Ashley Tarbet DeStefano
Second year CECS Student
Ashley Tarbet DeStefano speaking on “Mutual Aid not Charity” hosted by Social Justice Center at Emerson College
One of the most important aspects of organizing, activism, solidarity, and social justice is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. As we know from living in the world, change is inevitable and is the only reliable constant in life. In fact, as Octavia Butler reminds us in her epic visionary fiction tale Parable of the Sower, “All that you touch, you Change. / All that you Change, Changes you. / The only lasting truth is Change.” So we must come to expect change in all it’s forms at all times, and learn to adapt in order to survive and to make the world a slightly better place on the other side of that change. The current public health crisis that humanity is experiencing worldwide has reminded me of this wisdom and has helped to keep my hope that we can collectively seize this moment as an opportunity to further disrupt and dismantle the existing systems of oppression—white supremacy, capitalism, settler-colonialism, cis-hetero-patriarchy, ableism—and work together to build and practice the kind of world that we want to survive and in which we want to thrive. In this moment of reaching for hope and human connection, I have turned more deeply and firmly to mutual aid as a means and a journey to living this praxis.
First of all, it is important to note that marginalized communities, especially communities of color, Indigenous communities, disabled folks, and queer folks, have engaged in mutual aid for a long time. This is either because of community roots in horizontalism, or because in order to survive the ongoing crises of capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism folks are required to find interdependent solutions for survival. The practices themselves have roots all over the world and throughout history, whether the term “mutual aid” is used or not. Recently, it is a term that has been pervasive in the media and community conversations, and in some places I hear it discussed as if it’s a new idea. However, it only feels like a new idea to folks who may be privileged enough not to have to live in a daily state of crisis caused by oppressive systems of power because in that position you can put your faith or trust in authority and assume that it will support your wellbeing. Therefore, we can turn to mutual aid in times of global crisis, but first we must learn from those communities who have developed historical and political knowledge about how to approach mutual aid from a solidarity framework in order to challenge the status quo and build toward social transformation.
Mutual aid through solidarity is a complex approach that requires intentionality and praxis. On its surface, mutual aid is material support to survive existing harmful systems. However, at its core, mutual aid is an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonial practice. It engages people in building new social relationships that address these harms, developing a shared political analysis of the root causes, and prepares us for continued survival and movement mobilization after the immediate crisis is over.
It is not just a kind thing that you do to help a neighbor, it is an act of political resistance in which we engage in the care of people and communities that the systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and settler-colonialism have deemed disposable, expendable, and less valuable or human. It is also an act of disruption. It refuses and disrupts social hierarchies of value that support and maintain those systems by nurturing horizontalism, centering the leadership of the most marginalized members of our communities, and maintaining a commitment to individual and community self-determination.
However, mutual aid often is misused to label projects and activities that use a charity model approach rather than a solidarity approach and it is crucial to understand the differences if what you want is to contribute to social transformation. Charity as a framework maintains hierarchies of power and social value, reinforcing the systems of white supremacy, capitalism, settler-colonialism, ableism, cis-hetero-patriarchy by celebrating the generosity of the powerful and blaming those at the bottom of the hierarchies for their conditions rather than the systems that put and keep them there. In charity work, people in power at the hegemonic center make decisions for people receiving charity and divide recipients into categories of deserving and undeserving of help or of being saved. Charity is enacted to control marginalized people by creating a relationship of dependency and unequal power to facilitate assimilation into white supremacy, capitalism, and settler-colonialism. It recuperates, reinforces, and legitimizes existing harmful systems while demobilizing and isolating the masses to ensure cooperation and ineffective resistance. The charity framework is the antithesis of solidarity, but often uses the term “mutual aid” from solidarity movements as a mechanism to co-opt and subdue resistance.
I have been energized by the amount of mutual aid work through solidarity practices that I have witnessed in the last several weeks. Existing mutual aid networks have become more robust and are swelling in participation, or are using the current momentum as an opportunity to push their demands forward. Existing mutual aid networks have created temporary relief funds for folks who do not qualify to receive the government’s stimulus checks because of their imposed social status or categorization. I am seeing new relationships and networks within communities blossom where relationships didn’t exist before, and people actually reaching out and getting to know their neighbors if they didn’t already, offering and asking for support. Information, resources, and access are being shared and compiled for the collective benefit.
The energy and resilience around collective survival and support is inspiring, and you may be moved to want to take action and get involved as well. If so, and if mutual aid is a new concept for you—or even if it’s not and you just want to learn more—I would like to share some of my favorite resources from my directed study this semester based on Dean Spade’s course syllabus for “Queer and Trans Mutual Aid for Survival and Mobilization” at the University of Chicago:
What is Mutual Aid?
Spade, Dean and Ciro Carrillo. Shit’s Totally FUCKED! What Can We Do?: A Mutual Aid Explainer. July 9, 2019. YouTube video, 7:54.
Spade, Dean. When We Win We Lose: Mainstreaming and the Redistribution of Respectability. CLAGS Center for LGBTQ Studies New York City. December 9, 2016. YouTube video, 1:19:25.
Spade, Dean. “Big Door Brigade.” June 2016.
Prism, Imogen. “We’ve Been Too Patient: How to Create Mutual Aid Societies in the 21st Century.” The Body is Not an Apology. June 15, 2017.
Historical and Contemporary Examples of Mutual Aid Solidarity
Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Fight Against Medical Discrimination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Morales, Iris, dir. ¡Pa’lante Siempre Pa’lante! 1996; New York City, NY: Third World Newsreel. Documentary film, 49:00.
Anderson, Bridget, Nandita Sharma, and Cynthia Wright. “Editorial: Why No Borders?” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 26, no. 2 (2009): 5-18.
Batza, Katie. Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970’s. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
Beam, Myrl. Gay, Inc.: The Non-Profitization of Queer Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.
Gund, Catherine and Debra Levine, prods. “I’m You, You’re Me.” Aubin Pictures. 1992. Video, 26:13.
Eden and William. “Food Not Bombs with co-founder Keith McHenry, Parts 1 and 2.” Frontline Praxis. May 22, 2019. Podcast, MP3 audio.
Gelderloos, Peter. Anarchy Works. San Francisco, CA: Ardent Press, 2010.
Hwang, Ren-Yo. “Deviant Care for Deviant Futures QTBIPoC Radical Relationalism as Mutual Aid against Carceral Care.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 6, no. 4 (2019): 559-578.
Workers Solidarity Alliance. Building Your Own Solidarity Network. Seattle, WA: Seattle Solidarity Network. Accessed Nov. 26, 2019.
Young Women’s Empowerment Project. Girls Do What They Have to Do to Survive: Illuminating Methods Used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economies to Survive and Heal. Chicago, IL: Young Women’s Empowerment Project, 2009. Accessed Nov. 2019.
Goodman, Amy. “Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid & How to Organize in the Age of Coronavirus.” Democracy Now!. March 20, 2020.