Mutual Aid

What is Mutual Aid?

As anarchist Peter Kropotkin said, “Mutual aid is as ancient as human culture because it is cooperation, not competition, that made us humans what we are today.” Mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members to overcome barriers to meet each other’s needs. Mutual aid participants work together to organize to meet each other’s needs, such as food, housing, medical care, mass evictions, long strikes, and disaster relief while organizing themselves against the system that created the shortage in the first place. 

Priorities 

The purpose of the Mutual Aid Working Group is to organize people to meet the needs of people in our community. We work with folks to build organizations that provide for the needs of their neighbors, friends, and families. This safety net is vital because capitalistim leads to deeply biased and harmful policies that particularly impact racial and gender minorities. 

Projects 

Here is how we are actively engaged in various projects and project plans for the future of our community:

• Documentation of the Little Free Library and Pantry sites around the Quad Cities area  
• Creating, printing, and distributing Socialist literature for the Little Free Libraries  

• Canvassing to organize neighbors to support  for the Little Free Pantries in their neighborhoods

• What would you like to get involved in? What should we do next? Join us at an upcoming meeting!