Institute for Anarchist Studies

Feb 14

Joyful Militancy interview

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Solecast talks with carla bergman and Nick Montgomery about their Institute for Anarchist Studies/AK Press book Joyful Militancy on their podcast!

Joyful Militancy, part of the IAS/AK Anarchist Interventions series, is a critical examination of the toxicity that is so common within activist subcultures.

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Nick and carla talk about the influences schooling, religion, hierarchy, and Empire have on our lives and how those social forces seep into our organizing. They talk about how militant joy, art, and practices that empower us all to thrive together can make our movements stronger and healthier. Give it a listen, and pick up Joyful Militancy from AK Press!

Hillary Lazar on LaborWave Revolution Radio

Man! Here’s an interview with writer and activist Hillary Lazar on the connections between border politics and antifascism, applying intersectional frameworks to movement organizing. The discussion begins with a conversation about Lazar’s recent essay, “Connecting Our Struggles: Border Politics, Antifascism, and Lessons from the Trials of Ferrero, Sallito, and Graham,” published in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (N30, “Beyond the Crisis” issue)

Dec 13

Mutual Aid Speakers list

(art by Amanda Priebe)

The Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) has revamped and updated our list of available speakers. Our speakers bureau, called the Mutual Aid Speakers, are all available to come to your town and assist in your organizing efforts.

Take a look at all the awesome folks below. Many of them received an IAS writing grant, or have written books or essays over the years for the IAS. Some are either current or past IAS board members, while others are comrades, and people whose work we respect.

Nov 16

Call for Submissions: Perspectives No. 31, Imagination(s)

We know the importance of history—it teaches us about our origins and stories, it helps us understand the shape of the present, it provides cautionary tales and examples to follow. It gives us inspiration, wisdom, and role models—but it is also contained in the past. What are the visions that lead us forward into the future? What innovative, revolutionary forms have we yet to imagine?

Are you an organizer, an activist, a thinker, or a dreamer? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then the IAS wants to hear from you.

This year, we want to hear your fantasies, your alternate realities, and your wildest dreams. We believe that we need more than just analysis and hard work to make a better world—it takes the courage to imagine beyond our circumstances into the fantastic and the impossible. In that spirit, our theme for 2019 is IMAGINATION(S).

(Art by Bec Young – just seeds.org)

Nov 16

Fall 2018 IAS Newsletter

The Fall 2018 Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) newsletter is out. It contains updates on the IAS’ recent work, changes in the collective, important announcements about our grants program, and the call for contributions to the next issue of Perspectives, on the theme of Imagination(s).

Check it out here!

(Art by Josh MacPhee)

If you want to receive the IAS’ newsletter periodically via email, join our mailing list by writing to us at: anarchiststudies@gmail.com

Nov 13

Beyond the Crisis

The world is on fire.

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It has been, for quite some time. If you’ve done any organizing, you’ve felt it—that sense of racing about, extinguishing this flare up or that, spending precious energy and resources surviving the immediate emergency and hoping the future will somehow save itself. If you’ve watched the news, you’ve felt it—disbelief combined with the raw hilarity of the media circus; just when it seems things couldn’t get worse, or more frightening, or more absurd, they do. If you’ve ever worked three jobs to keep your family afloat, you’ve felt it. If you’ve listened to climate scientists, or survived a hurricane, or watched helplessly as an unseasonable forest fire tore through a landscape you loved, you’ve felt it—the rising certainty that we have waited too long, that global temperatures are edging toward tipping points from which we will never return. We are burning.

Western culture has been historically preoccupied with apocalypse, from Judeo-Christian threats of the End Times to doomsday cults. Every generation has imagined themselves living at the edge of history. The anticipation and dread permeate aspects of our puritanical, militaristic, consumeristic culture, yet they offer little in the way of seeing beyond times of crisis. In fact, it seems ever clearer that capitalism thrives on crisis—that capitalism is crisis. At this point, could we tell the difference between the “the end is near” and “the end is here?”

What if the apocalypse has already arrived, having crept up incrementally while we were waiting for a big announcement? What if this is what it looks like to be in the thick of things, the “interesting times” of the proverbial curse? Why are we not in the streets, then, in our thousands and our millions? Why haven’t we taken over our workplaces and neighborhoods and said, Enough! Are we simply resigned, cynical, nihilistic? Overwhelmed and preoccupied with financial survival? Distracted? Do we even think things can ever radically change for the better, much less in time?

Aug 27

8 Comments

An Anarchism of the Working-Class: A Review of Whither Anarchism?, by Kristian Williams (To the Point/AK Press, 2018), Reviewed by Miriam Pickens

whither_anarchism I appreciate Kristian Williams’ pamphlet, both the thought put into it and the challenge it represents. I learned a lot from its history, and in particular gained insight into the behavior of anarchists I meet today. Williams traces some practices of contemporary US anarchism back to pacifism, looking at how contemporary anarchists unthinkingly accept much of that philosophy. In my view, that influence led to the movement prioritizing providing comfort to its participants, rather than organizing to change the circumstances that led to the discomfort they feel with society in the first place. This emphasis accepts the inevitability of capitalism and is therefore a strategy to live within its parameters. But I don’t think capitalism will allow us these spaces. Instead, it has to be overthrown and not allowed to come back.

Jun 5

Beyond Anti-Fascism Reflection

The Beyond Anti-Fascism, But Not Without It statement was circulated in December, 2017, generating a number of both positive and negative responses.

Positive responses include Hillary Lazar’s piece, Connecting Our Struggles: Border Politics, Antifascism, and Lessons from the Trials of Ferrero, Sallitto, and Graham, in the forthcoming print issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (N.30, “Beyond the Crisis”), as well as other writing we’ll be sharing on-line soon.

Negative responses included critiques that the call was, a) being improperly essentialistic about identity politics and b) disregarding the fact that some of the white men writing about fascism/anti-fascism are Jewish and therefore it was insulting to say they don’t understand the history of fascism.

In light of these responses, we have rewritten the statement and are including it in the new print issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. Below you’ll find this new version, followed by a reflection on how we got from the original to this one, and what we still find inadequate and needing in our discussions of fascism and anti-fascism. And here we really want to encourage you to use our comments section for discussion, or send us your thoughts to be considered for posting on-line.

(Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative)

May 9

Perspectives issues available for 25% off & with free shipping

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All issues feature cover art and design by Josh MacPhee, of Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, and art by Justseeds’ artists. Take a look at which issues are available, and some of each issues’ highlights below!

Available issues:

Apr 8

Between Everyday Resistance and Overt Rebellion: Revolutionary Possibilities!, A conversation between Alexander Riccio and Kevin Van Meter

Alexander Riccio, a labor organizer based in Corvallis, Oregon who co-hosts the podcast LabourWave Revolution Radio, talks with Kevin Van Meter, author of Institute for Anarchist Studies/AK Press book Guerrillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible, available here!

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Alexander Riccio: Some have read your book, Guerillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible, as an attack on organized labor in general, or as one that poses an either/or decision between supporting Left organizations, such as unions, versus championing forms of everyday resistance. What do you say to these criticisms?

Kevin Van Meter: I don’t see my work as an attack on organized labor per se, but as a critique of where organized labor has been and how it is currently functioning. I think one of the major problems with organized labor, at least in regards to business unions, is their inability to innovate, their inability to learn from their own historical lessons, and their inability to listen to the actual needs and desires of the working class outside of the union’s organizational frame.

Unions have a very particular way of going about organizing: a steward system, a contract vote, provide services, conduct a corporate campaign. For thirty years, labor unions have hired people predominately out of college rather than from within their own ranks, and during the same period, there has been a focus on corporate campaigns rather than building substantive relationships on the ground. The fact is that building relationships on the job and in communities is necessary for the Left to bounce back, pass legislation, organize unions, and be successful in the streets against forces like fascism. All of that means it’s necessary to reweave the social fabric, but unions have largely ignored this necessity.