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A Small Key Can Open A Large Door: The Rojava Revolution
by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness
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There's a revolution going on in northern Syria, one that challenges everything we know about government and society and freedom. With centuries of ethnic oppression behind them, their backs against the embargo wall of Turkey, and the ruthless forces of the Islamic State laying siege to their cities, the people of Rojava are trying what might be the most ambitious social experiment of our times. Two-and-a-half million people are trying to live without a nationstate, using direct democracy to build a society ruled from the bottom up. As the Syrian civil war rages, the Kurds and other ethnic groups of Rojava fight for autonomy, feminism, ecological stewardship, cooperative economics, and ethnic, linguistic, and religious pluralism. It behooves us to understand their struggle as best we can.…
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"This book is written by Kurdish anarchist feminists who were among the group of men and women who led the Rojava revolution to liberate towns in northern Syria from the co-called Islamic State. They created this incredible social experiment that rejects the notion of the state. Anarchist feminism rejects the notion of borders and recognizes all the emergencies that the planet is going through now, including the climate crisis. These women are fighting all those tentacles of the octopus. They’re fighting not just the state, but they’re also fighting their own community and their own family. They’re fighting what I call ‘the trifecta of misogyny.’ The state and the street and the home together oppress women. This is a manifesto, an essay, a reminder of the moving revolution that is actively trying to dismantle the octopus called patriarchy. The older I’ve become, and the more radical my feminism has become, the more I am drawn to anarchism. I want a world without borders. The nation-state has a monopoly on violence and gives an entity I reject—the police—a license to kill on its behalf. Through the so-called criminal justice system, the nation-state throws people into prison. The Rojava revolution in Northern Syria remind us that patriotism and nationalism, the military, the police and prisons uphold that octopus called patriarchy."