About Mutual Aid NYC

Mutual Aid NYC is a multi-racial network of people and groups building support systems for people in the New York area during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

We work at a citywide level to help those actively working in communities find the people and resources they need to do their work.  We believe that this access will help them provide mutual aid, advocacy, and services to as many people as possible—now and in the future.

MUTUAL AID NYC GOALS

Provide support to local groups leading mutual aid efforts, and facilitate connections between neighborhood-based mutual aid groups, including tech and language access services.

Identify and amplify gaps between City, State, and Federal responses to the crisis, and what people can do to support each other interdependently. 

Gather and share access to human, food, material, and financial resources to support people-powered responses to the crisis.

Strengthen communication across existing groups serving the New York area, and help connect them to the support they need to respond to requests and rapidly scale efforts.

Serve as the first point of contact for people who want to get involved in mutual aid work or receive mutual aid support.

Why Mutual Aid

Times of crisis make existing inequalities worse and hit vulnerable communities the hardest. The COVID-19 crisis has emphasized the failure of government and social service institutions to meet the needs of those who have historically been most neglected. It has also emphasized the need for people to work together to create larger structural changes. 

Marginalized communities have long relied on support practices at the very local level for sharing resources and skills. These practices are now often referred to as mutual aid, and historically range from indigenous lifeways to mutual support in enslaved communities, to the Black Panthers community support programs, to queer communities surviving the AIDS crisis, to pod mapping for chronically ill people.

Why Mutual Aid NYC

The people of NYC have made an amazing show of support for our neighbors. Mutual Aid NYC aims to provide a decentralized but cohesive citywide support system to coordinate and connect mutual aid efforts across the city. Our aim is to build the power necessary to change failing systems, and build the structure to sustain these efforts for the long term.