By Cinara Marquis
Mutual aid is the voluntary, reciprocal exchange of support within a community to overcome barriers to meeting common needs. The grassroots approach to social justice emphasizes solidarity and connection over charity.
“Community Mutual Aid Networks: A ‘Youth’-Led Approach” was a Black Solidarity Day workshop presented by Taj Ellis, Educational Opportunity Program senior counselor and Cassie Joseph, EOP director. The presentation explored how youth can make tangible differences within their communities through mutual aid networks.
The session started with an icebreaker where participants were asked to submit words that conjured “community” to a word cloud.
“Authenticity goes along with belonging, right?” Ellis said. “If you can be yourself and still belong, where you don’t have to pretend to be someone else, that’s the ideal community.”
Other words like family, togetherness and security came up.
Mutual aid is collaborative; instead of being a vertical framework like charity, where support comes financially from the rich and trickles down to the poor, mutual aid operates horizontally, spreading support across the community.
“We are all on the same playing field,” Ellis said. “We are supporting one another across the community.”
Mutual aid has brought power to marginalized class communities throughout history, Ellis explained. As a first-generation American, he described the Jamaican practice of susu.
Susu goes by many names, including pawdna and merry-go-round; it is a rotating loan club. In the susu, community members all contribute the same amount of money to a common fund; the total of the fund is disbursed to a single member in the group. The recipient of the pooled funds changes so eventually every participant will receive the sum of the susu.
“So we’ll all throw (funds) into a pot every week and then every week someone gets a draw from that pot, allowing a surge of income for people who definitely need it,” Ellis explained. “The reason why mutual aid works is because no one has more than the other. We are all taking a hit to support someone now. All of us win.”
Another key point to mutual aid is that there are no hierarchies — mutual aid is a system built up by the oppressed and for the oppressed.
“This is a connected experience (in which) all of us support,” Joseph said.
Youth have always been at the forefront of social justice, marching in protests, advocating for change and sharing resources. College students, especially, have called for activism across the globe and started mutual aid networks within their communities.
At SUNY Plattsburgh, mutual aid looks like the Cardinal Cupboard, a student-run food bank that addresses food and hygiene supply insecurity. Mutual aid also looks like peer support groups like the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Circle hosted by the office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Community networks such as clubs and organizations or community and programming advocates within campus halls, also act as mutual aid networks to support student engagement. Resource sharing, such as textbook exchanges and study groups, helps support peers both academically and emotionally.
EOP is also a form of mutual aid. The program helps students overcome financial and academic barriers to attending a SUNY college.
Joseph, a former EOP student, was enabled to attend SUNY Plattsburgh and the University at Buffalo thanks to her hard work and help from the program. Her favorite part of her job today as EOP’s director at SUNY Plattsburgh is watching students grow and providing them with opportunities they may have never had before.
At the end of the session, participants created their own mutual aid networks.
To create a mutual aid network, groups need to first identify an issue and a goal; they must pool resources and form partnerships to create a support network. Following this framework, participants came up with projects to address issues on college campuses.
Groups at the session came up with mutual aid networks tackling the stigmatization of men’s mental health, a lack of financial support for international students and student trainings in de-escalation tactics and first aid to address police violence.
