Uprising democracy: Zapatista and Rojavan experiences

Uprising democracy - Zapatista and Rojavan experiences

Convened by Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA) and Grassroots to Global (G2G). Welcoming Servin Nudem, Gustavo Esteva, Xochitl Leyva and Ashish Kothari 

The Zapatista (Mexico) and Kurdish Rojava (west Asia) movements show the possibilities of radical, feminist, ecologically grounded democracy at a large scale, even in the midst of violence and hostility from the nation-states they are contained in.

Gustavo Esteva is an independent writer and grassroots activist. An active voice within the “deprofessionalized” segment of the Southern intellectual community, he has been a key figure in founding several Mexican, Latin American and international NGOs and coalitions. Gustavo is the author of more than 40 books and scores of articles that have made significant contributions to scholarly fields from economics to cultural anthropology, philosophy to education. He writes regularly in La Jornada and other leading Mexican newspapers and occasionally in The Guardian. In Oaxaca, Gustavo participates in the activities of the Centro de Encuentros y Diálogos Interculturales and Universidad de la Tierra en Oaxaca, of which he is a founding member.

In her youth, Servin Nudem started to get organised in the anti-fascist youth and autonomous women groups in Germany. The search for connecting political theory with practice, communal life with the struggle for a free society led her to join the women’s liberation struggle in Kurdistan and to participate in the works of the Jineolojî Academy.

Since 2016, Servin has been working with women from Kurdistan, Syria and other countries at the Jineolojî Academy in Rojava (West-Kurdistan) and the region of the democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The main focus of my work has been on popular education programs and collective, communal research about the historical and social foundations of the women's revolution and the system of Democratic Autonomy in Rojava / North and East Syria. She has further been participating in the establishment and works of the Andrea-Wolf-Institute of the Jineolojî Academy with the aim to connect women’s wisdom and struggles for democracy, justice and freedom worldwide.

Ashish Kothari is the founder of Kalpavriksh, an Indian non profit organisation working on environmental and social issues at local, national and global levels. He was trained at the Indian Institute of Public Administration and coordinated India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. He served on boards of Greenpeace International. He is part of the coordination team of Vikalp Sangam, the Global Tapestry of Alternatives and Radical Ecological Democracy. He is the (co-)author of several books including Churning the Earth (2012) and a co-editor of “Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary” (2019).

Shrishtee Bajpai is a young activist-researcher from India, a member of Kalpavriksh (an environmental action group). She documents, researches, and networks radical alternatives to dominant systems of statism, capitalism, patriarchy and other forms of concentration of power. She focuses on exploring indigenous, traditional, and customary ways of living, decision-making and their underlying worldviews. 

She helps in coordinating the process of alternatives confluence in India called 'Vikalp Sangam' that aims to weave together the grassroots processes on alternatives. She also helps in coordinating a global process called the Global Tapestry of Alternatives which seeks to create exchanges, synergies, cross-learning, and collaboration amongst the various radical alternative and social/ ecological justice movements around the world. She is active with other social movements and youth groups in India. She has been researching and networking on Rights of Nature in South Asia with particular focus on rivers, and has helped intiate the rights of rivers south Asia alliance. 

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