Airs on WSFM-LP 103.3 in Asheville / streaming at AshevilleFM from 3am EST on May 9th, 2016, through May 15th, then podcasting at radio4all.net. Also airing this week on KOWA-LPFM in Olympia, WA, KWTF in Bodega Bay, CA, KXCF in Marshall, CA, and WCRS-LP Columbus Community Radio 98.3 and 102.1 FM. The show will later be archived at TheFinalStrawRadio.NoBlogs.Org. You can email us at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net and you can send us mail at:
The Final Straw
c/o AshevilleFM
864 Haywood rd
Asheville, NC 28806
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This week on the show we feature an interview with Panagioti, who is an organizer with the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons. From their website:
“The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) is a collaboration with the Abolitionist Law Center. FTP’s mission is to conduct grassroots organizing, advocacy and direct action to challenge the prison system which is putting prisoners at risk of dangerous environmental conditions, as well as impacting surrounding communities and ecosystems by their construction and operation. At this time, FTP is focused on opposing the construction of a new federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky.
FTP is inspired by the abolitionist movement against mass incarceration and the environmental justice movement, which have both been led by the communities of color who are hardest hit by prisons and pollution.Both these movements also have long histories of multi-racial alliances among those on the front lines of the struggle and those who can offer support and solidarity, which we aim to build on.
FTP has been informed by the ongoing research and analysis of the Human Rights Defense Center’s Prison Ecology Project, as well as the work of the Earth First! Prisoner Support Project and June11.org”
You can see much more about this project, learn about the convergence, and donate or register for the event at https://fighttoxicprisons.org
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The second segment in today’s show is an interview with Ben Turk
conducted by members of The Prison Radio Show collective at CKUT, on the
campus of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada about the prison
strikes across the U.S. and the buildup towards calls for a general
prisoner strike on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising on
September 9th.
For a link to this show, follow: https://ckut.ca/en/content/prison-radio-april-14-5-6pm-ben-turk-ending-p…
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From the website, It’s Going Down dot org, the regular segment called
Bloc Party is a great source for recent uprisings in the streets and in
prisons around North America. We’d like to highlight a few of these
items. First off, the article summarizes a number of the May Day
disturbances that took place last Sunday, including brief report-backs
from May Day noise demos and street parties in NYC, Hamilton (Ontario) &
Chicago, riots in Seattle and prison work strikes in Alabama at Holman,
Elmore, and St Clair facilities. More details and photos from those
prison strikes and solidarity protests, including ones in Minneapolis &
Milwaukee plus arrestee support links can be found at
http://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org
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Also from that post are announcements of the June 12th birthday of Jay
Chase of the NATO3 who’s been struggling with some health and legal
hurdles of recently as well as information on the upcoming June parole
dates for longstanding Black Liberation political prisoners Robert Seth
Hayes and jalil Muntaqim with links to their support campaigns and also
a new mailing address for Joseph Buddington, recently sentenced to 2
years for a non-cooperating plea for releasing thousands of minks from
fur farms. We spoke about his case alongside that of Nicole Kissane.
Check out http://itsgoingdown.org to check it out in detail.
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Finally, we’d like to share a part of the crowd sourcing request for the
U.S.-based, English-language insurrectional anarchist journal, Fire To
The Prisons which is asking for help in the publication of it’s 16th
issue. In the request, FTTP describes the sorts of content it’s covered
and plans to cover, including wanting:
“to expand our coverage, scope, and the reach of the publication while
remaining true to the spirit of Fire to the Prisons. We will continue
with our long term commitment to counter-information, original writing
and content, and the amplification of the
anti-authoritarian/anti-prison/anti-repression struggle that you have
come to expect from us.
We will have both a domestic and international voice this issue. While
remaining true to reporting on repression and anti-prison resistance
across the states, Canada, and Mexico, we have committed articles from
abroad promising insight on struggles and happenings that will help to
bridge and unify an array of social tensions through a mutual awareness
and solidarity.
We truly want FTTP to become a global publication and one that links
anarchists and other autonomous combatants together in a dialog about
the commonalities that we all face, as well as a discussion on the
actions and struggles that we can all engage in.
We will be covering the resurgence of fascism in mainstream American
politics, as well as updates on communities resisting further
eco-devastation across the states. We have committed articles from
prisoners domestic and international. We have commitments from NYC
Anarchist Black Cross to use the project as a resource for raising
awareness on repression and prisoner status in North America. We will
also focus on the pacification of favelas in Brazil, the current reality
and history of anarchist struggle in Chile, and the refugee situation in
Greece. We will have further reports on anti-police struggle across the
United States, and will be continuing a tradition of news on broader
prisoner strikes across America since our last issue. We are also intent
on original articles on indigenous resistance in western Canada. Plus
accounts and updates of the struggle in Rojava and general Kurdistan.
Also all our featured articles will be available in Spanish for free on
our website.
We are a committed collective. We are prepared to invest a lot of time
and energy into producing this project, but we ask any and all
sympathetic readers to help us with printing and distribution. by
donating to our funding page. To print 10,000 copies of this it will
cost us $2,000 dollars. While in the past we have had to ask people to
pay the postage to our distributor, we would like to be able to send out
more copies for free, to encourage broader distribution. We are asking
for another $2,000 dollars for this. With maximizing our distribution
efforts through contacts and friends across the world, we can distribute
and mail out almost all of the new issues to anyone interested in
distributing it. This leads us to asking for $4,000 dollars. We know
this is an ambitious amount, and most likely those supporting us aren’t
very wealthy, but it will absolutely secure this project, and help with
the expansion of our readership. We hope that reaching out this way will
put a dent into that fiscal goal, as our collective members are all
working people.”
The collective is soliciting submissions and comments via email at
firetotheprisons@riseup.net and invites folks to read and download old
issues in pdf form from the website at: http://firetotheprisons.org
Donations can be made at
https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/help-print-and-distribute-fire-to…
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Playlist here: http://www.ashevillefm.org/node/16196