We survived the bomb cyclone and the gov shutdown and are back in sunny florida :)) . side note: how am I so lucky?!? ughhhhh😍😍😍😍😍😍😍💕
Friday was the last day of my internship in D.C. with Sovereignty First and the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy. This was my office space. I sorted and packed up thousands of correspondents and papers and worked on a project providing free labor and shitty graphic design [because people don’t want to pay actual graphic designers 🙄] for a pretty cool project attempting to improve communication between 98 key actors in the Syrian Civil War. . All of this happening as Turkey [a NATO ally] has declared war on Afrin, one of the cantons in N. Syria [Rojava] where several hundred thousand displaced people have found refuge under the protection of the YPG/YPJ; while the international community stays silent. For years, Turkey has aided ISIS under the principle of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Now that ISIS has been driven out by the US-backed SDF/YPG/YPJ, Turkey is now attempting to commit genocide. Infuriating following all of this in an office building in the nation’s capital without being able to tangibly support the people of Afrin. #DefendAfrin (at Lijst van bekende mensen uit Washington D.C.)
On the 16th anniversary of one of the grossest stains of our modern history—the opening of Guantánamo Bay—some comrades, nuns, monks, lawyers, and I bore witness, processing through DC to the White House in jumpsuits and black masks making the presence of our 41 Muslim brothers still illegally detained known and felt. . Sixteen years of being illegally detained and tortured without receiving a trial or chance to defend themselves in the court of law. Five human beings with families and stories, have been cleared to be released since the Obama days, yet are still indefinitely being held. Of course, both political parties are content with paying lip-service to any sense of ‘rule of law.’ All I can say is shame. However, it’s the movements where the real work happens; not in the halls of power, which give me hope. . “We’re gonna build a nation, that don’t torture no one. But it’ll take courage, for that day to come.” . 📸 @dorothydaydrunk (at The White House)
In DC for the month with my best friend and cherishing every moment💕 . We arrived during the ‘bomb cyclone’ ❄️🙄which was just perfect for two Floridians but we’re getting by and taking time to enjoy the city and each other. Here’s a photo of us cheesin’ at Union Market with a belly full of red beans and rice and coffee. . Tomorrow night, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker here in DC, along with Witness Against Torture, the Peace Poets, and others are hosting an event and some actions demanding the immediate closing of Guantanamo. “How long O Lord!” (at Union Market DC)
Elated about this incredible revolutionary + artist + human. It’s super cool getting to love someone so inspiring [and incredibly beautiful😇] 🖤
Yay for front-facing selfies! . Yesterday was Emily’s birthday and it was the best👏🏽day👏🏽ever👏🏽celebrating THE👏🏽best👏🏽partner👏🏽ever👏🏽 . Seriously, she is the most incredible person I know. The way she smiles with her eyes is mesmerizing. Seriously. Her laugh is infectious. It ’s my favorite sound. We can go from talking about the intricacies of democratic confederalism and revolutionary politics to sacramental theology to birb memes in one sentence. . In fact, as I’m typing this up right now, she’s tagging me in birb memes with Graeber’s book on ‘Anarchist Anthropology’ by her side. I can’t imagine a more inspiring and beautiful and brilliant and incredibly fun human to fall in love with. I’m the luckiest human alive. ☺️🖤
Henlo, I’m going to be in D.C. interning with the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy from January 3-26th. I’m looking for a place to stay while I’m up there. Anyone got a roof I can crash under? If you don’t live up there but know some folks who would be willing to host me, send me there way, pls🖤 📸 @dorothydaydrunk (at Greenwood Urban Wetland)
Nerdy thesis post:
I emailed back and forth with Noam Chomsky last night about Rojava and just got off the phone with Dr. Peter Bartu, Professor of Middle East Studies and International Relations at UCBerkeley and my head is spinning.
Favorite quote from Peter and I’s 30-min conversation: “The PKK are fucking brilliant fighters.”
That’s all😇
I’ve read almost all the material you can on the Rojava Revolution [in english], the current expression of the Kurdish freedom movement, “one of the world’s longest running contemporary resistance movements—a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old struggle stretching the opulence of the Ottoman Empire to today’s bloody civil wars in Syria and Iraq [p. 5]” and this short collection of anonymous essays is my favorite. . The one redeeming thing I can see out of our disastrous occupation and invasion of Iraq is peace and security for the Kurds, and democratic confederalism and social ecology are two beautiful underpinnings to such a tragic story. . “A revolution has its moment. Whether it is the Arab Spring, or the Occupy Movement, or Ten Days That Shook the World, there is a time when a spark hits some kindling and a time, or place, ignites. Whether the flame becomes strong, or withers without additional fuel, or gets put out, violently, always remains to be seen. . And so, now, we have Rojava. A man serving a life sentence in Turkey found one of Murray’s books, decided to read them all, and then convinced his followers [PKK] to create a real-life laboratory of liberatory expression. In a most difficult historical situation, in a most remote region, surrounded by enemies on all sides, this egalitarian exercise could almost be on a fictional moon. But it is real. . “To inspire our own work at home, we need to hear from those creating fragile and imperfect oases of freedom.” [p. 6] (at New College of Florida)
The ecology movement will never gain any real influence or have any significant impact on society if it advances a message of despair rather than hope, of a regressive and impossible return to primordial human cultures, rather than a commitment to human progress and to a unique human empathy for life as a whole…We must recover the utopian impulses, the hopefulness, the appreciation of what is good, what is worth rescuing in human civilisation, as well as what must be rejected, if the ecology movement is to play a transformative and creative role in human affairs. For without changing society, we will not change the disastrous ecological direction in which capitalism is moving.
Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (via probablyasocialecologist)
Anarcho-communism cannot remain a mere mood or tendency, wafting in the air like a cultural ambience. It must be organised — indeed well-organised — if it is to effectively articulate and spread this new sensibility; it must have a coherent theory and extensive literature; it must be capable of duelling with the authoritarian movements that try to denature the intuitive libertarian impulses of our time and channel social unrest into hierarchical forms of organisation.
Murray Bookchin, Looking Back at Spain p. 90 (via fyeahmurraybookchin)
Shout out to Savannah Comrades who joined Emily and I at the Savannah film festival to watch Resistance Is Life, an impeccable film about the YPG/J’s resistance and defeat of Daesh in Kobanê. And a big thanks for hosting us on our way back from the mountains. They live mutual aid. (at Savannah, Georgia)
in every blade of grass, Allah Allah Allah in every blade of grass. (at Asheville, North Carolina)
this is a candid photo RIGHT when a birb flew past emily’s head. It’s also one of my favorite photos of all time. ✨☺️💕
You may have seen reports about U.S.-backed forces liberating the city of Raqqa from Daesh. What no one has talked about is that those forces are the YPG/J, whom I’m writing a significant portion of my thesis on. The ecologically sustainable, feminist, and democratic movement in Rojava [N. Syria], inspired by the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, and his transition from Marxist-Leninism to democratic confederalism in a tradition similar to the Zapatistas in Chiapas and based on theories on social ecology and libertarian municipalism of the late Murray Bookchin, should seriously be given more credit and celebrated more. Biji Kurdistan, Rojava, Raqqa!
Anonymous asked:
As a relatively uninformed canadian catholic, what is DACA and why is deportation wrong?. Why should we block ice vans, etc?
At a systemic level, I’m an anarchist, so the organized violence of the state along with its arbitrary lines drawn up from the Westphalian system holds little-to-no weight for me.
DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, instituted by the Obama administration in 2012, and rescinded by the Trump administration last month [Sept. 2017]. DACA allowed undocumented minors who immigrated to the so-called United States to receive renewable two-year deferred action from being deported.
Imagine spending most of your life in a country, finding out your parents immigrated so you could have a better life, and then being ripped away from everything you knew, being placed in a country that is often unstable [as a result of coreStates like the so-called U.S] with little to know upward mobility. Deportations are wrong because they’re inhumane, violent, and also, for those who care, are destabilizing for the economy. There’s this paradox most people do not want to talk about which is our agriculture sector which is built on the exploited labor of undocumented peoples.
We should stop ICE vans because it’s effective. Direct action gets the goods.