Kat Abughazaleh on Losing, Mutual Aid, and What Comes Next

Your campaign used mutual aid as a core organizing strategy. Explain what it actually looked like.

Our office also served as a support center. The entire front area was filled with clothes, food, Narcan, formula, books, diapers – everything anyone could need. People were arriving every day: first mostly unhoused people, then many undocumented immigrants, then low-income families. We don’t require anyone to show ID, nothing. They take what they need and leave. And often they come back and bring things that other people can use.

For those who don’t know: mutual aid is not charity. It’s the idea that you give what you can and you take what you need. Particularly in immigrant and black and brown communities, people have been doing this forever to support each other outside of the structures our government creates — because many programs supposedly meant to help people only create more and more barriers to accessing that help.