Mutual aid has become a “hot term” in the nonprofit sector in the recent years. We see more and more mutual aid efforts as the world moves through a cascade of crisis. However, the practice of mutual aid, mutual benefit, and radical care is not new. Many communities have a long history of practicing mutual aid as a way to care for each other and survive. 

Let’s expand our understanding of mutual aid’s history and future. How do we turn these emergency responses into ongoing practices of care and mutuality? 

We've invited our friends from Agroecology Commons, Prospera, Repaired Nations, and Serenity Community for Justice and Peace to come and share how mutuality shows up in their day to day work and how they build upon these acts to create long term change.

About the Panelists

AjGod

AjGod is an producer/ MC/ Dj and 3rd generation east oakland,CA Resident whose family migrated from Louisiana . After watching his brother go to prison repeatedly, AjGod avoided the streets and put his energy into becoming an artist that promotes peace, knowledge of self and collective economics. Ajgod was heavily influenced by an entrepreneurial uncle who showed him how to make money as a musician. He learned how to produce , engineer, and write his own music and throw his own shows. Ajgod merges in-depth lyricism like zumbi, with the reverence for the culture of Hip hop like a KRS-ONE.

Brooke Porter

Brooke (she/her) is a seed sower, agroecologist, and visual storyteller, committed to cultivating relationships of reciprocity with the land and communities. Through a process of interweaving the social, ecological, and political dimensions of agroecology, she actively works to create regenerative farming systems rooted in ancestral practices and collective healing. She uses her ability to speak Portuguese, Spanish, and English, to strengthen a movement for food sovereignty, popular education, and land justice throughout the Americas. Brooke has worked as a public school educator in the Bay Area, teaching youth agroecology, natural building, herbal medicine making, and earth science. She holds a Master of Science in Agroecology from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in conjunction with Spain’s Universidad de Córdoba.

Daniella Preisler

Daniella is a Chilean mother of an amazing 20-year-old who has taught her the best lessons about
self-love, respect, kindness, compassion, and resilience. In 2012 they moved to San Francisco, California, where together they began this journey and she was introduced to cooperatives.. Looking for a better future for her and her daughter, she found in the cooperatives the safest place for her and her values. For 7 years she was a worker owner, in charge of the Administration and Finance Committee of the ecological house cleaning cooperative, Home Green Home in San Francisco. She considers this experience a great responsibility for herself, her co-members, the cooperative community, and the community of Latina women! During 2017, she completed her one-year co-op developer fellowship with Prospera, receiving hands-on professional development experience as a certified community coach and co-op developer! She has also collaborated with other organizations in different working groups; with SELC advocating to fix AB2883 and facilitating legal cafes in Spanish, with USFWC in the Immigrant and International Council, with DAWI in the Immigrant Cooperatives Collaborative. Served 2 terms (4 years) as a board member of the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives, serving on the Executive Committee as Vice-Chair for 2 years and various other committees, and is currently the President of CICOPA North America. In 2020, she completed the Lift Economy MBA program and inspired by the great need in the Latinx community for access to training and technical assistance for the development of immigrant cooperatives, she launched the Colmenar Cooperative Consulting cooperative with 2 other Latinas. Since 2021, she has been working part-time as a Cooperative Development Specialist at Prospera in charge of “Explore your Cooperative”, a 12-session program that she has helped develop and facilitate since 2017.

Ericka Williams-Rodriguez

Ericka Williams-Rodriguez is co-founder of Serenity Community for Justice and Peace, a BIPOC-led (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) intentional community and ecovillage in Louisa, Virginia. She is an activist, community organizer, and water protector who has dedicated her life to serving and protecting the needy and vulnerable. She has started two community service based intentional communities that run food pantries and care for the homeless. Ericka is a mother to two children that she is unschooling and decolonizing.

Jebena Kilgore

Jeneba Kilgore (she/her) is rooted in Oakland, CA with extensions to Sierra Leone, West Africa, and Indiana. She spent her childhood dreaming about living on a farm and watching loved ones in the kitchen. Jeneba is a former worker-owner at Mandela Grocery Cooperative. She specializes in cooperative community economics and has 3 years of experience running a community grocery store serving low-income customers, teaching nutrition classes, and working to support urban farmers, especially Black, Indigenous, and farmers of color. Jeneba is also a beginning farmer who is passionate about growing frequently forgotten varieties of crops.

Chris Tittle (Facilitator)

Chris is a facilitator, organizer, and attorney focused on land and housing justice, participatory governance, and co-creating post capitalist / post white supremacist futures. He is Director of Land and Housing Justice at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a democratically-run nonprofit supporting communities to create and control their own sustainable sources of land, labor, and capital. At the Law Center, he co-leads or contributes to the Law Center’s Housing, Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits, Farmland, and Money & Finance Programs.

He trained to become a lawyer without going to law school through the California Law Office Study Program, passing the California Bar in 2018.

Mutuality Month Sponsors