The Final Straw Radio

June 11th 2020: Marius Mason support and words from Jeremy Hammond In this June 11 th podcast special, we're happy to feature two interviews. The first is with Letha, a supporter of anarchist prisoner Marius Mason who is 7 years from release for animal and earth liberation front actions in the late 1990's. Marius, who tested positive for covid-19 recently at FCI Danbury, continues his activism inc...

Hotel Sanctuary in MPLS This week  we got to connect with Rosemary, who is an organizer in Minneapolis, about the liberation of a former Sheraton Hotel in that city and its slow but steady transformation into something that is becoming so much more than a housing cooperative. They speak about how this resocialization came to happen, some of the circumstances involved, about how this is a very deep...

Two Voices From MPLS: Medic and Abolitionist On this episode, we're featuring two voices from Minneapolis, the epicenter of mass demonstrations and uprising following the police murder of # GeorgeFloyd. First up, you'll hear from Jacquie, a professional medic living in Minneapolis. Jacquie talks about the impacts of corona virus on Black and Brown communities around the city, some of what she saw...

This is a presentation of some of the Q and A session which took place after the IDOC Watch panel in Chicago last year. If you are hearing this and don't know what I'm talking about, head on over to the previous episode to catch up!   In this segment, we'll hear Kwame Shakur, Lorenzo Stone-Bey, Sheila, and Zolo Azania speak on supporting incarcerated people, the tactic of the prison strike, and wa...

This week we are presenting audio from a panel conducted last year in Indiana with members of IDOC Watch, which is the Indiana Department of Correction watch. From their website :   "The Indiana Department of Correction Watch (IDOC Watch) exists to be in solidarity with prisoners. This means we correspond with and and foster camaraderie with people who are incarcerated in Indiana, expose abusive c...

We're happy to share the second half of this conversation with Graham Clumpner, anarchist, U.S. military veteran and eco-defender. If you missed the first half of this chat, check out our May 17 th episode up at our website. For this hour Graham talks about the responsibility of U.S. society as a whole for the devastation of the Global War On Terror and to the victims in Iraq, Afghanistan and else...

This week we're sharing a chat with Graham Clumpner, an anarchist veteran of the U.S. military from the early days of the so-called Global War on Terror. During his time in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Graham worked his way up to being an Army Ranger and left the military in 2007. After struggling with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Graham re...

Wayne Price on Anarchism and Marxist Economics Wayne Price is longtime anarchist, author and currently a member of Bronx Climate Justice North and the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, or MACC , in New York City. After reading his book, The Value Of Radical Theory : An Anarchist Introduction to Marx's Critique of Political Economy (AK Press, 2013), I got excited to speak to him about hi...

Digital Security Tools for Organizing We're happy to share the rest of our conversation with Michele Gretes, director of the Digital Security project at the Civil Liberties Defense Center, and Cora Borradaile, who is on the board of the CLDC. For this podcast special, you'll hear the two discuss different tools for more secure, encrypted communication that is available on various platforms to folk...

This week, we feature two conversations. Cora Borradaile and Michele Gretes, folks involved in the Digital Security Project of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, speak about contact tracing apps and surveillance. Then, Se speaks about Tucson Food Share's grocery distribution program. Contact Tracing Apps First up, we hear Michele Gretes and Cora Borradaile. Michele is the Digital Security Coordin...

Lorenzo Komb'oa Ervin and Bomani Shakur / Keith Lamar This midweek, we're sharing two segments. First up, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin talks about attempts in the 1960's and 70's at building a prisoners union in the United States and parallels with inside / outside organizing in the USA today. Then we hear from Ohio death row prisoner from the Lucasville Uprising case, Bomani Shakur (aka Keith Lamar) abo...

Barry Pateman on Anarchist History and Challenges I'm really happy to share a chat with anarchist and historian, 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 hi...

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...