The Final Straw Radio

We spoke with Yaffa, a Palestinian poet, author and activist living in the diaspora about two recent collections published by the Trans and Queer Muslim publishing house she founded called Meraj. One of the two books is entitled Inara: Light to Queer And Trans Palestinian Utopia and the second is a collection of her own poems written during the last lunar eclipse visible on Turtle Island,  Blood O...

Asheville's Southside Community Farm This week, we're sharing a recent interview with Chloe Moore, a steward, farmer and educator at the Southside Community Farm , in the historically Black neighborhood of Southside in Asheville, NC. The farm has been serving the neighborhood and the region with free and inexpensive, fresh produce for a decade, providing educational opportunities, grocery deliveri...

"Clean For Who? Safe For Who?": Asheville Business Improvement District We sat down with three local activists to talk about the proposed Asheville Business Improvement District, a model of service provision using public funding to increase policing in downtown by an unelected and unaccountable body of largely business and property owners. For the hour, Grace, Madison and Elliot talk about attempt...

This week, two segments plus Sean Swain Don Bosco Park Defense in Bologna First up, an interview submitted by audio comrades in Italy about the struggle against the cementization of the city of Bologna and the defense of Don Bosco park from the expansion of a university, highways… the whole urban landscape without the input of the residents so the city can move a school rather than renovate it. Th...

This week, you'll hear our chat with Simón Sedillo, author of Weapons, Drugs & Money: Crime, Corruption, and Community Based Liberation in the U.S./Mexico Neoliberal Military Political Economy . Simón talks a little about his early days in media near the start of the Indymedia world, his documentary that became the news website El Enemigo Com ú n (which translates to "the common enemy") which cove...

Josh Hart of  Feather River Action! in Plumas county joined me to speak about US Forest Service plans for an emergency thinning of forests in this north east part of so-called California and which is threatened to be reproduced in other Federal and private lands in the name of fire prevention around the country. We talk about the claims, motivations and alternative proposals of activists, scientis...

A recent chat with  Jeremy White , film-maker, activist, and street medic who's facing prison time in what has been dubbed the "San Diego Antifa" case. You'll hear Jeremy talk about what happened on January 9 th , 2021 at the Stop The Steal rally, how the police interacted with members of American Guard and Proud Boys as they assaulted passers by, the conspiracy-theory driven DA Sommers Stephan an...

SCI Rockview is a prison in central Pennsylvania where incarcerated comrades have been facing repression for demanding justice in the face of impunity by racist COs and following a year of prisoner deaths due to institutional toxicity and guard violence. We speak to an outside supporter about the situation at Rockview, the reactions of administration, inside / outside relationships and solidarity...

This week, you'll hear our chat with David "Mac" Marquis, one of the editors and contributors to the recently published new book  Books Through Bars: Stories From The Prison Books Movemen t out from University of Georgia Press. We talk about prison books projects, what they say about conditions inside, some of the value of this inside-outside organizing and what you can expect to find in the book.

This week you'll hear from James "Jay" Ward, a long-time abolitionist who has been incarcerated in Ohio for over half his life, since he was 15. Over the years, he has participated in the national prison strike of 2018, various hunger strikes, and other movements against the abuse and mistreatment of incarcerated people. Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) One of his major political goal...

This week, we're sharing an interview with Xinachtli, an anarcho-communist Chicano political prisoner held in the McConnell Unit of the Texas prison system. Xinachtli, whose name is Nahuatl for "seed" is also known by his state name of Alvaro Luna Hernandez. Xinachtli spoke to us recently about his views on the white supremacist, colonial system of the so-called USA, the legacy of genocide of indi...

As a mid-week special, we're releasing a conversation we had last weekend with Hani Almadhoun, a Palestinian-American journalist from Gaza and living in Virginia. Mr Almadhoun is also Director of Philanthropy at UNRWA USA, an independent charity to support the UN organization by the same name. In the chat, he speaks about conditions generally and for his family specifically in Gaza as well as the...

This week, we're featuring four segments. First up, you'll hear a chat with organizers of the 2024 Heart of the Valley Anticapitalist Bookfair which ran its first iteration in Corvallis, Oregon from January 19-21st.  A zine of their experiences will appear on that blog soon. [ -> 00:24:18 ] Then, you'll hear a brief segment updating listeners on the conspiracy case against six anarchists and antif...

Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone This week, we're sharing audio from anarchist prisoner in the UK, Toby Shone. Toby was arrested in November of 2020 after a car chase and during 5 simultaneous raids on residences in the Forest of Dean outside of Bristol. Toby was accused of being responsible for the insurrectionary counter-info anarchist site 325.NoState. Net as well as participation in the Informa...

An interview with Joan Braune , author of Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements: From Void to Hope out this year from Routledge. In this chat we talk about understanding fascism and fascists, motivations and deterrents, the framework of "deradicalization", the role of former fascists in education around fascism and the importance of fostering antifascist movements. Transcript PDF (Unimpos...

First up, Ian chats with Tasha of Project Mayday , a harm reduction project operating in so-called West Virginia. They discuss harm reduction strategies and the political framework of their approach to mutual aid. The conversation also touches upon co-existing in the public health and non-profit space without compromising their radical values and some of the many ways that drug policy and pharmace...

We're sharing a recent chat with  Andrew Lee ( instagram / tiktok ), author of the book Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War , released by AK Press on February 6th 2024. Andrew and I talk about gentrification, speculation and financialization of houses, the destruction of communities by racial capitalism and the state, and some methods used to fight back and stay put. Andrew sh...

This week on the show, we're starting out with an interview with Lo and Meghan, two supporters of Jewish independent journalist, artist and antifascist leftist from Albany, NY, Alex Stokes Contompasis. Alex is serving a 20 year sentence for defending himself and 3 other community members attacked by Proud Boys and Oath Keepers at the New York state capital on January 6 th , 2021. For the hour, we...

This week, we're featuring a conversation with Mohammad Hureini ( twitter / instagram ), a young activist from Masafer Yatta, an area in the hills south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. Mohammad is a member of a non-violent group called Youth of Sumud that struggles to hold on to the sites and lives of Palestinian villages despite displacement by the Israeli military occupation as...

This week on the show, we're featuring three segments. First up, you'll hear an interview with  Shupavu wa Kirima , General Secretary of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party, comes on to talk to us about the ongoing hunger strike among prisoners at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia protesting the abuse of solitary confinement and the medical status of hunger striker Kevin " Rashid...

Sean Swain is an anarchist prisoner who's serving an indeterminate sentence in Ohio for a self-defense killing. Sean has authored 3 books (one co-authored with Travis Washington) and released an album of his music (with collaboration of a number of artists) while behind bars. Sean is also a dear friend and collaborator on The Final Straw for 10 years, now. We're sharing here a conversation Bursts...

This week on the show, you'll hear Kazi Toure. Kazi is a former political prisoner from the Ohio 7 case and founding member of the Boston chapter of  The National Jericho Movement . For the hour, Kazi and I talk about the history of Jericho Movement, supporting political prisoners and support for post-release and aging prisoners. You can find recent updates from the group at @OfficialJerichoBoston...

We're joined again by podcaster, writer and activist Elia J. Ayoub, who is a Lebanese Palestinian living in Europe, co-hosts a podcast called The Fire These Times which is soon to be a part of the From The Periphery podcast network. For the hour we speak about the Israeli war on Palestinians, US policies in the SWANA region and the possibilities of war expanding to neighboring states, conspiracy t...

This week on the show, you'll hear part of our conversation with Eric King and Josh Davidson. Josh has been on a few times to talk about collaborative inside-outside projects he works on such as the  Certain Days calendar, the greeting cards he helped make of Indigenous political prisoner Oso Blanco 's artwork to benefit Zapatista schools in Chiapas, and the Rattling The Cages book that he co-edit...

On this episode, Ian spoke with Adam Shapiro, Co-editor of We Are Many , a comics anthology released as part of the Cypher Zine project ( @cypher_comics on Instagram) and published by Radix Media. The book pairs artists and activists to create narratives around the defense of women and sex workers around the globe. Among other topics, the conversation touches on the process of matching local artis...