[PeDAGoG] The communitarian revolutionary subject, new forms of social transformation

Sun Oct 3 16:45:59 CEST 2021

This is about films on Rojava and might be useful to many in the  group who
discuss Rojava or would like to. Also if someone has more good films they
can share. 

The link that Laurence sent  . 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyqG-71zOi0 ('Accidental Anarchist - What is
the Rojava .20 min ) : This is more the personal experience of an British
Anarchist-Rojava sympathizer. It is more about him than the Rojavas as he
moves around filming. 

We have found the following  film 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqo2MX3vf6M

It is 25 mins and made in 2019 to be  quite comprehensive . The commentary
is in German with English subtitles 

Lots of interviews with women (also men ) both ordinary and those elected to
councils and co-presidents. 

It has the following scenes : Schools, use of 3 languages, Kurdish  Arabic
- Syrian, a joint concert,  feminist revolution , womens home, scenes of an
actual dispute around womens equality and polygamy, university class on
jeneology,  references to fight with ISIS and Assad and Turkey,  graveyards,
refugees , YPG ( Rojava army) womens wing, social contract, protection of
Christians, , ecological revolution, cooperative organic farming, Kobane
with 100 house communes ,  women militia training, dam on Euphrates being
squeezed of water by Turkey, womens academy. 

We have made a 16 min clip out of some other film ( forgotten to note the
link) which we find to be quite useful to show in class . 

0  2:45 : women leader talking about rojava and the three enemies ( ISIS,
Assad, Turkey) along with many street scenes 

2:45  3:40 :  Judiciary council. Interview . cases of womenviolence,
marriage 

3:40  5:00 : Reconciliation council ( with those who worked for ISIS) 

5:00  6:00 : Street people talking about diversity and tolerance 

6:00  8:50 :  Scenes of Kobane . Battle. Loss. Rebuilding 

8:50  10:50 :  Womens Laws. Womens House . Local communes solving most
disputes. Only some going to judiciary .  Communes also preventing economic
monopoly 

10:50  12:40 : A Mural. Kobanes burial ground. Womens military wing 

12:40  15:30 : School. 3 languages. Text book issues . Printing issues.
Overcome propaganda to alienate Arabs. UNICEF refused to help unless Syrian
state books followed !!! 

Sujit 

From: GTA-PeDAGoG [mailto:gta-pedagog-bounces at lists.ourproject.org] On
Behalf Of Davis, Laurence
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2021 6:09 PM
To: Ted Trainer <tedtrainertsw at gmail.com>; Hari DK <hari.coding at gmail.com>;
David Barkin <dpbarkin at gmail.com>; Ariel Salleh <arielsalleh7 at gmail.com>;
Carlos Tornel <tornelc at gmail.com>; Tom Abeles <tabeles at gmail.com>;
gta-pedagog at lists.ourproject.org; to: Radical Ecological Democracy list
<radical_ecological_democracy at googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [PeDAGoG] The communitarian revolutionary subject, new forms of
social transformation

This is a very nice amination. Thank you for sharing it.

Some of the following videos may also be useful for teaching purposes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyqG-71zOi0 ('Accidental Anarchist - What is
the Rojava Revolution?')

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqlZOa7DMiU ('People Without Faces' -
Documentary about the Zapatistas)

...and my personal favourite...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPl_Y3Qdb7Y ('Living Utopia: The Anarchists
and the Spanish Revolution')

I use all of them in my third-year Government and Politics undergraduate
module, 'Contemporary Ecological and Anti-Capitalist Politics', which I have
taught for many years here at University College Cork, Ireland.

The following readings on their module syllabus, useful for those new to the
subject matter as well as more advanced readers, are also generally well
received by the students:

John Clark, Between Earth and Empire (PM Press, 2019) and The Impossible
Community (Bloomsbury, 2013)

Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (AK Press, 2005)

David Graeber, The Democracy Project (Allen Lane, 2013)

Amadeo Bertolo, Democracy and Beyond, Democracy and Nature, Vol. 5, Issue
2, July 1999, also available at
www.democracynature.org/vol5/bertolo_democracy.htm
<http://www.democracynature.org/vol5/bertolo_democracy.htm> 

William Morris, Useful Work Versus Useless Toil, in A.L. Morton (ed.),
Political Writings of William Morris (Lawrence & Wishart, 1979)

William Morris, News from Nowhere (1891)

Michael Robertson, The Last Utopians: Four Late 19th Century Visionaries and
Their Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (Harper & Row,
1974)

Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman (eds.), The New Utopian Politics of Ursula
K. Le Guins The Dispossessed (Lexington Books, 2005)

Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (Zed Books, 2014)

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom
Through Radical Resistance (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Martha Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the
Emancipation of Women (AK Press, 2004)

Sam Dolgoff (ed.), The Anarchist Collectives: Workers Self-Management in
the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939 (Black Rose Books, 1974)

Valérie Fournier, Utopianism and the cultivation of possibilities:
grassroots movements of hope, in Martin Parker (ed.), Utopia and
Organization (Blackwell, 2002), 189-216

Dylan Fitzwater, Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government
through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language (PM Press, 2019)

Ashish Kothari et. al. (eds.), Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary
(Tulika Books, 2019)

Laurence Davis, Anarchism, in Vincent Geoghegan and Rick Wilford (eds.),
Political Ideologies: An Introduction (Routledge, 2014), ch. 9

Colin Ward, Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press,
2004)

Solidarity,

Laurence

  _____  

From: GTA-PeDAGoG <gta-pedagog-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
<mailto:gta-pedagog-bounces at lists.ourproject.org> > on behalf of Mofwoofoo
<mofwoofoo at gmail.com <mailto:mofwoofoo at gmail.com> >
Sent: 29 September 2021 22:15
To: Ted Trainer <tedtrainertsw at gmail.com <mailto:tedtrainertsw at gmail.com> >;
Hari DK <hari.coding at gmail.com <mailto:hari.coding at gmail.com> >; David
Barkin <dpbarkin at gmail.com <mailto:dpbarkin at gmail.com> >; Ariel Salleh
<arielsalleh7 at gmail.com <mailto:arielsalleh7 at gmail.com> >; Carlos Tornel
<tornelc at gmail.com <mailto:tornelc at gmail.com> >; Tom Abeles
<tabeles at gmail.com <mailto:tabeles at gmail.com> >;
gta-pedagog at lists.ourproject.org <mailto:gta-pedagog at lists.ourproject.org>
<gta-pedagog at lists.ourproject.org <mailto:gta-pedagog at lists.ourproject.org>
>; to: Radical Ecological Democracy list
<radical_ecological_democracy at googlegroups.com
<mailto:radical_ecological_democracy at googlegroups.com> >
Subject: [PeDAGoG] The communitarian revolutionary subject, new forms of
social transformation 

[EXTERNAL] This email was sent from outside of UCC.

I am writing as a long time radical anarchist activist "on the ground". I am
not a scholar, but I have read a lot over 55 years. While I view the article
(The communitarian revolutionary subject, new forms of social
transformation) worthwhile, it is nothing new at all. Anarchist literature
and scholarship goes back to the 1860's when these same ideas were
expressed. Anarchists have seen through the problem of hierarchies in gov't.
and in general. I have submitted the 7 minute animation that I made in 2020
which explains a lot about organizing in a horizontal fashion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8&t=5s> &t=5s. And how it might
be the only way to eliminate once and for all corruption in governments. 

Citizen participation a la transition towns initiatives, localization,
collectivism, decentralization, deconsummerism, self-reliance, economies
that promote the good of the whole, cooperation, respect for the
environment, etc. are ideas whirling around throughout the internet and the
world. And as I am sure it is clear to everyone in this group, that the
current system of capitalism is the perfect recipe for suiciding the human
race.

Meanwhile, as capitalism is collapsing or is being collapsed, there seems to
be a rush to assert authoritarianism as soon as possible. And clearly the
vaccine mandate and the pcr tests are ways to do this. But since the vaccine
mandates will not go away no matter how hard the pushback is, they seem to
have plan b ready to go: world-wide food shortages which would result in
world-wide food riots and chaos, which will justify martial law and state of
emergency declarations, which at least in the USA would empower FEMA to
overstep the Constitution and do whatever they want due to the executive
orders that give them total power. 

To avoid this from happening, people need to check on where their area's
food sources are coming from and if they will be available or not. And in
this way, using google or duck, duck, go one can ascertain what really is
happening and what is going to happen in these regards. And if food
shortages are indeed imminent, alert the citizenry to prepare by storing up
on rice, beans, lentils, grains, tins, and storing food in preserves and
salt for perhaps 6 months and setting up programs for those who don't have a
few hundred dollars to spend to be able to be prepared as well.

Finally, I am the founder of a mostly latino, artist, eco-community in
Ecuador (chambalabamba.org <http://chambalabamba.org> , under construction)
since 2012, and believe me, this is not the solution for the world. It takes
years to get it going, most communities fail for lack of funds or cohesion,
it is not for everybody, and it is a false hope for those who believe that
this is the way, imho.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/gta-pedagog/attachments/20211003/0c39edf8/attachment-0001.html>