Cooperative Assembly of Cascadia

02/23/2021

Bookchin and the Kurds

The Kurdish freedom movement was heavily influenced by the ideas of Murray Bookchin and Social Ecology. After the imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in 1999, the members of the PKK began exploring ideas for Kurdish liberation outside of the nation-state model. An imprisoned Öcalan and other prominent Kurdish thinkers read foundational texts by Bookchin and incorporated his ideas into their model.

In his Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, Volume 1, Öcalan writes, “The criticism and proposals produced by Murray Bookchin in relation to ecology . . . are groundbreaking.” (p. 62) According to Damian Ge**er and Shannon Brincat in a book of essays called Building Free Life, “Ocalan, especially after his imprisonment in 1999, adopted key aspects of Bookchin’s thought into his own model of democratic confederalism.” (p. 199)

In 2005, the Kurdistan People's Congress formed the Kurdistan Communities Union, or the KCK, around the ideas of Democratic Confederalism. The KCK is the umbrella organization of democratic confederalist orgs in Kurdistan (Kurdish land in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria). The PYD (Democratic Union Party), TEV-DEM (Movement for a Democratic Society), and others are the Syrian groups affiliated with the KCK who organized the structures such as councils and communes that were necessary for the revolution in Rojava.
Debbie Bookchin recalls when her father died in 2006, the PKK released a statement characterizing him as "one of the greatest social scientists of the twentieth century. [...] He introduced us to the thought of social ecology, and for that he will be remembered with gratitude by humanity. [...] We undertake to make Bookchin live in our struggle. We will put this promise into practice as the first society which establishes a tangible democratic confederalism."

The ideas of Murray Bookchin continue to inspire revolutionaries from all over Kurdistan and are foundational to their political ideology. As Debbie Boockhin writes, “Had my father lived to see his ideas enacted in Rojava and southeastern Turkey, he would have been profoundly moved to know that his revolutionary spirit had been reborn among a generation of the Kurdish people. He would have taken heart that Rojava was one more historical instance of the desire for freedom that he himself felt so deeply and to which he dedicated his life”.

Sources:

Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, Volume 1 by Abdullah Öcalan

Building Free Life edited by Damian Ge**er and Shannon Brincat

Ecology Discussions and Practices in the Kurdish Freedom Struggle by Ercan Ayboğa, retrieved from:
https://komun-academy.com/2018/06/28/ecology-discussions-and-practices-in-the-kurdish-freedom-struggle-with-a-focus-on-north-kurdistan-bakur/

How My Father’s Ideas Helped the Kurds Create a New Democracy by Debbie Bookchin, retrieved from:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-ideas-helped-the-kurds-create-a-new-democracy/?lp_txn_id=1012030

Debbie Bookchin writes on her father and Öcalan by ANF News, retrieved from:
https://anfenglish.com/features/debbie-bookchin-writes-on-her-father-and-Oecalan-27481

Murray Bookchin and the Kurdish resistance by Joris Leverink, retrieved from:
https://roarmag.org/essays/bookchin-kurdish-struggle-ocalan-rojava/

02/21/2021

Democratic Confederalism

Democratic Confederalism is the means by which communities establish autonomy and make decisions with many neighborhood assemblies across larger regions through elected delegates in successively larger assemblies.

Essentially, it is a framework that allows direct democracy to take place across a much larger region than a single neighborhood. An elected delegate is not like a representative politician because they do not have unilateral power to make decisions on behalf of their local communities. This is communalism on a wider scale.

In our current system, legislative bodies create policy through representatives elected in districts.
In contrast, confederations are made up of delegates who administer the will of the neighborhood assemblies. Even though the confederation is made up of many different neighborhoods, each individual community maintains their freedom and identity.

Policies are made at the neighborhood level and are coordinated by recallable delegates within the confederal body instead of by representatives who become absorbed into a larger government superstructure.

The indepence of each community is interwoven with the larger network of other communities. This creates a coordinated and cooperative dependence that helps ensure the stability and success of each individual community. What develops is a newly formed interdependence of each neighborhood, where this confederation of municipalities can increase their own power and thereby negate the necessity of the State.

Sources

The Next Revolution by Murray Bookchin, chapter called The Meaning of Confederalism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-ursula-k-le-guin-the-next-revolution

The Politics of Social Ecology by Janet Biehl, chapter called Confederalism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/janet-biehl-the-politics-of-social-ecology

Democratic Confederalism by Abdullah Öcalan

@ Cascadia

02/20/2021

Happening in 5 minutes at: http://tinyurl.com/CACDIRECTDEMOCRACYFEST

02/20/2021

INFOGRAPHIC: Libertarian Municipalism

Libertarian Municipalism is a system used to build a society that upholds both social and individual freedoms supported by institutions that themselves are based in liberation. It is a movement dedicated to empowering all people to direct popular control of their municipalities through democratic neighborhood assemblies, thereby rejecting the surrender of power to the State in a Republican system (our current system).

The strategy of building power in a Libertarian Muncipalist structure involves:

1) Creating a communal society that meets the needs of its inhabitants.
2) Being sensitive and responsive to the local ecological system.
3) Developing an ethics based on sharing and cooperation.

By scaling-down large geographical areas to more immediate locales, people are able to revive their political practices through direct democracy, collectively assuming responsibility for their communities, instead of relying on abstract and impersonal systems of government and business. Through linking together multiple of these now independent neighborhoods, their strength through collective cooperation can stand against the current systems of power.

The original European sense of the term Libertarian relates to the broader movements towards freedom and autonomy, which often encompasses ideologies like anarchism, socialism, and communism. In contrast to the Libertarian Party of America, Libertarian Municipalism as Murray Bookchin describes it, “seeks to reclaim the public sphere for the exercise of authentic citizenship while breaking away from the bleak cycle of parliamentarism and its mystification of the ‘party’ mechanism as a means for public representation.”

Sources:

Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview by Murray Bookchin
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-libertarian-municipalism-an-overview

02/19/2021

Communalism

Communalism is the organization of direct democracy at the smallest unit of size, the commune. In communal societies this practice includes community ownership of property and making decisions at the neighborhood level in regularly occurring democratic assemblies.

Communalism vs. Communism

Communism refers to a stateless, classless society where everyone owns everything. However, the advent of state socialism in Eastern Europe and many parts of Asia has made this term essentially meaningless.

Additionally during the Red Scare, and through ongoing efforts, reactionary elements in Western countries have falsely defined socialism, anarchism, and communism thus stripping these terms of their meaning from everyday people who otherwise would side with them.

Communalism is not about bureaucratic state socialism, rather, it is about communities coordinating their own affairs instead of the government. Communalism fosters voluntary association in relationships and the absence of coercion over one another.
@ Cascadia

02/14/2021

Peter Berg and The Planetarian Mindset

Peter Berg was a San Francisco based ecologist and writer. He proposed the concept of Bioregionalism in the early 1970s in response to corporations and government agencies institutionalizing the environmental movement. He was highly invested in combating the growing popularity of Globalism with his Planetarian mindset.

Berg takes a more holistic approach to the revolutionary subject as contrasted with that of Karl Marx. Where Marx looks to the working class known as the proletariat, Berg advocates for the development of an ecological class he called the planetariat.

Being a member of the planetariat involves “...people who view themselves from within the biosphere rather than from the top of it, extend importance beyond the human species to include other life and the processes by which all life continues.” (42)

The danger of Globalism lies in its demand on environments to be infinite producers of commodities despite a finite capacity, going against the ebbs and flows of nature. Conversely, the planetarianism recognizes humanity’s place within the system. It places value in communities being aware of their environmental regions and how to live in harmony within them.

Berg’s vision called for a grassroots level movement. In the introduction to Peter Berg: The Biosphere and the Bioregion, Cheryll Glotfelty notes Berg’s observations of Indigenous peoples’ sustainable habitation of lands. She cites his understanding that “[t]o ‘inhabit’ implies fitting into and being a part of a habitat,…Perhaps people could learn to reinhabit Earth by learning about the natural conditions of the particular place where they live and evolving ways to fit into the ecology of that place.” (2)

Source: Peter Berg The Biosphere and the Bioregion

@ Cascadia

02/13/2021

Tinyurl.com/CACDirectDemocracyFest

01/30/2021

01/29/2021

Please join us for a conversation with David M. Buerge author of “Chief Seattle and the Town That Took His Name” January 31st at 1pm on Zoom: tinyurl.com/ChiefSeattleTown

01/29/2021

01/27/2021