Co - community
C - collective
A - autonomous abolitionist
R- redistribution reparations
E - expansive
Co-care is our responsibility to each other and to ourselves. We are creating expansive systems through the philosophy of full spectrum community care and how we can use co-care to support one and other. Because unlike many other theories and practices, we are not going to leave those most marginalised to suffer further whilst we are fighting for a ‘better’ world. Co-care incorporates elements of Black mutual aid practices and other collective forms of grassroots organising, advocacy and support through revolutionary full spectrum community care. With a focus on redistribution of wealth and resources and personal reparations (and state reparations), co-care pushes you to challenge yourselves, and to get involved with your whole self, not just selectively or performatively. We cannot separate politics from community, and co-care allows us to keep it intertwined.
The Co-Care Project is only open to people live in or predominantly live in SCEE+OUK*, we do work with other communities in internationalist solidarity where we can. But only SCEE+OUK based can receive direct support or join this group. However, the term co-care and philosophy behind it can be used by other people and groups to describe intentional community acts that follow our principles or as an alternative to using the term 'mutual aid' when speaking about Black-led activist-forward full spectrum community care acts.
The co-care Project
Formerly known as UK Mutual Aid, the co-care Project has chosen to divest from both the term UK and Mutual Aid.
The meaning of mutual aid has been increasingly co-opted since 2020 (and before) and we no longer feel it represents what our community actions. We had always seen mutual aid through a Black-centred lens, however using any term created by and for white communities will never fit what we are and is why it was so easy for the term to get taken by state, liberal and reformist politics, as it was never fully for us. We still believe fully in cooperation and community, but we have always taken it further than this. We believe in redistribution of wealth and resources as well as personal (and state reparations) and to work towards liberation, not be stuck in only providing aid or charity. We will now be using co-care as the term for our community offerings, actions and politics. Co-care is a Black-created term for expansive politics that embody the philosophy of full spectrum community care.
We do not agree with or consent to be in the ‘United Kingdom’, this was never a term we wished to use for UK Mutual Aid but could not find an appropriate alternative. We have created SCEE+OUK (Scotland, Cymru, Éire, England and other areas occupied as ‘United Kingdom’) as a way to describe the geographical areas we cover, whilst trying to be as respectful to the countries and people within them. Whilst we do not believe in borders, we understand there is a need for countries to free themselves from the imperial United Kingdom or Great Britain, and so we acknowledge their traditional names and will constantly update this term to be as inclusive as possible.
The principles of co-care
Being clear about the principles of the work that we do is important to avoid co-option and misunderstanding. That's why co-care imbeds its principles within the name, so that they cannot be lost or forgotten. Starting with community which is our main focus, building and strengthening communities is essential to the survival of marginalised people. The collective is who we are within the community, working collectively to protect each other and build the community. Staying autonomous and not working on behalf of the state or buying into the charity/ non-profit industrial complex is how we maintain our abolitionist politics. Our politics and actions are radical and revolutionary, we are not reformist or liberal. We believe that redistribution of wealth and resources and performing personal reparations are essential (alongside fighting for state reparations) - and this is the main action of co-care, in keeping with the ways of organising we created whilst known as UK Mutual Aid. Co-care is expansive, it cannot be contained, and it will not stop growing. co-care will be informed by the struggles of oppressed peoples worldwide and will challenge us all to support our community as far as is possible, not just as far as is comfortable. Accessible political education, individual and community responsibility, and working to dismantle white supremacist patriarchal and colonial power in all its forms are tenets of full spectrum community care and are shown through acts of co-care.
