Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity

by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak

Genres: Nonfiction, Activism, Politics

176 pages, Paperback

Published January 20, 2025

Reviews

[hsnblchx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ik ben fan !!!!!!

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful info and concepts sadly smothered in too much leftist academic jargon. There are fun ways to wield that vocab but here it's just dry — the last thing one wants from a book with this many seafaring references.
I call for a sequel, done in the spirit of the collectively sung sea shanty: how's about "way hey, blow The Man down"?

[Ari Damoulakis · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with many Leftist books, you sort of get confused, but luckily the writing was not that pretentious where you have academics try and show off that they think they have such superior vocabulary.
You look from the top down and everything seems depressing, but, you take this book and the practices from the bottom-up, it does help a bit for trying to make small changes, like America, some of this is useful at community levels where we are seeing marginalization and the things Ice are doing.
Often Communist or even more Socialist books talk about overthrowing the whole system because it has problems, and you know they are just dreaming, so, to solve some problems, one must just work within a small community.
For example, when trump won in America, there was an article sent to me written by a professor at University of Chicago about how the mind and thinking of such voters need to be changed, but his whole article had no ideas or plan how to do this, plus how do you even start combatting Maga Media when you just don’t have the resources to compete.
This book, it will definitely never change a system, but it is an interesting little book to read and practice and some like-minded people can try make some teeny changes to change some lives in a community or help them get access to resources to alleviate some poverty.
It is an ok book, but also some points it raises, it is sometimes confusing or you wonder how they seem to mention some things at random and you are not sure how it fits into the point.
But it could just be me, I only read it once.
Some of the examples in the book are quite interesting and inspiring.

[Neon Snake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've a section on my bookshelf (virtual or physical) for books which are less "theory" and more "actionable insights", which this fits nicely into.

This was recommended to me by Adam Greenfield, author of "Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire", and is very complementary to it.

It comes from very much the same angle - "no-one is coming to save us" - and notes, very correctly IMO, that the only way to reliably act in solidarity with the most vulnerable is to *do it yourself*, as this insulates you from the vagaries of government policy that can change every 4-5 years in line with which way the popular wind blows (which inevitably swings eventually in favour of the status quo, and against the needs of the must marginalised and vulnerable).

The book is split into several distinct but overlapping sections, covering things like meeting welfare needs, health needs (including hacking the tech needed to do this), supporting migrants, bodily autonomy including both abortion rights and gender affirmation, "village-based" childcare and more; of which any individual will have a greater or lesser stake in, depending on their personal circumstances, but within which, will be something that you Can Do Next Tuesday.

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The hook, as it were (pun intended?) of "pirates" is very interesting. The concept of pirate ships and their communities being small holdouts of egalitarianism, consensus democracy, anti-racism, and queering is not something that is new to me, personally, whether that be via earlier readings of Graeber, or even something as trite as playing AC: Black Flag, but using it as a hook is a great idea, I think - it encourages a certain romanticism that I think is worth holding onto, in a world that is every day more and more cynical. Who, after all, does not want to think of themselves as hoisting the Black Flag and sticking a middle finger up to the forces of Empire, in this day and age?

Highly recommend.

[Sevgi Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. It is completely packed true, but it is also great inspiration. I imagine the syllabus page being cold brewed into this tiny book. I hate the size of the print but I try to think of it as a swallowable pill shaped book.
I also love the essay Legal, Tender by Angela Mitropoulos(and Contract & Contagion) which Pirate Care introduced me to.

[Domiziana Palumbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have preferred for more space to be dedicated to the case studies and a bit less on the value-based narrative creative by the author on these . It would have made the concept of solidarity more justice by showing how it is practical and realistic rather than merely ideal

[Lanai · Rating 5 out of 5]

empowering