What is Mutual Aid?
Mutual aid is a term that is re-entering the mainstream as communities are creatively and beautifully responding to the current pandemic by showing care for each other. But what is mutual aid? The term mutual aid originally comes from the idea that we are inherently cooperative as opposed to naturally competitive; it's about us taking care of each other, considering each other as equals, and working together to meet our common needs.
To many, this is a foundational cultural practice - we owe much credit and offer gratitude to deeply grounded resisters from the Dakota and Lakota to the Maroons to the heathens of the Baltic Circle to Zapatistas and Syrians and beyond for teaching us how to live in balance with each other and the Earth and in opposition, by our very existence, to capitalist and colonial logics of extraction and extermination.
The shorthand "solidarity not charity" has been used to set mutual aid practices apart from the hierarchical forms of social assistance under capitalism. Mutual aid approaches taking care of each other in a way where everyone gives what they can and takes what they need. It doesn't have to look the same for everyone; it's about equity.
Mutual aid is not something that comes from governments, or businesses, or even nonprofits. It is anti-capitalist, it is in opposition to the state, it is decolonizing. In presenting a more robust, distributed, and democratic alternative to top-down service provision, it is a way to dismantle oppressive structures and the power they hold over people and resources. Mutual aid comes from us. We, here, on the ground, in our neighborhoods, schools, wherever we gather, we take care of each other. We meet each other's needs by being in relationship. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
When we bring our resources, skills, strengths and teachings together as a community, we are stronger in our fight against climate collapse and for a healthy, flourishing world. Let's continue to come together and build the world that we want. A world where everyone is fed. Everyone is housed. Everyone has healthcare. Everyone is free of detention and incarceration. No more missing and murdered relatives. No more pipelines. We live in balance with the planet under our feet and the sacred plants and beings that live here with us.
Check out the fun video below about mutual aid. We also found this podcast interview with one of the co-founders of the Common Ground Collective based out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to be inspirational and informative.