Mutual Aid
A study guide of Dean Spade’s 2020 book ‘Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next).’
Summary, part 2
What is Mutual Aid and What Does it Look Like? (cont)
Mutual aid becomes survival work when mutual aid is done in conjunction with social movements.
Mutual Aid and Social Change
There are two big jobs of social movements:
Organize to help people survive the everyday struggles;
Mobilize large groups (hundreds to hundreds of millions) to tackle the underlying causes of these struggles.
Although all influential social movements have included mutual aid, mutual aid is often overlooked. Below are case studies that exemplify how social movements and mutual aid efforts go hand in hand. When looking at this case study, think about how the two ‘jobs’ from above come into play.
Case Study: Hong Kong Protests
In 2019, Hong Kongers were protesting China’s increasingly heavy hand over the city’s politics. Read more about the history of Hong Kong’s protests here.
Then, COVID hit. At the onset of COVID-19, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, had an 80% disapproval rating. Lam was unresponsive to COVID-19, despite Hong Kong being particularly vulnerable (a tightly packed city, history of epidemics, and proximity to Wuhan). In the absence of any helpful government action, the people stepped in. Mobilized by the protest movement, they were able to suppress the original COVID-19 wave and mitigate the resurgence.
How did Hong Kongers organize to help people survive the everyday struggles?
They created case-tracking websites;
Monitored hot spots;
Reported hospital wait times;
Warned the general population about places selling fake personal protective equipment (PPE);
Defied the government ban on masks and countered misinformation from the World Health Organization discouraging their use;
Distributed masks to vulnerable populations; and
Set up hand sanitizing stations through the city and created digital maps identifying where the stations are.
How did Hong Kongers mobilize large groups to tackle the underlying causes of these struggles?
7000 medical workers went on strike to demand PPE and that the border with China be closed;
Protesters threatened the government with stronger actions (e.g., explosives were found at the border with China after that threat);
The Hong Kong government responded by creating quarantine centers in dense neighborhoods without the permission of those living in the neighborhoods; and
Protesters responded by throwing explosives into the quarantine centers until the government moved to less densely populated areas.
Mutual Aid and Charity
Mutual aid is different than the traditional charity model most of us are familiar with. The charity model is a way of giving that stems from the premise that those who are in the position to give have more expertise than the recipients. So under this model, the recipients are in need of the expertise of the givers. In short, the rich know how the poor need the rich to spend their money.
The charity model today originates from Christian and European practices. Many times they go hand-in-hand with a moral hierarchy of wealth, which is the idea that rich people are inherently better than poor people and thus deserve to be in their socio-economic position.
As an example of the moral hierarchy of wealth, many charities will put constraints on their help: piety, curfews, cooperation, lawful immigration status, etc. Spade explains that “Rich people’s control of nonprofit funding keeps nonprofits from doing work that is threatening to the status quo, or from admitting the limits of their strategies” (p. 30). Basically, charitable solutions are about managing poor people instead of redistributing wealth.
In this model, recipients of charity may have to answer personal questions or accept jobs with exploitative wages to qualify for charity. Many feel stigmatized and degraded by the end of the assistance process. This is the antithesis of solidarity. With charities (as well as federal relief packages), there is usually an air of debt, shame, and impermanence. Where charity models stick to Band-Aid solutions, solidarity and mutual aid address the underlying issues.
The case study below is an example of a successful mutual aid project based on a solidarity model that was later co-opted and converted into a charity model.
Case Study: Black Panther Party [BPP] survival programs
Source: Robertson/Black Perspectives
In the 1960s-70s, the BPP established key survival programs (mutual aid efforts) for their communities: free breakfast programs, free ambulance programs, free medical clinics, rides for elderly people doing errands, a school with a rigorous liberation curriculum, and more. They welcomed people into their movement by providing basic needs and creating a space––free of shame or stigma––for people to share their analysis of Black poverty. The BPP got people excited to work together for change.
As they were gaining traction, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover famously wrote a memo stating that the Breakfast for Children Program is the most influential BPP activity, and is thus a threat to government efforts to destroy the BPP. In response, the police broke into the church where the program was supposed to open, and they urinated on all of the food.
After all of this, not one year later, the government co-opted the program and expanded its federal free breakfast program in 1970 based on a charity model instead of a liberation model.
There is a lot to take in from the case study above, as it touches on a variety of topics we have already covered and will cover in this guide. For now, let’s focus on the “charity model" it introduces, and how that manifests in other parts of service.
Source
Spade, D. (2020). Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) [E-reader; Apple Books]. Retrieved from https://www.versobooks.com/books/3713-mutual-aid
Note: Page numbers may be inaccurate due to e-reader formatting.