Category Archives: General

AK Press, Anarchist, Andrej Grubačić, Author, Autonomy, Communism, General, History, Marxism, Philosophy, PM Press, Rojava, Transcribed, Yugoslavia, Zapatista, zine

Exile, World Systems Analysis and Anarchism with Andrej Grubačić

Exile, World Systems Analysis and Anarchism with Andrej Grubačić

Professor Andrej Grubačić
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Andrej Grubačić is a former teacher at the University of Rojava, founding Chair of Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies, author of books such as Don’t Mourn, Balkanize!, co-authored Wobblies and Zapatistas with Staughton Lynd and most recently the co-author of Living At The Edges of Capitalism: Adventures In Exile and Mutual Aid with Dennis O’Hearn. Andrej is also the editor of the Journal of World-Systems Research as well as the Kairos imprint at PM Press. For the hour we speak about anarchism, the Yugoslav experiment, exile, World-Systems Analysis, Rojava, his friend David Graeber and other topics.

A couple of Grubačić pieces referenced, found online:

Some further reading suggestions include (more references in upcoming transcript):

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abortion, activism, Anarchist, Autonomy, Capitalism, community, gender, General, Health, Misogyny, Sexism, Transcribed, United States, zine

The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach

The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach

A pregnant person in blue with a red womb, held up by red tinted small people, red tinted flowers growing behid them (by Marne Grahlman)
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This week on the show, we sat down with Bayla Ostrach, an activist, anarchist, longtime defender, provider of and researcher around issues of reproductive healthcare. We speak about experiences researching and working on the issue in Catalunya, the battle for abortion and reproductive autonomy in the so-called US, the challenges faced by independent clinics against the business model of clinic chains like Planned Parenthood, legal and material pressure and attacks by anti-abortion extremists as well as the cultural and political struggle to defend and expand the ability for people to get safe, affordable, full spectrum and stigma-free abortion and reproductive care more broadly.

Illustration by Marne Grahlman

** Content warning, because we are discussing a stigmatized series of medical procedures adjacent to sexual, social and political violence, listeners should be advised and we’ll put warnings in a few places during the episode. If you are hearing the radio version and want to hear a longer version of this show, and to listen at your own pace, check out our full podcast at our website, to be followed in about a week by a transcript for easy reading & a zine for printing. **

A list of people, works, and resources mentioned by our guest:

Good sites:

Citations for two shared documents co/authored by Bay:

Another document we can’t easily share:

  • Singer, E., (Elyse Ona), and Bayla Ostrach. “The End of Feminist Abortion Counseling? Examining Threats to Women’s Health.” In Transcending Borders, 255–70. Palgrave-MacMillan (Springer imprint), 2017. http://link.springer.com/.

Continue reading The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach →

activism, Capitalism, General, North Carolina, Prisons, Surveillance, Transcribed, United States, zine

The Perils of Prison Mail Digitization

The Perils of Prison Mail Digitization

"The Perils of Prison ail Digitalization with Prison Books Collective" showing bird cage broken free & bird escaping, "TFSR 12-12-21"
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Leigh Lassiter from prison books collective in Durham, North Carolina, a nonprofit project that sends zines and books to prisoners in Alabama in North Carolina prisons and jails comes on this week to tell us about recent changes by the NCDPS to use the private company TextBehind to scan all incoming and outgoing mail track, their contents surveil the outside users and mailers, and to make a profit on an already indigent population. We also talk about the work of sending literature, to incarcerated folks privatization and digitization of other services, and what literature gets rejected. More about the press books collective at PrisonBooks.Info or check out their linktr.ee

You can also check out local books to prisoners projects in your area that you could get involved with by visiting PrisonBooks.Org/PrisonBooksNetwork. There’re also a couple of really good articles from The Intercept about this and related surveillance services topics within you as prisons and jails.

Or check out the following resources:

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Anarchist, Anarchist Media, Asia, Communism, General, Neoliberalism, Politics, Transcribed, Vietnam, zine

Mèo Mun, Anarchist Views from Vietnam

Mèo Mun, Anarchist Views from Vietnam

Black & Red Flag background, purple cat in foreground holding a star in its mouth like a mouse
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Mèo Mun is an anarchist collective working to make anarchist materials and ideas more accessible to a Vietnamese audience, together with providing an analysis of social struggles from a Vietnamese anarchist lens. Over the next hour you’ll hear three collective members, Mai, Will and tùng share their critiques of leftist misrepresentations of the Vietnamese State as Socialist, lasting impacts of imperialism and war on populations of Vietnam, the centering US imaginaries of Vietnam, the struggles of working class people in general (and queer folks and sex workers in particular) in Vietnam, nationalism promoted by the government and other topics.

Mèo Mun links:

Other Links of Interest:

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Appalachia, General, Mountain Valley Pipeline, North Carolina, Petroleum, Pipeline, Protest, Transcribed, Virginia, West Virginia, zine

Stop The Mountain Valley Pipeline

Stop The Mountain Valley Pipeline

Banners left on pipeline construction equipment, reading "Where Will You Go When The Waters Rise?" and "The Fight Continues"
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The Mountain Valley Pipeline, or MVP is planned to be a 300 + mile pipeline 42 inches in diameter being built to transport compressed so-called Natural Gas from the Marcellus formation in the Appalachian Basin, from northern West Virginia to southern Virginia for export. The pipeline started being built in 2018 and is slated to cross over 1,000 waterways, posing a danger to countless human and non-human animals and plants along the way as well as being responsible for 19 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to 19 million passenger cars or 23 average U.S. coal fired power plants each year. It’s being built by a number of corporations involved in other fossil fuel infrastructure like ConEd & EQT. As of November 2020, the project was 3 years behind schedule and over $3 billion over budget because of a coalition of on-the-ground grassroots direct action and resistance, geographically dispersed solidarity actions and court challenges determined to keep this Marcellus Shale gas in the ground.

This week, we’ll speak with Toby and Emily, two longtime activists resisting the MVP’s construction about the pipeline, some of the resistance history, MVP’s attempt in federal court to intimidate and identify folks who run the social media accounts called “Appalachians Against Pipelines” and how to get involved in the struggle to fight climate change. You can find thorough coverage of the topic, and piss off the extraction industry, by following @AppalachiansAgainstPipelines on fedbook and instagram and the @StopTheMVP on twitter. You can support the ongoing resistance by throwing money at the effort’s fundraising page: bit.ly/supportmvpresistance.

You can find our past interviews about the MVP, including with folks actively in tree-sits and mono-pods at our website (by searching Mountain Valley Pipeline), and as well as our interviews about the water crisis in West Virginia generally and in WV prisons (by searching “Elk River”).

To learn more about the struggle at Line 3 and folks who are doing anti-repression work around it, check it this link and the related site: https://www.planline3.com/support-the-resistance

In about a week, you can a transcribed and easily printable version of this conversation for free at https://TFSR.WTF/Zines. You can follow us on social media and find our streaming platforms at TFSR.WTF/Links. You can support our transcription and publishing efforts monetarily, if you appreciate our work, by visiting patreon.com/TFSR or checking out other methods at TFSR.WTF/Support. And you can find more about our radio broadcasts, including how to get our free, weekly, hour-long broadcast up on a community station near you, by visiting TFSR.WTF/Radio.

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Antifa, General, Self-Defense, Transcribed, United States, zine

Firearm Safety and Education with Comrade Center

Firearm Safety and Education with Comrade Center

"Comrade Squid" color logo with a squid holding a lamp, sheaths of grain, an AK-47, red and black stars and flags and a large cog in the background
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This week on the show, we spoke with folks involved with Comrade Center, a leftist project focused on accessible education around armed self-defense in so-called New Hampshire. They were formerly known as Southern New England Socialist Rifle Association and while they’re no longer a chapter of the SRA, they are working with groups like that and individuals to purchase and maintaining a space for armed self-defense education outside of the right wing milieu in their area. For the hour we talk about mainstream, reactionary gun culture in the US, the impact of the NRA, the importance and empowerment of education around fire arms and other topics. You can learn more about the project at ComradeCenter.Org

Comrade Center links:

Other organizations we would like to shoutout:

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AK Press, Anarchist, Author, General, Transcribed

Eric Laursen on Modern Anarchist Conceptions of The State

Eric Laursen on Anarchist Conceptions of The State

Book cover of Eric Laursen's "The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State"
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One thing that sets anarchism aside from other radical, egalitarian critiques of Power developed in the modern West is the conception of the State as an enemy. But what is the State, how does it work, why and how do we as anti-authoritarians and anarchists oppose it? These questions and more are the focus of the recent book, The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State (AK Press, 2021). This week, we air Scott‘s conversation with Eric on the book, theorizing the State as computer operating system, the necessity of social revolution prior to a political revolution and other heady topics.

You can follow Eric on Twitter (@EricLaursen) and he has written for HuffPost, Z Magazine, In These Times, The Nation, The Village Voice, Counterpunch and The Arkansas Review. He also authored The People’s Pension: The Struggle To Defend Social Security Since Reagan and Duty to Stand Aside, The: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort as well as Understanding The Crash.

The introduction of Operating System was written by Maia Ramnath, a historian and author of Decolonizing Anarchism and Haj to Utopia.

Continue reading Eric Laursen on Modern Anarchist Conceptions of The State →

abolition, Capitalism, Colonization, General, Indiana, Prisons, Racism, Transcribed, United States, zine

IDOC Watch, Leon Benson and Abolitionist Organizing in Indiana

IDOC Watch, Leon Benson and Abolitionist Organizing in Indiana

IDOC Watch logo, a fist raising up and crushing a chain over a red background
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First, you’ll hear from Koby Bluitt talking about her father, Leon Benson and his struggle for release after 23 years in prison, 10 of which was in solitary confinement, for a murder charge in 1998 that he has consistently claimed to have not committed. More on Leon at freeleonbenson.org or leonbenson-freeleonbenson on facebook. The Mass Release & Clemency for Leon rally in Indianapolis is July 25th at Tarkington Park. [00:04:44]

Then, you’ll hear from Landis Reyonolds, a founder of IDOC Watch currently held in Westville Correctional Institution and who’s been in since he was a juvenile, and Ray, an outside organizer with the South Bend, Indiana chapter of IDOC Watch. They talk about their work to start study groups in prison, promote Prison Lives Matter, support jailhouse lawyers and recruit outside lawyers through the Prison Legal Support Network alongside the NLG and more. More info at IDOCWatch.Org or find them on twitter, instagram or fakebook. You can support them via their patreon as well! [00:38:08]

PLSN contact info

If you are or know an incarcerated paralegal in IDOC, please send a letter to:

IDOC Watch
P.O. Box 3322
South Bend, IN, 46619

or leave us a voicemail at (423) 281-5009 with your name, DOC #, a brief introduction, and legal training/experience. We will contact you by GTL.

If you are an abolitionist-minded lawyer, law student, paralegal, or have legal expertise and would like to assist:

Email Ray (PLSN outside facilitator) @ RaddishGreens@protonmail.com

Prison Lives Matter:

Sean Swain on Texas abortion laws at [01:19:58]

Continue reading IDOC Watch, Leon Benson and Abolitionist Organizing in Indiana →

Anarchist, Anarchist Media, Capitalism, Colombia, General, Indigenous, Labor, Police, Protest, Transcribed, zine

Colectivo Subversión on Protest in Colombia and Global Battles for Dignity

Colectivo Subversión on Protest in Colombia and Global Battles for Dignity

Photo of a street mural with nature themes reading, in Spanish, "This is the Time of the voice of the Communities"
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This week on the show we are pleased to present an interview with María Kamila, who is a teacher and a popular journalist who works with the anarchist Colombian journalism and counter-information collective in Bogotá called Subversión. We originally reached out to talk about the current wave of protests and riots in Colombia, and this interview covers many topics, ranging from a historical contextualization of the current moment, who are on the front lines of the protests, Indigenous solidarity with anarchist accomplices via the Minga – which is a pre-colonial term for collaboration, meeting or communal action – , and many more topics.

Much thanks to our comrades at Radio Kurruf, doing anarchist media in the Biobío bio-region of so-called Chile in occupied Wallmapu, for putting us into touch with Subversión.

Paypal donations for supporting frontline protestors: surterraneomusic@gmail.com

Social media:

Further reading and research topics:

  • [00:20:00] min Mention of Carlos Pizarro Leongómez of 19th April Movement, assassinated Guerrillero
  • [00:24:00] minutes Minister of Finance Alberto Carrasquilla Barrera who was forced to resign
  • [00:28:00] minutes Guarda de Cauca , an ongoing struggle of Indigenous people fighting for land sovereignty
  • [00:40:00] minutes: Minga (or Minka), Indigenous, pre-colonial term for collaboration, meeting or communal action

Good articles in English:

Continue reading Colectivo Subversión on Protest in Colombia and Global Battles for Dignity →

Asia, Burma, General, Myanmar, repression, Transcribed, zine

Alive With Resistance: Diasporic Reflections on the Revolt in Myanmar

Alive With Resistance: Diasporic Reflections on the Revolt in Myanmar

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This is a conversation with Geoff Aung (@Rgnhardliner on twitter), a Burmese American Marxist anthropology Phd candidate at Columbia University living abroad, about the current uprising, repression and revolutionary potentials in Myanmar. We discuss the evolution of tactics on the ground as revolutionaries adapt to the brutal murders of protesters by the state. Geoff also talks about the ways in which this movement is different from similar current movements in Asia and some of the historical context of struggle in Myanmar.

The host, John, wishes they’d had more time to dig into further questions. There are some links below of news sources and articles on the struggle in Myanmar.

For further anaylsis from Geoff Aung, please refer to the below articles as well as his twitter.
Geoff’s latest articles on the subject:
Some good sources for news on Myanmar:
Some interesting contextual podcasts on Myanmar/Burma from “The Arts of Travel” podcast:
Ways to show solidarity from abroad include:
  • focus on companies internationally doing business with the Burmese Military Junta: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56133766
  • Show attention to Myanmar government offices in North American cities
    • US:DC, NYC and LA
    • Canada: Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver
    • Mexico: DF
  • Donations to the movement in Myanmar  https://www.isupportmyanmar.com but be aware that when the regime shuts down the internet it makes it impossible to get money and it has been difficult getting money there.

Continue reading Alive With Resistance: Diasporic Reflections on the Revolt in Myanmar →