# Collective note-taking: What we are learning from COVID-19

**Politicising solidarity in the time of quarantine**

This is a collective note-taking effort to document and learn from the organising of solidarity in response to the urgency of care precipitated by the pandemic of Coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2). The first round of notes, protocols and instructions, or sessions as we categories them here in the syllabus, reflects, in particular, the experience of organising amidst outbreak and lockdown in Italy. In keeping with the spirit of this syllabus, we focus on those practices that foreground care, labour, technology and disobedience. They are meant to offer both practical guidance and inspiration to organising and living with the outbreak elsewhere. But are also meant to help articulate demands to shift our societies from capitalism, productivism, patriarchy and racism to societies centred on collectivising the shared task of regenerating the interdependent well-being of humans and nature.

Unlike the remaining topics in this Pirate Care Syllabus, this one is closely following developments that are unfolding. It is thus partial and provisional to the Italian, Croatian and British context from which we write. However, we encourage others to contribute to building a larger body of notes documenting solidarity in the time of quarantine. Please get in touch with us and propose practices you would like to document, either through our email [e-mail], [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/pirate.care.network/), [Facebook group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/191818791894368/), Telegram or Matrix.

# "Flatten the Curve, Grow the Care"


"Flatten the Curve" has become both a guiding principle for public health responses and a rallying call encouraging people to actively pursue social distancing. The spread of the virus should be slowed down so that around 20% of those who hospitalisation and around 5% of those who require intensive care remain at any moment low enough in number so that hospitals have enough of staff and equipment to provide everyone with the best chances of recovery and survival. The spikes caused by the exponential spread of the virus and medical cases have cripled the healthcare systems in Wuhan and across Italy, and this is what we want to avoid. Hence, "Flatten the Curve".

However, we want to claim that "Flatten the Curve" is not enough. Not only do we want to keep the spread of the contagion within the limits of health care system's capacity, but rather that the social crisis resulting from the response to and the aftermath of the pandemic will require a re-focusing of societies on modalities and capacities of care. Something that we think is already pre-figured in the practices and forms of organisation documented here. Hence, "Grow the Care".

# A health care crisis

The Coronavirus outbreak has demonstrated the weaknesses of the public health system that has far too few ICU beds and ventilator and respirators to deal with the sudden spike in infections, thus contributing to increased mortality from the outbreak. In Italy, the system is so overstretched that the ERs are not able to timely attend to acute conditions such as heart attacks and many surgeries have been postponed, leading to many additional preventable deaths. Time-critical procedures as pregnancy terminations are being postoponed too.

Medical staff at hospitals is working under conditions of war-like duress - under-equipped, overworked and overexposed - leading to a growing number of them getting infected and having to go into isolation and requiring assistance. Service workers - particularly, cleaners, carers, domestic workers, deliverers, workers in grocery stores, just as many others who can't work from home - are exposed to the contagion.

The vulnerability of many at-risk groups is contributing to the crisis. First, there is the elderly. Then there are those who are undocumented migrants and can be refused medical care. Those who don't have medical care coverage and face a crippling debt if they need testing or end up in hospitals. Those who don't live in a home of their own: homeless, refugees, elderly in retirement homes, women in safe houses or foreign students on campuses. But also many who cannot avoid to work: cleaners, workers in grocery stores, food industry and transport, carers - and industrial workers, who are asked to continue as nothing is happening.

# A combined crisis of care, work and environment

Over the last few decades, capitalist development has privatised, defunded and undercut the public mission of the healthcare systems across the world. It has surrendered to market forces many other institutional and non-institutional aspects of social reproduction, such as cleaning, cooking, child care, elderly care, and education. These sectors depend on a large army of labour, frequently consisting of women and migrants, who work in precarious conditions of low wages, limited benefits, zero-hour or on-demand contracts, informal arrangements and illegality. As the societal tasks of care have been subsumed to capitalist accumulation, the forces of labour have been fragmented and individualised, excising their own reproduction from the networks of mutual support and social action. Isolation is already a prevalent condition.

The last four decades have seen a two-to three-fold increase in zoonotic leaps of viruses from animals to humans. The zoonotic leaps such as Coronavirus, which seems to have originated from bats (and is found also in other animals), are a consequence of the incursion of industrial agriculture and farming into natural habitats and of growing inclusion of wild species into capitalist food commodity chains that have created conditions for such spillovers. Degraded ecosystems, with their complexity reduced to benefit industrial agriculture, have a lower capacity to halt the spread of epidemics. This will only worsen as planetary ecological destabilisation is expected to spawn new pathogens at an increasing rate. Recent studies are also highlighting the correlation between the severity of the impact of coronavirus and the rates of air pollution in affected areas.

For the majority of people on this planet, who are deemed expendible from the point of view of capital, to die from epidemics or even common viruses has been the norm for a very long time. The pre-existing conditions of neo-colonial poverty, poor health, malnutrition and degraded habitat can weaponise viruses and epidemics. It is believed that 60% of deaths from the Spanish Flue was in Western Bengal. The worst is, however, that many of these diseases have known cures and vaccines. In the UK, for instance, the life expectancy between the richest and the poorest kids is today of [18 years](https://www.ft.com/content/35003f82-565d-11ea-abe5-8e03987b7b20?fbclid=IwAR3bBaG61uScXBsqFIvK8cub7AhbBKiJMVCoSM2DwOGe5z9Ee18AI2funvg). What Coronavirus is introducing is a class-less variable in the disposition of care provisions, making it impossible, for the moment, to sort out the damned from those who can be saved along the usual axes of discrimination. This condition will not last for long.

# A crisis of domesticity

Due to the advised social distance and the cancellation of many public activities, many precarious workers are now facing weeks and months without work and income. Compensation for self-isolation does not exist in many places. Staying at home in deepening poverty is a horrific prospect. They will be joined by armies of laid-off workers.

Nurseries, kindergartens and schools are closed, creating an impossible situation for many parents who are required to work. In many cases, the elderly, who are most at-risk from the pandemic, are forced to stay with kids, creating an emotionally difficult situation in homes and families.

But there are also who suffer mentally ill, disabled and suffering severe conditions for whom remaining isolated to home is not feasible. And then there are those who face domestic violence for whom the lockdown equals continued abuse. The violence will only grow as neither adults nor kids can pursue their interests outside of home nor can socialise. The isolation without a radical rethink of how we organise self-determinative work, free time and conviviality will start to leave its psychological toll.

# Organising for an alternative future

The pandemic is likely to push an already unstable global economy into a tailspin, triggering measures to restore capitalist accumulation that will, judging from the past, might bring about further reductions to the public care system, dismantling of labour protections, discouraging civic life and deepening inequality and poverty. The fallout might set back efforts to counter and adapt to climate change that might lead to comparable disasters. Against these prospects, the loss of organising capacity to effectively make political claims while the outbreak is ongoing might prove crippling.

We are living through a time of deep transformation that will impact our collective future beyond the emergency of containing the epidemic. It is both a time of acceleration, a time of uncertainty expressed in statistical predictions, a time of suspension. The shape of what is to come is not written in stone, but it will greatly depend upon our joint reflection and capacity to organise political actions. There will be an urge to simply "go back to normal, quickly". And that tendency or hope, however understandable on the psychological level, will need to be collectively addressed, and also healed.

But we also live in a time where we have been provided with a peek into an alternative future.


The challenge today and in the next period of time is and will be how to keep the surge in solidarity provoked by this multiple crisis - that is, as a force motivating people to come together and make demands for systemic changes in public health and for the environment, for moving beyond the capitalist addiction to growth, speed and consumption. This last point is what has been in the back of our mind as, like many others, we began to sieve and collect some of the stories and information gathered here. Experiences and examples linked here are taken from different places in the world, in the spirit of internationalism and translocalism, which might be one of the lessons we re-learn from the virus.

# Sessions

In this topic we address what are the immediate ways to attend to the critical care needs that distancing, isolation and quarantine are introducing or making worse and that we can address in a collective and mutualist manner. These are the notes documenting interventions and practices in response to the Coronavirus pandemic:

- Assisting people in (self-)isolation: provisions, emotional support
https://hackmd.io/@tomislavmedak/assisting - TOM: complete

- Mutual aid for those who have lost work
https://hackmd.io/@tomislavmedak/mutualism - TOM: almost complete, needs a last reading

- Cronavirus and the planetary ecological crisis
https://hackmd.io/@tomislavmedak/environment/edit - TOM: almost complete, needs a last reading of lessons

- Tech and Science at the time of Coronavirus
https://hackmd.io/bxKwOvORR-64WCkivtMdHQ

- Through a Feminist Lense
https://hackmd.io/@madu/feminist

- Conviviality without Proximity
https://hackmd.io/x0qM-DpDT6Ks-uIopUAGsw?edit - TOM: read and corrected, including the translation of the English Web tutorial

- Kids in Quarantine
https://hackmd.io/9HGg3n0-SM2aPECr0MIyrQ?edit --> This needs reading and comments and more links to non-Italian resources.; TOM: read and corrected, sorted the structure of heading, but it needs to be finished
- Bambini in quarantena (ITA) https://hackmd.io/6D44YwaLRPOaghgZTBIknw?edit

- Those who can't go home: on prisoners, refugees and homeless persons
https://hackmd.io/0QAlNgFERz-rHxCQWqQBLQ?edit

These are also some sessions already in the syllabus that provide more sources to learn about pirate care practices that might be critical to develop further understanding of the present crisis:

- Introduction to Piracy Care: On the Crisis of Care
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/crisisofcare/

- Criminalistaion of Solidarity: Challenge the Rulings
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/challengetherulings/

- Housing Struggles: Struggles for Social Housing
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/strugglesforsocialhousing/

- Housing Struggles: Bad Housing Makes us Sick
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/badhousingmakesussick/

- Commoning Care: Mapping the Invisible Labour
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/mappingtheinvisible/

- Commoning Care: Exploring Interdependencies
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/exploringinterdependencies/

- Psycho-Social Autonomy: A Mutual Aid Group
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/mutualaidgroup/

- Psycho-Social Autonomy: An Inventory of Tools from Radical Communities
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/inventoryoftools/

- Hormones, Toxicity and Body Sovereignty: Micro-Macro Connections
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/micromacroconnections/

- Politicising Piracy: Download / Upload
http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/downloadupload/

# Further reding

**Making sense of the pandemic:**
- [How will country-based mitigation measures influence the course of the COVID-19 epidemic?](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30567-5/fulltext)
- [Flatten the Curve](https://www.flattenthecurve.com/)
- [The Man Who Saw the Pandemic Coming](http://nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/the-man-who-saw-the-pandemic-coming)
- [Mike Davis: "The Monster is finally at the door"](http://links.org.au/mike-davis-covid-19-monster-finally-at-the-door)
- [Why We Should Care: Common Questions and Answers about Covid-19](https://medium.com/@davetroy/why-we-should-care-commonly-asked-questions-and-answers-about-covid-19-6b166f1876e9)
- [Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now](https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca)
- [Daniel Tanuro: "Huit thèses sur le coronavirus"(FR)](https://www.gaucheanticapitaliste.org/huit-theses-sur-le-coronavirus/)
- [La vendetta del welfare – di Andrea Fumagalli (in ITA)](http://effimera.org/la-vendetta-del-welfare-di-andrea-fumagalli/?fbclid=IwAR0ce6czT8jAfxGgeN0k7AzjATMtqkNEtvW9iA6eqMl37Hg-kxbjCRyrRwk)
- [Against Agamben: Is a Democratic Biopolitics Possible?](http://criticallegalthinking.com/2020/03/14/against-agamben-is-a-democratic-biopolitics-possible/?fbclid=IwAR3H1X3rlmKu8qctgEWK_zY3l0H05SZ1S3LdppoBVfeWbM0sC-krErLRUck)

**Political demands:**
- [Plan C: "Pandemic inequalities, pandemic demands"](https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/pandemic-inequalities-pandemic-demands/)
- [Bue Rübner Hansen's list of demands](https://www.facebook.com/buerhansen/posts/10158037155810351)
- [To our friends all over the world from the eye of Covid-19 storm, by DINAMOPress, (Italy)](https://www.dinamopress.it/news/to-our-friends-all-over-the-world-from-the-eye-of-covid-19-storm/)
- [The Insanity of Making Sick People Work, by Jacobin Magazine (USA)](https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/coronavirus-workers-rights-health-care-cleaners-gig-economy)
- [Coronavirus: 8 demands we should make on the government, by Counterfire (UK)](https://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/20956-coronavirus-8-demands-we-should-make-on-the-government)
- [Demands from Grassroots Organizers Concerning COVID-19, by Transformative Spaces (USA)](https://transformativespaces.org/2020/03/04/demands-from-grassroots-organizers-concerning-covid-19/)

-----

TO BE DEVELOPED:

On Prevention and Disinfection
https://hackmd.io/cIiKUkxjQ-mKdOIkTe-78w

- Working, communicating and spending time online
- https://differentnetcritique.memoryoftheworld.org/pages/index.html
- https://syllabus.pirate.care/session/downloadupload/
- conference call overview (with the issue of infrastructure)

- Those with no fixed income:
- sexworkers
- precariat
- cultural workers

# Resources:

**Where to find public health advice on prevention and symptoms:**
- [WHO's Coronavirus disease advice for the public](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public)
- [CDC's Prevention of Coronavirus](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention.html)
- [Ireland Health Service's Coronavirus guidelines](https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/coronavirus/coronavirus.html)
- [NHS's Health Information and Advice on Coronavirus](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/)
- [Instituto Superiore di Sanità](https://www.iss.it/coronavirus)
- [Covid19Italia](https://www.covid19italia.info/)

**Phisical distancing and home isolation guidance and advice:**
- [Stay at home: guidance for people with confirmed or possible coronavirus](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance/stay-at-home-guidance-for-people-with-confirmed-or-possible-coronavirus-covid-19-infection)
- [What to do if you have confirmed or suspected Coronavirus](https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/COVIDcasepositive.pdf)

nizers Concerning COVID-19, by Transformative Spaces (USA)](https://transformativespaces.org/2020/03/04/demands-from-grassroots-organizers-concerning-covid-19/)

# Playful Resources:

- [Telegram Italian Stories](https://t.me/storiealtelefono)
- [Anarchist Film Archive](https://christiebooks.co.uk/anarchist-film-archive/)
- [Openddb](https://www.openddb.it/streaming-di-comunita/)

---

POSSIBLE SESSIONS:

SOLIDARITY W ELDERLY:
Shopping for food and explaining what is happening
[Brigate Volontarie per l'emergenza COVID](https://m.facebook.com/brigatevolontarieMilano/)

UNIONIZING AND PLATFORM WORK
- What questions to ask if your workplace is introducing remote working tools and technologies ( as in, who owns which data, if you are recorded, time management/expectation to be online - some ref. to SMART.be and other attempts to unioninse platform workers)
- [solidarietà digitale](https://solidarietadigitale.agid.gov.it/#/) is the worst thing happening in Italy now, promoted by government. They promote this kind of capitalistic paywall opening and then, as soon as red zone become all Italy, compannies have all runned away! ahahahah

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT
Psychologists are leaving their numbers on social networks

LESSONS NUDM ON INSTA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOgDV44xe_U&feature=youtu.be

RAI ARCHIVES OPEN WALLS
[MANIFESTO](https://ilmanifesto.it/giu-il-muro-ilmanifesto-it-gratis-per-tutti/) OPEN WALLS

MUTUAL MEASURES FOR THE PRECARIAT
[Dinamo](https://www.dinamopress.it/news/la-cultura-non-viene-mai/) - see [Manifesto](https://ilmanifesto.it/contro-il-coronavirus-estendere-il-reddito-di-cittadinanza-a-precari-e-freelance/) - [ACTA](https://www.actainrete.it/2020/03/03/limpatto-del-coronavirus-sui-freelance-i-risultati-di-un-sondaggio/)

RECLAIMING PUBLIC HEALTH
Some

MEDICAL MACHINES
Respirator / Repair

OPEN KNOWLEDGE
Vaccines
Bio hackers in California
Cough on a rich person meme

- how to spend the time convivially while maintaining distance
- how to help and mind the safety people who have to work: paramedics, cleaners, shop workers,...

- how to find/provide medical assistance for other ailments not requiring urgent medical attention

I would also add:
- how to build a Pirate Radio
- how to build basic pharmacy ([amuchina](https://video.corriere.it/cronaca/come-produrre-amuchina-casa-pochi-euro-ricetta-approvata-dall-oms/b11ec278-5efa-11ea-bf24-0daffe9dc780); mask, ...)
- how to explain to kids what is happening
- how to assemble online (sorry just finished our first [jitsi](https://jitsi.org) macao assembly!)
- as cited before a session on abortion (women on waves and obiezione respinta) is needed.

There is a issue on forced domestic time related to violence that should be adressed somehow.

Also:

- how to homeschool children and young adults while the school system is down

https://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/03/12/news/coronavirus_milano_lombardia_senzatetto_denunciato-251090641/?ref=drac-2

---

OLD WRITE-UP:

- Tasks:
- Tom edits Intro text: collective note-taking, sessions as intervention & sessions as already existing in the syllabus > with everyone
- people can get in touch through Pirate Care FB group, through Pirate Care FB page, through Telegram and through Matrix
- madu sessions: intro

# Collective note-taking: What we are learning from COVID-19

**Politicising solidarity in the time of quarantine**


[Marcell: Add links to other session from the syllabus (aka, PMS, Piracy, Housing struggles...)]

Rationale: Capitalism's development over the last decades has privatised, marketised, undefunded and undercut public mission of the healthcare system; it has created tertiary sectors, much of it attending to various needs of social reproduction, with large casualised, zero-hour, freelance, on-demand, informal and undocumented illegal labour force; and it has isolated people from their communities and larger organisations of mutual aid and social action. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) is likely a consequence of the incursion of industrial farming into natural habitats and growing inclusion into capitalist food commodity chains of wild species. Planetary ecological disruption is likely to increase the spawning of pathogens and novel entities.

((((@tomi seems there is a link between most polluted areas with higher death tolls...this should be probaly addresses))))

The Coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2) outbreak has demonstrated the weaknesses of public health system that has far too few ICU units and equipment to deal with such situations of crisis, thus contributing to increasing mortality from the outbreak. Medical staff at hospitals is working under conditions of war-like emergency - under-equipped, overworked and overexposed - leading to a growing number of them getting infected and having to go into isolation and requiring assistance. All those who don't have health care coverage are facing debt if they end up in hospitals

((((I would adress here that this is not happenig in Italy! underlining that despite war situation and cuts public service work for all: also sans papier ecc ecc)))).++++(((understandably many "secondary" healthcare operations have been postponed by priority, however women reproductive healthcare it is not provided: abortion, already difficult to have in Italy is now becomig impossible to reach - HERE IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO HAVE A SESSION ON PIRATE PILLS AND ABORTION - @valeria shall we write it together taking "obiezione respinta" and "women on wave" as example?)))

Service workers - particularly, cleaners, carers, domestic workers, deliverers, workers in grocery stores, just as many others who can't work from home - are exposed to the contagion.

(((here we neeed to add factory worker which are asked to continue as nothing is happening: there are many spontaneous strikes in these last two days)))

Due to the advised distance and the cancellation of many public activities, many freelance workers are now facing weeks and months without income. Compensation for self-isolation does not exist in many places.

(((to add lines)))

Nurseries, kindgertens and schools are suspended, creating an impossible situation for many parents, who are required to work. In many cases, elderies, the most affected by the consequences of Coronavirus, are forced to stay with kids, creating emergency situations
as well as emotionally difficult relationships within homes and families. Moreover, both adults and kids, can't go outside to unload some energy, neither socialise. Psychological toll of isolation as well as domestic violence (((how should I put it here?))) are raising.

Potentially worse off are those who cannot isolate or are most marginalised -- elderly in retirement homes, students in dorms, prisoners, destitute communities, homeless, women (and kids) in protected houses, undocumented migrants, refugees.

While the outbreak could be managed or rather alleviated only at the societal and institutional level, there are so many pre-existing social aspects of the crisis of work, care and conviviality that the conditions of the outbreak are exacerbating. The pandemic is likely to push and already unstable global economy into a tailspin, triggering structural shifts and governmental measures that, judging from the past, will bring about further cuts to the public care system, dismantling of labour protections, discouraging civic life and deepening inequality and poverty. The fallout might set back efforts to counter and adapt to climate change that might lead to comparable disasters. Against these prospects, the isolation is deepening social separation and the loss of organising capacity to effectively make political claims while the outbreak is ongoing and once the outbreak is over.

While these are systemic concerns and will need coordinated political action to scale , in this topic we want to address what are the immediate ways to attend to the critical care needs that distancing, isolation and quarantine are introducing or making worse and that we can address in a collective and mutualist manner.

[v: A point I would add somewhere in this intro:]
For the majority of people on this planet, who are deemed expendible from the point of view of capital, to die from common viruses has been the norm for a very long time. The worst is that many of these deseases have known cures and vaccines. In the UK, for instance, the life expenctancy between the richest and the poorest kids is today of 18 years (I'll fish out the source for this data). What Coronavirus is introducing is a class-less variable in the disposition of care provisions, making it impossible, for the moment, to sort out the damned from those who can be saved one along the usual axes of discrimination. This condition will not last for long.

[v:A second point I would add is to highlight that:]

We are livign through a time of deep transformations that will impact our collective future beyond the emergency of containing the epidemic. The shape of what is to come is not written in stone, but it will greatly depend upon our joint reflections and capacity to organize political actions.
Any tendency or hope, however understandable on the psychological level, to simply'go back to normal, fast' need to be collectively addressed, and also healed.
As Rutger Bregman put it, "Disasters and crises bring out the best in us. This simple fact is confirmed by more solid evidence than almost any other scientific insight, but we often forget. Now more than ever, in the middle of a pandemic, it’s crucial to remember this." https://thecorrespondent.com/350/dont-forget-disasters-and-crises-bring-out-the-best-in-people/46336220700-14f239ac
The challenge today and in the next period of time is and will be how to keep the the surge in solidarity provoked by the crisis political - that is, as a force motivating people to come together and make demands for systemic changes in public health and for the environment, for moving beyond the capitalist addiction to growth, speed and consumption. This last point is what has been in the back of our mind as, like many others, we begun to sieve and collect some of the stories and information gathered here.

(((I don't know but from my point of view, I would open up also possibilities that are shown by this crack, what the virus can unfold, in onne sentence, just to use figurations > for example, the sandro mezzadra's [article](http://www.euronomade.info/?p=13085) is very good, this [article](https://www.ianalanpaul.com/the-corona-reboot/) by Ian Alan Paul (v: I added this in the tech session, the point is not so new, but it is well expressed), as well as the perception of Time, for me it is very important now how its tirannny can/is commonly becoming visible. Moreover, there is a nice image that is running on solar punk groups which is: 
)))

Slow down / Emergency time of accelleration
Alternative time
Waiting time - when will i get it?
When is the time for demands?

This virus is doing left things ...

TO ADD: How do we invite them?
This is an invitation for others...send us materials...we will credit u...etc.
Chat Channel: Pirate Care Group on FB
https://www.facebook.com/groups/191818791894368/edit/