Everyone pays for the rich to get richer. We pay with our labor, working to fill their pockets. We pay with skyrocketing rent as they gentrify us out of our homes. We pay with the destruction of the environment, the erasure of our communities, the stress in our day-to-day lives. We pay for things that used to be free, like water. We pay taxes so they can hire more cops to terrorize us. Everyone pays, but only they benefit.
With an increasing media spotlight + growing actions across the US + the world, we caught up with several #Seattle anarchists to learn why people are pushing for a fare strike, police off mass transit, and increased + totally free service. #NoBodyPayshttps://t.co/rpZ7LmOuBY
Maria
Meza, a migrant woman from Honduras, runs away from tear gas with her
five-year-old twin daughters Saira and Cheili at the US-Mexico border on
November 25, 2018 [File: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon]
Last December, the Trump administration enacted a scheme requiring Central American asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal proceedings drag on indefinitely in the United States.
The Migrant Protection Protocols policy – a
handily perverse euphemism – is the approximate equivalent of calling
the Exxon Valdez oil spill the Marine Life Protection Initiative. As
various human rights and advocacy organisations have pointed out, the
border programme has exposed tens of thousands of asylum seekers to violence; including rape, kidnapping and assault, in the unsure border regions of Mexico.
In light of the surplus of rapes and other abuses already documented
as a result of so-called “protection”, the International Day for the
Elimination of Violence against Women – marked annually on November 25 –
is an ideal occasion to reflect on the violence facing migrant women in
an era of mass migration.
Pervasive violence
As the UN Women website observes : ” Rape
is rooted in a complex set of patriarchal beliefs, power, and control
that continue to create a social environment in which sexual violence is
pervasive and normalised.”
The feminist revolution in Rojava, N.Syria, shows how patriarchy can be defeated, even in a rural and strictly religious society. The revolution is now being destroyed by a Turkish invasion with a strongly patriarchal mentality. The Rojava kurds formed the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) in 2015 and welcomed dozens of Arab, Assyrian, yazidi, Christian..militias into a common front, spreading their revolutionary methods (eg in Manbij Council).Yazidi women victims have formed their own militia within SDF and recently the first arab women’s militia has been formed (July ’17). There are profound feminist implications in the context of previous extreme social repression.
For an idea of the extent of normalisation, just recall Patriarch-in-chief President Donald Trump‘s own previous advice about fondling women without their consent: “Grab ’em by the p****.”
Migrant women, of course, are particularly
vulnerable to “grabbing” – and much worse – especially given that crimes
against migrants are not generally reported or prosecuted. And for
Central American women transiting Mexico to the US border, sexual
assault is frequently par for the course.
Women departments in al-Tabqa, Deir ez-Zor, al-Raqqa, prepare to receive International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women
The
women’s departments in al-Tabqa, Deir ez-Zor, and al-Raqqa launched
their activities in coordination with the Syrian Women’s Council in
preparation for the International Day for Elimination of Violence
against Women, which falls on the 25th of November of each year under
the slogan, “Occupation Is Violence. By Hevrin’s Resistance, We Will
Break the Occupation and Fascism.”
WOMAN
24 Nov 2019, Sun – 19:28
2019-11-24T19:28:00
AL-RAQQA
There were numerous events and activities; the distribution of leaflets, hanging the banners, holding the symposia and lectures on the International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women and raising the women’s awareness that the freedom of society stems from women’s freedom and is linked to it.
On
2nd November a global day of resistance for Rojava brought thousands of
people out onto the streets in dozens of cities around the world.
For the people of Northern Syria, currently resisting an invasion by the Turkish army and its jihadist proxies, the joy and hope that these demonstrations brought is amongst the greatest gifts one could hope for. It reminds us that we are not alone against the Salafist hordes that the Turkish state is sending.
We salute all the actions and demonstrations happening in solidarity with Rojava and send our warmest greeting to those who are supporting the campaigns of #RiseUp4Rojava and #WomenDefendRjava. The resistance continues, as does the revolution, and today more than ever we need solidarity and support.
PLEASE HELP.. donate TO Kurdish Red Crescent / Heyva Sor A Kurd
On 2nd November a global day of resistance for Rojava brought thousands of people out onto the streets in dozens of cities around the world.
For the people of Northern Syria, currently resisting an invasion by the Turkish army and its jihadist proxies, the joy and hope that these demonstrations brought is amongst the greatest gifts one could hope for. It reminds us that we are not alone against the Salafist hordes that the Turkish state is sending. We salute all the actions and demonstrations happening in solidarity with Rojava and send our warmest greeting to those who are supporting the campaigns of #RiseUp4Rojava and #WomenDefendRjava. The resistance continues, as does the revolution, and today more than ever we need solidarity and support.
When you make a revolution against patriarchy, the nation-state and capitalism, of course you can’t rely on other states to support you. We use to say that the Kurds have ‘no friends but the mountains’, but on 2nd November we saw this was not true. The international solidarity that Rojava is witnessing is inspirational; it inspires us as internationalists in Rojava to remain steadfast on the barricades of this revolution and to commit to our many different works here, because we know that all our many struggles are entwined. Today the struggle is Rojava, tomorrow it could be anywhere else, and by defending Rojava we are defending not only the people and the revolution here, but also the hope that another world is possible.
Internationalism is an essential dimension in the history of revolutionary movements, and Rojava is today writing an important chapter. From the First International Association of Workers to the Tri-Continental Conference, from the 50,000 of the International Brigades who travelled to Spain to fight fascism in 1936, to the 500,000 Cuban revolutionaries who travelled to Africa to support decolonisation struggles, from the solidarity with the resistance in Vietnam to the antiglobalisation movements, from the revolutionary inter-communalism of the Black Panthers to the solidarity with Palestinian revolutionary resistance. Rojava is today heritage of this history of internationalism, and we are called to play our role in it.
Of course there are other important struggles happening all around the world. We see the uprisings in South America, with big mobilisations happening in Chile, the new ‘caracoles’ declared by the EZLN in Chiapas, and the resistance in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. We see the Catalan people resisting against the attacks of the Spanish state. We see the massive uprisings happening in Middle East, such as in Lebanon or Iraq, in Sudan and Egypt, and other peoples in Africa looking for alternatives to the nation-state model that colonial powers imposed on them. We see the resistance movements of India, Philippines, Indonesia, and we stand with all revolutionaries who fight to bring all oppression to an end.
Internationalism in the twenty-first century has a lot of colours, but for sure the colour of the woman is the one that shines brightest. Patriarchy is the foundation upon which all social oppression is built, and the liberation from the mentality of dominant male must always be in the forefront of any revolutionary struggle. The defence of nature, so exploited and abused by the industrial system, has to be also in the first line, facing the ecological crisis that capitalism created. Democracy is our flag, but not the parliamentary democracy that Western powers tried to impose to the rest of the World. We raise the flag of the commune, the democracy of local councils and popular assemblies.
For all of this, we call to defend this revolution, and to make it a cradle for a global democratic modernity.
When you make a revolution against patriarchy, the nation-state and capitalism, of course you can’t rely on other states to support you. We use to say that the Kurds have ‘no friends but the mountains’, but on 2nd November we saw this was not true. The international solidarity that Rojava is witnessing is inspirational; it inspires us as internationalists in Rojava to remain steadfast on the barricades of this revolution and to commit to our many different works here, because we know that all our many struggles are entwined. Today the struggle is Rojava, tomorrow it could be anywhere else, and by defending Rojava we are defending not only the people and the revolution here, but also the hope that another world is possible.
Internationalism is an essential dimension in the history of revolutionary movements, and Rojava is today writing an important chapter. From the First International Association of Workers to the Tri-Continental Conference, from the 50,000 of the International Brigades who travelled to Spain to fight fascism in 1936, to the 500,000 Cuban revolutionaries who travelled to Africa to support decolonisation struggles, from the solidarity with the resistance in Vietnam to the antiglobalisation movements, from the revolutionary inter-communalism of the Black Panthers to the solidarity with Palestinian revolutionary resistance.
Rojava is today heritage of this history of internationalism, and we are called to play our role in it.
Of course there are other important struggles happening all around the world. We see the uprisings in South America, with big mobilisations happening in Chile, the new ‘caracoles’ declared by the EZLN in Chiapas, and the resistance in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. We see the Catalan people resisting against the attacks of the Spanish state. We see the massive uprisings happening in Middle East, such as in Lebanon or Iraq, in Sudan and Egypt, and other peoples in Africa looking for alternatives to the nation-state model that colonial powers imposed on them. We see the resistance movements of India, Philippines, Indonesia, and we stand with all revolutionaries who fight to bring all oppression to an end.
Internationalism in the twenty-first century has a lot of colours, but for sure the colour of the woman is the one that shines brightest. Patriarchy is the foundation upon which all social oppression is built, and the liberation from the mentality of dominant male must always be in the forefront of any revolutionary struggle. The defence of nature, so exploited and abused by the industrial system, has to be also in the first line, facing the ecological crisis that capitalism created. Democracy is our flag, but not the parliamentary democracy that Western powers tried to impose to the rest of the World. We raise the flag of the commune, the democracy of local councils and popular assemblies.
For all of this, we call to defend this revolution, and to make it a cradle for a global democratic modernity.
Til Temir: Front line – A letter from an internationalist friend
Til Temir: Front line – A letter from an internationalist friend
A combatjet passes in low flight over the city of Til Temir, making
the windows of the houses vibrate, where Kurds, Arabs and Assyrians
coexist in this arid city located today few kilometers of the front.
When the blazing sound of the engine passes, the crying of a baby is the
first thing to break the silence. We did not feel any explosion, it
seems that this flight only wanted to frighten the population. Now heads
of neighbors pop out from the windows to see that everyone is good.
-Perhaps now that their soldiers have arrived, their planes are arriving as well.
-Surely it’s Russian, Russian planes have to fly lower than the others to see what happens!
-No, it must be American! Now that the Americans are leaving, so are their planes.
And they laugh. They laugh to scare the fear. The fear they have is
that the next plane won’t pass by, that it will drop one of the bombs
we’ve heard exploding on the outskirts of the city for days now. That’s
why nobody mentions that the plane in question is surely a Turkish F-16,
so as not to spread fear among the few people who are still left in
this neighborhood. Many neighbors marched days ago to Haseke, where a
couple of weeks ago they have started to build a new refugee camp to
receive people displaced by this new war. A new war that is confused
with the previous one.
Five years ago Til Temir experienced the war against the Islamic
state on the front line, especially the Christian villages nearby where
the Salafists showed their cruelest face, mutilating and decapitating
those who captured alive to the cry of “infidels” and “Allah is the
greatest”. They are the same cries that we hear today in the videos that
come from the front and that circulate between Facebook posts and
WhatsApp messages, where groups of armed men trained by the Turkish
state celebrate how the Kurdish politician Hevrîn Xelef, is executed or
how they capture the fighter of the YPJ Çiçek Kobane.
When we arrived in Til Temir in mid-October, seeking to open a
humanitarian corridor to the then besieged city of Serekaniye, Til
Temir’s seven schools were already filled with elderly people, mothers
and children fleeing Turkish bombs. Since then the front has continued
to inexorably approach the city, and more and more towns and villages
have to be evacuated. Yesterday the father of the host family, a teacher
in one of the schools that had to stop classes to accommodate refugees,
showed me a video of a small village from which a large column of smoke
was rising.
“This is my village. It was bombarded by a Turkish plane. The hevals
(Kurdish word for “friends”, referring to the fighters of the YPG/YPJ)
have been alone defending the village for three days, everyone had to
flee because of the bombs.
A strange front
Following the withdrawal of United States troops in early October, the agreement between the Self-Administration of North-East Syria and the government forces of the Syrian State has created a strange situation. The regular forces of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) are deployed jointly with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to deal with the Turkish occupation.
For the first time in more than seven years, government soldiers have set foot in the territory where the Kurds, along with Assyrians, Arabs and other ethnic groups of northern Syria, have implemented the self-government project inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan, known as the proposal for democratic confederalism.
A little less than a week ago the first reinforcements of the SAA
arrived in Til Temir. We knew this because the morning they entered the
city, they spent about twenty minutes circling and firing into the air
waving the Syrian flag from old trucks, full of young and badly armed
soldiers, before heading for the front. They hoped that this flag would
protect them from Turkish mortars and fighter planes, but it did not.
From the Legerîn Ciya hospital (an internationalist doctor who came from
Argentina to Rojava and who died just over a year ago) we could see how
the same afternoon, the improvised operating theatres were filled with
Bashar Al-Assad soldiers wounded by the bombings and mortars of
Erdogan’s soldiers (and others of jihadists).
Yesterday we saw once again American helicopters flying over the city, which indicates that they were moving troops again. After announcing their withdrawal in early October, last week, Donald Trump explained that they were returning to Syria to “protect the oil”.
Neighbors explained to us that their convoy of armored vehicles was returning to Qamislo after pro-turk Islamists attacked them as they passed through Ain Issa in the direction of Kobane. In the military base they had there, today the Russian flag is flying, and a few days ago Russian soldiers have been patrolling together with the Turkish army along the border between the cities of Serekaniye and Amude. A few kilometres further, between Qamislo and Derik, it is American soldiers who patrol.
This morning SAA reinforcements arrived again, this time with old Russian tanks and a few mortars and other heavy weapons. They will need them. The day before yesterday, when we went to visit the front, we saw the conditions in which they were deployed in the different villages where the SDF still maintain the defense of the territory. After the withdrawal of the SDF from the city of Serekaniye on October 12, the front has moved to the semi-desert plains that separate the scarce 40 kilometers between Til Temir and Serekaniye, where the Islamists advance thanks to the air support of Turkish planes and combat drones.
In a war in these conditions, it is sometimes difficult to know who
is a friend and who is an enemy. At the front we are usually guided by
the premise that if he doesn’t shoot you, he is a friend. The great
hospitality of the Middle East, where everyone you meet greets you with
vocation and invites you to sit down and have tea, can lead you to live
strange situations. The most recent, looking for a translator to explain
to the captain of a team of SAA mortars that we did not want sugar in
the tea he offered us, while a group of soldiers unloaded the cannons
behind the SDF lines while they asked us, honestly surprised, how it is
possible that we could speak Kurdish and not Arabic.
Rojava’s revolution has inspired social movements all over the world,
highlighting without doubt the libertarian, feminist and ecological
character that Kurdish socialism promotes. Solidarity committees
translate, organize demonstrations and denounce the Turkish occupation
to different countries, coordinating with the extensive Kurdish diaspora
that has dispersed in recent decades because of repeated wars that have
threatened their survival. In the framework of the campaign
#RiseUp4Rojava, last Saturday, November 2, we saw more than a hundred
demonstrations in dozens of countries around the world.
We are also quite a few internationalists who are currently working
on the ground, especially in communication and health care, covering the
fronts that resist the invasion. We said that war sometimes creates
strange companies, and I think it is an adequate description when we see
the two main international teams that are currently assisting the
wounded on the front of Til Temir in coordination with Heyva Sor (the
Kurdish Red Crescent). On the one hand, a group of anarchists from
different countries who have coincided in Rojava and who have been
working for some time as a combat medical team. On the other hand, a
group of American and Burmese Christians who have been working for more
than two decades as combat medical teams in different conflicts.
In fact, one of the international martyrs that this Turkish offensive has claimed so far, belongs to this team. Yesterday one of the ambulances at the rear of the front was hit by a projectile that wounded two people and put an end to the life of a third. His name is Zao Sang, born Thailand, who lost his life shortly after the impact caused by the serious injuries.
Also the German Konstantin G. (Andok), fighter of the international brigade of the YPG, was killed by the Turkish bombs in a convoy headed to Serekaniye. And today we had to add a third name, which is that the commander of the international battalion for freedom Ozge Aydin (Ceren), a Turkish national, died from the wounds that led to her coma last week.
Their names lengthen the list of the hundreds of combatants and civilians who have been killed in this Turkish offensive.
To speak of death and war can easily frighten the western reader, accommodated in the first world where wars always take place away from home. The revolution of 1936, when tens of thousands of international brigadists came to support the war against fascism during the second Spanish Republic, is a long way off. A third of those who came could never return home again, but their actions meant an important chapter in the history of revolutionary internationalism.
Today in Rojava we are a handful of Catalans who are here, together with Castilians and Galicians. Also Basques, Aragonese, Andalusians and Portuguese have passed through here, inspired by the revolutionary project of Rojava, living and discussing the contradictions that this society generates, debating on how to develop an Iberian confederal project. Now that the situation in Catalonia calls into question the model of the Spanish nation-state, it is more than ever necessary to reflect together on what future we want to build.
SEE HERE Orso killed by ISIS.. But Lives Always in our HeartsSEE HERE
In fact, today we have published a global appeal together with other internationalists to come to support the resistance of Rojava, to understand and learn what it means to build (and defend) a revolution.
The number of internationalists who have come to put their grain of sand to Rojava is difficult to calculate, but it is far from the 50,000 brigadists who more than 80 years ago answered the call to confront fascism when we needed it most. No doubt this should make us reflect if we are really ready to carry out a revolutionary process or if it is just a romantic imaginary that we explain while we live our privileged lives. Revolution is not a road of roses, but no one has ever said it was easy. However, the alternative is to allow patriarchy and capitalism to continue to lead our lives, and for me and the many other comrades who are here, this is no longer an option.
Dr Sims, who had no gynecological experience, obtained up to 20 black slave women suffering gynecological injuries of torn fistulas and experimented on them, without anesthetics , for 4 years in his ”medical Plantation” in Alabama .
In 2015 #Anarchagland, an autonomous-research project of #gynepunk in Catalonia, renamed female sex glands after 3 slaves, Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy, who were abused as medical guinea pigs by the maverick doctor J Marion Sims.
“If there was anything I hated,” he wrote from the outset, “it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.”
We don’t know how many of his victims died or if they really gave consent as he claimed in his extravagant autobiography ( it was a death sentence offense for slaves to write or record anything) but Sims was a showman and boasted of operating over 30 times on Anarcha who was 17 at the start, and almost killing Lucy outright on her first operation.
note> This post was 1st made as a copiable flyer HERE
No Government Will Save the Planet for Us
by Crimethinc From September 20 to 27, tens of thousands will take to the streets to denounce the causes of climate change and call on governments to address what may be the most drastic crisis facing humanity in the 21st century.
These mass actions will showcase the growing anger of a new generation that has known nothing but crisis, war, and the threat of environmental collapse.
We have prepared the following text as a flier encouraging climate activists to consider how to interrupt the causes of climate change via direct action rather than petitioning the state to do solve the problem for us. Please print these out and distribute them at climate protests and everywhere else you can. Continue reading “The Wrong ICE is Melting, The Wrong Amazon is Burning”
After the Syrian Kurds’ fight for Kobane against ISIS in 2014-5, many across the world were suddenly made aware of the Kurdish women’s movement in Rojava, northern Syria. But it was already flourishing across the border in SE Turkey, where women joined in taking up the ideas of imprisoned Ocalan and intense cultural and political change to a horizontal anti authoritarian way of life was in full swing.
All this was suppressed in Turkey with Erdogan’s police and military crackdown in his bid to demonize the Kurds in a racist bid for dictatorial power. To his fury the revolution has continued and blossomed in liberated Rojava, with echoes in Europe and beyond, despite Turkish support for ISIS and Al Qaeda, the economic blockade and the 750km long wall.
Here we republish a great interview on the birth, growth and suppression of the Feminist movement in Kurdish Turkey (Nth Kurdistan).
“Actually we have been calling our experience World War III. This is a war of destruction. The state does not call it a war, but this is the experience of those affected.”
After the Syrian Kurds’ fight for Kobane (a Kurdish city in northern Syria/Rojava) against ISIS in 2014-5, many across the world were suddenly made aware of the Kurdish women’s movement.
What has not reached us, however, is a much wider context that enabled the Kurdish women-fighters to confidently take up arms to defend themselves and their people. The unprecedented accomplishments of the Kurdish women predated Kobane and the war in Syria.
They are rooted in the evolution of Turkey’s Kurdish liberation movement, as it is represented by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and in the ideological shift of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
In what is regarded as a departure from the Marxist-Leninist perspective of national liberation, Ocalan developed a theory of democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy, making liberation of women into one of the central pillars of his struggle, alongside radical democracy and social ecology. The new ideology was first put into practice in Bakur (the Kurdish region in the southeast of Turkey) in the early 2000s and, despite continuing state oppression, the focus on and efforts towards women’s liberation within the movement brought visible results: a dramatic increase in women’s participation in the political and social life of the society, an evolution in their consciousness and the creation of various tools and spaces for their empowerment.
![Maria Meza, a migrant woman from Honduras, runs away from tear gas with her five-year-old twin daughters Saira and Cheili at the US-Mexico border on November 25, 2018 [File: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/11/25/16a247b20d24445182983ac12bc41b1b_18.jpg "Smash the patriarchy to save the planet")
The Free 