ORGANIZING
The Downside of Doing Good Mutual aid projects that start in a rush of urgent optimism may soon run up against bureaucratic barriers. BY CHIMA IKORO
A
lthough the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 shutdown on Chicagoans are still unfolding, one thing has been clear to many from the start: the government wasn’t going to save them. In 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act distributed stimulus checks of $1,200, on average, to Americans to last from April to December/January or nine months. The second stimulus check, issued in December, was for just $600, which isn’t enough to cover rent in most cities. On a larger scale, the CARES Act also provided cities with emergency funding, which was left to lawmakers to distribute. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot allocated over $280 million dollars of that money to the Chicago Police Department. Meanwhile, Chicagoans struggled to make ends meet. As a direct response to the needs of our communities, many organizers, including myself, put together mutual aid initiatives last year. Mutual aid differs from traditional charity work in that it 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
creates a symbiotic relationship between members of a community, enabling folks to pool resources to share collectively. These resources could be food, clothes, money, or virtually anything that can be shared. A longstanding practice in anarchist circles, as well as in labor and fraternal organizations, mutual aid is one way the community can bridge the gap between folks who need assistance and those who are willing to help. It’s beautiful and sad at the same time; I can’t help but ask myself, why are we doing this work while our tax dollars are funneled into institutions that harm us? Nevertheless, the community’s ability to lift each other up in dark times is inspiring. On its face, mutual aid would seem to have no downside, but as organizers have learned, there are hidden roadblocks that make the work hard. In some cases, groups that have provided free assistance to community members have even been criminalized by the police. In one example, police and City inspectors served the Chicago Freedom School (CFS) with a cease-and-desist order
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last year for providing food to protestors after they became trapped downtown following the George Floyd protests in the Loop on May 30, 2020. Inspectors claimed that by distributing food, CFS was in violation of their business license. Although the City settled and eventually agreed to rescind the ceaseand-desist order, this act was still a violent and egregious effort to stop community members from simply helping each other. In 2019, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty released an annual report that detailed, among other things, changes in restrictions on food sharing. This report stated that although homelessness is on the rise, more and more cities are creating laws that discourage food sharing. In 2018, twelve people were charged with misdemeanors for distributing food to houseless people in El Cajon, California. A municipal code in El Cajon prohibits food sharing in public places. The year prior, seven people were arrested in Tampa, Florida for similar charges, and a woman was ticketed for feeding houseless persons in Atlanta later that year.
If criminalizing the sharing of food didn’t pose a high-enough hurdle for organizers, redistributing funds has its own set of complications as well. If an ad hoc mutual aid group is not registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit through the IRS the individual(s) of record receiving the funds (through Venmo, Paypal, or some other means) are liable to be taxed for money received as donations. The process to complete the paperwork and meet the requirements can be tedious and riddled with caveats. According to the IRS, an organization that is tax-exempt as a 501(c)(3) cannot be an “action organization.” In other words, supporting or influencing policy changes and legislation, as well as supporting or rejecting political candidates, cannot be a part of such an organization's work. This would seem to pose a potential problem for many politically engaged mutual aid projects. But the process of obtaining 501(c)(3) status can be more laborious than upholding its rules. Femdot, a rapper from north Chicago and the south suburbs, is the founder and director of operations for Delacreme Scholars, a
