There’s something that many left wingers and many Trumpers can agree on: that one’s own people need to be helped. Who exactly needs to be helped is not agreed on. To me, it’s clear that we need to democratize every level of decision making so that the marginalized, dehumanized and victimized are actually given equal power. We should work toward that. As we do so, we need to help people that need help immediately.
 


Mutual aid groups have a long history, which I’m not expert enough to summarize well. Suffice it to say while many find the roots of such groups in anarchist thought (which I’m not opposed to, though it’s not my particular ideology), they are prominent in many cultures and traditions. To take a history I’m familiar with, even as diasporic Ashkenazi Jews existed in various situations of imperfect or absent autonomy, mutual aid as a concept played an important philosophical role. (I acknowledge and bracket that in practice such aid was often straight-up charity, not mutual aid, and hierarchical in nature.)


 
My suggestion here is that mutual aid groups are potentially palatable in this historical moment to those on various parts of the spectrum who find existing institutions untrustworthy or in violent opposition to their ends. One need not agree with the inimical ends of Trumpers, for instance, to see them as human beings in need of assistance, and potential elements of a wider network that might be linked up for the benefit of all.


 
What are your experiences and expectations of such groups, and do you agree with their potential utility even in the absence of, even not desiring, ideological agreement?