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 onContinue reading “Americans Don’t Understand What Violence Really Is”

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 expressesContinue reading “Not Only Food”

Introduction to Mutual Aid and hierarchies

As I’ve been talking and writing about Mutual Aid, I’m not surprised that most of the questions relate to hierarchies. Mutual Aid is founded on a flat or horizontal hierarchy, where everyone has a voice in decisions. I would highly recommend Dean Spade’s book , “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)”.Continue reading “Introduction to Mutual Aid and hierarchies”

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 timeContinue reading “A matter of faith”

Mutual Aid stories

For the past week I’ve been thinking and praying a lot about Mutual Aid in preparation for a discussion we plan to have at my Quaker meeting tomorrow. As I have nearly every Saturday for the last year, I was with my Mutual Aid friends this morning for our weekly food distribution. Here are aContinue reading “Mutual Aid stories”

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 queriesContinue reading “Mutual Aid is the Quaker way of being in the world”

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’tContinue reading “Does Mutual Aid speak to your condition?”

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. SteppingContinue reading “More notes on 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 haveContinue reading “Spirituality and Mutual Aid”

Notes to myself continued

Yesterday I wrote about preparing for a discussion about Mutual Aid at my Quaker meeting this Sunday. Describing the use of queries, and then coming up with an initial series of questions. Now I’m outlining the major topics to discuss. An hour isn’t much time, and the point of queries is to allow people timeContinue reading “Notes to myself continued”