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The Rojava Revolution: Toward Building a Democratic Society                                           

Sinam Mohamad and David Harvey in Conversation

Monday, November 9th, 6-8:30pm, Proshansky Auditorium

The determined resistance of the Kurdish men and women in the strategic border region of Rojava (Western Kurdistan, Syria) drew worldwide attention when they successfully repelled the siege of their city of Kobane by the Islamic State (ISIS) just over a year ago. Their fight became a symbol of popular resistance to the merciless violence and horrendous atrocities committed by ISIS.

Rojava’s bottom up democratic and pluralist decision-making methods have inspired people across the world to rethink emancipatory forms of organizing social life. Despite the relentless onslaught of ISIS forces over the past months, Rojava is still standing proud and free.

Although Rojava has been a source of inspiration, little is known to outsiders of the everyday practices that sustain and grow this new way of social organization and self-government through collectives, councils and cooperatives. This conversation will focus on how people are putting up fierce resistance and defend their self-governing administration (the Democratic Autonomous Administration of Rojava) and struggle to build a democratic, non sectarian, pro gender equality, and ecologically just society.

Sinam Mohamad is the European Representative of the Rojava Self-Governing Democratic Administration and a member of the leadership of the Democratic Society Movement (known in Kurdish as Tev-Dem). She was born in Damascus Syria in 1956. She graduated from the University of Aleppo in 1981. She was nominated to the Syrian Parliament in 2003 and 2007, but because of the Kurdish identity of her party she did not enter Parliament. She is a member of the Administration of the Kurdish organization STAR UNION in Rojava, which struggles for the rights of women in Rojava.  In 2011, she became the Co-President of the People Council of Western Kurdistan in Rojava . She then became a member of the High Kurdish Council of Rojava, and subsequently a member of the High political Kurdish Council in Rojava.

David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books, articles, and lectures. He is the author of Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism(Profile Books, 2014), one of The Guardian’s(http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/02/books-christmas-presents-economics-reviews“) Best Books of 2011, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2010). Other books include A Companion to Marx’s Capital, Limits to Capital, and Social Justice and the City. Professor Harvey has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital for nearly 40 years. His lectures on Marx’s Volumes I and II are available for download (free) on his website.  He was director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics from 2008-2014.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. It is free and open to the public.