Final Straw: Coalition for Immokalee Workers and Jalil Muntaquim

Listen and Download Here

Today we are airing an interview conducted with Lupe Gonzalo of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Immokalee, Florida. This is a worker-based human rights organization which seeks to promote awareness of social responsibility, human trafficking, and gender-based violence at work and in corporations, seeking to boost the voices of some of the more marginalized workers in the US.

We talk about the CIW, how it got started, and about hurricane relief after Hurricane Irma. We also touch on some political differences and points of unity with anarchism. This interview was conducted in translation from Spanish into English, with Patricia of the Alliance for Fair Food doing translation. If anyone would like the full interview just in Spanish, please write to us and we will provide that audio!

If you would like to learn more about the Coalition of Imokalee Workers, and to donate to hurricane relief efforts, you can visit their online fundraising page here.

For more on this group, including how to get onto their email list, information on their radio station Radio Conciencia or La Tuya, and their upcoming visit to UNC Chapel Hill, you can visit ciw-online.org. If you would like to see just one of the many accounts of anarchist solidarity with the CIW you can go to It’s Going Down and search Autonomy in Tampa, Solidarity in Immokalee: Love Letter to the Future.

Further links for reading and solidarity:

Blog Concerning Hurricane Irma relief
Alliance for Fair Food’s report on the state of the town of Immokalee
CIW Blog post about Hurricane Irma relief in Labelle, FL

CKUT’s Prison Radio with Jalil Muntaquim

Then comes part two of Prison Radio’s interview with Jalil Muntaquim, who is former member of the Black Panther party and the Black Liberation Army and is one of the longest held political prisoners in the world. While incarcerated, Jalil has become a father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Jalil graduated with a BS in Psychology and a BA in Sociology in 1994. He has written several books, arguably most notable being We Are Our Own Liberators, his most recent being a book of poems entitled Exiting the Prism.

More from CKUT out of Montreal can be found here!