this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Why don't more poor people join mutual aid groups instead of using charities? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2258784

I've been looking through some US and EU labor data and I have started to wonder why don't more of the working poor join local mutual aid groups instead of staying at their likely shitty jobs or relying on charities?

This is a study on the labour distribution in the US among the working poor

On table 4 it shows that there are about 5,812,000 people that are classified as working poor ( Its says number in thousands so I multiplied the number given by 1000) and that alot of those jobs are in essential services like making food or providing support to others.

Similar diversity is show in the EU as well

So if most of these people decided to stop working at their current job and instead bring that those skills to a mutual aid network wouldn't they still get most of the resources they need because other specialists would be there to help them and also live a generally more happy life?

Also the reason why I am saying instead of charities is because charities become less effective the more people request from them because they have limited resources to share and also mainly supported by wealthy people that can unilaterally give and take away support.

Whilst mutual aid networks can take the diversity that more people joining the network gives them and use it to offer more services to other people in that community.

This seems like a no brainer so what am I missing?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I only heard about them recently too so I might give an incomplete answer but

If you only recently heard about them, then why wouldn't you logically conclude that a plausible answer to your original question might be that more people don't join them because people haven't heard of them?

This seems like a no brainer so what am I missing?

People haven't heard of them.

Also, using the mutualaid.wiki resource you cited - I decided to look up what was available in my state and the only couple of groups seem to focus on Covid-19 related things....leaving me even more confused about what you're talking about.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

P.S. Just randomly looked through mutualaid.wiki and it seems you are right. You might have more luck on mutualaidhub.org or just searching up mutual aid on google.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I tried mutualaidhub.org - and found another one that is about 45 miles from me so I went to their site to check it out. From what I can tell, it's nothing more than a hyper-localized version of gofundme.com. It seems most of these things are just links to facebook groups. I don't think these things are as organized or as helpful as your original post made them out to be.

Also, for the record, I'm not actually looking for assistance. I've honestly never heard of this thing until your post and just am trying to learn more about them, what they do, who and how they help, and maybe find something I could contribute. These things do not seem like a very viable alternative to traditional social services.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well that sucks and I hope the communities around you grow to be bigger so they can help more people. As for me I was able to find mutual aid network that is supported by DSA of america so it seems like its more organized and more robust so I think for now it depends on where you are.

Someone else said in response to my comment in a different post that it is sort of a chicken and the egg problem where people have to join the network first before the network becomes useful and I think that's what is happening here where people aren't joining therefore they have a lack of organization for those communities.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I mean I sorta thought that most people haven't heard about them but also it seems like a simple enough answer that the fact that most people haven't heard of it meant that people haven't been willing to share the idea meaning that something was wrong with the idea.

So I am asking other people that have heard about them about the problems.