Finishing One Training Tour, & Beginning The Next!
We are so happy to announce that our pilot-project, Building the Movement for Mutual Aid Training Tour, was a great success in spring 2018 - so much so that we are hustling to put together [...]
(Solar) Power to the People
On May 23, 2018, 3 days after the 8-month anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s landfall in Puerto Rico, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief’s #PRRebuilds Sustainability and Ecological Resilience team arrived for the third time in Barrio Mariana, [...]
Temporary Autonomous Zones
Last week marked the end of our Tampa Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Post-Irma Convergence Center, the space was generously offered to us by St. Paul Lutheran Church. This space was artful, accessible, warm and creative. [...]
Building the Movement for Mutual Aid – SPRING TOUR 2018
Friends, I am so excited and grateful for this opportunity to organize our first "Building the Movement for Mutual Aid" Training Tour! This is a critical moment for developing a skilled and empowered standing network [...]
Dreaming With Our Hands: On Autonomy, In(ter)dependence, and the Regaining of the Commons
"It was like an atomic bomb went off" a local Boricua, as people born in Puerto Rico are often called, is saying about the view of the mountains the day after Maria passed. "Every branch, [...]
2017 Reflection: Unafraid of Ruins
2017 has been a busy year for us. We saw unprecedented disasters, both climate related and political. The storms are increasing in intensity and frequency, but so is our diverse movement’s power from below, our [...]
The Disaster is the Colony
Rolling through the gates of west end Aquadilla's Medium/Minimum security prison Institución Correccional de Guerrero, our view widens to capture barbed wire buildings, a generator screaming a guttural something off stage left and the furious [...]
This is Caguas
The rest is Puerto Rico. Centro de Apoyo Mutuo, Centers for Mutual Aid, exist as raised fists across the island landscape of post hurricane Irma, post hurricane Maria Puerto Rico. In the narrow, colorful streets [...]
Puerto Rico’s DIY Disaster Relief
A woman relaxes in the Centro de Apoyo Mutuo in Caguas, which feeds hundreds of people every day. The black and white Puerto Rican flag behind her symbolizes opposition to US-government imposed austerity. In the [...]
A Thank You from Manuel: dispatches from Puerto Rico
Our current Mutual Aid Disaster Relief team in Puerto Rico has concentrated efforts mostly on HIV/AIDS prevention, safe water outreach/education, breastfeeding in disasters and also is addressing other health needs with our team of nurses, [...]
Solidarity and Friendship
Hi Friends, another message from Tyler here... I am returning to the states tomorrow (!)... and I am happy that my last week in México has been so full and so meaningful. I want to [...]
Jayuya: Remembering the Past, Demanding a Future
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is a movement decentralized throughout civil society linking and contextualizing the intersectional struggles of climate/social/environmental and economic justice, rooted and steeped in a power-from-below solidarity not charity ethos. Throughout 2016/2017, Mutual [...]
Courage, Hope, and the Revolution of Everyday Life
In a battle between the forces of repression and the forces of resilience, a swat team raided the Mutual Aid Disaster Relief base of operations in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico in the early hours before dawn [...]
The Future of Resistance and Resilience
The 23rd of October 2017 is a big day for movements of resistance and resilience! Today the indigenous-led coalition Mazaska Talks kicks off their "Divest the Globe" campaign, with world-wide mass actions against the banks that fund pipeline developments and tar [...]
Repression vs. Resilience
Several police vehicles, an armored tactical vehicle, and law enforcement personnel including swat team pointed their guns at relief workers while surrounding and then entering our base of operations in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico in the [...]