Mutual Aid
The voluntary, uncoerced exchange of resources, predicated on solidarity and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Why Mutual Aid?
Capitalism is destroying our minds, bodies, and the environment.
It robs us of our humanity and turns us against one another rather than the ruling powers. It needs to be dismantled by building power through solidarity and cooperation.
Mutual aid can be as simple as:
Getting to know your neighbors
Forming a mutual aid hub with friends and family
Committing to reparations with money or skills
Making food
Supporting a comrade emotionally
And more.
With mutual aid, we have the power to take things into our own hands rather than waiting on the purposefully slow, inefficient, and corrupt capitalists to help us in an infantilizing and dehumanizing way.
Why Not Charity?
Organized charities and the nonprofit industrial complex starts with the idea that we need to "help" the "less fortunate." Then monetizes, fetishizes, and actively harms us living under capitalism.
Large nonprofit corporations end up giving sub par aid while taking monetary kickbacks, as in the Global South or colonialist missionary work, orgs like Planet Aid, American Red Cross, and even Greenpeace have more dedication to filling their administrative bloat than direct assistance.
When a person says,
I'd rather give to a charity than a random person begging on the internet.
they deny the reality of capitalism being the ultimate oppressor and not seeing the person begging on the internet as no different than begging on the street.
The working class is paychecks away from the same situation.
Solidarity with those struggling requires us to move away from the neoliberal mindset that the government and nonprofits are essentially good. We must, instead, work towards building mutual relationships out of love and support for the liberation of oppressed people.
Local Mutual Aid Networks
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Bucks County Mutual Aid
BCMA is a community organization working to help reduce the effects of shelter and food insecurity in Bucks County, PA.
We collect and distribute hygiene items, clothing/footwear, food, etc.
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Bucks County Anti-Racisim Coalition
This is a place for us to educate ourselves in order to be the kind of allies needed to bring about real structural change in the systems in the US that promote and protect racism.
Further Reading on Mutual Aid
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Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Pëtr Kropotkin
“Mutual aid and support cannot be limited to a small association; they must spread to its surroundings, or else the surroundings will absorb the association.”
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Anarkata Praxis
“We support the mutual aid of all Black people, especially disabled people, trans women, and gender non-conforming Black people. Anarkatas prioritize the mutual aid of poor and working class Black people and of homeless Black people.”
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What is Mutual Aid?
“In a world ruled by ceaseless capitalist competition, where people are pitted to work against each other, anarchists offer a different vision: Mutual Aid.”
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Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
Dean Spade
“Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world”