Building the Revolutionary Housing Movement through Mutual Aid

A lot of folks, first of all, when they do think of mutual aid, right, what do they think of? They think of just coming out to help be their brother’s and sister’s keeper, which ain’t nothing wrong with that. That’s a good thing, we encourage people to get involved.

But in doing that, you understand me, we all got limits. There’s only so much that you can give out, because the resources are going to run out. Unless you got a well that never runs dry.

So what do you do? There’s only so much you can do because people are just going to take the resources—“thank you, thank you, thank you” – and they’re gone. People appreciate it, right, but that is not solving the problem.

Because the issue is what’s pushing the oppression to the point that we gotta give my brother sleeping bags, right, that we gotta come out here and give people survival gear—they are being hit that hard, they are losing tents, they are being swept off the street, losing everything they got. How can we just keep doing that? We can’t keep doing that.

Mutual aid, in a sense, is how you grow it—you gotta organize the brother that you’re giving that tent to, you gotta let them know what the fight is all about, what it takes to get that tent. You know, that tent didn’t come easy, it didn’t come from a well that don’t run dry.

And so we need to let people know, “You need to become involved in the fight, basically. If we gotta come out here and give you a tent, under these conditions, you already know you need to get involved in the fight.”

Because that’s what’s going to change it, because we need to stand up, come together, and fight back against what’s causing the oppression—to where this brother is even getting this tent and the sweeps are even happening—from the beginning.

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