The term “mutual aid” basically just means
when people band together to meet immediate
survival needs, usually because of a shared
understanding that the systems in place aren’t
coming to meet them, or certainly not fast
enough, if at all, and that we can do it together
right now.
So, usually you see them really visibly during
kind of sudden disasters, like earthquakes,
storms, floods, where people are rescuing
each other or distributing water or distributing
masks, things like that.
But there’s also an ongoing history of people
and a contemporary reality of people doing
mutual aid projects to deal with the ongoing
disasters of the systems we live under.
So, an example a lot of people have heard
of is No More Deaths in Arizona, which puts
water into the desert, and food, so that people
who are crossing, hopefully, are less — it’s
less mortal for them; or abortion funds, that
help people access abortion right now; or
bail funds, as you mentioned; or projects
that help people coming out of foster care
or our of prison find housing; or prison pen
pal projects; or child care collectives.
Those are all sort of ongoing ways people
are meeting each other’s needs.
And I think the most probably visible historical
example of mutual aid in the U.S. that people
talk about a lot is, of course, the Black
Panther Party’s free breakfast programs
and health programs, which were a vital part
of the party’s work.
And it’s a good example of how social movements
often, pretty much always, centrally organize
mutual aid, because people come into social
movements to get immediate needs met, and
they also desperately want to help others
facing what they’re facing.
And when they’re there, they can build a
shared analysis: Hey, why don’t we have
food?
Why don’t we have shelter?
What systems are in place that we all actually
want to get to the root causes of?
And I think that one other piece to say about
this is that in a country like ours, the story
is elites will solve the problems, we should
change laws, or we should get policies passed,
and you should kind of wait to vote for those
people or lobby them and ask them to do things.
And mutual aid has a really different feeling
to it.
It’s like, you know what?
We’re not just going to wait and hope that
they solve our problems, especially since
they have a bad record of not doing that,
and especially because most relief doesn’t
end up reaching the poorest people or the
most marginalized or targeted people.
Instead, we’re going to do something right
now to build the world we want to live in.
So it’s a very empowering, participatory
kind of work that tends to build people’s
ability to mobilize generally.
I think one of the most important parts about
mutual aid has to do with changing the social
relationships that we have amongst each other,
in order to be able to fight beyond this current
moment, beyond the current crisis, beyond
the current form of a disaster that we’re
trying to overcome.
And so, one of the beautiful aspects is that
you really don’t know where the connections
are going to take you.
You’re going to make and build new relationships
that will kind of lead to new projects and
will lead to new understandings, that will
shape the potential future of, you know, your
community and beyond.
I think the fact that these are like hyper-local
projects is actually a very helpful thing,
because you’re definitely going to run into
these folks again.
And it provides a foundation for future political
action, if it’s done in a good way where
people feel good about it and good about each
other.
So I think that’s very important.
And in terms of where people can go to find
some of these mutual aid projects, there’s
a new hub that was created, that somebody
put together, using all of these different
— how do you call it? — all the different
Google docs that have been coming up and circulating,
so that people could find each other and find
themselves.
And I will send that, because I don’t have
the actual link for it right now.
But I will send that over so that you can
put it on your site.
And that’s a way where people can connect.
People can go to Twitter, go to Instagram,
go to Facebook.
There’s so many Facebook pages that have
come up, so many —
And, of course, we’ll link to it at democracynow.org.
