# /0 Summary

## // Why Deli-Plena?

Individual Community Plena should not be closed communities that act solidarily only internally. The aim is to collectively build a network of solidary modes of relating for a different city, across individual plena. A solidary city depends on coordination, discussion and support between Care Communities and all other people and groups of the Caring City.

For this, a structured, cross-context exchange of insights from reflections and political negotiations of existing Care Communities is needed — at regular Deli-Plena.

## // Who Participates in Deli-Plena?

Delegates of different Caring Communities and other (care-)political groups. Each participating group sends delegates to the Deli-Plenum.

## // In What Mode Do the Deli-Plena Take Place?

The Deli-Plena follow a standardised (but always discussable and changeable) procedure intended to enable the most effective cross-context coordination and discussion possible.

# /1 Structural Foundations

## // Participants

- Two delegates per group, institution, Care Community and otherwise (care-)political contexts
- The respective groups should pay attention to the sensitive selection and the available resources and adequate support of the delegates
- Delegates bring the respective positions and projects of the individual contexts into the Deli-Plenum
- The focus is on support needs and possible courses of action of grassroots groups in view of social lines of conflict
- A commitment to also taking the financial dimension of care into account and to contributing to the emancipatory redistribution of private assets across individual contexts

> **Note:** As at the level of Care Communities, a regular separate exchange of non-male persons as well as institutionalised critique of masculinity (Betraying Masculinity council) should also take place at the level of Deli-Plena. Furthermore, the topics of financial inequality and ableist, racist and antisemitic discrimination must be worked through.

## // Frequency and Time Frame

- Regular Deli-Plena (e.g. every 6 weeks)
- Acute Deli-Plena as needed

## // Preparation

- All contexts discuss internally in advance which topics they want to bring as agenda items to the Deli-meeting
- Topics are collected in advance and prioritised at the Deli-meeting itself

Guiding questions for collecting topics in advance — along the agenda item categories from Phase 3:

- Which political questions regarding our reproduction as politically active people are especially urgent and cannot be resolved within our context?
- Which topics — in particular relating to wage labour & unemployment, care work, everyday provision and options for self-development — do we want to discuss across contexts?
- Which insights and perspectives do we want to share more broadly?

# /2 Agenda Structure

## // Structured Approach

The Deli-Plena follow an agenda structure intended to enable coordination, discussion and processing of pending (care-)political topics in as resource- and time-efficient a way as possible. Like the protocols, the agenda is not set in stone but should be subject to ongoing adaptation. Nevertheless, the discussion of the structure itself should be made its own planned agenda item. Orienting oneself to collectively self-given procedural rules is an important building block for successful cross-context coordination.

## // Political Claim in the Approach

- Explicit rejection of pure compensation logics — collective organising must not be limited to compensating for capitalist crises
- Mutual update regarding the identification of adversaries — what does Four-in-One / feminist socialisation fail on? What are the central problems in the emancipatory shaping of care?
- Care council: Deli-Plenum as a site of cultivated dispute over fundamental questions and pragmatic resolution of technical problems
- Exchange about needed and existing resources as well as negotiation of (re-)distribution in the context of experiential values from & connections in struggles — and with the (solidary) countryside around

## // Discussion Mode

- Personal experiences and perspectives are explicitly connected with structural and political analyses; collective reflecting, planning, negotiating and deciding
- Moderated discussion along the prioritisation set at the beginning; minutes of results
- The minutes can be inserted directly into the table of agenda item proposals — simply reuse the table as a template at each plenum

## // Using the Agenda Structure

A complete practice template with guiding questions and the minutes table of all topic categories is available for download under **Resources** — as PDF for printing or as Markdown for editing in your own pad. Create a fresh copy for each session.

## // Short Form of the Agenda Structure

**Phase 1: Check-in 1 — Articulating Needs** (as the respective group)

- What struggles are we currently engaged in and what occupies us most?
- With what do contexts need help (soon)?
- How do contexts assess their current individual (in)capacity?
- How is use of existing resources, building of new resources and active shaping of antagonisms prioritised?

**Phase 2: Check-in 2 — Focus on political dimension of needs, prioritise today's agenda items**

- What do we want to discuss in more depth today?
- Which topic for which agenda category?
- Which topics should we prioritise?

**Phase 3: Agenda items — Structured problem-working**

- In-depth political engagement to gradually develop structured cross-context exchange on concrete, care-politically relevant topics
- Not all categories need to come up every time!
- Pre-discussion & collection of topics in advance; delegates then bring collected topics from their contexts
- For each category, updates are exchanged, demands noted where applicable and actions (especially care strike, public relations and legal steps) decided where applicable

**Phase 4: Check-out — Strategic orientation**

- Sharpen collective strategy, situate the plenum in the broader political context
- What is our care networking aiming at in the short and long term?
- How satisfied are we with current development?
- What do we want to think about until the next meeting?
- How will we become part of larger care structures?

# /3 Documentation and Development

## // Documentation per Meeting

- Collaborative digital minutes of results
- Recording of care needs and offers
- Documentation of structural obstacles
- Building a common vocabulary

## // Evaluation (every 3 months)

- Reflection on the care structure and its development
- Review of accessibility and inclusiveness
- Analysis of the distribution of care work
- Assessment of political effectiveness

## // Development

- Exchange with other care structures
- Formulating political demands from shared experiences
- Ongoing adaptation of the protocol based on collected experiences & political orientations

# /4 Critical Reflection

The plenum regularly asks itself the following questions — as a collective self-check:

- **Community capitalism** — Are we mere stopgaps for dismantled social benefits?
- **Psychologisation** — Are we losing the political dimension by falling into therapeutic logics?
- **Expert rule** — Are hierarchies emerging through unequally distributed knowledge?
- **Naturalisation** — Are we reproducing the notion of care as a "natural" or "female" task?
- **Commodification** — Is care becoming a commodity?
- **Collectivism as an end in itself** — Are we overlooking individual differences in favour of a collectivity for its own sake?
- **4-in-1 perspective** — Can our practice overcome the capitalist separation of the four life areas?
- **Redistribution** — Are we succeeding in taking responsibility for one another and redistributing accumulated private wealth and other problematically unequally distributed resources?

# /5 Final Provisions

This protocol is a living document — not a set of rules, but a guide that requires local adaptation.

Building Caring Cities from Below is an attempt to realise relational autonomy through collective political practice and to build new emancipatory urban infrastructures — beyond traditional community forms, market-based or state structures.

The protocol itself is a form of "technical tenderness" — rational structuring in the service of collective agency.