It was a pleasure to work with the Atlanta Press Collective on this piece about the history and contemporary realities of the criminalization of mutual aid, in light of the indictment of 61 forest defenders working to stop the construction of a new police training facility in Atlanta.
Freshly published: Rachel Herzing, Bench Ansfield and I had a conversation about abolitionist questions of infrastructure, focusing on what transformative justice means, how abolitionists debate questions of state formation, and much more.
I had the pleasure of collaborating with Fireweed Collective again to put on a fourth installment of my Dismantling the Romance Myth webinar series. The fourth webinar focuses on how we get caught in fears of abandonment and engulfment and what we can do to act in alignment with our values when those fears show up. Below you’ll also find the prior years’ videos and links to the slide decks from each year’s webinar.
Fourth Webinar with ASL:
Fourth Webinar with Spanish Interpretation:
2023 Webinar:
2022 Webinar:
2021 Webinar:
Should Social Movement Work be Paid?
Thursday, January 5, 2023
7PM EST/ 4PM PST
Sponsored by the Patricia Wismer Professorship in Gender and Diversity at Seattle University, and BCRW
REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dean-spade-should-social-movement-work-be-paid-tickets-483783729157
The COVID pandemic and George Floyd/Brionna Taylor rebellion of 2020 brought new attention to the role of mutual aid work in surviving crises and organizing resistance. People started thousands of projects giving out food, rent money, and bail money, doing errands for each other, providing childcare, emotional support, transportation, and other essentials. Many people learned more about the histories of mutual aid in social movements as vectors of survival and mobilization. The long-time critique of non-profitization of social movements reached newly politicized people as debates surfaced about whether to register mutual aid projects as non-profits.
In this talk, Dean Spade will explore a vexing question being discussed in many movement groups: should people be paid to do this work? Should groups should seek funding to create staff positions or stipends for people participating in the work? Is it a matter of racial, economic, gender and disability justice to pay people to be part of movement groups? Does the process of raising money tie groups too closely to philanthropists or governments? Does paying participants limit the potential growth of movements? Is payment the best way to recognize labor in groups? Is paying people a good way to reduce barriers to participation? How does paying people impact the culture of social movement work? Does it institutionalize the work? These questions have immediate practical significance, and also unearth larger themes about what it means to do resistance organizing within capitalism where people are demobilized, isolated, and struggling to meet basic needs.
This event is a continuation of the Building Capacity for Mutual Aid Groups workshop series, which started as a series of four online workshops led by Dean Spade:
Workshop 1 – No Masters, No Flakes! (October 28, 2021)
Workshop 2 – Decision-Making (November 11, 2021)
Workshop 3 – Skills for Abolitionist Practice (December 9, 2021)
Workshop 4 – Bringing New People into the Work (January 20, 2022)
ACCESSIBILITY
ASL and live transcription will be provided. This event is made possible by the Patricia Wismer Professorship in Gender and Diversity at Seattle University.
October 2021-January 2022 I am offering this series of four workshops about how to meet common obstacles facing mutual aid groups. For each of the posted workshops, you can find the slides, links to resources mentioned, templates of proposals I discussed in the workshops, and other tools in the links below each video here. The last in the series is coming up January 20. Register here.
WORKSHOP 1: No Masters, No Flakes
Group culture, capacity, overwork, procrastination, and perfectionism in mutual aid groups.
Presentation slides (PDF)
Results from the live polls (PDF)
Resources
Dean Spade: Facilitating Conversations about Capacity in Mutual Aid Groups (video)
Dean Spade: Burnout in Mutual Aid Groups (video)
Building Capacity for Mutual Aid Groups (Workshop 2): Decision-Making (video)
WORKSHOP 2: Decision-Making
Resources
Dean Spade: Facilitating Conversations about Capacity in Mutual Aid Groups (video)
Dean Spade: Burnout in Mutual Aid Groups (video)
Building Capacity for Mutual Aid Groups (Workshop 1): No Masters, No Flakes! (video)
Consensus (Direct Democracy @ Occupy Wall Street) (video)
WORKSHOP 3: Skills for Abolitionist Practice
Live transcription is available here.
A workshop with Dean Spade about giving and receiving feedback in mutual aid groups.
Resources
WORKSHOP 4: Bringing New People Into the Work
More videos from this series:
I had the great honor to be part of the Women’s History Month Annual Symposium at Northwestern University, where I got to be in conversation with Kelly Hayes about mutual aid. Check it out!
People who are considering going to law school are already started or finished law school ask me about this question a lot. Here are some of the things I have put together over the years that may be useful.
Here’s a captioned video from a recent presentation at Northwestern: “Fighting to Win: The Roles of Lawyering and Law Reform in Liberation Struggles”.
Here’s a captioned video of a May 2021 conversation with Stanford Law students about the role of lawyers in movements and how people who are in law school or have graduated from law school can be of service to movements. Here is a captioned video recording from an event titled “What Every Activist Should Know Before Going to Law School” hosted by the University of Washington’s Legal Pathways program in April 2020.
And finally, about ten years ago I published this short essay in the lefty law journal Unbound about the myths that mislead a lot of people who want social change to think they should go to law school, and the realities people should know before going. I think it is still a pretty good summary of the issues.
It was such a treat to have a conversation with Nikkita Oliver, one of my favorite collaborators and teachers, about my new book on mutual aid in January.
My favorite comic artist, Ellen O’Grady, made this comic about her experience listening to my interview with Jonathan Van Ness. I’m just including a couple favorite images of it below, check out the whole thing here.
