Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next)

by Dean Spade

People start mutual aid projects because existing programs or other services are not meeting people’s needs, and often are leaving out particular groups of vulnerable people. The notorious failures of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the face of disaster are a good example. The 2018 Camp Fire in California was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history, the worst wildfire in the United States in a century, and the most expensive natural disaster in the world that year. At least 85 people were killed in the fire, over 18,800 structures were destroyed, 52,000 people were evacuated, and the total damage was estimated at $16.5 billion. A tent city of people displaced by the fire emerged in a Walmart parking lot in Chico, California. In the days following the fire, as displaced people with more resources began to leave the tent city because they could afford to find new housing or stay with family or friends, city officials and media portrayed the people that remained as ordinary homeless and itinerant people who were “undeserving” of help, rather than as sympathetic fire survivors. The hierarchy of deservingness is built into FEMA’s eligibility process, which excludes people who cannot confirm an address before the disaster, such as homeless people or people living in poor communities where individual dwellings are sometimes not given an individual mailing address. The distinction between deserving and undeserving disaster survivors res...