Mutual Aid: A Roundtable

Celeste Tan and Yaiza Canopoli

On 31 March 2020, a small, leftist library in Singapore suddenly became quite the talking point. Their latest Instagram post announced the creation of a spreadsheet, which invited people to submit needs of any kind, alongside offers of help to meet those needs. As Singapore faced the onset of a lockdown, many were dealt with losses, and not just in financial terms. With more and more people experiencing isolation from their communities – extended families, friends, neighbours, social workers – the COVID-19 pandemic left many cut off from support.

With the publication of this spreadsheet, Wares Infoshop Library inadvertently gave many what they were looking for – a direct, accessible way to ask for help and, for those with the means, to offer assistance. The term ‘mutual aid’ wasn’t well-known in Singapore before the pandemic, though it has always been in practise among marginalised groups not covered by social safety nets. These communities have never been able to rely on the state, and organising resources to care for one another is necessary for their survival. Neighbours practise mutual aid on a daily basis, by pooling money, sharing food, or looking after one another’s children. Wares Mutual Aid helped to popularise the term, as well as provide a framework for direct action across the country, particularly at a time when people couldn’t gather in person.

What drew so many to mutual aid was its immediacy. Where charity and social services could take months to deliver the help they promised, mutual aid allowed instant assistance – be it funds for medical visits or electricity bills, food deliveries or even something as straightforward as accompanying someone to a medical or legal appointment. As we saw more and more people lose their jobs or fall sick with the virus and then slip through the cracks in the system, we knew we needed to help, and fast.

While Wares Mutual Aid was what kicked off the movement in Singapore, it is by no means the only group organising around mutual aid in 2022. Multiple offshoots have sprung from it since, including Migrant Mutual Aid and Eastside Mutual Aid. We caught up with four organisers (A, who got involved through Wares Mutual Aid; K from Migrant Mutual Aid; and P and Celeste – one of the writers – from Eastside Mutual Aid) to find out more about their journey and what mutual aid looks like in Singapore.

How and why did you get involved in mutual aid?

A: Being in those early stages of the pandemic and in a fairly privileged position was quite despair-inducing, in terms of trying to figure out how I could help. This just seemed like something that I could actually do without having to go out and be on the ground, which could bring illness back to my parents at home.

I was drawn to mutual aid because a lot of times, urgent material needs can’t really wait to go through bureaucratic processes. It’s also the idea of relating to a person and understanding what they’re willing to share about their situation. It just seems less dehumanising than going through the official channels.

K: It’s about trying to decentralise help so it’s not confined to institutional actors who get to accept or reject a case, and in the course of mediating end up obscuring a lot of systemic issues. For Migrant Mutual Aid specifically, we felt there was a need to address or cater to a community of people who were not – and continue to not be – able to access the help that they need and deserve from these institutions. It’s extremely rare for migrant workers to get the recourse they deserve. We also realised that in cases of salary disputes or work pass terminations, workers need to go through institutions and people in power, such as employers. As Singaporeans, we have the language and security of citizenship, which makes us better positioned to support them through that.

C: Eastside Mutual Aid happened because there was this feeling that Wares Mutual Aid, the group chat and channel, were really stretched quite thin, and that there was a need for something more area-focused.

What are some of the barriers to people getting more involved in mutual aid? What does it mean to create a space for everyone? 

K: There’s a difference between saying ‘everyone is welcome in this space’ and ‘this space was built with you in mind’. The infrastructure is not accommodating for everyone. And that’s why it feels very limited, that’s why we keep hearing the same names as opposed to it having that kind of critical mass that we want.

We have a lot of trouble talking to the employers of construction workers, because being Chinese, male businessmen, they can be quite misogynistic. They are less likely to want to negotiate or speak to a woman. We have one male Mandarin speaker, and that’s not enough to have all the conversations that need to be had. Sadly, I think a lot of people are afraid to join because of the intellectual jargon that comes with mutual aid.

I have a lot of friends who don’t necessarily identify as left-leaning but definitely believe in equity and justice – they just don’t feel comfortable entering these spaces because they feel that they’re intellectually out of their reach. These friends are so valuable in ways that I can see, and they’re probably valuable in a lot of ways I can’t see yet, but you don’t see them entering mutual aid spaces because it really feels like they’re not built with them in mind.

A: I really wish some kind of crypto-bro or person who knows about farming money would get involved. Could someone figure out how to grow money for mutual aid rather than buying electronic art? We need to bring in crypto people.

On a different note, my mum likes to put coins in a jar for the Hindu temple she visits. When COVID-19 was really bad, she wasn’t going out so much. I told her that I happen to know a low-income mother who has four kids and another on the way, and a lot of expenses. And she said, ‘Oh, okay, yeah, of course, send the money to her.’ So the desire and openness is there. Now whenever she fills that jar, she’s like, ‘Do you know anyone who needs it?’ I feel like there are a lot of aunties we can try to influence to redistribute funds this way.

K: What we’re feeling right now is that the mutual aid space is closed off from the general population. So how do we make this space bigger? It's not about having the few of us who are currently in the space try to reconstruct the space, but having people who are not in the space yet come in to construct it themselves. 

You have to ask yourself, how many of these people talk to their neighbours? That is itself a part of the problem, because you see that there are certain communities that need reaching out to, and because your neighbours don't appear to require any financial help or are not on the ‘official’ mutual aid list, you assume they're not the people you need to be talking to. But they fully are, and it's only when you have these conversations – whether or not you agree with their political alignment or what they do with their money – that you start to build and grow something.

How do you draw boundaries, especially when it comes to the stress of urgent requests? How might we structure mutual aid so it’s more sustainable for organisers?

C: What’s difficult for me is that everyone’s needs feel very urgent. Going back to what A was saying before, not having to go through bureaucratic processes is really good and what makes mutual aid necessary. But it also makes it feel like everything has to be done now. And there's not much space to be talking or thinking about the community-building aspects of it.

K: I think that is simply a by-product of the system we live in. Even if you don’t work a 9-to-5 job, this work is still super tiring. It’s really okay to feel like we can’t meet all these needs, even though there are very real people behind them. It’s just not possible. Accepting our limitations creates more room to breathe. Not because we are limited in our ability, not because we’re limited in love, but because we’re limited by the system we live in.

A: It’s good to communicate up-front. If someone says, ‘I urgently need X amount of money,’ I have taken to responding, hopefully in a kind way or in a neutral way, that I will work on it, but it’s a big ask and it’s going to take time because I am coordinating so many things, and I have work and personal things going on too. Generally, people have not responded to me unkindly. It’s been a good reminder for me that it’s better to communicate than to ghost them or leave them hanging.

P: Sometimes I can’t help but feel resentful, especially if I get messages from people just sending really long paragraphs of their story without any preamble, without asking, ‘Hey, do you have a moment?’ or ‘Can I talk to you?’ Sometimes I just see these long texts and I’m like, ‘I cannot deal with this right now.’ Then I end up feeling bad. But it’s like, no, this person needs help, and it’s kind of like a question of how do you draw those boundaries or tell people you can’t do it right now? 

Of course, I have the luxury of drawing that boundary or saying no, but the people I’m talking to don’t have that same luxury. They have to keep asking, and they don’t have the luxury of not replying. I find that really difficult to navigate and I feel like it’s the thing that burns me out the most. It becomes your personal responsibility to take care of everyone who has an ask. Which is ridiculous because obviously no-one can do that. To be honest, I don’t really have a good solution for dealing with it.

C: I still feel guilty a lot, but a social worker I was talking to said that you can’t do things for other people out of guilt. That takes the mutuality out of it. And that goes back to a charity mindset again. What has helped me personally is to try and turn it into anger. That becomes my starting point sometimes, when it comes to building a relationship with someone. When we express anger together, at the system or whatever policy is hurting them.

K: I have felt that as well when I was a part of Wares and then I felt bad for feeling it. I ended up in this horrible spiral where what I would do is mute and archive the chat so it would not pop up again, which is not a good way of coping. But I didn’t know what else to do. I plucked up the courage and was just like, I can’t coordinate this anymore.

The Migrant Mutual Aid cases are a lot easier, firstly because the nature of communication is very different. We recently restructured our roles in the team, so it’s very clear that there are some people who talk directly to the workers and there are some people who handle the writing, the fundraising, the transfers, and so on.

It feels structured in a way I think Wares was lacking. In trying to move away from a bureaucratic structure, there was no other structure that was put in place to substitute that. But we were able to learn from this. Migrant Mutual Aid is structured in a way where we work to our strengths, so it prevents burnout. This is also something we learnt because last year two of us on the team had to take a break because of burnout, which made us rethink our roles.

A: Sometimes I just challenge myself to think that it’s a privilege to be able to engage with someone and offer support, because we don’t have to meet KPIs like, ‘this year we helped 2,000 people.’ So I just try to see that ability to support someone as a positive thing, rather than a burden.

P: I've been thinking a lot about the difference between in person mutual aid – accompanying people places, meeting them face-to-face, delivering groceries – versus texting people, posting on social media, transferring funds, and how people draw boundaries in relation to that. I just do the online version most of the time and sometimes I find that makes it hard to form connections with people. The only time I've actually been able to form a friendship with someone in mutual aid was when we met in person. So I feel like the in person meeting is helpful because you appreciate their humanity more, but then it can be really overwhelming and not every in person experience is going to be positive.

A: Different people have different abilities and things they are more comfortable doing. For myself, I haven't actually done a lot of meeting with people that I've been speaking with, or done things like accompanying them to the hospital. It's all been online and giving updates to friends on social media. And I wondered to myself, why am I not able to take that extra step? But there are different people doing different things that can complement each other.

Why are there so many requests for financial help, many of them recurring? 

A: Something mutual aid revealed to me is how often young kids fall sick. Like, every single month someone has a cold, and I realised it’s not that they’re malnourished, that’s just how children and babies are. Sometimes someone will say, ‘I need $200’, and then three hours later it’s like, ‘my three kids are all puking and I can’t wait to go to the polyclinic and I need another $200.’ In these cases, I feel like setting up a central fund would be really helpful. What worries me is this: if people stop contributing funds because mutual aid is no longer ‘trendy,’ then what?

At one point, someone added up how much they sent to someone over time, and that made me a bit uncomfortable. Because if we’re starting to quantify our support, it seems to run counter to the principles of mutual aid. To say that you’ve received enough help, so it’s about time we move on to someone else. If the family’s circumstances were that straightforward then they would not be putting out more requests for support. The fact that they are speaks to the complexity of the situation they’re in.

K: Poverty doesn’t just disappear. There are definitely workers who have recurring needs, and we were wondering if we should have a cap on how much we disburse to a certain worker, so as to give everyone who approaches us a chance. So that we don’t have to say no. In the end we decided that this was not a good idea, because it doesn’t make sense to be like, ‘You’ve already asked for help twice, and your maximum is three times.’

One of our workers was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and was repatriated so he couldn’t afford the chemo or the bone marrow transplant. I think to date we have sent him close to $50,000 already. Because the treatment is still very expensive. This year he messaged again to say that the bone marrow transplant that we fundraised for last year failed, so he needs another $25,000 for a second shot at the transplant.

We immediately said yes, because we can possibly extend someone’s life. And even though it’s such a huge amount and we’ve already sent so much money, it doesn’t make sense to be like, ‘Actually, we’ve sent you a lot already, please handle this one on your own.’ People need to tap into the belief that there is enough money out there, we just need to find a way to get to it.

A: I do wonder if terms like ‘mutual aid’ will start to be more used by corporations and institutions. Your question brings to mind this hypothetical scenario – if a company wants to donate money to mutual aid, will people accept it or not? Part of me is like, ‘Well, we need the money, so yes.’ But would that compromise the integrity of mutual aid in any sense?

K: We asked ourselves this question as well, and the consensus was no, because even though we need the money, it’s a very short-term way of looking at it. The money can be raised. We can get that same amount from people who have good intentions. Powerful donors are ultimately a huge part of the problem. It mimics the charity model, or rather the non-profit model, where very rich people feel like if they give money to charity, they’re entitled to being rich. That line of thinking that goes, if you are complicit in a problem, but you give a bit of your wealth away, you’re entitled to keep profiting off the problem.

A: It makes me think of groups like SINDA and Mendaki[1]. It’s a very institutional kind of ‘self-help,’ where your IC shows that you are Indian, so we will deduct X amount of money from your pay cheque and send it to this organisation. Sometimes people who identify as a certain ethnicity are not able to receive support from those organisations because they’re like, ‘We don’t perceive you as Indian or Malay.’ But I think the fact that they’re called self-help groups, and in many ways mutual aid is about mutual self-help, makes for a very interesting tension.

K: Essentially, these organisations are set up with the idea that welfare is just there to carry you up to the point where you can do things on your own. Not even up to the point where you are comfortable, it’s up to the point where you can literally live hand-to-mouth. It’s the ‘three helping hands’ approach: government, individual and community, or something like that. These three entities work together and then magically, poverty is gone. It’s clearly anti-welfare rhetoric. It really doesn’t make sense. There is no mutuality in the way these organisations and state welfare systems are set up. 

C: One of the most mind-blowing things that happened in the past year in Eastside Mutual Aid was that a social worker reached out to me and asked if we could help her client. You are the gatekeeper to help and you can’t even help your own client. This is what I think of when people ask, ‘Why doesn’t this person just ask their social worker for help?’

K: In instances like that, you feel angry because you’re like, ‘Why should I have to help this person? You should be helping this person.’ But at the end of the day, the person that loses out is the individual. So I decide that I’m gonna help them better than you can help them. I’m gonna prove that the community can come together and meet this need that you cannot. Maybe that’s not a very regenerative way to go about it, but it’s the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind.

What are your hopes for the future of mutual aid?

A: I just hope that it continues. Even if we reach a utopian future, there will probably still be space for mutual aid. Maybe it can be less about urgent material needs and more about sharing books or plants together. Or we have a collective farm and we all take care of cats together.

With a lot of these kinds of initiatives, I also wonder if the objective is to make them redundant in the long run. So for example, in the distant future, let’s imagine that laws support unions, minimum wage and strong rights for migrant workers in Singapore. Then what does mutual aid need to do? But I don’t know how optimistic I feel about those laws changing anytime soon.

Maybe that’s a Singapore-specific thing, actually, because advocacy seems like a very long haul game here. Maybe it’s the case everywhere but I can’t speak to other countries. A lot of times, to play that long haul game, people either need to be affiliated with institutions that toe the line, or if they have more far-out views, or try to advocate independently, it often comes at great personal cost that not everyone can realistically afford. Things like risking going to prison when you have to support your family financially. I don’t know how optimistic I feel about laws changing in Singapore. Advocacy must continue, but I think for now, things like mutual aid are especially important.

K: My big dream is that we can all just read books and sit in the sun and, like, plant things, raise children communally, and all of that. More tangible goals I have for mutual aid are definitely to effect some change in our systems and policies. I think what is often not talked about is that very long in-between of where we are now and where we want to be. That’s a very slow, long, and difficult process that requires a lot of compromise, and saying yes to things that are not necessarily things we wholeheartedly believe in, but are necessary stepping stones to getting where we want to be. I think about these big goals when I’m daydreaming and it is what keeps me going. But the smaller, tangible goals are what help me do the work. So it’s two things at the same time.

C: I would like to find a way of redistributing wealth that involves our community deciding for itself what our priorities are and putting wealth towards those priorities. Like deciding together that this person’s need is more urgent, and so they should get this amount first, and then I will get the next amount or something like that.

In the long-term, I want to keep fighting for housing rights. A group of us did that at the start because there were so many people who were having to pay rent despite COVID-19 and very little rent relief. We wrote to MPs and we interviewed tenants. The energy we had then didn’t last, but I think it’s something we would need to keep doing and have tenants involved in organising as well. When we see recurring needs, we get a sense of what needs to be done in the long run.

P: The most tangible thing that I can think of is wealth redistribution, and slowly getting to a place where there’s a smaller and smaller gap between people who are very rich and people who are very poor. That’s kind of the main goal that I have for the world. Slowly tax the rich more, raise the minimum wage – this long, slow process where we can get to a place where we all eventually live with a decent amount of money that’s not too much or too little. And then, after that, it can go beyond money. Something that sounds very doable and actionable is just getting to a wealth equality stage. Which is why we need to get very wealthy people involved in mutual aid, too. 

A: To me, it’s not just about speaking about what’s happening in your country, but building something international, because nation-states and borders are violent constructs. I have seen instances of people in Singapore responding to things happening overseas, like when there were fundraising efforts for Myanmar. I think what Migrant Mutual Aid is doing already goes beyond Singapore in a way, because migrant workers in Singapore come from so many different places.

Doing mutual aid in Singapore exposes certain limitations or flaws in the system, such as the kind of aid that citizens or permanent residents are entitled to, as opposed to those who are living in Singapore and whose lives and realities are based here but who don’t get access to the official channels. They need support as well. Those are ways that Singapore mutual aid is still plugged into what’s happening on a much wider scale. The issues that mutual aid is seeking to address are not by any means limited to Singapore.

Celeste Tan is an aspiring documentary filmmaker and mutual aid organiser outside of her bullshit day job. She recently directed There To Document: A Decade of FreedomFilmFest in Singapore, on the survival of a human rights festival as part of Singapore’s civil society.

Yaiza Canopoli is a full-time Content Writer and Features Editor who specialises in interior design, literature, arts, and culture. She was involved in Wares Mutual Aid in its glory days and has been a part of Eastside Mutual Aid since its founding. You can find her portfolio at yaizacanopoli.com.

The groups/collectives mentioned in the article can be found on Instagram: @migrantmutualaid, @eastsidemutualaid and @waresinfoshop.

References

[1] The Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) and Yayasan MENDAKI (Mendaki) are  government-supported self-help organisations that offer support for Singapore’s Indian and Malay communities respectively, through a model that encourages those from the same ethnic groups to contribute funds through the Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB). This takes the form of financial assistance, bursaries, parenting programmes, tuition and enrichment classes, mentorships, social work and counselling services. An equivalent for Singaporean Chinese is the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC).