Victoria Anarchist Bookfair

We are pleased to announce the 2022 Victoria Anarchist Bookfair, located on unceded Lekwungen Territory, home of the Songhees and Esquimalt peoples, will be held in person this autumn.

Books & Presses

1. AK Press 
2. PM Press 
3. Little Black Cart
4. Contagion Press 
5. Camas Books 
6. Sparticus Books
7. Left Bank Books
8. Detritus Books 
9. Warrior Publications 
10. Electromagnetic Print 
11. Changing Suns
12. Aric McBay 
13. Ron Sakolsky
14. Lucho Libre

Journals & Zines

1. Dyke News 
2. Creeker Zine
3. The Analog Evolution
4. Thinky Thoughts Zine Distro
5. Serendipity Uprising
6. Backwoods Journal
7. ANVI (Anarchist Network of Vancouver Island)

Art, Craft & Apparel

1. N.o. Bonzo ***Bookfair Poster Artist
2. Forest Heart Botanicals 
3. Brass Iris
4. Dead Dog Collective 
5. Midnight Rose Rebellion
6. Iris Moore 
7. Gloomybunz
8. Rad Root Creations
9. Left Merch
10. Art By Rachel
11. For Flotsam
12. Meg's Macabre Marvels
13. Brianna Bear Art

Organisations

1. Food Not Bombs Victoria   
2. Worker Solidarity Network
3. Heart and Hands Health Collective
4. Anarcho-Transhumanism
5. LLEOHN (Lived and Living Experiences of Homelessness Network)
6. StopTheSweeps.ca
7. Defund604 Network
8. Save Old Growth

Saturday, September 24th

11:00 am

Opening Ceremonies and Land Acknowledgement

12:00 pm - 12:50 pm

500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book Kwakwaka’wakw author, artist, and warrior Gord Hill discusses the newly revised and expanded edition of 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book, an illustrated history of Indigenous peoples’ battles (and victories) against colonizers and oppressors. Topics include the 1680 Pueblo revolt in New Mexico, the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890, the 1990 Oka crisis, and recent assertions of Indigenous sovereignty to stop fracking and pipeline developments.

1:00 pm - 1:50 pm

Kracken Calling Join anarchist author Aric McBay for the launch of his fictional thriller, Kraken Calling. In 2028, activists fight an increasingly desperate battle against the climate emergency and capitalism, but their every victory brings down repression. Meanwhile, discontented by protests and polemics, a radical movement named Kraken grows in the shadows. Twenty years later, an oppressive regime has taken control after a series of epidemics, economic shortages, and ecological disasters. Popular social movements and underground liberation groups clash, and people struggle against the limitations of their time. In 2028, building the Kraken seemed premature—but by 2051, its imperative.

2:00 pm - 2:50 pm

Anarchist Cards – a deck to deal with! The Anarchist Cards suggest dynamic ways to activate our lives and liberate society. A deck in three suits, you can consider the one, the other, and the world. Join co-creator Kerry Coast to explore the unlimited possibilities of choice, chance, and change!

3:00 pm - 3:50 pm

Wet'suwet'en Resistance Learn about defending Wet'suwet'en territories against pipelines from Jennifer Wickham, Gidimt'en (Bear/Wolf) Clan, Wet'suwet'en Nation. (further description forthcoming)

4:00 pm - 4:50 pm

Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution Join artist-activist N.O. Bonzo for a discussion of their magnificently illustrated edition of Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. As Mark Bay writes, “the principles of reciprocal support have taken on a new significance in our era of austerity, isolation, climate crisis, and pandemic. With a fantastic stroke of transhistorical artistic wizardry, N.O. Bonzo simultaneously conjures up and reimagines the visionary aesthetics of the early-twentieth-century anarchist movement to make Kropotkin’s appeal for cooperation as urgent as ever.”

5:00 pm - 5:50 pm

War in Ukraine: an anarchist perspective The Russian war against Ukraine has been waged for over 6 months. Join ANVI (Anarchist Network of Vancouver Island) activist Erik Chepkyy as he speaks about anarchist participation in the resistance effort and past clashes with Ukrainian nationalists.Sunday, September 25th

12:00 pm - 12:50 pm

Matriarchs LLEOHN and ANVI present Kecia Larkin, Kwa'kwa'ka'wakw Nation/Blackfoot/Jewish; Ida Manuel, Secwépemculecw Shuswap Nation; and a third Guest Speaker (TBA) Three Indigenous women will share their many struggles, and the ways they have navigated through them, as Indigenous peoples displaced by settler colonialism. LLEOHN: Lived and Living Experience Of Homelessness ANVI: Anarchist Network of Vancouver Island

1:00 pm - 1:50 pm

On the Poverty of Student Life In 1966, members of the French branch of the Situationist International published a controversial pamphlet, On the Poverty of Student Life, that would subsequently be translated and circulate in multiple languages by radicals in Japan, Russia, Argentina, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Presenter Anna O’Meara has coedited a book with Mehdi El Hajoui tracing the pamphlet’s legacy across the arch of 60 years of activism.  Join O’Meara for her discussion of the pamphlet and its ‘afterlife’ around the world.

2:00 pm - 2:50 pm

Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones Speaks Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones will speak about the Ada'itsx/Fairy Creek Blockade and why the defense of sacred old growth forests is imperative for the well-being of mother earth. “I have many stories about this area, from my own experiences as a child and young man and also stories that were told to me by my elders. These forests bring us the clean air that we need to breathe and the clean water that we need to drink and all the plants and animals that we need to sustain not only our bodies, but also our spirits.”

3:00 pm - 3:50 pm

Land Back as Climate Justice: Pathways to Community Resurgence and Sustainable Self-Determination Given the close interrelationships between the health of Indigenous communities and the health of lands, waters, and biodiversity, it is important to consider climate action and justice as a key part of the self-determining authority of Indigenous peoples and nations. Jeff Corntassel (Cherokee Nation) examines some of the ways that the “Land Back” movement creates new spaces for climate justice and sustainable self-determination.

4:00 pm - 4:50 pm

Unionizing Starbucks! Workers’ Solidarity activist Izzy Adachi played an instrumental role unionizing Victoria’s Douglas Street Starbucks. Izzy will relate the impetus for the union drive, strategies for success, and how the Workers’ Solidarity Network is building unionization in hard-to-unionize places.