Mutual Aid

A high level briefing

Hear y’all, hear y’all!

“Don’t compete! — competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!” That is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. “Therefore combine — practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral.” That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position in their respective classes have done. That is also what man — the most primitive man — has been doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we stand now, as we shall see in the subsequent chapters devoted to mutual aid in human societies. - Peter Kropotkin

On Our Minds

Good morning lovely townies, Brian Butcher back at the helm this week and we are here today to brief all of you dear readers about the concept and practices of mutual aid, both the practice as it was originally conceived and the terms cooption by the nonprofit industrial complex in the past decade. On September 12th I co-hosted our community's first ever mutual aid fair. We served close to 20 individuals with various resources, from linkages to housing, food and supplies, to birth control and naloxone. While these sorts of resource fairs do not represent the ideal or purist ethos of the concept of mutual aid, our network of organizations (MOCHA, WV Housing Justice, Project Rainbow etc.) is actively working towards that ideal through this monthly formation. We had 16 organizations offering their resources throughout the two hours and we will continue to host this service for folks every second Tuesday. With this material real-world action in mind let's dig into the history, concepts, and outcomes of mutual aid.

THE HISTORY

Mutual aid was first coined as a term by Peter Kropotkin, an anarchist scholar and naturalist who quite literally wrote the book on the subject, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. In it, he seeks to expand on Darwin’s understanding of the natural world detailing his scientific observations of cooperation in nature not as a direct refutation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection but as a compliment to it. Kropotkin lays out how the species of the world around us work in constant cooperation to share resources as a means of continuing their existence and he extrapolates those observations to make connections to the social, political, and economic realms in which humans interact. Through those observations, he proposed a framework for societal relations that he called Mutual Aid which he concluded were naturally occurring relations. Essentially what Kropotkin was saying is that we all thrive through cooperation and that social institutions should adopt cooperative practices to progress society. Rather than charity or base altruism mutual aid is a practice that expects participants to be in community with one another providing for each other within the means that they can do so, lending each one’s particular talents and privilege to one another to accomplish shared goals. The concept is not about standing up institutions to thwart the worst excesses of capitalism it is meant as a lever to create societal change by allowing participants to imagine a world in which we do not base our entire society on competition but on cooperation and mutual benefit.

The Black Panther party engaged in multiple mutual aid efforts and those programs represent likely the most effective implementation of the concept. From free breakfast to a free healthcare program these efforts were built by the black community for the black community in cities across the nation including a national screening program for sickle cell anemia. As Huey P. Newton put it: “We recognized that in order to bring the people to the level of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would be necessary to serve their interests in survival by developing programs which would help them to meet their daily needs,” and in this way, the Panthers made the case that we were to show folks a better world through the institutional interaction that people have with our organizations by modeling what transformational cooperation might look like. This also laid the framework for the Panthers to allow the most marginalized folks in disadvantaged communities to have the resources they needed to engage politically. I can say from experience that it is much easier to have someone engaged in movements if they are not wondering where their next meal is coming from.

 THE CONCEPT AND THE CO OPTION

Mutual aid is meant to be a way of providing resources to individuals outside of traditional nonprofit and other charity structures that involve those that are affected and build community around that resource provision. This practice in its best form shows individuals how we can structure society as a whole and rejects the notion that monolithic institutions are needed to provide the safety net for our most vulnerable that capitalism cannot provide. Grassroots mutual aid groups sprung up around the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and since then nonprofits have coopted much of the anarchist language around the practice while adopting very little to none of the principles of mutual aid into their work. While it is heartening that the widespread use of this language to describe what amounts to charity efforts has opened many to the concepts of mutual aid, it is also unfortunate that many involved in movement politics do not have any conception of the core tenants of the practice or how it is meant to create political power. Often, what is called mutual aid in nonprofit circles ends up being resource provision that is very similar to the methods in which those resources were always provided, there is no reciprocity or community building built into the ethos of those programs. Grant-funded programs often require means testing and other conditions for receiving aid which is completely antithetical to the core tenants of mutual aid which, by design, requires nothing of the participants to receive resources other than a social expectation of reciprocity. 

The Mutual Aid Fair I mentioned earlier that I helped to put on certainly does not, at this time, embody the ethos of true mutual aid nor does it break from the cooption that nonprofits engage in. While it is true that none of the participants must meet any conditions to receive resources at these fairs it is not yet in a place in which participants can engage in reciprocity. The nature of these sorts of formations does lead to that behavior happening. We had an individual who was taking out the trash and folks were asking him questions about the venue until he explained that he was not working there, he was a participant who saw something needed to be done and felt compelled to help. The goal for these fairs is to build folks' capacity and buy-in for these programs so that they might be able to provide reciprocity.

In our community

I will have to once again miss a council meeting due to my big boy job but on Tuesday at 7 pm there will be a regular council meeting with the primary point of discussion on the MUB improvements and rate increases for the Cheat Lake Service District.

MOCHA is having regular canvassing so get involved if you are unhappy about the recent passage of the camping ban, check out the dates and times on all their socials.

Manifold

Kaos is a Netflix original which I can best describe as a modern-day setting for the Greek myths by way of Game of Thrones. It depicts the Greek gods faithfully to their source material and as such they are a psychotic power-hungry bunch that treats humankind as their playthings. The show has a lot to say about the corruption of power and the inherent violence of our society. Zeus is depicted smartly by Jeff Goldblum as a sort of paranoid fascist dictator but rather than ruling a country he lords over all of humanity and the gods themselves with a level of paranoia and cruelty that is an obvious allegory for fascist dictators. The show plays with the ancient Greek myths in modern ways that are thought-provoking with commentary about extreme politics, the complexity of human relationships, the nature of one’s identity, and gender identity. Beyond Goldblum’s excellent performance, the cast delivers incredibly across roles.

I recently discovered the incredible performance of Absolutely by Dijon on YouTube. There has been very little that I have listened to in the past 4 years since I stopped playing music regularly which has inspired me to want to pick my bass up again, but this set of performances has sparked that fire in me. The performances captured on film were meant to capture the experience the musicians had recording Dijon’s album. It is a lightning in a bottle encapsulation of what it is like when you are “feeling” music with a group of people. It at once brought me to the days of sitting around a campfire with a bunch of other kids who weren’t sure where they were going to sleep tomorrow, knowing that for whatever reason the moment we were sharing was important, that our belting into the night air was what our spirit was calling for. The purity of the love and anguish you can feel in that room is what making art is all about and it is one of those performances that you must watch for its genius and raw delivery of emotion.

That’s all folks, hopefully I will see you all soon.