In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a mutual aid group meets every Tuesday night. It started in the first weeks of COVID. The group plans the week's food handouts. They talk about who needs what. The worst of the crisis ended three years ago. Now they also run trainings to help renters organize. No one thought it would last. Most mutual aid groups form in a crisis and break up when the crisis ends. That is the normal path. Crown Heights Mutual Aid did not do that. When the food crisis got better, the people doing the work had found each other. They had learned who knew what. They learned who showed up. They learned who could be counted on. They learned who had been carrying loads for years, even before COVID made it easy to see. Inside the crisis, they built the one thing a crisis makes possible for a short time: they came to know each other. They stayed. They kept meeting. They grew from food to helping renters, and then to the slow, hard work of running their community together. The crisis passed. What they built stayed.
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On Tuesday evenings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the mutual aid network that formed during the first weeks of COVID meets to coordinate the week's food distribution, talk through who needs what, and — since the acute crisis passed three years ago — run the tenant organizing trainings that have become its second life.
It wasn't supposed to still be running. Mutual aid networks form in crises and dissolve when the crisis passes; that's the normal arc. Crown Heights Mutual Aid did something different. When the food emergency eased, the people who had been doing the work had found each other — had learned who knew what, who showed up, who could be counted on, who had been carrying what for years before COVID made carrying it visible. They had built, inside the emergency, the thing that emergencies make temporarily possible: the knowledge of each other.
They stayed. They kept meeting. They expanded from food to tenant support to the slower, harder work of community governance. The crisis passed. The infrastructure remained.
This is the care commons. It is a web of people who help each other. The help does not have to be bought. No one has to prove they qualify for it. Neighbors know each other's names. And they decide that knowing someone means you owe them care.
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This is the care commons: a network of relationships within which care flows without being mediated by a market transaction or a bureaucratic determination of eligibility. Neighbors knowing each other's names, and deciding that knowing means obligating.
In the early 1970s, Silvia Federici was working in New York. She wanted women to be paid for housework. Then she began to ask a question. That question grew into her book, Caliban and the Witch. The question was: where did this setup come from? Women did a lot of work. They cooked and cleaned. They cared for children, the sick, and the old. All of this work made it possible for others to go out and earn wages. It had always been work. So why did people stop seeing it as work? When did that happen? And how?
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Silvia Federici was organizing for wages for housework in New York in the early 1970s when she started asking the question that would become Caliban and the Witch: where did this arrangement come from? The work women were doing — cooking, cleaning, childcare, care of the sick and elderly, the entire reproductive infrastructure that made wage labor possible — had always been work. Why had it become invisible as work? When? How?
She worked out her ideas about the witch trials while running workshops. In those workshops, women were calling their housework "work" for the first time. The book that came out of this was Caliban and the Witch. It was published in 2004. That was thirty years after the campaign. The book still carries the push and need of that organizing in its ideas.
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She theorized the witch trials while running workshops with women who were naming their housework as labor for the first time. The book that resulted, Caliban and the Witch, published in 2004, thirty years after the campaign, carries the organizing's urgency in its analysis.
Between about 1400 and 1700, people were killed as witches. This happened across Europe and the American colonies. Between 40,000 and 60,000 people were put to death. That was about half of the 100,000 or so who were put on trial. About 80 percent of those killed were women. Most were over 40. Many were widows who owned land or had their own money. Most were healers, herb experts, and midwives. They knew about bodies, plants, and birth. That knowledge meant their towns did not need to rely on the new market as much. The number killed does not show the full harm. The women who were killed were the ones most likely to hold what the new economy wanted to take. They held shared knowledge. They held their own land. They held the skills that let villages take care of themselves without working for wages. Two hundred years of trials slowly wiped that group of women off the map of Europe. The fear spread far past those who died. Every woman watching learned the cost of knowing too much, owning too much, or living too freely. The usual story says this was a mass panic that was beaten by reason and learning. Federici argues something else. She says it was on purpose. It was a plan. Naming what the surface story had hidden.
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Between roughly 1400 and 1700, between 40,000 and 60,000 people were executed as witches across Europe and the American colonies — roughly half of the 100,000 or so brought to trial. About eighty percent of those killed were women. Most were over forty. Many were widows holding land or income of their own. Most were healers, herbalists, midwives — women whose knowledge of bodies and plants and birth made communities less dependent on the emerging market.
The body count understates the impact. The women killed were already the ones most likely to be holding what the new economy needed to take: communal knowledge, autonomous land tenure, the practical knowhow that let villages reproduce themselves without the wage. Two hundred years of trials systematically removed that demographic from the European landscape. The terror reached far beyond the executed: every woman watching learned what knowing too much, owning too much, or living too independently could cost.
The standard historical account treats this as mass hysteria overcome by Enlightenment.
Federici's argument: it was policy. Divination — naming what the surface concept had hidden.
This was not one big plot run from the top. Local officials did it. Church courts and town courts did it. Neighbors turned in neighbors. But over three hundred years, the pattern stayed the same. The targets were women who held knowledge that let towns take care of themselves. The killings wiped out that knowledge. The fear kept the women who lived through it in check. It made them afraid to use what they knew. It made them afraid to gather the way women used to gather. It made them afraid to look like a woman who knew too much.
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Not a centralized conspiracy — the persecutions were conducted by local authorities, church courts, secular courts, neighbors denouncing neighbors. But the pattern across three centuries is consistent: the targets are women who hold knowledge that makes communities self-sufficient. The executions destroyed that knowledge. The terror contained the women who survived — made them afraid to practice what they knew, afraid to gather in the ways women had gathered, afraid to be seen as the kind of woman who knew too much.
At the same time, common land was being fenced off. This happened in the same centuries. Shared fields and forests were turned into private property. Farming families were pushed off the land. This made a group of workers who owned no land, which is what the new system needed. The two kinds of fencing-off were part of the same change. Fencing off the land made towns need wages to live. Wiping out shared care knowledge made towns need the market for things they used to make themselves. The home was never outside the economy. It was the hidden base the economy stood on.
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Alongside this: the enclosure of common land, happening in the same centuries, converting shared fields and forests into private property, displacing peasant communities, creating the landless workforce capitalism needed. The two enclosures were part of the same transformation. The enclosure of land made communities dependent on wages. The destruction of communal care knowledge made communities dependent on the market for the things they had produced themselves. The domestic sphere was never outside the economy. It was the economy's unacknowledged foundation.
In 1972, an American activist named Selma James started the Wages for Housework campaign. She wrote a short paper. It made the argument in its simplest form. James came to feminist ideas through the Black radical tradition. Her partner was C.L.R. James. He was a Marxist historian from Trinidad. He studied the Haitian Revolution. He also studied how money was made in the Atlantic world. His point was this. The visible economy refused to count some work. But it was the work it most needed. He meant the work of enslaved people. He meant the wealth taken from colonies. Selma James brought that idea to housework. The two ideas met. The work of the enslaved person and the work of the housewife were the same thing. They were the base the visible economy ran on. And it did not count them.
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In 1972, an American activist named Selma James launched the Wages for Housework campaign with a pamphlet that made the argument in its simplest form.
James had come to feminist analysis through the Black radical tradition: her partner was C.L.R. James, the Trinidadian Marxist historian whose analysis of the Haitian Revolution and Atlantic capitalism had insisted that the labor the visible economy refused to count — enslaved labor, colonial extraction — was the labor it most depended on. She brought that tradition's understanding of invisible foundational labor to the question of housework. The two analyses converged: the slave's labor and the housewife's labor were both the foundation the visible economy ran on without counting.
The demand was: pay women for housework. It was built to be impossible. The organizers did not think it would be met. They made it to show how the system is built. Right now, care work is taken for free. Say you had to pay full market rates for all of it. Then the profits on everything else would fall apart. The demand shows what the system needs to keep hidden. Every wage, every profit, every GDP number rests on one belief: that the care work which makes everything else possible will be done for free, by women.
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The demand — pay women for housework — was designed to be impossible. Not because the organizers expected it to be met, but because the impossibility revealed the structure. If you had to pay market rates for all the care work currently being extracted for free, the profit margins on everything else would collapse. The demand makes visible what the system needs hidden: that every wage, every profit, every GDP number is calculated on the assumption that the reproductive labor that makes production possible will be performed for free by women.
Federici adds how it happened in history. It was not always this way. It was made this way on purpose. The way it was done was by destroying the knowledge networks. Those networks had run care as a shared job for the whole community.
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Federici adds the historical mechanism: it was not always this way, and it was made this way deliberately, through the destruction of the knowledge networks that had organized care as communal responsibility.
The campaign did not get what it asked for. But it did make people ask one question. Why does care work pay less than other work? Here is the answer. Care has been called a woman's natural job, not real work that earns money. Now that answer has a name. Naming it did not change the deal. But now people can fight it.
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The campaign never won its demand. What it won was the question: why does care work cost less than other work? The answer — because care has been defined as women's natural duty rather than economic labor — is now named. The naming hasn't ended the arrangement. It has made it available to be contested.
Federici showed how this works. Care knowledge is wiped out. Care work is pushed into private homes. Care is made hard to see, so the market can take value from it. This is not just old history. It still runs today.
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The mechanism Federici traced — care knowledge destroyed, care work made private, care rendered invisible so the market can extract it — is not historical. It is operational.
A home health aide works in the Bronx. She is one of about two million in the United States. She works twelve hours at a time. She cares for an old client with bad dementia. She bathes him. She feeds him. She gives him his medicine. She stays with him, and that is care too. In New York, most home health aides earn under $18 an hour. They get no health insurance. They get no paid sick days. They get no pension. When the aide gets sick, she gets no pay. The client's family may pay $8,000 to $12,000 a month to the agency. The aide gets only a small part of that. This is not a strange case. This is how the care economy is built. The work is real. The need is great. The skill is real. But none of that means good pay. There is $10.8 trillion in unpaid care work. It is the hidden economy that the seen one runs on. The paid care jobs pay so little that workers stay poor. Those jobs are the part you can see. This is care under enclosure. The work is made to look like love. It is priced below what it costs. It is taken from people who have few other choices. And it makes money for the agency that stands between the worker and the family that needs her.
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A home health aide in the Bronx — one of roughly two million in the United States — works twelve-hour shifts caring for an elderly client with advanced dementia: bathing, feeding, managing medications, providing the continuity of presence that is itself a form of care. The median wage for home health aides in New York is under $18 an hour, with no health insurance, no paid sick leave, and no pension. When the aide gets sick, she doesn't get paid. The client's family may pay $8,000 to $12,000 a month through the agency; the aide receives a fraction of that.
This is not an anomaly. It is the structure of the care economy: the work is real, the need is urgent, the skill required is genuine, and none of that translates into compensation adequate to the labor. The $10.8 trillion in unpaid care work is the shadow economy that the visible one runs on. The paid care sector, at wages that push workers into poverty, is its visible edge.
This is care under enclosure: the labor made to look like love, priced below its cost, extracted from people with few other options, generating profit for the institution that mediates between the care worker and the family that needs her.
The commons answer is being built. It always is. It is built by people who decided the other way was not okay.
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The commons response is being built, as it always is, by people who decided the alternative was unacceptable.
There are childcare groups where parents share the work, the cost, and the know-how of caring for kids together. They run outside the market. The families who use them run them. There are co-op home care agencies where the workers own the business. The workers set the terms. The workers make the choices. And the care gets better, because the things that make it worse under a normal boss are gone. There are community care networks where neighbors set up help for old and disabled people nearby. They keep people in their homes, not in institutions. In more than 350 places across the United States, the Village to Village Network has done just this. Older adults and their neighbors build help for each other, outside institutional care. The rule that guides them is simple. The community takes care of its own members.
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Childcare collectives where parents share the labor, the cost, and the knowledge of caring for children together — outside the market, governed by the families who depend on them. Cooperative home care agencies where the workers own the business, set the terms, make the decisions — and where the quality of care improves because the incentives that degrade it under conventional employment are gone. Community care networks where neighbors organize systematic support for elderly and disabled community members, keeping people in their homes rather than in institutions. In over 350 communities across the United States, the Village to Village Network has organized exactly this: older adults and their neighbors building mutual support systems outside institutional care, on the organizing principle that the community takes responsibility for caring for its members.
Mariame Kaba has spent thirty years building the things that make care possible. She does this for people the state has decided do not deserve it.
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Mariame Kaba has spent thirty years building the infrastructure that makes care possible when the state has decided certain people don't deserve it.
She grew up in New York. Her father was an activist from Guinea who came to this country. He taught her that you change things through group work, not just through how you act on your own. She has worked on crime laws, on family violence, on sexual assault, and on how they link up. She built programs for young people. She trained people who help victims. She made ways for a community to deal with harm without calling the police. Her main idea is that abolition is care. To build a world that does not need prisons, you must build care first. That means homes, help for the mind, money to live on, and the ties between people. These make people less likely to do harm. They also make people more able to fix harm when it happens. "We keep each other safe."
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She grew up in New York, the daughter of a Guinean immigrant activist who taught her that social change was institutional work, not just individual commitment. She has organized around criminalization, domestic violence, sexual assault, and the connections between them — building youth programs, training survivor advocates, developing the community accountability processes that address harm without calling the police.
Her insight is that abolition is care. The demand to build the world that doesn't need prisons is the demand to build care infrastructure: housing, mental health support, economic security, the community relationships that make people less likely to cause harm and more capable of addressing it when harm occurs. "We keep each other safe."
Four words hold a whole idea of how to keep people safe. We Do This 'Til We Free Us. Not watching people. Not punishing them. It means the group of people who know you. The people you answer to. The people who have put care into how you are doing.
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Four words that contain an entire theory of public safety. We Do This 'Til We Free Us. Not surveillance. Not punishment. The network of relationships that knows you, that you are accountable to, that has invested in your wellbeing.
That group of people is the care commons. It is all the shared know-how about people. Who you can trust. Who knows what. Who shows up. Capital did not make this. Capital cannot make it. But capital has always leaned on it. Taking it over is not just a figure of speech. It is real. Prices push communities out. Care workers are paid too little. Helping each other is turned into a crime. These are ways to grab what communities built. They do it by turning it into a service you buy, instead of a commons that people run together.
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That network is the care commons: the accumulated relational intelligence — who can be trusted, who knows what, who shows up — that capital did not produce and cannot reproduce, but has always depended on. The enclosure of it is not metaphorical. The pricing-out of communities, the underpayment of care workers, the criminalization of mutual support: these are mechanisms for capturing what communities built, by making it legible as a service to be purchased rather than a commons to be governed.
Enclosure made care hard to see. It made care a private problem. It made care a personal duty. It made care the natural job of women who love. The commons makes care easy to see. It makes care shared. It makes care social. It makes care the main rule of communities that mean to keep going.
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The enclosure made care invisible — a private problem, a personal obligation, the natural duty of women who love. The commons makes it visible — shared, social, the organizing principle of communities that intend to sustain themselves.
Before we ran the restaurant, there was the Wednesday potluck. A group of us met every week. Everyone brought a dish, and we all dug in. There were always days of leftovers. All of us together spent less than any one of us would have spent eating out alone. We used to joke that we should start a restaurant. We had no idea. And when someone could not cook that week, they brought what they had instead. They watched the kids. They washed the dishes. Everyone came with something. It worked like that for years. Then someone brought friends whose idea of a dish was a bottle of liquor, and whose idea of conversation was pitching their real estate business. That was all it took. The magic was gone.
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Before we ran the restaurant, there was the Wednesday potluck. A group of us, every week. Everyone brought a dish and we dug in. There were always days of leftovers, and all of us together spent less than any one of us would have spent eating out alone. We used to joke that we should start a restaurant. Little did we know. And on the weeks someone couldn't cook, they brought what they had instead — they watched the kids, they washed the dishes. Everyone arrived with something. The table held for years.
Then someone brought friends whose idea of a dish was a handle of liquor, and whose idea of conversation was pitching their real estate brokerage. That was all it took. The magic was gone.
The work is close to home. It is up close. It is not flashy. It does not grow without end. It does not make money come back. It works only if people care about each other. That is not a weak spot. That is the whole point.
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The work is local, intimate, and unglamorous. It doesn't scale to infinity or generate returns. It only works if people care about each other.
That is not a weakness. That is the point.