"Mutual aid has existed for as long as there have been people," says New York City educator and organizer Mariame Cava, who co-hosted a mutual aid workshop (opens in new tab) with U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in March 2020, and who has released the COVID-19 Mutual Mariame Cava (opens in new tab), who released the Mutual Aid Digital Toolkit. But there's a reason you've been seeing photos of people filling local refrigerators with #mutualaid and videos of people handing out clothing on the street all over social feeds lately. We're dealing with [COVID-19], a disaster of a magnitude that most people have never experienced in their lifetime," Kaba says. When you're put in a situation like this, you figure out how to interact with other people in such a way that you can actually survive." That's why people are focusing on this issue.

It is important to clarify what mutual aid is (roughly speaking, it is caring for others while working to make the world a better place) and what it is not (charity). Mutual aid is not about giving and receiving goods and services, but about building relationships. It's called mutual aid," Kaba says, "and it's not just (helping) that's important. From such a relationship you can build a connection that you wouldn't get from your only feel-good behavior. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

"It's not just 'do one thing for me and I'll never speak to you again,'" Kaba continues. It's about creating a new society, a new community. The idea is that once people interact in this way, they will find more and more ways to work together to help each other, leading to greater change.

The key to understanding this is found in a 1902 collection of essays by Peter Kropotkin. In "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" (opens in new tab), the Russian anarchist philosopher examined reciprocal cooperation in human and animal societies, a sort of counterpoint to Social Darwinism. For a deeper understanding of the modern version, read the introductory book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (opens in new tab) by Dean Spade (Verso, 2020). . Spade outlines how the systems we currently have in place are not set up to meet people's needs, as highlighted by last year's global upheaval.

But it is not only during pandemics that mutual aid is worth practicing. Mutual assistance is for when wealth is concentrated in one segment of society, when the health care system is flawed, or when working full time does not lift a family out of poverty. In other words, mutual aid is timely and timeless.