Kurds

A Message Of Hope For The New Year

January 6, 2016 Jack Balkwill, www.dissidentvoice.org Strategize! #BlackLiveMatter, Antarctica, Banks, Bolivia, BXE, Capitalism, China, Climate Change, Cooperatives, Democracy, Ecuador, Elections, Empire, Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Greece, Kurds, Marijuana, Media, militarism, Occupy, Portugal, Russia, sHellNo!, Spain, TPP, Ukraine, Venezuela, Wall Street, Zapatistas

By Jack Balkwill for Dissident Voice. There have been many victories and we need to celebrate them. Among the victories was stopping the northern portion of the KXL pipeline, various new laws in 24 states to prevent police violence and an increase inprosecutions of police who commit violence, and the increase in wages across the country and winning the critically important battle for net neutrality. These were people-powered victories that showed when we act together we have the power to defeat corporate interests. Another ongoing series of victories is seeing local people, who have not been involved in activism, working along with experienced, often young, energy activists, taking on big energy companies in an aggressive way. This is a victory.

Governance Without Hierarchy, Patriarchy Or Capitalism

December 20, 2015 Akbar Shahid Ahmed, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Capitalism, Democracy, Kurds, Syria

By Akbar Shahid Ahmed for Huffington Post. ISTANBUL -- Last fall, Islamic State fighters launched a coordinated, large-scale assault on the Kurdish town of Kobani on Syria's northern border with Turkey. Fresh from victories that granted them an aura of invincibility, the extremists were about to remove the single irritant on a wide swath of the border they otherwise controlled. The world watched in resignation. The lone superpower said it would not help. U.S. officials grimly predicted the city would fall. Yet the small band of Kurds held on for days, then weeks. The U.S.-led coalition against the self-described Islamic State began to help, first with a smattering of airstrikes then with daily assaults.

Kurdish Struggle Continues, With A Smile And A Shrug

November 8, 2015 Joris Leverink, www.telesurtv.net Resist! Kurds, Türkiye

By Joris Leverink for Telesur. The results of Turkey’s snap elections came as a shock to many, but especially to those who had bore the brunt of the AKP’s anger after the party had lost its majority in parliament for the first time in thirteen years. The five months between the two elections were marred by violence in which hundreds of people lost their lives; guerrillas and soldiers, policemen and citizens. Two of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Turkey’s history killed almost 140 people, and dozens of people were reportedly killed when security forces attacked neighborhoods and towns were militant youths had picked up arms to protect themselves from the state’s violence. Hope turned to anger; euphoria to disappointment. “How can the people reward them for all the corruption, the killings and the repression?” was an often-heard credo on the streets of the de-facto capital of Turkey’s Kurdish region. But, after a brief night of mourning and a few isolated clashes between excited youths and the police, Diyarbakir woke up the next morning to a bright blue sky and the warmth of the Mesopotamian sun. People were still angry, disappointed, sad and indignant, of course, but this is something the people of Kurdistan have dealt with all their lives. And they weren’t about to give up hope just yet.

This One Small Book Explains The Inspiring Rojava Revolution

October 17, 2015 Steve Rushton, www.occupy.com Create! Kurds, Syria

By Steve Rushton for Occupy - Rojava’s social revolution deserves more global attention and solidarity. The Kurdish autonomous region in Northern Syria is a working experiment creating a society based on direct democracy, with women’s empowerment central in that model. It is being organized beyond and outside a state-centric capitalist system; mutual aid and cooperation are challenging structural exploitation and inequality. Remarkably, all of this emerges out of the Syrian crisis where the predominantly Kurdish Rojava experiment continues despite an existential fight against ISIS, the fascist and genocidal caliphate.

The Kurds Liberating Themselves Through Grassroots Democracy

August 10, 2015 Joris Leverink, www.roarmag.org Create! Democracy, Kurds, Municipal Networks, Murray Bookchin, Participatory Democracy

By Joris Leverink for ROAR Magazine - The developments in Kurdistan — and especially in Rojava, the Kurdish region in northern Syria — have tickled the radical imagination of activists around the globe. The revolution in Rojava has been compared to Barcelona in 1936 and the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. The radical left needs its own mythology as much as everybody else, and in this sense Rojava, Barcelona and Chiapas serve as hopeful reminders that there is an alternative; that it is possible to organize society in a different way. Bookchin believes that if our ideal is a Commune of Communes, the natural place to start is at the local political level, with a movement and program as the “uncompromising advocate of popular neighborhood and town assemblies and the development of a municipalized economy.” Ultimately, the best way to support the struggles of the Kurds, the Zapatistas and many other revolutionary movements and initiatives that have sprung up across the globe in the past few years, is by listening to their stories, learning from their experiences and following in their footsteps.

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