Join us on Saturday, April 9, 2PM EDT (US) for our next reading group! This session is part of our comparative series on the Zapatistas and the Kurdish Liberation Movement. We will discuss the cooperative economy developed by both movements as well as their vision of achieving an ecologically sustainable society. We will also look at the participation of women in developing cooperative economy in both regions.
Feel free to join even if you don’t get a chance to do the readings!
Inspired by the Kurdish and Zapatista women’s autonomous organizing, we host women and queer-only space half an hour before the beginning of every reading group. Stop by to socialize and share your gender-related concerns and experiences. We hope this space will be an opportunity for our mutual empowerment.
Register to get the Zoom link here.
Main Readings
Zapatistas:
Section “Economic Resistance” (pp. 6-13) in Autonomous Resistence: First grade textbook for the course “Freedom According to the Zapatistas.”
Section “Working Collectively” (pp. 146-154) in Hilary Klein’s Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories (2015).
P. 19 - Definition of the term kuxlejal (life-existence) in Mariana Mora’s Kuxlejal PoliticsIndigenous Autonomy, Race, and Decolonizing Research in Zapatista Communities
Kurdish Movement / Rojava:
Sections “Towards the Democratization of the Economy?” and “Towards Ecological Sustainability?” in Cihad Hammy & Thomas Jeffrey Miley’s Lessons From Rojava for the Paradigm of Social Ecology
Section “Aborîyajin: The Experience of Women in the Social Economy” (pp. 154-160) in Azize Aslan’s “Chapter 10: Women’s Subjectivity and the Ecological and Communal Economy,” in the book Ecological Solidarity and the Kurdish Freedom Movement
Optional Readings
Section “The Paradigm of Social Ecology and the Project of Democratic Confederalism” in Cihad Hammy & Thomas Jeffrey Miley’s Lessons From Rojava for the Paradigm of Social Ecology
Explainer: Cooperatives in North and East Syria – developing a new economy by Rojava Information Center
Section “Exilic Economy” (pp. 124-128) in Andrej Grubacic & Denis O’Hearn’s Living at the Edges of Capitalism.
Section “Agroecology and Resistance” (pp. 197-200) in George Collier’s Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas