April 27: Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in Rojava

Posted on April 3, 2025 - April 26, 2025 by Orange

GET THE READING PORTION HERE: ZINE OR SCREEN, CAMAS BOOKS‘ FREE BOX, or EMMA’S FREE LIBRARIES AROUND TOWN.

ALSO LISTEN (35:00-end, 20m) and WATCH (14m)

Facilitators should note the Facilitation Guide.

We will be discussing the Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution methods and praxis of Rojavan revolutionaries in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

VARC-goers are expected to read Peacebuilding in a Conflict Setting: Peace and Reconciliation Committees in De Facto Rojava Autonomy in Syria (2017) by Dr. Yasin Duman, listen to The Women’s War podcast episode 5 Grandma Law And Revolutionary Sacrifice, (2020) and watch the SubMedia video The Fall of the Regime (2025) ahead of time for our discussion.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday April 27th @ 6:30PM.

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PS: Our friends at the Anarchist Network of “Vancouver Island” have put together a list of anarchist and adjacent projects on the territory. If you are looking to involve yourself in anarchist activism, look at their trifold! Particularly, Food not Bombs serves free vegan food for revolution every Sunday 4-6PM at Spirit “Centennial” Square and have been facing increasing harassment tied to the gentrification of the Square. Come show up to eat! They also need help from volunteers.

September 29: Nonviolence and Ally Mythology

Posted on September 18, 2024 by Orange

Spilling over from our last conversation on Turning Away from The State, we decided to revisit the classic Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex (2014) by Indigenous Action (now Indigenous Abolition), and to pair it with Peter Gelderloos’ Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance (2020).

This provocation is intended to intervene in some of the current tensions around solidarity/support work as the current trajectories are counter-liberatory from my perspective. Don’t construe this as being for “white young middle class allies”, just for paid activists, non-profits, or as a friend said, “downwardly-mobile anarchists or students.” There are many so-called “allies” in the migrant rights struggle who support “comprehensive immigration reform” which furthers militarization of Indigenous lands. – Accomplices Not Allies

The Floyd rebellion follows a long tradition of movements using a diversity of tactics to achieve their goals, discrediting champions of nonviolence. – Debunking nonviolent resistance

Accomplices Not Allies is available as to read here online or as a printable imposed zine.

Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance is available online for free through Roar Magazine or as a custom printable imposed zine.

As always, we meet at Camas Books and Infoshop, 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen Territory at 6:30pm on Sunday September 29th.

August 18: Security Culture

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Daisy

Good security practices are essential to effective, sustainable organizing. We have decided to review these practices by reading two zines about security culture, Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists and Confidence. Courage. Connection. Trust: A Proposal for Security Culture.

Both act as concise overviews of the basics when it comes to security culture. Each zine also provides extra insight into a particular area of the concept: Confidence. Courage. Connection. Trust offers practical strategies for maintaining confidentiality in real-life scenarios, with a focus on navigating relationships. Its suggestions are bolstered with anecdotes from the author about their personal experience using the strategies presented. The unique insights of Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists, meanwhile, include an overview of different arms of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies run by the Canadian state, as well as a brief guide to informants and infiltrators. Together, these two short readings offer activists a firm foundational education in strong security practices.

Both Confidence. Courage. Connection. Trust. and Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists can be obtained from The Anarchist Library. Both plain-text and imposed zine format are available for each reading. For the sake of convenience, plain-text PDFs of each can also be downloaded off this webpage just below:

Confidence. Courage. Connection. Trust.

1 file(s) 83.22 KB

Download

Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists

1 file(s) 98.40 KB

Download

As always, we meet at Camas Books and Infoshop, 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen Territory at 6:30pm on Sunday August 18th.

Feb 18: What Is Black Anarchism?

Posted on February 4, 2024 - February 14, 2024 by Light

In honour of Black History Month, we will be watching and discussing Andrewism (Andrew Sage)’s video What is Black Anarchism? (2021), which is also available to be read as a zine.

Andrew in his (video) essay introduces the concept and history of Black Anarchism, a political philosophy and movement that combines the principles of anarchism with the experiences and struggles of people of racialized Black people. He explains the main features and goals of Black Anarchism, such as opposing all forms of oppression, with particular emphasis on racism and white supremacy, and creating a non-hierarchical and self-determined society. He also mentions some of the prominent Black Anarchists and their contributions, such as Ashanti Alston, Kuwasi Balagoon, Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, and Martin Sostre, who have been invisibilized by their White counterparts.

The text version of the essay is available on the Anarchist Library as screen or imposed zine PDF.

It is also available through our website: screen or imposed zine PDF.

As always, we meet at Camas Books and Infoshop, 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen Territory at 6:30pm on Sunday February 18th.

August 20: Quiet Storm – Technology and Social Control Screening

Posted on August 13, 2023 by Creatrix

For the next reading circle, we decided to put the texts down and watch a video together! So we headed over to our anarchist educational co-conspirators at sub.Media for inspiration and of course, they came up with the goods! We are going to be viewing (together at the circle) Quiet Storm: Technology and Social Control, which is part of their Trouble Series of documentary films. After the movie we will discuss what we learned.

As always, we are meeting at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. The next meeting is Sunday August 20th @ 6:30PM.

June 23, 7PM: Restorative Justice & Prison Abolition Discussion

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Creatrix

Gilmore 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.

Restorative justice infographic

Feb 4: ‘Who will protect us without police?’

Posted on January 29, 2020 - January 29, 2020 by Creatrix

Peter Gelderloos

In a hierarchical society, whom do police protect? Who has more to fear from crime, and who has more to fear from police? In some communities, the police are like an occupying force; police and crime form the interlocking jaws of a trap that prevents people from escaping oppressive situations or rescuing their communities from violence, poverty, and fragmentation.

Our next reading is on alternatives to policing and community-based, self-organized ways to take care of our social needs and problems. Anarchists wish to create a society that can protect itself and resolve internal problems without police, judges, or prisons; a society that does not view its problems in terms of good and evil, permitted and prohibited, law-abiders and criminals.

We will discuss the common question asked of anarchists: ‘Yes, but who will protect us without police?’ that kicks off chapter 5, “Crime” from ‘Anarchy Works’, an excellent introduction to anarchism and response to many of the popular criticisms and reactions to the anarchist worldview, by Peter Gelderloos. Peter Gelderloos is an American anarchist and activist, and author of How Nonviolence Protects the State, Worshipping Power, Consensus, and Anarchy Works.

You can read the chapter online here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works#toc41

A PDF version of the reading is available for download at the top of the ‘Readings’ column, from the right-hand menu.

As usual, we will be meeting at 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen territory. Doors will be open at 6:50pm, and discussion starts at 7pm.

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