Andrew Sage

Yes.

Exactly.

And I want to tell all of you and the mayor that what you guys are doing here in New York City is important not only to the people here.

What you are doing, what the mayor is doing, is providing hope and inspiration not only to people all across our country, but honestly, all across the world.

Woman, Life, Freedom.

Such was the slogan of the women's movement considered key to the project of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava.

Though originating in the Kurdish liberation struggle, the project quickly became polyethnic.

There are Syrians, Arabs, Armenians, Yazidis, and other groups involved in that project.

And in fact, the internationally recognized name Rojava has fallen out of use by the project's administration in an effort to de-ethnicize the project.

I'm going to keep using Rojava simply because it's quicker to say than D-A-A-N-E-S or D-A-N-E-S or any other combination.

But just wanted to put that disclaimer out in the beginning.

So, in the midst of the Syrian civil war, the region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 and pursued a somewhat unique political experiment for grassroots governance and social and legal reforms that have attracted significant international favor and support.

Though not recognized internationally as autonomous...

except by the Catalan Parliament, for obvious reasons.

For the past decade plus, the people in the region have fought fiercely for independence from ISIS patriarchy, Turkish incursions, and other Syrian opposition groups.

But recent events led to the newly minted Syrian government having seriously jeopardized the autonomy of the project.

Welcome to It Could Happen Here.

I'm Andrew Sage, also Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined once again by

It's me.

Yes.