Mutual Aid

Building Solidarity During This Crisis

paperback, 128 pages

Published Oct. 27, 2020 by Verso.

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5 stars (1 review)

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 …

1 edition

Succinct, instructive, and empowering

5 stars

As I've struggled as a mutual aid organizer, I will sometimes wonder if I've done any good. But this book is the kind of manual and manifesto that will keep the fire alive while providing guidance to grow and refine the social movements this time of crises demands.