The Final Straw Radio

This week on The Final Straw , we're featuring two main events, both themed around the Prison Strike ongoing across Turtle Island until at least September 9 th . Kevin Rashid Johnson on the Prison Strike First, an interview we conducted with Kevin "Rashid" Johnson. Rashid is a co-founder of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party and is the Minister of Defense from within it's Prison Chapter. He is th...

Ray Luc Levasseur, PT2 This week, we share some more perspectives on prison, stretching back decades. You're about to hear the second half of our conversation from earlier this year with Ray Luc Levasseur. Mr. Levasseur is a longtime activist, Vietnam War vet, revolutionary and former political prisoner in the U.S. Ray was a reputed founder of the Sam Melville / Jonathan Jackson Unit , later known...

William C. Anderson This week on The Final Straw, we are super pleased to present a talk given at the most recent Asheville Anarchist Bookfair by William C. Anderson, who co authored the book As Black As Resistance with Zoe Samudzi. The talk he is giving here is based heavily on the first chapter of the book called Black in Anarchy, and in addition to laying the groundwork of how he and Samudzi wr...

Steady Collective + SFBayView Newspaper This week on the show we feature two interviews. The first is with Mary Ratcliff, the editor of 27 years of the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper , with a print distribution of 20,000 copies around the U.S., including thousands behind bars. For the hour, Mary talks about the history of the paper, it's relationship with prisoners and prison stru...

This week we had the opportunity to interview Isabel and Christopher, who are active in differing ways in the No NEXUS Oberlin campaign, one in a long series of anti pipeline pushes in Oberlin Ohio. This campaign is based in part around the college which exists there, but is also in strong coalition with non college attending community members in the area who have been battling  the extraction ind...

Donald Rooum, pt1 This week, we invite you to listen in on the first part of a conversation we had with 90 year old anarchist, cartoonist and author, Donald Rooum . Donald was born 1928 in Bradford, UK. Donald is most known for his longtime illustration of the wiley, bomb-throwing, firebrand anarchist cartoon character, Wildcat. In this episode, Donald talks about his early political trajectory an...

This week we are talking a little break to work on other things, and so have taken the time to re-broadcast two interviews from two other radical and anarchist audio projects, both of which have been doing amazing work. From Embers The first we'll present is from an anarchist radio show in so-called Kingston, Ontario called From Embers . This interview was originally released by them in the middle...

"You may be nonviolent, but I'm not gonna let these white people kill you". A presentation with Charles Cobb on This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed . This week we are very pleased to present a presentation done some months ago at Firestorm Books with Charles E. Cobb, Jr.  Charles Cobb is a journalist, writer, and current senior analyst at allAfrica.com , which is "is a voice of, by and about A...

This week Bursts had two conversations, both focusing on the upcoming Prisoner Strike from August 21st to September 9 th , 2018, one with a member of IWOC and one with a Amani Sawari, a media liaison for some of the prisoners who called for the strike. The viewpoints expressed by the two guests are at time contradictory and at others redundant but it felt better to keep their voices mostly intact...

#OccupyICEPDX and J20 Updates This week, we're featuring two interviews.  The first was an an interview from the IGDcast with someone affiliated with #OccupyIcePDX blocking the immigration detention center in Portland, OR.  The second  was a chat we had with a supporter of the J20 arrestees, from among the 230 people rounded up during the Inauguration protests of January 20th, 2017, in Washington,...

This week on The Final Straw, we're airing three international segments covering anarchist perspectives from the Rojava Revolution in Northern Syria, voices from the pirate radio, Radio Klaxon on the ZAD, a land occupation in western France, and refugee solidarity and struggle in on the border of Croatia and Bosnia in the Balkans. First, we'll hear an interview with an anarchist recently returned...

This week on The Final Straw, we'll be airing two interviews. Shane Burley on Fascism Today In the first, Bursts spoke with author and activist Shane Burley about the state of street level fascism and anti-fascism in the U.S. Shane is the author of numerous articles on the subject as well as a the 2017 book from AK Press, "Fascism Today: What It Is And How To End It." The conversation ranges from...

This week we are airing a presentation that Margaret Killjoy gave at Firestorm Books on the release day of her new release The Barrow Will Send What it May . This is the second in her Danielle Cain series which highlights magic, anarchism, queerness, punk squatter subculture and a bunch more. The presentation consisted of a brief intro, a reading, and to end up a q&a session. As a warning to liste...

This week, Bursts spoke with Micah Lee .  Micah is, according to his bio at The Intercept : " a computer security engineer and an open source software developer. He writes about technical topics like digital and operational security, encryption tools, whistleblowing, and hacking using language that everyone can understand, but without dumbing it down. An avid user of Qubes and Linux, he develops s...

This week we have two interviews to share. In the first Bursts spoke with two organizers of the Asheville Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB2018) taking place the 22-24th of June. To link up with this project and for aaall the information, you can visit the website here! To follow on social media, you find @acab.2018 on Instagram, and for email it's acab2018@riseup.net . This begins at [11:...

A change of plans: instead of airing the interview with comrades in Yogyakarta about May Day repression of anarchists there, we're including that in the radio show for next Sunday.  So, instead, kick back with this new issue of #Error451 ! The CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) got passed by the U.S. Congress earlier this year and signed into law by President Trump.  It's a rev...

Cory Doctorow on Post-Scarcity & Sci-Fi This week, we present an interview that Bursts conducted with the sci-fi and picture book author, technologist and social critic Cory Doctorow .  Cory is an editor of the blog BoingBoing , a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and his most recent book is entitled Walkaway, out from Head of Zeus and TOR books.  The novel plays with themes of open sou...

This week on Error451, William Budington and Bursts chat about the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal.  We've seen Congressional hearings and M. Zuckerburg give testimony, we've seen punditry, we've seen evasion. For the episode, the two chat about what's going on with the hullabaloo and different solutions privacy advocates have proposed. Check out past episodes of Error451 and hit us up if...

This week, we are excited to share with y'all an interview with TL, the main artist and designer of Bloc by Bloc: The Game of Insurrection. From the website of Out Of Order games , which publishes the game, "Bloc by Bloc is a semi-cooperative strategy board game inspired by 21st century riots and revolutions. The game features hidden agendas, deep strategy, area control, asymmetrical player abilit...

Sunday, May 20th from 14:00-22:00 Central European Time (UTC+1), so 8am North Carolina time, get ready for HOURS of anarchist audio from around the world with participants in the A-Radio Network, producers of B(A)DNews.  Find the stream soon at this facebook page.  Projects will include: A-Radio Berlin 98fm Athens Motbrus Dissident Island The Final Straw Bilda Kedjor Ex-Worker InfoLora Radio-A Kar...

This week, we are airing a conversation that William had a few weeks ago with Wriply Bennet and Ashley Braxton, two members of the Black Pride 4. The Black Pride 4 are four black queer and trans people with accomplices who were arrested during a Pride parade on June 17, 2017. The four werearrested after leading a silent protest that obstructed the Stonewall Columbus Pride parade in downtown Columb...

Welcome to the 8th anniversary podcast mini-sode special! The Final Straw has an irregular tradition of using our anniversary to air conversations with other projects that produce anarchist media. In past episodes, linked in the notes for this special, you can find chats from past anniversaries. This time around, we are featuring two interviews. First, you'll hear audio from the regular host of th...

This week I had the chance to speak to Ricchi, who is a Puerto Rican anarchist, about an autonomous squatted community center in Borique called Valle Garita. In this episode, we talk about the squatted space and the intentions of the organizers, plus the cultural context of squatting, reactions of the police, landlord, and bank, and some concrete asks for solidarity and support from non locals. We...

For this May Day episode William had the chance to speak with Nutty, who has been holding down a monopod blockade which is blocking the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in the renamed Hellbender Autonomous Zone. She has been without the ability to reup her food and water supplies for over 21 days due to cop and forest ranger interference. We get to speak about the monopod and her exper...

This week's installment of #error451 podcast, Bursts and William Budington speak about facial recognition technology.  We chat about how different methods are employed, scanning of social media by police and security forces, different methods used to avoid it such as camouflage, lights, makeup and masks, the Google Arts & Culture app comparing people's selfies to the contents of art museums and mo...