Though this mutual aid network has formed out of the COVID-19 crisis, we want to honor the long history of mutual aid organizing. We want to thank mutual aid folks out of Medford and Somerville as we have borrowed some of their model and language.
We have established collective values that we hope will bring our community closer together through mutual respect and collaboration:
Everyone has something to offer and everyone has things that they need. No one knows everything but together we know a lot.
Needing things is not a personal failure. We live in a deeply unequal society without safety nets. This is not your fault. We believe in taking collective responsibility for getting everyone through times of crisis.
Every person deserves dignity and stability in their lives. No matter why someone is reaching out, we do our best to support them. This doesn’t mean you personally have to give to everyone. If you are worried that someone is asking for things they don’t need we still ask that you treat everyone with respect on this page. It is easy for things to spiral out of control and for the spirit of this group to become damaged.
Bring any concerns to moderators directly. We ask that you bring any misgivings about someone or a post directly to the moderators. We want to preserve the spirit of the group and the safety of everyone to post.
No Sexual Harassment. Just don’t solicit anyone for sex, don’t say suggestive things, treat everyone as a human with dignity. If you have been sexually harassed please make sure to take screenshots of the interaction and send it to moderators.
This is an experiment, and we are flexible: learning from our mistakes, redesigning our systems as we go, and building muscles of decentralized organizing. We remain committed to each other, even when we mess up.
We have to trust in and fight for people we don’t know. This kind of work moves at the speed of trust (a learning from the Movement for Black Lives) and we choose to slow down, even through this urgency, in order to build trust and maintain accountability to each other and our network.
Mutual aid will only get us so far. We are also working on making large-scale demands of our politicians for an equitable world. We are just one community in a long history of mutual aid committed to collective surviving and thriving.
Listening and reflecting. We acknowledge that everyone right now is in crisis. That crisis looks different for everyone. For some folks, it is impacting us on a lot of fronts. We ask that everyone listen to what others need without judgment.
Centering racial justice. We know that wealth and safety nets have been systematically taken apart for people of color over generations, leaving people more vulnerable in crises like this. We commit to mutual aid support as a form of resource redistribution and weaving of a new community-held safety net for all.