Mutual Aid as a Praxis for Critical Environmental Justice: Lessons from W.E.B. Du Bois, Critical Theoretical Perspectives, and Mobilising Collective Care in Disasters

Abstract

We build on the critical environmental justice (CEJ) framework by exploring mutual aid as a means of practising and realising transformative environmental justice that allows activists to build environmentally resilient and just communities beyond the state. We draw on the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, the Black Radical Tradition, and other critical approaches to demonstrate how mutual aid offers a meaningful point of conjunction for uniting ideological approaches to environmental justice that are often understood as being at odds with one another. To demonstrate this in action, we provide brief examples on the proliferation and longevity of mutual aid in times of disaster, including the 1927 Mississippi floods, Hurricane Katrina, the Nashville tornados, and the Texas power outages. Through these accounts, we seek to demonstrate how environmental justice organisations can and have advanced collective liberation using mutual aid as a critical orientation rooted in community based care and empowerment.