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.