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Transcript
Rebel Girl: October 24, 2018: The migrant caravan from Honduras breaks through the Mexico-Guatemala border; a popular, autonomous assembly in Carbondale rises up when local government caves to fascists; and an interview about an anti-fascist Proud Boy alert hotline in New Orleans on this episode of…
Riot Dogg: The Hotwire, a weekly anarchist news show brought to you by The Ex-Worker.
Rebel Girl: With me, the Rebel Girl.
Riot Dogg: And with me, the Riot Dogg.
Rebel Girl: Whoa Riot Dogg, your voice is sounding pretty raspy. Are you catching one of those autumn colds?
Riot Dogg: No… actually, don’t make fun of me but, Crimethinc put a bunch of their old hardcore releases up on bandcamp, and I’ve spent the last two days shouting along to the lyrics and solo moshing in my antifa basement.
Rebel Girl: Dogg! Couldn’t you have waited?
Riot Dogg: Waited? These are some of the bands that helped spur a resurgence in anarchist activity at the end of the 20th century—Catharsis, Zegota, The Spectacle, Requiem, and the mighty and mysterious Umlaut! Their PASSION and commitment to DOING IT YOURSELF, and above all their URGENCY is what drew me into anarchism as a youngster—I wouldn’t be staying true to that SPIRIT if I [nasally voice] did the responsible thing and wait until after I got my work done [off] instead of arming my desires, taking aim at the boredom of this world, and letting loose a flurry of spin kicks and crust fists and unintelligible, guttural screams in my, uh, antifa basement. You want me to delay that gratification?! Let me tell you what early, punk rock CrimethInc would say about that—
AHEM
“Christianity demands of its followers that they delay gratification until they enter the next world, when they will supposedly be rewarded for their proper conduct… Traditional Marxism takes the Christian mistake one step further by asking its adherents to work towards a revolution they will probably never live to see… In contrast, today’s capitalistic consumer market…”
Rebel Girl: Ok let me just stop you there because you’re not getting me. I’m not saying you should’ve waited until after the podcast. I’m saying you should’ve waited to record your room-moshing singalong sesh for the show!
Riot Dogg: Har har Rebel Girl.
Rebel Girl: I’m serious! You know how I’m always saying I wish the Hotwire was more punk.
Riot Dogg: More punk?
Rebel Girl: Yeah, if it were up to me, the Hotwire would just be a blistering 2-minute long d-beat track with the week’s news shouted over it.
Riot Dogg: Ok, now I know you’re trolling me…
Rebel Girl: Not even! Punk has always been a great vehicle for bringing pertinent, timely information to radical audiences. Like, take this Oi Polloi track…
Oi Polloi: “Abortion clinics bombed, medical staff murdered, a sinister campaign of right wing terror. Were not just talking about a bunch of religious fanatics trying to impose their views on everyone else. The issue of abortion affects us all as it is a doorway through which many people are brought to the broader reactionary agenda of the new right
Rebel Girl: …Or this Oi Polloi track
Oi Polloi: neo-Nazis take a seat on a London council. The extreme rightwing racist British National Party has scored its first political success in Britain.
What can anyone do about it?
Fight them, basically. Wed say that the ideas that they put forward outside football grounds, on working class estates have to be combated politically, but also they’ve got a physical agenda. And they have to be met physically as well, people have to defend themselves against the fascists they cant just turn the other cheek
Rebel Girl: or this one…
Oi Polloi: 21, his whole life stretching in front of him, when a young Edinburgh man was viciously attacked…
Riot Dogg: Ok ok enough of the ‘Polloi already, oy!
Rebel Girl: Hey, sadly, each of those songs are just as relevant today as they were twenty years ago.
Riot Dogg: Point taken, but don’t you think we’ve wasted enough time on this cheesy punk-themed introduction yet? Let’s just tell the listeners that they can go to crimethinc.bandcamp.com to download music for free, or that they can also donate there since CrimethInc. has launched a new fundraising effort.
Rebel Girl: No, you know what Dogg. You’ve inspired me. I don’t want to delay gratification any longer—we’re gonna do it!
Riot Dogg: Do what?
Rebel Girl: D-beat news! Let’s go!
Riot Dogg: Uhh
Rebel Girl: I said let’s go!
Riot Dogg: Do we have to?
Rebel Girl: 1–2-FUCK-YOU!!!!
Riot Dogg: THE HOTWIRE
Rebel Girl: DBEAT NEWS
Riot Dogg: 2018 EVERYTHING’S BAD!!!
Rebel Girl: OJIBWE ELDERS IN MINNESOTA BUILT PRAYER LODGES IN LINE 3’S PATH THE NEED TO BLOCK ALL PIPELINES AND PROTECT OUR WATER IS DIRE DIRE DIRE DIRE DIRE
Riot Dogg: AFTER PROUD BOYS BEAT ANTI-RACISTS NEW YORK’S MAYOR SAID THERE’S NO EVIDENCE THAT NYPD ARE SYMPATHETIC TO PROUD BOYS LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR
Rebel Girl: ON OCTOBER 13TH IN LONDON ANTIFASCISTS SUCCESSFULLY OUTNUMBERED AND BLOCKED A XENOPHOBIC, ANTI-MUSLIM MARCH. THE ANTIFASCIST CONTINGENT WAS LED BY WOMEN AND NON-BINARY PEOPLE, TO DENY THE FASCISTS THE RHETORICAL PLATFORM OF DEFENDING WOMEN FROM SEXUAL VIOLENCE.
THE STUDENTS BLOCKING TRAFFIC ALSO HANDED OUT FLYERS FLYERS FLYERS FLYE—Uhhh hey whoa where’d the tunes go?
Riot Dogg: Ok, you see now? Sorry but you can’t fit the whole week’s anarchist news into one d-beat song.
Rebel Girl: That was so FUN though! Let’s do it again—maybe we can fit it all into TWO d-beat songs!
Riot Dogg: No please, listen I’ve learned my lesson, I’ll preserve my voice for The Hotwire next time. Sheesh.
Rebel Girl: Yeah… you were really going hard there. I almost didn’t recognize you…
Riot Dogg: Yeah well I’ve been listening to a lot of Umlaut, and you can too over at crimethinc.bandcamp.com, and check out our website for the accompanying essay, Music as a Weapon: The Contentious Symbiosis of Punk Rock and Anarchism.
Rebel Girl: Oh right, I almost forgot, also on our website, you can find a full transcript of this episode with shownotes and useful links, which might come in handy if you couldn’t understand the lyrics to d-beat news. You can also find a twenty-nine-and-a-half minute version of this episode for standard radio broadcasts, and no cussing!
Riot Dogg: And now, finally, the regular news…
HEADLINES
Rebel Girl: In opposition to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, protesters shut down work at an equipment yard in West Virginia for three hours on Monday. One person locked their body to a truck loaded up with sections of the pipeline, while others held banners reading “Water Is Life, We Won’t Back Down,” and “No Pipelines, No Compromise.” Cops arrested 6 pipeline resisters who are being held for a total bail of $17,0000. Appalachians Against Pipelines reminds us to build even more resistance from this action and the two anti-pipeline tree-sits that are nearing their 3rd month.
Riot Dogg: On Friday, water protectors locked themselves to the gates Kelcy Warren’s home. Warren is the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which is currently being fought in Louisiana. The Earth First Newswire also shares that on Thursday, “water protectors from L’eau Est La Vie joined pipeline opponents of ETP’s Mariner East and Dakota Access pipelines to shut down ETP’s shareholders meeting in Dallas, TX. As shareholders were forced to evacuate, a banner dropped from an adjacent building read, ‘Kelcy Warren Hates Black and Brown People.’”
Rebel Girl: In hurricane-ravaged Panama City, Florida, “Landlords are Finishing What Hurricane Michael Started.” After verbal assurances that they had until at least November before a decision on evictions would be reached, on October 19 residents of Macedonia Apartments woke to find 72-hour eviction notices on their doors. As Mutual Aid Disaster Relief reports, “They were given no rent reimbursement, no contingency directive and with the caveat that all things left behind would be destroyed courtesy of land owners.”
Naturally, “when the landlords were spotted on site, they had a small army of police escorts with them.” Residents are caught between a rock and a hard place, because FEMA representatives have stated that, “every person who lives in the home must be present at the house when they come for the assessment.”
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is on the ground, distributing legal aid for tenants impacted by the storm, but the legal aid game can take long, and residents are in need of relief now. To support relief and organizing on the ground, donate to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.
MIGRANT CARAVAN
Riot Dogg: On Friday, a migrant caravan that started in Honduras tore down a fence and broke through police lines on the Guatemala-Mexico border. We spoke with someone involved in solidarity work at the US-Mexico border for more details and background.
Hey, who are we speaking with and what kind of migrant solidarity work are you involved in?
Devra: Okay, well, hi, my name is Devra González. I’m an organizer with School of the Americas Watch, a grassroots organization that has been focused on US foreign policy, the impact of US foreign policy, in terms of causing migration and creating the conditions in which people are pushed out soon after. I’ve been in Tuscon for the past six years, and in here I’ve been working with communities, like, along the border, and in coalition with No More Deaths, and the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, we had a hotline that guided families through the process of locating relatives that had disappeared crossing the US-México border.
Riot Dogg: What is the story behind this caravan?
Devra: So, the caravan has started in Honduras, and has been making its way to México, picking people up along the way. I believe it’s been organized by people themselves that have been—that are impacted by the political repression in Honduras, under the dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernández. They made it to the México-Guatemala border a few days ago, and because that border was closed, they pushed through and they opened that border, and were able to make it across.
The Mexican Federal Police was trying to stop a lot of the people that were coming across, which included families and children. And it was just a really brutal scene in terms of how children were being pepper-sprayed, and injured, so forth. Like I mentioned, Honduras is going through a political repression, and that’s why people are fleeing, right. In November 2017, over 30 people were killed because of protesting the the regime of Juan Orlando Hernández, that really was put in power and backed by the United States through Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State under the Obama administration, there was a coup in Honduras in 2009 that was legitimized first by the United States. And after that, you see a huge influx of migration from Honduras to the United States. Soon after that, you just have a lot of violence that permeates the country, and we haven’t seen Honduras migration decrease. In fact, it’s increased. Especially after the second term of Juan Orlando Hernández, and the uprisings that happened protesting his dictatorship. Really the entire country shut down, there were over 30 people that were murdered, there were over 30 political prisoners. Right now there’s about 15 political prisoners still in—some of them in maximum security prisons that have been modeled after the United States. The United States trained the military in Honduras. And all of these connections really show us how the United States is really one of the backbones of the Honduran economy that continues to fuel the oppressive regime which is pushing people out, right. And so, people making it across to the Guatemala-México border and pushing through, is really a representation of this—like—of having nowhere to go. Of being pushed out of their homes, of needing to find something—to be in a different space, where they can actually survive. Part of it is that the reason that the Guatemala-México border exists is out of US funding. Plan Mérida, Alliance for Prosperity these programs have funneled millions and millions of dollars to the creation of the Guatemala-México border, right. That, along with that the border patrol in México has been trained within the United States. So one the big things is that the reason that there is a border in Guatemala and México is really because it’s modeled after the US border. The US-México border. And funded through the United States.
Riot Dogg: What can people in North America do to support migrants like the folks in this caravan?
Devra: I think one of the things that we can do is be very vocal about the fact that as people, we demand the demilitarization and the divestment of borders.
November 16th–18th here in Nogales: Nogales, Arizona, Nogales, Sonora. SOA Watch, School of the Americas Watch, is putting together a Border Encuentro, a meetup at the border, where we denounce and we demand for change in the divestment of borders, along with the end of political intervention through foreign policy. So that’s some of the things that people can do, is just being present in the borderland area if possible.
Riot Dogg: Thanks so much for speaking with us, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Devra: Just thank you, thank you for taking your time and talking to me.
Rebel Girl: Speaking of No More Deaths, here inside the CrimethInc podcast bunker we’ve been working on an audio-book version of No Wall They Can Build, CrimethInc’s new book that chronicles one anarchists’ decade of migrant solidarity work along the US-Mexico border. To give some background to the migrant caravan, we’re going to preview three already-recorded excerpts related to the Guatemala-Mexico border and emigration from Honduras.
NO WALL THEY CAN BUILD: Doing this work has given me a great deal of opportunity to observe how the border is managed on a day-to-day basis, and hopefully some insight into the functions it performs within global capitalism—the real objectives it serves. I’ve been positioned on one of the frontlines of global migration over an extended period of time, a vantage point shared by relatively few. This is how I see it: North America comprises a single economy, which is divided by two major borders. One runs between the United States and Mexico, the other between Mexico and Guatemala. * Many people are compelled to migrate across these borders by pressures largely beyond their control. The objective of both American and Mexican border policy is not to stop this migration, but to manage and control it, to the benefit of identifiable sectors of both societies, and with the deaths of thousands of people as the predictable and intended result. Ultimately, immigration controls in this part of the world amount to a form of systematic segregation, in which the movements and civil rights of certain people are curtailed due to place of birth. In other words, apartheid.
NO WALL THEY CAN BUILD: There was a 1950s-style coup in Honduras in 2009 backed by the government of the United States, and things appear to have been unremittingly messed up ever since. We have met an enormous number of Hondurans crossing the border in the years since the coup, out of all proportion to the size of the country. In 2012, for instance, less than half of the people that I met on the border came from Mexico, Guatemala, or El Salvador, and more than half came from Honduras—despite the fact that Mexico alone has a population sixteen times the size of Honduras. We heard di ff erent versions of the same story from countless people: grinding poverty, chronic hunger and malnutrition, widespread violence and insecurity (much of it an extension of El Salvador’s gang problems), a rampant HIV/AIDS epidemic, appalling levels of violence against women and LGBTQ people, assassinations of environmentalists, union organizers, and human rights advocates, and a lack of the most basic services or opportunities. Let me emphasize this one more time. If Honduras is in shambles, it is not because Hondurans are any less resourceful or fundamentally decent than anyone else, or even because its rulers are any more wretched and callous than our own. It is because the structure of the North American economy has made any other outcome impossible.
NO WALL THEY CAN BUILD: Mexico’s heavily forested southern border is well policed, but it is relatively porous—and the authorities policing it are fantastically corrupt. Central Americans have several options for crossing it and then crossing Mexico itself. The worst and most deservedly notorious way to get to the United States is via La Bestia (The Beast), the Mexican freight trains. I have heard an astonishing array of horror stories about this trip; it’s fair to say that for many people, crossing Mexico is an even more harrowing ordeal than crossing the border into the United States. There are two main train lines running from southern Mexico into La Lecheria , the main transfer point in Mexico City for all tra ffi c coming from the south and going north. One of these lines starts in the city of Tenosique in Tabasco, the other in Arriaga in Chiapas. So Central Americans who cannot a ff ord any other option have to cross the Mexican border on foot and walk to one of these cities—no small distance. Every step of the way, they run the risk of robbery, rape, kidnapping, assault, extortion, deportation, arrest, and murder at the hands of the police, the military, any number of di ff erent gangs and cartels, and god knows who else; they also risk exhaustion and exposure.
Rebel Girl: Stay tuned for the full audio-book of No Wall They Can Build, which we’ll be releasing right here on the Ex-Worker podcast feed.
Riot Dogg: Can I say something? With the midterm elections coming up and voting propaganda on full blast, this story is a good reminder of the equivalence between the democrats and republicans. Hillary Clinton’s state department legitimized the coup in Honduras, creating unlivable circumstances that drove thousands of people to flee, and now Honduran migrants are heading towards the increasingly militarized and just plain cruel border policies that Trump has expanded. Both parties are responsible for the thousands of people caught between borders, and no amount of voting will undo this situation anytime soon. What did make it possible for the migrant caravan to cross into Mexico was their own direct action—tearing down the border fence themselves. Let this be our north star in the fight against borders, and a reminder that politicians can only delay and dilute our desires, which will never fit inside their ballot boxes.
CARBONDALE
Rebel Girl: And speaking of the midterms, when it was announced that Trump would be speaking at a campaign rally in Carbondale, Illinois this week, neo-Nazis threatened both the town government AND the Flyover Social Center, a local radical organizing space, for their anti-Trump politics. We caught up with an anarchist-communist associated with The Flyover to learn more.
Who are we speaking with and how did anarchists find themselves in the same crosshairs as the local government?
Carbondale Anarchist-Communist: I’m an organizer here in Carbondale, Illinois, and I’m associated with a space called the Flyover Social Center. So, it was leaked that Trump was going to come to Carbondale, and a city council member drafted a resolution to denounce Trump as a fascist and make him persona non grata in Carbondale, and deny any city funds and police protection to support his security detail. And for reasons that we have heard from leaks within the city government, the city council meeting at which he would’ve made such a resolution was canceled due to threats of right-wing paramilitary violence. And so, the city government, in the face of those threats, basically abdicated its role, and canceled the city council meeting, presumably to avoid the city councilperson reading a statement denouncing fascism. And so, members of the Carbondale Solidarity Network and the Flyover Social Center and various other groups stepped up when the city stepped down and called for a popular assembly at the same time that the city council meeting was to be held. And that’s what we had tonight. And at that, the city councilman spoke, and read the resolution that he would have read to the city council, and we all collectively as a community affirmed that, not as a resolution by the city council, but as a pact between us, that we were going to stand together against the fascist creep.
Rebel Girl: Is Trump still scheduled to speak and do y’all anticipate a fascist presence that you’ll need to respond to?
Carbondale Anarchist-Communist: Mm-hmm. So, he’s supposed to speak this Saturday. He was originally supposed to speak at the university, Southern Illinois University, but the venue was changed the Southern Illinois Airport, which is in the town over. So he’s no longer speaking in Carbondale, he’s now speaking in Murphysboro. And for whatever reasons, we like to think that the possibility of Carbondale’s resistance had something to do with it.
We are—so, one thing you have to understand, is that this Saturday is also the annual Carbondale Halloween celebration. And that’s significant just because this Halloween celebration was canceled by the city, basically made illegal for 17 years due to riots throughout the eighties and nineties. And that culminated in the burning and flipping of cop cars. And this was the first year that it was to be back on in full swing, because they thought they had, uh, more or less destroyed the rebellious energy of this town. And so when everybody saw that Trump was going to speak here on that day, everyone was like, “Oh my gosh, you know, we thought we going to be able to have Halloween without a riot.” But Halloween celebrations are back on, hopefully as a celebration of the fact that we kept him outside the city limits.
But we do want to take precautions against the possibility of fascist and far-right street presence.
Rebel Girl: Anything else you’d like to add?
Carbondale Anarchist-Communist: Um…I just want to say, that Trump’s policies—or the Democrats’ policies, none of those things are going to work to solve crises that are facing people in small towns like this in rural America. And we at the Flyover, and in various groups throughout Carbondale and southern Illinois are working for a vision that’s centered around autonomy, and centered around direct action, directly solving the crises that we’re facing, without relying upon the government or the economy to do it.
NOLA AGAINST THE PROUD BOYS
Riot Dogg: After the Proud Boy attacks in Portland and New York that we described last Hotwire, anti-fascists in New Orleans organized a hotline for information on Proud Boy activity over the weekend. We spoke to an anti-fascist in New Orleans to hear more.
Thanks for speaking with us. Where did the idea for this hotline come from?
Anonymous Antifascist: Yeah, the idea behind the hotline was to put out there a way for people to report any kind of activity where the Proud Boys might be hanging out or harassing people, so that we as a community could respond to those sightings, and also to just let people know that there was a way that they could feel empowered to not live in fear of these people running around the city. And, yeah, someone just got a burner phone and put it together with a flyer, and it spread around really quick.
Riot Dogg: It seems like there’s two main purposes for such a hotline—to put Proud Boys and any other fash on notice that anti-fascists are watching, and to let folks concerned about Proud Boy violence know that they’re not alone. How did the hotline work in these two regards?
Anonymous Antifascist: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. So the Proud Boys were coming to New Orleans for a pub crawl that was supposed to be like three days long, and they hardly spent any time within the actual city itself. And we’ve gotten word that a huge part of that was because they were afraid to come—to hang out in the city, because they knew that people were spreading this number around, and people were watching out for them, that they were in very hostile territory. So, they hardly spent any time in the actual city. They spent most of their time in the suburbs. Secondly, it did give us kind of a constant update of what the pulse was around town about where people thought they were seeing them. Sometimes the reports were untrue, but sometimes they were true. So we were able to send people out to respond to it.
Riot Dogg: Are there any lessons you’d like to pass on from experimenting with this hotline model?
Anonymous Antifascist: I think that in the future, we wouldn’t want to spread it so widely on social media, because it opened this up to people giving fake reports, and also spreading information via social media just allowed for a lot of misinformation and rumors and reports that were often a day old trickling in. In the future, I think it would be better to have something more like a dedicated phone tree of people coordinated and dedicated to responding to these sort of things.
Riot Dogg: Thanks so much for speaking with us! Anything else you’d like to add?
Anonymous Antifascist: [laughs] Um…we’re just really glad we were able to prevent the Proud Boys from doing the things, the kind of damage that they have done in other cities. So, that’s the power of community for ya.
REPRESSION ROUNDUP
Riot Dogg: In this week’s repression roundup…
IWOC member and prison rebel, Keith “Malik” Washington is asking for support after being repeatedly strip searched, including while being videotaped. He requests that people call the Texas Department of Corrections executive director, Bryan Collier, at 936–295–6371. We have a link to a sample script in our shownotes.
Rebel Girl: In late September, three anti-fracking activists in the UK were sentenced to over a year in prison each, after being convicted of causing a public nuisance for a four-day protest on top of a truck at the UK’s first fracking site. The judge who sentenced them was recently revealed to have family links to the oil and gas firm responsible for the fracking. All three activists were recently released from jail after the court of appeals deemed their sentences ‘manifestly excessive’. Congratulations!
Riot Dogg: The Stansted 15 are currently on trial in the UK. The Stansted 15 are-you guessed it- 15 people who held a demonstration that, for ten hours, prevented a secret deportation flight from taking off at Stansted airport in 2017. The flight was chartered by the Home Office to deport around 50 asylum seekers, many with active asylum cases, to Nigeria and Ghana. Now facing terror related charges for their actions, the Stansted 15 are half-way through a six-week trial.
Rebel Girl: Anarchist political prisoner, Miguel Peralta, has begun a hunger strike at the Mexican prison he’s unjustly held in. Miguel was involved with the Community Assembly of Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca and is protesting the delays in his case and continued detention, despite the fact that many with similar charges have been released or had their warrants dropped. His supporters are not only demanding a quick resolution and the declaration of freedom for Miguel, but the release of the other seven prisoners of the Community Assembly, and nothing but complete freedom for their community!
Riot Dogg: The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee has issued a report detailing the ongoing repression that prisoners are experiencing in the wake of the 2018 Prison Strike. Across the board prisoners have experienced retaliation for their participation in the strike by way of physical abuse, destruction of prisoner’s personal property, placing jailhouse lawyers in solitary confinement, and pre-emptive lockdown and segregation of thousands of prisoners.
After a work stoppage in a Halifax, Nova Scotia prison, 40 people have been on 23 hour a day lockdown in their cells. Whistleblower Aaron McDonald now has no contact visitation status that will last one year after revealing the inhumane conditions at the Indiana State Prison he is held in. And his mother, Leslie Hernandez faces bogus charges for the organizing she’s doing on the outside in support of her son and other prisoners.
The crackdown against incarcerated activists in Youngstown, Ohio has intensified. Imam Siddique Hasan, who’s on death row following the 1993 Lucasville Prison uprising, received a one year phone restriction and security level hike, while multiple supporters were permanently banned from visiting any Ohio prisons. Officials at the Youngstown supermax have also imposed collective punishments by increasing visitation restrictions, especially targeting organizer Greg Curry. Prosecutor Mark Peipmeier also filed a motion to set an execution date for Keith LaMar. This motion came shortly after the strike, despite the fact that LaMar was not involved in strike organizing.
These are just a few of the detailed abuses prisoners are enduring for their brave resistance during the strike. And while reports of repression trickle out of prisons, those on the inside and the outside are still organizing across the country. There may very well be a 2019 prison strike, but in the meantime you can keep an eye on the IWOC and Jailhouse Lawyers Speak to find out how you can continue to support our comrades on the inside.
Rebel Girl: And lastly, we are thrilled to report that on Tuesday, October 23, Mike Africa of the MOVE 9 was released on parole after 40 years in prison. Mike was one of 9 people imprisoned after a 1978 standoff between Philadelphia police and MOVE, a Black-led revolutionary organization opposed to police brutality and environmental destruction.
Mike was reunited with his wife, Debbie Africa also of the MOVE 9, who was released on parole earlier this year, and their son Mike Jr., who Debbie gave birth to in prison.
Mike’s release is another victory in the continued fight for freedom for long-term political prisoners. There are five more members of the MOVE 9 who are still behind bars and eligible for parole. One of them is Eddie Africa, who celebrates his birthday next week. In our shownotes we have his address so you can send him birthday greetings, along with more information about MOVE, and a useful guide for writing prisoners from New York City Anarchist Black Cross.
NEXT WEEK’S NEWS
Riot Dogg: We’ll close out this episode with next week’s news, our calendar of events that you can get plugged into in real life
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief continues their tour across the Northwest and Midwest this fall with their two-part workshop on community organizing, disaster relief, and resisting disaster capitalism. You can catch them tonight in Eugene, Oregon, October 26 and 27 in Portland, and October 30 and 31 in Olympia, Washington.
Rebel Girl: This fall, apparently anarchists all over want to ensure you have plenty of reading material to get you through the long, cold winter, or long, hot summer, depending on where you are in the world!
Riot Dogg: From October 26–28, there’s an anarchist bookfair in Lisbon, Portugal.
Anarchists in Santiago, Chile are hosting theirs on November 1st and 2nd, while anarchists in Amsterdam are organizing a bookfair on November 10th.
And the weekend of November 17 and 18 has anarchist book fairs in both Seattle, Washington and Boston, Massachusetts. More at SeattleAnarchistBookFair.net and BostonAnarchistBookFair.org.
Rebel Girl: Feminists in Munich, Germany are holding a pro-choice counter demo and march on October 27 to counter the 1000 crosses for life“ pro-life march through the city. Meet at 1pm at Max-Joseph-Platz in Munich.
Riot Dogg: There’s an anti-ICE march in Portland, Oregon on November 6th at 6pm. Meet at City Hall and check out [@OccupyICEPDX]( https://twitter.com/OccupyICEPDX) on twitter for more information.
Rebel Girl: To mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht and to push back against the uptick in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobic violence around the world, there’s a Jewish call for International Days against fascism and anti-Semitism. The call reads, “On November 8–11, we will sing out and celebrate the survival of our peoples. We will say Kaddish for those who gave their lives in the fight against fascism. We will engage in acts of Kherem and ritually excommunicate those Jews who aid and abet the fascists of our time. And we will march on the institutions, the political parties, and the private businesses that collaborate with their genocidal agenda. At the same time, we will show the world that the real threat to our security as Jews isn’t our Muslim neighbors, but “Western Chauvinists,” Christian supremacists, and white nationalists – the would-be pogromists of our day. Starting now and continuing through [the year] 5779 and beyond, we will (re)build an international network of anti-fascist Jews and our allies. From the streets where we live to the places we work and play, we will organize to defend all of our communities from those who would exterminate us. We invite you to join us in the fight: For a world without pogroms. For a future without fascism.” The call is using the hashtags #AntiFascistFall, #CancelThem, and #OutliveThem. More info at outlivethem.wordpress.com. https://itsgoingdown.org/international-days-of-action-for-a-world-without-pogroms-for-a-future-without-fascism/ Riot Dogg: There is a call out from L’eau Est La Vie camp to protest banks who are invested in the Bayou Bridge pipeline. The pipeline is being built by Energy Transfer Partners, whose goons recently sunk two boats near pipeline construction that were carrying 15 water protectors, media and legal observers. The project is funded by a whole slew of banks that are holding employment recruitment events at colleges across the country this fall. L’eau Est La Vie is calling for people to gather their affinity groups and disrupt these recruitment events! Visit nobbp.org or read the full call on itsgoingdown.org. Rebel Girl: Itsgoingdown.org-one of our favorite online sources for anarchist and resistance news, has launched a fundraising campaign to ensure they can keep funding all their bad ass (and important!) revolutionary projects, visit itsgoingdown.org to donate or find out other ways you can support their very important work.
Riot Dogg: The 2019 Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar is now out. The calendar is themed around is Health/Care, and it features art and writing from current and former political prisoners like David Gilbert and Mike Africa. Find out more at Certaindays.org
OUTRO
Riot Dogg: And that’s it for this Hotwire. As always thanks to Underground Reverie for the music, and thanks to Devra from SOA Watch, the anarchist-communist in Carbondale, and the anti-fascist in New Orleans for the interviews. You can contact us at podcast[AT]CrimethInc[DOT]com or @HotwireWeekly on twitter. Don’t forget to check out all the links, mailing addresses, and useful notes we customized for this episode at CrimethInc.com.
Rebel Girl: You can subscribe to The Hotwire on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, just search for The Ex-Worker. You can listen to us through the anarchist podcast network Channel Zero, and believe it or not, every Hotwire is radio-ready, with a twenty-nine and a half minute version found in each episode’s shownotes, so feel free to put The Hotwire on your local airwaves. If you do, let us know so we can plug your station.
Riot Dogg: Stay informed. Stay rebel. Plug into the Hotwire.