Morning Comrades!
Welcome back to the now 4th year of this publication, quite the milestone to be fair and I am happy to see that more of you are here than we parted ways just before the so-called holidays.
I am still getting used to this part of my work-life restarting and the restaurant / kitchen work essentially has been non-stop since so this week is just going to be a little, coy “hello” before we start in earnest next week.
Obviously, it wouldn’t be a fresh start - and let’s forgo all the sentimental bullshit in regards to the new year etc. because who actually works along the lines of a made up calendar that billions of people were displaced/killed for and I would wager that the majority of you also didn’t have a break either - without some changes to this here little universe on the internet.
There is going to be a change in publishing schedule that start now and subscription-options starting in February. Starting now, this newsletter will come out three times a week, more if needs be, but at a minimum 3 times a week. All essays and artwork will be free for the month of January. Starting February, the paying subscribers will be getting 2 newsletters a week and free tier will get one. With that, I will reduce the monthly subscription fee down to 5USD instead of 10USD. Many of you had commented and written that this would be easier to handle and I agree.
We’ll see how that goes. As to the reasons, manifold, but primarily, I want to write increasingly better essays and not more, time and attention are huge luxuries that I ask of you when you sign up to this project and I reckon 1-3 dispatches from me are more than any one needs of me. Additionally, we’re opening a new restaurant come March and if my last few days of work are anything to go by, quality over quantity will guarantee my mental health if anything.
I still have no idea how and if I will continue the weekly playlists. I am definitely open to suggestions from your end. As it stands today I have enjoyed just listening to dumb metal and country these last few days and I don’t think anyone needs that in their life, except me and the poor souls that come over for dinner.
As to some sort of spiritual alignment between us, yourself and your real life and our causes, a few words from this side of the screen.
As with anytime I take a break I make the point to step outside of the routine of my political work and aim to look at it from the outside, to asses its failures and successes, its modus operandi and what to do better. Same goes with this newsletter, the question always is, daily as a matter of fact, why? Why do this, why bother to fight an immeasurable, Chimerian, unfriendly and destructive construct whose armour is not only vast but upheld by the majority of the people suffering from it when your efforts don’t seemingly dent said armour?
The angry teenage pissant in my that never grew up eagerly screams, “Why the fuck not, fuck all authority! Yay!!” and to be truthful, i often give that little prick centre stage but obviously there is more to this. The fact is that no matter how oppressive and violent this world we were born into is, it is equally possible to simply make it not so. Of course, and even here over the course of the last 3 years we have all discussed th various way this is possible and what the future could like and I genuinely hope that this will never cease to happen, but at the core this simple truth exist: All and any injustices are upheld by a select, violent few and we, all of us together, can change that to a more egalitarian, sustainable and inclusive reality in a blink of an eye. What matters is the work we do today, tomorrow until that moment, and then we do it some more.
We not only have to hold the powers that are accountable, and this is what we partly do in here, but additionally, unlearn all the insanity they have shoved down our and our ancestors throats to condition our subjugation. We are learning to dream again and are getting to the point where we accept these dreams not as utopian escapes that exist for some prick to make a netflix show out of but realize that our collective ideas for a world without capitalism is not only a genuine political idea, but importantly, a necessity. This is what this is here. Learning, unlearning, doing, putting the bastards up against the wall once and for all and finding each other, to see that we are on the right side of history and there are more of us than they have made us believe. By any and all means necessary and available.
Here is to another year of lighting collective fires under their arses, getting better, getting together and making it so.
Thanks for being here.
Yours, warmly,
V.