Mutual, I’m sure

Because we are all in this together.

Photo by the author of a mural in Nashville: “They tried to bury us but they didn’t know we were seeds.”

One of our family’s favorite lines from White Christmas is from the dancer/chorus girl who is being introduced to Bob and she says, inexplicably, “mutual, I’m sure”. We laugh every year.

Just like her answer has nothing to do with the introduction being made, this piece of movie nostalgia has really nothing to do with the post, which is about mutual aid.

Except mutual aid is, I am *quite* sure, something that is going to grow in increasing importance in the next few years.

I wrote about mutual aid from a different perspective over on my academic/community blog. You can check it out here. There are lots of resources on how to create mutual aid groups as well as some stories of mutual aid work (both past and present).

Here I want to both celebrate the fact that mutual aid exists and also vent a bit at the reasons we are going to be seeing more mutual aid in the future. Because of what is going on politically, we are in danger of losing programs that have long been safety nets for people who are in poverty or near it. We are losing programs and services for people who learn differently, who communicate differently. We are in danger of losing the basic programs that provide health care for people who are uninsured. We are, it feels like, just losing.