Insurrectionary Utopias Part 3: Examples of Liberatory Mutual Aid

by scott crow

Agency is publishing scott crow’s “Insurrectionary Utopias” as a three-part series commemorating the 20 year anniversary of the Common Ground Collective, founded on September 5, 2005, in New Orleans, LA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

The goal of mutual aid efforts is to rebuild infrastructure that has disappeared due to neglect and decay, and to also build new infrastructure that never existed: think health care, education, food security, communication, and more. Know that many efforts will succeed and many will fail. Don’t be discouraged. Push through the failures. On the other side of difficulties and failures are resilient, connected, autonomous communities. They are worth fighting for.

Collecting supplies under these circumstances is often not a problem. But distribution based on need can be a logistical challenge, especially in the first days. This is also true later. It might make sense to work within the confines of the law when it’s beneficial, and it also makes sense to have a willingness to defy the law when it’s counter to the reality and the needs on the ground. Do what’s right, not what authorities say. 

A question we need to answer is how to take the sensibility developed during those unguarded moments that disasters force on us and make them last, especially as disasters become more prevalent. Disasters, and the ensuing aftermath of cascading crises, will only get worse — not in some grand biblical way, but in fits and starts. An economy collapses here, an earthquake occurs there, bad politics here, war in some other place. If governments fail, authoritarians will seek to take advantage. We must be ready with answers, but also with deeper questions. How can we build towards the future, knowing what’s coming? And how do we do this while keeping our efforts liberatory?

The long histories of liberatory forms of mutual aid and solidarity should consciously be looked at as potential paths towards human freedom. While disasters glaringly and painfully reveal the failures of institutional power, they also open cracks for people to see themselves and their own power. People do this by supporting each other and working together. In direct and meaningful ways, people learn that they do not have to wait to make their lives better. They begin to realize that they can do it themselves, with support, even in the worst of times. 

A Peek into Some Histories 

“History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.” —Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

We can build on a long anarchist history of mutual aid, specifically in the context of responding to disaster or crisis. Drawing on these histories can help guide us as we confront more frequent disasters in the coming years resulting from climate change and other capitalist-induced crises. Readers are also encouraged to research further into these sketches for themselves, exploring their rich depths.

Anarchist Black Cross

Mutual aid in times of disaster appeared in the early days of the Russian Revolution with the formation of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC). This organization broke from the relief efforts of the International Red Cross (IRC) in Russia and Ukraine shortly after the revolution because the Red Cross refused to support prisoners, especially anarchist political prisoners, who were in dire need of medical attention and food. The ABC worked to alleviate this problem, with autonomous chapters springing up worldwide. Members provided material aid and called attention to the plight of anarchists and other political prisoners. Anarchist Black Cross continues to support political prisoners worldwide.

Spanish Anarchists

In July 1936, fascist generals attempted to overthrow the elected Spanish government, provoking what is generally known as the Spanish Civil War (referred to by anarchists as the Spanish Revolution). In the midst of social and military turmoil, through decentralized collectives and federations, peoples’ needs were met. Anarchists had begun organizing in Spain in the 1880s, and millions of people across Spain worked collectively together both in the cities and in the countryside. They both reorganized civil society along anarchist lines and fought fascism militarily with self-organized militias. They were ultimately crushed by the combination of fascists and communists, but for seventy years before the fascist coup, and for three years after, the anarchists of Spain provided thousands of examples of mutual aid during disaster and crisis.

Street Medics & Food Not Bombs

During the anti-nuclear movements of the 1970s and ‘80s, many anarchist practices were adopted in mobilizations across the U.S., from the work of the Clamshell Alliance in New England to the long occupations of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. In addition to using decentralized organizing, affinity groups, and spokescouncils, the movement gave birth to two strands of decentralized mutual aid: street medics and Food Not Bombs.

Street medics — with varying degrees of medical experience ranging from first aid training to medical school — had attended protests since the late 1960s, but now took active roles in supporting people who had been tear gassed, beaten, trampled, or injured by law enforcement at mass demonstrations.

Food Not Bombs, rooted in its decentralized network of autonomous chapters to feed people worldwide, also became active in the early ’70s anti-nuke movements. Feeding people under duress was a common sight at the anarchist-led protests in the streets, in the deserts of the Indigenous lands of Nevada, and in many city parks where homeless people gather.

Rise of Anarchist Mutual Aid Post-Seattle

The influence of anarchism had been gaining ground in the U.S. since the ’70s. This accelerated rapidly in the ’90s after the fall of Soviet communism. When the World Trade Organization met in Seattle in 1999, anarchists were at the forefront in organizing the mobilization against corporate globalization. A wide-scale anarchist renaissance emerged at successive massive summit protests in North America and Europe. Attended by tens of thousands of people, these mass mobilizations brought anarchist ideas and practices to large numbers of people. This led to the growth of anarchist networks of street medics, collectives focused on legal work, communications, and direct action.

After Disasters and Crisis

Mutual aid in the 21st century began to look different after the turn of the century and its rocky first decade. Disasters — human made, economic, and ecological — took their toll on the psyche of people in the U.S., but something important also emerged along the way: frontline grassroots, decentralized cooperation in dealing with these disasters outside of the state and the non-profit industrial complex.

Common Ground Collective

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in the fall of 2005, people worldwide could see the failure of the inadequate responses from both the U.S. government and the Red Cross. The state criminalized desperate people, prioritizing restoring law and order rather than rescue and relief. From the outset, a few of us activists on the ground asked questions: Could these informal post-Seattle networks like street medics, Indymedia, Homes Not Jails, Food Not Bombs, etc. be called upon to participate in disaster relief?  Could street medics form a clinic? Could that clinic become a hospital? Could Food Not Bombs feed people for the long term? These questions led to reaching out to those networks for supplies, people, and resources. Decentralized relief efforts sprang up out of the chaos. One of them was the Common Ground Collective, the largest anarchist inspired organization in modern U.S. history, with over 28,000 volunteers participating.

Common Ground’s foundational premises were simple: mutual aid and solidarity, expressed through the slogan, “Solidarity Not Charity.” Medics and health professionals, legal teams, Indymedia reporters, open source computer programmers, micro radio installers, eviction defense activists came from all these networks, bringing supplies and other people to support communities by providing relief, helping rebuild, and letting people determine their own futures. Volunteers engaged with individuals and neighborhoods on projects varying from community defense, gardens, neighborhood assemblies, and trash clean-up, to free schools, house gutting, and eviction defense. What made Common Ground different from most other relief models was that mutual aid and resistance to authoritarianism were consciously woven into its analysis and most of its practice in building collective liberation.

Tens of thousands of volunteers came through in the first three years at Common Ground to support communities that had been devastated, neglected, and ignored even before Katrina hit. It was a mutual aid response to a crisis of the 21st century, built on long anarchist traditions. The Common Ground Collective was a manifestation of these ideas. It has had a reverberating impact outside of the Gulf Coast, through shared stories of organization from the thousands who participated in the project over the years.

Occupy Movements

The next disaster was an economic one: Wall Street bankers’ greed and financial schemes created a financial meltdown in the U.S. that caused massive job losses, collapsed businesses, and evaporated life savings, leading to large scale home foreclosures and evictions. Spontaneously, it seemed, thousands rose up to retake public spaces by reclaiming the commons, gathering together in mutual aid in city after city across the U.S. and around the world. Starting in September 2011, millions of disaffected people supported the various movements under the umbrella name Occupy. Much like the Hurricane Katrina response efforts , different communities came together, working cooperatively to defend themselves, feed each other, and share experiences. Mutual aid emerged within campsites, in factories, at eviction defense actions, and during street protests across the country. Free schools and lending libraries were established; medical care was given to those in need. Organizers and volunteers who had been active within Common Ground were also part of Occupy’s decentralized organizing networks, building further on the ideas of mutual aid and solidarity.

Occupy Sandy

Human induced climate change continues to create erratic weather patterns. Superstorm Sandy struck the U.S. East Coast in October 2012 with catastrophic effects in numerous states. Much like Katrina, once the storm passed, the government and Red Cross response was abysmal in already marginalized communities. Momentum provided by people from within the Occupy movement led to the decentralized efforts of Occupy Sandy, rooted in the models of the Common Ground Collective and other radical movements. Working under the slogan, “Mutual Aid Not Charity,” first responders went to otherwise ignored communities, helping set up programs or supporting ongoing aid efforts. After the immediate crisis abated, many within Occupy Sandy continued to support these communities in their efforts for self-determination.

Oklahoma (OpOk)

In May 2013 a massive tornado destroyed large parts of Oklahoma–more of the “new normal” created by the rapidly changing climate. People, once again, set up decentralized mutual aid support for immediate relief and longer-term rebuilding. These types of spontaneous organizing efforts now had connected networks to rely on for quick responses, histories to build from, and people who brought extensive experience in dealing with crises and power-sharing skills.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Black Lives Matter Uprisings’

2020 saw two very different crises and disasters overlap and rock the foundations of civil society and Power. One was the COVID-19 pandemic that was both an ecological and economic disaster. Second was the continuation of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprising, which initially started after the murders of Treyvon Martin and Mike Brown, then took off exponentially as potentially the biggest protest movement in U.S. history after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. This sent the country into a crisis around racial identity and oppression, and the continuing role of the police in maintaining white supremacy. 

During these events we have experienced an explosion of mutual aid, taking many forms, from basic cooperation amongst people, collectively organized material and medical support for people in the streets, to liberatory approaches during the movement for Black lives which have sought to create collective autonomy for historically marginalized communities. There was a proliferation of cooperation and meaningful solidarity even as fear of the unknown gripped the world. 

Disasters, Crisis, and Conscious Paths Forward

“Without community, there is no liberation.” —Audre Lorde

The ideas and practices of mutual aid are alive and well in the 21st century. In fact, the concepts have become so popular within the mainstream that there is a danger of forgetting mutual aid’s liberatory potential. Our capacity to put our emergency hearts into action will continue to propel us forward living daily in our neighborhoods, during mobilizations of people, and when disaster strikes. Disasters will continue to affect all of our communities and lives to varying degrees. Being able to respond with liberatory mutual aid that counters the “last person standing” apocalypse fantasies of survival is critical in moving us from only thinking of ourselves, to thinking of how we can engage and actually thrive together in these dire and complicated situations.

Disasters can give us glimpses — the “cracks in History” the Zapatistas refer to — into potentials to take care of each other and work together when it really matters. After everything has been lost, mutual aid and its liberatory potential offers us other ways of seeing and engaging with each other when these cracks open.

Hoarding supplies to fill an empty concrete bunker amidst disaster is not only self-defeating, it’s lifeless. At some point the supplies diminish. We can never stockpile enough gold, toilet paper, or bullets. If instead we engage together in conscious cooperation, we can increase our survival chances, creating worlds we truly want to participate in with our families, neighbors, and larger communities that we couldn’t have imagined before.

This is more than some short-sighted journey where at the end your team wins for your god, government, or economic system. Mutual aid can be hard, with messy engagements, lack of clarity on what you should do, and fear of an unknown future. Yet these ideas can be incredibly beautiful and rewarding. Mutual aid allows us to put aside all the minutia we believe makes us different from each other and forge paths together. 

The more than twenty years since 9/11 have seen multiple grassroots mutual aid initiatives all across the country. These have helped lay the groundwork and feed into the flowering of projects responding to the coronavirus pandemic. We also see street medic collectives tending to the injured at Black Lives Matter and antifascist protests, and legal aid collectives helping those jailed. This is us developing power, sustaining the common sense around the importance of cooperation and caring for each other, centering liberatory ideas, and developing a world beyond police and prisons. 

The majority of the world cannot vote or buy our way out of disaster situations. Once we realize this, we can choose to make our and others’ lives better. We are developing our potential as human beings. We need to be preparing now for the future disasters we will surely encounter. Liberatory mutual aid is a key piece in making the world anew in this historic time. We can use these ideas and practices to help make a life worth living. 

In direct and meaningful ways, people learn that they do not have to wait for those in power to make their lives better. They begin to realize that they can do it for themselves, with support, even in the worst of times. These concepts — that anarchists politically name mutual aid — will continue to be needed for the survival and health of all of us in our day-to-day lives as we face uncertain futures. Disasters and crises open a crack for people to see themselves and their own power, allowing us to rebuild small pieces of our communities differently than before and establish new patterns for the future. These are openings to something different. This is liberation and connection. This is disaster anarchy.