mutual aid (spade)

Mutual Aid – Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) – (2020) by dean spade via 75 pg pdf from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dean-spade-mutual-aid]

mutual aid (kropotkin).. david on mutual aid.. mutual aid.. difference between mutual aid and charity

notes/quotes:

4

Introduction: Crisis Conditions Require Bold Tactics

The contemporary political moment is defined by emergency. Acute crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change–induced fires, floods, and storms, as well as the ongoing crises of racist criminalization, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality, threaten the survival of people around the globe. Government policies actively produce and exacerbate the harm, inadequately respond to crises, and ensure that certain populations bear the brunt of pollution, poverty, disease, and violence. In the face of this, more and more ordinary people are feeling called to respond in their communities, creating bold and innovative ways to share resources and support vulnerable neighbors. This survival work, when done in conjunction with social movements demanding transformative change, is called mutual aid.

which is great.. for survival.. but we have the means to go deeper than survival/triage mode..

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
root of problem

legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do

how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..

ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

need to try the unconditional part of left to own devices ness..

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it

ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition

Mutual aid has been a part of all large, powerful social movements, and it has a particularly important role to play right now, as we face unprecedented dangers and opportunities for mobilization. Mutual aid gives people a way to plug into movements based on their immediate concerns, and it produces social spaces where people grow new solidarities. At its best, mutual aid actually produces new ways of living where people get to create systems of care and generosity that address harm and foster well-being.

but that’s the problem.. actually not new.. we need to try a legit diff way.. sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do

This book is about mutual aid: it explains why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid as well as concrete tools for addressing some of the most difficult questions facing mutual aid groups, such as *how to work in groups and make decisions together, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout so that we can build a lasting mobilization that can win.

*these are all cancerous distractions.. all forms of people telling other people what to do

Left social movements have two big jobs right now. First, we need to organize to help people survive the devastating conditions unfolding every day. *Second, we need to mobilize hundreds of millions of people for resistance so we can tackle the underlying causes of these crises. In this pivotal moment, movements can strengthen, **mobilizing new people to fight back against cops, immigration enforcement, welfare authorities, landlords, budget cuts, polluters, the defense industry, prison profiteers, and right-wing groups. The way to tackle these two big tasks—***meeting people’s needs and mobilizing them for resistance—is to create mutual aid projects and get lots of people to participate in them. Social movements that have built power and won major change have all included mutual aid, yet it is often a part of movement work that is less visible and less valued. In this moment, our ability to build mutual aid will determine whether we win the world we long for or dive further into crisis.

*not getting to the root of problem unless we try/see the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

**cancerous distractions.. keeping us in same song

***we have yet to try to org around legit needs

5

As a result of these efforts by a mobilized and coordinated movement, and no thanks to the government, Hong Kong had an immensely successful response to the first wave of COVID-19. Through the combination of mutual aid and direct action to force concessions, the protesters did what the government would not do on its own, saving untold numbers of lives.

again.. great.. but not deep enough if want a diff way to live.. ie: keep whales alive? or hari rat park law.. et al

This book provides a concrete guide for building mutual aid groups and networks. Part I explores what mutual aid is, why it is different than charity, and how it relates to other social movement tactics. Part II dives into the nitty-gritty of how to work together in mutual aid groups and how to handle the challenges of group decision-making, conflict, and burnout. It includes charts and lists that can be brought to group meetings to stimulate conversation and build shared analysis and group practices. Ultimately, helps imagine how we can coordinate to collectively take care of ourselves—even in the face of disaster—and mobilize hundreds of millions of people to make deep and lasting change.

again.. cancerous distractions won’t get at root of problem.. so only thing lasting is sea world

6

PART I. What is mutual aid?

7

These are mutual aid projects. They directly meet people’s survival needs, and are based on a shared understanding that the conditions in which we are made to live are unjust.

we need to org around legit needs.. supposed ‘survival’ (because it’s to survive in sea world) needs just perpetuate triage ness et al

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1. Three Key Elements of Mutual Aid

One. Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.

first need to grok legit needs.. otherwise whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world

Mutual aid projects expose the reality that people do not have what they need and propose that we can address this injustice together. The most famous example in the United States is the Black Panther Party’s survival programs, which ran throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including a free breakfast program, free ambulance program, free medical clinics, a service offering rides to elderly people doing errands, and a school aimed at providing a rigorous liberation curriculum to children. The Black Panther programs welcomed people into the liberation struggle by creating spaces where they could meet basic needs and build a shared analysis about the conditions they were facing. Instead of feeling ashamed about not being able to feed their kids in a culture that blames poor people, especially poor Black people, for their poverty, people attending the Panthers’ free breakfast program got food and a chance to build shared analysis about Black poverty. It broke stigma and isolation, met material needs, and got people fired up to work together for change.

we need spaces where everyone can access (org around) legit needs

again.. none to date have addressed (org’d around) legit needs

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Mutual aid is a powerful force.

Two. Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.

Mutual aid is essential to building social movements. People often come to social movement groups because they need something: *eviction defense, childcare, social connection, health care, or help in a fight with the government about something like welfare benefits, disability services, immigration status, or custody of their children. Being able to get help in a crisis is often a condition for being politically active, because it’s very difficult to organize when you are also struggling to survive. Getting support through a mutual aid project that has a political analysis of the conditions that produced your crisis also helps to break stigma, shame, and isolation. Under capitalism, social problems resulting from exploitation and the maldistribution of resources are understood as individual moral failings, not systemic problems. Getting support at a place that sees the systems, not the people suffering in them, as the problem **can help people move from shame to anger and defiance. Mutual aid exposes the failures of the current system and shows an alternative. This work is based in a belief that those on the front lines of a crisis have the best wisdom to solve the problems, and that collective action is the way forward.

*all irrelevant s if org around legit needs

**not legit alt if ie: anger, defiance.. (those perpetuate same song)

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Solidarity is what builds and connects large-scale movements. In the context of professionalized nonprofit organizations, groups are urged to be single-issue oriented, framing their message around “deserving” people within the population they serve, and using tactics palatable to elites. Prison-oriented groups are supposed to fight only for “the innocent” or “the nonviolent,” for example, and to do their work by lobbying politicians about how some people—not all people—don’t belong in prison. This is the opposite of solidarity, because it means the most vulnerable people are left behind: those who were up-charged by cops and prosecutors, those who do not have the means to prove their innocence, those who do not match cultural tropes of innocence and deservingness. This narrow focus actually strengthens the system’s legitimacy by advocating that the targeting of those more stigmatized people is okay.

any form of m\a\p narrows focus

today we have means to try something legit diff.. and we’re missing it.. for (blank)’s sake

Solidarity across issues and populations is what makes movements big and powerful. Without that connection, we end up with disconnected groups, working in their issue silos, undermining each other, competing for attention and funding, not backing each other up and not building power. Mutual aid projects, by creating spaces where people come together on the basis of some shared need or concern in spite of their different lived experience, cultivate solidarity.

what we need to try is shared itch-in-the-soul

An initial goal of serving people impacted by homelessness quickly reveals that racism, colonialism, immigration enforcement, ableism, police violence, the foster care system, the health care system, transphobia, and more are all causes of homelessness or causes of further harm to homeless people.

any form of people telling other people what to do

Three. Mutual aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

Mutual aid projects help people develop skills for collaboration, participation, and decision-making. For example, people engaged in a project to help one another through housing court proceedings will learn the details of how the system harms people and how to fight it, but they will also learn about meeting facilitation, working across differences, retaining volunteers, addressing conflict, giving and receiving feedback, following through, and coordinating schedules and transportation. They may also learn that it is not just lawyers who can do this kind of work, and that many people—including themselves!—have something to offer. This departs from expertise-based social services that tell us we need to have a social worker, licensed therapist, lawyer, or some other person with an advanced degree to get things done.

cancerous distractions.. finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us law

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Most people have never been to a meeting where there was not a boss or authority figure with decision-making power. Most people work or go to school inside hierarchies where disobedience leads to punishment or exclusion. 

no such thing.. ie: invited vs invented .. dave’s campfire analogy.. et al

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2. Solidarity Not Charity!

Mainstream understanding of how to support people in crisis relies on the frameworks of charity and social services. We should be very clear: mutual aid is not charity. Charity, aid, relief, and social services are terms that usually refer to rich people or the government making decisions about the provision of some kind of support to poor people—that is, rich people or the government deciding who gets the help, what the limits are to that help, and what strings are attached. You can be sure that help like that is not designed to get to the root causes of poverty and violence. It is designed to help improve the image of the elites who are funding it and put a tiny, inadequate Band-Aid on the massive social wound that their greed creates.

still band aid ing.. unless we first undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

Contemporary charity comes with eligibility requirements such as sobriety, piety, curfews, participation in job training or parenting courses, cooperation with the police, a lawful immigration status, or identifying the paternity of children. In charity programs, social workers, health care providers, teachers, clergy, lawyers, and government workers determine which poor people deserve help. Their methods of deciding who is deserving, and..

all to date all have-been/are that way.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p..

has to be that unconditional

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In this way, poverty-focused and homelessness-focused nonprofits are essentially encouraged to merely manage poor people: provide limited and conditional access to prison-like shelters and make people take budgeting classes or prove their sobriety. They do not do the more threatening and effective work that grassroots mutual aid groups do for housing justice, like defending encampments against raids, providing immediate no-strings health care and food to poor and unhoused people, fighting real estate developers, slumlords, and gentrification, or fighting for and providing access to actual long-term housing. 

still cancerous distractions

15

But any poor person knows that poverty is caused by the greed of their bosses, landlords, and health insurance companies, by systems of white supremacy and colonialism, and by wars and forced migrations. Elite solutions to poverty are always about managing poor people and never about redistributing wealth.

still cancerous distractions.. even ‘redistributing wealth’.. cause of poverty (which we are all experiencing) = 2 missing pieces

Despite the fact that they pitch themselves as the solution for fixing the problems of the current system, nonprofits mostly replicate, legitimize, and stabilize that system.

One way the charity model is manifested is in the idea of “having a cause.” Celebrities and philanthropists show us that picking an issue to care about and giving or raising money for it is part of their brand, in a similar vein as their fashion choices. This idea of a charitable cause that is disconnected from other aspects of life keeps us in our places. We are encouraged to be mostly numbed-out consumers, but ones who perhaps volunteer at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, post videos about animal rights on our social media accounts, or wear a T-shirt with a feminist slogan now and again. Only those few experts or specialists who work in nonprofits are supposed to make concern for justice a larger part of their lives by turning it into a career, but even they are supposed to still be obedient consumers.

The false separation of politics and injustice from ordinary life—and the idea that activism is a kind of lifestyle accessory—is demobilizing to our movements, hides the root causes of injustice, and keeps us passive and complicit. *Robust social movements offer an opposing view. We argue that all the aspects of our lives—where and how we live and work, eat, entertain ourselves, get around, and get by are sites of injustice and potential resistance. At our best, social movements create vibrant social networks in which we not only do work in a group, but also have friendships, make art, have sex, mentor and parent kids, feed ourselves and each other, build radical land and housing experiments, and inspire each other about how we can cultivate liberation in all aspects of our lives. Activism and mutual aid shouldn’t feel like volunteering or like a hobby—it should feel like living in alignment with our hopes for the world and with our passions. **It should enliven us.

*nothing legit robust to date.. all only (eventually) perpetuate sea world

**need to try itch-in-the-soul as data to connect us

That doesn’t mean that mutual aid work never feels good. In fact, it is often deeply satisfying and connective, creating caring relationships, raucous celebrations, and an *enduring sense of purpose. In my experience, it is more engagement that actually enlivens us—more curiosity, more willingness to see the harm that surrounds us, and ask how we can relate to it differently. Being more engaged with the complex and painful realities we face, and with thoughtful, committed action alongside others for justice, **feels much better than numbing out or making token, self-consoling charity gestures. ***It feels good to let our values guide every part of our lives.

*but a supposed to’s purpose.. whalespeak et al.. so not enduring forever.. and not deeply satisfying to where we grok enough ness.. need to get at itch-in-the-soul for that.. we all need detox as detox

**maybe much better.. but again.. not deeply satisfying.. not what our hearts long for

***but aren’t legit ‘our’ values.. rather.. supposed to values

Mutual aid projects, in many ways, are *defined in opposition to the charity model and its current iteration in the nonprofit sector. Mutual aid projects mobilize lots of people rather than a few experts; resist the use of eligibility criteria that cut out more stigmatized people; are an integrated part of our lives rather than a pet cause; and cultivate a shared analysis of the root causes of the problem and connect people to social movements that can address these causes. Part II of this book focuses on how we can build our mutual aid groups in ways that can most successfully accomplish these goals, **avoiding the pitfalls of the charity model and the learned hierarchical behaviors that can reproduce injustice even in activist group settings.

*cancerous distraction

**any form of people telling other people what to do

What we build now, and whether we can sustain it, will determine how prepared we are for the next pandemic, the climate-induced disasters to come, the ongoing disasters of white supremacy and capitalism, and the beautifully disruptive rebellions that will transform them.

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3. We get more when we demand more

Disasters are ruptures—existing systems break down and then are either repaired, replaced, or scrapped. Disasters exacerbate and expose inequalities, showing the preexisting crises that elites strive to ignore and hide from view. When disasters emerge, governments and corporations quickly move to downplay them, hoping to get back to the status quo of extraction and profit-making as soon as possible, to take credit for having resolved them, and to silence demands for relief. Governments and the 1 percent also use disasters as opportunities to push their favored reforms. COVID-19, for example, has generated right-wing wins like closing the border; suspending environmental regulations; giving the FBI, DEA, and local police hundreds of millions of dollars; and expanding the capacity of police to harass and criminalize the poor for allegedly violating public health regulations.

At the same time, disasters are opportunities for exposing injustice and pushing forward left-wing demands. COVID-19 has also been an *opportunity for mobilizing people to resist injustice. As more people are laid off or forced to work dangerous jobs, we are increasingly standing together against landlords, bosses, police, prisons, and a profit-driven health care system. In seeking to curb the worst effects of the pandemic, some forms of government relief have emerged that give us hope for **another way of life: eviction moratoriums, increased unemployment benefits and income support, free public transit, suspension of student loan payments, and more. While this relief has been far from universal or adequate, it has demonstrated that many of the things our movements have fought for are entirely possible.

*any form of re ness as cancerous distraction

**not enough ness enough.. will only perpetuate whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world

Disasters are pivotal times in the competition between political programs, moments when much can be lost or won. Winning the world we want is far from guaranteed. Our opponents, those who currently control the most of the land, work, food, housing, transportation, weapons, water, energy, and media, are feverishly working to maintain the status quo of maldistribution and targeted violence, and worsen it to increase profits and power for themselves. *Our capacity to win is possible to the extent that we can collectively realize what they do not control—us—and collectively **disobey and disrupt their systems, retaking control of our ways of sustaining life. If we want as many people as possible to survive, and to win in the short and long term, we have to use moments of disaster to help and mobilize people. Mutual aid is the way to do that. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid groups have proliferated and more people are learning how to organize mutual aid than have in decades. ***This is a big chance for us to make a lot of change.

*not about winning/losing.. because it has to be all of us for the dance to dance

** will only perpetuate whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world

***only if we let go of any form of m\a\p.. so we can see/try the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

We need mutual aid groups and networks capable of bringing millions of new people into work that deepens their understanding of the root causes of the crises and inequalities they are fired up about and that builds their capacity for bold collective action. We need groups and networks that do not disappear after the peak of the crisis, but instead become part of an ongoing, sustained mobilization with the capacity to support people and keep building pressure for bigger wins.

rather.. need to try something legit diff.. sans ‘wins’ ness

As mobilization builds, governments, corporations, and corporate media will approach mutual aid in three ways, all of which, as I write this, are already visible in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. These three responses often happen simultaneously, among different agencies, elected officials, and levels of government: Some will ignore proliferating mutual aid efforts. Some will try to fold them into a narrative about volunteerism, labeling mutual aid efforts “heroic” and portraying them as complementary to government efforts and existing systems rather than as oppositional to those systems. And some police and spy agencies will surveil and criminalize mutual aid efforts.

*1\ ignore 2\ ‘volunteers’ need energies 3\ police et al spy/surveil/criminalize ma

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The fundamental goal of all three of these responses is to ensure the legitimacy and stability of the current systems and delegitimize alternative ways of meeting human needs. At best, mutual aid projects get framed as non-threatening temporary adjuncts to existing systems. Elected officials and government agencies sometimes even seek legitimacy by associating themselves with mutual aid projects if those projects are more successful at meeting needs than the government. At worst, mutual aid projects are portrayed as unlawful, dangerous, and criminal. As we saw with the police attacks on the Black Panther Party breakfast programs, or more recent Trump administration raids on the medical camps of No More Deaths (which offers support to migrants at the southern US border), when mutual aid efforts truly build and legitimize coordinated action and autonomy against existing systems, governments typically crack down on them.

The criminalization of mutual aid work has been ongoing throughout social movement history precisely because mutual aid directly confronts unjust systems and offer alternatives. Groups doing frontline mutual aid work that is particularly risky today, such as those helping with access to abortion drugs or procedures illegal in the jurisdiction where they are working, providing clean needles and safe consumption spaces to drug users where that is illegal, supporting the well-being of people in the criminalized sex trades, and helping homeless people occupy vacant homes, have useful knowledge and experience for all of us about navigating safety risks. Studying those groups’ experiences and methods for evading and/or confronting police, securing electronic communications, and sheltering the most vulnerable people from exposure can benefit all mutual aid groups as we prepare for our work to (hopefully) become threatening to the status quo.

*not legit alts

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Elites and their nonprofit gatekeepers encourage us to make small, “reasonable,” or “winnable” demands, and they try to redirect our action to official channels that are non-disruptive, with narratives about “peaceful protest” and “coming to the table.” They encourage reforms premised on the assumption that the systems we seek to dismantle are fundamentally fair and fixable. We have to refuse to limit our visions to the concessions they want to give—what we want is a *radically different world that eliminates the systems that put our lives under their control.

not until we get out of sea world

f concessions are signs of our impact, at best providing some relief to some people but ultimately stabilizing existing systems, *what would winning look like? As we build mutual aid groups, what do we hope for if not that the government, instead of us, will someday provide what we are providing? If our current systems are based on illegitimate authority and use coercion and violence to keep us tied to them, and if those systems primarily pursue the aim of concentrating wealth and decision-making power, what is the alternative?

*same song if still winning ness

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Part of the reason our dream of a savior government is so compelling is that it is *hard for us to imagine a world where we meet core human needs through systems that are based on principles of collective self-determination rather than coercion. We are accustomed to a situation where the choice is between a government that either denies the disaster’s significance and abandons people to its devastations or a government that responds with inadequate aid that comes with enhanced policing, surveillance, militarization, and wealth transfers to the top. **This is no choice at all. Because of how capitalism controls the means for getting by—food, health, housing, communications, transportation—and how dependent we are on systems we do not control, it can be hard to imagine that we could survive another way. But for most of human history, we did, and mutual aid projects let us relearn that it’s possible and emancipatory.

*rather.. hard to meet core human needs.. when we have no idea what they are (ie: maté basic needs)

**any form of m\a\p ness is no choice at all.. need to try curiosity over decision making.. so.. need a means to listen to each heart.. for revolution of every day life

Mutual aid projects let us *practice meeting our own and each other’s needs, based in shared commitments to dignity, care, and justice. They let us **practice coordinating our actions together with the belief that all of us matter and that we should all get to participate in the solutions to our problems. They let us realize that we know best how to address the crises we face. We don’t need to be saved by professionals, government agents, or people elites consider “experts.” Mutual aid cultivates the practices and structures that move us toward our goal: a society organized by collective self-determination, where people get a say in all parts of their lives rather than just facing the coercive non-choice between sinking or swimming; between joining a brutal and exploitive workforce, insurance scheme, or housing market, or risk being left in the cold.

*currently (since forever) we have no idea what those are.. need global detox leap first.. then no need to practice meeting them.. rather.. the dance can dance (left to own devices ness)

**if org around legit needs.. no need to practice coordinating.. we just do.. ie: the dance

How do we imagine “scaling up” mutual aid to a point where everyone has what they need, and gets to meaningfully co-govern and co-steward the structures and conditions of their lives? Because of the dominance of corporate and nonprofit models, people often think that “scaling up” means centralizing and standardizing projects, but this runs directly counter to the wisdom of mutual aid. “Scaling up” doesn’t mean making groups bigger or merging them into one organization across a region, state, or country. Locally operated mutual aid works better for meeting people’s needs in all kinds of situations, including disasters, because our needs are best met by those with the most local knowledge, and when we are the ones making the decisions affecting us. *Scaling up our mutual aid work means building more and more mutual aid groups, copying each other’s best practices, and adapting them to work for particular neighborhoods, subcultures, and enclaves. It means intergroup coordination, the sharing of resources and information, having each other’s backs, and coming together in coalitions to take bigger actions like rent strikes, labor strikes, or the toppling of corrupt governments and industries.

*rather.. it means org-ing around something 8b people already crave.. legit needs via itch-in-the-soul

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To imagine a society where we share everything, co-govern everything, have everything we need and don’t rely on coercion and domination, we have to shed the capitalist propaganda that tells us people are naturally greedy, and that without police keeping us in our places we would all hoard and harm. Instead, we can notice, as is particularly clear in times of disaster, that people are naturally connective and generous, though we often have cultural baggage to shed from being conditioned by white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism.

yeah.. need global detox leap

Mutual aid is only one tactic in the social movement ecosystem.*It operates alongside direct action, political education, and many other tactics. But it is the one that most successfully helps us grow our movements and build our people power, because it brings people into coordinated action to change things right now. As mutual aid expands in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, in climate change– caused disaster zones, and during economic crises, we have a chance to cultivate millions of new resistance fighters, to teach ourselves to work together in long-term ways, and to develop our ability to practice solidarity-based co-stewardship in all areas of collective life.

*direct action.. political ed.. any form of people telling other people what to do.. cancerous distractions

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PART II. Working Together on Purpose

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Mutual aid work is important for meeting people’s survival needs right now, and for mobilizing hundreds of millions of people to join struggles for justice and liberation.

rather.. triage.. won’t ever get at root of problem

This section of this book is for people who want to start mutual aid projects or who are already in them and want to intentionally build group cultures and structures that will help the work flourish. Chapter 4 describes some of the larger political pitfalls of mutual aid groups, and chapter 5 turns to the nitty-gritty, providing tools for addressing common obstacles in mutual aid work. This section includes things groups can do to address conflict and avoid slipping into charity-model or business-model practices, as well as ideas for things individuals within groups can do to expand their own capacity to do this work with as much compassion and care as possible—according to our principles.

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4. Some dangers and pitfalls of mutual aid.

24

Even while they explicitly work to reject the charity model, mutual aid projects can slip into some of the well-worn grooves of that model if we don’t root deeply in our principles and practice careful discernment. Mutual aid groups face four dangerous tendencies: dividing people into those who are deserving and undeserving of help, practicing saviorism, being co-opted, and collaborating with efforts to eliminate public infrastructure and replace it with private enterprise and volunteerism.

Deserving hierarchies

People start mutual aid projects because existing programs or other services are not meeting people’s needs, and often are leaving out particular groups of vulnerable people. ..days following the fire, as displaced people with more resources began to leave the tent city because they could afford to find new housing or stay with family or friends, city officials and media portrayed the people that remained as ordinary homeless and itinerant people who were “undeserving” of help, rather than as sympathetic fire survivors. The hierarchy of deservingness is built into FEMA’s eligibility process, which excludes people who cannot confirm an address before the disaster, such as homeless people or people living in poor communities where individual dwellings are sometimes not given an individual mailing address.

The distinction between deserving and undeserving disaster survivors rests on the idea that suddenly displaced renters and homeowners are sympathetic victims, while people who were already displaced by the ordinary disasters of capitalism—and are especially vulnerable after an acute disaster like a storm or fire—are blameworthy and do not deserve aid. As I argued above, state and nonprofit disaster recovery and social services models generally work to stabilize the existing distribution of wealth, not transform it, so it makes sense that they provide little or nothing to the poorest people.

need something deeper than redistribution ness..

Undocumented people were ineligible for relief. Disaster relief and poor relief are designed to uphold and worsen inequalities. Deservingness narratives justify those designs.

25

Even though mutual aid projects often emerge because of an awareness of how relief programs exclude people marked “undeserving” or “ineligible,” mutual aid groups still sometimes set up their own problematic deservingness hierarchies. For example, mutual aid projects replicate moralizing eligibility frameworks when they require sobriety, exclude people with certain types of convictions, only include families with children, or stigmatize and exclude people with psychiatric disabilities for not fitting behavioral norms.

The charity model often ties aid and criminalization together, determining who gets help and who gets put away, as we can see in this account from a Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR) participant:

Saviorism and Paternalism

Mutual aid projects must also be wary of saviorism, self-congratulation, and paternalism. Populations facing crisis are cast as in need of saving, and their saviors are encouraged to use their presumed superiority to make over these people and places, replacing old, dysfunctional ways of being with smarter, more profitable, and more moral ones.

Paternalism is also visible in programs within welfare and criminal punishment systems that force criminalized people and people seeking welfare benefits to take parenting classes, budgeting classes, and anger management seminars. The idea that those giving aid need to “fix” people who are in need is based on the notion that people’s poverty and marginalization is not a systemic problem but is caused by their own personal shortcomings. This also implies that those who provide aid are superior.

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Co-optation

For decades, politicians have combined attacks on public infrastructure and public services with an endorsement of privatization and volunteerism. As public services are cut, politicians push for already inadequate social safety nets to be replaced by family and church, implying that those who fail to belong to either deserve abandonment. Alongside the destruction of public welfare, public-private partnerships are celebrated and bolstered by the fiction that everything from hospitals to prisons to city governments should be “run like a business.” The prevailing myth is that business models are more “efficient.” The truth is that making everything profit-centered, as we’ve seen with our health care system, actually degrades the care that people receive, as businesses seek short-term gains at any expense.

A cultural narrative about “social justice entrepreneurship” has also emerged in recent decades, suggesting that people should not fight for justice but rather invent (and patent) new ways of managing poor people and social problems. One example of this kind of “entrepreneurship” that has received media fanfare is Samaritan and other smartphone apps that coordinate digital donations to homeless people in ways that ensure restrictions on how they can use the cash. These apps are more focused on the experience of the giver than on the person in need of aid, and are designed to make the giver more comfortable by knowing their donation can only be used at local partner businesses, or if the homeless person’s counselor authorizes it for a specific purpose like rent. .. it is being developed by the same tech industry that has gentrified cities and increased housing insecurity.

In this atmosphere, mutual aid projects have to work hard to remain oppositional to the status quo and cultivate resistance, rather than becoming complementary to privatization. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, corporate media news stories of boat owners volunteering to make rescues followed this script, neither criticizing government failures to rescue people nor interrogating the cause of worsening hurricanes and whom they most endangered. That is, the media stories of individual heroes hid the social and political conditions producing the crisis. Politicians and CEOs, who fantasize about a world where nothing is guaranteed and most people are desperate and easily exploited, love the idea of volunteerism replacing a social safety net. If we don’t design mutual aid projects with care, we can fit right into this conservative dream, becoming the people who can barely hold the threads of a survivable world together while the 1 percent extracts more and more while heroizing individual volunteers.

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The difference between neoliberal projects and mutual aid approaches is well illustrated when we compare the privatization of fire services with the work of the Oakland Power Projects (OPP), which seeks to build an alternative to calling 911. Increasingly, public firefighting services are inadequate and are facing further cuts, all in the midst of climate change–induced fires. Meanwhile, the private firefighting business is growing, with wealthy homeowners paying for private fire services to come seal their homes, spray fire retardants on the premises, and put owners in five-star hotels while less affluent people watch their homes burn, struggle in shelters, and fight FEMA for basic benefits.

In contrast, the OPP emerged out of anti-police and anti-prison movement groups who observed that when people call 911 for emergency medical help, the police also come, hurting and sometimes killing those who called for help. In response, the OPP works to train people in communities impacted by police violence to provide emergency medical care for gunshot wounds, chronic health problems like diabetes, and mental health crises. If people can take care of each other, they can avoid calling 911 and avoid a confrontation with the police. This strategy is part of broader work to dismantle policing and criminalization, and it works to both meet immediate needs and mobilize people to build an alternative infrastructure for crisis response guided by a shared commitment to ending racist police violence and medical neglect. Note that, although the OPP and private firefighting both provide an alternative to inadequate public services, they are not the same at all: instead of profiting and only serving those who can pay, the OPP’s programs build new ways of responding that allow those on the bottom to work together to meet survival needs while dismantling racist infrastructure.

can’t dismantle anything until there’s a nother way for all of us.. in sync

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Many powerful lessons about co-optation come out of the feminist movement against domestic violence.

Research has shown that pro-criminalization policy reforms that became popular in this period, like mandatory arrest laws requiring police to make arrests during domestic violence calls, resulted in the arrests of abuse survivors, especially if they were queer, trans, disabled, or people of color. This is a sobering story of how co-optation can undermine our efforts to meet survival needs and cause us to contribute to legitimizing or expanding the very systems that are harming us.

This work is often called “community accountability” or “transformative justice.” It includes many innovative strategies developed in mutual aid groups. Drawing on lessons from years of experience, Creative Interventions authored a six-hundred-page guide on how to address sexual violence and family violence through community support and problem solving. GenerationFIVE and the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective have designed approaches to addressing child sexual abuse that aim to get to the root causes and stop it, rather than just criminalizing the small percentage of people who get caught.

oh my.. huge red flag

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The goal of this kind of work is to do the things that the criminal punishment approaches fail to do: give the survivor support to heal, give the harm-doer what they need to stop the behavior, and assess how community norms can change to decrease the likelihood of harm in general, such as by providing healthy relationship skills training, addressing a culture of substance misuse, and changing community ideas about sexuality and gender.

oh my again

These feminist activists and groups with an antipolice, anti-violence politics also developed much of the analysis that informs this book. They identified how the system of nonprofitization and pressure from funders were pushing anti-violence work toward criminalization, how mutual aid approaches were undermined when domestic violence shelters and hotlines became more like social services, and how the co-optation of anti-violence work undermined solidarity, further endangering communities most targeted by police. Their wisdom can guide us in building successful groups and movements and in resisting co-optation.

resisting (any form of re ness) is already co opting ness

Characteristics of Mutual Aid vs Charity

Mutual aid projects depart from the charity model in crucial ways. Most mutual aid projects are volunteer-based and avoid the careerism, business approach, and charity model of nonprofits. Mutual aid projects *strive to include lots of people, rather than just a few people who have been declared “experts” or “professionals.” If we want to provide survival support to as many people as possible, and mobilize as many people as possible for root-causes change, we need to let a lot of people do the work and **make decisions about the work together, rather than bottlenecking the process with hierarchies that let only a few people lead.

*lots of people = still not enough

has to be all of us for the dance to dance

**making decisions.. esp together.. is already bottlenecking ness

Despite these important goals, avoiding the pitfalls of co-optation, deservingness hierarchies, saviorism, and disconnect from root-causes work *requires constant vigilance. .. Here are some guiding questions for mutual aid groups trying to avoid these dangers and pitfalls:

*requires a lot of work ness as huge red flag we’re doing it/life wrong

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guiding questions for mutual aid groups trying to avoid these dangers and pitfalls:

• Who controls our project?
• Who makes decisions about what we do?
• Does any of the funding we receive come with strings attached that limit who we help or how we help?
• Do any of our guidelines about who can participate in our work cut out stigmatized and vulnerable people?
• What is our relationship to law enforcement?
• How do we introduce new people in our group to our approach to law enforcement?

deeper questions: why control.. why decisions.. why funding.. why guidelines.. why law enforcement .. why invited vs invented.. (just another ie of people telling other people what to do)

While there is no single correct model for a mutual aid group, being aware of general tendencies that distinguish mutual aid from other projects can help groups make thoughtful decisions and maintain their integrity and effectiveness. To help us think through where things can get slippery, the chart below tracks characteristics within mutual aid groups against those of groups working in the charity model. It may be a good discussion prompt for a mutual aid group to clarify shared values or find areas of agreement and disagreement, or desire for further inquiry.

Chart 1. Characteristics of Mutual Aid vs. Charity

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Mutual Aid	Charity
De-professionalized survival work done by volunteers	Service work staffed by professionals
Beg, borrow, and steal supplies	Grant money for supplies/philanthropic control of program
Survival work rooted in principles of anti-capitalism, antiimperialism, racial justice, gender justice, disability justice	Siloed single-issue work, serving a particular population or working on one area of policy reform, disconnected from other issues
Open meetings, with as many people making decisions and doing the work as possible	Closed board meetings, governance by professionals or people associated with big institutions or donors, program operated by staff, volunteers limited to stuffing envelopes or other menial tasks, volunteers not part of high-level decision-making
Support people facing the most dire conditions	Impose eligibility criteria for services that divide people into “deserving” and “undeserving” recipients
Give things away without expectations	Set conditions for getting help—recipients have to fill out onerous paperwork, be sober, have a certain family status, have a certain immigration status, not have outstanding warrants, certain convictions, etc.
People participate voluntarily because of their passion about injustice and care for their community	People come looking for a job, wanting to climb a hierarchy, build a career, or become “important”
Efforts to flatten hierarchies—e.g., flat wage scales if anyone is paid, training so that new people can do work they weren’t professionally trained to do, rotating facilitation roles, language access	Maintaining hierarchies of pay, status, decision making power, influence that are typical of the mainstream culture (e.g., lawyers are more valuable and important than non-lawyers)
Values self-determination for people impacted or targeted by harmful social conditions	Offers “help” to the “underprivileged,” absent of an awareness or strategy for transforming the conditions that produced injustice; embraces paternalism, rescue fantasies, and saviorism
Consensus decision-making to maximize everyone’s participation, to ensure people impacted by decisions are the ones making them, to avoid under-represented groups getting outvoted, and to build the skill of caring about each other’s participation and concerns rather than caring about winning or being right	Person on top (often the executive director) decides things or, in some instances, a board votes and the majority wins
Direct aid work is connected to other tactics, including disruptive tactics aimed at the root causes of distress	Direct aid work disconnected from other tactics, depoliticized, and distanced from disruptive or root causes– oriented tactics in order to retain legitimacy with government or funders
Tendency to assess the work based on how the people facing the crisis regard the work	Tendency to assess the work based on opinions of elites: political officials, bureaucrats, funders, corporate media
“Members” = people making decisions, usually everyone involved in doing the work and/or getting help from the group	“Members” = donors
Engagement with the group builds broader political participation, solidarity, mobilization, radicalization	Engagement with the group is not aimed at growing participants’ connection to other issues, groups, or struggles for justice; main focus is to meet grant deliverables and give the organization a good public reputation with funders, media, elected officials

Mutual Aid	Charity
De-professionalized survival work done by volunteers	Service work staffed by professionals
Beg, borrow, and steal supplies	Grant money for supplies/philanthropic control of program
Survival work rooted in principles of anti-capitalism, antiimperialism, racial justice, gender justice, disability justice	Siloed single-issue work, serving a particular population or working on one area of policy reform, disconnected from other issues
Open meetings, with as many people making decisions and doing the work as possible	Closed board meetings, governance by professionals or people associated with big institutions or donors, program operated by staff, volunteers limited to stuffing envelopes or other menial tasks, volunteers not part of high-level decision-making
Support people facing the most dire conditions	Impose eligibility criteria for services that divide people into “deserving” and “undeserving” recipients
Give things away without expectations	Set conditions for getting help—recipients have to fill out onerous paperwork, be sober, have a certain family status, have a certain immigration status, not have outstanding warrants, certain convictions, etc.
People participate voluntarily because of their passion about injustice and care for their community	People come looking for a job, wanting to climb a hierarchy, build a career, or become “important”
Efforts to flatten hierarchies—e.g., flat wage scales if anyone is paid, training so that new people can do work they weren’t professionally trained to do, rotating facilitation roles, language access	Maintaining hierarchies of pay, status, decision making power, influence that are typical of the mainstream culture (e.g., lawyers are more valuable and important than non-lawyers)
Values self-determination for people impacted or targeted by harmful social conditions	Offers “help” to the “underprivileged,” absent of an awareness or strategy for transforming the conditions that produced injustice; embraces paternalism, rescue fantasies, and saviorism
Consensus decision-making to maximize everyone’s participation, to ensure people impacted by decisions are the ones making them, to avoid under-represented groups getting outvoted, and to build the skill of caring about each other’s participation and concerns rather than caring about winning or being right	Person on top (often the executive director) decides things or, in some instances, a board votes and the majority wins
Direct aid work is connected to other tactics, including disruptive tactics aimed at the root causes of distress	Direct aid work disconnected from other tactics, depoliticized, and distanced from disruptive or root causes– oriented tactics in order to retain legitimacy with government or funders
Tendency to assess the work based on how the people facing the crisis regard the work	Tendency to assess the work based on opinions of elites: political officials, bureaucrats, funders, corporate media
“Members” = people making decisions, usually everyone involved in doing the work and/or getting help from the group	“Members” = donors
Engagement with the group builds broader political participation, solidarity, mobilization, radicalization	Engagement with the group is not aimed at growing participants’ connection to other issues, groups, or struggles for justice; main focus is to meet grant deliverables and give the organization a good public reputation with funders, media, elected officials

why meeting ness.. decision ness.. engagement ness.. participation ness.. none will get to legit radicalness

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5. No masters, no flakes

One downside to the urgency that we bring to our mutual aid work can be that we dive right into the work, very concerned about how many people our project is helping, but fail to create good internal practices for our group to be strong and sustainable. It makes sense that we are not good at creating emancipatory group structures. Most of us have never been in groups that had fair, participatory, transparent structures. We’ve been working at jobs where bosses tell us what to do, or been in schools, families, state institutions, or churches where strong hierarchies rule and most people get no say in how things will go. We do not have much practice imagining or being in groups where everyone can truly participate in decision-making.

never going to get to rest of p.. as long as assuming last p.. ie: that we have to have/do decision making ness

Everyone wants a selfie with Angela Davis at the big event, but many people are less interested in the months of meetings where we coordinate how to pull off that event according to our values and handle the challenges of organizing.

i think that (months of meetings and challenging organizing) must be a red flag that event ness isn’t what legit free people would be about..

Building *efficient, participatory, transparent decision-making structures and **cultures of care and *principled action in our groups takes intentional work, but it is crucial for allowing our groups to flourish and ***win.

*this is a cancerous distraction to **this

***evidence of cancerous distraction ness.. thinking we have to win/lose

Groups are more effective and efficient when participants know how to raise concerns, how to propose ideas, when a decision has been made and by whom, and how to put that decision into practice.

again.. all cancerous distractions.. effective/efficient probably not ideas we’d have if legit free.. ie: the dance

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chart of approaches to org – alts column.. oooof.. ie: hierarchy: Horizontal decision-making structure based on consensus that prevents decision-making from being concentrated; Vague decision-making process: Clear decision-making processes that everyone is trained in and that includes all members; Leadership held by people who have seniority or self-select: Training new people in how to participate fully in decisions and in new skills and roles; Cultivating a culture of group participation

all red flags we’re doing it/life wrong.. ie: no train.. et al

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How do we hold our values of flexibility, compassion, and justice while building a culture *where we show up and do what we said we would? **These tensions are real.

*if all legit free.. maybe wouldn’t have to be saying you’ll do things.. you just do things.. ie: the dance of unpredictability ness..

**perhaps in sea world

This dual focus on rejecting hierarchies inside the organization and committing to build accountability according to shared values asks participants to keep showing up and working together not because a boss is making you, but because you want to.

oi.. red flags .. who says we must build culture? just another word .. for ie: defn; border; label.. all killers..

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Making Decisions Together

*Perhaps the most central group activity that makes everything else possible is making decisions.

*whalespeak.. we need to let go of that mindset and try the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

Most of us have little experience in groups where everyone gets to make decisions together, because our schools, homes, workplaces, congregations, and other groups are mostly run as hierarchies. *Our society runs on coercion. You have to work or go to school and follow rules and laws that you had no say in creating, whether you believe in them or not, or risk exclusion, stigma, starvation, or punishment. We do not get to consent to the conditions we live under.

*and will as long as there is any form of m\a\p

*The opposite of this approach to decision-making is to make decisions together, caring about every person’s consent. This practice is called consensus decision-making. Unlike representative government, consensus decision-making **lets us have a say in things that matter to us directly, instead of electing someone who may or may not advocate on our behalf. Consensus decision-making is a radical practice for building a new world not based on domination and coercion.

*or maybe the opp is curiosity (over decision making)

**that’s just whalespeak.. seat at the table ness.. so still coercion ness

It’s important to remember that *no decision-making structure can prevent all conflict or power dynamics, or guarantee that we will never be frustrated or bored or decide to part ways. **But consensus decision-making at least helps us avoid the worst costs of hierarchies and majority rule, which can include abuse of power, demobilization of most people, and inefficiency. ***Consensus decision-making gives us the best chance to hear from everyone concerned, address power dynamics, and make decisions that represent the best wisdom of the group and that people in the group will want to implement.

*oi.. so why are we insisting that it is the center of all things..

we need to let go of that finite set of choices ness..

**so .. triage.. when today.. we have means to get to the root of problem.. the healing (roots of)

***what we need is a means to hear from everyone.. period.. (nothing to do with group ness or concern ness.. et al)

ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

What Is Consensus Decision-Making?

Consensus decision-making is based on the idea that everyone should have a say in decisions that affect them. If we *are working on a project together, we should all get to decide how we are going to do the work, rather than someone telling us how to do it. ..**Consensus decision-making happens when everyone in the discussion hashes out possibilities and modifies a proposal until everyone can live with it. .. ***Consensus encourages us to find out what each other’s concerns are and try to create a path forward that addresses all the concerns as well as possible. ****It is based on the belief that people can cooperate and care about each other’s well-being, rather than the myth that we are naturally competitive and greedy.

*just words.. whalespeak our way thru the assumptions of sea world.. so still not enough.. still same song

**cancerous distractions

***what we need (and now can do) is to find out the itch-in-8b-souls first thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

****what we need (for the dance to dance) is a ‘basis’ of everyone being enough as is.. aka: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

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 a *willingness to spend time preparing and discussing proposals; and skillful facilitation and agenda preparation. These skills and qualities can develop as any new group **learns to work together—it is okay that we don’t have all these in place at the start. The greatest area of strength for most mutual aid groups is a ***common purpose.

*too much ness.. we need to let go and trust the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

**it’s actually huge.. that we don’t think we are enough at the start.. ie: no prep.. no train.. for the dance to dance..

***strength/rhythm/whatever of the dance is that unpredictable/every-changing/whatever itch-in-the-soul

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Advantages of Consensus Decision-Making

1. Better Decisions

decision making is unmooring us law

2. Better Implementation

3. Bringing More People into the Work and Keeping Them Involved

invited vs invented ness

4. Helping to Prevent Co-optation

5. We Learn to Value and Desire Other People’s Participation

that (raised eyebrow/observation ness) messes with the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

all are cancerous distractions

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Some other items that might go on a decision-making chart:

• Decisions about applying for or taking money
• Decisions about spending money
• Decisions about increasing the work in some significant way (a new location, a new program, a new curriculum, a strategy for reaching a new population)
• Decisions to end some part of the work
• Decisions to add new people or join larger groups or coalitions
• Decisions to ask people to leave or about the group leaving larger groups or coalitions
• Decisions about endorsing something or someone
• Decision to create a new paid role, eliminate a paid role, hire someone, or fire someone

oi oi oi.. decision making is unmooring us law

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If we are going to win the big changes that we want and need so that people can live with dignity and we can sustain human life on our planet, we need to organize hundreds of millions of people who are not yet politically active to take bold collective action together. We will never have as much money and weapons as our opponents. All we have is people power. We need to support people who have not been part of social movement work to join social movements. They need to feel like they can become part of a response to conditions that they find intolerable.

we can do this.. but it has to be everyone.. not a win/lose/opponents situation.. and not about social movements.. about itch-in-the-soul

*Mutual aid is the best onramp for getting people involved in transformative action because they get to address things harming them and their communities right away. To harness new people’s energy and capacity for collective action, our groups need to be ready to welcome them and, to paraphrase Toni Cade Bambara, **make resistance irresistible. We ***want them to join groups, have satisfying experiences of taking action, build new skills, develop their own political understanding of injustice, and stay in the resistance movement for the rest of their lives. Movements grow because new people join groups and feel co-ownership and co-stewardship of the work, and then recruit other people and orient them so they get deep in too, ****and on and on.

*aka: distraction from root of problem

**only thing truly irresistible is itch-in-the-soul.. what is on each heart

***aka: keep being whales speaking whalespeak in sea world.. the death of us

****and on and on w same song

hari rat park law

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Mutual aid work plays an immediate role in helping us get through crises, but it also has the potential to build the skills and capacities we need for *an entirely new way of living at a moment when we must transform our society or face intensive, uneven suffering followed by species extinction.

not new.. not diff if still all the cancerous distractions listed pp44-73.. any form of m\a\p

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