Patrick introduced himself, and told me this really was about mutual aid, and we are all encouraged to take food ourselves. And I have seen some of us taking some food. He also said we don’t do a lot of telling anyone what to do. It would be some time before I appreciated this was an example of how mutual aid resists vertical hierarchies.

Forty or fifty empty boxes were set out, and we would grab food and deposit it in each of the boxes. The amount of food in each box increased steadily. I noticed that bread was put in last so it wasn’t squashed. When there were pork products, those were kept separate so that wouldn’t be given to families who didn’t eat pork.

We started this at 9:00 and were done around 10:00. Tables were set up near the street outside the church. Once the boxes were full, we took them out to the tables.

In the meantime those who came for the food were parking in line in the school parking lot across the street. People find out about this by word of mouth. We had to be somewhat flexible as the numbers fluctuated from time to time.

One of us went to the cars, and controlled the flow to our food tables. We sorted out who was going to open the door as the cars pulled up in front of the tables. Someone else would put a food box in the car. When we had boxes of food from the government (school lunch) someone else would one of those boxes in the car. Often there are gallons of milk, which another person put in the car.

Sometimes Patrick will call for a team huddle, and we’d all circle around and divided up the tasks by volunteering.

Everyone of us is polite and friendly toward those picking up the food, as were the people in the cars toward us. I like the cars with kids in the back seat where we put the food. They always had smiles. This is a very important part of mutual aid. Recognizing it was the failure of the capitalist system that people needed help. Not their fault.

Another important part of mutual aid is the knowledge we are in this together. At another time we might be in need of help with food. Mutual aid is not “us” helping “them”. It is definitely not charity. It is all of us being in these things together, and working to make things better for all of us.

After the last car has been loaded with food, we sanitize and take down the tables. While most of us had been loading cars, others had been cleaning the church basement. Now was the time we got to relax together. Sharing news of what others are doing. Almost everyone is involved in multiple other justice work. Someone mentions another possible source of food.

Several times different accomplices (a term Ronnie uses that I love) have told me these Saturday mornings are the highlight of their week, as it has become for me. For the past three months I’ve only missed one Saturday morning.

Randomly passing an accomplice on the street and throwing up a fist at each other as we go our separate ways to destroy all that is rotten in this world will never fail to give me extra energy and a single tear of gratitude for what this city is creating.

Ronnie James

In his book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) Dean Spade says there are three key elements of mutual aid.

1. Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
2. Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
3. Mutual aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

Working to change the world is extremely hard because the conditions we are up against are severe. We cannot blame ourselves for having a difficult relationship to our work, even though we understand that learning to work differently is vital for our movements and for our own well-being and survival. We must be compassionate to ourselves and each other as we practice transforming our ways of working together.

We need each other badly to share what is hard about the overwhelming suffering in the world and the challenge of doing work for change in dangerous conditions. Even in the face of the pain that being awakened to contemporary conditions causes, all of our work for change can be rooted in the comfort and joy of being connected to one another, accompanying one another, and sometimes being inspired by each other. Reflecting deeply about our own orientations toward work— what it feels like to participate in groups, what ideas we are carrying around about leadership and productivity— is crucial to building a practice of working from a place of connection, inspiration, and joy. This means intentionally creating ways to practice a new relationship to work, and diving into the psychic structures underlying our wounds from living and working in brutal, coercive hiearchies. 

Dean Spade. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (Kindle Locations 1469-1481). Verso.

It is really significant that Mutual Aid is how justice groups are beginning to organize our work and invite others to work with us.

mutual aid is the new economy. mutual aid is community. it is making sure your elderly neighbor down the street has a ride to their doctor’s appointment. mutual aid is making sure the children in your neighborhood have dinner, or a warm coat for the upcoming winter. mutual aid is planting community gardens.

capitalism has violated the communities of marginalized folks. capitalism is about the value of people, property and the people who own property. those who have wealth and property control the decisions that are made. the government comes second to capitalism when it comes to power.

in the name of liberation, capitalism must be reversed and dismantled. meaning that capitalistic practices must be reprogrammed with mutual aid practices.

Des Moines Black Liberation

I’ve tried to illustrate some of these things in this diagram that I’ve been working on for over a year.

Returning to the questions Ronnie posed at the beginning of this:

So the question is now, where do we go from here? Do we continue to make incremental changes while the wealthy hoard more wealth and the climate crisis deepens, or do we do something drastic that has never been done before? Can we envision and create a world where a class war from above isn’t a reality anymore?

I’ve been asked how we can engage huge numbers of people to affect change. First, I believe the Margaret Mead quote, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing hat ever has.” I believe, and have experienced that.

And I have witnessed what Dean Spade called one of the key elements of mutual aid, “Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.”

A Google document was recently created for people to sign up for roles needed for the food giveaway each Saturday morning. That was partly done for social distancing related to the virus, and because the number of people coming to help was rapidly growing. Mutual aid projects do mobilize people. I think an analogy is going to be how the civil rights struggles of the 60’s exploded with national participation.

And as noted previously, frontline justice movements are calling for creation and participation in mutual aid groups.

The greatest driver to build networks of mutual aid groups is we have no choice. It is increasingly clear our political system has failed us. Capitalism has failed us. And most of all, environmental chaos will rapidly worsen. So many tipping points have been triggered. Air temperatures will increase rapidly, resulting in severe drought, crop failures, more ferocious wildfires, stronger storms and rising sea levels.

For those friends I mentioned at the beginning who are wondering how to become involved in mutual aid, I hope this has been helpful. I think the most important thing know is to you have to be present with those you are working with. Participatory. Mutual aid can’t be done from a distance. This is necessary because you have to learn new ways of being with others. You have to learn to abandon vertical hierarchies. You have to show your commitment that we are all in this together.

“Quakers will only be truly prophetic when they risk a great deal of their accumulated privilege and access to wealth. Prophets cannot have a stake in maintaining the status quo. Any attempt to change a system while benefiting and protecting the benefits received from the system reinforces the system. Quakers as much as anyone not only refuse to reject their white privilege, they fail to reject the benefits they receive from institutionalized racism, trying to make an unjust economy and institutionalized racism and patriarch more fair and equitable in its ability to exploit. One can not simultaneously attack racist and patriarchal institutions and benefit from them at the same time without becoming more reliant upon the benefits and further entrenching the system. Liberalism at its laziest.”    

Scott Miller
https://friendlyfirecollective.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/scott-miller-on-why-quakerism-is-not-prophetic/

The next American Revolution, at this stage in our history, is not principally about jobs or health insurance or making it possible for more people to realize the American Dream of upward mobility. It is about acknowledging that we Americans have enjoyed middle-class comforts at the expense of other peoples all over the world. It is about living the kind of lives that will not only slow down global warming but also end the galloping inequality both inside this country and between the Global North and the Global South. It is about creating a new American Dream whose goal is a higher Humanity instead of the higher standard of living dependent on Empire. It is about practicing a new, more active, global, and participatory concept of citizenship. It is about becoming the change we wish to see in the world.

The courage, commitment, and strategies required for this kind of revolution are very different from those required to storm the Winter Palace or the White House. Instead of viewing the U.S. people as masses to be mobilized in increasingly aggressive struggles for higher wages, better jobs, or guaranteed health care, we must have the courage to challenge ourselves to engage in activities that build a new and better world by improving the physical, psychological, political, and spiritual health of ourselves, our families, our communities, our cities, our world, and our planet.

The Next American Revolution, Grace Lee Boggs