audio.
I’ll be reflecting on some of this in an upcoming episode of the ItsGoingDown podcast while speaking with my friend and former co-host Scott Branson about how the bookfair here in Asheville went. Here’s an article (in French) about an Islamophobic scandal that occurred with members of the French Anarchist Federation (Kropotkin).
