Audio Interference

Listen to a discussion at Interference Archive about the various ways archiving sound can be a political act. With Mario Alvarez, Natiba Guy-Clement, Daniel Horowitz, and Samara Smith.

“Our lending policy is: as many books as you want, for as long as you want. We want people to take the time to live with the books as long as they need to, to figure out how they fit into the larger picture of how they live.” -- Dawn Finley, FLOW

In this episode, we ask the questions: What does it mean to be a radical, community library? What are the goals, responsibilities, and impacts of such an organization? We do so through conversations with Laura Moulton of Streetbooks, Melissa Marturano of Books Through Bars, Dawn Finley of FLOW, and Julia of the ABC No Rio Zine Library.

To learn more about Streetbooks visit their website at—http://streetbooks.org/

and read this NYT article about them: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/10/us/homeless-outreach-in-volumes-books-by-bike-for-outside-people-in-oregon.html

To learn more about Books through Bars visit their website at—https://booksthroughbarsnyc.org/

Read an interview with founder vikki law—http://artfcity.com/2012/09/05/the-abc-no-rio-interviews-vikki-law/ and this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/opinion/books-prison-packages-new-york.html

To stay up to date about what’s going on in Pennsylvania Prisons see the links below:

—https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/incarcerated-pennsylvanians-now-have-to-pay-150-to-read-we-should-all-be-outraged/2018/10/11/51f548b8-cbd9-11e8-a85c-0bbe30c19e8f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.49acb26c7a96

—https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/08/29/pennsylvania-prisons-are-locked-down-after-unknown-substances-leave-hospitalized/?utm_term=.ffa16cd982d

—http://www2.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania-prison-department-corrections-john-wetzel-security-plan-books-through-bars-k2-20181019.html?fbclid=IwAR1mWpHFFCjSgWWiE0AXCKUUfGW6DQBoxmhyKHgcbfMc2KNCgtZdLbU8auA

For those interested in what FLOW is up to: http://feministlibraryonwheels.com/ and https://lithub.com/the-feminist-library-on-wheels-a-roaming-tool-for-social-justice/.

ABC No Rio Zine Library Contact Information: http://www.abcnorio.org/pcgi-bin/suite/calendar/calendar.cgi?request=detail&website=default&event_id=12029

A huge Thank You to Laura Moulton, Melissa Marturano, Dawn Finley, and Julia for engaging us in conversation and for the important work you do! Stay tuned for Radical Access, Part II.

Music: “Bronco Romp,” by Waylon Thornton; “Feel Good (Instrumental),” by Broke For Free; “Luminous,” by Broke For Free; “Live on BSR,” by Juan Wauters.

Produced by Interference Archive.

“Our lending policy is: as many books as you want, for as long as you want. We want people to take the time to live with the books as long as they need to, to figure out how they fit into the larger picture of how they live.” -- Dawn Finley, FLOW

“I think we were interested in finding a true story. We were interested in telling the truth, not to make a propaganda film and not to make a film that would make people feel heroic. We wanted to make a film that was both sympathetic to the project and its goals and purposes, and at the same time was realistic about the world that it was operating in.”

- Robert Machover

“I remember walking home from that huge protest and feeling this sense of huge hope in the air...And it was just really exciting and it felt like things actually could change.”

“We knew it was illegal, and we knew the FCC would probably come after us at some point, and they did.”

"There's only a certain amount of time that a person can languish in prison while they prepare for a trial."

"They saw this region as affected by a kind of colonial influence from the larger urban areas, sort of extracting resources from Central Appalachia historically, for over a hundred years, and not giving anything back."

"We were exploding and we were asking women all over to explode with us." - Jeramy Turner

Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear from Andrea Benson, a contributor to Survived and Punished's Inside-Outside Newsletter about her experiences as an incarcerated person and her thoughts on justice and abolition.

This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived and Punished, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.

Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from their comrades on the inside as well as a longer interview with two Survived and Punished Members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.

To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org

Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/

Music from this episode (in order of appearance):

“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18