We are a people-powered relief effort. If we wait on the government or other large institutions, we may not survive the flood waters that threaten to drown us all. We the people must help each other.
Ready to join the frontlines of the climate justice movement? Check out our welcome packet:
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Welcome Packet
You can also sign up for our email updates by following this link.
Got a skill or interest (graphic design, accounting, arborist work, carpentry, counseling, etc.) and want to use it towards grassroots solidarity-based disaster relief efforts? Tell us!
For general volunteering and beginning the process of plugging you into Mutual Aid Disaster Relief ongoing organizing, you can email us at [email protected] to let us know how you want to be involved.
Additionally, you are welcome to check out our mutual aid, disaster response, collective care, and co-conspirators sections of our website to see additional ways to be involved in the wider movement for liberatory mutual aid and disaster response of which we are only a small part.
In solidarity,
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief
P.s. Disaster sites have the potential to be inherently unsafe. They may contain physical threats to health and body, emotional traumas, and strained or fragmented social relationships. We ask everyone involved in community disaster response, both local and non-local volunteers, coordinators, and participating community members– to be proactive in creating a supportive atmosphere where both the physical and emotional safety of others is ensured and validated. In the volatile, high-stress context of disaster, where people meet outside normal social relationships, it is easy to misunderstand each other. Therefore, it is essential to be more explicit and more careful in assuring all of our relationships are consensual
Volunteers and community participants work together on the basis of mutual, active consent.
- All volunteers and community participants must respect the physical and sexual boundaries of other people.
- Ask for explicit verbal consent before touching someone. Consent includes asking, listening, and respecting; it does not include coercion, expectations, or assumptions.
- Never assume consent, especially if drug/alcohol use is involved. Highly intoxicated people are always considered non-consenting.
- Perpetrators of sexual violence and harassment are not welcome in volunteer spaces and activities and will be asked to leave these spaces and activities. Sexual violence by a volunteer is grounds for immediately ending the volunteer’s relationship with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.
- A perpetrators’ presence should not hinder survivors’ participation in volunteer activities. Mutual Aid Disaster Relief invites survivors to contact Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Advocates Ellen Zitani or Stephen Ostrow to discuss how we can support you. Phone numbers hidden online for privacy. Email [email protected] to be connected to Ellen or Stephen.
- Volunteers and community members have the right to leave situations where they feel threatened. We will work with people to try to find alternatives in which they feel safe.
Failure to respect these guidelines and other egregious violations of volunteer or community safety may result in “free dissociation” of the violating person from all Mutual Aid Disaster Relief spaces, including volunteer housing, distribution points, work sites, or other operating spaces activities and resources. Click here for the full Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Code of Conduct.