Mutual aid helps people survive disasters of all kinds, mobilizes and politicizes new people, and builds the new systems and ways of being together t… - Dean Spade

Thin notions of volunteerism are about “feeling good” by “giving back.” I would argue that we need to feel more of the feelings that are labeled negative, like grief, sadness, anger, rage, and despair. ... Many of us feel so overwhelmed that we can’t imagine how we would begin to do anything effective. It can feel like the safest bet is to not even try. Or it can feel like we should go with a prescribed recipe for participating in charity or social services—volunteering at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, or attending one march or rally a year. Often these are efforts to quell the guilt and concern that plague us, rather than providing real opportunities for connection where we feel like we were part of meaningful change.

We must imagine and build ways of eating, communicating, sheltering, moving, healing, and caring for each other that are not profit-centered, hierarchical, and destructive to our planet. We must practice co-governing, creating participatory, consent-based ways of cooperating that are not based in militarism.

Mutual aid work plays an immediate role in helping us get through crises, but it also has the potential to build the skills and capacities we need for an entirely new way of living at a moment when we must transform our society or face intensive, uneven suffering followed by species extinction. As we deliver groceries, participate in meetings, sew masks, write letters to prisoners, apply bandages, facilitate relationship skills classes, learn how to protect our work from surveillance, plant gardens, and change diapers, we are strengthening our ability to outnumber the police and military, protect our communities, and build systems that make sure everyone can have food, housing, medicine, dignity, connection, belonging, and creativity in their lives. That is the world we are fighting for. That is the world we can win.