Mutual Aid

What is a mutual aid network?

Mutual aid networks, described by Santa Fe Mutual Aid is, “a network of community volunteers working to support one another, friends, family, & neighbors to meet each other's basic survival needs at this critical time. It is a system of community to community support & organization for resource sharing, information dissemination, & resilience-building.”

Mutual aid is:

• Getting people together in your community to provide material support to each other

• Building relationships with your neighbors based on trust & common interest

• Making decisions by consensus rather than relying on authority & hierarchy

• Sharing things rather than hoarding things

• Treating no one as disposable

• Providing all kinds of support, ranging from food prep, childcare, translation, emotional support, & recognizing the value in all of them

• A political education opportunity, where we build the relationships & analysis to understand why we are in the conditions that we’re in

• Preparations for the next disaster (natural or economic); next time a community will already have relationships with each other & know who is vulnerable & who needs support

• A jumping-off point for other kinds of organizing movement work

Mutual aid is not:

• Quid pro quo transactions

• Only for disasters or crises

• Charity or a way to “save” people

• A reason for a social safety net not to exist

The New York Committee of Vigilance

Mutual aid networks are rooted in community organizing.

Community organizing, as defined by Britannica is, “A method of engaging & empowering people with the purpose of increasing the influence of groups historically underrepresented in policies & decision making that effect

their lives.”

The history of community organizing & its relationship to mutual aid networks can be seen during the abolitionist movement, an organized effort to end the practice of slavery in the United States. Specifically, by the work done by the New York Committee of Vigilance, an abolitionist collective that battled kidnappers, slave catchers, & slave traders, while offering sanctuary & support to hundreds of self-liberated & self-emancipated people, we can see the impact of local-level groundwork.

The Committee was founded by a man named David Ruggles (pictured below, left), a free Black man born in 1810 Connecticut, who served as the secretary & general organizer of the organization as well as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He was also the first Black man to own a bookstore in the United States.

Through the NY Committee of Vigilance, David Ruggles was able to help 22-year-old fugitive slave, Frederick Douglass (pictured above to the right), when he arrived in NYC in 1838. Later Douglass would become a key figure in the abolitionist movement. Overall, Ruggles & those part of the NY Committee of Vigilance rooted their work in “Practical Abolition”, the work of advocating for fugitives in court, providing shelter, food, & transportation to them, as well as resisting the illegal slave trade through embracing civil disobedience, direct action, & self-defense. These are tools that can be used for community organizing. This collective, fueled by the fundraising of Black women, implemented these actions using functional solidarity to meet each other’s needs because their survival was dependent on one another. They used mutual aid to create a sustainable social safety net where they could support & uplift each other. By the 1840s they had become a template for other vigilance committees throughout the northern states who were able to further the on-the-ground local work, while still keeping in communication with each other.

More examples of mutual aid networks:

• The Black Panther Party's free breakfast program, where in 1969, was able to serve 20,000 meals to Black children

• Landsmanshaftn, Jewish immigrant mutual aid societies that formed in New York (Jewish Immigrant Organizations and American Identity 1880-1939, Daniel Soyer (Book))

• Chinese Americans in San Francisco building their own hospitals (When Chinese Americans Were Blamed for 19th Century Epidemics, They Built Their Own Hospital, Atlas Obscura)

• Caribbean women & mutual aid societies during the Interwar period (More than Auxiliary: Caribbean Women and Social Organizations in the Interwar Period)

• Sociedades mutualistas, mutual aid networks formed by Mexican immigrants beginning in the 1870s

• The Chicken Soup Brigade, where a network of volunteers supported people with HIV/AIDS beginning in Seattle 1980s; evolved into an all volunteer-crew supporting over 450 men (1993 Interview with Carol Sterling, who came to run the organization)

• Ujimaa Medics, a Black health collective in Chicago formed in 2014 that educates & trains people to handle & apply first aid to urbal health crises; created in response to the lack & inaccessibility of healthcare resources the city had in place for their community

Recently formed mutual aid networks:

• Mutual Aid Pandemic Disaster Relief

• Disability Ally Projects

• Community Bail Funds

• Bystander Intervention

• Cop-watch