by Joe Courter
Shortly after the last Iguana came out, I heard two stories that convinced me that the topic of mutual aid needed to be addressed in the next issue, and here we are.
One was a great interview I caught on YouTube by former network, now independent journalist Katie Phang with Kat Abughazaleh, who had just come in second in an open primary in Chicago for Jan Schakowsky’s Congressional seat (tinyurl.com/iguana2489). In it she talked about gearing her campaign organizing around mutual aid; her campaign office became a mutual aid hub for the community, and postelection she intended to keep it going.
The other was an NPR story about a Hispanic man who had been wrongly detained by ICE for weeks, and then finally let go, “freed” if you will, but now was without a job to support his family PLUS many thousands of dollars in legal bills. These are the times we are in, and for many it is a major struggle to survive.
I looked around for a good overview of mutual aid and found an article in the National Education Association’s NEA Today Newsletter by senior writer Cindy Long, from Jan. 23, from which I pulled the following:
“Mutual aid is the voluntary, peer-to-peer exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. It’s neighbor helping neighbor while building community connections and resilience. A popular slogan of mutual aid is “solidarity, not charity.” And if there is a symbol of the current mutual aid movement in the face of ICE brutality, it could very well be the whistle, a simple but powerful tool signifying awareness, protection, and protest.
“According to Dean Spade, author of ‘Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity Through this Crisis (And the Next),’ mutual aid is “where we choose to help each other out, share things, and put time and resources into caring for the most vulnerable.”
“While the surge in ICE operations in Minnesota shines a spotlight on mutual aid there, community members are banding together to support each other all over the country … in the year since Trump returned to the White House, as Americans struggle with high prices, cuts to government programs, and volatility in their communities.
“But the practice of mutual aid is not new. Indigenous communities around the world have practiced reciprocal community care for millennia as part of a core belief in the interconnectedness of people and the earth. Caring for each other and the land is critical to everyone’s well-being and was also practiced as a means for survival during colonization.
“In the United States, mutual aid among marginalized groups dates back to the 18th century. In the late 19th and early 20th century, fraternal societies practiced mutual aid, particularly in immigrant communities in major cities like Chicago and New York.
“More recent examples include the Black Panther Party free “Breakfast for Children” program, which began in Oakland, California, in 1969. It started in one local church but then grew into a nationwide initiative. It was dismantled under J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI through a campaign of disinformation, raids, and harassment.
“In the 1980s as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, gripped the gay community, it launched its own health clinics, food pantries, therapy groups, and community support programs.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of mutual aid groups jumped from about 50 to 800, according to Mutual Aid Hub. Likely, that number greatly underestimates the actual figure as most mutual aid organizations are small and informal.
“In the current administration, mutual aid is at the core of resistance and survival amid the harsh government crackdown on immigrants and working-class people. With the costs of healthcare and groceries skyrocketing, the federal government has made cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps). This 60-year-old program provides support to feed tens of millions of Americans. Then the services were abruptly cut during the government shutdown last November.”
Again, these are the times we are in, the undoing of safety nets in a cruel indifference to the human costs on some perverse principle that these “entitlements” need to be cut like we can’t afford them economically (meanwhile the war machine and fat cat tax cuts are just fine). The system seems totally fucked!
I firsthand watched the evolution of the volunteer-run Civic Media Center in the last decade, but especially after the COVID move away from community education and organization building, to a focus on helping the disadvantaged in our society — people trapped in poverty and people who were incarcerated.
Food Not Bombs, Books to Prisoners and Free Grocery Store activity became more highly valued than hosting community events and discussions, documentary films, and providing space for group meetings.
My vision of the CMC had been from its founding in 1993 had been that we would raise consciousness among people who would then move on to help change society and correct the ills that were so obvious.
You might say I was a dreamer, but I wasn’t the only one. But now, that sort of idealism has faded as things seem to be demonstrably going downhill on so many fronts, and expectation that trying to get help from the powers that be has faded. It’s gone from “keep hope alive” to “just hope to survive.”
I asked Kaithleen Hernandez, a former CMC coordinator from 2016 to 2019, who went on to get a master’s in public health, to write about her take on mutual aid. See her piece starting on p. 1.