Collectivity, Community, Mutual Aid

In crisis, people have to survive and help each other live
Dean Spade

Panelists

Topics

Collectivity, Community, and Mutual Aid

In a decade of the Black Lives Matter movement, grassroots organizing, and the COVID pandemic, many people have begun to realize (again) the power of mutual aid, collectivity, and community care in ‘surviving crises and organizing resistance.’ This discussion centers on the long and unfolding traditions of trans/queer action and reflects on how collective liberation organizes against the conditions that constitute structures of violence and provides possibilities for radical social transformation, love, joy, and laughter.

Whatever we can imagine here is possible - the endless catastrophe that we are constantly living in is not inevitable
Eric Stanley

Resources

Dean Spade and his book "Mutual Aid"

"Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next)" by Dean Spade

Dean Spade's book provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid including what it looks like in practice, concrete tools for organizing and its importance as part of larger social movements. [4:14] Read More

"Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable" by Eric A. Stanley

Eric A. Stanley's book shows the contradiction between the advances in LGBTQI+ rights and the accompanmient of rising attacks against trans,queer and/or gender-nonconforming people of color reveals the central role of racialized and gendered violence in the United States.[4:30]  Read More

Concept art for the documentary "Pinkwashing Exposed"

"Pinkwashing Exposed" Documentary

This documentary directed by Dean Spade focuses on the strategy of "pinkwashing" used when countries engaged in human rights violations promote  LGBTQI+ rights in order to divert attention away from the violence they are perpetuating in their communities and other countries. [4:11] Read More

Vicky Osterweil and her book "In Defense of Looting"

"In Defense of Looting" by Vicky Osterweil

Vicky Osterweil argues in this book that rioting and looting can be powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy. Dean Spade offers a mutual aid tactic Osterweil describes which provided direct action to thousands of people to meet their immediate survival need of housing during the Great Depression. [8:29] Read More

Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology

This collection includes thirty pieces in the form of poems, short essays, position papers, letters and personal reflections to identify the links between gender, militarism, reproductive and economic violence, prisons and policing, colonialism and war. Dean Spade references this as a resource to understand the relation of gender and sexuality to capitalism, white supremacy and other systems of harm. [54:27] Read More

It Did Happen Here Podcast

It Did Happen Here is an independently produced podcast about anti-fascist struggles and the fight against Neo-nazi organizing and violence in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 90s. Dean Spade provides this as a tool to understanding the impacts of fascism in the United States. [55:37] Read More

Mutual Aid Examples in the Community

Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries demonstration

STAR House

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson founded  Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) House in 1970 as a collective living space to respond to their community's need for housing. This legacy of mutual aid grounded in a trans politic demonstrates how trans and queer people have built networks of care by necessity. Eric Stanley emphasizes in their work the continued need for such projects as trans and queer people remain hyper-represented in houselessness, especially in the Bay Area. [17:05]  Learn More

Rad Mission Neighbors Logo

Rad Mission Neighbors

Rad Mission Neighbors was formed in 2018 as a response to violent police-based gentrification in the Mission District of San Francisco. Eric Stanley refers to their work to show how "small-scale" organizing can build to produce different conditions both individually and collectively. [40:06] Learn More

Thorn self defense art print

THORN Self Defense

THORN is a self-defense network based in Chicago that provides Black and Brown trans folks with free tools in response to ongoing violence against Chicago's Black trans community. Dean Spade considers this mutual aid project as an example of how people are addressing the material needs of people experiencing harm. [42:13] Learn More

Trans Asylum Seeker Support Network (TASSN)

The Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network is a volunteer-run mutual aid group that connects transgender and queer asylum seekers with guaranteed housing for at least five years. Dean Spade explains how they build connective support through their commitment to providing people with substantial resources. [42:56] Learn More

Food Not Bombs

Food Not Bombs inspires the public to participate in changing society by focusing resources on solving problems like hunger, houselessness, and poverty while seeking an end to war and the destruction of the environment. Eric Stanley uses this history to provide insight into how a local mutual aid project can reach a global scale. [14:38] Learn More

Key Takeaways

Centering Trans and Queer Organizing for Collective Liberation

  • Trans and Queer communities have always created mutual aid networks.Dean Spade describes mutual aid as “the part of movement work where we’re directly supporting people with an immediate survival need”. It is important to understand the legacies of trans and queer communities that have historically engaged in building mutual aid networks out of necessity. The need for shelter and food continue to be issues that disproportionately impact low-income trans and queer communities of color. Networks of care, such as collective living situations, have been successful in previous mutual aid projects and can be useful as future models. [17:05]
  • Dismantle the structures of heteronormativity through models of care. A structural analysis of heteronormativity and gender normativity are vital to understand systems of racialized and gendered violence. Centering transness and queerness challenges how state institutions perpetuate harm rather than provide support to vulnerable communities experiencing crises. Mutual aid works to dismantle systems of oppression and directly addresses the immediate needs of people to meet their survival needs through local, collective mobilization that responds to immediate suffering. [16:40]
  • Capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy are intertwined systems of violence that create harm and inaccessibility. A trans and queer politic exposes the complexities of how they function together and centralizes who is made vulnerable by these systems. This politic reorients understandings of gender and questions why other systems, including prisons, organize themselves around gender norms. [20:18]
  • Culture war narratives make trans and queer people more vulnerable. These narratives create false understandings that legislation can protect communities from harm. Violence against trans and queer communities happens across the country whether or not it is legal through anti-trans legislation. Focusing on conservative versus liberal politics distracts people from addressing where harm comes from, who it is affects and how it is occurs. Mutual aid work is grounded in taking pragmatic action and questions on how to mobilize strategically around policies that impact people within their local communities. [23:54]
  • Neoliberalism creates an illusion of protection for trans and queer communities. Rather than working to change the conditions that create harm, neoliberal strategies seek to legitimize violent institutions, such as police and prisons. Spade uses the example of Seattle where some police cars have rainbows on them to present themselves as LGBTQ+ friendly and erase any notions that they inflict harm onto trans and queer communities. [21:47]
  • Imaginary of the "trans child" intersection with heteronormativity: In some conservative U.S. states, anti-trans legislation is presented as mainly affecting children from white and upper- or middle-class backgrounds with supportive parents. This strategy is a neoliberal politic that minimizes suffering and violence to wealthier trans and queer communities in conservative states and excludes trans and queer people who might also be low-income, unhoused, in the family policing system or disabled. [23:33]

Material Anti-Racism in Mutual Aid

  • Mutual Aid, Not Charity: Charity assumes that a person in crisis is at fault for their circumstances and seeks to provide temporary relief without addressing the underlying structures that contributed to the crisis. Conversely, mutual aid questions the systemic causes that are producing a crisis and builds a collective-based action to address them. Social movements consist of ordinary people engaging in on-the-ground and mutual aid work in response to oppressive systems. [11:06]
  • Systems are the problem, not the people.  Resistance movements involve attacking harmful systems that you disagree with and helping one another survive conditions that those systems produce. In movement work, mutual aid involves providing direct support to people who have immediate survival needs, such as housing or food, which are the result of systemic problems affecting many people, leading to individual crises. [9:25]
  • Mobilize locally.Mutual aid projects should be integrated instead of operating independently from other movement work, even if individuals are specializing in one specific area. To achieve this type of integration, build networks of people who coordinate intentionally and tie those networks to other social movement strategies aimed to disrupt the same systems of violence. [12:00]
  • Political education is essential. Mutual aid is always carried out through a politicizing lens, integrating systemic conditions resulting in people’s basic needs not met, and taking collective direct action to provide resources to individuals in need of support. [14:54]

Organizing Across Divisive Lines

  • Move away from symbolic statements and surface reforms. While these interventions appear to address white supremacy, they fail to provide substantial support to individuals or communities. Instead, focus on people’s living conditions and ask what it would take to effectively dismantle the racism people experience in their daily lives. [29:27]
  • Organize autonomous from institutions. Institutional support is inadequate because of its reliance on carceral logics. Universities can however, be a place to organize and provide mutual aid. Since campus systems are often minimal, there are opportunities to create peer support networks that provide direct support to individuals. By building each other’s survivability, anti-racist organizing is made possible and facilitates collaborative relationships. [32:33]
  • Relying on social media will not suffice.  Social media can be useful to find out about and connect to small, local mutual aid projects but it can be inaccessible if it is the only means of organizing. Further, it can lead to demobilization by individualizing the work rather than promoting collective, material action. Social media platforms are subject to bans and censorship, making them an unreliable medium for organizing. [45:56]
  • Utilize dual approaches to organize. Issues with social media are less about the technology itself and more about the apparatus of its ownership and deployment. The focus should be on how to use social media platforms strategically. A dual approach that integrates new technologies with older ones, such as posters and wheat pasting, can offer a more accessible structure of mutual aid work. [51:15]
  • There are always opportunities to engage in mutual aid work. There are always opportunities to engage in mutual aid work, regardless of where we are. Oppressive systems we want to fight against are present everywhere. Organizing to support people with mental health, food insecurity, housing instability, etc. is useful anywhere. At its core, mutual aid seeks to change material conditions of all scales. [30:54]

Sustainability in Mutual Aid Work

  • Take time for solitude. Intentionally set aside time to digest your experiences and decompress your thoughts. This practice allows us to develop our skills to manage our emotions, which in turn helps us support others dealing with complex feelings.[48:46]
  • Collective support systems. Connecting to other people in resistance movements generates creativity, allows us to mourn with others, feel supported and build meaningful relationships. [1:09:04]
  • Tune into complex emotions. Tearing down systems of oppression and building something new requires using various tools and feelings including love, hate, pain and rage. Channeling these emotions into strategies and tactics that acknowledge the realities and conditions underlying them can produce creative solutions. [1:05:33]