 Evening everyone and welcome to the 12th episode of the School of Resistance, a livestream format that invites experts and change around the world to discuss valuable alternatives for the future and to create a blueprint for politics of resistance. This project is a collaboration between NTGENT, IRPM, Akademie der Künste, Kulturstiftungsbundes and HowlRound Theatre Commons. Other partners include European Alternatives, European Democracy Lab, Medico Internacional and Merberverlag. Today's episode is called Politics of Interdependence. What would a truly caring world look like? During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the consequences of the cuttings in the care and health systems in the countries got visible. The unequal access, the underestimation of the sectors' work, of the workers themselves got visible and even led to decision overlaps. Neoliberalism taught us to be self-sufficient individuals and COVID-19 is teaching us that we are not, that we depend on each other locally and internationally. Therefore, I'm very happy and honored to introduce you to our speakers of tonight to talk about the politics of interdependence and a truly caring world. I start to welcome Adna Bonham. She is a writer, historian of science and interdisciplinary artist. She holds a PhD in the history of science from Princeton University and a Master's in Health and Public Health from Columbia University. As a researcher, Adna's work interrogates the ecology of post-colonial science, embodiment, surveillance and the history of epidemics. Furthermore, I want to welcome Anna Jung. She is a political scientist and calling for global health care. She's head of the communication department of the Human Rights Organization Medical International and has worked for many years as a global health officer at the socio-medical development. Medical promotes the human right to the best possible access to health. Furthermore, announced was Lynn Siegel, who is part of the Care Collective and co-author of the Care Manifesto. Unfortunately, she is ill and we are hoping that one of her colleagues of the Care Collective can still join us. We're not sure about it, but we're crossing the fingers that it will still work out. Last but not least, my name is Carmen Hornbostel. I'm a dramaturg at NTGENT and before we start the conversation, I would like to remind our audience that there's a possibility to engage in the conversation by asking questions. If you're watching live, you can send us your question either emailing to School of Resistance at NTGENT.be or by commenting on the live streams on the Facebook pages of NTGENT or IAPM or even via Twitter with the hashtag School of Resistance. I actually wanted to start the conversation by getting a definition, a clearer insight to what actually is care and what we all have to redefine in there. I hope that we still will have the answer later, but we see in the pandemic, we've seen words like system-relevant work and suddenly care work that we have never really seen in our society that was kind of done in the background came up in the discussion, what actually is care work and system-relevant work. Adna, I would like to start with the first question to you because the virus was called at the beginning the great equalizer. Everybody was talking about it, but now we see that it's definitely not an equalizer. Being in the home office is a privilege and the most unprotected are the ones who cannot stay at home, for example, and mostly our care workers, and this work is mostly done by women and migrants. Could you please explain us a bit more about the inequality that the virus is showing us? So, first of all, thank you so much, Carmen, co-palonelist, as well as the School for Resistance for organizing this event, and you're right to point out that social distancing is a privilege and for those of us who have that privilege to be able to work from home, that's something to acknowledge, and one kind of group of people I would also like to give gratitude for are the care workers and the essential workers who've been putting their lives on the line, especially those who are underpaid and undercompensated and face very precarious situations. And I guess I will give a brief kind of gesture towards the care and what is so important about care. I think that it's absolutely ubiquitous in our society, and it shapes how we survive and thrive in this world, even if it's not acknowledged. At the same time, it's part of various forms of rituals that allow us to not only heal and move through this world, but it also gives space for us to really reflect on excavating things like ancestral memories, being able to provide care for others on a kind of interpersonal level, but also having a collective, very participatory experience that allows for repair. So I would say that care is very fundamental to how we move through the world, even when that world is in flux. So thank you for allowing us to be able to meditate on notions of care in this moment. To turn to your question about COVID-19 and this pandemic, I would say that last year was definitely a period in which people regained their interest in biology. That is to say, now people know what mRNA is, genomes, like people are trying to understand concepts such as herd immunity. And part of why this moment matters is because the social conditions of disease and its heaviness upon us has made us susceptible to trying to understand the dynamics of not just COVID-19 as a pandemic, but also other epidemics that have persisted and continue to persist like cholera, malaria, and so on. And one of the things that we are seeing as the disease mutates and changes, we're also seeing how our social structures and hierarchies are changing in the midst of this global pause. So the events of 2020, as they continue today, has also enlivened scholars, writers, everyday people to reflect on the racial inequalities, the colonial inequalities, and social discomforts that we're living through. In one of the New Yorker essays that P'Yangri Amada Taylor wrote, she said, wrote, quote, this macabre roll call reflects the fact that African-Americans are more likely to have pre-existing health conditions that make the coronavirus particularly more deadly, end quote. And so this perpetual death or perennial death is something that is obscured in some ways, but is ongoing in light of the racial violence that we've been witnessing, not just in the United States, but elsewhere. So even here in Germany, over the past several years, there have been far right attacks in Hala, Hanao, as well as in Chemnitz. So the ongoing pandemic juxtaposed with structural racism and police brutality has very much been part of perpetuating some of the medical inequalities. And part of what we can think about when we think about what it would look like to actually address the pandemic is to actually try to understand who are the most marginalized people in society? What are the structures that we need to address to be able to provide not just care in an abstract sense, but adequate compensation, ensuring that people have time off, ensuring that the resources and goods in the global north aren't just sitting there, but actually get distributed on a full level, but then also beyond that, the question around refugee and migration, where from migrants who particularly are coming from North Africa, Western Asia, and the rest of the African continent, ensuring that they get amnesty, immediate amnesty during this crisis, as opposed to the shedding of borders to them. And as, of course, the ongoing climate crisis continues, dealing with that is also going to be part of ensuring that the virus doesn't disproportionately impact those who are facing massive drought in their home countries, et cetera. So if we think about the virus as one biological element, it's not the only element that is producing the inequality. If anything, it gets perpetuated by the colonial, capitalistic, racist, and gendered inequalities that we see so present in the world. But what I would say is necessary to be able to remedy those social inequities is figuring out actual concrete policies that end the many social, political structures that oppress so many people of the world. I'll stop there. Thank you very much. And I'm curious to maybe hear later on some concrete ideas on that from you. I want to stick a bit to the topic of inequality, because there's another inequality that we're seeing in a moment. In the international distribution of the hope-giving vaccines that are developed, and Europe already secured itself a lion's part with exclusive and expensive contracts. And on top of that, the knowledge about the vaccines are protected by patterns which belong to the farmer industry. And nearly all countries with pharmaceutical industry denied and refused to have a patent pool, which would make the knowledge about it accessible to everyone and would allow as well a quicker and local production and distribution of the vaccines. So I would like to ask to you, Ann, to please explain the patent concept briefly and as well what holds us back in Europe to share our knowledge and what role in all of this the farmer will be actually placed. Thanks again for having asked tonight. I start in explaining the global patent system. In our opinion, this patent system is one of the biggest global obstacles to the supply of life-saving drugs to people. The patent system has focused knowledge production and health on profit maximization and capital gains rather than on research and development and equitable distribution of life-saving medicines. So this is a very general problem, not only a problem of this current pandemic. This patent system is based on the assumption that this could create an incentive for innovation because research into medicine will be refunded by high prices of medicine protected by the temporary monopolies that the patent system assures. In doing so, it does not meet global health's needs. And the patent system ensures that even those drugs whose development is based on publicly funded research are sold at high prices. Innovations are being paid twice in this logic, once through public funding of research and a second time through this high prices. In my opinion, this is a very serious form of privatization and it also conceals the fact that public financing of research and development would be more favorable from an economic point of view than refinancing it through patents and high prices. The central problem of the innovations through patents is that it triggers research only in area where profitable products are secure, meaning that health problems of poor people are neglected, like malaria and others as they or their health systems cannot pay for the medicines. During the last year, the pharmaceutical industry receives billions of public funds for the research and production of the vaccine, yet it is allowed to set the price of itself without any transparency and keep the research results protected by patents and other mechanisms of intellectual property rules, like the TRIPS agreement, some of you might know. That's why the vaccine is expensive. That's why the same countries that gave billions of the pharmaceutical to the pharmaceutical companies have to provide now public funds again so that the poor countries will eventually get some of the vaccine at a later stage. And what we can see from today, from the today's perspective, is that many countries will wait for another one year or two years until they get the vaccine. This COVAX funding model, some of you might have heard about it. This is connected to the WHO and is a kind of public-private partnership between pharmaceutical industry governments and the philantrocapitalistic foundations, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This model, for example, still lacks many billions to ensure supply of vaccine doses. So we can see that the world and all of us pays the price for these profits. But it would be too easy to blame only the pharmaceutical industry alone for this situation. Politicians have failed to attach conditions to the allocation of public funds and this is now falling on our feet. And just to remember us, back in 1999, so already 20 years ago, the World Health Assembly of the WHO called on its member states to critically examine the impact of international trade agreements on healthcare and their populations and to prioritize public health interests in matters of pharmaceutical and health policy. A stronger wording, which explicitly placed health above economic interest, was prevented by massive pressure from the Western industrial countries. And this is the same situation we are facing now. So this global injustice is evident in the coronavirus pandemic and goes beyond it at the same time. It is particularly visible in places where people cannot afford essential medicines, like you mentioned already before. Despite rapid medical progress and the availability of medicine for cure and treatment, millions of people die every year from diseases like tuberculosis, diabetes, or malaria. And the WHO estimates that one third of all patients worldwide do not have access to urgently needed drugs due to high prices and other structural obstacles. So the deadly force of this system is particularly hard for those who are marginalized in their origins and income. And these zones of exclusion, how you can call it, range from refugee camps, like we can see right now, on the island of Lesbos and the refugee camp of Moria and others, to urban slums all over the world and entire countries. So to come to an end for this first question, incremental changes to this system, such as life-saving price reductions for HIV drugs, only came about a result of years and years of international public protest and thus had to be forced by civil societies and countries particularly affected by the pandemic. The patent system it says also creates barriers to research progress by patenting research method and instruments. So overcoming these unjust structures is an anticipation of a future in which services of public interest are free from the market and profit principle in which places the human right to health as a public good in the center of health policy. Definitely. And maybe I can ask for more like, for example, you're based now in Germany, knowing all this, why is the German government not just saying, okay, we change it and it will be a public good? What is the, or what is the government gaining by giving all this money, as you said, even twice to the farm industry? Yeah, I think we can deepen this debate later on in the next questions, but what I can say is that there is a great fear that when the huge issue of the patent system is raised that we will come very close to a debate about the capitalist system as such. So this is really one of the strong pillar of our system. And when there is the proof that it works quite well without the patent system, people will start asking more questions about the whole systematic problems we are facing right now. So in a way it's really ridiculous and not understandable and it costs a bunch of money, but what you can see is that there is still a high priority to defend the system, the capitalist system we have and to leave people behind to do so. Maybe we can stick to this topic of capitalism at now because in one of your articles, you wrote, pandemics do not materialize in isolation. They are part and parcel of capitalism and colonization. Could you explain us the historical context of the interconnectedness of capitalism, colonization and how and in which way it influence our public health system? Sure, but before I answer that, I guess I also want to dovetail to the previous comment about Germany and its relationships to thinking about distribution, especially as a head of the EU. I think one of the things that the Germany has to reckon with is its history of colonialism and colonial violence, particularly on the African continent. So the question around historical amends and specifically the colonies that it had, the Deutsche Südwestafrika, which is present day Namibia and Deutsche Ostafrika, Burundi, present day Rwanda and Tanzania and how the state acknowledges and makes amends for German scientists who appropriated not just objects, physical objects from that, those lands, but also the bones, the skulls and bodily parts of these African people and how some of those bodies, remnants of those bodies are here in Germany and Berlin. I think that thinking about the relationship of colonialism and how it set the stage for present day capitalism has to be understood with what is going on today. So one major question that drives the work that I do and the works of so many different scholars that I respect and honor is the extent to which racial capitalism and colonialism not only causes disease, but the extent to which it exacerbates disease. And Megan Vaughn's work, Hearing Their Ills, she looks at that relationship, how colonial powers reproduced and constructed African illness by mostly focusing on the British context, but many of those dynamics existed in the French context where for the French, medical encounters in present day Saint-Domingue or what used to be Saint-Domingue in present day Haiti was also dovetailed under a slave society with medical expeditions and other things. Algeria, there was Richard Keller's work looks at the relationship between French occupation of Algeria and madness. And then there's also Napoleon's expedition in Egypt and the ways that that was tied to spreading the plague. And one could go on and on with these encounters and these histories in which epidemics spread, people were experimented upon. And this is something that we have to, especially as people who currently live in the global north have to reckon with what obligation both moral and material do we have to not just of course call out some of these inequalities, but to know them and call them by their name and to do something about it. Like as it currently stands, there's 1.2 billion people in the world who live on the equivalent of $1 a day or less. And yet meanwhile, there's 200 billionaires who have doubled their wealth in the 20th century. So this inequality and this financial inequalities has to be redistributed if we want to solve some of the major social and inequalities that exist. But beyond that, there also in my opinion needs to be a reimagining of how the global south is often experimented upon. So in April, two French scientists suggested that they should have conducted trials on African people for COVID-19. And it caused an uproar because it kind of eluded the sense that Africa could be a laboratory for Europeans as they develop the vaccine. And in some ways is a mirror and a magnifying glass to previous situations and hierarchies that existed under French imperialism. And it's also the kind of attitude that doesn't allow or gives the space for actual mutual cooperation in terms of medical information, medical knowledge, indigenous knowledge, as opposed to the types of experiments that were present during the 19th century. So in thinking about this and thinking about the relationship between colonialism, capitalism and the pandemic, it's also important to know the dynamics in the US where 360,000 Americans up until now have died and a disproportionate amount of black and Latinx and indigenous people have felt that hardship. And at the same time, what that then means is it's not just the death that occurs and the people who mourn their death but the millions of people who've lost their jobs and a portion of whom might not return to those jobs, the acute economic hardship that is happening in the context of a lockdown. And in the context also, one week later, an insurrection led by white supremacists in the US Capitol. And so thinking about this dynamics, it's important to note the hypocrisy that existed, for example, during the 2008 economic crisis where banks were bailed out, like in the US. In fact, they were able to get about 4.5 trillion dollars between 2007 and 2015. And yet when working class everyday Americans were begging basically for some kind of relief, there was a $1,200 check once in the spring in the late spring. And then it wasn't until December that they decided as a legislator within Congress to give a $600 compensation. And for most people who have lost their homes, that's nowhere near enough. And if you compare that to Germany, where there are people who did get like 5,000 Euro grants, there's incentives for a short, Kloetze Weiz or short work, I guess that's how you translate it. And there's some kind of social government relief. And so in many ways, the play out of how governments have responded to the pandemic often reflects how the government already sees and views the population and the people who live on its land. So it's no accident that the US as chaotic as it is and how polarized and neoliberal as it is has really left as a government people to fend for themselves, which is unfortunate. And the reason, at least in Germany, of course the numbers aren't, there have been deaths here too and we should be able to honor the lives that have been lost, but there's been incentives put into place because there's been workers' movements to create those social structures to allow the space for that safety network. And I think this is a moment in which we should be trying to fight for not just social support and networks in one country, but on an international level and to make the governments that have, in some cases cause havoc on their own citizens accountable to say, well, if the banks got bailed out, the people should be bailed out. And that in itself would actually allow for dealing with the inequities, dealing with the deaths that have occurred and hopefully allowing us to collectively mourn and recover from this year of a pandemic. So I'll stop there. Thank you very much. I quickly, or because I just see that Catherine Rottenberg joined us, I quickly want to welcome her here in the conversation. Thank you very much for being here. I might just quickly introduce you to the other speakers and as well to our audience. So Catherine is associate professor in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham. And her most recent books include The Care Manifesto and the Monograph The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism. And thank you very much for spontaneously replacing Lance Siegel, who's ill. So welcome. Thank you so much. So what have I missed? Sorry, I was coming from another meeting and here I am, interacting in the middle as Edna was. So eloquently speaking. Maybe I can directly pose a question to you because I already mentioned The Care Manifesto and you're in The Care Manifesto, we were just talking about capitalism and colonization. You state neoliberalism have neither an effective practice of nor a vocabulary for care. Neoliberalism is uncaring by design. And right now in these days, we can see a lot of powerful business actors trying to promote themselves as caring for the people, as caring for the planet. And we do see that some states pay a bonus to their care workers due to COVID and we saw as well the videos, the people clapping for the care workers and they went viral. But what can we do so that we don't get stuck in care washing, one-time actions? What are your proposals for a systemic change? Okay, so how much time do I have? More or less five minutes. Okay, so maybe what I'll do, I'm just gonna talk a little bit about maybe you outlined very nicely. Thank you, Carmen, and thanks for everybody for being here tonight. I'm just gonna talk a little bit about what we discuss in The Care Manifesto and the kinds of very broad strokes, the kinds of solutions that we propose, the alternative to the carelessness that we see, which has been exacerbated in so many ways by COVID. And one of the things that we do argue is that in the wake of the pandemic, what we've seen is that we need a radically new politics. And Edna was speaking, I mean, I didn't hear the beginning of the speech, but clearly what we need is a new politics that puts care front and center of life. And so what we are approaching The Care Manifesto is one that understands care as being necessary across all and every distinct scale of life. And of course we do begin, as you mentioned, Carmen, by diagnosing the ways in which the interconnected nature of the current reign of carelessness and of course central to our analysis is yieldable capitalism. But in The Manifesto, we do, in order to provide an alternative as we travel from the global dimensions that have produced the climate, I mean, the climate crisis and these economies across the globe that the profit over people. And then we move through careless states and communities to how what we call the banality of carelessness affects our interpersonal intimacies. And then we travel outward and we scale up from the interpersonal to the planetary precisely in order to outline caring alternatives to our contemporary condition carelessness and that's basically what you're asking. So what we posit sort of as an alternative is a caring world can only be built from the understanding that we are all dependent upon the systems and the networks, animate and inanimate that sustain life across the planet. And that's the basic premise of The Manifesto. And so building a caring world begins first and foremost by recognizing that our survival indeed are very thriving, are everywhere and always contingent on others. It first and foremost involves avowing our mutual interdependencies and embracing the inevitable ambivalences at the heart of care and caregiving. So what we develop in The Manifesto is a notion of universal care and it calls for inventive forms of collective care in every single scale of life. As I mentioned, universal care means ensuring that care is distributed in an egalitarian way. It's neither assumed to be unproductive or primarily and or primarily women's work nor when paid carried out by mostly poor immigrant and women of color. And so when we think about what if this means in terms of, and I'll give you just an example on the planet, which is the heart, the most grandiose way of thinking about it. But first, our vision translates into reimagining the limits from the interpersonal of familiar care to embrace more promiscuous models of kinship. It translates into reclaiming forms of genuinely collective and communal life. I mean, the adopting alternatives to capitalist markets, reversing the marketization of care infrastructures and restoring and invigorating and radically deepening our welfare states. And we have a whole section where we talk about what that we do not have nostalgia for the welfare state. We have to radically transform it, but some of the aspects of that welfare state need to be reinvigorated and expanded of course. But if we think about the planet and I don't know how much more time in terms of more concrete sort of concrete proposals that we lay out, how can we can create a more caring world, one that is capable of sustaining and nourishing all forms of life? Well, first and foremost, most we know that it means rolling out a green new deal on a trans national level. That and the green new deal involves, we know transforming work patterns, both of the construction green jobs and the working week to expand our time but of course a transnational green new deal is not enough. We need an array of transnational institutions and agencies who's organizing principle are based on care and care taking. And there are some examples that are emerging or that exist and have existed. And we need these institutions to be premised on not predatory capitalism or financial imperialism or settler colonialism, but caring for the world entails remaking and democratizing all of these international institutions and networks so that they facilitate the redistribution of the world's resources enabling all states and populations in them to build the caring and sharing infrastructure that they need to supply. So it requires cultivating embracing what we call an everyday cosmopolitan conviviality, one that moves our caring imaginaries beyond our kinship structures, beyond our communities and nation states, for the reaches of the strangest parts of the planet. That means that we have to cultivate cosmopolitan subjects who are literally citizens of the world, our convivial, have care for the world of the heart at their heart and recognize our irreducible differences as well as our profound interdependencies. And again, this brings us full circle to one of the basic premises of the Care Manifesto that it's only by valorizing rather than disavowing our global interdependencies that we can create any kind of current. So that was like, whoa, but that's the best I can do, five minutes after coming out of the day of meetings. Thank you very much. That already gave a very good insight in what the Care Manifesto brings more in detail. And I would like to stick to these questions of how we imagine specific new systems. And I would like to ask Anna, because as you already said, more than 3 million people are dying every year because of tuberculosis, because of malaria. And it seems that in a global north, these numbers, nobody knows them, nobody cares about them. And as well, the research about these diseases is not really enhanced because it's not profitable for the farmer industry as these diseases are playing a minor role in the global north. So my question is, how do you imagine a global healthcare in which the global south does not depend anymore on the humanitarian gestures that you have described already before? And as well, what are you concretely demanding in regards to the patents kill petition that we have linked today as well? Yeah, thank you very much for this question. I will answer it in a second, but I would like to refer just with one sentence to what Edna said before, because I would totally agree with what you explained, Edna, in your last command. And in my point of view, this locate policy of the industrialized nations that I mentioned and their insistence on these voluntary donation-based solutions are a form of neocolonial behavior. Poor countries are relegated to mechanisms that create dependency and widens inequality. As for example, also the South African delegation noted at the end of the WHO round where they were discussing the question if there might be a so-called waiver in the trips agreement that would allow to our sets and to leave the patent system aside for a while. So to come to your question, this COVID-19 pandemic shows the whole world that health policy is a global task and must be carried out by governments with a sense of responsibility and must be guided by a human rights principle and nothing else. This is also the key point of our international appeal patent skill that was mentioned before. So we should demand from our governments a policy oriented towards the health needs of the people which feed medicines as a global public good and limits the power of pharmaceutical companies in the public interest at the same time. To this end, the delinking of research costs and the price of medicines is, in our point of view, essential in order to create new incentive mechanisms that promote innovation and make it accessible. And to some of you, this might sounds like utopia, but it is not, because just to give you one example, patents on substances instead of production processes as before were introduced in Germany only in 1968 and also before there was research and development and innovations of new medicines. This example shows that patents are not the most important driver of medical process and it is often claimed by the pharmaceutical industry and also by politicians, but rather ensure one thing all above all, sorry, and this is high prices. And if we take up the questions of our debate today, what would a truly caring word look like? In my point of view, it is a fundamental importance that helps be thought as a human right, for example, that people have the right to best possible healthcare. This sounds also far away, but dependence on aid from rich countries leads to a feeling of powerlessness and I think this is quite central also when we talk about care. In South Africa, just to come back to South Africa for a second, this is the country most affected by the pandemic on the whole continent and the civil society, they came up with the idea of the so-called C-19 coalition and they are campaigning for the removal, for example, the removal of patent protection as to counteract the mistrust. I can quote them for a second. They say in their appeal that was just published yesterday, we support measures that seek to ensure that the WTOs or the World Trade Organization, rich countries and the pharmaceutical industry do not in the pandemic continue to enforce structural intellectual property rules, patents and pricing barriers to undermine universal access to vaccines and thereby also limit mass immunization and in turn, global herd immunity. Otherwise, they must account for the needless and preventable deaths in the pandemic. I think this is a very important quote, so we must insist on price regulation, control and price transparency of all vaccines. So I stop here. So this was already a concrete example of what could be done and what should be done. And I want to pose this question as well to the other ones and please feel welcome to add more there as well. If so, my question is, could you please give us some examples of already working alternatives that show that our world can truly care, that we can have as a flag and continue working? Who would like to start at the two of you? Catherine, I see you put it. No, I know it doesn't. I mean, this is one of the questions in the manifesto we draw on historical examples of more caring alternatives to the present. But we also think about, I mean, our spiel is basically that if we need to completely overhaul the current system in order for this to be sustainable, to have care front and center and to have a caring world, caring communities or even this bizarre thing, caring state, the priorities have to be completely transformed. But there are, we've seen moments in which we, where care has been front and center and in the manifesto, we talk of drawing on past examples, but also during the AIDS crisis in the US, the kinds of organizations that are organized around caring for the sick. And as again, interestingly connected back to what happens when you have volunteer or grassroots organizations coming in and taking over what should be state or structurally organized solutions. And I can talk a little bit about that later, but you would think about also the mutual aid groups, at least in the UK that spread up in the wake of COVID as an example of the ways in which we have to have both bottom down, but also in the care minister. We suggest top down, but not in the way, not hierarchical, but also coming from different levels. We talk about places like the city plaza, squatting hotel in the center of Athens. And there are many examples, but the problem is, how then do we scale up these examples? How do we make them sort of the norm rather than the exception? And how do we ensure that they don't come in in order to solve as band-aids to solutions to the neglect and criminal neglect in so many countries and so many communities? So one of the things that we, the challenge for us today in the midst of COVID, which has really changed our common sense in particular ways, is how do we build on these earlier moments of radical change? And again, there are many more details, examples in the care manifesto. And how do we build upon progressive visions of, let's say, you've been thinking about Rojava in the Middle East, and how do we rest back control from power grabbing the 1% and their tyranny of social carelessness? And I think what's interesting to think about in the first few months of COVID and things are changing so rapidly, I don't know if you could continue to say this, but care for the vulnerable has been taken seriously by certain segments of the population across the globe. But it will disappear, I think, being pessimistic unless we start to build these more enduring and participatory infrastructures for care at all of these different levels. So we're grasping for specific examples that can help us, there are a lot in history. But the question is also, how do we make them? How do we learn from the things that didn't work in the past and how do we make them sustainable and expand them in the future? And so the care manifesto provides certain templates, but it's not perspective in that sense. We're all in this together, we have to think together collaboratively on how to go forward. And would you like to add here and tell maybe some autonautists that you have worked on or that you know and you can share with us? So I would say that one of the many things that has been part of the kind of political uprising in this moment that should be part of care work is also the question around abolition. I think abolition should be centered not just towards the prison industrial complex, but abolishing wage discrimination, abolishing border systems, abolishing the very structures and foundations and pillars that have uplifted racial capitalism because in many ways, many of us who have to witness a specter of pain, have to bear in our DNA, in our bodies, the racial capitalism, it leads to an exhaustion that many of us realize has to just be withered through abolition. At the same time, I've been very inspired, whether it's through my own participation or just witnessing from a distance, thousands of kilometers away, the collective fight on the streets, the creative expression that people have, the ways in which people can utilize mutual aid from the bottom up to be able to care and redistribute resources within communities. It also, for me, is important to ask and think about more deeply what repairs are conceivable even when we have these systems of oppression still in place? How do we heal from the colonial wounds, the capitalistic wounds through collective practice and care? And I agree that implementing universal care as the care collective has put forth in their book is so important. And an example of that collective care that I saw, at least on a creative sense, here in Berlin, the Niamh Binkig Lab Collective, as well as We Are Born Free Radio had an 11-day performance here in Berlin called Radical Mutations on the Ruins of the Rising Sun, where during the early fall, there was a production and a set of conversations and series in which people were invited to think about mutations, the social changes that they've been doing, thinking about their history through drag performance, through a radio program. And one of the things that I noticed upon seeing who was being able to be put on stage was that of the 70 artists, musicians, dancers that were participated, majority, I would say 95% were Black, Indigenous, people of color. And to gather that many people in Berlin, many of whom are precarious and some cases undocumented or documented, many people, some people who haven't necessarily migrated, but as people of color, they're perceived to be migrants. And part of why that was so important in the middle of the pandemic to celebrate and bring life to the talents of these artists is that so often in Germany, people of color are silenced and aren't always visible as the typical idea of what Germanness might mean. And to come together in a moment of alienation and isolation meant that we could challenge a colonial history, that we could challenge the idea that we're not here, in fact, of anything, having a stage at how meant that we could say and create our own archives through, so we are born free radio sonic archives, but also it gave us an opportunity to see that you can gather while socially dissent, of course, during a pandemic and reimagine another future, reimagine a set of possibilities where one particular artist or dancer tried to break the fourth wall through sound, another artist tried to use comedy to be able to, in German, speak to some of the the various stereotypes about traditional mainstream German culture. And I think that for me, it was so important not just to see something like this present, but to also find that joy that we want so much from ourselves and to exercise that through a restorative and collective act of performance. And I think the contradiction of living in an epidemic under capitalism is that when we're presented so much with sickness and with death, we can absorb that in our bodies, but that it's really through those creative acts that we can start to undo the visible images of destruction. And it's in this way that I'm really inspired by Audrey Lloyd's cancer journals where she, as she was dealing with cancer documents, going from depression to this point in which she saw care as self-preservation. She saw care as affirming her joy, even if her body wasn't always feeling that. And she saw care through writing. And so for me, the care work I've been trying to exercise that is the act of asserting one's joy. It's the act of asserting collective unity and gathering. It's the act of abolishing systems of oppression. And it's also the act of just being able to express one's creativity in a world that may not always recognize it. And so it's in that way that I would say that I champion the creative works that have been coming from black, indigenous, and other people of color who've been doing that on a global scale in spite of the global pandemic, in spite of racial violence, in spite of colonialism. We're here and we have power and we do have a creative voice. So I'll stop there. Yes, that's wonderful, Anne. I think you want to directly react on this. I just want to add one, another idea because you asked for alternatives and what should be done now. It only takes me a minute because I think we should open also to the audience then, but I try to do it in speed. So I think now is the time also for new ideas and one idea medical is working on since quite a while is to create a kind of a global social contract in which richer countries commit themselves, for example, to pay for the health needs of poorer countries as long as they are unable to do so on their own. And this implementation of a kind of global health fund based on contributions that are binding under international law and not on a voluntary basis, so far is failing because of the lack and will of part of those politically responsible people. And I think the time now is a good moment to put pressure on these ideas. And this reflection goes far behind beyond the vaccine debate and looks at building universal health care systems and it must also look at our way of life as such. And just to sum up, I am of the opinion that if we want to look forward to a summer without fear and to look beyond the pandemic situation we are facing right now, then everyone should be able to rejoice we who have profited extremely from capitalist globalization in our way of life and have the money and the means owe this to the world and also to humanity. And it might be sound maybe a little bit pathetic, but in fact, all should be able to enjoy a summer after Corona, no matter where they were born. Definitely. And as you said, I want to open for questions from the audience now. And I think with your answer now, Anna, but as well with your at us, you already replied somehow to a question that we got a few times. And, but before I come back to this, there's a very concrete question to etna. If you could please repeat the journals that you just have mentioned. The journal or the particular 11 day performance? Yes. So the 11 day performance that had happened here in Berlin was called radical mutations on the notes of the rising, radical mutations and on the ruins of the rising sun. And it was curated by three people who were part of the Niamh Binh-Gi, three people who are part of the Niamh Binh-Gi lab collective. Those people are Natalie, I was on the core of Saskia Kopschal and Timnitzer. I can also put it in the chat if that helps. And then the radio collective, we are born free radio is a migrant and refugee led radio collective that's based here in Berlin, Germany. And they have wonderful programming that really tries to center migrant lives here in Europe. Thank you for clearing that out once more for our audience. Yes. A lot of people are asking via mail via chats. Really, how can we avoid that after COVID, everything will be the same as before. And you gave now, we had already the arts as one possibility to preserve what we are gaining now. We have the petitions that you're calling for that are examples. And I know as well in the care manifesto, there are more very detailed examples of how we can really perceive what or take this possibility to make a real change. Of course, you can add more, but I do have another very concrete question for Etna. So it is, how is racist thought connected to the way modern medicine operates? You Etna, as a historian, could you elaborate a bit how racism is connected to different diseases and sicknesses? So the first thing I would have to say is as many historians of medicine that I know and historians that I know would argue is that race as a construct is not real and as a biological construct. That is to say, there is one human race. However, racial identities as we understand them and how people move through the world as well as racism are very real. Unfortunately, when people see me, I am unambiguously perceived to be black and there's wonderful things about being a black person culturally, the history of resistance, beauty of like our culture, music, et cetera and intellectual traditions from W. E. B. Du Bois to Zora Neale Hurston. I'm proud of that. However, what that then means though, despite all of those achievements is that racism as a kind of process that is linked to the transatlantic slave trade as someone who is the descendant of slaves who was born on indigenous land in what is often called the United States that impacts everything from life expectancy to the ability for doctors to perceive or understand the pain that I may or may not be experiencing and to the point of maternal mortality. So in the United States where I was born, the maternal mortality rate is worse today than it was 30 years ago for black women and black people with wounds. The maternal mortality of black people with wounds is also worse today than in the United States than it is in Kazakhstan. And so that is not because of our internal biology but rather how medical system treats us. It's what Harriet Washington often terms racial apartheid. And there's a history to that legacy that is tied to everything from the ability for people to access medical resources, the history of experimentation on people's wounds, the history of sterilization, the history of eugenics and even just the present day who can even afford to have healthcare and health insurance within the context not just in the United States but on a global scale which has been pointed to earlier. And so when we think about that history, that legacy and the current dynamic, part of what is needed I guess as a kind of global dynamic is to try to undo that damage, to undo that work, to create anti-racist policies to train medical practitioners to shed that unconscious or in some cases very conscious bias towards black people, indigenous people, et cetera and to really collectively heal from those both internalized and also just vivid markers of racial discrimination in the healthcare system. I would say that part of that will also mean being particularly care-rained towards and listening to people of color, black people in particular who've been the victims of health biases, racial biases and then to also learn the history of that. So I love the histories of people who've been able to highlight this. So like Dorothy Roberts killing the black body who highlights that history of anti-black racism and misogynoir in particular, a term coined by Moya Bailey, Harriet Washington who I mentioned, Saadi Hartman's Wayward Lives also briefly mentions the work of Marion Sims who experimented on black women in the 19th century without their consent. And it goes on and on, the work is there. Unfortunately, many people don't know about it or in the mainstream and not enough is being done to undo that damage. So again, like racism as a concert that we live that we see, even if people might not think they're part of that system has to be examined, has to actually be targeted towards the medical system and has to be something that is approached with care so that we listen to those who continue to be disproportionately impacted by those inequities. I think I'll stop there. Thank you. And I see as well that we are at the limit of our time but I would like as the people are really asking and searching it seems for a hope giving another example, how to keep care after COVID. I would like to ask if any one of you wants to give one last example, one hope giving one or anything else, otherwise after this last round I would close our conversation. Can I just say a closing word and thank the participants and I apologize again for coming late. I think that what comes out of everything that we've been saying, whether the focus is on racism and the medical system or whether it's on the current COVID crisis is that the only way in which we can create an alternative society is if it's, if the infrastructures are in place, if they're resourced, if they're egalitarian, if there is not only an abolition of the systems of oppression but also rebuilding in a way in which care is front and center. And I think we're all speaking and different, we're all focusing on different aspects of it but ultimately what a caring society requires is the resources that are distributed, equal, egalitarianly, I don't know, that's not a word. And also that we have time, more time to do the kinds of caring work and the kind of creative caring work that needs to be done in a post COVID world. And so that is, and if you look at what's happening within the dying empire of the UK, right? Not only is it not doing anything else for, it's now England again, but it's devastating its own population, right? So that the numbers coming out and the money that is, the public money is going to these corporations and five corporations are basically helping to determine US elections to what's happening in terms of distribution of medical goods. And I think that we have, we really have to rethink in the wake of COVID in particular given the context, how we go forward and there is hope, we just have to create it. We can't try and find it. Before I try to sum up some of the things that were discussed, from my point of view, I think it's also an option to contact all of us via email or Twitter or other ways and you can raise your questions or add or comment on what we discussed now also at the later stage. So we shouldn't close it here. And what I can add is that I must admit that I'm not too optimistic when I take a look into the future, but I think what we learn from this pandemic is that we are facing a polydemic that already started before Corona and we continue afterwards. And so what we can maybe learn is that we try to combine our different approaches and socials, struggles and movement into one because we saw the interlinkages between all those things happen. And just to give a last example, it only took the blink of an eye for millions of people to lose their preparious jobs in, for example, Asian textile factories because the large textile change that we know here around from our shopping malls no longer collected their orders or didn't even pay them. So what we observed was the fragile situation of the whole system. And I think maybe we can also gain strength for the future social struggles, realizing how this is all linked to each other and that it was possible to stop the whole machine. The planes remained on the ground and this is something also a greater Thunberg race that what we experienced a situation that was different and where everybody said, when we stop the whole machine, everything will break down. And so maybe we can also learn from this that many solutions are really a question of a political will. And so it's worth to fight for it and also to pause for a change. But it's a long way to go. And I think you shouldn't, I can't end in two optimistic options, but we will keep on fighting. Well, I guess one thing that I would say in terms of optimism is that on the 1st of January, 1804, my ancestors were able to liberate themselves from slavery against the French Empire. And if they can do that, if they could using the minimal resources that they had, I feel and I have to believe that more can be done to resist and really abolish a system set of oppressors. I think the ability to imagine that with the breath that we have, with the people power that we have can allow the space because we have the numbers and we have the resources. It's just a question of willpower and optimism as we hopefully can collectively with care as everyone is noted to really do the work of changing this world. So I hope that although there are many reasons not to be optimistic for the sake of the communities that I'm part of, I think it's important to try. And optimism is also created collectively, exactly as Anna said. So that ties the two, the different sides of optimism, hope together is that the only way that we can go forward is together. So I am very optimistic after this conversation and I'm optimistic as well that we will all stay in touch and see how we can combine our strengths to find synergy and to actually give more power to all these movements that already exist. So all these good ideas that need to be practiced now and that it has to be the pressure on our politicians to change and we are all voting. So we do have a voice and we can do much more than that. And with this, I want to thank you very warmly for being here tonight, for joining this conversation, giving us an insight view on your perspective on care and on the work you're doing. And thanks to our audience for watching, for commenting, for asking questions to participate in this conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.