WATCH: Mutual Aid – #SolutionsWatch
In this time of thoughtcrime and hate speech laws, here’s a dangerous question: how did people provide for themselves BEFORE government-supplied cradle-to-grave welfare and “social security”? It’s one of those questions that is so obviously staring us in the face but no one thinks to ask. Why? Because the powers-that-shouldn’t-be are afraid of its two-word answer, of course: mutual aid.
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Eh, I’m not so sure about this one. In centuries past, and in the absence of social safety nets, millions of people in Western countries died in – and of – poverty, lacking safe drinking water, enough food to survive, even the most rudimentary housing, the ability to heat or cool themselves to liveable temperatures, etc. Let alone the ability to afford essential medical care.
Even today in relatively under-developed countries, millions of people die in – and of – poverty.
Even today in the US, food, housing, healthcare, and energy assistance programs are going the way of the dodo. Before too long, the same will be true of the people these programs were designed to help.
I lived in the US for 25 years. I returned home to Australia in my mid-50s because America is no place to be if you are old and poor, which is how I felt at the time. It was wonderful to be back in a country that has an old-age pension (or so I think of it) and universal basic healthcare. I hope never to need either, but it’s so good to know they’re there, for all of us, however eroded these programs has become in recent years.
The Aged Care program my mum used in her final years was remarkably good, even with all the bureaucratic red tape. Mum died in early 2021 (and no, not of covid). The Aged Care program is a shadow of its former self now, but it is still head-and-shoulders above what is available in “the land of the free.”
So, yes to mutual aid; and yes to basic social safety nets as well. Both, not either/or.
Because social safety nets are mutual aid.
Consider a local network where there is no hierarchy, no power structure, no commercial transactions, no barter or any direct agreement of exchange (no money changes hands), and supports the autonomy and sovereignty of each individual: http://solaris-ontario.org/