emancipation work is difficult. hell, living day-to-day is difficult. whether or not you are struggling with everything, if you are trying even a little bit, you are part of positive change. good job. sometimes I need to tell myself this, so I may as well tell you too.
last night I started sketching a little comic about emancipation work and what I mean by it, but I want to answer your excellent question sooner than it would take for me to finish that.
emancipation means a lot of different things to people, so I can only speak to my experience with it.
I prefer it as a term because “freedom” has become meaningless as a word.
very broadly, what I mean when I say emancipation work is:
“Anything that moves any or all of
your physical being
your community
your labor
your material conditions
your spirit
your self-expression and identity
towards agency and away from external dictates over which you exhibit little to no personal control or input.”
That is sufficiently vague, but for me it needs to be. I don’t know what an emancipated world looks like, because my slice of personal input is a mere 1/trillionth of the mathematics involved.
For me, complete emancipation necessitates the adoption of a few core principles that I hold fast to, summed up decently well by my union, the IWW.
“Emancipation of the working class, in struggle and at war, and the Earth that feeds and holds us all.”
For me, that means:
abolition of the wage system
abolition of slavery
abolition of colonialism-imperialism
democratisation of production and distribution
The emancipation of our one shared home, the Earth, will necessitate a serious and collaborative assessment of our role as custodians of this habitat. We are an amazing species capable of wondrous things and I am of the opinion that we hold a sacred responsibility to this delicate blue marble that holds us.
For me, emancipation encompasses freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom to self-actualise and the unhindered opportunity to realise your fullest life’s potential as you see fit.
There will always be hardship and difficulty in life. I believe we ought to work together to mitigate and lessen suffering wherever we can.
I ask of anyone, does that sound like something worth working towards? What does that look like to you? How will we build that together? How can I help you do that work?
Any work with which you seriously engage to delegitimise the current system and realise a new world in the shell of the old, is emancipation work. Organising for power at your job, or your housing, or your community, providing aid to those in need, providing care to those who are hurting, being your truest self in the face of a disapproving world. I think that all qualifies.
emancipation work is difficult. hell, living day-to-day is difficult. whether or not you are struggling with everything, if you are trying even a little bit, you are part of positive change. good job. sometimes I need to tell myself this, so I may as well tell you too.
