What are some lessons you learned from your two years in Rojava and at Mala Jin* that may be useful for U.S.-based organizers?
One is that social change is slow. You just have to begin and then as you work, your process will and should evolve. Not everything has to be perfectly in place before you begin community work, it will and should evolve with the community.
And then you have to be ready for and remain strong against community backlash. Have boundaries for what you will tolerate and what you won’t, but at the same time, keep your eyes open to the differences between what a radical movement might envision and what the community wants and is ready for. You’re working for and with the community, not trying to be dogmatic and authoritarian.
You have to be willing to sit down with people you disagree with. What the Mala Jin does all day, every day is sit down with really patriarchal men, maybe women who have certain ideas they don’t agree with, and they just talk about it, listen to them, they talk to them. And over the years, this has made a really material difference in the way that society approaches these issues. In each individual conversation, you might not feel the needle moving. But in an aggregate of a conversation held over the years in different rooms with different people, things start to change.
There is a certain amount of dedication and sacrifice that it takes to show up every day. It’s not going to be sexy the whole time.
Having self-control, self-discipline and decentering yourself is really important when you’re doing restorative justice work for the community. At the Mala Jin, it was very difficult to hear people saying really harsh, difficult things about women all day. But it’s not about your personal feelings in that situation, it’s about the slow process of social change, and acknowledging where a community is, so it can eventually be somewhere else. People feeling heard in a room will maybe slowly change the needle, and that process will make a lasting impact on the community at large. It’s really not about you proving in each situation that you are the most radical person and the person with the perfect idea. It’s really not about you proving anything about yourself. When we’re doing this work, we’re doing it for and with the community, and that’s where your sense of self will come from. That’s where our sense of self should arise from, is from being a part of community and being of service while also honoring yourself and your boundaries.
— Clara Moore, activist and researcher, who spend two years living in Rojava and working for both the Mala Jin and the Rojava Information Center, interviewed by Truthout.
*the Mala Jin (“women’s houses”) are places throughout cities and towns in Rojava/DAANES which "allow people to solve disputes at the community level, instead of through courts or police, by offering reconciliation and mediation processes for domestic and family situations." Assyrian/Syriac women in DAANES also have women's houses, under the name Eşterot. Read more on Mala Jin here.
