You look online to see if your neighborhood has any sort of mutual aid system set up. You don’t find anything — so you post on Facebook and Nextdoor with a link to a simple spreadsheet where people can post needs and offerings. You list a few offerings and call some friends to add items to it. You get into the spirit, a contrast from the charity model of operating: “Everyone has something to offer, and everyone has things that they need.”
It starts very slowly. Much of your time is spent cleaning up the spreadsheet. When nobody can meet a need, you research existing systems to point people to. The notes of appreciation do your heart good: a retiree who got help building their wheelchair ramp and then was able to offer piano lessons. Realizing food needs are a huge problem, you find some volunteers to help offer a once-a-week community meal. This brings a lot of attention to your work, but you still sense more could be done.
Your work speeds up rapidly when a local plant is raided by ICE. Apparently the owner called ICE on his undocumented workers right before payday. Workers flee en masse, uprooting their families. Suddenly your page is inundated with requests. And — thankfully — an almost equal number of offerings. The offers come from people from a wide political spectrum, and you carefully help people sort out care.
