I found this very, very helpful because while I knew of mutual aid, I was not clear on specifics. This book is great for that introductory information.

It’s actually also really good if you want to think about starting your own mutual aid program. There’s a lot of practical “how-to” advice. I can’t say how useful it is since it’s not like I’m going to make use of that information to start a program. But it gave me an idea of the inner workings of such a group.

The last bit of chapter 5 was a bit odd because it gets in a little deep on conflict management and burnout. It felt too deep for this book but also not deep enough to be truly useful. I guess it gives you an idea of common problems.

I also wondered about issues of pay. Spade’s concern about the way being paid for the work impacts the organization makes sense to me. But I think it’s a shame that paying people for their time would be complicated. It brought to mind mission trips that go to x country and paint a school when they could have paid locals to paint it. At what point should mutual aid be about hiring local BIPOC owned businesses to do the work? There are cases where that wouldn’t be possible or wouldn’t make sense, but are there cases where it does?