WHAT IS “MUTUAL AID”?

Mutual Aid is a voluntary, reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. It is not ‘charity’.

Put another way:

The Big Door Brigade puts it this way:

“Mutual aid is when people get together to meet each other’s basic survival needs with a shared understanding that the systems we live under are not going to meet our needs and we can do it together RIGHT NOW! Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable.  Most mutual aid projects are volunteer-based, with people jumping in to participate because they want to change what is going on right now, not wait to convince corporations or politicians to do the right thing.” 

As organizers of the Nursing Mutual Aid 2020 platform & Twitter conference, we recognize that “mutual aid” has been primarily been used to help support and sustain communities affected by, in our current case, the COVID-19 global pandemic. As academic nursing professionals, we recognize this includes: “folx who are students or recent graduates, early career, and/or reflect positionalities currently marginalized within nursing and writ large by forces such as whiteness & white domination, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, settler colonialism, and ableism.”

While being present to and for communities with health and material needs, we are hoping to simultaneously within this event be present to those within our scholarly circle because we value their contributions toward making this world a more caring and just place.

Digital Platform for Sharing Mutual Aid Resources: See this page curated by the Big Door Brigade for a general list of resources (local, regional, national, and global) where you can donate, share, volunteer, or otherwise aid individuals, families, and communities with need.

To view Mutual Aid Resources & Opportunities crowd-sourced from volunteers on this #NMA2020 platform, please see our Google Doc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14gHo8xtZpVQE602mfq3j4uxnmIUmxfuu2h6UZRkfGGo/edit?usp=sharing

To submit your own Mutual Aid Resources & Opportunities to the Google Doc, please email us at: NursingMutualAid@Google.com

or send a message to our Twitter account:

@NrsgMutualAid