This week we present quite the variety of consumables. Firstly couple of announcements about KOWA-LP and AshevilleFM and an update on the 5E prisoners from Mexico which includes a description of life and bribery culture in the prison where Carlos is currently held.
Next, the TFS crew’s newest member, Neka, interviews Keith Lamar (AKA Bomani Shakur), a defendant in the Lucasville Uprising case, facing the death penalty for allegedly leading a death squad of prisoners who killed snitches in April of 1993, of which he claims innocence. Keith is the author of a new book, Condemned, which he talks about alongside talking about his case and his upcoming final appeal. Find out more about his case and check out his book at his website, http://keithlamar.org and if you’re in or around Ohio and can make his hearings, please do show support.
If you’re in the line of travel for Black Bird Raum, pick up a copy of Keith’s book from their tour. http://www.blackbirdraum.net/
After that we are happy to present a recently translated interview by comrades from Anarchistisches Radio Berlin with a member of the Anarchist Black Cross of Belarus about a number of topics including prisoner support and anti-repression work the ABC is doing, the confusing nationalist and anarchist alignments occurring in parts of Ukraine, repression in Russia and much more. More from ARB can be found at http://aradio.blogsport.de
This week’s episode, we start off with announcements of the April 12th anti-racist march in Olympia, the April 28th Intl. Police conference in Phoenix, and a thanks from us for the recent awarding of The Final Straw with recognition by Anarchist News of our audio work.
Next, Sean Swain talks about the defendants of the Lucasville Uprising case.
The main segment is a discussion with Sonny, a German anarchist involved in resistance to the operation and spreading of the Lignite Carbon mine and subsequent destruction of the nearby environment by RWE. Sonny talks about the resistance there, the displacement of animals, devastation of the landscape and the eviction of 55,000 people over the years from local villages to expand the mine.
This week’s discussion happened as news came from the Hambacher resistors that the state was in the process of evicting the forest defenders. On 3/29/13 Sonny and I got back together to talk about updates on the situation. https://hambachforest.blogsport.de
This week’s show features an interview with two residents of the ZAD about the demonstrations of February 22nd in Nantes, France. Also, Anarchist prisoner Sean Swain talks about Swivilization in his weekly segment. More on him can be found at seanswain.org
The demonstration, dubbed a “sacking” by the media and police, featured directed attacks by demonstrators on offices of the French construction company threatening the lands of Notre-dames-de-Landes, a police station, a travel office, and a private transit company. The day of action also featured speeches, picnics, play, marches, discussions and theater.
In this conversation, some folks from the ZAD describe what they saw, why violence occurred, how that violence as an idea is wielded to form a narrative by the media and state and how it was experienced by folks actually present with the movement and the land.
The first is Sean Swain’s most recent challenges to Governor Kasich of Ohio.
Next up, William interviewed CeCe McDonald. CeCe was recently released after her arrest in 2011 after the death of neo-nazi who attacked CeCe and friends while hurling transphobic, homophobic and racist epithets. CeCe talks about the support she received, what time was like inside for her and how release has been. For more about her case, check out: http://supportcece.wordpress.com/
Then, Bursts spoke with Dane Rossman, who was extradited to Canada from the U.S. in relation to charges around the 2010 Toronto anti-G20 protests. Dane speaks about his experiences in detention, the other 3 known extraditees and what they face with their convictions, how to support them and anti-border and detention work going on in the Southwest of the U.S.
This week we’ll feature a segment by anarchist prisoner Sean Swain about education under Capitalism, a quick update about the U.S. activists threatened with extradition to Canada in relation to the 2010 Toronto anti-G20 protests and finally an interview with Orie Lumumba about the MOVE9, their 1978 conviction and their bid for parole. The last 20 minutes will feature tracks by Vallendusk from indonesia, Ah Ciliz from Los Angeles.
This week, we featured a segment by Sean Swain on sovereignty and consent of the ruled. We’ve begun archiving Sean’s segments under the title “You Are The Resistance” on archive.org, and those can be found linked as they come out on http://seanswain.org
This was followed by a conversation with Emily who does support work the NATO3 about what’s happened in the trial and what the next steps appear to be as sentencing approaches. Great news is that defendants Brent Betterly, Jared Chase & Brian Jacob Church were found Not Guilty of all of the terrorism charges, however they still each have felonies that stuck. Check out more at http://freethenato3.wordpress.com
Next, we speak with Johanna of Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, a grassroots group out of West Virginia that looks to the effects of Mountain Top Removal and coal extraction and burning on the environment, economy and people in Appalachia. Johanna shares some info on the recent Duke Energy Coal Ash Pit spill on the Dan River, near the North Carolina-Virginia border and what impacts can be expected from the 82,000 tons of toxic ash getting into a water source that provides for roughly 50,000 human animals, and uncounted non-humans and other life. http://www.mountainkeeper.org/
Finally, we’ll hear An Unearthly Sacrament by the Marin-County-California-based metal project Radagast, their only release thus far. That’ll be followed (really finally) by Destroyed By Ourselves from Katahajime from Allentown, PA.
This week’s episode of the Final Straw features a conversation with Cami, a resident of the ZAD (Zone À Défendre or Zone To Defend) speaks about experiences of living on, defending, struggling on and with the project and the people in Western France and against the police, airport expansion and fascists.
Backstory: Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL) in western France has been the target of the French government and private corporations like Vinci Construction for the building of new infrastructure. Plans have been brewing for 40 years to build a new, larger airport in the area, to expand the bus systems, build a high speed train out to the airport from the nearby city of Nantes and expand the port at Saint-Nazaire. The struggle, for many of the members of the farming communities around NDDL, has been about saving their countryside from gentrification, from preserving their generations-old ways of life, their homes, their agency in what happens to their homes so that it’s not just people in Paris and Nantes who reshape their world. For many others it’s about preserving some of the last remaining undeveloped lands in the area, resisting the expansion of the Metropolis and the way of life that it brings and even in making their own way of life with others while resisting eviction and learning new ways of struggle.
Much media coverage of the ZAD has worked to build a myth around the project that it’s hunky-dory heroism and everyday revolution. While those things exist there, the story is not so clean cut. This hour we’ll also be speaking about internal problems of sexism, racism, interpersonal violence, drug use, valorization of certain forms of struggle, homophobia… the same crap we have to deal with everywhere, sadly. Cami also talks about how people on the ZAD have tried to work through these problems. While also struggling against the occasional neo-fascist incursion from the outside.
We have hopes at the Final Straw that this will be the first of a few shows that focus on communities resisting development by Vinci, a company that destroys ecology, builds prisons and greenwashes around the world. Vinci is also the main holder of contracts with the Moscow government in relation to the development of old growth Khimki Forest to build a road and a village for the rich as well as Combe Haven in the U.K. Also, in the Atlanta, GA, USA they’ve been awarded (under the sub-subsidiary Hubbard Construction) the Northwest Corridor contract, worth $600 million, which will bring 30 miles of toll highway to that city.
(The following note is apparently up for dispute, according to some sources…) 2 days ago Vinci was seeing red in Bristol, UK, due to an arson at some of their offices by Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI)
The portions of the interview talking about Insurrectional theory, Radio Klaxtion (pirate radio on the ZAD), fascist attacks on the ZAD, immigrant solidarity, ability and the ZAD, films about the ZAD, and some of the music created through resistance by folks at the ZAD… don’t appear here due to lack of time. They’ll be linked on our afm blog page and eventually on thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org
The first is a call-out on behalf of Oso Blanco (Byron Shane Chabbuck #07909051) in his bid to receive medical treatment for chronic illness (Hep-C) and an unexplored growth in his liver that cause debilitating pain and have resulted in health crises for him. We suggest you participate in the call-in day on Wednesday, December 18th. More info on the call should soon be found at: http://denverabc.wordpress.com/prisoners-dabc-supports/political-prisoners-database/byron-shane-chubbuck/
The main portion of the episode features an interview with Alvaro Luna Hernandez, a Chicano political prisoner serving a 50 year sentence in Texas for disarming a Sheriff who pulled a gun on him, and then fleeing. Mr. Hernandez speaks about his case, his legal history, his political development, and his imprisonment. Special thanks to the Central Texas Anarchist Black Cross for this material. More info on Alvaro can be found at http://freealvaro.net
The final portion of the show features 3 new metal tracks: I by Dusk from their EP; Black Fast with Levitations from Starving Out The Light; and Voidcraeft from the album Scorn with the track As If Amongst Animals.
This week’s episode features three, that’s right, three whopping conversations.
Firstly, we hear from Luke O’Donovan about his case. Luke is an Anarchist in the Atlanta area who defended himself against a queer bashing last New Years at a party. Luke suffered multiple wounds inflicted by knives as well as beating which sent him to the hospital. He’s facing 5 charges of aggrivated assault with a deadly weapon for injuring the people attacking him, who’d earlier called him a faggot repeatedly. Each of those 5 charges could carry a twenty year sentence.
After that, we’ll hear from Rafi, an organizer in Durham North Carolina, about the spate of police murders of young men of color in that city. Particularly we’ll talk about the case of Jesus Chuy Huerta, a 17 year old latino man shot in the back of a patrol car while handcuffed that the police are claiming was self-inflicted.
Finally, we’ll hear from Jess who’s been organizing alongside youth in Santa Rosa, California since the shooting death by Sheriff’s there of 13 year old Andy Lopez for having a toy gun. The fatal shooting of Andy Lopez fell on October 22nd of this year. For those who don’t know, October 22nd is a day when many people in the United States remember those killed and imprisoned by police and protest against police violence.
Ed Mead & Danny Atteberry on the Tier of Walla Walla’s Isolation Unit in the 70’s Download This Episode
This week’s show features two parts. In the first we present a speech from the recent Carborro Anarchist bookfaire by a collective member at Untorelli Press on queer resistance inside and outside of prisons in the 20th century and what we might take from the experiences of our predecessors. More from Untorelli can be found at http://untorellipress.noblogs.org
For more on Men Against Sexism, check out this interview with Ed Mead on Earful of Queer
Secondly we’ll hear a presentation by Joe of the North American Anarchist Black Cross Medical Justice Committee. The conversation ranges over a number of topics, but focuses primarily on active and revolutionary solidarity with anarchist and other political prisoners. The original post with contacts can be found here: http://325.nostate.net/?p=9112
A pretty good list of prisoners can be found at Denver ABC‘s page
