The Final Straw Radio

This week, we dig into the pre-trial hearings and jury selection for Ayla King, Stop Cop City movement's first and only co-defendant so far to be granted a speedy trial. We're joined by Silver, an on-the-ground correspondent among many in Atlanta focused on supporting the collective defense against the State of Georgia's RICO indictment. Stay tuned for future coverage of the trials as they unfold....

This week on the show, you'll hear an interview with Lala an anarchafeminist in the Azerbaijani group Feminist Peace Collective about the recent war against and expulsion of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, about the Aliyev regime and patriotic elements in Azerbaijan's reaction against anti-militarist voices, conspiracy theories and real critiques of non-profit NGO's versus grassroots lgbtq...

This week, we checked back in with folks involved in the struggle to block the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303 mile so-called natural gas pipeline proposed to bring fracked gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations across parts of West Virginia and Virginia with an extension into North Carolina. Since a chat with activists we had in July, there have been nearly weekly actions to block the...

Sara and Josh On Certain Days Calendar This week on the show, Ian talks to Sara and Josh , organizers from the Certain Days Collective on the publication of this year's certain days calendar. The two discuss the creative and administrative processes involved in producing one of the most consistent projects in the abolition space. They also discuss the past, present, and future of the project and t...

Jewish Anti-Zionist in Palestine + Antifascists Repressed in Budapest This week's show features four segments: an announcement from IGD Podcast; an anti-Zionist Jewish voice from Palestine; an interview of two anti-repression activists on the harassment of two antifascist activists in Budapest, Hungary; Sean Swain's segment. Reflections of an Jewish Anti-Zionist from Palestine First up, we're feat...

Thomas Meyer-Falk is Free! We're sharing here a recent conversation that I had with Thomas Meyer-Falk, an anarchist who just finished a 27 year prison stint in Germany to speak about his life, his incarceration and his hopes now that he's out. Thomas was involved in a bank robbery in 1996 as a young RASH anarchist skinhead who hoped to fund above ground and underground leftist organizing and conti...

Mr. Block's Past and Legacy (with Sean Carleton and Iain McIntyre) 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 a...

This week on The Final Straw, we're excited to share a panel discussion recorded at Firestorm Books entitled Against Genocide: A Palestinian Solidarity Panel , recorded on Sunday, October 22 nd 2023. Transcription PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) From the event description: "With the "iron-clad" support of the United States and other Western powers, Israel has made explicit its plan for the syst...

This week on the show, we're featuring an interview I did recently with Sona, an anarcha-feminist from Yerevan, Armenia, about her experience of anarchism and some of the solidarity efforts related to supporting Armenians expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave within the borders of the neighboring country of Azerbaijan. Recent crimethInc articles: Anarchist Voices from Armenia and Aze...

This week on the show, we're featuring an interview with 3 activists involved in the Emergency Committee for Rojava about recent developments in Rojava, escalation of violence from the Turkish state and the KDP party-led Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, experiences of recent visits to the region, updates on the US relationship to aggressive regimes in the region and other topics. If you are li...

December 8th Affair Trial in France is Under Way Hey listeners, this mid-week release features the words of anarchists involved in or doing support for the December 8 th Affair in France, in which 9 people were arrested at the end of 2020, following Movement for Black Lives protests took place around the world to challenge police impunity and racism. The French state is asserting, based on some pr...

This week we're sharing a recent interview with Elia J. Ayoub, host of The Fire These Times podcast to talk a bit about #solarpunk. Elia J. was on the show with Leila Al-Shami some years ago to speak about revolution and civil war in Syria, uprisings in Lebanon and Iraq. Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) For the hour, we speak about the importance of radical imagination, the artistic g...

Ian speaks with journalist Shea Hennum about their article on #comicsbrokeme, in which workers in the comics industry shared their stories of tight deadlines, unreasonable workloads, and low pay following the death of cartoonist Ian McGinty. For the article, which appeared at  solrad.co , they applied an analysis that synthesized communist and anarchist traditions in order to identify a multitude...

Stop Cop City Movement RICO Indictments (with Matt Scott of ACPC) This week, we're featuring an interview with Matt Scott of the Atlanta Community Press Collective update us on the movement to Stop Cop City in light of the recent indictment of 61 people on Racketeering charges by the state of Georgia at the end of August and the legal shenanigans of the city to block a public referendum on the pol...

The following is a presentation by anarchists from Ukraine and Belarus, alongside a question and answer portion with the audience, conducted in part via live translation services. This panel is facilitated in part by Nina of Anarchist Black Cross Dresden , and features presentations by Masha (Belarus) an anarchist in Warsaw, Nastya is a member of Solidarity Zone (not speaking on behalf of that gro...

This week, we're sharing 3 segments. First up, Josh Davidson from the Certain Days: Freedom For Political Prisoners Calendar talks about the upcoming book that he co-edited with political prisoner Eric King from AK Press entitled RATTLING THE CAGES: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners , containing over 450 pages of first hand experiences of resisting from within the belly of the b...

This week on TFSR, we'll be airing a presentation by Diane Stevens, a member of the Jane Collective in Chicago in the 1960's. This presentation was recorded at the  2023 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville, NC. Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) From the presentation description: The Abortion Counseling Service, now better known as Jane, started out as a referral...

This week, you'll hear an interview we conducted with researcher and journalist Jessica Pishko about the upcoming, September 9 th Constitutional Sheriff & Peace Officers Association gathering in Cherokee, North Carolina. For the hour, Jessica talks about the office of Sheriff in the US, the CSPOA and Constitutional Sheriff movement, their ties to militia or other far-right wing and white nationali...

The following is an interview we conducted with Katka and Hazel, who both live in the UK and were recently back from Bakur, the portion of Kurdistan within the borders of Turkey. For 2 hours the guests speak about the political violence from Erdogan's ruling AKP, suppression of the Kurdish movement, electoral strategies, democratic confederalism, political prisoners and the F-Type prisons in Turke...

This week, we're sharing an interview with  Matthew N Lyons of Three Way Fight blog about the political legacy of Lyndon LaRouche, cultic leftist turned fascist US political figure from the 1970's through his death in 2019. For the hour, Matthew and I talk about the network of organizations and publications of the LaRouche movement, some of their approaches toward peeling adherents from the left,...

This week, we feature two segments First up, former co-host on the show Scott talks about the upcoming Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair happening the weekend of August 11 – 13 th , some of the content and notes on access, as well as mentioning some new projects their involved with. You can learn more about the bookfair by visiting ACABookfair.noblogs.org , the project's instagram , facebook or...

Josh MacPhee & Alec Dunn on Signal 08 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' Cooperati...

On The Work of Sex Work with Matilda Bickers 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. Transcript...

This week, we're sharing a conversation with Rose and Crystal, two comrades involved in the struggle against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 304 mile, 41 inch in diameter liquified so-called natural gas pipeline with a possible 75 mile extension crossing many delicate waterways, slopes and communities across Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. This project has been off and on under constru...

Co-Envisioning Worlds in Penumbra City Here we are presenting Ian's interview with members of Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness , a collectively run publisher of radical podcasts, fiction, zines, games, and much more. We discuss the kickstarter fundraiser the group just launched to fund their tabletop RPG, Penumbra City , their history with games and with each other, world building, the value of g...