Vermont interview with American YPG volunteer concerning the revolution in Rojava

Waterbury Vermont, February, 2019 - Michael Alexander, a guest of the Green Mountain Central Labor Council AFL-CIO, recently spoke to Equal Time Radio (WDEV 550AM) about his experience serving as a volunteer soldier in the YPG. The YPG & YPJ are the military arm of the revolution in the northern Syria. The revolution, which is ideologically influenced by the writings of the Vermont philosopher Murray Bookchin, is seeking to establish a secular Town Meeting-like direct democracy in Rojava (Syria). Alexander, a native of Ohio USA, served as a heavy machine gunner on the Raqqa front. Presently hundreds if not thousands of foreign nationals, like Alexander, serve within the YPG & YPJ’s international brigades. The YPG/YPJ continue to drive back islamo-fascist ISIS forces in the southeast while also defending their northern border from Turkish aggression. To their west the Assad regime also represents a threat. The scope of what the YPG/YPJ seek to establish in northern Syria is not dissimilar to what the CNT & FAI sought to achieve in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO (CLC) passed a resolution in February of 2018 declaring their unwavering solidarity with the YPG/YPJ and the democratic & equitable society that the revolution aims to achieve. As part of that resolution, the Central Labor Council pledged to provide three months of room and board to any returning American volunteers who served with the YPG/YPJ and who choose to come to Vermont. The CLC also committed to working with volunteers (who avail themselves of this offer) to find them Union jobs. Michael Alexander is being supported by the Central Labor Council as a result.

Here is a link to the Green Mountain Central Labor Council’s resolution on the YPG/YPJ:
https://vt.aflcio.org/green-mountain-labor-council/news/solidarity-strug...

Listen to Alexander discuss the revolution in Rojava on WDEV’s Equal Time Radio by clicking on the below link:
http://www.equaltimeradio.com/2019/fighting-isis-in-syria-for-real-democ...

In Solidarity,
David Van Deusen,
District Vice President of the Vermont AFL-CIO

*Photo: Michael Alexander (right) with comrades in Rojava.

There are 34 Comments

The amount of american "anarchists" who fetishises this "Revolution" that isn't even anarchists is telling of american anarchists...

PKK are a fetish for most anarchists in Ireland to. I'd say it's the same in most areas, well by liberal anarchists any ways.

Lol right... "islamo-fascists" can't exist. Muslims are by definition progressive and libertarians. Just look at Daesh and Erdogan for instance. All our comrades, DUH!!!

"To their west the Assad regime also represents a threat"

A threat they've been actively collaborating with for years

I surely can't be the only anarchist who is unable to stir up any interest or enthusiasm regarding Rojava.

I don't find it interesting in the least. It's some sort of nationalist thingy that anarchists circle jerk to for some reason.

On another note, can anews create a SirEinzige random quote generator please?

I actually don't wish ill will on the light libertarian leviathan project that it is and actually hope it doesn't become a more formal leviathan project over time like Israel after the Kibbutz. It lacks the ethnocentric problems of the latter but the ugly former ugly Stalinist and nationalist foundations of it's founder could make a comeback via problematic functions and simply bury the libertarian character that it has going on right now.

IF it can remain what it is right now and even overtime marginally improve in more libertarian directions then I will give a small clap as opposed to a slow clap. PZS had hope that it would transform into something more post-left overtime but I highly doubt that will happen, Just keep that Stalinst nationalist stuff away and don't create too much of a leviathan footprint and I will consider that something of an accomplishment.

Right on VT AFL-CIO. The fight being waged in Rojava today is on par with the CNT in the Spanish Civil War, Mahkno in the Ukraine, and the Paris Commune. Rojava is THE political struggle of our times. I am impressed that the AFL-CIO in Vermont sees this clearly and have taken real steps to show that that solidarity is real.

"The fight being waged in Rojava today is on par with the CNT in the Spanish Civil War, Mahkno in the Ukraine, and the Paris Commune."

Alright... so we're supposed to be joining another monumental, bloody defeat at the hands of fascists, because the Revolution's on its way*. Then in a few decades this onslaught will be regurgitated eternally as the historical moment of revolutionary victory for libertarian communism. For as you may know, in Bizzaro world, tragic bloody defeat means great success!

*only in Rojava! As for North America, ask-an-academic.

Fuck yes VT AFL-CIO! Solidarity with the YPJ and YPG!

Based on some of the comments, seems the Vermont AFL-CIO is further to the left than a number of self identified "anarchists" who like to post comments on websites. Strange times...

It's difficult for people who haven't been paying attention to the anarchist milieu over the last 30 years or so to follow the conversations happening here, which is perhaps unfortunate in some ways, but not all anarchist media can perpetually explain the basics of anarchist discourse to a general audience. http://anarchy101.org is a good source for that though.

Suffice to say there are many anarchists that are uninterested in the magical thinking necessary for the ideological bloodbath that is revolution, and are more than a little skeptical of revolutionary optimists. A phrase like "further to the left" requires more context (which projects and values among the messy soup of contemporary politics do you consider to be leftist?) but in the sense of the post-WWII left as a relevant political force, I'd like nothing more than for the zombie to admit it's been dead for some time. The coming weirdness will hopefully queer any simple political formulations.

The impending 6th extinction which is about 40% into its course, should put into perspective the significance of the struggles of the very same forces of revolution which ironically, are the agents for the causes of the extinction in the first case, which is the pursuit of sovereign wealth and capital.

Seems like just another sky is falling claim. I suspect freedom rhetoric will still be around at the end of the century and beyond. extinction will happen when it happens.

This REVEOLUTION is the REVOLUTION of this generation. Here there is a right side and a wrong side. To be an Anarchist or Leftist today means you support the YPG-YPJ REVOLUTION in Rojava. I applaud the Vermont AFL-CIO for being on the correct side of history. To those who claim to be an Anarchist or Leftist and do not support this real struggle, feel free to go back to your parents basement and work on your blog which is read by know one.

But Bill, both the right and wrong, both sides, and this thing you call freedom, will all be extinct, gone, not worth a thing.
Can you not see the futility of such an uncertain and futile expenditure of lives and effort?

A revolution tactically on the side of US and other imperialism for the formation of a new State and government. There's nothing anarchist about this revolution. It's THE anarcho-liberal revolution du jour, that's it.

your words paint a picture of a moralistic leftist entrenched in the status quo left. if you are also a workerist (not "worker" as in the handle), i suspect i know who you are.

The struggle in Rojava is one for direct democracy and economic equality. Solidarity.

15:05 back again. Not sure if that was a reply to my comment, or that you have a pre-written or a fixed slogan-like response to objectors. I suppose the fervor of war and adrenaline fires up all those associated with members of the group who put their lives on the line, no disrespect intended, BUT YALL WASTING YOUR TIME.

who the hell wants any kind of democracy, and *economic equality* is a goddamn pathetic joke, as with any 'equality'

Are you a millionaire or more? If the answer is no, then you're the joke. Or perhaps, the joke is at your expense. ;)

Nah, we're also equals in a lifeboat... Unless you piss me off!

*shakes fist*

The benefit I see in these kind of projects is one-dimensional: battle hardening yourself and your gang. Battlefield experience goes a really long way

Binary warfare leads to extinction in the long run.

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