Sean Keller: In Rojava, a region in Syria also known as North Kurdistan, a groundbreaking experiment in communal living, social justice, and ecological vitality is taking place. Devastated by civil war, Syria is a place where a cessation of hostilities often seems like the most that can be hoped for. But Rojava has set its sights much higher. What started as a movement for political autonomy in the city of Kobane has blossomed into an attempt to build a radical pluralist democracy on the principles of communal solidarity — with food security, equality for women, and a localized, anti-capitalist economy at its core.

The Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM) has been at the heart of Rojava’s democratic revolution since its inception. The Movement grew out of single-issue campaigns against dam construction, climate change, and deforestation, and in 2015 went from being a small collection of local ecological groups to a full-fledged network of “ecology councils” that are active in every canton of Rojava, and in neighboring Turkey as well. Its mission, as one of its most prominent founding members, Ercan Ayboğa, says, is to “strengthen the ecological character of the Kurdish freedom movement [and] the Kurdish women’s movement”.

It’s not an easy process. Neoliberal policies, war, and climate change have made for an impressive roster of challenges. Crop diversity has been undermined due to longstanding subsidies for monocultures. Stocks of native seeds are declining. The region has been hit by trade embargoes from Turkey, Iraq, and the central Syrian government, and villages have been subject to forced displacement and depopulation. Groundwater reserves are diminishing, and climate change is reducing rainfall. Many wells and farms were destroyed by the self-described Islamic State (ISIS), and many farmers have been killed by mines. Much of the region is without electricity. And there has been an influx of refugees from the rest of Syria, fleeing civil war.

As MEM sees it, the solutions to these overlapping problems must be holistic and systemic. Ercan gives an impressive rundown of MEM’s priorities: Decreasing Rojava’s dependence on imports, returning to traditional water-conserving cultivation techniques, advocating for ecological policy-making at the municipal level, promoting local crops and livestock and traditional construction methods, organizing educational activities, working against destructive and exploitative “investment” and infrastructure projects such as dams and mines — in short, “the mobilization of an ecological resistance” towards anything guilty of “commercializing the waters, commodifying the land, controlling nature and people, and promoting the consumption of fossil fuels”.

In 2016, MEM published a declaration of its social and ecological aims, and it is a thing of beauty. “We must defend,” it says, “the democratic nation against the nation-state; the communal economy against capitalism, with its quick-profit-seeking logic and monopolism and large industries; organic agriculture, ecological villages and cities, ecological industry, and alternative energy and technology against the agricultural and energy policies imposed by capitalist modernity.”

Getting children involved in all of this is critical. Schools in Rojava teach ecology as a fundamental principle. In 2016, with the support of Slow Food International and the Rojava Ministry of Water and Agriculture, MEM helped build a series of school gardens in villages around the city of Kobane, in order to provide a ‘laboratory’ for children to learn about the region’s biodiversity and how to care for it. These gardens are growing fruit trees, figs, and pomegranates, instead of corn and wheat monocultures. Some have been planted on land that was once virtually destroyed by ISIS. In Rojava, even cultivation comes inherently infused with a spirit of resistance. “We grew up on this land and we haven’t abandoned it,” says Mustafa, a teacher whose school was one of those to receive a new garden in 2016. “As a people of farmers and livestock breeders, we have always tended the crops using our own techniques, which are thousands of years old.” As the MEM declaration says, “Bringing ecological consciousness and sensibility to the organized social sphere and to educational institutions is as vital as organizing our own assemblies.”

The spirit of resistance is as alive in the realm of society and economics as it is on the land. The cooperative economy in Rojava is booming. Michel Knapp, a longtime activist in the Kurdish freedom movement and co-author of the book Revolution in Rojava, observes that most cooperatives in Rojava are “small, with some five to ten members producing textiles, agricultural products and groceries, but there are some bigger cooperatives too, like a cooperative near Amûde that guarantees most of the subsistence for over 2,000 households and is even able to sell on the market.”

The government of Rojava is democratic and decentralized, with residential communes and local councils giving people autonomy and control over decisions that affect their lives. Municipal-level government bodies are systematically integrated into the operations of MEM, in a one-of-a-kind partnership between the public and nonprofit spheres. And the prison system is being radically reformed, with local ‘peace committees’ paying attention to the social and political dimensions of crime in passing judgment. Most cities contain no more than one or two dozen prisoners, according to Ercan.

And to top it all, women have taken a leading role in every facet of the revolution. Women’s cooperatives are a common sight in Rojava, as are women’s councils, women’s committees, and women’s security forces. Women’s ecovillages have been built both in Rojava and across the border in Turkish Kurdistan, aimed at helping victims of domestic violence and trauma. Patriarchy is just one more aspect of the neoliberal program being cast aside in Rojava, on the road towards building what MEM describes as “a radical democratic, communal, ecological, women-liberated society.”

This piece was originally published on Medium as part of Local Futures’ Planet Local webseries.

Read about other holistic ecological initiatives from around the world on our Planet Local: Ecology page.

Dig deeper into Rojava and the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement on the following pages (the source material for much of this piece):

• ‘The revolution in Rojava: an eyewitness account’. Article published by ROAR Magazine; October 2016. https://roarmag.org/essays/revolution-rojava-pluto-book/
• Final Declaration of the First Conference of the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement; April 2016. http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/mesop-ecology-mvmt/
• ‘Kobane: An eco-challenge for humanity’. Article published by Slow Food International; December 2016. https://www.slowfood.com/kobane-an-eco-challenge-for-humanity/
• The official website of MEM (in Turkish): http://www.mezopotamyaekoloji.org/

Lead image: Hasankeyf, a predominantly Kurdish historic town in Turkey, and the proposed site of a large hydroelectric dam which would threaten the local ecosystem and water supply. MEM has been active in opposing the project

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The terrorist attacks in Paris compels us to acknowledge the deeper causes of the resentment that gave rise to ISIS, and to unite behind a far-reaching demand for sharing the world’s resources.

A week after the brutal terrorist attacks in Paris, the Western world is still coming to terms with the horrific violence that was perpetrated on large numbers of innocent civilians. Understandably, there is much fear among the people of Europe and other Western states that further atrocities will be committed in the near future – not least within the United States in light of the Obama administration’s air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since 2014. Endless news reports and articles continue to debate how the community of nations should further respond to this urgent threat of Islamic extremism. But what should be the collective response of ordinary people of goodwill in the face of these atrocities, and how can we truly affirm our common humanity in the immediate time ahead?

While France and other Western states clamour for a “pitiless” war against terrorism, only the relatively few progressive voices are calling for an alternative to increased military intervention. Among these anti-war and peace activists, one of the most radical propositions comes from Rabbi Michael Lerner who advocates for an entirely new approach to “homeland security” – one that firmly integrates the principle of sharing into world affairs through a “strategy of generosity” and massive redistribution of resources led by the popular will of America.

In his latest editorial for Tikkun Magazine, Rabbi Lerner reiterates the need for us to embrace a new worldview that understands “our mutual interdependence and oneness”. This calls for an informed understanding that militaristic solutions can never bring lasting peace and security, and that you can’t simply bomb an extremist ideology out of existence. It also means acknowledging the deeper causes of the resentment that gave rise to ISIS, which would include the past 14 years of failed Western interventions across the Middle East and north Africa – where close to 300,000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands injured, and millions forced from their homes.

More than this, however, it means acknowledging the unequal distribution of global wealth and resulting extremes of poverty that inevitably fuels resentment against the West. Rabbi Lerner cites the official UN estimates that up to 9,000 children under five die each day from preventable poverty-related causes, while at least 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Such is the “structural violence” that everyone in advanced industrial societies is morally implicated in, caused in large part by the unjust structural arrangements of the global economy that benefit big corporations and a privileged minority of the world population, at the expense of the majority of the Global South.

Embracing this broader awareness of our divided world does not remotely vindicate the reactionary force of ISIS and similar groups, who represent a level of murderous brutality unparalleled in the twenty-first century. But the horror witnessed in Paris calls on us to reflect anew on the “cumulative effects of a world lacking generosity of spirit and generosity of action”, which – as Rabbi Lerner articulates – “plays an important role in shaping the psychological underpinning that leads people to act out in various ways, of which ISIS is only one manifestation”. Now more than ever, we are called upon to shift our sympathies and solidarity from solely “We are all France”, to “We are the whole world”.

So what can we do to translate our global empathy with the suffering of humanity as a whole into practical, constructive action? First of all, we can follow Rabbi Lerner’s instruction to play a role in resisting the dominant discourse that pushes for increased military interventions on the basis of fear and revenge, and we can try and convince others to adopt this “new consciousness”. This may compel us to support the campaigns and activism of the many progressive groups who oppose an escalation of the destructive bombing in Syria and Iraq, which will only intensify the chaos and suffering in these war-torn regions, leading to an even greater influx of refugees to Europe and increased bitterness against the West. The many alternative options for curtailing the threat of ISIS remain largely outside of mainstream public debate, such as an international arms embargo or the empowerment of the United Nations in negotiating real political and diplomatic solutions.

But if we wholly embrace the emerging new consciousness that Rabbi Lerner speaks of, then we may also see the necessity of uniting behind a demand for sharing global resources rather than “simply focusing on resisting the policies of the right”. In a newsletter accompanying the Tikkun editorial, Rabbi Lerner questions whether the events in Paris represent a wake-up call to help us see that the only real response is to build a massive, peaceful social movement that can “take back our country and our world”. He writes:

“Perhaps this moment is a call to action – not to create a false sense of safety or security or to turn more inward – for ordinary people to rise-up and lead because our leaders are failing us. They continue to promote and use the same strategies of violence, weapons and war to try to bomb the world to peace and impose global capitalism around the globe. And yet we know this strategy and approach has not worked for thousands of years and it will not work now.

… It is time for a sea change and it is we, the people, who are the only ones who can create it.

… We will not be safe until everyone on the planet is safe. Until all lives are valued. Until everyone has the resources they need to live peacefully, securely, eat healthy food, have drinking water, education, functioning communities, healthcare, etc. We need to stand-up in a loving, compassionate, powerful and nonviolent collective way and demand that our leaders do what is needed to build a safer world for ourselves and everyone else on the planet and to make it clear that more weapons and more violence is not the path.

… [We need to] mobilize people to take to the streets in massive nonviolent civil disobedience demanding that those who support continued wars and those who support weapons industries either withdraw their support or we will vote them out of office. To demand that we move from a homeland security policy of power over, domination and submission to a strategy of generosity and kindness. To demand that our leaders are actually beholden to the people they represent, not the wealthiest individuals and corporations. To demand that corporations be socially and environmentally responsible.

This is a crucial moment in history. Let’s capitalize on it ourselves rather than leave it to the warmongers to do so because we know what will happen if they do. With a massive movement, we can turn to the light and away from the darkness but to do so will require each and every one of us to get out of our offices, our houses, our schools, our communities and even our comfort zones and take to the streets.

What do you say?”

The post After the Paris attacks: affirming our common humanity through a global call for sharing appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Yesterday I watched a PBS documentary about the rise of ISIS. Around minute 43, a phrase caught my attention. Explaining how ISIS arrived to a tipping point in recruitment, the script noted that the group itself had been surprised at the massive response of a generation who

wants to be part of something special, they want to be part of something successful

Today, an report in “El País” quoting “Le Parisien” includes a statement of the lawyer of one of the murderers of the massacre of Paris describing him as:

a clueless guy who did not know what to do with his life and who met people who made ??him feel important

I guess it is quite clear in jihadism but in reality is the generalization of these feelings that make militant movements of all kinds reach their tipping point. What happens these days is that we are nearing the time when the new political movements begin to be credible winners. And people are pointing to star in a historic change… the most credible in every different place or circumstance.

Of course will not produce the same results if is ISIS who capitalize that feeling in Syria and Iraq or if it will be the new PKK in Kurdistan. And if we look at Europe Ukrainian nationalism has not the same values thanSYRIZA or Podemos. But from the point of view of network analysis it is a very similar phenomenum: The protagonist of the great social movements is changing worldwide.

The time of the young European jihadist who was able to destroy himself as a way to defy an unquestionable power has passed away as the time of the cyberactivist who wanted to change social consensus promoting new social conversations.

Lets remember two slogans from the quotes: “feel important” and “be part of something successful”. Those will be the magic words of all the mobilizing discourses during the coming years.

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