As a society, we have all known what our needs were to resist and succeed, by whom and how we have been cared for without their shying away because of personal risks. We felt the priority for solidarity amongst all in order to emerge from the crisis; we wanted to come out reinforced both personally and as a society and to make protection of the weakest a reality.
Care giving, since the very beginning has been in the hands of women and traditionally undervalued. Women are the protagonists who have saved us and given us hope in the most tragic moments of the first wave of the pandemic. So that this attitude of dedication, tenderness, compassion, empathy, patience and gratitude, etc. not be lost and teach us to be better, it is necessary to not ostracize care and that care be the general responsibility of both women and men. Our society cannot forget the experiences we are now having nor those we did have during the most acute moments of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we must keep them ever present to put care in the center of policies and interpersonal relations, both local and global.
We need a strong Public Health to take preventive measures against illness, capable of protecting, promoting and restoring the health of the entire population. We consider it essential to improve workers’ health, environmental, mental… for which it is necessary to act efficiently confronting social factors regarding health in order to reduce inequalities.
We denounce the fact that a second wave of the pandemic is here because the directors have not taken and applied the required measures to prevent it. They have continued privatizing and deteriorating all matters referring to the public, squandering the scarce resources that we have without giving priority to the health of the citizens or the return to schools.
In addition, we denounce President of the region of Madrid (Comunidad Autónoma)1, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, and Madrid governors who criminalize the victims of the pandemic, many of whom are the same people who have given and continue giving the basic services that save and maintain us as a society and the values that we reclaim.
Women in Black DO NOT WANT:
* Policies that create enemies, conflicts and confrontations and dedicate our resources to instruments of war.
* Neither laws nor practices that foment the fear and distrust that isolate us into a bubble.
* That in order to increase their earnings, with the excuse of protecting health, laboratories and pharmaceuticals speculate about illness and manipulate governments.
* That the directors and politicians prioritize their own party interests without caring about resorting to slander, disdaining their opposition….
* That they resort to xenophobic and aporophobic measures or messages.
We insist that WE NEED for governments to put health and life above spurious interests and to develop a feminist policy for care that:
♀ Will teach us to care for those nearest us and those far away and revalue the care given.
♀ Achieves human rights for all humanity without forgetting women’s rights.
♀ Protects the ecosystem and the cultural patrimony.
♀ Urgently, cares for and prioritizes the public good after years of privatizations and deterioration.
♀ Provides for civil society being formed and organized to respond to emergency situations so as to not militarize care.
All people must be responsible and take care of ourselves, maintaining the thought that I am the other and we are all they. COVID-19 is going to be here for a time and we can prevail if we produce the social change that makes us better, a change that will make us feel safer in the vulnerability.
1 Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid 6,74 million inhabitants and Madrid city 3,26 million inhabitants