Category Archives: United States

Afghanistan, Anarchist, Federation of Anarchism Era, Immigration, Iran, repression, Transcribed, Ukraine, United States, war, Zapatista, zine

Updates from Afghanistan and Iran

"Anarchist solidarity with the revolutionary women of Afghanistan! -Power To The People -Fire To The Prisons -Down With The Patriarchs -Down With The Taliban -Down With The State" showing women cheering and raising fists
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This week, we’re joined again by Aryanam, a member of the Federation of Anarchism Era (ASRAnarshism.Com), mostly made up of anarchists from Iran and Afghanistan. We mostly get updates about the situation of anarchists, atheists and feminists in Afghanistan under the Taliban or in an effort to escape as refugees, but we also get a few updates from Iran as well, including the regime’s founding of a national anarchist group called Iranarshism. At the time of this release, we’ve already got the transcript and a zine available for download, translation, reading and sharing.

You can find out more about the Federation by visiting ASRAnarshism.com, or finding them on instagram, twitter, Telegram, facebook and youtube. You can also hear our past interviews with Aryanam alongside other episodes concerning Iran here: https://thefinalstrawradio.mayfirst.info/post/category/iran/

A few links of note:

Announcements

BAD News #54

The March 2022 episode of the A-Radio Network‘s monthly, English-language podcast. This month with additions from: 1431 Social Radio in Thessaloniki, Greece; A-Radio Berlin on workers from Gorilla gig delivery app service; A-Radio Vienna with experiences from a queer anarchist in Kyiv right after the invasion by Russia; Crna Luknja from Ljubljana, Slovenia with a Serbian anarcho-syndicalist organizer on the part in the war in Ukraine played by NATO and resisting from within that framework. Check it out!

Eric King Trial

In a surpisingly good piece of news, a jury recently found anarchist and antifascist political prisoner in the good ole USA, Eric King, not guilty of assaulting an officer, a charge which would have given a 20 year hit to Eric who has been slated for release from Federal prison in July of 2023. You can find updates at SupportEricKing.Org as well as ABCF.Net. You’ll hopefully here more about this in an upcoming interview with members of his support crew and you can direct thanks to the amazing folks at the Civil Liberties Defense Center, or CLDC, for lawyering for him.

Doug Wright Out of Prison!

The remaining member of the Cleveland 4 case, Doug Wright, has been released from prison nearly 10 years since the initiation of the case. You can find our past interviews about the case here: https://thefinalstrawradio.mayfirst.info/post/category/cleveland-4/

You can support Doug’s life on the outside: https://fundrazr.com/81xTKc?ref=ab_6jmRCDUT7nt6jmRCDUT7nt

War In Ukraine

Yup, still happening.

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Featured Tracks:

  • Rope (طناب) by Toomaj (توماج ) & Biqlb (بی‌لقب). Tamooj is an Iranian protest hip hop artist released on March 17th 2022. Toomaj Salehi was detained by Iranian officials for propaganda because of his anti-corruption, anti-regime music and Amnesty International had to step in on his behalf, which in addition to popular pressure secured his release from Dastgerd Prison. Tamooj just released a new video on March 17th, 2022: Blind Spot ( نقطه کور) . You can hear more at his soundcloud or watch more videos on youtube.
  • Year of Famine (Sale Ghahti, سال قحطی) by Fereydoon Forooghi (فریدون فروغی), recorded in 1974 and leading to Fereydoon’s ban from acting for it’s public performance by the Shah’s regime. He released an album by this name in 1977.
Continue reading Updates from Afghanistan and Iran →
abortion, activism, Anarchist, Autonomy, Capitalism, community, gender, General, Health, Misogyny, Sexism, Transcribed, United States, zine

The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach

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This week on the show, we sat down with Bayla Ostrach, an activist, anarchist, longtime defender, provider of and researcher around issues of reproductive healthcare. We speak about experiences researching and working on the issue in Catalunya, the battle for abortion and reproductive autonomy in the so-called US, the challenges faced by independent clinics against the business model of clinic chains like Planned Parenthood, legal and material pressure and attacks by anti-abortion extremists as well as the cultural and political struggle to defend and expand the ability for people to get safe, affordable, full spectrum and stigma-free abortion and reproductive care more broadly.

Illustration by Marne Grahlman

** Content warning, because we are discussing a stigmatized series of medical procedures adjacent to sexual, social and political violence, listeners should be advised and we’ll put warnings in a few places during the episode. If you are hearing the radio version and want to hear a longer version of this show, and to listen at your own pace, check out our full podcast at our website, to be followed in about a week by a transcript for easy reading & a zine for printing. **

A list of people, works, and resources mentioned by our guest:

Good sites:

Citations for two shared documents co/authored by Bay:

Another document we can’t easily share:

  • Singer, E., (Elyse Ona), and Bayla Ostrach. “The End of Feminist Abortion Counseling? Examining Threats to Women’s Health.” In Transcending Borders, 255–70. Palgrave-MacMillan (Springer imprint), 2017. http://link.springer.com/.

Announcements

Anti-Abortion & Fascist Over in DC

Fascism must be opposed, Reproductive Autonomy must be defeneded and there are many ways to do this. As the interview mentions, the neo-fascist masculinist dance troupe known as Patriot Front (or the Blue & Khaki Man Group) joined the anti-abortion “March For Life” in Chicago on January 8th and were heckled from within the march and surrounding Chicagoans. According to leaked audio, they may appear in Washington DC at the “March For Life” on January 22nd. A little info is available at PatriotFrontMarchForLife.NoBlogs.Org or by checking out sites for local anti-racist, anti-fascist & pro-choice and feminist groups in the DC area.

Sean Swain Support

So far as we know, Sean still isn’t out of the woods on an inter-state transfer despite the hearing board recommending him not be transferred out of state. 2 years ago he was transferred to Virginia with no hearing or warning and lots a bunch of his property in the shuffle. Now he’s back in Ohio and wants to stay near his spouse, his lawyer and many supporters. You can contact Interstate Compact Coordinator Earlena Shepherd at earlena.shepherd@odrc.state.oh.us or

Earlena Shepherd
Interstate Compact Coordinator
ODRC
4545 Fisher Road, Suite D
Columbus, OH 43228

More contacts at SeanSwain.Org

Supporting TFSR

If you appreciate the work that we do at the final straw, there’re a few ways to support us. The following links are all https…:

You can rate, review & subscribe to us on your favorite streaming source like spotify, youtube, google, audbile, stitcher, apple or our podcast feed. You can follow us and share our content on social media. You can also reach out to us with feedback or interview ideas. More at https://TFSR.WTF/links

We’re now over a year into transcribing each weekly episode, which you can find alongside select older shows at https://TFSR.WTF/zines for easier reading if that’s your spead. You can print out zines and mail them to prisoners you support or distro or share them where you are. If you translate an interview, let us know and we’ll promote it.

Finally, anarchist radio isn’t much of a thing in the so-called USA, but we air on about a dozen stations weekly. You can find out more and how to get us on local airwaves by contacting us and reaching out to a local community station and proposing us. More info is available at https://TFSR.WTF/Radio

thanks!

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Featured Tracks:

Continue reading The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach →
activism, Capitalism, General, North Carolina, Prisons, Surveillance, Transcribed, United States, zine

The Perils of Prison Mail Digitization

"The Perils of Prison ail Digitalization with Prison Books Collective" showing bird cage broken free & bird escaping, "TFSR 12-12-21"
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Leigh Lassiter from prison books collective in Durham, North Carolina, a nonprofit project that sends zines and books to prisoners in Alabama in North Carolina prisons and jails comes on this week to tell us about recent changes by the NCDPS to use the private company TextBehind to scan all incoming and outgoing mail track, their contents surveil the outside users and mailers, and to make a profit on an already indigent population. We also talk about the work of sending literature, to incarcerated folks privatization and digitization of other services, and what literature gets rejected. More about the press books collective at PrisonBooks.Info or check out their linktr.ee

You can also check out local books to prisoners projects in your area that you could get involved with by visiting PrisonBooks.Org/PrisonBooksNetwork. There’re also a couple of really good articles from The Intercept about this and related surveillance services topics within you as prisons and jails.

Or check out the following resources:

Zine Updates

Just a reminder, a comrade’s been compiling our zines into a catalog, for easy mailing into prisons. You can check out the latest, December 2021 list at the top of https://TFSR.WTF/Zines as a pdf.

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Featured Track:

Continue reading The Perils of Prison Mail Digitization →
abolition, activism, Appalachia, Asheville, community, COVID-19, Mutual Aid, North Carolina, Transcribed, United States, zine

Asheville Survival Program

"Asheville Survival Program" in a circle, around dandelions and the word "donate"
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Asheville Survival Program is an autonomous mutual aid network formed in early 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in so-called Asheville, NC. They are building mutual aid with oppressed communities, promoting solidarity and sharing outside the bounds of State structure through their streetside camping gear, food and solidarity distro and their “Until We’re All Free” Store, holding a distribution space open a few days a week walk-up visits and delivering groceries through a network of drivers.

ASP volunteers collecting donations at abandoned Kmart

For the hour, I spoke with Fern and Ducky, two members of ASP affiliated with the Free Store, about the history of the group, challenges its faced, challenging charity dynamics and working to reach outside of subculture and across racial and cultural lines. You can reach ASP on Instagram at @AvlSurvival, on fedbook via @ASPDonate, find more links, including how to donate, at https://linktr.ee/avlsurvival. You can also reach them at their email if you have further questions at ashevillesurvivalprogram@gmail.com.

And here’s the segment that Sean Swain references the FBI emailing VADOC about from April 11th, 2021

Announcements

KPCA-LP Now Broadcasting TFSR!

We’re excited to say that starting on the evening of Halloween, Sunday October 31st 2021 we’ll be airing on KPCA-LP, community access radio in Petaluma, CA! If you’re on occupied Coastal Miwok and Pomo territories of southern Sonoma County and looking for a 10pm political radio show, tune in to 103.3 FM!

Check out https://TFSR.WTF/Radio to see our other radio broadcasts around the so-called US as well as ways to get us on your local airwaves and spread the anarchy!

BRABC Prisoner Letter Writing for November

"Political Prisoner Letter Writing" flyer from BRABC with details over an autumnal Appalachian landscape

If you’re in the Asheville area, check out the Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross letter writing night on Sunday, November 7th from 5-7pm at West Asheville Park at 198 Vermont Ave. More details on the BRABC instagram, fedbook or their website at BRABC.BlackBlogs.Org. No letter writing experience required, they provide stationary, names and addresses of prisoners with upcoming birthdays or facing repression.

New Website to Support 2020 Uprising Prisoners

Comrades have started up UprisingSupport.Org to help track prisoners who went in last year after the murder by police of George Floyd and other instances of racist, police violence in the so-called US. If you’re involved in supporting someone facing charges or in prison, get in touch with the site to get your friend listed. If you and your crew want to support folks, check it out and get involved!

And now a couple of prisoner-related updates:

Bo Brown, Presente!

Revolutionary anarcho-communist, urban guerrilla member of the George Jackson Brigade, white working class butch dyke lesbian anti-authoritarian, anti-imperialist, ex-political prisoner passed recently after a long battle with Lewd Body Dementia. She will be remembered by her many comrades, including in the prison abolitionist communities of Oakland, CA, where she was active in her later life. To see a beautiful poster designed by Josh MacPhee of Just Seeds collective, downloadable and printable for free: https://justseeds.org/graphic/bo-brown-rest-in-power/

Bo’s loved ones are raising funds to help cover her funeral expenses via a Go Fund Me entitled “Show Up For Bo Brown”: https://www.gofundme.com/f/pfspu-show-up-for-bo-brown

Russell Maroon Shoatz Is Out!

Dedicated community activist, founding member of the Black Unity Council, former member of the Black Panther Party and soldier in the Black Liberation Army and now-former political prisoner, Russell “Maroon” Shoatz has been given “compassionate release” after years of medical neglect in the Pennsylvania prison system. Maroon has been released to an outside hospital to coordinate palliative and likely hospice care as he’s in stage 4 of colorectal cancer. While it’s great that Maroon gets to be near his family, this is 49 years too late and the victory rings a bit hollow to receive this fighter back into our midst after such mistreatment. There is a fundraiser at Go Fund Me entitled “homegoing Service For Richard Shoates”: https://www.gofundme.com/f/homegoing-service-for-richard-shoates

And you can learn more about Maroon at https://russellmaroonshoats.wordpress.com/

David Gilbert Paroled!

Finally, some really good news. After decades of pressure, notably by Releasing Aging People in Prison (RAPP), former Weather Underground & May 19th Communist Organization political prisoner David Gilbert is expected to be released in November of 2021. He was granted partial communtation by outgoing NY Governor Cuomo, and the parole board announced that it was granting him parole. David was arrested after the Brinks armored car robbery in 1981, led by a Black Liberation Army unit. Free Them All!

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Featured Track:

Continue reading Asheville Survival Program →
Antifa, General, Self-Defense, Transcribed, United States, zine

Firearm Safety and Education with Comrade Center

"Comrade Squid" color logo with a squid holding a lamp, red and black stars and flags and a large cog in the background
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This week on the show, we spoke with folks involved with Comrade Center, a leftist project focused on accessible education around armed self-defense in so-called New Hampshire. They were formerly known as Southern New England Socialist Rifle Association and while they’re no longer a chapter of the SRA, they are working with groups like that and individuals to purchase and maintaining a space for armed self-defense education outside of the right wing milieu in their area. For the hour we talk about mainstream, reactionary gun culture in the US, the impact of the NRA, the importance and empowerment of education around fire arms and other topics. You can learn more about the project at ComradeCenter.Org

"Comrade Center" countryside logo

Comrade Center links:

Other organizations we would like to shoutout:

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Featured Tracks:

  • K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) [instrumental] by Diamond D from Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop (Instrumentals) ‎(2xLP)
  • All You Fascists Bound To Lose by Nina Hagen from Personal Jesus, cover of Woody Guthrie
Continue reading Firearm Safety and Education with Comrade Center →
abolition, Missouri, Prisons, Racism, Transcribed, United States, zine

Stop The Legal Lynching of Ernest Johnson

"Clemency for Ernest Johnson", picturing protest at Boone County courthouse
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On February 12th, 1994, Ernest Lee Johnson and his ex-girlfriends’ two sons participated in the botched robbery of Casey’s General Store that took three victims’ lives: Mable Scruggs, Mary Bratcher and Fred Jones. Mr Johnson has no recollection of the murders, was in despair and had been drinking and smoking crack in the hours after his ex-girlfriend broke up with him. A Black man with intellectual disabilities and no former, violent convictions, he was convicted by an ill-informed, all-white jury with the help of Boone County, Missouri, Prosecuting Attorney, Kevin Crane. Ernest Johnson now faces an execution date of October 5th, 2021.

Stop The Execution of Ernest Johnson

This week, we spoke with Elyse Max, State Director of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty about the life of Ernest Johnson, the media and court situation he faced, his twice overturned death penalty, the links between the lynching of Black people in the US and the current death penalty, intersections of race and class in who are the victims of capital cases and who sit on death rows, the mishandling of Ernests intellectual disability in the case and other topics.

You can learn more about Ernest’s case, including ways to help press Missouri Gov Parson for a commutation of Ernest’s execution and the work of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty by visiting MADPMO.org. You can follow their work on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram via the handle @MADPMO.

Some other useful links:

More info on Swainiac Fest available on Instagram (@Swainiac1969)

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Featured Tracks

  • For Pete’s Sake (instrumental) by Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth from For Pete’s Sake
  • Hangman by Al Dean from The Hangman’s Blues: Prison Songs In Country Music
  • Reflections (instrumental) by Diana Ross & The Supremes from Reflections
Continue reading Stop The Legal Lynching of Ernest Johnson →
AK Press, Anarchist, Author, Law, Protest, repression, Tilted Scales, Transcribed, United States, zine

“Representing Radicals” Lawyers’ Guide from Tilted Scales

Book cover of "Representing Radicals" featuring someone facing off a riot cop
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Resisting state repression and surveillance is one of the cornerstones of The Final Straw and has been since the beginning of this project. Over the years we’ve featured interviews with support committees, political prisoners, defendants in ongoing cases, incarcerated organizers, radical legal workers and lawyers and others to talk about how power strikes at those who it fears constitute a threat. For those of us caught up in cases, navigating self-defense through the courts, penal system and mainstream media can be treacherous, as we attempt to balance our political and personal goals with our lawyer’s desire to have us do as little time and pay as little money as possible to the courts. Winning in these circumstances can sometimes seem to pit a well-meaning lawyer or legal worker against their own client. Enter the Tilted Scales’ new book, “Representing Radicals.”

This week, you’ll hear Jay from the Tilted Scales Collective talk about this book out from AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist Studies, about anti-repression work, and about this book’s attempt to shift the culture of legal representation by intervening with arguments by radical lawyers, more intimately inviting clients and their supporters into the fray and new frameworks for approaching cases.

You can find their guide for defendants and other resources, as well as contact, at TiltedScalesCollective.Org. You can hear our 2017 interview with another member of Tilted Scales about their defendants guide. And you can follow the group on instagram or twitter.

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Featured Track:

  • The Wrong Side Of The Law by Mick Jones from Mick Jones
Continue reading “Representing Radicals” Lawyers’ Guide from Tilted Scales →
abolition, Alabama, Prisons, United States

Swift Justice on Abolitionist Struggle in Alabama

Swift Justice from his support blog
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On this special midweek release, you’ll hear Swift Justice, incarcerated Abolitionist in Alabama affiliated with the Alabama Resistance Movement and Unheard Voices OTCJ. Swift talks about some current situations in the Alabama Department of Corrections, legislation ongoing around prison slavery due to the exception clauses at the state and federal level (specifically the 13th Ammendment), covid-19 behind bars, groups doing well in the struggle and organizing that needs to go further and actually engage with incarcerated comrades and updates on the recent attack on Swift’s mentor, Kinetic Justice. Check out some of Swift’s writings on his supporters blog at SwiftJustice4Freedom.wordpress.com.

You can hear our past interview with Swift here as well as our interview with Kinetic and Bennu on the founding of the Free Alabama Movement. For more Alabama prisoner perspectives from over the years, you can search Alabama on our site.

Announcement

Solidarity demonstration outside Green Bay CI

from ABOLISHmke.com:

Protesters will take action against increasingly torturous and fatal conditions at the prison in Green Bay (GBCI) at noon on Saturday, August 28, 2021. The protest will include a march to the prison, speeches from advocates and people who’ve done time at GBCI, and relaying messages from people currently held there. The demonstrators will use large banners, loudspeakers and noisemakers to attempt to reach and express solidarity with people confined in the prison.

WHERE: Green Bay CI, 2833 Riverside Dr, Allouez, WI 54301

WHEN: 12:00 Noon on Sat August 28, 2021

Conditions at prisons across Wisconsin have deteriorated in recent years, and GBCI is one of the worst. Money that was intended to repair and improve the 123 year old prison is instead being used to create more solitary confinement cells and control units. People held there describe it as a conversion into a supermax style prison.

Staff at GBCI frequently neglect medical emergencies and drive their captives to self-harm and suicide. Those held in the restrictive housing unit (RHU) often express fear for their lives. When summoned to investigate deaths or litigate suits against the prison, local law enforcement and judges support the prison, enabling continued atrocities.

Read more about conditions, neglect, and abuse at GBCI here: https://abolishmke.com/2021/08/18/march-on-gbci/

The demonstration at GBCI is part of the national SHUTEMDOWN2021 mobilization called by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS), a prisoner-led organization. The goal of SHUTEMDOWN2021 is to raise awareness of the prison strike JLS plans for next year, and their 10 demands to end slavery and improve conditions in prisons across the US.  Wisconsin organizers are also planning educational events in Milwaukee, and a large demonstration at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) on September 9.

Read more about JLS and SHUTEMDOWN2021 here: http://www.iamweubuntu.com/shutemdown.html

Read more about solidarity plans in Wisconsin here: https://abolishmke.com/2021/07/29/shutem-down-wisconsin/

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Featured Tracks:

  • Not Afraid by Eminem from Not Afraid (single)
    • Kinetic describes this as his anthem
  • Digging For Windows by Zach de La Rocha from Digging For Windows (single)
abolition, activism, California, Capitalism, Communism, History, Hunger Strike, IWOC, Mwalimu Shakur, National Liberation, Prison Strike, Prisons, Protest, Transcribed, United States, zine

Unity And Struggle Through The Bars with Mwalimu Shakur

Photo of Mwalimu Shakur from 2021 at Corcoran Prison (copied from Mwalimu's site)
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This week on the show, you’ll hear our conversation with Mwalimu Shakur, a politicized, New Afrikan revolutionary prison organizer incarcerated at Corcoran prison in California. Mwalimu has been involved in organizing, including the cessations of hostilities among gangs and participation in the California and then wider hunger strikes against unending solitary confinement when he was at Pelican Bay Prison in 2013, helping to found the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, or IWOC, Liberation Schools of self-education and continues mentoring younger prisoners. He was in solitary confinement, including in the SHU, for 13 of the last 16 years of his incarceration.

For the hour, Mwalimu talks a bit about his politicization and organizing behind bars, his philosophy, Black August, the hunger strikes of 2013, the importance of organizing in our neighborhoods through the prison bars.

You can contact Mwalimu via JayPay by searching for his state name, Terrence White and the ID number AG8738, or write him letters, addressing the inside to Mwalimu Shakur and the envelope to:

Terrence White #AG8738
CSP Corcoran
PO Box 3461
Corcoran, CA 93212

Mwalimu’s sites:

To hear an interview from way back in 2013 that William did former political prisoner and editor of CA Prison Focus, Ed Mead (before & after the strikes), search our website or check the show notes.

Other Groups Mwalimu Suggests:

Announcements

Shut ‘Em Down 2021

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Jonathan Jackson at the Marin County Courthouse, the assassination of his brother George at San Quentin in California and the subsequent uprising and State massacre at Attica State Prison in New York. Black August has been celebrated at least since 1979 to mark these dates with study, exercise, community building, sharing and reflection by revolutionaries on both sides of the bars. In the last decade across Turtle Island, you’ve seen strikes and protests and educational events take place around this time of the year as we flex our muscles.

This year, as you’ve heard us mention, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak is calling for weeks of action for Abolitionism under the name “Shut ‘Em Down 2021”. You can find out more at JailhouseLawyersSpeak.Wordpress.Com and follow them on twitter and instagram, linked in our show notes, alongside links relating to this weeks chat. You can hear our interview with a member of JLS from earlier this year about the “Shut ‘Em Down” initiative, or read the interview, at our site and in these show notes. Also, check out our interview with the remaining member of the Marin Courthouse Uprising, possibly the oldest living political prisoner in the US, Ruchell Cinque Magee.

Shaka Shakur Hunger Strike

New Afrikan prison rebel, co-founder of the New Afrikan Liberation Collective and IDOCWatch organizer, Shaka Shakur has been interstate transferred hundreds of miles away from his support network to Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia (recognize that name?). There was a call-in campaign this week focused on VA Governor Northam, director of VADOC Harold Clark, VADOC central regional director Henry Ponton and Warden Woodson at BKCC. This was in support of Shakur’s hunger strike in protest of the transfer, his time in solitary prior in Indiana for having his prescription medication, being moved into solitary at BKCC with minimal hygiene and no personal materials. As noted in the transcript about his hunger strike at IDOCWatch’s website, the transfer interrupts civil and criminal litigation Shaka Shakur had pending in Indiana and has caused him to be halfway across the country after his own surgeries, the loss of his family matriarch and another aunt, the hospitalization of mother and other health hardships.

You can find ways to support via

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Featured Tracks:

  • Blues For Brother George Jackson by Archie Shepp from Attica Blues
  • George Jackson by Dicks from These People
Continue reading Unity And Struggle Through The Bars with Mwalimu Shakur →
abolition, AK Press, Anarchist, Anarchist Media, Atlanta, Author, Georgia, History, Louisiana, North Carolina, U.S. South, United States

Dixie Be Damned: a regional history of the South East through an Insurrectional Anarchist lens (rebroadcast)

Book cover of "Dixie Be Damned", featuring African-American folks in the 1960's holding the streets at a march
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This week, we’re excited to (re-)present a 2015 conversation with Saralee Stafford and Neal Shirley, editors and authors of their book out from AK Press entitled “Dixie Be Damned: 300 years of Insurrection in the American South”. The book is a study of Maroon, Indigenous, White, Black, worker, farmer, slave, indentured, women and men wrestling against institutions of power for autonomy and self-determination. All of this in a region stereotyped to be backwards, slow, lazy, victimized and brutal. The editors do a smash-bang job of re-framing narratives of revolt by drawing on complex and erased examples of cross-subjectivity struggles and what they can teach us today about current uprisings in which we participate.

Throughout the hour we explore some of the examples that became chapters in the book, critiques of narrative histories and academia and what new ways forward might be towards an anarchist historiography.

Announcements

Benefit for Pepe from DIY-Bandits

Asheville-based punk collective called Bandits Never Die, in conjunction with the DIY-Bandits label, is doing an online fundraiser for Pepe, the founder of DIY-Bandits who is doing time in Federal prison. We interviewed Pepe before he went in in 2019, you can find a link in the show notes about his reflections of preparing for prison and what he’d learned about the realities of families of people serving time in the BOP. The benefit is a limited time print of a t-shirt and or poster and 100% of proceeds will go to support Pepe while he’s in prison (https://banditsneverdie.bandcamp.com/merch/i-want-to-believe-t-shirt-poster-combo). You can also see Q&A’s and some videos of Pepe before he went inside at his blog, https://preparingforfreedom.org

Giannis Dimitrakis

Anarchist bank robber and prison rebel in Greece is still healing from the attack he suffered at Domokos prison at the hands of guards under the New Democracy administration. G. Dimitrakis was held for a period in solitary confinement after the attack rather than be transported to a hospital to help treat his serious wounds, likely as an attempt to inflict permanent damage or kill the rebel. There is a new letter from Mr Dimitrakis that was kindly translated into English by comrades in Thessaloniki available on June11.org that we invite listeners to check out and will link in our show notes, alongside the original Greek. You can also find his firefund to raise court costs to argue for a quick release for Giannis Dimitrakis at firefund.net/giannis. Our Passion for Freedom is Stronger Than Their Prisons!

TFSR Housekeeping

As a quick reminder, you can find transcripts of each weekly episode of our show at our website by clicking the Zines tab, as well as on each episode’s page. We also have choice past episodes transcribed and available for easier reading, translation, printing and mailing.

If you want to support TFSR’s transcription work, you can visit TFSR.WTF/support and find a few ways to donate to us, one time or recurring, or by buying stickers or shirts as merch. If you sign up to support us via patreon.com/tfsr you can find thank you gifts as well. Thanks to our transcribers, zinesters and those who support us by sharing us with their communities and on social media. We also air on a dozen or so radio stations around the country, more on how to tune in or how to help us get on more airwaves at TFSR.WTF/radio.