Dilemmas in Mutual Aid: Lessons for Crisis Informatics from an Emergent Community Response to the Pandemic

Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, networks of community organizers and activists mobilized to support their neighbors as part of mutual aid groups across the United States. Emergent community response is a common phenomenon during crisis, but mutual aid in the pandemic took on a distinct character, drawing on traditions of political and community organizing. Our research into these activities suggests that mutual aid organizing in relation to disaster is growing practice but remains evolving and contested. Drawing on interviews with organizers of mutual aid groups in New York, we identify a series of four dilemmas that mutual aid organizers encountered in their work, with impacts on their organizational strategy and technology choices. We then raise three implications for crisis informatics to support community response to disaster: taking a long view of crises, centering questions of equity, and adopting a transformative vision of emergency response.