Community Room Conversations

On this episode of the Firestorm Community Sustainers Drive, we sit down with local investigative journalist David Forbes. David is the founder and editor of The Asheville Blade, a local news site known for its rigorous long-form journalism and principled perspectives on the inner workings of Asheville city government’s economic and social issues. In our talk, we discuss what first drew David to journalism, the factors that led them to start the Asheville Blade, her ideas of what it takes for grassroots organizing to successfully push back against monied interest in the city, and ways listeners can support her ongoing efforts. We hope you enjoy the informed insights shared here today.

For the sixth installment of our Community Sustainers Drive, we sit down with Samhita and Giannina, co-directors for The Center For Participatory Change, a democratically run, multiracial organization that works to open up space focused on learning, healing, and relationship building for folks most affected by structural inequalities. Throughout our conversation, we take a deep dive into the three circles of their work: popular education, racial equity, and language justice, as well as Samhita and Giannina's experience taking leadership within the organization. Finally, we discuss what they have in store for their upcoming 20th anniversary celebration. We hope listeners enjoy hearing the complexities of what it takes to build relationships, heal in community, and ignite collective action to transform systems of oppression.

For the fifth installment of our Community Sustainers Drive, we sat down with Julian and Julie from Asheville Prison Books, a loosely run volunteer collective that distributes free literature to people incarcerated in North and South Carolina. As a project rooted in anti-authoritarian politics, Asheville Prison Books finds ways to connect with, humanize, and meet the every day needs of incarcerated people while building collective power to challenge mass incarceration, the prison industrial complex, and the existence of prisons themselves. In our conversation, we talk about the lifeline books can offer to folks who are incarcerated, the vision of prison abolition, how listeners can get involved with Prison Books’ monthly packaging party, and what they have planned for this weekend’s recognition of Banned Books Week. We hope listeners enjoy this crucial conversation about the need to connect and work in solidarity with folks caught in the dragnet of the horrific repression that is the United States prison system.

On this episode of the Firestorm Community Sustainers Drive, I sit down with Whitney and Leslie from Rural Organizing And Resilience – otherwise known as ROAR, a project started in 2017 with a goal of increasing access to essential resources for all people and communities in rural Madison County, North Carolina. Throughout our conversation, we discuss how they got involved with the project, their organizing approach of mutual aid, how the context of Southern Appalachia influences their work, and how listeners can get involved in supporting what they do. We encourage listeners to actively engage with this strategic and critical conversation on the importance of relationship building in the midst of capitalist and climate catastrophe.

For the second installment of our Community Sustainers Drive we sit down with Hillary Brown, director of the Steady Collective, an organization committed to improving overall community health by reducing the rate of drug overdose and the spread of infectious disease with education, advocacy, and direct services. In our conversation we discuss the approach and principles of harm reduction, the challenges involved in implementing these programs, the connection between the opioid crisis, racism, and criminalization, and ways in which listeners can support the work of Steady Collective. We offer this vital conversation in hopes of shedding light on what is needed to continue this life-saving work.

For the first installment of our Community Sustainers Drive, members of our co-op sat down with organizers of the third annual Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair happening this weekend, August 23 - 25, in Asheville, North Carolina. In our conversation we cover the origin of the book fair, the responsibility of organizers in curating a safe(r) space of encounter, the importance of gatherings like this for anarchists and anti-authoritarians in southern Appalachia, and what newcomers might expect of their experience. We think you'll enjoy and we hope to see you at the book fair!

"[Radical spaces] serve increasingly where there's almost no place that isn't privatized or commodified or policed. More and more they serve a crucial role of people finding each other and being able to actually engage in face to face conversation... After the Trump election, so many people were suddenly interested in politics, and where do you go to find that?" Cindy Milstein is the author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, co-author of Paths toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism, and editor of the anthologies Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism and Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief.