If you agree with what we’re writing about, and want to start helping out with spreading anarchist ideas in your community, here’s a few pointers to get started. These can also be applied to any of the awesome zines you’ll find at Sprout Distro or CrimethInc. as well.
1. Read the zines you want to distro!
We believe that the purpose of anarchist zines is to introduce a new way of thinking and engaging with the world, and that these new perspectives will lead to conversation, which will then lead to action. It’s hard to discuss and answer questions about a zine you haven’t read, and it’s hard to plan an action when the goal is a vague “Smash The System!” The whole purpose of writing, publishing, and creating dialogue about philosophy is that we engage with the nuances of these concepts, instead of gesturing at a greater idea without comprehending it. Read a lot, or read a little, but read! Then you can actually decide which ideas you think are worth sharing.
2. Download the zines you want to distro!
You can find all of our texts and some others that we recommend at:
ember.noblogs.org/printable-zines
You can download imposed pdfs from there which are pre-formatted to print into a booklet or a pamphlet. The metadata has already been scrubbed before upload, but if you want to be extra sure, you can run exiftool on the pdf file and either overwrite or delete all the metadata for your downloaded copy. We recommend moving this file and any other zines or posters you want to print to a usb stick for offline access, and deleting the downloaded copy off of your computer so it only exists on the usb drive. Google Drive and other cloud storage options are not your friend, and should be treated like a shared hard drive that the feds have access to (because they do).
3. Print out your zines!
Welcome to the magic of self-publishing, baby! You can simply send a file through a printer and the government can’t track or stop you! Of course, we still need to be smart about it. After all, there’s real stakes now.*
If you have a printer, hell yeah. This is preferred, especially if you can connect to it via usb, as opposed to over WiFi. Back in the day, the fascists could go to a warehouse where the local socialist newspaper was being printed and smash the press to bits. Can’t do that if every individual socialist is printing their own paper!
If you don’t have a printer, you can procure a printer, or you may know a friend who has one. Offer to grab them some ink refills in exchange for its use! Or cook them some food, or help out with childcare once in a while. This presents an opportunity for establishing a relationship of mutual aid. If you don’t know anyone who has a printer, there are plenty of places to print like office supply stores, shipping hubs, or the library! Most of these places probably have a self-use printer where you don’t have to talk to an employee directly, or have to hand anyone a felony charge for them to print it for you. If you have to pay, pay in cash. Mask up with an N95 at the very least if you have to interface with employees.
Open up the pdf on the computer that’s connected to the printer. The pdf’s are made to be printed double-sided. When you go to the pdf reader menu to set the print settings, select Print Doublesided, and Flip on SHORT Edge. ← This is important, as not doing it will result in an unreadable zine, and a waste of paper and ink. Collate the pages if you’re printing multiple copies so that they come out pre-sorted. If your printer can’t print double-sided, you may be able to figure that out on your own, or go to a place that does double-sided printing. Print your first zines one at a time to make sure you got the print settings right before jumping into a whole batch at once.
Once your zines are printed, fold them up, staple ‘em together, and boom! You’ve got a bunch of cool literature that the police would rather you didn’t! Let’s get these out to people!
4. Pick out spaces and events that might be receptive to the reading materials you want to bring!
Where do the cool kids hang out? Leave some zines there! DIY spaces, punk shows, infoshops, coffee spots, local protests or political actions, these are all good places to start.
Be discerning about your level of visibility in these spaces as you leave your literature. Packed punk show? No one will probably notice you dropping a stack on a table. Quiet coffee shop? N95 and a quick in-and-out maneuver. Protest? Bloc’d the fuck up. As much anonymity as possible. You’d be surprised just how many people will take some folded paper from an obvious anti-fascist. We’ve also just started showing up to places uninvited with our own table, and most of the time folks will just let you stay and hand out cool stuff!
That’s it! Congrats! You just did your first distro! The effects may not feel tangible at first, but we’ve been doing this for a while, and are always stoked when we see a copy that we didn’t personally put there out in the wild. We’ve also noticed our communities changing their conversations, in ways that while don’t exactly match our literature, are at least in parallel. We think that is worth it, which is why we keep doing it, and want your help in that endeavor. This is the shit that helped us untangle our minds from the pervasiveness of white supremacy, the horrors of capitalism, the pox that is misogyny and queerphobia. You cannot get people to fight something they cannot describe.
Change a mind, change a community. It all starts with an idea.
Welcome aboard, dreamer
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“On June 23, 2026, Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada, received 30 years [in prison] for moving a box of zines from his parents’ house.”
This is our current political reality. We need to take the threats of the state seriously. This is not to say that we should cease our activities, quite the contrary. We just need to make our moves according to the consequences we may face. Read up and bulk up on OpSec tactics. This is why we don’t have an instagram, or any online presence beyond the noblogs site.
Take this seriously, because the state certainly is.