Category Archives: Indonesia

Anarchist, Author, Autonomy, Colonialism, Environment, Farming, Food Sovereignty, Forest Defense, History, Indigenous, Indonesia, Transcribed, zine

Countering Dispossession in Casiavera, Indonesia (with David E Gilbert)

2025/04/27 The Final Straw Radio

book cover of "Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land: A Social Movement Ethnography" featuring a woodcut of a farmer holding a basket filled with fruit in an ecologically diverse area surrounded by banners reading "Manusia MemeLihara Alam Memberi" + "TFSR 4-27-25 | Countering Dispossession in Casiavera, Indonesia (with David E Gilbert)" — Download This Episode

This week you’ll hear our chat with the author of Countering Dispossession: Reclaiming Land: A Social Movement Ethnography, the political ecologist David E Gilbert (not to be confused with the former Weather Underground prisoner in the US). For this episode, David and I speak about the book, the small community in south Sumatra, Indonesia known as Casiavera, the legacy of colonial land grabs, the people who live there and the agro-ecology of the rainforest at the base of the Arin volcano. You can find more of David’s work at https://DavidEGilbert.Com

Announcement

May Day

Happy upcoming May Day, comrades known and unknown! I hope that wherever you are and whatever you do, you’re surrounded by siblings in love and struggle, you can take pleasure in the beauty of the world around you, take strength from our predecessors who share our vision of a life unencumbered by state / capital & the other anchors foisted upon our shoulders, and with the energy to create a path towards our desires

Ángel Espinosa Villegas

We had an interview scheduled with Ángel Espinosa Villegas, a trans masc butch dyke, formerly a 2020 uprising prisoner who was transferred to ICE detention for deportation, however the screws seem to have decided to escalate the deportation to Chile rather than let hir continue to speak to the media. Keep an eye out for upcoming interviews with Ángel, and consider checking out hir GoFundMe. At the end of this post there are some statements from Angel…

Supporting The Show

Hey listeners… we’ve had a string of early releases with more on the way coming out through our patreon for supporters at $3 or more a month, alongside other thank-you gifts. If you can kick in and help, the funds go to our online hosting, and creation of promotional materials like shirts and stickers, but MOSTLY to funding our transcription efforts. We hate to ask for money, but if you have the capacity to kick us a few bucks a month, either through the patreon or via venmo, paypal or librepay or by buying some merch from us (we have a few 3x, 4x & 5x sized tshirts in kelly green coming soon), we’d very much appreciate the support. We’re hoping to make a big sticker order in the near future.

If you need another motivator, the 15^th anniversary of The Final Straw Radio is coming up on May 9^th, 2025 and we are not above accepting birthday presents. That’s 15 years of weekly audio (albeit at the beginning it was more music than talk), including 8 of which 7 of which aren’t in our podcast stream (you can find some early show examples in this link _by skipping to the last page of posts on our blog).

Other ways to support us include rating and reviewing us on google, apple, amazon and the other podcasting platforms, printing out and mailing our interviews into prisoners, using our audio or text as the basis for a discussion of an ongoing movement, contacting your local radio station to get us on the airwaves, and talking about us to others in person or on social media.

Alright, capping this shameless plug!

Angel statements:

These are press statements and direct quotes that Ángel Espinosa-Villegas has provided from inside Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, TX, where she was held from April 1 to April 25, 2025. Ángel is currently in transfer to an undisclosed location, but has not been able to contact loved ones yet. These messages were received by loved ones on the outside throughout the past 3 weeks and she has given explicit permission to publicize these statements.

“We dance a lot, draw our hopes and homes on the walls of this place any way we can. We tell stories of home, hold each other past language barriers because we all know all too well what it’s like to be torn away from our families, hold onto hope, only for it to be crushed cruelly by these heartless fascist traitors. To remain utterly powerless at the mercy of the abusers of gluttonous power. People
are quite literally dragged out, hogtied, by these pirates that speak of protecting democracy yet dehumanize and humiliate us without so much as a look in our eyes before ripping us apart from our newfound friends, and, more distantly, our families we have here. They rob us of the little money we have and have no paths of recovery. They tell us clean water is a privilege and not a right. That
speaking to our families is a privilege. That seeing the sun is a privilege. That if we get too loud of this constant mistreatment, then we should get ready to eat mace.”

“Most people here don’t have the means to speak out against these human rights’ violations we face every day. But I will take any and every chance to fight, to expose the way they treat us that these human traitors have normalized.”

“This was supposed to never happen again. But here it is again. We need everyone demanding our freedom, to expose all the vultures robbing these vulnerable people of everything from money to merely see our families and small children. We’re not even allowed to say goodbye, to hug our children goodbye.
What madness is this? How is this STILL happening to us, I ask myself when I wake up. Is this country for the free? For those yearning for a safe, happy life? If this country and its people care about freedom and safety, then people should
refuse to let this government and administration work a second longer until they free us ALL.”

“A lot of women here are fighting their cases because they’ve been following protocol to obtain legal papers or asylum or were just rounded up randomly from racial profiling. One woman here lost her purse with all her money on a train and went to church to seek help. The church called ICE on her because she couldn’t speak English! Another woman here was late to her job and her boss called ICE
on her. Few of us have criminal records. Most were just following advice from their lawyers and continuing their appointments with ICE and USCIS to get their visa or temporary protected status or whatever it was they were doing. But because of Trump’s administration they’re all rounded up by ICE and deported.”

“I’m feeling alright, mostly numb since being locked up is so abusive and heart wrenching. Here… It’s a rollercoaster. I witness, every single day, cries of agony and anger and despair. I see people hogtied and dragged out. People being yelled at to gather their things and go into the unknown, being threatened with PREA for hugging as we say our goodbyes and well wishes. This place is much worse than prison in many ways. I hear guttural wails and sobs so many times a
day. It’s like being at a perpetual funeral; laying to rest this person’s life, that one’s dreams, the other’s hope. Knowing they’ll be inevitably harmed, kidnapped, sometimes disappeared or even killed when they go and we can do absolutely nothing.”

“We’re just hostages. Being one for so long now… I’m so hollow on the inside. I haven’t dropped any tears the last year and a half. I just can’t. Not even when I was sentenced. I don’t know how I’ll even begin to heal, but I sure as fuck ain’t ever gonna stop fighting. My hope and ambition to fight… I’ve just been refueling his entire time being down.”

“Fighting brings me solace. Helping others brings me solace, some
meaningfulness, a melting of stone in my petrified heart. I spend most of my time going around and helping people as much as I can; working the tablets, giving phone calls, cooking food, doing little chores and tasks for the older, sick, or disabled ladies.“
With love & solidarity,
Free All Dykes

. … . ..

Featured Track:

Judas Goat by Filastine from Burn It (a benefit for Green Scare defendants)

Continue reading Countering Dispossession in Casiavera, Indonesia (with David E Gilbert) →

Anarchist, Asheville, Asia, Bookfair, Indonesia, Java, May Day, repression, Yogyakarta

Anarchy in Yogyakarta + Anarchist Bookfair in Asheville

2018/06/04 The Final Straw Radio

This week we have two interviews to share.

In the first Bursts spoke with two organizers of the Asheville Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB2018) taking place the 22-24th of June. To link up with this project and for aaall the information, you can visit the website here! To follow on social media, you find @acab.2018 on Instagram, and for email it’s acab2018@riseup.net. This segment begins at [11:46]

Then Bursts spoke with Tristan, an anarchist living in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, about the riot that took the streets for 3 hours there on May Day. They talk about anarchist in Java, the feudal Sultanate they suffer under, the New Yogyakarta International Airport threatening to displace a village and more. This segment begins at [40:02]

As Tristan says in the interview, much of the resistance of the Committee Against Feudalism that raged against the police on May Day in Yogyakarta was in order to damage government facility as well as to undermine trust of local and international investors in the building of a New Yogyakarta International Airport, or NYIA. The airport has already lead to the displacement of people in the farming village of Kulon Progo, destroying trees & livelihoods, and authorities cut power supplies to intimidate residents into selling their ancestral lands in this southern coastal village. In place of the farmlands where 11.5 thousand people live, cultivating peppers, eggplants and watermelons, the state would destroy the erosion and flood-defending dunes around this area with a 2,000 hectare “airport city” containing hotels, industrial zones, shopping centers & other tourist ventures. Here is a chronology of resistance up to late 2017.

The airport would be operated by Angkasa Pura (state-owned Airport Operator), and constructed by the U.S. company Landrum & Brown, with offices in NYC, Orlando, SF, Tampa, Cincinnati, Bogota, Boston, Chicago Alongside L&B is the India-based megaproject conglomerate, GVK. GVK is named for it’s founder, Gunupati Venkata Krishna Reddy, and is also active in the Australian coal mining sphere. A Czech corporation involved in designing the NYIA is AGA-Letiště, s.r.o. (based in Prague). Mott McDonald, an employee-owned consultancy firm, also plays a role in this mess. Finally, the Rajawali Corpora (a heavy hand in five star hotels and media ownership) is involved and is owned by https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-sondakh/.

The Sultan, Hamengkubuwono X, the second in his lineage to be given official governorship of Yogyakarta, is grabbing public and communal lands for sale and gifts to investors, selling it off for megaprojects like the NYIA and personally profiting, claiming a Feudal ownership. The real losers in this situation are the people of Yogyakarta, the real winners are the Sultan, the global rich and these megaproject proliferators who choose short-term profits over community autonomy and ecological health.

Since we didn’t get to it, I’d like to touch on what I understand of some of the racism that Tristan references. Among other things, the Sultan’s continued use of a 1975 law that is now in conflict with Indonesian national law against discrimination, is another tool at grabbing land and fueling ethnic populism. The law excludes ethnic-Chinese Indonesians (despite many having been in Indonesia for generations) and other non “pribumi” (or ethnically Indonesian) people from owning land and has been used to repress ethnic minorities in the archipelago in the past. This law also serves the Sultan, by denying property rights it allows his government (therefore him as feudal lord) to retain the rights to the land.

A few articles on resistance in Indonesia can be found at Agitasi, a site for Indonesian Counter Information and Analysis. If you can’t read it, learn Indonesian (or babelfish or googletranslate it). Some photos of solidarity can be found on InsurrectionNews. An article on resisting the airport from EF!Newswire, with more links inside. Indonesian embassies in the Americas can be found listed here.

To share acts of solidarity or for information on how to donate funds, drop an email to palanghitam@riseup.net or matata@riseup.net, or paypal funds to business.with.rangga@gmail.com and mention in the memo that it’s for Ucil. And here’s a letter Ucil written on May 21.

Announcements

Here is an update from the Appalachians Against Piplelines social media, which was posted two days ago:

Earlier this morning, on day 12 of the skypod on Pochahontas Road in the Hellbender Autonomous Zone (aka the Jefferson National Forest), fern was extracted and arrested.

Law enforcement began arriving to join the skypod’s existing 24 hour watch before 6am. For a couple hours, they discussed extraction, suited up in climbing gear, and attempted to coax fern down – but she refused to give in to their intimidation. Shortly after 8 am, a cherry picker drove up the road, by 8:30 fern was on the ground, handcuffed, and arrested.

Although the blockade of this pipeline access road has been removed, the fight is far from over. The Mountain Valley Pipeline remains a dangerous project, installed by force, and part of a network of dead end disasters for water, climate, communities, and ecosystems.

So before MVP and law enforcement even begin to breathe a sigh of relief, thinking they are one step closer to their goal of padding the pockets of executives at the expense of this forest and the lives of all along the route, let’s show them that they have not won.

Let’s remind them that this pipeline is not yet built, that it is not a foregone conclusion. Let’s prove that they have not extinguished the flame of resistance.

If you’ve been watching the efforts and sacrifices of the people confronting the MVP, if you’ve been grateful to know that this pipeline isn’t getting through without a fight, now is the time to move forward with actions of your own! None of us can do this alone.

If you want to donate to fern’s and other’s legal costs, you can go to bit.ly/supportmvpresistance.

To get connected with these efforts, go to bit.ly/AAPIntakeForm.

And you can follow them on social media by searching Appalachians Against Pipelines on any platform you can think of.

. … . ..

Following the recent murder of Roxsana Hernandez at the hands of ICE agents, the organization Familia TQLM (Trans and Queer Liberation Movement) is organizing a national day of action against ICE, to end trans detention, and to call attention to the dangers forced upon trans, gay, and queer people in detention on Wednesday June 6th. Roxsana Hernandez was a 33 year old trans woman from Honduras, and her passing is one of the most recent examples of the specific threats that Immigration and Customs Enforcement pose to LGBTQ people. A recent study found that LGBTQ people are 97 times more likely to face sexual assault and sexualized violence at the hand of ICE agents while imprisoned, as well as facing conditions akin to torture: being held in freezing cells, or ones that are dangerously hot, and being denied life saving medication, as in the case of Roxsana Hernandez.

If you would like to connect with this action on June 6^th, you can follow the hashtag JusticeForRoxsana, or email info@familiatqlm.org

To read the full article on conditions facing LGBTQ detainees, you can visit the link here.