The Final Straw Radio

This week on the show, we're airing a portion of our 2018 interview with filmmaker and activist Yousef Natsha about his film about his hometown, Hebron, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. We invite you to check out our full interview with him from March 25, 2018 , linked in our show notes and we're choosing to air this right now because of the flare up in violent evictions, home destruction...

This week, we present a conversation with Shane Burley, author of the new AK Press book, " Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse ". For the hour, we speak about the contents of the book, anti-fascism, toxic masculinity, pushing racists and fascists out of cultural space, antisemitism (including in the left), conspiricism, right wing publishing and other topics....

This week, you'll hear Scott's chat with Max Fox, editor of the late Christopher Chitty's book, " Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy and Capital in the Rise of the World System ", published by Duke University Press in 2020. Max Fox is an editor of Pinko Magazine , a former editor of New Inquiry Magazine and translator of Guy Hocquinguem's novel " The Ampitheatre of the Dead ". You can find Max on...

This week we are very happy to present an interview with Pranav Jeevan P, who is a student, a writer, an anti-caste activist, and an Indian anarchist living in the state of Kerala. You are listening to the full extended audio from this conversation, where you'll hear Pranav explaining how he got into anarchism, how anarchistic praxis unfolds in India, some about the origins of and worldwide implic...

Veronza Bowers, Jr: 47 Years of Justice Denied This week, we're airing a conversation recorded by Eda Levinson on September 12 th , 2002, with political prisoner Veronza Bowers, Jr. It originally aired on Youth Speaks Out on KZYX in Modesto County, California, and we re-air this with permission of Veronza and the current producer of the Youth Speaks Out. The show continues to produce youth focused...

This is a conversation with Geoff Aung ( @Rg nhardliner on twitter), a Burmese American Marxist anthropology Phd candidate at Columbia University living abroad, about the current uprising, repression and revolutionary potentials in Myanmar. We discuss the evolution of tactics on the ground as revolutionaries adapt to the brutal murders of protesters by the state. Geoff also talks about the ways in...

This week on the show, we bring you the audio of an activist panel from the recent Queer Conference held online by University of North Carolina, Asheville, in March of 2021. Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Imposed PDF) The conference was titled Fitting In and Sticking Out – Queer [In]Visibilities and the Perils of Inclusion . From the panel's description for the conference: This panel brings toge...

This week on the show, I spoke with Comrade Chux, a member of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. JLS is an autonomous network of incarcerated activists from across the so-called US. They have been engaged in organizing and calling for the 2016 & 2018 Nationwide Prison Strike activities. Chux and I chat about the call for this year for folks on the outside to engage for Abolition on August 21 and September 9...

It's been nearly half a decade since thousands of indigenous water and land defenders and their accomplices and allies weathered a difficult winter and attacks by law enforcement and private security attempting to push through the Dakota Access Pipeline through so-called North Dakota. The DAPL was eventually built and has already, unsurprisingly damaged the lands, waters and sacred sites of the St...

This week, we spoke with Anner, an Ethiopian member of Horn Anarchists, an anarchist group based in east Africa, particularly in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian diaspora. The group has been around for about a year and hopes to organize and spread anarchist ideas and organizing in the horn of Africa. Horn anarchists is a newer group planning to do work with refugees and introduce anarchist ideas to east...

This week we are re-airing a conversation that Bursts had last year with Aric McBay, who is an anarchist, organizer, farmer, and author about his most recent book called Full Spectrum Resistance published by Seven Stories Press in May 2019. This book is divided into 2 volumes, and from the books website [fullspectrumresistance.org]: " Volume 1: Building movements and fighting to win , explores how...

In Defense of Looting with Vicky Osterweil This week we are getting the chance to air a conversation that we had with writer, anarchist, and agitator Vicky Osterweil about her recently published book In Defense of Looting, a Riotous History of Uncivil Action published  (Bold Type Press, August 2020). We get to talk about a lot of different topics in this interview, how the book emerged from a zine...

The last year has been a trying time for everyone. Hardest hit have been prisoners who have seen increasing infections of the covid-19 virus brought in by guards who live off site or other prisoners transferred in from other institutions, prisoners who don't have the luxury of free movement during the incessant lockdowns their wardens employed as a band-aid measure to limit transmission, prisoners...

This week on The Final Straw, we feature a conversation between our occasional host, Scott, and adrienne maree brown. For the hour, Scott and adrienne speak about " We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice ", her latest booklet available through AK Press , as well as sci-fi, abolition, harm, accountability and healing. adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the...

Building Working Class History [00:05:53] This week, I spoke with John from the Working Class History collective and host of their WCH podcast. We spoke about the new book, " Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance ", that WCH has published through PM Press, their archives, methodology, the project of popularizing working class, movement and human-sized history and a bunch more. More in...

The Security State, Far Right and Media Post-January 6 th This week on the show, you'll hear two segments: chat with Spencer Sunshine on the far right and the government's reaction following the riot on January 6 th in DC and some perspectives on political content removal and social media from anarchist media platforms ItsGoingDown and crimethInc . Spencer Sunshine Transcription PDF (unimposed) Zi...

ShineWhite on Turning Razor Wire Plantations Into Schools of Liberation The following is a conversation with ShineWhite. ShineWhite is the former spokesperson for the National White Panther Organization, a part of the United Panther Movement. There was quite recently a split in the UPM and ShineWhite is now affiliated with the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party. In this conversation,...

Organizing To End Prison Slavery with Bennu Hannibal Ra Sun [starts at 00:02:37] This week, Bursts spoke with Bennu Hannibal Ra Sun, co-founder of the Free Alabama Movement and the National Freedom Movement, which is helping coordinate prisoner-led organizing across the so-called US. Bennu just finished a 5 year period in segregated housing for his organizing efforts. For the hour, they talk about...

Prison Bars Won't Stifle These Hearts This week, we're presenting three segments, all related in some way to prison. We hear an essay by an anarchist prisoner in Chile about a prison massacre on it's 10 th anniversary, the voice of David Easley reporting from within a covid outbreak in an Ohio prison, and the voice of someone who's protest against nuclear weapons was leading her to incarceration....

Organizing in "No Chance Alamance" County This week on the show I'm speaking with three folks engaged in organizing in the rural Alamance County, North Carolina, and it's capital of Graham. All three work with the 501c4 political non-profit, DownhomeNC which in Alamance has been working on a range of engagements including running local candidates for office, doing get-out-the-vote work, sparking c...

This week, you'll hear Kiran and Marco of the Angry Workers , a collective of anti-authoritarian communists struggling to think through and build workers autonomy from the UK. For the hour, they talk about their organizing and the book they just published, " Class Power On Zero-Hours " (available from PM Press in the US & UK, currently at a 50% discount if purchased from the publisher using the di...

This week, you'll hear a full show, including a segment by Sean Swain [00:01:38 - 00:07:54] Defend DC, 12/11-12/12 [00:07:52 - 00:51:28] Our main content is a conversation with antifascist organizer Daryle Lamont Jenkins of the One People's Project and IdaVox to talk about his views of the state of the far right at this time in the US, their Stop The Steal rallies and the November 14 th Million fo...

This week, I spoke with Dónal O'Driscoll, an animal rights activist and anarchist from the UK talking about the work of the Undercover Research Group to investigate possible SpyCops in the UK, share resources by those harmed by the lies of long term undercovers in activist communities and the current Inquiry that activists are using to unearth the legacy of police infiltration since the 1960's. He...

Belarus is continuing to experience a revolt against the 26 year dictatorship of the post-Soviet dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. The situation came to a boil, fueled by yet another election rife with administration corruption, the creation of mutual aid infrastructure in the face of a government that abandoned public health measures in the face of the corona virus pandemic, decreased economic qual...

This week I got the chance to sit down with Olive and Yousef of the Durham NC based eviction defense group HEDS-Up! HEDS-Up! stands for Housing Eviction Defense Solidarity and is a group which formed in Durham North Carolina when COVID was first hitting the area and folks' housing was becoming more and more unstable. We get to talk about a lot of topics in this episode, among which are gentrificat...