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.
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.
I am grateful to Oishik Sircar for asking me perhaps the most interesting questions I have ever been asked during this recent conversation. We talked about teaching, mutual aid, the role of legal work in social movements, and so much more. Check it out here. PDF here.
I’m so grateful that Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis and the Next has been recently published in Italian, Catalan, and Czech and is forthcoming from various publishers in Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, German, Korean.
I’m doing some events this May and June in Europe related to these versions being published. Here’s the current information on events, some still being finalized.
May 28, 18:00, Prague Anarchist Book Fair
June 2, Desgraca, Lisbon
June 8 Barcelona
June 10 Ateneo La Maliciosa, Madrid
June 15 Milan – Circolo Anarchico Ponte della Ghisolfa
June 16 Florence – Comitato di vicinato di San Casciano (Firenze)
June 17 Bologna – Vag 61 Social Center
June 19 Rome – Forte Prenestino Social Center
Last week in June, details still TBD, Berlin. Book forthcoming from _worten&meer_.
I had the pleasure of doing another workshop on romance with the Fireweed Collective, following up on my Valentine’s Day 2021 workshop on the Romance Myth, below.
Below is a video of the ASL interpreters for the Romance Myth workshop.
I had so much fun talking to Carla and Liam from the Grounded Futures podcast. They really asked such interesting questions. Listen here.
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: