Monument to Networks of Mutual Aid: Memories of pandemic

COVID19 intensified what many have been experiencing for years: a crisis in care. The disinvestment in and privatisation of care has meant that sustaining society’s various configurations of family and community have increasingly fallen to the individual. In response to inadequate government solutions, many migrant, feminist and anti-racist communities self-organised networks of support. Just as quickly as these networks were activated, so they are in danger of disappearing from the official memory of the pandemic.

But how to remember the work done by these collectives to hold the social fabric together without naturalising the assigning of the activities of ‘crisis management’ to the same gendered and racialised communities? These networks of mutual aid put in motion new identities and new alliances that challenge and denaturalise the previous dynamics of ‘visibility’. For this reason commemoration requires bringing into the present both what has been broken in the past as well as what has transformed. This change flickers in the present, as precarious and radical as the act of listening.

The decision to emphasize the experience of both activist and minority faith organizations intends to demystify two of the most important affective, political and social building blocks common to both activist and religious practice: mutual-aid and spirituality. Solidarity not charity.

This project is the result of a collaboration between Rebecca Close and Violeta Ospina, with the participation of Aurel Bunda and Antonia, from La Parroquia ortodoxa rumana Sant Jordi; Samuel Céspedes, Carina Ramírez Castro and Nicky Susana Justavino Cedeño, from Sindillar Sindihogar; Linaxa, Wenda Trejo and Baro Aboubacar Landry, from la Red de Cuidados Antirracistas; Aly Saad, from the Centro Cultural Islámico Catalán; Aminah Akram and Hafsah Imaan Shabbir, from Minhaj-ul-Quran (Foro Minhaj Diálogo);