Collective Care Is Our Best Weapon against COVID-19

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PLEASE NOTE! THE “COLLECTIVE CARE” DIRECTORY WILL NOT BE UPDATED HERE ANY LONGER (as of 4/4/2020). INSTEAD, PLEASE VISIT ITS NEW HOME AT https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/collective-care/, WHERE IT WILL CONTINUE TO BE UPDATED DAILY!

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As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps around the world, statist and capitalist structures predictably continue to fail us in many ways. Underlying that failure is the stress on individual responses: stockpile, isolate, and care for yourself.

While “social” aka “physical” distancing is a necessary tool to help stop the spread of this virus, it will only be effective if it’s grounded in an ethics and practice of social solidarity and collective care. COVID-19 clearly demonstrates that only by deeply looking out for each other—acting as if everyone’s life has inherent worth and is at risk; as if the health of one is the health of all—will we actually be able to lessen the amount of sickness and death, not to mention the emotional weight on us all. Unless everyone cooperates, the virus exponentially spreads.

Such cooperation has to be about building on—rather than fearing—the fact that we’re all interconnected and impacted by COVID-19; that we’re all in this together. Our cooperation is about making sure everyone can take time off work, have a home and enough food, stay hydrated and wash their hands, not feel alone or abandoned, receive health and other care, and the list goes on. It’s what geographer Peter Kropotkin long called “mutual aid” in his book by the same title—a phenomenon that he saw repeated time and time again in his studies of various species, ecosystems, and societies: mutual aid allowed them to not only survive but also thrive! Or as Kropotkin put it, “Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence.”

Thanks to your local radical healers, queers, feminists, anarchists, and like-minded others—who know that only we can love and protect each other—social solidarity and mutual aid pandemic care is blossoming in communities large and small around Turtle Island!

In hopes of helping folks find and join in a mutual aid effort where they live, offering inspiration to start your own, and/or simply lifting your spirits, below is a growing directory of mutual aid pandemic disaster care (with the acknowledgment that place-names are a colonial imposition). Note: Each project is autonomous and self-organized; they all use public links, so be wary of putting info on these sites/docs that you don’t want to be public too.

DO-IT-OURSELVES RESOURCES:

General

Beyond Prisons: Short Guide for How to Support Prisoners during the Coronavirus Crisis

Catalogue for Local Mutual Aid Communities Worldwide

Community Response to Covid-19: An Online Summit

Coronavirus Resource Kit

Coronavirus Tech Handbook

Five Demands Posters

Form Letter: A Neighborly Invitation Regarding Coronavirus

Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Skill-Share--Covid-19/Coronavirus Resources

Keeping Each Other Safe When Virtually Organizing Mutual Aid

Know Your Rights during COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

Mutual Aid and Survival

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief: In the News

Mutual Aid Hub

Mutual Aid Toolkit by Big Door Brigade

Mutual Fire Brigade (zine)

Useful Mutual Aid Projects in Response to COVID-19: Experiences from Chinese Volunteers in Response to Coronavirus Crisis in Wuhan

What Is Mutual Aid? (video)

You Have Skills: Evaluating What Skills You Can Bring to Radical Organizing

Health and Wellness

All We Have Is Each Other: A Guide to Creating Fabric Masks

CODIY Emergency Handwashing Station

Great Radical, Boil Roots: A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to Wellness in the Time of COVID-19

Half-Assed Disabled Prepper Tips for Preparing for a Coronavirus Quarantine

Immune and Respiratory Herbs: A Resource For Tribal Communities during COVID-19

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief: Navigating Trauma

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Medic Group--COVID Info: When Every Community Is Ground Zero: Pulling Each Other Through a Pandemic

#NoBodyIsDisposable Know Your Rights Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Triage Protocols

Prison Holistic Self-Care and Protection (COVID 19) (English and Spanish versions)

Safety Practices for Mutual Aid Food and Supply Distribution during the Coronavirus Pandemic (zine, English and Spanish versions)

Rent and Other Strikes

Bay Area Rent Strike

COVID-19 Strike Document

Drop Rent Santa Cruz

Grève des loyers: Cancel All Mortgages, Cancel All Rent (English and French versions)

Keep Your Rent, April 1

Rent Strike 2020: Cancel Rent or We Strike

Solidarity/Cooperative Economy

Common Good: Tools for a Common Good Economy

Mutual Aid Network

MUTUAL AID (North America):

General, United States

Covaid

Mutual Aid U.S.A.

Navajo Hopi COVID-19 Response

Alabama

Alabama / Birmingham: Birmingham Mutual Aid

Alabama / Montgomery: Montgomery Mutual Aid

Alabama / Tuscaloosa: Tuscaloosa Mutual Aid

Alaska

Alaska / Juneau: Juneau Mutual Aid: Give Help

Arizona

Arizona / Flagstaff: Kinłání (Flagstaff) Mutual Aid

Arizona / Phoenix: Phoenix Community Mutual Aid Volunteer/Volunteer Sign-up

Arizona / Phoenix: Phoenix Mutual Aid

Arizona / Tucson: Tucson COVID-19 Mutual Aid Volunteer Sign-up

Arizona / Tucson: Tucson Food Share

California

California / Bay Area: Covid-19 Financial Solidarity

California / Bay Area: Bay Area Senior/Disability/Worker Mutual Aid Form

California / Bay Area: SF Bay Area/Nationwide COVID-19 Mutual Aid Resources List

California / East Bay: East Bay Disabled Folks COVID-19 Support Request Form

California / East Bay: East Bay Disability Ally Form

California / Long Beach: Long Beach Mutual Spreadsheet

California / Los Angeles: COVID-19 Mutual Aid (Los Angeles) // Apoyo Mutuo para COVID-19 en Los Angeles

California / Los Angeles: LA Helping Hands

California / Oakland: Oakland at Risk

California / Orange County: Orange County COVID-19 Mutual Aid 2020

California / Pasadena: East Pasadena Neighbor to Neighbor

California / Sacramento: Sacramento COVID-19 Mutual Aid

California / Sacramento: Sacramento COVID-19 Mutual Aid 2020

California / San Diego: We All We Got SD

California / San Francisco: How Can I Help? SF Bay Area

California / San Francisco: SF Bay Mutual Aid Form

California / San Francisco: SF Community Support

California / Santa Clara County: Santa Clara County COVID-19 Financial Solidarity

California / Santa Cruz: COVID Santa Cruz County Aid and Volunteer Form

California / South Bay: South Bay Mutual Aid Intake

California / South Bay: South Bay Mutual Aid Volunteer Intake (English and Spanish versions)