Below is a sampling of recent Institute for Anarchist Studies grant recipients, including the Anarchist Horizons Grant and the Jen Angel Anarchist Media Grant, made in partnership with Agency. Learn more about our grants program and how to apply here.
It Did Happen Here
By Moe Bowstern, Mic Crenshaw, Alec Dunn, Celina Flores, Julie Perini, Erin Yanke
Anarchist Horizons Grant
Project Description: It Did Happen Here is an independently produced podcast that documents the organizing and unapologetic street battles against racist white skinheads in the 1980’s and 90’s. The 11 episode podcast talks to three core groups: the Portland chapter of Anti-Racist Action (ARA); Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP); and the Coalition for Human Dignity. The three groups united over and over to attack fascists on their home ground—and won it back.
Since it was originally broadcast and distributed in 2021, IDHH won a 2022 Oregon Heritage Excellence Award. The team went on to adapt the podcast into a book with PM Press in 2023, It Did Happen Here: An Antifascist People’s History, which received enthusiastic praise:
“It Did Happen Here is a masterpiece. This is one of the most vibrant and essential histories of antifascism ever put together and draws together a range of voices speaking to what it takes to keep us safe and transform our communities. This is essential reading.” —Shane Burley, author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse
Hindi Introduction to Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism
By Sarthak Tomar
Anarchist Horizons Grant
Project Description: India’s socio-economy seems to be swinging between ethno-nationalism, militarism and the neoliberal capital order. The people looking for available alternatives in texts can only find authoritarian Marxism. My booklet will be an introduction to anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism in Hindi for the working-poor and activists.
Grantee Bio: Sarthak is an activist based in Bhopal, India. He runs Swasth Aazad Mazdoor Pehal, for organizing industrial workers around occupational safety and health issues. He is also a lawyer and takes up environmental and labour cases.
Chicago ’68
By Yoni Goldstein, Joe Dewhurst, and Ronen Goldstein
Anarchist Horizons Grant
Project Description: ANTIWAR-WARGAMES. Chicago based artists and designers present a hands-on demonstration about radical play and the history of political modeling and leftist war games. This will be followed with a collective play-through of our forthcoming historical conflict simulator: “CHICAGO ‘68” – a competitive board game about radical street theater, civil disorder, tear gas, and machine politics.
The game completed a successful Kickstarter campaign, with IAS support, and ships in 2025. As one early reviewer describes the game: “There’s nothing like it. Truly. Playing Chicago ‘68, I was transported. More than that, those transported memories were imbued with new meaning.”
Grantee Bio: The CHICAGO ’68 project is led by experimental filmmaker and game designer, Yoni Goldstein, with UK based anarchist game developer, Joe Dewhurst, and video artist and animator Ronen Goldstein. We are collaborating on a series of events in Chicago against the DNC with the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Dissenters, Public Media Institute, and INT’L Cafe.
Revolutionaries, Rebels & Anarchists: The Women of the Mexican Liberal Party
By Luis F. Olvera Maldonado, translated by Blood Fruit Library Translation Collective
Anarchist Horizons Grant
Project Description: In the early 20th century, a network of women across Mexico and the United States articulated visions of freedom within newspapers like La Mujer Moderna, Hijas de Anáhuac, Sagitario, La Voz de la Mujer, and Vesper. These anarchist rebels organized a cross-border counterculture connecting regions like Bridgeport, Texas, Chicago, Illinois, Tijuana, Baja California, and Mexico City in efforts to overthrow the Porfirio Diaz regime and abolish all forms of authority and private property. This project will translate a new book by Luis Maldonado – which draws on a variety of documents including newspapers, surveillance records, pamphlets, and letters – to reconstruct the trajectories of this lesser-known network of conspirators.
Grantee Bio: This collaboration between anarchist print projects in Mexico City and researchers at Blood Fruit Library in Chicago aims to intervene in biases of archival recovery by compiling these stories for the first time in English, and placing Mexican and US anarchy within a common frame. Blood Fruit is an autonomous library, archive & zine distro of anarchist, underground and self-published literature that serves as an inclusive, intergenerational sanctuary where people can meet, connect and build new constellations of affinity.
The Elements of Mutual Aid
By Payton McDonald and Leah Ayer
Jen Angel Anarchist Media Grant
Project Description: “The Elements of Mutual Aid” is an independent, four-part docuseries that explores the origins, structures, healing ways, and logistics of anti-authoritarian mutual aid across North America. Each chapter is based on one the four elements—fire, earth, water, and air—and introduces a unique cast of grassroots activists that each tackle oppression in their communities. Currently mid-post production with plans for release and tour in 2025. Watch the trailer here.
Grantee Bios: Payton McDonald (he/they) and Leah Ayer (they/them) are anarchist filmmakers who have both spent the last decade organizing on the ground in their communities. Payton’s from Michigan and has focused on anti-fascist organizing, agit-prop production, and popular education. Leah’s from Texas has organized disaster response and recovery, worked in solidarity with Oaxacan indigenous anarchists and migrants, and documented lessons learned along the way. Both are first-time filmmakers who are excited to co-produce media that helps explain how anti-authoritarian values can be put to practice.
Lesbians and Gays Against Intervention Podcast
By Toshio Meronek
Jen Angel Anarchist Media Grant
Project Description: The history of the San Francisco Bay Area-based collective known as Lesbians and Gays Against Intervention is the subject of a podcast series utilizing archival testimonies, sound images, and interviews with remaining members of the group that has fought for justice since the 1970s. The collective has focused organizing efforts on issues including the continuing housing crisis in the Bay Area. Based on the essay, “How a queer liberation collective has stayed radical for almost 40 years,” supported by the Institute for Anarchist Studies in 2016, in partnership with Waging Nonviolence.
Grantee Bio: Toshio Meronek produces Sad Francisco, a podcast about neoliberal nightmares. Their book ‘Miss Major Speaks’ was published in 2023 by Verso.