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Collective Care Is Our Best Weapon against COVID-19

From Outside the Circle

As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps around the world, statist and capitalist structures predictably continue to fail us in many ways. Underlying that failure is the stress on individual responses: stockpile, isolate, and care for yourself.

While “social distancing” is a necessary tool to help stop the spread of this virus, it will only be effective if it’s grounded in an ethics and practice of social solidarity and collective care. COVID-19 clearly demonstrates that only by deeply looking out for each other — acting as if everyone’s life has inherent worth and is at risk; as if the health of one is the health of all — will we actually be able to lessen the amount of sickness and death, not to mention the emotional weight on us all. Unless everyone cooperates, the virus exponentially spreads.

Such cooperation has to be about building on — rather than fearing — the fact that we’re all interconnected and impacted by COVID-19; that we’re all in this together. Our cooperation is about making sure everyone can take time off work, have a home and enough food, stay hydrated and wash their hands, not feel alone or abandoned, receive health and other care, and the list goes on. It’s what geographer Peter Kropotkin long called “mutual aid” in his book by the same title — a phenomenon that he saw repeated time and time again in his studies of various species, ecosystems, and societies: mutual aid allowed them to not only survive but also thrive! Or as Kropotkin put it, “Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence.”

Thanks to your local radical healers, queers, feminists, anarchists, and like-minded others — who know that only we can love and protect each other — social solidarity and mutual aid pandemic care is blossoming in communities large and small around Turtle Island!

In hopes of helping folks find and join in a mutual aid effort where they live, offering inspiration to start your own, and/or simply lifting your spirits, below is a growing list of mutual aid pandemic disaster care, in alphabetical order (with the acknowledgment that place-names are a colonial imposition). Please note: these links are all public resources, so be wary of putting info out on them that you don’t want to be public. And thanks to Anarchist Agency for setting up the list on Google Drive At:

http://tiny.cc/coronavirusmutualaid

To add to this list, email anarchistagency@gmail.com.

As of this afternoon, you’ll find:

Table of Contents/Quick Links

General

Mutual Aid and Survival

Half-Assed Disabled Prepper Tips for Preparing for a Coronavirus Quarantine

Form Letter: A Neighborly Invitation Regarding Coronavirus

Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Skill-Share — Covid-19/Coronavirus Resources

United States

Community Response to Covid-19: An Online Summit

State/Local

California / Bay Area: Covid-19 Financial Solidarity

California / San Francisco: SF Bay Mutual Aid Form

Illinois / Chicago: COVID-19 Mutual Aid Volunteer Sign-up

Illinois / Chicago: 73.5 Neighborhood Resource Pool

Indiana / Bloomington: No Space for Hate COVID 19 Mutual Aid

Kentucky / Lexington: Mutual Aid Lexington Kentucky

Kentucky / Louisville: Mutual Aid Louisville

Maryland / Baltimore: Mutual Aid and Emergency Relief Fund

Massachusetts / Medford, Somerville: Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville (MAMAS)

Michigan / Ann Arbor: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Michigan / Grand Rapids Area: COVID-19 Mutual Aid Form

Michigan / Grand Rapids Area: Mutual Aid Spreadshee

Minnesota / Minneapolis–Saint Paul: Twin Cities Queer and Trans Mutual Aid

New Mexico / Albuquerque: What Do You Need?

New York / Ithaca: Cornell University COVID Shutdown Housing Resources

North Carolina / CHP/Carrboro: Covid19 Support

Ohio / Cleveland: Provide Aid in Cleveland

Oregon / Portland: Portland-Area COVID-19 “Offer Support” Volunteer Form

Oregon / Portland: Covid-19 Portland-Area Community Support

Pennsylvania / Philadelphia: Philly Performance Artist Fund

Washington / Seattle: Seattle-Area COVID-19 “Offer Support” Volunteer Form

Washington / Seattle: Seattle-Area COVID-19 “Request Support” Form

Washington / Seattle: Seattle Artists Relief Fund amid COVID-19

Washington / Seattle: #covid19mutualaid links

Washington / Seattle: GLP SANI: Sex Worker Aid Network Initiative

Washington / Tacoma: Tacoma Mutual Aid Network

Worldwide

Germany / Berlin: Queer Relief Covid-19 Berlin — Help Form

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