The Internationalist Commune Of Rajava.

One year in the Internationalist Commune of Rojava

Posted on June 12, 2018 by MW IntCommune:

Dear friends,

        One year ago, 12th of June 2017, we shared the first public statement of the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, presenting our project to the world. Today, after one year of non stop working, we look back and see the big steps we have achieved in this year.

         After the public presentation of the commune under the slogan ‘learn, support, organize’, we started to develop our work and our projects, putting in practice the ideas and dreams we had, and searching for a place to build the first internationalist academy of the Democratic federation of Northern Syria. After a few months, we finally found the right place, and at the end of summer in 2017, we started to build of the academy. Since then, we have been working mostly focused on 3 main lines: internationalism, women liberation and ecology.

      Concerning internationalism, our main task has been the construction of the Internationalist Academy, the place to debate, study, research and also to host new internationals who also want to learn, support and organize the Rojava Revolution. At the same time, we have also been working on the up building of the Internationalist Commune itself, as the organizational frame for us and other internationals who want to join, developing a system and a network to integrate and strengthen the international dimension of this revolution.

         Concerning ecology, we launched the ‘Make Rojava Green Again’ campaign in coordination with other institutions working topics related with ecology. We wrote a book that we will start to publish soon in different languages, presenting our project and what motivates us to carry it out. Our main goal is to spread an ecological perspective of the revolutionary life, building our academy with a sustainable approach and starting a tree cooperative to help to reforest the arid lands of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

         Concerning the liberation of women, the women of the commune are organized as an autonomous group, connecting directly with the different institutions and structures of the women’s movement in this revolution. We also supported different projects and campaigns of the women movement, taking part in the work developed by Jinwar, the women’s ecological village. We also studied and organized education programs about jineolojî and the women liberation movements.

         In the middle of this first year of life as a Commune, the Afrin war erupted. We know that the revolution will be in defense of the land or there will be no place for the revolution, so we saw the need to slow down our normal projects and take part in the Afrin Resistance, mostly doing translations, international solidarity work and other kind of media work.

        The Afrin invasion was hard and brutal. It’s very sad to see the Turkish army and other islamist armed forces destroying the most beautiful region of Rojava. The war in Afrin affected us in ways we were not able to imagine before. The invasion, the struggle, the resistance… it opened for us processes of debate and reflection about what should be, and what can be, the role of internationalism today. Also about how can we help and contribute, as internationalists, to the Rojava Revolution and to all the resistance movements and struggles around the world. A lot of friends lost their lives fighting to resist the fascist invasion, and also several internationalist friends fell sehids in this war. In their memory we will continue walking their path.

        In this last month of May, after several months building the academy, we have finally finished. We have decided to name it the ‘Internationalist Academy Sehid Hêlîn Qereçox’ in memory of Anna Campbell, the British YPJ fighter who became sehid in Afrin. With sadness for her loss, but at the same time with the will to continue her struggle against fascism and patriarchal oppression, we started the first education course of our academy. We also continued the ecological work for the Make Rojava Green Again campaign, translated and published in different languages an article about the importance of the women struggle in the revolution, started an internationalist radio project in collaboration with other internationals in Rojava, published different articles and letters of international solidarity in our website, etc. But of course, our main project this month has been to organize this first education course.

         Now, after one very intense year of work, we have succeeded in organizing a one-month education course for the new internationals, together with the ones who have been here since the beginning of the commune. The education included Kurdish language lessons, ideological debates, knowledge about the society, the history of Midle East and the Kurdish people, and of course, debates about internationalism and the history of the Commune. A few days ago we finished this first education course, and a new wave of internationalists from different parts of the world are just starting to work and travel around Rojava, taking part in the Commune’s work. We are really happy to see how this project is growing and evolving, consolidating and step by step turning into reality the dreams and ideas that one year ago were just in our minds.

         Today, we are proud to say that the Internationalist Commune of Rojava is stronger than ever, and that this is just one step more towards the democratic and revolutionary movement that is growing and being connected all around the world. For all those reasons, we invite all the internationalists, revolutionaries and democratic forces once again, all those who want to walk with us, to learn, support and organize this revolution. Because we know that Rojava can be the spark that ignites a new way of understanding life, of developing a society outside capitalism, patriarchy and Nation-States. And because we know that this is just the beginning. As sehid Hêlîn once said:

You should fight with us, and light the fires of resistance.

Biji Soresa Rojava!
Long live international solidarity!

ann arky's home

 

Internationalism.

          There has been a lot written about the volunteers that went to fight fascism in Spain, 1936/39, but I personally haven't read anything about the Chinese contingent, that may be due to my ignorance. So it was interesting to come across this article giving some details of this, small, but dedicated group of volunteers from a country, on the other side of the world, that was facing its own problems from imperialist Japan.

         In the autumn of 1937, Zhang Ruishu was enjoying a rare break from his 14-hour days on the frontline. One of very few, if not the only, Chinese in Madrid, he hadn’t asked for time off – there was so much to do – but his commander had insisted he take a break. The Spanish capital was decorated with defiant if raggedy banners reading No pasarán (“They shall not pass”) and Madrid será la tumba del fascismo (“Madrid will be the tomb of fascism”). Zhang had seen many such signs before. At a newsstand, however, a large promotional poster for Spanish news magazine Estampa caught his eye.

        The intriguing poster featured a man’s face in profile. It wasn’t a handsome face, but ruddy and weathered, with tightly cropped hair, hollow cheeks and a muddle of crooked teeth in a mouth set slightly agape – the face of a no-nonsense man who had known hardship. Suddenly, a crowd was gathering around Zhang; eyes were widening and fingers pointing. “That’s him!” they cried, lunging forward to shake the stranger’s hand.

Read the full article HERE:

         Xie Weijin (left) and Zhang Ji (right) with a fellow Chinese in Spain, in 1938. Photo: courtesy of Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

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Internationalists With A Hatred Of Nations.

        Anarchists are individuals, anarchists are internationalists, internationalist that drive towards the obliteration of nations. Just as we see no boundaries to our solidarity, we see no borders between patches of soil on the planet, we are blind to ethnicity, the only category we desire is comrade. We are people on a planet that belongs equally to us all. There can be no nobler dream, than to see all, as free as we wish ourselves to be. It is to that end anarchists strive.

This from Insurrection News:

       From the movement in solidarity with Sacco and Vanzetti when sabotage were realized, among others, by the anarchist circles close to the journal Culmine to the sabotage actions in solidarity with the hunger strikes of the Greek comrades, from the coordination and support between comrades of the United States and Mexico to organize and propagate the insurrectional upheavals of 1910 – including the support to comrades on the run or in prison – to pamphlets in solidarity with the comrades of the 5E-M in Mexico, anarchism has showed clearly that there exist no borders for solidarity and coordination, that is to say, for the struggle itself. From comrades in Norway or Finland, countries where social pacification is strongly spread to comrades in Turkey, Syria or the Arab countries which are since years finding them-selves in a logic of all out war, we anarchists are not going to create social or ethnic categorizations, neither are we going to reproduce those categorizations that the capitalist system has created to divide. We are not going to treat comrades as little bourgeois due to the fact that they are born in a place different than ours, just as we are not going to discriminate (“positively” moreover!) others who are born in much more catastrophic and rotten places than where we are living.
       It is clear that each place has its own characteristics that in a certain way define the conditions of the struggle and that the insurrectional project has to be adapted to this characteristics, but even as such the anarchist struggle does not only correspond to local outlines of struggle. On the contrary: the struggle tries to be global reality of attack against State and Capital. As such, anarchy is far away from leftist realism, that left realism which incites passivity, waiting, reformism and kills all dreams and desires for a life of quality through the speech of what is possible and what can be done based on “the reality we are living”.

Read the full article HERE:

 

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An Injury To One----!!!

       Divide and rule has always been the strategy of the rich and powerful, and the politically aware individuals among the ordinary people, have always called for unity in our struggle to combat the continuing onslaught against our conditions.

       However we are stuck in the past if we see the struggle on a national scale, calling for unity against our national government, as if that would solve the problem. It is not, and never has been a national struggle, it is an international struggle. The powers that be, will still use the same tactic of divide and rule but they work on a pan-European, pan-world scale. As we struggle with the austerity attack here in the UK, the exact same thing is going on across Europe, and elsewhere in the world.
 

      Our struggles are replicated across the world, but our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, doesn't give much cover to these struggles. Ireland for example where recently 100,000 people took to the streets in the continuing struggle against water charges. Or in Belgium, where a strike on December 15, across public and private sectors, brought thousands onto the streets in several areas across Belgium, bring the country to a standstill.
     We in each of the countries of Europe should see these struggles as our struggles and organise accordingly. An injury to one is an injury to all, is not a national slogan, it is a basic philosophy of all the ordinary people battling under the repressive capitalist system. We, here in the UK, should be organising in support of the Irish and the Belgium people. Likewise these countries should be involved in supporting our struggles here. Our unity is unbeatable, as small groups, they are, and will continue to, kick the shit out of us.

       Finance and corporate power doesn't recognise national borders as they attack the ordinary people, why should we the people, recognise these borders, in our struggle for justice?

On the Irish people's struggle against water charges:

 

      A European country in crisis. Men in black come to the rescue. With the complicity of the national government, they impose painful measures on the population. Men in black never forget to be nice to their friends, so the measures include a provision to privatize public water services. As a reaction, massive citizen’s mobilizations take place. The story sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
     We have already experienced this situation in Greece, and just a few months ago, Greek citizens won the battle, and water will remain in public hands. Now history repeats itself, and the struggle against water privatization and commodification is at boiling point in Ireland.

Continue reading:
On the Belgium strike:

     To understand the events, the political context should be pointed out. In Belgium, the attacks against workers have been going on for 25 years coming governments in which the social democrats participate. After the long political crisis following the 2010 , marked by the victory in Flanders of the NVA, the SP Prime Minister estimated that “to save the country” it had to step up these attacks, so that the Flemish traditional right could beat the neoliberal-nationalists and that the coalition with social democracy could be continued.

     This policy - which cost the workers the trifling sum of 20 billion Euros - was a terrible fiasco. Last May, the return of the coalition seemed the most likely option. But, to general surprise, the French-speaking Liberal party, put into the saddle by the Palace, formed a homogeneous rightwing coalition with the Flemish Christian Democrat , the Flemish Liberals and the NVA. This latter agreed to keep quiet on its separatist , in return for an ultra-neoliberal program.

Continue Reading:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

The Kilt And The Black Flag.

       With Scottish independence on the agenda it is good to hear the various points of view being put forward. I for one have never quite got my head round "what is a nation". Having been born in "Scotland" and lived there for most of my life I have often wrestled with the question, "what is Scottish", after all the border between Scotland and England has moved several times in history. It is a geographical location where at least three languages have struggled for survival, and with languages comes as many cultures. As a citizen of Glasgow, a post industrial city, I feel I have more in common with the people of Liverpool than I have with the people of the highlands and islands. I am also loathed to get involved in a debate between the various party political clans as how best to carve up a capitalist entity, so that, that capitalist entity can best serve a particular section of the population. I would rather debate how do we get rid of that capitalist entity and best serve the interest of the people. To me, nationalism and capitalism belong in the same bed, and it is a bed soaked in the blood of the ordinary people. Would it not be better if the debate was about what is happening in Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Ireland, Turkey, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and find the connection to what is happening here?

       To add to the debate here is an extract from an interesting article in The Commune:

 

  "--------In Britain today, the mainstream socialist left, in defiance of history,  still regards internationalism as abstract propaganda and is campaigning for a yes vote for Scottish nationalism and independence for Scotland, which is not an oppressed nation.  In a globally integrated world economy, dominated by transnational corporations and world financial organisations, such as the International Monetary Fund, the entire question of national independence becomes hollowed out as in Greece.  And how can the creation of another capitalist state, based on cutting business rates and corporation tax,  and other measures to attract capitalist investment,  benefit the working class ?  Loyalty to a new Capitalist State would renew nationalism and class collaboration and blunt any class struggle for a post Capitalist alternative.
       Independence lite, the programme of the SNP, sharing the Bank of England, the army, the Monarchy  and a currency will not represent the break up of the British State.   But the left in Scotland is putting its hopes on steering the state left .  The Radical Independence Campaign is  ”a coalition that does not even pretend to be based on the goal of Socialism.  Indeed, this emerging coalition is very much in the tradition of welfare provision in Scotland and England for a century ”  (18)  Nationalism given a Social Democratic gloss to attract the working class.  ”The only way in which the grip of a capitalist world system on individual countries, can be broken, is that if the system itself is destroyed. And no national struggle can achieve this, only the international working class” (19) Working class self emancipation from below  cannot be built on a nation, utilize the nation-state, or be confined to the nation-state.

Read the full article HERE:

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PATRIOTISM.

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,

if truth be known, ‘tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag

held aloft by some foolish hand

inciting worker and peasant to kill

on some green and wooded hill,

peasant and worker from some other land.

Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag

that brings out fools to stand and brag

of brutal deeds painted grand,

deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still

killed by my brothers' misguided hand.

No allegiance have I for the Nation

this man made autocratic creation

that divides my brothers in a world so small,

binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,

bids us follow its drum, sing its song,

then sheds our blood in some border brawl.

No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,

have no ear for power oration,

though its iron heel is on my breast,

my back feels its leather thong,

at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.

ann arky's home.