The Final Straw Radio

This week William got to sit down with Sarah Lyons, who is an author, activist, and a practicing witch about her new book Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism which came out in 2019 from Running Press .   This was a great interview to have for TFS, because this is a topic we haven't yet presented on this show and we cover a wide range of topics; our guest's personal history with w...

Social justice and Struggle in Lebanon and Syria: Elia J. Ayoub and Leila Al-Shami Photo taken from Al Jumhuriya This week on The Final Straw we're featuring a chat with Elia J Ayoub and Leila Al-Shami. In this conversation, Elia tells us of some of the history of Lebanon, since the civil war that ended in 1990 and up to the current demonstrations against the clientelist warlords in power in that...

This week we got the chance to sit down and catch up with Ben Turk, who is an anarchist and prison abolitionist living in Milwaukee WI, about some recent efforts that he has been involved in and some ways that listeners can plug in and do solidarity work from afar. We speak about the lockdowns that have been occuring in Columbia CI, continued efforts to raise awareness about solitary confinement a...

Josh Harper of SHAC7 and Voices from Gidimt'en Access Point This week, we feature two portions of the show. Josh Harper on 'Animal People' film [00:06:27] First up, we'll hear Josh Harper, a co-defendant from the SHAC7 case and former political prisoner talking the struggle to shut down the company, Huntington Life Sciences, a contract animal testing laboratory, in the early 2000's in the so-calle...

Voices from the Gitdimt'en Access Point   This is a podcast special featuring the voices of three warriors who were on the barricade on the road to Unist'ot'en Camp at the Gitdimt'en Access Point. Eve Saint (Wet'suwet'en land defender), Anne Spice (Tlinket land defender) & Shilo Hill (from Onandaga nation, Haudenosaunee, Six Nations) were there to defend unceded Wet'suwet'en land from the Canadian...

This week on The Final Straw, an anarchist living in Mexico talks about the reign of the MORENA party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (aka AMLO), the new face of capitalism it presents, it's relation to social movements and indigenous sovereignty and the anarchist and indigenous resistance to the regime. We cover mega-projects being pushed through around the country, the repression of activists and...

This week, we have two portions to the show. First, we catch up with Mitch from Red Strings and Maroons podcast about some of what they saw at the A2 rally in Richmond on January 20 th , about antifascist intervention and the effectiveness of intervening to call out white nationalists in gun advocacy spaces. More of their work available at RedStringsAndMaroons.com . If you are interested in hearin...

This week we have two segments, an interview with an Anarcha-Feminist organizer in San Salvador, El Salvador on the situation there, followed by Mitch of Red Strings And Maroons podcast on the upcoming Militia demonstration on MLK Jr. Day, January 20th, 2020 in Richmond, VA. Elisa on GANA Govt in El Salvador [starts at 00:04:54] First, you'll hear my conversation with Elisa, an anarchafeminist in...

Perspectives from Iranian Anarchists This week on The Final Straw we feature a chat with a translator of the Anarchist Union of Afghanistan and Iran to share perspectives from membership in Iran and abroad about resistance to the regime from within, solidarity from abroad, the impact of US Sabre-rattling. A transcription of this interview can be found here . A zine formatted version will be availa...

This week we have two segments.  Jason Goudlock and the Old Law in OH First, we'll hear from Jason Goudlock, a prisoner under the so-called "Old Law" in Ohio serving his 26 th year of a 6-25 year sentence. Jason talks about the situation in Ohio between the "Old Law" and the "New Law", for instance if he had been convicted of the same robbery and battery crimes three years later he might have serv...

This week Cypress spoke with Io Ascarium. The conversation covered their work as a member of ABO Comix Collective and their work in comics and print. Io is "a maurading pillar of salt just doing their best to make what could, in a sense, be described as 'art'" (I love them dearly but could not bring myself to write this into the actual script). ABO Comix Collective is a group of buds and comrades...

Israeli Dissent and Sean Talks "Last Act" This week we are happy to feature a couple of audios we did NOT record ourselves. Resisting Militarism and Occupation in Israel First, German comrades attending the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair last year interviewed two Israeli anarchists about resistance against the settler-colonial nation they live under. Dana is from Tel Aviv (a member of the Coalition of...

Israeli Dissent and Sean Talks "Last Act" This week we are happy to feature a couple of audios we did NOT record ourselves.     Resisting Militarism and Occupation in Israel First, German comrades attending the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair last year interviewed two Israeli anarchists about resistance against the settler-colonial nation they live under. Dana is from Tel Aviv (a member of the Coalition...

Little Village Solidarity Network This week on The Final Straw Radio, I'm happy to share a conversation with Rozalinda, Pura and Lynn from La Villita Red de Solidaridad or the Little Village Solidarity Network in so-called Chicago, IL. LVSN, in the English-language acronym, is an autonomous community organizing project based in La Villita or Little Village neighborhood and networks with other resi...

This week we are super pleased to present an interview done with Sima Lee, who is a queer Afro-Indigenous hip hop artist and community organizer of long standing, about a recent raid that occurred at Maroon House in DC this March. We speak about Maroon House, its story and what it is in the process of becoming, the ask for support in helping this movement build and heal from the brutal police repr...

This week we are pleased to present a paper given at the 2019 north american anarchist studies network that took place this year in Atlanta Georgia by e ornelas who presents a thoroughly de-colonial reading of Ursula K. LeGuin's novel The Word for World is Forest . The paper is entitled "If You Wait, It Is We That Will be Burned: Exploring Violence and Resistance in Ursula LeGuins The Word for Wor...

This week we bring you two different segments. First, Cypress spoke with Jenny from Project Fang, a project that financially supports visits to earth and animal liberation prisoners. Since 2016, Project Fang has worked to combat the isolation of incarceration these prisoners feel by providing a fund for financial assistance for visits. The prisoners and their loved ones can apply to the fund to he...

This week I had the opportunity to sit down with Margaret Killjoy to talk about her new EP called Every Breath Our Last out this October from her one woman project Nomadic War Machine. Margaret is a writer, musician, and anarchist based in Western North Carolina. We got to talk about a lot of things in this episode, including her new EP, what went into making it, Nomadic War Machine as a project i...

This week we are presenting a special guest interview, done by Scott who is an anarchist academic and regular listener, 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....

"We are prepared, motherf**kers!": Greek anarchists on the New Democracy regime This week, we're sharing a conversation that I had with comrades from Radiozones Of Subversive Expression, an anti-authoritarian pirate radio station based in Athens, Greece. Mike, Sprout and Omar, three anarchists working with ROSE share their perspectives on the change in government in Greece, corruption in the New D...

This week William had the chance to interview someone, a 20 year old anarchist from the territory of so called Chile, about the uprisings which have been occurring there. The protests began on Monday October 14th in Chile's capital, Santiago, as a coordinated fare evasion campaign by high school students which led to spontaneous takeovers of the city's main train stations and open confrontations w...

This is a show with two parts, firstly William got to sit down with two members of Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross about the ongoing and increasingly dire situation in South Carolina prions. We won't take up too much space here with an intro because we have a pretty packed show, but they outline some upcoming actions coordinated at the behest of people incarcerated in SC, a phone zap scheduled fo...

For this special podcast episode I spoke with G ö n ü l D ü zer, who is a labor activist, math teacher, and a board member of the Kurdish Cultural Center in Chicago. G ö n ü l was willing to take the time to speak on the current Turkish invasion of Northeast Syria, some history that would be useful to keep in mind when considering current events in this region, the complex tensions of being an ant...

Secret Shame This week William had the chance to speak with 3 members of the Asheville based goth/darkwave/post punk band Secret Shame about their politics, their music, what ails and what's good about Asheville in general, the tensions of living under capitalism, the recent attention this group has been getting, and many more topics. You can learn more about them by following @secretshameband on...

Preparing for Freedom Today you'll hear Bursts interview Pepe, an anarchist from so called Connecticut. As of September 4 th 2019, Pepe has been sentenced to 5 years in prison on federal charges. In this interview he speaks on a range of topics related to the prison industrial complex, from detailing how prosecutors operate within the "criminal justice" system, to his personal experience in prepar...