odette
@1.43am

Mutual aid tends to require emergency fundraising because precarity is so common among the working class. This is especially the case for the most marginalised – Queer folks, disabled folks, etc. However, the point of this Liberapay account is to encourage RECURRENT donations.

I strongly believe that regular donations: 1) make the act of redistributing income a habit, which counters resource-hoarding due to exaggerated assumptions of scarcity (we often CAN spare an extra $20/month for redistribution); 2) offer folks in precarious situations some form of stability and assurance; 3) allow mutual aid work to not always & only be a crisis response – a pool of readily available funds allows needs to be met in a more paced + assuring manner, versus needing to scramble to ask around and quickly acquire funds without guarantee that enough money will be raised in time for deadlines; and 4) gives breathing space to everyone involved in mutual aid, especially when capacity is stretched.

I encourage everyone (and this is something that I practice as well*) to: 1) check on their financial capacities; 2) evaluate how much they're comfortable allocating weekly/monthly/etc. to redistribute; 3) make a recurrent donation.

Any amount is OK. Our levels of stability and risks of losing that stability vary, but most of us are working class. This is where the "mutual" aspect of "mutual aid" becomes self-evident: Most of us exchange our bodies and labour for a salary in order to survive, and are at risk of financial precarity at any moment as well. Therefore, how much we contribute is less important than the principle and act of contributing – to share what we have, to recognise that we have collective abundance even if we are individually limited, and to remind ourselves that we are all ultimately connected with one another. Our vulnerabilities and liberations are intertwined.

For transparency and accountability, I will keep track of contributions and tally their redistribution via Excel Spreadsheet, and provide [most likely] monthly updates on how they've been allocated.