Prince George's County Mutual Aid

 

Prince George's Mutual Aid's mission aligns with Open Collective's tenants of creating a positive social impact and developing tools to increase civic participation. Since our inception in early 2020, our main activity consisted of buying cleaning supplies, food, and baby supplies for folks who needed them during the covid-19 pandemic. 

           
 As the pandemic rages on and PGMA grows, we've looked for ways to bring our work closer to the reciprocal relations that are so important for mutual aid. The Big Door Brigade in Seattle defines mutual aid as "a term to describe people giving each other needed material support, trying to resist the control dynamics, hierarchies and system-affirming, oppressive arrangements of charity and social services. Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable.".  
 
Over the past year we have built relationships with unhoused community members and organizing renters (tenants) throughout the county. In 2021 we hope to shift our focus to organizing these groups and strengthening our relationships with them, because these relationships will be paramount to building the new social relations described above. We will continue to bring food and supplies to people, but we expect that to be part of our work rather than the core of it from 2021 onward.
 
As of February 2021, at least 90% of our money has gone towards providing supplies to community members in need. As our priorities shift this year we expect that some of the donated money will continue to go towards supply request, but we also expect more of it to sustain organizing projects in tenant communities, unhoused communities, and formerly incarcerated communities. Since Prince George's County has a large Spanish-speaking population, we also want to start having a Spanish interpreter at our meetings so our Spanish-speaking community can truly be engaged. We plan to use some of our donated money to provide a small monthly stipend to this interpreter, and are prioritizing community members for that role.