Riot Dogg: October 31, 2018: Interviews with the Outlive Them network of anti-fascist Jews and an anarchist who works at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; solidarity with our comrades in and the oppressed of Brazil after Bolsonaro’s electoral victory; Mexican police repress the migrant caravan from Honduras at the border, killing one; the MAGAbomber; the midterm elections, and more on this episode of…

Rebel Girl: The Hotwire, a weekly anarchist news show brought to you by The Ex-Worker.

Riot Dogg: With me, the Riot Dogg.

Rebel Girl: And with me, the Rebel Girl. Happy Halloween, Dogg.

Riot Dogg: Yeah, thanks, but this is not going to be a happy episode. I think this Hotwire has more horrifying news than any other one we’ve worked on.

Rebel Girl: Seriously. So, no cheesy jokes this time around, but listeners are encouraged to send us pictures of any good Gritty costumes. E-mail us at podcast AT crimethinc DOT com, where you can also find a full transcript of this episode with shownotes and useful links. 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, the news…

HEADLINES

Riot Dogg: A new report from the World Wildlife Fund found that since 1970, there has been a 60% of the world’s wildlife has been wiped out. Human overfishing, deforestation and pesticide use has been at the heart of many of the species’ declines.

Rebel Girl: Mexican police killed a Honduran migrant in the caravan at the Mexico-Guatemala border on Monday. The police shot Henry Diaz in the head with a rubber bullet, while, for the second time in a week, thousands of migrants demonstrated in front of the border fence, demanding that police grant them freedom of movement and throwing back the teargas police used to try and make the caravan disperse. Make no mistake about it, it may have been Mexican police killing a Honduran national on the border with Guatemala, but this death is the fault of US border policy, whose violence trickles down through the economies and militaries of Central America.

The Mexican government has tried to appease the US by offering the migrants that crossed the southern border last week promises of asylum, jobs, temporary identification papers, and education. Some have applied for status in Mexico, but up to 4,000 more continue to press on towards the US, seeing this bureaucratic maneuver as the fruitless trap that it is. In the words of one Honduran mother, “We prefer to die on the American border than die in Honduras from hunger.”

Riot Dogg: Tragically, that is not as far from possible as it should be. As if the border wasn’t deadly enough for migrants, on Monday the pentagon announced that it was sending up to 7,000 troops to the border—the same amount of U.S. soldiers involved in the battling against the Islamic State. There have been informal calls circulating on the internet for a march to the border in solidarity with the migrants, and we’d like to remind listeners of the Border Encuentro in Nogales Arizona and Mexico in just two weeks, November 16.

Rebel Girl: Last Monday, Trump proudly described himself as a nationalist, and the following day he doubled down on the label after being criticized for dogwhistling explicit white nationalists with it. We at the Hotwire are obviously not surprised, but the statement was followed with a week of high-profile racist, far-right, and anti-Semitic attacks.

In Louisville, Kentucky on Thursday, a white racist attempted to enter a black church to commit mass murder, but the doors were locked, so he went to a nearby Kroger grocery store and killed two elderly Black people.

On Friday, a far-right wingnut was arrested for mailing bombs to high-profile critics of the Trump regime, including Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, George Soros, CNN, and Robert DeNiro. In all, the MAGABomber, known for his van decorated with pro-Trump stickers, sent 14 mailbombs. This story blew the racist attack in Louisville out of the headlines—although in Louisville, two people died, whereas no one was injured by these bombs.   Riot Dogg: And if someone had been, well, most of the MAGABombers’ targets hire workers to open their mail for them. While the increase in right-wing terrorist attacks is ominous, & we have to mobilize against them, let’s take the lives of the poor & marginalized as seriously as we take those of wealthy, well-known politicians & journalists. If all the #MAGABomber attacks had hit their targets, they would still have killed fewer people than US Border Patrol, or Trump’s foreign policy decisions, or the police departments of most major cities—in just the past few days. While the far-right target state actors as well as autonomous activists and whole communities, let’s not fall for the fallacy that our enemy’s enemy is our friend—the state is always the cause of the most harm overall.  

PITTSBURGH

  Rebel Girl: Finishing up this horrible week of escalating right-wing violence, on Saturday, Shabbat, a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 people while expressing his hatred of Jews, shouting “I just want to kill Jews” during his subsequent shootout with police. This is the deadliest attack on Jews practicing their faith in American history. In a clear illustration of the privileges that even white mass murderers enjoy, Robert Bowers, the white 46-year-old killer, was taken into custody ALIVE despite shooting SEVERAL POLICE OFFICERS.   Riot Dogg: Yeah, he definitely would have been dead if he were black or brown. I wonder if the cops also bought him Burger King like they did for Dylann Roof?   Rebel Girl: Bowers was found to be very active on Gab, a social media platform started in 2016 that is a haven for the far right, as it tolerates bigoted views and users who have been banned from Twitter and Facebook. Just hours before the massacre, Bowers ranted on Gab about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS, which started in the 1880s to help migrant Jews escape persecution. As times changed, the organization reflected on their own history of persecution and evolved to help refugees and migrants in the same kinds of situations, but from other cultures—including Central Americans fleeing military dictatorships and Muslim refugees from the war torn Middle East. This extension of solidarity across faith and culture is what the killer found most objectionable. His last Gab post before the attack reads, “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”   Since Saturday, Gab has come under heavy scrutiny, leading to the loss of their webhost, GoDaddy, and their two main donation processors, PayPal and Stripe. As we go to press, Gab’s service is completely offline, and all you currently find on Gab.com is a whiny rant of stale alt-right talking points about free speech.   Riot Dogg: I think New York City Antifa said it best when they tweeted Sunday that, “None of these tech companies deserve any kudos. Much like after the killing of Heather Heyer at Unite the Right, which saw them dump high-profile fascist sites because of PR, it takes another unspeakable tragedy at the hands of fascists for them to do the bare minimum.”   Meanwhile, anti-fascists have been leading the charge to deplatform sites like Gab and push white nationalists off Twitter and Facebook.   Also, through online anti-fascist intelligence, it’s been revealed that Robert Bowers, the killer in Pittsburgh, is chat buddies with Jack Corbin, the alias of the notorious self-described “antifa hunter” who has been responsible for doxxing and harassing anti-fascists and anti-racists across the US, aiding both police and right-wing paramilitaries in their targeting of anti-fascists. Unicorn Riot has published a log of old Discord chats between Bowers and Corbin, in which they discuss targeting specific anti-fascists.   Rebel Girl: The importance of getting fascists offline cannot be underestimated, but we also don’t want to lose focus of the human-level, real world costs of these kinds of acts, so we reached out to an anarchist in Pittsburgh who works at the Tree of Life synagogue to hear about what it’s been like on the ground…   Who are we speaking with and what has the response from the Tree of Life community been like since Saturday?   AMI: My name is Ami, and I am a Jewish anarchist in Pittsburgh. I actually work at the synagogue where the shooting happened   So I think on Saturday, most people found out about the news, like people didn’t go to work, people stopped working. Then there was a vigil that happened that a bunch of high schoolers put on. There were maybe 3000 people at this vigil, which is really significant in Pittsburgh which is only a city of 300,000. We did our ceremony to end Shabbat in the streets, in the little Jewish neighborhood, and that felt significant in the sense that the Jews who were killed were killed while they were worshipping and while they were praying, and, even to take it out of a religious context, while they were being Jewish in public or in their own public spaces. So for a community of Jewish people to come together and say, “We are not going to be scared to be Jewish in the streets, in our neighborhood,” feels significant and feels like an attitude of we’re not going to let anti-Semitism and the fascism that’s associated with it change us and make us scared and make us scared to practice these rituals that are so life giving and so important to us and our community.

On Sunday, there was another vigil that was put on by If Not Now, which is a national organization that also has local chapters of Jewish Americans who are trying to end the American Jewish support for the occupation and they’ve been very active in also speaking out against anti-Semitism that’s been happening since Trump was elected.

Their vigil also happened in the Jewish neighborhood and it was very much emphasizing the need for intersectionality at this moment and emphasizing that anti-Semitism and the acts that happened are one prong of white supremacy, but that ultimately unless we are attacking white supremacy itself, we won’t really get anywhere.

Rebel Girl: Has this attack brought out dialogue between the Jewish community in Pittsburgh and others who face the threat of fascism?   AMI: So I guess I’m not sure of the exact dialogue because I think one of the differences of what’s happening here and maybe the people who are involved in actions and processes of mourning in Charlottesville or something is like the Jewish community itself is already super aware of fascism in perhaps a way that’s really different. I see a lot of my friends who grew up in white Christian households talking like, “Oh whoa, did you see that white nationalist,” or “Did you see the Proud Boys are around,” or whatever sort of situation and you would open the front page - or, like, on the front page of the Jewish newspaper in this city months ago was reports about the white nationalists in Pittsburgh. So I’m really just trying to emphasis to people that the Jewish community is super aware of what white nationalism means and what fascism means in all of these sorts of things and maybe tactically are not doing the same things as anarchists but it’s not like a lack of understanding, if that makes any sense.   One of the commonalities between many of the fascist movements of the 20th century, was anti-Semitism. So at the root of fascism is anti-Semitism, and you can’t discuss fighting fascism without talking about anti-Semitism or without talking about how we actually are standing with our Jewish comrades.

I think one of the main things about that, is the killer targeted the Synagogue specifically because they were hosting a refugee Shabbat and he was blaming the Jewish community for letting refugees into this country and for kind of bringing them in to America. From my understanding of historic anti-Semitism, one of the important parts is the role of Jews, they are often blamed for the advancement of other people and seen as this insidious group of people who are controlling the world and controlling what’s happening. So like, all these Jewish conspiracies, right? You  can see this with George Soros, where everyone was like, “George Soros is funding the leftists,” but really what they were trying to say was the Jews are controlling these anti-Trump leftists. That’s the same rhetoric that you can see happening in the 1850s in Europe or when the Russian revolution was happening, that same sort of rhetoric was the Jews are controlling this, the Jews are making this happen.   Rebel Girl: Is there anything else you’d like to tell our listeners?   AMI: One other thing too is, I’m speaking to you pretty normally now but this is a deeply mourningful time and the city of Pittsburgh is grieving, just for people to remember that, and remember that there is a political element to this and there’s also deep pain and sorrow that’s happening and just keep us in your thoughts and actions and care work and I’m seeing our process of grieving beginning, and all of that feels like the outpouring of the anarchist tendencies that already exist within Jewish culture and beliefs. It feels beautiful to watch that happen and obviously depressing that it’s in this context, so that’s kinda one thing that I’m feeling about it.   Riot Dogg: As we go to press, we’re heartened to report that a block away from the Tree of Life synagogue, during the president’s visit to exploit the massacre for PR purposes, Trump’s motorcade was forced to turn around in the face of thousands of unpermitted demonstrators.

Last episode we announced the International Days of Action against fascism and anti-Semitism, coming up on November 8–11, the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany. The call came out before Saturday’s attack, and we caught up with some members of the Outlive Them network, who made the call, to hear more about the week of action and how it has been informed by Saturday’s massacre.   Riot Dogg: Hi. Thanks so much for speaking with us.   Sherona: Hey my name is Sherona, I am a queer Jewish communist from North America, part of the Outlive Them network. 

Moishe:: We have a variety of tendancies in the Outlive Them network, but we are all oriented against the imperial state in the United States. That’s in the points of unity. Is that fair to say Sherona?

Sherona: Yeah for sure. 

Moishe:: And I am Moishe:, I am a Jewish anarchist communist also a queer from New York City, and I am part of outlive them New York and the Muslim Jewish Antifascist Front, MUJEWAntifa

Riot Dogg: And can you tell us more about the International Days of Action against fascism and anti-Semitism?

Sherona: Yeah sure. I think that last year since Charlottesville 1, a lot of people have been committing themselves, more and more to fighting fascism directly in the streets, in their lives.. committing more of their lives to it at least in the community that I am in here. A lot more Jews are realizing they have a lot of skin in the game that they didn’t before—more poor Jews, more queer Jews, more Jews of color getting activated around that part of their identity in an antifascist way and I think that this call came out of wanting to call in Jews to antifascist resistance and also call in all the other communities that we stand with to recognize that anti-Semitism is a growing threat globally and that our Jewish Diaspora stands with one another. 

Moishe:: I would just like to add that many of us had been working together previously since before Charlottesville in 2017 we had formed strong ties with Muslim antifascists, and antifascists of color organizing in the North East and the South East and we are in touch with people in other countries and on the west coast and we felt the need to formulate an alternative framework for people wanting to take action outside of the page of this party system in this election season. We knew about this international day against fascism and anti-Semitism that had taken place in Europe in 2013 and so we got in touch with some comrades internationally and figured it would be a good time to call something for the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht which also would be the first wave of action in our community after the US election. 

Sherona: In New York they got a full action packed weekend. Thursday some cultural events, Friday there is a teach-in, Saturday there is a march from the location of the proud boys attach to the Warsaw ghetto memorial. North Carolina is having a Yizkor service which is a memorial for the dead for the martyrs, from those killed in the holocaust, from the recent white supremacists and antisemitic attacks in the US. What about you, Moishe:? What’s on your Radar?

Moishe:: I will just add that there are street actions planned in Germany in Eastern Europe and western Europe and in Latin America as well. And I believe antifascist action Jerusalem is also doing something. 

Riot Dogg: And, how has Saturday’s attack changed or not changed what’s going on during the Days of Action?

Moishe:: Anti-Semitism, white supremacy, Christian nationalism and fascism itself as an ideology have all been really tight with each other and really close for a long time and we as Jews have not been able to ignore that, and that is not something we can to fail to see but it is something that was on the margins of a lot of people conscious who do not experience it directly until Saturday. Since Saturday, I mean I think part of the impetus was for calling this initially was to try to go on the offensive and not just be on the defensive all the time but since Saturday I think a lot of sentiment that we don’t just want to respond with fear or to the terror they want to incite in our communities and that people are getting told to go vote and to deal with it that way. And people are told to bring cops into their schules and more cops onto their streets and part of the role of antifascists needs to be to push a different politics, a different narrative, and a different analysis of what is going on in which both the state and the fash who aren’t in the state are working hand in d hand and we see that with our own eyes when proud boys show up and pound it out with police and really coordinate sometimes with police to keep us less safe just like they have been making a lot of people of color less safe for hundreds of years. 

Sherona: I think to emphasize it personally for myself it feels simultaneously much more meaningful and also all I have heard from Jewish peers, coworkers, friends and neighbors is that no on is surprised, and everybody thought it was just a matter of when this was going to happen which is a horrifying thing to hear. and at an organizing meeting for this week of action that I was at just a couple days ago, by word of mouth there was almost 40 people in the room and we kicked off the meeting by talking about this great dissatisfaction that Jews, left progressive Jews, or mostly left Jews are feeling by standing in crowds of thousands and being told to go vote, and being told that we should pray and mourn and sing together and then go vote and then go vote whereas people are really angry and you have a lot of anti-capitalist Jews that don’t know what to do and don’t know what organizations to join and don’t know how to make a positive change in the world because they feel isolated and alienated and this is a horrifying attack that is galvanizing a lot of people.

Riot Dogg: Thanks so much for speaking with us. Is there anything else you’re like to add?

Moishe:: Just real quick I might add that the structure of this is wide open and based on a network of autonomous collectives in different cities, different countries, territories around the world so if folks want to self organize in the place that they are we can you know try to support each other through that network and try to support with resources and whatever else they and if they want to get in touch with us through email. 

Sherona: Yeah the website is outlivethem.wordpress.com the hashtags are #outlivethem #antifascistfall #cancelfascism and it is November 8–11 and you can shoot an email to wewilloutlivethem@protonmail.com.  

ELECTIONS

  Rebel Girl: In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, known for his misogyny, homophobia, and statements in favor of dictatorship and mass killings, has won the election. Like Trump before him, Bolsonaro threatened to not accept election results that did not deliver him to power, but hey, who needs a military coup when you can use voting to accomplish the exact same thing?   Already, in the two days leading up to the runoff election, military police raided more than 20 universities throughout Brazil, confiscating material on the history of fascism, interrupting classes for their “ideological content,” and removing anti-fascist banners and posters, claiming that it was “electoral propaganda.”   In one interview we read with a Brazilian anarchist, he states that in the last few weeks, “there are hundreds of reported cases of LGBTQ [people], women, black people and merely people with the #elenão [not him] hashtag on their bodies being attacked by Bolsonaro supporters.”   In one of the most high-profile cases, three Bolsonaro supporters “carved a swastika in the stomach of a woman wearing the #elenão slogan,” and the police downplayed the attack, claiming it was just a Buddhist symbol.   Riot Dogg: All this goes to show how majority rule and dictatorship are interrelated—elections are just a means of legitimizing governments so that people will accept their authority, no matter how tyrannical and oppressive they are. As anarchists, we don’t believe that any election could validate police violence, homophobia, racism, or misogyny, nor prisons, borders, or the destruction of the natural world on which everyone’s survival depends. No vote gives anyone the right to dominate others.   The important question for us is not how to improve democracy. The important question is how to defend each other from the violence of the state; how to find ways to meet our needs that don’t depend on unanimity or coercion; how to collaborate and coexist rather than compete for power.   You could say that the opposite of fascism is freedom, or that it is solidarity, or direct action, or resistance. But it doesn’t make sense to say that it is democracy. Democracy, yet again, has been the mechanism that brought fascists to power.   Rebel Girl: Hey Dogg, yknow, like any anarchist, I don’t want to be ruled by a right-wing strongman OR a left-wing Workers Party—hell, I’ll go even further and say that all the supposedly left-wing parties bear at least some culpability for strengthening the apparatus of the state so this Bolsonaro character could take it over—but it’s still crazy that that many million people voted for this guy… like, that doesn’t give him legitimacy in my eyes, but what happened there? I remember just a few years ago the Ex-Worker was covering Brazil because revolt against austerity was spreading all over. One of the teachers’ unions there even passed a resolution declaring unconditional support for the black bloc. So how did this douchebag get so popular?    Riot Dogg: So, remember the anarchist from Brazil that we interviewed in Hotwire #40? Here’s what he had to say…   Brazillian Anarchist: We failed as autonomous and grassroots movements to give people an alternative and we saw a wave of people being disappointed with government and especially disappointed with the 13 years the Workers Party have been in power and so the media and the elites were attacking the Workers Party, the PT, as much as they can and corruption scandals have been touching the right wing and the left wing parties the same way but the media was focusing a lot on the Workers party as if the corruption is a left-wing thing and not something intrinsic to the system and to the state, to the government, and to capitalism. So what we saw was people trying to be outsiders and anti-system. And they bought the discourse and the agenda of the far-right.   Rebel Girl: Ok, I can definitely see how the discourse of corruption fed back into the state—corruption suggests that there is some ideal way that government is supposed to work, whereas anarchists argue that one way or another, the state exists to concentrate wealth into fewer and fewer hands, so bribes and pay-to-play isn’t a corruption of the system, but rather, a natural consequence.   Riot Dogg: Totally. But there was another part of that clip that was more, like, challenging in a way.   Rebel Girl: Challenging?   Riot Dogg: I dunno how to describe it exactly—the part where he says that autonomous movements failed to propose an alternative to the system. I’m just not used to thinking of us having that much responsibility.   It made me think, like, with the midterm elections coming up in the United States, the anarchist response, or, at least the CrimethInc response to voting for the last decade or so has been to emphasize the promise of direct action, but maybe we’ve been downplaying an equally important, and in a way even bigger task: articulating anti-authoritarian visions about how else we could live.   At the moment, it seems like the most popular argument anarchists are relying on is about how the democrats don’t take the task of fighting fascism seriously—which, yeah, they don’t, but we can’t lose sight of what we’re fighting FOR, lest we get absorbed, through anti-fascism, into some kind of generic leftism that either tolerates authoritarian proposals like Marxist-Leninist ones, or, on the other hand, some vague notion that we’re just willing to use militant tactics to get back to pre-Trump neo-liberal capitalism. We should be putting out proposals, ideas, practical examples of the kind of world we want.   Rebel Girl: So, you want, like, an anarchist platform? Maybe a campaign? Anarchy for president! Get with the program!   Riot Dogg: No, I don’t mean it like that. The best approximation that comes to mind is that old slogan from the anti-globalization movement—a world in which many worlds fit, or in this case, a radical imagination in which many different anti-authoritarian visions fit. Not unity, but a plurality of decentralized, mutually informed dreams. Anarchy.   Rebel Girl: Ok, but let’s not leave militancy out of it.   Riot Dogg: What do you mean?   Rebel Girl: It kind of sounded like you were downplaying how anarchists have been on the frontlines of anti-fascism, while liberals have basically sat on the sidelines, if not actively swallowing, hook line and sinker, the far-right propaganda that anti-fascists are against the liberal hallmark of free speech. Don’t forget the democratic mayor of Berkeley who wanted to classify Antifa as a gang.   Circling back to Brazil, if there’s anything we have to offer our comrades there at this moment, it’s gonna be lessons from the last two years of facing the rising fascism here. We’ve already been contacted by anarchists there asking for interviews on how we’ve been faring under Trump.   A humble step in this direction that we wanted to put out to you, dear listeners, is that Sub.Media just dropped their Trouble episode about the J20 actions at Trump’s inauguration and the ensuing legal battle after over 200 demonstrators in the anti-capitalist, anti-fascist bloc were arrested that day. If anyone out there can help translate the subtitles to Brazilian Portuguese, we know that comrades there would appreciate it. The J20 demonstrations set the tone for North American anti-fascist resistance over the last two years—from the airport blockades and the black bloc that stopped Milo Yiannopolous at Berkeley to the costly victory against the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, not to mention all the smaller battles anti-fascists have waged. The J20 legal battle showed the other side of this coin—about how important solidarity and caring for each other is through the dark times we’re living in.   But, as tough as things are here, let’s not forget that because of all the ways that Latin America is on the receiving end of colonialist violence, the wave of nationalism that has already crested in the United States and Europe will involve considerably more brutal violence there. Our comrades in Brazil have already experienced a tremendous amount of state repression and capitalist violence—now they’ll face far worse. We ask that you to think about how you can act in solidarity with those who are going to be targeted in the attacks that Bolsonaro has promised to carry out. Our hearts go out to our comrades there.

RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Riot Dogg: And now, since we ran our mouths so much about fascism, anti-fascism, elections, and the left, we have just a few minutes for a quick resistance roundup of the week.

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief have been participating in indigenous-led hurricane relief efforts in Lumberton, North Carolina. The Lumbee Indians have a proud and rich history of fighting off the Klan and taking care of each other, and Lumberton is smack in the middle of the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s path. Mutual Aid Disaster Relief are still looking for accomplices in their autonomous relief work there, as well as supplies.

Rebel Girl: Water protectors in Duluth, Minnesota shut down a Wells Fargo in solidarity with the L’eau Est La Vie’s call to pressure financiers of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.

The night before the action, several affinity groups used banners and chanting to disrupt a Duluth City Council meeting called to approve the purchase of riot gear for the town’s police. A coalition of groups in Duluth, including Occupy Duluth General Assembly, Anti-Colonial Land Defense, and Twin Ports Anonymous are calling for a weekly People’s General Assembly, every Tuesday at 6 pm at the People’s Power Plaza to say no to fascism & white supremacy.

Riot Dogg: And the Hellbender Autonomous Zone tree sit blocking construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline near Ellison, Virginia just celebrated its 50th day up. For the expansion of the Hellbender Autonomous Zone, down with pipelines!

Rebel Girl: Over the weekend, more than 6,000 people converged on the Hambacher Forest to take part in the biggest act of civil disobedience in German history against coal mining, blocking the railways that would have been used for transporting coal for over 24 hours. A smaller group of 40 people also occupied one of the digger machines, preventing excavation.

Riot Dogg: In Athens, Greece, the anarchist group Rubicon broke the front of the Canadian Embassy for Canada’s support of the mining corporation Eldorado Gold, responsible for mass destruction of the natural habitat in the Chalkidiki region of northern Greece.

Rebel Girl: Last week, a few hundred migrants who have been stuck in Bosnia got fed up with waiting and began protesting and attempting to push their way into Croatia. Police responded with tear gas, while some of the migrants hurled stones and tree branches at the police. The protests are ongoing.

Riot Dogg: In Bristol, England’s Easton neighborhood, a crowd of over 100 people blocked a UK Border Agency van from leaving the area with a man they arrested for deportation. Residents chanted, “Cops go home,” and even used cars to block the street. After a few hours, police eventually did clear the area and leave with the detainee in custody.

Rebel Girl: In North Carolina, anarchists and anti-fascists greeted fascist Patriot Front members as they were about to do a banner drop. The tip came from an anti-fascist who had infiltrated the Patriot Front group, first online, then in person. The self-described crew of “valiant faggots and bitches” beat the fascists up and sent them on their way back to their van, of which they found the windows broken out and “NAZI SCUM” scrawled across it in paint.

Riot Dogg: In smalltown Mosinee, Wisconsin, anarchists got in the middle of a Trump rally with a banner that read, “Abolish Trump’s White Supremacist AmeriKKKa.”

Rebel Girl: In Santiago, Chile, around 150 anarchists and anti-fascists disrupted a far-right, anti-trans, anti-abortion march of over 3,000 evangelical Christians.

Riot Dogg: In Buenos Aires, Argentina, protesters built burning barricades, broke the windows of police water vans, and used sticks and stones to attack police who, in turn, used teargas and rubber bullets outside a congressional budget hearing that aimed to cut education and healthcare in line with International Monetary Fund loan requirements. The budget is so unpopular that representatives almost came to blows with each other inside the hearing. The G20 meetings are coming to Buenos Aires on November 30, and it’s looking like they will be a flashpoint for anyone in Latin America wanting to demonstrate anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian resistance.

REPRESSION ROUNDUP

Riot Dogg: In this week’s repression roundup…

Rebel Girl: A quick word regarding an update on long-term anarchist prisoner Eric King. About six weeks ago, Eric was transferred to the Secure Housing Unit (SHU) at U.S.P. Leavenworth in Kansas. Eric has yet to receive any kind of write-up or official charge for whatever incident the state is using as reason to isolate him. The SHU is no easy place for anyone, coupled with the increased distance from his family who could visit him at FCI Florence in Colorado, the isolation weighs heavy on our friend. Eric also has some new rules regarding mail. All paper has to be plain white or regular lined notebook paper. Envelopes have to be straight white. Eric is also unable to receive cards.

As you may know Eric has been through a lot of trauma recently and really could use support through mail and always books. He misses his family and really needs the community right now. It is imperative that on the outside we let our friends and comrades who are locked up know that they are in our thoughts and that we strive to destroy the isolation of prison, with or without pen and paper. Eric is so grateful for all the support, letters, and books he has received so far.

Riot Dogg:In Mexico, anarchist prisoner Miguel Peralta is being held responsible for the attempted homicide of a Oaxacan politician, and her brother, and was sentenced to fifty years in prison. Supporters continue to defend his innocence and are calling for his freedom, while lawyers will continue to pursue legal redress.

Rebel Girl: Last week we reported on the request for support from political prisoner, Keith “Malik” Washington, about the abhorrent conditions he’s held in. This week, he has announced a hunger strike, not only against his conditions, but also against police brutality on streets and inside prison walls, against prison slavery, and against patriarchy and imperialism. We have an address where you can write him and show him some love on our site. Riot Dogg: Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, a revolutionary prisoner who is a founding member, and Minister of Defense, of the Prison Chapter of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, is asking for your help. Supporters say that he is being held in his cell 24 hours a day, is being forced to eat his meals with no utensils off a mat on the floor, and is without hygiene products to clean himself. Additionally, Rashid takes medication for his blood pressure and the prison is withholding his medicine. Supporters can call Warden Beth Cabell, any day other than Friday, at  (804) 834–2678. The focus should be on his medical emergency, as Rashid needs to have his blood pressure checked in order for any adjustments to be made to his medications.

Rebel Girl: According to those active in the Bayou Bridge Pipeline struggle, law enforcement are using false warrants to specifically target women. In line with this, St Martin’s Parish arrested a trans woman of color and water protector on bogus charges on last week. She has since been released but you can still donate to the ongoing fight at Gofundme.com/NoBBP.

Riot Dogg: In the Philippines, maniacal tyrant Rodrigo Duterte launched a brutal campaign against drug users after taking office in 2016. Under the auspices of eradicating drugs, the campaign has given a green light to murder suspected drug suspects. An estimated 12,000 people have died because of this campaign, including four Food Not Bombs activists. A fifth Food Not Bombs volunteer named Marco is in prison awaiting trial on drug charges. His supporters vehemently maintain that he had drugs planted on him and that he is being framed. We have a link to a fundraiser in our shownotes, where you can donate to Marco’s legal fund.

Rebel Girl: Friends of Tim Brown Jr are raising legal funds on his behalf for charges he incurred while in jail after being arrested in Charlottesville. While in jail, Tim happened to stumble on James Fields, the neo-Nazi who murdered Heather Heyer. There was allegedly an altercation, and Tim allegedly beat the living daylights out of James Fields.

Riot Dogg: Yo, that is allegedly really cool.

Rebel Girl: What’s not cool is Tim now has new charges resulting from the incident. We have a link to the donation page on our site, and if you can spare a few bucks, please do-it’s the least we could do to help out the fella who gave James Fields a meager taste of what he has coming to him.

Riot Dogg: For those who’ve been following the continuing case of Maya Little, who put her blood on the now toppled confederate statue at the University of North Carolina last spring, on Friday, Maya walked out of her honor court proceedings after it came to light that a former head of the College Republicans, who has made multiple public statements in support of the confederate statue in question, refused to recuse himself from the judges panel. In a damning move, at the commencement of the trial, the conservative judge deleted his entire social media presence to conceal all of his biases. Bravo to Maya Little for defying the rules every step of the way and staying true to what is most honorable to the victims of white supremacy.

NEXT WEEK’S NEWS

Rebel Girl: And now, for prisoner birthdays and next week’s news.

Ed Poindexter celebrates his birthday tomorrow, November 1! Along with the late Mondo we Langa, Ed Poindexter is one half of the Nebraska 2, Black Panthers targeted by CoIntelPro and framed for the murder of an Omaha cop by means of exploding suitcase. Writing to Ed may only take you a few minutes, but getting your letter could be the highlight of his week. We have his address and a guide to writing prisoners in our shownotes.

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 in Seattle, Washington on November 1st and 2nd and in Fort Collins, Colorado on November 6th and 7th.

Rebel Girl: Anarchists in Santiago, Chile are hosting a bookfair on November 1st and 2nd, while anarchists in Amsterdam are having theirs 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.

Lastly, anarchists in Umea, Sweden are hosting their first ever bookfair from November 29 to December 2.

Riot Dogg: There are two important upcoming anti-fascist actions in Toronto…

Toronto Against Fascism is calling for counter protests against Steve Bannon and David Frum on November 2nd at 5pm. Steve Bannon and David Frum will hold a debate, which will essentially be fascism vs capitalist imperialism. We lose either way! Meet up this Friday at 5pm outside Ray Thomson Hall located at 60 Simcoe St. They’re also calling for counter demos against PEGIDA’s anti Muslim anti refugee demonstration on November 10. For that one, meet at noon in Mel Lastman Square.

Rebel Girl: There’s an anti-ICE march in Portland, Oregon on November 6th at 6pm. Meet at City Hall and check out @OccupyICEPDX on twitter for more information.

Riot Dogg: Don’t forget to check out the Outlive Them anti-fascist call to action we mentioned earlier in this episode, or the Border Encuentro in Nogales, Arizona and Mexico. Rebel Girl: There’s a Stand Against Proud Boys action in Philadelphia on November 17th at 11am to counter Proud Boys who are planning to attend a rally called We the People. Meet at Washington Square Park at 6th and Walnut Streets.

OUTRO

Riot Dogg: And that’s it for this Hotwire. As always thanks to Underground Reverie for the music, and thanks to Ami, Sharona, and Moisha 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.