In 2024, the Camas Books Collective announced our inaugural Mutual Aid Microgrants Project, where we raised and distributed $8,000 (CDN) to help fund five collective projects in accordance with our Principles of Unity and Mission Statement. In 2025, we were proud to be able to increase that distribution to $10,000 (CDN) and support an additional nine projects. You can read about each of these projects below, as well as find some links to see how you can support them further.
It is our hope that by supporting such groups we can contribute to the growth of various fledgling means of resistance. Each Mutual Aid grant recipient will further their vital actions in their own ways, building and expanding the Anarchist community through good old fashioned hard work and solidarity. Solidarity is the foundational premise underlying the very existence of Camas Books, and we are grateful for the support of our community, whose patronage of our Infoshop make this possible.
2025 Microgrants Recipients
Victoria Food Not Bombs (FNB) – $725
“Victoria FNB serves food for free as an act of mutual aid, not charity, serving to whomever wishes to eat with us. In Victoria food is donated from local organic farms, where we cook plant based meals high in nutrients. The Kitchen Safety project is for interested FNB collective members to take their Food Safe Level 1 course and become certified. With this we can approach more commercial kitchens that require us to be Food Safe certified allowing us to give members a break from hosting the cooks which is very much needed. Not only will we have an easier time acquiring the use of commercial kitchens we’ll be able to table events and serve free food in such a way that labor is fairly distributed. By having six more people with their Food Safe Lv.1 we will be able to secure more kitchens where we can host the cooks for free and create bonds of solidarity within our community and with other anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian mutual aid groups. Our presence will grow in Victoria, we will be able to engage with a wider audience resulting in more members and give relief to members who for years, have been hosting many cooks.”
IWW K’jipuktuk (Halifax) – $250
“The broader goal of the IWW is the overthrow of the wage system by the establishment of directly democratic workers’ organization at the point of production. The specific goal of this committee is producing a newsletter to help inspire and educate our fellow workers with this goal in mind. Specifically, we aim to publish, when possible, articles focused on building workplace committees and taking direct action, esp. workers’ first-hand stories. “The Worst of Times” is a periodic newsletter of the IWW–Kjipuktuk (Halifax). Our goal going forward is to publish issues quarterly in addition to occasional special issues. We are aiming to focus on producing something that can be of practical utility in workplace organizing, that an organizer could hand to a coworker to inspire them with concrete examples of workers exercising power, as well as offering accessible “theory.” In the past, we have included interviews with prison organizers, articles about migrant justice, tenants rights, legal information concerning termination, and more. The goal is to see an increase in shopfloor democracy and direct action among low wage workers, esp. in the workplaces where IWW members are active. We also aim to empower people to grow as writers and artists and learn to tell their own stories.”
DIRA Bibliothèque Anarchiste Archives Preservation – $1500
“DIRA is an anarchist library and independent archive in Montreal aiming to acquire and provide free resources on Anarchism and social struggles for liberation. We loan books and give access to information on anarchist theory, practice and history; to activists and curious newcomers alike. DIRA has been active since 2003 and participates actively current struggles by giving access to our space to organizers for events aligning with our values such as meetings, film screenings, workshops and more. We welcome every walk-in from the city and out-of-town during open hours to answer their questions about what anarchism means to us and how they can get involved in activism. Our archival project aims to collect, inventory and preserve archives from the anarchist movements in the city and beyond. DIRA’s long term goal is to further Anarchist organizing, to encourage revolutionary thinking and to promote direct action towards liberation. By keeping a record of the anarchist movement, we aim to provide a historical understanding on which to base our own contemporary organizing. Our goal is to educate people from all backgrounds about non-hierarchical and anticapitalist ways of living; to create a world without oppression and state repression.”
Unhoused Solidarity Collective Okanagan (USCO) – $1500
“USCO is a group of housed and mostly unhoused people who gather weekly in solidarity to organize and educate around social justice matters that affect the unhoused in Kelowna. Unhoused leadership and initiative is crucial as we recognize that only those directly affected by issues surrounding houselessness can truly give meaningful solutions by offering insights that housed people cannot. As such, USCO exists as a medium to bring the struggle of houselessness to the forefront of the City. This project will result in the creation of a memorial quilt, each quilt square dedicated to the loss of an unhoused person in Kelowna, drawing inspiration from the AIDS quilt project. We will host four all-day workshops, facilitating the creation of quilt squares by our unhoused members and allies. Multimedia art supplies will be available including traditional fabrics, thread, beading, paints, etc. This project can offer time and space for grief and will result in a collectively-built memorial art piece which can be preserved and protected from violence. Through many hours of skill-sharing, shared space and conversation for people to tell their stories; we can raise consciousness of everyone involved about the realities of state violence and build stronger bonds of trust and solidarity. We will document this process on our Instagram and Substack, using this quilt at events/protests, and possibly display it in local galleries and organizations.”
Black Oak Zine Library Collective – $830
“We are Anarchists committed to zine making and distribution as an accessible way of sharing a wide variety of radical ideas. The zine library will spread both the practice and politics of zine making and distribution, as well as ideas contained in the zines themselves. The zine library will exist within an anarchist social space that hosts a wide range of events and drop-in hours, and we believe that the existence of a zine library within the space will be one way for visitors to take away new ideas, deepen their politics, and learn from new perspectives. The zine library will have a digital and physical archive that community members can browse by topic and title. The library will include a printer and scanner that visitors can use to copy and takeaway zines that interest them. The scanner will also be used to add zines to the digital archive as the collection grows. The library will include display shelves for a rotating collection of featured zines, while the rest of the library will be stored in a categorized, easy-to copy format in hanging files inside of a filing cabinet. The ability to explore the archives and take zines away for free will expose visitors to new ideas and perspectives in a low-barrier way, and may even inspire them to create their own zines and share their own ideas and stories.”
Constellation: An Anarchist Festival – $500
“Constellation is an anarchist festival taking place, for the second year running, on May 17-18th in Montreal. It is a volunteer led, locally-driven initiative that strives to bring together individuals,groups, and projects with socio-political affinities in Montreal and beyond. This free multi-day event will provide space for participants to engage in meaningful dialogue and community building. Constellation seeks to provide a setting to strengthen and expand grassroots connections in Montreal, as well as to host a vibrant celebration of resistance. The Constellation Collective will organize central events (to be held in fully accessible venues), as well as assist in the organization of decentralized events across the city. There will be a schedule of pre-planned activities, including workshops, trainings, skill-shares, film screenings, discussion circles, games,and more Constellation is addressing a community-wide need for autonomy, increasing our capacities, and fostering self-reliance. Constellation will offer space for groups to come together to share the things we’ve learned over the past year, to discuss how we’ve changed and grown. To connect with old friends and new and to imagine meaningful attacks on the status quo. We will offer intellectual and practical skills to make our communities healthier, safer, and stronger.”
subMedia – InterRebellium Documentary – $2000
“subMedia is a longstanding anarchist media and propaganda collective. We exist to spread anarchist ideas, and to shine a light on global struggles waged against capitalism, colonialism,and the state. InterRebellium is a new documentary series exploring the flurry of uprisings and revolutions that broke out between the fall of 2018 and the summer of 2020. The title of this series is a Latin word that means ‘between uprisings’. This is a nod to the interconnected and reciprocal nature of these uprisings, understood in both a physical/geographical and temporal sense. We have already finished the first instalment in this series, which covers the 2019 EstallidoSocial (or Social Explosion) in so-called Chile. For our second film, we plan on analyzing the#ShutDownCanada uprising that broke out in early 2020, when supporters from across the territories ruled by the Canadian state joined forces, in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en land defenders. This struggle was a high-water mark for Indigenous resurgence, and resistance to the Canadian state and extractive industries. It was also rich with tactical and strategic lessons that could be of immense benefit to contemporary and future resistance movements. Our hope is that future movements will be able to learn from these lessons, transcend these limits, and ultimately push the next uprising even further.”
Duncan Keeps Six Community Care Network – We Keep Us Safe – A Community Feast – $750
“The project we’re hoping to get funded is a community feast, put on by our emerging community group Duncan Keeps Six Community Care Network. The group is made up of settlers and Indigenous folks, unhoused, underhoused and housed people, drug users and non-drug-users. We are working to find leadership and guidance from Quw’utsun elders and community members in this work. Our main theme is Allyship/Accompliceship because a key goal is to continue to strengthen relationships and grow solidarity between all of us as neighbours and community members. We are building a network of mutual aid and community support in the face of the ongoing failure of the state to provide for all of us. After several months of having block meetings to build solidarity between housed and unhoused people in Duncan, it’s clear that the community is constantly reeling from death, grief and displacement, with little time to recover between losses and a complete lack of space or resources to rest and take a breath together. This event will create some of that necessary space for honouring, processing and spending time together. We hope to bring together a wide variety of people to share a big meal in a safe and relaxed atmosphere.”
Food Not Bombs Kjipuktuk (Halifax) – $2000
“Food not Bombs Kjipuktuk (FNB-K) is a community organizing act that works for and advocates food security and harm reduction for the communities in Kjipuktuk as well as greater Mi’kma’ki. FNB-K’s primary mode of action is through serving of food. FNB-K is not a charity but a political organization that opposes all forms of oppression and directly engages to abolish all structures that create those forms of oppression. FNB-K is/will be offering two types of serving –• Weekly serving: Every Saturday, FNB-K will be serving free hot food to the community. FNB-K will also have harm reduction supplies (such as masks, PPE, condoms, safe supplies etc.) for the community. Additionally, FNB-K will have key literature on our politics of harm reduction, transformative justice and decolonization in the forms of pamphlets and zines. Solidarity Serving: FNB-K will be serving in the community events such as mutual aid fundraiser,rallies and community teach-ins. FNB-K will use this funding to get the cooking and food security supplies. And this would also help FNB to set long term goals for food security organizing beyond serving such as creating literature that address specific food security and housing issues from an anti-colonial, anti capitalist perspective.”
2024 Microgrants Recipients
Hiladi Rematriation Project – $2000
“The Hiladi Village project is an assertion of Indigenous sovereignty spear-headed by Ma’amtagila matriarch Tsastilqualus Ambers Umbas, in coordination with broader Kwakwaka’wakw hereditary leadership. The Ma’amtagila are a nation within the Kwakwaka’wakw, or the people who speak Kwak̓wala. Tsastilqualus and other members of the Matriarch Camp are rebuilding their village on their traditional summer village site at Hiladi, “the place to make things right,” to affirm their Indigenous title and rights and uphold hereditary systems of governance. The reoccupation of Hiladi Village will enable Tsastilqualus, her son Makwala, their kin, and other Indigenous people to spend time on the land and water, rebuilding relationships and taking up their traditional responsibilities. The Hiladi Bunkhouse construction is the second building that has been constructed at Hiladi. It is where Tsastilqualas lives, and where guests and other Ma’amtagila people stay when they visit the territory. The building itself was completed in the summer of 2023. As Hiladi is an exposed maritime environment, the entrance to the bunkhouse is constantly pelted with wind and rain. The bunkhouse entrance needs a covered deck so that people can enter and exit the building during inclement weather without tracking mud and water into the bunkhouse. The bunkhouse has plywood floors and wood heat, so its important that the inside of the building stays dry so it doesn’t mold or get water damaged. This project will protect the most important building at Hiladi from water damage, and will enable the bunkhouse to be used year round, which will allow Ma’amtagila community members to stay at the village site year round. The village site needs to be occupied year round to prevent it being damaged or destroyed by logging companies or enemies of the Ma’amtagila sovereignty movement.”
Humans of Fairy Creek – $1500
“The Humans of Fairy Creek are a group of volunteer community theatre artists and musicians who are also activists/anarchists. We all, in one way or another, have been involved in the movement known as the Fairy Creek Blockade. Most of the collective are in their 20s, queer, neurodivergent, and living with financial and housing instability. We believe that the mostly young people who experienced violence from the “Canadian justice system,” while taking a principled and nonviolent stand for old growth forests and Indigenous sovereignty, deserve to have their stories told. We also believe their stories deserve to be linked to the escalating global ecocidal and genocidal atrocities of imperialist and corporate interests. We have made an intention to do our work in a culture of care. Humans of Fairy Creek 2024 is the sequel to Humans of Fairy Creek: A Variety Show that had a short run at the 2023 Victoria Fringe. Our tagline is: “Featuring people and friends of people who got the shit beat out of them by the RCMP.” Last year’s show incorporated music and dance; video from the blockades; storytelling; skits; satire; poetry; serious discussion of unresolved issues, such as lateral violence; a tribute to fallen comrades; and an immersive audio piece. It was very successful as far as small theatre events go, with mostly sold out houses and powerful audience reactions. We are currently in the process of re-devising and modifying our show to travel to the Edmonton and Vancouver Fringes, as well as another run in Victoria.In just one year, capitalist and colonial violence, which is at the foundation of deforestation, has escalated globally at a scale beyond what most people are able to absorb. We have made an explicit intention to draw connections between the humans of Fairy Creek who got the shit beat out of them by the RCMP and the shit that ALL HUMANS are dealing with worldwide. Normalized live-streamed genocide. Summer days when we can’t breathe. “Inflation.” Collapse of public services like healthcare and education. Militarized police increasingly mobilized against peaceful citizens. No housing. Algorithmic hate. Fascism and corruption, breathtaking in the thoroughness and invisibility. SO MANY LIES.”
Solidarity Sundays: Sweet Relief Project – $1500
“Solidarity Sundays’ goals are twofold: First, to further help address the immediate material needs of our unhoused neighbours and other marginalized people by expanding our mutual aid efforts to create larger and more resilient networks of care and support. Second, to advocate for and see the realization of transformative policies that address the root causes of societal issues such as houselessness, the toxic drug crisis, stigma, mistreatment by city officials and law enforcement, food insecurity, limited access to healthcare and other services, and more.” Solidarity Sundays is seeking funding to expand our distribution offerings to include items to cool off our unhoused neighbors during the Summer months. The folks at Tent City Whom we service are already requesting ice-cream and frozen treats which we have provided on occasion in the past, and it’s currently only April. Offering ice-cream and frozen ice-tea drinks in sufficient quantities for everyone sheltering there, which we have done in the past, comes at a considerable cost. Along with our weekly distribution of burritos, harm-reduction supplies, medical/hygiene supplies, and water bottles, we are hoping to add four 4L ice-cream pails and 160 frozen ice-tea/lemonades to our list, weekly. We are planning to hand out as many other heat/sun-mitigation items as possible along-side the rest of our distribution this summer, such as individual packets of sunscreen and aloe vera, and items to provide shade (hats, umbrellas, etc). Solidarity Sundays has established a robust network of support from within its own community and is funded entirely by community donations. Although there will be no other organizations or groups aiding us in specifically accomplishing our Sweet Relief project, there are dozens of individuals and several established community organizations who support us on a weekly basis. Though some wish to remain anonymous, some organizations that aid us publicly are Anarchy Coffee Roasters, Okanagan Freak Alliance, local trans punk band Svengali, and Vegilante, to name a few.”
Victoria Disability Arts Collective: Disability Pride and Radical Self and Community Care Coloring Book and Launch Event – $1500
“VDAC seeks to create a coloring book with art from local disabled artists with the theme of disability pride and radical self/community care. Each artist includes a bio, and receives an honorarium. This coloring book will be widely accessible and will serve as an educational/destigmatizing tool. We will also be having a free to attend launch event where artists can speak about their work. The book will be sold by donation and money made from the project will go back into providing services for this community. This serves as a platform for skill-sharing as artists can share their skills and perspectives with the broader community, fostering appreciation for diverse talents. Additionally, the free launch event provides a space to learn about radical self and community care. Through artist talks and community discussions about these topics, attendees can engage in critical dialogue, learn from experiences, and deepen their understanding of disability issues. The book represents an activist art and radical media project. By showcasing artwork that celebrates disability pride and challenges societal norms, the book will provoke thought, inspire action, and promote social change. Furthermore, the free launch event serves as a platform for amplifying activist voices and promoting radical media projects. By featuring disabled artists speaking about their work and experiences, the event highlights the power of art as a tool for advocacy and empowerment Our project goals are to: uplift disabled artists’ work and voices, create community, and to create a sense of pride within the disability community. We will be uplifting disabled artists’ work and voices by showcasing various disabled artists’ work in our colouring book, and by inviting disabled artists to speak at our launch event about their work. We will create community by bringing folks together at our launch event to talk about disability and art, and by having our colouring book available to a wide community of people. We hope to contribute to increasing the sense of pride in the disability community by showcasing art that celebrates disability.”
Stop the Stack YYC: Calgary Remand Centre Activation And Community Engagement – $1500
“Stop the Stack YYC is focused on prison abolition and prisoner support projects, primarily, providing community support at the Calgary Remand Centre. Our intent is to attend Calgary Remand Centre weekly during predetermined intake and release times holding actions that educate and disrupt while increasing public awareness. Similarly to our actions taken while one of our collective, Taylor McNallie, was in weekend jail, we will take back space; filling the visitor parking, being loud, offering support to family/friends of those jailed in the form of pamphlets and conversation surrounding knowing your rights, practicing abolition and how the prisons system is intentionally designed to isolate- both physically and mentally. During our past weekend activism at the Calgary Remand Centre we recognized the purposeful remoteness and inaccessibility of the location, the positive reactions and conversations we had with family/friends of prisoners surrounding the awareness we were bringing and the effect that providing food, water, cigarettes and bus tickets to those being released or visiting had in cracking the “unapproachable” prison facade. Folks entering the prison system have their rights as citizens removed by the system and represent one of the most marginalized groups in society. Our primary goal is to center their needs by developing connections,hope, care and support while including them within our activism- recognizing that activism often excludes those who are unhoused or imprisoned. We want to create relationships with those entering and/or exiting the weekend jail program in order to break down the social and emotional isolation the prison system purposely creates. Stop the Stack evolved out of a need to provide support to Taylor McNallie and Adora Nwofor – Black activists residing in Moh’kins’tsis who are and were facing stacked charges related to their activism. Taylor has received 17 criminal charges since 2020 due to her activism, as well as facing 3 lawsuits after being sued by members of the Calgary Police Service for speaking out against their violence. Adora has faced 3 criminal charges, as well as a “hate crime” that was withdrawn two weeks later due to “clerical error.” All charges against Adora have now been dropped but the psychological, emotional and reputational tolls of those charges and the arrest remains. Taylor and Adora continue to be centred within and involved without activism as their experience contributes to how we approach and provide support for those experiencing imprisonment. Stop the Stack is also involved with Walls Down Collective with many members being part of each group. Walls Down Collective has deep relationships with many unhoused folks who are disproportionately represented within the Calgary Remand Centre,as well as members with lived experience of being unhoused, police violence and housing insecurity. Walls Down Collective provides weekly pop-up in downtown Moh’kins’tsis which includes food, water, first aid, harm reduction and support and would also be part of Stop The Stack occupying space for weekend jail intakes and releases at the Calgary Remand Centre.”
