This panel will discuss efforts to organize from the bottom up for local control, emphasizing the leadership of women and the perspectives of people excluded from power—Blacks in Detroit and Kurds in Northern Syria and Turkey. It will focus on the long, difficult, and transformational nature of these struggles and what it takes to bring women's leadership to the fore in such a way that it cannot be reversed. Detroit, a city devastated and left without a tax base by white flight and de-industrialization, has lost any pretext to local democracy and was for years under the control of a Republican governor-appointed city manager. Water is a particular issue, as is a corporate combination of gentrification of some areas and abandonment of others. The Boggs Center, which has been active in the black community since the early 90s, has been a leader in combining education, organizing, and protest against these trends. Rojava, an area about the size of Massachusetts in Northern Syria, is the site of a women's revolution, a place where women are redefining the nature of politics and taking leadership roles in creating a new multi-ethnic, ecological and radically democratic society—while also defending their territory against ISIS from the south and Turkish Islamic fanaticism from the north. What can these two activist communities teach us about creating lasting institutions for social change that have women at the fore? What can we learn from the historical difficulties of integrating U.S. feminism with left wing movements around the world?
Featuring:
- Sinam Mohamad, she/her, @sinam56
- Kimberley Sherobbi, she/her
- Gwendolyn Winston, she/her
- Meredith Tax, she/her @meredithtax
- Giran Ozcan, he/him
Affiliated Organizations:
- Emergency Committee for Rojava - defendrojava.org
- James and Grace Lee Boggs Center - boggscenter.org
- Internationalist Commune of Rojava - internationalistcommune.com
- HDP www.hdp.org.tr/en
- Meredith Tax www.meredithtax.org
