Can Mutual Aid Withstand Pandemic Fatigue?
Free goods and services distributed by mutual aid groups helped vulnerable New Yorkers survive 2020. As the pandemic eases, those organizations are more needed than ever.
A woman takes food from a mutual aid group's street refrigerator on March 2 in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. One Love Community Fridge is one of many organizations that began as a response to the long lines at food banks that started when the coronavirus pandemic spread to New York.
Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North AmericaNew York is a crowded, loud, bustling city of 8.4 million people crammed into just over 300 square miles.
In the past that has meant jam-packed subway cars, endless lines for the latest museum exhibit, elbow-to-elbow seating in East Village hotspots, and constantly dodging tourists who have stopped slack-jawed to take it all in. As a born and raised New Yorker, I have witnessed this energy come to a frightening standstill only twice. Once, on Sept. 11, 2001, and the days after — and then again, just a little more than a year ago, when the perpetrator was the deadly novel coronavirus.