We’re fast approaching the end of 2023 and are taking some time to reflect, both publicly and internally, on the work Mutual Aid Books did over the year. 

First, a huge thank you to all of our backers! For over three years now, we have been able to sustain a true community of mutual aid books, procuring abolitionist texts from donations by community that go back out to serve the needs of community. This year, we converted $18,777.77 into 1,558 books! These books were distributed at our monthly tabling at The Station, at the South King County and Eastside Mutual Aid food pantries, at Taking B(l)ack Pride, events at Pipsqueak, mutual aid fairs, and all the other fantastic opportunities we had to engage in conversation, connection, and future building with you all.

We want to especially highlight the success of our first group political education project, Read with MAB, in which we read Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie’s No More Police as a group, alongside community members including folks who are currently incarcerated, with our comrades at No New Washington Prisons. This project was the result of years of visioning, and we are excited to continue dreaming up new ways to engage and learn together.

We also feel grateful and proud to have had the resources, structure, and community to swiftly show up in support of Palestinian liberation these past two months: from providing books, zines, and pamphlets at various actions, to supporting our own internal growth and education around building sustainable liberatory movement work. 

As a collective, we are working to unlearn the ways white supremacy culture shows up in our organizing, using the characteristics identified by Tema Okun. We are interrogating our own racial dynamics and working to build an anti-racist and access-centered culture in MAB. 

Like many mutual aid groups that arose in the summer of 2020, we’ve experienced a drop in donations. To continue working towards our goal with less financial resources, we’ve experimented with new ways to engage: we’ve upped our zine and poster offerings (including some skill sharing to learn risograph printing!), asked for folks to bring back books they’ve received from us and already read, and pivoted towards showing up for direct actions. As we move into a new year, we want to meet this moment with openness and welcome any ideas of how Mutual Aid Books can best serve our community in 2024.

In solidarity,

Jane and the rest of the MAB team