I'm really happy to see the sub growing so much and all the well placed anger that's leading to positive change but I feel like there is still more that we can do.
I really love the push towards unionization that I've been seeing lately, as well as the solidarity with strikes, but I still feel like we are missing a massive opportunity for more positive change. I know this sub is about combating work and improving working conditions and rights and unions and strikes do work to achieve that but there's still much they don't do.
Workers can't have a successful strike if they don't have goods at home. They will faulter and return to work to survive. I know unions have strike funds for this purpose but also I know that the majority of union funds go to hiring lawyers for contract negotiations and other strictly wage and benefit side campaigns. source
That's where I feel mural aid organizations can come in and help for a multitude of reasons.
- Mutal aid can fill the material gap for successful strikes and unionization efforts:
“In organization theory, mutual aid is a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions” source 2)
Mutal aid can take many forms, from community food banks, funds for eviction protection, bail and medical costs, to community gardens and offering someone a place to stay in your homesource 2). All these things can be very helpful ways in supporting union and strike efforts. Because resources are the main thing preventing people from successfully striking and unionizing.
Let's face it as much as we hate our jobs in this horrible world we live in we need them to survive. That's why many people are afraid to try to fight for better working conditions because it threatens their work and their survival. But with mutal aid we can take that fear away and make unionization and striking easier.
If people know their community will supply them with food when they might get fired for forming a union they will be more willing to take that chance. If a employer is being stubborn and not bending to union demands and the strike fund is running low mutal aid can keep the strikers supplied and starve the employer before the workers will breaks. If an employer tries to aquire desperate lower class people to work as scabs mutual aid can provide those desperate people the things they need so they won't scab on the strikers. Mutual aid can kill a lot of the dangers workers face with kindness.
Mutual aid can be the vital support unions and strikes need to be more successful. If unions and strikes are the spear head that slays the dragon capitalism, mutal aid is the spear shaft that pushes the strike home.
- Mutual aid can help make allies, build a base of power, and enact equity:
This I feel is the major opportunity we are missing. Everyday we can see things getting worse. Inflation destroying saving, rent rising, massive and unnecessary debt keeping people from living good lives and a hundred other issues keeping the majority of people down.
People need help but the systems that be have refused to help them and instead chose to capitalize on their suffering. This is where we as a community and as a movement can use mutual aid to provide people with the things they need and sway them to our cause.
Because in all honesty lofty ideals, and sweet promises of a workers utopia won't change the minds of those who have had anti worker propaganda pounded into them since birth. The way we change their minds to our side is by helping them when no one else will. If we can show people that we can help them and provide for them when others dont, they might think differently about the left and the workers movement and might join us. They also might not and they might simply take our help and continue to hate us or refuse it all together. In my mind that's an acceptable outcome as even if we help someone who hates us it's still one less person suffering under capitalisms apathy and that's a victory in my book.
Next building a base of power. The more we help people the more people will join us and make it easier to help more people. This is how we build our base of power to enter into the political game and try to make large scale change.
Because again ideals and promises that get obstructed as soon as they hit the law makers floor won't change anyone's mind. We need victories and laws to change but we are facing obstruction from every side so we need a strong base of support to elect more radical representatives and be an undeniable voting block that demands change.
With the obstruction we face we can't try to force people into office and be upset when they fail in a broken system. We need to start by building a base of power and then getting more people in office and gets our demands met. To that end we need to change people's minds by providing for them.
Lastly equity. There's a saying we hear a lot: that no one is free until everyone is free, and I strongly agree. This movement is still plagued with the individualism that built this sick capitist world. Every day we see stories about “MY job sucks” or “MY boss sucks” or “I left MY old job and got a better one.” We have the right idea but we and stratified and disorganized. Quitting our jobs and asking for better things as individuals when we should be doing this as a movement. I still don't believe we have a concrete set of terms or demands as a movement.
So it is great that we are trying to free ourselves here but we need to focus on freeing everyone especially those that can't free themselves. I'm talking about people who through generations of systemic neglect, or racism, or poverty, abuse and a thousand other things are trapped in horrible situations and places with little or no safety nets and forced to fight their neighbors out of desperation to survive. These people can't help themselves because they have to focus on surviving today. You can't make a better home or fight for worker rights when everyday is live or die.
With mutual aid we can support the communities that need it most. We can have the solidarity and altruism we seek. Imagine if a head line read “Flint's lead pipes fixed through the resources gathered by the anti-work mutual aid fund.” Can you imagine how big that would be? We would not only help those people that need it most but also show ourselves to the world and to the people that we are more capable and caring than the government and any rich person.
Not only will it be good press but helping those on the lowest rung of society will make build new allies and loosen the chains capitalism has on us all. The lowest class of people are unfortunately a living threat to everyone above them. A sword hanging above our heads proclaiming “stay in line or the suffering you see over there will be inflicted upon you”. By improving these people's lives and making safer, and healthier communities the threat evaporates and creates a new class of people no longer restrained with the effort of surviving everyday. With their needs met with our help they can also join in our cause of organizing and fighting for better conditions.
When they are freed they can fight along side us until we are all freed.
- Mutual aid can create an alternative supply chain and aid in a general strike.
With the broad and flexible definition of what mutual aid can be I see no reason why it couldn't be an effort to create an alternative supply chain. With mutual aid communities could pool their money and collectively buy the supplies they need. Better yet they could go to suppliers of food, medicine, clothing etc. And buy it from the source, whole sale and redistribute it to their communities. For enough money any supplier will take that deal. It could even be possible to build alternative supply routes with volunteers working as distributors of goods, traveling around their communities, or between communities to deliver, transport and aquire necessary goods.
Alternatively if funds are an issue communities could work to supply themselves internally. With community gardens, individuals working to preserve food that is grown, others working to build homes, furniture or devices that someone might need, others working as distributors. With the right organization any community could accomplish this.
Either option would be beneficial for multiple reasons. First it would reduce the need for people to work to survive as their base needs are being met. They can instead focus on fighting for better working conditions or ceasing to work all together. Second it would reduce the reliance on capitalist supply chains that are exploitative and destructive as with a mutual supply chain there is no need for profit as the only goal is everyone is supplied which is a much more sustainable goal. Thirdly an alternative supply chain can improve the success of a general strike.
I've seen the idea of a general strike been tossed around here a few times, with a day set and then nothing to show for it. A general strike without organization and more importantly goods will always fail. Firstly because if no one agrees or let alone knows on what the plan is for a strike there can be no strike. With mutual aid networks a general strike can be coordinated more effectively as the people participating in the mutual aid network can be more clear about their needs and the needs of those they serve and given this information set a date for a strike would be most effective and most doable.
Second an alternative supply chain can give people the resources they need to complete a general trike successfully. We've probably seen the idea by now based on the CDC new guide line that a 10 day general strike would shatter the economy and allow us to demand anything we want in order to return to work. However not everyone has the resources or access to 10 days worth of supplies.
10 days is enough to kill people especially in the event of a general strike where food won't move, people won't be able to pick up medicine, people may be evicted, water or other utilities may be shut off from lack of payment or cruel retaliation, violence may be done. We can't count any injustice off the ruling class' table in order to break our will and end the strike.
But with mutual aid and an alternative supply chain we can supply people with the things they need for the time necessary to succeed in a general strike and achieve the change we want to see.
Hopefully you read this far and agree with what I wrote. I hope I laid out my thoughts in away that is understandable and convincing. I don't mind what's happening on the sub at all. There's solidarity, theres advice, there's support. But more direct action needs to be taken to make the changes we want to see. So I would thank you if you considered joining a mutual aid society, donating to one, volunteering, or making your own. In addition I have an idea for a large scale online mutual aid network similar to gofundme where people can donate directly to causes or fund they believe in. It can be a good place to organize and have funds in one place without capitalist interference but I don't have the skill to accomplish it so if someone wants to talk more about that please let me know. Thank you all and I hope you have a good day.
Tldr; I believe for multiple reasons such as helping unions and strikes, making allies and helping others, and creating alternative supply chains for a general strike, that mutual aid(the collaborative and communal redistribution of willingly given resources) can achieve the changes we want to see.
Find mutual aid locations near you: mutual aid hub
What is mutual aid and How to make a mutual aid organization: link 1,. Link 2