Raising awareness about care - the activities of Care Revolution Mittelfranken

The Care Revolution network has regional groups in various cities as one of its pillars - alongside co-operation groups, supra-regional working groups and committed individuals who make a contribution. They are perhaps even particularly important when it comes to coming together with other care-politically active groups to form action alliances and exchanging ideas with people about their care experiences.

There are many different ways of doing this. The Care Revolution Mittelfranken regional group, active in the Erlangen/Fürth/Nuremberg area, mainly organises events to raise the profile of care issues in the region. In this way, co-operations and networks are often established. This article is intended to give a small insight into their activities and show that something is possible even in a small town.

Care Revolution Mittelfranken organised two events in July 2023 in cooperation with the 'Altstadt trifft Burgberg' neighbourhood project. One focused on the concept of the 'caring city'. The regional group introduced the topic with an input: What does the concept entail, how can it be put into practice? This was supplemented and concretised by an online contribution from Lukas from the Veddel polyclinic, who told us about the founding of the polyclinic and its work.

At the other event, the organising groups showed the film "The Women's Strike Continues"(https://en.labournet.tv/womens-strike-continues). The film follows Polish educators over several years during their industrial action and the founding of a trade union section. The film addresses the importance of (poorly) paid and unpaid care work for the maintenance of the capitalist system with excerpts from Silvia Frederici, a feminist activist and academic since the 1970s. This was followed by a discussion with Mario Schwandt from GEW, who reported on the current (labour) situation in daycare centres in Germany, but also talked a lot about labour disputes in the sector and the particular difficulties involved.

In November, Care Revolution Mittelfranken showed the film "Care is more" by Anne Frisius. The film opens up different perspectives on the care of older people and provides fundamental reflections on the topic of living with dignity with support and care needs. The film also deals a lot with the perspective of (caring) relatives and carers and their thoughts on a care system that focuses on the well-being of everyone involved.

This year, the group organised a workshop on the topic of 'Care and anti-fascism', on which they will write a separate report. The explosive nature of the topic is obvious and has only been emphasised by the elections in Saxony and Thuringia. Finally, they will be holding an introductory workshop on the topic of care at the 'Vergesellschaftet Bayern!' conference from 29 November to 1 December, which will serve as the starting point for the care strand of this conference. This shows how the regional and supra-regional levels of networking work together: In March this year, we co-organised the care strand of the 'Let's Socialize' conference; this conference is based on the idea of 'Vergesellschaftet Bayern!

If you would like to set up a regional group yourself, please contact us at koordination@care-revolution.org. We can advise you, support you, provide you with material or just have a chat about the various options without any obligation.

You can reach Care Revolution Mittelfranken here: care-revolution-mfr@riseup.net