Mutual Aid & Dual Power Discussion Group 2022-23

Concept

We believe that the areas currently known as the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and, more broadly, the state of Minnesota and surrounding region are at an important crossroads. Finding ourselves on the other side of both an urban uprising and a hard fought frontline pipeline battle, we are now in what might be mislabeled a "quiet" time. While many of us are deep in the work day-in and day-out, the battles look different and, basically, less is on fire. But we don't see this as a quiet time and we *do* think it's a time to build; we know we're not alone. Specifically, many folks have chosen some form of mutual aid as their project.

But what is mutual aid? Are we really practicing it? Why do we do it?

Is it to build power, and if so, toward what? Is the dominance of it as an activity on the radical left serving us? How could it offer more? How can we build better? The Mutual Aid & Dual Power Discussion Group comes out of these questions. May we read, discuss, learn, debate, and continue to challenge ourselves to have ideas and actions that come from solid theory and offer us strategies and tactics that stand a chance of winning!

structure

We propose that from November 2022 through March 2023, a reading group meets in person, every other week. We propose it as a closed and distinct group - ideally future iterations can include others or, even better, spin off multiples. The hope is to see how generative a conversation can be when the same people come together each session to build relationships and ideas over time - a cohort of sorts. We'd love to have folks join us from around the mutual aid spaces in the Cities, as we are already in this work and it isn't solely theoretical to us. Each week would be facilitated, with TLC members taking on initial facilitation just to get it going and then rotating each week.

Notes on accessibility and health: We believe that access to the readings themselves should not be a barrier to participation, so a digital form of each will be sent to the emails provided by group participants. If you need access to printed documents, we can also work to make that possible. We also want to recognize that despite the state and capitalism's insistence otherwise, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over. As this group will meet in person and inside due to the season, we will require that all participants wear a mask throughout the duration of each session. Additionally, if a participant is sick, we ask that you not come, and, similarly, if you are positive for COVID, that you also not attend. Further community agreements will be proposed to the cohort prior to the first meeting.

Syllabus

Week 1 - November 14. Entry Points: Questions of Unsettling.

Wait, I thought this was a group about mutual aid (MA)? Well... before getting to specific content on Mutual Aid and Dual Power, we want to acknowledge that the organizing work that many of us do - very much including MA work - is nested within the broader Left. How is that "left" doing right now? These pieces hope to give us entry points into hard questions for the left these days. Oh, also, we want to start things off  with a little fire. 

  • Resisting Left Melancholy - Wendy Brown, 1999 (8 pgs)

  • The Defeat of Identity Politics - Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, 2022 

  • As We Have Always Done, Chp 3 (pgs 39-54) - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, 2017 
    SPECIAL NOTE: Chapter 3 of the Simpson feels like the most directly relevant for this week. However, given how she builds concepts, it is hard to jump in in the middle, and she defines ideas in earlier chapters that she goes into in depth in this one. So we are adding Chps 1 & 2 to next week, but if you want to read it all, or in what order/timeframe works for you, please do so.

Considerations for other reading: Intro to Elite Capture - Olúfémi O. Táíwò, 2022

Week 2 - November 28. Mutual Aid Definitions and Contestations.

While mutual aid is a foundational cultural practice for many around the world, the term "mutual aid" is usually credited to Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Pairing this with a video of some of the most notable participants, writers, and thinkers on mutual aid today, we can begin to dig around in the concept of mutual aid and our shared or disparate understandings of it. There's also an argument against Mutual Aid in here.

  • Classic excerpts on mutual aid and anarchism - Peter Kropotkin

    • Conclusion to Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, 1902 (6 pgs)*** [content warning: Kropotkin uses some deeply problematic language. If you would like to skip it, feel free to start reading halfway down the second page]

    • The Anarchist Principle, 1913 (4 pgs)

  • Mutual Aid: Building Communities of Care During Crisis and Beyond - Mariame Kaba, Dean Spade, Klee Benally, Kali Akuno, 2020 (video: 1 hour, 36 mins)

  • Socialism is Not Charity: Why We're Against Mutual Aid - Black Flag Sydney, 2021

  • As We Have Always Done, Chps 1 & 2 (pgs 11-37); SEE NOTE from Week 1

Week 3 - December 12. One World Within Many.

The Zapatistas speak of a world in which many worlds fit; a notion beautiful in its simplistic expression of autonomy. Mutual aid lives and breaths and moves alongside many struggles. The abolition of police, prisons, borders, and for liberatory futures. Indigenous resistances and resurgences and movements towards decolonization. The creation of worlds with bodily autonomy whether in pregnancy, queerness, transness, physical- and neuro-divergences. Let's bring some sharp takes, classic and fresh, of a few of these into the room. 

NOTE: There were SO SO many options for this week and it was really difficult to narrow down even to these authors and books. If page counts weren't an issue, we could've added more and more or even others. But the Gilmore and Walia in particular are incredible collections and highly recommended as full books.

  • Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence (19 pgs) - Ruth Wilson Gilmore

  • Historic Entanglements of US Border Formation (20 pgs) - Harsha Walia

  • Introduction to Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (7 pgs) - Samuel Stein

Considerations for further reading:

  • There's No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster - Neil Smith

  • "Introduction" and "Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference" in Abolition Geography [book] - Ruth Wilson Gilmore

  • "Disposession, Deprivation, Displacement: Reframing the Global Migration Crisis" (Chp 3, Border and Rule) - Harsha Walia

  • "Planning Gentrification" in Capital City - Samuel Stein


Week 4 - January 9. Mutual Aid and Movement Building.

Where does Mutual Aid fit with other strategies? Does Mutual Aid have a politics? How do we see Mutual Aid as carrying it's own ideological position, and how do we then relate that to the diversity of tactics in our communities? How do we see (or do we want to imagine) Mutual Aid moving struggles for liberation forward? This week looks at how Mutual Aid is or has been in relationship to the movements around it. 

  • Poetry is Not a Luxury - Audre Lorde (2 pgs)

  • Whether Darren Wilson Is Indicted or Not, the Entire System Is Guilty & Everything Worthwhile is Done with Other People - Mariame Kaba (4 pgs; 14pgs)

  • Overgrowing Hegemony: Grassroots Theory - Harsha Walia (16 pgs)

  • "Only With You, This Broom Will Fly": Rojava, Magic, and Sweeping Away the State Inside of Us - Dilar Dirik (29 pgs)

​​​​​​​Considerations for further reading:

  • NOTE: In general, we'd love to point folks back to the Leanne Simpson that we've already engaged with (Chps 1, 2, & 3) and now add Chp 5: Nishnaabeg Anticapitalism

  • Just Short of Breaking Camp (Chp 4, What Does Justice Look Like?) - Waziyatawin

Week 5 - January 23. Mutual Aid and Organizing Practice.

As we read from Kaba last week, "Everything worthwhile is done with other people." But how do we approach organizing collectively? It's no secret movements and spaces on the left have been studded with (at times stunted by) internal rupture and division. To "cancel," and to disavow cancel culture, have somehow both managed to become cliche references and remain relevant, difficult patterns driven by real experiences and problems. We know movements are made of relationships -- but how do we structure and envision those relationships in motion, to defeat the social, cultural, and political systems of oppression that not only enact unequal regimes of violence upon us, but ceaselessly attempt to recreate themselves in our midst? 

  • Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times - Nick Montgomery and carla bergman (23 pgs total) 

    • pgs 81-83 "The urgency of making kin"  

    • pgs 92-105 "What can friendship do?" & "Solidarity begins at home"

    • pgs 120-127 "Friendship & freedom have sharp edges" & "The active shaping of our worlds together"

  • The Tyranny of Structurelessness - Jo Freeman ​​​​​​​(12 pgs) 

  • Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy & Power in a Time of Crisis - Maurice Mitchell   (32 pgs) 

Considerations for further readings: 

  • "Unthinkable Thoughts: Call-out Culture in the Age of Covid-19," from We Will Not Cancel Us by Adrienne Marie Brown

    • pgs 33-63 in book, pgs. 17-31 in pdf

Note: The possible additional readings below are current pieces from the last six months weighing in on movement conflict and 'the left' -- whether or not they contain interesting, useful, or probematic depictions, they are also artifacts that show us how that conversation is moving right now, how it is traveling in different circles, and how it is passing between more grassroots and more elite/centrist spaces. We put them here for the convenience of anyone interested in tracking those threads and thinking about what they mean. 

Week 6 - February 6. Mutual Aid Case Studies and Histories, Part I
***POSTPONED!***
Session 6 has been rescheduled to Monday, February 20. Subsequent sessions will also be pushed two weeks.

As we turn the corner into the last sessions of this group, we look to more specific case studies, so-to-speak, of mutual aid work. Much of what has been written around this in recent times orients toward disaster relief. There are other areas of focus that would be welcome here as well - reflections on the AIDS crisis comes quickly to mind; and we expect to see more in the coming years as writings on the COVID-19 pandemic continue to surface. For now, we will stick with many of these works that come out of disaster relief, touching on other subjects that could be entire sessions or reading groups of their own. While holding close the theory and critical writings from the previous weeks, let's dive into these reflections, statements, and ideas. 

  • Building Power While the Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power - ed. Jimmy Dunson

    • "Survival Programs: Then and Now" - Malik Rahim (4 pgs)

  • Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective by scott crow 

    • "Like Flowers in Concrete" (34 pgs)

    • "With Thunder in Our Hearts" (20 pgs)

  • Political Statement from the Autonomous Brigades After the Earthquakes (3 pgs)

Considerations for further readings:

  • more from Black Flags and Windmills, specifically the prologue and rest of the "Like concrete..." section

  • La Sexta

Week 7 - February 20 March 6. Mutual Aid Case Studies and Histories, Part II

Similar to last session, here we look to more specific case studies, so-to-speak, of mutual aid work. In addition disaster relief, there are pieces here on COVID and migration. Again, there is is so much more that could be here but let's both continue to hold close the theory and critical writings from the previous months as we dive into these reflections and accounts.

Considerations for further readings:

Week 8 - March 20. Mutual Aid and Dual Power​​​ 

As we wrap up this reading group experiment, we end with pieces specific to dual power itself. From theory and large movement questions through examples of mutual aid work, we've built to this point. Here is a proposal for dual power as a project, joined with a piece looking at some of the most well-known current global attempts at building new structures and societies in the shell of the old. As always, there are countless other examples - articles, books, essays, and more that we could pull from. As we look to a specific proposal here, how does this relate to the theories and case studies we've read so far? Does this feel possible? Rooted in the world we want; in our own ideologies? We look forward to this last session and hopefully more conversations in the future as we reflect on mutual aid, dual power, and the work we are each connected to in community. 

  • Community, Democracy, and Mutual Aid: Toward Dual Power and Beyond - John Michael Colón, Mason Herson-Hord, Katie S. Horvath, Dayton Martindale, & Matthew Porges (39 pgs)

  • Same/Different: A Comparative Study of Kurdish-Led Rojava and Opposition-Held Syria - Andrea Glioti (*start bottom pg 4; 13pgs)

Considerations for further reading:

JOIN THE DISCUSSION GROUP:

The Winter 2022-23 Discussion Group has reached capacity. Please check back for future offerings, and reach out to tclogistics@riseup.net if you would like to be notified of future groups and happenings.