Pick Each Other Up

Reciprocity builds power, a power that offsets our despair. Collective self-determination wields that power through approaches and actions that tell each other: we’re what we’ve got, and we got this.

As part of a larger intervention in the field to loosen the supposed tension between providing services and organizing, there is excitement for hybrid dissenting and assenting actions.

Some organizers are skeptical of mutual aid-style actions because they claim the approach lacks a robust power analysis or “real” organizing. And it’s true that we don’t want to just always care for each other; we do want the state to change. These projects, first and foremost, demonstrate that our shared care and abundance are a “fuck you” to the state’s austerity and can serve as an organizing engine that propels our neighbors to put pressure on the state. The goal of targeting each other is to create what philosopher Olúfémi O. Táíwò calls collaborative security. “You can protect yourself by a) making it dangerous for others or b) harmonizing with the security of others. We can either protect our interests from other people, or protect our interests with other people’s interests.” Mutual aid projects that may seem small are proof of concept for a profoundly different way of being together; proof of concept for solidarity.

For sources and contextual details, read the full report