"No Masters, No Flakes"

 “Mutual Aid – Building Solidarity During This Crisis,” by Dean Spade, 2020

This blessedly short book describes the politics, methods and goals of providing mutual aid.  Mutual aid is not charity and is not non-profit work either.  Spade makes the differences very clear.  It is claimed to be a form of ‘community building’ that orients towards a post-capitalist future, building concrete ties among people so as to form a base for a new, socialized society of some sort.  At the same time it provides concrete benefits to the working class – in disasters, in conflict, in normal capitalist times.  This book serves as a practical primer, though later it veers into individual therapy territory.  The author is a law professor who has worked providing mutual aid around prisons, borders, poverty and war.

According to Spade, mutual aid involves various individual struggles:  anti-police, immigration enforcement, welfare authorities, landlords – almost anything you can name.  It is related to survival; to mobilization; to collectivity.  Occupy Sandy, the mass-based work in New York dealing with the effects of that deadly super storm, is one example.  Another is the work of the Black Panther Party, like their breakfast programs of the ‘60s and ‘70s.  Spade also mentions No More Death’s work along the border, mutual aid work in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irene and labor strike support efforts.  He doesn't deal with examples like the "Cajun Navy" which helps rescue people after flooding, and is not a non-profit or charity, and yet has no future goal of a socially-based society.  Mutual aid is also what many people do naturally, as part of the human species.      

Mutual aid according to Spade differs from charity work in that it involves the recipients and non-professionals, being as broad as possible.  It is a collective effort avoiding saviors, not for the psychological satisfaction of the donors.  It is aimed not to create band-aids or compliments to government work in managing ‘poor’ people, but to create long-lived organizations that point to a social solution.  It is not for tax-write-offs, nor funded by the wealthy, but from grass-roots sources.  It is democratic, not secretive.  It is not limited to ‘the deserving.’  Nor is it like the massive non-profit sector with paid staffs, degrees, grants, foundations and police / government tie-ins, which effectively function as a soft-power arm of the ruling class.

Spade maintains that while capital always takes advantage of a disaster, as seen after Katrina, the left can too.  Which is where he sees mutual aid coming in.  The pandemic is the latest example.  He suggests that mutual aid work might also prompt the government to create real programs, such as the present free breakfasts in schools, which the Panther’s first developed.

Spade supports localism; consensus decision-making, and creates lists of do’s and don’ts for organizations and individuals in mutual aid groups. The latter relate to problems that arise on a regular basis in mutual aid groups – new hierarchies; paternalism; co-optation; vague decision-making; over-promising; ultra-security and secrecy.  After all, the government and the Right “love the idea of volunteerism replacing the social-safety net,” so the goal of real mutual aid is to go beyond the present system.

Spade charts good group cultures and bad ones.  He has a long section praising consensus decision-making, though in my experience you might call it totalitarian liberalism.  He has sections on how to run meetings so as not to drive people away and lists good and bad qualities of leadership.  He discusses the all-important money issue, the issues of paid staffs, the causes of burnout and then has a long section on individual psychological problems that arise in groups.  This I can only interpret as the fact that mutual-aid groups attract young people with little experience in group settings like unions, large organizations or revolutionary parties, and who emotionally personalize everything as a result. 

At any rate, a somewhat useful book if you are in or plan to get involved in a left mutual aid organization. 

P.S. - As has been noted before, the 'first responders' in almost any accident or disaster are actually fellow citizens.  This was true about the collapse of the 35W Bridge in Minneapolis a number of years ago.  Latest example is the derailment of the Empire Builder train in Montana.  Locals rushed to the scene before police, fire-fighters, medics or the NTSB. 

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive of reviews:  “Extreme Cities,” “The Shock Doctrine,” “Nomadland,” “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers Again,” “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” “How to Kill a City,” “Anarchism and Its Aspirations,” “The Wealth Hoarders,” “Winners Take All.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

September 26, 2021