On Secure Apps and Social Media, Teens Take to Mutual Aid
Mutual aid is having a moment. The non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic form of giving — just members of a community voluntarily helping each other for reciprocal benefit — is no longer solely the domain of anarcho-communist theorists. Mutual aid is on The New Yorker’s pages and the pages of your Facebook friends, and it’s taken off in Manhattan Valley and Morningside Heights, with at least two large mutual aid groups operating websites, and several others working less formally. Among the most notable is a 150-person network run by and for one of the city’s most tech-savvy but vulnerable populations: teenagers.
The New York City Youth Mutual Aid Network (NYCYMA) arose from the Black Lives Matter protests that surged last summer. Adam Neville, an 18-year-old from Morningside Heights, participated as part of a teen activist group called Extinction Rebellion Youth. “The protests continue to be very dangerous despite them being peaceful. I was like, ‘Okay, let’s band together. Let’s make sure that the kids are safe. Let’s make sure that everyone has someone to go with,’” said Neville. These efforts eventually expanded into a full-fledged mutual aid network that has served young people ranging from eighth graders to early college students.
Neville was reluctant to allow access to the network itself, due to concerns that the protest activity discussed therein might attract police attention. However, some of the requests for aid from young people that the network has boosted on social media do provide a picture of its activities.
Those seeking help range from a gay teen kicked out of his home because of his sexual orientation to a 15-year-old whose father had died from Covid-19 and whose mother hadn’t been the same since. There are posts asking for assistance with utility bills and tuition, but also to replace damaged camera equipment, and get a domain name for a college portfolio.
Many requests are being met by young people like Stella Georgian, an 18-year-old who discovered NYCYMA on Instagram. In November, she posted an offer of myriad resources, including water, masks, food, and mental health support. Since then, she has fulfilled several requests for aid per week through her Instagram DMs, mostly with Cash App payments of $20 to $50.
Georgian meets almost every request that she gets, without questioning the honesty of the asker. “They send me their whole story, usually they send me pictures, too. A lot of them feel obligated to justify themselves, and they shouldn’t have to do that,” said Georgian. “I truly don’t think that they’re taking advantage of me or they’re trying to profit off of the mutual aid.”
Georgian is hardly the caricature of the privileged socialist teen. “I’m a daughter of a single mother, and I grew up on food stamps, and I’m still on food stamps,” said Georgian. “But I just sort of choose to use my money in that way to help other people. And I know that I’m still in a more privileged position than them.” To Georgian, mutual aid — and the trust that it requires — are preferable to more mainstream forms of charity. “Mutual aid is a more collective approach for building power in people and building communities, rather than charity just stepping in and trying to save or fix a situation,” she said.
These differences are crucial for some of NYCYMA’s organizers as well. “The difference with mutual aid is that it’s a very personal thing. Charity can feel like, I’m gonna drop off these [goods], at this place, on this day, and I’m going to forget about it. And you never actually interface with the people who are getting those resources,” said Neville.
Although mutual aid can involve more direct contact, part of the appeal to young people of networks like NYCYMA is that they live almost entirely online. NYCYMA is organized as a series of group chats on a secure messaging platform. The platforms are free and native to a lot of teens, who might struggle to find and apply for mainstream forms of charity. However, tech comes with drawbacks. “It’s sort of inaccessible for a lot of people who need mutual aid, who aren’t on technology and don’t have access to Slack or Instagram, even. There’s a lot of people who don’t have phones,” said Georgian. NYCYMA also does some flyering, but most of its efforts are digital.
There are also difficulties that come with ensuring that everyone in the network is both young and trustworthy. Potential network members are vetted primarily through whether they have mutual Instagram friends with people who are already part of the network. This could make aid harder to come by for young people who don’t already have teen activists in their social networks.
However, NYCYMA is also doing good offline. The network has organized several clean-ups of local areas, as well as two resource drives, in which they gave away donated winter clothing, hygiene supplies, food, and books. “[We’re] just sort of seeing that [the] system isn’t working for us, and we’re starting to try and figure out our own solutions,” said Georgian. And although NYCYMA’s work is unique, it shouldn’t necessarily be surprising. “If you look at social movements in general, you’ll find that there’s a lot of energy that comes from teenagers and young adults,” said Sarajane Blum, a Morningside Heights-based activist who has been involved in mutual aid efforts since the mid-’90s. “The people who get turned into icons in history very often were just kids.”
