COVID-19 Charity: Sparking the re-emergence of mutual aid culture
This pandemic has illuminated how charity, as one of the most distinguishing traits of American culture, has not died. How can we design technology and infrastructure to keep the habits of mutual aid alive after times of pandemic?
COVID-19 has changed New York City. Sirens wail hourly outside my window. The streets are empty as is the park, normally bursting at the seams in this time of year. Businesses have hand-written closure announcements in their windows; for many of them, this closure will not be temporary. The news is full of stories about our overloaded hospitals, strained public services workers, and desperate locals afraid of eviction. At home, my roommates and I work quietly from our dining table and take work meetings in our bedrooms, venturing out only for groceries and laundry.
None of this could have been expected and many of us are still reeling from the new kind of life we’ve been forced into. But also unexpected is how I’ve seen New Yorkers respond to this crisis. In just a few weeks, we’ve resurrected a hyper-local system for charity and social welfare that echoes the mutual aid societies of the 19th century. The re-emergence of this approach to social welfare could mean good things for us as a city and as a nation if we have the tools and the courage to nurture it.
Before the city went into lock-down, I was working remotely from a café in my neighborhood, listening to neighbors swap tips on where to buy perhaps the last remaining bottles of alcohol and aloe vera in the borough. Online, my neighborhood Facebook group sprang into action, sending around a Google sign-up sheet for receiving and giving aid. Flyers sprouted in apartment building foyers. I even saw a post about a flyer attached to a light pole in which a complete stranger named Susan promised food and assistance if they called her number.
Alexis de Tocqueville, upon observing America in the 18th century, reported that Americans tackled most of their political and social problems by organizing themselves into problem-solving associations. He noted how they rarely sought government aid, believing that self-governing men and women, if organized towards a common goal and guided by virtue, could solve community problems just as effectively, if not more so. They took the direction and improvement of their communities into their own hands.
“America is, among the countries of the world, the one where they have taken most advantage of association and where they have applied that powerful mode of action to a greater diversity of objects,” Tocqueville wrote. “There is nothing the human will despairs of attaining by the free action of the collective power of individuals.”
Over the course of a few decades, hundreds of mutual aid associations sprung up across the country, many of them organized by and for marginalized citizens such as blacks, women and immigrants. For their members, the associations provided a sense of community as well as practical resources such as life insurance, medical services, income in case a member was too sick to work, and proper burials in the case of death. Beyond these tangible goods, they also provided a sense of agency, accountability and moral direction, encouraging virtues such as temperance, thrift, and hard work. At their highest point, they provided services to nearly 35 million Americans.
Only a few of these kinds of associations exist today. When we think of civics, we don’t think of roll-up-your-sleeves problem-solving, much less community or friendship. We most likely think about time-wasting board meetings and arguments over parking spaces, building heights, and bike lanes. Even though the need for improved social welfare infrastructure is as relevant as ever, the conversation focuses primarily on the appropriate role of the government, not the power of associations or collective action. You could say that locally-based mutual aid associations as a framework for social problem-solving seemed long dead.
So the fact that hundreds of New Yorkers (and Americans) are responding to the crisis of COVID-19 by organically organizing into this almost-century-old model for collective action is good news. It proves that there lies within us the same intuitive understanding about charity, security, and aid that earlier Americans put to work.
This is a good thing for three reasons. First, it’s good for our mental health. We are wired for interdependence, but so much of modern life has designed this out of our daily lived experience. Mutual aid associations reintroduce the practices of charitable collaboration, which can enrich and expand our sense of well-being and connectedness. Resurrecting mutual aid as a part of what it means to be a citizen could go a long way in contending against our ongoing crisis of loneliness.
Second, because it provides a framework for local civic engagement that would be more inspiring. I’ve written before about how the biggest deterrent to civic engagement is television. I think another deterrent is how outdated and wasteful civic engagement feels. In other words: people want to be involved in local civics, but it seems too bureaucratic and time-wasting, extremely unappealing to the average citizen. I think if we redefined civic engagement to include not just the dry work of political decision-making, but also the inspirational work of mutual aid, more people would show up.
A third reason why the return of mutual aid associations is a good thing is because they are a more efficient way of solving community problems. While far from perfect, locally-based solutions tend to fit their community better than those that come from the top-down. Locals, being on the “front line” of their communities, have better intel about their community. The ideas they generate are more likely to be a better fit while also being less prone to waste and corruption.
This is not to say that the solutions that stem from localism are perfect. Like any model, it only works when matched with a well-tuned moral compass. Doubtless, some of the 18th Century associations struggled with corruption. But despite the imperfections, I can’t help thinking that it’s time to give local mutual associations a more thorough examination. Watching neighbors and complete strangers rally together to help each other makes me wonder if the solutions to some of the largest problems ailing our society could be cultivated on a local level, right in our own backyards with a few spreadsheets, cell phone numbers and conversations around coffee.
This is a conversation we should explore sooner than later. If history is any teacher, the days after COVID-19 will be prime time for a potentially irreversible expanse of the federal government, similar to Johnson’s Great Society, which emerged as the government’s response to the Great Depression and considerably expanded the size of the government. While there will doubtless be a role for the government to play in our economic re-stabilization, there will also be a chance for renewed localism. We’ll have a unique chance to repeat history, but not one of expanded government, rather one of expanded friendship.
The impulse for greater civic awareness and local engagement is here. What’s needed are innovative tools that can nurture this impulse and nurture it into something that can last.
What could it look like to capture these benevolent intentions, this upwelling of charitable energy, this intuitive understanding of collective action and nurture it into the development of a robust civic culture that can last long after this pandemic ends?
