There’s an old saying — actually, there are two old sayings. Well,
okay, there are many more than two old sayings, but there are two old sayings that are relevant
to what I’m about to tell you. The first one is, “all politics is local.” That saying is
most closely associated with Tip O’Neill, the Democratic member of Congress who served as
Speaker of the House for most of the 1980s. But before you start thinking I’m about to urge you
once again to get involved in electoral politics — I am gonna do that eventually, just not right
now — let me tell you the second old saying I’m thinking of: “everything is political.”
I think voting is important. I think encouraging others to vote is important. I think getting
involved in, or at least remaining informed about government and our political system is important.
But as we examine the problems facing us here in the United States in the post-Trump era,
we need to look at what we can do beyond elections and working with political parties and
lobbying elected officials. Many of the most serious issues we have to deal with can be
addressed in our own communities, by organizations we can directly support — in other words, by us.
Before we go any further, I think it’s worth spending a couple of minutes to define some terms.
Organizations that address social problems tend to fall into one of two categories:
mutual aid organizations, and charities.
Defined most broadly, mutual aid is simply people in a community helping each other to meet their
needs: food, clothing, shelter, medical care, what-have-you. The more specific concept of
mutual aid as something separate and distinct from charity comes from anarchist theory, but you don’t
have to consider yourself an anarchist in order to think mutual aid is a good thing or support
the world of mutual aid groups — and I know this because I’m not an anarchist. Or,
as some of my anarchist friends like to phrase it, I’m not an anarchist yet.
Mutual aid groups are usually volunteer-based rather than professional,
and have a flat rather than a hierarchical organizational structure. They also tend
to be operated by people who are part of the groups they’re trying to help,
as opposed to outsiders who are offering assistance to those they perceive to be
underprivileged. And, typically, they are working with extremely limited resources and workforce,
which means if there are mutual aid groups in your community, they could probably use your help.
None of that is to say that charitable organizations which
don’t operate under mutual aid principles are necessarily bad.
While I think mutual aid is usually preferable to charity as defined under this theory, there are
many charities that do work which deserves to be supported.
Also, the line between mutual aid and charity isn’t always solid. Some organizations may have
attributes of both. What ultimately matters — to me, anyway — is whether or not a given
group is doing good work, is benefiting the community it was created to serve.
Besides, if you want to support local groups and you live in a rural area, like I do,
you may not have the luxury of being picky.
I don’t talk about it as often as I used to — there’s more important stuff going on,
and also Star Trek — but I’m an atheist. However, the two largest homeless shelters in this
area — the Hope Center of Hagerstown and Reach of Washington County — are both faith-based. So,
if I want to support an organization addressing homelessness in my local area — which I do,
because it’s a problem — I have to support one or more of those
organizations, despite our differences of opinion on the subject of religion.
Or, I guess I could start my own organization, which I have neither the resources nor the
skills nor the time nor the inclination to do, which is why I’ve donated to both the
Hope Center and Reach, because they’re excellent organizations that do good and necessary work,
and as long as they do, their religiosity doesn’t prevent me from supporting them.
They aren’t perfect — for example, the Hope Center requires people to attend
church services prior to meals, which I’m not a fan of at all — but I weigh the stuff I don’t
like against the good being done for people who are truly in need, and I live with it.
There are some faith-based organizations that I do not and will not support. I don’t
support the Salvation Army, for example, but that’s not because it’s Christian,
but because the particular brand of Christianity it professes is explicitly discriminatory against
LGBTQ people. Fortunately, there are other organizations that do the same sort of work
that I’m more comfortable supporting, some of which are also faith-based. It’s the bigotry
I have a problem with, not the religion. You can have religion without bigotry,
it’s just that a lot of religious folks don’t seem to want it.
Anyway. All of this is to say, if you want to support local advocacy and social welfare
groups in your area, you might not be able to find one that lines up perfectly
with your personal politics or philosophy, but hopefully you can find a few that are providing
a benefit to the community that outweighs any objections you have. Things like whether an
organization is doing mutual aid or charity, and the underlying values and principles that
guide how an organization carries out its mission are important — I wouldn’t have even mentioned
them if they weren’t — but if options in your area are limited, I’d recommend not getting too
hung up on them. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good — hey, that’s another old
saying! Identify people who are trying to be a benefit to your community, who are doing it
in a way that you think you, in good conscience, can be a part of, and find a way to help ‘em out.
So, how do you do that? How do you find groups in your area to support? The internet is a good place
to start, obviously. A lot of locally focused groups, especially those that do mutual aid
and aren’t affiliated with larger organizations like churches or charity networks, use social
media to organize and promote their activities. So, check around on Facebook or Twitter. If your
local newspaper has a message board, see if there are any organizations active on there.
And attend protests! Often, local charity and mutual aid organizations will be present
at protests. They’ll set up tables, have business cards and flyers to pass out, and they’ll be able
to give you information about what they do, when and where they do it, and how you can
help. Protests are important for making our voices heard, for showing up to stand against injustice,
but they also bring people together so the work of protests can continue after everybody goes home.
Like I said, I live in a rural area. It’s also very conservative. I don’t have much in the way
of mutual aid or organized protests happening in my backyard. But, I donate to the local shelters
that I mentioned before, I give to food pantries and clothing banks in the area when I can,
and when COVID is less of a thing, I'll make an effort to make it down to D.C.,
or over to Baltimore more often to attend protests and at least show up from time to
time for the important work being done by activists in both of those cities.
Many of the issues we face need to be addressed nationally, through large scale,
institutional reform and changes to public policy. As this series continues I’m going
to examine what some of those issues are and what we can do to address them. But even the
biggest problems we face as a society are going to have solutions that will need to be carried out
at the local level. Organizations in your community are going to need your money,
your time, your effort, whatever you’re able to offer — they’re going to need your help. They
need your help now. So find out who they are, what they need, and what you can do, and get involved.