This week, you’ll hear Scott’s chat with Max Fox, editor of the late Christopher Chitty’s book, “Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy and Capital in the Rise of the World System”, published by Duke University Press in 2020. Max Fox is an editor of Pinko Magazine, a former editor of New Inquiry Magazine and translator of Guy Hocquinguem’s novel “The Ampitheatre of the Dead”. You can find Max on twitter at @mxwfx. Christopher Chitty was a phd candidate in the History of Consciousness at the University of Califronia, Santa Cruz.
Fox also notes that workers at the publisher, Duke University Press, are currently struggling to unionize. You can find out more about that struggle at DUPWorkersUnion.org
This week on the show, we bring you the audio of an activist panel from the recent Queer Conference held online by University of North Carolina, Asheville, in March of 2021.
The conference was titled Fitting In and Sticking Out – Queer [In]Visibilities and the Perils of Inclusion. From the panel’s description for the conference:
This panel brings together 4 local (Asheville, NC) and regional groups working at different intersections of queer community support. We will learn about the work these groups do, the particular issues that affect southern queers, the changes in visibility and inclusion for queer community, and the building of larger coalitions of liberation. Representatives from four organizations will be part of the panel:
Youth OUTright (YO) is the only nonprofit whose mission is to support LGBTQIA+ youth from ages 11-20 in western North Carolina. Learn more about their work on their website, and support them financially here.
Southerners on New Ground (SONG) is a nonprofit aimed at working towards LGBTQ liberation in the south. Find out more about their work on their website, and support them financially here.
Tranzmission Prison Project (TPP) is a prison abolition grassroots organization that provides literature and resources to incarcerated members of the LGBTQ community. Learn more about their work on their website and donate here.
Pansy Collective is a decentralized, DIY, queer, music and arts collective that created Pansy Fest, an annual queer music festival showcasing LGBTQ musicians from the south and rural areas, prioritizing reparations for QTBIPOC artists and community members, and community education and organizing around the principles of autonomy, mutual aid, antifascism, love, and liberation for all. Learn more about their work on their website, or donate here.
This week on the Final Straw, we’re sharing another audio gift from comrades. We spoke with a participant in the Taller Libertario Alfredo López / ABRA in Havana, Cuba, recorded in late 2018. In this chat, the guest talks about the ABRA which is the only openly anarchist organization in Cuba at the time, about the LGBTQ movement and abortion rights which are both facing repression due to pressure from Cuban Evangelical and Catholic churches on the Cuban government, political discourse and difference, government co-optation, neoliberalism, animal rights, repression of dissent and the erasure of anarchist history.
In May of 2019, the guest and his boyfriend Jimmy Roque Martinez were arrested on their way to the annual Conga Against Homophobia and Transphobia, essentially Cuba’s main Pride Parade and detained 24 hours in order to block their participation. As the guest talks about in the interview, the state-run National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) had bowed to pressure from right wing Christian groups and canceled the event so activists were planning to hold an autonomous Conga resulting in several more arrests. A report with updates on the subject can be found at the Rosa Negra / Black Rose Federation website. You can also find an audio statement from Mario from the TLAL space on the subject in Spanish via BRRN.
We’d like to say a brief hello to our new listeners on Royalton Community Radio in eastern so-called Vermont, where this show will air every Saturday at 10pm following Nocturnal Combustion as well as Tuesday mornings at 5am!
If you’d like to hear two recent interviews with the hosts of the show, check out last week’s FE-Live podcast (audio or video) with David Rovics for Fifth Estate Magazine, as well as the final episode of the SoleCast from the end of 2020, soon to be renamed The Institute for Post American Studies.
I found this interview extremely illuminating, perhaps like many other people who might not have strong ties to either academia or popular education models of learning, I had sort of written Oscar Wilde off as this kind of white dead rich guy who carried little to no relevance apart from a model of queerness that we could look back on. This interview very much proved that this isn’t the case, and that he and the circumstances around him very much influence how we as queers and as anarchists can sense historical threads that pull on our lives very tangibly today. Thanks a million to Scott for researching and conducting this interview!
You can learn more about the author, Kristian Williams, who is most known for his book Our Enemies in Blue, which is a critical history of American policing and police, at his website kristianwilliams.com.
Help Charlotte Jail Support Rebuild!
One announcement before we begin from our comrades at the Charlotte Uprising, Charlotte Jail Support has been getting extremely targeted harassment for some months from CMPD and the sheriff’s department. In times of rebellion or revolt, it is the support infrastructures that are often the most vulnerable to repression and violence. All of their supplies have either been seized or destroyed by the police, if you would like to support them re upping their much needed materials, you can Venmoing them @Ashwilliamsclt or Cash App $houseofkanautica.
This week we got to sit down with two members of the Portland General Defense Committee, AC (they them) and Raoul (they he), about the ongoing Uprising in Portland OR in the months since the murder of George Floyd. We get to touch on a lot of topics in this interview; the neo-liberal whitewashing of the image of the city of Portland which masks a lot of ultra racist and colonial tendencies, personal timelines of engagement in the Uprising, and a lot of tips and tricks for newer and older anarchists and radicals for dealing with and anticipating state repression and violence.
Here are some notes and links to the topics that our guests spoke on:
-One note on the group Riot Ribs that AC mentions, I think that the group has disbanded for now but have seemingly regrouped as Revolution Ribs, you can find them @RevRibs on Twitter and their Cashapp is $RevolutionRibs. This group does not have a verified Instagram presence as far as I know.
–Walidah Imarisha on Oregon’s racist, anti-Black history:
-Indigenous Mutual Aid is a platform that started up at the start of pandemic and has a very thorough list of Indigenous led and centered projects in their directory (indigenousmutualaid.org)
-Portland Freedom Fund which is a general fund that bails out BIPOC (portlandfreedomfund.org)
–Twitter folks to follow for otg news on the PDX Uprising:
-And finally, there are too many autonomous local bail funds around the country to all name here, but if you do a search for “mutual aid bail fund in [name of town/city]” then that should give you a pretty solid clue about how to support places that haven’t made it into the news as much. You can also do searches for Black Mamas Bail Out in your area to help fund efforts to bail out Black mothers and caregivers.
This week we are super pleased to present an interview done with Sima Lee, who is a queer Afro-Indigenous hip hop artist and community organizer of long standing, about a recent raid that occurred at Maroon House in DC this March. We speak about Maroon House, its story and what it is in the process of becoming, the ask for support in helping this movement build and heal from the brutal police repression, her newest album Trap Liberation Army, and many more topics.
Sima Lee has given some interviews recently about her political trajectory, her life, and relationship to anarchism in detail. Rather than having a repeat of those words, we are going to link her past interviews below!
Link to Bandcamp where there was an ask for monetary donation to help support the Maroon Movement and the Food, Clothing & Resistance Collective.
This week I had the opportunity to sit down with Margaret Killjoy to talk about her new EP called Every Breath Our Last out this October from her one woman project Nomadic War Machine. Margaret is a writer, musician, and anarchist based in Western North Carolina. We got to talk about a lot of things in this episode, including her new EP, what went into making it, Nomadic War Machine as a project in general, and her new anarchist fiction podcast called We Will Remember Freedom.
This was a great conversation to have for me, and is a little bit of a different approach than what we usually do in that the conversation unfolded organically with little in the way of pre set prompts. I hope you will get a sense of sitting down at a kitchen table with two people who have known each other for some while, talking about stuff they would kind of normally talk about anyway, except it’s being recorded. I am also clearly not a music journalist, and that comes out, especially because I neglect to ask her about the political or social themes of her new EP. Give it a listen tho on any streaming platform!
Click on her Patreon to support Margaret in her endeavors and to read more of her fiction.
This episode of the Solecast includes her reading a short story called The Northern Host (“nazis don’t go to Valhallah”), and an interview on TFS where we talk about her then new book The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion.
Support Project FANG:
From their fundrazr page:
“The climate crisis, and ongoing destruction of landscapes and wildlife, are provoking a deepening sense of urgency in an increasing number of people. It can be a serious struggle to care for a world that is being plundered for profit, but there are more and more people turning their grief into resistance in defense of nature and other animals. From water protectors to pipeline protestors, and wildlife and caged animal defenders – good people who care for our world are standing up for all of us. Unfortunately taking such a stand can result in arrest, court, jail, and prison time.
Background:
In 2016, project FANG was established by the NYC ABC as a much-needed attempt to fill a gap in the ongoing support work for the growing number of eco and animal rights prisoners in the United States. The focus of project FANG funding is to help pay for prison visitation costs for friends and family of these prisoners.
Why are visits so important?
Visits from friends, family, and loved ones are repeatedly identified by prisoners as one of the most important life lines that exist for them. Without visits, the crushing isolation of life inside a prison becomes unbearable. However, visits can often be prohibitively expensive. Travel costs might include not only an expensive plane ticket, but also lodging, a rental car, and meals. These quickly add up to hundreds of dollars.
How you can help:
Currently, project FANG has committed funding of $5,000 per year, but due to the increase in eco and animal rights prisoners, and requests for visitation funding, we need to increase our available funds. With your support we are aiming to double the fund’s annual budget for 2019 and 2020 by raising $10,000. Can you help us reach our $10,000 goal?”
This week I had the chance to interview three people who organize with La Concha, which is an anarchist space in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles that does many projects such as prisoner solidarity, legal and popular education, reading groups, bike brigades, and lots else. We talk about their work, and how the three came to be doing what they are doing right now, and also about the incursions that they’ve been experiencing from authoritarian Communists in the area. I felt great getting to have this conversation with them and really energized to build where I’m at, but also to help build more bridges between places all over so we as anarchists can enrich and nuance each other’s thinking and praxis.
Big thanks to the folks at Firestorm for putting TFSR in touch with La Concha! Here’s to many more colabs and for a furtherance of anarchist, Indigenous, and decolonial spaces.
To learn more about La Concha and the Psycos, you can follow them on all their social medias:
To read the zine they were mentioning called AlwaysAgainstTheTanks, follow the link!
Also if you come across a documentary about the Ovas and are curious to watch it, get in touch with them for a copy! For this inquiry and all others, say if you have something to contribute to the zine they were talking about, you can email them at ovarian.psycos@gmail.com
This week we have the opportunity to share a talk by Coco (they/them pronouns), who is a queer, Black, Puerto Rican anarchist about the recent 17 days of direct action against no-longer-governor Ricardo Rosselló and organizing as an anarchist after Hurricane Maria.
They talk about some of the lead up to these revolts – about the fascist campaign and term of office of Ricardo Rosselló -, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, decolonization and fighting US imperialism as it relates to PR, queer people and femmes on the front lines of the protests about Ricardo Rosselló, the active warping of this situation by media outlets, and many many more topics!
Coco originally presented this talk at the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair 2019 on Saturday August 24th.
I wanna give voice to something that came up in the Q&A after the talk, which was not recorded, in which Coco made space for an open conversation about revolt in Puerto Rico. They asked of the audience what we thought when #RickyRenuncia was trending on Twitter, and people were saying stuff like “we need to look to PR and learn from people there in order to figure out what to do where we’re at”. And a really good conversation wound out about disaster/riot tourism that has always been a problematic current on the far left, especially where the struggles of non-white folks are concerned. It was located in that conversation that the support of people interfacing with struggle that isn’t theirs is very conditional and fragile, and it was stated by participants of the conversation that there needs to be another way of looking at struggle that doesn’t involve an attitude of entertainment style consumption but rather comes from a place of real solidarity and real support.
As Coco stated, the media has really been messing with the narrative of what has been going on in PR, painting it either as super pacifist or like people are “out of control hooligans” or other such nonesense. For better sources of information, you can visit our blog at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org where we will post links to people and accounts you can follow who are on the ground or have a perspective that isn’t beholden to the larger capitalist media outlets.
Here is an announcement on behalf of the upcoming Queer Conference at UNC Asheville:
“Communities? Will a rainbow flag on a police car protect queer folks from a culture built around (trans)misogyny / misogynoir and sexual assault?
We are constantly reminded that our culture is still built on anti-black, anti-queer violence by the all too frequent murders of black transwomen, the further criminalization of queer sex workers, and the erasure of rural LGBTQ+ identities experiencing the pains of addiction, joblessness, and lack of resources. Today, we are at another fork in the road, where there is nominal acceptance of certain gay and lesbian identities (namely white, educated, middle-class families), while a wide range of experiences of people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella get forgotten. As queerness becomes hip and queer subcultural styles are being bought and sold, we must ask how the culture, lives, and sexuality behind the looks can survive and thrive. With the rise of global fascism, the impending doom of large-scale environmental collapse, and the inevitable next crash of capitalism, can we still envision a queerness that seeks liberation rather than admission to the status quo and benefits of a vastly unequal US society? How can we balance these visions with protecting the precarious lives most threatened by the current sociopolitical landscape?
This week we feature three segments. As it is literally packed with jam, we suggest you check out our podcast for free online at our website or any number of streaming sites for longer, more detailed conversations on the topics plus, again, Sean Swain’s segment for this week.
Move call for support for Delbert Orr Africa
First we have a couple of shorter segments. Respectively, you hear the voices of Janine Phillips Africa, Janet Holloway Africa and Eddie Goodman Africa of the Move 9, a political and religious group that follows the teachings of John Africa and have faced heavy repression from the state of Pennsylvania over the last 50 years, who are recently released after 40 years in prison on some bull charges. The three are requesting peoples support calling in to the prison administration in Pennsylvania and to two hospitals to get contact with their fellow Move 9 prisoner, Delbert Orr Africa. Delbert has a parole hearing in September and has suddenly been heard to be suffering from swelling and possible prostate cancer. His blood daughter, his lawyer and his family members in the Move organization are concerned that so-called authorities aren’t letting Delbert communicate with them. As they say, two other members of the Move 9, Phil and Merle, died under mysterious circumstances in the dungeons of the PA prison system that has sought to bury Move and it’s supporters like Mumia Abu-Jamal, with an announcement of sickness that quickly turned to the death of their family members. It’s also good to note that Chuck Africa of the Move 9, while support in this moment is not being directed at him, is also still incarcerated after more than 40 years. More info at OnAMove.Org, OnAMove.com, Move9Parole.blogspot.com or the fedbook page, “Justice For The Move 9”
There’s a statement from Move in our show notes, near the bottom of the post for this episode with more details. Those notes don’t include the number for Wilkesbury Hospital at 5708298111
Yellow Finch Tree Sit Against MVP
Then, we’ll hear from an anonymous tree-sitter and Dusty who are both in trees blocking the path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline cutting through Appalachia and threatening the immediate health of the forests, waterways and communities it passes by as well as the the wider future of life on earth as a project to pull fossil fuels for burning out of the soil for the profit of a few hucksters. More information on the Yellow Finch Tree Sit at AppalachiansAgainstPipelines on fedbook, InstaGram and Twitter or send them some money at bit.ly/SupportMVPResistance.
As a quick update, the efforts by EQT’s attempt at extending an injunction around the Eminent Domain for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to also criminalize tree-sitters, their supporters and lawyers have failed and the federal judge, Elizabeth Dillon, meaning that the construction will have to move from Cove Hollow around to the other side of Poor Mountain, ostensibly increasing the cost of building the pipeline by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Consider visiting them and congratulating the tree-sitters
. … . ..
Pansy Fest and Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair 2019
Third up, we got to talk with members of the fast approaching Pansy Fest and Asheville Anarchist Bookfair, which is an exciting collaboration happening over the weekend of August 23-25. We got to talk here about this colab and many more things, if you are listening to the radio version and want more content that will be up at our blog thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.
We want to share that the wrong address for writing to Sean was up at his support site and announced in his segments. You can actually write to him at:
Sean Swain #2015638
Buckingham Correctional
PO Box 430
Dillwyn, VA 23936/
Tom Manning
This week saw the passing of long-time political prisoner, alleged member of the Jonathan Jackson Unit and the United Freedom Front and revolutionary, Tom Manning. Tom’s death came after literally years of medical mistreatment and neglect at the hands of Federal Bureau of Prisons, ending at USP-Hazelton in West Virginia. The system had it in for Tom, that he would die inside, for even though he only had about a year left in the Federal System, he was bound upon release for the NJ state prison system, a system renown for it’s vendetta against prisoners accused of killing cops. We’ll link in our show notes to a recent writeup by Ray Luc Levasseur on It’sGoingDown.org. If you want to hear our interview with Ray Luc which touched on his relationship with Tom and Tom’s treatment by prison officials, we’ll link that in the show notes, too.
Jason Renard Walker on Kite Line
So, you heard the Kite Line jingle today. Due to this episode being a behemoth already, we’d like to direct you to hear the voice of prison organizer and Deputy Minister of Labor for the New Afrikan Black Panther Party (Prison Chapter), Jason Renard Walker on the August 2nd episode of Kite Line. In the future we may feature some of Mr. Walker’s audio essays to get them on the airwaves further. You can also find his articles, for which he’s been punished by the Texas prisoncrats, at the SF Bay View Newspaper.
Delbert Orr Africa
ONA MOVE
The MOVE Organization would like to bring to people’s attention a very dangerous situation that is currently occurring with our Brother Delbert Africa . For the past two weeks Delbert has been suffering from severe swelling from the bottom of his waist all the way down to his toes . For the past two weeks prison officials at SCI Dallas has ignored Delbert’s request for medical until this past week when several calls were made to his counselor . A medical visit was finally scheduled for this past Wednesday 7/31/2019 where it was explained to Delbert that he has a fluid build up which required to be drained Delbert was immediately taken to an outside hospital, where as of today 8/3/2019 we still do not know where Delbert is .
For several days now Delbert has been kept incommunicado from calling his MOVE Family , His Blood Daughter, and even his lawyer . Prison officials and also hospital officials will not give any one information pertaining to where Delbert is at . Something very suspicious is happening here and it appears the same pattern that occurred with Phil Africa in 2015 where a simple stomach virus turned to A weeklong trip to the outside hospital held incommunicado from family and friends to return back to the prison and be placed in hospice care and to only die a day later. In 1998 Merle Africa who had a stomach virus was forced in her cell and told she was dying only to die a couple of hours later .
This system has no issue with murdering MOVE people and that’s what they are trying to do with Delbert now . They have already given ground by letting innocent MOVE people out on parole and they do not want to do this with Delbert . As we said before this system has always saw Delbert as the leader and isolated him and this latest tactic is no different . Delbert is set to go before the board this September after winning his appeal now this happens . As of now we have heard from Delbert’s attorney where he has stated based on the medical report given from Outside medical they are stating that Delbert has Anemia , High Potassium , High Psa’s , Acute malignancy of lower intestines , Kidney Trouble , and Suspicion of prostate cancer . The only thing that Delbert has agreed to with any treatment or exams is the submission of a catheter to be used Delbert has requested a phone call to his MOVE Family which the prison and Also Hospital will not allow . We are highly suspicious that this prison has done something to Delbert to bring on these symptoms on so quick . They could not kill Delbert August 8th after the brutal beating they gave him and now they want to finish the job before he can come home on parole .
These officials are so arrogant this is the same way they murdered Phil Africa and Merle Africa .
As we have stated before they have isolated our Brother So they can kill him. They won’t let know one speak to him and this is very Dangerous we need people now to call
SCI Dallas Superintendent Kevin Ransom 570 675- 1101
We want people to demand that Delbert Orr Africa Am4895 be allowed to call his MOVE Family and let them know what’s going . Even Though it’s the weekend we are still asking people to call and Monday we are going full blast .
