What Is Mutual Aid?​

Mutual aid is a form of collective action that seeks to meet people’s immediate needs, build solidarity and facilitate community-based problem solving.

​While many new mutual aid groups rose in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid has existed forever. Indigenous people, Black people, other people of color, and other marginalized communities have long formed mutual aid organizations as they turned to one another for support when systems like the government did not meet their needs.

Mutual aid is not like traditional charity. In a mutual aid mindset, everyone has something to offer and may have something they need. There are not usually any eligibility requirements to access resources and the individuals who provide services or support are typically self-organized and operate in a non-hierarchical structure. In contrast, traditional charity may perpetuate a division between people who have the resources to give and those who have the needs. Mutual aid seeks to democratize both power and access to resources.

Additionally, mutual aid is political. Those who do mutual aid come together with the understanding that our political and economic systems have left people behind. We understand that the choices that our politicians and leaders make have left our community without sufficient food, housing, or healthcare, and we all suffer for it. We help provide basic necessities, while simultaneously arguing that we shouldn’t have to exist, and organizing for a future in which our society provides these things to everyone. 

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This page is excerpted from a blog post from 2021 on the Astoria M​utual Aid website.​