What Was It Worth In The End?
Morning Comrades.
I always get a little sentimental & romantic towards the end of the year, increasingly so the older I get and whilst I am in no mind to explain why that is, I have stopped fighting this and decided to roll with it these days. I have always embraced the romantic side of my thought process as I found that without a pinch of romantic idealism much of what I do lacks a certain flavour but the sentimentalism is somewhat new. With that, I had an interesting and moving encounter over the weekend that I wanted to share with you for two reasons. One, it utterly relates to the work we do here and wherever you are and secondly, tis’ the season to say things that someone definitely needs to hear.
As always, here is a link to your new weekly playlist for this week. I have almost made up my mind about continuing these into the new year and there will be changes. After 3 years of doing these it is time for a change as well as me needing some music cleanse I reckon. In any case, here is the second to last one of the Black Lodges Weekly Jams.
What Was It Worth In The End?
I am still nursing myself to a relative state of health after having caught a rather nasty flu last week, luckily not the Covid Variant but vicious nonetheless. After a few gruelling double shifts I managed to crawl out of bed on Saturday afternoon to go for a brisk walk in the cold and on my way back home I passed by my local pub, figured I could use a little warmth, chit chat and a Guinness. Luckily, I managed to sit down with Hanne for a little while and chat.
Hanne is an absolute treasure in my little world, in other circles people would call her in OG and for what it is worth, she is. She was fighting our fight way before most of us were born, here in Hamburg, in so many different capacities that do fill several books. To cut a very long story ( or stories to be truthful ) she has been at the forefront of a radical, feminist, anti-capitalist and certainly anti-authoritarian fight since the early 1970s, as an organizer, social worker, agitator, cook, artist and so much more.
Aside from the all the wonderful stories she does share on occasion of fighting cops, the bureaucracy, opening and running shelters for women, children and other people in need, throwing bricks, cooking for squats and so on what really makes it all so special to me is that she was truly active at a time, and in the same neighborhood as me, when I had first moved to Hamburg at age 6, back in 1984. I generally distrust my childhood memories of growing up only because memories in hindsight are internally romanticized but Hanne manages to tell stories of her time in my neighborhood that all so often confirm some of the visual memories of that time for me and that is extremely important to me, especially as I have no family left to correlate any of my memories with.
Coming back to Saturday evening, Hanne was sharing stories again, interweaving them with questions about where I am and what I am doing, still acutely aware of the political climate and groups still active here- fascinating again, because I don’t know that many mid 70s that are happy to pop down a pub on a Saturday night by themselves and have a few drinks with us.
Towards the end of the evening, admittedly, things got a little emotional to be true. As we were saying our good byes, she hugged me with tears in her eyes and asked if all she had done was enough and if it was worth it.
It made me pause initially because I feel that I am the last person to offer any sort of judgement or absolution to anyone but she made it clear that it was absolutely intended for me.
To take a few steps back, I am currently finding myself in this entirely new space, age and experience wise, where I am still learning and listening to the generations that went before me, whose work, I and so many others were able to build from starting in the early 90s. Additionally, I am also in the space where I am ( and I know this to be an utter privilege that I respect greatly ) teaching people just getting into radical politics and those taking their first real steps towards the work beyond identity posturing. I am used to being asked if a and all struggles are worth it, from them, but I have yet to have been asked this question by a person whose work I not only admire but have built on for decades myself.
Any and all struggles against the abuse of authority, violence and injustice within our capitalist nightmare, no matter its scale, impact, privacy or publicity are so brutally and utterly worth it! Not only worth it, they are required, demanded and necessary, no matter of we can ever see its results. To be absolutely clear, most of the time we will never witness the results of our struggles and we struggle not for us, but for those that come after us. If there is one thing I have learned after being at this for 30 years now is that “success” is entirely irrelevant, and people that chase material success for themselves, today, are not to be trusted with any serious political work. No, it is entirely however about trying and doing what is needed, when it is needed, no matter the size of the problem. Much like Nemik in Andor said ( and I am refraining from quoting Tolkien here as I have done so previously and Hanne had just watched Andor:
“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy," he says. "Remember this: freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause."
To come back to the evening, all I could say to Hanne was, that yes, everything she did was worth it. For me and my generation to have had examples of what to do, how and how not to do and more importantly, the fact that had she and her comrades not done what they did, my generation may never have had a ground to start from in the first place.
To come back to 21st Century colloquialism, I don’t know who needs to hear this but everything, no matter what it is, you do to counters the ever persisting injustice inherent in capitalism is worth it, it is important, it will be seen and is part of a multi-generational struggle for freedom from oppression.
Yours, warmly,
V.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
Ursula K Le Guin