Cindy Milstein (they) on Nostr: My heart is in Asheville and North Carolina as well as other nearby spots devastated ...
My heart is in Asheville and North Carolina as well as other nearby spots devastated by the catastrophic flooding, mudslides, infrastructural collapse, and other systemically manufactured violences dubbed “Hurricane Helene.” This “once-in-a-1,000-years” event is now what’s likely a “normal” climate disaster—in the Appalachian mountains, but also across the globe, knowing no borders.
Which is why borderless, boundless, beautiful on-the-ground mutual aid—solidarity not charity, interrelationality not alienation, commons not capitalism, collective care not colonization—is truly all that we have and need. And as stories emerging from small cities and rural areas across North Carolina attest, it’s what many people are doing, without need for so-called authorities or saviors, but instead voluntarily, imaginatively, and anarchistically (whether they hold to that politics or not), self-organizing neighbor to neighbor, friend+stranger to friend+stranger, community to community.
A crucial part of this social fabric of mutual aid—able to kick into high gear at a moment’s notice and then dive into being there for each other nonstop—is the infrastructure already in place, including from other disasters, but also from engaging in dreamy space-making and world-building. That includes so many scrappy and sweet mutual aid project and collectives, ranging from the @mutualaiddisasterrelief network, to spaces and affinity groups in cities in the surrounding region, to in this case, community hubs (like @firestormcoop) and crews like @pansy.collective and @appalachianmedicalsolidarity that are themselves directly experiencing the NC calamity firsthand, and yet have things like this to say: “I would rather live every day in a crisis than pretend every day is not already a crisis.”
I feel honored to be getting glimpses of so many profound acts of solidarity while doing small acts from afar, such as putting together this infographic and posting resources in my IG stories (you can too!). It’s what’s keeping me going amid the bleakness of disasters on so many fronts—too many for any of our small individual hearts to hold, which is why we need our shared hearts.
Which is why borderless, boundless, beautiful on-the-ground mutual aid—solidarity not charity, interrelationality not alienation, commons not capitalism, collective care not colonization—is truly all that we have and need. And as stories emerging from small cities and rural areas across North Carolina attest, it’s what many people are doing, without need for so-called authorities or saviors, but instead voluntarily, imaginatively, and anarchistically (whether they hold to that politics or not), self-organizing neighbor to neighbor, friend+stranger to friend+stranger, community to community.
A crucial part of this social fabric of mutual aid—able to kick into high gear at a moment’s notice and then dive into being there for each other nonstop—is the infrastructure already in place, including from other disasters, but also from engaging in dreamy space-making and world-building. That includes so many scrappy and sweet mutual aid project and collectives, ranging from the @mutualaiddisasterrelief network, to spaces and affinity groups in cities in the surrounding region, to in this case, community hubs (like @firestormcoop) and crews like @pansy.collective and @appalachianmedicalsolidarity that are themselves directly experiencing the NC calamity firsthand, and yet have things like this to say: “I would rather live every day in a crisis than pretend every day is not already a crisis.”
I feel honored to be getting glimpses of so many profound acts of solidarity while doing small acts from afar, such as putting together this infographic and posting resources in my IG stories (you can too!). It’s what’s keeping me going amid the bleakness of disasters on so many fronts—too many for any of our small individual hearts to hold, which is why we need our shared hearts.