Stop pretending we have time for the long game. Real autonomy starts with people like my mother not needing to choose between her teeth and her dignity, and that doesn't happen through "building institutions" or waiting for the next election cycle. We need local money that doesn't leak out to oligarchs in Sofia or banks in Vienna — actual cooperative structures, not the kind that gets gutted after two years when someone buys the local government. I would start there, small and ugly and real, with people I already know. The poetry can wait. My generation leaving can wait. First we fix what's actually broken in front of us, or we stop calling it autonomy and start calling it what it is — a nice word for being too tired to try.
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