Mutual Aid

“Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable. Most mutual aid projects are volunteer-based, with people jumping in to participate because they want to change what is going on right now, not wait to convince corporations or politicians to do the right thing.”

Dean Spade, Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law, and scholar of the mutual aid movement lists some of the ways that mutual aid is different from charity:

• An understanding that it is the system, not the people suffering under it, that creates poverty, crisis, and vulnerability

• Governance/control by people who are most effected (can mean having a membership base of those most effected, or being formed in ways that ensure those providing the aid are from the same group as those giving the aid, or models that allow allies to participate but focus on accountability to those being served)

• Transparency about how they work, any money they use or manage (many mutual aid projects are not funded and are all volunteer run)

• Open meetings and pathways for new people to join and participate

• Political education within the organization to help those working in the project to expand their awareness of experiences that are not their own, to build solidarity, and to make the project supportive and welcoming to marginalized people

• Humility and willingness to accept feedback about how to make the project more useful to the people it serves

• Long-term commitment to provide the aid the project works on

• Connection to and solidarity with other mutual aid projects and other transformative work

• Commitment to dignity and self-determination of people in need or crisis

• Consensus-based decision making rather than majority rule

FAQs, How To Guides, & Tookits

• Mutual Aid: What it is how it works

• Mutual Aid: Teaching Guide

• Mutual Aid Toolkit: Building a neighborhood pod

• Neighborhood Pod Slide Show

Short Readings:

• Mutual Aid: What it is, How it works
• Mutual Aid 101

Videos:

• YouTube Playlist
• Everything Wrong With Nonprofits

Zines:

Books:

• Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution or take the sparknotes version here or the teaching guide here
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