#communal-care — Public Fediverse posts

"They want us to think care is something we have to qualify for. That it belongs to the insured. The compliant. The deserving. But we win everyday when we reject all of that. When we remember care is a promise. Older than any institution. More powerful than any system. We win when we remember care is a practice, passed hand to hand. When we claim it as ours together, without apology."

#CommunalCare #AllCareForAllPeople

"I don’t know what else to say. Hold each other close. Don’t forget the people who need our love and support. Reach out and say something you’ve needed to say. Even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard. There’s no other way to grow. No other way to feel the warmth."

https://petergelderloos.substack.com/p/hold-us-all-close

#cancer #care #communalcare

Das obige Zitat stammt von Genner aus der WoZ-Beilage zum Thema Preppen.

https://www.woz.ch/wobei/23-4/iii-die-prepperinnen/!8XFEMR1ATE25

Tadzio Müller sprichst von solidarischem Preppen. Doch wie soldarisch wäre er und seine in-group, wenn die Faschos aus Brandenburg anklopfen? Hoffentlich gar nicht.

Preppen geht somit immer um's überleben einer in-group, wie auch immer definiert, richtet sich auf Zukünftiges, Spekulatives, anstatt im hier/jetzt mit #MutualAid und #CommunalCare zu handeln.

This article can give a good impression on how anarchist mutual aid gets done in Asheville:

"Mutual aid looks mostly like meetings, spreadsheets, Signal loops (group messages), wellness checks, and deliveries. Deliveries by car, by truck, by ATV, by dirt bike, by pack mule, by helicopter, by foot. Neighbors who don’t even like each other are knocking on each other’s doors and making sure everyone has what they need."

https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/disaster-compassion-is-real-in-north

#Asheville #MutualAid #CommunalCare #DisasterRelief

Let’s create spaces where everyone feels safe and valued, where we can address our needs together without relying on the very systems that have historically failed us. By embracing community care, we protect not only ourselves but also challenge the structures that perpetuate harm and neglect."

#CommunalCare #MutualAid

This group aims to become a network for disabled and/or chronically ill persons and their partners, especially for people negatively affected or socially isolated during the ongoing pandemic. A place where communal care can be discussed and examined from an anarchistic/feminist viewpoint, but also to put it into practice.

Patriarchy kills.
Ableism isolates and kills.
Anti-capitalist.
Intersectional.
Anarcho-feminist.

Please let us know if you are interested in joining our Signal group.

Or help us to create zines, collections of art about #COVID19, #LongCOVID, the age of the #pandemic and the collective abandonment of disabled/chronically ill people.

#MutualAid #CommunalCare #Anarchy #Feminism

"There's only one way to fight a wendigo. It's not with arrows or guns. You fight it by doing the opposite of cannibalism. You build community. You support people. You help them. You listen. You pay attention to threats and deal with them.

Compassion is resistance."

#CommunalCare

The book edited by @cbmilstein is now available.

"Anarchist feminism—or anarcha-feminism—shows us that the ways we tend to our social relations can build a new world inside the old one. We can take care of each other when nothing else will, supplying communal well-being and liberatory horizons."

https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349961/constellationsofcare/

#CommunalCare #AnarchaFeminism

Raum Bern/Schweiz:

Aus gesundheitlichen Gründen müssen wir uns weiterhin vor #COVID19 schützen, was zu zunehmend erdrückender sozialer Isolation und Einsamkeit geführt hat.

Wir suchen Leute, die wie wir weiterhin #CovidCautious leben müssen, oder wollen, um zusammen ein lokales Unterstützungsnetzwerk/Germ Pod/Masc Bloc aufzubauen.

Gibt es überhaupt solche Leute hier? Es wirkt nicht so.

🖤❤️

For ex-pats or English-speakers as well:

Bern/Switzerland:

Because of health reasons we continue to protect ourselves from COVID-19, which has lead to a heavy burden of social isolation and loneliness.

We are looking for people who like us still have to, or choose to, live COVID cautious, to build a local support network/germ pod/masc bloc with them.

Do such people even exist here? It does not look like it.

These are two zines we created:

https://lettertoourcomrades.bearblog.dev

https://lettertoourcomrades.bearblog.dev/testimonials-of-the-collectively-abandoned/

#LongCOVID #CommunalCare #MutualAid #GermPod #MaskBloc #Bern #Switzerland #Schweiz

"To me, creating a different kind of world is one where everyone’s care needs are taken care of, where care is a system of collective support that is anti-capitalist, that is anti-racist, that is gender inclusive, that understands the different care needs that people have, and understanding the different capacities that people have to give care. I don’t believe care can be egalitarian. Care is never egalitarian. It is not about equality, but rather it is about giving what we can and about getting what you need. And so for me, a real caring society would be universal in that sense, but it would be one in which we’re all equally invested."

https://truthout.org/audio/care-must-be-a-collective-practice-of-survival-not-a-site-of-profit-extraction/

#RadicalCare #CommunalCare

Intent vs. Impact vs. You Cannot Not Communicate

https://pieceoplastic.com/2024/03/03/hating-it-here-again/

Still would love to discuss this topic here. The other day we were talking about, how men tend to make a big deal out of it when they are the care person, whereas women - at least in tendency - do this much less. Care work is still structurally "expected" from women in our culture.

Maybe we could organize a video chat on the care topic? Is anyone interested? @fr3nzin3

#LongCovid #CareWork #CommunalCare #CovidIsNotOver

For our third zine we would like to critically examine some positive examples of community organizing that happened during the ongoing #COVID19 pandemic.

We would like to ask what went well, what could be improved, also how #CommunalCare and #MutualAid projects can scale and how we can turn them into a #PrefigurativePractice to help us get ready for any upcoming crisis and/or pandemic.

If this interests you, please join us to work on this zine.

If you know of interesting projects to examine, please let us know.

lettertoourcomrades[at]proton[dot]me or DM us here.

Read more about this idea in this toot thread:

https://chaos.social/@antiaall3s/111871097761416943

#SafeSpace #RadicalCare #AntiAbleism #Anarchism #CovidIsNotOver #Intersectionality

How could #CommunalCare and #MutualAid scale, to maybe, and hopefully, turn into a mass mobilization? Yes, this is where our question turns utopian, in the best sense of the term, by asking: What could have been.

If this question interests you, if you know about projects that fit this description, if you would like to write, or already have written, about these questions, please feel free to contact us here or via mail lettertoourcomrades[at]proton[dot]me.

Call for contributions for a zine looking at the revolutionary potential of a crisis like the #COVID19 pandemic. For that we would like to critically examine some positive examples of community organizing that did happen. A look at #MutualAid, #GermPods, #CommunalCare #CirclesOfTrust projects started during the pandemic. We want to analyze what worked well, what didn't, which potentials for revolutionary prefigurative practice did happen, which were left unexplored. And at how this could scale.

2/2 This is a topic that interests me a lot and is hardly mentioned in the media. Does anyone know of any articles and/or studies on this? Or would you like to share your own experiences? I am aware that it is also very personal! DM me if you have thoughts to share or are maybe interested in a talk about this topic. #LongCovid #CareWork #CommunalCare #covidisnot0ver

1/2 The Care-Work for people with LongCovid is primarily passed on to the family/partner. Not only is this problematic in terms of unpaid and unappreciated care work, it also has an impact on the relationship. It can create a kind of dependency which can be ‘unhealthy’ for both sides. #LongCovid #CareWork #CommunalCare #covidisnot0ver

The Wimmelbild shows scenes of how we have been failed during the ongoing pandemic, in the absurd nation state where we are forced to live, in a country that wants us dead. And there are probably lots of international similarities.

This drawing was made by @fr3nzin3 for our new zine.

https://archive.org/details/testimonials-of-the-collectively-abandoned/WimmelbildColorByFr3nzin3_s.jpg

https://rant.li/atlettertoourcomradesatrant-li/testimonials-of-the-collectively-abandoned

Spot the: #Capybara

#CommunalCare #MutualAid #SmashTheState #SystemChange #PandemicIsNotOver #stillCOVIDing #AntiAbleism #SwissCOVIDFail

And the PDFs for the zine: Testimonials of the Collectively Abandoned are now ready and available as well.

Web optimized in color: https://archive.org/details/testimonials-of-the-collectively-abandoned-the-pdfs/TestimonialsOfTheCollectivelyAbandoned_WebColor/

Print optimized in black&white: https://archive.org/details/testimonials-of-the-collectively-abandoned-the-pdfs/TestimonialsOfTheCollectivelyAbandoned_PrintBW/

Thank you so much for reading and sharing this zine.

Let's create more and feel free contact us if you care to get involved.

#LongCOVID #Ableism #PandemicIsNotOver #AntiAbleism #COVIDing #stillCOVIDing #AntiAbleistAction #Anarchy #CommunalCare #MutualAid

We need to build better communities of care and support, desperately.

With how our society keeps refusing to acknowledge the pandemic (Covid levels are so high in my state right now that it’s dangerous to go out), it makes existing with other people even harder, and often disabled, marginalized folks like me get left behind. It shouldn’t be that way. It feels like the Left is so caught up with reacting to the Right’s evils, that we’ve forgotten how to build up communities of solidarity and liberation.

We should be engaging in collective community care. We should be building that together and not eating up the isolating consumerist culture that late-stage-capitalism throws at us.

We need more media networks focused on building up communities of care and communities based on liberation. We need more support (monetary, housing, basic needs, etc.) for our most vulnerable and to build that up for all people. We need to create alternate ways of giving and receiving that does not fall prey to the consumerist demands of capitalism, such as repair libraries and libraries of things as well as more intensive library systems. We need to support alternative ways of being that is focused on care, agency, creativity, cooperation, and liberation.

The Right built up a powerhouse with its grassroots initiatives to an alarming extent, and it’s how this mess we’re in got worse. Part of their ‘success’ lies in the media empires, book deals, community support, and in-group terms, verbiage, symbols, beliefs, and ideas. The Left has, instead of doing the same like we used to do prior to the 70s through today, needs to create an alternative that is just as extensive — a microecology of communities centered on liberation and solidarity rather than hate and fear.

Yes, we must tear down the racist, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, homophobic, colonialist, sexist system; but, we must also build up an alternative. We can do both at the same time. This isn’t an either/or, and right now? We desperately need stronger communities of care and liberation, because things are going to get worse if we don’t stop all oil and coal use, if we don’t stop the rise of fascism, if we don’t stop the genocides. Climate change is currently intensifying the suffering, and those in power are using that intensification to consolidate fascism and oppressive systems.

In the “Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism,” John P. Clark wrote:

“Over the past generation of radical social theory, we have heard a great deal more about the ‘microphysics of power’ than we have about the microecology of community. The dominance of the former approach is, I think, less a reflection of the inherent superiority of poststructuralist analysis than a symptom of the defensive nature of oppositional culture in our time. A heavy focus on the ‘physics’ of the system of power, and the depiction of social action in terms of various ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ shaped largely in reaction to this system betrays a certain level of capitulation to a dominant mechanistic, objectifying order. There has been a widespread assumption — not only among post modernist and poststructuralist theorists, but also among political activists — that the historical destiny of opposition is essentially a future of permanent struggle against the system of power. For many, the highest aspirations of oppositional culture seem to lie in small tactical gains within a fundamentally immovable system and in forms of enjoyment and creativity possible through struggles within the vast labyrinth of power.”

Here Clark calls out the reactionary politics that the Left has fallen into, where we’ve lost that sense of community and instead react to the horrors with ‘strategy’ and tactics’ without laying a groundwork of community to support one another through our process of dismantling a harmful system. This reactionary politics views the system as immovable and a fact of life, when it is anything but.

He writes:

“The ideology of permanent struggle embodies some important truths about our creative resources in the face of dominations, but unless these truths are placed within a larger, more affirmative problematic, they easily become a recipe for disillusionment and nihilism. Such a larger problematic underlies the microecology of community. This approach undertakes a careful exploration of the nature and possibilities of community at the molecular level of society, and directs our hopes and efforts toward a project of regenerating human society and liberating human creative powers through engagement in that project. It sets out from the assumption that society, no matter how mechanized and objectified it may become, always remains an organic, dynamic, dialectically developing whole, the product of human creative activity in interaction with the natural world of which it is an inseparable part. Society is shaped by human thought, imagination, and transformative activity, and is not least of all, the result of the kind of primary relationships that humans beings enter into with one another.”

Here Clark describes how community and the relationships we build with another shapes society. Without community and building relationships with one another, we fall prey to the false idea that liberation is only a struggle against domination — an oppositional strategy. Except, that’s not the full picture. Liberation is never just about a struggle against opposition. Liberation is about creating a community beneficial for all, an alternative to the dominant oppression, as well as a strategy/tactics that dismantle the oppression. It’s a multifaceted approach that builds up more than it tears down.

Clark continues:

“It has been suggested that the most immediate concern in a renewed radical politics must be the creation of strong, thriving communities of solidarity and liberation. Such a form of community is one that is engaged deeply in the quest for communal freedom…”

Our freedom cannot be realized without community.

“It is the process of replacing a system of domination of the person and community through force, violence, and coercion with a system of voluntary, mutualistic cooperation. It is the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through exploitation, manipulation, and instrumentalization for the sake of power with a system of personal and communal self-realization. And it is in the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through alienation and objectification with a system based on agency, self-determination, and free self-expression.”

Chapter 6 of The Impossible Community, John Clark

In the above quote, he contrasts the Right’s dominating systems and communities against what the Left ought to be building. By building up this alternative community, we can overtake and tear down the harmful exploitive, oppressive, and bigoted systems and replace it with our more just, loving, creative, equitable, sustainable, and cooperative communities. He provides a crucial call out on progressives, who have failed to build that community-foundation:

“The respectable Left long ago decided that this discourse [of liberation] was too dangerous, and decided to label itself and its aims as ‘progressive.’ It is no secret that ‘progressive’ was invented in part as a euphemism for ‘liberal,’ the political orientation that dares not speak its name. But the term has also become a generic label for virtually anything that is vaguely to the Left, or begins to look Left in a political culture increasingly dominated by the Right. Thus, the rise of ‘progressivism’ has been an eminently regressive development. The abandonment of terms such as ‘women’s liberation,’ ‘Black liberation,’ and ‘gay [LGBT] liberation,’ has coincided with the marginalization of the remnants of what were once called ‘freedom movements,’ and the co-optation of their issues by the dominant political interests. In the end, the discourse of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ has largely been conceded to conservatives and right-wing ‘libertarians,’ with lamentable consequences. The dominance of the negative, individualist concept of freedom as ‘being left alone’ goes almost unchallenged, while the positive, social concept of freedom as collective agency and participation in many-sided communal self-realization is seldom mentioned. It is in this context that the concept of the communities of solidarity and liberation takes on crucial importance.”

Chapter 6 of The Impossible Community, John Clark

This callout is really needed because we have ceded far too much to the Right in regards to terms, communities, and approaches to society. If we truly wish to stop the rise of fascism and its subsequent genocides and oppression, then we need to do more than just react to the bad. We need to tear down at the same time we build up our own grassroots communities.

Clark continues:

“It is essential that we look for inspiration for the emergence of such communities not only in certain neglected chapters in the long and diverse history of radical and revolutionary movements, but also in contemporary examples of grassroots, community-based social reorganizations across the globe. It is crucial that we understand how the successes of reactionary movements (and most notably those of the religious Right) have resulted in large part from their achievements in community buildings, in grassroots organizations, and in the creation of organizational forms that fulfill primary social needs. We must understand the way in which both successful liberation movements and successful reactionary ones have created small communities that embody a highly articulated set of values, ideas, beliefs, images, symbols, rituals, and practices, and integrated these communities into a large social movement.”

Chapter 6 of The Impossible Community, John Clark

Here Clark points out how the Left has neglected to examine the radical and revolutionary movements — especially those in the Global South — created a strong, liberatory community in their fight against oppression, and it is how they won those fights. Such as the ‘Arabic Spring’ that happened a decade or so ago, where strong communities of liberation toppled dictators. It wasn’t reactionary politics that did that. It was a strong community built on solidarity and liberation, that provided for one another’s primary needs, while also sharing a common foundation that intensifies that sense of belonging and collective care.

This is what we need to be building. This is what the Left desperately needs if we want to defeat the rise of the Fascist Right and their genocidal campaigns. Our foundation of care, solidarity, agency, communal self-realization, creativity, and liberation exists in the communities we build with one another, and provides us with the strength in which to stand up and tear down the systems of harm and oppression.

So let’s keep working on building that, okay?

Thanks for reading this essay.

https://reshapingreality.org/2023/12/18/building-communities-of-care-and-liberation/

#anarchism #collectiveCare #communalCare #Communalism #communitiesOfCare #community #justice #liberation #Race #radicalAndRevolutionaryMovements #socialJustice #solidarity

Building radical communal care collectives might well be our new normal. Ours turned out to be such a fantastic, enriching experience, it made us wonder, what had we been waiting for to try and start one?
This might sound like one of those lame stories of how good things can grow out of bad situations. And in some ways it is. But no worries, i am neither an optimist nor a

https://pieceoplastic.com/2023/12/08/let-us-build-radical-communal-care-collectives/

What if #COVID19 was a test run to see if we as a species could step away from all encompassing #Consumerism under late stage #Capitalism and instead build structures of #CommunalCare and #MutualAid.
Well, if it was, we failed. 💯

"Where are we going to put our energy right now? I think it needs to be towards mutual aid and sabotage of our opponents’ technologies of extraction rather than trying to fix the state or get them to make morally right decisions. [..] But to me the urgency of the collapse timeline makes clear that it's time to save as much life and wellbeing and reduce as much suffering as possible given the conditions that are definitely unfolding." @deanspade

https://mskellymhayes.substack.com/p/can-we-imagine-ourselves-surviving

#MutuaAid #CommunalCare

Are you also tired of always getting asked the same question.

Why do you still wear a mask.

Here's a handy flowchart to hand out as a postcard.

[Artwork by: @fr3nzin3]

#Anarchy #Disability #AntiAbleism #Ableism #COVID19 #Zine #CommunalCare #RadicalCommunalCare #LongCOVID

Our open letter is now available as a zine, as a PDF either print-ready in black&white or web-readable in color.

"There will be no anti-capitalist revolution (whatever form it might take) without anti-ableism and antieugenics."

https://archive.org/details/open-letter-to-our-comrades-zine/

#Anarchy #Disability #AntiAbleism #Ableism #COCID19 #Zine #CommunalCare #RadicalCommunalCare

By all intents & purposes i probably now have to be considered to be agoraphobic. Not because i hate people, on the contrary. But because i literally fear them, have lost all trust in them. The pandemic has made it clearer than ever before, they will not keep me safe, not even the people i considered to be my friends, not even my family.

Best to just hide to avoid most of them. Best to build dedicated networks for online support with like-minded & -abled folks.

#AbolishTheFamily #CommunalCare