Listen to the Episode — 37 min

Transcript

Rebel Girl: March 14, 2018: A roundup of International Women’s Day actions and actions to #DefendAfrin, the Hotwire’s hot take on the end of the West Virginia teachers’ strike, and a packed list of events and calls for next week’s news 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. Believe it or not, 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

On March 6, the Informal Anarchist Federation (or FAI) burnt cars belonging to security corporations in Berlin.

In Thessaloniki, Greece, an international assemblage of 2,000 anarchists from across the Balkans clashed with police during a march against nationalism.

In Bariloche, Argentina, indigenous folks and allies damaged a bank and clashed with police outside of a courthouse while inside a judge decided that Mapuche leader Facundo Huala will be extradited to Chile to face charges over an incendiary attack in 2013.

Striking grad students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign staged a sit-in at the chancellor’s office last Wednesday. Grad students there have their own union, and are demanding fair wages for grade labor and more educational funding. Nearly a thousand classes have been canceled or moved due to the strike.

On March 6, two Buffalo defenders locked to a capture facility with a banner that read, “Buffalo Slaughter = Cultural Genocide.” One of the activists was quoted saying, “I am standing with the plains Indians as a member of the Ojibwe tribe in Minnesota, I have a Blackfeet friend who helped me protect my territory from the line 3 pipeline and now I am here for him and the buffalo. I have a love for the people. That’s what my mom passed down to me. And I have love for the environment and animals and I feel like I have an obligation to protect them. If I have to put my body on the line to do so I will.”

In rural Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a busload of rowdy locals went on a pipeline protest tour, dropping a 12-foot stretch of pipeline in one energy company’s meeting room, and then heading to a pipeline worksite and locking down to one of the drill rigs, halting construction for the day. Five were arrested.

Eco-defenders also locked down to construction on a proposed fracking station in rural Charles County, Maryland.

Oakland, California’s worker-owned Hasta Muerte coffeehouse and bookstore has found itself in a small local controversy after refusing service to a uniformed cop back in February. Allow us to borrow an excerpt from Ex-Worker episode 49 to sum up how we thrilled we are to hear that there’s one less spot where cops are welcome.

Alanis: In all seriousness, I think this is a potentially really inspiring new tactic to adopt. Insurrectionary anarchists say we should evaluate our tactics by asking, is it conflictual? and do it generalize? Everyone’s flipping out over these anti-police shootings that have happened recently; they sure as hell are conflictual, but it’s pretty unlikely that that degree of intense anti-police violence is going to generalize to the point where it’s likely to seriously alter power relations between police and their victims. But small acts of defiance that challenge the supposed respect and legitimacy police are supposed to have, like this woman at Taco Bell refusing to serve them, actually could generalize and begin to undermine the authority of police in our society. Imagine if a group of fast food workers all agreed not to serve cops, and then went on strike if one of them faced consequences. It could totally spread, with people competing for who can give the cop at the drive-in window the most wicked diss on viral videos, etc… They’re trying to clamp down on this insurrectionary possibility by firing her, but the more people who start doing it, the more it can spread, and the more polarized it’ll reveal our society to be - the more people will have to actually take a side.

Rebel Girl: March 8 was International Women’s Day, and women and gender non-conforming folks around the world demonstrated against sexual violence, exploitation in the workplace, and patriarchy in general.

A year on from #ADayWithoutAWoman, women’s strike actions took place in dozens of countries across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. One of the most impressive coordinated strikes was in Spain, where over 5 million women launched a nationwide feminist strike against the alliance of patriarchy and capitalism. Women stayed home from work, demonstrated noisily with pots and pans, and took to the streets for major marches in cities like Bilbao, Zaragoza, Valencia, Barcelona, and Madrid. Organizers published a manifesto reading, “Today we call for a society free of sexist oppression, exploitation and violence. We call for rebellion and a struggle against the alliance of patriarchy and capitalism that wants us to be obedient, submissive and quiet. We do not accept worse working conditions, nor being paid less than men for the same work. That is why we are calling a work strike.”

It would be hard to ignore the influence of the #MeToo movement this International Women’s Day. But while corporations and celebrities tout the hashtag, we would urge listeners to check out the CrimethInc. text “Fuck Abuse, Kill Power: Addressing the Root Causes of Sexual Harassment and Assault.” The text points out, “with the bad behavior of so many men coming to light, we have to consider the possibility that these are not exceptions at all—that these attacks are the inevitable, systemic result of this social order. Is there a way to treat the cause as well as the symptoms?”

In Afghanistan, hundreds of women marched in Kabul for education access and against the violence women face. It reminded this Rebel Girl of the days of RAWA—The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. During the Bush years of the War on Terror, RAWA loudly and proudly dispelled the myth that the war in Afghanistan was somehow being undertaken for their own liberation, saying “no thank you” to US imperialism and instead calling on worldwide solidarity for their own grassroots-led movement against patriarchy and for women’s freedom.

In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of landless women occupied a major newspaper’s office to denounce its role in the government’s right-wing shift, including the 2016 impeachment of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. For an in-depth analysis of Dilma’s impeachment from an anarchist perspective, we recommend the new CrimethInc. text “Brazil 2016–2017: The Political Crisis and Coup d’État”.

In Chiapas, the EZLN Zapatista National Liberation Army hosted the First International Gathering of Women in Struggle. From International Women’s Day to over the weekend, thousands of women from 34 countries, 27 Mexican states, and indigenous women from all the Zapatista caracoles gathered for workshops on gender-based violence, cultural activities like theater and music, and skillshares like crafting DIY personal hygienic items. The call for the gathering states, “We know well that the bad system doesn’t just exploit us—they repress us, they rob us, and they degrade us as human beings, and then they come back and exploit us again, rob us again, and degrade us again as the women that we are.”

In Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile, over a 100,000 women and transfolks participated in marches that saw fires in the streets and colorful, loud contingents of women workers, sex workers, students, trans-feminists, and shirtless masked torch-wielding badasses.

In Stockholm, the Anarcho-Syndicalist Youth Federation participated in the International Women’s Day march there, and helped scare off fascist trolls with chants of “Fascism shall be crushed!”

Anarchists from the Libertarian Student Federation in Java, Indonesia called for “the direct use of violence against all forms of sexual repression,” specifically responding to the rise of ultra-nationalist and Islamic fundamentalists who act as morality police over women’s bodies and sexual freedom.

Over at CrimethInc, we observed International Women’s Day by tweeting out the broadcast of the 1921 Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt. Ahem…

“LIBERATED KRONSTADT, TO THE WORKING WOMEN OF THE WORLD…

“Today is a worldwide holiday, the Day of Working Women. We the people of Kronstadt, under the thunder of cannons, under the explosions of shells sent at us by the enemies of the laboring people, the Communists, send our fraternal greetings to you, the working women of the world. We send greetings from Red Kronstadt, from the Kingdom of Liberty. Let our enemies try to destroy us. We are strong; we are undefeatable. We wish you fortune, to all the sooner win freedom from all oppression and coercion.

Long live the Free Revolutionary Working Woman. Long live the Worldwide Social Revolution.”

Anarchists showed up to the Women’s Strike march in New York City with banners in solidarity with the YPJ women’s defense units in Rojava. They also chanted “every gender, every race, punch a Nazi in the face,” which was followed up by someone literally punching one fascist, and someone else pelting another fascist with snowballs.

Lots of anarchists participated in International Women’s Day demonstrations by making connections to the struggle of the YPJ against the invasion of Afrin by Turkey.

Members of Demand Utopia and the IWW rallied in downtown Olympia with banners that read, “Destroy Patriarchy,” and “Defend Afrin, Olympia to Syria, Women Rise Up.”

In Melbourne, Australia, a group of women and other gender-diverse people demonstrated in front of the Turkish consulate with banners that read, “Turkey’s War On Afrin Is A War On Women.”

In Berlin, a café owned by Turkish ruling-party-supporting fascists was vandalized by the Young Women’s Revenge Unit Şehid Viyan Soran. Windows were broken, Turkish flags were taken down, and the building was spraypainted with “Free Afrin” and “FCK AKP,” referring to Turkey’s authoritarian ruling party.

In Paris, Kurdish youth invoking the name of a martyred YPJ combatant claimed the torching of “a car belonging to a Turkish agent in Paris to express their anger at the fascist Turkish State and its attacks against the people of Afrin.”

On International Women’s Day itself, a call for militant direct action across Europe and in solidarity with Afrin went out, entitled “If Afrin Falls…It Will Have Been Too Late.”

It reads, “Like no other revolution of the last decades, Rojava has inspired us and shown us how radical and beautiful the struggle for the liberation of a society can be. The heroic resistance of YPG and YPJ in Kobani and the self-organization of the population under the initiative of self-liberating women cast a spell over thousands of leftists, anarchists, socialists and feminists. Worldwide, this revolution was discussed, admired and given solidarity, hundreds of people made their way to Rojava and participated in the resistance against ISIS and the building of a new society. In spite of all the contradictions, the Rojava movement, with its determination, its attachment to the people and the concrete implementation of our utopias, has become the most important focal point of the global struggle against capitalism, patriarchy and racism. Today, this project is standing with its back to the wall. The war over Afrin is a struggle for existence or not-existence for the revolution in Rojava.”

While the call beckoned militants to launch actions starting on Monday the 12, it was immediately answered with incendiary attacks across Germany and France.

In Marseille, an AKP collaborator’s car was torched by Kurdish youth.

In Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Kurdish youth carried out a molotov attack against, “a Turkish fascist club… in revenge for Afrin,”

Another Turkish fascist club, the Grey Wolves, was attacked with molotovs in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

In Berlin, a propaganda center for a Turkish ultranationalist religious organization was also firebombed.

And in Dortmund and Dusseldorf in Germany, and Manchester, England, Afrin solidarity demonstrations shut down trains and city trams for some time. In Cambridge and London, defend Afrin demonstrators shut down traffic in the city center. Stay tuned until the end of this episode to hear about the upcoming North American day of action to defend Afrin on March 24.

Right before we went to press last week, West Virginia teachers agreed to go back to school after the Governor signed a bill giving all state employees a 5% raise. There’s a celebratory way to look at this, and then there’s a critical way.

On the celebratory side, well, teachers had been saying they would strike until one of their demands was met, and one was! Even after union leadership and the governor negotiated a lesser deal two weeks ago. And such a victory demonstrates that putting progressives in power isn’t the most direct way to achieve gains for workers. By taking power out of the capital and into the hands of teachers themselves, the strikers were able achieve what no democratic politician would have been able to—to force a Republican legislature and governor to raise state employees’ wages. Direct action gets the goods y’all.

And the example of the West Virginia teachers’ strike seems to be inspiring strike action elsewhere. A round up from Mic.com details the strike murmurs around the country. “Oklahoma’s largest teachers union told state lawmakers they have until April 1 to raise teacher pay or face a statewide shutdown of schools. Like West Virginia, Oklahoma teachers are nearly the lowest paid in the country… On Wednesday, teachers in Arizona wore red to school in a spontaneous, grassroots-organized #RedForEd event to raise awareness over low pay. Educators there are also considering a strike to push for higher wages and benefits. Meanwhile, teachers in eight Kentucky counties are holding “walk-ins”… to show opposition to Senate Bill 1, a state proposal to cut teacher retirement benefits to support the state’s ailing pension fund. In these demonstrations, teachers gather in the morning and march to work in solidarity.” Over the weekend Kentucky teachers Facebook-lived one of their demonstrations, and the comments section was flooded with really sweet messages from teachers in West Virginia who logged on to show their solidarity.

On the critical side, it basically seems like the %5 raise in West Virginia will be paid for with money taken from the state’s Medicaid program. The public employees insurance funding is still unsettled, and probably won’t be adequately funded. Meanwhile, the other statewide strike in West Virginia, that of Frontier Communications workers, has seen a scab pull a gun on strikers, and police are out in force at their pickets in ways that they definitely were not at the teachers’ pickets. The teachers’ strike was popular, but it didn’t legitimize private sector strikes to the point that cops are backing off from their primary role—to protect private property.

Still, we hope that the example of the striking teachers rings out and inspires other workers to get organized, and that next time the kind of agitation and organization is in place to spread the strike even further. For a really great on-the-ground interview about the strike with one West Virginia teacher, check out the episode “Striking Gets the Goods” on the number one anarcho-comedy podcast Street Fight Radio.

“We are not in the least afraid of ruins, for we carry a new world in our hearts.” Durruti’s courageous words are painted on the plywood covering the storefront of The Tower, an anarchist social center in Hamilton, Ontario. Their windows were broken last week, a few days after a festive black clad anti-gentrification riot swept through downtown Hamilton last Saturday night. After receiving multiple specific threats from far-right groups, folks at The Tower suspect that it was members of the far-right who attacked their spot. In the same statement, folks from The Tower explain their feelings about the riot downtown: “We feel that a single family being evicted is far worse than everything that happened on Locke Street, even if you believe that running luxury businesses is a neutral act. And the level of outrage is particularly despicable considering that there have been two random stabbings of women in the last few days as well. It’s beyond disgusting to see conversations about artisan donuts being prioritized over conversations about violence against women. This isn’t just whataboutism, this is us picking sides. When it goes down, we aren’t on the side of the rich and business class. We’re in solidarity with everyone who resists the dominant powers in this city and we make any tactical criticisms we have privately.” They conclude saying, “We oppose all repression and all collaboration with the police.”

We think this is the most principled and strategic response anarchists can take—to keep any criticisms internal to the movement and extend unconditional solidarity to comrades facing state repression. For more anarchist takes on the recent events in Hamilton, check out north-shore.info, which is a regional website for anarchist news and analysis from Southern Ontario.

Unfortunately, The Tower wasn’t the only collective social center attacked last week. On March 4, someone broke into Groundwork Books Collective on the campus of UC San Diego, knocked over shelves, damaged the space, and lit an outside bookshelf on fire. A statement from the collective makes clear, “Nothing of value was stolen from the collective; this was clearly a political attack.” The attack comes after months of Identity Evropa and other white nationalist groups organizing at UC San Diego.

REPRESSION ROUNDUP

Rebel Girl: In this week’s repression roundup…

Apparently prosecutors in the J20 case were feeling insufficiently totalitarian after dropping cases down to 59 defendants, because last week it was reported that they want to introduce a so-called “expert” witness to testify under an alias. Back in January, the prosecution told the court that the remaining defendants are folks who allegedly engaged in “identifiable acts of destruction… or other assaultive conduct,” participated in planning, or who knowingly participated in supposed “black bloc” tactics, and this new witness is being brought in to testify about those “black bloc” tactics. Prosecutors say that the witness spent two years infiltrating a “anarchist extremist” group in New York City, but considering these are the same prosecutors who alleged that “jail solidarity” means chucking rocks at cops, who even knows if they know what they’re talking about. Trials are scheduled to begin within the following month, and you can keep up to date by following @DefendJ20 on Twitter and Instagram.

And speaking of so-called “anarchist extremists,” guess who the Department of Homeland Security focused their surveillance on in the lead up to Charlottesville. I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t the white supremacists who shot at protesters or ran them over with a car. Last week Shadowproof published a report on documents they obtained from Homeland Security and the Virginia Fusion Center, which “show law enforcement agencies kept close tabs on anti-racists while largely ignoring or downplaying the activities of white supremacist groups. They also provide new details on intelligence agencies’ focus on ‘anarchist extremists’ and ‘black identity extremists,’ an investigative category developed by the FBI last year.”

I know as well as the next guy that cops and Klan go hand in hand, but I have to admit, when I read the Shadowproof story, the extent to which DHS just flat out ignored the violent pasts of known attendees of Unite the Right and solely focused on anarchists and anti-racists felt like an almost Orwellian level affront to the basic notions of truth, like two plus two equals five or something. As if it wasn’t clear enough before, the government ain’t gonna stop no Nazis—anti-fascism has to mean anti-state.

The Earth First! Newswire published a heads up that the FBI has contacted someone they associate with the wildlife defense project Wolf Patrol. They state, QUOTE, “while we at the Earth First! Journal don’t support Wolf Patrol because of its founder’s unwillingness to be accountable to abusive behavior, we are adamantly opposed to the state and do not support the FBI in any of their attempts to contact, interrogate, or imprison anyone, so we are putting out this warning in hopes that folks will be prepared if they are contacted by the feds.” To best prepare yourself, check out the CrimethInc. essay “If the FBI Approaches You to Become an Informant: An FAQ.”

All those arrested protesting Richard Spencer’s visit to East Lansing, Michigan last week are now out of jail, but legal funds are still needed as over a dozen folks are facing charges ranging from minor citations to misdemeanors to felonies. And the Michigan antifascists truly deserve your support because on Monday, Richard Spencer’s legal team announced they will postpone their visit to the University of Michigan, and in a 20 minute long video that we’ll save you the time of suffering through, Spencer talked about how “antifa is winning,” and how antifascists are willing to go harder than the fash are. The last claim is only half true—certainly, antifascists have more solidarity with each other than fascists do, that just comes along with believing in cooperation and mutual aid rather than supremacy. But Spencer saying that also brushes over how his supporters have shot at people, ran a car into anti-racists in Charlottesville, and the dozens of murders committed by alt-right associated white men in the last year. It’s not that we go harder, we go with more heart. And part of that is showing support to each other through the repression we face as a consequence of fighting fascism, so please throw a few bucks to the Michigan antifascists over at www.fundedjustice.com/stopspencermsu.

Long-time political prisoner Robert Seth Hayes is in need of support to get a new sensor on his insulin pump. The prison ran out of insulin sensors on February 23, and Hayes has been without adequate diabetes treatment since, putting his health in serious danger. You can call 518–457–7073 and 845–434–2080 to demand that Robert Seth Hayes gets new insulin sensors and the medical treatment he deserves.

NEXT WEEK’S NEWS

We’ll close out our episode with political prisoner birthdays and next week’s news.

On March 17, Ruchell Cinque (SIN-KAY) Magee will celebrate his birthday. Imprisoned since 1963, Ruchell is one of the longest held political prisoners in the world, and he’s the sole black survivor of the armed breakout of George Jackson from Marin Courthouse in 1970.

We have an address for writing letters to Ruchell in this episode’s shownotes at Crimethinc.com/podcast, as well as a link to a beginner’s 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.

We are currently in the middle of a week of solidarity with Russian Anarchists, leading up to the next Putin election on March 18. Over the last six months anarchists in Penza, St. Petersburg, Crimea, Moscow, and Chelyabinsk have been rounded up, given bogus charges for things like having an airsoft gun, and have had confessions tortured out of them, sometimes for months on end. In the call for solidarity, our Russian comrades emphasize that protest and international publicity really can help political prisoners there. They say that the anarchists from Penza were tortured for months amidst relative silence, while an international solidarity campaign in February forced prosecutors to re-examine the confession of one of the St. Petersburg anarchists. So amidst all the liberal Russia-gate clamor out there, try to make some noise for our anti-statist comrades who are far more serious about bringing down Putin and the world that made him than any American intelligence agency is. For more information on supporting anarchist political prisoners in Russia, check out the recent episode of The Final Straw podcast, which has an interview with someone from Moscow Anarchist Black Cross.

Tomorrow, March 15 is the 22nd annual March Against Police Brutality in Montreal. The march meets at 7:30 PM at Parc LaFontaine, and it has a reputation for producing, ahem, “some of the dankest riot porn up on the web,” as our friends over at Sub.Media would say.

Tomorrow also kicks off a week of anti-speciesist action and skillsharing in the Hambacher Forest, Germany. The gathering is called Liberate Or Die and will feature workshops on lockpicking, hunt sabotaging, action climbing, investigations, and a history of the Animal Liberation Front. The event is free, in the woods, and free of cameras, so pack accordingly. For a history of the amazing occupation of the Hambacher Forest, check out episode 37 of The Ex-Worker.

On March 17, folks in St. Louis, Missouri can catch the CrimethInc. presentation of their latest book From Democracy to Freedom at 3 PM inside Foam Coffee on Jefferson Avenue.

If you’d like to arrange a CrimethInc. presentation in your own town or at your university, just contact rollingthunder@crimethinc.com.

Folks in Southern California and Arizona this week can still catch the last few tourdates of the West Coast J20 solidarity speaking tour. Speakers will describe the unprecedented nature of the case and the need to support the remaining 59 defendants, whose next trials are scheduled to begin in the coming month. Also, we hear from folks who’ve already seen the tour that it’s really good. This week, you can catch the tour at… 1811 Johnston Street in Los Angeles at 7 PM, March 14, the Metate Infoshop in San Diego on March 15, the Taala Hooghan Infoshop in Flagstaff, Arizona on March 16, somewhere in Phoenix on March 17, and at the Global Justice Center in Tucson on March 18.

To keep up with developments in the J20 case, follow @DefendJ20 on Twitter and Instagram, or go to DefendJ20Resistance.org.

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief are also touring from now until May. They’re doing two dates per town, on the first day presenting Protectors vs. Profiteers: Communities in Resistance to Disaster Capitalism, and the following day hosting a more participatory workshop entitled Giving Our Best, Ready For The Worst: Community Organizing as Disaster Preparedness.

This week, you can find their tour at… Soft Web Collective in Richmond, Virginia, at 7 PM on March 18 and 12 noon on March 19, and in Charlottesville, Virginia at the Friends Meeting House, 7 PM on March 20 and 3 PM on March 21.

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

Demand Utopia, the North American Kurdish Alliance, Friends of Rojava North America, and the Institute for Social Ecology are calling for an international day of solidarity in defense of Afrin on Saturday, March 24, 2018. Their demands include immediate cessation of the Turkish and jihadist invasion of Afrin, immediate cessation of arms sales to Turkey, a no-fly zone over Northern Syria, and arms for the YPG/YPJ. If you want to plan an action or activity, they suggest organizing a rally in your area, hosting a fundraiser or educational event, and writing your congressperson with the demands we mentioned. Being anarchists, we at the Hotwire aren’t really into relying on representatives, but there are people who argue this is a time where it could really save lives. But whatever you do, don’t just write your congressperson—learn about the revolutionary autonomous project in Rojava and do what you can to spread autonomy, people’s assemblies, and women’s liberation to wherever you live too.

Head over to TheNAKA.org to find out more about the March 24 day of solidarity to defend Afrin, or to register your own local event.

Also on March 24, listeners in New York City can celebrate two decades of political prisoner support at the 20th anniversary celebration for the National Jericho Movement. The Jericho Movement does some great work to support and connect political prisoners across struggles. We here at The Hotwire often use their website as a resource to learn more about political prisoners’ history. The celebration will take place at Holyrood Episcopal Church on 179th street, with dinner at 5 PM and the full program at 6:30.

March 24 to the 27 is the international offensive to free political prisoner and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia is one of the most well-known political prisoners across the world, but for those who don’t know he’s a former Black Panther has spent decades on death row over the killing of a Philadelphia policeman in 1981. Mumia has not only maintained that his arrest and trial was a racist frame-up, but he has also remained a committed prison activist and radio journalist. For March 24 to 27, on those days supporters are calling on folks to take local actions to free Mumia, and for March 27 to pack the courthouse in Philadelphia. They are also calling on folks to call the DA at 215–586–8000 and tell him to release all police files on Mumia to the public. You can find out more at FreeMumia.com

From April 6 to April 8, the fourteenth Zagreb Anarchist Bookfair will take place in Croatia. For more info in Croatian and English, go to ask-zagreb.org.

There’s another Anarchist Bookfair that weekend on April 7 in Liverpool, England. You can find out more at Liverpool Anarchist Bookfair on Facebook.

The Southeast Trans and/or Women Action Camp will take place from April 26 to 29 in the smoky mountains of western North Carolina. The action camp is open to all trans and/or woman identified folks. Workshops will be offered on earth skills, conflict resolution, botany, tree climbing, direct action, anti-racist organizing, black leadership training, prisoner support, security culture, herbalism and much, much more! Organizers hope to receive attendees from rural Appalachia to southern cities. You can find out more by e-mailing setwac@protonmail.com.

Also, their donation page has been shut down twice, so if you have some bucks to spare you can donate at PayPal.me/setwac2018.

From June 1st to the 3rd, the European Animal Liberation Gathering 2018 will take place in Bilbao, Basque Country. Organizers describe it as, “A place to share practical skills and discuss strategy and tactics for the fight against the oppression of animals and the destruction of their habitats.” The gathering also focuses on preventing repression against the animal liberation movement, as well as oppressive behavior within the movement.

The gathering is organized using anarchist principles, but that doesn’t mean you have to be an anarchist to attend. Workshops will be available in Spanish, English, and French. If you are interested in attending the gathering or presenting a workshop, just e-mail liberation.gathering@riseup.net.

There’s a call for participation in Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB) the weekend of June 22 to the 24 in Asheville, North Carolina. Organizers are looking for skillshares, workshop presenters, authors, publishers and distributors, and basically anyone who has an anarchist project or idea that they’d like to share with the world.

The deadline for workshop and vendor registration is April 15. You can find out more details at acab2018.noblogs.org or by e-mailing ACAB2018@riseup.net. And you can keep up with their updates by following @ACAB.2018 on Instagram.

OUTRO

And that’s it for this episode of The Hotwire. As always thanks to Underground Reverie for the music. Don’t forget to check out all the links, mailing addresses, and useful shownotes we customized for this episode at CrimethInc.com. Every Hotwire is radio-ready, so if you want to replay part or all of this show, just go for it! You can find a twenty-nine and a half minute long version on our website. If you have feedback or just want to get in touch with us, send an e-mail to podcast[AT]CrimethInc[DOT]com.

Stay informed. Stay rebel. Plug into The Hotwire.