Mutual Aid

Disunited States: Government Failure To Address Coronavirus Is Sparking A Mutual Aid Revolution

April 14, 2020 Eleanor Goldfield, Mintpress News. Create! Capitalism, COVID-19, Mutual Aid, Recession

I‘m not from DC, but I live here. I’m now a part of this living, breathing being that is a city. This city. It helps me to think of cities that way, even ones that I don’t fully feel at home in – like a body. And I’m like a blood transfusion. I know this isn’t my city, my body, but it’s where my life flows now, and so I best flow with it. This body holds me – it is my literal and figurative structure. I am one of the millions of cells rushing through the veins of this place, and although I’m a relative newcomer, I can feel that this body is not well. I can feel that familiar illness – it’s the same as any city I’ve ever lived in.. Every body is weakened and bowed under the weight of capitalism. Yet, there is a new illness – one that found a foothold in our immunocompromised bones and at the same time exposes the severity of that underlying sickness so old it’s etched in our souls.

Fascists Are Using COVID-19 To Advance Their Agenda

April 13, 2020 Ejeris Dixon, Truthout. Strategize! Fascism, Mutual Aid, Pandemic, Police State

The COVID-19 crisis is a story of a predictable pandemic. It is a result of the willful ignorance of the impact of the climate crisis and unsustainable expansion, a failure of multiple governments and the intentional under-resourcing of public health and medical systems. It results from our societies’ ignoring of the conditions for poor people, the unhoused, disabled and chronically ill people, sex workers, migrants, communities of color and street-based communities, and the exploitation of this crisis by a rich, privileged and powerful fascist minority. Our government had the information, the resources, and the ability to prepare for this pandemic, including supporting those most at risk. We could have had the tests, the masks, the ventilators, the resources and emergency plans.

Navajo And Hopi Families Relief Fund Builds Movement In Response To Covid-19 Pandemic

April 8, 2020 NavajoHopiSolidarity.org. Create! COVID-19, Hopi, Mutual Aid, Navajo

Tsiizizii, Dinétah (Leupp, Navajo Nation/Arizona) - In response to the escalating health crisis facing Diné (Navajo) and Hopi communities in Northern Arizona, Southern Utah, and New Mexico, the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund has mobilized volunteer emergency food and water distribution throughout the region. “It is so amazing to see our communities come together and respond proactively to the threat of coronavirus and COVID-19 on the Navajo and Hopi reservations.” said Ethel Branch, former Navajo Nation Attorney General and founder of the Relief Fund. “I thought this would make just a small impact, but the great love and care that the public has for our communities, and their sense of justice to correct the inequities that exist in Indigenous communities has morphed this effort into a movement.”

The Horror Films Got It Wrong; COVID-19 Turned Us Into Caring Neighbors

April 7, 2020 George Monbiot, The Guardian Blog. Create! Collective Liberation, Commons, COVID-19, Mutual Aid

You can watch neoliberalism collapsing in real-time. Governments whose mission was to shrink the state, to cut taxes and borrowing and dismantle public services, are discovering that the market forces they fetishised cannot defend us from this crisis. The theory has been tested, and almost everywhere abandoned. It may not be true that there were no atheists in the trenches, but there are no neoliberals in a pandemic. The shift is even more interesting than it first appears. Power has migrated not just from private money to the state, but from both market and state to another place altogether: the commons. All over the world, communities have mobilised where governments have failed. In India, young people have self-organised on a massive scale to provide aid packages for “daily wagers”: people without savings or stores, who rely entirely on cash flow that has now been cut off.

Mutual Aid: Inspiration & Support for Disaster Preparation

July 21, 2019 Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Create! Disaster Preparadeness, Hurricanes, Mutual Aid

As we enter hurricane season in the Atlantic and fire season in the West, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is compiling tips for preparing communities to take care of each other in the spirit of mutual aid when disaster strikes. Below is a list we’ve started and are continuing to add to as y’all submit new ideas for ways to prepare for disaster. Oftentimes, in disasters, whether personal or collective, we find a power within us that can’t be measured or defined. There is an alternative to the hoarding, violent zombie-prepper trope. This alternative is an instinctual social responsibility that most individuals and groups will default to when a crisis strikes.

Man Builds Pantry Outside His Home To Feed The Hungry

July 4, 2019 Mayukh Saha, Activist Post. Create! Food and Agriculture, Hunger, Mutual Aid, Poverty

To all those people claiming humanity is in shambles and moral values are dead — you have no idea what you are talking about. Yes, humanity has certainly taken some hits to the chest, but it is still very much out there. People still believe in kindness, and people still engage in civility. This is a true event from Watertown, New York, where a citizen named Roman Espinoza has built a ‘blessing box’ — essentially a pantry for people to pick up and food at any point of the day. The box is built in the lawn facing their house; and just like Little free libraries, there are no restrictions for these either. The concept is extremely simple — the box contains food that people donate — the same food others might want. To put it even more simply, the box was simply a donation box where the poor ate, and the not-so-poor donated.

Newsletter – From Neoliberal Injustice To Economic Democracy

November 5, 2017 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, Energy, Housing, Mutual Aid, New Economy, Public Banks, Transportation

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. This week, we will focus on positive work that people are doing to change current systems in ways that reduce the wealth divide, meet basic needs, build peace and sustainability and provide greater control over our lives. The work to transform society involves two parallel paths: resisting harmful systems and institutions and creating new systems and institutions to replace them. Throughout US history, resistance movements have coincided with the growth of economic democracy alternatives such as worker cooperatives, mutual aid and credit unions.

Replacing TrumpCare and ObamaCare with Co-opCare

July 3, 2017 Paul Glover, www.popularresistance.org Create! Cooperatives, Health Care, Mutual Aid, New Economy

By Paul Glover. Few are satisfied with America’s medical insurance system, but many resist abrupt change. Conservatives want smaller government and more individual responsibility. Liberals fear abandonment of the poor and elderly. Everyone dreads premium increases. Yet there is a path that’s both liberal and conservative, which relies on a genuinely free market to achieve low-cost, high-quality health care for all. This process revives the American tradition of mutual aid co-operatives and fraternal benefit societies. One hundred years ago most health insurance was provided through these organizations. Their members built hospitals, orphanages, old folks’ home, paid sickness and death benefits. For pennies per week they delivered health care that was affordable, democratic and humane. Today, a national network of such local and regional co-ops could operate as mutual medical savings accounts, from which national coverage can evolve.

Neighborhood Medics Saving Lives In Chicago

July 2, 2017 Shannon Hefferan, www.thetrace.org Create! Healthcare, Mutual Aid, Violence

By Shannon Hefferan for WBEZ Chicago. The program is called Ujimaa Medics, or UMedics. Ujimaa means “collective work and responsibility” in Swahili. In 2013, the city’s inspector general released a report on how often paramedics took more than five minutes to get to a medical emergency. The results: longer response times were more common in some parts of the South Side. UMedics co-founder Martine Caverl said the city’s violence, along with health disparities and ambulance response times, can make people feel powerless. So she helped found the UMedics group, which led its first training in 2014. “We wanted to say to people … this is one thing we can do,” Caverl said. “You know, when we hear the gunshots we are going to make sure we are safe, but then we are likely to see what is going on because we have something we can offer.”

NYC Shut It Down: Weekly Shut Down & Clothes For The Poor

February 15, 2016 Keegan Stephan, www.keegan.nyc Resist! Clothing, Homeless, Mutual Aid, NYC

By Keegan Stephan for Keegan NYC - On Wednesday, November 4th, before temperatures in NYC dropped to 4 degrees, and the mayor warned people to stay inside unless absolutely necessary, NYC Shut It Down, the group who has been shutting down NYC for victims of police violence every week for over a year, distributed clothes to those who have no option to stay inside, even in arctic weather – the homeless. Over the previous weeks, NYC Shut It Down had accepted clothing donations and stored them at the offices of Global Revolution TV, a media collected made famous during Occupy Wall Street.

Mississippi Wants To Punish 88 Year Old Doctor Who Treats Poor For Free

January 18, 2015 Peter Holley, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Healthcare, Mutual Aid

For the last two years, Landrum has been working without an office, but he’s happy to meet his patients wherever they are. Sometimes, the meetings occur in a home; sometimes they take place in a parking lot. Other patients meet the doctor on the side of a quiet country road — or inside his 2007 Toyota Camry. The location doesn’t matter because Landrum, a World War II veteran who has been in private practice for more than 55 years, believes it’s his duty to help anyone who calls on him. “I’ve always had a heart for the poor,” Landrum told The Washington Post this week, struggling to hold back tears. “I grew up poor, and when the doctor would come to us, and he was happy to see us, I pictured myself doing that some day. I try not to ever turn people away — money or no money – because that’s where the need is.” But his work may soon come to an end.

#GazaRebirth: New Paradigm For Recovery Activism

October 20, 2014 Raincoaster, www.thecryptosphere.com Create! Gaza, Israel, Mutual Aid

Besides the aid to Gazans, there are two outcomes we would love to achieve: One, establish a new way of providing emergency assistance which bypasses the NGO empires and paternalistic controls on people who need aid. People are not products, aid should be a human relationship not a corporate one. If we can set up one trust relationship for Gaza, we hope we can use it as a proof of concept to expand across Gaza and in other places like Syria, Myanmar and everywhere really. The trust networks we set up for direct global communication to bypass corporate media can be used in the same way to provide direct aid and bypass corporate NGOs. Two, we want to start a dialogue about this cycle of destruction and ‘rebuilding’ where corporate empires are feeding off real human torment as a growth industry to enrich themselves.

Grandma’s Tiny Home Shed, Gives Daughter’s Family A Home

July 27, 2014 Kimberley Mok, www.treehugger.com Create! Housing, Mutual Aid

Many people have been moving into smaller homes for a host of reasons: it could be a conscious change toward a simpler lifestyle, it could be a way to avoid paying all the bills and taxes associated with a larger home, or for some younger people, tiny homes are a quick and affordable start for home ownership and an early lesson in independence. But choosing to live in a tiny home could also be done for selfless reasons, as this elderly woman did when she chose to give up her own house to her daughter and five kids, all of whom had recently become homeless. Instead of seeing her daughter go out onto the street, Monica Smith elected to move instead into a converted 8-foot by 10-foot shed in her backyard. Monica gradually transformed a tool shed into a two-storey tiny home. There is a kitchen, a sitting area and a bedroom tucked above the ground floor, accessible by a stepladder. Monica did much of the renovation work herself, keeping costs down.

Across Latin America: Struggle for Communal Land & Indigenous Autonomy

July 22, 2014 Renata Bessi and Santiago Navarro F., www.truth-out.org Resist! Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, Indigenous Rights, Mutual Aid

"We recognize that we must confront the plundering by transnational companies and the harassment of bad governments through their political parties that offer programs and money that corrupt many leaders and divide our communities," states the declaration of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) of the Isthmus region, which took place in March 2014. While a furious battle has been unleashed for the recognition of indigenous rights and culture in other communities in Mexico and Latin America, in Oaxaca, new legislation is being debated on this very theme while large-scale projects continue to advance.

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