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Social Ecology, Kurdistan, & the Origins of Freedom

Reflections on a recent visit to Turkey and North Kurdistan. Many Kurdish revolutionaries describe their struggle as one of organic society against authoritarian society and have forged a unique role in the continuing evolution of human freedom.

Hamburg conference features scholars & Kurdish activists

Reflections on Challenging Captialist Modernity, Hamburg, Germany Report by Eleanor Finley In Kurdish, “roj” means sun. Rojava is the land to the west, where the setting sun of freedom and possibility lays to rest and renew itself. Last week, I spent three days at Hamburg University as part of Challenging Capitalist Modernity, a conference hosted […]

Social ecologists in Colombia

El Collectivo Ambiente de Tabanoy (CAT): Social Ecologists in Columbia link indigenous medicine, permaculture, and the call for communal politics.   The Collectivo Ambiente de Tabanoy is a popular education project dedicated to sharing social ecological principles in Cristobol, Columbia. Cristobol is a suburb of the capital city of Bogota with many indigenous, peasant and […]

Video: Brian Tokar at the Oslo Ecological Challenges conference

The New Compass has just posted a video of Brian Tokar’s presentation from last September in Oslo, titled “Climate Change as a Challenge to Democracy.” This was the opening session of the 3-day Ecological Challenges conference at the University of Oslo, and included a panel of academic and activist respondents to the opening talk. In […]

ROAR Magazine interview with Debbie Bookchin

ROAR Magazine (Reflections on a Revolution), one of the very best websites chronicling today’s protest movements and global uprisings, has posted an extended interview with Debbie Bookchin about her father’s legacy and the importance of his essays collected in the book, The Next Revolution, co-edited by Debbie and ISE board member Blair Taylor. The interview […]

Ursula LeGuin on Murray Bookchin

“Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.”

“To Revisit Spain,” by Eleanor Finley

“The silence that gathers around Spain, like a bad conscience, attests to the fact that the events are very much alive.” – Murray Bookchin, To Remember Spain.

In the late 1960’s, social ecologist Murray Bookchin traveled throughout Spain and Catalonia collecting the history of Spanish anarchism. Though the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War was highly-publicized throughout the “democratic” west, few accounts ever dealt seriously with the social revolution that took place within in. Furthermore, no definitive history existed of the Spanish anarchism that fueled these events, a political movement dating back to the mid-19th century. Murray set out to write this history and, in the process, shed light on the development of revolutionary Left theory and practice.

Brian Tokar: Defying Apocalypse

This commentary appears on the occasion of the forthcoming “Apocalypse Now?” issue of the Occupied Times of London, as well as the People’s Climate March in New York City and events before and after, and also the publication of the newly revised and expanded edition of my book, Toward Climate Justice.  It also appears on […]

Left Green Perspectives [Complete list of issues]

Left Green Perspectives was published regularly between 1986 and early 1999, with an additional issue in January 2000. It originated from the Social Ecology Project in Burlington, Vermont, and was co-edited by Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl.