Activities

Collecting Donations

Brick City Mutual Aid redistributes money through donations to ensure that resources go to those who need it. To that end, in 2020 we redistributed almost $20,000 in donations to families and individuals in the form of groceries, supplies, and cash payments towards shelter, bills, and assistive devices. Since coming together, we have helped over 20 undocumented families to get $1000 gift cards, gave out over 320 prepared meals, and brought donated warm clothes to over 70 people. We also collect donations of books for Books Behind Bars, which are delivered to incarcerated people.

Transparency on how we use funds is important. We only use the mutual aid donation fund for deliveries of groceries, supplies, and cash payments. All costs related to prepared food at distros, literature printing costs, and other materials come out of pocket of the volunteers involved in the Brick City Mutual Aid network. We all contribute what we can, and believe in the maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

You can contribute to our mutual aid fund on Vemno (@BrickCityMutualAid) or Cashapp ($BrickCityMA).

Community Education

We support community education through providing food, water, and supplies at educational actions, such as Maroon Project's community teach-in on defunding police. We also invited the NJ Harm Reduction Coalition to teach Naloxone administration, held virtual tenant's rights training, and participated in the Newark Public Library's "Organizing for Change" panel to teach the community about mutual aid.

We also distribute literature in the form on pamphlets, flyers, and zines on information related to prison industrial complex abolition, covid-19, mutual aid, water rights, harm reduction, employment resources, and other subjects relevant to the information needs of the community.

Covid-19 Safety

We initially came together to respond to the Covid Crisis in early 2020. Our work has always been guided by the health needs of the community, and the interconnected nature of our survival. We practice the most up to date guidance on preventing spread of the virus that causes Covid-19 while delivering groceries, holding actions, and distributing supplies in the community.

In addition, we hand out Covid safety supplies including masks, hand sanitizer, gloves, and written information on spread and vaccines. We believe everyone should have access to the tools they need to stay safe and healthy during a deadly pandemic. To this end, we also commit to offering material support to any rank and file workers who go on strike for safer working conditions, hazard pay, or other demands.

Food and Water Distribution

Brick City Mutual Aid safely delivers groceries and supplies to undocumented and working class families in Newark, NJ. We partner with Cosecha and Mutual Aid Tenants Collective of Hudson County to ensure a confidential and information-secure process to work with vulnerable people on connecting them with needed supplies.

We also hold monthly food distribution events where we give out prepared food to anyone who needs it. We usually give out over 75 meals to members of the unhoused community in Newark, NJ at every distro. Along with food, we give out Covid safety supplies, warm socks, personal hygiene supplies (including toothbrushes, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, and menstrual supplies), Naloxone, sturdy canvas bags for ease of carrying belongings, and literature.

We partner with the Newark Water Coalition to distribute clean, lead-free drinking water to people in Newark. Since beginning this partnership, we have given out hundreds of gallons of water, and information on how and where to refill containers.

Free Flea Market

Brick City Mutual Aid, Solidarity Jersey City, and North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America came together to create a free flea market. In this context, a free market is a pop-up regional market where anyone can take whatever they need or want without paying. Mutual aid groups offer free books, clothes, furniture, food, water, and more.

The first was held in Jersey City in November 2020, with the intention of alternating between Newark and Jersey City. Collaboration on this event builds solidarity between the communities of Newark and Jersey City, with the intention of local mutual aid networks supporting each other and working together, with a larger goal of building dual power. The free flea market is a great opportunity to connect with the community and show that the people can step in to provide for others outside of the boundaries created by capital.

Harm Reduction

Harm reduction is a set of principles and associated praxis that forefronts respect, autonomy, and safety of people who use drugs. Brick City Mutual Aid partners with the New Jersey Harm Reduction Coalition to distribute Naloxone to anyone in Newark who needs it. The NJHRC are advocates and organizers advancing harm reduction and equitable drug policy reform in New Jersey.

Protests and Actions

Black Lives Matter

During the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter international uprisings, Brick City Mutual Aid attended over a dozen actions, including an action focused on Black trans lives, and provided water, food, and covid-safety supplies.

Brick City Mutual Aid is a multiracial coalition and stand in solidarity with all Black Lives Matter actions, as well as other revolutionary, anti-capitalist, anti-imperial, and de-colonial racial justice movements. Our liberation and survival is collective.

Defund the Police

Brick City Mutual Aid is an abolitionist organization who advocates for preventing and addressing harm without relying on the white supremacist prison industrial complex. We participate in actions advocating for defunding and abolishing police, for decarceration, and for decriminalization of immigration, drug use, and sex work. We strive to reduce interaction between communities and police in order to protect the survival and health of marginalized people. To that end, we hold actions such as brake light clinics or overdose prevention trainings so that we can solve our problems without involving the carceral system.

Free Them All

New Jersey has the highest racial sentencing disparities and the highest prison death rate from COVID-19 in the United States. Brick City Mutual Aid attends actions in support of freeing people from ICE concentration camps, prisons, and jails. We protest those profiting off this inhumane and unjust family separation and caging people.

On the night of NJPAC's Gala, activists in Newark came together in The People's Gala, a protest action organized by New Jersey Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (NJCAIC), featuring speeches by community organizers, music, dance, and consciousness raising. The People's Gala demanded that NJ free all incarcerated and detained people.

Local organizers from New York and New Jersey, including Brick City Mutual Aid, attended the November 2020 Hudson County Freeholders meeting and spoke out against renewing the ICE contract.

Strike Solidarity

Brick City Mutual Aid pledges to support striking workers who live or work in the Newark area.

In solidarity with workers during this extraordinarily difficult time, Brick City Mutual Aid commit ourselves to provide grocery support and other material needs to striking workers living in the Newark area. As pressure mounts on workers to continue to be productive in spite of severe hazards to their health, and by extension, the health of their loved ones and communities, we encourage our neighbors to reject this exploitation. School teachers are being advised to have their “affairs in order” before returning to work. Healthcare workers remain overworked and under prepared. Employees of the USPS are facing an acute federal threat to their livelihoods. We will support you as you fight for your life!

We recognize that maintaining both public and material support during a strike can be incredibly difficult. Unions, even when powerful, cannot face the pressures of the bosses, state austerity, capitalists, and virus conditions on their own. It is not enough to threaten strikes and then scramble to put together ad hoc support systems. We must have these support systems readily in place, demonstrating that they can function, so that we can encourage our community members to fight. Brick City Mutual Aid has delivered thousands of dollars in groceries to homes in Newark. If you go on strike, we will help to put food on your table.

In keeping with our principles, we extend this offer to all rank and file, striking union workers except Police, ICE, and Corrections Officers. We work to support our community from the harms of capitalism, oppression, and the prison industrial complex, and to that end will not materially support those who serve the interwoven systems of those harms.

Please ask your union representative, shop steward, or someone from the strike team to reach out to us at: BrickCityMutualAid@protonmail.com