[Reading Notes] Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) - Dean Spade
2025 08 28
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These notes are from the introduction.
Introduction, 1
- ... the contemporary political moment is defined by emergency.
- Sometimes I dislike the word politics, or any of its fellows, being used in this way. Sometimes people glom onto that word and define everything that follows in terms of political party or by how a person votes - not by the over-arching era that is meant by the term above - as if there was no other way to define these situations of existential dread we face daily.
- It's hard, sometimes, to see the interconnectedness of all these things - disease, climate disaster, war, wealth inequality, and the like - a difficulty that more and more frequently seems deliberately built. Or, rather, that it's so grossly overwhelming we can only take in so much at a time., and sometimes that taking in challenges privilege, status quo, and sunk cost.
- In the face of this, more and more ordinary people are feeling called to respond in their communities, creating bold and innovative ways to share resources [...] produces social spaces where people grow new solidarities. At its best, mutual aid actually produces new ways of living where people get to create systems of care and generosity that address harm and foster well-being.
- This goes beyond things like food banks, but does include things like community fridges. I seem to recall reading that they were originally created to help combat food waste, which is a noble goal in and of itself, but there's no denying the help they've been in combatting food insecurity as well.
- Black Panthers' neighbourhood ambulance service and meal programs for kids, current popularity of repair popups, volunteer-based home delivery for food banks, buddy walk programs to provide safety for women, etc.
Introduction, 2
- Left social movements have two big jobs right now. First, we need to organize to help people to survive the devastating conditions unfolding every day. Second, we need to mobilize hundreds of millions of people for resistance so we can tackle the underlying causes of these crises.
- We know that's what needs to happen, but how? It is an ever-burdening struggle to fight systems that have become so adept at propagandising us to prevent us from building the necessary community. Our differences, instead of being celebrated, enjoyed, or even just accepted as part of the natural order of things, are used as weapons to foster otherness, to kindle disregard, distrust, superiority. Things that are then used as fuel for resource theft, racism, and dehumanisation. Look how the "welfare bum" myths still persist, how those in poverty are not only blamed for their own lot in life (without anyone seeing the systemic accountability), but also for the wider societal ills, or even just government-oriented fiscal ones. We know the real culprits are corporations, capitalism, and a cultivated lack of empathy and compassion.
- We do see some of the fight happening now - people banding together for a common cause. But TPTB still hold the balance of power. Poverty is still rampant, privation rampant, and bombs are still dropping.
- The way to tackle these two big tasks - meeting people's needsa nd mobilizing them for resistance ...
- I think the most significant thing to bear in mind here, is that one single solution can't fix every issue. It needs many, and just as many adaptations. Another thing, too, is that much of what gets done is going to have to be done as an end run around capitalism and government. Things must be done in spite of them, because there will be no help from them. What's that saying? Something like: "you can't ask the perpetrator of the disease to help heal the sickness."
Introduction, 5
- ... what mutual aid is, why it is different than charity ...
- Charity is a service provided. Mutual aid is a community built.