Dean Spade will guide you through the Workshop. Masha from Educat Kollektiv supports facilitating.
Content
In the context of worsening ecological crisis, rising fascism, and expanding war, we need to build communities and movements that can take care of each other and fight back. Mutual aid is the work we do in communities to meet immediate survival needs autonomous from government and NGO’s.
It is where we practice skills of collaboration, generosity, and co-stewardship, engage in political education to expand our solidarities, and move from being passive observers of political crises to active participants in preparing for and addressing the disasters being caused by capitalism. In this interactive workshop, Dean Spade will guide us through the basics of what mutual aid is. Why is it so important for social movements? What common obstacles come up in doing the work? And how can we address them?
Place / Date
The event will take place online via “ZOOM”. The platform-link with the instructions on how to use it will be sent after signing up for the event via Typeforms (see information below).
The event will take place on the 8th September, from 6 pm to 9 pm CET.
- Ending: 9 pm
- Opening Online Room (for technical support/test): 5:45 pm
- Beginning: 6 pm
- Break: 7:15 pm
Estimated Work Amount
If you like to prepare for the topic, feel free to stroll through materials in our “Resources” section. If you do not have anytime, do not worry and join anyways! We are happy to have you!
Optional preparation materials:
- Mutual Aid Explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPgTZeF5Z0
- Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next): https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dean-spade-mutual-aid
- Visual History of Mutual Aid: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-22/a-visual-history-of-mutual-aid
- And for those who want to go deeper, this workshop series: https://www.deanspade.net/2021/12/20/workshop-series-building-capacity-for-mutual-aid-groups/
Barriers
You might need some steady internet connection. We also encourage you to use headphones, if you can. It increases concentration. We will have a break during the 3 hours event, but feel free to get some drinks and snacks and a comfy position. There will be no work to be done by participants, past the event.If you do need some help using the online platform, please join 15 minutes earlier – 5:45 pm, we will explain everything and clarify open technical questions.
Language
The spoken language will be English. We will also have automated subtitles enabled. We will try to keep track of questions in the chat, personal discussions and explain some of the used concepts or words in easier language.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch and tell your needs at skills4crisis@protonmail.com with the Workshop title as a subject.
Costs
The event is free of charge. If you feel like you want to support the project, feel free to donate though 🙂 https://skills4crisis.org/#get-involved
Applying
Please sign up through the link below. We will send you the link to the online platform latest one day before the event. If there is a problem or any open questions – please get in contact via E-Mail to skills4crisis@protonmail.com.
Facilitators
Dean Spade
Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He is a professor at the Seattle University School of Law.
He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law. Bella Terra Press published a Spanish edition in 2016.
In 2015, Dean released a one-hour video documentary, Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, which can be watched free online with English captions or subtitles in several languages.
Dean’s book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next) was published by Verso Press in October 2020. It is also out in Spanish, Czech, German, Catalan, Italian, Thai, Korean, and Portuguese.
Educat Kollektiv
Masha
Masha moved to Germany in July 2023 and joined our collective in the fall. In Belarus and Georgia, she is involved in informal education, human rights activities, and remembrance work. She is now active in the collective in Dresden and has accompanied two of our major projects on remembrance work, “Cultures of Remembrance” and “Queer Identities in Darkest Times.”
About the project
The ‘Skills for Crisis’ project acknowledges that ecological tipping points, social collapse and multiple crises have been reached. They will be and already are our reality. The world as we know it is coming to an end. Embracing this thought, faces us as individuals, but also our communities with questions, feelings and processes, forcing us to leave our known ground of “solving” and “saving”.
Together we want to explore what civil society organisations, our communities and social movements need in order to react and act in Solidarity to crises. We want to learn from the past, support healing in the present and shape the way we enter the future.
For one year, we will collect and discuss existing knowledge and practices about crises and develop workshops based on five streams of thoughts.
Stream of Thought
Strengthening Civil Society is one of the 5 Streams of Thoughts we are following throughout the project. The Illustrations show a group of people overwhelmed by the crisis and its Solidarity alternative. Drawing by Fine / Educat Kollektiv.
