Why We Need Mutual Aid - A Review of "Mutual Aid" by Dean Spade
- Feb 23, 2024
- 9 min read
In my opinion, no one can be mobilized if they don’t understand the meaning of the word. Especially in a political, moral, and real-world context.
Like myself, so many of my friends and peers desperately want to live in a world free of the violence and harm produced and reproduced by colonial institutions which we are forced to depend on and interact with in our everyday lives. In both our private conversations and in the public sphere, we are able to meaningfully question our government and its policies, both in how they impact vulnerable communities in this moment and how they represent gross systemic elitism and white supremacy on a larger scale.
I have noticed increasing numbers of people in my age bracket contemplating how these systems, which they reject, relate to their place in society on a deeply personal level and I have seen them struggle with how to realistically detach from capitalism’s inherent injustice. But while we are morally and intellectually capable of rejecting violent institutional practices (like fast-fashion, stock trading, consumer culture, the military industry, global food trade, private air travel…) in conversation, we lack the tools and knowledge to take meaningful collective action to support our values.
While we desperately want change, there is a general feeling of powerlessness.
Enter: mutual aid.
I recently re-read one of my favourite non-fiction books, Mutual Aid by Dean Spade, and I felt the need to make it’s inspiration more widespread. One of the ideas in his book that struck me the most was that mutual aid retires the belief that we need experts and professionals to help us make change. In an attempt to not gate keep more of this wisdom, please read on for a foundational understanding about mutual aid and key notes I’ve taken from this enriching book.
At the end of my summary, you will find some tools for how to apply mutual aid to your everyday life and hopefully cultivate more optimism about your (and our) future.
What is Mutual Aid?
In short: it is action that directly meets someones survival needs because the conditions they are in are unjust and government response is inadequate.
Mutual aid work usually has 2 agendas:
1. Meet people's immediate survival needs (respond to emergencies)
+
2. Mobilize large groups for resistance (movement demanding change)
= Mutual Aid
Not in short: mutual aid is a way of building long-lasting mobilization through systems of care and solidarity. By care and solidarity, we mean cultivating connectedness with people despite differences, not because of them (especially differences that cause tension or conflict). Mutual aid work is about connection, belonging, and togetherness in nature - it is inherently antiauthoritarian and requires organizing without coercion, authority, or force. This is the meaning of free, collective action - everyone acts willingly.
The two agendas of mutual aid mentioned above are a result of either an emergency crisis, like war, genocide, or natural disasters, or people living in an “ordinary” threatening condition caused by poverty, racism, criminalization, gender violence, etc.
The threats to survival that we are seeing people experience around the world on a global scale are narrated as “ordinary” by capitalists because capitalism requires us to believe that people cause their own shortcomings due to an individual fault or mistake. This false ideology misplaces responsibility from the government, who’s job it is to protect our human rights, and allows them to avoid recognition that the system they uphold is inadequately meeting people’s survival needs.
As an example, rich people would rather believe that drug use is the cause of homelessness instead of the capitalist housing market. This is because it mystifies the causes of poverty. The truth is, any poor person knows poverty is caused by the greed of bosses, landlords, health insurance, wars and forced migration, and other systems of white supremacy.
Other conditions that threaten people’s survival, made “ordinary” by the government:
Racist criminalization
Brutal immigration enforcement
Severe wealth inequality
Endemic unemployment rates
Privatized medication
The rising cost of living
This is why, and which it is important to always remember, mutual aid work is not complimentary of government efforts and existing systems. On the contrary, it is solidarity-based stewardship, which is only possible when we shed the capitalist propaganda that human beings are naturally faulted and prone to situations of injustice.
What does Mutual Aid look like?
Alternatives to systems that push people further into exploitative situations
A middle ground between the two options that capitalism offers: either sink or swim
A radical distribution of care and resources (with the larger goal of dismantling systems that concentrate wealth to the hands of the 1 percent)
Creative intervention
Mutual aid work is never organized into one big entity. The people who are affected by a situation are always the ones who are in the best position to make decisions which will affect them, therefore mutual aid groups do not function on hierarchy but rather local networks of shared knowledge, resources, and information
“It is hard to imagine a world where we meet human needs through collective self-determination rather than coercion”
(This is because we are dependent on systems that we do not control, so it can be hard to imagine surviving any other way)
Mutual aid work has the potential of breaking down massive stigmas prevalent in communities through connection and shared experience. It does this by providing support through a political understanding of the conditions that caused someone’s crisis by confronting unjust systems instead of blaming the individual or community.
By enacting multi-issue, solidarity-based approaches to the problems within a society, mutual aid work allows for a realistic picture of the complexities of injustice. Meaning, there is never one single cause, root, or solution to a problem that will simply work for everyone impacted by a situation. With this understanding, collective action does not aim to target the majority of people impacted while leaving out the most vulnerable. It recognizes all human life is equally deserving of help, with no limitations.
Famous Examples
Activist-run abortion clinics in the 1960s and 70s
Indigeneity - mutual aid is woven into Indigenous culture, traditions, and practices to resist forced dependence on settler colonial systems
Sylvia Rivera Law Project: free legal aid to trans and gender non-conforming people
Understanding Elitism
Elites* strive to ignore the inequalities in the current systems that govern us because:
They benefit and profit from the uneven distribution of wealth
They work to maintain the status quo of exploitation and targeted violence
They control most land, work, food, housing, transportation, weapons, water, energy, and media
They use disasters as an opportunity to push people further into dependent relationships with their oppressors
*Elites are those who uphold capitalism: the belief that the rich are most capable group to govern and control society.
Though they have established an immeasurable amount of control over civil society, we must remember that elites don’t control us or our actions. We must remember and exercise our free will.
Capitalism & Colonialism are to Blame
Under capitalism, social problems resulting from exploitation and unequal distribution of resources are seen as an individual failure, not a systemic problem
Example: blaming poor people for not being able to feed their kids instead of recognizing the inadequate labour force and economic inflation as the cause of poverty
By tying many benefits, social services, and welfare programs to labour, it often leaves out the most vulnerable groups (ie. disabled people)
When we rely on capitalist-imperialist systems to provide vital necessities, we can guess that they will be designed to transfer more wealth to the population that the system was designed to benefit: rich white straight males
As a result, efforts made by colonial structures to make change will be performative and established mainly to stiffen resistance
The law, which is the main and largest system aimed to help and protect people, often makes worse the situations we're in when we seek their assistance
They cause forced dependency on hostile systems which harm us and the globe, and provide us with no alternatives if we wish to reject them
From birth, we learn the practice of hierarchy, which makes us believe we must rely on systems of dominance to establish order. Systems of hierarchy are designed to maintain injustice and concentrate wealth
Capitalism tells us to only care about about short-term gains, not long-lasting mobilization
Forced systems of wage labour, private property, and concentrated wealth cause increasing difficulty for connection and care
The irony: through technology, this is the most connected human beings have ever been in human history, yet it is the hardest time to organize entities towards common goals to change unjust conditions on a large scale
Mutual aid threatens government and authority figures by making evident the ways in which our governments are not only inadequate but also blameworthy for many injustices that prevail.
This makes mutual aid work an act of rebellion and resilience, because it must specifically work against, not for or with, the government.
Government and authority figures have routinely viewed mutual aid projects as an attack and threat on their power because it exposes the functions of the current system and shows an alternative.
The Faults of Settler Non-profits
To gain money, they must cater their organization to the moral beliefs of the founder
Using tactics palatable to elites often involves using cultural tropes of “deservingness”
Elites decide where money goes, not the people who the money will effect
It makes rich people/ organizations look generous while upholding and legitimizing systems that concentrate wealth
It legitimizes unjust systems by blaming victims for their problems and giving the government the appearance that it cares
Elites and their non-profit gatekeepers try to re-direct our action to channels that are non-disruptive, in order to not threaten the status quo and functioning of capitalism
Represents “social justice entrepreneurship” - another way of suggestion that people should invent new ways of managing marginalized groups and their problems, instead of fighting for justice
It requires vulnerable people to go through humiliating and degrading tasks or hurdles to receive benefits still too small to live off of, which will force them to accept any exploitative work
Makes it stigmatizing to receive help by requiring certain criteria be met before those suffering may receive support
All of these pieces, often overlooked, uncover how the non-profit sector largely supports conformity with colonialism and capitalism instead of challenging and resisting the systems which produce the problems they attempt the address.
The Faults of Charity
Band-aid solutions for massive social wounds which the rich and government’s need for greed creates in the first place
Rich people or the government decide the methods of support for poor people (ie. eligibility requirements to qualify for housing)
Designed to help improve the image of the elites and founders
Rich people decide who is morally deserving of help
Tax cop-out: 95% of donated money goes to the founders (over 90% of which are white men) which allows people to funnel money to friends and family without getting taxed (yet another way for the rich to get richer)
Makes vulnerable populations look like “hobbies” or “projects”
What Can You Do?
“The false separation of politics and injustice from ordinary life, the idea that activism is a type of lifestyle, is demobilizing and keeps us passive and complicit.
Mutual aid should feel like living in alignment with our hopes for the world and our passions”
It it not a prerequisite of mutual aid work that you must be willing to be overworked or stretched thin. Contrary to capitalist agendas, incorporating this work into your life does not need to be strenuous or overbearing. In fact, mutual aid begs for the opposite; it reminds us that in order to function at full capacity, we must allow ourselves to also rest.
These are some very small and low-barrier ways you can start to enact values of mutual aid in your everyday life that involve little effort:
Hierarchies reproduce injustices: practice co-stewardship in your daily life by inspiring mutual decision-making in your groups/ communities (weather in a friend group, within your family, in your relationship, when parenting...). Stop seeing decision-making in your life as an opportunity to “win” people over to get your way. Instead, value the perspectives of others by taking their desires into account.
Don't surrender to the limitations of government-led initiatives. Saving lives, jobs, homes, communities, and entire cultures may require taking bold action before getting permission from authority. Don’t wait for the bureaucratic green light before seeking out solutions to emergencies or crisis’.
Practice transparency. Dominant white culture teaches us that giving and receiving feedback is a sign of weakness and is risky. Instead, we’re taught to suppress concerns or manipulate situations to get what we want. This is unhealthy and counter-productive to mutual aid work, which requires us to engage with problems. Practice confronting your differences with people and communicating about them openly.
“People infrastructure” is the idea that to combat our currently crumbling infrastructure, we can replace it with a people-first structure, which decentralizes profit and greed. Participate in people infrastructure by focusing your energy, effort, and work on communication and connectedness (in both your inner and outer circles).
Shed the capitalist propaganda that people are naturally greedy and prone to disaster. Instead, try to notice small acts of kindness and generosity in your everyday life by observing the beauty around you when you can.
Don’t undermine ordinary caring labour.
Pay careful attention to your feelings and stop going on auto-pilot.
Be open to talking about your challenges, struggles, and questions when it comes to resisting the harmful systems that we are forced to rely on. Open communication about shared experience has the ability of channelling group power that builds resilience. It is the beginning of de-stigmatizing everyday challenges like mental illness.
Deepen your understanding about the complex causes and multifaceted issues that cause systemic harm. Commit to learning, reading, and absorbing new information.
Of course, none of these things alone will cause transformative social justice. These ideas must be coupled with real action that confronts the faults and inadequacies of our government and elites that control recourses. However, these deeply personal understandings of anti-capitalist values must be first be embodied before we can achieve successful, long-lasting activism.
"Even in the face of pain that being awakened to contemporary condition 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 one another."
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