DEFENSE COMMITTEE, or SAFETY COMMITTEE
In Rojava, the people living there are multi-ethnic,
multi-religious, and wary of state power and
male domination.
So, they make it their goal to decentralize
knowledge, power, and responsibility as much
as possible so that no one can dominate anyone
else.
In 2015, communes all over Rojava started
forming the HPC (Self-defense forces) and
the HPC-Jin (an autonomous women's self-defense
force) to replace the regular police (Asayîsh).
The HPC is a city-wide defense force made
up of 2 directly elected members from each
commune
These two elected security members are accountable
to the mandates of the directly democratic
assemblies in the communes and can only act
as instructed by the people who actually live
in the communes.
They are trained in self-defense, feminism,
weapons, tactics, and ideology.
The ideology being "democratic confederalism"
(stateless democracy) that is driving the
revolution in Rojava.
They can be immediately recalled by the direct
democratic assembly of the residents if they
violate their mandate or act against what
they were told in any way.
Beyond this, as in the militias of the YPG
and YPJ, as in the communes themselves, and
as nearly every institution in Rojava, HPC
members undergo what is called Tekmil, a public
meeting of community members where they are
encouraged to criticize their own failures,
those of each other, and let others criticize
them.
These meetings do not carry authority or force,
but are just public suggestions that keep
people from getting too full of themselves
or from latching onto too much power.
The HPC members rotate, and take turns training
everyone in the commune in self-defense, with
the goal of eventually every member of the
commune serving in the role at some point,
so that power is decentralized and there is
no need for an official police force.
As most decisions that affect a commune are
made by the residents themselves, they deal
with much less crime in the first place (why
break rules you yourself made, argued, and
voted on?).
So, how does this structure differ from a
police force?
Well, there are several key ways.
1) every single member comes from the community
and is directly elected by the community
2) they only enforce decisions that every
community member gets a say on and only act
as instructed by the community
3) they can be immediately stripped of power
if they violate the mandate of the community
4) They rotate and their power is eventually
dispersed to everyone so that safety becomes
not the responsibility of a special professional
body, but of the whole of the community.
HEALTH COMMITTEE
As I said before, the more knowledge is concentrated
into the minds of a few people, the more likelihood
those people can create an oppressive power
dynamic over those who depend on them.
For those living in the communes, access to
good healthcare is vital, especially in an
area always under threat by hostile states
and fundamentalist groups.
In such a situation, it benefits no one for
health knowledge to remain the domain of professionals.
The people of Rojava see the dispersal of
this knowledge as the reclamation of traditional
knowledge that had once been passed down through
women, but had been stolen from them by the
state, guarded by powerful men, and sold back
to the people for profit.
As Heval Azad, a member of the health committee
for Jazeera Canton pointed out:
“The problem is that before the revolution
there was a deep connection between health
and the power of the state.
So we are building up a new system with a
new basis – trying to remove this connection.
Health is one of the key areas which is represented
by specific structures and institutions in
the new system.
So the main aims for health in Rojava are:
To solve the problem of relations between
health and power/ the party.
To critique and rebuild the relationship between
society and doctors.
To return ownership of health to society.
“Everything is centered around [self-organized]
committees and if we organize around these
committees the state will disappear.”
So how is health knowledge and care decentralized
at the commune level?
As I said before, the goal is to decrease
reliance on professionals whenever possible.
To do this, each commune elects two heads
of the health committee (one man, one woman)
who are trained by doctors.
These co-chairs then train every commune member
who wants to learn in basic first aid and
often even more advanced aid.
This keeps valuable health knowledge from
being centralized and allows life-saving action
to be dispersed.
The communal health care model seeks to combine
the latest in medical technology and research
with traditional, natural medicine without
discounting the value of either.
In April of this year, Halanj village near
Kobani was reported to have achieved medical
autonomy through their self-organization in
communes.
Four of the communes in the village, together
part of the House of Communes, established
a medical center for themselves and the surrounding
area.
The villagers chipped in what they could to
buy pressure gauges, sugar testers and other
medical tools such as sterilisers and syringes
to be stored in the village medical center.
The role of natural medicine is encouraged
by education so people can learn about their
own bodies and some communes are even coordinating
excursions for gathering herbs to start to
get back the wealth of local knowledge that
5,000 years of state and patriarchal systems
have attempted to destroy.
From Qandil, a region of Iraq where Kurds
have formed some autonomous villages also
under democratic confederalism, we have the
example of the village of Binare, where residents
volunteer to plant and harvest the Sumac herb
together, taking what they need for themselves
and distributing the rest to relatives and
neighbors.
A resident, Amine Mehemed told a journalist:
"Sumac contains many healthy features.
It is also used as a medicine for many health
issues.
It is effective against high blood pressure,
it strengthens the gum and is very beneficial
for children as well.
But it should be only enjoyed in healthy moderation,
and not in abundance.
It is also deemed a medicinal herb.
It grows in almost the entire region.
And it is also effective against diabetes."
An important aspect that cannot be overlooked
is women’s health needs and the ways in
which women are organizing to meet them.
Again, we can turn to Heval Azad: “the point
is to give people education [at the commune
level] so that they can have the knowledge
and decide for themselves.
In this education people are made to think
about for example, the consequences of having
many children if you do not have any money,
and what the future might be like for your
children.
People are thus given the chance to decide
for themselves how many children they want
to have.”
Women can use this knowledge how they would
like and have easy access to birth control.
The last crucial piece of the health committees
is prevention of illness in the first place.
Heval Azad noted how states spend tons of
money on treating illnesses but don’t put
the same resources into prevention.
I’ll close this section with her words:
“[The state system] looks at society as
if it is sick and needs to be cured, but it
is the system itself that is the illness of
society.”
THE PEACE AND CONSENSUS COMMITTEE
A common problem facing much of western society,
especially in suburbs sick with social isolation
and atomization is our knee-jerk response
to any slight annoyance from our neighbors
just to call the police instead of actually
having face-to-face conversations with our
neighbors.
The suburbs seem to me like the antithesis
of the Rojava commune.
They are largely places to return to after
a long day at work, maybe wave tour neighbors
as we get the mail, and then rush inside to
watch some mindless TV and rest before having
to start over again the next day.
Outsourcing our conflicts to the police is
the easy way out, and over time, we have forgotten
how to handle things ourselves or on a communal
level.
Out of sight out of mind.
One phone call and we never even have to follow
up to hear whether our neighbor was locked
in a cage or ground through the gears of a
faceless court system.
We have already talked about how rapid response
to an issue is handled differently in Rojava
than in most everywhere else, with elected
and accountable community members rather than
a professional police force.
But what about justice?
How would a commune take on a project like
that?
Are there courts in Rojava?
Yes, there are courts.
We could do a whole video on how these differ
to American courts, but since we focusing
more locally on the communes, suffice it to
say that in Rojava, only about 1/3 of social
disputes ever reach a court.
Every other dispute is solved within the communes
themselves through the peace and consensus
committees.
These have a long history in areas where democratic
confederalism took hold, working clandestinely
until the revolution.
Peace and consensus committees are organized
bodies in every commune in which neighbors
try to resolve disputes through consensus.
They usually meet in informal places like
homes, meeting houses, and the like.
“These Committees have a dual structure.
The general committees are responsible for
conflicts and crimes; the women’s commissions
are responsible for cases of patriarchal violence,
forced marriage, plural marriage, and so on.
They are directly attached to the women’s
organization Kongreya Star…
In Rojava, conflicts arising from patriarchal
violence are not to be judged by men”
Every resident of the commune comes together
to elect the five to nine people who make
up the committee, with at least 40 percent
of the members required to be women.
The committee members are usually those with
a reputation for bringing together conflicting
parties.
Like the HPC, rotation is usually frequent
so everyone eventually gets the experience
of peacemaking.
The goal of these committees is not to focus
on punishment or blame, but rather to achieve
a consensus between disputants.
If someone commits an action that is outside
community norms, the communes seek to get
to the bottom of the person’s reasonings
and understand the conditions that led the
person to harm others.
They are guided by the question, “How can
we eliminate the conditions causing this person
to harm?”
instead of “How can we now harm this person
who harmed others?”.
Of course, if it turns out that the community
norm a person broke no longer makes sense
to the people living there, it can easily
be changed thanks to the flexibility of direct
democracy in the commune system.
Unlike a rigid system of laws that are written
by a few and imposed on the majority of people
who have no say in them, the rules that govern
the communes are subject to change with ease
based on the actual needs and decisions of
the people affected by them.
Many cases in the committees are resolved
through dialogue and consensus among all parties
and the committee members.
But sometimes community sanctions may need
to be brought towards an individual or group:
in most cases, this would mean community work,
or work for the people who were hurt by their
actions.
There could also be a period of education
related to the offense, lasting until the
community members are convinced that the person
has changed.
For example, polluters would probably go to
an academy to learn about ecology and why
polluting is bad.
Other sanctions could be a fine, “work in
a cooperative or public service; exclusion
from the commune; social isolation — for
some people the hardest of all; boycott, if
the convicted person
has a shop; temporary relocation to another
neighborhood; and exclusion from
some public rights.”
Most famously, many long-standing blood feuds
that could never be resolved through any state
or elder-based system were finally resolved
through the communes’ peace and consensus
committees without trial.
Only the worst cases or disputes that can’t
be solved go to anything like a traditional
court and even then they usually go through
multiple levels of mediation-based, restorative-justice
driven assemblies at various levels first.
ECONOMIC COMMITTEE
"Solve your problems yourself and do not wait
for others to do it”- motto of Shexo village,
Qamishlo countryside
A growing part of Rojava’s economy is the
cooperative.
Cooperatives are democratically controlled
by all of the participants, without control
by bosses or state bureaucrats.
Often in Rojava, it is participants of the
communes who decide what cooperatives to open.
This method might be even more representative
than worker-owned cooperatives, because the
entire community, even beyond those who work
at a business are often affected by the decisions
made by it, and here they too get a say.
An economy based on participatory democracy
instead of managerial feudalism encourages
the consideration of factors beyond just money.
A community is never going to vote to pollute
their own neighborhood for example.
The current global economy allows people (especially
CEOs) to make decisions that affect the lives
of many, but avoid dealing with any of the
consequences.
The cooperative economy in Rojava is an antidote
to this.
I should stress that cooperatives have been
much slower to develop than other structures
of the revolution in Rojava.
The Syrian regime for years imposed mono cropping
of wheat, controlled by large landowners on
the region and Rojava’s economy was dependent
on other parts of Syria before the war.
Since the war, the region has been under embargo
from all sides (including from Turkey and
the much more state capitalist oriented Kurdish
Regional Government in Iraq).
The economy before the war was also very much
feudal.
Unlike many radical revolutions, this one
was not accompanied by massive expropriations
of private lands or forced collectivizations.
The revolutionaries in Rojava prefer a slow-going,
voluntary building of a social economy from
the ground up.
Radical change, in their minds, is much longer
lasting and more deeply rooted in society
when it is done through building consensus
with many sectors of society.
This means face-to-face meetings, education
and public service announcements, incentivizing
cooperation, etc.
Besides, many plots of lands have been owned
by families, many of them arabs, for generations
and some sort of expropriation of these lands
could lead to ethnic conflict, entirely contradictory
to the democratic con federalist project.
Land and businesses possessed and worked by
individuals and families is perfectly tolerated,
in fact guaranteed in the Social Contract,
but cooperation is incentivized in a way similar
to how large corporate entities are in the
United States.
These incentives range from subsidies, tax
breaks, “municipalities providing tools
and machinery, trade and production cooperatives
offering reduced prices, trade unions assisting
with engineers and specialized workers, etc.”
Those who prefer to work within a more hierarchical
or capitalist paradigm can do so, they just
may have limited access to the communal economic
network.
The incentives have made a difference.
Before the war, cooperatives were very rare
in the region.
Now, all cooperatives make up 7% of Jazira
Canton’s economy alone, with cooperatives
solely run by women making up 3% of the entire
economy.
There are 87 cooperatives in Cizire Canton
alone, comprising more than 30,000 participants,
according to Hawar News.
Kobanê’s cooperative sector is even more
advanced.
No region of Rojava had more cooperatives
than Afrin, but sadly all of that has been
lost thanks to Turkey and Salafist groups’
invasion and occupation of Afrin earlier this
year.
However, refugees from Afrin immediately organized
themselves into communes in their new homes
and will carry their social economy with them.
Cooperatives aren’t limited to the cities,
but are growing in the countryside too!
If you will allow me to read an extended excerpt
from Cooperativeeconomy.info, I think it will
provide some valuable insight:
“Carûdiye is located in the Berave region
of Dêrik (Derik / Al-Malikiyah).
The Şehit Kanî commune includes an agricultural
cooperative with 26 members.
In the 3 acre field, all cooperative members
participate in the work.
There are 6 groups with 5 members each.
Every group works for one day, and every Friday
all groups participate.
The aim of the cooperative is to revive the
communal and natural village livelihood.
Accordingly, a common programme has been made
to carry out farming and irrigation etc.
The cultivated products are sold in the Derik
market and the revenue is distributed equally
to all cooperative members…”
Children have also been involved in the activities.
Going to the fields with their families, the
children play with their peers in the spacious
and communally-cultivated fields.”
This village is an economic commune that decided
democratically to communalize its economy.
Most villages and cities in Rojava have a
mix of social-oriented and individual-oriented
economies.
Many communes also pool money to provide a
safety net for their members, reminiscent
of that once provided to many Americans through
fraternal organizations like the Lions’
Club, Odd Fellows, and similar organizations.
For example, In the village of Shexo in Qamishlo,
there is a common fund, from which everyone
can benefit on occasions such as illnesses,
deaths and weddings.
This fund is mainly used by economically ill-posed
residents in emergencies.
As 80-year-old Mihemed Elî Kûtê told the
ANHA news agency, all villagers pay monthly
into the fund according to their financial
resources.
Finally, communes also work like the bulk-buying
cooperatives that have been taking off in
the US and UK recently.
“The Commune buys essential food products
(sugar, salt, bulgur, oil, bread, etc.) and
other important goods directly from producers
and wholesalers for around 20 to 35% cheaper.
If there are cooperatives that produce or
trade in these goods, the cooperatives are
favoured…The commune [also] procures generators
to create electricity for the households.”
THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE
The Rojava Revolution is a backlash against
the hierarchical state mentality in its entirety,
and one of the places this mentality is deepest
embedded all over the world is in education.
The Syrian regime’s schools were centered
on the idea of “one language, one nation,
one state, one flag”, leaving out all ethnic
groups other than Arabs, all religions other
than Islam, all other identities than those
bound up with the nation-state.
Schools are one of the few areas where the
Syrian state retains some sort of power base
in Rojava, and the regime still pays many
teachers, but since people organized themselves
into communes, they are starting to organize
their own autonomous schools to replace the
regime’s.
In mixed ethnicity communes, the first priority
in education is to make sure that students
can learn in their own language and about
their own cultures, while also encouraging
cooperation between cultures and sharing of
each other’s languages.
But crucially, the teachers in Rojava, often
elected and sent out by the communes, are
seen more as facilitators and as equals to
their students.
The educational philosophy associated with
the radical decentralization in the communes
recognizes that teachers have just as much
to learn from their students as the other
way around.
What gets taught to students usually depends
on joint process between teachers, students,
families, and civil society organizations
and can differ from commune to commune.
Tekmil is a part of daily and weekly life
inside Rojava’s autonomous schools, academies,
workshops and universities; students are encouraged
to criticize their teacher’s methods in
an effort to better their education and diffuse
hierarchies that might grow up between teachers
and students.
There are a wide range of educational options
available to students in Rojava, most organized
at the communal level.
The schools are somewhat similar to schools
everywhere else except that the classes are
more project-based, students have much more
say in decision-making and teachers are seen
as facilitators, not in charge.
And testing is very much de-emphasized.
But like schools elsewhere, they are often
housed in similar buildings, for similar hours,
and similar times of year.
This is called “open education”, the meaning
of which will be clear when I explain “closed
education” shortly.
On the other end of the spectrum are the academies,
which are usually much more specialized.
There are Jineologî academies (open to women
and men but studying women’s science), self-defense
academies, ecological academies, internationalist
academies (for foreign volunteers), health
academies, etc.
Here, a more holistic approach is taken.
While in the academy, the school becomes your
community.
Students and teachers study together, live
together, cook together, clean together.
Often times in an academy, the students and
teachers are working together to do research
for a class thesis that they all collaborate
on together.
Generally, half of the semester is spent on
theoretical work and the other half is spent
on practical work.
This collaboration has the aim to build a
democratic and ethical character.
From an academy member:
“Every day we have two chefs chosen in turn
between the students, alternately two men
and two women.
Every week we do general cleaning with two
groups from a list, we clean up 10-12 people
together.
For everything there are responsible students,
from cleaning to the kitchen, passing through
the library, other common needs, and so on.”
Some academies practice the “open education
model”, but most are “closed education”.
This education is intensive and meant to eliminate
distraction for the time of study.
Attendees give up their cell phones for the
whole week.
They wake up at 6:00 am on most days and usually
start off with 30 minutes of exercise or sports,
in which teachers also participate.
They follow by cooking breakfast and then
begin four hours of lessons, stop down for
a two-hour lunch break, and then resume classes
from 2:00pm-5:00pm.
Until 7:30 or so, students and teachers cook
and eat dinner and socialize, followed by
a circle reflection on the day’s activities
until 9:30, after which is time for relaxation.
Sundays-Thurdays are spent like this and students
usually leave campus on Friday and Saturday.
To give one concrete example, Kongreya Star
has opened the Star Academy, a women’s academy,
in Rimelan, where commune and assembly representatives
as well as the women in the administration
of Kongreya Star receive courses based on
the specific needs and wishes of the group.
The courses that are offered here give some
idea of some of the more popular classes offered
throughout Rojava:
-History of the Middle East
-History of Kurdistan
-Women’s History
-Jineology
-Economy
-Law and Justice
-Diplomacy
-Gender-Equality,
-Philosophy,
-Democratic Confederalist philosophy
-Sexism within Society,
-Equality in Relationships,
-Regimes of Truth,
-Concepts and Analysis
In addition to schools and academies, communes
and committees are always organizing workshops
that people can attend on subjects like self-defense
training, first aid training, driver’s education,
sports, cinema, cultural activities and more!
WOMEN’S COMMITTEE
The women’s revolution is the central pillar
of the democratic society being built in Rojava.
While this is NOT the first time a revolution
has been launched primarily by the efforts
of women, no other revolution has gone farther
to advance women’s freedom.
Throughout 20th century revolutions, women’s
issues were always told to wait.
Socialists said that communism must be achieved
before women can be free and pushed women
to the back burner.
Anarchists in Spain were challenged by Mujeres
Libres, an organization of anarchist women
who refused to be forgotten or pushed aside,
despite the substanceless lip service of most
anarchist men.
These are two examples of very many.
But, unlike other radical ideologies, democratic
confederalism has women at its very heart.
Women were the first colony and all oppression
stems from the first oppression of women.
If women aren’t free, society cannot be
free.
These are central beliefs of democratic confederalists,
and sure enough, women have played the leading
role in the first democratic confederalist
revolution.
By now, most of us have seen the often fetishized
images on Western media of predominately Kurdish,
but also Arab, Chaldean, and Yezidi women
taking up arms against the Islamic State.
Many commentators miss the mark when they
claim these women are fighting for “freedoms”
more like those in the West.
In fact, the women fighting in the YPJ are
pushing much farther and adding groundbreaking
additions to women’s liberation theory and
practice.
I must mention that the YPJ is fully autonomous
from any male structures, and that female
fighters are not subject to orders from male
commanders.
But, there have been plenty of videos focusing
on the broad scale organization of the Women’s
Protection Units, but very few focusing on
the women’s struggle at the communal level.
Women in Rojava aren’t only fighting against
horrifically patriarchal militants like the
Islamic State or the Salafist mercenaries
backed by the Turkish state.
They are fighting against the patriarchal
mindset that has dominated the very societies
in which they live for thousands of years
and which has even been infused into their
own thought patterns.
Democratic Confederalism, while centered in
Rojava, Northern Syria, is also being practiced
in parts of Northern Iraq and Southern Turkey
and in all of these places, hegemonic patriarchal
ideas have encouraged “honor” killings,
exclusion of women from the social sphere,
forced marriages, child marriages, torture
and sexual violence against women.
While Rojava as a whole banned all of these
things as soon as the revolution began, real
change happens locally, village to village,
street to street, house to house.
Women’s committees in the commune spend
much of their work going door to door and
talking to women, hearing their complaints,
providing historical perspective and encouraging
women to join the movement.
Men are also encouraged to help in the struggle
for women’s freedom, to “kill the dominant
male” inside of them by educating themselves,
listening to the women in their lives, and
holding their friends accountable.
As feminists were the first and most consistent
to point out, patriarchy harms men too, encouraging
them to suppress their emotions and to try
to fit into an impossible mold of an “ideal
man”.
Men benefit from joining the fight against
patriarchy by becoming more fully human with
all the complexities that entails: emotions
like affection, sadness, touch, fear and so
on.
Indeed, education is a massive part of daily
life in Rojava and Jineologî (a social science
formulated by Kurdish women meaning the “science
of women and free life”) is institutionalized
in all schools, militia academies, HPC training,
and youth groups.
As I said before, the communes run on direct
democracy where any member of the commune
who wants to come to a meeting can propose,
discuss, debate, and vote on the policies
that govern them.
Just like in every meeting in Rojava, in order
for a commune meeting to have quorum,, AT
LEAST 40% of the attendees have to be women.
Also, I mentioned earlier that elected and
recallable spokespersons are the mouthpieces
of the decisions made by the commune in coordination
with other communes and societal groups.
At every level of influence, one co-chair
has to be a woman and one has to be a man.
According to Kongreya Star, the women’s
movement in Rojava, women now play an active
role in public life, with participation rates
for women in the communes averaging between
50 and 70 percent and in some neighborhoods
reaching 100%.
Even in the HPC, there is gender parity in
who the commune elects to serve them.
But in addition to the HPC, there is also
the HPC-Jin, an autonomous women’s defense
force also rising out of the communes but
accountable to the women’s committee and
Kongra Star (The Women’s Movement).
A woman in an institution in Rojava never
takes orders from a man.
At the communal or municipal levels can often
be found the Mala Jin (or Women’s Houses).
These are places where women can come to escape
domestic violence, to bring their spouses
to mediation or accountability, to spread
information or learn about women’s health
and to organize with other women.
This is also where the women’s own autonomous
peace and consensus committee is often housed
to handle cases dealing with violence against
women.
Women also form their own independent cooperatives
and communes to increase their self-sufficiency
and react to common problems and desires together.
In Jazira, local women and some of their internationalist
friends have helped to build the first totally
autonomous women’s village Jinwar.
It is worth quoting from their construction
committee at length:
“At JINWAR, a woman will improve her historical
and current wisdom in her own academy; she
will carry out her healing methods and natural
medicines in her own healing houses; and she
will educate her children in her own schools.
She will reclaim knowledge and science as
a woman.
With Jineoloji, the science of women, she
will develop social and scientific remediation
methods and deepen her knowledge of education,
art, production, ecology, economics, demography,
health, history, ethics-aesthetics, and self-defense.
JINWAR, the free ecological women’s village,
an alternative living space to contemporary
forms of society, will strengthen her sense
of freedom with this level of consciousness
and wisdom.
Today war and crime are ubiquitous.
The war against democratic, libertarian forces
that favor humanity and a diversity of beliefs
and ethnicities, are under attack by hegemonic
powers.
This social demolition hurts women and children
the most.
Against these policies of annihilation, it
is our most sacred duty to continue to construct
JINWAR.
Some women, victims of war, urgently need
these spaces to heal and recover; other women,
who have alternative imaginations of free
women’s spaces, can join this work to achieve
the life they desire in JINWAR.
Young girls and women will take part in the
pedagogical development of the community.
Using the wise methods of our mothers, who
are part of history, JINWAR women will plant
and harvest crops; they will raise the animals
and make yoghurt and cheese from their milk.
Projects that are suitable for the free women’s
village include building a school or an academy,
establishing a natural medicine center, developing
a children’s park, improving the use of
solar energy, building an animal farm, and
establishing a sewing workshop, an arts center,
or a show venue.
The village is open to anyone to carry them
out.”
COMMUNES EVERYWHERE!
The commune model is replicable.
I believe that we can organize similar structures
right here in the United States.
In Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia
too.
Not only do I believe we can organize similar
structures, but I believe we have no choice.
The isolation endemic to our society, the
mass shootings, the ecological catastrophes
wrought by economies focused on endless growth
instead of scaled down to the local level
and based on sustainability makes the formation
of autonomous communities a necessity.
But there are no shortcuts here.
We can’t just tick a box on a voting machine.
We can’t ask a politician to build this
for us or put our faith in “historical inevitability”
or individualistic lifestyle choices.
There is no substitute for the work, the really
hard work.
But I can promise you, the work that we have
to do now to organize ourselves will be much
easier than the clean-up work required to
make our homes and our planet inhabitable
again after we push the community-building
work aside until the next global catastrophe.
The Rojava communities built up the groundwork
for these structures over the course of years
through face-to-face, street-to-street, house-to-house
meetings.
They did this almost entirely clandestinely
at first but still managed to include as many
people and ideas as possible and avoid becoming
a vanguard-like, authoritarian group of professional
social engineers.
They worked, they played, they worked some
more and they kept their eyes out for an opportune
moment to go public.
They seized a moment when the Syrian regime
had largely fled their neighborhoods to focus
on the war in the South of the country and
so there was a vacuum to be filled.
They had done the hard work, so when the vacuum
needed to be filled, they had the structures
in place to fill it.
Most importantly, they made their work fun!
They danced, they sang, they played, they
laughed, all throughout the entire process.
They didn’t get bogged down in meetings
more than they had to, but they got serious
when the times demanded it.
The communes made these alternative lives
together possible because people have built
direct democracy in their neighborhoods.
The massive problems we in America need to
address: police brutality, climate catastrophe,
racism, ethnic and religious hatred, gun violence,
misogny, loneliness- all would be much more
easily and systematically addressed if we
had a strong communal basis to embark from:
in other words, communes.
Communes are something we can do too:
We can gather our friends and neighbors, be
more social with them, share the joys of what
life in common can be, and then realize that
together we have power.
Like the Black Panthers did, we can stop depending
on the state to meet our needs and set up
spaces to meet our needs among each other.
Unlike the Black Panthers, instead of building
up a hierarchy, we can decentralize power
by encouraging consensus and participatory
decision-making.
Even starting with a barbecue or block party
to just get to know your neighbors, doing
this a few times a month, and slowly starting
to talk about issues affecting you and your
neighbors can be a great start.
Then you and your neighbors might discuss
how you can solve these problems together
with what little resources you have instead
of waiting on the government or corporations
or non-profits or anyone else but yourselves.
Whether it is filling potholes on your street,
building a tool library, hosting language
lessons, or going to the gun range to learn
how to defend yourselves, there is a lot you
can do here and now!
But when you do these things, don’t do them
individualistically.
These should be things groups of friends,
neighbors, and families do together, not hoarding
the knowledge themselves but sharing it with
others.
We can discuss not calling the cops when we
feel unsafe, but relying on each other as
first resorts.
We can set up carpools to doctors offices,
volunteer ourselves to check on elderly folks
instead of entrusting that to the police or
neglecting them.
The social events among neighbors can start
ending with quick, more official meetings
to actually discuss and vote on community
norms that you all take responsibility for
implementing and enforcing.
Finally, once these alternatives are built,
you can discuss how you can defend them.
And how to spread these ideas to nearby neighborhoods.
There is no master plan available to us.
As the Zapatistas say, we have to make the
road by walking!
So let’s get started!
