Ultra-red

07/30/2026

Good first day in Foligno, Italy!

Ultra-red's U.K. team of Chris and Elliot are working alongside our good friends, the cultural association and publishing house, Viaindustriae in Foligno. Ultra-red's time in Foligno began with today's listening session (see photos) with an invited-group of local activists looking at the current conjuncture of politics, protest, and organising with a desire to collectivize towards analysis and action. The sessions continue tomorrow into the Holydays Festival, Scopoli festival di musica indipendente nella valle del menotre, umbria. Chris and Elliot's appearance at the Holydays Festival will also include an introduction to Ultra-red's long term work.

For more information see:
https://holydaysfestival.it
https://www.facebook.com/HolydaysFestivalUmbria
https://www.viaindustriae.it
https://www.facebook.com/viaindustriae1

05/28/2026

Ultra-red go Italy! Listening work around trying to forge new political relationships between old and new comrades in Foligno.

* * * * *

Holydays Festival 2026
Scopoli festival di musica indipendente nella valle del mentre
Umbria
31 luglio, 1-2 Agosto

Holydays è un’associazione culturale che da dieci anni promuove e diffonde musica in Umbria con una proposta unica e selezionata. Fondata da un gruppo di volontari e volontarie cresciuto nel tempo, l’associazione sostiene una scena musicale poliedrica, offrendo spazio a progetti indipendenti.

Dal 2019 il festival si tiene stabilmente a Scopoli, frazione montana di Foligno (PG) – nella Valle del Menotre. È qui che il festival è cresciuto, diventando un appuntamento atteso per la qualità della proposta artistica e per l’atmosfera intima e partecipata.

holydaysfestival.it

02/19/2026

November 2025 came and went but the month marked the ten-year anniversary of Ultra-red's research fellowship with the Social Practice Art Research Center at University of California Santa Cruz, curated by Elliot Anderson. The fellowship was titled, "Against Participation: Social Action and the Conditions of Neoliberalism."

For a week in November 2015, members of Ultra-red from Germany, U.K., and U.S. gathered in Santa Cruz. In conversations with students and scholars, collective members reflected on the contradictions of the value form of participation under neoliberalism based on experiences in public health, housing, education, and art.

While Ultra-red produced numerous discussion papers and collected detailed responses from discussants, "Against Participation" never resulted in a published study as was our original plan. (Perhaps in the future?) However, the analysis of participation in its value form would eventually shape our praxis in a number of organizing projects including the Ballroom Freedom School in New York and the Los Angeles Tenants Union.

See: https://sparc.ucsc.edu/ultra-red/

02/18/2026

RADIO ULTRA-RED HAS REACHED 100 SUBSCRIBERS! Thank you for all the support! Become a paid subscriber and support Radio Ultra-red as we bring more dispatches from our network of popular educators, organizers, and artists.

"No movement without listening."

https://substack.com/

02/16/2026

“In the second part of my interview with L.A. Tenant Union organizers, Celeste Kessler, Lucio Maldonado, and Paulo Suarez, the organizers show a critical distance from the founding of the Union while engaging with the Union's commitment to base-building, popular power, and the praxis and experimentation of popular education. The organizers talk about a shift in their own praxis from bringing tenants closer to the Union to bringing the Union closer to tenants. This means that the forms and practices of tenant organizing are translated into the material reality of a specific neighborhood where the Union strives to establish a new common sense among residents regardless of the depth of their relationship to the Union.”

[Radio Ultra-red is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, become a paid subscriber.]

A Conversation with L.A. Tenant Union Organizers in Koreatown, Part Two

02/02/2026

"In the weeks before Christmas, Radio Ultra-red had the opportunity to join a Zoom conversation with three L.A. Tenants Union (LATU) organizers; Celeste Kessler, Lucio Maldonado, and Paulo Suarez. All three are part of the Union’s Koreatown chapter and, for a few years now, have been accompanying tenants with Unión de la 8, a neighborhood committee located in the Oaxaca corridor of Koreatown [. . .].

"In the first part of the conversation with the Koreatown organizers on December 3, 2025, I ask them to give us an image of the Koreatown neighborhood and then to situate themselves as organizers in relation to that neighborhood. Understanding the context and the positions of the organizers helps them to then map the terrain of education as it functions in the community organizing of Unión de la 8."

[Radio Ultra-red is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.]

A Conversation with L.A. Tenant Union Organizers in Koreatown, Part One

01/03/2026

📢 ANNOUNCEMENT | ALFORJA NETWORK
From the Alforja Network we strongly condemn the intervention of the United States government in Venezuela.
Sanctions, economic blockade, military threats and political interference violate international law and self-determination of peoples.
Every aggression against Venezuela is also an attack against the peoples of Our America.
We reaffirm that Venezuela has the right to decide its own destiny, without guardianship or blockades.
We express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people and their popular organizations, who resist with dignity.
✊🏽 No to imperialist intervention
✊🏽 Yes to the sovereignty of the peoples

📢 PRONUNCIAMIENTO | RED ALFORJA
Desde la Red Alforja condenamos de manera firme la intervención del gobierno de Estados Unidos en Venezuela.
Las sanciones, el bloqueo económico, las amenazas militares y la injerencia política violan el derecho internacional y la autodeterminación de los pueblos.

Cada agresión contra Venezuela es también un ataque contra los pueblos de Nuestra América.

Reafirmamos que Venezuela tiene derecho a decidir su propio destino, sin tutelajes ni bloqueos.
Expresamos nuestra solidaridad con el pueblo venezolano y con sus organizaciones populares, que resisten con dignidad.
✊🏽 No a la intervención imperialista
✊🏽 Sí a la soberanía de los pueblos

12/03/2025

"Any careful observation of the path taken by subcultures could have predicted where we were headed. In the hours after midnight, August 15, 1992, my best friend and I were driving out of Los Angeles. The Antelope Valley Freeway took us northeast towards Vasquez Rocks and the unincorporated area of Agua Dulce. It was seven years before the juggernaut of Coachella Festival set sail on a course that took Southern California popular music towards a party selling 250,000 individual tickets totaling more than $100 million dollars. But on this occasion, pumped with stimulants, we headed towards a destination we had only learned about an hour before."

Radio Ultra-red is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

On Nick Angelos’ Edifice

12/01/2025

"It’s impossible to arrive on December 1, World AIDS Day, and not be overcome with feelings of joy, grief, desire, and rage. When the topic of feelings and affects in the context of political struggles comes up, my thoughts immediately turn to my earliest movement experiences in the 1980s. Words come from my lips involuntarily: 'The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is a nonpartisan group of diverse individuals united in anger to end the AIDS crisis through direct action.' This sentence remains etched in my memory and bursts into the room regardless of the context of the conversation, whether AIDS activism, harm reduction, or tenant organizing. In my imaginary, this declaration of purpose and aim stands in as the paradigmatic example of the centrality of political feelings."

Radio Ultra-red is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

An interview