Photo: Getty Images
Chances are you have been practicing mutual aid in your everyday life without even knowing it. Mutual Aid on a small scale level often looks like sharing meals with a stranger, participating in a clothing swap, or pooling resources with others to fundraise for a community member in need.
At the onset of COVID-19, many Detroiters found themselves cut off from material and social resources following job layoffs and social distancing protocols. Mutual aid organizing grew out of this scarcity to bridge gaps of crisis-induced economic displacement.
“Between 2020 and 2021, we saw that the biggest need was cash, frankly,” said Myaia Holmes, the executive director of The Metro Detroit Mutual Aid.
“During COVID, folks couldn’t afford to pay their bills, help for tenants facing eviction even during the moratorium and landlords who insist on evicting folks. There were also utility needs with people on payment plans with DTE. There was a lot of direct distribution through our partners at East Side Mutual Aid.”
The Metro Detroit Mutual Aid is a capacity-building organization that works with mutual aid groups in Detroit, Michigan, and the surrounding area by providing training, assistance, and support. The group crowd funded an estimated $75,000 to provide cash assistance to residents.
The goal of the organization is to set up tables where our organizations can work together, pool resources, and develop a more comprehensive strategic plan for the entire region.
Since 2010, the organization grew out of a direct aid model program and in 2022 switched to a capacity-building program. In the early days, the organization’s work consisted of fresh, hot food delivery, toiletries, and other basic needs across the city.
Today, Metro Detroit Mutual Aid acts as an intermediary between community members that request a need and are then connecting with other residents to share resources.
Building on their capacity and future vision, the team expects to be able to provide organizational staff and community training, no-return or low-interest microgrants, and construct a larger strategic plan and theory of change across like-minded groups.
“Mutual aid is different from charity or traditional philanthropy,” said Holmes. “You’re not just dropping off your clothes for a donation or other things you don’t need and carry on. Mutual aid is based on connecting with your community, getting to know each other. We need to be able to look each other in the eye and see each other, build relationships that are meaningful so that we take care of each other sustainably.”
What is Mutual Aid?
The concept is not brand-new. Mutual help networks have been vital to the survival and accessibility of many low-income, Black, LGBTQIA+, immigrant, and Indigenous groups for millennia.
The demand for mutual aid networks has increased dramatically in the face of an unyielding epidemic of COVID-19, the economic crisis, and an increase concern of an unstable climate.
These crises bring to light the structural injustices that are pervasive throughout our society and even in humanitarian help. And mutual assistance has always contributed to bridging those gaps.
In 2022, the University of Chicago Press Journals published a study titled “Values and Beliefs Underlying Mutual Aid: An Exploration of Collective Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” exploring key intersections that define mutual aid.
The underlying common values include reciprocity, shared humanity, and community-driven care and redistribution of resources.
Eastside Mutual Aid is a self-described leftist organization that provides mutual aid to Detroit. The group’s mutual aid efforts include clothing, food, toiletries, and resources.
“Much like a lot of mutual aid projects across the nation, we came out of the midst of COVID 19,” Jewan Price, co-founder of Eastside Mutual Aid (EMA). “We just realized there were a ton of resources and direct action not really being allocated to certain marginalized communities, specifically Black disenfranchised communities.”
Price said the idea grew out of chats on social media with community members that saw the gaps around them and felt compelled to act.
“We pulled up downtown, in the midst of the winter, at Rosa Parks transit center, and started handing out clothes out of the back of a pickup truck and it just snowballed from there,” said Price. “We’re only a year and a half in and going strong. There are a lot of opportunities to keep doing the work.”
The group is geared toward cultivating a self-sustainable and empathetic community. Ongoing projects include plans to build more community fridges, parks, free libraries, free stores, educational events, and purchase of lots on the east side of Detroit.
In terms of building on the momentum of mutual aid, Price said everyone involved needs to think about how to build a sustainable culture model.
“I really started to notice how the mutual aid network in Detroit works here and what happens is that we don’t have a streamlined method to get things done and allocate resources as efficiently as we could. Hopefully in the next coming years because things like that really do take time and a collective effort.”
About Post Author
