Category Archives: Labor

Attica, Hunger Strike, IWOC, IWW, Labor, Ohio, Prisons, Sept 9 Strike

Bend the Bars conference, plus updates on AntiFenix, justice for Jerry Williams, and new music from Asheville

Bend The Bars Conference

bendthebars.noblogs.org
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This week we spoke with Alex about Bend the Bars conference which is taking place in Columbus OH on the weekend of August 26th-29th. This is a gathering which was called for in direct support for the September 9th national prisoner work strike, and is one of the only gatherings that we know of which explicitly centers the work of people doing direct support with incarcerated folks as opposed to NGOs and non profits. In this conversation we speak about the intentions for the conference as well touching on the prison condition in the US, the National Work Strike, and many other things.

 

You can learn more about this event by visiting https://bendthebars.noblogs.org/, and you can RSVP to this event or correspond with the organizers by emailing bendthebars@riseup.net

And, to visit the news sources that our guest mentioned, and to learn more about the upcoming national prisoner work strike to be called on September 9th, you can visit the following websites:
http://freealabamamovement.com/
https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/
https://iwoc.noblogs.org/

Additionally there is https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/, which is a resource for folks who want more
information about the day to day litigation that affects convicts and their families.

Announcements

AntiFenix

But first here is an announcement regarding AntiFenix by our comrades in the so called Czech Republic:

“Last week the appeal court hearing took place in the High Court in Prague. Russian, vegan, straight-edge anarchist Igor Ševcov, who was appealing his sentence – a 2 year expulsion from the Czech Republic for video recording someone else graffitiing prison walls during a support demonstration (complicity to criminal damage) – was given a new sentence.

The judgement remained the same – the high court still finds him complicit in criminal damage, but the judge changed the penalty. The new sentence: Igor is banned from attending any sporting or cultural event or any event like a manifestation, demonstration, benefit, mobilization, protest or any other action within the anarchist movement.

We do not know yet what it means exactly, but it’s likely that Igor will have to visit a probation office any time there is a big action, and he will be surveilled during any other event by under cover state agents and spies. If he violates his sentence he can be put behind bars for up to 3 years.

We do not know if Igor will follow this sentence, try to oppose it legally or just follow his own agenda and feelings and see what happens in the future. In any case, he has our full support.

If you want to support Igor, rather than congratulating him on his “better” sentence, ask him what kind of support he needs, for he is in a very uncomfortable situation. And mostly, keep changing your environment into a world where repression, exclusion and borders are exchanged for mutual solidarity and freedom.”

To learn more about this situation, you can visit their support website at https://antifenix.noblogs.org

Jerry Jai Williams

While national coverage continues surround reactions to police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Philando Castile in Minneapolis, and so many other people of color, and significantly black men killed by police, protests continue here in Asheville around the police killing of Jai “Jerry” Williams on July 2nd of this year. Jai was shot 7 times and killed by Sgt. Tyler Radford at the Deaverview Apartments in West Asheville on July 2nd. Since then family, community members and activists have continued acting in public to make sure the police account of what happened July 2nd does not go unchallenged. This activity includes presenting a different version of the story, working to support family and make space for their needs, marches downtown, flyering, interceding at public meetings, vigils outside of the Asheville Police HQ and also a sit-in that ran for about 36 hours in the HQ lobby and leading to the arrest of 7 on July 22nd. The demands of the sit-in included the firing, arrest and indictment of Sgt. Radford for the murder of Jai Williams.

Support and resistance events continue. If you’re in the Asheville area and want to help out and draw attention to the case and bring home the message that this touristic mountain town suffers the same plague as the rest of the U.S. in terms of police unaccountability and systemic racism, you can join folks in the streets in vigil outside of the downtown police headquarters at the daily vigils at 6pm and plug in.

Much respect to those resisting, solidarity with the family. Shut it down.

activism, Alabama, Ben Turk, Canada, Coal, Earth First!, Environment, General, Labor, Prison Strike, Prisons, Quebec, Texas

The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (or FTP) and Ben Turk on the recent prisoner strikes

Panagioti on Fight Toxic Prisons + Ben Turk on September 9th Prison Strike

https://fighttoxicprisons.org
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This week on the show we feature an interview with Panagioti, who is an organizer with the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons. From their website:

 

“The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) is a collaboration with the Abolitionist Law Center. FTP’s mission is to conduct grassroots organizing, advocacy and direct action to challenge the prison system which is putting prisoners at risk of dangerous environmental conditions, as well as impacting surrounding communities and ecosystems by their construction and operation. At this time, FTP is focused on opposing the construction of a new federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky.

FTP is inspired by the abolitionist movement against mass incarceration and the environmental justice movement, which have both been led by the communities of color who are hardest hit by prisons and pollution.Both these movements also have long histories of multi-racial alliances among those on the front lines of the struggle and those who can offer support and solidarity, which we aim to build on.

FTP has been informed by the ongoing research and analysis of the Human Rights Defense Center’s Prison Ecology Project, as well as the work of the Earth First! Prisoner Support Project and June11.org”

You can see much more about this project, learn about the convergence, and donate or register for the event at https://fighttoxicprisons.org

. … . ..

Ben Turk on Sept 9th Nationwide Prison Strike

The second segment in today’s show is an interview with Ben Turk conducted by members of The Prison Radio Show collective at CKUT, on the campus of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada about the prison strikes across the U.S. and the buildup towards calls for a general prisoner strike on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising on September 9th.

For a link to this show, follow: https://ckut.ca/en/content/prison-radio-april-14-5-6pm-ben-turk-ending-prison-slavery-0

Announcements

Bloc Party Updates

From the website, It’s Going Down dot org, the regular segment called Bloc Party is a great source for recent uprisings in the streets and in prisons around North America. We’d like to highlight a few of these items. First off, the article summarizes a number of the May Day
disturbances that took place last Sunday, including brief report-backs from May Day noise demos and street parties in NYC, Hamilton (Ontario) & Chicago, riots in Seattle and prison work strikes in Alabama at Holman, Elmore, and St Clair facilities. More details and photos from those prison strikes and solidarity protests, including ones in Minneapolis & Milwaukee plus arrestee support links can be found at http://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org

Also from that post are announcements of the June 12th birthday of Jay Chase of the NATO3 who’s been struggling with some health and legal hurdles of recently as well as information on the upcoming June parole dates for longstanding Black Liberation political prisoners Robert Seth Hayes and jalil Muntaqim with links to their support campaigns and also a new mailing address for Joseph Buddenburg, recently sentenced to 2 years for a non-cooperating plea for releasing thousands of minks from
fur farms. We spoke about his case alongside that of Nicole Kissane.

Check out http://itsgoingdown.org to check it out in detail.

Fire To The Prisons magazine

Finally, we’d like to share a part of the crowd sourcing request for the U.S.-based, English-language insurrectional anarchist journal, Fire To The Prisons which is asking for help in the publication of it’s 16th issue. In the request, FTTP describes the sorts of content it’s covered
and plans to cover, including wanting:

“to expand our coverage, scope, and the reach of the publication while remaining true to the spirit of Fire to the Prisons. We will continue with our long term commitment to counter-information, original writing and content, and the amplification of the anti-authoritarian/anti-prison/anti-repression struggle that you have come to expect from us.

We will have both a domestic and international voice this issue. While remaining true to reporting on repression and anti-prison resistance across the states, Canada, and Mexico, we have committed articles from abroad promising insight on struggles and happenings that will help to bridge and unify an array of social tensions through a mutual awareness and solidarity.

We truly want FTTP to become a global publication and one that links anarchists and other autonomous combatants together in a dialog about the commonalities that we all face, as well as a discussion on the actions and struggles that we can all engage in.

We will be covering the resurgence of fascism in mainstream American politics, as well as updates on communities resisting further eco-devastation across the states. We have committed articles from prisoners domestic and international. We have commitments from NYC Anarchist Black Cross to use the project as a resource for raising awareness on repression and prisoner status in North America. We will also focus on the pacification of favelas in Brazil, the current reality and history of anarchist struggle in Chile, and the refugee situation in Greece. We will have further reports on anti-police struggle across the
United States, and will be continuing a tradition of news on broader prisoner strikes across America since our last issue. We are also intent on original articles on indigenous resistance in western Canada. Plus accounts and updates of the struggle in Rojava and general Kurdistan. Also all our featured articles will be available in Spanish for free on our website.

We are a committed collective. We are prepared to invest a lot of time and energy into producing this project, but we ask any and all sympathetic readers to help us with printing and distribution. by donating to our funding page. To print 10,000 copies of this it will cost us $2,000 dollars. While in the past we have had to ask people to pay the postage to our distributor, we would like to be able to send out more copies for free, to encourage broader distribution. We are asking for another $2,000 dollars for this. With maximizing our distribution efforts through contacts and friends across the world, we can distribute and mail out almost all of the new issues to anyone interested in distributing it. This leads us to asking for $4,000 dollars. We know this is an ambitious amount, and most likely those supporting us aren’t very wealthy, but it will absolutely secure this project, and help with the expansion of our readership. We hope that reaching out this way will put a dent into that fiscal goal, as our collective members are all working people.”

The collective is soliciting submissions and comments via email at firetotheprisons@riseup.net and invites folks to read and download old issues in pdf form from the website at: http://firetotheprisons.org

Donations can be made at https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/help-print-and-distribute-fire-to-the-prisons-13

. … . ..

Playlist

#LibertadDiDimora, activism, Autonomia, Bologna, CounterInsurgency, Feminism, General, Immigration, Italy, Labor, Neoliberalism, Police, repression, Student

#LibertaDiDimora: Hobo, Repression and Autonomia around the University of Bologna, Italy

hobo-bologna.info
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This week’s episode features a conversation with Francesca. Francesca is a student at the University of Bologna in Italy and is one of the people at the center of a wave of repression in response to ongoing autonomous organizing inside and outside of the University. The University of Bologna is the oldest, continuously operating public University in the world. Francesca is also a member of the Hobo collective, which runs an autonomous social space inside of the Poli-Sci department of the University.

In December of last year, after numerous marches and interventions around the city and university on a range of issues such as immigrant rights, precarity of employment, underpaying of university workers, increased cost and decreased quality of services at the university, affordable housing, the censure of political dialogue and more, the District Attorney of Bologna had Francesca and 5 comrades arrested as a preventative measure in order to stop their organizing and to terrorize the students and militants of the area. 4 students have been placed on house arrest in Bologna, making it quite difficult to make ends meet economically, and 2 were exiled from the city, thus cutting short their educational career. In response, a campaign called “#LibertaDiDimora”, which translates to freedom of home, was launched to respond to the repression of the 6 comrades and to continue struggles around freedom of movement and housing issues inside and outside of the university. More on student organizing around the world at http://commonware.org/

For the hour, we’ll be speaking with Francesca about her case, the campagn, the Autonomia movement which Hobo is alligned with, the monetization of education, precarity, internships, immigration in Italy, squatting and more. More at http://hobo-bologna.info

But, first a few announcements.

In the wake of the tragic murder of nine African American bible study members on June 17th, 2015 at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a white supremacist their was an outpouring of grief and solidarity expressed around the world. This was followed by a series of protests and direct-action removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the capital grounds in Colombia, South Carolina. The pressure built in other Southern States to remove the CSA Battle flag from their state flags resulting in blowback from some white folks to the removal of this “heritage” symbol that means oppression to so many others. Subsequent to the killings and flag debates, at least 6 black churches were torched between June 22nd and June 29th around the South East. Churches in: Knoxville, TN; Macon, GA; Charleston, SC; Elyria, OH; Tallahassee, FL. To top this, and never to lose an opportunity to display their pointy heads, the Klu Klux Klan has decided to call for a rally on the steps of the South Carolina State House on July 18th at 3pm and just as the racists will be coordinating to show up at the rally, so are anti-racists and regular-ass folks around the region. There are all sorts of calls for participation in all sorts of ways to counter a public display of hatred by the KKK. I hope to see y’all there. http://columbiascdemocallout.tumblr.com/

In a perfect segway, the next evening, July 19th 2015, folks are invited to come to the new location for Firestorm Books & Cafe at 610 Haywood Rd for a presentation by Saralee Stafford & Neal Shirley on their book, Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South. For our conversation with the Shirley & Stafford, check out this link.

A reminder to listeners with graphic talents, we’re soliciting designs for stickers, posters and more. The artists who’s designs are selected will receive a few prizes from our freeboxes (actually, some tee shirts and literature). We’re looking for the name of the show, our website and images that may reflect the project. We’re hoping it can be a tool for better advertising the project and getting more folks involved. You can email designs in pdf format to thefinalstrawradio(aat)riseup( dott)net or send them in physical form to, again:
The Final Straw
C/o Ashevillefm
864 Haywood Rd
Asheville, NC 28806

Finally, I’d like to give a brief shout out to some other audio & video projects that have been kicking out the jams of late. If you’re familiar with The Final Straw, you may have heard some of their names on our 4th Anniversary show last year.

Check out the Free Radical Radio at http://freeradicalradicalradio.net for a mostly weekly mix of commentary, comedy, critique and always witty reparte.

For great action updates, audio documentaries, reviews and more, Crimethinc’s podcast called “The Ex-Worker” is not to be missed. You can find episodes at http://crimethinc.com/podcast, along with links and transcripts of the episodes.

WhichSide Podcast, which features hosts Jeremy Parkin & Jordan Halliday, did a great interview with Kevin Van Meter, contributor to the book “Life During Wartime”. Regular episodes feature chats on anarchism, activism, animal liberation, veganism and more. More can be found at http://whichsidepodcast.com.

Finally, I want to give a shoutout to The Stimulator & his f-ing show, It’s The End Of The World and We Know It (And I Feel Fine) for riot porn, interviews, commentaries, updates and stunning images and movie references. More from that project at http://submedia.tv

Playlist

Anarchist, Author, Capitalism, Coal, communization, Feminism, gender, General, History, Indigenous, Labor, Marxism, Neoliberalism, North Carolina, Philosophy, Police, Prisons, Racism

Dixie Be Damned: a regional history of the South East through an Insurrectional Anarchist lense

http://www.akpress.org/dixie-be-damned.html
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This week, we’re excited to present a conversation with Saralee Stafford and Neal Shirley, editors and authors of a new book out from AK Press entitled “Dixie Be Damned: 300 years of Insurrection in the American South”. The book is a study of Maroon, Indigenous, White, Black, worker, farmer, slave, indentured, women and men wrestling against institutions of power for autonomy and self-determination. All of this in a region stereotyped to be backwards, slow, lazy, victimized and brutal. The editors do a smash-bang job of re-framing narratives of revolt by drawing on complex and erased examples of cross-subjectivity struggles and what they can teach us today about current uprisings in which we participate.

Throughout the hour we explore some of the examples that became chapters in the book, critiques of narrative histories and academia and what new ways forward might be towards an anarchist historiography. Keep an ear out for Saralee and Neal’s book tour, coming to a bookspace near you.

Playlist

activism, Capitalism, General, Hunger Strike, Labor, Prison Strike, Prisons, Racism

Free Alabama + Mississippi Movements in prisons + updates on Sean Swain

freealabamamovement.com
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Prior to the main portion of this week’s episode, we hear a Sean Swain segment and also Ben Turk comes on to talk about difficulties Sean’s currently facing (for instance beginning a hunger strike on Monday due to shenanigans by officials at OSP, where Sean is being held, and possibly JPAY (the company that contracts communication with Ohio’s DRC) that have limited his communications again.

It is suggested that folks concerned called the boss of the ODRC Lead Council Trevor Clark’s boss (Stephen Grey 614 752 1765). More on this can be found here: http://seanswain.org/support-seans-hunger-strike-call-the-odrc-on-monday/

The majority of this week’s episode is a conversation with incarcerated members of the Free Alabama & Mississippi Movements. The FAMMC (now including inmates in California as well) is an inmate-drive non-violent, civil disobedience movement with the goal of bettering the situations of prisoners, challenging the profits of prison corporations and departments of correction, ending the impunity of wardens and guards and abolishing the “new slavery” of mass incarceration in the U.S.

Due to the poor connection with the guests, some of the audio is difficult to hear, so a transcript should be posted in a few days at ashevillefm.org/the-final-straw where this post can be found and later at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org (oh yeah?  where is that, now?)

Melvin Ray (aka Bennu Hannibal Ra(y)-Sun) at St. Clair Correctional Facility/SCCF and R.EARL (aka Kinetic Justice Amun) at Holman/HCF near Atmore, AL, two founders of the Free Alabama Movement along with a member of the Free Mississippi Movement break down mass incarceration, the forms of struggle they’re taking, the economic underpinning to prison labor and prison privatization, issue of sanitation, diet, cost to inmates and family of incarceration, assault and rape in Women facilities, networking across state borders… M & Kinetic also talk about the recent lock-downs at their facilities.

A call-out for folks on the outside to pressure the administrations of these AL facilities to get rid of Warden Davenport (St. Clair, formerly Tutwiler) & Bobby Barrett can be found here: http://prisonbooks.info/2015/01/30/help-stop-the-reign-of-terror-by-alabama-prison-officials/

A post concerning the lockdowns from a few days ago but with information on the death row hunger strikes at Holman facility can be found here: https://denverabc.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/fam-press-release-protest-at-st-clair-prison-in-alabama/

An upcoming way for folks around the country to get involved in this movement is to share the information of the FAMMC with folks on the inside and try to help them to get involved in the movement. Keep up on the upcoming pushes to protest at and outside of prisons around Alabama, Mississippi and more by checking out their facebook and twitter pages. These groups are planning to focus demonstrations and campaigns against McDonalds Restaurants (which use prison labor to make it’s burger patties, uniforms and more) and other businesses that are all around us that contract prisoner labor to make a profit.

These folks run a weekly (often up to 3 times a week) podcast-radio show called The People’s Platform that can be listened to and called into when live or found as archives. More on this show can be found at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/freealabamamovement

For more information generally about the FAMM, check out their main website at: http://freealabamamovement.com/

A recent report about the violence (sexual and otherwise) perpetrated by officials against the prisoners at the Juliet Tutwiler Women’s Facility in Alabama (at which the current warden of St. Clair, Curtis Davenport, who’s overseen this rise of violence was once an official), check out this US DOJ report from January of last year: http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/tutwiler_findings_1-17-14.pdf

For the book that M. Ray has written about the goals and background of the Free Alabama Movement: http://freealabamamovement.com/FREE%20ALABAMA%20MOVEMENT.pdf

Playlist

Anarchist, Anti-Civ, Asheville, Earth & Animal Liberation, Earth First!, Environment, Eric McDavid, General, Hacking, History, June 11, Labor, Marius Mason, Music, NATO3, Prisons, repression, Sean Swain

June 11th announcements then METAL

neveralone2014
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This week’s episode features a couple of announcements about the upcoming June 11th Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason, Eric McDavid and Longterm Anarchist and Eco Prisoners. For info on the cases of Eric & Marius and other folks needing support, along with ideas of what solidarity might look like, check out http://june11.org

Here in Asheville, there will be a 4pm picnic at Carrier Park where folks will talk about June 11th, Eric & Marius’s cases, solidarity and prison realities. Food will be present, but bring your own sides to share, especially if you have dietary restrictions.

At 9pm on June 11th, there’ll be a show at the Odditorium. The benefit requests a $5-20 donation. Bands include Aneides and Uninhabitable from Asheville, Burnt Books from South Carolina and Harsh Words from Georgia. Items’ll be raffled off and there’ll be plenty of info available and folks to chat with. On Fakebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1452424341665913/

For more events in your town, check out june11.org. Also announced was the online art exhibition curated by the Earth First! Prisoner Support Project and featuring the work of 23 different artists, many of whom are eco-prisoners. Check out http://neveraloneart.org for flyers and more info. It’ll be up and online from June 11th to June 30th.

Bursts read a statement by Sean on this episode concerning the U.S. economy and the role that counterfeiting money plays in it. Very informative, as always.

Following the announcements, we heard Cervidae, Ancient Oak, Deafest and more! Check out the playlist here

Anarchist, Author, Capitalism, Environment, General, History, Labor

Market Anti-Capitalism: A conversation with Charles W. Johnson

Markets Not Capitalism, edited by G. Chartier & C. Johnson
Markets Not Capitalism, edited by G. Chartier + C. Johnson
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This week’s show features an interview with Charles W. Johnson, an editor and contributor to the new edition “Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty”, just out from Autonomedia Press.

Charles is a market anarchist writer from Auburn, Alabama. He is a member of Occupy Auburn, a Research Associate at the Molinari Institute and an alumnus of Auburn University. He has published the Rad Geek People’s Daily weblog at radgeek.com since 2001, and is a frequent speaker and columnist on radical responses to the economic crises, stateless social activism and the philosophy of anarchism.

We discuss definitions of Capitalism, critiques from Left Libertarians and possible market alternatives. We also touch on racism, regulation, and class struggle.

Charles will be speaking about this new compilation at Firestorm Books and Cafe, 48 Commerce St in Asheville at 6pm on Thursday, March 15 (Tyrannicide Day).

http://radgeek.com/gt/2011/10/14/markets-not-capitalism-1st-ed/
http://charleswjohnson.name/

A-Radio Berlin, activism, Anarchist, Antifa, Feminism, gender, General, Germany, History, Labor, Marxism, May Day, Nazis

Black Bloc: The legacy of the Kreuzberg Riots of 1987

May Day in Kreutzburg, 1987
May Day in Kreutzburg, 1987
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This week’s episode of the Final Straw features a conversation on a divisive and spectacular tactic that for many outside of the movement defines what an anarchist is: the black bloc. We speak to a comrade who was present in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin on May Day of 1987 when thousands of autonomous activists (of the Autonomen movement of which our guest was and is a member) and erected burning barricades while physically resisting the state. This date is pointed to by many as the beginning of the tactic as it’s practiced in it’s modern form. We also talk about beginnings of the Autonomen, how it differed from other movements before and after, gender and class in the inflammatory May Day riots in Berlin and more.

This episode was made possible by the comrades at A-Radio Berlin who translated our questions, conducted the interview and sent us transcripts and even overdubbed the audio. Much thanks. Check out their project, as they do at times produce content in English, Spanish and French in addition to their work in German.

The playlist for this episode can be found here

activism, Anarchist, Author, China Martens, gender, General, Labor, Parenting, PM Press, Queer, Vikki Law

Radical Parenting and Sustaining a Multi-Generational Movement

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China Martens has published Future Generation, a zine about radical parenting since 1990 (published as a book by Atomic Books in 2007). Vikki Law has worked to get the voices of women in and out of prison around by producing Tenacious: Art and Writing by Women in Prison and the recently republished Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. China and Vikki are authors, editors, anarchists, activists and also, mothers.

This week we speak to Vikki Law and China Martens about the newly published book, Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities (PM Press, 2012), which they edited and contributed to. We talk about multigenerationality in struggle as well as intersections of age, class, gender and race.

Vikki Law: http://resistancebehindbars.org/
China Martens: http://kidzcitybaltimore.blogspot.com/

*Correction, Vikki Law is involved with a group called WORTH, not GROW. http://womenontherise-worth.org/

activism, Anarchist, communization, Earth First!, General, Grand Jury, History, Labor, PNW, Police, Prisons, Quebec, repression, Security Culture, Student

Montreal Student Strikes (part 2)

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This week’s show features the second part of my conversation with Maria about anarchist perspectives on the student strikes in Montreal,
Quebec. Maria continues to draw the history of this last year of student strikes that have developed into a nascent social strike and talks about the call to help block the start of the next semester in early August of this year

The second half of this episode features music from and about the struggle of Miners against the bosses and the state and for survival and self-determination. The playlist can be found here.

Call Out to
block the next semester
Greve
Montreal