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Mutual aid projects emerge because public services are exclusive, insufficient, punitive, and criminalizing. Neoliberals take aim at public services in order to further concentrate wealth and, in doing so, exacerbate material inequality and violence. Mutual aid projects seek to radically redistribute care and well-being, as part of larger movements that work to dismantle the systems…

“Creating New Futures” states that capitalism is organized abandonment, so the only possible response is organized care. To me, that means mutual aid—non-transactional exchange based on a sense of safety, trust, and collective liberation. Mutual aid rejects scarcity. Mutual aid lays bare the false equivalence of obedience and safety. Communities experiencing incredible loss have stepped…

Mutual aid is not a substitute for the effective provision of social services, but policymakers can still learn from community aid networks. These groups, like Bed-Stuy Strong (BSS)—a Brooklyn-based mutual aid network—quickly organized and mobilized during the pandemic to generate flexible, far-reaching responses despite extremely limited time and resources. Though the mutual aid model is…

Mutual aid is the brigade of volunteers mucking out basements after a flood, the church basement food pantry staffed by retirees, the GoFundMe to pay the rent for a tenant about to be evicted. It can look like an easier alternative to politics, which requires not just generosity but toughness, not just tolerance but side-taking.…

Mutual aid groups emphasize an egalitarian way of providing help with no strings attached. Community-based nonprofits may participate in and collaborate with mutual aid networks, but the groups themselves are typically volunteer led and unincorporated often because they prefer it that way. Under the stress of a pandemic and other crises, people had the experience…

In theory and practice, mutual aid centers the collective. The organization of the DDGC (Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum collective) mutual aid action group reflects this fundamental tenet: it has no specific leaders and utilizes a flat, nonhierarchical structure. All network and action group members are empowered to act and respond, to offer and…

Mutual aid stands in contrast to large bureaucratic assistance structures (such as governmental and nongovernmental organizations) in that it provides relief in an informal, decentralized, nonhierarchic, and reciprocal manner (Beito, 2000), versus top-down approaches to helping. This ideological departure from traditional aid structures is communicated by the slogan solidarity not charity used in recent mutual…

Mutual aid is about cooperating to serve community members. Mutual aid creates networks of care and generosity to meet the immediate needs of our neighbors. It also addresses the root causes of challenges we face and demands transformative change. Mutual aid networks don’t require community members to fill out burdensome paperwork or require anything in…

When a school lacks funding it cuts programs that are deemed nonessential. But when funding is no longer an issue this problem ceases to be. By creating a mutual aid network of collaborative organizations, students will have access to more art education than before. The ability to pool resources and to share skills will make…

A significant challenge for the mutual aid model is the lack of group work education inschools of social work. Social work students receive limited exposure to group work theory,methods, and skills related to forming groups, contracting, supporting mutual aid in phasesof group life, building mutual aid group structures and cultures, and dealing with blocks tomutual…