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.
First up, Ian interviews Josh MacPhee and Alec Dunn, co-editors of Signal, about the recently published eighth volume of the Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. They discuss their motivations and experiences producing Signal for over a decade, designing print media in the digital age, and their work as part of Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, long-running, geographically dispersed artist collective dedicated to the production of radical art for grassroots movements. [ 00:05:33 – 00:44:37]
Mwalimu Shakur on Abolition, Organizing and Education
Then, you’ll hear most of a conversation with imprisoned New Afrikan revolutionary socialist, Mwalimu Shakur currently incarcerated in Corcoran Prison in CA, about abolition, political education and the hunger strikes of 2013 in which he participated. [00:45:14 – 01:12:37]
Join Blue Ridge ABC on the first Sunday of each month, next up being August 6th from 3-5pm at the NEW Firestorm spot at 1022 Haywood Road, in West Asheville. And swing by our table at the ACABookfair August 12-13 at Different Wrld to get involved, get a poster for the upcoming International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners and check out the other awesome stuff.
ACABookfair
If you’re nearby, consider a visit to the 3 days of event around the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in Asheville from August 11-13 with tons of speakers, publishers, music and more. https://acabookfair.noblogs.org
Dr. Mutulu Shakur, ¡Presenté!
New Afrikan revolutionary elder, accupuncturist and revolutionary Dr. Mutulu Shakur joined the ancestors at the age of 72. He was released by the state after 36 years in prison, organizing, healing, educating and inspiring despite having developed a virulent bone cancer. Dr. Shakur spent the last year on this planet continuing his work, speaking and attending events, surrounded by loved ones. Rest in power.
Ruchell “Cinque” Magee Will Be free!
Politicized prisoner and jailhouse lawyer, Ruchell “Cinque” Magee, is slated to be released after 67 years in the California prison system. Cinque is 84 years old, arrested on an indeterminate sentence around a marijuana charge from 1963, he joined the attempted jailbreak during the Marin County Courthouse shootout in which Jonathan Jackson attempted to free William A. Christmas and James McClain. Ruchell was the sole survivor and was a co-defendant of Angela Davis until their cases were split. There is a fundraiser to support Cinque’s post-release needs as an elder: https://fundrazr.com/82E6S2
Rashid’s Treatment Resumes, Thanks To Support!
As an update to past announcements from Kevin “Rashid” Johnson of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party, the public pressure from calls & emails apparently had the desired results and as of a few days ago he was receiving the medical treatment he needs for his prostate cancer, though he hasn’t received all of his papers so he can continue to pursue his lawsuits against the Virginia DOC since they were confiscated by prisoncrats, but he’s super thankful for public engagement to defend his health. More updates on his case can be found at rashidmod.com
. … . ..
Featured Tracks:
Don’t Play Around (Instrumental) by DJ Nu-Mark from Broken Sunlight Series 6
Black Hole by The Bulletproof Space Travelers from Urban Revolutions – The Future Primitive Sound Collective
We’re happy to share our recent chat with Matilda Bickers, co-editor and contributor to the recent PM Press collection Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex. For the hour we talk about labor organizing in the erotic industries, Matilda’s past experiences in publishing, hangups around sex work in radical communities and related topics. [ 00:01:00 – 00:43:02]
Then, Črna luknja shares an interview with a comrade who’s been living and active in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, so-called Mexico, about increasing violence and fears of civil war. This segment appeared in the June 2023, the 69th episode of BAD News from the A-Radio Network. [ 00:43:02 – 01:01:56[
You can hear some live audio this week starting on July 19th and until July 23rd from the St-Imier anarchist and anti-authoritarian gathering in Switzerland, including audio from the A-Radio Network. More info on that at https://anarchy2023.org/en/radio
Here’s our interview with Shannon Clay, co-author of We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action. For this episode, Shannon and I walk through the book, covering some of the history of the network, how it evolved, challenges it faced, and invitations to discuss current day anti-fascist and anti-racist organizing on Turtle Island.
This audio was released earlier to Patreon supporters of $3 or more a month. It’s one of the thank you gifts, alongside tshirts, zines, stickers and updates on the project. If you’d like to support our ongoing transcriptions help to make these conversations more accessible to a wider audience, give yourself that warm and fuzzy feeling by visiting tfsr.wtf/support for a link to ways to support our project with your pocket book.
. … . ..
Featured Track:
Rude Boys Gone To Jail by Desmond Baker from Rude Boy Gone To Jail / Don’t Fool Me
We’re happy to share another past episode, this time from May Day 2016, about 4 months before the start of our rss feed for our podcast. I feel it’s notable that this show approaches it’s 13th birthday on the May 9th of this year.
To friends we’ve met, and to those we have yet to meet, I’d like to wish everyone a happy May Day. As we’ll hear in the following hour, this day has a long celebrated history. From its many European pagan roots as a celebration of fertility as the fruits of the spring planting season began to… uh, spring forth. Then on to the repressive winter that fell early on May 3rd and 4th of 1886 in Illinois with, first, the killing of workers striking for an 8 hour work day at the McCormick Works and then the repression of anarchist and socialist workers and organizers following the bombing at Haymarket Square in Chicago of that same year. From there to the taking up of May 1st as International Workers Day by struggling groups around the world and the U.S. adoption of a sanctioned Labor Day in September of the year.
To divide an international working class, The U.S. government, oppressors of that May Day 1886 sanctioned a Labor Day to be celebrated in September, declared the first of May both Law Day (an obvious testament to Irony in respect to the Haymarket 8, all jailed and 4 executed) and, for some, it’s celebration as Americanism Day. Whatever that means. In 2006 & 2007, immigrants rights marches were seen on and around May Days that, for many, re-sparked the importance of this day. The protests and festivals swelled to numbers nearly unmatched in the history of protest on Turtle Island, and were accompanied by school and work walkouts and boycott days.
Whether you’re out there today taking direct action, in repose from the horrors of wage slavery, resisting the carceral state, gardening, dancing around a May Pole or otherwise celebrating the possibilities of this year to come when, hell, we might as well end this system of exclusion and extraction: We wish you a fire on your tongue, love in your heart and free land beneath you.
.. … . ..
Featured Tracks:
The International by Ani DiFranco & Utah Philips
The Earth Is Our Mother by Oi Polloi from Fuaim Catha
Surrounded by Matador from Taken
I Wish That They’d Sack Me by Chumbawamba from The Boy Bands Have Won
Addio a Lugano by Pietro Gori (performed by Gruppo Z on Canti Anarchici Italiani)
This week, we’re sharing an interview with 2 contributors an amazing history of anti-racist organizing in the late 1980’s through the mid 1990’s in Portland, Oregon, and with ripples across the so-called USA & beyond. In 2020 KBOO radio released a serialized podcast which became the basis for the book.
Mic Crenshaw was born and raised in Chicago and Minneapolis and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Crenshaw is an independent hip hop artist, respected emcee, poet, educator, and activist. Crenshaw is the lead US organizer for the Afrikan Hiphop Caravan and uses cultural activism as a means to develop international solidarity related to human rights and justice through hip hop and popular education. Crenshaw was a founding member of the Minneapolis Baldies and Anti Racist Action. He was a coproducer and narrator of the podcast version of It Did Happen Here. Moe Bowstern is a alum of the anarchist space in Chiacgo known as the @-zone that lasted from 1993 to 2003. She’s also a writer, laborer, Fisher Poet, and DIY social practice artist. Moe is the longtime editor of many publications, including the commercial fishing zine Xtra Tuf. She contributed to the writing of the book version of It Did Happen Here and lives in Portland, OR.
For the hour, we talk about the book and podcast, the reach, the resonance to anti-racist struggle today in Portland and beyond. We also talk about the toll of the violence faced and engaged by folks pushing back the organized white supremacy of the day, police and institutional violence and other, related topics. If you would like people featured in this book to come and speak at your institution, you can reach them at ItDidHappenHerePodcast at gmail dot com, through PM Press, or via the IDHH instagram.
This book was published by PM Press as a part of the Working Class History series. Another featured title in that series that was recently released was a similar documentary history with a really good narrative on the history of Anti-Racist Action in the 1990’s and early 2000’s throughout the midwest of Turtle Island, both in so-called Canada and the USA, and bits of other areas. Hopefully we’ll feature a chat with one of the contributors to that book entitled We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action soon on this show.
This week we’re re-airing our 2012 interview with Dr. George Katsiaficas, author and contributor to over a dozen books on Peoples Movements and the elucidator of the Eros Effect. For over a decade, Dr. Katsiaficas has been studying the culture and history of South Korea and it’s culture and has published the a two volume set, the first of which is entitled Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century from PM Press.
For more of Dr. Katsiaficas’ writing, check out his website at www.eroseffect.com
Shine White
[ 00: 56.41 – 01:19:33 ]
Supporters of Joseph “Shine White” Stewart conducted an interview with him about conditions in the NC prisons, violence and his views on organizing. Shine White is an anti-racist, white, maoist prisoner.
You can find our 2021 interview with Shine White here.
You can write to Shine White at:
Joseph Stewart #0802041
Granville Correctional
PO Box 247
Phoenix, Maryland 21131
This week on The Final Straw, Professor Raymond Craib talks about his book, “Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age” out recently from PM Press. We talk about capitalist fundamentalists attempting to create free market utopias, right wing so-called Libertarians, Ayn Rand, neoliberalism and the oxymoronic tendency known as “anarcho-capitalism” at the center of the recent HBO Max series called “The Anarchists”.
A quick note: the book on the Republic of New Afrika that Bursts mentioned was Free The Land by Edward Onaci. There was an interesting interview on Millenials Are Killing Capitalism podcast with the author last year.
Stay tuned next week for our interview with Sam & Alex of the antifascist podcast, 12 Rules for WHAT about their podcast and their two books, “Post Internet Far Right” or PIFR, and “The Rise of Ecofascism”. Patreon supporters can get this episode a few days early alongside other gifts. Check out that and other ways to support us at tfsr.wtf/support
The Age of Globalization (pdf) by Benedict Anderson, the updated edition of Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination. Published by Verso, but seems out of print
This week, I spoke with John from the Working Class History collective and host of their WCH podcast. We spoke about the new book, “Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance“, that WCH has published through PM Press, their archives, methodology, the project of popularizing working class, movement and human-sized history and a bunch more. [00:05:53]
If you thirst for more conversation with John, you’re in luck as Firestorm Books will be hosting a presentation with him about the book on February 25 from 7-8:30pm eastern or UTC – 5. You can find out more at Firestorm.Coop/Calendar.
