Since mid-March, I've been organizing a mutual aid network, Bed-Stuy Strong, alongside my neighbors in response to COVID-19. Hundreds of volunteers are funding and delivering groceries for neighbors in need - 85% of whom are immunocompromised, disabled, and elderly and are unable to safely leave home for food. This work is critical right now - 1 in 4 New Yorkers are experiencing food insecurity, double pre-pandemic levels. We just did our 2000th delivery, but we still have hundreds more requests in our backlog.
This work is done in the spirit of solidarity, not charity. We don't do needs testing and we put food sovereignty first by buying the food that neighbors ask for. Mutual aid is rooted in the need for resource redistribution towards bottom up efforts that enable communities to meet their own needs. In any change-making work, we move at the speed of trust, and I'm in awe of the incredible solidarity that's enabled us to rapidly respond to meet escalating need.
Doing a grocery delivery with fellow Bed-Stuy Strong volunteers
This work also requires us to act in response to racist events that are unfolding across the country, in solidarity with Black Americans. These events are part of a larger system in which we must transfer resources away from militarized, combative policing and towards communities keeping themselves safe. As we've seen, people of color are inordinately infected and killed by COVID-19, people of color are inordinately arrested for social distancing enforcement (in NYC - more than 90% of social distancing arrests are for BIPOC and majority of 311 complaint calls have been in White, wealthier neighbors), and people of color inordinately experience violence at the hands of the police (and the officers who are responsible are rarely held accountable).
The need for mutual aid is rooted in this reality — all of our communities, and particularly communities of color, need to keep building the muscles to take care of each other and keep each other safe.
If you, like me, you have felt particularly exhausted, angry, and disheartened this week or if you, like me, are searching for ways to direct your platform and resources towards community-led, hyperlocal, civic power movements centered in justice for disenfranchised and marginalized communities, here are few immediate action items:
Donate to support anti-racist organizers in Minneapolis - Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, Minneapolis Bail Fund.
Donate to Bed-Stuy Strong - 100% of your contribution goes directly to food for vulnerable neighbors in Bed-Stuy.
If you know of a mutual aid organization focused on food access that that may want to swap notes, our organizing leads at Bed-Stuy Strong recently compiled a guide to our systems that we want to offer as a resource to other organizers (with overview on our technology, fund, volunteer operations, communications). Would love to connect with anyone who may be interested - please drop me a note at alyssa@alyssadizon.com.
Thanks for reading, and for your actions to move us forward.
Petition demands from Black Visions Collective & Reclaim the Block - sign it at bit.ly/defundmpd
