Building Abolitionist Networks of Care: Lessons in Mutual Aid & Community Political Education Work

• In Event: Building Coalitions of Solidarity: Humanizing Praxis, Indigenous Epistemologies and Education for Transformation

Abstract

This interactive presentation will support those interested in creating abolitionist care networks, building on the theorizations and insights from two mutual aid political education collectives that support housing justice and youth political education with an emphasis on community care. Topics to be discussed include: 1) Lifemaking under racialized capital and the carceral state (Gilmore & Murakawa, 2020), 2) A critique of neoliberal "care" systems (Mukerjee, et al., 2025), 3) Community-centered approaches towards carework and political education under colonial-capitalism, 4) Dignity-centered practices through cultural rituals, harm-reductionist principles, trauma-informed care, and anti-colonial approaches to healing (Page & Woodland, 2023).
The abolitionist mutual aid network models explored draw from a rich tradition of the anti-carceral liberatory scholarship and movements of Black and Indigenous communities (Davis, 2003; Russo, 2018; Taylor, 2017). While mutual aid has been a way in which to address communities’ survival needs, it can and should serve another purpose, i.e., to undermine the reification of transactional human relations under capitalism. This presents an opportunity for new forms of care-taking institutions to emerge. As such, many organizing against dehumanizing systems embrace abolitionist politics of care where abolition is not a single event but a philosophy and a form of critical humanizing praxis towards self and social transformation (Freire, 1994; Gilmore & Lambert, 2019).
The data I will analyze comes from past peer-reviewed studies and research projects that I have conducted with two mutual aid models and in collaboration with other researchers, which continue to adapt their praxes based on insights. The specific concepts from those works to be highlighted include: 1) Eschewing carceral logics and punitive orientations for humanizing alternatives to social issues (Tapia, 2022), 2) Fostering critical democratic learning environments (Freire, 2018; Love, 2019), 3) Challenging Western paradigms and using non-traditional modes of relationship-building (Cajete, 2015).
Findings are based on the observable aspects of the collectives, which embrace the following:

1. Developing non-linear, interconnected political education curricula that nurture active community participation.
2. Non-coercive, democratic, and anti-colonial practices for organizing, decision-making, and addressing conflict.
3. A holistic and asset-based view of community members that takes seriously the task of not reproducing racist, cisheteropatriarchal, and ableist logics.
4. Continuous self-reflection and opportunities for indigenous healing practices.
5. Organizers as learners and guides who, in their most liberating role, are unobtrusive resources available to community members.

The two mutual aid collectives to be discussed are ongoing experiments. They embrace the joys and challenges that come from co-creating abolitionist networks of care that address their communities’ material needs while nurturing opportunities for political education. We face significant economic and social upheaval as the United States descends further into fascism. We are navigating multi-layered crises of care where fewer can be assured of dignified housing, education, healthcare, and safe environments to belong to. Instead, critical anti-colonial educators, organizers, and researchers should consider building widespread democratic education and mutual aid networks to foster the type of praxis necessary to build alternative models of care for human flourishing.

Author

• Ndindi Kitonga, Angeles Workshop School