A Black anarchist introduction to mutual aid

Mutual aid is not charity. It’s not a buzzword. It’s not a trend. It’s how we’ve always survived—it’s through community, care, and resistance.

Mutual aid is when we organize to meet each other’s needs without relying on the state, the market, or institutional gatekeepers. It’s not about “helping the less fortunate”—it’s about building power together, practicing collective self-defense, and reducing our dependence on the systems that harm us.

From maroon societies to the Black Panther Party, from rural kinship networks to today’s pods and community kitchens, mutual aid is a long-standing part of how Black people and many marginalized communities have built economies for life in the cracks of empire. It is rooted in political struggle, not charity or reform. It is a living tool of abolition, a refusal to leave each other behind.

Mutual Aid ≠ Charity

The term “mutual aid” comes from 19th-century anarchist and scientist Peter Kropotkin, who used it to challenge the myth that competition and hierarchy are natural. But the practice of mutual aid predates the term by centuries—especially in Black, Indigenous, and colonized communities. We’ve always pooled food, shared housing, passed down healing, and protected one another from harm—not out of pity, but out of necessity and love.

Black Mutual Aid: A Tradition of Resistance

Mutual aid has never been optional for us. Under slavery, mutual aid looked like collective parenting, secret schools, and shared gardens. After emancipation, it was the formation of burial societies, free Black towns, cooperatives, and mutual help associations.

The Black Panther Party’s Survival Programs took mutual aid to a revolutionary level. Free Breakfast for Children, health clinics, ambulance services, and education programs weren’t just “services”—they were concrete steps toward building dual power: structures that met people’s needs while challenging the legitimacy of the state.

“We don't believe the capitalist system of the United States is going to feed our children... We have to feed our children.”
— Huey P. Newton

Mutual aid today draws directly from that legacy. It shows up in neighborhood food distribution, jail support collectives, community defense teams, and housing solidarity. Mutual aid has and will always be a foundation for survival—it is a continuation of Black resistance, abolitionist strategy, and communal survival.

Mutual aid doesn’t need a 501(c)(3), a board of directors, or an app. It starts where you are. It grows in neighborhoods, in kitchen tables, at bus stops, on encampment blocks, and through text threads.

Organizing Solidarity - From the ground up

Black mutual aid has always been organic—built through relationships, shared struggle, and creative resourcefulness. We don't wait for grants. We don't ask permission. We take care of each other because no one else will.

know the difference between:

  • Charity, which reinforces hierarchy and conditional access

  • Direct Aid, which meets needs but may still replicate power imbalances

  • Mutual Aid, which redistributes power, builds relationships, and centers collective dignity

The factor of change is organizing our impulse for solidarity into a network. creating a web of abundance to tackle the material needs of those around us. This is the ground work for grassroots communes and associations of producers and labor that is based on voluntary association to alleviate the needs of shelter, hunger, clothes and more! Building this economic and communal infrastructure is building a home base against capitalist reliance for our needs and desires.

Excerpt from Mutual Aid: Solidarity In Action by Boise Mutual Aid

Mutual Aid Is Political

To organize mutual aid is to make a claim:
That we will not wait.
That we deserve to live, not just survive.
That we can and will care for one another, even if the state won’t.
That every act of shared survival is a strike against capitalism, white supremacy, and the myth of individualism.

You Are Needed

We aren’t building an organization—we’re building a movement.
And movements need everyone.

Bring what you have. Learn what you need.
Let’s build new worlds—together.

Coming Soon: Tools, Zines, and Education

This page will eventually link to deeper dives on:

  • Historical case studies of mutual aid formation throughout history

  • How to start or sustain a mutual aid project

  • Healing justice and mutual mental health care

  • Abolition and jail support

  • Food sovereignty and land-based practices

  • Mutual aid as a form of dual power