- Mutual Aid Hub
- Mutual aid (organization theory)
- What Mutual Aid Can Do During a Pandemic
- HOW LENDING CIRCLES & MUTUAL AID GROUPS CREATE COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
- Collective Care Is Our Best Weapon against COVID-19 and Other Disasters
Even though our strategy of iteratively improving the legal framework of disability rights has certainly expanded our life choices, over time it has become less and less effective in making new improvements. The System has gotten better at undermining our advocacy and using its System Logic to marginalize our gains.
We need a way to move forward that doesn’t require us to allow our gains to be degraded by the logic of the System.
At the same time we will continue to need the System as a source of funding and expertise, because of the complexity of our needs. Few of us can simply drop our relationship with the System entirely.
But we do not need to view the System as The (only) Solution. Instead, we must learn to view the System as a tool, and begin to make our own systems to augment, replace, and finesse what we need from the System. We must build what we need together and use it to orchestrate a more effective strategy for achieving our freedom. The systems that we build will be:
- Local
- Intersectional
- Collaborative
- Community-focused
- Self-funding
They will be based on social justice models, rather than civil rights entitlements. That doesn’t mean that we don’t use civil rights laws to advocate. Again, we view civil rights laws as tools, not solutions.
Our systems will build from the bottom up, not from the top down.
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