April 9 2026 – Cainta, Rizal (We Are Loving Anarchist-WALA)

April 11 – Taguig City (We Still Exist Collective)

April 12 – Muntinlupa City (Onsite Community)

April 18 – Cubao Quezon City (Non Collective Flying House)

April 22-24 – Baler Aurora (Squat Fest)

April 26 – Morong, Rizal (Canna-Community Library event)

more dates and areas to be announced soon HERE

FREE Download the book “Gen Z Makes History” HERE

We tour to encourage people to sustain Gen Z’s heroism. Whether Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, or Gen Z, we should follow the lead taken by recent uprisings. All human beings are increasingly power-less within nation-states armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction. Global warming advances daily. As Gen Z has so remarkably illustrated, our most effective action is militant street protests.

Just when we thought that the world was going completely to hell, Gen Z uprisings swept country after country, demanding life over death. Whether the issue was elite corruption in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Philippines, police brutality in Indonesia, Israeli genocide in Gaza, increased taxes in Kenya, mandatory pension plans in Peru, scandalously underfunded hospitals in Morocco, or a lack of basic services like electricity and water in Madagascar, a new generation has emerged in the struggle for better lives.

www.voidnetwork.gr | eroseffect.com | crimethinc.com

The post Gen Z Makes History Tour- Philippines Archipelago 2026 appeared first on Void Network.

Written by Blade Runner– first published by Plan C, an anti-authoritarian communist organisation based in UK

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The year began with fresh bloodshed in Iran and Syria, adding to the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. The Middle East, as Abdullah Öcalan—ideological leader of the Kurdish movement in northeastern Syria—has argued, is the cradle of nation-state civilisation. From the Sumerian ziggurat to today’s capitalist modernity, the region has long seen patriarchal, hierarchical structures emerge, deeply embedded in state power. The Kurds, who have experienced genocide in their history, state-less, now face another looming threat in Rojava, where Turkish-backed jihadist militias operate with impunity. In Iran, a youth- and middle-class-led uprising is being brutally crushed by the Islamist regime, with Kurdish-majority areas paying the highest price in blood.

These developments expose a broader split in the Western left: some emphasise grassroots liberation struggles from below, while others focus on geopolitics and great-power alignments. Still, both camps acknowledge the surge in militarisation—rooted in the agendas of white men in power, securing their castles as the world burns.

Trump’s version of fascism, built on brute-force governance, gave new expression to an old white supremacist worldview: domination as virtue, state violence as default. In the US, vulnerable communities are under attack both in law and daily life, while federal institutions are being hollowed out and reshaped by far-right actors exploiting the left’s strategic collapse. As capitalism slams into ecological and resource limits, elites double down—playing the fascist cardas their system fractures alongside the ecosystem.

Much of the Western left remains trapped in a framework inherited from the postwar compromise—where revolutionary potential was traded for social peace and welfare became the terrain of struggle. This strategic vacuum continues today. 

How did we get here? 

Capital’s restructuring since the 80s through digitalisation and financialisation detached life from collective decision-making. Based on a drastic technical shift, the neoliberal political design enforced the merger of state and capital into a hierarchy-preserving machine, that protects the pyramidic structure of economy and power while producing dependence to it.

The neoliberal assault to the working class under the ‘less state’ marquise staged a spectacle on which the unions negotiate in the midst of a raging social war waged on the lowest classes. There is a deeper continuity here that remains protected—the very architecture of the welfare state is tied to capital accumulation and state sovereignty. Reforms, however welcome, cannot do much to erode its core functions for discipline, control and population management.

Welfare, even at its heights, never enabled autonomy. Today, we find ourselves defending scraps—yet unable to replace the model with bottom-up infrastructures not based on extraction or obedience.

A great shift towards consumerist abundance has taken place: smart phones, branded clothing, laptops, vehicles, traveling, are now accessible to wider strata than ever before. Or at least this is the promise that has been built upon decades of urban gentrification and the expansion of the services economy. Middle classes are deeply invested in this materialistic social contract, so much that leisure time is willingly being replaced with commercial entrepreneurship. For many activists of the white middle class, the boundaries between “the struggle” or “the action” and a paid relationship with charities or NGOs is becoming increasingly blur.

This new reality has been conditioned as ‘freedom,’ to justify the installation of the core-zone insulation through militarised borders and technocratic management. Welfare state and the promise of consumerist abundance is not a function of solidarity anymore—it is a cushioned internal border, mirroring its reverse spiky version from the outside.

In this context, the mainstream narrative frames the uprisings of the 2010s as relics or cautionary tales. But the uprisings led by Gen Z across Asia, Africa, and Latin America is a reality check: mass militant street action not only remains possible—it continues to erupt as the clearest threat to regimes when electoral politics stall. This signals a shift from demands for inclusion and integration, to anti-hierarchial participation, to construction of new autonomous spaces. Forms of resistance not aimed at improving state functions, but bypassing or replacing them.

Genocide at the bordersⁱ

The fractures in today’s Western left echo the deeper planetary divide. The neoliberal information age sharpened the separation between the fortified Western citadel and the militarised periphery. In the global South, war is a reality for many, and its toll is most brutally felt by women—those raped, enslaved, executed by jihadists and warlords. Patriarchal terror that feels like time travel to the Dark Ages thrives under structures propped up by the liberal West.

That terror arrives at the beaches of Fortress Europe. Tens of thousands of immigrants die every year attempting to reach safety, mostly at sea. Over 10,000 people died in transit to Spain in 2024 alone. The real number is likely far higher, since undocumented movement is difficult to trace. In 2023, the Greek Coast Guard allowed more than 600 people drown in a single shipwreck—a direct result of the informal pushback policy. Deadly incidents as a result brutal push-back operations are reported every year. Frontex—Europe’s ICE—has become the EU’s most heavily funded agency, with its own ships, aircraft, drones, and weapons. Its 10,000-strong Standing Corps is the first and only pan-European armed force, operating with a budget that rivals those of small countries.

But border violence is only one face of the system’s breakdown. Behind it lies a deeper contradiction: capitalism has always emerged from a largely peasant and rural society. The agrarian question remains structurally unresolved: how can capital dismantle, discipline, or absorb peasant production while preventing rural populations rendered surplus from becoming a source of instability? What happens to land, labour, food systems, and social relations when profit demands endless expansion in a world of finite resources?

As ecosystems collapse and agriculture fails, more and more people are forced into motion—some fleeing drought and desertification, others pushed by floods, fires, or rising seas. Climate displacement is here and will become increasingly a major factor in global migration. The uneven impact of eco-collapse mirrors and reinforces the divide between the fortified Western citadel and the militarised, expendable periphery. It is overwhelmingly the poorest who are forced to move, while the wealthiest retreat behind borders, flood walls, and drone-enforced no-go zones.

In a way, rivers of people returning to the source close an infinite loop, further sharpening the divide between resurgent nationalism and emancipatory politics. And there is no ‘new world’ left to colonise with Europe’s so-called ‘dangerous classes’—its surplus poor, displaced, and radicalised. Increasingly, capitalism’s only remaining ‘solution’ appears to be mass death. The systematic slaughtering of migrants on Europe’s shores is not a malfunction but a structural expression of a dead end. 

The farmers in Europe have felt that dead end too, that they are among those slated for sacrifice. Greece, among other countries like France, Spain, Portugal and Belgium, saw one of the largest agricultural uprisings in years as farmers face soaring fuel costs, livestock disease, and decades of rural neglect. Their demands go beyond subsidies, asking for the reversal of the whole neoliberal EU agricultural design. The repression has been severe and has been met with widespread solidarity from workers, students, anarchists, and local communities. The agricultural sector is another frontline in the wider collapse of extractive economies under the state/capitalist-created climate stress.

Genocides are becoming a permanent tendency in a system that, having exploited the planet to its limits, now turns inward, consuming its own surplus population in a futile attempt to stay alive. Neocolonialism delayed this reckoning by exporting social conflict and looting the periphery to build welfare at the core. This pacified the working classes of the West. But immigration undoes this arrangement, reverses the flow, and brings the contradictions home.

Fascism has returned out of necessity—from the ruling class’s need to retain control when the old arrangement no longer works. Social democracy is entirely unfit for the current moment, stuck in domestic redistribution politics while the global system itself rots. Electoral results across Europe confirm this irrelevance.

What was always a fragile compromise is now in terminal decline. The migrant genocide is not just a consequence—it’s an expression of this slow breakdown. Western foreign policy increasingly centres on keeping immigration contained at the source. Governments can’t resolve the global agrarian question. And so border violence, genocide, and militarisation all flow from the same unresolved root.

The system is now operating at boiling point. Rising mass radicalisation at home has led to escalated repression. Dissent is criminalised, disruptive direct action is proscribed as domestic terrorism, and zero tolerance becomes doctrine.

Militarisation, then, becomes the new organising logic. The Cold War’s ideological veneer has melted. What remains is open competition, brute force, and intensified suppression of disagreement. The logic that obliterates Gaza and threatens the Kurds in Rojava, is the same logic that drowns migrants in the Mediterranean, assassinates them and their supporters in the US, demonises migrants in Britain, criminalises dissent, and elevates white supremacist narratives.

What can we do?

All state actors—despite tactical differences—ultimately reinforce the same oppressive capitalist modernity. They align in their efforts to crush any alternatives. Our task, as the libertarian anti-authoritarian communist tendency, is to expose this machinery and stand with those at the front lines of resistance—from London to Minneapolis, from Iran to Sri Lanka, from Gaza to Peru, and beyond.

The US may soon lose its role as the lead architect of the world system—and it will not fall quietly. For us, this may also be an opportunity. Our role is to articulate and express a libertarian communist perspective: the destruction of the state and the creation of horizontal cooperation among communities from below. Taking action means embracing a diversity of tactics, supporting those targeted by state surveillance and carceral violence, and building bonds of trust with communities under attack. We must carve out spaces of refusal where strategy can be shared and disagreement doesn’t splinter solidarity. We need local defence and mutual aid structures rooted in everyday life, rather than reactive pursuits of far-right narratives and media spectacle.

Some tendencies on the left continue to back authoritarian regimes simply because they oppose the West. But true anti-imperialism isn’t about choosing sides in a geopolitical chess match, but supporting the poor, the colonised, the non-binary, the femmes, the non-whites, the children, the underdogs that suffer under any regime. We need to keep grounding our efforts in the lives and resistance of the displaced, the exploited, and the exiled. To build trust in our communities, we must come as allies and co-conspirators against the enemies at the top. And we need to rethink the ideological habits that isolate us and make us appear like a lifestyle cult rather than a political force.

There is a persistent tendency within both liberal and radical activism to treat issues like Palestine or climate collapse as isolated causes, each with their own branding, tactics, and acceptable narratives. In Palestine solidarity spaces, mass marches are welcomed—rightly—but dissenting tactics are often policed. Protesters who reject pacified, choreographed action get framed as threats to “unity,” exposing a vanguardist obsession with respectability and non-violence. Meanwhile, in environmental campaigns, urban symbolic action that leads to arrests—with minimal strategic impact—has popularised a model of low-barrier, media-friendly protest. This spectacle has come at a cost: hundreds jailed, public support thinned, and long-term grassroots organising sidelined. For all the visibility, the material impact on emissions, extraction, or capital flows remains negligible in the face of accelerating ecocide.

Palestine Action was proscribed because its targeted, disruptive tactics—like shutting down weapons factories—began to seriously impact arms production. Similarly, in Germany, Ende Gelände’s mass blockades of coal infrastructure have repeatedly disrupted mining operations and transport, forcing coal phase-out into the political mainstream. What gets criminalised is often what works.

We will not be passive observers to suffering and collapse. The system is cracking. Our task is not to patch it—but to resist with a variety of tactics—and build the ground beneath us before it falls.

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NOTES

i This section refers to info and arguments from this post: https://mronline.org/2025/06/18/the-migrant-genocide-toward-a-third-world-analysis-of-european-class-struggle/

The post This world is cracking- We need to start building appeared first on Void Network.

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Generation Z was born into the digital age, and the internet has been part of their lives since day one. For this reason, Gen Z is also called the “digital Generation.” Although they have certain widely accepted general characteristics, attempting to describe them through rigid stereotypes can be misleading. Definitions that portray Gen Z solely as a group that only communicates digitally are deceptive. This generation resembles a volcanic mountain ready to erupt, with an unpredictability about when it will spring into action. That observation can be observed in the powerful actions they have already carried out around the world. They have toppled three regimes in Asia and one in both Europe and Africa. In more than 20 other countries, they have compelled governments to reform.

The superficial analyses of Gen Z produced by groups that benefit from the capitalist system—claiming that “Gen Z is individualistic,” “Gen Z is financially oriented,” that they are a “lost generation”—serve no purpose other than attempting to shape and control the new generation, just as has been done with every previous one. We must pay close attention to this. No system wants the incoming generation to disrupt its “tranquil” domination. To prevent this, it creates its own experts and academics who spread theories that discredit Gen Z, while waging special warfare through mindless Tik Tok videos, “realistic” video war games, hard drugs, and other means targeted specifically at young people to blunt their revolutionary edge.

The capitalist definitions of Gen Z reveal cynicism and fears, but many more people greet Gen Z with open arms. Decades of past struggles produced visionaries who welcome Gen Z’s energies and actions.

Characteristics and Shortcomings of Gen Z Actions

Perhaps the most important feature of Gen Z is its ability to organize extremely quickly through digital media and simultaneously to turn organization into action. Globalizing solidarity networks in a very short time, especially in many parts of Asia and the Middle East, they display fearless resistance against entrenched politicians. Unlike previous Gens, Gen Z has no single leader. They organize horizontally. Their leaderless structure makes them appear strategy-less, unplanned, and scattered, which limits their ability to achieve lasting results. Because they lack self-defense planning, they often face extreme violence. When the government changes or when the issues they protest are addressed, their dissent subsides. While a few individuals step up to exert political influence, Gen Z as a group has not generally offered alternative models for qualitative change. In Bangladesh and Nepal, a Nobel Prize winning economist and a former Chief Judge were accepted to lead interim governments. In the next part of this article, I consider the free territory in Rojava, Syria  as a genuine alternative to nation-states based upon capitalist partiarchy.

Gen Z has already proven its fearlessness by challenging governments despite enormous state violence. They have paid a high price: more than 2,000 insurgents have been killed and thousands more wounded. The most important task now standing before us is to create a livable alternative, to move from rebellion to revolution. Whenever insurgencies compel governments to retreat or reform, similar regimes inevitably return. Over time they develop corrupt and  anti-democratic practices. For Gen Z’s struggles to truly transcend capitalist modernity, it is crucial to have an alternative model of life. Anarchism, feminism, national liberation movements, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and previous episodes of class struggles have created a tremendously important history of resistance. Yet Gen Z — one of the major forces of resistance in the new century — needs a 21st Century orientation to make their gains permanent and sustainable. One-dimensional or ideologically “correct” perspectives fragment the movement rather than creating the necessary transformation of existing systems. Facing a multitude of problems, Gen Z needs a holistic system that can shed light on all problems and develop collective solutions.

It is vitally important that Gen Z develops a perspective that takes women’s liberation, class consciousness, grassroots democracy, and an ecological worldview as its foundations. Today, many left and socialist movements lack a strategic approach to women’s liberation. Without resolving patriarchal oppression, no radical solution is possible. Similarly, ecology either has no place or only a very limited place in the ideology of many organizations, even though the pollution and gradual destruction of nature is currently one of the world’s most critical problems.

Against capitalism’s effort to create an individualistic society in which people stay away from social issues and focus on “individual” problems, Gen Z can overcome incessant capitalist assaults by building its own communal culture. To do so requires a radical break from customary everyday life. If Gen Z truly wants a freer society, it must begin with itself. To do that, a radical rupture from the life offered by capitalist modernity is necessary. We must take a stand against the system’s materialist personalities and imposed gluttonous consumer habits, and we must overcome the values that treat women merely as commodities.

Gen Z’s Alternative in Rojava

Since 2012, diverse peoples from northern and eastern Syria have come together in Rojava to build exactly the kind of society we need. Although it began as a Kurdish majority region, today Rojava contains a mix of Muslim Kurds, Syrian Christians, Assyrian Christians, Armenian Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen, Muslim Chechens and even atheists. A total of around three million people live harmoniously within a political framework that strives to ensure everyone’s rights are protected, women have equal representation in all organizations, and ecology is a basic principle. 

An estimated 40 to 50 million Kurds in the world are divided by Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Although they lack a nation-state, Kurds have built a variety of political organizations in the four countries where they live. Creatively navigating an international constellation of forces seeking to control them, Kurds became the main ally of all forces who oppose the Islamic State (ISIS). In a region where despotic dictatorships and religious exclusivity reign, Kurds provide a refreshing alternative of diversity, tolerance and free association.

The Rojava Revolution has emerged as an alternative organizational model to nation-states. The Rojava experience is the concrete embodiment of “Democratic Confederalism” — the democratic, women-liberationist, and ecological paradigm developed by the leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan. This system embodies the paradigm of freedom in an alternative in every aspect of life. Youth, women, all religions, and all languages are free to organize in their own specific ways and live together freely. Although Öcalan and the PKK originally fought for a nation-state, today they have changed both tactics and that goal: they believe in creating liberated democratic confederations similar to the Zapatista caracoles in which people can live freely.

Nation-states are fundamentally militaristic, nationalist, sexist, and religious. Governments have made people dependent on the state in matters of security, administration, and basic needs such as water and food. Democratic confederalism is an alternative created to oppose dependency, and it is an alternative to the nation-state itself. The goal of this system is the liberation of economy, culture, politics, and every dimension of social life—and to develop necessary self-defense to protect hard-won freedoms. The basic organizational forms of confederalism are academies, cooperatives, assemblies, and communes.

Academies play a strategic role in the formation of the educational system. Cooperatives in which members share responsibilities and reap the products of their labor is another fundamental organizational tool to protect society from giant monopolies and establish enterprises owned communally. People have organized themselves into communes and assemblies in every city, every village, and every neighborhood to solve their own problems together in solidarity with one another.

Nation-states monopolize all means of defense in order to control society. That is why self-defense is one of the foundational elements of democratic confederalism. All civilian and political organizations are built from the grassroots. Over more than  a decade of repelling attacks by ISIS and other Islamists as well as Erdogan’s Turkish army and air force,  more than 11,000 Rojava communards have lost their lives. Many more Iraqi Kurds have also been killed by regimes there.

Internationalist revolutionary youth from many countries of the world (England, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, USA, and others) came to Rojava to embrace the Rojava revolution against the threat posed by ISIS. In 2015, the Internationalist Freedom Battalion was formed by Marxist-Leninist, Maoist, and anarchist fighters from outside Syria. Beginning on June 10, 2015, they arrived to support the People’s Protection Units (YPG) against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the Rojava War. Inspired by the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, at least 300 international fighters were also killed in the fighting. Most of the militias fought under the umbrella of the YPG before forming into other groups such as the Internationalist Freedom Battalion. Foreigners also helped to create the Rojava Information Center (https://rojavainformationcenter.org).

So, what is the history of the Rojava Revolution?

The Rojava Revolution

Just when Gen Z was being born, popular uprisings that began in Tunisia at the end of 2010, spontaneously spread across the Middle East, and became known as the “Arab Spring,” which reached Syria on 15 March 2011. The greatest success of the uprising that turned into a bloody civil war in Syria was the Rojava Revolution. Syrian Kurds neither took the side of the Baath regime nor the gangs formed against it. Choosing the Third Way, the Kurds led the “Spring of the Peoples” with the understanding of a “democratic nation.” Ultimately, they formed the basis of today’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

To demonstrate their determination for revolution, Syrian Kurds established the Democratic Society Movement (TEV-DEM) and the People’s Council of Western Kurdistan (MGRK) to form their own political unity in the face of attacks from both the regime and the forces described as “opposition.” Originally launched in northern and eastern Syria, Friday marches were held across the country. Following these protests, basic services previously run by the Assad regime were taken over by popular assemblies. In Afrin, language courses in Kurdish, a banned language in Turkey and Syria, were opened. For the first time, Kurdish children enrolled in primary and preparatory schools and received education in their own language.

The People Seize Power

On July 18, 2012, a meeting in Damascus, the capital of Syria, was attended by the heads of all major regime institutions. A massive explosion occurred, killing most officials. A day later, regime forces were driven out of Kobanê, led by Kurdish youth and with the participation of the people. Following Kobanê, the people seized power in Afrin, Serêkaniyê, Dirbêsiyê, Amûdê, Dêrik, Girkê Legê, Tirbêspiyê, and Til Temîr. On the same day, the Kurds declared a people’s government in Kobanê, which they named a canton, under the slogan “Democratic Syria, Autonomous Rojava.” July 19 became the starting date of the revolution. The declaration in Kobanê was followed by the declaration of new cantons in Afrin and Qamishli. As fighting intensified, people first formed local defense units and engaged in self-defense activities in the streets. Later, the YPG and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), were officially established, although their foundations were laid years earlier during the resistance against the Baath regime’s massacres.

The first step taken in 2012 in the liberated areas, cities, towns, and villages was the establishment of People’s Houses. Through meetings and training sessions, people fully grasped autonomous administration. Security emerged as a fundamental concern. On this basis, people began to establish a self-defense system after the first steps of forming small defense groups. Another important task was to improve relations between the region’s divided communities while also taking the first steps to strengthen women’s power and to provide services to all in need.

As People’s Houses stimulated grassroots actions, the shape of autonomous administration changed. People’s Houses evolved into broader communes. Thousands of communes were established in villages and neighborhoods. Under the umbrella of these communes, education, defense, health, economy, and social services were provided. Members received training to play active roles, and separate women’s and youth communes were also created. Communes soon transformed into broader organizational structures organized as assemblies. City, village, and neighborhood assemblies were formed, consisting of representatives from communes, political parties, and municipal service institutions. Neighborhood assemblies were merged into city assemblies, and similar steps were taken at district and town levels. In December 2013, the first conference of city, district, and town assemblies was held, and a co-chair system was adopted for assemblies and communes, according to which every assembly, commune, and institution would have one female and one male co-chair. This dealt a major blow to the male-dominated mindset that had ignored women for years. Young people have continually played a major role in expanding democracy in Rojava.

Joint struggles were waged to unite ethnic and religious groups in the region, and significant progress was made fighting the provocations of Nusra (an affiliate of Al-Qaeda). The ISIS attack on Kobanê in 2014 was defeated through the unity of all peoples, beliefs, and different ethnicities in Northern and Eastern Syria. Years of fighting galvanized military units and command structures. The creation of  joint administrations to establish a free and equal lives further strengthened the military forces under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). In Rojava, one observer noted “a novel synthesis, a militant vertical organization empowers a communal, horizontal politics.”[1]

After this revolutionary advance, education in peoples’ mother tongues was intensified. Approximately 100 schools were opened in the region, and approximately 1,000 teachers were trained. Significant research on regional culture was initiated. Cultural and artistic centers with music groups, folklore, theater, and children’s groups were established. Committees were established to meet the needs of the people and address social, legal, and economic issues. A “justice committee” was established as an alternative to the Syrian legal system. Furthermore, a “social justice department” was created within the Mesopotamian Academy of Social Sciences on April 4, 2013, to improve the legal system.

Women’s Organizations

Female combatants have been centrally important to the defense of Rojava. Active since the beginning of the revolution and organized under the name Yekîtiya Star,[2] they created women’s assemblies and women’s houses. Priority was given to women’s representation in people’s assemblies, and women’s science-education centers and academies were opened in many cities. Women took their places in all administrations under the co-chair system and played active roles in education, family, politics, economy, and public security through women’s institutions.

Due to embargoes imposed on the region, the population facing severe shortages of medicine, flour, fuel, and other daily needs. To organize aid coming from abroad, the Kurdish Red Crescent (Heyvâ Sor) was established to break the embargo, build a non-capitalist system, and solve daily problems. In 2013, the Economic Development Institution for North and East Syria was founded. Aiming to develop an economy based on the people, this institution gave priority to cooperatives, starting in Kobanê and Dêrik.

At the end of 2013, the autonomous administration system recognized Kurdish, Arabic, and Assyrian as official languages. Other linguistic constituencies were granted the right to learn their own languages. Women’s representation in institutions was set at a minimum of 40%, and the participation of all regional components built on three pillars: Legislative Assembly, Executive Council, and High Court. All this multi-ethnic diversity has provided challenges that demand compromises, such as reversing a ban on polygamy in Arab-majority regions. In the fight for Kobanê, the SDF agreed to accept the offer of US air cover.

Youth’s Ownership of the Rojava Revolution

The second Middle East Youth Conference was held in Kobanê on February 20, 2019. Organized under the slogan “Toward a colorful and democratic Middle East under the leadership of youth,” the conference hosted more than 300 delegates from the four parts of Kurdistan, as well as Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Libya, Armenia, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, Yemen, North Africa, and Sudan. The economic, political, and social crises in the region were discussed within the framework of capitalist modernity. In this context, solutions to the deadlock facing the Middle East were debated from fresh, youthful perspectives. At the end of the conference, steps were taken toward establishing a coordination council among youth organizations and developing joint political actions.

Led especially by Generation Z, young people organized the First World Youth Conference in Paris, France, between November 3–5, 2023. The conference brought together 400 delegates representing 95 youth organizations from 49 countries worldwide. Alongside participants from many European countries, young people from the Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan, Kenya, Mali, the United States, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador met with youth from the four parts of Kurdistan. The discussions and exchanges during the conference were strongly endorsed the demand for freedom of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. The problems faced by revolutionary youth around the world were central to the agenda, emphasizing the importance of struggling together against the fragmentation created by the system. During the conference, solidarity was declared with all oppressed peoples, particularly the Palestinian people and the Kurdistan freedom movement. It was also stated that a common struggle would be carried out to protect the gains of peoples in Rojava and in many parts of the world.

Within the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, young people work in a distinctively autonomous manner. There is no imposition or top-down direction on youth councils or youth institutions in any field. Youth organizations determine their own forms of organization and modes of action. Education, organizational activities, as well as cultural and sports programs for young people are coordinated directly by youth councils themselves. As the pioneering and driving force of the revolution, youth take an active role in post-war reconstruction efforts, organize aid campaigns for those affected by war, and carry out support and play activities for children. Within the framework of women’s liberation, young people organize activities for November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, as well as marches, panels, and street actions on March 8, International Women’s Day. The struggle against patriarchal mentality stands at the center of youth work.

In the field of culture and arts, young people play an important role in preserving the cultures of peoples by organizing music and theater festivals that include all communities and cultures, as well as photography, cinema, and painting workshops. Youth also carry out significant activities on ecology by organizing meetings, actions, and events such as tree-planting campaigns and repairing damage caused to nature by war. Through the sports tournaments they organize, youth contribute to social solidarity and healthy living. In addition, by holding commemorative events on the anniversaries of massacres and attacks to honor those who lost their lives, youth take the lead in keeping social memory alive.

Ecology in Rojava 

Ecological work in Rojava faced significant obstacles in the implementation of many projects due to attacks from various jihadist groups and Turkey. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made in the ecological field. The first steps towards ecological production were taken by the village communes that began to form in 2012. In 2014, cooperatives were established to secure the food supply, and the first decisions were made to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The Ecology Committee was officially established in 2015, and local programs began to be developed. In 2016, a large-scale campaign aimed at planting hundreds of thousands of trees was launched. Starting in 2017, solar panel projects were developed to address power outages. Solar energy systems began to be installed at homes and cooperatives. In 2018, Jinwar, a women-run ecological village, was officially opened. This village is based on organic farming, natural building materials, solar energy, and collective living. In 2019, initiatives were launched to preserve local seeds and develop agricultural practices that reduce chemical use. Small-scale organic farming trials have begun. In 2020, campaigns against environmental pollution and waste management programs were launched. Local campaigns to reduce plastic use were also launched. The Keziyên Kesk (Green Braids) Initiative was established in September 2020 to combat the ongoing environmental destruction in North and East Syria and increase soil productivity. Its work aims to help the people of North and East Syria become more self-sufficient in agriculture, thereby strengthening their resilience to embargoes. In collaboration with the Ministry of Education in North and East Syria, it has ensured that every school has a teacher teaching social ecology. As part of the “Lungs of the Village” project, millions of saplings were planted, and teams visited villages to explain the ecological destruction and how it can be reversed. In 2021, following the region’s water crisis and the decline in the Euphrates River’s flow, an emergency ecological plan was developed. Turkey regularly disrupts the flow of the Euphrates River, posing a serious threat to the region. This impacts not only agricultural activities but also access to clean drinking water. In response, water conservation campaigns were conducted, alternative irrigation methods (drip irrigation and the use of recycled water) were promoted, and local water communes were established. Solar-powered irrigation systems were expanded, and organic agricultural production increased.

Approximately 500,000 hectares of land previously under the control of the Assad regime have been consolidated into public land. According to a report by the Public Land Administration dated December 20, 2023, approximately 80% of this land has been allocated to agricultural cooperatives, women’s institutions, families, forests/afforestation, parks, associations, and camps for internally displaced persons. Fifty per cent of the population’s vegetable needs are now met locally. Products are delivered directly to the public at fair prices through cooperatives. More than 140,000 fruit trees have been planted to increase fruit production. Production, processing, and distribution continue through cooperatives.

Rojava is now nearly self-sufficient olive oil production, along with wheat, flour, bulgur, pasta, and lentil processing facilities. The Economic and Agricultural Councils continue to work on sugar, sunflower, soybean, and cotton processing and textile production facilities. Significant progress has been made in dairy production through agricultural cooperatives; dairy processing facilities now produce cheese, yogurt, and butter. While Rojava fully meets its red meat needs, it has not yet achieved self-sufficiency in white meat. Ecological production principles continue to be implemented to secure the food supply for the people of North and East Syria.

Recognition of the Revolution

No UN member state has officially recognized Northern and Eastern Syria. However, in October 2021, the Catalan Parliament voted to officially recognize Northern and Eastern Syria. Catalonia thereby made history as the first parliament to recognize the Rojava Revolution. With this decision, Catalan MPs declared their friendship with the Kurdish people and their opposition to Turkey’s occupation policies.

While the Rojava Revolution inspires worldwide opponents of ethnocentrism, religious fundamentalism and global capitalism, some local, regional, and global powers are also hostile to the outbreak of freedom, particularly the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey began attacking the free life of people whom they labelled “terrorists” both directly and through paramilitary proxies. With international support, Turkey continues its attacks unabated to this day. In recent years, it has been carrying out these attacks using armed drones.

Despite years of attacks by Turkey, its affiliated paramilitary forces, and ISIS, a significant ecological revolution led by Gen Z has been achieved in North and East Syria. In the face of ongoing threats and embargoes, the revolution is progressing step by step through communes. With its pillars of democracy, women, and ecology, the Rojava Revolution stands before us as an alternative that Gen Z can create elsewhere in the pursuit of freedom.

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Murat Bakur is a journalist and writer from Northern Kurdistan. His first novel, “Open Blue Freedom,” won second prize in the 5th Deniz Fırat Story and Photography Competition. Several of his short stories have been published by various news agencies. He continues his journalistic work at Medya Haber TV.

[1] Matt Broomfield, Hope Without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment (AK Press, 2025).

[2] Formed from the combination of the words “Star” (goddess) and “Yekîtiya” (unity), the name means “Union of All Goddesses” or “Union of Women.”

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No crystal ball could have predicted that three years later, the example they set would lead to the wholesale arson of Nepal’s government buildings, its parliament, and supreme court. Nepal’s Gen Z hurricane-force uprising makes Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (The Struggle) appear tranquil, even moderate, although at the time the Rajapaksa family were so frightened by protesters that both prime minister Mahinda and his brother, president Gotabaya, went into hiding, the former on an isolated naval base, the latter on a naval vessel.

The term ‘economic crisis’ does not do justice to the indignities Sri Lankans suffered in 2022. Daily blackouts, fuel shortages, high unemployment and debilitating inflation–to say nothing of food shortages–plagued the nation at the same time as the elite enjoyed multiple luxury estates, staffed by servants even when their bosses were away for days at a time. Is it any wonder that young people screamed ‘Go Home Rajapaksas!’ and ‘Go Home Gota!’ As the movement built its momentum, their refrain became ‘Victory to the Struggle!’ (Aragalayata Jaya Wewa), showing how a revolt against perceived injustices was transformed into a revolutionary desire for a new reality.

Little did it matter that two decades previously, scarcely half the country had electricity, that schools, jobs, and basic healthcare had been largely unavailable. The growing gap between young people’s expectations in 2022 collided with the deadly misery crafted by elite politicians until an explosion was the only rational solution. Silent candlelight vigils overnight turned into hundreds of people swarming the president’s house on March 31, 2022. What had been a peaceful, spontaneous protest was then attacked by police firing tear gas and water cannons. The next morning, the president released a statement declaring that ‘extremist’ elements were trying to import the ‘Arab Spring’ to Colombo. The government declared a ‘state of emergency’ and mobilized the military and police to defy constitutional protections of free speech and assembly. Pro-Rajapaksa forces attacked young protesters, leading to a chain reaction of retaliations, a spiral of violence that engulfed even the homes and offices of the rich and powerful. Fishers, cricketers, carpenters and contingents of women all joined students in the protests. Even a nightly curfew and brief social media blackout failed to stop the movement.

Occupation of the Galle Face Green provided protesters with a 24/7 base of operations. The government countered with a mobile phone signal jammer, hoping to isolate resistance, but people refused to back down until the president resigned. Similar to Occupy Wall Street camps, the occupation of Galle Face swelled in both services it provided and supporters who rallied to the cause. Celebrities arrived to serenade the beleaguered demonstrators. By the end of the month, more than 1,000 unions staged a one-day support strike. Led by university students, people surrounded parliament and demanded resignation of all members as well as for the Rajapaksa clan to return their stolen money. “This is our country, not your ATM!’ was one of many placards.

On May 9, Mahinda Rajapaksa organized his supporters to massively assault the Galle Face Green. As police watched, more than one hundred people were beaten so badly they required hospitalization. The attackers’ brutality immediately turned the country against ‘state sponsored terrorism.’ That very same day, Mahinda was compelled to resign as prime minister. Riots against Rajapaksa loyalists proliferated. Many of the buses that carried the mob to attack Galle Face were torched. Politicians who supported Rajapaksa’s attack were beaten on the streets, and more than a few of their homes were torched. Insurgents’ violence was well targeted. They burnt to the ground the home of Sanath Nishantha, the man who had led the attack on Galle Face. The Rajapaksa museum was torched, a statue of the brothers’ father was destroyed, and two family homes were destroyed. A family-owned hotel was burnt along with a Lamborghini, a Hummer, a Cadillac and Ferrari parked there. When it was thought that Mahinda was hiding at the Trincomalee naval base, people surrounded it and demanded that he be arrested. To stop the escalating retaliations, president Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered the military to take charge of the streets with ‘shoot on sight’ orders and authorization to detain people for 24-hours.

Two months of ongoing protests and repression culminated on July 9. After protesters began to surround his house, president Gota fled on an Air Force jet to the Maldives, later to Singapore. People swarmed the president’s residence and made it into an open house for days. Security forces enjoyed taking selfies along with thousands of citizens who came to marvel at the luxurious home. The presidential secretariat, the prime minister’s official residence as well as his private home were all occupied. Two weeks of uncertainty ended on July 13 when thousands of soldiers and police stormed Galle Face in a pre-dawn raid to close the camp. The occupied buildings were next.

Although ‘order’ had been restored by the military, protesters won their main demand, removal of the president, who fled along with more than dozen other clan members. By November, lines for gas and fuel all but disappeared, inflation cooled, and citizens enjoyed the satisfaction of having broken the Rajapaksas’ grip on power. Today, the nation continues to struggle with the legacy of Rajapaksa pillaging of state coffers.

No knew it at the time, but by massively confronting its corrupt and power-hungry elite and forcing them from power, Sri Lanka’s heroic populace set an example that would be followed within years. The recent synchronization of revolts in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nepal reveals a phenomenon I named the ‘Eros effect’ to understand the global proliferation of revolutionary movements in 1968. Since then, other instances of simultaneous protests are evident in the global disarmament movement of the early 1980s, the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, the alterglobalization insurgencies from the Zapatistas to Seattle, and most importantly, although less well-known, the chain reaction of Asian uprisings in the Philippines (1986), South Korea (1987), Burma (1988), Tibet, Taiwan, and China (1989), Nepal and Bangladesh (1990) and Thailand (1992).

The example set in 2022 by The Struggle in Sri Lanka prefigured subsequent uprisings in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nepal. They all contained surprisingly similar characteristics. None involved centralized leadership nor involved traditional political parties. All had students at their centers. Each erupted suddenly, without governments’ having a clue about the turmoil ahead. Each targeted leading politicians’ homes and offices. All targeted ostensibly ‘democratic’ regimes that failed to offer any avenue for popular participation other than street protests. Their spontaneous emergence and the success of anti-corruption uprisings have put entrenched elites everywhere on notice. ‘Behave well or you may be next!’

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* George Katsiaficas is the author Asia’s Unknown Uprisings. He is a retired professor from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. His web site is www.eroseffect.com

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