Pirate Care

"A most nourishing and encouraging book" McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker Manifesto and Capital is Dead

In many places worldwide, the freedom to care for one another is being attacked by the powerful, and acts of solidarity are being made illegal. In a moment of struggle defined by the rollback of the social safety net, the criminalization of migration, and the right-wing clampdown on bodily autonomy, radical networks of care are fighting back.

From volunteer rescue boats in the Mediterranean to underground labs preparing gender-affirming hormones, people are reclaiming the means to care for one another in defiance of a system that devalues and exploits the labor of care.

Against atomized despair, Pirate Care shows that fighting back isn't only about legal and legislative changes and organizing, direct action, and disobedient care.

Valeria Graziano is a cultural theorist and organizer. Along with Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak she is the convenor of the Pirate Care Syllabus project. She has contributed to a number of collectives, including Precarious Workers Brigade, the Radical Education Forum, Boycott Workfare and the Women Strike UK. She is the co-author of Rebelling with Care: Exploring Open Technologies for Commoning Healthcare and she lives in Rijeka, Croatia.

Marcell Mars is an advanced internet user. With Tomislav Medak he founded a shadow library Memory of the World, He develops and maintains software infrastructure to support custodians of (universal access to) knowledge. His research Ruling Class Studies, started at the Jan van Eyck Academy, examines state-of-the-art digital innovation, adaptation, and intelligence created by corporations such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and eBay. Marcell lives in Rijeka, Croatia.

Tomislav Medak is a commons and disability activist and an independent researcher with a focus on technology, environmental crisis and degrowth transition. He's a member of the green-left party Mozemo! (HR). With Marcell Mars and a community of friends in Zagreb he founded Multimedia Institute/MAMA, since 2000 a hub for cultural and political organizing. Together they have co-edited Public Library and Guerrilla Open Access. He lives in Zagreb. Croatia.

The authors are the convenors of the Pirate Care project.