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.

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.

March 30: Beyond the Screen, the Stars

Posted on March 12, 2025 - March 15, 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 will be discussing the contents of Beyond the Screen, the Stars (2023) by Anonymous; (published by Ungrateful Hyenas Editions) an intervention on cell phone use and normalization in anarchist spaces.

As technological expansion hurtles forward at an increasingly dizzying pace, the presence of smartphones threatens to become normalized across the anarchist space; in many places, this presence has already been normalized for a long time. […] What would it look like to propose that anarchists ditch the technologies we have become increasingly dependent on and addicted to for over a decade, that have come to mediate so much of our lives, relationships, and forms of struggle?

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday March 30th @ 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.

March 16: Accounting for Ourselves: Sexual Assault, Abuse, and Accountability

Posted on February 21, 2025 - March 15, 2025 by Orange

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

Readers should note that this reading deals heavily with triggering and upsetting topics. Facilitators should note the Facilitation Guide.

We will be meeting to discuss Accounting for Ourselves: Breaking the Impasse Around Assault and Abuse in Anarchist Scenes (2017) by Jason Cortez.

“Sexual assault and abuse continue to plague anarchist circles and spaces. In response, we’ve developed processes to hold each other accountable outside of the state. But why can’t we seem to get them right? This essay examines the context in which these community accountability models emerged and analyzes the pitfalls we’ve encountered in trying to apply them. To move beyond the impasse around sexual violence within our scenes, we need to challenge the idea of community itself and take our resistance in new directions.”

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday March 16th @ 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.

March 9: Community Control of the Poor Community

Posted on February 3, 2025 - February 21, 2025 by Orange

GET THE READING HERE: ZINE OR SCREEN, AUDIO (note multiple parts), CAMAS BOOKS‘ FREE BOX, or EMMA’S FREE LIBRARIES AROUND TOWN

Facilitators should note the Facilitation Guide.

Note that we have moved VARC to March 9th to accommodate the Anarchism Across the Arts Conference at University of ‘Victoria,’ which is free for everyone to attend. Next time, we will be meeting to discuss Community Control of the Poor Community: An Organising Manual for Community Activists (2008 edition) by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, a former Black Panther turned Black anarchist. This pamphlet is an extract out of the book called Anarchism and the Black Revolution and has been slightly edited to be more contextually relevant to the conditions of South Africa.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. Our meeting is Sunday March 9th @ 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.

Feb 16: Demodernizing Anarchism

Posted on January 20, 2025 - February 21, 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 will be discussing Jesse Cohn’s Demodernizing Anarchism (2022).

Dr. Cohn acknowledges the calls from some Indigenous scholars about the need to decolonize liberatory theory–that is, to locate and identify the ways in which our theories about collective liberation might be built on assumptions about settler colonialism as a way of life. He argues we need to go further and consider demodernizing anarchism: locating and identifying the ways in which anarchism is built on assumptions about science, progress, and revolution that might limit our thinking about what radical alternatives might look like. – The Anarres Project

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. The next meeting is Sunday February 16th @ 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. They need help from volunteers.

Feb 2: Afrofuturist Movie Night

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Orange

For our next gathering at the beginning of Black History Month, we will be watching an Afrofuturist movie together.

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 February 2nd @ 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. They need help from volunteers.

January 19: Festivals of Resistance: 40 Street-Legal Ways to Fight Fascists

Posted on January 5, 2025 - January 20, 2025 by Orange

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

In response to an Anonymous anarchist callout for Festivals of Resistance against a second Trump term, as well as our own foreboding Conservative federal election victory too in “Canada,” we will be discussing 40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists (2020 revised) by Spencer Sunshine. See also: an optional more recent bonus podcast with Spencer talking about the work.

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 January 19th @ 6:30PM.

While this reading has an American focus, the Canadian-law version 40 Ways to Fight the Far Right: Tactics for Community Activists in Canada is currently unavailable online.

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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. They need help from volunteers.

December 22: Childcare and Radical Parenting

Posted on December 17, 2024 - December 17, 2024 by Orange

Last week, we talked about giving/receiving care, and creating collective access. This week we will be expanding on discussions of care, time, and access, by zooming-in on childcare and radical parenting.

Childcare Practices of Radical Parent Activists by Deborah Sielert from the (Un)usual Business journal Utrecht Meent Het #1 (May 2015) is free to read via screen or as a custom imposed, short-edge doubleprint zine PDF.

As always, we meet at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. The next meeting is Sunday December 22nd @ 6:30PM.

art credit: Voice by Nikki McClure

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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. They 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.

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