The Final Straw Radio

This week, we're sharing a presentation from the 2023 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville, NC. From the presentation: The Mediterranean Sea is Europe's deadliest border. For years, non-state actors like Sea-Watch and other NGO's have played a part in humanitarian search-and-rescue operations. In spite of legal repression and the technical challenges of maintaining a "civil f...

This week we're sharing audio from  Dr. Mohammed Bamyeh 's presentation entitled "The No-State Solution" as recorded at the 2024 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville, NC. Dr. Bamyeh is a Palestinian sociologist and professor at Pitt and the author of multiple books. There is a youtube video of this chat available on the Firestorm Books channel.  Shuli Branson's current podcas...

This week, we're featuring an interview with Dominika Ożyńska (Egala Association) and Aleksandra Chrzanowska (Association for Legal Intervention [polish: Stowarzyszenie Interwencji Prawnej SIP]), two human rights activists in eastern Poland near the Belarus border who speak about the situation with the migrant route through the Białowieża forest in the midst of increased militarization on both sid...

This week, we're sharing audio from the presentation "Direct action abortion services in Latin America" 2023 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville, NC. Thanks to the volunteers who re-recorded the presenter and audience questions where permission to share their voices was not granted and a transcription. Keep an eye out in August for our youtube video to include the slides fro...

Here's an interview with Walter of the Antifa International social media project. In 2016, this took over the running of the annual July 25 th Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners that was formerly a day to show affinity with Jock Palfreeman, an Australian antifascist who was incarcerated in Bulgaria for defending some Romani people from a right wing attack in which an attacker died. Trans...

This week we're featuring three segments. First up, you'll hear a conversation I had with Asphalt, a supporter of a recent federal grand jury resister in Charleston, South Carolina. [00:04:53 - 00:36:28] After that Cyprus Hartford, the grand jury resister, speaks for herself and reads her statement of resistance and here's her  GoFundMe . [00:36:28 - 00:40:39] Transcript PDF (Unimposed) Zine (Impo...

This week, we're sharing a conversation I had with Matthew Lyons and Xtn Alexander, editors and contributors to the book Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism , out this year from Kersplebedeb Books and PM Press. We talked about the development of the political tendency which troubles the read of both liberal capitalism and the autonomous far right from a revolutionary left liber...

Shut 'Em Down 2024 + Monsour Owolabi An interview with Courtney of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee  & Millions For Prisoners New Mexico  and Roc, communications bridge for Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and residential manager at the JLS housing center  to speak about the JLS call for  Shut 'Em Down strikes inside and outside of prisons in December of 2024. We talk about abolitionism, the o...

Views from the "Rogue Gold" Tree Sit (with Cricket and D) This week you'll hear an interview we conducted with Cricket, a tree sitter in a tree called Goldie in southern so-called Oregon as well as D of Siskiyou Rising Tide. The two talk about the experience and efficacy of tree sits, about the land threatened by the Bureau of Land Managements plan to have Boise Cascade and other timber companies...

This week, we're sharing our interview on the Balkan anarchist journal,  Antipolitika which released it's Nationalism issue last July. It's now available via PM Press  (USA) and Kersplebedeb (Canada) on Turtle Island, alongside the back issues. Our guest is Rey Katula (an editor of the journal and a co-host of the awesome antifascist podcast The Empire Never Ended ) talks about the journal, about...

This week on The Final Straw, we're sharing an interview we conducted in recognition of the upcoming celebration of June 11 th International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and other long term anarchist prisoners. This week you'll hear Julie Herrada, a long time anarchist activist, comrade of Marius Mason and worker at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan. Julie is joined by Ma...

This week, we're sharing two segments. Addameer on Palestinian Prisoners First up, we spoke with Tala Nasser of the Palestinian prisoner human rights group, Al-Addameer which has offices in Jerusalem or Al-Quds, as well as in Ramallah. We speak about the report they released on Palestinian Prisoners day, April 17 th , on the conditions of Palestinian prisoners, particularly since October 7 th , 20...

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...