In 2020, as the world got slammed by the impacts of the Pandemic, the once-fringe concept of Mutual Aid rapidly went mainstream (or at least a version of it), when people stepped up to support their neighbors and communities as many societal life-sustaining systems were disrupted.
On the positive side of things, prosocial activities like sharing food in public, which had been criminalized in many places, suddenly became normalized. Organizing neighborhoods and blocks became routine. And inequalities which had long been hard to see just under the surface became visible.
But it was not all roses. Mutual aid has a deep political history of challenging the status quo that was often neglected or purposely stripped away. And as the Pandemic transitioned to being endemic, many of the pre-covid policies that criminalized Mutual Aid, returned, with some being much worse.
In our recent feature story, the noted mutual aid practitioner and educator, Dean Spade, wrote about how the Georgia state Attorney General, Chris Carr, is currently arguing that participation in mutual aid projects and practicing solidarity as part of the organizing happening to Stop Cop City constitutes a criminal act to further a criminal conspiracy.
Dean illustrates how this represents a brazen assault on social justice organizers reminiscent of the FBI’s surveillance and attacks on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1960s and 70s.
And it’s not just in Georgia, all over the US, reactionary policies are criminalizing reproductive justice, climate protests, and more.
Today on the show, we’ve brought on Stephanie Rearick, a founder, and Director of the Madison Mutual Aid Network Cooperative and Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks, or HUMANS for short, which is a new type of networked cooperative ‘creating means for everyone to discover and succeed in work they want to do, with the support of their community.’
In this conversation, Stephanie talks about how mutual aid has changed since the pandemic began, how to create networks of Care that can actually support members of our communities long term, the new tech stack that they’re creating to support mutual aid work to scale, and what it means to live a POSHtarity Lifestyle.
Resources:
- Mutual Aid Network
- Humans at Home
- Call for a Ceasefire in Gaza
- Jewish Voice for Peace Call for Ceasefire in Gaza
- Mutual Aid and the Movement to Stop Cop City
Episode credits:
- Hosted, presented, and co-produced by Tom Llewellyn
- Edited by Robert Raymond
- Theme Music by Cultivate Beats
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The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable and Robert Raymond exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.
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