Mutual Aid and the Lie of Individuality

Rachel

03 May 2025 • 2 min read

"We can’t do anything alone that’s worth it. Everything that is worthwhile is done with other people." - Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us

“The only thing that keeps those in power in that position is the illusion of our powerlessness. A moment of freedom and connection can undo a lifetime of social conditioning and scatter seeds in a thousand directions.” - Dean Spade, Mutual Aid

If your schooling was anything like mine, when learning about the American Civil Rights Movement in class you likely learned about Rosa Parks. The story of Rosa Parks is a fairly well-known one. In December 1955, Alabama had a requirement that black Americans sit in the back of the bus while the front seats were reserved for whites only. Rosa Parks, a black woman, sat in the front of the bus and refused to move when asked [1]. She was arrested, which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which helped push the country towards desegregation.

The way this history is taught often makes it seem as though a single person and a single action was primarily responsible for the entire effect. This sort of individualism, however, undermines the power of collective action [2]. While Rosa Parks’ arrest was a magnificent rallying cry, most history lessons don’t give nearly enough attention to the boycott which followed, and the mutual aid that allowed it to continue for so long.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was originally scheduled for a single day, December 5, 1955, but lasted over a year, ending on December 20, 1956 [3]. Over that time, 90 percent of the black Americans in Montgomery, Alabama avoided the bus system. This was possible because of mutual aid. Black taxi drivers lowered their fares to 10 cents to match the standard bus fare [4]. A carpool system was put in place with 300 cars to help boycotters who could not walk to their destinations [3]. It is estimated that the city missed out on 30,000 to 40,000 fares daily during the boycott [4]. At ten cents per fare, that would be $3000-$4000 dollars daily, or the equivalent of roughly $35,500-$47,000 in 2025 dollars [5].

The world is a difficult place right now, but when we work together we have enormous power. Back in February I posted some ideas for direct action. Here are a few more:

Find mutual aid collectives in your area. Contact them and ask where they need help
Gather your neighbors and campaign for a change in your area. An example might be petitioning the local school system to improve their teaching of mutual aid during the Civil Rights Movement
Unionize your workplace. Collective bargaining can get you better pay and benefits than what you can get on your own
Join or start a fundraiser for a cause you care about
If you learn of a system set up to report on others (for example, reporting that somebody has had an abortion, might be an undocumented immigrant, or is LGBTQ+) get a group of friends to submit worthless reports to make the system less effective. If one person can submit 5 false reports and you can get nine friends to join you, that’s a lot of paperwork for them to slog through looking for real reports through all the garbage

We can’t make sweeping changes alone, but together we can push back and become too loud to ignore.

References