Hello and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying or Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, whichever podcast feed you're listening to this on. I'm your host today in Minarowin and we're here today to talk about our June featured zine, Martyr Culture by Sarah Bloom, which is an essay about martyr culture within the Kurdish Freedom movement, which felt incredibly relevant to Live like the World is Dying, so we're posting it here as well. We have an audio version of the zine as well as an interview with Sarah about the piece and her time with the ypj, but if you'd like to read along then you can go to tangledwilderness.org under our features tab and you can read along there for free. You can also get a physical copy of our monthly featured zine, but unfortunately not this one by signing up for our [email protected] strangersinatangled wilderness our June feature was generously provided by Sarah Bloom, an internationalist who spent several years with the YPJ in Roshava to accompany and contextualize our newest book, Orso Wartime Journals of an Anarchist, which is currently available for pre order as of right now and will be regularly available ship out in early mid July. Orso contains the first person narrative of Lorenzo Orso Orocetti, also known as Heval Tecoshe Piling, now Chehith Tekoshehr or Martyr Tekoscher, an internationalist soldier in Roshava. This journal was published in its original Italian following Orso's death. We're excited to bring you the first English edition which includes additional essays that share the historical and cultural context in which Orso lived, fought and died. We're excited to bring his message to a new audience. The struggle against Daesh for an autonomous liberated region in Roshava is bigger than any one person, but one person's life can offer us a glimpse of a vast project and how one life can fit into it. And Sarah's essay really helps build a vibrant backdrop for the world that Orso gives us a glimpse of. This is part one of this episode as the interview with Sarah ended up being quite long, but tune in in two weeks for the second half of the interview as next week is this month in the Apocalypse on Live like the World is Dying. We won't get to it until the second half of the interview, but the word of the month this month is about those who are mindful. As always, the feature, or I should say as usually, sometimes it's not as usually, the feature is read by the incredible Beeflowers and we're really excited for you to hear it. But before we get to that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network and also another show which I think is really cool that we want you to hear about but isn't on Channel Zero Network.

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Martyr Culture by Sarah Bloom Kurdish friends, upon meeting an internationalist, often ask about our decision to come to their homeland in Rojava, Kurdistan. When they'd ask how I first came into contact with the friends, I felt a bit embarrassed to say that. Honestly, the first friends of the movement I met were those that helped me after I actually arrived in Mesopotamia. I told them I learned about the movement by reading articles on a few different anarchist websites and contacted the friends by email. In fact, I knew so little about the movement that I first emailed YPG People's Protection Units instead of YPJ Women's Protection Units. The friends were often amazed at this and in their generosity considered it some kind of bravery or indication of the depth of my belief in the revolution and the people rather than of naivety or impulsivity. It's a common story among internationalists from the so called USA because the Kurdish Freedom Movement doesn't have a presence here like it does in many parts of Europe where There is a bigger Kurdish diaspora. When I initially went, I planned to stay there for six months or a year. I ended up staying for several years, and for most of that time I was with the Autonomous Women's Military Defense Forces YPJ. I decided to go in late 2018, and at that time it was hard to find much information about what to expect. Not much has changed in that regard. My dad told me to bring extra socks and that before going I must read Che Guevara's on Guerilla Warfare. Other than that, most of the practical information about what to bring I received from an internationalist fighter whom I reached through an online message board. He said to bring all sorts of supplies, sent a packing list, and told me to bring a bunch of US dollars. He emphasized that I should bring water for border crossing across the mountains, which he said would be long and difficult, but to not share my water because the Kurdish comrades would pass it down a line until there was none left, and then I wouldn't have water. The YPJ friend I was corresponding with told me I didn't need much and and if it came to be that I needed something when I got there or along the way, comrades would sort it out then. This seemed to me rather casual at the time. I felt frustrated at the vagueness. Packing and repacking my bag, researching the weather conditions, trying to prepare as much as possible for what could be the rest of my short little life. I wanted all the information I could find, and there wasn't much. I didn't realize then that I was encountering the first contrast of revolutionary and capitalist culture. Different modes of being. The internationalist from the message board with his best intentions, shown me one way to go about struggle, while the YPJ comrade showed me another way of joining the revolution. Preparing myself as an individual by making sure I had all the right specific things on the one hand, and on the other, preparing myself to take on the same circumstances as whoever I end up with and to sort all my needs within the context of our collective needs. As an internationalist from the west, the tension between these tendencies has long lived in me. I find that it still does. But I have also found that being out of water together always seems to be better than having water while the person next to me doesn't. Before I left, I tried many times to write letters to my family, close friends and comrades, which I would leave in the hands of a trusted friend so that in the event of my death they could be sent. I was determined to leave loved ones with some Words of strength. I didn't want to die, but since it was a distinct possibility, it was important to ensure that my death would not be a weight or darkness in their lives. I had made this decision for myself, but I realized as time went on that I'd also made a decision for many other people. My mother became the mother of a YPJ fighter defending the Women's revolution. My close friends in the US became personally involved in the defense of the liberated territories, as their loved one would be there. Telling my family I was leaving was one of the hardest things I've done in my life until that point. But writing those letters proved to be much more difficult. I found that I couldn't finish them. The hours I spent writing and rewriting them, however, were the first I'd ever spent thinking so much about my own death and its meaning. It's easier to think of dying than it is to think about the meaning of my own death for the people left behind. I told myself I'd finished the letters during my basic training. I arrived first in southern Kurdistan. After a short while, I ended up with a couple of other internationalists in a refugee camp, where we stayed as we waited for the opportunity to cross the border into Rojava. We spoke not one word of Kurdish and only very few words in Arabic, which, as it turned out, were all completely useless in the area we were staying. We couldn't read any signs or documents or understand the most basic hand gestures, which were, to my surprise, completely different from the ones of my culture. Nobody mentioned that on any message boards. I never imagined it could be so difficult to establish a shared understanding of yes and no. I felt like an incompetent toddler. Incompetent, I specify, because around me were quite often dozens of Kurdish toddlers in each of a higher degree of competence within the context of Kurdish life. This is all to say that when encountering the world around me in those first weeks as I waited in Basur, southern Kurdistan, to cross into the border into Rojava, western Kurdistan, there was often no way anything could be explained to me with language and also often not with a gesture. Even given the downright maternal levels of patience of our Kurdish hosts, I was very fortunate to be staying with a family deeply connected to values both Kurdish and revolutionary, who regularly did work for the movement. It wasn't always clear to me who was related by blood and who by life and struggle. A couple of days after I arrived in the camp, they took me to its center. We passed many earth brick homes and in some of them. Hands of all sizes had left their imprints behind in the dried earth and concrete covering the sides as they joined in the building process. Everything in the camp looked like it had been made by the people there, and indeed it had been. Houses were built close together, and winding paths took us through what felt like something between a village and a city. We reached a large concrete floored pavilion, big enough for a couple hundred people at least, with a building at one side. The dull gray of the dirt roads, pattern paths and concrete all around us was interrupted by the tiny red, yellow, and green flags in the bunting which lined the pavilion, all a bit sun faded and interspersed with what must have been hundreds of little yellow flags with the face of Abdullah Okalan, known in the movement as Reber Appo, leader of the Kurdish Freedom Movement and a champion of democratic Confederalism. As I write this, he is held on a Turkish prison island where he is kept in isolation and imprisoned for more than two decades. I wasn't sure where we were going or why, but after a few days I'd become accustomed to simply going along with things. We walked up the staircase into a dark room. As I entered, the light from the doorway caught dimly in a hundred places all around us, corners, frames, glass and gold along the walls. In the darkness the father of the family went off as I walked closer to white plaster walls, and then, as the generator outside began to grow, flickered on, and all around me were faces in gold frame photographs with bright red backgrounds. Some of the frames were clearly aged and others looked new. The faces were mainly young, although some were old men and women, mostly in uniforms. I'd never seen so many eyes sparkling with the warmth and kindness that would become familiar to me in Kurdistan. It's a spark, or perhaps more of an ember that I now understand is most common among revolutionaries. Although I have seen something like it in the eyes of mothers and sometimes in young children. In revolutionaries it is born of the capacity to practice love freely and openly that one acquires upon giving up a life lived for personal gain and taking up the life lived for the love of the people. Some of the faces were joyful and fresh, others weathered and with a fierceness that was at once both full of fire for the enemy and totally unthreatening for the rest of us. There was so much the look of hope all around. They were the faces of people you could trust with anything, of friends. Language wasn't required to transmit, the understanding that they were all dead now and also wildly alive. After some weeks with the aid of a very faulty translation app and a dictionary with almost as many errors as accuracies. We, the internationalists and the Kurdish family hosting us, reached a level of communication that allowed us, however slowly, to discuss matters together. One friend of the family was a wounded fighter. He was passionate and kind, often deep in thought, and took seriously the task of showing us comradeship and helping us understand the world around us. One day we were discussing religion and asked him if he was Muslim. He said fire was God and told us a bit about the principles of the Zoroaster before telling us of all the martyrs who had self immolated for Kurdistan, naming dozens. At first I couldn't believe it. Surely with so many people burning themselves alive, we would have heard about it. Certainly it would be possible to find some news articles online in English, but when I looked there were none, and the only ones he could find were in Kurdish, Turkish or Arabic. Eleftaria, he said, was a Greek woman, an internationalist like us. She burned herself for the freedom of the Kurdish people who faced occupation in all four parts of their homeland, as well as generations of torture and genocide. From then on, he said, hers would be my name. I felt it at that moment as a weight, though not at all in any unwelcome sense. I began to think of the meaning of carrying the name of a revolutionary martyr, which is something I've never finished thinking about. What does it mean to give it my own personal name? What happens when it is my task to carry on hers? The name of a woman who gave everything? Who am I to go by her name? What is needed of me, and what am I capable of? Shortly after this, it was our time to cross and we said our goodbyes to the friends who had taken such good care of us. It was amazing to me that a family would take us in like that as their own, even with all the risks involved. We'd been complete strangers. Later, when I discussed this with my commander, she pointed out that they would have done the same for any friends of the movement as they have many times before, and will again. The YPJ International Academy where I arrived was named after Saheed Avasin Tikhosin Gunesh martyr Ivana Hoffman, the first internationalist woman martyr of the Rojava revolution who fell in the defense of Taltmer while living there. I walked past her smiling, warm portrait and that of Saheed Helene Kireh Shoks martyr Anna Campbell. Dozens of times every day I was surrounded by rocks laid down by the hands of Saheed Helene who helped to build the academy before she was martyred in the defence of Ephrin. And while I was there, I laid down more rocks with a comrade who is now Ciheed Martyred who herself. Often, while visiting friends in other parts of ypj, I would be asked by Kurdish comrades if I'd known Saheed Helen since she was an internationalist. I'd never met her, but for years I heard stories of her. How she spoke such good Kurdish and was always reading and writing, how she joined the life and what she brought to it. I stayed in places she'd been and found that everywhere she went she'd laid down a foundation for internationalist women to be understood and taken seriously as militants, even if we spoke Kurdish with funny accents. She and other militants like Avacyn Legerine, Alina Sanchez and Ronaki Andrea Wolff had set the definition of an internationalist woman and left us a torch to carry. I met many Kurdish and Arabic comrades who had never met an internationalist, but none who had never heard of internationalist militants among their ranks. Within the month of my arrival, dozens of comrades fell martyr, mostly Kurdish and Arabic members of YPG and ypj, and one internationalist, Tekoshar Orso Pilling, who fell martyr in Baghuz alongside an Arab YPG fighter named Ahmed Shami Habib. I never met either of them. But Saheed Takosher's martyr ceremony was the first I went to, and his last letter was the first such letter I read. It stayed with me. It seemed rather casual for the occasion of his death, but I found myself thinking of him every time it rained, whether I was watching the droplets on the window or feeling them run down my cheeks on the days when I felt smallest, felt the most, unable to do anything in the face of the massive imperialist machine and its fascist Turkish state. I thought of all the little droplets of water that constitute the rain. Together with the comrades, they have been enough to sustain the life that can be sustained in these conditions, even as the region is devastated by the water war tactics of the Turkish state, which has cut the water from flowing into the liberated parts of Rojava. We got in a van headed to the ceremony and drove down streets lined with the photographs of martyrs, where in the west there would be billboards advertising things nobody needs. I didn't expect it would take us so long to get there, since it wasn't very far. But when we got close, lining the streets in every direction were cars, trucks, vans, military and civilian parked to attend. Swarms of people moved among those cars, a river flowing in all the same direction, to see Orso off across the border so he could return to his homeland. Most were local, but many came from other parts of Rojava. We got out and followed the currents of the crowd, and I heard an indescribable human sound, dreadfully familiar. As we turned a corner, what I saw broke open. Some part of me I'm not sure now, looking back years later, how many mothers I actually saw then. But in my memory they were there in hundreds, crying out, wailing at the sacrifice of Tecusher, as though he was their own son. They had never met him and didn't need to. He was their son, just as he was my comrade, in the same as every person behind every photograph along our way. After a while, comrades with faces covered by their keffiyehs to hide their identities from cameras, carried on their shoulders the casket that held the body of Zahid to kosher. Back at the academy, our basic training began with ideology. Every aspect of revolutionary ideology is connected in some way or another to the martyrs. Revolutionary culture itself is derived in large part from the culture of the martyrs. The martyrs are everywhere, and with them their meaning, if one is willing to look. Examples are everywhere in the life. But let's take something as basic as the food we ate each day. We didn't get it by going to a grocery store. It was brought to us by a comrade sent by the logistics center of the Revolution itself, named after a martyr. Like all logistics centers, often it would be named after a martyr who put forth a lot of effort to build the material basis for the Revolution and its fighting forces. It is easy for those raised in part by Hollywood to imagine the rugged soldier with a gun in his hand, gloriously fighting in a visually impressive scene, and to forget or simply never learn of the role of logistics, their procurement and distribution in war as a determining factor of victory or defeat. It's also easy, when a bit sleep deprived from guard duty and busy with the many tasks at hand, to forget, while eating lunch, that every lentil, grain of rice, bottle of olive oil was brought in front of you not by the familiar forces that move materials in a capitalist society, but by the hands and work of comrades and by families who support the Revolution. In my experience, it is harder to forget after learning that comrades have sacrificed their lives to get supplies of food, water and bullets to the people who need them. In every logistics center I ever visited, there hung somewhere a photograph taken many years ago of a comrade now martyred, stitching back together a Shoe by hand. Underneath it is written, thus we have reached this day. When I first arrived, I shared a rifle for a month or two with other comrades. Our commander said we'd make do like this until more rifles could arrive, and told us that it was normal for comrades to share weapons in the early days of the armed struggle, when they were acquired from the hands of the enemy at great sacrifice. Everything we have, she said, is a value given to us by the sacrifices of the cid, and so it is thus our duty to protect it as best we can. This deceptively simple statement represented an entirely different relationship to material objects than any I'd encountered in my life until then. Those of us at the academy then came mostly from anarchist backgrounds, and while we tended to fancy ourselves as non materialistic and opposed to consumerism, it became clear that in practice our relationship to objects and possessions had more to do with the capitalist culture we came from than we'd thought. More experienced comrades had a way of making things last, while newer comrades would often break things and then lament that we should simply ask for a replacement for this broken broom or that pot without handles. Why not? After all, they would send us one. We didn't understand at first the duality of responsibility that underpins the relationships within the revolution. When it comes to distributing provisions, there is the responsibility of comrades in logistics to provide for the needs of the comrades to the best of their ability. It's our responsibility to go to whatever lengths are necessary to meet the needs of our comrades, as comrades have given their very lives to just that. When a comrade says they need something, we don't ask if they really need it, because there is also the responsibility of comrades to ask of themselves, what is it we really need and what can we make do without? We expect both of these tendencies of ourselves take on this responsibility and share our practice around the assumption that other comrades are also expecting these things of themselves. This is part of why the cultivation of the militant personality among comrades is so important, because so much of how we live depends on people being or becoming humble, thoughtful, responsible, communal, strong willed and self sacrificing. As it happens, surviving the conditions of struggle in itself requires and cultivates in many people some or all of these qualities. It is a fact of all protracted armed struggle that comrades are wounded but often survive. It is impressively common in Kurdistan for those comrades who are wounded, having lost an eye or their leg or a hand, to nonetheless have such a will, such a determination coming from their love of their people and connection to the martyrs that they continue in the struggle often with the same or a higher capacity, and they had before they were wounded. Reber Appo calls comrades who are wounded in this way living CID. Most of my commanders over the years were comrades who were very seriously wounded and whose injuries left them with heavy daily consequences. From these comrades I learned the most about militancy in the West. We'd receive a lot of messages about the body. Capitalist culture values what is productive and fungible. Patriarchy denigrates that which is considered weak and academic. Liberal, postmodernist forms of feminism have reacted to this at times by reclaiming the power of vulnerability. Extreme forms of these ideas are displayed among liberal activists in the glorification of victimhood and powerlessness. Revolutionary culture is what emerges when we overcome simple reaction to the enemy in order to formulate our values not on their terms, but on ours. And so what is valued is not simply strength or weakness, but will. Will is the life force of the people and our revolutionary movements. Wounded comrades taught me an entirely different approach to discipline that had nothing at all to do with patriarchy or capitalism. At first I saw it as macho, when comrades refused to be sick or insisted on doing difficult things themselves, that able bodied comrades like myself could more easily do for them. I thought it was questionable when comrades would say that overcoming limitations was a matter of strengthening one's psychology and militancy, and cringed at the idea of how my friends in the west would see these statements. I wasn't sure what to think of this culture in which it was the norm to expect more of ourselves than I was used to. But then, as I lived with wounded comrades, I noticed that it comfortably was expected that we would all work together and do what's needed, while each challenging our own limitations, wounded or not. And that ended up working well for all of us, wounded and not. There is an ocean of distance between individualism and individuality. And the latter, in the extraordinarily practiced communal culture of revolutionary Kurdistan, is often seamlessly and beautifully interconnected with the collective. There is again the dual responsibility among committed militants, of each comrade taking care to anticipate what others need, and each comrade in turn to struggle against their own limitations, to become the fullest expression of who they can be, of their essence. I once remarked that the martyrdom of Cid Helene was a tragedy, and a comrade who lived a long time with her and loved her very much told me this was an insulting thing to say. She said it was right to point to the atrocities committed by the Turkish state, but said that it Was Saheed Helene's dream to go and fight, to defend Efrin. And that fighting there was an expression of her foremost ambition. Saheed Helen knew that she might fall martyr in the struggle, but she said she was ready to give her life if necessary. She, a person who loved living very much, gave her life because she had something worth fighting for. Criticism and self criticism is another practice enriched by the cultural knowledge imparted by the collective experience of the martyrs. I will share a few words that have slowly but persistently changed what I am able to accept from myself, which I have heard now in one form or another, more times than I can count. We do not measure ourselves by the standards and conduct of the people around us. We do not measure ourselves by what is considered normal. There is nothing normal among us. We measure ourselves by the standards set for us by the sacrifices of our martyrs. This doesn't mean that we do everything as any martyr did. I shouldn't take up smoking simply because Tekoshar did. It's about what we expect of ourselves as people who remain on the path set by the martyrs and their sacrifice. It means that Tecoscher died defending this land, its people and the revolution they built to liberate themselves. And we owe it to him to liberate it from occupation so that his sacrifice does not go to waste. It's no small ambition to overthrow the capitalist imperialist system. It's a serious task. And while a lot of groundwork has been laid, the struggle has been hard fought. And the path until this point has been lined with countless sacrifices, both known and unknowable. What is clear is that while this struggle is built on the foundations of the struggles put forth over thousands of years, what is required of us if we are to reach our aim is struggle at a level never before seen on this earth. We must become people ready to meet the task at hand. It is on this basis that we criticize ourselves and our comrades. The friends point out that we in fact only criticize our comrades and never our enemy. Another way of saying this is that we let our comrades know where their weak points are, so they cannot be exploited. While our approach to the weaknesses of the enemy is to identify and exploit them in order to defeat them. Why would we criticize except with the intention to strengthen? There are some aspects of the culture surrounding martyrs that seem strange to me at first. For example, in the defense forces we take care not to act too casual in front of martyr portraits. By crossing one's legs, laying down, taking a nap or sleeping etc. In the burial place of martyrs there is no smoking or chewing gum, although notably it is perfectly alright to laugh or sing and for children to run around freely. Comrades sometimes cultivate gardens for the martyrs. When transporting the portrait of the martyr, I have seen comrades refuse to put it in the trunk, rather they place it in its own seat. This seemed to me religious almost. It may be that I first perceived it this way because I grew up surrounded by capitalist culture where nothing is allowed to be sacred except within the context of religious practice. Now I will share something I and many others have come to understand the hard way. I encountered many norms about how we speak and act towards each other that for several years I did not understand. Some specific words that we don't say to each other. Some ways we don't treat a comrade, even as they behave badly or even if we don't really like them. Many things we don't do as well as some things that we do. All this felt to me a bit dogmatic at times. It turns out that many aspects of revolutionary culture in Kurdistan, particularly those concerned with approach towards other comrades, are the result of decades of experience of thousands of dedicated people facing the loss of thousands of other dedicated people. Sometimes the person lost is our most beloved comrade, and sometimes she is a comrade who tended to get on one's nerves. Militants are people, and it happens often that like all people, they struggle with some topic or another within themselves throughout their lives. And when living communally, as we do in the struggle, all those personal issues become a part of the lives of all of one's comrades. People make mistakes, and revolutionaries are people who take enormous responsibility and thus can and do make mistakes of equal proportion. The Turkish state doesn't turn around and go home from its genocidal fascist campaign simply because a comrade makes a big mistake. And so neither do our comrades. They make huge mistakes and still they must continue together with everyone else. Sometimes their mistake was a genuine accident and other times it is the result of a serious personal shortcoming. However frustrated we become with each other, it's important within the context of the struggle, and particularly within the context of war, to remember that any of the words we exchange with a comrade at any moment can be our last. We are facing an enemy that is trying to kill as many of us as possible. It's an important fact to remain grounded in and tends to bring into focus the actual proportions of our disagreements and differences. I've been fortunate to experience the highest ideals of comradeship among Kurdish friends. And so I can tell you Honestly, it's no myth, but it seems to me that like all of the achievements of revolutionary struggles, this immense depth of comradeship present in many places within the Kurdish Freedom movement, this ultimate expression of communal love was uncovered at great sacrifice. This contrast of sacrifice and achievement, insofar as one is willing to come into contact with it, reveals the essence of struggle and delivers a weight of meaning to all aspects of life. There is a cutting harshness in the reality of armed struggle, one that can't be softened. At some point. People you love die. One day she is there bringing you a tea made in that way she knows you like handling her sidearm with way less care than you would prefer, telling you something you'd rather not hear, discussing the book you're reading together. And then the next day, she isn't here in the world anymore and never will be again, except in the ways you and others bring her here. By remembering her, by making and fulfilling your promise to her in the life you are still living. That love you have doesn't disappear. A comrade once told me that martyr culture is the expression of that love which remains when it no longer has anywhere else to go. Sometimes these comrades are martyred by the enemy in an airstrike as they drive from one place to another. Sometimes they are martyred as they take their chances trying to do as much damage to the enemy as possible while living to fight another day. Sometimes they are martyred taking an action they know they will not survive because they have evaluated that what they will accomplish is worth their life. The friends say that a militant must know when to live and when to die. What they mean is that a militant doesn't give their life in an empty way and is not a person who seeks death. Saheed Zelan, a woman who didn't meet the preconceptions of the time of what a fighter was supposed to be like, was the first comrade of the PKK to make a self sacrifice action. She pioneered this kind of action because she saw it as a supremely effective way for her to destroy many enemy soldiers. Sahid Baratan, cornered on a mountain, shot all her remaining bullets and then destroyed her rifle before she retreated to the peak where she jumped off so as not to fall into enemy hands. Saheed Mazloum Dogan made a self sacrificing action in the prison resistance while under the most extreme conditions, as a statement against betrayal, when Turkish prison guards were going to every imaginable length using unending torture to force the imprisoned revolutionaries to turn against their own Comrades, the friends say Saheed Mazlum loved life so much he was willing to die for it. Because he was willing to die for it, to give up the only thing that was his in order to become a symbol of the heart of the struggle, the love of life and its fullest, freest expression. Other comrades were able to draw strength from him and continue the prison resistance through its darkest hour, as comrades do still today. This is what it's meant by one of the most prominent slogans of the martyrs don't die. Martyrs are immortal. Life inside the capitalist system is designed to isolate us, to make us feel and be alone, because that is when we are weakest. But in every moment, whatever the state of affairs, whatever lies behind us, and whatever difficult obstacles remain ahead of us, we are never alone. Across the world, in every place that the capitalist imperialist system has touched, there lives resistance and the mountains of Kurdistan. They're our guerrilla comrades and they will fight for the revolution until the end. And here, right here with us in this and every moment, is something that can never be taken from us. The martyrs, they never leave us. And at the risk of sounding ridiculous, I will share that it has been a source of strength in moments of need, when there is nothing else left, to literally imagine them around me, to bring their faces into my mind and imagine what they would say to me. This is something anyone can do. Whether recalling comrades we have personally known or an anti fascist partisan martyred long before our birth. It is complicated and beautiful to see comrades we have known personally become something beyond a person and come to live in the hearts of thousands of people. Here we are confronted again with our own sense of personal ownership and the limitations it presents. The truth is that comrades who were known and loved as people cannot anymore express themselves except through the memories and actions of others. Those of us who for now are breathing to Kosher Helene Avacyn, Eleftaria Zilhan, Ronahi Maslum, Sara Attakan Beretan and thousands of others live on because we remember them not only in our minds, but in our actions. They live on because for each of them who fell, many more comrades, inspired by their memory, join the struggle in their place. And those who fought by their side recommit themselves and dig in a bit deeper at the thought of them, because the love of them has to go somewhere. And some kinds of love have no place left to go but the struggle.

And we're back. Thanks so much for coming on the.

Show today to talk about your essay.

Martyr Culture, which we just listened to. And now I want to go be sad somewhere, but instead I'm going to talk to you about your piece and your time with the ypj and. And I'm also very excited to do that. Could you introduce yourself with your name pronouns and a bit about your, I guess, backdrop, experience with the YPJ and the Kurdish Freedom Movement?

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here. My name is Sarah and my pronouns are she and her. I went to. To Rojava in 2019 to join YPJ, the Women's Protection Units, which is the Autonomous Women's Self Defense Forces, military forces of the people in north and East Syria. And yeah, so I went there in 2019 and I was there for several years working within YPJ and also doing some work on the civilian side of things in the women's movement there.

So, yeah, and we just listened to your beautiful piece, Martyr Culture, which really provides a deep context for the rest of the book and Orso's journals. I know it's a daunting task, but I was wondering if you could give us a brief history of the revolutionary struggles that are really not brief subjects, but just to give a little bit of a historical backdrop for what we're going to be talking about today for those who are less familiar with the struggles.

Spoiler alert.

It's all really complicated and is definitely a bigger topic than we can cover in this little introduction, so consider learning more about it elsewhere.

So revolution has actually been ongoing in Kurdistan for almost 50 years. Kurdistan itself has been divided into four parts by the British Empire because the Kurdish people do not fit into this concept of the nation state that originated in Europe. And so Kurdistan actually exists in part within the borders of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Rojava is actually the part of Kurdistan that is within the borders of Syria. Rojava means west, so it's Western Kurdistan. The revolution in Rojava happened because for several decades before this, revolutionaries have been struggling in other parts of Kurdistan, notably in North Kurdistan, sometimes called Bakhor, which is the part of Kurdistan that is within the borders of Turkey that's under Turkish occupation. So for many decades, Kurdish people have been fighting there for the right to speak their own language, to write their own language. And they've been fighting to get the word Kurdistan back in the dictionary. You know, really basic things, to be able to walk down the street singing a Kurdish song without being lynched. And they have been. Every, like, horrifying thing imaginable has been done to them. By the fascist Turkish state. Many revolutionaries who, you know, started their lives in North Kurdistan, joined the revolution because they saw the Turkish state burn down their home with their parents in it, you know, and so this is the kind of like context that exists in Kurdistan. So in 2011, there were uprisings throughout Syria. And this is called, you know, on the news or in Reddit, the Syrian Civil War. And what this was was the people of Syria, who were living under the regime of Bashar Al Assad, had had enough of his corruption and his authoritarianism, and they had enough with this system that they were forced to live under that did not fit with, you know, being human, incompatible with being human. And so they made uprisings. Well, in the north and east of Syria, these are predominantly Kurdish regions. Well, the people of Kurdistan, because of the struggle that they have been in for almost 50 years, there was a lot of revolutionary experience. They had been already Kurdish people in revolutionary struggle for generations. And this revolutionary struggle produced like revolutionary knowledge, organization, technology, human technology, social technology that made it possible for them to build a revolution. And this. So the revolution that they built while surrounded by enemies on all sides and fighting ISIS who was occupying their land also and destroying people's lives and committing every horror you can imagine, the people of north and east Syria decided not only to fight ISIS and defeat it and free the people from isis, but that, that was not enough for them. They didn't just want to, they weren't satisfied to just fight an enemy. They wanted to fight for something. And what they decided to fight for was free life. And so they founded the revolution built on grassroots democracy, you know, free life, women's liberation and ecology. And these are the foundational principles of the revolution. And they come from the ideas laid out by the ideological leader of the revolution, which is Abdullah Ojalan, who is a long term political prisoner of the Turkish state. So this is kind of like the overview of the revolution. I hope I included enough things that people can look into parts of it that sound unfamiliar to them or sound interesting. I didn't really do it justice, but that's the kind of like too long didn't read.

I thought that was a beautiful, a beautiful thing. As someone who admittedly, and I'm probably going to cut this, absolutely doesn't know enough. So that was. That's the most informative explanation I've ever heard.

Thank you.

Okay, so one of the things that I'm really curious to hear about in regards to these struggles is kind of what the international framework for participating in this looks like. And how do Internationals coming into the struggle think about this? And are there, I guess, kind of are there. Are there things that you went into it expecting and found were different? Or what do people think about this? And later. Stick with that for now. But what do people there think about Internationals who are coming into these struggles? Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally, yeah. Um, Well, I think this is actually a very funny question because, honestly, when I was going, and I will say when many other internationalists were going, like, our attitudes and our mentalities about why we should go are often vastly different than our ideas about why we stay, like, when we stay longer. Like, a lot of times when internationalists are first coming, we're coming with these, like, big ideas. Honestly, we're coming with a lot of Western chauvinism and a lot of Orientalism, even when we think that we're immune to those things. Like, you know, I come from the US and we're, like, raised on Hollywood films. And so I think that our vision of what it means to be in struggle is, like, really shaped by the culture that we come from and our position in the world. And so when I went to Rojava, to be totally honest, like, I don't think I could have, like, coherently express to you, like, an internationalism with any depth. I think, like, for me, I felt a really strong sense of connection to the revolution that people were building there, and I saw that it was under threat in 2019. Like, I mean, the headlines were like, is this the end of Rojava? And I had like, a, you know, an admittedly, like, impulsive response of, like, if it's going down, like, I want to be there with them and I want to, like, do what I can to defend this revolution. And I think my concept of what I would be doing was very much like that. And I think that, like, also, like, a lot. I notice a lot of internationalists, when first coming, have ideas about, like, you know, I'm going to bring my knowledge or my expertise or my ideas about struggle here, you know, like an insert XYZ ideology. A lot of anarchists, to be quite honest, come there thinking, like, I'm going to bring anarchism to the revolution, then maybe they don't know about it yet. And then they find there's, like, Bakunin translated into Arabic, like, sitting in their military base, like, with the gold, shiny letters, and they're like, what? Like, they're like, yeah, of course we've read this. What are you talking about? So, you know, that's a very common Experience. But for me, that's really funny. That's a true story. But, yeah, for me, I also. I felt like I didn't really see, Like, I had a real lack of clarity around me politically. Like, the US Is a very difficult place to be in the struggle. And there's a lot of, you know, liberalism is really strong in the cultures here. And so there's like. For me, I felt like I want to learn about how to accomplish things like this, like, what has been accomplished there. I want to learn, like, what methods are people using. I want to, like, grow. And as I got there, I learned again and again, really over time, the whole time I was there, that there is no way, like, there's nothing that I could do in my entire life. I could spend the rest of my life just trying to give back to the revolution, but I will never be able to give as much as I have received from the revolution. And I felt almost at first when I started to realize this, I felt, like, uncomfortable with that. You know, Like, I felt like I'm supposed to come here to give something, which I think is. It comes from a good place. And I would propose people who want to go try to have a mentality of trying to give more than you take. But we should not let that goal that we have to give more than we take distract us from the reality that we will always be receiving more than we give in that revolution. As an internationalist, in terms of knowledge, in terms of development, we are surrounded by people who are giving their entire lives to build up something for the people, to liberate the land that they're on, the people that are around them. And it is a really. You learn so much about sacrifice from the people all around you. And the longer that you are there and the more people you get to know, the more likely it is that you will even know people who. And love people who give everything, including their own life, for the revolution. And so. And when they do that, they're actually also giving something to you, and it's something that you cannot repay. Although you should keep trying. I think it's good to keep trying. So, you know, for me, it's sort of changed over time. For many people, it changes over time. And I think that many people who end up being more like longer term involved with the revolution, their reasons for remaining involved in the struggle are a lot different than when we first entered. As for how. I hope that answers your question. Does that.

Yeah, yeah. And it makes a lot of sense. It's like when you really Think about it. It is wild to think that any singular person could give as much as they receive in that context. Like that. Yeah. Makes perfect. It makes perfect sense. And I totally see the. Like, the. How one gets to thinking that that's what they need to do or that that's what they have done or. Yeah, I don't know. Makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, totally. So as far as how our internationalists perceived. That's your question. Right. The second part, how are interactions.

Yeah. And maybe some context with that question is that it's like, I think especially here in the us we have complicated relationships around, as outsiders to anything going and being involved in. In someone else's struggles and things like that. And it feels like a very complicated thing to talk about where it's both very necessary and people are being invited to do those things. And there's a tension between that and some people say, kind of parachuting into a struggle. And it's like, I don't know. So that's kind of a lot of where that question comes from, because I think we have tension around that concept, especially in anarchism in the United States.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's a great question. I would say that. So it's interesting the way that internationalists are perceived in Rojava is that I think for me, most of the comrades that I met there in many places had never met an internationalist before or like a Western. What we would think of as like a Western internationalist person. But all of the revolutionaries of the Rojava revolution are themselves internationalists. And internationalism is something that is foundationally a part of the revolution and which predates the revolution in Rojava. It's foundationally part of the movement. But we are. Our numbers are actually very few compared to the number of people on the ground there who are from the region and who are fighting for democratic Confederalism, which is, I would consider it a kind of internationalism. It is about, like, Kurdish and Arabic people and Assyrian people and all of the peoples of the Middle east fighting for a framework where they can all have free life together. And so it was actually like the Kurdish Freedom movement itself was founded in Turkey, and one of the founders of that movement was himself a Turkish person. And so I think that, like many, when I came there, I was sort of surprised to be so invited into so many aspects of the movement. I was sort of expected to be almost like a bystander to many things or like a witness to many things, or like, not give my input. But comrades from the very beginning were very insistent that we should see all internationalists and especially all women of the world, but also all internationalists should see this revolution as their revolution. And I felt uncomfortable with that as a person who was like consciously trying to struggle with my own Orientalism and my own Western chauvinism. I was like, oh no, I can't, I can't. This isn't mine, you know, because. No, like why? Because my concept of ownership was also very connected to this like colonizer sense of ownership, you know. But the type of ownership that they were talking about was more like what I would maybe in my language call responsibility.

Yeah.

And their whole way of thinking about responsibility versus ownership is reflective of the lives that they're building there. It's reflective of the culture that they come from and the revolutionary culture that they're building out of it. And it is to me it's like familiar in the context I come from hearing like in the so called us hearing how indigenous people here talk about ownership and responsibility. So like we were very welcome and are very welcome to criticize any aspect of the revolution through the appropriate like frameworks, just like any other comrade. And we have the same like rights and responsibilities as any other person there. I will say that, like, we are very culturally different. And like I'm from the US and people from the US are generally seen as like wildly individualistic. And that is something that I like, didn't know about myself. Like I had no idea that I like had a culture. Like that sounds really silly to say, but I didn't know that I had or wasn't aware of the ways that I was influenced by the culture that I came from, which is a very capitalist culture until comrades there pointed it out to me. And so I think that, you know, I mean, every internationalist, wherever they come from, whether it's from the west or from some other part of the Middle east or anywhere they come with their own culture. And it's like often a very strange culture for people there, especially where I came from, because it's a very communal culture in comparison in the Middle East. So I think that sometimes internationalists are seen as like, yeah, are seen a little bit like our culture is the most visible thing about us at first. But I will also say that like when getting to know people, when they would really share their like deeper feelings about internationals with me, they would often talk about how impressed they were that there were people who would come from all the way, like the other side of the world and learn their language, which was at one point forbidden for them to speak and to learn their language and learn about their struggle and stay with them and fight with them and live with them. And that was something that, like, they really. That is something that they really give meaning to. And they see internationalists as something like, very precious. They see it as a really meaningful thing that people come from other parts of the world. There's a really strong guest culture that I think is like a part of that. But yeah, like, for example, when internationalist revolutionaries are martyred and struggle, that's something that hits them really hard. And in cities like Til Tammer, Ivana Hoffman, who was martyred fighting ISIS just outside of Til Temer, like, her photograph is still all around Til Tammar. And people know who she was. And when I was there, I heard stories about her from people who lived there. And that was many years ago. She was martyred there. But they saw it as something really, really precious. And they call, they call us all the time, like their daughters and their sons and they really will take you into their homes like that too, you know.

So, yeah, that is not something that I would necessarily expect to hear, like, people talk about, which, I mean, is like. I don't know, which is very like, wrapped up in kind of like Western individualism or like the. I think my perception is that everyone, like, just, just hates people from the United States. Like, if you go anywhere in the rest of the world, I just assume that, like, you're like, oh, you're an American, you. That's like, that's. That's my, like, framework for like, which is like, whatever some, like in, in some internalized cultural shame. But like, I don't know. That's really, that's. That's really interesting to hear about. Is there. And maybe this is. I don't know if this is a weird question. I don't know what's a weird question or not a weird question anymore. This is what I learned about doing this job. Is there tension around the fact that internationalists can probably much more easily leave?

I think that definitely internationals can usually much more easily leave. I think that there's not so much like a tension. I didn't experience much tension around that, but there is like an awareness of that. And also there. This is also why there is like a kind of a shock that people have that internationalists would even choose to be there. Because many people, some people are like, you know, died in the wool revolutionary coming from revolutionary families. And they will, like, stay and fight and defend the autonomous territories, like, until the last person, you know. But there are a lot of people who have really, really suffered and are really, really suffering and are living in just awful conditions, surrounded by enemies on all sides, not even able to access water, you know, in one of the hottest places on Earth. Right. Hesitate was like, the hottest place on earth one day, like two years ago. And at the same time, like, people couldn't access water. And so the circumstances there are so hard to live. And so many times, like, when people met, like, people just. Maybe not so much revolutionaries, but just people that were living there, they were shocked that internationalists would choose to live there and couldn't understand why they wouldn't leave. So I didn't experience so much tension as, like, this almost kind of disbelief, like, what are you doing here? You know? But in that way, you also have a lot of potential to, like, give morale to people in difficult circumstances by sharing those circumstances with them. But I also think that there, you know, among revolutionaries, there's sometimes frustration that I think is justified about how much, like, the mentality, like, with what mentality does an internationalist from the west come to the revolution? How much are they willing to give? How much are they even trying to give versus, like, what do they. And what. How much are they trying to understand the history, the present, like, the actual circumstances of the actual real revolution? It's not like a. Id, like, it's not an idealistic thing, you know, like, we don't live on paper.

Yeah.

And so when people have, like, a humble approach, people like other revolutionaries who are from there see that humble approach and feel respected. And when people have an arrogant approach, people who are from there see that. And I think there has, like, some people are frustrated that people will come and stay for, you know, six months and be, like the most demanding and not work very hard to understand the people that they've come to their land, you know, they've come to this place. It's important to try. If you're going to stay, if you're doing a short visit, maybe you don't need to learn kurmanji, but if you're gonna stay a bit longer, you should learn Kumanji. Or you should always try and try to understand people in this culture who are welcoming you in. And so I think it is frustrating when people, like, for people who are from there, the coming and going, you know, like the. Yeah, like, what approach do people have to it? But that's not a really big topic, you know, like, people don't focus on stuff like that there. It's A very different culture, because it's not such a capitalist culture, like, people don't like here. My experience in the US is our relationships can be very transactional, and we have almost like a positivist approach where we're always evaluating each other and evaluating a person's value or something. And there it's like, just not a focus at all. Yeah, it's terrible. It's unlivable. Like, no wonder people are so anxious. Like, it's terrible. But there, it's not. Like, it's a very collective culture. Everyone has a place. Everyone has a right to be there, to exist. You know, everyone's part of the communal life. No one is. You're not under this constant evaluation, you know, like, of your value to anyone. It's, like, not at all mechanical. It's an extremely human culture, which I think, like, this is one of the things like that I think has been the most impressive to me about the revolution they've built is how much the revolution they have built has enabled them to reveal human culture in a way that it is not allowed to exist under capitalism, you know, and in a really human culture, this is not, like, something people focus on. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Maybe this is related and not related, and I don't know how this is dealt with there, but one of the more horrifying things that I learned about the war in Ukraine right now is that for almost the entire time, people have been expected to pay rent somehow.

What? Really? Wow. I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Wow.

For the first few months, I think people didn't really have to pay rent, but, like, people have been. People have been paying rent, like, this whole. Like, almost this whole time.

Wow.

It's like this unthinkable thing. And I'm like, yeah, that's. Yeah.

So horrible. Like, I can't. I can't even. Like, I'm shocked by that. But I think if you told, like, comrades in Kurdistan, like, if you told them about this, they would be, like, not able to imagine how you could treat another person like that. Like, you know, it's a very. The whole life is communal there. If you go there and you're working with the friends, then you just live where everyone else lives, and you eat what everyone else eats, and you join the cooking shift and you take part in your. Everyone just solves all of our problems together. Like, I can't imagine leaving someone to, like, come up with rent.

Like, yeah.

And then calling them, like a comrade, like, that's what is Comradeship then, you know, like.

Yeah, yeah, it was. It was one of the more baffling things that I think I've heard in my entire life.

Yeah.

Which is wild to think about.

I.

Guess, like, to maybe transition away from this. Not quite yet, but soon. Would y' all. Would internationalists, like, who are there. Would y' all gather and talk about, like, what it means to be an internationalist within those struggles?

Yeah, totally. All the time. I mean, some people. I would say some internationalists spend a lot of time with other internationalists, and some internationalists prefer to, like, I don't know, move a little bit away from that and spend more time in the local structures. But all of the internationalists there have been part of, like, really important and sometimes even, like, formalized, like, gatherings to discuss internationalism, what it is. But I think, like, more so. People definitely actively discuss it. Often discussions there are, like, very practical, you know, like, so you discuss, what is it to be an internationalist, but you also struggle with each other as internationalists. And so. And this is where this topic of criticism, self criticism, comes into play. And I think a lot of the definite, like, defining what it means to be internationalist comes from, you know, we're all there doing our work, trying to do the best that we can, and then making mistakes. And then we see our mistakes, we see each other's mistakes, we see the impact of those mistakes. People from their comrades from there see those mistakes, and we are all evaluating what's working and what's not working and what is the meaning of how we are practicing internationalism, and how much does that meet the standards that we're aiming for. And then there's criticism that happens. And then, you know, people think about this criticism. Like, I might criticize myself. A comrade might see something in what I'm doing that's, like, not effective, and criticize me. And that person might be an internationalist who is from the west, and they might be an internationalist who is a Kurdish person who was born and raised in Rojava, and they are also an internationalist and a revolutionary, and they are giving me a perspective on internationalism. So. But yeah, definitely. Like. Like, Western internationalists gather as internationalists, for sure.

Yeah.

Cool. And I guess before we move away from this particular topic, are there any other things that you find notable to this framework that you want to talk about?

Yeah, I will say when I talk about internationalism, we're thinking as an internationalist. I call myself an internationalist, but we are actually, all of us, everyone that I would Call a comrade. We should all be internationalists wherever we are, whether you ever leave the town that you were born in or not. You do not have to go abroad to be an internationalist. Internationalism, it's a framework for how we see the world, how we formulate our goals, how we go about struggle. And I think, like, even how we read the news is informed by our internationalism and how we relate to a revolution. If we see a revolution and we, whether or not we have ever been to the place where that revolution is taking place, do we see that revolution as something that we belong to or that belongs to us, that we have any responsibility to? You know, how we tend to talk about revolutions in the US really needs to change. When we look at a revolution and we see that there are problems in that revolution, do we approach those problems as people who want to solve those problems, or do we approach the problems of the revolution the same way that we approach, like, talking about, I don't know, Internet drama? Is it the way that we talk about, like, the. The fight that we had with this person we're not sure if we want to be friends with? Well, I, you know, now that I don't want to be friends with them. I heard that they actually did XYZ messed up stuff, and this is why they should be canceled. You know, like, many times I feel or I see, like, people talk about problems in any revolution. Many times a revolution of people who are in the worst circumstances imaginable, surrounded on all sides by enemies with, like, no resources, who have made something despite all of this. Incredible, you know, and unbelievable in the worst circumstances. And people who are sitting here in the US who cannot even hold a collective of four people together for, like, more than two years will be like, talking about problems in a revolution as if that means that the revolution itself is, like, not worth fighting for. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, every process to change things has problems. And if we are internationalists, then we need to have a dialectical approach to understanding problems where we neither. We don't want to cover up any problems that exist, not at all. Because we need to learn from every single one of them. And so if we cover them up, we can't learn from them and we will fail. Right? And we also can't see a problem and then think, ah, yeah, no, I supported this revolution, but then this happened. And so, I don't know, you know, like, this always kind of sitting on the fence thing, right? Like, as internationalists, we ask ourselves, are these people trying to build free life. Are they trying to build a world free from capitalism? You know, like, are they trying to build a society in which people are actually able to make decisions about their lives rather than like the ruling class makes decisions for everyone? Great. You know what? I. Maybe I'm not from there, maybe I'll never go there, but I support any effort of any freedom loving people anywhere in the world to like, you know, try and make something of it, you know, And I will look at their problems and I will try to learn from those problems. And I'm not gonna sit on my armchair and have like weird theoretical discussions about them, judging them for every little problem. You know, Like, I won't need to imagine myself in their shoes actually and think, if I was living in the circumstances they were living in, what would I realistically do to try to progress my goals to reach this aim, you know? So I think that that is also internationalism. So I think, yeah, that's what I would say.

That's awesome. That is like a framework for internationalism that I had not considered and yeah, feel very in awe of because it like, really addresses a lot of the tensions and stuff that I see in different, like, communities in like the. In the United States at least, and like these like, revolutionary struggles that I'm like, I don't know if your process can get halted up by like, like, if, if some like, huge process can get halted up by like two people who are in conflict with each other, who can't figure out how to navigate that conflict, then like, we got bigger fucking problems. I'm sorry.

Yes. Yes, 100%. Which.

Yeah. Which doesn't mean ignoring problems. It just. But we, yeah, we do need to figure out different ways to move forward and deal with things than I think we currently are doing.

Yeah.

I don't know, it all feels trivial in comparison to other things, obviously. So one thing that I want to ask you about, because it's something that you mentioned off air, really wanting to talk about, is kind of different models for women's revolutionary organizing and kind of like from, I think specifically like a cultural, Cultural perspective. So, like, how. How does women's organizing culture work? Like from what you've seen?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I love this question. Yeah. I think one of the key differences that I saw in like the approach to women's organizing in Rojava versus like what I had seen or what I encountered prior to going or in other places was that the conversation there and the framework there is based on autonomy. Whereas in the US many times when I try to Explain what is an autonomous women's army? What is an autonomous women's Self Defense force? How does it work? You know, what does it mean an autonomous space? Many times people from the US hear that and their first thought is like, women's separatism in, like, maybe like the second wave in the us, which was like its own. It was a very specific thing, you know, And I'm not going to talk much about it, but what I can say is that there is a huge difference between autonomy and separatism. And autonomy is not about, like, we don't like men, we don't want to talk to men. It's not even about the exclusion of men or of anyone. Actually. It is about, like, how do we get. How do we, as women get the things that we need? How do we get. How do we solve our problems? How do we go about solving our problems? How do we approach life together? And women's autonomy means that when I'm working together, I'm organized with other women. My problems as an individual person, I'm going to put some of those aside and I'm going to think about how can we as women find collective solutions to the faces, to the problems that we're facing together as women? It means that I'm going to think about if I want to learn how to do something new. I'm going to go to the women I'm organized with, and I'm going to see if any of them know how to do that thing before I ask anyone else, you know, if I see a woman comrade has a problem, well, congratulations, I also have a problem. That is our problem. That is not her problem. That is what autonomy means. And it actually, like in a women's autonomous structure. I was for several years in a women's autonomous structure, and I spent a lot of time with men. It doesn't mean that you're not around men. It doesn't mean you don't form really deep comradeships with men. I had the pleasure and the honor to know some of the most incredible men that I've ever met, who I really deeply love. Male comrades who I met in Rojava and was really deeply impressed by. And we were able to form really deep comradeship with each other because I did not depend on them for anything, because we had autonomy and because I lived with women, you know, and because I dedicated myself to put most of my energy into my work with women comrades, into my relationships and comradeships with women comrades. The comradeships that I did have with male comrades, they had these Kind of like boundaries that allowed us to develop comradeship on a level I never thought that you could have with a man as a person who's like, oppressed by patriarchy, you know, and that was because it's like men are approaching you and they know, okay, you're a member of ypj, so he can't approach you wanting to get something out of it. Do you know what I mean? He can't approach you differently than he would approach another woman. So if he wants to talk to me because he likes me, but he doesn't like this other woman because, I don't know, she's like, not. She's like too assertive or something, or maybe she's not like, feminine enough or whatever he doesn't like about her. Well, too bad. Like, you can't be, you know, treating me with respect and treating her with disrespect. Because we're ypj, like, we're an autonomous women structure. And how you treat one of us is how you're treating all of us. Like, an approach to one of us is an approach to every woman. And like, this really changed our relationships actually. And the level of respect that you receive as a woman and also that you give to other people when you're organized together with other women is like, it's. It is sometimes like living outside of patriarchy. It is incredible. You're not able to fully live outside of patriarchy, but you are able to really mitigate a lot of the worst parts of it through autonomy. And, you know, we worked together closely with men. It's not about separating yourself permanently from men. It's just about who do we depend on. And when we do not depend on men, they lose a lot of power over us as women. And that is actually really important. Like, that loss of power. Right. It opens up a lot of doors between human beings. And I think that this concept of autonomy in the concept of. In, like, in the context of women's organizing is very powerful, but it actually also is a foundational principle in the revolution for, like, other groups of people. You know, like, it's the autonomous administration of north and East Syria. Like, autonomy is a foundational principle of freedom. Kurdish people having their autonomy, Arabic people having their autonomy. So they just apply the same. The thing that's cool about this revolution and why it's a women's revolution is like, unlike many other leftist frameworks, they fully apply all of their concepts and they don't just, like, do something different for the woman question, you know, so this is what that looks like, it becomes a woman's revolution. You know, it also is something that's really interesting to me is it's like fully incompatible with identity politics stuff in the U.S. like, in a way that is kind of unexpected for a lot of people. Like, when I come up into someone's space, I'm talking about women's autonomy. They expect me to, like, have lower standards for myself than for a man. You know, that, like, I wanna. That I'm the person to come to because we're gonna talk about those men are doing those bad. We hate them. Like, he said something annoying today, and I'm, like, looking at myself and I've said five annoying things today. You know, like, I'm not gonna cancel this comrade for being annoying. You know, Otherwise I'd be. I'd be canceled for that.

We can't cancel people for being annoying. I'm sorry.

Absolutely. That's the main quote of today. I just put that in the name of the podcast. You can't cancel people for being annoying. Yeah, no, but I mean, instead, okay, you know, there are legitimate problems that happen among comrades or that happen inside an organization, outside of an organization, in a specific political context where men, comrades, are doing things that are really, really bad for women and other men and people generally. And in those situations, we can either, you know, sort of stay in the land of should. Oh, he should not do that. Men should. It shouldn't have to be this way. We as women, we shouldn't have to deal with this burden, you know, which I think is the framework I was taught here, here in the US Is like, to focus on, like, it shouldn't be like this. I should not have to deal with this. It's not fair. Whereas, you know, in women's autonomy, we say, we don't really focus on what should be, we focus on what is. And we do not depend on men to solve the problems for us. Like, men will not give us our freedom. You know, we as women have to come together and create the circumstances under which we will be free. And, you know, like, as people, right, who are living under capitalism, we, all of us of all genders, we will not be free until women are free. And as women, we are not going to be free until we see the end of capitalism. So this is a great place to come together, you know, like. And so I think that this is like, something that, for me is really powerful about this framework. It's not like, you know, feminism. It's not like. I mean, feminism is a type of women's struggle. It's not like slapping feminism onto a revolutionary struggle. It's not like an answer to the women's question as an afterthought. It is like women's autonomy is how we integrate the freedom struggle fully into the world that we live in. And so women's autonomy is how we, as women, make that happen. And. And it is impossible to enact, to start creating women's autonomy with one other woman and then two other women and then five other women. You don't need to have a huge group of people to do it. You don't have to wait until everyone else agrees with you in the room. It doesn't, you know, the men, comrades, do they understand it or not? They don't even have to know about it, actually. You know, like, you can just start doing women's autonomy and they can, you know, like, proceed as normal until, you know, normal things are no longer happening and no longer working because we're changing the way that we're living together. And we're gonna make these relations between people more free and more human. And I think also, like, our standards as women increase. When we get together as women and we define our standards for ourselves, we do not look to what, like, the men are doing, what are men finding acceptable? What does it mean to them to be a militant? What does it mean to them to be a leftist or an anarchist or whatever. We don't look at what men are doing and derive our standards from that. And when women get together and actually talk to each other about what we value and what are our visions for the future and how do we want to live? How do we want to be, who do we want to be? What does it mean to be human? What is freedom? How are we going to get there? The standards that women come up with for ourselves, because they're connected to those goals, because they're connected to our analysis of our, like, actual conditions. Those standards are connected to what is necessary in order to win, to progress, you know, and so those standards are often higher, actually, and we end up needing to ask more of ourselves and not less of ourselves. Whereas I find many times in the US like, the approach to gender is like, well, if I'm more oppressed as a woman than a man is, then, you know, I should expect more of that man. Well, it doesn't make sense. Like, if the men were going to free us, they would do that yesterday. You know, we've truly been complaining about it long enough. They would hear us and they would say, God, I just want her to stop. I'll give her her freedom. But they're not going to do that, you know, so we are going to do that. And I think this is actually true for every axis of oppression, is that the person who holds the power is, like, not going to give it to you. So autonomy is the answer to that in this revolution.

Yeah. And it's like, autonomy is kind of like a dialectic or whatever. Like, can you experience autonomy within an environment in which you are being oppressed?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and when you do. Right. Like, you have more tools to deal with that oppression and to make it to progress the circumstances so that there's less of it. Like, there are so many problems that we experience as women that we can actually, some of us, you know, the more privileged we are in other ways, like, some of us can find individual solutions to the problems we're facing of patriarchy to some extent. But actually, in the long run, if we just stop doing that, if we stopped finding individual solutions, we would all be better off, actually, you know, if we put aside finding individual solutions and find collective ones instead. But I think, like, yes, you can. I mean, you have to struggle for your autonomy. It's, like, not something that you. I don't want to make it sound romantic, which is a great fault of mine, is that I am a romantic. So I do make things sound less complicated than they are. But, I mean, it's a constant struggle. But it is a beautiful struggle and a worthy struggle and, like, something that, for me is very fulfilling. And I find myself, like, deriving a lot of strength from these practices. Like, you know, I'm here in the US There's a lot of challenges. I don't have to tell you about it, you know, like. But I have never felt more, like, hopeful in facing them. I've never felt, like, harder to keep down, you know, like, because autonomy as a framework, not only as a woman, but as just like, a person who doesn't like capitalism. Yeah. Gives. Is, like, the source of a lot of strength, actually, because it's a collective practice, and it's. It's one that takes some personal sacrifice. But it's actually like, the math is not mathing. Like, the sacrifice that you give, it actually ends up being, like, nothing compared to what you gain by throwing your lot in with other people. I mean, this is just how revolution works. We're just applying it to women, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's so hard for people, especially in the United States, to, like, imagine what it is like to live outside of capitalism. Thanks so much for listening. Here's our abrupt end to the middle of this interview. We weirdly ended up going on a lot of tangents and next week we're going to be talking about stuff that relates a little bit more directly to Sarah's piece. But I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation that we had for today's episode, and I hope you did as well. And if you enjoyed listening to it, then go out and explore what autonomy truly means. And also if you enjoyed it, you can tell people about the show, you can go check out the pre order for the new book or so, and you can tell your friends about it. We think it's going to be a really awesome book or it is a really awesome book and we think you're going to think it's a really awesome book as well. You can also support us in other ways by doing stuff with the algorithm or whatever that means. And you can support us on [email protected] strangersinatangled wilderness and there for various tiers of support you can get different things. Like for $10 a month you can get the zine that we put out every month. Like if you had gone back in time, like two months, then you could get Martyr Culture in a print version mailed to you anywhere in the world. But some of you did do that and some of you didn't do it. And maybe you will. I don't know how time works. It's a mystery. But if you do have a time machine, you should maybe do other things with it. Then go back in time to get a print copy of Martyr Culture. Let's be honest. And then for $20 a month we will thank a thing of your choosing. And this month we would like to thank Hunter mark tiny nonsense thegoldengate26 Jonathan the goose the KO initiative the incredible Ren Arai Alexander Gopal A Future for Abby Hyun Hee Max the Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island Park Prodigal Maestro Lancaster Chooses Love Astoria Food Pantry Renegade Lens and Inc. The Canadian Socialist Rifle association the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, New Hampshire IWW Farrell in West Virginia Blink Cat Shulva Jenny and Phoebe the Cats Jason Aiden Yuki the Dog Sunshine Amber Ephemeral Appalachian Liberation Library Portland's Hedron HackerSpace Boldfield E. Pitoli Eric People's University of Palestine Julia Catgut Marm Carson Lord Harken Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia Princess Miranda Janice and Odell Ally Paparuna Milica Boise Mutual Aid Theo Hunter SJ Page David Dana Chelsea Starro Jennifer Chris Micaiah Nicole, and Tikva the dog and the immortal Hoss the dog. Thanks so much for listening and for everything that you've helped support us through next week. If you're listening on Live like the world is dying, we're gonna have this month in the Apocalypse, like we usually do. Like we usually have the episode. Not that the apocalypse is usually next week, but we're in the Apocalypse, so it's all the time. Anyways. If you're listening on Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, then there'll be nothing next week, and then the week after this one. Then we'll have the second part of this interview. And mayhaps the book will even be out by then. We're not quite sure. We're waiting on the mail. We hope that you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on, and we'll see you soon.