Mutual Aid spring study
Fourth Thursdays, 7 pm ET/6 pm CT/4 pm PT
Register for all sessions via Zoom
All are welcome to attend any session even if they have missed previous sessions.
In spring 2021, Zach Johnson and Abby Rampone will co-facilitate a discussion series on Dean Spade’s Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). This short book describes a blend of tactics, tools, and advice that are applicable to all four of our Strategy Working Groups: education, direct action, lobbying, and alternatives. Strengthening our understanding of movement ecology, we will think about how to combine and practice strategies to improve material conditions in the church and world. This is one of two study tracks offered as part of CTA’s 2021 National Campaign.
Mutual Aid can be purchased from Verso Books, Powell’s, or (hopefully) your local bookstore! Cost: $14.95 for paperback, $9.99 for ebook. For financial aid to purchase a copy, email cta@cta-usa.org with “Mutual Aid book” in the subject line. Participants will ideally locate the book by February 25 and read the designated chapters before each discussion session!
Schedule (7 pm ET/6 pm CT/4 pm PT):
February 25 - Introduction and Chapter 1: “Three Key Elements of Mutual Aid”
March 25 - Chapter 2: “Solidarity Not Charity!”
April 22 - Chapter 3: “We Get More When We Demand More”
May 27 - Chapter 4: “Some Dangers and Pitfalls of Mutual Aid”
June 24 - Chapter 5: “No Masters No Flakes!”
ABOUT MUTUAL AID, from deanspade.net:
Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.
Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.
Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.
This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity
