Rebel Girl: April 11, 2018: Resistance to the eviction of la ZAD and more rebellion across France, direct action staves off pipelines and police academies, and a call to support anarchist prisoner Sean Swain on this episode of…

The Hotwire.   A weekly anarchist news show brought to you by The Ex-Worker.   With me, the Rebel Girl.   A full transcript of this episode with shownotes and useful links can be found at our website, CrimethInc.com/podcast. 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, or on your radio’s dial in… Eugene, Oregon every Sunday at noon on KEPW 97.3, Fairbanks, Alaska Saturday mornings at 9 on KWRK 90.9 and in Tacoma, Washington every Friday at 9 AM on KUPS 90.1. Every Hotwire is radio ready, and in our shownotes you can download a twenty-nine and a half minute version of this episode for standard radio timeslots. If there’s a story or upcoming event you’d like us to include in a future Hotwire, just hit us up at podcast[AT]crimethinc[DOT]com.   And now for the headlines…  

HEADLINES

The Oklahoma teachers’ strike entered its second week on Monday, as hundreds of schools closed and teachers flooded the capitol demanding raises for staff and funding for students. It’s been heartwarming to see how teachers in Oklahoma are learning from the previous strike wave in West Virginia. The organizer of the Oklahoma Teacher Walkout Facebook group was quoted saying, “When talking to West Virginia teachers, they told me the most important day of the walkout was the 2nd Monday.” We hope that the lessons and sense of agency from these strikes can not only be passed on from state to state, but from one sector of exploited workers to all others.

Meanwhile, the teachers’ union in Kentucky has shown once again that one of the biggest obstacles to generalizing such conflicts is union leadership. While rank-and-file teachers staged a wildcat “sick out” last week, the managerial class of union leaders caught up with the conflict and urged teachers to go back to work on Monday, shaming them for “continued calls for action that deprive students, parents and communities of the educational services we provide," as if education solely had to do with having teachers at work, regardless of the resources they have to offer.

End Of The Line: “That is a national forest. The kids have as much a right to be there as the pipeline has a right to be there.”

“For us this is about saying ‘no, this is still the people’s land, no, this is still the people’s water, and not only are we gonna fight you on this, we’re going to win.’”

Rebel Girl: That clip was from an End of the Line podcast episode focused on local resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia.

There, treesits against the pipeline are on the up and up! On April 2, a new sit was launched, occupied by a 61 year-old woman identified as “Red,” while the monopod blockade we mentioned last Hotwire is entering its third week, and Appalachians Against Pipelines believe that they’ve set a record for the longest continuously occupied monopod under threat of eviction. Woo! You can hear more interviews with locals opposed to the Mountain Valley Pipeline at soundcloud.com/pipelinepodcast.

Since the beginning of March in the occupied Coast Salish territories also known as British Columbia, nearly 200 people have been arrested for opposing the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would triple the amount of tar sands oil flowing from Alberta to the coast. After a month of intense resistance, which has included everything from mass marches to lockdowns on construction equipment, Kinder Morgan has announced that they are suspending work on the Trans Mountain project. The company attributes the decision to the regional government’s supposed opposition to the pipeline, making no mention of the protests or direct actions because they don’t wait to embolden their organizing. It may be a time for some celebration—but not for rest. The only way to maintain victories is to stay organized and attentive for the next time Kinder Morgan or any other company decides that the profits of moving oil outweigh the costs of bad publicity, legal cases against water protectors, and the irreparable damage to the earth. Capitalism ensures that inevitably, some company will come along which values profit over all other concerns. Keep the pressure on!

REBELLION IN FRANCE

As the 50th anniversary comes around of the May 1968 uprising in Paris, it’s been kicking off all over France.

Beginning the morning of April 9, nearly 2,500 riot cops began evicting the 250 or so squatters on the ZAD, or “zone to defend,” in Notre-Dame-De-Landes, France. Our French comrades have prepared a full history of the resistance at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, from the first resistance to the airport in the 1960s through the establishment of the ZAD in 2009 up to the eviction on Monday. Entitled “La ZAD: Another End of the World Is Possible,” it explores some of the challenges that the movement faced after the French government announced the cancellation of the airport project. You can read the text at Crimethinc.com.

As we reported in the Hotwire for February 7, the government had recently announced that they were abandoning the plans to build on airport on the ZAD’s land, and from then until now the future of the ZAD was in the air. Now, it’s teargas, stones, and concussions grenades in the air, as the police and squatters battle over control of the territory.

We know what is happening at the ZAD is brutal and painful, as French police forces attempt to destroy an autonomous model of the new world we’re trying to build. But we here at the Hotwire have been reminded of what beautiful dreamers we can be, holding visions and spaces of a different path forward, in a world that’s quite literally trying to crush them. We wish those at the ZAD luck and safety as they fight back, and to remember, that even if they destroy our spaces, we carry a new world, here in our hearts.

As we go to press, folks at la ZAD are still defending their homes against eviction by thousands of riot police. We were able to catch up with Camille at the ZAD about the eviction and what’s going down.

Camille: I’m Camille. I live on the ZAD.

Yesterday morning they came—legally they can’t evict before 6 in the morning or after 10 at night here, so everyone was getting ready to get up at 6, and they came at 3, and they took so much ground so fast

They took the barricade road, but people had basically already given it to them. And they destroyed- we announced 9 cabins destroyed yesterday, but there were actually only 7. And then today they said 16, but we haven’t been to verify yet because most people are holed up in this place like on this one road. And they aren’t really letting any- because they have the whole road. It’s like a 4-kilometer road, and the whole thing is end to end police and military vehicles. So we can’t really get into the east part, which is the wooded part. Some people are there, we know there’s been a couple evictions, but. We don’t have that much information because they’re too far for walkie-talkies. 

There’s this thing going on lately of, like… this glorious future, where like, we’re going to—I don’t know how much of this is like getting out in North America, but this glorious future where we like negotiate with the state, and then we get a contract, and we can all like be farmers and live happily ever after. And I think a lot of people that have politically disagreed with that already left, which is why we’re so few. And people who disagree but didn’t leave, I mean, it’s because we don’t have anywhere else to go. And so, like, what we’re fighting for is like, it’s our homes, it’s our, like- the fucking lives we live here, it’s our gardens. Because I fucking hate the cops, and because, they, like, fucked up my friends’ houses. And like gassed all our medicinal plants, and like.

The police kept saying “We’re only going to evict the road,” the barricade road, where, like, “the radicals” live, like in quotes. Like, basically punks, and people who used to live on the street, so a lot of people didn’t really care, and were like, “Oh the airport is over, and so we’re not going to support them anymore,” and so there was basically no one that came to the callout. And then yesterday, they did a very stupid thing, which was to knock down the house of these like, clean, adorable farmer people that do press work. And now there’s lots of people coming and lots of journalists, and they’re like backing down some. So I don’t really now why they did that, that also, like, made our internal conflicts, definitely changed our internal conflicts a lot.

Yeah, I don’t know- people are doing things- there’s this enormous catapult called The Syrian, made out of metal that is launching rocks that are about the size of my backpack. …Which, you don’t know how big that is, because this is the radio. Big. 

I mean it’s just like a fucking war zone. That as you can hear, probably, in the background. There’re a lot of grenades.

One thing we’ve been trying to get out in the media, especially as medics, is that since they called someone at the ZAD du Testet with a concussion grenade, they’re illegal in France. And the police headquarters has been saying all day long, and all yesterday: “There’s no grenades, no one’s been wounded, we don’t know what they’re talking about.” And I’ve seen several people who have been very wounded by grenades in, like, really dramatic fucked-up ways. And as you’ve probably heard over the course of us talking, they’re going off every five minutes. And so. I don’t know if it’s useful to like, tell a bunch of anarchists that the police aren’t respecting the law, but in the interest of us being safe, we’re trying to get that out – that they are using grenades and it’s a lot. Even though it’s illegal and they’re denying it. 

Yeah, I was on the roof doing lookout, and all of the police came running around the corner, going “Oh shit, they’re coming!”, and firing over their shoulder. And they ran all the way to the road, being chased and charged. That was pretty beautiful to see. Then they came back a couple hours later. They just keep coming back, and like- they’re like, exhausting us, they’re using up all our ammo, they’re using up all our barricade material. I think they’re just kind of like fucking with us, and then they’re going to come back and destroy everything. But. People seem to feel strong for now, so that’s good. 

Yeah. And like, yesterday, the… I went to a house yesterday, after it got destroyed, and like in the mud, it’s like, bits of grenades, tear gas, and- and like glass bottles, but the glass bottles are like apple cider vinegar, olive oil, like- poppy flowers from 2016. People are just throwing like, fucking- like- like-  our house lost all- all of our cups this morning, like all of the glass jars. I’m in- like- this is like what we live, and so it’s just like- yeah. We don’t really have anything left- left to lose. So, yeah. Everyone’s just throwing like their conserves, and their cutlery, and like everything, because we don’t have anything else.

Yeah, who knows. Yeah. Anyway. Thanks. 

Rebel Girl: And panning out to the last month of rebellion in France, we’re going to run a clip of episode number five of Sub.Media’s news show TFN.

Stimulator: This year marks the 50th fucking anniversary of the riots of ’68, when millions of Parisian students and workers cut class, walked off the job, drank wine, built barricades, ate croissants, fought the pigs, and tried their best to overthrow the French government. They were anarchists, that was the spirit And although they were the furthest out politically That was also the one place where workers joined with students and almost toppled the government. Aaaaaand in the decades that have followed, riots and labour unrest have become as a mime playing Frère-fuckin-Jacques on an accordion. So it’s no fucking surprise that peeps in France have decided to honor the anniversary in the only way you’d expect. That’s right… the French “poulets” are once again on the back foot, as swarms of black-clad, cop-bashing cortèges de têtes keep beating them back, hucking bottles, and doing le smashy smash.

This time around, la merde’s hitting the fan after Emmanuel Macron, the radical neoliberal centrist piece of shit elected to power last year on a strict platform of not being Marine Le Pen announced plans to push through sweeping changes to France’s state-run rail system, the SNCF. These reforms include cutting the strong employment protection rights rail workers, and taking the initial steps to privatize the SNCF by publicly listing it on the stock market – part of a broader attack on public sector being carried out in the name of EU integration. Buuuuuuuuut the country’s famously militant weren’t gonna take that shit lying down, and they’ve been joined by students pissed off at planned university reforms… not to mention all the sketchy French youths who’ve jumped at the opportunity to break from their daily ennui to throw down against the pigs…. because after after all… Everyone Hates the Police! Yuuuuup, once again, peeps in France did not fuckin disappoint…

Shit started really popping off on March 22nd, 50 years to the day that radical students first occupied the Université Paris Nanterre, kicking off the historic wave of resistance that followed. In an impressive display of decentralized coordination, demonstrations took place across France, including wildcat strikes that seriously jammed up France’s trasportation grid featuring militant black blocs that were reminiscent of the 2016 movement against the so-called “Loi de Travail”. Buuuuuuuuut in a stark reminder of how the political winds have shifted over the past two years, later that evening a student occupation of an auditorium in Montpellier University was viciously attacked by a mob of masked fascists, including members of the right wing student group GUD and several teachers, who were recognized and outed by their students. These goons rampaged through the hall, wielding wooden pallets and tazers, seriously injuring four people, including two students who had to be hospitalized with skull fractures. Several witnesses accused the dean of the university’s law faculty, Philippe Pétel, of orchestrating the attack, after he allegedly let the thugs in through a back door and cheered as they literally cracked his other students’ skulls. Tuesday April 3rd saw the start of three months of planned rolling strikes by SNCF workers, and with the large national union, the CGT, calling for a general strike on April 19th, shit looks like it’s just starting. Something tells me that this year, May Day in Paris is gonna be one for the cook books.

Rebel Girl: In the weeks since the violent eviction of the Montpellier University occupation by fascists, fascists have also attacked a student occupation at the University of Paris, which had previously voted for an unlimited blockade and the formation of “the Free Commune of Tolbiac.” According to the students, the university president, “feared to see a ZAD settle in the heart of the university.” Days earlier, riot police also attacked a university occupation in Strasbourg.

But you don’t have to go all the way to France or back in time 50 years to launch a university occupation. Last week, students occupied the Chancellor’s Office at the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale to demand, “that the chancellor’s office release a statement today (4–5–2018) that there will be no police academy… at SIUC.” This runs parallel to an ongoing popular campaign against a new police academy further north in Chicago, which has seen widespread community and youth participation.

And, it seems that the university occupation in Carbondale had some pretty immediate, if not wholly satisfactory, outcomes. Here’s the occupiers’ statement from later that day:

“Earlier today, in response to pressure from students and the community, the Chancellor announced to the graduate council that the decision on the cop academy was being ‘tabled.’ We understand this to be a Public Relations move on the part of the administration: pass the decision on the cop academy off to another group, put it off to another time, thereby sidestepping the pressure that students and community members have built against the proposal.

“To say it clearly: the police, by their nature, are violence… who use the threat of death, kidnapping, beatings, and caging people to enforce the power of the few over the many. This is the reason for their creation – as slave patrols and as hired thugs to beat up organizing workers – and it has never ceased to be their purpose… We oppose the illusion that these problems can simply be solved by ‘better training’ or ‘police reform.’ Like the prison system, every police reform has ended up deepening their control over society.”

The Syrian Civil War continues, with recent news reporting that chemical gas attacks were carried out on unsuspecting families, children, and the elderly this past Saturday in the area of Douma, just outside Damascus. Hundreds were injured and as many as 50 were left dead. As world leaders from Trump to Putin to Netanyahu spar over the fate of hundreds of thousands in Syria, we caught up with someone who was active in the Syrian Revolution until 2013 to contextual autonomous resistance in Syria and what people on the ground really want in response to military attacks by their government.

Salam: So first of all, thank you for your interest in the Syrian tragedy but also the Syrian revolution, something else we can talk about.

So my name is Salam, I am a Palestinian Syrian, I left Syria in 2013, so I experienced two years and a half of the revolution. I was an activist.

So Douma is around Damascus, basically it’s an area of working class and farmers and people working in these things, it’s an area that’s experienced significant poverty and unemployment, before the revolution I’m talking about this. So because many of these things, it was was very active in the first month of the revolution and it helped spread the revolution around Syria.

So, we have to know that this recent attack in Douma comes after 7 years of daily bombardment and airstrikes on this- on these areas, Eastern Ghouta, by the murderous Syrian regime, to retake the city and to displace its population. So, Douma and Eastern Ghouta have been under armed opposition control since 2012, and has been besieged since that time. So, why this happened? Of course because of the Syrian revolution in 2011. After months of peaceful demonstrations, in 2011 the Syrian regime continued to kill protesters in the streets, which forced the people to fight back and then rebel groups were established in each neighborhood.

This is the Syrian revolution that I am talking about and the left in general, and anarchists should support. They rose up against the repressive state and they managed to crush the state in different areas. And they managed to create, defend liberated areas from the state after the state machine and police control collapsed in these areas, and they created local councils – at the highest point of the Syrian revolution we’re talking about more than 200 local councils in different areas managed by people, by civilians and defended by people, by those people .

So basically these factions are local resistance units. Later on, regional countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar created and financed Islamist factions among these groups. And those factions, Islamist factions, became a dominant power, actually, in the Syrian conflict. So they wanted to install a new authoritarian regime in Syria, but without Assad. And this is the difference from the West and those countries. They want an authoritarian Syria without Assad and the West wants- the Russia wants Syria with Assad and Iran. The Syrian people, however, have been struggling against both murderous regimes to achieve free Syria and so we should support them.

The local communities actually resisting are resisting the Syrian regime and its allies, and also these fundamentalist groups that grew during the conflict; and they managed to become very significant actors in this revolution. But we have to remember–in eastern Ghouta alone, there are 20,000 fighters, many of them are from these Islamic groups, and we disagree with them of course, they are being resisted and we were resisting them. But there are also 300,000 people – these people I am talking about, 300,000 people who participated in the Syrian revolution, who are still now actively engaged and involved in independent social and council organizations. They refuse, those people, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, refuse to live under the Syrian regime control. While at the same time challenging the authoritarian Islamic faction. At the same time. And push toward more autonomous self-governing areas. So this is the Syrian revolution that I stand for and support and stayed going on, until now. This is not only in Ghouta, but in many areas, in many other areas in Syria that are being destroyed by the regime. And we have to stand with those people, those people that I’m talking about. And the story of Afrin, for example, is the same for me. Also people in Afrin, local communities trying to defend themselves against authoritarian structures and power, whether local structures of oppression, or Turkey for example, in the case of Afrin.

Last year there was a U.S. response for the chemical weapon attack in Khan Sheikhoun, this was the first time they responded out of hundreds of times – last year– around this time of last year. So after this response, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons dozens of times – dozens of times, actually, without any response.

So, as I said, it’s not about humanity or regime change, as I said, it’s about enforcing international law- norm, by imperial powers. And the regime, the Syrian regime, is permitted- is still permitted to kill the Syrian people by all kind of weapons, and by using starvation tactics, and siege, but not sarin gas, and this is really obscene. So, conducting a strike right now driven by these norms just illustrates how cheap Syrian lives are. Syrian people have been upended since 8 years, and we need to stand with them and support their legitimate right of self-determination, and of living in freedom and dignity. There is definitely a geopolitical rivalry between imperial powers, especially the U.S. and Russia, but both want stability, both want authoritarian regimes allied to them, in our country, in Syria. The Syrian people, however, want something very different: they want freedom and justice. Something that can only be achieved through a struggle against all authoritarian murderous parties, whether Assad or Islamist jihadists on the one hand or Russia and the U.S. on the other hand. 

REPRESSION ROUNDUP

  Rebel Girl: In this week’s repression roundup…

Long-time anarchist prisoner, radio commentator, and author Sean Swain has launched a hunger strike and calls of support are needed. We LOVE Sean, so please call Warren Correctional Institution at (513) 932–3388 and press 7 to raise concerns to the Warden’s office about Sean’s status.

Early Friday morning, police in Hamilton, Ontario carried out a house raid and arrested one person, Cedar, on conspiracy charges stemming from the March 3 anti-capitalist, anti-gentrification destruction in downtown Hamilton. Police seized computers, books, posters, and other belongings, and also trashed the place—for example they threw some decoratively framed feminist postcards into the toilet. During the arraignment later Friday afternoon, one supporter shouted, “Love you Cedar!” and we at the Hotwire echo that.

Police have accused Cedar of operating The Tower social center, which, two weeks ago, saw fascist retaliation for the anti-gentrification march. However, while Cedar has been under arrest, The Tower released a statement about the repression: “We have no desire to engage with the politics of innocence. The concept of innocence and its flipside criminality obscure more than illuminate – no one is innocent and the most “criminal” amongst us run the economy and government…That said, it is worth noting that conspiracy charges are notoriously dubious and flimsy… They are an act of desperation intended to cast a wide net and scare people. Such charges are not a matter of engaging in a particular activity, but rather a matter of possibly encouraging a particular activity.

“Our politics have always included both gardens and riots. We want to see people building beautiful alternatives of liberation, just as much as we want to see people attacking structures of domination. Nothing about this is going to change, and despite recent challenges, our project will continue to push these ideas. We still have no tears for Locke Street and we remain unapologetically supportive of the activities that took place last month.”

Keep up with updates about the repression in Hamilton through north-shore.info.

Over the last year, Belarus’ ministry of information has been playing cat to any mouse in the country that clicks on the anarchist website Pramen, and Pramen have recently had their sites and mirrors blocked once again. Rebels in Belarus are still accessing the site’s new address via Tor, but they need help to keep the information up online. You can PayPal them funds at pramen@riseup.net, or e-mail them there to find out how to get them Bitcoin, which is perhaps even better in Belarus.

The next J20 trial begins on April 17. Friday and Monday, lawyers were able to argue the judge out of allowing the government’s supposed “expert” Black Bloc witness from testifying under an alias, and the defense also won further limits on what counts as an expert and the admissibility of so-called “co-conspirator” statements. What happens in this next trial may have an important impact on the rest of the fifty-plus defendants going to trial afterwards, so please give the April 17 defendants all the support you can. You can call the prosecutor’s boss and tell her to drop the charges at (202) 252–7566, you can print and wheatpaste our new poster about the J20 case from Crimethinc.com, which would be especially helpful if you are in Washington D.C., you can come pack the courthouse during the trial, you can e-mail info at dclegalposse dot org to volunteer to take court notes, and you can keep up with DefendJ20 on Instagram and Twitter for updates throughout the trial.

And just in case you think that this kind of state repression is solely a result of the Trump presidency, The Daily Beast recently released an exclusive report about a 2016 Obama-era Department of Homeland Security memo that instructs police to look out for anarchist demonstrators by markers like “wearing dark clothing or bandanas, scouting a marching route in advance, and carpooling to a demonstration—actions that could apply to a wide swath of protesters.” Remember, it’s not just Trump y’all, it’s the state.

Speaking of the criminalization of protests as so-called “riots”, an important trial is scheduled for May 7, stemming from the uprising in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2016 after police murdered Keith Lamont Scott.

Jamie: The National Guard and the police held a line there, and began to shoot the tear gas and the rubber bullets. And on that first deployment was when the police’s- what we believe was a rubber bullet hit a man- a Black man named Justin Carr in the head. And, this was a protester who had come out with the spirit of their family members that had always told them about being parts of the civil rights movement and came to kind of continue that family legacy that night and was killed on the spot with a baby on the way. And we were there, we saw it- I think all three of us were there- but Glo was someone who was particularly impacted because when Justin Carr was shot, Glo happened to be right next to him. 

Glo: Yeah, and I think it’s really important to paint the image around whenever a window did break at the arena, officers and personnel were there, quickly, you know, to apprehend people who they’re, you know, naming as criminals, but when Justin Carr fell in front of us, not one of them moved to participate in preserving his life. Because the state wants to- wants to protect capital and wants to protect property, and of course isn’t there to protect Black bodies, especially Black bodies that are showing up in defense of and in search of justice for, and, like, just enraged about the death of a Black- another Black body, right? And so, when we come into this space and we see these same officers A) take the life of Justin Carr and then B) treat windows with more humanity, let’s be real about it. It was a really harsh juxtaposition to move about with tear gas stinging your eyes, tears running down your face, blood on your clothes and your face depending on where you were

Rebel Girl: That was a clip from The Final Straw podcast with participants in the Charlotte Uprising, including Glo Merriweather, a black, trans organizer whose trial is scheduled for May 7. Glo maintains, as other witnesses do, that the police are the ones who killed Justin Carr during the uprising, and that it was not another young black protester named Rayquan Borum, who the police cynically and opportunistically arrested and charged with Carr’s death. Glo also maintains that it’s because of their outspokenness about both the police’s murder of Keith Lamont Scott and Justin Carr that they were arrested and charged with inciting a riot and assault on a government official. We’ll be back with updates as they develop in Glo’s case.

NEXT WEEK’S NEWS

  We’ll close out our episode with political prisoner birthdays and next week’s news.    April 13 is the birthday of Janet Holloway Africa. Janet is one of the MOVE 9: imprisoned black eco-revolutionaries each serving 100 years after being framed for the murder of a Philly cop in 1979.   And April 16 is the birthday of Walter Bond, an imprisoned Animal Liberation Front operative who was arrested in 2010 for arsons of a Sheepskin Factory in Denver and a Leather Factory in Salt Lake City.

Writing to Janet Africa and Walter Bond will only take you a few minutes, but it could be the highlight of their week. We have their mailing addresses in this episode’s shownotes at Crimethinc.com/podcast, as well as a guide to writing prisoners from New York City Anarchist Black Cross.   And now, next week’s news, our list of events that you can plug into in real life.   Mutual Aid Disaster Relief continue their speaking tour on Communities in Resistance to Disaster Capitalism and Community Organizing as Disaster Preparedness.   This week, you can find their tour in… Lansing, Michigan at the First Presbyterian Church on West Ottawa Street at 6:30 PM April 11; in Kalamazoo at The Boiling Point on Oak Street at 6 PM April 13 and 12 PM April 14; in Bloomington, Indiana at Girls Inc., 6 PM April 15 and 3 PM April 16; and at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee at 6 PM on April 17 and 18.

Go to MutualAidDisasterRelief.org to find details on all the tour dates from now through May.

April 20 is the anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine, and another round of high school and middle school walkouts is called for that day. If any students out there want printable literature that expands the debate about gun control to discuss the real roots of gun violence in our culture, check out the text, “We Don’t Need Gun Control, We Need to Take Control,” available at Crimethinc.com.

Today until April 21 is the 25th anniversary of the 1993 Lucasville prison uprising, when prisoners came together across racial lines to rebel against their prison’s oppressive conditions. Nine inmates and one guard died during the rebellion. For the 25th anniversary, the Free Ohio Movement and the Central Ohio Incarcerated Workers Organizing Commmittee are calling for events in solidarity with the uprisings’ survivors, some of whom are facing the death penalty for their alleged participation. You can organize a letter writing night, drop a banner, or host a screening of The Shadow of Lucasville. On April 21, protesters will hold a 3PM noise demo outside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Check out episode 50 of The Ex-Worker for an interview that goes in-depth about the Lucasville prison uprising and how it informs contemporary prison rebellion and organizing.

There’s also a call from the Atlanta IWW and GDC to oppose the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement in Newnan, Georgia on April 21. Follow [READ: AFA in ATL][afainatl on Twitter](https://twitter.com/afainatl) for updates, but watch out because there are a lot of fake, far-right controlled antifa accounts out there. We recommend those connected with the TORCH network.

From April 26–29, the Southeast Trans and/or Women Action Camp will take place in the smoky mountains of western North Carolina. The action camp is open to all trans and/or woman identified folks and will offer a bunch of different workshops and skillshares. You can find out more by e-mailing setwac@protonmail.com.      May Day is less than a month away, so it’s high time to get cracking on your plans for anarchist celebration, remembrance, and resistance! You can send announcements for any cool activities to podcast [AT] crimethinc [DOT] com. For some ideas, check out the CrimethInc text, “The May Days: Snapshots from the History of May Day” or listen to our very first episode of The Ex-Worker, which is all about the history of the Haymarket martyrs.    For the rest of May and going into June, there will be a solid month of anarchy in Quebec. It starts with the Montreal anarchist film festival May 17–20, then there’s the Montreal anarchist theatre festival May 22–23, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair May 26–27, the North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference is June 1–3 also in Montreal, and the grand finale will be the mobilization against the G7 summit, which will feature fierce anti-capitalist protests in Quebec City on June 8 and 9.   There’s a bunch of other great stuff coming up this summer too.

June 8–11 is the third annual Fight Toxic Prisons convergence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The convergence explores the intersections of anti-prison and environmental struggles, and is committed to creating a space in which those most directly impacted are centered. Speakers at past convergences have included Ramona Africa, the Earth First! Prisoner Support Project, Daniel McGowan, Mark Cook, Anarchist Black Cross chapters, and plenty of other great presenters who do amazing prison abolition work. Find out more and register at FightToxicPrisons.org.

The last day of the Fight Toxic Prisons convergence is June 11, the international day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners. It’s a day for letter-writing, solidarity actions, fundraising, and raising awareness about our comrades on the inside—it’s a day to remember that imprisoned comrades are still a part of our movement, and we should do what we can, across the walls that separate us, to include them in our struggle. This year’s call for solidarity, which you can find at June11.org, includes updates on long-term anarchist prisoners around the world, from Tamara Sol and Juan Flores in Chile to Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis in Greece to Marius Mason in the United States. For a chronology of June 11 from 2004 up through last year, check out the CrimethInc text “June 11: The History of a Day of Anarchist Prisoner Solidarity.”

OUTRO

  Rebel Girl: And that’s it for this episode of The Hotwire. As always thanks to Underground Reverie for the music. You can get in touch with us by e-mailing podcast[AT]CrimethInc[DOT]com. Don’t forget to check out all the links, mailing addresses, and useful shownotes we customized for this episode at CrimethInc.com.   Stay informed. Stay rebel. Plug into The Hotwire.