Audio Interference Interference Archive

In this episode, we speak with Interference Archive volunteer Dane Michael about his favorite zines in the archive’s collection as well as his interest in collecting radical print materials and mutual aid ephemera, which he regularly donates to the archive. In particular, Dane shares experiences traveling to social centers and radical spaces in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia in Spain. He also talks about the mutual aid work he is a part of in the Bay Area in California.

References from this episode of Audio Interference:
Doris Zine: www.dorisdorisdoris.com
Todo Por Hacer: www.todoporhacer.org

Dane is part of a few mutual aid groups in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, including: East Bay Food Not Bombs: www.eastbayfoodnotbombs.org
Omni Commons: www.omnicommons.org
Bound Together Bookstore: www.boundtogetherbooks.wordpress.com
Prisoners Literature Project: www.prisonlit.org
North Oakland Mutual Aid: www.instagram.com/northoakland_mutualaid/?hl=en

Thank you to J.Cruz/COVR for creating the music for this episode, which is titled “shake shake shake”.

Audio Interference is produced by Interference Archive.

Free City Radio contribution for Audio Interference: Asylum seekers fighting back against workplace exploitation in Montréal

In this segment we hear about the struggles for workplace justice for non-status people and asylum seekers in Montréal. The segment revolves around an ongoing campaign on the part of the Immigrant Workers Centre to support the workers at the warehouse distribution centre for Dollarama, one of the largest dollar shop corporations in North America. Many of the workers at the 24-hour distribution centre for North America, which was declared an essential service by the government in Québec City last spring, are asylum seekers and non-status people.

Mostafa Henaway, an organizer with the Immigrant Workers Centre speaks about the campaign to support Dollarama warehouse workers, giving some context and background. Mohamed Barry, a former asylum seeker from Guinea who recently won status, speaks on experiences working within the Dollarama warehouse distribution centre and details the ways that asylum seekers from West Africa and the Caribbean are being exploited in such workplaces in Québec.

Mohamed is one of the founders of the Statut pour les guinéens campaign to demand regularization for all refugees from Guinea and is a former worker at the Dollarama warehouse. View a silk-screen poster worked on by artist Christeen Francis, a member of Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, that is up here to support the campaign.

Thank you for listening ! –– Stefan Christoff.

In this episode, we speak to Zeelie Brown, a Black, queer artist and cellist based in New York City. She creates “soulscapes”: sites and soundscapes that invoke the temporality, sacredness of connection, and layers of history embedded within feelings of refuge. Zeelie’s sanctuary spaces draw on her personal and ancestral traditions of music, cuisine, scent, ritual, and community. Throughout this episode, you’ll hear music that Zeelie has produced as a part of her practice.

This episode stems out of a partnership with Brooklyn Public Library, where we explore how different organizations, groups, and people aim to create space for folks who are often disenfranchised and disempowered by normative systems at work in our world. Stick around at the end of the episode to hear from Tim Barrigan, a literacy advisor in the adult learning center at the Brooklyn Public Library.

You can listen to the Brooklyn Public Library's episode here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/education-for-all

Volunteer Coordinator Sophie Glidden-Lyon explains why handbooks are among her favorite items at Interference Archive.

Audio Interference is produced by Interference Archive. To learn more visit www.interferencearchive.org

Music in this episode:
"Arizona Moon," "Palms Down" "Calisson" "The Cornice" & “Dusting,”by Blue Dot Sessions - www.sessions.blue
Theme in G” by Poddington Bear

In New York in the early 1970s, government disinvestment coupled with widespread landlord neglect and abandonment, gave rise to squatting, urban homesteading, and other forms of self-help housing. Residents took control of city-owned land and buildings, and developed or rehabilitated their own housing. The ultimate goal for many of these tenants was to take their buildings out of the speculative housing market and own them collectively and democratically. Today, around 1,300 resident-controlled, low-income housing cooperatives exist in New York City, providing some of the most deeply affordable and stable housing in the city.

The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, or UHAB, grew out of the self-help housing movement. UHAB was founded in 1973, and started by working with self-organized groups of tenants to convert homesteading projects into limited-equity cooperatives, affordable in perpetuity and owned by their tenants.

In this episode, we are sharing excerpts of an oral history of UHAB, conducted by researcher Conor Snow in 2020 and featuring interviews with Charles Laven, Fernando Alarcon, Ayo Harrington, and Ann Henderson. Thank you to UHAB, and to Charles, Ayo, Ann, Fernando and Conor for granting us permission to share this audio with you.

For more information about UHAB: https://uhab.org/

For more information about Interference Archive’s exhibition in collaboration with UHAB, “Building for Us: Stories of Homesteading and Cooperative Housing”: https://interferencearchive.org/building-for-us-stories-of-homesteading-and-cooperative-housing/

For previous Audio Interference episodes on similar topics, check out:
Episode 74, “We the People Won’t Go” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-74-we-the-people-wont-go/)
Episode 47 “Lower East Side Community Gardens” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-47-lower-east-side-community-gardens/)
Episode 31 “Squatting on the Lower East Side” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-31-squatting-on-the-lower-east-side/)
Episode 23 “Brooklyn Housing Struggle” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-23-brooklyn-housing-struggle/).

Music: “Bathed in Fine Dust” by Andy G. Cohen and “Tribal” by David Szesztay, both from the Free Music Archive.

Produced by Interference Archive.

Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear "A Quarter of a Century," a song by Ivie, a comrade on the inside whose story is uplifted by Survived and Punished. It references her campaign to free herself from a 25 to life sentence and was recorded over the phone from Bedford Hills prison, a maximum security correctional facility in Bedford Hills, NY. In the middle of the song, you'll hear an accompanying rap by another comrade, Sassi, who is also incarcerated at Bedford Hills.

This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived & Punished NY, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.

Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from Survived & Punished's comrades on the inside, as well as a longer interview with two Survived & Punished members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work.

A huge thank you to Ivie and Sassi for sharing their song. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.

To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org

Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/

Music from this episode (in order of appearance):

“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18