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@ -3,15 +3,15 @@ title: "Organising a solidarity kitchen"
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# Reflections from Cooperation Birmingham[^3]
# Reflections from Cooperation Birmingham[^1]
# Covid-19, a "not-so-natural" disaster
The global Covid-19 pandemic is being faced by governments and covered by the media as a natural disaster. And in a way they are right: as scientists predicted, the rapid change in climatic conditions has created a favourable environment for the virus to spread. However, other factors have also contributed to the transmission and mortality of the disease. Global capitalism and the frenetic movement of people and goods that it entails; an endemic lack of funding (or plain privatisation) of public healthcare systems all over; cultural inclination to frequently socialising; and most importantly, widespread lack of access to basic goods such as healthy food or clean water and air. Critical geographers already discovered decades ago that natural disasters are not purely natural, but to a great extent they are socially constructed. Or as Neil Smith, in his account of hurricane Katrina, puts it – natural disasters don’t just create indiscriminate destruction, “[r]ather they deepen and erode the ruts of social difference they encounter”.[^1]
The global Covid-19 pandemic is being faced by governments and covered by the media as a natural disaster. And in a way they are right: as scientists predicted, the rapid change in climatic conditions has created a favourable environment for the virus to spread. However, other factors have also contributed to the transmission and mortality of the disease. Global capitalism and the frenetic movement of people and goods that it entails; an endemic lack of funding (or plain privatisation) of public healthcare systems all over; cultural inclination to frequently socialising; and most importantly, widespread lack of access to basic goods such as healthy food or clean water and air. Critical geographers already discovered decades ago that natural disasters are not purely natural, but to a great extent they are socially constructed. Or as Neil Smith, in his account of hurricane Katrina, puts it – natural disasters don’t just create indiscriminate destruction, “[r]ather they deepen and erode the ruts of social difference they encounter”.[^2]
# From disasters to solidarity
But there’s a more hopeful side to natural disasters which seems to be reproduced across temporal and geographical scales: the outstanding popular responses based on solidarity and cooperation. In this extreme situations in which the social order is temporarily broken, people tend to organise together in order to fulfil each other’s basic needs and ensure their collective survival.[^2] Whilst there’s goodwill in all the help being offered, the current pandemic is proving that it’s not enough. A clear lack of experience in political involvement and structured organising by most of the population is decimating mutual aid efforts in the UK.
But there’s a more hopeful side to natural disasters which seems to be reproduced across temporal and geographical scales: the outstanding popular responses based on solidarity and cooperation. In this extreme situations in which the social order is temporarily broken, people tend to organise together in order to fulfil each other’s basic needs and ensure their collective survival.[^3] Whilst there’s goodwill in all the help being offered, the current pandemic is proving that it’s not enough. A clear lack of experience in political involvement and structured organising by most of the population is decimating mutual aid efforts in the UK.
Take as an example WhatsApp groups created to connect residents of the same street or area in several cities, which have become the locus of popular self-organisation in times of Covid-19. Whereas they might be useful to help some people in self-isolation access basic goods, their reach is very limited. They embody a type of solidarity which, even if necessary, is insufficient because it is exclusively based in locality, which is translated in a lack of coordination among networks. Moreover, unequal access and ability to use technology or lack of time to follow conversations are factors that, when not taken seriously, prevent many members of the community from being actively involved. In the end, these groups tend to become taken over by a few residents who dominate the interactions and/or modify the scope of the group – and with it its potential effectiveness.
@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Take as an example WhatsApp groups created to connect residents of the same stre
# How to organise a solidarity kitchen
Aware of these dynamics, and of the fact that structure and purpose are key factors in mutual aid efforts, Cooperation Birmingham[^3] has recently brought together several grassroots organisations and workers’ cooperatives to create a solidarity kitchen. Funded with donations collected through an online platform,[^4] we offer warm meals to people in self-isolation in Birmingham. We ask no questions and we take no money, we practice solidarity without conditions.
Aware of these dynamics, and of the fact that structure and purpose are key factors in mutual aid efforts, Cooperation Birmingham has recently brought together several grassroots organisations and workers’ cooperatives to create a solidarity kitchen. Funded with donations collected through an online platform,[^4] we offer warm meals to people in self-isolation in Birmingham. We ask no questions and we take no money, we practice solidarity without conditions.
## Securing access to a professional kitchen
@ -48,9 +48,9 @@ As nice as it may sound, our solidarity kitchen is far from perfect, and we try
At the same time, though, this systemic externalisation of social services onto the commons makes the existence of politicised mutual aid projects like ours more important than ever. Because our purpose is not just to respond to the current crisis, we need to look beyond. What awaits after the immediate public health emergency is an economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude that will change the capitalist system as we know it. Socio-economical reconfigurations that follow disasters and crises traditionally offer “an opportunity for elites to recapture and even intensify their power”.[^6] However, there’s also a window of opportunity that we should try to seize. We need popular mutual aid efforts such as Cooperation Birmingham to become strong alternative institutions that take power from political elites and redistribute it among the working class. We need to have a major role in writing the new rules of the world to come. A world defined by the worst economic crisis of our times and by climate change, an uncertain world in which the elaborate system of social ordering will start to crack.[^7] A world of hope.
# Notes
[^1]: [Neil Smith: "There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster"](https://items.ssrc.org/understanding-katrina/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-natural-disaster/)
[^2]: [Rebeca Solnit (2010). *A Paradise Built In Hell. The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster*. Penguin Books.](http://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/book/7951fc75-1b97-4859-93e7-02b2fcfbbef6)
[^3]: [](https://cooperationbirmingham.org.uk/)
[^1]: [](https://cooperationbirmingham.org.uk/)
[^2]: [Neil Smith: "There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster"](https://items.ssrc.org/understanding-katrina/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-natural-disaster/)
[^3]: [Rebeca Solnit (2010). *A Paradise Built In Hell. The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster*. Penguin Books.](http://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/book/7951fc75-1b97-4859-93e7-02b2fcfbbef6)
[^4]: [](https://www.gofundme.com/f/cooperation-birmingham-mutual-aid-kitchen)
[^5]: [](https://forum.cooperationbirmingham.org.uk/)
[^6]: [Ashley Dawson (2017: 257). *Extreme cities: The peril and promise of urban life in the age of climate change. Verso Books.*](http://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/book/103a590d-1468-46d5-9c13-d0e228e59881)