Principles

Mutual aid is about solidarity, not charity. It’s about justice and building power. It’s about autonomy and agency amongst our people. It’s more than just survival but about community care. It’s about prioritizing individuals and communities that are system impacted. Mutual aid is about redistributing to meet the needs of our communities. It’s about finding solutions together because all we got is us. We build the world we want through collective power and action. Mutual aid is when we meet people where they are at. It is an essential tool of base-building and relationship building by genuinely serving the people. We’re not just trying to survive under a global pandemic — we are out here building power and a movement for our freedom!

While this group is a mutual aid that everyone has access to we center with intention those who experience marginalization and are even more so vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19. This includes (but is certainly not limited to): Black and Indigenous, people of color, undocumented, people with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming, poor/working class, those experiencing homelessness and chronic housing instability, sex workers, and those relegated to informal economies because of racism and racialized capitalism.

We acknowledge that white supremacy, capitalism, hetero-cis-patriarchy, imperialism, colonialism, xenophobia, and other institutionalized forms of oppression exist -- we are not here to debate their existence. Crises like COVID-19 further reveal the complex ways these systems have been enacting violence and death. While COVID-19 is devastating to many, we acknowledge the disproportionate impacts the groups we center will experience because of these systems of oppression.

This is a group that values self-determination. We honor that people know what they need to survive and it is not our place to tell people how they will get free or what care looks like for them. We believe that people know what they need best to survive.

We do not work with those who enact state violence. We know that the police, ICE, border patrol uphold multiple systems of oppression and perpetuate violence in BIPOC communities.

We are doing work of envisioning what community looks like after the crisis. We are asking folks to practice a new way of being. We are invested in creating the system we want.