Mutual Aid, Dean Spade
Mutual Aid, Dean Spade
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Mutual Aid
Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

Author: Dean Spade

Narrator: Stephen R. Thorne

Unabridged: 4 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/12/2021

Synopsis

Around the globe, people are faced with a spiraling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.

Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.

This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout. Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.

About Dean Spade

Dean Spade is an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law, where he teaches courses on policing, imprisonment, gender, race, and social movements. Dean has spent over two decades working in social movements working to end prisons, borders, poverty, and war and support people trying to survive right now. In 2002, Dean founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a nonprofit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming people who are low-income and/or people of color, and which operates on a collective governance model. Alongside his book Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the Law, Dean's writing has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Out, In These Times, Social Text, and Signs.

Reviews

Goodreads review by K on January 12, 2022

I think this is a good book for new organizers. I found the Mad Mapping section to be really helpful and feel that I will incorporate. I was a little troubled with some of the framing regarding Hong Kong organizing, but overall think this is a good book for someone who just found their organizing/mu......more

Goodreads review by Morgan on November 16, 2020

Dean Spade's new book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis is an essential manual for organizers, activists, and everyone invested in changing the world whether in big ways or small. This is perhaps one of the most useful, clear, and accessible books I've ever read on the practical work of......more

Goodreads review by David on February 21, 2021

Given that my reading-brain operates in the nitpicky "citation needed!" / "but what about [...]?" mode by default, there are a lot of ways in which Mutual Aid wasn't totally satisfying. * What kinds of resources and necessities can realistically be delivered through Mutual Aid models? * How are conse......more

Goodreads review by Lizzie on October 27, 2020

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next) by Dean Spade is an introduction to mutual aid. Dean Spade discusses effective ways of engaging in mutual aid, common pitfalls, and ways to manage group dynamics in order to maximize the potential for beneficial outcomes of mutual aid wor......more

Goodreads review by Zana on January 15, 2025

"Mutual aid gives people a way to plug into movements based on their immediate concerns, and it produces social spaces where people grow new solidarities. At its best, mutual aid actually produces new ways of living where people get to create systems of care and generosity that address harm and fost......more

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