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Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity
176 pages, Paperback
Published January 20, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 31, 2026
yeah protesting is cool, but have you tried acting on the margins of (il)legality as a way of showing solidarity with, and tangibly caring for, those that need it most, while simultaneously unmasking and subverting the very structures of power that had care privatised, criminalised or made illegal in the first place?
i will never be half as cool as the people whose practices are featured in this book! all hail pirate carers!
i will never be half as cool as the people whose practices are featured in this book! all hail pirate carers!
February 6, 2025
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"?
I call for a sequel, done in the spirit of the collectively sung sea shanty: how's about "way hey, blow The Man down"?
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July 4, 2026“if Empire is back, then so is its enemy: the pirate.”
“A market logic, by definition, cannot guarantee that all are well cared for, as capital needs exclusionary mechanisms of scarcity in order to thrive”
“A market logic, by definition, cannot guarantee that all are well cared for, as capital needs exclusionary mechanisms of scarcity in order to thrive”
June 3, 2025
Ik ben fan !!!!!!
June 18, 2026
Good message, but I would have liked a deeper dive
February 5, 2026
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.
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.
August 3, 2026
This is a manifesto advocating for a Pirate and Care approach to resisting the control of empire and technofuedalism. It details practices to resist the gatekeeping of information as well as morally sound care practices to emancipate huge swathes of the people most affected by populism and far right hate. I was surprised at how so much of this resonates. Very challenging to put this into practice.
August 5, 2026
Pirate Care is a fascinating manifesto/ideological tome by Graziano, Mars, and Medak. The core idea is pretty straightforward: under capitalism and neoliberalism, subversion is necessary. For the authors, even social welfare systems are, as best, irreparably intertwined with systems of exclusion and judgement over who should have access to what kind of care. Pirate care is the way forward: to break through these systems, and the very the notion that care should be governed (and ergo, de facto restricted), by performing care in ways that actively cut against laws and norms.
Graziano, Mars, and Medak then set out to highlight a wide variety of care practices that exist in this pirate realm. Some you may have heard of already if you're the type to pick up this book, such as floating abortion clinics (that sail in international waters to provide healthcare to those trapped in countries where it is banned) or hacker creators (e.g., Four Thieves Vinegar, which has tried to build tools for synthesizing and delivering drugs, such as a much cheaper "epi-pencil" that circumvents copyrights on the famous(ly expensive) epipen).
I also particularly value their articulation of what makes Pirate Care versus right wing care different. Right wing and fascist groups do indeed perform many care actions (e.g., soup kitchens, other forms of charity), but Graziano, Mars, and Medak argue that these ultimately end up as the opposite of Pirate Care because of their exclusionary nature: at some stage, whether quickly or long term, they ultimately found themselves in some sort of in-group that ought to be cared for and an out-group that should not. "The 'prepper' movement," write the authors, for example, "organizes resources for an anticipated societal collapse, but with a patriarchal and militaristic mindset that fetishizes the survival of its select in-groups and has nothing to do with community care" (p. 9). What makes Pirate Care Pirate Care is the refusal to believe there is ever an out-group: care should be available to all, always.
I find their ideas compelling, even if at times the book does drop into a slightly repetitive manifesto mode. That being said, I do think there are two things they don't grapple with enough to really land the persuasive case:
First, while they occasionally allude to the fact that many of their examples don't end up being terribly impactful at scale (e.g., setting out with good intentions but not being able to carry out the mission; being so difficult to scale that only handfuls of people get helped with extreme effort, etc), they never really grapple with what this means for Pirate Care. It's great that Pirate Care can be massively impactful for those who happen to be on your pirate ship, but many of the crises they describe (e.g., lack of access to healthcare) are having such incomprehensibly large, societal-scale harms, that there needs to be at least some theoretical accounting for what Pirate Care can offer to a planet in distress, not just at the level of resource-intensive interpersonal relationships.
Second, particularly given above, their critiques of social welfare systems are valid, but land in a slightly frustrating way. While I agree with the authors that social welfare can so often be coopted into becoming a mechanism of exclusion rather than radically inclusive care (e.g., "the stultifying ethics of the professionalized care industries... keep us locked in a moral cage, where prescriptions of 'good' and 'right' serve to maintain oppressive structures unchecked," p. 25), it /is/ an effort to grapple with the questions of how we do this kind of caring at scale. I can't imagine a leftist, for example, that would argue that national pharmacare is perfect, but when it comes to reducing harms and exclusions (when compared to the current system), for example, it's making a real difference. I don't think the authors ever really grapple with what it means to come down so heavily and critically on social welfare systems for the ways that they're part of exclusion (which, again, to be clear, is fair) without dealing with the way Pirate Care is, de facto, exclusive in its own ways (e.g., inability to scale; technological literacy required to participate in hacking communities, etc).
(I'd also briefly mention that they introduce a four-fold theory of what Pirate Care is, but then really never weave that into their analysis, shy of a brief mention in the conclusion. This should be more front and centre if it is to be a contribution.)
That said, I did really enjoy this book for being provocative and for putting forward a concept for building a better world. They position Pirate Care as "ungovernable, joyous care" (p. 151), which is sure something we need. Pirate Care is certainly a tool we'll need more of, even if I think the authors didn't deliver on their more grandiose ambition of convincing me that it's a superior tool to others.
Graziano, Mars, and Medak then set out to highlight a wide variety of care practices that exist in this pirate realm. Some you may have heard of already if you're the type to pick up this book, such as floating abortion clinics (that sail in international waters to provide healthcare to those trapped in countries where it is banned) or hacker creators (e.g., Four Thieves Vinegar, which has tried to build tools for synthesizing and delivering drugs, such as a much cheaper "epi-pencil" that circumvents copyrights on the famous(ly expensive) epipen).
I also particularly value their articulation of what makes Pirate Care versus right wing care different. Right wing and fascist groups do indeed perform many care actions (e.g., soup kitchens, other forms of charity), but Graziano, Mars, and Medak argue that these ultimately end up as the opposite of Pirate Care because of their exclusionary nature: at some stage, whether quickly or long term, they ultimately found themselves in some sort of in-group that ought to be cared for and an out-group that should not. "The 'prepper' movement," write the authors, for example, "organizes resources for an anticipated societal collapse, but with a patriarchal and militaristic mindset that fetishizes the survival of its select in-groups and has nothing to do with community care" (p. 9). What makes Pirate Care Pirate Care is the refusal to believe there is ever an out-group: care should be available to all, always.
I find their ideas compelling, even if at times the book does drop into a slightly repetitive manifesto mode. That being said, I do think there are two things they don't grapple with enough to really land the persuasive case:
First, while they occasionally allude to the fact that many of their examples don't end up being terribly impactful at scale (e.g., setting out with good intentions but not being able to carry out the mission; being so difficult to scale that only handfuls of people get helped with extreme effort, etc), they never really grapple with what this means for Pirate Care. It's great that Pirate Care can be massively impactful for those who happen to be on your pirate ship, but many of the crises they describe (e.g., lack of access to healthcare) are having such incomprehensibly large, societal-scale harms, that there needs to be at least some theoretical accounting for what Pirate Care can offer to a planet in distress, not just at the level of resource-intensive interpersonal relationships.
Second, particularly given above, their critiques of social welfare systems are valid, but land in a slightly frustrating way. While I agree with the authors that social welfare can so often be coopted into becoming a mechanism of exclusion rather than radically inclusive care (e.g., "the stultifying ethics of the professionalized care industries... keep us locked in a moral cage, where prescriptions of 'good' and 'right' serve to maintain oppressive structures unchecked," p. 25), it /is/ an effort to grapple with the questions of how we do this kind of caring at scale. I can't imagine a leftist, for example, that would argue that national pharmacare is perfect, but when it comes to reducing harms and exclusions (when compared to the current system), for example, it's making a real difference. I don't think the authors ever really grapple with what it means to come down so heavily and critically on social welfare systems for the ways that they're part of exclusion (which, again, to be clear, is fair) without dealing with the way Pirate Care is, de facto, exclusive in its own ways (e.g., inability to scale; technological literacy required to participate in hacking communities, etc).
(I'd also briefly mention that they introduce a four-fold theory of what Pirate Care is, but then really never weave that into their analysis, shy of a brief mention in the conclusion. This should be more front and centre if it is to be a contribution.)
That said, I did really enjoy this book for being provocative and for putting forward a concept for building a better world. They position Pirate Care as "ungovernable, joyous care" (p. 151), which is sure something we need. Pirate Care is certainly a tool we'll need more of, even if I think the authors didn't deliver on their more grandiose ambition of convincing me that it's a superior tool to others.
July 24, 2025
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.
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.
------------
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.
July 5, 2026
quite amazing. Graziano, Mars & Medak managed to pull this concept (read the title) as a way to abolish "care as an institution". isn't it both very harsh and sad, that the freedom to simply care for one another is constantly under attack by those in power?
the authors weaved the pirates of old, how they all started as forces of resistance against Empires (two truths can exist; piracy can also be authoritarian!!! - if it does not have care embedded to it).
this book might be challenging to those who are used to thinking in black or white since it challenges the notion of structures...
another key theme of the book: we live in a post-digital world where online violence supercharges physical violence, so we won't / don't gain much by treating these realms as separate.
a call to redefine what constitutes as "kinship" and our relations to tech serves as a key message.
what stays with me isn’t the theory though [though the theory is good, tight, load-bearing] — it’s how concrete the book gets. Sea-Watch running rescue boats in the Mediterranean while their crews get charged as smugglers for the crime of not letting people drown. Estrofem! Lab, teaching people to extract hormones from urine because the official channels for gender-affirming care are gatekept or simply not there. Mars and Medak’s own Memory of the World — a shadow library they built and maintain — as proof that piracy of knowledge is itself a form of care, for anyone locked out of paywalled medicine and research. the authors aren’t theorising from a safe distance; they’re describing infrastructure they helped build.
authors gave nods to so many movements from health, migration, open science in education. i truly think this is one of those books that cannot help but leave you feeling hopeful. dreaming is an act of resistance after all.
the authors weaved the pirates of old, how they all started as forces of resistance against Empires (two truths can exist; piracy can also be authoritarian!!! - if it does not have care embedded to it).
this book might be challenging to those who are used to thinking in black or white since it challenges the notion of structures...
another key theme of the book: we live in a post-digital world where online violence supercharges physical violence, so we won't / don't gain much by treating these realms as separate.
a call to redefine what constitutes as "kinship" and our relations to tech serves as a key message.
what stays with me isn’t the theory though [though the theory is good, tight, load-bearing] — it’s how concrete the book gets. Sea-Watch running rescue boats in the Mediterranean while their crews get charged as smugglers for the crime of not letting people drown. Estrofem! Lab, teaching people to extract hormones from urine because the official channels for gender-affirming care are gatekept or simply not there. Mars and Medak’s own Memory of the World — a shadow library they built and maintain — as proof that piracy of knowledge is itself a form of care, for anyone locked out of paywalled medicine and research. the authors aren’t theorising from a safe distance; they’re describing infrastructure they helped build.
authors gave nods to so many movements from health, migration, open science in education. i truly think this is one of those books that cannot help but leave you feeling hopeful. dreaming is an act of resistance after all.
August 12, 2026
Written rivetingly and brings hope through highlighting acts of illegalized care to include all peoples in acts of care! Reads almost novelistically. So many cool and concrete initiatives were mentioned in this book and I love how the authors brought in their own experiences as well. I am inspired to check out more of these initiatives to see them in action.
But I’m also left with questions that I don’t think were adequately answered in this book. Given that most of the acts of pirate care mentioned in this book were undertaken spontaneously in response to a collective need (and I’ve seen this with my grandparents’ generation too), what would be the benefit of federating them beyond just a #syllabi? How would a community of elderly folk caring for each other in illegal ways benefit from affiliation with a wider coalition? Are there ways in which staying separate may protect communities, because it places them less in the spotlight of politicized reactionary movements?
Moreover, how would a pirate care movement be organized if one of goals is the make the illegal LEGAL, and thus the pirate care to become decriminalized healthcare? This is something I am confused about: would the authors rather celebrate acts of pirate care to remain as they are, that is, acts of piracy against exclusionary legal systems—or seek as a central goal the decriminalization of those acts of care, so that they are NO LONGER piracy, by the very definition of piracy? It seems from the examples the authors mentioned about illegal care that later became legal that the latter seems to be the goal, but this is never made explicit (I imagine it would change the narrative to pose the “system” as it were as an ally rather than an enemy, which would not serve the narrative).
But I’m also left with questions that I don’t think were adequately answered in this book. Given that most of the acts of pirate care mentioned in this book were undertaken spontaneously in response to a collective need (and I’ve seen this with my grandparents’ generation too), what would be the benefit of federating them beyond just a #syllabi? How would a community of elderly folk caring for each other in illegal ways benefit from affiliation with a wider coalition? Are there ways in which staying separate may protect communities, because it places them less in the spotlight of politicized reactionary movements?
Moreover, how would a pirate care movement be organized if one of goals is the make the illegal LEGAL, and thus the pirate care to become decriminalized healthcare? This is something I am confused about: would the authors rather celebrate acts of pirate care to remain as they are, that is, acts of piracy against exclusionary legal systems—or seek as a central goal the decriminalization of those acts of care, so that they are NO LONGER piracy, by the very definition of piracy? It seems from the examples the authors mentioned about illegal care that later became legal that the latter seems to be the goal, but this is never made explicit (I imagine it would change the narrative to pose the “system” as it were as an ally rather than an enemy, which would not serve the narrative).
Read
August 23, 2026I got scared when I realized this was by Europeans, because I’ve simply read enough European activism literature that ignores the lived carceral and surveillance realities of most people in the world, but these guys get it. This is one of the topics I’ve been most interested in and most dedicated to in my life and this was a great foray into it. I say “foray” because it doesn’t try to do too much, it’s not a manifesto, it just links together enough illustrative stories about how we care for each other outside of oppressive systems to make the point that we’ve been doing that forever and it is one of the most revolutionary, empathetic, and worthwhile actions we can take. I realize how this sounds, but I often feel very very disheartened when confronted with the fact that the people most energetic about the #revolution bring only very rudimentary ideas of praxis to the table, but this book is by and about the movement veterans who operate at a sustained higher level (aka the people I revere most in this world). Also selfishly I really wish they’d interviewed us street medics about the 2020 Minneapolis uprising, because I can think of a lot of people who would have contributed well to the “Learning Together Under Fire” chapter and it felt a little light (though of course all credit to the content on Standing Rock). Ok I’m removing my “jaded movement retiree” hat now
August 13, 2026
This book profiles a number of extremely brave, defiant, and (mostly) illegal group actions against unjust institutional policies. 🏴☠️
Some fairly dry far-left academic writing is punctuated by inspiring case studies of clever carers building communities and finding ways to help people in distress by subverting structures of power. Fans of Robin Hood and other scrappy outlaws will love hearing about these often under-reported real-life heroes risking everything to help the people around them.
Big shout out to Women On Waves, planka.nu, Fairy Wings Mutual Aid, Operation Vulamanzi, Afghanistan's insurgent educators, and Docs not Cops - all doing important work to ensure marginalized groups have access to basic human needs.
Some fairly dry far-left academic writing is punctuated by inspiring case studies of clever carers building communities and finding ways to help people in distress by subverting structures of power. Fans of Robin Hood and other scrappy outlaws will love hearing about these often under-reported real-life heroes risking everything to help the people around them.
Big shout out to Women On Waves, planka.nu, Fairy Wings Mutual Aid, Operation Vulamanzi, Afghanistan's insurgent educators, and Docs not Cops - all doing important work to ensure marginalized groups have access to basic human needs.
August 18, 2026
The case studies are very interesting, but the problem is, there are secondary to the authors' need to constantly repeat the same theories over and over without actually going into depth. Maybe I already am too familiar with the vague shape of many of their core ideas (mutual aid, disaster solidarity etc), but I would have liked more depth, and more historical grounding. Their main concept - pirate care- draws from the real lives of pirates in the 18th century, but these stories only crop up rarely throughout the book. I would have preferred a structure that started with an entire chapter on pirates before moving chronically through more recent examples. It just felt a bit all over the place structurally.
September 2, 2026
Maybe if you’re gonna write a book about direct action don’t fill it with so much jargon that you need a PhD in social theory to get through??
Super interesting concept and case studies buried under unneeded terminology and references.
eg. if the main point of a section is how privatized healthcare is resource inefficient, multiple throwaway lines about how it’s also heteronormative and also paternalistic and so on and so forth just serve to dilute the point.
Felt like the authors were aiming to convince me of their academic views rather than focusing on actionable stuff like the book (seemed to) present itself as :/
Super interesting concept and case studies buried under unneeded terminology and references.
eg. if the main point of a section is how privatized healthcare is resource inefficient, multiple throwaway lines about how it’s also heteronormative and also paternalistic and so on and so forth just serve to dilute the point.
Felt like the authors were aiming to convince me of their academic views rather than focusing on actionable stuff like the book (seemed to) present itself as :/
December 16, 2025
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.
I also love the essay Legal, Tender by Angela Mitropoulos(and Contract & Contagion) which Pirate Care introduced me to.
November 4, 2025
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
June 30, 2025
empowering
March 28, 2026
meant to be a spark for your own fire rather than a torch for you to carry.
March 29, 2026
ahoy my fellow friends
September 23, 2026
Rating based on the Macedonian translation of the book.
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