Alternative Pathways
The Left, Ecology and Degrowth. A panel with Feyzi Ismail, Kai Heron, Kin Chi Lau and Matt Huber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-K_zy9NkeI
Saturday 20 April 2024 . As climate change, global warming and massive loss of biodiversity disproportionately affect people along class, race and gender lines, acknowledging that Climate Struggle is Class Struggle is now more urgent than ever. But debates about how exactly the left should address this multi-layered crisis run deep. Whilst degrowth is increasingly gaining appeal—not the least in the mainstream—, it is necessary critically to assess its proposals and limitations. Can degrowth mean anything more than a ‘programme of aggregate reduction’ or ‘ecological austerity’? How does degrowth fit, if at all, within struggles for socio-economic justice, especially in the Global South? Are the analytical tools and the political arguments deployed by the degrowth movement useful to challenge capitalism?
Neighborhood Pods: What They Are And How To Start Them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1f3NHqqzHw Nov 20, 2020
Neighborhood pods are hyperlocal coordinations of immediate neighbors from 5-30 households to check in on each other, socialize, meet each other's needs, and take shared decisions on shared problems together.
Growing out of mutual aid projects, most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, they've proved inspiring building blocks for society to reclaim its own autonomy starting at the hyperlocal level, to build resiliency and local self-sufficiency. As states everywhere have proved how little they care for the lives and autonomy of the people living under them, we say that a strong, democratic, organized, and communal society makes the state obsolete!
The Communes of Rojava: A Model In Societal Self Direction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDnenjIdnnE
An in-depth look into the inner workings of the commune system in Northeast Syria (Rojava) and how they work in practice to give people direct say over the decisions that affect their lives at the most local level. I also call for people to form communes throughout North America and the world.
2020- The Communes of Rojava have many lessons to teach us in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty that has arisen from it globally.
This is a 45 minute documentary about the Kurds, Assyrians, Arabs, and Yezidis in Northeast Syria (Rojava) who’ve spent the last 9 years dealing with the uncertainty and precarity we are just now beginning to face, turned to their neighbors to get themselves through civil war and ISIS attacks, and are emerging through it all with a new society that is far more beautiful and far more free than they had before. It’s a story of hope and I think it is very instructive for us about the possibilities that can emerge out of crisis when neighbors “pod up”.
Some historical context:
The formation of “communes” in Rojava did not come out of nowhere. Kurdish people had been oppressed in all four modern nation-states that were built over their traditional homelands: Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran- denied the ability to speak their language, sing their songs, denied their very existence as a category in some states, barred from citizenship in others, prevented from even growing fruit trees or having any of their own means to sustain themselves. Since the 1970s they have fought back against their oppression and often made common cause with other oppressed minorities such as the Assyrian Christians. In Northeast Syria they had been secretly and illegally organizing support structures to fill the gaps that the state left in their communities, and the idea of the communes came about as their homegrown ideology of Democratic Confederalism won favor among many different ethnic groups in the region. Democratic Confederalism is a kind of hyperlocal direct democracy where local people band together to meet their needs themselves and ultimately make the state obsolete. It emphasizes ethnic and religious pluralism, women’s freedom, and ecology- all refreshing in light of the authoritarian states dominating the region. This is the background that takes us to 2012, when the Syrian government completely pulled out of Northeast Syria to fight a civil war in their major cities, leaving a power vacuum. That vacuum could have been filled by jihadists or aspiring authoritarians as in many parts of Syria, but instead thanks to the building blocks of the communes and civil society organizations that were already in place, the local people were able to step in and govern their own lives in a remarkably smooth transition.
I should have mentioned that Rojava is a term no longer officially used their because it is rooted in the Kurdish struggle and is Kurd-centric as a name, but the society is being built as explicitly multi-ethnic so is now called the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria to reflect this diversity. I used the former term because, sadly, it is the word most people know.
The Internal System of the Communes in Rojava by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi https://www.aymennjawad.org/2018/04/the-internal-system-of-the-communes-in-rojava
‘World Localization Day’ will be celebrated on 20 June. Organised by the non-profit Local Futures, this annual coming together of people from across the world began in 2020 and focuses on the need to localise supply-chains and recover our connection with nature and community. The stated aim is to “galvanize the worldwide localization movement into a force for systemic change”.
Local Futures, founded by Helena Norberg-Hodge, urges us to imagine a very different world, one in which most of our food comes from nearby farmers who ensure food security year round and where the money we spend on everyday goods continues to recirculate in the local economy.
Green imperialism
The ‘green economy’ being heavily promoted is based on the commodification of nature, through privatization, marketization and monetary valuation. Banks and corporations will set the agenda – dressed in the garb of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a euphemism for governments facilitating the needs of powerful global interests. The fear is that the proposed system will weaken environmental protection laws and regulations to facilitate private capital.
The banking sector will engage in ‘green profiling’ and issue ‘green bonds’ and global corporations will be able to ‘offset’ (greenwash) their environment-degrading activities by, for example, protecting or planting a forest elsewhere (on indigenous people’s land) or perhaps even investing in (imposing) industrial agriculture which grows herbicide-resistant GMO commodity crop monocultures that are misleadingly portrayed as ‘climate friendly’. Imperialism wrapped in green.
26/04/2022
How to build a sustainable house using natural building materials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jTmGRyy4Z4 Down To Earth
After successfully running the Aaananda Permaculture Project near Chandigarh, Manisha Lath Gupta and her family realised that it was time to live in the environment where they grow their produce. Living with nature meant living in a home built using natural materials. Aanandaa sustainable house is built using sustainable materials like rammed earth, stone, lime, brick, and traditional roofing systems. The natural building materials were sourced locally and Manisha also ensured that they hired local crafts persons. Some other features of the house include the underground cellar to store the produce, rainwater harvesting, waste water management and a biodigester.
The sustainable architecture at Aanandaa is designed and directed by the Studio Aureole team lead by Architect Jitesh Malik. Studio Aureole is a conscious practice, often bridging the artificial divides of product, interior, architecture and landscape. Architectural practice at Studio Aureole is about creating spaces that have the power to re-connect us with nature, with ourselves and with our communities. Their definition of sustainable goes beyond materials to include the social and ecological fabric that we inhabit. At Aanandaa, their approach has been to bring together an environmental sensitivity with a contemporary design sensibility and a socio-cultural imagination that fosters collaboration.