There is a huge chart from pages 61-64. It's a very interesting chart. I'm not going to copy the whole thing down here, because I'm lazy.

I'm majorly concerned about "Open meetings, with as many people making decisions .. as possible" and "Consensus decision-making", because I've seen those go bad, but to some degree I also believe in it. It's something that takes some experience and/or skill to manage though -- open meetings can suck A LOT.

I

Quote from: p60history is full of examples of mutual aid groups that, under pressure from law enforcement, funders, and culture, transformed into charity or social services groups and lost much of their transformative capacity.

What is the transformative capacity of mutual aid which is lost in this transition?

EDIT:: Oh, maybe it's on the previous page, which I skimmed

Quote from: p59Characteristics of Mutual Aid vs. Charity

[..]Mutual aid projects strive to include lots of people[..] If we want to provide survival support for as many people as possible, and mobilize as many people as possible for root-causes change, we need to let a lot of people do the work and make decisions together, rather than bottlenecking the process with hierarchies that let only a few people lead.

- provide [..] support for as many people as possible
- mobilize as many people as possible for root-causes change

Dangers and pitfalls:
Deservingness Hierarchies - "mutual aid groups .. sometimes set up their own problematic deservingness hierarchies" - exclude no-one.
Saviorism and Paternalism - "The idea that those giving aid need to "fix" people who are in need is based on the notion that people's [needs are] not a systemic problem but [are] caused by their own personal shortcomings."
Co-optation - paraphrasing: if "collective coordination to meet each other's needs" becomes non-primary* (e.g. displaced by financial concerns), it's not mutual aid

*p.s. there is no such thing as having two equal guiding principles. one will always win.

Quote from: p41Governance and innovation remain local, but knowledge, support, and solidarity are networked and shared.

Quote from: 40How do we imagine "scaling up" mutual aid to a point where everyone has what they need, and gets to meaningfully co-govern and co-steward the structures and conditions of their lives?

Hell yeah, this is the question I want answered!

Quote from: p31

3

We Get More When
We Demand More

Solid title.

Quote from: p21mutual aid is not charity.

I've skimmed this chapter. I don't want to know in greater detail about this thing that mutual aid isn't, because I (personally) already understand that it isn't it.

Quote from: p20For social movements working to imagine and build [..] sustainable, regenerative ways of living, mutual aid offers a way forward.

Okay!

Quote from: p19[Naomi Klein] argues that in energy, as in other areas of survival, we should be working toward locally controlled, participatory, transparent structures to replace our crumbling and harmful infrastructure.

Quote from: WikipediaA participatory organization is an organization which is built based on public participation rather than their contract obligations.

I don't quite follow, but sure. But the question still stands -- why do things like this happen? how do we get from where we are now to "getting rid of the undemocratic infrastructure of our lives"? Individuals need to get interested in mutual aid. participate in mutual aid.

Is there a way to take the infrastructure we have now and make it porous to participation? Open to gradual transformation?

Quote from: p19[The devastating 2018 California fires] were caused by Pacific Gas and Electric Company's mismanagement, and then [..] California's government immediately offered the company a bailout, meanwhile failing to support people displaced by the disaster.

Big yikes. Why do things like this happen?

Last messagethought reminds me of Everything Everywhere All At Once

Quote from: p18MADR asserts that "saving lives, homes, and communities in the event and aftermath of a disaster may require taking bold action without waiting for permission from authorities. [..]"

Quote from: p18-19Mutual aid projects [..] developed to support people living through the crises caused by poverty, racism, criminalization, gender violence, and other "ordinary" conditions[..]

What constitutes a disaster, for me especially? I don't know how to draw that line, myself... What would I do for what I believe in? What do I believe in? See 'unspooling' above. Is everything a disaster? Is nothing? Am I a cold and uncaring being because I'd rather care about nothing than everything? I have no particular passion here, no focus. It seems unjust and basically impossible to focus on any particular injustice.

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I got Mutual Aid (Dean Spade) from the library today :) I wasn't sure when I'd be ready to start reading about it, but as soon as I read the words 'mutual aid' in The Dispossessed, I knew it was time.

Quote from: p16Mutual aid is inherently antiauthoritarian, demonstrating how we can do things together in ways we were told not to imagine, and that we can organize human activity without coercion.

Quote from: droqen on July 27, 2022, 04:41:30 PM

Quote from: p76, The Dispossessed"But we haven't been sure whether or not you came with the approval of--" [Oiie] hesitated.

Shevek grinned. "Of my government?"

"We know that nominally there's no government on Anarres. However, obviously there's administration. And we gather the group that sent you, your Syndicate, is a kind of faction; perhaps a revolutionary faction."

"Everybody on Anarres is a revolutionary, Oiie. . . . The network of administration [does] not govern persons; they administer production. They have no authority either to support me or to prevent me. [..] Most people on Anarres don't want to learn about Urras. They fear it and want nothing to do with the propertarians. [..] I came to begin to change that."

"Entirely on your own initiative," said Oiie.

"It is the only initiative I acknowledge," Shevek said, smiling, in dead earnest.

In dead earnest: People can just do things. Does it really have to be antiauthoritarian to say "Just do things that you want to see done"?

Quote from: droqen on August 04, 2022, 09:10:40 AM

Quote from: p128, The DispossessedTo his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions, but to write down the answers they had learned. And some of them objected strongly to his giving everyone the same mark. [..] If no competitive distinction were to be made, one might as well do nothing.

"Well, of course," Shevek said, troubled. "If you do not want to do the work, you should not do it."

Are so many people really so stripped of their basic desire to do things for their own sake? I am as troubled by Shevek is here, that it seems Mutual Aid must be framed as an anti- something, must be given a name, to seem worth doing.

Frustrated. I love the do-ocratic energy that suffuses mutual aid. 'If you discover that people need something, help them with it.' But I'm not a fan of the wrapper in which it comes: 'We are only doing this because the systems are bad.' No! No!!! To me that suggests the underlying ideal is to use mutual aid to arrive at a new state of complacency.

Why do I feel this way? Am I wrong to feel this way?

Quote from: p8In this context of social isolation and forced dependency on hostile systems, mutual aid--where we choose to help each other out, share things, and put time and resources into caring for the most vulnerable--is a radical act.

I'm pissed off that it has to be "radical." I can't put my finger on it. Someone tell me what I'm doing wrong.