Care Revolution network celebrates 5 years!

The Care Revolution network has celebrated its birthday. Founded in 2014, we celebrated our fifth anniversary in mid-September. And just as the network began at an action conference in Berlin, the birthday celebration also took place during a large gathering - the Feminist Futures Festival in Essen. This festival was jointly organised by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie and the Care Revolution network. After 1,500 participants had registered, registration was closed. Without really being able to estimate how many were in the various events, eating or chatting on one of the meadows at the same time - it was already very full, and the buildings, workshops or the food counter reached their capacity limits. This made it even more admirable how relaxed, friendly and curious the participants - most of whom were women*, in keeping with the title of the festival - were towards each other. We were also able to experience this in the workshops offered by Care Revolution, in which our thoughts on a caring and solidarity-based society met with a great response. However, the birthday party was at the centre of these Care Revolution events. In a dialogue, Mike and Anja, one of the co-organisers of the Berlin action conference five years ago, presented what has happened in the five years since it was founded. Activists from various regional groups in Berlin, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Freiburg and Leipzig showed how Care Revolution is present in different cities. After this retrospective, we turned to the future: Gabriele, as co-founder, and Svenja, as a comparatively new activist, explained what was significant for them in these five years and what will be important in the next five years. Anthea and Lisa from the Berlin Women's Strike Alliance and Conny, a strike activist from Essen University Hospital, added their views from the perspective of alliance partners whose actions we were involved in. There was also culture. And it was really good and homemade: the idea of a care catwalk( watch the videohere ) came from the Spanish group Territorio Domestico and was already successfully tried out in Berlin on 8 March. Here, people from Spain and Berlin organised a workshop at the festival and showed the mixture of pantomime, sketches, fashion show persiflage and poetry slam to a rather enthusiastic audience. Afterwards, we discussed issues that are set to become relevant in the coming years at tables, such as debates on unpaid labour or care and migration. Finally, there was a tower of gift packs with wishes for the future, sparkling wine and orange juice as well as even more conversations - we didn't want to part so quickly. So that we could meet again soon, we talked about the next network meeting.