690 days. That is how long the tree sit on Yellow Finch lane has been standing to block the progress of the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proposed 301 mile corridor of pressurized, fracked liquefied natural gas.
This week, we speak with Dustie Pinesap and Woodchipper who are at the Yellow Finch Tree Sit in so-called Montgomery County, Virginia, who talk about the MVP, the recently-cancelled Atlantic Coast Pipeline, resistance during the pandemic, solidarity with the uprising against capitalism and white supremacist policing and a whole lot more.
If you’re in the Asheville area this week, city council will be conducting a hotly contested vote on the police and other budgets Tuesday, July 28th. According to the instagram account, @DefundAVLPD, there will be a rally that could turn protest starting at 5pm in front of Asheville city hall at 70 Court Plaza in downtown.
Phone Zap for Hunger Striking AL Prisoners
Anarchist prisoner Michael Kimble and fellow prisoner Brandon Oden began a hungry strike from all food other than water to protest the following:
the inept mishandling of the covid-19 crisis at Easterling Correction Facility
a lack of outside exercise time
a lack of access to law library
a lack of access to immune building foods and fruits
a lack of clean and fresh water
a refusal by administration to release all vulnerable prisoners being held at Easterling
a lack of proper testing and quarantining
Kimble and Oden are asking that everyone call and fax the Governor and Commissioner to demand that they seriously address and correct these problems.
Interview with Michael about the recent WV Teacher’s Strike
In this interview, Bursts spoke with an anarchist teacher and IWW labor organizer in West Virginia, MichaelMochaidean, about the work that went into the recent teacher strikesthat went slightly Wild Cat and ended in a partial victory for theteachers after 12 days of walk outs by public school teachers across thestate and has inspired labor organizing among communication workers inWest Virginia, teachers across Oklahoma, Arizona, New Jersey andelsewhere. They cover Right To Work regimes in the U.S. South, theorganizing model of the IWW, dual union membership, #generalstrike2018,#55strong, and where Michael sees things moving forward.
Interview about the Southeast Trans and/or Women’s Action Camp
Next we have a short interview with Miel, an Asheville resident and co organizer of the Southeast Trans and/or Women’s Action Camp, or SETWAC, which will take place outside of Asheville from April 26th thru 28th. We talk about the camp and the importance of having an eco-struggle space be centered away from cis-masculine genders.
We also talk about this group’s fundraising platform and the troubles they’ve had there, plus a link for a new fundraising push and how to get involved.To learn more about this project, you can visit https://setwac.blackblogs.org, and to donate you can go to http://paypal.me/SETWAC2018
Podcast special: International Solidarity against Repression of anarchists and antifa in Russia
If you want even more audio in your ear, check out our website for the interview Bursts did with Antti, a member of Moscow Anarchist Black Cross, about repression of anarchists and anti-fascists in Russia & Crimea, including the frame-up of criminal conspiracy, torture, disappearances and criminalization of supposed statements on social media. There has been a call for international solidarity actions with a-team and antifa in the Russian Federation from today, March 11th through the 18th, as well as a day of solidarity specifically on the 18th called for by Moscow Anarchist Black Cross in the run-up to the first round of Russian Presidential elections.
Presentation at Firestorm
Also, if you’re in Asheville this week,at Firestorm on Thursday, March 15th at 6pm there’ll be a presentationby another Russian anarchist comrade entitled, “The Western Left andMedia Politics of Russia in the Context of the War in Ukraine”. Thisevent is free, wheel chair accessible and will be followed by a questionand answer period. You can see the Fedbook event here!
Firstly, Bursts chatted with erin. erin is a resident of the Blacksburg VA area and an affiliate of Blue Ridge Rapid Response Project (or BRRRP) and is helping to organize the “Stop The Pipelines Action Camp” in that area from July 13-17th, 2017. The action camp is being organized in hopes to spread resistance to the Mountain Valley & Atlantic Coast Pipelines that are traversing Appalachian West Virginia, Virginia and, in the ACP’s case, North Carolina. We talk about what it is to live in a place and defend your home, to get to know your neighbors, to build the skills needed to resist ecocidal, capitalist infrastructure projects. More info at https://blueridgerapidresponse.wordpress.com. The event is being co-sponsored by Smokey Mountain Eco-Defense (SMED)
erin mentions pipeline security pursued by mercenary groups like TigerSwan as well as industry-sponsored astro-turf (or fake grassroots) group YourEnergy meant to muddy the water of community resistance to pipeline expansion and other infrastructural projects.
Errekaleor Bizirik!
After that, Bursts chatted with 2 residents of the squatted neighborhood of Errekaleor Bizirik in the Basque territory within the borders of so-called Spain. The residents talk about the history of Errekaleor Bizirik, feminism, energy infrastructure, recent attacks by police on the project and pre-figuring a post-capitalist life-way in the rubble of the existent. For more info on the project, which translates to Dry River (Errekaleor) Lives (Bizirik)!, check out:
The draft wikipedia page;
An IGD post about the project with links and context;
Their Coopfunding page.
We wanted to also state that the folks at Errekaleor reached out to us for the interview, which was super awesome. If you have a project, a book, an article, a fight that seems like it’d be interesting to us and our listeners, send us an email at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net and get the ball rolling.
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Announcement
The Arizona based humanitarian aid group No More Deaths (No Mas Muertes in spanish) has been under semi constant surveillance by Border Patrol for the past week. This is unprecedented attention; since its foundation in 2004 this group has had a written agreement, essentially a non interference good faith contract, with Border Patrol that names the group as a health aid and humanitarian group that has every right to be doing the work it’s doing. NO More Deaths is a group based on certain faith principles (it is an official ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Tuscon) and on critical engagement with policy reform, nevertheless it is a group that has a high degree of anarchist involvement and solidarity with what could be called anarchist principles. It is most famous for desert aid; volunteers hiking out and leaving supplies such as water – essential in the 100 plus degree heat – food, socks, blankets, other supplies, and directed first aid where needed along remote corridors in the Sonoran Desert. The group also engages with legal aid, abuse documentation, searching for missing or disappeared people, helping getting belongings back from Border Patrol, networking with other border solidarity groups in the area, and consciousness raising and education to subvert the extremely stale narrative that immigration has in the US.
A couple of days ago, after almost a week of constant surveillance, Border Patrol raided a camp “in an unprecedented show of force, [with] approximately 30 armed agents raided the camp with at least 15 trucks, two quads, and a helicopter to apprehend four patients receiving medical care.” We hope to talk with someone about this situation soon for the radio show; the fact that this raid is coming now is a clear sign of the administrations attitude toward this kind of work. For more information on this issue and to keep up with No More Deaths, you can go to their website https://nomoredeaths.org
This week’s episode is LITERALLY packed solid. We start off with an announcement about the case of Luke O’Donovan’s trial beginning on August 11th at 9AM at the Superior Court of Fulton County, 136 Pryor Street, S.W., Suite C-640, Atlanta, GA. Luke’s support is asking for folks who want to get his back to show up in court attire and be present for the court date. Luke is facing 5 attempted homicide charges stemming from injuring the 5 men attacking him as he was being queer bashed in Atlanta on New Years of 2013. More info and the callout can be found at http://LetLukeGo.wordpress.com
Next, a quick announcement about an upcoming benefit for and presentation about the 5E3, three anarchists (Amelie, Fallon and Carlos) accused of using molotov cocktails to damage a Nissan dealership and the Ministry of Communication and Transportation in Mexico City on the 5th of January. A supporter of the 5E3 will be speaking about their case on Sunday, August 10th at Rosetta’s Kitchen (Upstairs) at 8pm. August 10th is also known as Prisoner’s Justice Day and witnesses yearly hunger strikes across the convict race serving time across Canada in remembrance of all prisoners who’ve died of unnatural causes while incarcerated. More info at http://fuegoalascarceles.wordpress.com/in-english-information/
Our first segment (after Sean’s words of wisdom) is a conversation with D, an anarchist and prison abolitionist from West Virginia to update us about the Elk River chemical spill from January of this year. We talk about the West Virginia Clean Water Hub and the project it recently spawned, Voices From South Central WV. Voices from South Central is working to amplify the voices of prisoners at the main jail in Charleston, WV. The project began as a way of gauging and presenting (in prisoners own words) the effects of the water crisis on those incarcerated and how the administration dealt with health effects it caused and worked (or didn’t) to provide clean water to those they jailed. http://storiesfromsouthcentralwv.com/
For our past coverage of the spill, check out: http://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/?s=west+virginia
Finally, we air another great segment from Anarchistisches Radio Berlin. This time A-Radio speaks with members of the Greek political Hip Hop group Social Waste. The discussion ranges from chat about the development of Hip Hop in Greece, where it overlaps with politics, immigrant solidarity, anti-capitalism and anti-fascism as currently practiced in Greece.
The first will be the 2nd in our hopefully ongoing presentation of audio essays by anarchist prisoner Sean Swain, currently held in isolation at Ohio State Prison in Youngstown Ohio for alleged involvement in the Army of the 12 Monkeys, a nascent prisoner guerilla sabotage movement in Ohio prisons which is spreading every wider. Sean Swain denies involvement in the group and a self-identified member of that movement denies his involvement yet he’s been convicted of it despite any evidence and is now serving 23 hours a day in solitary, without human contact. We’ll be featuring mostly weekly segments by Sean from inside prison until the fascist running dogs at OSP shut off our communication. Here Sean gives his bid in hopes of being elected not the next governor of Ohio in 2014, but the last. Check out some of his writings at http://seanswain.org
Our second segment is a conversation with Nat and D, two anarchists in the South East of the U.S. doing mutual aid solidarity work with communities in West Virginia effected by the leaking of chemicals by the sarcastically named Freedom Industries, a company involved in providing chemicals for coal extraction. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/keeperofthemountains
For more info, if you have the fakebook account: https://www.facebook.com/pages/WV-Clean-Water-Hub
This week’s show features a conversation with Will Potter about political repression against accused Anarchists in the Pacific Northwest. Later, we’ll speak with Bryan of Katuah Earth First! about his participation in a recent action in West Virginia against Mountain Top Removal.
Our first segment of this weeks show is a conversation with Will Potter, award-winning journalist, author and blogger at www.greenisthenewred.com about the JTTF & FBI raids on suspected Anarchists in the Pacific Northwest and the series of Grand Juries now being convened around participation in the May 1st protests in Seattle of this year.
Also, we’ll be speaking with Bryan, a member of Katuah Earth First!, based out of Asheville. Bryan was arrested on July 28th during a non-violent direct action under the banner of Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival (RAMPS). This action briefly shut down and brought attention to the Mountain Top Removal style of strip mining being used at the Hobet mine, operated by Patriot Coal in Lincoln County, West Virginia. We talk about the Katuah bioregion, Fracking in North Carolina and getting involved to save our landbase.
