When institutions and social services fail to provide adequate relief to marginalized communities—especially during crises like the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic—individuals from those communities are often left to take care of each other through mutual aid.
Trans activist and writer Dean Spade defines mutual aid as “a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions; not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable.”
According to a 2021 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA, 56 percent of Black LGBT adults live below the federal poverty line, and at least 20 percent of Black queer women are uninsured. While the country is experiencing a housing crisis, homelessness has always been a critical issue for transgender people. The National Center for Transgender equality reports that one in five transgender people in the United States has been discriminated against when seeking a home. And more than one in ten has been evicted from their homes because of gender identity.
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