Riot Dogg: November 28, 2018: Our last episode of the season! Featuring an interview with an anarchist in Tijuana supporting the migrant caravan, a report about the Yellow Vest movement in France, autonomous mutual aid in the Wallywood encampment in California after the Camp Fire, and lots of event announcements to keep you busy this winter on this episode of…

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

Riot Dogg: And with me, the Riot Dogg. You can find a full transcript of this episode with shownotes and useful links at Crimethinc.com, where we also have a twenty-nine-and-a-half minute version of this episode for standard radio broadcasts, and no cussing.

Rebel Girl: And now, the news…

HEADLINES

Riot Dogg: On November 16, prison abolitionists rallied outside the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Central Office in Columbus. The action was called for by Lucasville Amnesty, Pittsburgh Anarchist Black Cross, Central Ohio IWOC and the Black Queer & Intersectional Collective to support prison rebel Siddique Abdullah Hasan for speaking in favor of the national prison strike that happened earlier this fall, and to call for the demands of the demands of the hunger strikers at Toledo Correctional to be met.

Rebel Girl: Last week we reported on a tree-sit that was erected in the ancient Mattole forest, in Humboldt County, California. Since then, about a dozen forest defenders stormed Sierra Pacific Industries’ logging activities one more, shutting down logging for the day.

Riot Dogg: In the last two weeks in Australia, multiple railway blockades stopped coal shipments by the Adani corporation. On November 15, one woman erected a tripod over the railways and suspended herself with a banner reading “Galilee Basin Not For Sale.” On November 19, another person got on top of a coal train, forcing it to stay put, and insisted she was waiting for the Adani CEO to join her QUOTE, “for a cuppa.” And another railway shutdown occurred on November 20.

Rebel Girl: Tuesday morning, November 27, pipeline fighters in West Virginia blocked work at a Mountain Valley Pipeline site on Ellison Ridge. Just like we reported last week, a protester once more climbed and locked themself to a boom tractor, about 20 feet in the air, as supporters gathered nearby. A banner hanging at the site reads “ANTIPATRIARCHY, ANTIPIPELINE.”

Riot Dogg: In Amsterdam, the squatting collective De Mobiele Eenheid has cracked open a new building under the slogan, “No evictions for hotels!” The building has been running for a few weeks now as a non-commercial social center with daily activities.

Rebel Girl: In Glasgow, Scotland, a black clad “antifascist unity bloc” joined 2,000 other people for an anti-racism march after it was announced that nine police officers involved in killing Sheku Bayoh, a black man, would not be prosecuted.

Riot Dogg: A self-organized encampment dubbed Wallywood has sprung up in the wake of the Camp Fire disaster in Chico, California. The name is a nod to the Wal-Mart parking lot the encampment has been squatting for weeks. Despite a number of eviction scares over the past two weeks, the camp continues to grow.

There are a number of other shelters being offered, but either because of the desire to stay close to people’s missing loved ones or damaged homes, or because the state-sanctioned shelters bar those with warrants or without papers, well over 100 people have flocked to Wallywood instead.

It’s Going Down reports that, “as the size of the camp grew, so did the infrastructure. People brought hay bales in order to stop the dirt from turning into mud and pallets to help elevate tents from the ground. Massive army styled tents were erected at the center of the encampment and next to the parking lot for easy access to the constant stream of dropped off supplies; each one housing different camp needs, from dry food and pet supplies, to hot food, coffee, and water, clothing and toiletries, and finally a drying area for items that were wet. Walmart has responded to this growth by hiring Brosnan security, a large corporation that provides around the clock security in three different shifts and is constantly seen driving their vehicles up and down the concrete road between Wallywood and the parking lot, and then circling to stop in a vacant part of the field, only to watch the people going about their day to day activities. Brosnan and other forces have also pushed to move the RVs and campers in the parking lot away from the Wallywood encampment, attempting to attack any potential sense of collective solidarity people might have with each other.”

You can support autonomous mutual aid in the wake of the Camp Fire by donating to North Valley Mutual Aid.

And again, if you have donations or just time to lend, the Wallywood encampment is in Chico, California, in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Rebel Girl: Last week had the twin celebrations of colonialism and capitalism—Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

On Thursday Morning in Wisconsin, Anti-Colonial Land Defense erected a tipi to blockade the entrance of the John A. Blatnik bridge in Superior. The blockade was in opposition to the construction of the Line 3 pipeline on indigenous land, and banners were wrapped around it reading, “Thanksgiving = Genocide” and “No Pipelines, No Borders”. A few days earlier, anonymous anti-pipeline rebels in Superior released a communiqué describing how they blocked the movement of oil trains there by “tricking” the sensors on the railroad system. Their communiqué ended with “direct action always gets the goods! Our message to Enbridge & the Public Utilities Commission: ‘EXPECT RESISTANCE: NO PIPELINES ON STOLEN LAND!’”

Riot Dogg: And instead of some hipster millennial friendsgiving thing with Tofurkey and chosen family, the US government decided to keep Thanksgiving old school this year—by trying to take away Indian land. Back in September, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, literally the descendants of the indigenous people that saved the pilgrims from a cold starvation, received a letter from the Secretary of the Interior telling them that they did not meet the government’s bureaucratic standard of “Indian.”

Rebel Girl: Wow, there is so much wrong with that. Someone should send the Secretary of the Interior on a vacation to North Sentinel Island.

Riot Dogg: Man, if only there was a North Sentinelese response every time some colonizer came to impose their worldview.

Rebel Girl: I’d be thankful for that!

Riot Dogg: But colonization is not just about invasion. Once conquered territory is settled, it’s also about exclusion, in-groups and out-groups—in other words: borders. Over the weekend, liberals decried the attacks on migrant families trying to cross into the US from Tijuana by contrasting Border Patrol’s repression with the capital-F capital-V Family Values TM of Thanksgiving. But as anarchists, we know that the nationalist myth of Thanksgiving is inseparable from the nation it gave rise to, its borders, and, inevitably, its border patrol’s repression of those seeking a better life.

Rebel Girl: To back this story up a little, last week we reported that thousands of Central Americans from the migrant caravans had arrived in Tijuana, only to be met with racist and nationalist demonization and violence on the streets. By the weekend that number swelled to 5,000, and on Friday the mayor of Tijuana declared a humanitarian crisis.

Although, we’d say that the crisis isn’t the thousands of migrants in Tijuana, it’s the thousands of troops, border patrol agents, and racist vigilantes along the border keeping them from crossing—not to mention the crises wreaked by US backed militarization and hundreds of years of wealth extraction in the places these migrants are fleeing.

Riot Dogg: Having left home months ago in search of a better life, and facing racist attacks on the streets of Tijuana, on Sunday, about a thousand migrants bravely marched toward the border. During the march, Customs and Border Protection closed, for a few hours, the port of entry between Tijuana and San Diego, which sees as many as 100,000 people crossing it per day.

Undeterred by Mexican police in riot gear, the group eventually faced US border agents, who deployed tear gas, helicopters, and sound cannons against the group, including many a child in DIAPERS. About a hundred migrants were arrested, both on the Mexican side and on the American side.

NPR reported that “following the incident, the Mexican Interior Ministry said it will deport hundreds of migrants who attempted to ‘violently’ cross the border.”

Rebel Girl: To the state, the children choking on teargas, the riot police arresting those seeking a better life—that’s not violence. The department of homeland security is pointing to alleged stone-throwing from migrants as the reason they deployed teargas.

Riot Dogg: Right, stones…against those border patrol agents in storm trooper, ninja turtle, terminator armor.

Rebel Girl: Once again, we see that the category of “violent” doesn’t meaningfully denote any specific behavior, but rather a class—those who act without the government’s permission.

But even if people threw stones, even if they tore down and destroyed the whole damn wall, I couldn’t care less. Whatever it takes to undo the power relations maintaining the border, by any means necessary—because that’s the biggest cause of harm.

Riot Dogg: We were lucky enough to touch base with an anarchist in San Diego and Tijuana about support for the caravan going on down there.

Who are we speaking with? How long have you been involved in support for the caravan? And what does support for the caravan look like down in Tijuana?

Mar: My name is Mar and I have been organizing with Food Not Bombs in San Diego and Tijuana for the last 8 years or so. My involvement with the caravan is strictly through Food Not Bombs in Tijuana through an organization called Caracol - a collective based out of Tijuana that has been feeding indigent people, homeless people, and people who were deported to Tijuana from all over the United States. They have been feeding these people long before this caravan showed up to Tijuana. We have anarchists from all over the country, all over the US, all over Mexico, and really even international anarchists coming to help out. The first signs of the caravan showing up to Tijuana were about two weeks ago. Started straggling in little by little and started getting larger and larger numbers as bigger parts of the caravan were showing up. Along with the recent Haitian population in Tijuana where we received twelve to fifteen thousands Haitians that showed up about two years ago. It’s been pretty swamped, so we were already pretty swamped before this latest immigration into the city.

They are all staying at a place called Benito Juarez, it is a sports complex, a series of baseball and soccer fields. They are all staying in one main stadium. In the biggest stadium that can hold 15,000 spectators, and they are staying on the fields. That is the main group, now there are a lot of other Hondurans spread out throughout the city. And a lot of the outreach from Tijuana can mostly be seen there. Caracol itself only has about 80 people staying there. The majority of the Hondurans are at that sports complex and they are helping each other out as much as they possibly can, they don’t have very much with them, but I see examples of the little bit that they people are able to get from the community and sharing that among those that are more shy about reaching out to the community. So there is definitely mutual aid within the caravan itself. And they are thinking about opening another one that is down a little bit further south into the city, another sports complex because Tijuana is still receiving more ad more people

And the main march that happened on Sunday came from that baseball field. There was no premeditated agreement to rush the border the way they did. I think it was planned as a peaceful march to put pressure on the border patrol and kind of morphed into what happened.

Riot Dogg: Can you say more about the fascist and nationalist presence in Tijuana, and the racism that’s been directed towards the migrant caravans?

Mar: I think honestly that they are taking a page out of the recent phenomena in the USA with Trump supporters and the type of online trolling most of his supporters are well known for now. It just kind of exploded with this recent immigration into Tijuana with the Hondurans and a lot of Mexicans have picked up on that style. It is a really strange phenomena to see jump the border and now being used in the same way. Also, I would like to say that it has been found out that a lot of the people who were leading the resistance to the Hondurans have been found to be people with ties to Nazi organizations… There are some people from San Diego who are known Trump supporters, there are some actual Nationalists from Mexico that we have had problems with for a long time. We actually fought them almost to where we thought they had become not a menace anymore and they had pretty much gone underground and disappeared. Those people are called “defensores de Baja California,” “defenders of Baja California” in English. They took their cues from the people who defended against Flores Magon’s uprising back in the 1900s and their whole schtick came from trying to emulate those people. It died out for a good while but it seems like with this Honduran immigration into the city it just kinda sprung back up a lot stronger.

Well the Mayor in Tijuana is well known for being far right wing. His party is the National Action Party and they came from, they actually were born out of Franco’s Phalange in Spain. The National Action Party tried their hardest to emulate what was going on in Spain at the time, so they are actually born out of fascists. A lot of people in Mexico forget that, so it is no surprise to us when we hear this guy mouthing off like that because his roots are well known to us.

Riot Dogg: Thanks so much for speaking with us. Is there anything else you’d like to plug before we go?

Mar: I could just say that if anybody out there really wants to help out, Tijuana will always have its arms open for people coming to help. Do not be afraid of what’s going on because that’s not the reality of what you see in the media. As a focal point, go to Colectivo Caracol, it is in downtown Tijuana. It is very easy to find, you can look it up online and get an address. It is the easiest thing. Other than that just keep fighting the good fight.

Rebel Girl: Liberals have emphasized that those in the migrant caravan are asylum seekers—but instead of predicating our support on how much they conform to legal immigration, we think it’s important to emphasize how the Democrats backed the 2009 Honduras coup that is driving people from their homes, how the Republicans’ strong borders rhetoric is driving people to desperation, and how the Mexican state has been complicit in all of this—doing the US’ dirty work at the southern border and trying to thin out the caravan with false promises. The legal system that upholds asylum also upholds the border itself—and it all needs to go.

Riot Dogg: And teargas isn’t even the worst thing border agents use “stone throwing” to justify. They use the same excuse to shoot children. On It’s Going Down, anarchists in Tucson, Arizona report that, “On Wednesday, November 21, a jury… found Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz not guilty of involuntary manslaughter for his 2012 shooting of 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodríguez. Though Swartz’s killing of José Antonio is only one among many murders committed by Border Patrol, the particularly egregious nature of the shooting made it the first time in history that a BP agent has faced criminal charges after killing someone. Swartz shot through the border wall from Nogales, Arizona into Nogales, Sonora, hitting the unarmed teenager ten times in the back and killing him instantly.

“In response to the not guilty verdict, over 100 people gathered outside the Federal Courthouse before [taking the streets] and blocking traffic in all directions. After holding the intersection for perhaps an hour, the crowd was urged to form a tight perimeter… [and] With banners blocking police from entering or being able to see what was going on, folks applied a generous amount of wheatpaste to the asphalt before unfurling a massive paper message onto the street: José Antonio Presente! Using paintrollers that had previously been disguised as protest signs, people glued the message firmly to the road.”

Rebel Girl: On Friday in North Carolina, nearly 30 people were arrested for attempting to block ICE agents from removing a dearly loved member of the community, Samuel Oliver-Bruno.

For almost a year, Samuel has been living in sanctuary, in the basement of a church in Durham after entering the US with a birth certificate not of his own in order to make it back in time for his wife’s open heart surgery. With assurances that it would help defer his deportation, Samuel left his sanctuary Friday morning for an appointment with Citizenship and Immigration Services. But once there, ICE agents dishonorably and cold-heartedly besieged Samuel and detained him and arrested his son. The report on It’s Going Down reads, “As I.C.E officers elbowed clergy out of the office, our community ran around the back of the building and surrounded the transportation vehicle. A fraught stand-off ensued. In the shadow of steady chanting, tires were deflated, live streams activated to summon more folks, and hands were held. 27 of us were zip-tied in the scuffle and charged with resisting a public officer and failing to disperse.”

In the end, Samuel was taken away. Let’s remember that when the colonizers offer treaties, all we should offer back are flaming arrows.

Riot Dogg: Surely some of our listeners have seen the photos coming out of France of police clashing with angry protesters in yellow traffic vests. This movement, dubbed, “the yellow vests,” sprung up around a viral Facebook demonstration on November 17 against President Macron’s new so-called “ecological” tax hike on gas. The demonstrations involved blockades of tollbooths, highways, and gas stations, as well as other kinds of demonstrations. Almost 300,000 angry people took to the streets.

This past weekend, another online call resulted in almost 100,000 people demonstrating, including almost 10,000 in Paris, where demonstrators clashed with police. Politically, the movement is, well, hard to pin down, to say the least.

Rebel Girl: And to say the most?

Riot Dogg: Well, let me explain a little more. In Montpellier, yellow vest protesters formed a guard of honor to welcome a feminist and antisexist march this past Saturday. In Yellow Vest protests that spread to Belgium, demonstrators smashed cop cars and attacked police with billiard balls. They even tried to break through a police checkpoint with a truck! Whereas in Cognac on November 17, yellow vest protestors assaulted a black woman who was driving a car, and some of them told her to “go back to [her] country.” The same day, at Bourg en Bresse, an elected representative and his partner were assaulted for being gay. In the Somme department, some yellow vesters called the immigration police when they realized that migrants were hiding inside a large truck stuck in traffic.

Rebel Girl: Wow, that’s pretty bad.

Riot Dogg: Yeah—officially, the movement calls itself “apolitical.” In Paris this weekend, the chants included classic slogans from May ’68 and from the recent anti-labor law demonstrations, with both saw significant anarchist participation, but they also chanted the first verse of the Marseillaise, which is currently associated with traditional republican parties and the far right, not radicals. The movement boasts about being horizontal and leaderless, but that hasn’t stopped all stripes of conservatives from trying to jockey the movement towards their own brand of right-wing politics, from neo-liberal to neo-fascist.

Rebel Girl: It’s so funny, when I was a younger anarchist one of the arguments I constantly had to put up a fight against was that no movement could succeed without some kind of leadership. Now, basically since Occupy and the Arab Spring, it seems that nearly all movements boast about being horizontal so as to legitimize themselves. In a way I guess it’s a step forward for anarchist values… but a step backward because it’s harder to tell where movements are going. Like, this yellow vest thing sure seems like a dead end at best, if not feeding into reactionary consumer politics.

Riot Dogg: Well, certainly the anger of the poor is legitimate. As always, governments and capitalists expect us to bear the brunt of the problems they caused, while a new class of rich industrialists profit off of so-called “clean energy” initiatives. That the movement is taking place under a centrist president who is couching this new tax in the language of environmentalism shows the strange fractures that can open up under the contradictions of modern centrism: above all, the false dichotomy between addressing global warming and addressing the ravages of capitalism. This dichotomy is especially dangerous in that it gives nationalists a narrative with which to capitalize on economic crisis while discrediting environmentalism by associating it with state oppression.

The fundamental problem with the yellow vest movement is that it begins from the wrong premises, attempting to preserve conditions that we should all have been fighting to abolish in the first place. Rather than seeking to protect today’s alienated and miserable consumer way of life, which is itself the result of a century of defeats and betrayals in the labor movement, we should be asking why we are so dependent on cars and gasoline in the first place. If our ways of surviving and traveling had not been constructed in such an isolating, individualized way—if capitalists were not able to exploit us so ruthlessly—we would not have to choose between destroying the environment and giving up the last vestiges of financial stability.

Rebel Girl: In the buildup to the 2018 elections in the US, we heard a lot of arguments that it would be better for centrist politicians to win control of the government. But what happens when centrists come to power and use their authority to stabilize capitalism at the expense of the poor? One consequence is that far-right nationalists gain the opportunity to present themselves as rebels who are trying to protect “ordinary people” from the oppressive machinations of the government. In a time when the state can do precious little to mitigate the suffering that capitalism is causing, it can be more advantageous to be positioned outside the halls of power. Consequently, far-right nationalism may be able to gain more ground under centrist governments than under far-right governments.

In attempting to associate environmentalism, feminism, internationalism, and anti-racism with neoliberalism, centrists make it likely that at least some of the movements that arise against the ruling order will be anti-ecological, misogynistic, nationalistic, and racist. That works out well for centrists, because it enables them to present themselves to the world as the only possible alternative to far-right extremists. This is precisely the strategy that got Macron elected in his campaign against Marine le Pen. In this regard, centrists and nationalists are loyal adversaries who seek to divide up all possible positions between themselves, making it impossible to imagine any real solution to the crises created by capitalism. Let’s defy them both.

Riot Dogg: This stuff in France reminds me of some other news that happened this week. On Monday, General Motors announced that it will lay off 15 percent of its salaried workforce, and stop production at five of its plants in the US and Canada. On the one hand, it shows how flimsy Trump’s promise was of a return to a 1950s style industrialism and booming middle class. However, that shouldn’t be our goal either—we’re not trying to go back in time, but rather to uproot the power relations that got us to this point. Let’s remember that no company will remain loyal to its workers when faced with an opportunity to make a buck, and no politician is really motivated to deliver on his or her promises while their power is secured. Trust no company, trust no government—abolish capitalism now and redistribute the wealth.

REPRESSION ROUNDUP

Rebel Girl: In this week’s repression roundup…

Back in March, a rowdy anti-gentrification demonstration in Hamilton, Ontario left graffiti and shattered windows in its wake. The march coincided with the weekend of the Hamilton Anarchist Bookfair, and, through a series of house raids and arrests, police targeted bookfair organizers and attendees to pin march-related charges on. Eight people in total were eventually charged, and after 8 months, resolution of the case is expected later this week—we recommend checking out Northshore Counter Info for developments in the case. Much love to our comrades up in Hamilton.

Riot Dogg: You know what the HAM in Hamilton stands for right?

Rebel Girl: Well it ain’t for piggies! Riot Dogg: As mentioned in last week’s Hotwire, TransCanada tried to enter the Unist’ot’en Camp on November 20th. The Unistoten Camp is in need of support to stop TransCanada from coming into their indigenous territory. TransCanada is trying to begin work on the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline and is taking advantage of the cold winter months when people are away to try and get on to the land. They’re asking people to come visit, donate, and start solidarity campaigns! Visit unistoten.camp for more information.

Rebel Girl: Water protector, Michael ‘Rattler’ Marcus self surrendered yesterday to the federal prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, to start a three-year sentence on charges stemming from the No DAPL protests at Standing Rock. The judge is requiring Rattler to serve at least 85% of his three year sentence. You can donate to his commissary through his support campaign, at freerattlernodapl.com or send him a letter! We have his address in our shownotes!

Riot Dogg: Supporters of the Virgin Island 3 are imploring folks to help get them released from prison by pressuring the Governor to commute their sentences. The Virgin Island 3 are Abudle Azeez, Hanif Shabazz Bey, and Malik Bey, activists wrongly convicted of murdering eight people at the Rockefeller-owned golf course in St. Croix. All three were anti-colonial activists resisting US rule of the island. Malik, Hanif and Abdul have been imprisoned for 46 years and just applied for commutation of their sentences.

Join with the Philly Anarchist Black Cross to help get them free. Because the Governor’s term is ending, time is truly of the essence and NOW is the time to contact him and express support for their commutation applications. You can remind the Governor that one of their co-defendants received a pardon back in 1994 and THERE’S NO REASON these men have been held for an additional 24 years. Please write a letter in support of their commutation, you can mail, email, or fax one in. We have addresses and numbers on our site, as well as the address for the Virgin Island 3.

Rebel Girl: After a four week trial, the verdicts are in for the first of the Vaughn 17 to go to trial. The New Castle County jury found Dwayne Staats guilty of first-degree felony murder, first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, kidnapping, assault and conspiracy. Staats was found not guilty of intentional murder in the first degree. J. Ayers was found not guilty of any of the three murder charges but guilty of kidnapping, assault and conspiracy. And Deric Forney was found not guilty of all charges against him.

A statement from the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement reads, “The Vaughn 17 were protesting for very basic improvements, which are routinely ignored. Dwayne Staats’ testimony reiterates the painstaking process of attempting to be heard in a society that consistently renders black voices, and especially black incarcerated voices, silent; a society that deems it acceptable to coldly and in a calculated way, rip the humanity the away from those it incarcerates. The Vaughn 17, and many others who were incarcerated at Smyrna prior to the uprising, had protested, cried, and plead to be treated humanely. The uprising was a last resort to ask for better treatment, but the judgement confirmed that those incarcerated should have no voice and should accept this treatment.

While this outcome is a hardly surprising result from white supremacist America, we would like to celebrate the principled stance of the Vaughn 17. They stood strong in their solidarity and did not implicate each other and have successfully politicized their trial. In light of the prisoner led anti-slavery campaign, the Vaughn 17 is proudly poised as an important voice and example in this movement. We will continue amplifying their voices, making their case known and struggle along side them as these trials continue, and they face their sentences. Dare to Struggle, dare to win!” The Vaughn trials are ongoing, you can check out vaughn17support.org for more information.

Riot Dogg: Anarchists and activists are in the midst of resistance against the G20 in Buenos Aires, Argentina,) with the mass march set for this Friday, November 30th. You can watch footage on the ground at antenanegratv.com.ar, a rebel tv station occupying the airwaves in Buenos Aires. We’ve also been keeping a daily logbook over at crimethinc.com, and we’ve received reports that in the last few days the government has been tightening security at the borders to try and prevent people from entering to protest the summit. In response the Protest Alliance has set up a round-the-clock legal emergency service.

Additionally, the government has released the security perimeters around the city, and while people have anticipated extreme restriction of movement in the coming days, security measures are surpassing expectations, with additional restrictions on public transportation on a scale that has never been implemented before at any previous summit. The entire regional rail network and metro system will be shut down during the summit, rendering travel nearly impossible. Already, altercations between police and protestors have heated up, leaving on person, Rodolfo Orellana, dead after riot police showed up to a land occupation. There are solidarity demonstrations planned in Hamburg, Paris, and London, you can follow along with what’s happening at crimethinc.com and we wish everyone who’s in the streets this coming weekend luck and safety. 
 Rebel Girl: There is ongoing resistance in the occupied Hambacher Forest, an ancient forest outside Cologne, Germany that the company RWE is trying to clear cut to expand their already immense open-pit coal mines. Activists living in the forest report that there is ongoing harassment by RWE security. Last week, cops and RWE security destroyed several structures that are part of on the ground resistance camps and three people were taken into custody,only to be identified and then released. They also destroyed the memorial for an activist who died during the last wave of evictions. One activist, by the name of Owl, has been sitting in jail for the last seven weeks, refusing to give their personal information to the police. In the past few days, there have been banners strung up in Hambach in support of Owl and all political prisoners. Visit hambachforest.org to learn more, or better yet, if you’re anywhere near Cologne, visit the Hambach Forest yourself to join in on these beautiful acts of resistance!

NEXT WEEK’S NEWS

Riot Dogg: And to close out our episode, prisoner birthdays and next week’s news. Since it’s our last episode of the season, we’re going to announce the rest of the prisoner birthdays for the year.

On December 3, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, an outspoken revolutionary prisoner active with the New Afrikan Black Panther Party and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.

Kevin Johnson #264847 Indiana Department of Corrections Reception-Diagnostic Center 737 Moon Road Plainfield, IN 46168

Rebel Girl: December 4 is the birthday of Reality Winner, the alleged NSA whistleblower who is currently being held while awaiting trial on charges of leaking classified documents to the media.

Reality Winner #22056–021 FMC Carswell Post Office Box 27137 Fort Worth, Texas 76127

Riot Dogg: December 15 is the birthday of Muhammad Burton, one of the Philly 5, a group of men accused of an alleged attack on a police station that killed one cop. Burton has maintained his innocence since his arrest.

Fred Burton AF 3896 SCI Somerset 1590 Walters Mill Rd Somerset, PA 15510 USA

Rebel Girl: On December 17, Connor Stevens, one of the “Cleveland 4”, activists entrapped in a bomb plot set up by the FBI in order to repress the Occupy movement.

Connor Stevens #57978–060 FCI Jesup 2680 Highway 301 South Jesup, Georgia 31599

Riot Dogg: Also on December 17, Alejandro Rodriguez-Ortiz, one of the Vaughn 17 prisoners currently facing charges for alleged participation in an uprising in early 2017.

Alejandro Rodriguez-Ortiz SBI# 00515700 Sussex Correctional Institution P.O. Box 500 Georgetown DE 19947

Rebel Girl: On December 30, Casey Brezik, an anarchist prisoner serving time for an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the governor of Missouri.

Casey Brezik #1154765 Farmington Correctional Center 1012 West Columbia Street Farmington, MO 63640

Riot Dogg: And, on December 31 another Vaughn 17 prisoner, Jonathan Rodriguez, celebrates his birthday.

Remember, it only takes a few minutes to write a birthday card, but getting it could be the highlight of a prisoner’s week. In our shownotes, we have addresses for all the people we mentioned and a guide to writing prisoners from New York City Anarchist Black Cross.

Rebel Girl: And we’ll close out this episode with our calendar of events that you can get plugged into in real life.

First of all, don’t forget that on New Year’s Eve there will be noise demonstrations outside prisons, jails, and detention facilities across the world, to let prisoners know we’re out here for them until all the cages are empty. Get in touch with anarchists near you to find one happening in your town, or better, make one happen yourself.

Riot Dogg: Anarchists in Umea, Sweden are hosting their first ever bookfair from November 29 to December 2.

Rebel Girl: The 5th Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair will be held on December 2, 2018 from 10am–6pm at San Francisco City College Mission Campus, located t 1125 Valencia Street. This year’s theme is Fighting for the Air We Breathe and you can find out more at howardzinnbookfair.com.

Riot Dogg: To mark the ten year anniversary of the death of Alexis Grigoropoulos, Greek anarchists and students are calling for occupations and student mobilizations throughout the county on December 6. Alexis was a 15 year old student who was murdered by police in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens, whose death sparked weeks of fierce riots in Athens and school and university occupations across Greece.

Rebel Girl: There is a call for autonomous actions against the Laval Migrant Prison being built in Laval, Quebec, Canada from now until December 7th. The Laval Migrant Prison is a new migrant detention center being built by the Canadian Border Services Agency under the auspices of alternatives to prison for migrants, but we all know a cage by any other name is still a cage.

Riot Dogg: There is a fascist march in London on December 9th and there’s a call by Stand Up to Racism and Unite Against Fascism to oppose it. Anti-racists say that fascists are trying to hijack the Brexit crisis in order to whip up further hostility to migrants and grow a far-right street movement. Meet on Downing St, London at 11am, on December 9th to oppose these scum.

Rebel Girl: There’s an international call from anarchists on four continents for a day of action against borders on December 10. The idea is to kick off the 10th of each month as an anti-border day of action. You can find a link to the full call in our shownotes.

Riot Dogg: The Father Frost Against Putin Festival will take place again in Helsinki, Finland on January 5th and 6th, 2019. The intention of the festival is to discuss the state of affairs in Russia and the ex-USSR while getting to meet other political activists without the roving eye of police or special service operations.

Rebel Girl: BLACK FLAGS OVER BROOKLYN 2019 is a new anti-fascist, anti-racist extreme metal festival coming to the dark heart of Brooklyn, New York from January 25–26, 2019. Check out @blackflagsovrBK on Twitter to learn more.

Riot Dogg: The KKK & white supremacists are planning a rally at Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta, GA on Feb 2, 2019. Though the Park has denied a permit to KKK, the Klan has not canceled its rally. Flower United is calling for a large anti-racist mobilization on February 2 in response. Check out flowerunited.org.

Rebel Girl: The Caravana Wallmapu is a caravan of different autonomous and alternative media collectives from around Latin America and the world, that will be traveling through Mapuche territory in Argentina and Chile to draw attention to the struggles, experiences and voices of the Mapuche people. The caravan will start January 15, 2019 and last for a month, ending February 15, 2019. Check out @carav_wallmapu

Riot Dogg: The New York Anarchist Mental Health Conference will be held on February 23rd. The one day conference is for anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-capitalist mental health care workers and students to skill-share, build community, and discuss how to infuse mental health work with anarchist values. Email nycamhc@protonmail.com for more info.

Rebel Girl: The 2019 Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar is now available, this year’s theme is “health/care” and features art and writing from Bec Young, Hikaru Ikeda, Alisha Walker and Laura Whitehorn. You can order one (or 100!) at certaindays.org

Riot Dogg: And before we finish, we want to turn you onto some other great anarchist podcasts you can listen to while we’re off the air.

The Final Straw is an excellent interview-based, weekly show that gets deeper into anarchist ideas, history, and strategy than we get to on the Hotwire. We highly recommend it.

This is America, available through the It’s Going Down podcast feed, is a great source of movement news, but also insightful op ed style takes on mainstream news from an anarchist perspective.

For anarchy up in Canada, check out From Embers, and for anarchy across the pond, do not miss our favorite anarchist podcast Dissident Island. And if you just can’t get enough audio anarchy this winter, check out the anarchist podcast network Channel Zero, or the audiobooks over at Resonance Audio Distro.

Rebel Girl: Hold on Dogg, I’ve got something more to say. Dear listeners, this is in fact the last show of our season, and to honest with you all, may be the last Hotwire for the foreseeable future. At this time, we’re not intending to return for a winter season. This show has been a labor of deep love-for anarchy, for the struggles for a brighter and better world, for all creatures big and small, and for you-yes, you. However, this show takes an immense amount of effort on the weekly, and we here in the crimethinc podcast bunker are ready to take a break and refocus our efforts. You can be sure that you’ll hear from us again on this stream in the not too distant future. And you can always contact us at podcast@crimethinc.com with any suggestions about what you’d like to hear more of.

In the meantime, it’s a big, bad world out there-trust us, we know, and we hope you hang on to each other for dear life and fight like hell in the coming days, months, and years. We want you to know that we appreciate your dedication and support over the last year and a half and that we believe in you, dear listeners, to keep digging for inspiring reports buried under mountains of bad news, to keep bringing curiosity to the world, to keep being fierce and beautiful in the face of the ugly oppressions people face daily. You have inspired us with your stories and we hope that we’ve inspired you too. Remember, your heart is a muscle the size of your fist, keep loving, keep fighting.

OUTRO

Riot Dogg: And that’s it for this season of the Hotwire. As always thanks to Underground Reverie for the music, and thanks so much to all our listeners and to everyone who has helped us transcribing, contributing news or events, and in a million other ways. We couldn’t do it without y’all. You can contact us at podcast[AT]CrimethInc[DOT]com, where you can also find all the links, mailing addresses, and useful notes we customized for this episode.

Rebel Girl: Stay informed. Stay rebel. Plug into the Hotwire.