Tag: mutual aid

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New Interview about Mutual Aid with In These Times

Clara Liang recently interviewed me for In These Times.

ILLUSTRATION BY GALINE TUMASYAN

Amid the cat­a­stro­phe of the pan­dem­ic, cli­mate emer­gency and racist state vio­lence, mutu­al aid has explod­ed. Ordi­nary peo­ple around the globe, from Seat­tle to Nige­ria, are find­ing ways to sup­port each oth­er when the gov­ern­ment won’t.Mutual aid isn’t just that we help each other. We help each other based on a shared recognition that the systems aren’t delivering and are actually making things worse. We’re simultaneously building a movement to address the root causes of the crisis we’re in.

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Mutual aid will help us survive the Biden presidency

Roar Magazine just published this adapted excerpt from my new book.

The only thing that keeps those in power in that position is the illusion of our powerlessness. A moment of freedom and connection can undo a lifetime of social conditioning and scatter seeds in a thousand directions.

— Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Many people are feeling great relief that Trump has been voted out and are rightly celebrating the efforts so many people have undertaken to make that happen. But even as we celebrate, we must ensure we do not demobilize, hoping that the new administration will take care of our problems. Unfortunately, we can be certain that the Biden/Harris administration will not address the crises and disasters of climate change, worsening wealth concentration and poverty, a deadly for-profit health care system and racist law enforcement.

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Conversation on Transformative Justice and Mutual Aid and Two Recent Interviews

Last week, Mariame Kaba and Ejeris Dixon joined me in a conversation about mutual aid, transformative justice and abolition. It was one of the best public conversations I have ever been part of and I highly recommend watching the recording!

In advance of that event, Barnard College interviewed me about mutual aid.

I also recently spoke to KUOW’s Bill Radke on The Record. You can listen here.

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Book Launch Event, Death Panel Podcast, and 5 Books that Inspire My Thinking on Mutual Aid

Last week I launched my new book, Mutual Aid, in conversation with Whitney Hu, hosted by Community Bookstore. You can watch the event video if you missed it.

Verso also recently gave me the opportunity to write a short descriptive list of five books that have influenced my thinking about mutual aid. You can read the essay, which focuses on the work of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, No One Is Illegal, and INCITE! and includes writing by Peter Gelderloos, Alondra Nelson, Harsha Walia, and others.

I encourage you to listen to all the episodes of the Death Panel podcast, including my recent conversation with them about mutual aid, COVID, poor relief histories, law, and more.

Finally, I wanted to note that my new book is part of a four-book series from Verso about COVID and care. Collect all four!

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New Book on Mutual Aid, Out Today!

Today my new book from Verso Books, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity Through This Crisis (and the next) launches. I’ll be doing a launch event with Whitney Hu hosted by Community Bookstore tonight at 7:30pm Eastern, which will be recorded and available on their youtube after.

I am also very much looking forward to “We Keep Each Other Safe: Mutual Aid for Survival and Solidarity,” a conversation about the book with Ejeris Dixon and Mariame Kaba, hosted by the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Nov 12.

Also, check out this article Chris Dixon wrote featuring the book and discussing, more broadly, the importance of the ordinary, everydayness of mutual aid work in a world that tells us to seek fame and notoriety for social movement work.

Finally, Truthout published an adapted excerpt from the book today that might be good for reading groups or classrooms since its short and to the point.

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Recent Events: Recordings to Watch!

Check out these three videos of recent panel events I was part of.

This panel at NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality was a truly interesting conversation. And there was accidental outfit coordination between panelists.

This event at San Francisco State was a showstopper, featuring so many brilliant thinkers talking about queer justice, colonialism, war, and pinkwashing.

I was honored to be the keynote trainer at Movement Law Lab’s final session in their Build Power, Fight Power online course, in which thousands of lawyers and law students participated over several months. In this talk, I provide a basic rundown of the limits of law and lawyers to social movements, and the potential for us to participate in ethical, transformative ways.

Finally, this event with the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project about queer and trans abolition politics is not to be missed!

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Free Teaching Guide for New Mutual Aid Book

For years, I have been sad about how mutual aid rarely gets taught in classes about social change and social movements. It is such a vital part of movement building and transformation, and often very mobilizing for students to learn about it. I hope this will be changing as the concept of mutual aid is circulating more. I made a Teaching Guide to go with my new book about mutual aid being published by Verso Books in October, wanted to share now in case anyone is considering the book for fall syllabi.