Nearly two years after the pandemic, ad-hoc collective care networks emerged from the cracks in state neglect. This July, mutual aid organizers from all over the U.S. meet in Indiana to plan for survival and crisis management.
“To the extent that we engage in this work only as an emergency response, it’s doomed to stay a Band-Aid,” said Shannon Malloy, who is helping plan a “Dual Power 2022” gathering from July 29-31 at Indiana Dunes State and National Parks. “It’s our long-term, larger-scale interconnectedness that makes it more of a long-term viable solution, as opposed to just a way to stop the bleeding.”
Malloy described building mutual aid networks as a tactic in the strategy of constructing “dual power,” defined by the Black Socialists of America as “[a] situation where there are two powers — a democratic one developed by poor and working-class people (defined by direct democracy), and the other one capitalist (defined by domination) — coexisting and competing for legitimacy during a transition away from Capitalism.”
Woodbine is a great choice. an experimental hub in Ridgewood, Queens, hopes to encourage dialogue and cooperation among mutual aid groups in order to build dual power. In May, Woodbine hosted a regional gathering on “Autonomy and Survival” alongside SymbiosisA network of grassroots organizations working together to create a democratic, sustainable society. Participants agreed that they would wear masks and undergo COVID-19 tests before attending, in order to eliminate the risk of contracting the coronavirus. The gathering offered organizers the opportunity to reflect, share and strategize together in order to strengthen their projects both locally and regionally.
“I think there was a real need for people to finally be able to gather in person to meet new people that they didn’t know or weren’t working with for the last few years to hear about different people’s experiences doing mutual aid work,” said Matt Peterson, a cofounder of Woodbine. “Political organizing, or transformation, is going to occur with real people in a real space. People who trust one another have trust. They can talk to one another. They can learn.”
For a weekend of panels and discussions, more than 200 people from across the nation shuffled into and out of the gathering. The mutual aid panel featured organizers representing groups that emerged from the uprisings or pandemics. Atlanta Survival ProgramAnd Bushwick Ayuda Mutua (BAM), Washington Square Park Mutual Aid, and others that were already established, like Woodbine, Mutual Aid Disaster ReliefAnd Distribute Aid, a grassroots organization that provides logistical support for aid shipments all over the globe. Attendees learned about groups’ varying organizational styles, historical contexts, and about how the pandemic altered the trajectory of their work.
“Just in terms of New York City, it was interesting because we had BAM from Bushwick, which is just right next door to Ridgewood, and then we had Washington Square Park, which is in Manhattan, and then Woodbine,” said Peterson. “We’re all in New York City, but we have three very different organizational forms, very different approaches in terms of what we’re doing, very different ways of relating to each other internally.”
Woodbine went through major organizational changes during the pandemic. Their physical hub transitionedFrom an event and meeting space to a full-time aid center. In collaboration with Hungry Monk, a homeless outreach organization with some Woodbine-affiliated volunteers, neighbors began distributing hundreds of bags of fresh food — mostly obtained for free through partnerships with farms and businesses — on Wednesdays and Fridays.
“After two years of COVID, we’ve built trust and we maintained it,” Peterson said. “We didn’t do it for a few Instagram photos. So that builds more trust and new trust and that enables us to meet more people and meet different people and hopefully, expand the types of work we want to do or can do in Ridgewood, or throughout the city.” Peterson noted their ability to respond to the pandemic depended on infrastructure that members of the collective had built during previous disaster relief efforts, including 9/11, the financial crisis of 2008 and Hurricane Sandy.
Woodbine used funds raised throughout the year in December 2020 to move into a space that was three times larger than its original location. The pantry is open Mondays and Wednesdays. People line up around the block long before doors open. The new space can accommodate donation-based yoga twice weekly, film screenings, and other activities. an open gymCertified trainers, reading group, Sunday night dinners, and large-scale events.
All across the country, there are many other models for mutual aid organization. Washington Square Park Mutual Aid was formed in Manhattan. rowdy battlesThe protest against the eviction of the park by police Each Friday, the group organizes a free market that sells food, clothing, and toiletries. They also distribute food and water to protestors during demonstrations. The group distributed food and water for free on June 24. water, pizza and tacosDuring protests against the overturning Roe v. Wade. BAM has operated a volunteer-run hotline for neighborsIn need of food, diapers, or masks for more than two-years.
In Richmond, Virginia, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Richmond (MAD RVA), a groupThis allocates micro-grantsThe state ran a supply drive for free during the pandemic. This raised thousands of money to transition towards opening a physical space. free store. People will be able come in and take what they want free of charge, as mutual aid model collective members state. people with autonomyOver their choices.
The Atlanta Survival Program, a free food delivery initiative that launched in Georgia’s state capital during the pandemic, is supporting the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, an abolitionist fight against the construction a new police training facilityIn the South River Forest, by donating resources to people occupying the forest. While police drones and helicopters hover overhead, riot cops are stumbling through the forest, nimble forest defenders depend on donations to live communally. the woods to destroy their camps. Resources are distributed freely between each other according to need without bosses and hierarchies.
Woodbine and Symbiosis’s “Autonomy and Survival” gathering facilitated connections between disparate mutual aid organizers for building power regionally.
Taylor Fairbank, Distribute Aid’s operations director who recently moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after coordinating aid shipments across Europe for years, said the gathering helped him feel more attuned to the mutual aid landscape in the U.S.
“Oh, my gosh, that was exactly what I needed at a personal and organizing level, it was so exciting and refreshing,” he told Truthout. “I got to meet so many people for the first time there and have an actual conversation — not just the occasional call or message in the group chat — and get caught up with what they had been doing in the states for the past few years, and just build those connections.”
Distribute Aid had sent aid shipments to Atlanta Survival Network months before Fairbank met them in person. Fairbank also met with organizers from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR). The two groups have already coordinated sending a truck-worth water bottles to Florida to combat the summer heat waves, and to stockpiles for hurricane season.
“I met them for the first time at Symbiosis. Boom, now we’re talking,” he said, of MADR organizers. “This wouldn’t have been possible without regional coordination that clearly exists in the U.S.,” said Fairbank, “and without these meetups and these events, you know, that heartbeat that keeps us connected and that place where we can tell each other stories and kind of dream of a shared future.”
Many mutual aid programs that were established during the pandemics and uprisings have since dissolved. Some became overwhelmed by their own contradictions and tried to replicate charity models, create rigid leadership structures or align themselves with local politicians. The U.K. data suggestsAbout 4 out 10 mutual aid groups formed during the pandemic remain active.
Intentional spaces such as regional gatherings force organizers to think about why some mutual aid projects end up replicating the very system they are trying to abolish. Payton, an MADR organizer who attended the gathering, said that effective and lasting mutual aid networks tends to prioritize slowly building relationships around antiauthoritarian and anticapitalist values. making a documentary about mutual aid. (Payton preferred to give his first name.
“Mutual aid is contingent on relationships. It’s really difficult to just call a bunch of people in the room who have vaguely relevant values, or even conflicting values, and call it mutual aid,” he said. “I think we need to be a lot more scrutinizing. What are we looking for? What kind of world are we trying to build? How do we really support one another and show up for one another? Do I know you? Do I have your back? Do I have a long-term, committed fight with you? And this is where we start to develop real mutual aid.”
Mutual aid predates colonialism, Payton noted, but it didn’t need to be named as a concept. “It was just how people functioned,” he said. “We have to really think and be committed, and listen to the people who have been doing this longer than us, particularly the matriarchs and the people of color, or the people in our communities who are just doing the damn thing and not calling it ‘mutual aid.’”
Many organizers believe that mutual aid and the abolition or the nation-state are intertwined. Without politicians and police, or any other type of carceral state apparatus to manage resources, people could provide for their survival needs autonomously and collectively.
“White people who are interested in mutual aid really need to sit with what it means to come from a culture that has deprived the world of its ability to participate in cooperation and mutual aid and think critically then about what it means to live on the stolen land with infrastructure that’s been built by stolen bodies,” says Payton.
Organizations that establish democratic decision making structures around abolitionist values and relationships have a better chance at building robust communities. federationsThe organizational structure that allows autonomous groups to build power locally and then connect and support one another regionally according set principles without a central authority.
Building federations and dual powers is a tedious task. It won’t miraculously emerge out of a gathering — a difficult pill to swallow in the context of urgent, looming existential threats like the climate crisis.
“In the future, we may need to set up water purification infrastructure for whole communities, decommission nuclear power plants, or be an accomplice to the trees and help them reverse climate chaos, as only they, not us, have the wisdom and ability to do,” writes Jimmy Dunson in a forthcoming anthology Building Power Even When the Lights are Out: Disasters and Mutual Aid.. “The skills, connections, education, experience, and experiments we learn and do now matter. Our exodus form the capital and state is not inevitable, but hinges on our individual choices and collective actions. And there is no way to get there. We make these paths by walking them.”
For Payton’s part, he warns against any attempts to replicate large-scale projects that organizers in the U.S. admire, including Rojava in North and East Syria or the Zapatista movement in ChiapasThese were built over many generations of revolutionary struggle.
“A friend at the Symbiosis gathering at Woodbine shared the metaphor of an arch bridge,” he explained. “We can’t start with the keystone which is in the middle, and it’s suspended by gravity. It’s held together by the friction of stones that came before it. Those stones that come before are the on-the-ground long-term relationships and infrastructure that needs to necessitate the finality of the bridge, which is the federation.”
