Mutual Aid:

What It Is and Why Your Anti-Racism Group Needs to Do It

This isn't charity. Charity is a transaction. It keeps power with the giver. It often comes with strings, judgment, or a pat on the back. It asks, "What's wrong with you that you need my help?" (Katz, 2014)

Mutual aid is solidarity. It's a collective action where people pool resources to meet each other's needs. They aren't a charity case. They are a community member that has needs that aren't being met. It flattens power. It says, "The system is failing us, so we will take care of each other." It asks, "What do we need to survive and fight back?" (Spade, 2020)

Why this is your business as European Americans working against white supremacy:

White supremacy isn't just hateful ideas. It's a system built on hoarding resources (land, money, food, safety, power) for a select few. It creates dependence and calls it "help." It isolates people and calls it "individual responsibility." (Gilmore, 2007)

Your job is to help dismantle that system. Funding education is one step. Mutual aid is the next, concrete step. It's where you stop just talking about redistribution and start doing it.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION

Here’s the blunt reason it matters:

When people are in survival mode (stressed about food, rent, medical bills) they cannot focus on bigger fights. They are forced to make choices that serve immediate needs, not long-term change. They might work a job that harms their community because it pays the bills. They might not have the time to organize. (Mullaly, 2010)

Mutual aid gets people out of pure survival mode. It creates a base of material security. You give someone a week of groceries through a community fridge, you've just bought them time. Time they can use to think, plan, organize their own community, and fight the systems that put them in need in the first place. (Dean, 2019)

It builds real, tangible power. Instead of waiting for politicians or non-profits to fix things, people fix it themselves. They control the resources. They decide the priorities. This is community self-determination, which is the exact opposite of what white supremacy wants. (Kaba, 2021)

How to start, without the bullshit:

Listen, don't lead. Your group has resources. Do not parachute into a community with your "great idea." Find the existing mutual aid networks, especially those led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Ask: "What do you need? How can our resources support the work you are already doing?" Your role is to follow, fund, and provide labor. (INCITE!, 2017) Meaning you don't just share your own needs, but you share the needs of others

Start practical and small. Don't make a big plan. Do one thing.

Is there a community fridge you can stock?

Can you form a driver pool for grocery runs or clinic rides?

Can you set up a fund to help with sudden rent or utility crises?

This isn't glamorous. It's logistics. It's work. (Spade, 2020)

Build relationships, not resumes. This is about trust, not your group's portfolio. Show up consistently. Do the boring work. Take direction. This proves you're in it for the long haul, not for a social justice badge. (Brown, 2017)

Focus on the "MUTUAL." This isn't you saving anyone. The "mutual" means recognizing that your own liberation as European Americans is tied up with everyone else's. A system that hoards resources and destroys safety nets hurts everyone, even those it temporarily privileges. You are building a new way of being together, right now. (Dean, 2019)

Bottom line: Mutual aid is the material backbone of liberation. It's not an optional side project. It is THE WORK. It moves money and resources directly to where they're needed, builds community power, and creates the physical space for people to breathe, think, and fight. (Kaba, 2021; Spade, 2020)

So stop just funding the theory. Start practicing the action.

References

Brown, A. M. (2017). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press.

Dean, J. (2019). Mutual Aid: The Other Economy. Verso (originally 2015 essay; see also Dean's 2019 expanded talk).

Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of California Press.

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (Ed.). (2017). The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Duke University Press.

Kaba, M. (2021). We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Haymarket Books.

Katz, S. (2014). Charity and mutual aid. The Journal of Progressive Human Services, 25(2), 85–87.

Mullaly, B. (2010). Challenging Oppression and Confronting Privilege (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Spade, D. (2020). Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). Verso.