The Final Straw Radio

This week, you'll hear an interview with Matthew Scott, a journalist with ACPC in Atlanta to talk about recent developments with the struggle against Cop City, the building of a giant police training facility with a simulated cityscape for urban counter insurgency training for law enforcement from around the USA & around the world in a forest in Atlanta, Georgia. You can read Matthews work at  ATL...

Here's our interview with  Shannon Clay , co-author of We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action . For this episode, Shannon and I walk through the book, covering some of the history of the network, how it evolved, challenges it faced, and invitations to discuss current day anti-fascist and anti-racist organizing on Turtle Island. Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) Shannon al...

This week we chatted with Jasmine, an anthropologist and activist involved in the migrant solidarity and freedom of movement cultural organization called Maldusa which is based in some of the southern most reaches of Italy in Palermo, Sicily, and the island of Lampedusa and in the Mediterranean Sea. We speak for the hour about migration across the sea, what drives and draws people to make the trea...

In this discussion, we talk with two trans organizers in Missouri about the recently withdrawn emergency rule made by the state Attorney General Andrew Bailey. At the time, the emergency rule, which was one of the most far reaching bans on trans access to affirming medical care, had been stayed by the courts and was awaiting further hearing. Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) The Attorn...

Scott talked with members of Femboys Against Fascism, a group based in Liverpool countering anti-migrant protests. The local far right, along with Patriotic Alternative and other ghouls, have been trying to displace refugees being housed in hotels in and around Liverpool in the UK, using the usual fearmongering tactics about crime and danger. The Femboys have been at the forefront of making it kno...

This week, we're offering a few pieces of content. [ 00:03:20 - 00:07:07 ] First up, after some announcements concerning a local case of police brutality and jail issues in Buncombe County, NC, we'll hear a statement from Mark "Mustafa" Hinkston , a politicized prisoner we first heard from some years back, who is being held in Ohio about the cruelty of his keeping. His letter can be found below. [...

This week, we're sharing a recent chat with Devi Machete, an anarchist involved in the Tijuana mutual aid project known as Contra Viento y Marea Comedor Comunitario which distributes clothing, medical supplies, meals and stable food boxes throughout the week at the border with the USA. The project, known for short as El Comedor is launching a free school and art laboratory in June. For the hour, w...

This week, a new contributor, Ian, talks to cartoonist and educator  Johnny Damm about his recent releases I'm a cop, featuring dialogue from Police Union speeches and Riot Comics: Tompkins Square Park , which explores the 1988 Tompkins Square Riot in which Police evicted an unhoused encampment in the park on New York's Lower East Side. They discuss the collage technique by which Damm assembles hi...

Our interview with journalist and community organizer,  Kit O'Connell (of the Texas Observer ), and anarchist and activist lorén (of QTPIE or Queer and Trans People Illuminate Everything). Both folks are trans folks in Austin, Texas, and we speak for the hour about the increasing legal and social oppression of trans and gender non-conforming folks in that state as well as across the so-called USA,...

May Day 2016 with Peter Linebaugh (repodcast) We're happy to share another past episode, this time from May Day 2016 , about 4 months before the start of our rss feed for our podcast. I feel it's notable that this show approaches it's 13 th birthday on the May 9 th of this year. Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) In this show, you'll hear an interview with autonomous Marxist historian,...

This week, we're sharing an interview with 2 contributors an amazing history of anti-racist organizing in the late 1980's through the mid 1990's in Portland, Oregon, and with ripples across the so-called USA & beyond. In 2020  KBOO radio released a serialized podcast which became the basis for the book. A brief intro to the book can be found below... Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) I...

This week, we're sharing two portions. Transcript of SFLARC PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) South Florida Anti-Repression Committee [00:05:37 - 00:54:07] First up, a chat with two members of the  South Florida Anti-Repression Committee doing solidarity for the 4 queer activists facing up to 12 years in Federal prison on charges related to graffiti at a Pregnancy Crisis Center, aka a building fu...

Here's a chat we just had with 4 radicals in France. Rather than introduce them, I'll let them do that themselves. We talk about the recent protests and riots in France concerning reforms to the pension system that would push back the age of retirement and increase the amount of years someone has to work in order to retire, the legal manipulation by Macron's neoliberal government to get it passed,...

This week, we're sharing part of our  April 26th, 2020 interview with 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 history. Barry has also contributed to and ed...

We're happy to share this chat with Leah and Payton, directors of the upcoming documentary series "The Elements of Mutual Aid". You can find previews of the film on their social media and links to those and more in our show notes at our website. The series is about to enter post-production once they've gotten JUST a little more footage to add to their 5 years of work. For the hour, we talk about t...

This week, we're sharing an interview with Leo, an anarchist and eco-feminist from Russia who has temporary relocated to Europe after facing political repressions. Leo is a co-organizer with the Feminist Anti-War Resistance movement ( Facebook in English, Telegram in Russian, LinkTr. Ee ), a network of activists in and outside of Russia involved in struggling against the war in Ukraine and the Put...

This week: a chat with Pip, a defendant in, and  Grace , a supporter of, the Aston Park Defendants case which led to the arrest of 16 people, including 2 journalists for the Asheville Blade , many facing various charges of felony littering and conspiracy to felony litter. You can read some background to this in the words fo the Sanctuary Park defendants at AVLSolidarity. NoBlogs. Org by clicking t...

This week on the show, we're sharing an interview with  Mixael Laufer of the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective about the the group, building scientific competency, biohacking, authority, intellectual property... oh boy there's a lot there. Mixael also speaks about some of the projects that 4 Thieves has on offer, including a do it yourself AED setup for defribulation , misoprostol-soaked business cards...

This week, I spoke with  Dr. Alexander Dunlap about a range of topics, such as Degrowth, green anarchism, the violence of extractivism, questions of the conception of renewable energy and resistance to ecocide. We covered a lot in this discussion and he's written a lot on a range of related topics. Check out his ResearchGate where many pdfs are available or searching his name on AnarchistLibrary....

South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century (rebroadcast) [ 00:02:09 - 00:50:03 ] This week we're re-airing our 2012 interview with Dr. George Katsiaficas, author and contributor to over a dozen books on Peoples Movements and the elucidator of the Eros Effect. For over a decade, Dr. Katsiaficas has been studying the culture and history of South Korea and it's culture and has published the a...

This week, we spoke with Maia Ramnath about her essay contribution to  ¡ No Pasar á n!: Antifascist Dispatches From a World in Crisis . The essay was entitled "The Other Aryan Supremacy: Fighting Hindu Fascism in the South Asia Diaspora". Transcript PDF (Unimposed) – pending Zine (Imposed PDF) – pending For the hour, we talk about about Hindutva, a brand of Indian ethno-religious-nationalism some...

We're re-airing Scott's 2020 interview with Kristian Williams about his book,  Resist Everything Except Temptation: The Anarchist Philosophy of Oscar Wilde . Transcription (thanks to MKE Lit Supply!) PDF (unimposed) Zine (imposed PDF) From the original post: I found this interview extremely illuminating, perhaps like many other people who might not have strong ties to either academia or popular ed...

This week we are re-airing an interview from November 10 th , 2019, by Scott Branson with Eli Meyerhoff about his book "Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World" . In this book, Meyerhoff "traces how key elements of education emerged from histories of struggles in opposition to alternative modes of study bound up with different modes of world-making. Taking inspiration from Black Lives...

This week, we share our chat with Tom Wetzel on his recently published book Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century (AK Press, 2022). Tom is an organizer with Worker's Solidarity Alliance , an anarcho-syndicalist group relaunching in the SF Bay Area, which publishes to Ideas & Action journal online and is affiliated with the International Worker's Association IWA/...

This week on The Final Straw, we feature three segments: words from a friend of Manuel "Tortuguita" Teran, the forest defender killed by law enforcement on January 18 th outside of Atlanta, Georgia; A-Radio Berlin's conversation with an activist at Lutzerath encampment in western Germany attempting to block a lignite coal extraction operation by RWE; a discussion of the Tren Maya megaproject by th...