30 June 2018

Komun academy: a virtual academy launched by the Kurdish Freedom movement


Saturday marks the inauguration of the Komun academy, a website launched by a collective of activists launched particularly with the aim of "finding solutions to both, local, specific problems" for the various peoples' of the world. The Komun academy also seeks to fight universal contradictions, which encompasses "women's oppression, ecological crises, capitalist exploitation, racial supremacy, colonialism, knowledge of imperialism, poverty, and war".

The website aims to approach critical issues and aid social movements globally through the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdish movement.

"As the fundamental units of Democratic Modernity, people's academies constitute the theoretical groundwork of societal mentality in favour of freedom", the about section of the website states, "these units which we could even define as village academies work to guarantee society's ability to become aware of its own needs and organize around them, through an ethical-political mentality" the description continues.

The goal of the website is to provide an online outlet to conduct the work already taking place in thousands of academies across Kurdistan.

The website is organized around six categories, Democratic confederalism, Jineologi, Analysis, Columns, Seminars, and the works of Abdullah Ocalan, a co-founder of the PKK and an ideological inspiration for many Kurds around the world.

Democratic Confederalism refers to the political system proposed by the Kurdish freedom movement, which entails the construction of stateless democracies within the already existing boundaries of nation states. Coupled with a commitment for the establishment of "democratic republics", free polities within the nation states that could allow for democratic confederalism to flourish, the Kurdish freedom movement also hopes to imbue democratic confederations with the capacity for self-defence.

Democratic confederalism, a form of democracy constructed inspite of the state, is predicated on the commune form and seeks to delegate power upwards to the village, town, city and region levels. Women are to share power in all levels of political decision making.

Jineologi refers to the construction of a "science of women", dedicated to challenging what the Kurdish freedom movement call "positivist" forms of knowledge that have gone hand in hand with justifying and upholding the oppression of women. While the Analyses, Columns and Seminars sections hope to spread the living examples of radical democracy that are happening across the world.

The website seeks to distinguish itself from other journals, and explicitly states that it "does not aim at idealism which will only appeal to a small section inside society." "Instead, it works to portray the real struggles that organize themselves around this paradigm all over the world."

"We want to the agora of the mothers, workers, labourers, strugglers, rebels, youth, and militants!" the organisers of the Komun Academy conclude. 

To visit the website, go to https://komun-academy.com/


by The Region  30/06/2018 

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