Justice Beyond Courts: The Conciliation Committees (Rojava Excerpt)

Neighbor Democracy

*This is an audio version of a video originally intended for Youtube: https://youtu.be/Cc5i5Xau4xs* An excerpt from my previous video The Communes of Rojava: A Model In Societal Self-Direction (https://youtu.be/cDnenjIdnnE). I'll be releasing several other excerpts over the coming days covering each committee of the commune system. In this video, I explore the question "Do we need courts and punishment in order to find justice?" by using the way people in Rojava/DFNS hold each other accountable to the norms they create together as a case study. Rojava gives us some insight into what kind of community efforts it would take to create an alternative to the mass incarceration and backlogged, dehumanizing court system that we have in America. They approach the idea of justice in a fundamentally different way, with the goal not being punishment, but to first meet the needs of the person(s) who was harmed, while also trying to understand what factors led someone to harm others in the first place and root those out. They are guided by the question, “How can we eliminate the conditions causing this person to harm?” instead of “How can we now harm this person who harmed others?” Justice is handled through decentralized community intervention with a restorative focus. If you've seen previous excerpts from my Communes of Rojava video, feel free to skip to 2:29 to get past the introduction. I. A Short Introduction to the Commune System: 0:00-2:29 II. Justice Beyond Courts: The Conciliation Committees (the main presentation): 2:29-7:46