Hello users of hexbear:
Due to recent meta posts in our mutual aid community we wanted to open up discussion about the community !mutual_aid@hexbear.net
We will never require explanation or justification from a user asking for aid in the community, and the mod and admin team continue to commit to not featuring an individual’s mutual aid request to prevent unfair exposure.
In addition, we will maintain a strict “No critical comments or meta comments” on a mutual aid post.
This post is to discuss the mutual aid community’s rule of allowing meta posts: mutual aid as a community, those making posts in it and those commenting on posts.
We are considering removing the exception allowing meta posts but wanted to involve the userbase before committing to a change.
Please comment with any thoughts, feelings, or suggestions regarding this change.
Thank you
You might not like semantics but “mutual aid” has a meaning and key to that meaning is “mutual aid is not charity” (hence it bring mutual). Right now the mutual aid comm doesn’t really function like that, and personally I don’t think there’s way its set up could ever function as proper mutual aid - which is fine but if you’ve ever done real life mutual aid work it doesn’t look like people asking for cash donations and some cadre giving them. Like semantics or don’t, that’s the motivation.
People tend to get attached to mutual aid as a name because it’s a cool horizontalist leftist thing to do, but we don’t enact that stuff and just take the name.
THANK YOU. A bunch of people are saying that it’s just semantics, but words mean things. In the social services field, the terms “mutual aid”, “harm reduction”, “peer support” among others are being coopted and bastardized and quite frankly depoliticized for profit by the “non-profit industrial complex”. If this is supposed to be a community of leftists we SHOULD care about how these terms are applied. Or maybe I’m just being sensitive because of the work I do idk
Idk, I think the name still works. Right now I’m In a position where I occasionally ask for assistance, but I have an interview coming up that may change that and even allow me to give back to the community. Sometimes the mutuality just takes longer to kick in.
i see what you mean about “mutual” but if we get bogged down with semantics, even if we changed the name wouldnt we just as easily be arguing over what constitutes “emergency”? i guess we could talk about the proper meaning of ‘mutual aid’ but this is an online communist community, the current name falls closely enough to wikipedias entry which I’ll put up for all:
mutual aid
Mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members to overcome social, economic, and political barriers to meeting common needs. This can include physical resources like food, clothing, or medicine, as well as services like breakfast programs or education. These groups are often built for the daily needs of their communities, but mutual aid groups are also found throughout relief efforts. Resources are shared unconditionally, contrasting this model from charity where conditions for gaining access to help are often set, such as means testing or grant stipulations. These groups often go beyond material or service exchange and are set up as a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions
Some of the things in that definition do not fit how this comm is run, youre right. i think that is natural, tho, limitations of the format, and if changes are really needed —probably my professed hatred of semantics makes it obv i don’t think they are— we should if anything strive to more closely meet the definition of mutual aid rather than force-fit the name to what it currently achieves.
real life experience, maybe relevant
I have recently gotten involved with a community farm/food pantry and been (perhaps this is my naivete showing) shocked to see some of the attitudes from the people involved casting judgement on those who line up to receive help. some attitudes of (imo) ‘buying right to judge’ prevail within the group.
one of the people donating their time (for years, mind you) expressed how upset they were by the difference in responses week-to-week, imagining the food we have to deliver wasn’t “good enough”, that there was a “hotline” (their term) of people calling each other to “stay away this time” or “call everyone, come n’ get it!” one week to the next, as sometimes we have steaks etc, and sometimes we only have vegetables or less ‘exciting’ things. i was just shocked by the attitude really. why would they care? what does it matter to them?
peeps who donate their time to the pantry get to pick out a box of food for themselves. i watched that ‘complainer’ set aside the best for themselves beforehand, biting my tongue, because hell, they’ve been offering their time for free for a decade and i don’t know what their circumstances are either. if i cared to soapbox there id judge them for judging others, but then id have to account for myself as well.