Kulna: for systems change and collective liberation

KULNA is for those who feel that something is fundamentally broken, and refuse to look away, give up, or turn cynical. We are living in a moment of relentless moral injury: Genocides live-streamed; fascism rising; ecosystems collapsing; and the world system revealing its true face.

We understand that the response to this moment requires thinking in generations, not viral moments. We believe the work of understanding power is inseparable from the work of changing it. We are part of a growing movement committed to systems change and collective liberation.

Our work is about what comes before and after what you see on the news: the systems, histories, and forces that explain why things happen. But we don't stop there: We take the next step and look at what this makes possible, and what needs to be done next.

It grows out of years of research, activism, and strategy built at the Kawaakibi Foundation, by people who know - intimately - what it means when Western and international institutions fail to uphold what they claim to represent.

KULNA is also a community space, online and in person, for people who share this horizon to gather, think, and build together. By joining KULNA, you aren't only accessing content - you are stepping into a living community space for like-minded people.

Running through everything we do is a simple conviction: that human life, human dignity, and human freedom are not negotiable - not a variable, not a detail, not a casualty of realpolitik. In fact, these are the only things that are worth it, and the only reason we do this work.

We're not free until we're all free, and we're not safe until we're all safe.

Our Team

Our team spans activists, educators, artists, researchers, and entrepreneurs from across the world. Our team was seeded by activists from the MENA region, but it quickly expanded to become a truly global team, reflecting our understanding that this is a shared struggle.

Among us are people who have been tortured, exiled, imprisoned, surveilled, and threatened for speaking truth to power. We have lost friends and comrades to this fight. KULNA is a continuation of that work, and a commitment to making sure it doesn't stop.

Our Channels

KULNA has three editorial spaces:

HowToLiberate is geopolitical analysis for people who want to understand power in order to challenge it. It moves from the anxieties of the present toward historical depth and strategic clarity. Hosted by Iyad el-Baghdadi, Ahmed Gatnash and Muhammed Saad.

Shefa is a space for healing, bringing together trauma research, feminist practice, and psychedelic-assisted approaches to recovery, because we believe that wounded movements cannot build free societies. Hosted by Ramy Essam, Isabelle Davodi, and Leyla Hussein.

Fadaa is art, cultural resistance, and a practical platform that connects artists with spaces to work and gather - rooted in a Sudanese tradition of communal sharing, and in the conviction that access to space is a political question. Hosted by Khalid Albaih, Ramy Essam and Kristine Eikrem.

Each has its own focus, but all three share the same conviction: that geopolitics, healing, and culture are part of the same struggle for liberation.

As a preview of what's coming, we are sharing our first HowToLiberate piece: a lens on the current US-Iran moment, not as breaking news, but as a window into the deeper forces reshaping the region and what they mean for the decades to come.

KULNA means All of us. كلنا

The forces we are up against - tech billionaires shaping what you see, tyrants controlling narratives, mainstream media serving power - have never welcomed this kind of work. This platform's launch - and success - is all about you.

We are for people like you, and we depend upon people like you.

"All of us" means all of us. Nobody gets left behind.