Introduction
This series gathers the voices of community organizers who are tending grassroots alternatives to systems of oppression. Weaving together over 60 voices and profiling 15 groups across North America, the series explores the radical values, infrastructure, healing ways and logistics of mutual aid work.
The Elements of Mutual Aid is a four-part series. Each hour-long chapter represents a different theme, which are depicted through the four natural elements:
- Chapter 1: Fire explores the history and values of liberatory mutual aid
- Chapter 2: Earth focuses on building and networking communal infrastructure
- Chapter 3: Water discusses healing from oppression and healing our communities
- Chapter 4: Air delves into the logistics of non-hierarchical organizing
This series was made to be a tool for community learning and reflective, strategy-building conversations. We have to figure out how to transform our mutual aid efforts into deeply relational, strategic, and revolutionary practices, and we have to take time to figure out how do to that together. Source
Organizers are welcome to host a screening of the series. Each video is accompanied by a discussion guide zine which includes questions, activities, facilitation tips and resources to support conversations.
If we wanna be able to figure out another world and be in it, we’re going to have to move toward the mutual aid, cooperative, solidarity economies. And we’ve got to have the courage to do it. We’ve got to have the sense of agency to do it. And we’ve got to work with other people, which is the whole point of all this is about working with other people, right? We can’t do it alone. – Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard – Source, pg 12
What is Mutual Aid?
“Mutual aid: A way of caring for each other where everyone gives what they have and takes what they need. A way of meeting our collective needs where the helpers and helped aren’t separate.” – Source, pg. 11
Watch Videos
Chapter 1: Fire
Mutual aid is the spark of our humanity that we have to defend while those in power try to stomp it out. This chapter sets the foundation: What is mutual aid, how is it different from charity, and why is it at odds with the ruling class?
Meet supply distros in Detroit and Atlanta alongside unhoused families in Los Angeles reclaiming homes from the State.
Chapter 2: Earth
This chapter takes a look at how to grow projects with strong, interconnected roots that can support communities. How can local needs and capacity inform our projects, how we can network projects over large areas, and how we can build infrastructure that outlasts crisis points?
Meet a harm reduction project in Tucson, an international decentralized disaster response network, and a web of mutual aid centers in Puerto Rico.
Chapter 3: Water
Colonization and capitalism are dams holding us back from each other. This chapter is all about breaking them down so we can let mutual aid flow between us. We discuss creating safer spaces, handling crisis without police, and navigating power dynamics, burnout, and conflict.
Meet a self-defense project for trans femmes of color in Oakland, a group building crisis response skills in Detroit, and a community project combating patriarchy in Los Angeles.
Chapter 4: Air
Like the wind, our conditions are always shifting. The spirit of Air teaches us to speak, listen, strategize, and change with the seasons. This chapter explores decision-making, managing resources without hoarding them, weighing the pros and cons of formality and scale, and making our projects accessible.
Meet neighborhood disaster relief organizations in Houston, a migrant solidarity network in DC, and a refugee support collective in Tijuana.
Access Resources
Explore Further
- Mutual Aid Isn’t a Handout: It’s a Framework for Resistance
- Mutual Aid: An Introduction
- The Communes of Rojava: A Model In Societal Self Direction
- People Without Faces (documentary about Zapatistas, Russia-Mexico, 2016)
- 5 Defensive Strategies Against Fragmentation: A Zine Series from AORTA Worker-Owned Cooperative
- Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Workshop Facilitation Guide
- Keeping Each Other Safe When Virtually Organizing Mutual Aid
- Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next), Dean Spade
- Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next): Study Guide, Radical in Progress
- How to Make your Community Space into a Hub for Local Resilience and Mutual Aid
- Community Weaving Handbook
