Category: community

An Epistle to Friends Regarding Community, Mutual Aid and LANDBACK

To protect all living-beings and sacred sites is a feminine act and in complete defiance to Christopher Columbus’ worldview, which is the narrative that we counter every time we celebrate Indigenous People’s Day instead of Columbus Day. –Sikowis Nobiss

It has become clear to some of us who are called Friends that the colonial capitalist economic system and white supremacy are contrary to the Spirit and we must find a better way. We conscientiously object to and resist capitalism and white supremacy.

Jeff Kisling

I am sometimes discouraged that so much work by Indigenous Peoples, so much that I have tried to do, rarely results in any progress toward justice. For White people, we must begin by de-colonizing ourselves.

Dear Friends

The measure of a community is how the needs of its people are met. No one should go hungry, or without shelter or healthcare. Yet in this country known as the United States millions struggle to survive. The capitalist economic system creates hunger, houselessness, illness that is preventable, and despair. A system that requires money for goods and services denies basic needs to anyone who does not have money. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) are disproportionately affected. Systemic racism. The capitalist system that supports the white materialistic lifestyle is built on stolen land and genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the labor of those who were enslaved in the past or are forced to live on poverty wages today.

Capitalism is revealed as an unjust, untenable system, when there is plenty of food in the grocery stores, but men, women and children are going hungry, living on the streets outside. White supremacy violently enforces the will of wealthy white people on the rest of us.

It has become clear to some of us who are called Friends that the colonial capitalist economic system and white supremacy are contrary to the Spirit and we must find a better way. We conscientiously object to and resist capitalism and white supremacy.

capitalism has violated the communities of marginalized folks. capitalism is about the value of people, property and the people who own property. those who have wealth and property control the decisions that are made. the government comes second to capitalism when it comes to power.

in the name of liberation, capitalism must be reversed and dismantled. meaning that capitalistic practices must be reprogrammed with mutual aid practices. 
Des Moines Black Liberation Movement

Mutual Aid

How do we resist? We rebuild our communities in ways not based on money. Such communities thrive all over the world. Indigenous peoples have always lived this way. Generations of white people once did so in this country. Mutual Aid is a framework that can help us do this today.

The concept of Mutual Aid is simple to explain but can result in transformative change. Mutual Aid involves everyone coming together to find a solution for problems we all face. This is a radical departure from “us” helping “them”. Instead, we all work together to find and implement solutions.  To work together means we must be physically present with each other. Mutual Aid cannot be done by committee or donations. We build Beloved communities as we get to know each other. Build solidarity. An important part of Mutual Aid is creating these networks of people who know and trust each other. When new challenges arise, these networks are in place, ready to meet them.

Another important part of Mutual Aid is the transformation of those involved. This means both those who are providing help and those receiving it.

With Mutual Aid, people learn to live in a community where there is no vertical hierarchy. A community where everyone has a voice. A model that results in enthusiastic participation. A model that makes the vertical hierarchy required for white supremacy impossible.

Commonly there are several Mutual Aid projects in a community. The initial projects usually relate to survival needs. One might be a food giveaway. Another helping those who need shelter. Many Mutual Aid groups often have a bail fund, to support those arrested for agitating for change. And accompany those arrested when they go to court.

LANDBACK

The other component necessary to move away from colonial capitalism and white supremacy is LANDBACK or ReMatriate.

But the idea of “landback” — returning land to the stewardship of Indigenous peoples — has existed in different forms since colonial governments seized it in the first place. “Any time an Indigenous person or nation has pushed back against the oppressive state, they are exercising some form of landback,” says Nickita Longman, a community organizer from George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada.

The movement goes beyond the transfer of deeds to include respecting Indigenous rights, preserving languages and traditions, and ensuring food sovereignty, housing, and clean air and water. Above all, it is a rallying cry for dismantling white supremacy and the harms of capitalism.

Returning the Land. Four Indigenous leaders share insights about the growing landback movement and what it means for the planet, by Claire Elise Thompson, Grist, February 25, 2020

ReMatriate

“For Indigenous Peoples Day, I would like for folks to better understand and appreciate this movement which has been working its way into the dominant public narrative over the past few years. As a hashtag or sign at a protest, the term Land Back is straightforward. It is a demand that stolen land, sacred sites and sovereign stewardship be returned to whom it was stolen from: Indigenous peoples. It has become popular movement slang used in our ongoing efforts to fend off relentless theft and racial injustice, and a call for reparations.

Land Back is a helpful term but I prefer to use ReMatriate, as it is more inclusive of the many issues that have arisen from land theft, and better describes the Indigenous fight to defend Mother Earth. It is a call to reestablish Indigenous landscapes, bring back Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and to give stolen power back to the feminine. In a world where unfettered patriarchal violence and greed has brought us to the precipice of a climate extinction, ReMatriation is the return of the matriarchy. This counterbalances the forces of toxic masculinity that, through Christian colonial-capitalist violence, are intent on holding all power and controlling all the life, land and resources on our Mother Earth.”

PERSPECTIVES: Why “ReMatriate” is a more inclusive term for returning land to Indigenous peoples by Sikowis Nobiss, reckon, Oct 3, 2023

What will Friends do?

It matters little what people say they believe when their actions are inconsistent with their words.  Thus, we Friends may say there should not be hunger and poverty, but as long as Friends continue to collaborate in a system that leaves many without basic necessities and violently enforces white supremacy, our example will fail to speak to mankind.

Let our lives speak for our convictions.  Let our lives show that we oppose the capitalist system and white supremacy, and the damages that result.  We can engage in efforts, such as Mutual Aid, LANDBACK, and ReMatriate to build Beloved community. To reach out to our neighbors to join us.

We must begin by changing our own lives if we hope to make a real testimony for peace and justice.

Americans Don’t Understand What Violence Really Is

Racism Made America a Failed State, Just Like Its Greatest Mind Predicted. Americans Don’t Understand What Violence Really Is — And So They’re Stuck in a Vicious Cycle of It is the title of an article, published on Martin Luther King Day, by umair haque, an author I follow.

I often wonder to myself on days like this, and I try to talk about this every year on this day: what might an America that really understood MLK’s message have been like? What kind of country would that have been and become?

The answer is: it would have been a better place for everyone. A more prosperous country, in every way imaginable.

How so? MLK’s central messages were twofold: nonviolence and love. And yet Americans are such violent people — they fetishize and worship violence at such a deep level — that even “leftists” today roll their eyes and laugh at such a message. Love! Lol!!!

But they shouldn’t.

Americans Don’t Understand What Violence Really Is by umair haque, Eudaimonia and Co, January 17, 2022

The article is an interesting discussion of violence, which isn’t usually part of the discussion of nonviolence.

MLK understood — or would have — that all the following things are forms of violence. People forced to “crowdfund” healthcare — to beg their neighbors for pennies for medicine. A workplace culture where being abused and berated by your boss is totally normal. Incomes not rising for half a century — while costs skyrocket to absurd levels. The average American dying in debt. Being forced to choose between healthcare and your life savings. Having to give up your home because you want to educate your kids.

All these things are forms of violence. Violence runs deep. It isn’t just mobs of fascists smearing feces on the walls — though it is also that. It’s what Americans do to one another as everyday interaction — and shrug off as normal. Mental, emotional, social, cultural violence makes up the very fabric of everyday American life. It’s the poisonous residue of slavery. And it’s profoundly traumatic. It has lacerated the American mind, and made violence a legitimate solution to every social problem. But these forms of all-pervasive violence are what a capitalist society is limited to, because everything is competition, rivalry, and ultimately, domination and subjugation.

Americans Don’t Understand What Violence Really Is by umair haque, Eudaimonia and Co, January 17, 2022
This makes me realize Mutual Aid is an expression of nonviolence.

What we have is each other. We can and need to take care of each other. We may have limited power on the political stage, a stage they built, but we have the power of numbers.

Those numbers represent unlimited amounts of talents and skills each community can utilize to replace the systems that fail us.  The recent past shows us that mutual aid is not only a tool of survival, but also a tool of revolution. The more we take care of each other, the less they can fracture a community with their ways of war.

Ronnie James, Des Moines Mutual Aid
This is a video I made years ago.

Not Only Food

I would normally be going to Des Moines this morning to help put together boxes of food with my Des Moines Mutual Aid friends. I won’t because predictions for heavy snow overnight would make travel hazardous. The predictions were accurate. And my brother is visiting.

The Des Moines Mutual Aid’s (DMMA) Points of Unity expresses what Mutual Aid is about. DMMA has several projects. One is the free food distribution, which the following describes. This continues the Black Panther Party school breakfast program.

A principle of Mutual Aid is to invite others into the work, mobilizing people and building movements. The statement above is given to those who come to us for food, inviting anyone to join.

One of my Mutual Aid friends asked how I became involved (long story). Then she told me she used to come because she needed food. Now she is happy she can join in the work of distributing the food.

There are three key elements of Mutual Aid.

  1. Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
  2. Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
  3. Mutual Aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

    Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity during this Crisis (and the next) by Dean Spade, Verso, 2020

Now all of us are facing food insecurity as we see grocery stores beginning to have trouble stocking their shelves. I hope this will result in more Mutual Aid projects.

A recent article reminded me about Food Not Bombs.

Every Wednesday, a mix of New Paltz college students and locals congregate in a small workspace just outside of town. It may look like they’re just cooking and packing food to deliver to needy families, but it’s really more than that.

“Like when people say, ‘serving the community,’ well, we want to build a community,” said Katari Sisa, a volunteer for Food Not Bombs New Paltz.

Sisa, a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz, has been involved at the organization for the last four years now. Sisa says that giving back is necessary right now, with a pandemic raging and, according to data collected by the University of Southern California, nearly 37% of Americans are dealing with food insecurity.

“This is part of a larger project, kind of like a larger vision for a community center and having a kind of consistent spot to do stuff like this from,” Sisa said.

The ultimate goal, organizers say, is to build unity between people and create a more equitable community.

FOOD NOT BOMBS AIMS TO BRING MORE THAN JUST FOOD By John Camera, Spectrum Local News, February 3, 2021

Randomly passing an accomplice on the street and throwing up a fist at each other as we go our separate ways to destroy all that is rotten in this world will never fail to give me extra energy and a single tear of gratitude for what this city is creating.

my friend Ronnie James, Des Moines Mutua Aid

A matter of faith

There are two definitions of faith.

  • complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
  • strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

I wasn’t familiar with the use of apprehension above. I found one definition is “understanding or grasp”.

I spent a lot of time praying (faith) and thinking about the discussion we were going have at my Quaker meeting, Bear Creek (some of us via ZOOM) related to Mutual Aid. I’ve been deeply involved in Des Moines Mutual Aid (DMMA) for two years, writing nearly daily to share what I’ve been learning. It can be difficult to express lived experiences to those who haven’t had those experiences. Many Friends have had experiences that could be called Mutual Aid in their peace and justice work.

I made mistakes over the years because I had conflicts with the meeting related to the use of fossil fuels. (Meeting refers to my local meeting, Bear Creek.) I didn’t do a good job of inviting the meeting to engage with me about that. Although I understood there are major obstacles to reducing use of fossil fuels where there is no mass transportation, I have been humbled to face that problem myself since I moved to Iowa from Indianapolis several years ago.

One Friend from the meeting had a suggestion that helped us work together on fossil fuel issues. That resulted in the approval of the following Minute by our Yearly Meeting.

Radically reducing fossil fuel use has long been a concern of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative).  A previously approved Minute urged us to reduce our use of personal automobiles.  We have continued to be challenged by the design of our communities that makes this difficult.  This is even more challenging in rural areas.  But our environmental crisis means we must find ways to address this issue quickly.

Friends are encouraged to challenge themselves and to simplify their lives in ways that can enhance their spiritual environmental integrity. One of our meetings uses the term “ethical transportation,” which is a helpful way to be mindful of this.

Long term, we need to encourage ways to make our communities “walkable”, and to expand public transportation systems.  These will require major changes in infrastructure and urban planning.

Carpooling and community shared vehicles would help.  We can develop ways to coordinate neighbors needing to travel to shop for food, attend meetings, visit doctors, etc.  We could explore using existing school buses or shared vehicles to provide intercity transportation.

One immediately available step would be to promote the use of bicycles as a visible witness for non-fossil fuel transportation.  Friends may forget how easy and fun it can be to travel miles on bicycles.  Neighbors seeing families riding their bicycles to Quaker meetings would have an impact on community awareness.  This is a way for our children to be involved in this shared witness.  We should encourage the expansion of bicycle lanes and paths.  We can repair and recycle unused bicycles and make them available to those who have the need.

Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) 2017

That experience has helped me have more faith in the work of our meeting, in the sense of trust in the meeting. And helped me be a better listener.

We had the discussion about Mutual Aid at Bear Creek yesterday and I was very pleased. Friends had interesting and helpful questions and ideas. I was happy to hear what Friends had been doing in their communities related to Mutual Aid.

One of the most thought-provoking questions related to hierarchies. That any group would have differences, such as educational level or class, for example. I didn’t have a good answer at the time. The following video by Dean Spade explains this well. Of course, we all have different experiences and skills. Mutual Aid communities appreciate and encourage the use of community building skills. And helping people build new skills is encouraged.

Vertical versus horizontal hierarchies are related to decision making.

Two of the queries (questions) we considered yesterday relating to hierarchies were:

  • Do we recognize that vertical hierarchies are about power, supremacy and privilege? What are Quaker hierarchies?
  • Do we work to prevent vertical hierarchies in our peace and justice work?

Dean Spade wrote the best book I’m aware of about Mutual Aid. Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity during this Crisis (and the next) by Dean Spade, Verso, 2020

He teaches courses about Mutual Aid and has produced videos related to the subject. The following is a good discussion of horizontal group structures.

These workshops are about building mutual aid groups that can make decisions together, that include everybody, that can prevent and weather conflict, that can sustain work and sustain engagement, that can bring lots of new people into the work and so that it’s well resourced by people power. And that can be a bridge for people towards deeper and bolder movement engagement.

I strongly believe that horizontal group structures, meaning group structures where there’s no boss or executive director or main decider are the way to get there, for a number of reasons, and I want to share those in case that’s new for people.

One big reason is that hierarchies invite abuse and reproduce systems like racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, et cetera. I mean, we see it all the time. It’s like when you set something up as a hierarchy, oftentimes it’s men or white people bossing people around or old people bossing young people around or whatever.

And the bossing around can include worse forms of exploitation and abuse, also. I think that is inherent to hierarchy.

So we’ve seen forever in social justice movements, people set up hierarchical groups and then the same stuff plays out that they were trying to fight.

I think that’s worse, and it’s not as if it can’t happen in horizontal groups. We still have the dynamics. We still have that unlearning to do, but I think that hierarchy invites it.

Dean Spade: Horizontal Group Structures in Mutual Aid Work

Dean Spade: Horizontal Group Structures in Mutual Aid Work

Mutual Aid is the Quaker way of being in the world

This week I’ve been writing to help refine what I hope will happen when we discuss Mutual Aid at my Quaker meeting this weekend. Quakers have a practice of using questions (queries) to help focus and stimulate participation in consideration of topics such as peace, Quaker education, etc. In the tables below I’ve extracted queries from those we routinely consider that relate to Mutual Aid and added others I’ve written.

I think what I will have the most trouble conveying is Mutual Aid represents a paradigm shift away from our current situation. Away from capitalism, white supremacy, insurance-controlled healthcare, militarized police and punishment oriented judicial system, prisons, education that resists teaching critical thinking and promotes white supremacy, and domestic and global militarism. Away from commodifying all natural resources. Continuing extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Simply put, Mutual Aid is the Quaker way of being in the world.

I’d like us to spend most of the hour’s discussion Sunday hearing what the people in the (Quaker) meeting say about these queries.

At the beginning of the discussion, I want to make the following points.

  • My introduction to Mutual Aid was in response to a strong Spiritual leading.
  • Mutual Aid is NOT charity.
  • Maintaining a flat or horizontal hierarchy is what makes Mutual Aid work.
    • The short video below “Horizontal Group Structures in Mutual Aid Work” does an excellent job of explaining this. The video is by Dean Spade, who wrote the book, “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next).” Verso.
    • MUTUAL is the key.
  • Removing the artificial hierarchies eliminates grouping people by race, class, gender, education, etc. There cannot be white supremacy, for example, if there is no vertical hierarchy.
  • Mutual Aid resists authoritarianism and colonization.
  • Mutual Aid is the Quaker way of being in the world.

The point that seems most difficult to grasp, but is most important to learn, is the difference between Mutual Aid and charity. Charity is an example of a vertical hierarchy. The donors are above the recipients. The recipients are often stigmatized. There is rarely any contact between the two. And there are often strings attached. Recipients must meet certain criteria to qualify for the help/money. And what is offered as help is often not what the recipients actually need.

“Mutual” is the key to Mutual Aid. It can never be “us” helping “them”. The whole community works together to identify and solve problems affecting everyone. There is the understanding that anyone of us might need the help that we are involved in providing. Someone I met when we were putting together boxes of food told me in the past, she was among those who needed the food.

I wrote about using questions (queries) to help guide the discussion and encourage participation by those attending. (Notes to Myself).

Queries related to Mutual Aid
Do we recognize that vertical hierarchies are about power, supremacy and privilege? What are Quaker hierarchies?
Do we work to prevent vertical hierarchies in our peace and justice work?
What are we doing to meet the survival needs of our wider community?
How are we preparing for disaster relief, both for our community, and for the influx of climate refugees?
Are we examples of a Beloved community? How can we invite our friends and neighbors to join our community?

The following lists some of the Yearly Meeting’s queries that apply to Mutual Aid.

Advices and Queries of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative)
OutreachIn what ways do we cooperate with persons and groups with whom we share concerns? How do we reach out to those with whom we disagree?
Civic responsibilityIn what ways do we assume responsibility for the government of our community, state, nation and world?
Environmental responsibilityWhat are we doing about our disproportionate use of the world’s resources?
Social and economic justiceHow are we beneficiaries of inequity and exploitation? How are we victims of inequity and exploitation? In what ways can we address these problems?
What can we do to improve the conditions in our correctional institutions and to address the mental and social problems of those confined there? (This one is related to Abolition of police and prisons)
Peace and nonviolenceWhat are we doing to educate ourselves and others about the causes of conflict in our own lives, our families and our meetings? Do we provide refuge and assistance, including advocacy, for spouses, children, or elderly persons who are victims of violence or neglect?
Do we recognize that we can be perpetrators as well as victims of violence? How do we deal with this? How can we support one another so that healing may take place?
What Is Mutual Aid?

Mutual aid is collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them. Those systems, in fact, have often created the crisis, or are making things worse. We see examples of mutual aid in every single social movement, whether it’s people raising money for workers on strike, setting up a ride-sharing system during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, putting drinking water in the desert for migrants crossing the border, training each other in emergency medicine because ambulance response time in poor neighborhoods is too slow, raising money to pay for abortions for those who can’t afford them, or coordinating letter-writing to prisoners. These are mutual aid projects. They directly meet people’s survival needs, and are based on a shared understanding that the conditions in which we are made to live are unjust.

There is nothing new about mutual aid— people have worked together to survive for all of human history. But capitalism and colonialism created structures that have disrupted how people have historically connected with each other and shared everything they needed to survive. As people were forced into systems of wage labor and private property, and wealth became increasingly concentrated, our ways of caring for each other have become more and more tenuous.

Today, many of us live in the most atomized societies in human history, which makes our lives less secure and undermines our ability to organize together to change unjust conditions on a large scale. We are put in competition with each other for survival, and we are forced to rely on hostile systems— like health care systems designed around profit, not keeping people healthy, or food and transportation systems that pollute the earth and poison people— for the things we need. More and more people report that they have no one they can confide in when they are in trouble. This means many of us do not get help with mental health, drug use, family violence, or abuse until the police or courts are involved, which tends to escalate rather than resolve harm.

In this context of social isolation and forced dependency on hostile systems, mutual aid— where we choose to help each other out, share things, and put time and resources into caring for the most vulnerable— is a radical act.

Dean Spade. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (Kindle Locations 104-120). Verso.

There are three key elements of Mutual Aid.

  1. Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
  2. Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
  3. Mutual Aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

    Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity during this Crisis (and the next) by Dean Spade, Verso, 2020

DateBlog posts related to Mutual Aid discussion
Mutual Aid in the Midwest
12/31/2021A Call for Quakers to Embrace Mutual Aid
1/2/2022What I Don’t Know About Mutual Aid
1/3/2022Notes to Myself
1/4/2022Notes to Myself Continued
1/5/2022Spirituality and Mutual Aid
1/5/2022More Notes on Mutual Aid
1/6/2022Does Mutual Aid speak to your condition?

Additional information about Quakers and Mutual Aid:

We did distribute food on Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Does Mutual Aid speak to your condition?

For the past week I’ve been writing daily to prepare for a discussion at my Quaker meeting this Sunday. (See the table at the end listing those posts).

Yesterday’s post is an example of why I need to prepare. I went a bit off track. There is a lot to Mutual Aid, and we can’t cover it all in one hour. I hope there will be interest to continue to explore more about Mutual Aid after this weekend’s discussion.

In the quote below (Quaker) George Fox uses the term “speak to my condition”. I think that might be a way to frame Sunday’s discussion, does Mutual Aid speak to our condition today?

But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”;

George Fox, (Quaker)

I wrote about using questions (queries) to help guide the discussion and encourage participation by those attending. (Notes to Myself).

Queries related to Mutual Aid
Do we recognize that vertical hierarchies are about power, supremacy and privilege? What are Quaker hierarchies?
Do we work to prevent vertical hierarchies in our peace and justice work?
What are we doing to meet the survival needs of our wider community?
How are we preparing for disaster relief, both for our community, and for the influx of climate refugees?
Are we examples of a Beloved community? How can we invite our friends and neighbors to join our community?

The following table lists some of the queries that we routinely use that apply to Mutual Aid.

Advices and Queries of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative)
OutreachIn what ways do we cooperate with persons and groups with whom we share concerns? How do we reach out to those with whom we disagree?
Civic responsibilityIn what ways do we assume responsibility for the government of our community, state, nation and world?
Environmental responsibilityWhat are we doing about our disproportionate use of the world’s resources?
Social and economic justiceHow are we beneficiaries of inequity and exploitation? How are we victims of inequity and exploitation? In what ways can we address these problems?
What can we do to improve the conditions in our correctional institutions and to address the mental and social problems of those confined there? (This one is related to Abolition of police and prisons)
Peace and nonviolenceWhat are we doing to educate ourselves and others about the causes of conflict in our own lives, our families and our meetings? Do we provide refuge and assistance, including advocacy, for spouses, children, or elderly persons who are victims of violence or neglect?
Do we recognize that we can be perpetrators as well as victims of violence? How do we deal with this? How can we support one another so that healing may take place?

Mutual aid work is not easy. It means forming lasting commitments to doing hard work collaborating with people even when we have conflict. And facing the heart-wrenching realities of the systems we live under. It is also deeply satisfying work that transforms us from being exasperated passive observers of the shitstorm we’re living in to inspired builders of the new world we desperately crave.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

There are three key elements of Mutual Aid.

  1. Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
  2. Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
  3. Mutual Aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

    Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity during this Crisis (and the next) by Dean Spade, Verso, 2020
DateBlog posts related to Mutual Aid discussion
Mutual Aid in the Midwest
12/31/2021A Call for Quakers to Embrace Mutual Aid
1/2/2022What I Don’t Know About Mutual Aid
1/3/2022Notes to Myself
1/4/2022Notes to Myself Continued
1/5/2022Spirituality and Mutual Aid
1/5/2022More Notes on Mutual Aid

Additional information about Quakers and Mutual Aid:

More notes on Mutual Aid

I’ve been preparing for a discussion my Quaker meeting will have this weekend about Mutual Aid. At the end of this is a table of posts I’ve been writing to help me organize my thoughts. I am not satisfied with how this post has turned out, but these are notes, not a finished document.

Stepping back from the details, I’m reflecting on what I hope will happen as a result of this discussion. My hope is that we begin to use Mutual Aid to guide our work, both in our Quaker meeting and how we do our work in the community for peace and justice.

Mutual Aid requires a paradigm shift from a community of primarily White Quakers immersed in the capitalist economic system, white supremacy, settler colonialism and land theft, forced assimilation, foreign and domestic militarism, state sanctioned violence, punishment oriented criminal justice system, fossil fuel power, and whatever you call our political systems.

Wow!

The greatest obstacle will be to persuade Friends that we should stop participating in those systems. Although that is looking more attractive as these systems are rapidly collapsing now.

Capitalism is economic slavery. Capitalism has forced millions into poverty. Capitalism denies shelter, food, water, healthcare quality education, and the ability to build any wealth at all to millions of people.

There were White Quakers who were involved in the institution of slavery. Even those who did not claim ownership of enslaved men, women and children benefited economically. Continue to benefit.

I don’t think we have many years of civilization left. But I think a few years hence people will look back at this time in a similar way to how we look back on slavery.

Quakers also have their history of participation in the institutions of forced assimilation to atone for. This is a significant barrier between Friends and Indigenous peoples.

In December 2020, Ronnie James and I had the following email exchange:

RonnieI don’t know what you can do. The church is the church’s past, which is its future. It continues to see my people as obstacles in its endless conquest.
JeffI was not feeling worthy of participating in Mutual Aid but thanks to you, I’ve signup up again for this weekend.
RonnieYou’re a good relative Jeff. To be blunt, there is too much damage that the church profits from and needs to protect to have any future there.
JeffI am afraid you are right.
RonnieI wish you the best. I imagine its a hard struggle.

Mutual aid work is not easy. It means forming lasting commitments to doing hard work collaborating with people even when we have conflict. And facing the heart-wrenching realities of the systems we live under. It is also deeply satisfying work that transforms us from being exasperated passive observers of the shitstorm we’re living in to inspired builders of the new world we desperately crave.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
DateBlog posts related to Mutual Aid discussion
Mutual Aid in the Midwest
12/31/2021A Call for Quakers to Embrace Mutual Aid
1/2/2022What I Don’t Know About Mutual Aid
1/3/2022Notes to Myself
1/4/2022Notes to Myself Continued
1/5/2022Spirituality and Mutual Aid

Spirituality and Mutual Aid

This continues my preparation for a discussion about Mutual Aid at my Quaker meeting this weekend. A couple of days ago I wrote about using queries (questions) to invite people to participate in the discussion. And began to come up with some queries.

It occurred to me that some of the queries we already have are relevant to the discussion about Mutual Aid. I’ve listed some of those in this table.

Advices and Queries of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative)
OutreachIn what ways do we cooperate with persons and groups with whom we share concerns? How do we reach out to those with whom we disagree?
Civic responsibilityIn what ways do we assume responsibility for the government of our community, state, nation and world?
Environmental responsibilityWhat are we doing about our disproportionate use of the world’s resources?
Social and economic justiceHow are we beneficiaries of inequity and exploitation? How are we victims of inequity and exploitation? In what ways can we address these problems?
What can we do to improve the conditions in our correctional institutions and to address the mental and social problems of those confined there? (This one is related to Abolition of police and prisons)
Peace and nonviolenceWhat are we doing to educate ourselves and others about the causes of conflict in our own lives, our families and our meetings? Do we provide refuge and assistance, including advocacy, for spouses, children, or elderly persons who are victims of violence or neglect?
Do we recognize that we can be perpetrators as well as victims of violence? How do we deal with this? How can we support one another so that healing may take place?

Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) is the yearly meeting my Quaker meeting (Bear Creek) belongs to. (Note: Conservative means maintaining/conserving the beliefs and practices of early Friends). There is an unofficial Facebook group for the yearly meeting. I share most of my blog posts with this group, hence the reference to mutual aid in the following that Marshall Massey wrote recently.

The Christian position, rooted in Deuteronomy 10:14 and Psalm 24:1, is that the Earth and all it contains belongs to the Lord, and we have no more ownership of any part of it than inheres in the right to enjoy a measure of its fruits without selfishness. Thus the early Jerusalem church went so far as to abolish private property, to hold all things in common, and to give to the needy amongst them “as anyone had need” (Acts 2:44-46, 4:32-35).

Friends from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries carried this ancient testimony forward, not going all the way to the abolition of private property but certainly giving generously from its fruits to their meetings, pressuring those who failed to give, and relying upon committees of overseers (the Quaker equivalent of deacons) to distribute what had been given to the meeting to those who were in need. In some corners a measure of this practice persists today. This is a testimony of communal sharing and mutual aid (hello, Jeff Kisling!) that we inherit and can revive and carry forward in the very teeth of the American obsession with private wealth, and it is eminently applicable to the right sharing of whatever is in our hands. A meeting can give of its funds to any threadbare storefront church, if it feels so led, without any need of royalty calculations, on the grounds of love and faithfulness alone.

Marshall Massey, member of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative)

Spirituality

I had been having a lot of trouble for the past several years, especially now that I’m blessed to have many Indigenous friends, about Christianity in general, and Quakers in particular related to the institutions and policy of forced assimilation. The only times I’ve brought up Quakers with Indigenous friends are when I’ve acknowledged and apologized for what was done.

Well, there was the time I briefly explained Quaker worship and we spent a little time in silence, holding hands, during the First Nation Farmer Climate Unity March (2018). Each time we walked over the Dakota Access Pipeline as we walked together from Des Moines to Fort Dodge (ninety-four miles) someone would offer prayers.

I bring this up because a number of my Mutual Aid friends are Indigenous people. I first learned about Mutual Aid when I met Ronnie James at a vigil for the Wet’suwet’en peoples in February, 2020. Ronnie is an Indigenous organizer and now a close friend. He mentored me as I learned about Mutual Aid.

I think Quakers and other Christians should be very careful about speaking about our religious beliefs, especially when with Native people.

On the other hand, one of the most impressive things about Mutual Aid, with it’s flat hierarchy, is people aren’t treated as belonging to any particular group. My Mutual Aid community has the greatest diversity I’ve ever experienced in the Midwest and we get along so well because of the mutuality concept. That alone should encourage Friends to seriously consider joining in the work of Mutual Aid.

What I don’t know about Mutual Aid

Disclaimer: Before getting to that, I think I should make a disclaimer, especially since I shared the 2021 Peace and Social Concerns report of my yearly meeting, Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative). I included that because Mutual Aid is mentioned in the report. “These injustices are some of the effects of systems of white supremacy. The concept of Mutual Aid is becoming an increasingly used model for communities working for justice. The idea is to have a horizontal hierarchy, where everyone has a voice. And work to ensure a vertical hierarchy does not develop. Without a vertical hierarchy, there can, by definition, be no superiority. Several of our meetings are supporting existing Mutual Aid communities or considering creating their own. These are opportunities to begin to disengage from the colonial capitalist system and white supremacy. Ways we can model justice in our own meetings and communities.”

But that doesn’t mean what I’ve been writing on this blog has been approved by the Yearly Meeting.

What I do know about Mutual Aid comes from my two years of experience with Mutual Aid in Des Moines.

I met Ronnie James, and Indigenous organizer and now close friend, when he came to a vigil we held in February 2020 in support of the Wet’suwet’en people’s struggles to prevent the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline through their territories. He came because he wanted to know who was supporting the Wet’suwet’en, because their struggles were not being covered in the mainstream media. That was a good organizing strategy, a way to find allies.

Because of the COVID pandemic, he and I didn’t meet in person for several months. But during that time, he was very generous in teaching me about his work with Des Moines Mutual Aid (DMMA). I quickly saw there was much more to Mutual Aid than just distributing free food, or propane tanks for the houseless in winter. I could also tell the people involved in DMMA were very careful about who they associated with because they were on the police radar, so to speak. Several had been arrested, some several times, as they demonstrated to support Des Moines Black Liberation’s protests of police violence after the killing of George Floyd.

But after months of email exchanges, I felt we were getting to know each other well enough that I could ask if it would be appropriate to participate in his work. I knew it was important for allies to be careful about inviting ourselves into situations in ways that are not appropriate.

Fortunately, he said yes, and I have been participating in the food distribution part of Des Moine Mutual Aid nearly every Saturday morning since (for more than a year).

I thought I would see how this worked for a few weeks, and that might be the end of it. But I found the actual experience of being present in this community taught me so much that words written in emails could not.

When I arrived that first morning, apprehensive about what might happen, I was told this was Mutual Aid, which meant all of us were encouraged to take any food we wanted, ourselves. For many weeks I did not take any, but finally realized that was a mistake. It was like I wasn’t really buying into the mutual part of this. I realized this when one of my new friends, in a friendly manner, asked why I wasn’t taking any food. Now I do.

I also witnessed the truly uplifting way every volunteer greeted each car of people who came for the food. It was always, “hi, how are you doing? Have a great day.”

I also saw this insistence of avoiding any kind of vertical hierarchy. No one said, “do this, do that…”. When there was a problem, anyone with a solution was expected to just do it. Or when the van of food arrived, someone would say “the van is here” and whoever wasn’t doing something else would just go out and help unload the food.

Also, one of my new friends who volunteered to help with the food distribution told me she was once in the position of needing the food herself.

And I know my friends always show up. As they did yesterday, New Year’s Day, with a wind chill of -11 degrees. As we had on Christmas day the week before.

So a new person has to learn a new way of working together. Learn how to act in a situation where you aren’t told what to do by someone above you in a vertical hierarchy. To learn to be always aware of what is going on around you. See if there is something that needs to be done, then do it yourself.

Multiple times I’ve heard someone say these Saturday mornings together are the best part of their week. I feel that, too. That’s one of the important parts of Mutual Aid. We are enthusiastic about this work. It pulls people in when they are doing something that has an immediate impact.

This is one of the many reasons I’m encouraging Friends and others to learn about, create and participate in Mutual Aid. Most of the Quaker meetings I’m aware of have dwindling numbers of people attending their meetings. And we don’t attract many/any young people or Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC).

I’ve thought we should have more workcamps, as we did when I was growing up. Those were experiences people appreciated. Mutual Aid can be the answer today.

But there is a more fundamental reason to adopt Mutual Aid. We need to accept that our political and economic systems are failing. Are not meeting our needs. “We” being those of us fortunate to have had livable incomes. Those who don’t have known the failure of these systems their entire lives. We have no choice but to come up with alternatives. I believe Mutual Aid is one alternative.

Finally, we get to what I don’t know about Mutual Aid. The key to Mutual Aid is for everyone in the community to be involved in the work. But most of us live some distance from our Quaker meetings. Is it possible, or desirable, to find ways to create Mutual Aid communities if people are not physically present with each other? Is ZOOM Mutual Aid possible, or desirable?

I don’t know. If you have some ideas about this, please write them in the comments.

Thank you.

Bear Creek Friends

A Call for Quakers to Embrace Mutual Aid

I am writing to make the case for the adoption of Mutual Aid as a framework for Quaker justice work.

This comes from my perspective of a White, Quaker, male (he/him), settler on Ioway land, in the country called the United States. When I refer to Quakers here, I mean White Quakers. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) Friends have completely different experiences related to white privilege and racism, for example.

My credentials include friendships with Native people here in the Midwest. And to have been part of a Mutual Aid community for the past two years. The following is from these lived experiences, which have excited me, shown me a different way to work for peace and justice.

There are three key elements of Mutual Aid.

  1. Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
  2. Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
  3. Mutual Aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.

    Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity during this Crisis (and the next) by Dean Spade, Verso, 2020


Mutual Aid is NOT charity. People often think of their financial support for a cause as aid. But that is not Mutual Aid. Charity involves an agency determining what the need is. Which too often is not what is needed. And has an implied hierarchy of the agency providing aid as superior to those who receive the aid. There are usually rules as to who qualifies for the aid.

Instead, Mutual Aid involves everyone in the community to work on problems that affect everyone. There is not a distinction between those who need help and those providing help. It is explicitly stated that anyone in the community might need help at some point. The whole community determines its needs and how to address those needs. Not a vertical hierarchy like “us helping them”.

Mutual Aid communities work to make sure no vertical hierarchy develops, implied or not. Vertical hierarchies mean some people are seen as superior in some way. Vertical hierarchies are about power. Which is the antithesis of mutuality.

Quakers and hierarchy

I hadn’t thought much about Quakers and vertical hierarchy before getting involved in Mutual Aid. But for example, we have yearly meeting clerks and yearly meeting committee clerks. Members of yearly meeting committees are appointed by local meetings, which might imply they have some superiority in those meetings. “Birthright” Friends are sometimes accorded privilege.

Often Quaker meetings make donations to peace and justice organizations, which is charity. Which usually doesn’t create a mutual relationship with those organizations or the people they serve.

For these reasons I think Quaker communities should embrace Mutual Aid. That would mean connecting with everyone in the neighborhood around the meeting. This is the concept of beloved community.  This might attract neighbors to become involved in the meeting. We would get a better idea of what we might work on together. This would be a way to speak to the spiritual condition of our communities.

This PDF has much more information about Quakers and Mutual Aid:
A Call for Quakers to Embrace Mutual Aid

Following is this year’s report of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) which includes discussion of Mutual Aid.

Peace and Social Concerns Committee Report 2021
Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative)

This has been a year of great upheaval locally, nationally, and globally. The work of our monthly meetings has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet we have found ways to continue our peace and justice work. And had more time for prayer and reflection.

Global chaos from rapidly accelerating environmental devastation is highly likely to occur, breaking down our economic, social, and political systems. As air and water temperatures increase, water supplies are drying up. Widening areas and severity of drought are decreasing crop production and forcing people to flee. Rising oceans are creating more climate refugees. The trend of increasing numbers of more ferocious wildfires, hurricanes and other storms are expected to accelerate. All kinds of infrastructure will likely be destroyed, creating more climate refugees, many migrating to the Midwest. How can we prepare our own communities for these disasters, and plan for the arrival of climate refugees?

Justice work by White Friends has changed in recent years. An important concept of justice work is to follow the leadership of oppressed communities, who are working tirelessly for their liberation. Those who consider themselves White Friends are learning how to step back. Be supporters and allies.

Many injustices today trace their roots to the arrival of white Europeans on this continent. These include a whole history of enslavement as well as genocide of Indigenous peoples. It is important for white Quakers to know we are not expected to feel guilt or blame for injustices that occurred in the past. But knowing what we know now, it is up to us to learn more about those wrongs, and work toward repair and healing.  This will be a primary focus of this committee’s work in the coming year.

As a society we have been forced to face systemic racism. For example, public murders by police have generated sustained protests regarding police brutality, with calls to limit police powers and change or abolish prisons.

Also dating back to the arrival of white Europeans is the genocide of Indigenous peoples. The theft of Native lands. And the atrocities of Native children taken from their families to institutions of forced assimilation, often far away. Places where attempts were made to the erase their culture. Many subjected to physical or sexual abuse. Thousands of Native children died. This intentional cruelty broke the resistance of Native peoples who were trying to hold onto their lands.

The recent validation of the remains of Native children on the grounds of those institutions is having devastating effects in Native communities and those who care about them. Searching the grounds of the institutions in this country is about to begin. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, has launched a federal investigation into these institutions of forced assimilation in the US

 A number of Catholic churches, who ran those institutions in Canada, have been burned or vandalized.

There are renewed calls for truth and reconciliation. Canadian Yearly Meeting has done a great deal of work on this.

These injustices are some of the effects of systems of white supremacy. The concept of Mutual Aid is becoming an increasingly used model for communities working for justice. The idea is to have a horizontal hierarchy, where everyone has a voice. And work to ensure a vertical hierarchy does not develop. Without a vertical hierarchy, there can, by definition, be no superiority. Several of our meetings are supporting existing Mutual Aid communities or considering creating their own. These are opportunities to begin to disengage from the colonial capitalist system and white supremacy. Ways we can model justice in our own meetings and communities.

We can show up for Black Lives Matter and other racial justice events. We can support those who meet with local, state, and Federal government officials. We can show up in the streets to support agitation for change, train in nonviolent civil disobedience, or accompany arrested activists through the justice system.

We can show up, when appropriate, at events of Native peoples, such as the Prairie Awakening ceremony. We can share Indigenous news on social media platforms, so others are aware of these things.

Indigenous leaders in the Midwest have asked us to learn about and find ways to engage in the concepts of Land Back. The website LANDBack Friends has been created and will be updated as our work continues.  https://landbackfriends.com/

We pray for guidance for how our committee might work together at the intersection of our responsibilities and those of Ministry and Counsel.

We will continue to seek spiritual guidance, both for what we are called to do, and ways to offer spiritual support for those who are not Friends. There is great spiritual poverty in many communities. Spiritual support will be needed by those who suffer the consequences of environmental and other disasters. And those responding to these disasters.

It is important to understand this work depends on us all working together, in the community. Outside our meetinghouses. Developing friendships in the local community. We encourage more engagement with our youth. They can teach us about justice. We and our meetings will be revitalized.

Many monthly meetings are adapting to these changing ways of doing peace and justice work.  Building relationships with communities of black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Exploring ways to be in right relationship with these communities. All of us learning from each other. Sharing our stories. Deepening spiritual connections.

Jeff Kisling, clerk
Peace and Social Concerns Committee