Roundtable Discussion from December 1, 2020
" ... roundtable discussion ... with scholar-activists Angélica Cházaro, Chandan Reddy and Dean Spade about Spade's new book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) (Verso, 2020).
According to Spade, "Mutual aid is a term used to describe collective coordination to meet each other’s needs stemming from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them. Those systems, in fact, have often created the crisis, or are making things worse." Mutual aid projects have proliferated during COVID-19, and have been core infrastructure in the current uprising against racist policing and vital on the front lines of fires, floods and storms caused by climate change.
The roundtable will discuss the role of mutual aid in the current and coming crises, reflecting on lessons learned in the movements for migrant justice, police and prison abolition, and climate justice. Even as we face unprecedented times, this discussion will offer insights rooted in friendship and solidarity to help us build collective power and the relationships we need as we look to 2021.
Dean Spade has been working in movements to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, the director of the documentary “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!,” and the creator of the mutual aid toolkit at BigDoorBrigade.com.
Chandan Reddy is Associate Professor in the Departments of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and the Comparative History of Ideas at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is co-editor of the special issue, “"Economies of Dispossession: Indigeneity, Race, Capitalism," Social Text (Spring 2018) and the author of Freedom With Violence: Race, Sexuality and the U.S. State (2011) from Duke University Press. He is a core organizer with Decriminalize UW, a call to defund armed campus policing and invest in intellectual communities of color and community health resources.
Angélica Cházaro is Assistant Professor in the Law School at the University of Washington, Seattle. She teaches courses on critical race theory, poverty law and immigration law. She is author of the paper, “The End of Deportation,” in press with UCLA Law Review. She is a core organizer with Decriminalize Seattle and the coalitional work to replace punitive policing with community-based public safety programs.
Sponsored by the University of Washington: Geography Department, Comparative History of Ideas Department (CHID), Gender Women & Sexuality Studies Department (GWSS), and the Coalition to Decriminalize UW."
