Worth Fighting For: Bringing the Rojava Revolution Home

Chapter 4: Transforming - Change starts with the Self

Best Laid Plans

Chapter 3: Belonging - the People in Resistance

We Wanted to Plant a Garden

Chapter 2: Believing - the Battle of Kobane

Chapter 1: Beginning - Joining the Rojava Revolution

Kurdistan is a land that has been divided. The British and French empires chopped up the region, and put sections under the control of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria inthe early 20th century. Kurdish resistance to oppression runs back even further and continues to this day. The Kurdish region of Syria (known as Rojava) caught the attention of the world after the uprisings across the Arab world in 2011. The Kurdistan Freedom Movement, which had been organising across all four parts of Kurdistan for decades, seized its chance. Autonomous regions in northern Syria were officially established in 2012, with people’s councils driving out the Assad regime’s forces and taking control of defence and governance.

Throughout our lives, we write to make sense of the world around us.

Sometimes it’s love letters to friends in other cities. Sometimes it’s poetry in the early hours of the morning, urgent blog posts and social media updates to tell people what’s happening, journal entries of reflection and release.

Sometimes writing is uncompromising as it looks you in the eye, and sometimes the truth is subtle and sits between the lines.

But it’s always stories, because stories are where we find strength in times of despair. Stories move us to tears at the suffering of strangers. It’s with stories that we send children off to dream. If we want to know what’s happening around the world, we can turn on the news. But if we want to imagine a new one, we need to tell stories.

In short, stories are powerful.

Title, Information and Dedication