Name: drew mcarthur's review of Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
Item: Mutual Aid
Rating: 5
Author: drew mcarthur

Dean Spade

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable. Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid. This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout. Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.

Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

Mutual Aid

Daniel U

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to--or actively engineer--each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable. Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid. This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout. Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.

Great introduction to organizing, both practical and the principles and theory behind it.  Provides a good dose of optimism for the work that is to be done.

drew mcarthur

Liyah 🤎

Anyone interested in organizing should read this book. It has everything you need to either start or improve your organization. It's very practical and accessible but doesn't water down the topic either. It's so detailed, well-thought-out, and really walks you from theory to praxis. One of my favorite most informative reads yet. It really reaffirmed the work i am doing and gave me practical next steps to improve myself, my leadership skills, and the groups i am a part of!

Abiiii

I found this to be a wonderful and accessible introduction to mutual aid from a practical standpoint. I learned a lot, and particularly appreciated the last portions on burnout, conflict, and mad mapping, as well as explaining the limitation of the nonprofit industrial complex and preventing cooptation or watering down of radical projects. it didn't go into step-by-step detail on how to organize a network, but rather explains the theory and practice of mutual aid from a broader perspective, including triumphs and lessons from past movement history. I agree that there wasn't much nuance to the Hong Kong framing, but overall I would 100% recommend this to anyone, new to organizing or not.

Yennifer Villa

This book is a must-read for everyone creating mutual aid networks, volunteering, organizing, or even working in charity and NGOs. 

I was very frustrated about a lot of my volunteering experiences, fundraising efforts for crisis support, and also mutual aid projects during the hights of the pandemic, and couldn't really describe why. This book goes into the differences between mutual aid and charity and the volunteering sector. The book helped me understand where my frustrations came from and what I can actively do about them and how to avoid them in the future. 

It is a practical book, about decision making in a group, conflict solving,  boundaries with unpaid labor, self-care, community care, and a lot more.

It helps to be impactful in the long run and how to set up systems and projects that can focus on sustainable and systematic change.

This is for all the people who don't want to make the same mistakes as the charity and the volunteering sector in the last decades. And who really want to dive into mutual aid, focusing on our actions, ways of organization,  and who want to set new values, and who do not only want to change their language around "doing charity". 

Daniel U &
Mutual Aid by Dean Spade

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Daniel U &Mutual Aid by Dean Spade

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Join the club

Daniel U &
Mutual Aid by Dean Spade