Mutual aid is a practice rooted in collective care and solidarity. It’s ancestral wisdom: we take care of one another by sharing resources, knowledge, and support—directly and without hierarchy. Unlike charity, which often positions people as passive recipients of aid, mutual aid is built on the belief that everyone has something to contribute and everyone deserves care.

In a world shaped by systems of oppression, mutual aid offers a pathway toward self-determination, reclaiming our agency and building resilience. It challenges the structures that create scarcity and barriers to essential our resources, like healthy food, land access, and economic opportunity. Mutual aid is offered by community, for community.

Food sovereignty goes beyond ensuring access to food; it’s about uplifting our community to grow, share, and govern our own food systems. By addressing barriers like financial insecurity, lack of land access, and limited resources, mutual aid enables more people to join this vital movement.

Our Mutual Aid Fund is managed by members of our Leadership Council, the fund provides direct support to our people, helping to overcome obstacles to participating in food sovereignty efforts. Whether it’s covering transportation to teach ins, purchasing seeds or garden supplies, or addressing urgent needs, this fund ensures that no one is left behind.

Black communities have long practiced mutual aid as a means of survival, resistance, and liberation. Rooted in African communal traditions and adapted to the realities of enslavement, segregation, and systemic oppression, mutual aid has been central to our resilience.

• Enslaved Communities: Shared resources and skills to care for each other despite brutal and violent conditions, supporting each other’s collective survival.

• Freedmen’s Aid Societies: After emancipation, Black people organized to provide food, education, and legal aid for newly freed people.

• The Civil Rights Movement: Groups like the Black Panther Party ran free breakfast programs, health clinics, and community schools, demonstrating the power of mutual aid in fighting systemic racism. We still have organizations, like People’s Programs, continuing their work around the world.

• Modern-Day Movements: Black-led mutual aid networks continue to address food insecurity, housing justice, and health care disparities while building community power.

Mutual aid is not new—it’s a continuation of Black communities’ deep-rooted practices of care and solidarity.