Greetings and happy solstice from Circle City Mutual Aid (ccma)! We hope you are warm + safe, wherever you find yourself reading this. As a collective, we find ourselves reflecting on all that we attempted + accomplished as the calendar year draws to a close. Read on for our yearly round-up, the 2023 ccma What’s Up(date)!
What We Do + What We’ve Been Up To
Sunday Shares & Tuesday Prepares
Every Sunday, collaborators from ccma gather downtown to join in community, share struggles, and help each other meet our needs. Every Tuesday, we come together to prepare for these Sunday sharing events–either by crafting kits and care packages or collaborating on the many virtual tasks necessary to keep the ccma wheels turning. From February 2023 to December 2023 We Made and Distributed:
Bus Pass Program
For the past year, ccma has been granted a 50% discount on bus passes through Indianapolis’s IndyGo Foundation. We used this over the course of 2023 to purchase + give away: In July, we collaborated on our first ever grant application–a bus pass grant from IndyGo Foundation. We were delighted to be awarded this small grant! This will allow us to increase the amount of bus passes we can distribute weekly to our neighbors! We are excited to attend the award ceremony in January.
Book Bloc
Circle City Mutual Aid launched its first ever book club this year! The ccma Book Bloc currently has 44 members and has read 3 books together so far:
For our most recent meeting (and for future meetings) we partnered with Ujamaa Community Bookstore. They generously host us in their beautiful shop, allowing us to welcome anyone (for liberation) to join in-person or virtually (and at no cost!). We reach informal consensus by taking a poll on each book pick, and have already planned our selections for January and February!
In the introduction for On Palestine, our most recent book selection, Frank Barat calls books
“one of the best tools we can use to learn, reflect on, and truly understand the world we are living in. They are a bridge between languages, continents, and people.”
The ccma Book Bloc community and our book selections are aimed to help us create a shared analysis, deepen our understanding of global struggles, and challenge us to organize and care for each other in new and more effective ways. Because a better world is possible.
Free Food Box (aka “The Cutie”)
In collaboration with Community Food Box Project and Soulshine Vegan Café, we established a free food box on the northside of Indianapolis. We started in May by having Paint Parties to decorate what became affectionately known as “The Cutie,” allowing us to tap into our creativity and joy together and deepen our relationships. In June, we had a Stock the Box Party to officially launch the project.
Check out our previous update on The Cutie Currently, we are stocking the Cutie 1-2 times per week, with the ultimate goal of becoming self-sustained by the community. Anyone can donate to The Cutie by dropping by and stocking with shelf stable goods and essentials. The Cutie is accessible 24/7/365 outside of Soulshiné Vegan Café located at 6516 Ferguson St., back unit. Anyone can drop by to take what they need.
Events + Happenings
At the beginning of 2023, ccma was invited to participate in an annual event hosted by Flanner Farms. We were so excited and honored to participate in this year’s Flanner Farms May Day Picnic, and we plan to join again next year. Later in the year, we were chosen to be a vendor at a Grapevine event held at Cleo’s Bodega, a grocery store and cafe - a part of Flanner House Food Justice Initiative.
These opportunities allowed us to introduce new people to mutual aid, create new partnerships and nurture pre-existing connections–as well as bring in new donations to support our mission. Our relationship with Flanner House has grown this year, and we are so grateful. We are excited for our continued collaboration with Flanner House and Ujamaa Community Bookstore in 2024! Shortridge HS Day of Service
Spoken Word: Elevated
Beginning in April, we were gifted a space at the AMP during Spoken Word Elevated, a monthly poetry event by Speak On It Media. We were offered to table alongside other vendors and had opportunities to speak both with folks individually and to the entire audience about mutual aid. This is also where we debuted an organizer’s custom-designed greeting cards with hopeful messages in exchange for online donations. From the relationships developed while tabling, we received several clothing donations for Sunday Shares. This has been a valuable partnership for introducing new people to how we can care for each other even more effectively.
Hat Making Parties
We partnered with Soulshine Vegan Cafe for our first hat-making party in November. Twenty-two people came out to assist and develop their sewing skills! One of our collaborators and their mom shared their skills, teaching several adults and children basic sewing with a machine. Forty hats were made to distribute at our Sunday Shares!
The first one was such a hit and we had so much fun, we decided to do it again! The second hat-making party took place in December, and was hosted by Ujamaa Community Bookstore. New faces came out and even more donations were provided! We debuted free coloring pages about mutual aid as a secondary activity. Thirty-seven hats were made! These family-friendly events have been a great entry point for new people to get involved.
Growth, Learning + Challenges
This year, we have had some growing pains! We are enthusiastic and grateful for our expanding collective of neighbors and collaborators, yet with more people comes more challenges. As we grow in people power, we seek ways to further distribute and decentralize our labor and expand access to the core organizing work of ccma. We are often in discussion about how we can embody our values and grow deeper in relationship with each other. A new working group was formed to help guide and facilitate these discussions. This new biweekly working group–now known as the SCA Squad, SCA ( \ska\ ) Springboarding, Consensus, + Accountability–is a three-armed approach at tackling some of these fundamental organizational questions.
How do we recruit new people and acclimate them to the group culture?
How do we reconcile opposing viewpoints to make decisions?
How do we navigate disagreements? Conflict?
How do we ensure we are holding ourselves accountable and adhering to our collective values?
How do we flatten unintentional hierarchies or address power imbalances?
One challenge we have had this year is holding a consistent and regular meeting to allow organizers and collaborators to share ideas, address concerns, and make decisions. As a collective, we share many different ideologies and perspectives related to structure and structurelessness of our organizing work.
SCA Squad has seen the most success as our longest ongoing series of meetings so far. They have presented challenges in and of themselves, yet we are moving through these challenges with care + intention. There are definitely times when it feels like we are talking in circles, or past each other, or that we aren’t getting anything done. But as we develop our facilitation and active listening skills and learn alongside each other, we are deepening our relationships and creating a regular practice of sharing feelings, ideas, and concerns together.
Looking Forward
Our first series of SCA Squad meetings focused on Springboarding–aka recruiting new collaborators/organizers, training new folks in our structures and processes, and formalizing some of our processes to increase transparency. Ideas from these discussions that we hope to experiment with in 2024 include:
A welcoming committee/table during Sunday Shares to talk about who we are, what we do and why, and to share opportunities to plug in with us.
Tabling at more community events to create more connections and partnerships
Increase flyering and engaging in discussion with our neighbors and community members about mutual aid and our collective
Recruiting with diversity in mind
Radical Lit Table to share resources + build shared analysis
Volunteer Onboarding sessions
Creating + Making Zines together!
Throwing a Benefit Show (or two!)
We are currently in phase two of SCA Squad meetings, discussing consensus and collective decision-making. We have used Peter Gelderloos’ text Consensus as somewhat of a guide in learning about and developing our own consensus processes. We hope in 2024 to intentionalize and put to practice our own consensus processes to support and guide our collective decision-making. In 2024, we will also explore conflict resolution processes and accountability processes to help us navigate disagreements and embrace conflict as an avenue for growing deeper in relationship with each other.
Other important ideas, dreams, and goals for 2024 include:
Supporting a second food box in the community
Make progress toward shared storage space
Thank you!
Thank you to our many community supporters and partners for your contributions this year! Overdose Lifeline, StepUp, I Support The Girls, Spoken Word Elevated, Soulshine Vegan Cafe, Ujamaa Community Bookstore + Flanner House, Community Food Box Project, First Mennonite Church, and Mochi Donuts!
Thank you to all our contributors, collaborators, and co-conspirators. 2023 was a whirlwind of growth, learning, and iterative improvement. Thank you for sticking with us. Stay tuned for more radical love + direct action.
Yours in Solidarity,
Jacq, Amethyst, Britt, Chuck, Luc, + Others on Behalf of ccma
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