Mutual Aid: Building Futures of Collective Care
What is Mutual Aid?
Mutual aid is a strategy of resistance and survival.
It’s a collective way of caring for one another by sharing resources, skills, and support, not as charity, but as solidarity.
It’s about communities coming together to meet each other’s needs, resist systems of oppression, and build networks of care that challenge inequality.
It’s also about shifting power, refusing isolation, and building systems where everyone’s needs are met through collective responsibility and grassroots leadership.
Across our histories of enslavement, migration, colonization, and climate catastrophe—and in every moment when the state has failed or actively harmed our people—mutual aid has been a tool of collective survival and liberation.
Throughout the U.S. South, it remains the heartbeat of survival before, during, and after disaster. Whether in the aftermath of storms, under the weight of racial terror, or amid economic collapse, our communities have always turned toward one another in order to get through the hard times.
The Black Radical Traditions of the U.S. South & Mutual Aid
Mutual aid is a vibrant tradition of solidarity, rooted in our Southern Freedom Movement histories and the lessons of the Black Radical Traditions of the U.S. South. It reminds us that care, cooperation, and resistance are inseparable. Born from the struggle of enslaved and free Black people who built their own systems of survival in societies designed to erase them, the Black Radical Traditions of the U.S. South teaches us that our liberation has always depended on one another.
From maroon communities hidden deep in Southern swamps to the mutual aid societies formed by Black people during enslavement, mutual aid was a radical act of refusal—refusal to die, to be erased, or to depend on systems built to oppress us. As a cornerstone of Black survival, it is an enduring practice of resistance, cultural preservation, self-determination, and collective care.
The earliest Black mutual aid and benevolent societies emerged in the late 1700s. Created by free and enslaved Africans, these groups arose to confront financial hardship and to provide burial services, education, and care for those excluded from white institutions.
Across the U.S., these societies became the backbone of community life—funding schools, hospitals, and freedom movements. During Black Reconstruction, mutual aid groups expanded this foundation, linking care work to the struggle for political power and collective liberation.
Generations later, the Black Panther Party’s survival programs, including free breakfasts for children, community health clinics, and political education, carried this same lineage of revolutionary care. The nation’s first paramedic service also grew from Black mutual aid work: the Freedom House Ambulance Service. Staffed entirely by Black men and women, it was created to fill the void left by state neglect and to deliver emergency medical care in Black neighborhoods—a powerful example of community care transforming into life-saving infrastructure now used throughout the country.
From the 18th century to today, each generation of Black organizing carried a simple principle: we keep us safe. When Malik Rahim co-founded the Common Ground Collective after Hurricane Katrina, he reignited this centuries-old fire of communal care. His work brought thousands of volunteers to New Orleans, demonstrating once again that liberation is built on people power.
We Build the Future
During the K20 People’s Movement Assembly in August 2025, mutual aid was recognized as a core principle of how we organize, care for each other, and build power.
Today, as we face compounding disasters, from intensifying storms and heatwaves to the ongoing impacts of systemic racism, economic instability, and rising fascism, mutual aid remains our lifeline. It is how we refuse to be disposable.
As governments cut SNAP and affordable housing programs, mutual aid networks are rising in response: neighborhood kitchens, community fridges, food pantries, and farm collectives that help feed our communities. These remain blueprints for our communal future. They remind us that solidarity—not scarcity—is the foundation of our work.
Mutual aid invites us to imagine a world where care is power and power is shared. It’s about collective survival, but also collective transformation, creating the systems of justice, autonomy, and interdependence that our ancestors dreamed of. Mutual aid is one way we embody the future we’re fighting for: a future rooted in justice, autonomy, and collective care.
The Black Radical Tradition teaches us that freedom is not an individual pursuit; it’s a communal practice rooted in our collective action. And in the face of crisis, it reminds us that our most powerful inheritance is each other.
Project South’s Commitment
In 2017, Project South and our local partner, the Hunger Coalition of Atlanta, joined forces to launch the Mutual Aid Liberation Center at 9 Gammon (MALC). Today, the center stands as a shared space for neighborhood organizing, direct support, and leadership development.
Through the MALC we’ve hosted a range of mutual aid programs—from free COVID-19 testing during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to a community food pantry, thrift shop, and organic farm that meet immediate needs while strengthening long-term organizing. We see the MALC as part of a proud Southern legacy of mutual aid and people power, carrying this work forward into today’s movements.
