LUMA Admin

Welcome to LUMA, Lesley University Mutual Aid! In these challenging times, we are committed to showing up for each other in solidarity. Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/152926309494154

Jennifer Tierney

Open Collective Foundation

<div>Instagram: @lumatogether<br />Join Our Facebook Community: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/152926309494154">https://www.facebook.com/groups/152926309494154</a><br />Like Our Facebook Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/2XCCpun">https://bit.ly/2XCCpun</a><br /><br />Welcome to LUMA, Lesley University Mutual Aid! In these challenging times, we are committed to showing up for each other in solidarity. This mutual aid network was formed out of the COVID-19 crisis and has evolved to address the basic human needs of the Lesley University community. We seek to provide emotional, community, and psychoeducational support during a period of increasing instability.</div><div><br /><br /></div><div>We affirm:</div><div><br /></div><ul><li><strong>Most everyone has needs and most everyone has privileges. </strong>Together, we can use collective action and networks to support and meet our needs through community care and mutual aid. <ul><li>Everyone has needs, it’s a part of life: We live in an unfairly-balanced society needing major structural change. We believe in taking collective responsibility for helping everyone through times of crisis. </li><li>No need is too great or too small. We do our best to meet needs on a personal level, within legal and ethical boundaries. </li></ul></li><li><strong>Mental health and psychoeducation is a human right: </strong>While not everyone in LUMA is a mental health professional or student, we believe in providing scaffolding when people cannot access reliable resources. Curating supportive resources, offering human connection, and providing psychoeducation are some ways we can help to alleviate loneliness, isolation, and collective trauma.</li><li><strong>We are dynamically shaping this process together: </strong>Being flexible, adjusting to problems and past mistakes, and constantly improving is the best way to meet changing needs of a community. We are committed to each other and committed to the process of rupture and repair. </li><li><strong>Impact and intention are not the same: </strong>We try to help someone the way they ask to be helped. Even if we think we know better, having respect for each other and everyone’s agency is critical to the success of our work. </li><li><strong>We can only be as strong as the trust in our communities</strong>: We choose to invest in relationships, the process of rupture and repair, and the importance of responding to suffering against oppression. </li><li><strong>Mutual aid will only get us so far</strong>- we are in solidarity with organizers making large-scale demands of our politicians for an equitable world. We are just one community in a long history of mutual aid networks committed to collective surviving and thriving.</li></ul><div><br /></div><div>We follow these values by:</div><ul><li><strong>Emphasizing equitable mutuality. </strong>Giving what we can and taking what we need, sharing material and emotional burdens equitably, delegating labor and costs to the privileged, and using our funds to help the most vulnerable is central to the very meaning of mutual aid.</li></ul><div><br /></div><ul><li><strong>Keeping it simple and equitable. </strong>We use low-tech and open-source tools that keep the barrier to entry low and our resources accessible to all. We prioritize accessibility and equity, and try to make things easy to learn and participate in.  </li><li><strong>Keeping it safe.</strong> We protect people’s information and offer community support if anyone feels threatened.</li><li><strong>Spreading out the work.</strong> We don’t believe in reinventing the wheel, and delegate work to existing structures and groups when they exist. We devote most of our energy offering services to our community and other mutual aid communities that have not yet been developed.</li><li><strong>Follow-through:</strong> We try to respond to needs as quickly as possible, and want to be as transparent as possible about our limitations. </li><li><strong>Listening and reflecting.</strong> We ask and listen to what people need, and shift our actions in response.</li><li><strong>Working towards language justice.</strong> We translate everything that we can and are building a multilingual support network to reach all of our neighbors. </li><li><strong>Minding climate justice.</strong> Sustainability informs our decisions.</li><li><strong>Centering racial justice.</strong> We know that wealth and safety nets have been systematically taken apart for people of color over generations, leaving people more vulnerable in crises like this. We commit to mutual aid support as a form of resource redistribution and weaving of a new community-held safety net for all.</li></ul><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>

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Lesley University Mutual Aid

Welcome to LUMA, Lesley University Mutual Aid! In these challenging times, we are committed to showing up for each other in solidarity. Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/152926309494154

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