The revolution starts by building with poor folks in your own backyard

To hell w/ Middle-Classist organizing + Start with Mutual Aid

“But what can we do?”

In the face of multiple genocides ravaging the world, we understandably slip into exasperated hopelessness. How can we “pick” which of the thousand injustices to focus our attention on? We can’t & we shouldn’t be. If we care about building a better world, then the most important thing we can do is focus on building with the most marginalized folks, the poor in our local ecosystem. Start somewhere but the focus must be on the poor nearest to you. Pull on the thread closest to you. That is where collective power lives.

“If pressuring politicians and voting is not the answer, then what is?” I get these questions a lot. Firstly, even people who think they have answers are all still figuring out the practical details of bringing these “answers” to life. No one simply “knows”. It is an active struggle we must commit to for a lifetime & we have to build these solutions together.

In today’s piece, I’ll share some big realizations I’ve had in the last few months to the initial steps we must take if we want to be free.

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Side note: I haven’t written to you in a month because I’ve been struggling & grappling myself with hopelessness. It happens to all of us. I’ve been incredibly burnt out. Partly cuz I was cramming & studying for my medical specialty licensing board exams while the world is on fire. Every fiber of my being was fighting itself. “People are dying, suffering, why the hell am I doing this?”

The rest of my exhaustion came from the mind-numbing drama of leftist organizing spaces where I felt a similar sense of pointlessness & uselessness. “Why are we getting bogged down with ego-driven conflicts when the planet is dying? Why are people fixated on tearing each other down more than the system killing us all? Why so many symbolic actions & performative events but not many mutual aid projects? How is no one noticing that Palestine is being co-opted by opportunistic leftist political parties focused on electoralism?” It’s driven me mad (a term I don’t use derogatorily).

I mean, IS IT JUST ME or does much of activism and organizing in the west feel like performative theatre? People theorize and talk about doing the thing more than doing anything substantial to help someone in need today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to have a political home in a Nashville based organizing collective. I get to organize with some of my best friends. I’m grateful because we’re struggling to figure out how to do things that matter, that REALLY matter. Here’s what I/ we’ve learned:

1. Single issue movements don’t work. Tackle the root cause behind all forms of global oppression.

There’s multiple genocides raging on. Congo to Palestine to Sudan to Tigray to Haiti & hell to Indigenous/ Black/ Brown/ poor folks being crushed by the empire right here in the so-called United States or wherever YOU are. There is an unquantifiable, unfathomable expanse of suffering, death & inequity around the world. When we fixate on single causes as though they occur in a vacuum, we’re not going to free anyone.

From global poverty to settler colonialism in Palestine— the same capitalist/ colonial empires, the same systems are behind every form of injustice. So the question we should be asking ourselves isn’t “what issue should I work on?”, it should be “how can WE target & weaken capitalism/ colonialism locally?” We have to pull on the thread nearest to us and the whole death machine WILL unravel eventually.

Oppression isn’t a lollipop in a candy bar where we pick our favorite “causes” to “raise awareness” about but the way people “do activism”, you’d think it was. Even the word activism irks me because of what they often end up looking like in the west— a social scene, a performance.

People dabble in activism like a hobby or extracurricular activity more than diving into it as though it is a total transformation of how you live, your priorities, a commitment to caring for those who have been shown the least care, a collective struggle — one that requires sacrifice, discomfort, a dedication of your whole being & letting go of privilege.

Think of different forms of oppression as symptoms of a downstream problem. If we fixate on symptoms (like colonial medicine does) without tackling the root cause & the original pathology, we will never “heal” anything. We have to think about, analyze, find the root cause of suffering— capitalism/ colonialism— & target that. What does that look like in real life? Poverty. People struggling to find food & shelter. Tackling poverty locally is the first step to addressing suffering globally.

Inflammatory disorders, pain & chronic illnesses- capitalism's impact on our bodies

2. Start with mutual aid. Figure out how to serve and build with the poorest, most marginalized folks in your own backyard— wherever you are.

The reason the unhoused folks in the encampments downtown are struggling is the same reason people in Gaza are being starved to death. The same settler colonial empires are behind both crises. I assure you there is a direct, very real, tangible thread that extends from a poor person in the city or town that you live in to the the starving child in Gaza to the displaced, orphaned child in the Congo & beyond. That should be our focus. Pull on the thread nearest to you.

The most powerful, sustainable impact any of us can have on this world is when we act local and think global. I.e. build with the most marginalized in your local ecosystem while raising collective political consciousness to connect threads between the struggles different communities face.

Can I be real with y’all for a sec? Just because some folks newly become “more aware” watching genocides live-streamed doesn’t mean those genocides didn’t exist before. While the scale of destruction might be massive in certain contexts, please know that the horrifying tragedies you witness happening in Palestine are also happening in your own backyard. If you live in the global south, then I hope to god that you know how bad things are on your doorstep.

If you live in a settler colonial state (US, Canada, Australia, NZ etc)- then indigenous people have been massacred for centuries here, many tribes entirely wiped out & many more continue to be decimated on reservations & beyond. Black & Brown communities ARE suffering under state occupations right here. It IS that bad right here. The difference is some of us don’t face the same extent of suffering as the unhoused person struggling to breathe in the scorching heat on the same street we live on (& this is a dystopian tragedy). Suffering, death & loss in Palestine occur on a much more mass collective scale (though privilege still plays a role in who can escape the genocide & who just cannot).

I’ve been wondering if some people prefer to focus on Palestine or another issue 10,000 miles away as though it exists in a vacuum… because it is easier than reckoning with the carnage on your doorstep? How many unhoused folks did people step over or drive by on their way to weekly protests? Thousands of community members encircled, defended & guarded Palestine solidarity student encampments on elite college campuses— often, it was so effective that it prevented police raids & mass arrests. Why was the same not done to fight unhoused encampment sweeps that are a regular occurrence in downtown & gentrified neighborhoods? I saw student orgs raise tens of thousands of dollars in bail funds overnight. How many poor people could that have fed or housed if we raised, pooled & distributed funds with just as much fervor & urgency?

Again, I’m not the except to the rule of ignorance here because a solid chunk of my past “organizing”, especially early on, lacked a firm commitment to mutual aid but how else do we learn to do better? If you know now, start now.

How can you get a group of folks you’re aligned with & operationalize a consistent mutual aid project? Can you start with daily/ weekly cold water distributions & something simple like sandwiches? How can you scale up? How can you pool the resources you already have as a collective?

3. Accept that we don’t have the collectivist, community infrastructure to stop genocides right now. The priority right now should be on building the foundation, laying the soil… so that we can be a threat to these oppressive systems.

It’s difficult to face reality but it’s important if we want to ever do anything useful. I am truly unable to stop the 100-year long genocide that is throttling onward in Palestine right now. Many of us want to contribute to the eventual downfall of these settler colonial empires but we have to be honest about where we’re at RIGHT NOW if we’re ever going to progress towards liberation.

Especially in the west, most people lack community. Community isn’t a gathering of people who come together to “organize” but a collective of kin who are dependent on each other for survival, who trust/ know/ understand each other, share a culture + basic core values & are dedicated to fighting for those who have the least, for this planet, for this universe.

As someone who moved to the US from the global south, the main culture shock was seeing how alienated, lonely, isolated, fragmented & disconnected people are— including in organizing spaces where both mutual aid AND community building are often systematically deprioritized in favor of productivity & one-off “events” or “initiatives”. So let’s be real— most of us do not have the community infrastructure we need to be a threat to these systems even if we may have some reciprocal personal relationships.

• So what soil do we need to lay? What foundation do we need for “effective activism”? 3 things: We must start by creating a consistent mutual aid project(s) which serves as a container to build with the most marginalized in our local ecosystem + prioritize community/ relationship building + political education.

We need to feed, shelter, clothe people. We are quiet literally attempting to build a world where we can provide for each other. That is only possible if are increasingly less reliant on oppressive systems which eventually makes them obsolete. That endeavor requires us to focus on the poor closest to us (as in if it rains for you, it rains for them) & build up from there. At the same time, we must build intimacy & trust with each other.

Political education is critical because without it, we can be easily deceived & manipulated by capitalist, colonial, state propaganda that convinces us that we just need to work hard & make more money to be free. We must find accessible ways of raising our collective political consciousness— not just with jargon heavy political theory but also story telling, group discussions that dissect how revolutions have worked historically around the world, how have our ancestors & collectivist communities globally resisted oppression, what are the tactical approaches the Palestinian resistance is taking, etc?

To dismantle systems brick by brick, we have to be a threat to systems & we have to be willing/ able to deliver on our threat (yes using violence). But most of us are far from that collectivist infrastructure. It’s not entirely absent though. The hood has it, migrant “ghettos” have it, hell many urban gangs have a lot of collectivist care infrastructure. These communities have a shared culture, religion, values & a shared commitment to defending & caring for each other WITHOUT relying on the state (because the state has usually long abandoned them anyways). We have to move away from organizing one-off events & focus on building THAT kinda rock solid, reliable, sustainable collectivist foundation like our lives depend on it… because they do.

4. Abolish Middle-Classist Organizing. Build power with the poor, the working class, the hood.

One of my homies (@badschoolbadschool) breaks this down really well-

Whatever work you want to do, building with the poor (aka “the hood”, aka "the “working class”) must be the heart of it.

The hood holds the keys.

Liberation is in the hands of the most oppressed. If you are not with them, join them.

I’ve come to call most western leftist spaces “middle-classist organizing”. People with some privilege (enough to have shelter & not worry about struggling for food in the immediate future) organize events or teach-ins n such to “raise awareness” about X issue. The target audience by default is middle to upper class people. We saw a lot of this blasted into the mainstream in the last 10 months. Weekly protests that seem more & more like a social scene, a hangout, a “fun activity” as opposed to an intentional effort to help anyone in need. They’re not entirely pointless. Protests, mass actions & big events mobilize people and can be spaces for people to find each other, grieve.. it’s a starting point. But when that is all you do… you are going to lose people.

June 8th for example there was a massive protest where hundreds of thousands of people traveled to DC & surrounded the white house to say “Biden, we are your red line”. It was a symbolic action with a 2.5 mile red line formed with people holding a red banner around the white house… an action that thousands of people traveled to from around the country. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were collectively spent on everything from travel to logistics. There’s been many such symbolic actions that suck up resources & my question is to what end? Biden doesn’t give a shit about the people being a red line. Who are we dancing for at these symbolic actions & events? And why???

There’s a leftist/ socialist ticket for president and vice president for gods sake! The 2 party system is a problem but that 3rd or 4th party will solve our problems? How much money goes into these electoral campaigns? Leftist political parties keep popping up out of every bush at every Palestine protest to opportunistically advance their political agenda. This entire genocidal settler colonial empire, the SYSTEM is the problem, not a few politicians.

All these mainstream approaches (using channels created by the same empires we’re attempting to dismantle) will NOT save us. When people are repeatedly told that these approaches are the answer, that THIS is what they should direct their limited, precious time/ energy/ resources to… they are being deceived & often, they figure it out. 10 months of calling, begging politicians & pushing for ceasefire resolutions has done nothing to stop the massacre of roughly 193,000-500,000 Palestinians. It was never going to work & many people rightfully pointed this out in October.

So at what point do we say f**k this & focus wholeheartedly on building a foundation for a mass movement of the people that actually aims to take matters into our own hands?

Also— let’s be real, are our movement spaces accessible to poor, marginalized folks? Almost all leftists talk about advocating for the most marginalized but how many do you think have actually experienced poverty, have been unhoused or even know & have a real relationship with an unhoused person or have struggled to make ends meet? Do you see poor people at protests? Do you see folks from the hood pull up at protests? I’ve seen protests march on right by unhoused folks without glancing at them or even actively avoiding eye contact. Do you see the irony?

Poor people do not need to be convinced that the system doesn’t work. People who are exploited & brutalized the most under these systems viscerally know that capitalism/ these genocidal empires/ the state do not serve us. No one has more to gain from a better a world being built than the most marginalized. No one understands oppression on a molecular level than those who are facing the worst forms of colonial, capitalist violence. No one has more authority to speak to suffering under these systems than those who are suffering under them the most on a day-to-day basis— it’s seems obvious but why then is our attention not focused on that? The task for those of us with any iota of privilege is to abandon middle-classist bs & build with the poor. That is where liberation lives.

5. Mutual aid & organizing focused on the poor is more sustainable than whatever most groups are doing right now. Engaging in mutual aid makes people WANT to continue building a better world.

I’ve seen waves of people abandon movement spaces because deep down they know they’re being duped by opportunistic leftist orgs who recreate capitalist/ colonial dynamics in their spaces. How many protests, teach-ins should someone go to or for how long should they vote & email politicians while continuing to watch Palestinian babies be beheaded & charred to death?

Also— of course, voting & diversity/ inclusion type approaches trying to reform the empire will never ever save us. I’m not going to go deeper into that here but next piece will. The issue is MANY leftist groups still misdirect well meaning folks who want to help create change towards such reformist approaches. Liberalism literally exists to misdirect people’s energy into pointless s**t that was never meant to work. I see self-identified radical abolitionists ironically doing the same thing. Symbolic actions, workshops, teach-ins, middle-classist organizing in a vacuum doesn’t work. Good people get jaded & leave. And I’m hoping many of these folks do autonomously continue to build with folks who are committed to direct action.

The reality is we do need to see material change in whatever small way to know that we’re moving in the right direction. We need meaning & purpose to live. Similarly, we need validation in our organizing. We need to know if any of this matters… and not just in the hypothetical utopian future.

If we cook a meal for a handful of people who were going to otherwise struggle for food— you can immediately see the change you’re enabling. That matters. That’s not to say that mutual aid is all roses & lillies because it is messy, painful, uncomfortable in many ways to confront our biases & show up consistently as a community member & NOT a savior. It’s HARD as hell. But it is also rewarding & regenerative. It fuels you. There’s rough days but there’s also the deep knowing that someone’s life is being made more livable for now. Even if 1 person eats, if 1 person finds some shelter, if 1 person is kept from having a heat stroke… that matters. Now scale that up— how much power do you think we can build if we focused on feeding the hungry, housing the unhoused & building power with those that already have most to gain from the end of capitalism/ colonialism?

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Liberation lies in building with the most marginalized, the poor.

I’m not saying that those of us who have a roof above our heads for now do not suffer. We suffer. Many of us have been poor, unhoused, struggling to put food on the table. I know I have. But in this moment, I have more than the folks in the encampment at the highway underpass next to our apartment complex. And so it matters what I decide to do with the “extra” that I have including the time, energy & labor I can give.

Poverty IS what capitalism/ colonialism look like. The rich are rich BECAUSE the poor are poor. That is the monster hurting all of us. That is the beast you can tackle wherever you are and it WILL contribute to the annihilation of all empires. All forms of oppression are magnified for the poor.

If you are a middle/ upper class person who cares about building a better world — your duty & moral responsibility is to focus on and build with the poor, working class in your local ecosystem. Our freedom is contingent on the poorest of us living with dignity. That is who I am fighting with & for. That is my north star.

Ending with 2 examples of mutual aid projects- one historical project & one current, personal, baby project

The Black Panthers were labeled by the FBI as a terrorist group & the biggest threat to the state. The foundation of their sustainable organizing? The Free Breakfast for School Children program that thousands of hungry kids. That program sparked nation-wide unrest & led to the feds clamping down on them— with COINTELPRO.

Philly Black Panthers Free Breakfast Program in action.

The Black Panthers free breakfast program started in January 1969 at an Episcopal church in Oakland with feeding just a handful of kids and scaled up within weeks to feeding hundreds and then it expanded to multiple cities. The program was simple: members and volunteers went to grocery stores to solicit donations, gleaned their excess produce that would have been discarded anyways, researched nutritious breakfast recipes bearing local ecology & cultural traditions in mind, did outreach in poor neighborhoods and finally, prepared and served the food free of charge. That’s it. This is something many of you can do right now on a small scale if you have a handful of dedicated homies committed to this.

Kansas City Black Panthers Free Breakfast Program.

At it’s peak, there were 45 nationwide programs feeding thousands of children EVERYDAY. Excess food was given to the families. The Black Panthers mutual aid model went beyond food to programs that provided clothing, basic life-saving healthcare thru mobile clinics and even emergency, ambulance, paramedic services that gave communities alternatives to calling the police which could be a death sentence in itself.

I’m not kidding— this mutual aid program was the final catalyst for the FBI to come after the Black Panthers. These are the words of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who oversaw COINTELPRO & was the lead hunter coming after Black revolutionary groups:

“The BCP (Breakfast for Children Program) promotes at least tacit support for the Black Panther Party among naive individuals and, what is more distressing, it provides the BPP with a ready audience composed of highly impressionable youths. Consequently, the BCP represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.”

Seriously, the revolution starts with feeding, clothing & sheltering people. Think about it. It will decrease our communities dependence on the state. It will bring us closer to each other, to the ground, anchor us in community & give us hope that it is WE who ever has, can & will save US.

The beginnings of a mutual aid project- our experience in TN

The Palestine-focused organizing collective I’m a part of in Nashville is currently operationalizing our local mutual aid project. We are just getting started but we’re doing it and it makes my heart oh so happy. Today, some members went to one of the local farmers markets and gleaned excess produce from various vendors who gave us what they didn’t sell or need. We got carts full of nutritious, luscious, fresh produce!

Seriously- look at all this incredible produce. Members of our collective gleaned this in roughly 1 hour on a Saturday from 1 farmers market (we have access to this once a week & had to give a lot away to another local food project because we do not have the capacity right now to cook more). We're starting small, want to establish consistency & reliability before we scale up.

We are starting with preparing meals for ~30 people (a main hot dish with a cold, hydrating, side salad, maybe a side dish and cold water + juice). We’re starting with 1 location for now but we’re doing resources & needs mapping. Soon, we plan to reliably, consistently hit up at least 2-3 encampments in different parts of town. Start small & scaling up gradually. We want to do more open community cook outs & spontaneous food distributions as well with leftovers or pooled resources (like just handing out cold waters & cut up fruits like watermelon in the afternoon heat).

Additionally, we’re hoping to pair our 1 local project with 1 international mutual aid project to connect tangible threads between our struggles. We recently had members of our collective go to the West Bank, Egypt and Jordan to volunteer & work with folks on the ground. We’re hoping to deepen & strengthen those relationships such that we can send resources straight to the frontlines. We’re documenting each part of the process of setting up these mutual aid programs so I hope to share a “how to zine” with y’all in case it is helpful for some folks to translate it wherever you are.

So TLDR: I know it’s been a month since I’ve written to you. I was in a slump, frustrated at the leftist political theatre around me & drowning in my work. Now I’m crawling my way back with glimmers of hope thanks to friends & the excitement I feel seeing this mutual aid project comes to life. I’m cueing up ~3 or more posts a week— shorter ones, less filters, more taking a leap of faith & putting words to paper without fixating on “getting it right”. There’s so many of us that I know in my heart that are committed to building a better world, we just need to rip the bandaid off & go for it. We got this.

Gonna echo my homie’s words again- the hood is where it’s at. If you are not with them, join them.

With care,

ಆಯಿಷಾ

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PS— I am really really really thankful to those of you who pay to support this newsletter. If you’re able to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber (it takes 30 secs). Next piece I’ll include all past “Heal in Community” session recordings and share sign ups for the next one!

Also- if you see mutual aid fundraisers & have capacity, definitely directly donate to those (you don’t absolutely need middle men & I trust big nonprofits even less).