This week on the Final Straw Radio, we’re sharing an interview with Matt Hart of the Los Angeles Anarchist Black Cross chapter of the ABC Federation. We talk about the book Matt just released via PM Press, an expanded edition of Boris Yelensky’s history of anarchist prisoner support “Shadows In The Struggle For Equality”, illustrated by NO Bonzo. Matt talks about the work of the LA-ABCF, ABC’s pre-history with the Narodnik movement in mid-19th century Russia, prisoner defense under the nihilist movement, some moments in resistance and mutual aid through the following hundred and fifty years or so, some colorful moments and comrades up into the 21st century. We hope you enjoy! [ 00:01:16 – 01:19:36 ]
Then, we’ll share a reading of the 2025 June 11th statement since this week is the day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners. More info on that initiative at June11.noblogs.org and the original text can be found there [ 01:19:41 – 01:30.51 ]
This week we spoke with Moira Meltzer-Cohen, an anarchist and lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild who practices mostly in New York City. For the hour, Mo talks about knowing ones rights and risks during interactions with law enforcement in the US during Trump 2.0, why even scofflaws should know some basic Bill of Rights trivia, info on warrants and house visits, airports and borders, and the importance of face-to-face practice with local lawyers who know the legal precedents on the ground in your jurisdiction.
We’re a week and a half out from the annual June 11th Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners. If you’re in the Asheville area, Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at The Odd (1045 Haywood Rd near Firestorm in West AVL) . $10 door, opens at 7pm, music at 8pm
If you’re elsewhere, you can check out announced local events in your area by checking out the social media accounts for June11.Noblogs.Org, particularly their mastodon account on @june11@kolektiva.social
Fire Ant Movement call to action
Finally, the Fire Ant Movement released the following statement concerning June 11, 2025:
“Fire ant movement defense, an organization that works to gather mass opposition to the political prosecutions of the stop cop city movement in atlanta, is calling for a “movement defense day of action” on June 11 to support stop cop city defendants and long term anarchist political prisoners. Their statement reads: This year, June 11th arrives amid growing repression: Pro-palestine protesters are facing indefinite detention in ice facilities, and in Georgia, the state continues its aggressive persecution of the stop cop city movement, with 61 activists currently facing RICO charges.
In response, we call for a united front, to link the defense of the stop cop city struggle with the june 11th tradition of solidarity with long-term anarchist political prisoners.
We invite people to learn about Marius Mason and other long-term anarchist prisoners, host public events, drop banners, throw fundraisers, and take action to defend our movements for total liberation.”
Fire ant movement defense says that this will be the first of many movement defense days of action, drawing connections and lines of solidarity between movements fighting for liberation. You can find more information at fireantmovement.org and follow them on instagram, twitter or bluesky.”
This week, we’re sharing an interview with Garret Felber, author of the book A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre, which is due out May 5 from AK Press. Garret speaks about the life of Martin Soster, famed jailhouse lawyer who successfully won cases related to the constitutional rights of prisoners, was politicized in prison by the Nation of Islam in the 1950’s, ran radical Afro-centric bookstores in Buffalo NY to radicalize the youth, embracing anarchism during his time imprisoned on a frame up during which he was a celebrated political prisoner resisting cavity searches through the courts, went on to organize after his release for tenants rights and rehabilitating disused buildings for community centers and helping run a childcare. Sostre was a mentor to Lorenzo Komb’oa-Ervin and Ashanti Alston and laid important foundations for modern Black Anarchism in the US.
There’s a lot in here and we hope you enjoy the book and that the story inspires complex, creative and combative resistance to all forms of domination. The transcript for this chat is currently on the post and soon we’ll have a zine and pdf up on our zines page.
Rashid was “compacted” on May 1 to the Perry Correctional Institution in South Carolina, 430 Oaklawn Rd., Pelzer, SC 29669. His ID number in South Carolina is 397279.
In the transit van, he was severely injured – probably a broken bone – in his left leg. He has not been given any treatment for it.
He is in solitary confinement, with only a concrete slab to sleep on. He can make only one phone call per week. A comrade is helping him get onto the “GTL Getting Out” app so that he can communicate with everyone.
Meanwhile, he has been on hunger strike since he got there. He lost 17 pounds during the first week.
He appeals for maximum publicity and pressure.
The phone numbers listed for the prison are: 864-243-4700 and 803-737-1752.
Make calls and spread the word. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, ID number 397279, must be treated humanely, given good medical care and a decent place to sleep and allowed full access to communicate with his lawyers and supporters. Tell the authorities to meet his demands so he can end his hunger strike.
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Featured Track
Standing At The Crossroad by Eddie and Ernie from Lost Friends
This week, an interview with Clifton Ariwakhete Nicholas and Franklin Lopez about about the film currently in production via Amplifier Films, A Red Road To The West Bank: An Indigenous journey of resistance and solidarity. The conversation covers some about relationships between the people of occupied Palestine and Kanehsatà:ke in so-called Canada, histories of settler colonialism and resistance of it. Clifton and Franklin are attempting to raise $10000 CAD for the film.
This week, we’re sharing an interview with Ángel, an ICE detainee currently incarcerated in Otero Detention Center in New Mexico. Ángel is a trans-masculine lesbian of Mapuche heritage, whose family moved hir to the US from Chile at the age of 7 and has lived undocumented since, attaining DACA status under Obama. During the 2020 George Floyd Uprising she pled guilty to charges related to arson of police vehicles in Little Rock, serving 15 months before moving to Chicago and where s/he was detained by ICE. Approaching 30 years old, the majority of which has been in the so-called USA, Angel made the hard choice to waive the right to fight deportation and has been in detention centers since on hir way to being sent to Chile to join hir mother and family now living there.
For the hour, Ángel speaks about conditions at Prairieland and Otero detention centers, the conditions of hir fellow prisoners, the hurdles they face in access to healthcare, quality food, clean facilities, legal resources, access to communications with their families, ability to communicate needs and demands with staff and guards who only speak English, and other topics.
If you want to learn more about 2020 Uprising prisoners (from 2022 & 2023), you can find our interview with one of the people running the website UprisingSupport.org linked in our show notes.
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
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 15th anniversary of The Final Straw Radio is coming up on May 9th, 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
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Featured Track:
Judas Goat by Filastine from Burn It (a benefit for Green Scare defendants)
First up, you’ll hear comrades from Frequenz-A out of Germany speaking with Eylem Çağdaş, an activist and a trans woman from Istanbul about current protest, queer and feminist perspective, anarchist participation and needs of solidarity. This segment was featured in the April 2025 episode of Bad News: Angry Voices from Around The World, the monthly English-language podcast from the A-Radio Network, which will be available early this week, so keep an eye out in our social media and updated links in our show post. You can find more work by Frequenz-A at frequenza.noblogs.org and more from the A-Radio Network and its contributors at a-radio-network.org. Eylem mentions Bianet and Birgun as good places to get introduced to ongoing news from leftists in Turkey.
Then, a chat with no Bonzo, anarchist historian, printmaker and artist, about how they developed their art, the historical work they do and some upcoming projects. You can find more of their work at https://noBonzo.com
This week, we’re featuring an interview with Anton, a longtime member of Solidarity Collectives, a group that supports anti-authoritarian and anarchist activists involved in the resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as funding mutual aid projects for civilians and domesticated animals suffering or displaced by the invasion, bolstering left libertarian social movements during wartime, making propaganda and manufacturing FPV drones as well as a few other projects.
In this ranging conversation we spoke for 2 hours covering issues of anarchists participating in military structures, the state of the armed resistance, impacts of changes in the US administration and more.
This week, we’re sharing an interview with Selena who speaks about the “Stop Cop City: Imaginary Crimes Tour” and Jordan, a RICO defendant from the Stop Cop City 61 case. The two speak about anti-repression, about where the case is at right now and a wider view of resistance and support. The tour will be hitting over 60 cities (not all in the USA)
61 people are facing RICO trials in Atlanta for alleged involvement in resistance to the construction of Cop City. The State uses imaginary associations and crimes, framed as RICO, as a means to break solidarity and momentum when movements are strong. Anti-repression is a response that uses an alternate imagination to strengthen solidarity and resistance.
In Spring 2025, a nationwide tour will visit over 60 cities to discuss the history of the Atlanta forest, the resistance to Cop City, history of RICO, ongoing legal updates and facilitate discussions on anti-repression and movement defense. Through this tour we aim to share the lessons we have learned across struggles, and adapt to the evolving repressive forces so that we can continue to move bravely together.
To hear past episodes of ours on the Stop Cop City movement, check out this link.
Announcements
A Message from Peppy
A brief statement from Brian “Peppy” DiPippa, an anarchist in Pittsburgh convicted of engaging a home made smoke bomb at cops protecting an anti-trans event at University of Pittsburgh in May of 2023 and sentenced to 60 months in Federal Prison. You can learn more about Peppy & his co-defendant Krystal (who just had a birthday!) at their support site
May we find inspiration and creativity in these challenging times. Let us be guided by friendship and self determination. May we mind our pace, study our ancestors, listen to our storytellers and run towards expansive freedom and autonomy. Solidarity to all those held captive by the state and their loved ones on the outside, your work is felt even if it is not always the most visible.
Now Airing on WEFR 1700 AM, Fairmont WV
We are happy to announce that we’re airing at 3pm on Saturdays on WEFR 1700AM in Fairmont, WV. To support this small station, check out their GoFundMe, and if you’ve got a community radio station, college radio station or public radio station in your area that you’d like to hear us on, check out our Radio Broadcasting tab and send us their way!
We’re sharing audio from audio recorded by Franklin Lopez of Amplifier Films with Palestinian journalist Hamza M Salha who lives in North Gaza describing the conditions with the resumption of the escalated genocide being conducted by the Israeli settler-colonial military. Hamza speaks about the means that people are informed of incoming bombing raids, speaks of the sleepless night in the midst falling bombs in the rubble and tents, clearly exhausted himself. He speaks about the availability of food, his thoughts on the strangling and murderous siege of Israel, the failure of the world to stop the genocide and occupation.
You can find stories and photos from Hamza on his instagram account. If you want to support him and 40 members of his extended family and attempting to get out of Gaza to get medical attention, you can check out his Go Fund Me.
You can watch the video without any accounts, only a web browser and internet connection by visiting the Amplifier Films mastodon account. To echo Hamza, thanks to Franklin Lopez of Amplifier Films (Facebook, Instagram) for sharing this audio and creating videos to share Hamza’s world with us on the outside, and our deep gratitude to Adrienne for the support and Hamza for expressing his experience for the audience. We wish you solidarity and health.
You can read some of Hamza’s writings below (same as last episode):
We’re a week and a half out from the annual June 11th Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners. If you’re in the Asheville area, Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at 
