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.
Don’t miss this recent webinar, packed full of info about the current ways that mutual aid work is being criminalized and attacked, and how organizers can keep doing our work even as pressures build.
It was delightful, as always, to talk with Toshio Meronek about nonprofitization, queer resistance, gentrification, cops and more. Check it out.
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:
Something I made a long time ago, when it was fun to make animated characters say your propaganda for the first time. Content warning: dry humping.
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.
