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.
Amyrose Foll
If you come to Virginia Free Farm at Spotted Pig Holler, you’ll find many of the typical features of an average American farm. You’ll see chickens pecking away, diligently fertilizing the grounds in preparation for subsequent growing seasons. Ducks and geese will be busily pulling every last weed they can get their bills on, while hard at work gifting the farm with a bounty of beautiful eggs. You’ll notice tangles of polyculture gardens mimicking the diversity of our natural ecosystems, and pigs oinking noisily at anyone who’ll listen, in hopes that a kindly visitor will share a morsel of food. It’s the Rockwellian pastoral landscape many envision when picturing a bucolic farm. What’s different about this farm, however, is that the food produced here is given away all of it.