This week, we’re sharing a recent interview with Cal Robinet, an anarchist, union electrician, and fire arms instructor involved in the union and LGBT Ray Rainbolt Memorial Shooting Club. Cal is also a member of the Minnesota 15, who were federally indicted following Operation Metro Surge and taking their challenge to court, charged under 18 U.S.C. § 372 “conspiracy to impede federal officers”, the civil war-era statute that has been deployed against other, non-violent anti-ICE protesters as we saw in Chicago with the Broadview 6 and in Washington with the Spokane 3. We would direct folks to Minnesota15.org for further reading, updates and ways to support the defendants.
Of note, there is a call for a day of solidarity with the defendants on Sunday, October 3rd wherever you are. More at the support site, or find a pic in our show notes related to this.
This week, we’re sharing a conversation with two anti-repression organizers in the UK who are both associated with NetPol, or the Network for Police Monitoring as well as other defendant support projects. For the chat we speak about the sort of work their orgs are involved in, changes in sentencing amongst protestors, increasingly violent police suppression of antifascists counter-demonstrating (and greatly outnumbering) anti-immigrant crowds, the Filton Palestine Action cases and more. We hope you enjoy and you can find some links in the show notes on where to find more of Maya and Andy’s work.
We recorded this interview several weeks ago, before Palestine Action was proscribed by the US as a Specially Designated Terrorist Entity and has had sanctions applied to it by the US State Department, so it’s notable that we can legally not suggest anyone offer material support to Palestine Action thanks to the Anti-Antifascist US government as they could be punished under US law.
NetPol (including the ‘One Day In…’ protest reports): https://netpol.org
On June 11, 2025, there was a demonstration of hundreds of people in Spokane, Washington to defend two young asylum-seekers, Cesar Alexander Alvarez Perez and Joswar Slater Rodriguez Torres, who were kidnapped by ICE while appearing for a scheduled check-in. The next day, the Trump administration’s DOJ sent out a memo to all districts to prioritize prosecution of anti-ICE protestors and publicize the repression. Months later, 9 people were brought to Federal trial, with 6 of them taking a non-cooperating plea deal. The remaining 3, refused to back down and were taken to trial and were convicted of conspiracy.
For this episode we’re joined by Hadley, a member of the Spokane 3 Support Committee to speak about those defendants ( Justice Forral, Bajun Mavalwalla II, and Jac Archer ), their case and struggle for justice. A great, local media outlet named Range Media has been covering this case in detail, check it out at https://www.rangemedia.co/spokane-9-protests/ . Finally, stay tuned for a press conference this coming week after some next legal steps are taken by the defendants.
First up, you’ll hear Jeremy and Sea speak about the upcoming G20 Financial Track gathering of Finance Ministers and Central Bankers happening in Asheville at the end of August this year. We speak about the G20, neoliberalism, and some of the organizing happening locally. More info available at G20AVL.NoBlogs.Org
Then you’ll hear a segment form the June 2026 episode #103 of B(A)D News: Angry Voices from Around The World by the A-Radio Network. In this audio, members of Crna Luknja from Ljubljana, Slovenia, speak with participants in the autonomous, squatted neighborhood of Athens, Prosfygika, a name which translates to Refugee. The audio was recorded on May 28th , so likely the situation has shifted and you can find more information and updates at SaveProsfygika.GR/index.php/en/ for English. According to a statement from June 24th found on that website, the hunger strikes of Aristotelis Chantzis and Suzon Doppagne were suspended following municipal statements in line with movement demands. Check the Materials page for statements, photos, audios and documentaries from and about the community.
Mutual Aid in Spokane in the wake of massive fires
A comrade sent some fundraising links for mutual aid, particularly for undocumented community members and folks at the Colville Tribal Rez north of town where fire damage has been extensive. Check our show notes for links.
Sunday 8/16 – Week of Action kickoff & potluck: coalition building, info and resource sharing, and organizing for week of action and beyond, 1 to 3 pm, Home Hub Pavilion, 27 Balm Grove Ave., W AVL, rain or shine (covered outdoor space and access to indoor spaces).
**Tuesday evening 8/18 – online panel and Q&A with local and national experts, 7 – 8:30 pm.**
Friday evening 8/21 – Infoshare, Q&A, Speak Out + dance party, 6 to 10 pm, location TBD.
First up is a conversation with two activists of Appalachians Against Uranium in eastern Tennessee about the expansion of a nuclear weapons development in Jonesborough in the Tri-Cities near the border with North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For the interview we speak about the legacy of the nuclear industry in the region, health impacts on locals, some of the companies (like BWXT) involved, concerns of pollution and building off the work of past and ongoing civic activism in the region. Find our guests online at their website or find them on bluesky for further information.
If you missed our prior interview talking about other and related elements of the nuclear industries in the US, check out the chat with M.V. Ramana from our July 19th episode, found at our website.
Eastern TN Nuclear Links
Scott Perez article on “economic hostages” available thanks to Dine CARE
A book about the Transform Now Plowshares action in Oak Ridge, TN
The Ulm 5 Case in Germany
[00:50:00]
After this, you’ll hear a recording from May 14th, 2026 of journalist Roser Garí Pérez speaking in Freiberg, Germany, about the the case of the Ulm 5: five activists from various countries held in pre-trial detention since September of 2025 in Germany on charges of taking action against an Elbit Systems Deutschland factory in that country. Elbit Systems is an Israeli arms manufacturer whose products bring death to people in Palestine. The defendants have experienced long term isolation, extraordinarily long pre-trial detention without the option of bail. This segment appears in episode 104 of B(A)D News from the A-Radio Network, and was submitted and recorded by Radio Ausbruch from Freiberg
As a note for US listeners, the use of the term protocol in this segment can be translated to mean taken notes. You can keep up on the case, find how to write letters or send support, at https://ulm5.info/ and find updated writings on the case by Roser Garí Pérez on their instagram or their author page at The Left Berlin
Announcement
Support Request by 2020 Uprising Prisoner Khalif Miller
We received correspondence from Khalif Miller who was arrested in Philadelphia. Acording to his GoFundMe, “Khalif was held on pre-trial detention for 2 years and eventually sentenced to 5 years in Federal prison. As he was on probation at the time of his indictment he was additionally given a 1-10 year state sentence for probation violation.” According to his page on UprisingSupport.org, Khalif had this to say:
“I was working, I was trying to get my business up and running, I was going to school. I was doing things not just to help my family, I was trying to help communities. The day that I went to the protest… the night before when I was even making my signs. I spent 4 hours just making signs and writing down a bunch of people who were unfairly killed by police officers. This is something I really feel passionate about.
People say all the time, you can do anything you want in America. You can be whatever you want to be. Growing up, I heard it but I never really believed it because I felt like my resources were limited. The world has so many possibilities. I would like to teach that. That’s one of the things I would like to be able to pass along to the younger generations when I come home.”
Check the show notes for links to how you can write to Khalif and how you can offer him support during this long period of repression.
Write letters:
Smart Communications / PA DOC
Khalif Miller / #QQ9287
SCI Forest
PO Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Send books:
Khalif Miller
#QQ9287
268 Bricker Road
Bellefonte, PA 16823
This week, we’re sharing two segments on the episode: updates on the federal sentencing in the Prairieland Antifa terrorism case; followed by a discussion of a recent anti-Flock surveillance sabotage case in the Great Lakes region.
First up, two members of the DFW Support Committee return to give a rundown of the sentencing in that case with people receiving decades in relation to a noise demonstration in support of detainees at the Prairieland ICE Detention facility on July 4th of 2025.
This case, framed in terms of Trump’s State Dept declaration of Antifa as a terrorist organization and his NSPM-7 memo titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” declaring the intention to prosecute those motivated to violence by views of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
Then you’ll hear a guest speak about a recent court case involving two individuals in the Great Lakes region who took action against flock surveillance cameras. You’ll hear some insights into the sorts of evidence presented, the defendants experiences of incarceration and how you can send support their way as they do their bid.
You can send funds to support them at @deez_zines on venmo. If you donate $20 or more to the fundraiser, send proof of donation and an address to deez_zines@tutamail.com and you’ll be sent a thank you gift from the support team.
This year has felt like there’ve been a series of large sports mega events and summits planned and taking place in cities across the USA. For instance, starting in June the FIFA World Cup will be hosted in cities across the country (as well as a few in Mexico and Canada). Also a few cities are hosting meetings and an eventual summit related to the G20, or group of 20 economies, a gathering between large capitalist industries, banks, para-governmental neoliberal international institutions, government ministries and heads of state that share policy decisions effecting immigration, wars, trade policy and the climate. In 2028 Los Angeles will host the Olympics.
This episode will feature two discussions about some of the security impacts of hosting large sports or political events and the ways that the state and capital work to change the landscape and norms of the locations they take place. First up, Kristian Williams speaks about National Special Security Events like the G20 or World Cup, how they change local police and surveillance landscapes and work to turbocharge gentrification and displace working and poor people, making our cities more hostile to anything but commerce and control. Then, you’ll hear from Sam Schmidt at Our Streets Collective to speak about homeless sweeps in Pittsburgh, PA in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2026 NFL Draft taking place in that city.
Prosfigyka coverage by Pyrias of Athens appears on this episode of B(A)D News podcast
Announcement
Marius Mason
Longtime listeners to The Final Straw Radio will be familiar with the yearly June 11th Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and other Longterm Anarchist Prisoners. Well, stay tuned for an announcement from the June 11 crew in coming weeks with a recording of this year’s call. We are happy to announce here that Marius Mason, a long standing ecological, animal rights and trans prisoner rights activist will is on his way out of prison, currently in a halfway house having served out his sentence,
Past interviews on Marius’ case, other prisoners supported on the day and June 11th yearly event
Here’s our recent chat with two members of The Peoples Want Network, an attempt to build an Internationalist movement from below and to the left. For this chat, Rindala and Doxie speak about sharing lessons from movements and uprisings of the recent past from around the world among participants and those hoping to create movements in their own lives, organizing in exile, the enriching practice of building solidarity and the recently published English booklet of The Peoples Want manifesto, Revolutions Of Our Times (Haymarket 2026). At the end of the chat, Rindala announces the upcoming, June 2026 project Mujawara for networking local movement sites with those around the world to further increase intercommunication and solidarity and support such spaces in conflict sites in the SWANA.
We’ve covered a number of the uprisings, migrant struggles, and internationalist organizing topics and movements discussed in the episode since we started in 2010, so feel free to pick through our website if you want to dig a little deeper and hear some views from the times.
This week we spoke with AC and E, two members of the DFW Support Committee about the recently finished federal trial for 9 defendants in the terrorism case around the Prairieland Detention Center noise demo in July of 2025.
To recap the case, in the midst of increased racist and nativist rhetoric, ICE and CBP snatch squad deployments ripping apart communities across the US in the first year of Trump 2.0, and the buildup of immigrant rendition and imprisonment in the southwest there was a July 4th noise demonstration called for to happen outside the infamous Prairieland Detention Center outside Alvarado, Texas. During the protest, meant to be loud enough for people held there to hear that they were not forgotten, participants used bullhorns, shouted, shot off fireworks and painted slogans. In response the staff called the Alvarado police and upon arrival the cop drew his weapon and aimed at dispersing protestors. At this point the state narrative and that of the defendants diverge: on the one hand the state argues that this whole event was a planned ambush for law enforcement by a north Texas Antifa terrorist cell in black bloc meant to draw police into a fight and then liberate the prison; on the other side the defendants claim the event was escalated to targeted gunfire by defendant Song meant to deter deadly violence by the cop and allow the crowd to disperse without bloodshed.
For the hour, you’ll hear folks from DFW Defense Committee talking about what evidence and arguments were presented in court, what evidence and arguments were suppressed, the strange decisions of the judge in jury selection, venue and other elements effecting the ability of those facing decades in prison to mount and defense and where we’re at now with the case. This case cannot be disconnected from the Trump administration’s call to name Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, to tie in projects and movements they consider to be enemies (ranging from Democrats to civil liberties groups, queer folk and immigrants rights advocates to anti-fascists, communists and anarchists and everyone in between) with the goal, some speculate, of more fully capturing the federal government under a white, christian nationalist and fascist regime. More on the case at PrairielandDefendants.Com
Next week, keep an ear out for a chat we plan to release with Nina of Anarchist Black Cross Dresden about the impacts of naming German antifascists as terrorists by the Trump Regime on the ability of various leftist, anti-repression groups there to do their work, to hold bank accounts for sending money to prisoners or pay for lawyers and about the shift towards the right electorally and politically that is being experienced in that country. You may be surprised about the parallels with the situation in the US.
This week, an interview with Aryanum, a member of the Persian-language anarchist group Anarchism Perspective, based in Iran and Afghanistan. Anarchism Perspective is a synthesist anarchist group based mostly in the region that organizes solidarity and resistance as well as publishing writings at Anarshism.com . For this episode, we speak about the recent uprising in Iran that was met with bloody repression by the regime, with internet blackouts and low-ball estimates of 30,000 dead at government hands from January 8th and 9th 2026 alone. Aryanum speaks about the posturing by monarchists supporting the return and enthroning of Reza Pahlavi II, the son of the last Shah, and the weaponization of Islam by the Mullahs of the regime and other topics.
Thread on mastodon about the usefulness of Delta Chat via locally run servers when the internet (and therefore connection to Signal) was cut off: https://archive.ph/GBR6A
