Rebuilding with Care: The Infrastructure of Equity

Rebuilding with Care: The Infrastructure of Equity

Rebuilding Care with Equity at the Center

Source: Constructing a New Social Compact: Full Schedule | Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor | Georgetown University

I love the plenary titles from the recently concluded virtual gathering “Constructing a New Social Compact”. I wish I could have attended the event. Regardless, I’m adding these titles to my framing toolkit.

I have been reading the infrastructure bill and find so much of it good and important. The construction of care work as infrastructure is one of the most creative social policy moves the democrats have made in a long time, in my humble estimation. It is the kind of thing that, if it happens, could actually work.

Source: Why Our Money is Funny – essaying

I agree. I’ve picked up and amplified this framing of care, combining it with interdependence.

• Interdependence and Care
• “Care is an organizational structure needed to keep our nation running.” “Care work makes all other work possible.”
• A Credo for Support: Respecting Autonomy in a Society of Interdependence and Care
  

And I’ve been on the equity literacy train for awhile.

• Equity Literate Education: Fix Injustice, Not Kids
• Design is Tested at the Edges: Intersectionality, The Social Model of Disability, and Design for Real Life
  

Framing a rebuilt care as “The Infrastructure of Equity” appeals to me. I like it.

I recently added these lines on care to my “Just Sayin’” collection of DEI quotes.

• Putting care-not just care work, but care-at the center of our economy, our politics, is to orient ourselves around our interdependence.
• Care is an organizational structure needed to keep our nation running. It’s, by definition, infrastructure.
• Care work makes all other work possible.
  

I’m considering a couple more:

• Rebuild care with equity at the center.
• Care is the infrastructure of equity.