While grieving the loss all around us, we’re simultaneously finding fortitude in a world suddenly in bloom with thousands upon thousands of mutual aid-based projects, ideas, and connections. We’ve seen so many inspiring resource lists sharing the logistics of how to respond to COVID19 with mutual aid; how to get neighbors in touch, start food distribution programs, and organize rent strikes.
We want to encourage people new to mutual aid-based organizing to not limit their understanding of the concept as merely the growth, gathering, and sharing of fruits with our neighbors. Although this is amazing and beautiful in itself, for our mutual aid work to be meaningful in its capacity to increase community power and sustainable in its ability to withstand what will inevitably challenge it, our efforts need strong roots. We need to grow intertwined with each other and deeply connected to the old growth that came before this crisis and to visions of the world we’re growing towards. We need to develop these roots with conscious intention and care.
In this post, we’re sharing reflections, inspiration, and resources to contextualize our current efforts beyond the COVID19 crisis while nourishing deeper understandings of what it means for this work to be deeply rooted in mutual aid’s fertile soil.
[Read more from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief]