The Final Straw Radio

Its not uncommon to hear pundits and regular folks making comparisons between the crises we are now facing and other historical moments, such as the 1920s in Germany or the global rebellions of the 1960s. But is this an effective approach for gauging the potential of now? For the hour, anarchist author and activist Peter Gelderloos shares some of his thoughts on those comparisons, on the revolutio...

We Need To Spread This Freely: JN On HK Under National Security Law This week, I speak with JN, an anarchist who works with the decolonial, leftist HongKonger platform, Lausan , talks about where the uprising against Chinese integration in Hong Kong stands, the National Security Law, tankie and rightwing narratives and international anti-authoritarian solidarity and resistance. The interview about...

Omaha In The Uprising with Mel This week, we're going to hear two specials in two separate episodes, basically exploding radio edition into it's components. In this one you've clicked on, you'll hear Mel B from Omaha, Nebraska talk about the city, the protests there including the killing of James Scurlock on May 30 th , the mass arrest of 120 people on July 25 th and leftist and Black organizing t...

RVA In The Uprising with L and Buzz This week, we're going to hear two specials in two separate episodes, basically exploding radio edition into it's components. In this one you've clicked on, you'll hear L, who works with the Richmond Community Bail Fund , and Buzz talk about their experiences in the streets and doing anti-repression work in Richmond, Virginia, throughout the uprising against pol...

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, perso...

Pipeline Updates from Yellow Finch Tree Sit 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 liquified 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 abo...

Anarchist Prisoners and Updates from the A-Radio Network This week, we're continuing our pandemic vacation. First up is some new words on surveillance and resistance by Sean Swain.[00:02:51-00:09:25] Then you'll hear audio from the most recent episode of our cousin project, Dissident Island Radio, where they spoke with a fan of London Anarchist Black Cross about the upcoming July 23-30th Week of S...

Rik Scarce is the author of the 1990 exploration of earth liberation and defense and the folks involved, entitled "Eco-Warriors: Understanding The Radical Environmental Movement", which is still considered required reading in understanding radical eco-defense. At one point, he served 159 days in the Spokane jail for refusing to testify about his sources in his research on the Animal Liberation mov...

On Blackness and Anarchy This week on the Final Straw, we are taking a break from consistently bringing fresh content over the last few months (frequently twice a week, instead of just the usual Sunday episodes) and re-airing this segment form a prior episode 2 years ago. Here we re-present a speech by William C. Anderson , keynote of the 2018 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Ashev...

Justice4Jerry2020, Confederate Monuments + Repression During The Movement for Black Lives photo by Ben Harper This episode has three portions following a segment by anarchist prisoner, Sean Swain, about confederate monuments. [00:02:31 - 00:09:32] This episode warrants a general content warning for the mentioning of the murder by shooting of a Black man at the hands of the police. Justice4Jerry 20...

Pan-African Social Ecology: A conversation with Dr Modibo Kadalie This week, we're happy to air a conversation I had with the author and activist, Modibo Kadalie, author of Pan-African Social Ecology as well as Internationalism, Pan-Africanism and the Struggle of Social Classes . A version of Dr. Kadalie's conversation with Andrew Zonneveld of OOA! Publishing, entitled Pan-Africanism, Social Ecolo...

In the past few weeks since the uprising in response to police killings of Black and Brown folks around Turtle Island, amazing chances have presented themselves and folks have seized opportunities. One great and unfolding circumstance is known as the CHAZ or CHOP, an autonomous zone and occupational protest surrounding a police precinct in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The area was opened t...

This week we are pleased to present an interview William conducted with Gabriel Kuhn and Maxida M ä rak on the 2019 PM Press release Liberating S á pmi: Indigenous Resistance in Europe's Far North . This book, of which Kuhn is the author and editor and Märak is an contributor, details a political history of the Sámi people whose traditional lands extend along the north most regions of so called Sw...

June 11th 2020: Marius Mason support and words from Jeremy Hammond In this June 11 th podcast special, we're happy to feature two interviews. The first is with Letha, a supporter of anarchist prisoner Marius Mason who is 7 years from release for animal and earth liberation front actions in the late 1990's. Marius, who tested positive for covid-19 recently at FCI Danbury, continues his activism inc...

Hotel Sanctuary in MPLS This week  we got to connect with Rosemary, who is an organizer in Minneapolis, about the liberation of a former Sheraton Hotel in that city and its slow but steady transformation into something that is becoming so much more than a housing cooperative. They speak about how this resocialization came to happen, some of the circumstances involved, about how this is a very deep...

Two Voices From MPLS: Medic and Abolitionist On this episode, we're featuring two voices from Minneapolis, the epicenter of mass demonstrations and uprising following the police murder of # GeorgeFloyd. First up, you'll hear from Jacquie, a professional medic living in Minneapolis. Jacquie talks about the impacts of corona virus on Black and Brown communities around the city, some of what she saw...

This is a presentation of some of the Q and A session which took place after the IDOC Watch panel in Chicago last year. If you are hearing this and don't know what I'm talking about, head on over to the previous episode to catch up!   In this segment, we'll hear Kwame Shakur, Lorenzo Stone-Bey, Sheila, and Zolo Azania speak on supporting incarcerated people, the tactic of the prison strike, and wa...

This week we are presenting audio from a panel conducted last year in Indiana with members of IDOC Watch, which is the Indiana Department of Correction watch. From their website :   "The Indiana Department of Correction Watch (IDOC Watch) exists to be in solidarity with prisoners. This means we correspond with and and foster camaraderie with people who are incarcerated in Indiana, expose abusive c...

We're happy to share the second half of this conversation with Graham Clumpner, anarchist, U.S. military veteran and eco-defender. If you missed the first half of this chat, check out our May 17 th episode up at our website. For this hour Graham talks about the responsibility of U.S. society as a whole for the devastation of the Global War On Terror and to the victims in Iraq, Afghanistan and else...

This week we're sharing a chat with Graham Clumpner, an anarchist veteran of the U.S. military from the early days of the so-called Global War on Terror. During his time in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Graham worked his way up to being an Army Ranger and left the military in 2007. After struggling with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Graham re...

Wayne Price on Anarchism and Marxist Economics Wayne Price is longtime anarchist, author and currently a member of Bronx Climate Justice North and the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, or MACC , in New York City. After reading his book, The Value Of Radical Theory : An Anarchist Introduction to Marx's Critique of Political Economy (AK Press, 2013), I got excited to speak to him about hi...

Digital Security Tools for Organizing We're happy to share the rest of our conversation with Michele Gretes, director of the Digital Security project at the Civil Liberties Defense Center, and Cora Borradaile, who is on the board of the CLDC. For this podcast special, you'll hear the two discuss different tools for more secure, encrypted communication that is available on various platforms to folk...

This week, we feature two conversations. Cora Borradaile and Michele Gretes, folks involved in the Digital Security Project of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, speak about contact tracing apps and surveillance. Then, Se speaks about Tucson Food Share's grocery distribution program. Contact Tracing Apps First up, we hear Michele Gretes and Cora Borradaile. Michele is the Digital Security Coordin...

Lorenzo Komb'oa Ervin and Bomani Shakur / Keith Lamar This midweek, we're sharing two segments. First up, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin talks about attempts in the 1960's and 70's at building a prisoners union in the United States and parallels with inside / outside organizing in the USA today. Then we hear from Ohio death row prisoner from the Lucasville Uprising case, Bomani Shakur (aka Keith Lamar) abo...

Barry Pateman on Anarchist History and Challenges I'm really happy to share a chat with anarchist and historian, Barry Pateman. Barry, born in the early 1950's, grew up in a working class coal mining town of Doncaster in the UK and became an anarchist in the 1960's in London. He is a longstanding member of the Kate Sharpley Library which covers histories of little-known anarchists and events in hi...