Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working
to change the world.
Around the globe,
people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the
Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and
storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing,
brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe
wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to--or actively
engineer--each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and
innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.
Survival work, when
done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is
called mutual aid.
This book is about
mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do
it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how
mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social
justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to
work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process,
how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
Writing for those
new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements
for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a
radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation,
compassionate activism, and solidarity.