Micro-worlds of care spill up.

(Debbie - “‘I’ve always felt these spaces were ours’: disability activism and austerity capitalism,” City 27:1-2, 2023)

Inclusive solidarities of care Springer’s emphasis on the capacity for direct actions to construct a prefigurative politics, based on the fellowship, reciprocity and equality enacted during them, is a point echoed by feminist scholars who argue that focusing on messy unpredictable sites of collaborative practices can illuminate possibilities for radical alternative futures (Kern and McLean 2017; Ruddick et al. 2018). This is demonstrated in the ways that DPAC organises its actions. Jeffries (2018) emphasised the importance of social reproductive processes, such as washing, cooking and caring, for enabling the 2011–13 urban protest encampments: but reproductive processes are necessary for even one-off street actions by disabled activists. Due to the range of physical impairments and multiple social barriers producing disability, DPAC needs to carefully plan strategies of mutual care in advance of its protests (Clifford 2020), from financial help for transport to physical assistance on site. The way that we organise a protest is always collectively and it’s very inclusive and accessible. So, we’ve almost got a microcosm of what future society could look like, because we have to be very interdependent and we work together. (Clifford) As such, DPAC are producing ‘micro-worlds of alternative urban relationships’ (Kern and McLean 2017, 418) by enacting ‘horizontal relationships and forms of organization that strive to reflect the future society being sought’ (Springer 2016, 287). These embodied practices are thus worthy of academic attention because they have the potential to constitute what is possible at scale, a potential that is captured by the description of these micro-practices as ‘worldmaking’ (Kern and McLean 2017) or ‘mondialization’ (Ruddick et al. 2018). DPAC’s model of collaborative care also helps shift the discourse of ‘dependency’, re-presenting it as a positive and progressive value. People with impairments are not excluded because of what they cannot do but instead the diverse skills amongst a solidarity group are recognised, supported and put to use for the common good, What’s great is we all bring different skill sets. Some are great with social media, some are great with direct action, some are great at talking to the media, some are great at lobbying MPs, some are great at doing research. It’s horses for courses, what you’re good at. (Peters) Significantly, DPAC centre their struggles on the reproduction of life, the right to reproduce the self and others, which feminists have argued is the ‘“point zero” of anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal and anti-colonial struggle’ (Jeffries 2018, 580). Rather than emphasising the role of social reproduction in the exchange value of the capitalist relations of production, disabled activists centre its use value for the reproduction of the self and other (Vogel 2019). DPAC’s struggles for subsistence and survival therefore provide orientation for alternative visions of a post-capitalist society that privileges care over competition, collectivism over individualism and reproduction over production.