When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in early 2020, millions of Americans across the country were suddenly out of work and unable to afford food, rent, and other basic needs — and few sources of help existed. Out of that necessity, hundreds of groups sprang into action to meet those needs for their community members directly. Many of these were progressive base-building organizations that were adopting mutual aid as a practice for the first time or scaling up existing efforts that integrated mutual aid and power-building.
Since 2020, climate-related disasters have mounted and newly emboldened authoritarianism threatens even the shredded social safety net we have. This ups the ante for the work Future Currents examines in its new report, Building Power Through Mutual Aid: Lessons From the Field. The report studies the experiments of the early 2020s, looking at whether and how organizations can use mutual aid to strengthen ties, engage new people, and build power. It encourages us to interrogate, and perhaps let go, the idea that building power and collective care are mutually exclusive.
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