CRAC-K is an autonomous research collective with anti-authoritarian, feminist and against all forms of oppression affinities. Working as we do in other autonomous anti-authoritarian collectives, we see a profound potential for social transformation through engaged reflection on our individual and collective actions. This is among the many reasons that we are engaged in the CRAC-K research project, which explores specific experiences with anti-authoritarian modes of autonomous collective organizing in Quebec since 1995. Currently, in addition to having developed a kind of yellow pages of autonomous collectives in Quebec—our repertoire—we are also in the process of producing monographs about several pro-feminist anti-authoritarian groups and networks.

To date, the monographs on the eco-radical group, Liberterre, the anti-authoritarian feminist radio production group Ainsi Squattent-Elles and an article on the experience of self-managed gardens have been completed and published. We are in the process of putting together monographs (and other texts) on the following groups and networks: queer activist group Les Panthères Roses; la Convergence des Luttes Anti-Capitalistes (CLAC); collective gardens; Queer People Of Colour (QPOC) networks; queer group Q-Team;  Ste-Emilie Skillshare, which is a queer space for production and sharing of creative work; radical feminist networks; and anti-racist/anti-colonial (pro)feminist networks.

Using a research-action methodology, we are working to produce a series of publications or texts that reflects on the interests and preoccupations of these groups and networks. These texts therefore both reflect the issues that these groups and networks wish to put forward within their/our milieus, and simultaneously enter into a dialogical process of research that will ultimately bring about some kind of transformation. We are particularly interested in the many challenges, contradictions and issues that have been encountered by activists in their collective actions and organizing work, such as the relations of domination or power that develop among people or groups which might be linked to a range of diverse social identities, categories and experiences.

We work in a place of rupture and subversion in relation to normalized university research, because we believe that knowledge should be in the public domain, and furthermore that is should be constructed and shared by the people to whom it pertains. It is our hope and our goal that, by participating in this research, these networks and groups, who already produce knowledge through their day to day organizing work, will be at the heart of the content of this virtual space, our website. Our works are created within the framework of research-action – they are first and foremost ours! The primary idea behind this methodology is to relate these two goals—research and action—through the dialogical process between the two, engaging the participation of all involved. This trajectory is intended to have positive repercussions for the milieus and activists with, as, and for whom we are researching. If the details of our functioning interest you, please do not hesitate to check out our library.

This is why we are interested in creating tools, such as this website – because of our desire to nourish and energize anarchist and anti-authoritarian organizing and organizations, to contribute to the fluidity of exchanges among multiples groups, networks and individuals, and to continue the consolidation of our findings, and the concretization of our values and principles.

For more information, to add a group to our repertoire, or to find out dates for our events, please do not hesitate to contact us.