Building A Movement: Find Your People

We've had some time to process. Your ears have stopped ringing, I would assume–actually if they still are you might have something else going on–and now you're wondering about concrete actions to take in the face of an admittedly scary looming threat. First, I want to spin you a little anecdote.

I am going to admit something: I woke up Wednesday morning and saw the news, having mostly ignored it the night before, and I felt all right. Which is pretty wild, as the world was coming down around my ears that morning in 2016. But I felt all right last Wednesday. It was helpful that I voted my conscience, but what is the most helpful is that, despite how dark and impossible things seem, I feel like I have some idea of what to do now, and what we're up against. We are again met with the clarity of lost options: the Dems ran a terrible campaign, on a platform of genocide, contrary to the will of the people. They got their keisters handed to them for it, but they, thus far, do not appear to have learned any lessons. For us, this simplifies things. If our only viable political option has abandoned us, then we can no longer rely on political options.

So today, let's break down how we are going to address this problem, both as individuals and as a group. For folks who have been around a while, some of this will be retreading old ground–but I hope it will still be useful to you. And to be clear, this is an introduction to a subject about which books on books have been written. What this looks like, very simply, is finding your people.

Mutual Aid and Dual Power

It's perhaps a little more disarming than I mean for it to be to say that what we're addressing today is the absence of the political. But rather than focus on some of the very real and very potent threats communities among us will face right out of the gate (and have been facing–they didn't go away because Biden was in office), I want us–all of us–to start on a solid foundation. That foundation is mutual aid.

Mutual aid, if you're new to this letter and being a leftist (welcome, by the way! It is both harder and better than being a lib), is the practice of solidarity through concrete means, such as community members coming together to provide food for other members. It is distinct from charity in spirit and perpetuity–charity occurs from a place of hierarchy: the well-off giving to the poor. Mutual aid, and solidarity, is work done with the purpose of being one with the community that is being served, with mutual benefits. You don't work at a Food Not Bombs, for instance, to please the Lord; you give your time there because it's helpful to people in your community and, crucially, because you are part of that community. There is a holistic understanding to mutual aid that doesn't occur with charity. The central idea here is that you acknowledge the personhood in the person you are helping, rather than simply throwing down the proverbial rope into a pit.

Obviously mutual aid doesn't have to occur by and for community members–you likely donated to mutual aid funds in Gaza or North Carolina recently. Good on you for that! But the work being done occurs in the community, mostly by community members, as folks who come and go or give remotely aren't establishing the relationships that make mutual aid work. They're doing the work, just not completing it–make sense? The relationships that you form are the critical thing here because they establish a network of support that is ongoing.

(Quick aside since I brought up Gaza: the UN recently reported that 70% of verified combat deaths in Gaza are women and children. It is a clear indictment of the sickness of our country that we're not only allowing this to continue, but actively assisting in the genocide. I know this isn't directly relevant to our subject but it is infuriating and I don't want us to let it slip from our minds.)

The reason for forming relationships is the permanence necessary to the second layer of our foundation, which is dual power. (Apparently anarchists prefer counterpower, but I first encountered the idea as dual power.) Dual power is the concept of creating alternatives to existing power structures with the goal of making them irrelevant. While the concept comes from the political apparatus, it can function at a smaller level. A concrete example would be a community, or a neighborhood, establishing a library of goods–from tools to clothing–to be donated, lent out and returned, or simply used–in lieu of an outside institution such as a the Salvation Army or, to some extent, a box store. The idea here is to eliminate the need for craven institutions, and eventually the state, so that your community is living better, safer, and more equitably.

Crisis and Opportunity

The second coming of Trump is a frightening prospect, but it is not without its silver linings. The dismantling of government operations presents us with an opportunity: we can build our movement in the ashes. I want to underscore, if this isn't clear enough, that I am not smiling at the idea of what few safety nets we had left in this country being cut. My ideal world does not involve people suddenly being without desperately needed assistance so that we can come out of the bushes and save them. But, as there is going to be a great need anyway, it would behoove us to be the ones to step up and assist.

So, the work of establishing dual power, and siphoning participation away from existing power structures, becomes easier in Trump's shadow. Not only do the existing institutions function poorly, or disappear entirely, but public buy-in decreases as the opposing political party (the Dems) become suspicious of everything Trump does. Our work, in this environment, presents itself as much more viable an alternative and our movement as a whole becomes more possible.

It's hard to judge how much of Trump's bluster will actually get pushed through; much has been said about him surrounding himself with loyalists who will know how to do things for his second administration, and I'm fairly sure I've said the same in previous letters. In reality, there's the possibility that he gets distracted by something shiny and some of the horrors don't come to pass. But we shouldn't rely on luck and the dipshittery of our foes to make our plans.

Concrete Action, As Promised

Most of what I've said thus far is rather vague leftist theory, but mutual aid is the backbone of praxis, and it begins very simply. I'll repeat my ask from last week: what are you good at? Do you have a skill–whether you particularly enjoy it or not–from which your community can benefit? Do you know others who could assist you in implementing this skill? Alternatively, is there a particular issue that you care about deeply, that will motivate you through the work? Find that thing. Obvious examples include:

1. Cooking for members of your community/providing regular meals.
2. Distributing harm reduction supplies such as clean needles, narcan, prophylactics, and the like.
3. Establish rapport with unhoused communities and provide them with supplies, which can vary from the above to tents, warm-weather clothing, transportation, and liaising with government health and welfare services (to an extent).

The needs of your community may vary, and there are many, many more ways you can help people. It is also likely that your community already has people doing some of this work, whether under the banner of mutual aid or not. It can be difficult to contact these groups, sometimes, but it is worthwhile so that you're not trying to build a movement from the ground up when one already exists. But if nothing exists, show up someplace with the help you know is needed. Distribute it. It's very simple to say that and much more complex to do, but that kind is how this starts.

As I said before: we need all kinds of people in this fight, because ultimately our goal is to give society an equitable and just do-over. For you, this may mean skipping work like mutual aid and moving straight to opposing the establishment by more direct means–and that's okay. All of this work, all of it, is vital–whether you're in the streets protecting marginalized peoples or keeping those groups fed. Not everyone is able to do all the work that is necessary, but everyone can do something.