Dispatches: Covid Conversations

The words mutual aid seem to be on everyone’s lips right now. What exactly is mutual aid? And how do we set up a mutual aid project that makes the impact our communities need? Dean Spade walks us through the basics of mutual aid, flags some common pitfalls that can shift mutual aid efforts toward charity or social service models, the dangers of demobilizing political engagement, and the tools folks can use to get started today.

Dean has been active in movements to end poverty, criminalization, and immigration enforcement over the last 23 years. In 2002, he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a nonprofit collective that provides free legal help to low-income people and people of color who are trans, intersex, and/or gender non-conforming, and he works to build trans resistance rooted in racial and economic justice. He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law (Duke University Press 2015).

Today’s episode is about one busy family and the food drop-offs they are doing for over 100 people. One of the tenets of mutual aid is that it is grounded in solidarity, not charity. When you hear Boo Torres talk about what she’s up to, you can feel the embodiment of what Edward Galeano calls the “horizontal respect of solidarity” versus the top-down relationship of charity. Boo shares practical advice about how she convinced her friends to receive help, and about how she parents and grandparents toward values of collective care and mutual aid. 

Boo is a queer Chamorro mother of five and grandmother of two, living in Skyway, Washington. She is a union electrician and the owner and operator of Tribal Electric LLC.

Lea and Bong call in from Korea to tell us what it’s like to live in a country that swiftly flattened the COVID-19 curve through a collective culture (masks, masks, masks!) and cool apps. Then the conversation expands when Bong credits this achievement to Korea’s newly re-energized democracy. He connects the COVID response to Korea’s mass protests in 2016, which led to the impeachment of their corrupt president and a government capable of responding to this crisis. They reflect on what it’s like to win and offer a vision of mass mobilization just in case, hypothetically, anyone listening is faced with a similar situation some day.

This is the second in a two-part episode of my conversation with Zephyr Elise and Julianne Gale. Zephyr Elise is a mixed-Indigenous 2-spirit filmmaker, liberation activist, Mason County Climate Justice co-founder, soil regenerator, gluten-free chef/baker, and guest on Skokomish territories. Julianne Gale is a youth worker and a community organizer committed to complete liberation for all people and a just transition in the face of the climate crisis.

This is the first in a two-part episode of my conversation with Zephyr Elise and Julianne Gale. Zephyr Elise is a mixed-Indigenous 2-spirit filmmaker, liberation activist, Mason County Climate Justice co-founder, soil regenerator, gluten-free chef/baker, and guest on Skokomish territories. Julianne Gale is a youth worker and a community organizer committed to complete liberation for all people and a just transition in the face of the climate crisis.

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