Today on the show, we've brought on Genean from Common Humanity Collective — a mutual aid organization based out of California's Bay Area.

When the pandemic began in 2020, it felt like there was a huge spike in mutual aid efforts — in fact we did an entire series of episodes on many of the community-led responses to COVID that year including an audio documentary that highlighted the work done by a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, in Chico, California.

But where are things now? What have mutual aid organizations, and the left more broadly, learned from the last couple of years? How do we continue to make sure that the mutual in mutual aid remains a central pillar of our efforts? And how can we politicize our work within the communities we're engaging with?

We explore these pressing questions in this week's interview — along with a lot other stuff on mutual aid and ways to plug in.

Episode credits:

• Host and editor: Robert Raymond
• Presenter and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats

Additional Resources:

Check out Common Humanity Collective and get more information on their air purifier build coming up on December 17th and their mask build on January 22nd on their website. And make sure to follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and on Mastadon.

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters