Reading Questions for Mutual Aid Class

Reading Questions Week 2

Emily Hobson, Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Lesbian and Gay Left (University of California Press: 2016), Chapter 5, pp. 120-154.

Screening and discussion in class:

“¡Pa’lante Siempre Pa’lante!” (1996)

“Battle of Chile, Part 3: Popular Power” (1979)  (watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBMOPQMui8Q)

In-class discussion:

Discussion Questions for ¡Palante, Siempre Palante!

• After reading excerpts from the YLP newsletter and speeches from YLP leaders, what did seeing video of the Party’s actions add to your questions or understanding of their work?
• Did it change anything about how you understand their mutual aid tactics, or how mutual aid fits into their broader strategy?
• What questions did the movie raise for you?
• Are there any noteworthy differences about that time period that are relevant to thinking about how and why that kind of organizing was happening then, versus what you see happening around you now?

Discussion Questions for Battle of Chile Episode 3

The video excerpt we watched shows how, in the face of US embargo, right wing violence, and right wing organizing aimed at creating shortage of transportation and basic goods, leftist workers and peasants engaged in widespread organizing to grow and distribute food, keep factories producing, and transport people and goods. 

• What observations can we make, based on this video, about widespread participation in building “people’s” infrastructure? 
• How is the way that people were running things (transportation, workplaces, food distribution, etc) during the moment we see portrayed in the video different than the way things run in our day-to-day lives in Chicago? What do you think it felt like to do what they were doing and how is that different than what it feels like to do our lives the way we are doing them?
• Why were people motivated to get involved in such widespread volunteer efforts? 
• Are there other things you know about this period in Chile that help you reflect on what is shown in the video? Share them with your group.
• What questions do you have about that period and those events after watching the video? 
• How does the self-organizing of survival infrastructure at the scale that was happening in Chile at this time relate to theories and strategies of mutual aid articulated by the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party?

Reading Questions Week 3

Batza, Before AIDS, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5.

“I’m You, You’re Me,” video, 1992, https://vimeo.com/277354130

David Gilbert interviewed by Dan Berger, “Grief and Organizing in the Face of Represssion: The Fight Against AIDS in Prison,” in Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, (ed. Milstein), pp. 271-297.

1. Hobson’s chapter raises important questions about what solidarity is and how it is practiced. On page 122, Hobson includes quotes from Sara Ahmed, Araceli Esparza, and Maylei Blackwell about solidarity. Discuss these quotes and what they mean for the stories told in the chapter.
2. Hobson tells the story of Nicaraguan activists strategically managing information in order to maintain the solidarity activities of US activists. What do you think about this? Have you been in other situations, or can you think of other situations, in which a similar strategic management of information is happening to maintain fragile solidarity relationships?
3. What does Hobson say about the critique of “sandalistas” and the “continuum” of solidarity and tourism activities? (p. 125)
4. Hobson talks about the concept of the “New Man” in the Cuban revolution, which was also taken up by the Sandinistas. How can we relate this to our broader conversation about nationalisms and sexual and gender politics? How do we make sense of the fact that the Sandinista revolution included many indicators of feminist and sexual liberation, such as women in high numbers in the insurrectionary militia, rights to equal wages and paid maternity leave, and also included discourses of masculinity that feminists critique? Why is homophobia often present in nationalism?
5. Hobson’s chapter brings up a dynamic seen in many contexts, where queer identities are sometimes seen as imports from the US or Europe, and demands for queer liberation are sometimes framed as counter-revolutionary or on the side of colonial or imperial forces. What are radical queer responses to this? How does this relate to the concept of “pinkwashing”? Where else do you see this conversation happening?
6. Hobson mentions “a tension between universalism and difference within transnational feminist solidarity.” (132) What is this tension?
7. What do internationalist feminist and queer liberation struggles look like today? Where do you see internationalism being practiced in other important movements today, such as the movement for Black lives or the movement for migrant justice?
8. A common refrain in social movement work is that “movements are made of relationships.” How do you see this in the readings for this week? What does that have to do with the concept of solidarity and the question of transnational solidarity?
9. One of Batza’s central arguments is that gay health activism did not emerge primarily from gay liberation, but instead from a range of radical political lineages. Why is it so important to her to “decenter gay liberation” (40)? What is important about this for our study of mutual aid? How do her three examples of clinics emerging in LA, Chicago, and Boston each illustrate her argument?
10. What changes does Batza track as each clinic shifts from being small and volunteer-based to becoming large, well-funded non-profits? What details did you notice about the changes? What are the costs of these changes, according to Batza? How do these changes reflect larger trends in social movements over that same period, moving from mass mobilization to non-profitization? What does this have to do with neoliberalism?
11. How did funding and licensure change the clinics? What was different in the early 1970’s about both health care regulation and philanthropy that can help us make sense of the trajectories Batza is tracing?
12. How did the institutions that Batza examines, despite their relationships with anti-racist and feminist movements and ideas, end up marginalizing women and people of color? What is the “color-blind approach” that many gay health services took that Batza critiques (48)? How did feminists and anti-racists respond to marginalization?
13. What is the significance of the story of the LA Center absorbing the Gay Women’s Service Center? What do you make of the argument made by Sharon Raphael that many women migrated away from the Women’s Service Center because that organization asked them to participate and do chores? What was Mina Meyer’s critique of the Center’s failures regarding women’s programming after the Women’s Center closed (52)?
14. One of the first things the LA Center provided was a housing program for gay parolees (p. 32). How does that suggest a different politics than what emerged as the priorities of gay and lesbian non-profits as the decades progressed?
15. On p. 33, Batza quotes Ostro recalling, “It’s what everybody [did]. . . . You fe[lt] isolated from other people with whom you share[d] an interest and you fe[lt] left out at your job or school or something and you form[ed] a. . . .group.” Is this still the case today? What is different? How does this relate to mobilization and demobilization, and the popularity or lack of popularity of mutual aid as a strategy?
16. Batza’s accounts again bring up a theme we saw in reading about the Black Panthers and Young Lords deprofessionalizing health care. What do the stories Batza is telling add to our analysis of critiques of professionalization? What more did you learn about strategies for deprofessionalizing health care? Does any of this carry over into other activities movements might seek to deprofessionalize?
17. Why does Batza say that “the state acted less as a straight state than as an antiqueer state” (67) and why is this important to her?
18. After the defeat of the BRA, Fenway clinic activists felt they had significant political power and did not need to follow rules and regulations (69-70). What does this tell us about mutual aid strategies, government power, and people power? Around 1980, this power seemed to run out and the clinic was on the brink of collapse. What can we learn from that? In response, the clinic professionalized and, as one community member said, “There was nothing left for an ordinary citizen to do” (73). What can we observe about changing political conditions and the changing nature of the clinic through this story?
19. How does program-specific funding create philanthropic control of community institutions in Batza’s account (74-75)?
20. What did you think about the tactics of the Feminist 11, fired from the LA Center? What did you think about the government funders’ response? What did you think about the board’s response?
21. What forms of mutual aid emerged in the AIDS crisis, even before there was any medicine to help people survive?
22. The Gilbert and Berger interview, and the anthology it comes from, bring up the question of how grief relates to organizing. What do you think?
23. Repression and retaliation are particularly overt in the context of prison organizing. What can we learn about dynamics of repression and co-optation from Gilbert’s story that relate to our study of mutual aid work both inside and outside prisons?
24. What did you notice about what the participants in the “I’m You, You’re Me” were doing in the group? What kinds of mutual aid were being provided by that group? What similar kinds of spaces exist today and how do people use them? What is different about getting support or breaking stigma in online spaces versus in face-to-face gatherings?

Week 4

Beam, Gay Inc., Chapters 3, 4, and 5.

From The Revolution Will Not Be Funded:
Chapter 1: The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, by Dylan Rodríguez

            Chapter 10: Social Service or Social Change?, by Paul Kivel

            Chapter 15: Non-Profits and the Autonomous Grassroots, by Eric Tang

Sylvia Rivera Law Project, “From the Bottom Up: Strategies and Practices from Membership-Based Organizations,” https://srlp.org/from-the-bottom-up-strategies-and-practices-for-membership-based-organizations/

1. “Community, in the context of neoliberalism’s ever-expanding ability to incorporate particular queer bodies into the national imaginary and technologies of control, is increasingly the logic through which some queer bodies are protected and folded into (national) life, while others are located outside the life of the nation, a threat to it, and exposed to early death.” (83) What is Beam arguing? What evidence does he use to make this argument? What does this have to do with non-profitization? What is the significance of the term “neoliberalism” in this quote and how does what Beam is arguing relate to things you have learned about the concept of neoliberalism from other sources?
2. Beam argues that community is exclusionary. What does he mean?
3. Beam writes, “[a]s neoliberal multiculturalism invites a stripped-down form of inclusion in the place of substantive systematic change, individuals in marginalized groups are invited to feel their connection to the newly welcoming state through their community identification” (87). Can you think of examples of this kind of neoliberal multiculturalism, that offers something less than real inclusion, something perhaps more symbolic or surface? Beam is not suggesting that state violence targeted at marginalized groups ends when the government starts adding “welcoming” messages. Can you think of examples of this tension, between a purported welcome and a reality of targeted violence?
4. Beam argues that technologies of inclusion are just as deserving of scrutiny and critique of technologies of exclusion. Why?
5. Beam writes, “The historical function of nongovernmental organizations in the United States—managing the ‘deviance’ of poor people and immigrants and ‘educating’ them as to the ways of middle-class citizenship, while serving as a more punitive and less redistributive alternative to a welfare state—this does not disappear simply because nonprofits have been discursively recoded under neoliberal antiwelfare-state narratives as spaces of community.” How do you understand this historical function he is describing and how it relates to the stories he recounts of today’s nonprofits?
6. What are Beam’s concerns about “empowerment” programs?
7. What examples does Beam give of how the organizations he studies, or gay non-profits generally, draw the line between “deserving” and “undeserving” constituents, or between who is included and excluded from “community”?
8. What does Dylan Rodriguez mean when he describes the carrot and the stick of criminalization of social movements and nonprofitization of social movements?
9. Why do Rodriguez and others use the term “non-profit industrial complex” or NPIC? What does this term help them understand and argue?
10. Rodriguez contrasts “white bourgeois freedom” with “radical freedom.” What are some of the differences between these that you can see in his account? What other ideas does this contrast provoke for you?
11. Rodriguez asks, “should the NPIC itself be conceptualized as a fundamental target of radical social transformation?” (34) Why does he ask this? What do you think?
12. Rodriguez criticizes how the NPIC pushes organizations to aim for more “winnable” “practical” campaigns and demands. What’s wrong with this according to him?
13. What is the “buffer zone” according to Kivel? What does it have to do with his argument that “demands for social change have been co-opted by the ruling class”?
14. Why does Kivel think economic inequality makes democracy impossible?
15. Kivel critiques “diversity” discourses and practices, arguing they are an insufficient approach to dismantling racism. What does he mean? Can you think of examples from our readings or from what you have observed in institutions you contend with?
16. In previous readings, we have often examined the question of solidarity. Kivel asks us to consider who we are trying to be in solidarity with as we do work inside social service organizations or non-profits. What do this week’s readings suggest to you about if or how solidarity works or fails in the context of organizations that provide direct support to people in crisis? What practices or characteristics of organizations make solidarity more or less possible?
17. What does Eric Tang mean by the “autonomous grassroots”?
18. Eric Tang suggests that non-profits might sometimes have a complementary role to autonomous grassroots organizing. We can certainly see instances where this is not the case—where the role of non-profits is to fight for thin reforms that keep systems in place, to discipline and control targeted people through social services, to work in alliance with government and corporations to control and limit resistance, or to keep elites in control of resistance formations and strategies. In the face of these dangers, what kinds of conditions might be necessary for non-profits to be complementary to autonomous grassroots organizing?
19. How does the critique of non-profitization, which mostly focuses on the US in our readings for this week, play out in the realm of international aid? Are you aware of controversies surrounding how governments or philanthropists from rich/creditor countries use aid to influence what happens in poor/debtor countries?

Week 5 Reading Questions

Undoing Border Imperialism 37-78, 97-156.

Antonia Noori Farzan, “’We Stuck Together Like Neighbors are Supposed To’: A Community Thwarts Father’s ICE Arrest,” Washington Post, July 23, 2019.

Marisa Franco, “On Direct Action and Trump’s Immigration Agenda,” Medium, July 23, 2019.

Mijente, “Free Our Future: An Immigration Policy Platform for Beyond the Trump Era,” July 2018.

1. Why does Walia think all borders are acts of violence? Why is it important to her to say that borders are constantly “being redefined” and that “borders represent a regime of practices, institutions, discourses, and systems that [she] define[s] as border imperialism” (38)?
2. On page 39 she writes, “[a]n analysis of border imperialism encapsulates a dual critique of Western state building within global empire: the role of Western imperialism in dispossessing communities in order to secure land and resources for state and capitalist interests, as well as the deliberately limited inclusion of migrant bodies into Western states through processes of criminalization and racialization that justify the commodification of their labor.” How does this way of thinking about migration differ from some other ways you hear it discussed by others who also advocate for migrants?
3. Why is it important to Walia that we think about displacement when we consider migration? (41) What does displacement have to do with capitalism and imperialism? Why does Walia think insufficient attention has been given to “the central role of land and the colonization of Indigenous societies in the development of capitalism” (46)?
4. Why is Walia concerned about “humanitarian intervention”? (42) What does this have to do with carceral feminism and imperialist feminism (64)?
5. What does Walia mean when she says that “a fundamental feature of border imperialism within neoliberalism is to facilitate capital flows across borders while also ensuring labor flexibility by legalizing an exploitable migrant labor workforce” (46)?
6. What does Walia mean by “settler colonialism”? Why is this term important to her arguments? What is she saying about the relationships and tensions between migrant justice work and Indigenous resistance to colonialism in Canada? What does it mean to say “No one is illegal, Canada is illegal”?
7. Walia, and the organization she works with, No One Is Illegal, argue for border abolition. What do you think of this? Why isn’t this position more visible in contemporary debates about immigration policy in the US? What kind of way of imagining the world does Walia suggest border abolition is a part of around p. 78?
8. What does Walia mean when she says NOII groups are not “single issue” groups? (98)
9. Walia says that NOII is committed to “five key movement-based practices: community organizing and antioppressive leadership through direct support work, advocating status for all migrants and prefiguring safe spaces for undocumented migrants, building broad alliances toward a systemic abolition of the security apparatus, the centrality of Indigenous self-determiniation within anticolonial migrant justice struggles, and strengthening anticapitalist resistance (100).” Why do these things go together? What does this approach tell us about the role of doing mutual aid work in NOII’s larger strategy?
10. Starting on page 103, Walia shares the five tenets of direct support work that guide NOII. Why are these tenets important? What harm or pitfall does each one address? How are these tenets similar or different from how you’ve seen or heard about legal services, social services, or medical services being delivered elsewhere? How does this point relate to critiques we heard from Paul Kivel “social service relationships” between poor people and the government, poor people and movement organizations, and/or movements and the government?
11. Around page 141, Walia discusses the relationship between NOII’s local work and participation in global anticapitalist work, including convergences around WTO, G20, the Olympics and more. Why does she think it is important that they choose to do both kinds of work, ranging from the scale of trying to get individual people not deported to opposing global economic relationships? Why don’t most legal service and social service organizations working with poor people do work on all these scales? What is different about NOII?
12. Around page 121-123 Walia raises some concerns about legal reform. Based in these sections or other parts of the book, what do you notice she brings to our ongoing conversation about pitfalls or limits of legal reform?
13. On p. 121 Walia talks about the “lowest common denominator” problem and the dilemmas with alliances. What are her concerns and what does she propose is useful for addressing them? Did you notice anything else in the book about how NOII approaches alliances with groups or public figures who do not share all of its principles?
14. What did you notice in Walia’s description of NOII’s work to support Indigenous resistance? How does she think of solidarity and what can we learn from those stories?
15. NOII often uses bold tactics, such as in 2003 when Walia describes 30 activists storming a deportation that allowed the targeted migrants to escape, or when NOII Vancouver organized with other groups to shut down the International Terminal at the Vancouver airport so that Laibar Singh’s deportation was prevented. Why do mutual aid groups end up using more bold and even law-breaking tactics than charity groups, social service agencies, and non-profits? Does it matter?
16. Why does Mijente’s policy platform include a history of family separation in the US throughout? Who is the audience for this? What intervention is the organization trying to make in the contemporary conversation about family separation?
17. Is the Mijente “Free our Futures” policy platform abolitionist? In whole or in part? If you put yourself in the shoes of the authors of the platform, what strategic choices can you see that they had to make to write it? What is hard about making a policy platform for abolishing immigration enforcement?
18. Mijente advocates abolishing Border Patrol and funding border rescue. If this were to happen, what pitfalls might you anticipate? How would you attempt to design funding for border rescue to prevent those pitfalls, if that was your job?

Week 6

Peter Gelderloos, Anarchy Works.

1. On pages 8 and 9 Gelderloos provides six basic principles as his way of defining anarchism. Did they surprise you? How do they compare with what you have heard about anarchism and anarchists before? Do any stand out to you?
2. Gelderloos writes, “Freedom cannot be given; it must be taken.” (8) What does this mean? What accounts of various struggles from the book come to mind when you read this? Why is this important?
3. What stories about human nature are told to justify the current conditions and systems we live under? How does Gelderloos contest those stories? What does he think people are like?
4. In many accounts throughout Anarchy Works, Gelderloos shares stories where anti-government uprisings are betrayed by reformers who want to take over rather than eliminate government. What examples did you notice? What did you learn about how and why that happened in each of those examples?
5. In some parts of the book, Gelderloos talks about how the disappointments and criticisms many feel regarding the revolutions that occurred in China, the Russia, Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam should not lead us to believe that revolution is impossible, but should instead provoke wariness about the creation of new authoritarian regimes to replace the old. He suggests that some social movements have shifted from a focus on building political parties and taking over government to building autonomous, de-centralized infrastructure, and he uses the Zapatistas as an example. At the start of our class, we read the rules of the Young Lords and we learned about the top down, centralized structures in the Black Panther Party. While many take inspiration from groups that cultivated powerful disobedience 50 years ago, how might we see contemporary activists, even in the US, choosing different organizational forms and being guided by more anti-authoritarian principles?
6. What did you learn about decision making processes from the examples that Gelderloos provides? What does decentralized, horizontal decision making look like? What does consensus mean (see p. 48-49)? What are collectives?
7. How does accountability work when there is not a hierarchy to enforce decisions (see p. 54-55)?
8. Why does Gelderloos think that people would still do work without a wage economy rewarding them for it with cash? How do his arguments call into question what “work” means? What have you noticed about the different feelings and behaviors you have when you are doing something for money, versus when you are doing it because you want or need to? What does he mean when he says that “the social and economic become indistinguishable” when people are no longer working for a wage (64)?
9. Why do roadblocks, squatting, and land reform come up so much in this book? What did you learn about them? What does Gelderloos say about the moments when governments agree to legalize squats or undertake land reform as a concession to movements?
10. On 152 Gelderloos says that political parties are “inherently authoritarian.” What do you think?
11. On p. 156 in footnote 11, Gelderloos distinguishes the typical US meaning of “nonviolent” or “pacifist” activism from what it meant to the movement in Kabylia to have a commitment to being peaceful. What did you get out of this distinction?
12. On p. 151 Gelderloos argues that contemporary governments are both stronger and weaker because of how globalized our systems now are. What does he mean? He says the “system has still not been abolished because the victors of such struggles have always been co-opted and reincorporated into global capitalism.” What examples of this would you point to?
13. Gelderloos says there is pressure on movements to institutionalize (157). What does that pressure look like in the examples he provides?
14. Gelderloos says that “solidarity is the polar opposite of charity” and that it destroys the categories of giver and receiver and neither ignores nor validates whatever unequal power dynamics may exist between the two.” (165) What does this mean?
15. On p. 167, Gelderloos juxtaposes the Reconciliation commissions that have occurred in Guatemala, South Africa and elsewhere to the 1936 assemblies of Spanish peasants that redistributed land. What is he arguing and what do you think the important differences are?

Week 7

YWEP, “Girls Do What They Have to Do to Survive: Illuminating Methods Used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economies to Survive and Heal,” https://ywepchicago.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/girls-do-what-they-have-to-do-to-survive-a-study-of-resilience-and-resistance.pdf 

Empower Foundation, “Hit and Run: Sex Worker Research on Human Trafficking in Thailand,” 2012, Introduction, Chapters 1 and 2, https://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/Hit%20and%20Run%20%20RATSW%20Eng%20online.pdf 

Review the website of SWOP Behind Bars: https://www.swopbehindbars.org/ 

Read the description of Whose Corner Is It Anyway? on this fundraising page: https://www.gofundme.com/w-ma-street-worker-leader-stipends?fbclid=IwAR1r-VbOIjLpCdjFoqBv-32P_9jp9OuH0ctO0d6YDDNnqBCKwDjUnIQ0oTM

Red Canary Song: Fly in Power Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=sAznZiu-_-Q&feature=emb_logo

1. What is YWEP’s critique of saviorism experienced by young people in the sex trades? How are social workers, therapists, foster care workers, researchers, doctors, and government officials (p. 5) specifically implicated in it? What does this have to do with YWEP’s intention, from its founding, to be an activist organization and not a social service organization (p. 6)?
2. What kinds of problematic dynamics exist between researchers from universities and criminalized/stigmatized groups, such as people in the sex trade? Make a list of all the problems you can imagine or have witnessed.
3. How did YWEP attempt to do the research for the report in ways that aligned with their values? What did you notice about their efforts to make their organizing build power for and center the decision making of young people in the sex trade? Are any of their methods reminiscent of things we have read other mutual aid groups doing? Are there any that you think you could learn from or replicate in groups you are part of?
4. Why does YWEP choose to use the term “sex trade” rather than “prostitution” or “sex work”?
5. Why does YWEP resist the framing of people in the sex trades as “victims”? How do they work to acknowledge the harm and vulnerability that people in the sex trades experience while rejecting the “victim” framing?
6. Why, unlike other organizations, does YWEP work with people regardless of whether they want to leave the sex trade? (8)
7. How is YWEP theorizing the relationship between resilience and resistance and what does that have to do with how mutual aid tactics fit into broader social movement strategies for transformative change?
8. Why does YWEP not want to use law and policy in their work? They say this is part of their transformative justice approach (12, 41). What does that mean?
9. Why do the organizations whose work we read and read about this week criticize the contemporary efforts to end “human trafficking”?
10. Who are the intended audiences of the reports we read for this week and how does that impact the research and writing?
11. How does the “Hit and Run” report’s description of migration and criminalization relate to Harsha Walia’s concept of border imperialism?
12. How is non-profitization or NGO-ization and philanthropic control visible in the story of the “rescue industry” told in the “Hit and Run” report?
13. In the “Hit and Run” report, RATS-W both criticizes laws that criminalize sex trade and appeals to legal systems to protect people in the sex trade. This is different from YWEP’s approach. What do you notice about the difference? What might the benefits and costs of such an appeal to law be? How does it relate to other themes in our readings this quarter?
14. Last week’s reading of Anarchy Works included some discussion of how work is defined and shaped in capitalism. What more can we add to how work is defined based on this week’s readings? What kinds of workers, in addition to people in the sex trade, can you think of who are disputing legal and cultural definitions of work? How would the concept of work be abolished or redefined by various movements we have read about or that you are learning about or observing outside our class?
15. What are the different models of decriminalization and legalization of sex work outlined on the SWOP Behind Bars website and how do they relate to our ongoing conversations about law and legal reform?

Week 8

“Workshop Facilitation Guide.” Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/MADR-WORKSHOP-FACILITATION-GUIDE-rough-1.pdf.

Sophie Weiner, “The Grassroots Movement to Transform Our Broken Disaster Relief System,” Splinter News, November 21, 2018, https://splinternews.com/the-grassroots-movement-to-transform-our-broken-disaste-1830576143 (Links to an external site.)

“Autonomous Disaster Relief Organizing in the Wake of the #CampFire” November 26, 2018. In It’s Going Down (podcast). 59:26. https://itsgoingdown.org/organizing-in-the-wake-of-the-campfire/.

1. What did you notice about how Mask Oakland was organized? What background conditions do you think might have made their work emerge? At one point in Weiner’s article, Weiner quotes a Mask Oakland member criticizing the City of Oakland for not having a plan to distribute masks even though the fires had happened the prior year and were likely to happen again. Why is disaster relief so inadequate?
2. What are some differences between mutual aid groups like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, North Valley Mutual Aid, and Mask Oakland and large aid organizations like the Red Cross?
3. Weiner mentions Naomi Klein’s concept of “disaster capitalism” and briefly describes it as “taking advantage of traumatized communities for profit.” Have you seen any examples of this? How does this work?
4. In the readings and podcast for this week, we hear many observations about how poor people get left behind by government and non-profit disaster relief. What examples did you notice? What structures are making this happen? How do poor people and people of color end up criminalized during disasters?
5. Why are anarchist organizations so likely to form mutual aid projects in the face of disaster? What does the idea of mutual aid have to do with anarchist ideas about disaster and resistance?
6. Why is this quote at the beginning of the MADR facilitation guide? Who is Buenaventura Durruti? “We are not afraid of ruins. Our opposition might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. . . We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.” — Buenaventura Durruti
7. What did you notice about how MADR structured their tour of workshop events and about the information and advice they provide about how to set up the workshops, before they get into the content? Is anything in their promotion guide useful in anything you want to organize, or does any of it ring true with your experiences organizing any events?
8. What did the MADR facilitation guide teach you about facilitation that may be useful to you? What might be hard about facilitating for you (either based on experience or speculation)? What skills would you like to increase in yourself in order to become a better facilitator? What have you learned about facilitation that was missing from the MADR guide? What qualities do you think make for good facilitation? What have you noticed about facilitation based on spaces you have been in, such as classrooms, organizational meetings, family meetings, faith community activities, or other spaces?
9. MADR offers several slogans. After reading the facilitation guide and the other materials throughout our class, what do you think of each of these? How would you describe what they mean in your own words? What examples do they bring to mind from our readings throughout the quarter?
   1. Solidarity Not Charity
   2. Community Organizing Is Disaster Prep (and Vice Versa)
   3. We Know – We Advocate – We Embody
   4. All of Us Can Do This!
   5. No Masters, No Flakes
10. What stood out to you in the MADR core values? Can you imagine facilitating a discussion of these? What do you think would be difficult or easy, if you were to facilitate within a group of people who you think you could reach for a workshop (this involves imagining what communities you are in, who you would collaborate with to put on such a workshop, who you could promote a workshop to, who might come)?
11. On page 36, MADR shares two stories about boldness, one of people using MADR badges to take supplies from a government warehouse in Puerto Rico and one of Common Ground activists fighting to reopen a school. What did you notice about these stories? What kinds of skills and capacities would the activists involved have to have to be bold in these ways? How could people build those?
12. In the “Disaster Patriarchy” section, MADR tells the story of FBI agent, Brandon Darby. What did you get out of this story? How do you think organizations, especially ones that have large numbers of volunteers, should vet people to address the danger of agents or infiltrators? What do you think of MADR’s advice about addressing disaster patriarchy? What would you add?
13. Why does MADR talk about the phases of recovery? How do the roles of mutual aid efforts, non-profits, and government agencies change in the different phases? What is an anarchist approach to each phase?

Week 9

1. What did you notice about the writing style of Take Back the Land?
2. On page 10, Rameau argues, “After the powerful social justice movements of the 1960s and 70s, particularly the Black Power movement, the system appears to have adjusted by intentionally devising means to reduce the number of people willing and able to participate in political actions.” What is Rameau’s evidence for this and what else would you add about why people are less mobilized now than at that time and what caused that demobilization?
3. Around pages 12 and 13, Rameau talks about Patty Macias, arguing that working with someone who was committed to “both sides” was a strategic mistake for Take Back the Land. He suggests that while it is important to have room for people to grow in their politics, there must be some level of political unity. What did you learn from this story? How do or how should mutual aid projects and other radical organizations deal with this question of who to let in or keep out based on politics?
4. On page 14, Rameau talks about Rev. Richard Dunn who gets bought off to switch positions and come out against the shantytown. What is there to learn from this story? Why does this happen to people? How could we make ourselves into people who are not easily bought off? What would need to be in place in our lives and psyches? What would help us create an activist ecosystem in which less people could be bought off like this?
5. Rameau repeatedly argues that government incompetence is not responsible for housing crises, corruption, and gentrification, but rather that “high levels of competence [are] required to steal, lie, and cover up” (13) as government officials do. What is important about this point? Why does it matter? How does it contribute to his theory of how social change works and what radicals need to do?
6. What examples does Rameau provide of the government transferring wealth to large developers while enhancing the impoverishment of low-income tenants in Miami?
7. Why do public officials consistently fail to deliver low-income housing, even when elaborate legislative schemes pass that are supposed to create it?
8. How does Rameau show that the government makes gentrification happen?
9. What were some of the bold actions that Rameau described Take Back the Land activists engaging in, both on the land and off?
10. On p. 36 and 37, Rameau talks about how when the news broke about HOPE VI and Scott-Carver, the setting of the story was the housing crisis, but the theme was government corruption. Why was this a problem, from Rameau’s perspective? Can you think of other examples of this you have seen? Why does Rameau think it is unsatisfying that the outcome of the focus on government corruption would be firing the crooks or prosecuting them?
11. Why does Rameau think that the root issue is land?
12. Rameau makes a few brief mentions of settler colonialism in the US, and the fact that the land Black people are fighting for is stolen from indigenous people. What other questions or observations do you have about this? How might this be important to the central questions of this book?
13. Rameau explains that “the systemic issues part of this movement [had to be] an all African formation” (47, and see 49). What were the reasons for this design choice? What are Rameau’s observations about coalitions and how does that relate to this choice? Some people argue that because of the depth and breadth of anti-Black racism, it is not possible for real coalition to exist between Black people and non-Black people. Why might that be argued? What do you think of that? How did Take Back the Land address this dilemma when working with non-Black people?
14. Rameau says that the “guiding assumption was that there is little point in seeking help from the government, as the government is largely responsible for this mess in the first place. If they had not responded to the years of begging, pleading and demanding, it was not because they were unaware of the problems or unable to address them—it was because they did not want to” (49). How does this belief guide the action of Take Back the Land?
15. Why might some people argue that the shelter system is an extension of the prison system?
16. On pages 53 and 54, Rameau talks about how Take Back the Land consulted with lawyers about their strategy, but then made their own assessments about risk rather than following the lawyers’ advice. How do group deal with the problem of seeking expert advice but also taking it with a grain of salt since the experts in a particular system are often part of that system and lack perspective? Where else can we see lawyers and other insiders advising mutual aid projects in ways that might curtail the boldness of those projects’ plans?
17. Rameau says that understanding racial segregation as the root problem, rather than land, is a big mistake that has harmed Black people. What is his argument? Why isn’t racial segregation the root problem? Who benefits from the idea that it is? He argues that “teaching whites to hate us less” is not a substitute for building power (64). What does this mean?
18. Rameau tells the story about how the City, in the face of protest, signed contracts with 482 families displaced by the purchasing and demolition spree the City had gone on, but that the units of housing that were supposed to be provided were never built. What does this story, and other stories like it in the book, tell us about the problems with concessions from government?
19. On page 81, Rameau provides the principles of unity of Take Back the Land. On 83 he provides the three political objectives. What stood out to you?
20. Rameau argues that black homeless people “have no political power, their opinions do not matter and more effort is exerted by the state to dislocate or hide them than to assist them. . . . yet we assert that the most marginal members o fsociety are better qualified to run their ‘city’ or ‘village’ than the college-educated elected official or bureaucrat” (86). Why are these points central to Take Back the Land’s work? Did they prove this, as Rameau argues?
21. Rameau talks about the conflicts that sometimes occurred in Umoja Village around whether to kick someone out who was behaving in a disruptive way. Should mutual aid projects kick people out? How does group conflict relate to mutual aid and what tools do mutual aid groups use to deal with conflict?
22. On page 101, Rameau says that “a critical component of direct action is using your tactics to provoke a political crisis, forcing the system to respond.” How do you see this in the story of Umoja Village?
23. Over the course of the occupation, the organizers and residents of Umoja Village built power and were able to force their opponents to respond. Where do you see that in the story? How did their demobilization after the fire change those dynamics and impact what happened in the end?
24. On page 134, Rameau discusses the dilemmas that organizations and movements face when offered concessions by their opponents. What did you learn about these moments of deciding whether to declare something a “victory”? What would have happened if some people had accepted the concession and others had continued with the plan to erect shanty towns all over Miami?
25. Rameau argues that when the lobbyist was able to break the deal the city had made to give Umoja Village the land, it exposed who the real decisionmakers are. Have you seen other such moments, in which the lack of democracy or sovereignty, as Rameau put it, of governments is exposed (146-7)?
26. How does SeaSol believe that their small fights for individuals could contribute to building a new society? How does this relate to previous theories we have read about the relationship between mutual aid, mobilization, and new social relations?

Week 10 

Jem Bendell, “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy,” IFLAS Occasional Paper, July 27th 2018 https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

Todd Miller, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security, (City Lights; 2017), p. 36-70, p. 71-105 is optional.

Movement Generation, “From Banks and Tanks to Cooperation and Caring: A Strategic Framework for a Just Transition,” https://movementgeneration.org/justtransition/

Raúl Ilargi Meijer, “Renewables Are Dead,” The Automatic Earth, May 6, 2019. https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2019/05/renewables-are-dead/

Jonathan Neale, “Social Collapse and Climate Breakdown,” The Ecologist, May 8, 2019, https://theecologist.org/2019/may/08/social-collapse-and-climate-breakdown

Optional:

Nafeez Ahmed, “The Collapse of Civilization May Have Already Begun,” Vice, November 22, 2019, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xwygg/the-collapse-of-civilization-may-have-already-begun

Jem Bendell and Wolfgang Knorr, “Climate scientist speaks about letting down humanity and what to do about it,” July 31, 2019, https://jembendell.com/2019/07/31/climate-scientist-speaks-about-letting-down-humanity-and-what-to-do-about-it/

Bill Henderson, Why It Is Too Late for the Green New Deal (As Presently Invisioned), Resilience, May 30, 2019. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-30/why-it-is-too-late-for-the-green-new-deal-as-presently-envisioned/

Jem Bendell, “Acceptance and Evolution in the Face of Meltdown,” The Future Is Beautiful Podcast, https://www.thefutureisbeautiful.co/2018/12/27/e45-jem-bendell-on-deep-adaptation-climate-change-and-societal-collapse-acceptance-and-evolution-in-the-face-of-global-meltdown/

1. This week’s authors talk about the necessity for people to feel more grief and rage about climate change and to move past denial. What arguments did you notice about how our capacities to feel relate to our capacities for action? What do you notice about your own feelings and/or denial about climate change?
2. What have you learned about “negative emotions” and “negative outlooks” from your family and from the context in which you were raised? What about those lessons do you want to keep, question, or reject?
3. What are some common forms of climate change denial you have seen or heard in yourself or among other people who believe in climate change but are denying its significance to their immediate futures? (I’m not talking about right wing climate change denial).
4. If this week’s readings are right and societal collapse is coming soon, what would you like to have done to see your life as “good,” having lived in this time? How is it different than other ideas about the “good life” that you have heard throughout your life? What does looming collapse change, if anything, about how you see your life purpose?
5. The readings for this week could be read to suggest that we should all spend more time contemplating our own deaths and the deaths of those we love. Why might we consider that an anti-capitalist act, a feminist act, an act aligned with disability justice, an anti-racist act, an anti-colonial act, and/or a queer act?
6. What actions do you think we should be taking, if the readings for this week are correct about what is happening now and will likely happen next? What actions should we stop taking?
7. How is what we have studied all quarter about mutual aid relevant for thinking about responses to our current predicament?
8. How do you see yourself participating in what the Just Transition zine calls the extractive economy and how are you participating or might you participate in building a regenerative economy? Are there any organizations that you can think of that are working on building a regenerative economy? How?
9. At times throughout this class, we have learned about how non-profits are incentivized to declare false victories. We have also looked at how governments and other institutions often falsely declare that equality has been achieved or other “good news” as a response to social movement mobilization. How do this week’s readings connect our misunderstandings about climate change to incentives for producing good news and our desires to feel the kind of hope that liberalism and neoliberalism cultivate? How is this working in media? In environmental NGOs? In government and international bodies?
10. Sometimes work on climate or environmentalism is talked about separately from work on racial justice, migrant justice, health care access, abolishing criminalization, etc. Think of an example (or several) of work that you are doing or care about in an area that is not explicitly about climate. What would it look like if that work were being done with the information from this week’s readings fully integrated? How would it change the work?
11. What relationships between political turmoil, growing apparatuses of state control and violence, and climate change are described by this week’s authors? How do these depictions invite us to critique the image of roving bands of armed survivors visible in apocalyptic novels, tv shows, and movies? How do this week’s authors’ arguments and evidence relate to the idea we talked about in Week 8 about how the devastation of supposedly “natural” disasters is actually not natural?
12. Jonathan Neale argues that in the face of climate social collapse, we should not expect society to disintegrate, but instead to have it intensify, with power concentrating and splitting so that people kill each other in large numbers. Do you see any evidence of increasing social and/or political polarization in the US and/or globally?
13. Neale offers examples of extreme state repression in the face of famines, but he also offers examples of famines causing popular uprisings that end brutal regimes. What can we take from this to think through possible people-power victories that could occur as conditions deteriorate, using examples from Anarchy Works to contemplate how people have successfully risen up against governments in various times and places?
14. Neale writes, “But scientists and environmentalists are conservative people. The green movement is mostly white, mostly posh, mostly in the rich north. The deep wish of many environmentalists is to be a small business person.” What does he mean? Why is this significant? 
15. Were you surprised by Miller’s description of how, despite policies ranging from inadequate action to outright denial of climate change at the federal level, DHS, the military and other parts of the federal government are feverishly preparing for climate collapse (and have been doing so no matter who was president since the mid-1990s)? How do you account for this? What are the goals of this climate security work?
16. Miller suggests that the US government, by investing in climate security regimes, is engaging in adaptation rather than mitigation. How does this relate to what Bendell says about adaptation and mitigation, and to what Neale says about society “intensifying”?
17. How do you orient to hopelessness, based on this week’s readings (your own hopelessness and/or others’)? Are there different ways to be hopeless? What have you noticed about hope when it comes to climate change?
18. Given this week’s readings, what are your thoughts on the national debates about the Green New Deal?
19. Bendell’s writing and interviews are primarily pitched at Europeans and, perhaps, others in the global north. What are the consequences of that for his analysis? Bendell also seems like someone who has not spent his life in transformative social movements, but has instead focused on what governments and corporations can do. How does this affect his analysis? Given his limitations, what is useful about Bendell’s analysis?
20. Finally, a question from across the whole quarter: If/when is it okay to kick people out of groups/spaces? Why would we be concerned about that? What alternatives exist for addressing harmful behavior, beyond punishment and expulsion?