what is a social clinic?
Social Clinics are autonomous community-based healthcare collectives that provide primary healthcare services. We believe that healthcare inequities are intertwined with other forms of social and economic marginalization and exclusion. As such, they need to be confronted politically. Social Clinics operate autonomously and are self-managed. Our goal is to challenge conventional organizational structures through innovative practices encompassing everyday interactions, processes, and medical procedures. We firmly believe in people’s capacity to organize, self-govern, and collectively make fair and egalitarian decisions concerning their work, health, and lives. Social clinics serve as a radical political model, offering a vision of a more equitable, just, consistent, and anti-authoritarian societal structure that can extend beyond healthcare. If it can be successfully implemented in healthcare, it can be applied anywhere.
The name “Social clinics” was chosen collectively to encompass a diverse array of experiences striving for a different concept of health and healthcare, including Solidarisches Gesundheitszentrum, Ambulatori Popolari, Centres de Sante Communautaire Autogérés, Κοινωνικό Ιατρείο Αλληλεγγύης.
basic principles
social clinics are anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-racist and transfeminist. We are committed to fighting all forms of discrimination based on factors such as geographic origin, sex, gender, social class, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs. We recognize the necessity of uniting these various struggles and hold an intersectional perspective on them.
what we do
While offering primary healthcare services, our impact extends beyond healthcare provision; it also involves being ‘allies’ and active participants in social struggles that contrast the processes of marginalization of communities and groups, thus contributing to making their struggles visible.
why we exist
Healthcare systems have been systematically dismantled due to cuts in public spending, leading to widespread discrimination and exclusion from essential services. Social Clinics actively fight to overcome barriers such as bureaucratic, economic, and language challenges that people face when accessing healthcare. This form of political action can sometimes take the form of conflict and protest, aiming to guarantee universal access to healthcare and uphold the right to health for all.
We felt the need to create spaces where hierarchies and power dynamics in healthcare and medical practices can be questioned and challenged. We advocate for a radical and collective vision of healthcare, where everyone who enters our clinic is treated equally, regardless of their status or background. Our assemblies and collective structures show our commitment to dismantling all forms of hierarchy and fostering open discussion and critique. In our daily roles and routines, we often lack the time and space to collectively reflect on our health and how we care for ourselves and others. Social clinics provide precisely that time and space. This Manifesto is the product of our collective discussions and reflections, our dreams and aspirations.
Next: section 1: neoliberal policies and relations with public health system
