Local strategies for a political agenda of care
The day “Cities, neighborhoods and towns that care” brought together municipalities, cooperatives, community organizations, universities and administrations at the Bloc4BCN very diverse territories with a shared conviction: you can’t continue to sustain life on precariousness of women, migrants and the working class, families and informal networks, while care services and resources continue to be subordinated to market logics and fragmented within public policies.
The meeting had the participation of 60 people from town councils, county councils, cooperatives, social organizations and universities Vallès Oriental, Vallès Occidental, Baix Llobregat, Osona, Barcelonès, Maresme, Moianès, Montsià and Alt Empordà. And it served to share experiences that, from various local realities, they are trying build a more fair, equitable and democratic care provision modelreorganizing public services and socializing the collective responsibility to sustain life.
But above all, the day highlighted a fundamental issue: although local strategies and practices are heterogeneous, the problems they are trying to address are remarkably similar. The aging and overaging of our society, the intensification of unwanted loneliness, the overload of women in relation to social reproduction, the multidimensional precariousness surrounding care work, institutional fragmentation, and territorial inequalities appeared transversally in all the tables.
