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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 […]

New book: Social Ecology and Social Change

In September last year New Compass organized a conference in collaboration with the University of Oslo called Ecological Challenges. Some of the questions we asked were:  How can we create a society that is ecological as well as egalitarian? How can we develop new forms of activism that are constructive as well as confrontational? How […]

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.”

New collection of Murray Bookchin’s political essays

From Athens to New York, recent mass movements around the world have challenged austerity and authoritarianism with expressions of real democracy. For more than forty years, Murray Bookchin developed these democratic aspirations into a new left politics, influencing political thinkers and social movements alike.

Eyewitnesses to the Kurdish revolution

Last December a delegation, including social ecologists, visited the Kurdish region of Syria – known as Rojava – to experience their implementation of “democratic confederalism”…

New book reviews and an interview

Reviews are starting to come in for the recent books by Brian Tokar and Dan Chodorkoff that were profiled here:

• The Swiss Ecologie Sociale website has reviewed both books (in French)

• PopularResistance.org has reviewed Toward Climate Justice

Report and a call to action from Ferguson, MO

ISE board member Negesti Cantave is on the ground in Ferguson and offers this update: In the past 48 hours here in Ferguson, MO I have personally been affected by tear gas, and been in close vicinity to rubber bullets and pepper spray. I was personally directed by either National Guard or county police to […]

NY Times letter on Kobane

From the New York Times editorial page, November 25, 2014. Also see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-schumacher-and-debbie-bookchin/the-kurdish-experiment-in-radical-decentralism_b_5996184.html: To the Editor: Re: “More Than a Battle, Kobani Is a Publicity War” (front page, Nov. 20): While the Syrian border town of Kobani may be viewed as a public relations battle by the United States and the Islamic State, Kobani’s true […]