Shadows in the Struggle for Equality

Boris Yelensky (1889-1974) was a Russian anarchist propagandist who took part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Due to czarist repression, he was forced to flee the country in 1907, eventually landing in the US. He helped to establish the Philadelphia and Chicago chapters of the Anarchist Red Cross. Yelensky later returned to Russia to participate in the 1917 Revolution. With Lenin’s rise to power and the increased repression against anarchists, Yelensky once again left his native country, settling permanently in the US. Once he returned to the US, he continued to provide support for imprisoned anarchists through his work in the Alexander Berkman Aid Fund, a section of the Anarchist Red Cross. For over fifty years he was an important figure in Chicago’s Free Society Group and active in the Anarchist Red Cross.

Matthew Hart is an educator and labor activist from the greater Los Angeles area. His participation in the political movement began with Whittier Food Not Bombs and the anti-globalization movement in the mid-1990s. In 1998, he helped to establish the Los Angeles chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross. Throughout the years, he has engaged in extensive research and archiving of the Anarchist Black Cross history. Hart has spent several decades in the labor movement as a rank-and-file activist and staff and teaches labor studies courses at Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

N.O. Bonzo is an anarchist illustrator, printmaker, and muralist based out of Portland, OR. They are the illustrator of Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution and creator of Off with Their Heads: An Antifascist Coloring Book for Adults of All Ages, Beneath the Pavement the Garden: An Anarchist Coloring Book for All Ages, and The Beautiful Idea.