This week, an interview with Clifton Ariwakhete Nicholas and Franklin Lopez about about the film currently in production via Amplifier Films, A Red Road To The West Bank: An Indigenous journey of resistance and solidarity. The conversation covers some about relationships between the people of occupied Palestine and Kanehsatà:ke in so-called Canada, histories of settler colonialism and resistance of it. Clifton and Franklin are attempting to raise $10000 CAD for the film.
Franklin also talks about his recently published kids book “The mega-adventures of Koko Sisi & Kiki Pupu” that he co-created with his son.
We’re sharing audio from audio recorded by Franklin Lopez of Amplifier Films with Palestinian journalist Hamza M Salha who lives in North Gaza describing the conditions with the resumption of the escalated genocide being conducted by the Israeli settler-colonial military. Hamza speaks about the means that people are informed of incoming bombing raids, speaks of the sleepless night in the midst falling bombs in the rubble and tents, clearly exhausted himself. He speaks about the availability of food, his thoughts on the strangling and murderous siege of Israel, the failure of the world to stop the genocide and occupation.
You can find stories and photos from Hamza on his instagram account. If you want to support him and 40 members of his extended family and attempting to get out of Gaza to get medical attention, you can check out his Go Fund Me.
You can watch the video without any accounts, only a web browser and internet connection by visiting the Amplifier Films mastodon account. To echo Hamza, thanks to Franklin Lopez of Amplifier Films (Facebook, Instagram) for sharing this audio and creating videos to share Hamza’s world with us on the outside, and our deep gratitude to Adrienne for the support and Hamza for expressing his experience for the audience. We wish you solidarity and health.
You can read some of Hamza’s writings below (same as last episode):
Jail and Housing Conditions, Recovery in Post-Helene Asheville
This week on The Final Straw Radio, you’ll hear three interviews relating to community needs and recovering concerning Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina.
If you’re a non-Pacifica radio station airing the show, here’s a link for the 58 minute radio edition while Archive.Org continues to be down due to hacker attacks.
First up, you’ll hear Jen Hampton of the WNC Tenants Network about the re-opening of eviction courts in Buncombe County and conditions of housing in an already difficulty place to live.
Finally, Yousef of the Palestinian and Arab-led Sumud Collective speaks about his experience of the storm and recovery work in the region in an interview recorded a couple of weeks ago.
This week on the final straw we’re featuring a conversation with Tom and Miriam of the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led network of activists standing in solidarity with Palestinians on the ground in the occupied territories. For the hour we talk about the organization, its history, what got these folks involved, the recent and tragic murder of Ayşenur Eygi in Beita in the West Bank which Miriam witnessed, and how conditions have changed as the war by the Israeli settler state has expanded.
Our chat with Louis, an anarchist emergency room nurse who has just returned from a second tour doing healthcare work in Gaza and is about to leave again. During this difficult conversation, we talk about medical conditions that he encountered in Gaza, what aid is getting in and how it’s being distributed, health infrastructure and how this relates to his prior mutual aid and anti-border work in the so-called USA. You can find a prior interview with Louis from Living and Fighting blog.
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 podcast is The Breakup Theory and she also authored a zine by the same title as this presentation.
A prior presentation of this title appeared at The Victoria Anarchist Bookfair, a discussion between Dr. Bamyeh and Dr. Uri Gordon. You can find a video or a zine of the dialogue.
Announcements
SCI Fayette hunger strike
According to incarcerated activists in SCI-Fayette in Luzerne Township, Pennsylvania, there are plans to initiate a peaceful hunger strike starting with breakfast on August 5th, 2024, to protest lack of out-of-cell time, locked down for laundry, commissary and evening recreation time during which they can contact family and friends. More on the details in our show notes to support their hunger strike demands.
The brothers at SCI-FAYETTE are planning a peaceful resistance 2 strike all the meals beginning the morning of 8/5/2024 because administration is continuing 2 limit our time out of the cell on the unit, as if we’re in a pandemic. This is the only facility n PADOC that are doing pandemic procedures. Continues to take from us. Creating problems & hostile environment. The men are tired of being locked down for commissary, laundry & now they’re restricting are evening recreation. For most inmates that’s the only time we can contact are family & friends. We want full day room recreation (no cohorts) on every housing unit 7:45-10-30am, 1:15-3:35pm & 5:00pm-8:30pm & more seats on the housing unit 2 accommodate the seating arrangements. We need their help on the outside to call #724-364-2200 & speak up 4 us.
Administration likes to keep matters like this in-house & hope we don’t have any outside support.
Please support us?
To hear about more ongoing and recent prisoner struggles and anti-repression news, check out the monthly column on ItsGoingDown.org entitled In Contempt.
Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners
August 23-30th is the Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners. To learn who is being supported, find propaganda and art and how to send your own updates, visit the website solidarity.international
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Featured Track:
Viva Tirado (part 1) by El Chicano from Viva Tirado
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 17th, on the conditions of Palestinian prisoners, particularly since October 7th, 2023 including in Gaza since the invasion. More info on the group and their findings can be found at addameer.org
Then, we’ll hear a segment by our comrades at A-Radio Berlin speaking with Johan Eriksson, an anarchist game designer has recently published such an RPG called “Oceania 2084“, based on George Orwell’s novel “1984”. You can find more of about the game including a free austere pdf of the gameplay at jocher-symbolic-systems.itch.io , and you can hear more audios from A-Radio Berlin at aradio-berlin.org .
Sean Swain’s 2024 Presidential Run
For the sake of anyone in the office of Attorney General of Ohio if they’re listening: this segment is political satire. We feel it’s necessary to make this disclaimer as they referenced a spoof press conference for Sean as governor in exile of Ohio on the January 18th, 2015 radio segment in court filings to prove how dangerous Sean is, while actually just showing how stupid hierarchs are.
Midweek Release: Yaffa As
In case you missed mid-week release of our interview with Yaffa As, a queer and trans Palestinian poet, author, publisher and activist living in the diaspora about two recent collections they published as well as mutual aid and fundraising to get queer Palestinians out of range of Israeli genocide.
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 a collection of her own poems written during the last lunar eclipse visible on Turtle Island, Blood Orange. We spoke about the importance of poetry and world building, the importance of community care and mutual aid, as well as supporting queer and trans Palestinians escaping genocide at the hands of the Israeli military. You can find more from Meraj publishing as well as how to obtain these titles at https://merajpublishing.com/
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 soup kitchen that his brother founded in north Gaza (https://www.gofundme.com/f/Hot-meals-in-gaza-daily , on Instagram at @GazaSoupKitchen ).
This week, we’re featuring a conversation with Mohammad Hureini (twitter / instagram), a young activist from Masafer Yatta, an area in the hills south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. Mohammad is a member of a non-violent group called Youth of Sumud that struggles to hold on to the sites and lives of Palestinian villages despite displacement by the Israeli military occupation as well as the illegal zionist settlements (like the neighboring Havat Ma’on) and their routine violence and impunity. For the hour, Mohammad speaks about the work of Youth of Sumud, their recent report co-published with The Good Shepherd on increased settler violence entitled Indigenous Erasure: How the zionist movement is using state sanctioned violence to eliminate the Palestinian communities of the West Bank, the South African genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice and other topics.
Check out the January 2024 episode featuring updates on support for antifascists facing charges in Budapest from February 11, 2023; reflections from an Autonomist on the ’80s-’90s journal “Radikal”; a portion of our interview with Israeli refuser Yuval Dag; and an interview from Solidarity Zones on the case of accused Russian war sabateur, Ruslan Siddiqui
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Featured Track:
Building Steam with a Grain of Salt by DJ Shadow from Entroducing….