Last March, the pandemic forced grassroots group Detroit Action to halt a 10-year program helping people who face homelessness or have low incomes to get their vital records. That program ran out of soup kitchens, where it reached people in need, and closed at that time.
More than a year later, the initiative relaunched, reviving a service that Detroit Action which focuses on economic injustices affecting Black and brown Detroiters says can help more than a
dozen people a week navigate the often complicated process of getting IDs and birth certificates.
These vital records are required to access housing and employment.
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief: The Response (live) Print
“There is a really great opportunity in the vacuum of disaster relief” according to a co-founder of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, or MAD Relief for short, who goes by the name Rain. She continues on to say that “mutual aid in general, [in response to] COVID, has really helped to reinforce the idea that mutual aid doesn’t have to be just disaster response. There are living disasters every day in our communities, and so mutual aid is necessary all the time.”
With origins going back to Common Ground in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2007, MAD Relief is a grassroots disaster relief network based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action.