Mutual Aid

Mutual Aid Unites NYC Neighbors Facing COVID-19

August 5, 2020 James Ives, News Medical. Create! COVID-19, Mutual Aid, New York City (NYC), Recession

Nancy Perez, a 45-year-old resident of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, contracted COVID-19 in March. She stayed quarantined in her room for a month to isolate from her two sons and grandson. A few days before she got the virus, she'd met a volunteer with Bed-Stuy Strong — one of the many mutual aid groups around the country that have rallied to provide help in the face of the pandemic. Bed-Stuy Strong assembled an army of volunteers to help vulnerable neighbors with food deliveries and basic supplies.

Paralyzed Companies Rescued By An ‘Army’ Of Volunteer Workers

July 20, 2020 By Jessica Dos Santos, Russia Today. Create! Business, Cooperation, Mutual Aid, Venezuela

The Productive Workers' Army (EPO) is a grassroots movement composed of Venezuelan workers that came together in 2014. They dedicate their volunteer labor to rescuing various companies that have been paralyzed because of the economic situation which the country is going through, the shortages of spare parts and supplies due to the US blockade, and the various kinds of political destabilization. The movement, with 2,270 members spread across the country, defines itself as "an unconventional army to win an unconventional war." When the EPO is contacted by workers from the company in trouble, those best placed -- according to the sector to be treated and the geographical location of the company -- visit the entity to "diagnose the critical productive knots.”

Human Solidarity And A Global Health Commons

July 17, 2020 Christian Laval, ROAR Magazine. Create! COVID-19, Healthcare, Mutual Aid, Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us of the most fundamental features of the human condition: the solidarity that exists between humans across borders, between humans and all other living beings, as well as between living beings and their environments. This reminder, which obtuse nationalisms and competitive logics are already rushing to hush up, invites us to rethink what a true global political institution should be — what we will here call the “global commons of humanity.” The lessons from the pandemic also apply to other major problems that confront humanity, starting with global warming and the procession of disasters that are predicted to occur, and for which we are no more prepared than we were to confront the global virus today. In no way do our economic and political institutions arm us to face what lies ahead. It is then more urgent than ever to politically rethink the necessary conditions for the survival of humanity on Earth.

Today’s Revolution Includes Kale, Medical Care And Help With Rent

July 8, 2020 Rinku Sen, ZocaloPublicSquare.org. Organize! COVID-19, Mutual Aid, Pandemic, Recession

In recent months, members of progressive direct-action organizations have developed new systems for checking on their neighbors, dropping off food and medicine, providing protective personal equipment to incarcerated family members, and giving cash to those suddenly unemployed to meet immediate rent, food, and medical needs. At the same time, they’re continuing to press for workers’ rights and proper health care during the pandemic, as well as ensure access to federal stimulus money for individuals and small minority-owned businesses. In so doing, these organizations are harkening back to their roots: people creating social ties by helping each other out, and those ties fueling collective fights for new systems and policies.

Solidarity And The Absent State In Puerto Rico

June 17, 2020 Pedro Cabán, Dissent Magazine. Resist! Corruption, Mutual Aid, Puerto Rico, Solidarity

Puerto Rican artists, entertainers, and athletes have been conspicuous in calling for protests against the government, which the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP) firmly controls. Indeed, January 2020 was uncannily similar to last July, when El Residente, Bad Bunny, Ilde, Daddy Yankee, Ricky Martin, and other artists roused scores of thousands of their fans to rise in opposition to Governor Ricardo Rosselló. Seven months later, as the government failed to take any decisive action toward a relief effort, anger was building against Rosselló’s hapless successor. Even more damaging for the practice of democracy is people’s awareness that Puerto Rico is ruled by an entrenched and hard-hearted political class that holds them in contempt. After a seemingly endless swarm of earthquakes battered the southwest coast, the colonial state was once again absent. The people were, as always, presente, caring for one another when the authorities failed to do so.

A History Of Mutual Aid Has Prepared POC For This Moment

May 26, 2020 By Myriam Gurba, Remmexcla. Create! Black Panthers, Food and Agriculture, Mutual Aid, Racism

Southern Solidarity has gone from 24 daily meal distributions to 250. “We’re doing this because capitalism is making survival impossible,” Araujo says. She plans to meet with researchers and academics to develop a guidebook on how to create a mutual aid project during a pandemic but, in the meantime, she has advice for those of us interested in lending a hand: “Assess and observe,” she says. “Do not mimic colonizer actions. Connect to existing institutions. And, most of all, insert your radical imagination.”

Emancipatory Mutual Aid: From Education To Liberation

May 23, 2020 By PReP / Neighborhoods, ROAR. Create! Collective Liberation, COVID-19, Mutual Aid, Solidarity

The COVID-19 pandemic has strained and even overwhelmed the public health, medical care and disaster response systems where governments and state agencies were ill-prepared to contain and suppress infectious outbreaks. In countries where emergency lockdown measures have been adopted without accompanying policies to guarantee income security and housing tenure, there is the additional problem of economic hardship. Already existing and newly formed non-governmental organizations and associations have mobilized to fill the gap. These formal and informal groups assist people forced into the margins by government neglect with free meals, grocery and medicine deliveries, safe housing and even cash.

Mutual Aid In Public Housing Continues After Housing Authority Pushback

May 23, 2020 By Sarafina Harper, The Real News. Create! COVID-19, Food and Agriculture, Mutual Aid, Poverty, Recession

In early April, Baltimore City’s Housing Authority threatened Reverend Annie Chambers with arrest and eviction for distributing food to her neighbors at Douglass Homes, citing a policy barring non-government organizations from giving food donations to public housing residents. Rather than stopping Chambers’ mutual aid initiative, the incident led to widespread support for her work. Chambers says that the Housing Authority has not interfered with a giveaway since and that the public attention has resulted in an increase in donations. ”We have not had any trouble from them since. People called The Housing Authority from Washington, New York, Philadelphia and Virginia,” Chambers told The Real News Network. “Senator [Mary] Washington and the Teachers Union called the Housing Authority. Many single individuals have called the mayor and The Housing Authority on our behalf.”

Mutual Aid: Building Networks Of Solidarity Not Charity

May 11, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast COVID-19, Mutual Aid, Recession, Solidarity

In the face of the twin crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic collapse, people are organizing mutual aid networks to provide food, medicines and other basics to those in need. This is done in the spirit of solidarity, not charity, a non-hierarchical empowering approach versus a hierarchical exploitative approach. We speak with Eleanor Goldfield, an activist in Washington, DC who is active in her local mutual aid network and has written about it, about how they are organizing, the response from the community and government and how this fits into the bigger picture of resistance and building alternative systems to meet human needs. Some resources that Eleanor suggests are MutualAidDisasterRelief.org, ItsGoingDown.org and her website, ArtKillingApathy.com.

Organizing For Survival In New York City

April 29, 2020 Woodbine, Commune Mag. Create! Autonomy, COVID-19, Mutual Aid, New York City (NYC)

We are in month two of the coronavirus crisis in New York City, and must reassess how we are organizing ourselves. More than ten thousand have died, and we have seen mass burials in a public park, without names or ceremonies. The medical emergency quickly morphed into a crisis of social reproduction, with vast numbers of New Yorkers out of work, without income, and experiencing heightened food insecurity. At the same time, a newly designated class of “essential” workers struggles to maintain grocery stores, delivery services, and transportation. For most of these workers, social distancing conflicts with survival to such an extent that they risk illness to stock food, deliver packages, work cash registers, and drive rideshares.

In Absence Of State Action, Organizers Help Homeless People During Pandemic

April 27, 2020 Ella Fassler, Truthout. Create! COVID-19, Food and Agriculture, Homeless, Mutual Aid, Social safety net

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, collectives sharing free food with the hungry were facing a sharp uptick in state repression. In Arizona, Tucson Police Park Safety warned the public that sharing food in public parks is illegal in a statement posted to Twitter on February 7. In response, the People’s Defense Initiative in Tucson started a petition and organized a rally at the City Hall on February 19 to “remind Tucson leadership that feeding the hungry is never a crime!” Free Hot Soup, a group that serves food to over a hundred people in a Portland, Oregon, park five nights a week, sued the city in November 2019 after it introduced a new “social service” law. The law creates new bureaucratic hurdles for solidarity services including food handling permits, insurance coverage, dumpsters, security, and restricts the services to once per week per park.

Mutual Aid: ‘When The System Fails, The People Show Up’

April 23, 2020 Eleanor Goldfield, ROAR Magazine. Organize! Community, COVID-19, Mutual Aid, Pandemic

The badges are both for security and for building relationships. We want our community corner stores to know us as those who are looking out for the people. And we want the people to know who we are in case they need help or can lend a hand. We want cops and other government entities to acknowledge and respect that we are essential workers getting supplies and services to our community. It is not a fail-safe, but for scrappy DIY mutual aid teams, nothing ever is. We roll with what comes as best we can. We are unpaid and many folks are brand new to this work. And yet, we still manage to do a better job than the almighty politicians and their corporate overlords. For instance, here in DC, several offices under the purview of Mayor Bowser, along with city-partnered nonprofit organizations, have routed calls for help to mutual aid networks around the city.

Open-Source Medical Supplies Battle COVID-19

April 22, 2020 Anders Lisdorf, Shareablenet. Create! COVID-19, Medical equipment, Mutual Aid, Pandemic

While health authorities focus on top-down measures to get COVID-19 supplies to hospitals in need, home-grown initiatives are enlisting regular people to create open-source equipment. Rather than wait for the impact of government efforts to persuade manufacturers to move into emergency production of ventilators and protective equipment, the sharing economy is already saving lives with home-made masks and 3D-printed ventilators. A dearth of adequate medical supplies was implicated in an increase in coronavirus mortality in Italy, compared with Germany and South Korea, where supply was adequate. Meeting a desperate need for ventilators through open-sourcing Health authorities say the immediate short-term need is to get more ventilators, which compress and decompress air for patients who are too weak to breathe on their own.

Essential Work

April 17, 2020 Stephanie Luce, Organizing Upgrade. Create! COVID-19, Essential worker, Mutual Aid, Public Good

In the midst of the COVID-19 quarantine, Anna* wrote to a neighborhood facebook page, asking for help. Within hours, dozens of people had responded offering to buy groceries, donate cash to pay for a birthday dinner, bake a cake, host an online birthday party, take a socially-distant walk in the park, or just to talk. This wasn’t unusual. During this pandemic lots of people need help and have turned to neighbors (usually strangers). Even more people have stepped up to offer assistance. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Many writers have told stories of how people step in quickly to assist in times of disaster. Rebecca Solnit observed this in the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco and in post-Katrina New Orleans in 2005; she learned of similar responses in earlier disasters like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

How Disabled Activists Are Fighting Isolation, Collectively

April 15, 2020 Brooke Anderson, In These Times. Create! COVID-19, Mutual Aid, People with Disabilities

Oakland, CA - “I already disinfected the door handle, so come on in!” Yomi Wrong says. A rambunctious puppy eagerly eyes us through the gate. “Shiloh can’t wait to see you.” As a healthcare compliance manager, Wrong is used to being out in the world—from going into her office to taking the dog for long strolls around Lake Chabot. All that changed when she began sheltering in place to lower her chances of contracting COVID-19. “I’ve lost so much human connection,’’ Wrong says. “My sister lives in Alameda, but I haven’t seen her in over a month because she is immunocompromised. The two of you are the people I most consistently see.” My friend Katie Loncke and I have been stopping by Wrong’s home every other day for the past three weeks as volunteers for a mutual aid project launched by the Disability Justice Culture Club (DJCC), a collective of five disabled and neurodivergent queer people of color in Oakland.

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