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Grants Awarded
Grants Awarded
The IAS annually awards $8000 in grants to writers whose work is important to the anarchist critique of domination, who exhibit a clear financial need, and whose piece is likely to be widely distributed.
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See Also: How to Find IAS-Supported Projects
July 2001 Grant Awards
The IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award grants to the following individuals for July 2001:
$2000
to Carlos Fernandez and Jena Cephas for their two part project
Anarchists of Color (recently
renamed The Quilombo Project). This project will explore
the experience and theories of people of color within anarchism.
The first part of the project, in the form of interviews and
reports, will describe the actual presence of people of color in
contemporary US anarchism. The second part, a 15 – 20 page
overview of the theories used by anarchists of color in comparison
with anarchist canons, will seek to revaluate anarchist theory in
the light of the comparison. For up to date information on the
project, there is a website for the project, at
http://www.quilomboproject.org. Carlos Fernandez is pursuing an
undergraduate degree in Film Studies while his activist work
ranges from protests of the Gulf War to current prison reform work
and his work has been published in Arsenal Magazine and Onward
Magazine. Jena Cepha is currently studying architecture as an
undergraduate with a focus on gentrification and affordable
housing and she has been engaged in grassroots activism for over
ten years, including the Youth Power! Anti-racist conference in
Detroit, 1996.
$1000
to Ronald Campbell for his project The Anarchist Within:
Anarchist Prisoners Building a Movement. This project will
examine contributions made by imprisoned anarchists to the
anarchist community and will cover the various organizations and
projects founded by these prisoners, as well as their reception by
fellow prisoners, prison administrators, and the anarchist
community. While many prisoners have written for various anarchist
publications, this project focuses on anarchist groups operating
within prison. Ronald Campbell has been actively involved in
anarchist support groups as well as, while serving time, anarchist
groups within prison.
$1000 to Bill Weinberg for his book in progress Pachamama Betrayed: Ecological Crime and Indigenous Resistance to the Andean Drug Wars. This book seeks to deconstruct the Orwellian euphemism of the “War on Drugs” to reveal how US military involvement in Latin American has not changed since the era of “gunboat diplomacy.” By dissecting corporate interests in Columbia and examining indigenous resistance movements against US plans for the region, which violate international standards on war crimes and genocide, it will make a case for the revival of anti-war activism in the US and forge ties between the US and Andean activist communities. Bill Weinberg is the author of War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America (Zed, 1990) and Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000).
The
IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award grants to the
following individuals for
January 2001 (actual board meeting held February 10, 2001 due to
weather delays):
$2000
to Caitlin Hewitt-White, for her study, "Gender in Current Anti-Globalization
Activism in Canada." Using Canadian examples, her project
will assess the potential effectiveness of the current
anti-globalization movement in resisting capitalist globalization
and in reconstructing a society based on freedom, equality,
cooperation, and justice. First-hand information will be gathered
from activists, which will then be analyzed within broad social
and political themes to discuss the challenges that face the
anti-globalization movement in not only resisting capitalism, but
also in confronting oppression in all its forms and in all spaces.
In the face of a rejuvenated movement, this project will hopefully
help us to correct on-going problems such as sexism within the
left. Caitlin is a student at the University of Waterloo and is
active in the Peak Collective and Guelph Action Network.
$1500
to Jessica Lawless for her article and documentary,
"Racializing Anarchism
Then and Now." This piece focuses on the re-emergence of
anarchism in the broader public sphere since the protest in
Seattle and subsequent international anti-globalization protests.
Addressing both anarchist and non-anarchist identified audiences,
this study will counter mainstream mediated portrayals of the
anarchist protestors as ahistorical, violent, young, white males
who are incapable of offering a viable critique of society. In
particular, it will argue that the mainstream media has agitated
public anxieties toward young people who identify as anarchists by
relying on racialized and racist constructions of
"blackness" and urban uprising, taking the focus off the
issues being raised and putting it instead on issues of law and
order. Jessica, currently a graduate student at Claremont Graduate
Univeristy, has been active in many areas, including women's self
defense, social work, and as an organizer of various anarchist
collectives in Seattle.
$2000
to Andrés Peréz and Felipe del Solar for their book Chile:
Anarchist Practices Under Pinochet. As the title indicates,
this piece focuses on anarchist practices and organization under
Pinochet's military dictatorship from a political as well as
cultural perspective. The study will span Pinochet's reign,
beginning in 1973, to the present, by tracing the social
manifestations, organizational relationships, and political
contributions of anarchists. Andrés Pérez is an international
free-lance journalist and writes for the national political
magazine Ercilla. Felipe del Solar is studying history at the
Universidad Cató lica de Chile, and has taught at Infocap, the
university of the workers, in Santiago, Chile.
$500
to Will Firth for his translation of three Russian writings,
"Russian Capitalism and Globalization" by the MPST (the
local Moscow group of the KRAS-IWA) from a 1999 collection of
essays entitled The Return of the Working Class. The second piece
is actually two essays on Nestor Makhno, one by Russian anarchist
Ida Melt; and another by N. Sukhogorskaya, originally published in
Nestor Ivanovich Makhno (ed. VF Verstyuk, Dzvin Publishers, Kiev
1991). The first piece in an anarcho-syndicalist look at the
economic and power structures in the USSR and contemporary Russia
and examines how they fit into the world economy; and the
real-existing labor movement in Russia and draws conclusions about
the kind of autonomous, anti-capitalist workers' movement which
would be needed to combat rampant neo-liberalism. The Makhno
pieces are of a historical nature, incorporating recent research
on Makhno and his wife.
The IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award grants to the following individuals in June 2000:
$1000
to Kevin Doyle for Orange Fire, a three act theater play about the
life, beliefs and struggles of Irish activist Captain Jack White
(1879-1946), who strongly identified as an anarchist. White's life and
anarchist beliefs have all but been obliterated due to the destruction of
his memoirs and papers by his family (White came from a privileged
Protestant family loyal to the British monarchy) and the fact that, as a
revolutionary, he has been "written out" of the history books.
In order to provide a framework with which activists can challenge
sectarian divisions in Ireland, this play aims to situate White within
Irish revolutionary history as well as anarchism and draws on the
destruction of White's papers as a metaphor for the repressive mentality
of a sectarian society. Kevin Doyle is an award winning short story writer
and political activist. He is a founding member of the Workers Solidarity
Movement, an anarchist organization in Ireland.
$1000 to Lucien van der Walt for "Anarchism and Revolutionary
Syndicalism in South Africa, 1904-1921", which expands upon a project
previously funded by the IAS. This new work will deal with the influence
of anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism on broader social movements in
the same period. The specific focus is on the impact of libertarian
socialist ideas on trade unions and Black Nationalism. This project builds
upon the original research into the influence of anarchism and
revolutionary syndicalism on revolutionary groups in South Africa. Lucien
van der Walt is a student, teacher and activist in South Africa. His work
focuses on trade union activity in Africa and he has written extensively
on historical and contemporary labor politics.
The IAS Board of Directors was
pleased to award grants to the following individuals in January 2000:
$1500 to Mike Staudenmaier for his piece, Towards a New Anarchist Theory of
Nationalism. This piece will develop an in-depth historical analysis on
anarchist theories of nationalism and the diversity of opinions within
anarchism. It will focus on a contradiction between theory rooted in
class-based international criticism and a practice normally consisting of
uncritical antiimperialist and antiracist solidarity. He intends to show
that this contradiction between theory and practice, along with very little
written on contemporary nationalism from an anarchist perspective, only
serves to polarize the issue of nationalism. Ethnic groups try to advance
their freedom at all costs and anarchism often dismisses nationalistic
struggles out-of-hand due to the historically simplistic anarchist belief
that all people will triumph equally. This piece will include a case study
of contemporary revolutionary nationalism; an intellectual history of
anarchism and nationalism looking at writers such Mikhail Bakunin, Gustav
Landuar, Rudolp Rocker, and Freddy Perlman; and a section on contemporary
issues that often intersect with nationalistic struggles, such as prison and
antifascist activism. To be completed in March 2001, this piece will provide
us with an innovative and sophisticated understanding of nationalism from an
anarchist perspective. Mike Staudenmaier has been an active anarchist for
ten years now, primarily in the Chicago area. He has also worked extensively
with the Puerto Rican community in Chicago and has had opportunity to
interact with members of the Puerto Rican nationalist movement on a daily
basis
for several years.
$2500 to Alberto Villarreal for his Spanish translation of Murray Bookchin's
Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future (Rehaciendo la
Sociedad). Originally published in 1990, this book is meant to be a
summarization of social ecology, a political philosophy that bases the
ecological crisis in the emergence of social hierarchy and domination and
advocates for a radical transformation of society. A wide variety of Spanish
speaking movements, particularly in Latin America, are struggling with
social and ecological issues, which can be radicalized by ideas presented in
Remaking Society. To be completed by September 2001, this translation
project will greatly add to Latin American radical intellectualism. Alberto
Villarreal has translated several of Bookchin's essays for Comunidad,
newsletter for the Comunidad project of Sweden and Uruguay, and Tierra
Amiga, magazine of REDES - Friends of the Earth Uruguay. He was a founding
member of REDES and has been actively involved with social ecology for the
last fifteen years.
The
IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award grants to the following
individuals in June 1999:
$2200
to Fernando Gustavo López Trujillo for this piece,
The FACA and the
Anarchist Movement in Argentina, 1930-1950. This piece will be a
historical study of the Federación Anarquista Comunista Argentina (FACA).
He will examine the growth of the FACA from 1935 and into the 1940’s, a
development that is exceptional given that the Argentine anarchist
movement and its organizations were shrinking at this time (after being
the largest anarchist movement in Latin America). He will then look at the
decline of the FACA in the 1940’s and 1950’s and the relationship of
its decline to the rise of the Peronist movement. Lopez will search for
the deep reasons of the FACA’s demise, arguing that state repression
cannot be counted as a primary cause. It will contain chapters such as
“The Coup D’Etat of Uriburu and the Rise of the FACA”; “The
1930’s Strikes”; “The Civil War in Spain”; and “The Dictatorship
of 1943 and the Rise of the Peronism.” The work will be written in
Spanish.
The scheduled date for the completion of this project is March 2000. López lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
$800 to C.W. Brown for “Vanguards of the Crusaders: Freedom and Domination in Right-wing Discourse.” This project will study the social and political theory of the patriot right in the US as seen through the lenses of classical anarchist theory. It has two objectives: first, to understand the patriot right discourse in the contemporary US in the context of anarchist studies in fascism, and second, to grasp the extent to which that patriot right discourse resonates with everyday American ideology and thus expresses the clean outlines of the ideology of domination in the ‘new world order’. The scheduled completion date for this project is Fall 1999. Brown lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
In January 1999, the IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award a grant to the following individual:
$2000 to Samuel Mbah for his book Military Dictatorship and the State in Africa (co-authored by I.E. Igariwey). This book will utilize an anarchist critique to analyze military dictatorship on the African continent. It is intended to follow up their previous book, African Anarchism: The History of a Movement (See Sharp Press, 1997).
Mbah and Igariwey will use libertarian analytical tools to lay bare the problems of military dictatorship. They will demonstrate that military dictatorship is a logical, if perverse, extension of the state system (despite liberal and state socialist criticisms). They will also show that overthrowing military dictatorship does not remedy the instability, economic difficulties, and lack of freedom inherent in the state system and neo-colonial capitalism.
Drawing on case studies of Nigeria, Egypt, Zaire, and other countries, they will address the role of the military as an institution on the African continent since the 1960's. They will examine military dictatorship in an historical context, the relationship between the military and state system, and its connection to the international political order. They will also portray the repression of free speech and human rights, corruption and economic mismanagement, and the destruction of communal African values.
The authors will conclude that overthrowing military dictatorships will not put an end to the oppressive conditions on the African continent. They will show that military dictatorships are not isolated aberrations of the state system and that nothing short of an anarchist response to the state and capitalism will fundamentally advance the African people to freedom.
The scheduled completion date for this project is December 1999.
On June 13, 1998 the IAS Board of Directors awarded grants to the following individuals:
$1000 to Joe Lowndes for his piece, Anarchism and the Rise of Rightwing Anti-statism. This work will analyze the emergence of anti-government politics on the American right, contrast this with the current failure of the anarchist left to construct and convey a viable anti-statist politics, and discuss the centrality of race to both. It will explore the historic connection between decentralism and racial domination in American political culture in order to advance an anarchist politics that can express an anti-statist populism delinked from discourses of racial domination. Lowndes lives in Brooklyn, New York.
$900 to Patricia Greene for Federica Montseny: The Woman and the Ideal/La Mujer y El Ideal. This book will present the first comprehensive English language study of the works and political legacy of Federica Montseny, an important Spanish anarchist and intellectual. Greene lives in East Lansing, Michigan.
$600 to Will Firth for the translation of three articles on Eastern European anarchism from Russian and Bulgarian into English. The two Russian articles are: "A Survey of the Anarchist Movement in the Ukraine 1987-1994)" and "Under Fire Between the Lines" (about the Volunteer Medical Brigade formed by socialists and anarchists in 1993 during the conflicts over the seizure of the Russian parliament). The Bulgarian translation will be a ‘compilation’ of various chapters from the book National Liberation and Libertarian Federalism by Georgi Khadzhieff. Firth lives in Berlin, Germany.
$500 to Lucien van der Walt for a collection of historical articles entitled Anarchism and Revolutionary Syndicalism in South Africa, 1904 – 1921. Van der Walt lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Grants awarded in January 1998:
On January 17, 1998 the IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award grants to the following individuals:
$2000 to Chris Day for Anarchism and the Zapatista Revolution. This book will develop a revolutionary, anti-authoritarian analysis of Zapatismo as expressed in the words and deeds of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. It will have three main components: an empirical investigation of Zapatista theory and practice, a consideration of the two main forms of libertarian thinking in Mexico – the traditions of indigenous autonomy and European anarchism; and finally an investigation of the more recent historical roots of the EZLN in the Mexican New Left and the indigenous struggles of Chiapas in the past few decades. It will draw out some of the important lessons that the Zapatista struggle has to offer contemporary anarchism. Chris is currently in Chiapas, Mexico.
$1200 to Matt Hern and Stu Chaulk for The Myth of the Internet: Private Isolation and Local Community. This book will use a radically democratic, anarchist perspective to investigate and critique the social and cultural repercussions of the Internet. It will argue that, while the Internet appears to be a medium for genuine communication and democracy, it is actually undermining the very arenas in which actual freedom and democracy can flourish. Matt and Stu live in Vancouver, British Columbia.
$800 to Melissa Burch for Autonomy, Culture, and Natural Resources in the Neo-liberal Age. This piece will present a comparative critique of the domination of global capitalism and its devastating effects on the local culture in three regions: the Mexican State of Chiapas, the North Atlantic Autonomous Region of Nicaragua, and the state of Vermont. It will bring to light the fundamental incompatibility of the neoliberal model with an authentic, local, and ecological culture. Melissa lives in Plainfield, Vermont.
On June 15, 1997, the IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award grants to the following individuals:
$1000 to Zoe Erwin and Brian Tokar for the production of Engineering Life: A People’s Guide to Biotechnology. This anthology of essays will bring a comprehensive and radical perspective to current debates on biotechnology. It will emphasize the urgent need for an activist response to biotechnology and that efforts against it must also challenge larger structures of social domination.
$500 to Frank Adams for the essay, The Educational Ideas and Management Practices of 19th and 20th Century Anarchists in Labor-Owned Cooperatives. This essay will explore the practical educational efforts made by anarchists to end the exploitation of their labor by capital. It will examine their accomplishments and failures in order to enhance our ability to organize work wisely, effectively, and in accord with anarchist values.
$250 to Peter Lamborn Wilson for an introduction to Freedom - My Dream: The Autobiography of Enrico Arrigoni. Enrico Arrigoni (a.k.a. "Frank Brand") was an anarchist author and activist of Italian descent who lived in New York from 1924 until his death in 1986. His remarkable life included a stay in Russia during the early years of the revolution, participation in the Spanish Civil War, and a lifelong commitment to anarchism. Wilson’s intro-duction will analyze and introduce elements of Arrigoni’s life and work.
$250 to Mark Bonhert and Richard Curtis for Post-Industrial Resources: Anarchist Reconstructive Efforts & Visions in the Upper Midwest. Bonhert and Curtis will write an oral history and analysis of contemporary anarchist efforts to rebuild community in areas of the Midwest devastated by capital flight, urban neglect, and the repression of marginalized people.
Grants Awarded in January 1997:
On January 11, 1997, the IAS Board of Directors awarded the first IAS grants to the following individuals:
$1000 to Murray Bookchin for the completion of his book, The Spanish Anarchists. This new book will complement the first volume, which chronicled the Spanish anarchist movement from 1868 to 1936, by exploring the period from the outbreak of social revolution in 1936 to Franco’s victory in 1939. It will conclude with a discussion of lessons to be drawn from the entire Spanish experience.
$1000 to Alan Antliff for his book, The Culture of Revolt: Art and Anarchy in America. This book will clarify the pivotal role played by anarchism in the development of modern art in America. It will explore both turn-of-the-century debates about the relationship between art and politics and the development of discourses that cast anarchism in the arts as part of a larger revolutionary culture. It will demonstrate that anarchist artists and art critics formulated their artistic practices and criticism to further radical programs of social transformation.
$500 to Kwaku Kushindana for his essay, "Avoiding New Forms of Repression: An African-American Reply." This piece will examine the rise of conservative tendencies within African-American politics. It will begin with an analysis of the black liberation struggle of the 1960’s, which will set the context for a critique of contemporary black leaders and a concluding discussion of the black tradition of anarchy.
$500 to Paul Fleckenstein for his piece, "Civic Space and the Anarchist Dream." This essay will use Burlington, Vermont, as a case study for a critique of contemporary municipal development policy and practice. It will explore the market’s transformation of images of civic space, the structural dependence of the municipality on the international market and the nation-state, and the implications of these developments for an ecological, anarchist politics.
If you are interested in applying for a grant, please click here.