“There was a Lack of Outside” — How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led to Community Care
Last winter, Portland mother and educator Luna Chandler* turned to mutual aid groups when she was in need. At 1:30 a.m., someone had broken into their car and stolen all the clothes she had purchased for her and her daughter. Within two days, all the stolen clothes were replaced and their car windows were repaired for free — all due to mutual aid.
“Mutual aid…it makes me cry every time…” Chandler says. Like many people in the United States, they faced additional financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately for them, there were people who were able to alleviate the financial stress she had from what happened to her car and clothes. Since the start of the pandemic, mutual aid organizations have consistently provided for community members in need, no questions asked.
As defined by Open Democracy, mutual aid “…is about building ‘bottom-up’ structures of cooperation, rather than relying on the state or wealthy philanthropists to address our needs.”
With COVID-19 magnifying financial disparities and keeping people from going to work, school, and most places that were once deemed safe without a mask, folks became even more aware of current events than usual. According to the Nielsen Total Audience Report, news consumption significantly increased once stay-at-home mandates took over the country.
In addition to the pandemic being covered in the news nearly 24/7, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis began to make headlines just as often. News consumption being at a high due to COVID-19 and the death of Floyd sparked the largest social justice movement in the history of the United States, according to research conducted by Harvard Kennedy School professor Erica Chenoweth and the Crowd Sourcing Consortium.
Financial hardship and social unrest led to people starting to reach out to those in their community for support. Chandler, who became an activist after their unlawful arrest in 2019, says “I think people finally had time to slow down and realize…now that a lot of people are without jobs and stuff, all we can do is take care of each other.”
The pandemic caused many people to lose their jobs or have their hours cut. Pew Research Center reports that in the United States, a quarter of adults say they or someone in their household lost a job or wages because of COVID-19. Many nations appropriately addressed the financial instability that the pandemic caused, but the United States was not one of them.
According to the U.S Department of the Treasury, three rounds of stimulus checks have been sent out since March 2020. A dataset from European think tank Bruegel shows that the U.S. COVID-19 response has not been as effective as those of countries like the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, and Australia.
In response, many started to take matters into their own hands to provide for those in need. Abolitionist and activist Martha Tekie is one of those people. Tekie has been organizing since high school, and became more involved with mutual aid in June 2020 due to major protest activity in Portland.
Tekie noticed that well-off business owners who lost business due to the pandemic needed to find ways to keep their relationships with the community. In order to stay involved, they donated to mutual aid groups and contributed to the efforts organizers were already working on.
“There was a steady routine of mutual aid…it helps a lot more than many government funded programs just because the difference with mutual aid is that you’re able to get that instant help…versus waiting for paperwork to go through and waiting to get accepted, if you get accepted,” she says.
Organizer Magnet Ivanov became involved with mutual aid when she started cooking homemade meals for houseless minors that were staying in a motel paid for by community members. One night she and a friend made too much food and distributed it at a houseless youth camp. “Then it snowballed from there,” she says, “now we have grown as a group and primarily feed East Portland camps, as well as the downtown youth camp.”
The pandemic has been especially hard on those experiencing homelessness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that people experiencing homelessness are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Since houseless folks do not have the same access to shelter, food, and other basic necessities that sheltered folks do, many mutual aid groups are dedicated to providing for them.
The underwhelming relief response to the pandemic along with the oversaturation of protest news changed the country. Ivanov says “The state fails to provide for the people’s needs, and as a result, folks can’t rely on the system as it is…people are funding this kind of food, housing, and supply aid out of their own pockets. It’s the clear right choice to help your neighbors, your community.”
“I feel like we all recycle the same $100” Chandler says. “Mutual aid has fed people during this pandemic, it’s paid for hospital bills, car vehicle repairs, it’s housed people…and a lot of the mutual aid I’m seeing right now is people collecting supplies to go donate them to the unhoused, that way they can survive through the winter.”
There is a sentiment that mutual aid is strictly for those who only have nothing but the clothing on their backs and pennies to their name. “When people think of mutual aid, they think that it’s only for the houseless, but in reality, mutual aid is for all of us,” Tekie says. “It’s basically creating a community where people are comfortable and able to ask for their needs and have their needs met.”
*Source uses she/they pronouns that are used interchangeably in this piece.
