Anti-Capitalist Resources

ALL OUR STRUGGLES ARE CONNECTED.

These are people and projects that have been essential for my own journey of unlearning capitalism. If you’d like to see a specific topic here, or if you can volunteer a bit of time to help me clean up the formatting, leave a comment here or on any of my social media accounts, or email me.

You have my permission to share, repost, copy and re-use this list anywhere for any reason as long as it’s not placed behind a paywall. A link back to this original page would be helpful, to expose more people to my work with the goal of building up sustainable Patreon/PayPal income so I can devote more time to these efforts.

If you appreciate my work and want to send a thank-you tip for my public education work, here’s my PayPal and Amazon list. Or, even better, become a Patron and support my work long-term.

We deserve good revolutionary art! Check out my new favourite album that came out recently, King Of The Moon by Pusher. It’s incredible. Also, if you listen carefully, you might hear a cameo from someone you recognize 😉 🚀🌝

This list is in two parts:

1) PRAXIS: I’m in. What should we do?

2) THEORY: I want to learn more

Resources to learn more about anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, the War on Drugs, and alternatives to our current hell world.

PRAXIS: I’m in. What should we do?

Unionize

The number one most helpful thing you can do is UNIONIZE YOUR WORKPLACE. Here’s how!

Organize Your Community

Protest & Direct Action

Posting on social media

  • Share this page, anything on it, and other educational/action resources on you social media accounts
  • Are you an outspoken, justice-obsessed, possibly neurodivergent person? Create a TikTok account now and start practicing yelling and joking into your camera about the things you care about. We need more voices to counter the well-funded propaganda! It doesn’t matter if you suck at it now, doing it is how you get better. I have 79,000 followers somehow and I promise you, my first TikToks were awkward garbage. If you care about other people and our planet and want to live in a better world, that’s all that matters – talk about that.

Electoral Politics (aka political harm reduction)

Voting should not be the primary focus, but it should also not be ignored.

Worker Owned Co-ops

Individual changes you can make whenever possible

  • Support worker-owned co-ops and companies, like Ocean Spray and Bob’s Red Mill. More:
  • Do trauma work. See this section below. To be able to work with other people and take feedback when necessary, you need to have a strong sense of self-compassion and self-love, or you will get defensive and deflect.

Revolutionary art & music to enjoy

Help me out

Updating and maintaining this list takes a LOT of time, and it still needs work. If you have web design skills or just wouldn’t mind doing some work to collect more links to fill in the gaps, please reach out!

THEORY: I want to learn more

ANTI-CAPITALISM 101 CRASH COURSE:

Must-watch videos, long-form 
(Many are 30 minutes or more, but I promise they’re super entertaining, trust me, I have ADHD lol)
Must-watch videos, short form (5 minutes or less):
Essays, Zines & Pamphlets:
Podcast episodes I find highly useful/informative:

Resources for Specific Topics

For a more comprehensive reading list, scroll down to the Big Ol’ Booklist section.

Police abolition

Land Back, Indigenous Knowledge

Drug Policy

Drug use, harm reduction, benefit enhancement, recovery

Mental Health (general)

Mental Health (for men)

Positive Masculinity

Understanding Trans Issues

Cancelling/Mobbing/Pile-Ons

Palestine

Vaccines

White Supremacy & Fascism

Disability Justice

  • Wong, Alice (ed). Disability Visibility: First-person stories from the twenty-first century
  • Srinivasan, Amia. The Right To Sex
  • Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

Non-monogamy & the nuclear family

Understanding Marxist terms

Labour History

  • Prisoners of the American Dream by Mike Davis
  • Fighting Times by Jonathan Melrod

Climate Action

Post-Capitalist Economies

People to learn from

Leftist news & analysis:

Podcasts

Accounts to follow on Twitter

My favourite leftist creators on YouTube

  • Check out this guide to find people who resonate with you: A Practical Guide to Leftist YouTube (Noah Samsen)
  • Re-Education
  • FD Signifier (cultural analysis, Blackness, masculinity)
  • Philosophy Tube
  • Shaun [Incredible data analysis. Easy to listen to instead of watching. Highly recommended for lulling you to sleep (in a good way).]
  • Thought Slime (very funny & entertaining analysis from an anarchist lens)
  • Innuendo Studios
  • ContraPoints (kind of a lib, but still has very entertaining, thoughtful & informative analysis, especially about trans issues)

My favourite leftist creators on TikTok

The Big Ol’ Booklist

Liberation (anti-capitalism, leftism, socialism, communism)

Anti-Imperialism

Race, racism, anti-Blackness, intersectionality

  • Black Marxism – Cedric J. Robinson
  • Women, Race & Class – Angela Davis
  • No Name on The Street by James Baldwin
  • Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson (Interesting account about the way that social stratification happened (even in pre-modern societies) due to relationships with property/capital which led to racialization/subjugation)

Decolonization, Land Back, Indigenous Voices

  • Vine Deloria Jr. – Custer Died For Your Sins
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015). Braiding Sweetgrass

Capitalism & Affect

History

Neoliberalism

Strategy

Prison, police, prohibition

  • Alexander, Michelle. 2012. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.
  • Goffman, Alice. 2014. On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. New York: Picador.
  • Maynard, Robyn. 2017. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing.
  • Mullins, Garth, Sam Fenn, Ryan McNeil, Alexander Kim, and Lisa Hale. 2019. Crackdown (Podcast). British Columbia Centre on Substance Use.
  • Ralph, Laurence. 2017. “Becoming Aggrieved: An Alternative Framework of Care in Black Chicago.” Pp. 93–110 in Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming, edited by J. Biehl and P. Locke. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • House, Jordan Lorne. 2020. Making Prison Work: Prison Labour and Resistance in Canada (PhD Dissertation)

Anthropology

  • Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer. Boston: Beacon Press.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015). Braiding Sweetgrass
  • Massumi, Brian. 2010. “The Future Birth of the Affective Fact: The Political Ontology of Threat.” Pp. 52–70 in The Affect Theory Reader, edited by M. Gregg and G. Seigworth. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Pine, Jason. 2019. The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Raikhel, Eugene and William Garriott, eds. 2013. Addiction Trajectories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Ralph, Laurence. 2017. “Becoming Aggrieved: An Alternative Framework of Care in Black Chicago.” Pp. 93–110 in Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming, edited by J. Biehl and P. Locke. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Robertson, Leslie and Dara Culhane. 2005. In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside. Vancouver: Talonbooks.
  • Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Stewart, Kathleen. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Taussig, Michael. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
  • Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Williams, Bianca C. 2018. The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Zigon, Jarrett. 2018. A War on People: Drug User Politics and a New Ethics of Community. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Drugs (general audience)

  • Bourgois, Philippe. 1995. In Search Of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bourgois, Philippe and Jeffrey Schonberg. 2008. Righteous Dopefiend. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Boyd, Susan. 2017. Busted: An Illustrated History of Drug Prohibition in Canada. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.
  • Boyd, Susan C., Donald MacPherson, and Bud Osborn. 2009. Raise Shit! Social Action Saving Lives. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.
  • Erika Dyck & Jesse Donaldson. The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital
  • Hart, Carl L. 2021. Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty In The Land Of Fear. New York: Penguin Random House.
  • Lattin, Don. 2011. The Harvard Psychedelic Club. HarperOne.
  • Lupick, Travis. 2017. Fighting For Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.
  • Gabor Mate (2008). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
  • Pine, Jason. 2019. The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Robertson, Leslie and Dara Culhane. 2005. In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside. Vancouver: Talonbooks.
  • Rolles, Steve. 2017. Legalizing Drugs: How to End the War. Oxford, UK: New Internationalist.
  • Quinones, Sam. 2015. Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
  • Schultes, Richard Evans, Albert Hofmann, and Christian Rätsch. 1992. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press.
  • Reider, Travis. In Pain

Drugs (academic audience)

  • Alexander, Bruce K. 2008. The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  • Bourgois, Philippe. 1995. In Search Of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bourgois, Philippe and Jeffrey Schonberg. 2008. Righteous Dopefiend. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Boyd, Susan. 2017. Busted: An Illustrated History of Drug Prohibition in Canada. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.
  • Boyd, Susan C., Donald MacPherson, and Bud Osborn. 2009. Raise Shit! Social Action Saving Lives. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.
  • Courtwright, David T. 2001. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Dyck, Erika. 2009. Psychedelic Psychiatry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Lupick, Travis. 2017. Fighting For Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.
  • Paley, Dawn. 2014. Drug War Capitalism. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
  • Pine, Jason. 2019. The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Robertson, Leslie and Dara Culhane. 2005. In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside. Vancouver: Talonbooks.
  • Rolles, Steve. 2017. Legalizing Drugs: How to End the War. Oxford, UK: New Internationalist.
  • Raikhel, Eugene and William Garriott, eds. 2013. Addiction Trajectories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 1992. Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. New York: Pantheon Press.
  • Zigon, Jarrett. 2018. A War on People: Drug User Politics and a New Ethics of Community. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Places you can find Hilary Agro’s work on the internet

Articles:

Podcast Appearances:

Talks and conference presentations:

French write-up of some of my work and lit review: https://blog.alexgirard.com/liste-darticles-evalues-par-des-pairs-sur-lutilisation-recreative-de-la-mdma-par-hilary-agro/

Support my work:

Articles I’m mentioned in:

Bio:

Hilary Agro is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her ethnographic research focuses on how people whose drug use is criminalized build solidarity and connection while resisting prohibition and its entanglements in structures of racial capitalism. Her work on consciousness alteration in urban North American settings also focuses on the subjective and contextual benefits and pleasures of self-administered drug use in non-medical social settings, which are widely recognized and experienced by users themselves, but seldom included in academic or mainstream discussions of drugs. Hilary has run workshops on psychedelics, harm reduction, destigmatization, and consent culture, and she is passionate about public outreach and abolitionist activism, with a large audience on Twitter and TikTok (@hilaryagro). She received her Master’s in Anthropology from the University of Western Ontario.

Table of Contents For Navigation:

  1. ALL OUR STRUGGLES ARE CONNECTED.
  2. PRAXIS: I’m in. What should we do?
    1. Unionize
    2. Organize Your Community
    3. Protest & Direct Action
    4. Posting on social media
    5. Electoral Politics (aka political harm reduction)
    6. Worker Owned Co-ops
    7. Individual changes you can make whenever possible
    8. Revolutionary art & music to enjoy
    9. Help me out
  3. THEORY: I want to learn more
    1. ANTI-CAPITALISM 101 CRASH COURSE:
  4. Resources for Specific Topics
    1. Police abolition
    2. Land Back, Indigenous Knowledge
    3. Drug Policy
    4. Drug use, harm reduction, benefit enhancement, recovery
    5. Mental Health (general)
    6. Mental Health (for men)
    7. Positive Masculinity
    8. Understanding Trans Issues
    9. Cancelling/Mobbing/Pile-Ons
    10. Palestine
    11. Vaccines
    12. White Supremacy & Fascism
    13. Disability Justice
    14. Non-monogamy & the nuclear family
    15. Understanding Marxist terms
    16. Labour History
    17. Climate Action
    18. Post-Capitalist Economies
  5. People to learn from
    1. Leftist news & analysis:
    2. Podcasts
    3. Accounts to follow on Twitter
    4. My favourite leftist creators on YouTube
    5. My favourite leftist creators on TikTok
  6. The Big Ol’ Booklist
    1. Liberation (anti-capitalism, leftism, socialism, communism)
    2. Anti-Imperialism
    3. Race, racism, anti-Blackness, intersectionality
    4. Decolonization, Land Back, Indigenous Voices
    5. Capitalism & Affect
    6. History
    7. Neoliberalism
    8. Strategy
    9. Prison, police, prohibition
    10. Anthropology
    11. Drugs (general audience)
    12. Drugs (academic audience)
  7. Places you can find Hilary Agro’s work on the internet

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