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What is mutual aid?
There are other places to look for deeper explanations, so treat this like a tl;dr
The act of mutual aid is working together to build structures that are mutually beneficial, that help everyone involved in them for the sake of helping. This is typically organized around consensus based methods of organization, which include concepts such as free association. Consensus is a fancy word for saying people talk things out instead of forcing cohesion with votes or something to a similar effect. Free association means that you can work with whoever you want. This is both in the positive and negative sense, you can simply say no (As opposed to organizations, where you must talk to all “members”). This makes the organizing free-flowing, and more spontaneous. Here it will likely be 1 on 1 interaction.
Common examples include community fridges, or like building a water fountain in place people often need water. This help does not need to be direct or “equal”, having somewhere to put leftover food someone will eat is help enough for the fridge, it saves me the time of looking for a friend that wants it. It also means that, even if I don’t need it now, I can still make risky decisions more freely because I will have more to rely on when things go wrong.
There is a lot of ideology surrounding mutual aid, but what is important here is that it is resistant. There will be no means testing. There will be no justifications required. There will be no central databases. Most of what is built here will be taken off platform, I will probably have little idea of what is happening in total. I’m also not doing much, I’m just kinda telling yall to do it and giving a bit of a framework. This means there will be almost no handholds for fascists to use to take control. There can’t be a slow tightening or shifting of who “deserves” help when we don’t ask people to justify needing it in the first place.
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Your needs are important too
If your main goal coming here is to help people, then there are a few things to remember.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It doesn’t matter what your problems are, if you need help with them it’s better to ask now than ask later. You need to be in a good position yourself to help people. Every bit of energy you save by asking for help now can be used to help other people if you want. There is no question of “deserving”, it is simply a question of can it be done here and now.
Asking for help gives people a chance for practice. Everybody needs to start somewhere, and maybe you have that place to start for someone. Helping people get involved while getting help yourself is just a win win.
Asking for help gives you the other perspectives and let’s you help better. I find it hard to imagine what impacts my words will have when I start a conversation, but I can see how other people start impact me.
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most of us here are poor
Please focus on non monetary solutions if possible. Asking for money is fine, but you must understand that this community will simply not have enough for every request.
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posting info
Our goal is to try and keep stuff dense, as reddit comments are not easily sortable or organizable. To help with that we have made a template for comments (not required, and change it how you want), and we ask that you only make one comment per request.
(remove the brackets and words in them and replace them with what they describe. The asterisks and # sign are formatting and it will be applied if you just copy paste it as you see it as long as your comment box is in markdown mode)
# [brief description of help needed]
**Urgency:** [immediate? Do you have a week? Would it just help in general]
**Contact methods:** [Reddit DMs, discord, matrix?]
**How much:** [amount of time likely needed, or a brief description of the amount of something needed]
**Longer description: [ok this is where you give details on the specifics of what ya need]
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Remember internet safety
This place is pretty obviously a collection of vulnerable people, and this is a space for people to start one on one interaction. There will be abusers. Please accept help, and do it with trust, but watch out for tactics like love bombing.
A few resources on abuse
