Start a Mutual Aid Group in your community
As we are facing this public health crisis, systemic injustices that are set up to serve just the elite are predictably failing to respond to this crisis in many ways. While so much messaging is around isolating and caring for ourselves, in the face of this, we must hold up the first and seventh UU principles: The inherent worth and dignity of every person, and respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. That is, to get through this, we must come together to support each other.
UU Mass Action is inviting and encouraging our UU members and congregations to use a mutual aid framework to support each other through this crisis. Thousands of mutual aid networks are organizing across the country and world, hyperlocal efforts to connect people’s needs to resources (and of course many people have both needs and resources!).
We want to do our part to expand these networks to every community within Massachusetts. We encourage you to find out and tap into your local existing mutual aid group and plug your congregation in, and if it doesn’t yet exist, we invite you to initiate one. Please email Tali Smookler at tsmookler@uumassaction.org if you would like support in getting started or, if you are already engaged in this effort in your community, so we can be resources for each other. Below are some key resources to help you.
How to Replicate - clear instructions for starting a group. Use this for practically getting started.
Boston + MA COVID19 Resources - look at the “mutual aid” list for groups that already exist. This also has many other great resources for thinking about this crisis through a public health lens.
Collective Care is our Best Weapon - a national resource re: mutual aid, includes list of some MA groups already. This is long, only look through if you want more broad resources.
As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps around the world, statist and capitalist structures predictably continue to fail us in many ways. Underlying that failure is the stress on individual responses: stockpile, isolate, and care for yourself.
While “social” aka “physical” distancing is a necessary tool to help stop the spread of this virus, it will only be effective if it’s grounded in an ethics and practice of social solidarity and collective care. COVID-19 clearly demonstrates that only by deeply looking out for each other—acting as if everyone’s life has inherent worth and is at risk; as if the health of one is the health of all—will we actually be able to lessen the amount of sickness and death, not to mention the emotional weight on us all. Unless everyone cooperates, the virus exponentially spreads.
Such cooperation has to be about building on—rather than fearing—the fact that we’re all interconnected and impacted by COVID-19; that we’re all in this together. Our cooperation is about making sure everyone can take time off work, have a home and enough food, stay hydrated and wash their hands, not feel alone or abandoned, receive health and other care, and the list goes on. It’s what geographer Peter Kropotkin long called “mutual aid” in his book by the same title—a phenomenon that he saw repeated time and time again in his studies of various species, ecosystems, and societies: mutual aid allowed them to not only survive but also thrive! Or as Kropotkin put it, “Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence.”
In the face of these dramatic and sudden changes brought about by Coronavirus (and the federal government's response to it), mutual aid is needed now more than ever. It's been incredibly encouraging to see folks like you stepping up to support members of your community.
In just the past few days, thousands of mutual aid projects have been cropping up nationally and globally and we want to do our part to expand these networks to every community within Massachusetts. Do you know of any mutual aid networks in your area? If not, we are hoping to support our members in connecting and/or creating to these networks. Would you be able to see if there are networks already in your area, and if not would you be interested in helping to initiate those conversations?
We would provide you with the forms and sheets for laying out needs and offerings. You would:
get the word out about the network by sharing via email, social media, and neighborhood online groups.
work to pair offers with needs.
respond to community member inquiries.
You would be supported by a team of organizers comprised of Vignesh Ramachandran, and Tali Smookler. *(or however individuals want to alter this as they send it out)*
Here are some useful reflections from 350.org and Mutual Aid Network in Medford and Somerville (MAMAS):
Crises times can make us feel like each person has to look out only for themselves -- in reality, we know we have better chances if we stick together and support one another. Climate breakdown all but ensures there will be more disasters in the months and years ahead and building these systems of community resilience now will support us during other catastrophes down the road. Having a connected community will help us through it all.
If you aren't able to bottom-line a new mutual aid network in your community at this time, are there other ways that you would like to get involved?