Mutual aid (organization theory)

In organization theory, mutual aid is a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions.

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See also: Communal work

Origins

Mutual aid is arguably as ancient as human culture. People in every society in every time period have worked together to ensure their communities can survive. Mutual aid has been practiced extensively in marginalized communities.

The term "mutual aid" was popularised by the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin in his essay collection Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which argued that cooperation, not competition (as advocated by Charles Darwin) was the driving mechanism behind evolution. Kropotkin argued that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of humans and animals and has been promoted through natural selection.[1] This recognition of the widespread character and individual benefit of mutual aid stood in contrast to the theories of social Darwinism that emphasised individual competition and survival of the fittest, and against the ideas of liberals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love.

Practice

Mutual aid participants work together to figure out strategies and resources to meet each others' needs, such as food, housing, medical care, and disaster relief, while organizing themselves against the system that created the shortage in the first place.

Typically, mutual-aid groups are member-led, member-organized, and open to all to participate in. They are often structured as non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic with members controlling all resources. They are egalitarian in nature and designed to support participatory democracy, equality of member status and power shared leadership and cooperative decision-making.[2]

Mutual aid vs. charity

As defined by radical activist and writer Dean Spade and explored in his University of Chicago course "Queer and Trans Mutual Aid for Survival and Mobilization", mutual aid is distinct from charity.[3] Mutual aid projects are often critical of the charity model, and may use the motto "solidarity, not charity" to differentiate themselves from charities.

Spade makes the following distinctions between mutual aid and charity:[4][5]

  • Whereas charity differentiates those who have from those who need and puts those who have in a position of power to make decisions about how to meet others' needs, mutual aid emphasizes working cooperatively to meet each others needs. Charity is vertical; mutual aid is horizontal.
  • Whereas charity addresses symptoms of systemic issues, mutual aid analyzes the causes of those issues and builds new social relations to help society be more survivable in the long-term.
  • Whereas charity is often professionalized work performed through legislated nonprofit organizations, posing onerous bureaucratic accounting and compliance obligations, mutual aid projects avoid formalization to retain autonomy and flexibility.
  • Whereas the charity funding model relies on the donations of rich individuals and profitable corporations, requiring the charity to publicize those donations to boost the public image of donors and for donors to continue to make sufficient profit to have enough left over to donate, mutual aid utilizes the resources available in their communities, often creatively seeking free supplies.
  • Whereas charity implements criteria for who is deserving of assistance, mutual aid is offered to anyone.

Examples

In the 1800s and early 1900s, mutual aid organizations included unions, the Friendly Societies that were common throughout Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,[6] medieval craft guilds,[7] the American "fraternity societies" that existed during the Great Depression providing their members with health and life insurance and funeral benefits,[8] and the English "workers clubs" of the 1930s that also provided health insurance.[9]

Inspired by Kropotkin, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Movement wrote about mutual aid and encouraged the practice as a way of performing the works of mercy.

Food, medical care, and supplies

In 1969, the Black Panthers created the free breakfast program to serve families in Oakland. By the end of 1969, the program fed 20,000 children across 19 cities. Other survival programs included clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease.

In the 1970s, the Young Lords, an organization devoted to neighborhood empowerment and self-determination of Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and colonized people, operated multiple community programs, including free breakfast for children, the Emeterio Betances free health clinic, free dental clinic, community testing for tuberculosis and lead-poisoning, community day care center, free clothing drives, and "Garbage Offensive" to clean up garbage in Puerto Rican neighborhoods neglected by city sanitation.

Food Not Bombs was founded in 1980 by anti-nuclear activists to share free vegetarian food with hungry people and protest war, poverty, and destruction of the environment. Today Food Not Bombs continues to recover food that would otherwise be discarded and shares free food in over 1,000 cities in 65 countries.[10]

Disaster relief

Hurricane Katrina

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, mutual aid efforts began through the Common Ground Collective. Efforts included aid distribution centers, opening seven medical clinics, house-gutting, roof-tarping, building neighborhood computer centers, debris removal, a tree planting service, establishing 90+ community gardens, and legal counselling services.[10] In 2012 after Hurricane Sandy, people formerly associated with Occupy Wall Street formed Occupy Sandy to provide mutual aid to those affected by the storm. Occupy Sandy distributed clothes, blankets and food through various neighborhood hubs.[11]

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, a network of activists, has responded to flooding in Baton Rouge, flooding in West Virginia, Hurricane Matthew, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and Hurricane Maria by building health clinics, distributing medication and medical supplies, cleaning debris, gutting buildings, building infrastructure, and distributing supplies. Their aim is to support people’s survival, empowerment, and self-determination.

Earthquake in Mexico City, 2017

Due to mistrust of the Government and its corruption, a number of organizations and volunteers were prepared to meet the needs of the people of Mexico City immediately after the September 19th, 2017 earthquake. This included removing debris from collapsed buildings, searching for survivors, providing medical attention, disseminating news and information, donating and distributing food, etc.[12]

COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, local mutual aid groups and tools were established to help share resources and run errands.[13][14][15][16]

Housing

Various groups have organized eviction defense squads, which would show up en masse to defend anyone from an attempted eviction.

Technology

Riseup is a volunteer-run collective providing free secure email, email lists, a VPN service, online chat, and other online services.

Contributing to Wikipedia is a form of mutual aid.

See also

References
  1. Kropotkin, Petr (1902). "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution". The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  2. Turner, Francis J. (2005). Canadian encyclopedia of social work. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. pp. 337–8. ISBN 0889204365.
  3. Spade, Dean (1 March 2020). "Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival". Social Text. 38 (1): 131–151. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  4. "Mutual Aid Chart – Dean Spade". Retrieved 2020-05-06.
  5. "What is Mutual Aid? – Big Door Brigade". Retrieved 2020-05-06.
  6. Sonnenstuhl, Samuel B. Bacharach, Peter A. Bamberger, William J. (2001). Mutual aid and union renewal: cycles of logics of action. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University. p. 173. ISBN 080148734X.
  7. Kropotkin, Peter (2008). Mutual aid: a factor of evolution. [Charleston, SC]: Forgotten Books. p. 117. ISBN 160680071X.
  8. Beito, David T. (2000). From mutual aid to the welfare state: fraternal societies and social services, 1890 – 1967. Chapel Hill [u.a.]: Univ. of North Carolina Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 0807848417.
  9. Borsay, edited by Anne; Shapely, Peter (2007). Medicine, charity and mutual aid: the consumption of health and welfare in Britain, c. 1550–1950 ; [5th international conference of the European Association of Urban Historians, which was held in Berlin in summer 2000] ([Online-Ausg.] ed.). Aldershot [u.a.]: Ashgate. pp. 7–8. ISBN 0754651487.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  10. "FOODNOTBOMBS.NET". foodnotbombs.net. Retrieved 2020-05-07.
  11. Feuer, Alan (2012-11-09). "Occupy Sandy: A Movement Moves to Relief". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-05-06.
  12. Campoy, Ana. "Photos: Mexicans show the world how to work together when an earthquake hits". Quartz. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  13. "'The way we get through this is together': mutual aid under coronavirus | Rebecca Solnit". the Guardian. 2020-05-14. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  14. "COVID-19 Mutual Aid UK". Mutual Aid UK. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  15. "Gig workers have created a tool to offer mutual aid during COVID-19 pandemic". TechCrunch. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
  16. "COVID-19 Mutual Aid". It's Going Down. Retrieved 2020-05-06.

Further reading
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