Guest: Andrej Grubacic, former teacher at the University of Rojava and is the founding Chair of Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Andrej talks with Mitch about Rojava the autonomous, mostly Kurdish region of Northeastern Syria.
From Dissent magazine:
“Turkey’s invasion of Rojava is not only a source of deep shame and disgust to many Americans, particularly those in the military, but a terrible defeat for the international left. The revolutionary system now in place in Rojava is an attempt at a new socialist paradigm, something the international left has been looking for since the end of the Cold War. As British feminist Rahila Gupta writes, the model Turkey wants to destroy is one we desperately need:
[Rojava’s] organizing principle is democratic confederalism: a system of direct democracy, ecological sustainability and ethnic inclusivity, where women have veto powers on new legislation and share all institutional positions with men. Within the short time since forming Rojava’s democratic experiment, child marriage, forced marriage, dowry and polygamy were banned; honour killings, violence and discrimination against women were criminalized. It is the only part of Syria where sharia councils have been abolished and religion has been consigned to the private sphere. This is a blueprint for the kind of society that many of us have been campaigning for all our lives—and yet it is the best kept secret in the world.””