SOS 🆘

Mutual aid is a survival technique based on collectivism. [...] There are myriad examples of mutual aid among humans in the modern world: abortion funds, bail funds, grassroots legal and eviction defense, disaster response, and food distribution, among others. But mutual aid can easily be co-opted by the state or nonprofit organizations, turning a potentially power-building social action into another fixture of the neoliberal state.

Another classic example of the state co-opting a powerful mutual aid project is the USDA’s School Breakfast Program, a means-tested program that offers free or reduced-price breakfast for qualifying children in schools that choose to participate. The USDA began experimenting with a free breakfast program in the mid-1960s, but expanded in earnest in the 1970s. What changed? The rapid spread of the Black Panthers Free Breakfast for School Children program across the United States. [...] The Panthers sought donations from local businesses, and members served the breakfast, offering a communal experience.

Some of the clearest examples of successful mutual aid in American history originate in the antebellum and Jim Crow eras. W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1907 work Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans details the structures in which Black Americans collectively strugged for survival. From the Black church as site of planning slave insurrections to the Underground Railroad, people without institutional power cooperated to attempt to survive colossal violence. [...] Free people of color also organized Black mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

How is mutual aid different from charity?
Mutual aid projects often spell out that their work is “solidarity, not charity.” In both cases, people mobilize to provide aid to others; the difference lies in whether peers autonomously share resources or whether individuals interact in a hierarchical structure where elites get to decide who is deserving of help.

How can mutual aid be effective without a strong decision-making structure?
Mutual aid’s greatest strategic strength is its capacity to empower people. Mutual aid projects can offer a chance for ordinary people to “get involved” for the first time. Regular people act, and not just act, but make decisions about how best to help.

Disaster relief provides a good example of how mutual aid can sometimes be more effective without strongly centralized decision-making.

How can mutual aid build political power?
Mutual aid can be very effective when people work independently and without a centralized decision-making structure, but that doesn’t mean mutual aid can’t fit into a structured campaign. [...] There’s no real contradiction between autonomy and structure—if planned carefully and thoughtfully, they can reinforce each other.

What can mutual aid do? What can’t it do?
Mutual aid can help people survive. As we face a global pandemic, alarming income inequality, mass unemployment, and escalating and unpredictable climate catastrophes, working toward collective survival could be a full-time job. [..] It makes sense for organizations—and most particularly, organizations which explicitly seek to build power—to weigh mutual aid projects against capacity concerns.

currentaffairs.org/2020/10/what-is-mutual-aid-and-how-can-it-build-power/

Current Affairs

What Is Mutual Aid (And How Can It Build Power)

From the New Orleans DSA brake light clinic to benevolent associations in the Jim Crow South to a disaster relief supply “heist” in Puerto Rico, Cate Root explains mutual aid and its relationship with power.

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