To Defend Nature, We Must Organize – Greetings from Rojava to the Climate Movement

From the Internationalist Commune of Rojava

As part of the global action day of the climate movement "FridaysForFuture", a solidarity action in the city of Qamislo in Rojava took place on Friday. Together with the city administration of Qamislo, Internationalists from Make Rojava Green Again, students of the Rojava University demonstrated and cleaned up the city.

With banners, shouting slogans, more than 50 students of the Rojava University in Qamislo walked through the city and drew attention to the ecological difficulties, from waste in the city to the global climate crises. With this demonstration the activists took part in the global climate movement FridaysForFuture, which had called for a worldwide action day on Friday.

The banners brought along and carried by the students declared: "To defend nature we have to organize ourselves - system change not climate change", signed as FridaysForFuture-Rojava.

This slogan makes the point: only in a self-organised society, that is able to determine their future outside the logic of capitalist production and inner need to produce and to consume more, there will be no solution to the ecological crises we are facing today. Only in a society, that lives on the values of solidarity, with a holistic understanding about the world, can a future be built.

In the demonstration in Qamislo, Mahir Pir a history student at Rojava University, said that the way we deal with nature and the cleanliness of cities reflects the mentality of any society. Cleanliness in daily life, cities, homes and the preservation and defence of nature, is one of the essential things in life.

The students underlined the importance of leading this action as the youth, because it is in the young people that the strength of society lies. Especially these days, in the global movement for a radical change of the economic and political system, we can see this importance. In the front line, of every Friday demonstration, the young people are marching, claiming a future worth living in.

And as in the defence of the revolution in Rojava, and the Democratic Federation of North East Syria, the building up of the democratic system and an ecological society, the revolutionary youth will play a significant role.

With these actions in Rojava on the second global day of action of the climate movement, the activists also sent their warmest and revolutionary greetings to the people on the streets around the world, and wished them every success in the struggle for a democratic modernity, in harmony with nature.

This is a short video of the event.