The Hotwire #29: MAY DAY Special—The best of anarchist news reporting from the vaults (uncensored!)

The Ex-Worker

Happy May Day! Find an action near you HERE. To celebrate the anniversary of the strike that led to Haymarket, and the 8 anarchists executed for it (two of whom were anarchist media producers themselves!) we bring you our favorite anarchist news reporting from throughout history. As an anarchist news show ourselves, we wanted to pay homage to all the anarchist newspapers, zines, and other media projects that have inspired us. You’ll hear reports from as far back as the Paris Commune, the punny and irreverent 1980s British organization Class War, a 1977 article in Fifth Estate about this newfangled thing called punk rock, coverage of the very first nationwide-called-for black bloc in the US, a firsthand report from the streets of Seattle in 1999, and much more. We’ll even have guest appearances by other anarchist podcasters, like MC Sole, the Stimulator, The Final Straw’s William Goodenuff, and our friends from Resonance Audio Distro.

We’ll air our regular weekly episode on Thursday, May 3—a day late—so that we can include as much May Day 2018 coverage as possible. Please e-mail us your May Day action reports by May 2 at [e-mail]. {May 1, 2018}

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• Table of Contents:
  • Introduction {0:00}
  • May Day and colonial desertion in the new world {2:55}
  • The Paris Commune {9:55}
  • Haymarket {11:40}
  • May Day 1971: mass coordinated direct action and repression in Washington D.C. {15:08}
  • When punk was new(s) {16:25}
  • Class War UK {26:15}
  • The first American black bloc {32:40}
  • N30: Seattle 1999 {38:20}
  • A choir of criminals {1:00:40}
  • News from the balcony with Waldorf & Statler {1:11:55}
  • Trotsky’s ash cookies {1:21:10}
  • G20 Toronto 2010: the end of the world as we know it, or the beginning of the revolution? {1:23:40}
• Find a May Day celebration or demonstration near you and HIT THE STREETS!
• Listen to the history of Haymarket and May Day on our very first episode of The Ex-Worker.
• Anarchist texts related to this Hotwire:
  • The incomplete, true, authentic and wonderful history of May Day by Peter Linebaugh
  • March 18, 1871: The Birth of the Paris Commune A Narrative
  • Address of August Spies
  • The Liberation News Service, a Washington DC-based collective with anarchist participants. They collected resistance and counter-culture news from all over the world and syndicated it to different underground publications in the 1960s and 70s—sort of like a radical Reuters.
  • Ending a war, inventing a movement: Mayday 1971
  • Punk Rock: Musical Fad or “Radical Kernel” from the December 1977 issue of The Fifth Estate, the longest running English language anarchist publication in North America
  • The Power is Running: A Memoir of N30 Shutting Down the WTO Summit in Seattle, 1999
  • Green Anarchy Magazine
  • The May Days: Snapshots from the History of May Day
• About our Black Bloc historiography: we put in a few hours researching the history of the Black Bloc in North America before making the claim that the 1991 anti-Gulf War actions in DC saw the first Black Bloc in North America. While Black Bloc tactics, including dark clothing and masks, featured in protests in Berkeley, Minneapolis, and New York in the late 80s, as far as we can tell the first call including the term “Black Block” was for the anti-Gulf War protest in Washington DC in 1991. We’re willing to be proven wrong though!
• Fundraising:
  • Donate to the legal support fund for the four people charged over last year’s May Day actions in Olympia.
• Our guest podcasters include:
  • William Goodenuff from The Final Straw
  • MC Sole from The Solecast
  • Resonance Audio Distro
  • The Stimulator
• Start gearing up for a summer of anarchy in Quebec!
  • The anarchist film festival (May 17–20 in Montreal)
  • The Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (May 22–23 in Montreal)
  • The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair (May 26–27 in Montreal)
  • The North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference (June 1–3 in Montreal)
  • Anti-G7 mobilization (June 7–9 in Quebec City)
• Use this straightforward guide to writing prisoners from New York City Anarchist Black Cross to send May Day greetings to some anarchist prisoners, like Cedar, a comrade in Ontario who is in jail over conspiracy charges stemming from the March 5 anti-gentrification march in Hamilton, Ontario. Please address the envelope to Peter Hopperton and the letters to Cedar:

  Peter Hopperton Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre 165 Barton St East Hamilton ON L8L 2W6

• J20 support resources:
  • POSTER: The J20 Prosecution—Trumped up Charges
  • J20 Legal Defense Fund
  • Twitter
  • Fed book
  • An Open Letter to Former J20 Defendants, with useful “do”s and “don’t”s
  • Teen Vogue: The J20 Arrests and Trials, Explained
  • Tell the prosecutor’s boss to drop the charges by calling (202) 252–7566