Flyer from Care Revolution Bielefeld for the Easter March 2026: Against every war!

The flyer below was created by the Bielefeld Care Revolution regional group for the Easter March 2026. The text is documented below; underneath you will find the link to the layout of the flyer.

AGAINST ALL WAR!

As the Bielefeld group Care Revolution, we position ourselves against war and militarisation!

War has been raging in Ukraine for 4 years, in Israel/Palestine the Hamas massacre on 7 October 2023 was followed by a 2-year genocidal campaign of extermination against the population in Gaza with an open end. In Sudan, the fighting is more brutal than ever, in the USA a reactionary autocratic president is reorganising world politics according to his wishes, most recently the attack on Iran. And as a reaction to this, there is almost universal and unopposed talk in Europe of intensive armament, active militarisation of society and social cuts.

We stand in fundamental and feminist opposition to this! We continue to fight for a society based on solidarity, in which human needs and caring for one another take centre stage, in which it is not about plundering this planet and dividing up and exploiting people according to racist, sexist or class-based criteria.

For us, war has something to do with society's general relationship to care and with social gender relations:

At its core, care is about providing for people and looking after the foundations of human life. Care is an activity that preserves the world. For us, care must therefore be at the centre of society's interest. If this were the case, billions would not be spent on armaments and the promotion of a deadly defence industry as a matter of course - whatever the cost. And what it will cost - and that was clear from the outset - can be seen in the current and almost unstoppable push for social cuts and longer working hours. The redistribution of wealth, on the other hand, which would create immense opportunities, is dismissed as "social envy".

It is no coincidence that the majority of women*, queer and other marginalised people are responsible for care work in our capitalist and patriarchal society. It is no coincidence that care work is poorly paid and not particularly valued. Those who are undervalued do the undervalued work. The fact that this undervalued work is the basis of everything is not a contradiction, but on the contrary a logical consequence. Because if we were to admit that this work is of eminent importance, it would be more difficult to pay it poorly and permanently demean it. The fact that the work that provides for life as such is not particularly valued by society naturally also has consequences for war and peace.

In contrast to care, war and the military are about efficient destruction and the use of force; they are world-destroying. War destroys everything that has been painstakingly created. First and foremost, life. But it also destroys all the wealth produced by society: public infrastructure, means of production, social relationships. It inevitably destroys what the belligerents claim to be protecting. And war means destroying nature on a grand scale. Wars set back humanity's chances of limiting global warming by decades.

War is no more gender-neutral than care work, even if there are a few female soldiers and male carers. According to the latest UN report on conflict-related sexual violence, it reached an unprecedented level last year, with a shocking increase of 25 per cent compared to the previous year. This is despite the fact that a unanimous UN resolution to ban it transnationally was passed 26 years ago.

The fact remains: war always means an intensification of violent relations. It means the brutalisation of men, which is followed by the structural contempt of women, queers and other groups that are held in low esteem. However, the acts of violence do not only serve to demean - through them, the categorisation as "woman", and especially as "man", is first violently established and celebrated. In war, bisexuality is forcibly normalised.

And: War produces toxic masculinity!

In recent years, something has changed in this previously shared perception: The knowledge of the world-destroying nature of war - of every war! - seems to be gradually being replaced by an acceptance of its alleged inevitability. With fatal consequences: The idea and the search for a different world that is possible and necessary is lost. Just as no peace is possible without care work, no war could be waged without care work. Nursing and comforting and caring for the wounded and vulnerable is never as much in demand as in war. In this respect, a perverse logic comes to the fore in war that already applies in patriarchal peace: care is utilised for a deadly system. Because the people who are used as labour and killed in war must first be born and cared for, every day anew.

It is a dilemma that world-preserving activities are permanently placed in the service of world-destroying activities.

That is why we demand: Care work must position itself.

- It should reliably act as an advocate for the marginalised, the powerless and the disenfranchised

the disenfranchised, in favour of a society based on solidarity

- It should defend itself against any appropriation in war planning

- It should actively oppose any logic of war and the normalisation of war

normalisation of war!

- We must attack the patriarchal order together!

CARE ECONOMY instead of REFURBISHMENT!