COVID-19 Mutual Aid, Anti-Authoritarian Activism, and the Law
![handle is hein.journals/loyolr67 and id is 71 raw text is: COVID-19 MUTUAL AID, ANTI-
AUTHORITARIAN ACTIVISM, AND THE LAW
Michael Haber*
[E]ven before widespread workplace closures and self-iso-
lation, people throughout the country began establishing in-
formal networks to meet the new needs of those around them.
In Aurora, Colorado, a group of librarians started assembling
kits of essentials for the elderly and for children who wouldn't
be getting their usual meals and school. Disabled people in the
Bay Area organized assistance for one another. . . . Under-
grads helped other undergrads who had been barred from
dorms and cut off from meal plans. Prison abolitionists raised
money so that incarcerated people could purchase commissary
soap... . As the press reported on this immediate outpouring
of self-organized voluntarism, the term applied to these ef-
forts, again and again, was mutual aid.... [S]uddenly, they
seemed to be everywhere.1
I was awestruck by the abundance ... meal deliveries to
the elderly in Paterson, New Jersey; the Twin Cities Queer
and Trans Mutual Aid group in Minneapolis-Saint Paul; pro-
jects to aid the Hopi, Zuni and Navajo on reservations in the
U.S. south-west; a Washington state project to support the un-
documented; sex workers organising to raise emergency funds.
I saw people stuck at home in isolation teach dance and
* Clinical Professor of Law and Attorney-in-Charge, Community & Economic
Development Clinic, Maurice A. Deane School of Law, Hofstra University. The author
wishes to thank Jon Brown, Robert Caserta, Brian Glick, Satvi Soonachan, Dean
Spade, Andrea Tan, and Charlotte Tsui for their support and feedback on these ideas,
and the members of Abell & Charles Village Mutual Aid, Bed-Stuy Strong, Club A
Kitchen, Cooperation Long Island, Crown Heights Mutual Aid, East Brooklyn Mutual
Aid, Greater Prospect Heights Mutual Aid, Lafayette Mutual Aid, Mayday Space,
Movimiento Cosecha, Mutual Aid Books, New School Mutual Aid Fund, Pocket Change
Pools, Princeton Mutual Aid, and other mutual aid groups for the conversations that
helped to inspire this writing.
1. Jia Tolentino, What Mutual Aid Can Do During a Pandemic, NEW YORKER (May
18, 2020), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/what-mutual-aid-can-do-
during-a-pandemic.
61](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/loyolr67&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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COVID-19 Mutual Aid, Anti-Authoritarian Activism, and the Law
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