A Guide for Trans, Disabled, and Neurodivergent Lives

A small wildflower with pale petals pushes up through the cracked concrete of an old sidewalk. The background is softly blurred, drawing focus to the fragile bloom and the jagged lines around it. The flower appears luminous in the light, a quiet act of defiance in a broken place.

When an earthquake struck recently, a video spread across the world: a herd of elephants, sensing the tremors, quickly closed ranks around the youngest and smallest among them. Without hesitation, they circled their bodies to protect their most vulnerable members, standing shoulder to shoulder against an invisible threat. It was a wordless act of collective survival, woven not by strategy or command, but by instinct—an ancient wisdom carried in the body.1

Mutual aid is that wisdom.

It is as natural as breath, as old as life itself. It is not a political invention, nor a new social trend. As Peter Kropotkin wrote more than a century ago, “Mutual Aid is as much a law of Nature as mutual struggle, but it is far more important.” 2 Cooperation—not domination—has been the secret to survival across species and across history.

For disabled, trans, and neurodivergent people, mutual aid is not just an idea; it is a daily necessity. It is the living memory of our ancestors, who learned to survive by caring for one another when the systems around them refused to. As Shayda Kafai reminds us, “Our survival is not passive. It is collective dreaming, fiercely willed into being.”3

Mutual aid is not charity. It is not a handout or an act of pity. It is a profound, ongoing, messy practice of loving each other into the future.

This essay is a guide: an invitation to remember what we already know deep in our bones. It will explore what mutual aid is, why it matters, and how we—especially those of us who are trans, disabled, autistic, and marginalized—can practice it, build it, and sustain it together.

What Is Mutual Aid?

Mutual aid is the practice of collective coordination to meet shared needs, rooted in solidarity rather than hierarchy or charity. It happens when people come together to help one another survive, not because they are paid to, not because they have been granted authority to, but because survival is something we achieve together—or not at all.

Dean Spade defines it simply: “Mutual aid is collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them.”4 It is a survival strategy, a resistance practice, and a way of building the world we want to live in—one relationship, one act of care at a time.

Importantly, mutual aid is not charity. Charity tends to flow from the top down: from those with resources to those deemed “deserving,” often with strings attached or with the underlying assumption that those receiving help are somehow deficient. Mutual aid, by contrast, insists that no one is disposable, that we all have needs, and that offering care is not an act of pity, but of solidarity. As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha puts it, “Mutual aid is revolutionary love without charity.”5

Mutual aid is not an invention of political activists. It is an ancient practice, visible across the natural world: in animals who protect and nourish each other, in early human societies that relied on collective hunting, child-rearing, and defense, and in marginalized communities who have always had to find ways to survive abandonment by dominant systems.

As Shayda Kafai writes, “Mutual aid is not charity. It is cripped, queered, decolonial survival work.”6 It is survival shaped not by dominance, but by relationship, interdependence, and creative resistance.

At its heart, mutual aid is a refusal to leave each other behind.

Why Mutual Aid Matters

Across the natural world and human history, it is not the strongest, richest, or most ruthless who endure. It is those who learn to cooperate, to share resources, to defend and nourish one another.

Peter Kropotkin observed that “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best.”7 In other words, survival does not belong to the fittest alone—it belongs to the most caring.

Today, mutual aid remains a vital survival strategy because the systems meant to protect us—state institutions, capitalist economies, nonprofit organizations—are often designed to abandon us instead. Especially for disabled, queer, trans, and poor communities, survival has never been guaranteed by government programs or charitable initiatives.

It has been built, instead, through networks of mutual care: friends sharing medication, families organizing food distributions, strangers pooling resources for emergency bail funds, neighbors building disability justice collectives from scratch.

Trauma, isolation, and systemic abandonment can fracture movements.

When marginalized people are pitted against one another for scraps of access, representation, or funding, solidarity weakens and hope shrinks. But mutual aid cultivates resiliency—both emotional and structural—by teaching us to rely on each other instead of appealing to distant powers. As the Jane Addams Collective reminds us, “Mutual aid cultivates resiliency as a methodology to counter the traumas weaponized by the various oppressive forces that divide and diminish us.”8

Movements survive not because they are funded, but because they are loved into continuation. As INCITE! writes, “Movements are made up of people who do the work because it must be done, not because they are paid to do it.”9 Mutual aid is not glamorous, and it is rarely recognized by the institutions of power. But it is how we endure.

It is also how we dream. As Shayda Kafai beautifully puts it, “Crip persistence is the magic that manifests radical new worlds.”10 Through mutual aid, we survive not only the brutal conditions of the present, but we lay the foundation for futures shaped by care, creativity, and collective will.

Core Principles of Mutual Aid

Mutual aid is not a project of rescue. It refuses the top-down model where resources are dispensed to the “deserving” by the powerful. As Dean Spade explains, “Mutual aid is not charity.” 11 Instead, it is solidarity: the recognition that we all have needs, we all have gifts, and we are in this together.

At the heart of mutual aid is interdependence, not individualism.

The myth of the “self-made” person has always been a lie, but it is a particularly dangerous one for those of us whose survival has always depended on networks of shared care. In mutual aid, asking for help is not a failure; offering help is not an act of superiority. Care moves back and forth across relationships like breath.

Consent and access intimacy are also core principles.

Access is not something to be grudgingly provided, or treated as an afterthought. It is an act of love and liberation. Access intimacy, as defined by Mia Mingus, is the “feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs without you having to constantly explain them.”12 It is the trust, ease, and emotional closeness that can grow when access is anticipated, respected, and lovingly woven into relationship.

As Shayda Kafai echoes, “Access intimacy can transform ordinary access into a tool for liberation.”13 In mutual aid, access is not a checklist; it is a relationship—one where the needs of all members are met as living, shifting realities, not as inconveniences or exceptions.

Mutual aid is not neat, predictable, or flawless. It is a living, breathing practice shaped by exhaustion, mistakes, grief, repair, and love. As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha reminds us, “Care webs are messy, imperfect, and precious.”14

There is no perfect mutual aid group, no flawless care network. The work is to keep caring anyway—to adapt, to forgive, to hold each other through the breaking and remaking that survival demands. In a world that punishes disability, slowness, and complexity, mutual aid insists that imperfect care is still real care.

Mutual aid also moves at crip time: a pace that honors rest, fluctuation, and the unpredictable rhythms of real bodies and minds. Survival is not a sprint. Building the future is not a race. Mutual aid survives because it refuses the violence of urgency that capitalism demands.

These principles are not abstract ideals. They are how we build the conditions for each other’s survival, and each other’s dreams.

How to Find, Build, and Sustain Mutual Aid

Mutual aid begins wherever two or more people decide to show up for each other.

It does not require permission, funding, or a perfect plan. It begins in the smallest actions: sharing meals, organizing ride shares, creating a group text for mutual check-ins, offering skills, supplies, or shelter. It scales not by centralizing, but by multiplying. As Dean Spade notes, “Scaling up means building more and more mutual aid groups, not building one big organization.”15

If you are looking to join an existing mutual aid group, start locally.

Many cities and towns have mutual aid collectives organized around geography, identity, or specific needs. Search community bulletin boards, online platforms, social media, or ask local organizers. Be prepared for groups that look informal, decentralized, or messy—this is often a sign of vitality, not disorder.

If you are starting something new, begin with a few questions:

• Who are the people you are accountable to?

• What are the immediate unmet needs in your community?

• What can you offer, sustainably, without burning out?

Building mutual aid groups that are accessible and trauma-informed is crucial for sustainability.

The Jane Addams Collective reminds us that group trauma can derail movements if it goes unrecognized.16 Signs like hypervigilance, infighting, shame spirals, and burnout are not personal failures—they are common responses to living under oppressive systems. Recognizing these patterns with compassion, rather than judgment, is key to surviving together.

Accessibility is not just about wheelchair ramps or captioning—although those are vital. It is about pacing, sensory access, communication styles, emotional safety, and flexibility. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, “Our survival is in each other.”17 Care webs succeed when they move at the speed of trust, when they anticipate needs without shame, and when they make room for bodies and minds that change day to day.

Mutual aid groups are sustained not just by logistics, but by storytelling, art, and relationship. Songs, zines, newsletters, oral histories, and shared rituals root mutual aid groups in collective memory and joy. Shayda Kafai describes crip-centric liberated zones as places “where we can exist, thrive, and breathe beyond oppression.”18 Building mutual aid is not only about distributing resources—it is about weaving together the emotional and cultural fabric that makes survival not just possible, but meaningful.

To sustain mutual aid is to remember that imperfection is expected, that conflict can be generative, and that no one has to carry everything alone. Communities thrive not when they are flawless, but when they are flexible, forgiving, and rooted in collective care.

Challenges: Burnout, Conflict, and Sustainability

Mutual aid is often romanticized as purely joyful, but the work is hard. It happens inside communities shaped by trauma, scarcity, and structural abandonment. It asks us to show up with care even when we are exhausted, grieving, or scared. And because it exists outside of formal institutions, mutual aid groups often carry more emotional labor than they can safely hold.

One of the most persistent traps is the pull toward professionalization—a slow slide toward nonprofit-style organizing that reintroduces hierarchy, paperwork, and dependency on external validation. As INCITE! warns, “The non-profit industrial complex promotes professionalization over organizing, competition over solidarity, service over struggle.”19 These models encourage groups to compete for funding, appease donors, and shape their work around institutional metrics of “success,” often at the cost of their original values and relationships.

Even in explicitly non-hierarchical spaces, trauma can erode trust and generate patterns that drain group energy. The Jane Addams Collective names this plainly: “Trauma can destroy political organizations.”20 Hypervigilance, perfectionism, internal policing, and withdrawal are all common symptoms of survival-mode politics.

To build sustainable mutual aid, we must make space to heal while organizing—not demand that people be “fixed” before they participate. We must design care webs that account for burnout as inevitable, not shameful. This includes normalizing cycles of retreat and return. Some of us will need to step back. Some will disappear for a while. Some will leave permanently. That is not failure. That is part of how ecosystems function.

As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha teaches, “Access is love.”21 Love means letting people rest. Letting them leave. Letting them come back without punishment. And love also means not measuring anyone’s worth by how much they contribute.

Shayda Kafai opens Crip Kinship with the words so many of us long to hear: “You are not too sick, too disabled, too sad, too crazy, too ugly, too fat, or too weird.”22

You do not have to be well to deserve a place in the circle. You do not have to be productive to be part of the collective. Sustainability doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from holding space for each other’s limits with tenderness and trust. From organizing as if everyone’s bodymind matters—including your own.

Conclusion: The Future We Are Already Making

Mutual aid is not new.

It is ancestral, natural, and rebellious. It pulses through animal herds and coral reefs, through the grain baskets of Indigenous villages, through the whispered networks of queer survival, through the hands of disabled people holding each other up in hospitals, prisons, bedrooms, and streets.

As Kropotkin reminds us, even in the darkest eras, “The constructive forces of men—the forces of mutual aid—never ceased to act.”23 Even when abandoned by empires, hunted by laws, or erased from official records, mutual aid persisted—not because it was permitted, but because it was necessary.

Every act of care we offer now—every meal shared, every ride given, every pill split, every crisis text answered, every ramp installed, every conflict repaired—is part of building the next world. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, “We are already building the next world, in how we care for each other now.”24

Mutual aid is not about heroism. It is about persistence. About refusing the lie that we are alone. About organizing not just for resistance, but for presence—for being alive and held, right here, right now.

And it is about lineage. Shayda Kafai reminds us: “We are already our ancestors’ impossible dreams made flesh.”25

When we gather in circles, when we center access and tenderness, when we protect each other fiercely and imperfectly, we are doing something ancient and new.

We are extending a thread of care backward and forward in time.

We are becoming the future that remembers how to love.

FOOTNOTES:

  1. “San Diego elephants form ‘alert circle’ during earthquake,” KPBS Public Media, YouTube, April 15, 2025, https://youtu.be/IZ45kRP6LGE. ↩︎
  2. Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Preface, p. vi (1902). ↩︎
  3. Shayda Kafai, Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, p. 8 (2021). ↩︎
  4. Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), p. 7 (2020).
    ↩︎
  5. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, p. 33 (2018). ↩︎
  6. Shayda Kafai, Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, p. 145 (2021). ↩︎
  7. Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Introduction, p. 2 (1902). ↩︎
  8. The Jane Addams Collective, Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency, Introduction, p. 2 (2019). ↩︎
  9. INCITE!, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Introduction, p. 2 (2017). ↩︎
  10. Shayda Kafai, Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, p. 26 (2021). ↩︎
  11. Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), p. 24 (2020). ↩︎
  12. Mia Mingus, “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link,” Leaving Evidence blog, May 5, 2011, https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/. ↩︎
  13. Shayda Kafai, Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, p. 43 (2021). ↩︎
  14. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, p. 35 (2018). ↩︎
  15. Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), p. 41 (2020). ↩︎
  16. The Jane Addams Collective, Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency, pp. 17–25 (2019). ↩︎
  17. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, p. 45 (2018). ↩︎
  18. Shayda Kafai, Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, p. 32 (2021). ↩︎
  19. INCITE!, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, p. 45 (2017). ↩︎
  20. The Jane Addams Collective, Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency, p. 23 (2019). ↩︎
  21. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, p. xiii (2018). ↩︎
  22. Shayda Kafai, Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, p. 3 (2021). ↩︎
  23. Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Preface, p. vii (1902). ↩︎
  24. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, p. 95 (2018). ↩︎
  25. Shayda Kafai, Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, p. 156 (2021). ↩︎

WORKS CITED:

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, editor. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Duke University Press, 2017.

Jane Addams Collective, The. Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency. Combustion Books, 2019.

Kafai, Shayda. Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021.

Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. 1902.

Mingus, Mia. “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link.” Leaving Evidence blog, 5 May 2011, https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.

Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). Verso, 2020.

“San Diego elephants form ‘alert circle’ during earthquake.” KPBS Public Media, YouTube, 15 Apr. 2025, https://youtu.be/IZ45kRP6LGE.