This article was originally published in ‘Ramsey County History’ in the Fall of 2021 and, given the recent increase in mutual aid efforts in the Twin Cities, it is reprinted with permission.
On December 24, 2020, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran an article that caught my eye: “Grassroots efforts spring up to help Twin Cities families in need” by reporter Kelly Smith reminded me of just how much good can be accomplished by determined individuals and small groups of dedicated people. Smith highlights community members – many out of jobs themselves because of the COVID pandemic – who set out to provide towels and bedsheets and clothing and meals for those in immediate need. Some people cleaned up looted stores after the murder of George Floyd; others set up portable toilets or started community gardens in hard-hit areas of the Twin Cities. Of one volunteer, Smith wrote, “She’s not moving mountains. She’s not exacting change. She’s not trying to end poverty. She’s a neighbor helping neighbors.”
While not described as such in that article, the idea of neighbors helping one another is the essence of mutual aid. This term is defined eloquently by Rebecca Solnit in “The way we get through this is together: the rise of mutual aid under coronavirus,” which published in The Guardian:
“Mutual aid has generally meant aid offered in a spirit of solidarity and reciprocity, often coming from within struggling communities, empowering those aided and with an eye towards liberation and social change. Generally, it meant volunteer coalitions doing work such as rebuilding or food distribution or supporting resistance camps.”
Solnit describes the explosion of mutual aid that has occurred during the COVID crisis and its resulting economic conditions, commenting:
“(a) dozen years ago, the term ‘mutual aid’ was, as far as I can tell, used mostly by anarchists and scholars. Somehow it has migrated into general usage in recent years and now, in the midst of the pandemic, it is everywhere.”
Recently, I started to see the reference in emails from my synagogue with notes of remote mutual aid Shabbat services and mutual aid Hallel services during Chanukah. While I assumed that, in this context, mutual aid referred to the partnership of two or more congregations collaboratively providing a religious service via Zoom, I asked Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg for confirmation. Her response expanded my understanding:
“We call it Mutual Aid Hallel for the way that this space and the collaboration have allowed us to access spiritual uplift and heartfelt yearning in a time of incredible challenge,” she said. “This mutual aid has been life-giving for tefillah (prayer) leaders in the space and has allowed continued exploration of new/deepening ritual and liturgical practice.”
I love the use of this term to encompass various actions and interactions for outcomes—not only material, but also spiritual.
Indeed, the concept of mutual aid had fallen out of the common lexicon, as Solnit suggests, but it has a long history. In the first half of the twentieth century, mutual aid societies were common in the Jewish community, when immigrants, mainly from Eastern Europe, established societies to help their landsleit (their fellow countrymen) as they adapted to their new country and established new lives for themselves and their families.
One such mutual aid organization was the Workmen’s Circle—in Yiddish—Der Arbeter Ring. The Workmen’s Circle, known in 2020 by the non-gendered descriptor The Workers Circle, is an American Jewish nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting social and economic justice. Formed in New York City in 1900, it had hundreds of branches in the US and Canada and more than 84,000 members at its height in the 1920s. In its first one hundred years, the Workmen’s Circle provided many services to members, including life insurance, unemployment relief, healthcare, and burial assistance, along with social and educational opportunities.
In St. Paul, the Workmen’s Circle chapter also had a credit union in Highland Park. My brother Mike Bernath remembers going there with our father as a teenager in the 1960s and meeting with Mr. Joseph Krawetz, an insurance agent and active member of many Jewish communal organizations, who assisted in arranging a loan for Mike’s first car. Mike also reminded me that our grandfather Jacob Gottlieb had been active in many mutual aid organizations, including the Workmen’s Circle, often serving as the organizational treasurer.
The Workmen’s Circle promoted Yiddish education and had socialist ideals, becoming influential in the then-nascent American labor movement and the recently established Yiddish newspaper, The Forward. They also operated medical clinics and homes for the aged. Around the time of the New Deal, the Workmen’s Circle shifted from socialism toward liberalism. A decline in membership was seen in the 1960s as Jews joined the middle class in large numbers and found the organization to be less essential than in earlier years. Still based in New York City, The Workers Circle today focuses on secular Yiddish culture and social justice activism, with a membership of 11,000.
An internet search using the terms “mutual aid” and “Minnesota” today yields many results. For example, a website for the Twin Cities Mutual Aid Project, which was created in June 2020 to help citizens find places to volunteer, donate, and access assistance, describes mutual aid as one of its core values:
“We believe in mutual aid, and approach our work as a form of reciprocal care. What this means, simply put, is that we reject capitalist notions of charity and instead see our project as direct action. TCMAP supports interdependent communities who collaboratively work towards an equitable future. Our work supports networks of freely given assistance and shared resources in order to make us all stronger and safer.”
A TCMAP map identifies nearly 500 separate organizations from Stearns and Blue Earth Counties to Winona County, with the vast majority situated in the seven-county metro area. The Twin Cities, a regional hub for immigrants, has seen growth in the number of mutual aid organizations for many, including both Hmong and Somali immigrants. Such grassroots groups are usually formed with few internal or external hierarchies, and the members may be both giving and receiving aid. A few include the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, based in Minneapolis, and the Intercultural Mutual Assistance Association, which is headquartered in Rochester.
Like Jewish immigrants a century ago, members of diverse communities are banding together to help one another during these unprecedented times. Last February, the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul hosted a Zoom discussion entitled “Solidarity not Charity, Twin Cities Mutual Aid Organizers Community Panel.” Panelist Jae Yates of the Community Aid Network of Minnesota, which focuses on food security, distinguished mutual aid from philanthropy, stating that philanthropy may be viewed as a gift, coming from one with means to one without means, while mutual aid is not hierarchical in that way. They also highlighted the important relationship between mutual aid and activism, stating that when people have their needs met they are freed up to organize more effectively. And so, many have in recent months.
Mutual aid organizations were vital in helping my Jewish forebears in the 1920s. A century on, it appears these small groups of neighbors assisting neighbors—grassroots community-led organizations giving a helping hand—are making a comeback and making a difference in the lives of more recent immigrants and members of other diverse communities all over the Twin Cities area and beyond.
Robin Doroshow is the executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.