There's a lot of people that are in the streets, and many of them don't know
if they can return to their to their homes, because no one can tell them.
And of course they always want to go back to retrieve their belongings,
but that puts their lives in danger.
And the authorities are not competent.
The autonomous brigades, here in our school emerged from the restlessness
of asking ourselves: "What can we do?"
The first thing we did was to open a center of supplies and aid.
Later we started an information verification project, because of the massive amounts of messages - real and false.
Some things that had already happened, other things that had not.
So then we concentrated reousources, and from here bicycle brigades would leave
to take aid to the places that needed it
- be they shelters, disaster zones or damaged buildings.
When they came back, they would give us a report
on the status of the situation.
If other things were needed,
or if heavier things required a car to be transported,
bikers would come that would support us
in moving insulin.
Some taco delivery motorcycles
helped fit a cooler of insulin in the box of their motorcycle.
On Thursday night it seemed like
material necessities were taken care of,
so we asked ourselves: what more could we do to help?
What came next?
We put our energies into the school here, with the documentation brigades
- who interviewed people that were affected by the quake
with a list of questions.
Asking them how they were doing, how was their home?
What they needed...
and asking them to describe their interaction with the authorities.
When we decided to stop working as an aid warehouse,
we began to envision this work as a long term project.
So we developed new working groups,
like art brigades that deal with things that we are more used to, like graphic work,
to find ways to support with what we really know how to do....
to go beyond the moment of emergency and immediacy.
So we have various assemblies, in which we figure out
where we should put our energies - where to support.
Like creating a census of people who've been affected.
If we find camps that need things, if we have the capacity we bring them.
We never got in one another's way. We never said: "You do this, and you go there!"
...like no one has to tell you what to do,
which was fuckin awesome!
This charity vibe of the big corporations raising funds,
they do it so they can say, "I am this corporation, and I am going to help you
rebuild your home, because I am so good."
And I think that mutual aid doesn't seek recognition.
Charity can be used as political capital
for other interests that don't interest us.
When you receive charity, other than probably clearing
someone's conscience, they can also profit politically from it.
Mutual aid doesn't pursue that.