From Embers

Audio from a panel at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair.

Hosts from The Solecast, Intersection'elle, Changing On The Fly, and From Embers discuss questions about podcasting, Internet culture, radio, privacy, and "being a personality."

Music in this episode is Sole, off his album Destituent.

Also it's the one year anniversary of From Embers!

This year on May Day in Toronto, anarchists and radicals brought a replica guillotine to a rally at Queen's Park, leading to outrage in the mainstream media and government calls for a police investigation.

In light of this, and in a context where guillotine memes and other gestures towards political violence are becoming more popular, we spoke with an author of the article Against the Logic of the Guillotine published on the CrimethInc website. We discuss the ideas in the article, and tease out some of the philosophical tensions that underpin it.

Music: L'Interrogatorio di Sante Caserio and Sante Caserio by From the Depths

In 1919, what started as a dispute over how workers in a particular trade should negotiate with their employers became a generalized workers' revolt that we now know as the Winnipeg General Strike. Don't click skip just yet! It can be hard to see the relevance in things that happened so long ago, but how to build things that (a) generalize, and (b) actually threaten business as usual is a pressing question for a lot of us today, and while 2019 and 1919 are radically different contexts, they aren't separate planets. In this episode, I spoke with Sean Carleton, a professor of history and member of the Graphic History Collective about the strike and what lessons we can learn from its history, whether we are labour activists or not.

The Graphic History Collective's book about the strike - 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike - is out on Between The Lines press and can be purchased wherever you buy books. They're also on a book tour right now - check social media (warning - facebook link!) or your local event listings for details.

Today we bring you an episode of a brand-new podcast miniseries entitled "What Happened to Prisoner Justice Day?" about the history of prisons in canada focusing on differences in the prison system in the 1960s-1980s versus today. The podcast features interviews with former and current prisoners, as well as supporters on the outside.

"In [this] episode, we talk to Gene, who started doing time in canadian prisons in 1972. Gene talks to us about the early days of PJD on the inside and the role that inmates committees and outside support played in prisoner resistance in the 70s and 80s. He talks a bit about protective custody or PC, and how changes to protective custody policies in federal prisons undermined solidarity.

At the end of the show, we mention the website penalpress.com. The site features a catalogue of newspapers produced in prisons in canada. Check it out for an inside perspective on the canadian prison system from the late 1940s onwards."

More about the podcast:

This is a mini series about the history of prisons in canada focusing on differences in the prison system in the 1960s-1980s versus today. The podcast features interviews with former and current prisoners, as well as supporters on the outside. For those new to prison history, Prisoner Justice Day, also called PJD, started in 1975 on the one year anniversary of the death of Edward Nalon, an inside organizer who bled to death in a segregation cell in Millhaven Maximum Penitentiary on August 10th, 1974. Prisoners refused to eat and refused to work to commemorate Eddie's death. In May 1976, Robert Landers, who had been actively organizing in Archambault Pen before being involuntarily transferred to Millhaven, died in a segregation cell in Millhaven after repeated calls for medical help met no response. In June 1976, prisoners in Millhaven launched a call for support for their one day hunger strike in remembrance of all prisoners who had died inside - to take place on August 10th. Word spread across the country and, in the end, thousands of prisoners participated in the one day hunger strike and supporters on the outside organized events on the outside. A lot has changed since the 70s, not just in prison, but outside of prison. While respecting PJD remains important to many on the inside and outside, the numbers of those participating are nowhere near the numbers involved in the 70s and 80s. This podcast mini-series sets out to explore why that change has occurred. We found the PJD image for the podcast and its backstory here: http://journal.radicalcriminology.org/index.php/rc/article/view/68/html

Search for What Happened to Prisoner Justice Day wherever you get your podcasts, or check it out online at prisonhistoryca.libsyn.com

The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair is the largest anarchist gathering in North America and 2019 is it's 20th year. In this episode, I interviewed two members of this year's bookfair collective. Topics include:

- what, if anything, does the bookfair have to do with books?

-is the bookfair for "us," for "recruitment," or both?

-how much should event planners try to shape a space like this? what kinds of policies are appropriate and how, if at all, should they be enforced?

-what should we expect at this year's bookfair?

The bookfair is coming up on May 25th and 26th!

Links:

Website

Facebook Page

Twitter

Recording of a talk by Alexis Shotwell on veganism, relational ethics, and mutual aid. From the event description: "Will eating plant-based foods save us from climate catastrophes? Should everyone eat vegan? How should people who care about the world understand "clean eating"? Is Jordan Peterson pursuing a beef-only diet because he's an asshole, or because he's managing a severe disability, or both? Is criticizing factory farmed meat the same as criticizing Indigenous hunting practices? What does any of this have to do with mutual aid?

In this conversation, I'll share some approaches to answering these questions. I'll explain what I think is a useful distinction between ethical decisions based on substances (what something is) and ethical decisions based on placing ourselves in relationships. I'll talk about the difference between clean eating and vegan eating, and share why anarchist understandings of political care in the form of mutual aid help us be in good relationships with our devastated, hurting, good world."

AKA Autonomous Social Centre (Kingston)

Punch Up Collective (Ottawa)

Interview with Kevin Tucker about his latest book The Cull of Personality, which tells the story and surrounding context of the murder of Shipibo-Conibo healer and indigenous rights activist Olivia Arevalo at the hands of Canadian ayahuasca tourist Sebastian Woodroffe in the Peruvian Amazon. Woodroffe was subsequently lynched by members of Arevalo's community, which became a big story in the Canadian press. We discuss the story, ayahuasca, colonialism, and new age spirituality in a civilized world.

Music by Slugdge

Tonight on From Embers we're talking about the unfolding crisis in Venezuela, and specifically the role of the Canadian state and the Lima Group. We open with a bit of a rant about how tricky anti-imperialist politics can be for anarchists to navigate - somewhat coincidentally, the topic of the week on Anarchist News this week. Then we feature an interview with Lydia of the Women's Coordinating Committee for a Free Wallmapu, a grassroots organization based in Toronto with ties to the Mapuche struggle in Chile. I asked her about Canada's role in the intervention and recent actions she's taken to disrupt mainstream narratives about so-called democracy in Venezuela.

A few background English-language anarchist articles about Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution:

Anarkismo Visit Report (2004)

Socialism to the Highest Bidder (2006)

True and False in Venezeula (2014)

Roland Denis Interview (2016)

Uruguayan Anarchists on Popular Power in Venezuela (2017)

Black Rose statement (2019)

This week's episode features two interviews with people involved in the struggle to stop a new migrant prison from being built in Laval, Quebec. Topics discussed include:

-the project and how the government is trying to frame it as a "nice" cage.

-senses of strategy and what might work to actually stop a project like this.

-actions that have taken place against the prison, how they've gone, and what actions might be on the horizon.

Stop The Prison

Ni Frontières, Ni Prisons (facebook link!)

Solidarity Across Borders

This week's episode features two perspectives on the right-wing "Yellow Vests Canada" movement and how anti-fascists are taking them on. Topics include:

What, if anything, do these people have to do with the yellow vest movement in France?

Are they workerists, xenophobes, populists, fascists or all of the above?

How are neo-nazis and other fascists recruiting from inside the movement?

Should we as anti-fascists treat the yellow vests like fash or like something else?

What's up with the United We Roll truck convoy? Is this really a grassroots movement *for* pipelines?

Links:

https://twitter.com/VestsCanada

https://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/

https://ottawagdc.org/