Mutual Aid Top 5s
What are your top five things that have brought you comfort and/or joy during the past year? It can be anything: foods, movies, people, animals, thoughts, books, records, yoga positions, a particular hike, a new pen, an old friend, whatever! Sam Smith Perspectives copy … Read more
The Quarantine Commune
We call ourselves the Moth Mother Collective to honor our kitchen’s many winged inhabitants. Even before coronavirus, we strove to live our lives in common. Six days of communal meals each week, a rotating chore wheel, a garden, workspace, and collective care for the needs … Read more
How the Poor Continue to Die
Of the numerous realities the pandemic has uncovered, few are as stark as how front-line, essential, service industry workers are not just seen as replaceable but as expendable. And many are out of work. When a member of the working-class is without wages and the paltry handouts from the government vanish, reproduction of one’s biological functions and faculties are still required. Working in front-line, essential, service industries is work as is seeking to obtain work in such sectors.
Is Another World Possible? Pandemic Communalism as a Cure to Corona Capitalism
When a society is confronted with an unexpected catastrophe, be it warlike conflict, a sudden scarcity of resources, or a natural phenomenon, human empathy, mutual aid, and solidarity tend to come to the fore. Despite the ideological dominance of capitalism, humans still possess an almost reflexive tendency to come together and develop spontaneous forms of support and collective organization even during times of deep agony. Humans are fundamentally social animals. Coming together is also a means for us to deal with stress, uncertainty, and insecurity in a changing environment.
Landlords, Nonprofit Directors, and Politicians Turned Low-Income Hotels into COVID-19 Hotspots
“As you grow older,” she told me, “you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, and the other hand is for helping others.” Especially when the government and its contractors chase money and media attention while revealing how deeply they loathe poor people.
Mutual Aid Dispatch
I try to put the brakes on my self-righteousness. She’s trapped in this dystopian hell-hole too. There is so much need and so little support. I don’t know her story. Everyone is trapped. But I am angry. I want to rip that “Fight Fascism” sticker off her car. What does she think fighting fascism is?
Casting Spells, Blowing Bubbles
The hard part of this distancing at work—other than not being able to hug anyone, even though we’re all under stress and i haven’t had a single hug in weeks—is navigating the smaller spaces, like the kitchen. We have to do a lot more communicating. “I just need to get water at the sink.” “I’m passing through to the office.” “I’m going that way.” “You go first.” We treat each other with exceeding courtesy.
We know how important it is to have each other’s back in times of need, and there are no cops on island to usurp the ability of the community to take care of itself when a crisis arises.
COVID-19: or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the virus
Like watching Dr. Strangelove, our present situation is an experience that makes people ask challenging questions about the mystification of our society.
Covid-19 and Catch-22
“It has become increasingly clear to me that Catch-22 is a book, not only of its time, but for ours. It supplies the right model for making sense of the anxieties of this crisis and the irrationalities of the government’s response. There may be other reasons, or other kinds of explanations, that account for the various problems I’ve mentioned—to say nothing of the rush to ‘open the economy,’ the misallocation of vital and scarce medical supplies, or anything that Donald Trump has said, done, or tweeted.”
