"Victoria" Anarchist Reading Circle
Reading for Revolution
We were so inspired by reading Andrew Cornell’s history of the Movement for a New Society that we decided to explore the conversations associated with the movement. Please read the following reflective sections regarding MNS theory and praxis for the next gathering. You can find the reading here:
As always, we are meeting at Camas books located on unceded Lekwungen territory at 2620 Quadra Street. We start at 6:30pm this Sunday evening on December 10th.
Be seeing you!
The next reading we will be considering is a section from Andrew Cornell’s 2011 book Oppose and Propose! Lessons from Movement for a New Society (MNS). MNS spanned across the United States between 1971 and into the 1990s, but was concentrated largely in Philadelphia. As the name of the book implies, MNS was involved in both protest actions (to oppose) as well as in building alternative institutional frameworks (to propose). The section we chose to read outlines the early history of the movement, as well as an analysis of why it dissipated at its end.
As always, we are meeting at 6:30pm at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, Victoria, BC on unceded Lekwungen Territory. The next date is on Sunday, November 26th.
There’s nothing like actually getting to read something that is local and close to our hearts like we are this week with the first installment of the Creeker Zine. Yes, it is time for us to consider all the trials and tribulations our comrades over on the blockades have been experiencing as we take a few moments to ponder over their words in Creeker Volume One. Join us for an undoubtedly intense journey by clicking on the link to their zine here.
As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street on Lekwungen Territory. This meeting will take place on Sunday, Sept 17th at 6:30 pm. Be seeing you!
This time we are shaking things up! Join us at 7:00PM at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory on Sunday, September 3rd for an in-depth discussion about how art can infuse unionization drives, Indigenous solidarity campaigns, and the struggle for Palestinian justice with militancy.
This interactive workshop, facilitated by long-time community organizer and artist Stefan Christoff, will highlight three examples of creative activist campaigns and community organizing work that explores the intersections of art and activism.
First Stefan will speak about current efforts in Québec to mobilize artists to join the struggle against Bill 31, newly proposed legislation in Québec that aims to cut into the capacity of renters to express solidarity through lease transfers. Stefan is working on a campaign called Artists United Against Bill 31.
Stefan will speak about the campaign to support Dollarama warehouse workers in Montreal during the peak of the pandemic crisis who faced unjust and unsafe working conditions. Many workers were facing the realities of precarious status and pending deportations from Canada. Stefan helped coordinate artist support for this campaign as part of the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC), which included an open letter and street art posters.
Also, Stefan will speak about an ongoing collaboration with Wet’suwet’en activist Marlene Hale to support the Indigenous land rights of the Wet’suwet’en people who are struggling against the imposition of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline on their traditional Indigenous territories. Stefan coordinated a series of events and an open letter signed by many local artists to support the Wet’suwet’en resistance to contemporary colonialism.
Finally, Stefan will speak about helping to coordinate the global #MusiciansForPalestine campaign, which has brought over 1500 artists together to support the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the apartheid policies of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people.
There will be a presentation aspect and also a street art aspect to this workshop. Participants will cut out street art lettering to express an important campaign and / or political demand that arises from the conversation in this workshop.
Over the past few weeks we have been reading Peter Gelderloos’ How Nonviolence Protects the State and the discussions have been riveting! This book has both strong points to make in favour of diversity of tactics, but unfortunately, it also has its limitations, which we are unpacking.
We are accessing the text on one of two ways:
Camas Books made a special order from Detritus already. Thanks to those who participated in this bulk purchase.
Reading Assignments
March 5: Part One: Terminology; Part Two: Nonviolence is Ineffective; and Part Three: Nonviolence is Racist.
March 19: Part Four: Nonviolence is Statist; and Part Five: Nonviolence is Patriarchal
As always, we meet at 6:30 pm at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, unceded Lekwungen Territory.
For our next reading circle, we will be discussing the commodification of activism; we will do so by reviewing a piece from Damani James Partridge called “Activist Capitalism and Supply-Chain Citizenship: Producing Ethical Regimes and Ready-to-Wear Clothes.”
In his paper, Partridge examines new models of citizenship that are the direct result of globalization.
In those new models, capitalistic enterprises such as global supply chains and global corporate axes become intertwined with social projects. Partridge examines new collaborative models, which are the results of “[…] links between corporate governance, negotiations between corporate and nation-state sovereignty, and the related setting and enforcement of global labor and environmental standards.
Link to the paper
The PDF is also attached for those who cannot access the link:
Activist Capitalism and Supply-Chain Citizenship
For a complementary reading, see Nike’s Kaepernick ad is what happens when capitalism and activism collide, by Marc Bain.
Link to the article
Although we are no longer physically meeting as a group, we still operate on occupied, unceded Lekwungen territory. Our next meeting will be held on our private Jitsi server on Tuesday, September 8th at 7pm PST.
Jitsi is open-source software that is fully encrypted end-to-end, and which does not track your IP address. In the time when it seems like everyone’s falling for the most insecure communications platforms motivated solely to collect, sell and trade in your data, we created our own Jitsi instance as an infrastructural countermeasure.
If you are interested in participating in this week’s reading circle, please contact varc[at]victoriaanarchistreadingcircle.ca introducing yourself to confirm your place in the shadow-cabinet list and obtain access to the meeting.
Resistance is a process that pushes to understand how to unravel social dynamics and tensions, in the hope that from such an act would emerge meaningful solutions. Art, as a mean of expression, can speak and address such tensions.
For our next reading circle, we will be reading and discussing the following two writings:
> Pedagogical Subversion: The “Un-American” Graphics of Kevin Pyle, by Allan Antliff. Allan explores the work of Kevin Pyle, an illustrator whose work highlights the many social issues in the United-States. The writing discusses how Art can be used to unravel some of the state’s ideological tools and motivations, including the prison and the legal systems.
> Accomplices Not Allies, from Indigenous Action, is an indigenous perspective on the “ally industrial complex”, which stems from the “institutionalization” of allyship and its steering away from meaningful support.
Although we are no longer physically meeting as a group, we still operate on occupied, unceded Lekwungen territory. Our next meeting will be held on our private Jitsi server on Tuesday, July 28th at 7pm PST.
Jitsi is open-source software that is fully encrypted end-to-end, and which does not track your IP address. In the time when it seems like everyone’s falling for the most insecure communications platforms motivated solely to collect, sell and trade in your data, we created our own Jitsi instance as an infrastructural countermeasure.
If you are interested in participating in this week’s reading circle, please contact varc[at]victoriaanarchistreadingcircle.ca introducing yourself to confirm your place in the shadow-cabinet list and obtain access to the meeting.
Continuing with the theme of prisons and incarceration in relation to social issues, we decided to further explore that theme on the prison system in Canada.
* “Everything you were never taught about Canada’s prison systems” explores what the writers call an “urgent human right crisis”. Their research highlight the relationship between crime rate and incarceration, living conditions, and targeted populations.
* In “Why Indigenous Women Are Canada’s Fastest Growing Prison Population”, we learn the stories of indigenous people and their experience with the prison system.
Links to the readings:
> http://www.intersectionalanalyst.com/intersectional-analyst/2017/7/20/everything-you-were-never-taught-about-canadas-prison-systems
> https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/5gj8vb/why-indigenous-women-are-canadas-fastest-growing-prison-population
Although we are no longer physically meeting as a group, we still operate on occupied, unceded Lekwungen territory. Our next meeting will be held on our private Jitsi server on Tuesday, July 14th at 7pm PST.
Jitsi is open-source software that is fully encrypted end-to-end, and which does not track your IP address. In the time when it seems like everyone’s falling for the most insecure communications platforms motivated solely to collect, sell and trade in your data, we created our own Jitsi instance as an infrastructural countermeasure.
If you are interested in participating in this week’s reading circle, please contact varc[at]victoriaanarchistreadingcircle.ca introducing yourself to confirm your place in the shadow-cabinet list and obtain access to the meeting.
Drawing upon our previous readings, we decided to take the topic of systemic racism and the police state further to explore issues relating to prison abolition and restorative justice.
We will be discussing two readings:
Although we are no longer physically meeting as a group, we still operate on occupied, unceded Lekwungen territory. Our next meeting will be held on our private Jitsi server on Tuesday, June 23th at 7pm PST. Jitsi is open-source software that is fully encrypted end-to-end, and which does not track your IP address. In the time when it seems like everyone’s falling for the most insecure communications platforms motivated solely to collect, sell and trade in your data, we created our own Jitsi instance as an infrastructural countermeasure.
If you are interested in participating in this week’s reading circle, please contact varc[at]victoriaanarchistreadingcircle.ca introducing yourself to confirm your place in the shadow-cabinet list and obtain access to the meeting.
Given the recent events galvanizing resistance to systemic racism and police brutality in North America, we decided to delve deeper into the issue in order to unpack what it means in terms of building communities against social oppression and State violence. Our next reading is an excerpt from the edited anthology, Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States. It was edited by Joe Macaré, Maya Schenwar, and Alana Yu-lan Price, and recently came out on The Anarchist Library this May, 2020.
We have assembled a series of 4 chapters from the second half of the book to discuss at our next circle.
Get it here:
Excerpt: Macare, Schenwar & Price: Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect?
1 file(s) 134.11 KB
Although we are no longer physically meeting as a group, we still operate on occupied, unceeded Lekwungen territory. Our next meeting will be held on our private Jitsi server on Tuesday, June 9th at 8pm PST. Jitsi is open-source software that is fully encrypted end-to-end, and which does not track your IP address. In the time when it seems like everyone’s falling for the most insecure communications platforms motivated solely to collect, sell and trade in your data, we created our own Jitsi instance as an infrastructural countermeasure.
If you are interested in participating in this week’s reading circle, please contact varc[at]victoriaanarchistreadingcircle.ca introducing yourself to confirm your place in the shadow-cabinet list and obtain access to the meeting.