Embedded Files
Credit: Photo from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, via their article "Queer folks have always protected each other against disasters" (accessible under a nonprofit Creative Commons style use).
We Keep Us Safe
We Keep Us Safe
Care isn't a luxury – it’s crucial for our survival. For queer and trans communities, especially those of us who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, or undocumented, care has always been a powerful force for change. Before institutions offered us even minimal support, we were creating networks of mutual aid, where we'd house each other, feed each other, and come together for free.
This module explores care work and mutual aid as powerful alternatives to abandonment. We shift away from charity toward practices built on interdependence, solidarity, and refusal. Mutual aid isn’t about rescuing individuals, but about building systems that stop us from falling through the cracks.
Core Content
Core Content
Explainer Video (YouTube): Season 3 Episode 1: Speak Out on Queer Mutual Aid - OutWrite Magazine
A episode featuring queer organizers discussing how mutual aid functions in their communities—highlighting care practices and strategies rooted in collective survival.
Lecture (YouTube): Mutual Aid – Dean Spade
A talk by disability justice and mutual aid scholar Dean Spade, offering a deep framework for community solidarity, reciprocity, and power redistribution.
Scholarly Article (Open Access): "We Just Take Care of Each Other" - Levin et al.
A phenomenological study based on interviews with queer/trans young adults, exploring how chosen family functions as mutual care in health and community contexts.
PDF Essay (Open Access): "We're All We Have" - Holloway et al.
A comprehensive read tracing mutual aid's origins in AIDS-era queer communities and suggesting radical visions for future care infrastructures.
Video (YouTube): Mutual Aid: How To Survive When The State Fails Us - Prince Shakur
Documentary that explores the distinction between charity and mutual aid, focusing on community accountability and resilience.
Mini-Documentary (YouTube/PBS): Your Hobby Could Make You a Better Citizen: Mutual Aid Fridge - PBS Voices
A show segment talking about real-world mutual aid in action: how sneakers and community fridges serve as material, visible care strategies during crises.
Extra Credit
Extra Credit
Mini-Doc: Can't Stop Change: Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines
A film by the Queer Ecojustice Project highlighting grassroots mutual aid responses by queer/trans/BIPOC communities facing climate disasters and legislative violence.
Reflect, Resist, Rejoice: Discussion & Practice
Reflect, Resist, Rejoice: Discussion & Practice
Reflection Questions (great for journaling or small group dialogue)
Reflection Questions (great for journaling or small group dialogue)
When have you experienced care that felt liberatory, not transactional?
What made it feel different?
Who are the people or communities you turn to in moments of crisis?
How do you show up for each other?
How does mutual aid differ from charity or saviorism?
Have you ever witnessed or participated in each, and what did it feel like?
What kinds of care are undervalued in your community or family?
Who’s doing that work, and what would it take to honor it?
What stops us from asking for help when we need it?
What systems or stories have taught us to go it alone?
Critical Discussions Prompts (for classrooms, study groups, or peer-led facilitation)
Critical Discussions Prompts (for classrooms, study groups, or peer-led facilitation)
What does it mean to say “care is political”?
How does that challenge dominant narratives about individual responsibility or self-sufficiency?
How have queer and trans communities historically practiced mutual aid?
Why were those systems created, and what made them effective?
What’s the difference between care as a practice and care as performance?
How do institutions perform care without truly offering it?
How do race, class, disability, and immigration status shape who is expected to give care, and who is allowed to receive it?
What roles do power and privilege play?
What would it take to build a world where care is not conditional, scarce, or weaponized?
Where have we already seen glimpses of that world?
Creative + Collective Practice Prompts (for workshops, zines, or embodied learning)
Creative + Collective Practice Prompts (for workshops, zines, or embodied learning)
Build a mutual aid map.
Identify who and what in your life makes survival possible—people, spaces, skills, relationships. Then dream up what else your community could offer or needs.
Design a care ritual.
Create a repeatable act of care (for yourself or others) that doesn't rely on money or institutions. Write or draw the steps. Share with a partner or group.
Host a Skillshare.
Plan or imagine a workshop where you teach or learn something rooted in survival (e.g., conflict navigation, harm reduction, cooking, doula care). What knowledge lives in your community?
Make a “care zine.”
Collect reflections, poems, checklists, recipes, boundaries, love notes—whatever feels like care—and compile into a shareable resource.
Write a community care manifesto.
In a group or solo, draft a statement of what your community believes about care, how you give it, how you receive it, and what you’re building together.
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