Ai-jen Poo — This Is Our (Caring) Revolution | The On Being Project

we all have needs that need to be tended to. I always wonder, what if care is the work? What if caring for ourselves is the revolution, meaning, what would happen if we divested from dismantling white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and invested our energy in equitizing the care we are able to provide one another?

I see an experiment with care as an untapped resource with the potential to undo capitalism.

Most essentially, it’s about treating child and elder care as infrastructure: absolutely essential to the health of society, and deserving of holistic reforms that treat it as such.

Across the many scales and dimensions of this problem, we are never far from three enduring truths: (1) Maintainers require care; (2) caregiving requires maintenance; and (3) the distinctions between these practices are shaped by race, gender, class, and other political, economic, and cultural forces. Who gets to organize the maintenance of infrast... See more

Yet many private and public challenges and dilemmas remain. The social care system faces ever-rising demands and pressures. The vital skilled work of care – for the young, the elderly, the sick – remains undervalued and under-invested in. And women remain over-represented in the domain of care, in both the domestic realm and in the public economy.

A... See more