Exercises
The following exercises complement sections of this guide.
Knowing Your Community
Can you think of five communities that you consider yourself a part of?
Start with a simple writing exercise.
Audience: Can be done by an individual, but could also be done in a group setting.
Format: Zine or worksheet that can be printed or electronically filled out
Goal(s) of exercise:
A way to check in with oneself.
This is a "warm-up."
Gently guide the exercise-taker to understand not just what mutual aid is, what it can/has done, but also become more acquainted and familiar with this particular toolkit and its place in the mutual aid multiverse.
Connect individual or group experiences with larger structural inequities, baked into their workplaces, social circles, or existing community groups.
Connect with and be guided to existing resources that they can watch, read, or act on now or later.
Understand and define "community" (generally) and those communities they are a part of currently.
Understand some shared characteristics among those who work, have worked, in or adjacent to GLAM.
To connect with others (maybe also a way to establish healthy or productive boundaries)
Other thoughts/notes:
Can be used by a multitude of people along the mutual aid journey
Starting out thinking about mutual aid/have never thought of mutual aid
Already entrenched in a project and can use as a way to reflect, improve, evolve existing model.
Thinking about starting a mutual aid effort.
Mapping Your Workplace
"Aim for the Bullseye" and "Map Your Workplace and Its Leaders," in Secrets of a Successful Organizer by Alexandra Bradbury, Mark Brenner, and Jane Slaughter. Labor Notes, 2016.
Identifying Community Needs
Once you identify your community, it's best to also understand and identify your community's needs. It's important that a sense of "needs" comes from within a given community. Members of the community can develop a list of needs, starting with questions like:
What do we need right now, or what are our immediate needs?
What are our long-term/ongoing needs?
The next section will describe some more detailed aspects of identifying community needs, including work and non-work context as well as barriers.
In the workplace / context of work
Start by mapping your workplace:
Literally draw a map: where does everyone work?
Who works on the same team(s)?
Who hangs out in or out of the workplace?
Once you have a list of everyone and where they work, get in touch with them for informal, 1:1 conversations: How's it going at work? What are some questions they have? Is anything going wrong with them or their team? How are things outside of work?
Also use any mechanisms in your workplace for anonymous (or semi-anonymous) responses, such as a poll or suggestion box. This may work better at large organizations or in situations where it's not easy to identify people who wish to remain anonymous. To account for this possibility, only collect as much information as you need! For a suggestion box, this means collecting comments and nothing else.
Take stock of the conversations and comments: What issues matter to your coworkers?
Outside the context of work
Use a variety of approaches to learn more about issues and experiences that affect members of what you identify as your community.
Ask people how they're doing, and what questions or issues are on their minds
Walk around, observe, and talk to people
Look at flyers, bulletin boards, and local newsletters, in person and online
Consider also the existing community infrastructure:
What services, groups, sources of information, and other resources are available?
What services, information, and resources are hard to find or missing altogether?
What networks already exist within your community?
Take stock of what you learn: What issues matter to your friends and neighbors?
Barriers to identifying needs
There can be numerous barriers to identifying needs, including:
Language barrier
Limited prior contact between coworkers or neighbors
Lack of trust
Lack of engagement
Cultural competency ... issues
It can be difficult to identify a truly shared issue or concern, for example if a community is divided about one or more needs. Not all concerns translate directly to a clear need, and another challenge may be identifying the near- or long-term nature of a need.
Threat Modeling
To identify barriers to mutual aid organizing in your workplace, start with a two-part exercise:
Mapping out barriers: Which people, systems, and spaces are involved?
Power mapping: What are the sources of power that sustain the threats or barriers?
Next we'll describe some possible outcomes in and out the context of work.
In the workplace / context of work
There are several threats or barriers to organizing mutual aid in the workplace:
The risk of organizing in the workplace
What sort of accountability systems can prevent abuse, without undermining the purpose of mutual aid? This means not placing too many barriers to "qualify" an individual's needs, like asking to provide receipts.
Dispersing funds may look different on an institutional level, relative outside the institution. Bureaucracy can get in the way, and can delay the aid.
What are the pros and cons of working through your employer, through a professional organization, or completely outside of any sort of professional context?
Does mutual aid—asserting power away from institutions—require institutional recognition to succeed? Can it succeed if institutions do not acknowledge that they are part of the problem?
Working conditions in the field, including the whiteness of upper management and boards, produce precarity, burnout, and stress among workers.
Mutual aid utopia vs. reality
Considering Community in Institutional Contexts
What can you learn by considering the relationship between your mutual aid effort in a greater institutional context? Consider your relationship with your fellow workers. This is a critical first step.
Connecting with your co-workers
Do you have a way to have conversations with your coworkers outside of the framework of your institution?
Do you have a way to contact them outside of work email?
Do you have a way to identify, for example, the names/contact information for individuals who were laid off?
Identifying your co-workers' needs
Do you understand your coworkers' needs?
How will you identify needs?
Will coworkers be forthright about needs only under certain conditions (e.g., anonymity)?
Are the needs financial and/or services or support related (childcare, food, deliveries)?
Identifying your positionality and relationships
Do you understand how your own positionality affects your ability to offer help?
Who do you have close contact or relationships with, that could help you "skip a level" by advocating?
Is there an established group (e.g., committee, representative/governance groups, etc.) that could advocate?
Navigating your workplace structures
Do you understand the organizational structures that will need to be engaged or could further support?
Have you identified bureaucratic archetypes and levels of authorization (for instance, your unit/department administration, Human Resources, legal counsel, Board, EEO/AA office)?
Are there rules in your workplace that restrict mutual aid activities?
What risks would you be taking by proceeding despite these rules?
What would you have to compromise to stay within the rules?
How does mutual aid relate to other kinds of formal or informal organizing in the workplace? In the profession? Unions? Professional orgs?
Identifying challenges and barriers
Have you identified challenges to mutual aid in the workplace?
Among coworkers, have you considered any existing issues of trust, invasion of privacy in the workplace, moving beyond individualistic to collective thinking, etc.?
Have you considered structural and legal obstacles and risks, such as liability related to fiscal sponsorship?
Getting organized
Have you explored models and platforms that could mitigate risks of liability?
Have you develop policies related to safety (e.g., COVID-19 related deliveries), distribution of money or services, communications, and record-keeping?
Have you considered distributed risk models, minimizing liability?
Be ready to deal with finance departments, HR, legal counsel, board; and address distinctions between different staff types.
Something unique about doing mutual aid at work is coming up against the institutions (workplaces, professional orgs, schools), the fear of burning bridges with people on whom you depend for economic survival.