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http://etherbox.local/pad/p/care-manifesto


Activity 1.
How does care center?
What are the strategies that are happening?
How do we care or how do we not care?
Are there tools for caring? 

Olave: 
    Care is something that she is noticing that she works with other people, there is illiteracy of care, oftentimes in safe spaces, there is a presumption of safety, there is very little theorizing of how care can happen, figuring out what you want and need

safe spaces are not so safe... presumption of safety, but how do we make those safe?
individual vs collective spaces not articulated around care.

don't know what to suggest

pedagogy as care. Create the conditions for people to speak -- active consent.
Tools to create such spaces 

Haven't thought so much about care, have the feeling that the notions of care, mis subjectivity of needs, there is someone who needs something very subjective experience, that's why sometimes its different to make lists that should apply to every place, one rule that applies everywhere, to find the strength and the space to speak out those specific needs of every person

Institutions that do have a guide, but that its not transofrmed into space, from the rules of conduct to a praxis, not reacting - but an embodiment

we should do all the same to take care of things, of our collectivities, we don't have to necessarily have to be the same, we are all in the same ship, we will still move towards care

there is a lack of care and attention to care in many institutions, the bigger the institution the bigger the lack, at the same time, there is an act of caring or a praxis of caring but that its not that explicit - it depends from the personal or the individual feelings or sensitivities than from a more general statement from the institutions, people do it because its individual decisions, and also very complicated, would have to have a more explicit emphasis on care, but in a way that it can create a shared responsibility, but not put the organisation in the most leading organisation 

power relationships wrt care: who cares and who is cared?

blackfacing parade -- 

there is a missing of people who are realising that what they're doing now is wrong - how can we have the situations where people can commit that they are wrong? 

Do not exclude the ones that 'violate' the code of conduct. How can we include them and keep the communication going (.e.g, transformative justice)

how do we keep people in? (the how has to become this is how) 
how to care of someone who doesn't take care 

reciprocal care? how to bring the topic of care as a commonground? this is not always welcome in certain spaces. 

worried about different sociocultural backgrounds that each member of a group could have - and how this opens up forms of expression of not knowing in a more free way -- and that is not minimised -- open it up to the socioeconomical backgrounds 

Formulate Questions that can be answered through this manifesto.


The state of care

• in a patriarchal and racist society care is undervalued.
• Care is chronically undervalued.
• Care exists in a false dichotomy of productive/ reproductive labour.
• Care is not valued by the current state of society.
• We need care, our communities need care .
• Care is an action, not a service .
• Care is currently hegemonic: meaning some have the priv ile ge to define what 'care' is, and others don't.
• Our society allows for vac u ums of care to exist. 
• Care is not equally distributed across fields, professions, areas of life. 
• is deeply entwined in power relations.
• is deeply entwined in institutional engagement or lack thereof.
• is a technology/intuition that is underdeveloped in western civilisation.
• Care cannot be outsourced .
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Outlook of care

• If things stay this way....
•    if care remains as undervalued as it is, we will burn out those of us who do the caring.
•    We are headed towards isolated islands of those who care .
•    We are headed towards the end of humanity and the destruction of the eco-system .
•    The proliferation of ego-centric hedonists and hoarders of goods, wealth, status and power. 
•     We will all become facsimiles of whiteness: greedy, extractive and exploitative.
•     Persons, groups, identities will be subjected to the violence of categorisation, victimization, commodification and marginalisation.
•    The tyranny of self-help models of survival, will undermine the formation of solidarity and collective power.
•    Living in a crisis of care, we are suspended in precarious modes of surviving, shamed for our failures and our shame marketed to and our failures capitalised 
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Visions of Care

• If we veered off course, what would alternative futures look like?
• What alternative futures of care inspire us and are we willing to work towards?
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• The emotional, physical, philosophic and social reality of those who are alive and sustain life will find expression.
• We will hold all those who are alive and sustain life as sacred, as valuable, as necessary to ourselves, as worthy of care .
• Value, worth and agency will be DIT (do-it-together) collective bottoms-up. 
• The shareholder model and corporations will no longer be legal ways to organise, only cooperatives  be allowed. 
• Nation states, borders and advertisement will be abolished. 
• The power of love, sex, relationship and care (in modes of enthousiastic consent and freedom to abstain) will be liberated. 

Strateg ie s of Off Roading 

• How to get to a lternative fututres ahaed?
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• Dismantle existing structures and relationships of power. 
• We need to evolve towards disassembled  and loosely structured, interchangeable meshworks of power 
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• To care is to be curious, curious enough to ask, 
• To ca r e is to be humble, humble enough to abandon assumptionss
• To care is to be gentle, gentle enough to be asked 
• To care is to be open about our failures
• To care is to be conscious of our priviledges 
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• We need to value those who do the caring. 
• We need to pay salaries to those who do the caring. 
• We need to value/ pay those who do domestic work
• We need to value/ pay those who do the child rearing
• We need to value/ pay those who do the teaching
• We need to value/ pay those who hold space
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• We must expropriate those who hold concentrations of power, status, wealth, capital and goods
• We must expropriate those who hoard
• we must expropriate those who extract
• We must expropriate those who exploit
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• We must i mpliment universal care ( healthcare, housing, income, education, art and culture )
• We must put our privileges to the service of those who do not hold them. We must embed our privileges within a praxis of ethics and duty. 
• We must root our power within communities that we advocate for, that we service. They must legimitize our power, and excercise of that power, and hold us acountable
• We must commit to pu r pose-driven, introspective lives. We must nurture and facilitate each other's talents and dreams.
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Accountability and care

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• Starting principle : pedagogy
• Use pedagogical tools to aknowledge the damage 
• Allow an environment for the victimazer to learn
• Integrate the victim in the pedagocical process
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• What is our collective commitment -- to this?? -- 
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• awareness 
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• social accounatbity - no assumtions of op
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• Legitimitacy of those who hold power: have they been elected, can they be changed, 
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• We need to share and alternate the role of caretakers of others that are alive and sustain life.
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• Friendship as a method
• Open-ness 
• Multivocal

Not only relationships of power, but also levels of power --> too many levels, too little accountability.
Network/meshwork thinking instead of top-down thinking

we a

• Power first... 

Accounatbl l ty *still to come
















Love and sexyness, relationships, desired, to be freely expressed, shared, acknowledged

Decide ourselves which are our sustainable values; rather than letting corporations decide for us.

The I and we can not be separated 

• National degree of happiness will rise - the notion of well being will rise.
• We want more space for happiness, grief, frustration, we want more space for things to be visible.
• There will be enough space and time to feel.We want to be complete 

The state of care: In a patriarchal and racist society, care is undervalued, wrt analytical masculine work [considered as masculine that's why overvalued but isn't masculine] which is overvalued. 
Reproductive Labor and Productive Labour are at war, and there is a chronic undervaluing of reproductive labour. 

 Reproduction of power 
 Perpetualtion of poor mental health 
 Commodification of care 


Outsourcing of care 

How to validate 'care' in a way it is grasped by the current state of society?

The assignment of self-care inhibits our ability to take care of others.
The work of care is as needed towards the community as it is for ourselves.

To be able to recieve care, you have to be able to give it. 

The mixed signal of care being undervalued and also being stigmatised sets us up in a way that we can't claim it, and yet we are expected to perform it. 

Our personal and collective relations to care tend to be pathological in our current status of society.

How can we define Care? the current definition is also hegemonic: someone's telling the story of care and what is important/what is not.

Some professions are about taking care and others abuse people.  The division of labours creates vacuums / spaces where we do not expect care, however we should go towards something more structural on this.

Money should be taken into account, as it brings/takes out the value of care: e.g., emotional care is not well  rewarded (if rewarded at all). Doctor vs. nurse; chef vs cook

POWER. Relationships that play a role in institutional engagement to care. 

There is not technology to take care of others in western civilization. 
A technology of care, a technology like this is a sign for analysing these analytic tools - we could also call it intuition - of registering and taking this "soft" topic and put it into more "formalised" language.