Freiburg i.B.

Unfortunately, the Freiburg regional group is currently inactive. We are happy to bring together those interested in founding a new group and provide support! Please write to us at koordination@care-revolution.org. Below is a documentation of their activities, possibly also as a suggestion for a new attempt:

Freiburg i.B.

We founded our Freiburg regional group in May 2014, shortly after the nationwide action conference in Berlin. As a stable but small group, we join forces with other organisations in alliances and for individual actions. We also try to publicise the concept of the Care Revolution at talks, workshops and stands.

For example, we have been taking part in the 1st of May demonstration and the DGB's May Day festival with our own posters and leaflets for years. We emphasise that 1 May is also a day of invisible work that is done unpaid in families and social networks. In the coronavirus year 2020, there was no demonstration or party, but we organised a small rally at which we distributed flyers with the statement, taking the necessary precautions: At the end of the pandemic, there must be no return to the old conditions that overburden and destroy care relationships and ecosystems. In 2022, the May Day festival was finally possible again in a central square. Since then, we have been present there and at the May Day demo again, relating our commitment to people in care relationships to the global situation with wars and the advancing climate catastrophe. You can find our flyer from 2023 here.

In view of the war in Ukraine, we are also involved in the organisation of the Easter marches in Freiburg. Here you can read the speech we gave at the rally. Activists from our group also take part in other peace actions.

We also regularly take part in activities to mark 8 March. In the mornings, we are present at the stands of feminist groups and organisations in front of the town hall, and in the evenings we take part in the demonstration with leaflets and posters, which has been taking place regularly and with a large turnout in Freiburg since 2015.

In 2021, an initiative of our Freiburg group gave rise to the "Platz für Sorge" (Space for Care) campaign, which brings together groups of paid and unpaid care workers and groups that also want to relate their practice to the concept of care, e.g. against the climate catastrophe or against racism. In some cities, alliances came together to take over public spaces and organise rallies and other actions there. In Freiburg, we started as an alliance with 45 groups and organisations on 8 March. In this first of several 'Platz für Sorge' actions, women from different contexts reported on their experiences and projects at a beautiful rally characterised by mutual curiosity and respect.

Interlinking the struggles for better care conditions and against the climate catastrophe is important to our group. That's why we regularly take part in the Freiburg climate strike demonstrations, sometimes with a small care block, as we did in September 2021. You can find our call for participation in the climate strike day in March 2022 here.

We also support struggles by employees in the care sector to improve their pay and working conditions. For example, we took part in the support alliance for the 2015 educators' and social workers' strike as well as the alliance to support the ver.di collective bargaining campaign in hospitals: "Entlastung jetzt! South Baden for more staff in hospitals". This alliance supported the industrial action at Freiburg University Hospital from the end of 2016 until the collective agreement on minimum staffing levels was reached in April 2018. It acted from the position of potential patients or as friends and relatives of patients. This alliance was originally founded to support the labour dispute. It is now a permanent organisation with a broader objective as the "Solidarity Healthcare Network", with a wide range of campaigns on healthcare policy and repeated support for wage disputes at the university hospital. During the coronavirus pandemic, the healthcare network organised further campaigns in support of nursing staff. We are also involved in the Solidarity Healthcare Network again. You can find out what's happening there on the health network's website.

We have also helped to organise events in the city on the topic of the Care Revolution, even beyond the left-wing bubble. One example is a sermon in a Catholic church during the service followed by a discussion in the parish hall.

Our largest single project to date was the Freiburg action conference "Care into the centre - Care Revolution as a perspective", which took place at the university on 20 May 2017. The conference was organised by Care Revolution Freiburg and supported by 33 initiatives and organisations from Freiburg and the region. 120 people took part in the plenary session and workshops. The participants reflected the entire spectrum of the care movement: carers as well as staff councillors from hospitals, activists from feminist and left-wing groups as well as those involved in the church, students as well as professionals. We are delighted with the positive response we received. You can get an impression of the action conference in a 20-minute video here.

There was also a very concrete project as a result of the action conference: the Care Council was created from the circle of participants to give care workers and people in family and voluntary care relationships space to describe grievances and emergencies. The aim of the Care Council was to develop solutions, demands and options for action. These can be addressed to the local council, for example, or the participants can implement the ideas themselves.

Since October 2017, the Care Council has been focussing on the situation of elderly care in Freiburg. Carers from outpatient and inpatient care reported on their experiences, a scientist from the Catholic University of Freiburg presented the situation of migrant carers in 24-hour care for the elderly; we also compiled our own research results. Two projects in this context: We tried to obtain information from operators on wages and staffing ratios in Freiburg care homes. Here we initially met with silence, then with clear rejection. However, we also gained interesting insights from the discussions we held. We conducted a survey on training and working conditions at the DAA nursing school for the elderly. In January 2019, we presented the results at an event at the school. You can find a newsletter on the work of the Care Council (as at the end of 2018) here. However, we realised that we had reached our limits with this concept when it came to building up the necessary pressure for change or recruiting care workers to work with us on a permanent basis. As a result, those involved in the Care Council put the project on ice in 2019. A restart in 2021 together with local councillors was not successful: however, we are still endeavouring to intervene in local politics, including with regard to the local council.

Care Revolution Freiburg continues to pursue the issue of care for the elderly. For example, we organised stands in front of several care homes to engage in dialogue with employees and relatives. This project was interrupted for the time being due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we are determined to keep working on this important topic, we have developed display boards on the subject, which we presented for the first time at the May Festival 2022 and will certainly be able to use again at our stands in front of care facilities.

We regularly organise online discussion events via the Fair Care Initiative, a cooperation project with church organisations (employee pastoral care, KDA, KAB), ver.di, the Left List and the Solidarity Healthcare Network. Unfortunately, we were only able to hold one well-attended regulars' table before it was cancelled due to the pandemic.

After Gabriele Winker from our group published the book Solidarische Care-Ökonomie in March 2021, some group members met to read and discuss the contents together. In addition to the organisational tasks, we always try to take time to discuss the content. That's why our meetings are split into two parts: In one half, we plan our political practice and distribute the tasks; in the other half, we deal with changing care topics, each prepared by a group member. The meetings also include reports on what is happening in the Care Revolution network across the region.

In the last period of the group, when it became increasingly difficult to harmonise the interests and wishes for cooperation within the group, we continued to regularly take part in activities with stands, flyers and demonstration posters about the framework conditions under which care work can still be carried out in the future. We were particularly present at climate and peace campaigns such as the Easter march.