Below are videos recorded by me and by The Struggle Video News (TSVN) of two closely linked panels at the Left Forum that should be of keen interest to anybody who has been following events in Rojova, Yarmouk, and Syria as a whole. In addition, they amount to a challenge to the pro-Assad left over how to understand the struggle against Baathist tyranny that is now in its fifth year.
The panel I covered was titled “The Syrian Tragedy: Failure of the Left and the Need for a Movement of Solidarity” that featured Yusef Khalil, an ISO member, chaired and spoke the role of counter-revolution in the region both at the hands of the West and local elites. Yasser Munif, an Emerson College professor and co-founder of the Global Campaign of Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution. Joseph Daher, who is a member of the Syrian Revolutionary Left Current living in exile, spoke about the persistence of the grass roots movement in Syria despite all efforts of the Baathist dictatorship and jihadist gangs to wipe it out. Although my video failed to credit her in the introduction, the final speaker was Elisa Marvena, a member in Spain of Solidaridad Global con La Revolution en Syria. The other panel was titled “The Syrian Revolution, Yarmouk, Rojava: Politics of Solidarity” Yusef Khalil, chaired the meeting and spoke about the rise of ISIS. Emrah Yildiz, a Turkish graduate student at Harvard, gave a wide-ranging talk about the Kurdish struggle in Syria that actually faced the same sort of obstacles that if faced in Turkey. He referred to repression that took place in Syria against the Kurds in the early years of the Erdogan regime that was saluted by Assad as a welcome blow against terrorism. Finally, there were powerful presentations by Talal Alyan Mariam Barghouti, two Palestinian activists, who called out those in the Palestinian solidarity movement who have failed to take a clear stand against the Baathist siege of Yarmouk that has cost the lives of nearly 3000 Palestinians, including 400 who were tortured to death in Assad’s dungeons. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/06/14/syria-panels-at-the-left-forum-2015/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
