The Healthcare Worker Solidarity Collective (HCWSC) is a group of individuals committed to building solidarity and power among healthcare workers, patients, and all those suffering at the hands of our for-profit healthcare system through education, organizing, and collective action.
We believe in promoting dignity for patients and healthcare workers alike, and that this can only be achieved in a not-for-profit, decolonized, decarcerated system. We believe that medical debt is an unacceptable symptom of our for-profit system and that no one should have to face crippling debt in the pursuit of health. People should be participants, not subjects, in their own healthcare. Access to care should be unimpeded by means or means testing. Providers should have the right to freely disseminate knowledge and provide care outside the bounds of a capitalist system. The very definition of healthcare itself should expand to include traditional, holistic, and Indigenous medicine, activism addressing the social determinants of health, and honoring our relationships with one another and the Earth.
We operate in an abolitionist framework, where we work to reimagine systems of oppression, including our healthcare system, so that they are effective and equitable, especially for those who have been historically marginalized and oppressed. We are anti-ableist, anti-imperialist, and internationalist. We welcome all to this work, and seek to learn from our comrades who face similar struggles around the world.
Finally, we are committed to caring for one another, embodying the principles of radical hope and radical rest. We value caring for and remaining present with one another in this work, both in the spirit of true healthcare and in service of our movement’s sustainability.