Confronting the Police State and Imagining Alternatives, Oakland, 5/22/09In this audio production from the Friendly Fire Collective, Irish anarchist intellectual and labor organizer Andrew Flood came to San Jose and Oakland as part of his North American speaking tour. Flood is a long time member of Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) and has participated in the anarchist movement’s development from a handful of dedicated organizers into a directly democratic anti-capitalist movement that has spread across Ireland.
Memory and Solidarity: An Evening with Sean Burns and Andrej GrubacicThe Friendly Fire Collective held a panel discussion titled “Confronting the Police State and Imagining Alternatives” at AK Press in Oakland on May 22nd. The panel consisted of members of San Jose Copwatch, Silicon Valley De-Bug, the Watsonville Brown Berets, Petaluma Copwatch, O22, Cop/Migra Busters, and Critical Resistance.
On Anarchism, Capitalism, and Militarism: Loren Yglesias from UA-in-the-BayIn this recording you will hear an event organized by the Friendly Fire Collective featuring Sean and Andrej, two organizers, teachers, and historians of the Left. Recently they have each completed works on two dynamic elders of US radicalism: Archie Green and Staughton Lynd. Burns and Grubacic discussed why they entered into these projects, including questions of cross generational activist dialogue, memory and social struggle, Marxism and anarchism, cultural politics, and more. Additionally, discussion will focus how they have developed their historical work through oral and archival history, marking continuity as well as generational and philosophical tensions between collaborators.
Osha Neumann at the SF Anarchist BookfairOn Sunday March 29th, Unconventional Action in the Bay sponsored a Community Anti-War and Militarism Forum at the Oakland Public Library. The forum focused on resistance to militarism at home and abroad. After featured speakers, groups broke out into three strategic planning sessions: Police and Immigration; Corporate War Profiteering; Art, Culture, and Everyday Life. This audio segment was part of the introduction to the event. The audio from the rest of the event is located here (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03/30/18584656.php).
The Squatter Movement: Seizing HousingNeumann was part of an “anarchist street gang” called Up Against the Wall Motherfucker on the Lower East Side of NYC in the late-60s/early-70s, a direct action affinity group largely made up of artists. He recently released a book entitled Up Against the Wall Motherfu**ker: A Memoir of the 60s with Notes for Next Time. This is the audio of him speaking at the SF Anarchist Bookfair.
An interview on KPFA’s Guns and Butter with journalist, squatter, and housing activist Frank Morales. Morales tells of the direct action campaigns for housing in the South Bronx and lower east side of Manhattan in the late 1970s. His analysis is top-notch as he discusses the banks’ redlining of loans to certain neighborhoods, government reports outlining the deconcentration of the urban poor from inner-cities as a counter-insurgency strategy, and the creation of the modern shelter system. An excellent look into the causes of endless housing crises as well as means of resistance and creation in the face of such attacks on the basic right to shelter.
