In The News

Texas residents filled in for an absent government by helping each other survive a devastating winter storm.

While the power grid struggled and Texas officials dithered, mutual aid groups demonstrated their capacity for fast, effective disaster relief

Last week, an untold number of Texans who had lost power and heat, and in some cases water, took to social media platforms to ask for help — and be connected to those who could offer it.

Faced with widespread power outages and water shortages, mutual aid organizations in Texas are stepping up in the absence of state leadership.

I was recently collecting plastic containers for a friend of mine who said that a food bank or pantry or soup kitchen or someone needed them. I wasn’t sure of the details but I was excited to reduce my recycling and pass on containers from yogurt, olives, soup, etc.

Team up, talk to your neighbors, practice self care and don’t judge, say folks who’ve joined the local movement.

On Wednesday night, photos posted to Twitter appeared to show something borderline unthinkable: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas boarding a flight to Cancun, Mexico. In the middle of a pandemic. And in the middle of a crisis that had left millions of his constituents without power or clean drinking water.

From the perspectives of Indigenous nations, the crises of 2020 have not been something entirely new, or even a significant historical departure from “normal.” Having previously experienced the ravages of violent colonialism, pandemics, environmental catastrophe, and forced assimilation, the current era has long been a dystopia for Native peoples.

Disasters sometimes have a way of focusing public attention on basic human needs and long-term ecological survival. According to the Shareable network, survival is not even possible without a “sharing transformation,” or “a movement of movements emerging from the grassroots up to solve today’s biggest challenges, which old, top-down institutions are failing to address….Amid crisis, a new way forward is emerging…The sharing transformation is big, global, and impacts every part of society.

Climate change and pandemics are sad and frightening topics, but they can also be viewed as an unprecedented opportunity for 21st-century societies. These crises can become an excuse to quickly make necessary changes for a healthier future for people and the planet that otherwise may take many years to implement.

In 1882, a Russian zoologist and philosopher by the name of Peter Kropotkin visited the Brighton Aquarium. Here, Kropotkin would observe a key piece of evidence supporting his belief that mutually beneficial cooperation, not competition, played the greatest role in the sustainment and continuing evolution of animal species — a revolutionary idea that ultimately became a fundamental tenet of the anarchist movement.

Three times a week, a small and changing group of local individuals meets at Bayside Community Hall to cook and package hot meals for distribution in the greater Arcata community.

At The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, our winter-quarter class on “Catastrophe: Community Resilience in the Face of Disaster” began in early January 2020, so our students had early warning of coronavirus as it began to spread around the world, but before the disease or public awareness had reached the United States.

The beginning of a semester can get costly. There’s the gas or the plane ticket it takes to get to campus. Sometimes there’s moving, which can mean lease application fees, security deposits, furnishing and more gas.

A disturbing video of a man shoving a 91-year-old elder to the ground in Oakland Chinatown made international headlines, and became a lightning rod in a heated debate about how to best combat anti-Asian racism and promote public safety.

Throughout the tumultuous year of 2020, people in many parts of the world were jolted into rediscovering the importance of relying on one another. The people of Puerto Rico, however, have long understood the power of mutual aid as a means of both survival and resistance.

Last month, I interviewed Mutual Aid Disaster Relief about one of their most recent projects and their perspective on the dangers and promise of mutual aid during a pandemic and rampant fascism.