TEACHER: Joss Willsbrough
THEME: Community and Mutual Aid
Joss: We are interdependent creatures whether we want to be or not (and sometimes, we really do not). We may not have a choice over whether we are connected to people (and creatures, environs, political structures, god-knows-what-else) but we do have some choice about how we connect with them. Mutual aid is about “imagin[ing] and build[ing] ways of eating, communicating, sheltering, moving, healing, and caring for each other that are not profit-centered, hierarchical, and destructive to our planet.” (Dean Spade, Mutual Aid) In spite of how impossible it seems sometimes, my heart refuses to accept that self-interest and collective care are mutually exclusive. There is a place where those circles overlap; the center of that Venn Diagram is my North Star. Other worlds are possible; getting to them alone is not.
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