January-April 2026 “Militant Kindergarten” from the Center for Especifismo Studies

Posted on December 4, 2025 - December 4, 2025 by Orange

Militant Kindergarten 2025 - CES While ‘Victoria’ Anarchist Reading Circle is still on hiatus, we want to bring special attention to the Center for Especifismo Studies (CES), who for their free online Militant Kindergarten course, each Sunday 9AM PST from Jan 11 – April 19 2026 takes inspiration from the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (FARJ, which we have studied before) and their Social Anarchism and Organisation (2008).

According to the CES:

Militant Kindergarten is a 15-week seminar
Combining radicalizing and radicalized people into a shared learning space
Studying especifismo, a revolutionary current of anarchism coming from Latin America
Reading Social Anarchism and Organisation by the FARJ (the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro) and the abridged CES version, “104 Steps to Recovery of the Social Vector”
Refining and developing our understanding of anarchist theory, strategy, and militancy
Discussing specific passages, concepts, and theories
Aiming to create a dependably safe and welcoming environment for learning

*All the organizers have already attended this seminar at least once, and at the end, we’ll invite anyone interested to join us in organizing future Militant Kindergartens.

Click here to learn more about or sign up for CES’ Militant Kindergarten.

September 20/21: Announcing The 20th “Victoria” Anarchist Bookfair

Posted on September 9, 2025 by Orange

We are happy to announce our friends on the “Victoria” Anarchist Bookfair Collective are holding the 20th Annual “Victoria” Anarchist Bookfair, happening on September 20th and 21st at the Fernwood Community Centre on unceded Lekwungen territory.

The Bookfair will include vendors, free workshops, and a Festival of Anarchy leading up to the weekend. Entrance is free.

“The Fernwood NRG is fully wheelchair accessible, and we will be providing free masks to everyone at our event. We aim to avoid replicating the barriers in society that derive from social oppression.”

You can find more information about this year’s Bookfair here.

August 17: Anarchist Commitment, Responsibility and Self-discipline

Posted on July 22, 2025 - August 13, 2025 by Orange

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

Facilitators should note the Facilitation Guide.

We close our circle with a reflection of Thoughts on Commitment, Responsibility and Self-discipline (2014) by the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (FARJ.) Commitment, Responsibility, and Self-discipline emphasizes the importance of continual self-discipline and sustained militancy for anarchists. Critiquing the authoritarian socialist understanding of discipline “from above” as a doctrine, it suggests anarchists must seriously make their positions viable and grounded with clear goals in mind. The text suggests the importance of anarchists to commit to their actions and have follow-through on tasks with procedural frameworks for mutual and self-reinforcement.

The piece reflects on historical conversations between, and the lessons learned by, anarchist revolutionaries Nestor Makhno, an anarchist-communist who helped organized the Ukrainian anarchist Makhnovschina which at its height saw a population of 7.5 million people, and Errico Malatesta, an insurrectionary-turned-syndicalist anarchist who breathed life into dozens of protests, general strikes, and uprisings. The piece aims at showing how these lessons can be applied to members of the FARJ and the wider anarchist tradition.

This is our last VARC for a while as the Circle goes into hiatus. Please write and bring notes. We meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday August 17 @ 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.

July 20: Migrant Justice, Community Defence and Anti-ICE Protest in Yaanga (“Los Angeles”)

Posted on July 11, 2025 - July 11, 2025 by Orange

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

Facilitators should note the Facilitation Guide.

Next time, we will be discussing various reportbacks from anarchists and radicals participating in migrant defence and anti-ICE protests in the so-called “United States,” zeroing in on Yaanga (“Los Angeles,” Tongva land.)

The following short reportbacks have been combined into a single reading: Revolt and Representation: A View from the Battle for Los Angeles by Cuauhtli & Mapaches Clandestinxs, It Never Has Been, It Always Will Be: On the “Right” Time To Act by Ignatius, and Fuck I.C.E. City-Wide: Los Angeles Goes Up by Anonymous.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday July 20 @ 6:30PM.

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Art credit: Jesse Lee

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.

June 22: Dykes Nation & Victoria Tenants Union Collaboration The Battle of Tuntenhaus and the Fight to Abolish Rent

Posted on May 25, 2025 - June 4, 2025 by Orange

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

Facilitators should note the Facilitation Guide.

In collaboration with Dykes Nation and the Victoria Tenants Union, we will be reading Chapter 1: Rent is the Crisis ahead of time, from Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis’ Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis (2024) as a primer for the movie The Battle of Tuntenhaus (1991) by Juliet Bashore, which we will be watching together at Camas.

Abolish Rent is from two co-founders of the largest tenants union in the “United States,” and is a deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centres poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process.

The Battle of Tuntenhaus is a documentary film following the inhabitants of the Tuntenhaus, (“house of queers”) a gay and drag queen squat on Mainzer Strasse in East Berlin. The film takes place during the Automon movement.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday June 22nd@ 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.

May 25: The Formation of Local Councils

Posted on April 27, 2025 - April 27, 2025 by Orange

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

Facilitators should note the Facilitation Guide.

“We are not less than the workers of the Paris Commune… They lasted 70 days and we are still here since a year and a half.” – Omar Aziz

Next time, we will be reading The Formation of Local Councils: To Live in Revolutionary Time (2012) by the martyred Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz. This foundational, strategic proposal inspired Local Councils in large swathes of Syria during the Syrian revolution against the Assad regime. Local Councils provides insights relevant to all anarchists and anti-authoritarians organizing for a more just society.

“Our hope is that by translating and distributing this text to make more visible the Syrian revolution, which has so often been denied or conflated with the armed groups that share its territories. Often leftists who support the Assad regime or anarchists who support the YPG/PYD will ask things like, “Are there really liberatory groups in these areas? What are their names? What are their ideas?” as if the organization of daily life needed a name, a website, and an English-language spokesperson to exist.” – Translator’s Introduction

You can learn more about Omar Aziz and his legacy here.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday May 25th @ 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.

April 13: Care Pod Mapping Workshop

Posted on April 1, 2025 - April 1, 2025 by Orange

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

Next time, we will be hosting a Pod Mapping Workshop led by community activists and abolitionists Audrey and Corina.

Care Pod Mapping is a concept developed by disability activist Mia Mingus as a part of creating stronger and more interdependent liberatory community. A care pod is a network of people who you can seek support from to if violence, harm, or abuse has happened to you, if you caused harm, if you have witnessed harm, or if you are just seeking more support in your life.

We will also discuss related concepts of Relationship Anarchy, with two small optional primer readings: The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy (2006) by Andie Nordgren and Ideal Care Menus conceptualized by Ndeye Oumou Sylla.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday April 13th @ 6:30PM.

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.

December 15: Disability Justice

Posted on November 27, 2024 - December 5, 2024 by Orange

Note: In line with our solidarity statement with the Gitxsan, we are postponing our next circle to December 15th and encourage VARC goers to instead attend the anti-pipeline benefit show in town where Kolin Sutherland-Wilson will also be speaking. Kolin a Gitxsan land defender, artist, and troublemaker from the House known as the Git’luuhl’um’hetxwit, of the Fireweed Clan, hailing from the Village of Anspayaxw, where he is currently serving as Chief Councillor.

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Our last reading discussion revealed how the (“Liberal Democratic”) military industrial complex preys on working class inequalities to seduce people into selling their bodies in labour to the state. Which lead us to a question: what about disabled bodies the State deems “unworthy?”

Our next reading will be a selection from Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (2018) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and our conversation will be prefaced with the short 10 Principles of Disability Justice. Leah writes passionately and personally about creating spaces by and for sick and disabled queer people of colour, and creative “collective access” — access not as a chore but as a collective responsibility and pleasure — in our communities and political movements.

Our Chapter 1 selection is available via Screen or as a custom imposed zine (short-edge).

We ask you to please read the pieces ahead of time. We also encourage everyone to bring suggestions for our next readings.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. The next meeting is Sunday December 15th @ 6:30PM.

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. They need help from volunteers.

PPS: A global majority-prioritized Liberation Reading Circle, unaffiliated with VARC, has also started at Camas. Their first meeting was Wednesday, December 4th from 6:30PM-8:00PM. This was their reading.

October 27: Rejecting Statism During Crisis

Posted on October 16, 2024 - October 16, 2024 by Orange

Next time, we will be discussing Sobre la violencia en una época de catástrofes AKA About violence in a time of catastrophes (2023). We will also be pairing it with an excerpt, Chapter 7: Trusting, from Worth Fighting For: Bringing the Rojava Revolution Home. (2023)

About violence in a time of catastrophes is a short essay (machine-translated from Spanish) exploring the principles of anti-colonial violence and pleas for its audience to take a principled, intersectional stance against right-wing Islamic Jihadism, taking into account the experiences of Iranian and Afghan comrades. It is available for free on the Anarchist Library or as a custom imposed zine short-edge PDF.

Worth Fighting For: Bringing the Rojava Revolution Home is the story of two internationalist volunteers who became part of the Rojavan revolution, such as martyrs like Anna Campbell, who left her home in England and travelled to northeast Syria – the Rojava region of Kurdistan – to join the women fighters of the YPJ in the battle against the Islamic State. One year later, she was killed in the Turkish invasion of Afrin. The text is a critical reflection from these volunteer activists on what we can “bring back” to our movements at home on Turtle Island. Our reading, Chapter 7: Trusting, explores dismantling individuals’ state mentality in a time of War to create bonds of trust. It is available as a custom imposed zine short-edge PDF.

A screen reader with scans of both texts is available here:

Oct 27, 2024 Reader_About Violence + Trusting

1 file(s) 45.67 MB

Download

We ask you to please read the pieces ahead of time.

As always, we meet at Camas Books and Infoshop, 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen Territory at 6:30pm on Sunday October 27th. Bring a tea and a notebook!

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.

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