The Final Straw Radio

Harm Reduction in Pandemic and Jason Renard Walker This week we feature two segments, first up we got to chat with Hill Brown about Asheville's response to the pandemic in terms of public health, drug use and the houseless communities. Then, Jason Renard Walker talks about his journalism, activism and troubles in the Texas prison system. Harm Reduction in Asheville during Pandemic First we got to...

Kazi Toure (Burning Books Lecture Series) Here's our second lecture we're excited to share in the Burning Books Lecture Series. We're slowly continuing to release audios recorded at Burning Books in Buffalo, NY, to share inspiring ideas and experiences this bookstore has hosted over the last 7 or so years. This pandemic period should be one where we take account of the situation we find ourselves,...

Release Ramsey Orta! / Housing Struggle in Asheville Sean Swain's segment on Bernie Sanders withdrawal the Democrat candidacy. [00:03:20-00:12:27] Release Ramsey Orta! [00:12:27-00:38:00] This week, we hear from Deja, the fiance of incarcerated cop watcher Ramsey Orta. Ramsey has been in prison since 2016 and during his short time inside has he's been transferred around a lot and spent over a year...

Being Better To One Another: Comrade Malik from USP Pollock / Peter Gelderloos from Spain On this podcast special, we're sharing two segments. First, Comrade Malik (s/n Keith Washington) of the IWW and Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee speaks about his experience at the Federal prison USP Pollock in Grant Parish, Louisiana, changes in policies in relation to the pandemic and the dangers po...

Seeing the World Elsewhere: Rural Mutual Aid in Appalachia and David Forbes on Journalism, Asheville and Anarchism (image by Nicole Marie Burton , used with permission) This week you'll hear two conversations after we hear from Sean Swain on making it through isolation. The text can be found below . [00:02:42-00:11:05] First, Matt from Rural Organizing And Resilience, or ROAR, in Madison County ta...

Kijana Tashiri Askar i In this podcast special, a comrade spoke with Kijana Tashiri Askari, an imprisoned community organizer, prison abolitionist, and New Afrikan Black Revolutionary who helped to found the W.L. Nolen Mentorship Program. At one point in time the mentorship program had about 50 prisoners nationwide on its mailing list. The W.L. Nolen Mentorship Program, named after a central leade...

This week I am very excited to present an interview done with Aishah Shahidah Simmons , who is a writer, community organizer, prison abolitionist, and cultural worker who has done just an immense amount of work over the years to help disrupt and end the patterns of sexual abuse and assault within marginalized communities. In this interview we talk about a lot of things, her background and how she...

Being Out Here For The Prisoners in NC / Mesh Networks This week we feature two portions to this podcast bonus, two abolitionists in North Carolina talk about detention issues during and after Covid-19. Then Grant Gallo of Sudo Mesh talks about community mesh data networks and alternative infrastructure for autonomy. For a radio edition of this for broadcast, reach out to us at our email . Our mai...

Doing For Selves: Open Source Supplies and Tenant Organizing Welcome to a podcast special from The Final Straw. While William is was busy producing an episode featuring voices of medical professionals and activists inside and out of prison to talk about the impacts of covid-19 on incarcerated people for broadcast, I had a couple of conversations about work folks are doing on the outside that I'd l...

Today we have a show about COVID-19 , specifically how the pandemic is being handled in prisons and detention. This show includes a lot of voices, and we structured it that way in order to both include as many perspectives as we could and also to take some of the expectation that interviewees speak to us for an extended period; everyone who is working on this is very busy and we wanted to respect...

As corona virus spreads, the failures of capitalist states becomes even clearer and many people are forced to take some breaks from participating in the economy in the way they did before, we'd like to offer some audio we've been sitting on. The good folks at the radical bookstore and community space, Burning Books in Buffalo, New York, has given us a small trove of audios from presentations by au...

No Evil Foods Union and PLAN Line 3 This week on The Final Straw, we're presenting two conversation, plus announcements [02:02-05:47] and Sean Swain's segment [05:47-11:49]. Union Busting at No Evil Foods [11:49-29:44] The first was a chat with workers from the local, plant-based protein company 'No Evil Foods'. The company has been getting flack for using social justice imagery while working to u...

20 Years of South Chicago ABC Zine Distro with Tony & Mike This week on The Final Straw, we'll hear a conversation from a few month back with Anthony Rayson and Mike Plosky, who have run the South Chicago Anarchist Black Cross Zine Distro since 1998. They send zines to prisoners, publish the writings and art of politicized prisoners as a project of public education, and help advocate and support p...

This week William got to sit down with Sarah Lyons, who is an author, activist, and a practicing witch about her new book Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism which came out in 2019 from Running Press .   This was a great interview to have for TFS, because this is a topic we haven't yet presented on this show and we cover a wide range of topics; our guest's personal history with w...

Social justice and Struggle in Lebanon and Syria: Elia J. Ayoub and Leila Al-Shami Photo taken from Al Jumhuriya This week on The Final Straw we're featuring a chat with Elia J Ayoub and Leila Al-Shami. In this conversation, Elia tells us of some of the history of Lebanon, since the civil war that ended in 1990 and up to the current demonstrations against the clientelist warlords in power in that...

This week we got the chance to sit down and catch up with Ben Turk, who is an anarchist and prison abolitionist living in Milwaukee WI, about some recent efforts that he has been involved in and some ways that listeners can plug in and do solidarity work from afar. We speak about the lockdowns that have been occuring in Columbia CI, continued efforts to raise awareness about solitary confinement a...

Josh Harper of SHAC7 and Voices from Gidimt'en Access Point This week, we feature two portions of the show. Josh Harper on 'Animal People' film [00:06:27] First up, we'll hear Josh Harper, a co-defendant from the SHAC7 case and former political prisoner talking the struggle to shut down the company, Huntington Life Sciences, a contract animal testing laboratory, in the early 2000's in the so-calle...

Voices from the Gitdimt'en Access Point   This is a podcast special featuring the voices of three warriors who were on the barricade on the road to Unist'ot'en Camp at the Gitdimt'en Access Point. Eve Saint (Wet'suwet'en land defender), Anne Spice (Tlinket land defender) & Shilo Hill (from Onandaga nation, Haudenosaunee, Six Nations) were there to defend unceded Wet'suwet'en land from the Canadian...

This week on The Final Straw, an anarchist living in Mexico talks about the reign of the MORENA party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (aka AMLO), the new face of capitalism it presents, it's relation to social movements and indigenous sovereignty and the anarchist and indigenous resistance to the regime. We cover mega-projects being pushed through around the country, the repression of activists and...

This week, we have two portions to the show. First, we catch up with Mitch from Red Strings and Maroons podcast about some of what they saw at the A2 rally in Richmond on January 20 th , about antifascist intervention and the effectiveness of intervening to call out white nationalists in gun advocacy spaces. More of their work available at RedStringsAndMaroons.com . If you are interested in hearin...

This week we have two segments, an interview with an Anarcha-Feminist organizer in San Salvador, El Salvador on the situation there, followed by Mitch of Red Strings And Maroons podcast on the upcoming Militia demonstration on MLK Jr. Day, January 20th, 2020 in Richmond, VA. Elisa on GANA Govt in El Salvador [starts at 00:04:54] First, you'll hear my conversation with Elisa, an anarchafeminist in...

Perspectives from Iranian Anarchists This week on The Final Straw we feature a chat with a translator of the Anarchist Union of Afghanistan and Iran to share perspectives from membership in Iran and abroad about resistance to the regime from within, solidarity from abroad, the impact of US Sabre-rattling. A transcription of this interview can be found here . A zine formatted version will be availa...

This week we have two segments.  Jason Goudlock and the Old Law in OH First, we'll hear from Jason Goudlock, a prisoner under the so-called "Old Law" in Ohio serving his 26 th year of a 6-25 year sentence. Jason talks about the situation in Ohio between the "Old Law" and the "New Law", for instance if he had been convicted of the same robbery and battery crimes three years later he might have serv...

This week Cypress spoke with Io Ascarium. The conversation covered their work as a member of ABO Comix Collective and their work in comics and print. Io is "a maurading pillar of salt just doing their best to make what could, in a sense, be described as 'art'" (I love them dearly but could not bring myself to write this into the actual script). ABO Comix Collective is a group of buds and comrades...

Israeli Dissent and Sean Talks "Last Act" This week we are happy to feature a couple of audios we did NOT record ourselves. Resisting Militarism and Occupation in Israel First, German comrades attending the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair last year interviewed two Israeli anarchists about resistance against the settler-colonial nation they live under. Dana is from Tel Aviv (a member of the Coalition of...