Making a Small City Smaller: Mutual Aid and the Ongoing Attack on our Social Safety Net

Contributed

The folks behind the mutual aid group See You Next Tuesday helped install and stock a little free pantry outside of Ember + Forge cafe on Fourth and State streets – full of donated food items from the community to help offset food insecurity for the neighbors in the downtown area.

In a shocking report last month by The New Yorker, the elimination of USAID by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE, the Elon Musk meme name for the department that feels like it was founded seven lifetimes ago already) has already contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in what the author Atul Gawande described as "public man-made death." While USAID worked globally to address completely avoidable plagues of malnutrition, effectively dropping the rates of malnutrition-related deaths in some sub-Saharan African countries from over 20 percent to under 1 percent with simple interventions, our own country is also facing completely avoidable crises of malnutrition, hunger, and lack of access to healthcare and necessary resources. If the destruction of USAID taught us anything, it's how important our social safety net really is to millions of people, both here in America and across the world.

Last month also saw a public meltdown by Erie County Executive Brenton Davis following his loss to Christina Vogel, in which he decided to veto several changes to the proposed county budget, some approved unanimously by members of County Council. Vetoes included monies for the Human Relations Commission, the Booker T. Washington Center, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, and the Urban Erie Community Development Center. He also reduced the funds for public safety grants and underfunded the Pleasant Ridge Manor senior care facility. Davis' impact on our county resources will thankfully be short-lived, but it lays bare the most basic underlying principle of MAGAnomics: the cruelty is the point. All the hand-wringing over culture war nonsense makes sense when you recognize it for what it is: a distraction from their main policy objective, which is to simply hurt people who are not rich.

A little background on Brenton Davis if you have been living under a rock in Erie for the past four years: Christina Vogel beat Brenton Davis, a one-term incumbent Erie County Executive, by nearly 20,000 votes, an astonishing margin in Erie for a political newcomer. Davis, who spent energy in the primary to help Vogel beat Perry Wood (thinking she would be the weaker candidate to face in the general), acted as though he had this election in the bag. That makes Vogel's victory so much more satisfying for Erie County voters and so much more humiliating for Brenton Davis. Vogel is an intelligent, hardworking woman and I do not want to take away from her achievements and the campaign she ran against him, but Brenton Davis lost this election all by himself. He likely would have lost to anyone. And that gives us all a little bit of hope.

By most reasonable measures used to analyze his tenure, Brenton Davis was the worst Erie County Executive in recent history. He became embroiled in multiple lawsuits over his budgets and his attempts to block equity initiatives, including suits by Erie County Council and Diverse Erie, made claims about his military record that were later challenged by local media and veterans as misleading, messed around with the county budget, cut funding across the board for necessary county services like housing and senior care, used county social media as his personal political megaphone, and a former girlfriend of Davis was granted a temporary Protection from Abuse order for her and two temporary Protections from Intimidation orders for her two children, which a judge later declined to extend. Most times he opened his mouth, boilerplate MAGA copypasta or misogynistic garbage would stream out. Over the course of four years, he alienated constituents, donors, partners, colleagues, and others who wanted to see the county succeed.

Gratefully, the people of Erie County actually held him accountable at the ballot box this November.

It was almost refreshing and kind of quaint, in a small-town way, to imagine people coming to their senses and shaking off the MAGA spell for long enough to give Davis the boot. But we did it. And since we did it, in the most purple county in the most purple state, others can certainly do it. And if others can do it, maybe more dominoes will fall. Accountability is back, baby!

Similar to the destruction of USAID and other arms of our social safety net by DOGE, Davis' cuts were never about saving us taxpayers any money (we're still waiting on that DOGE refund check, right?) they are about manufacturing cruelty and death where there once was a helping hand. They are about dividing the working class and weakening our political and financial power, reducing our ability to mount resistance. That, both fortunately and unfortunately, is where mutual aid can step in and literally save peoples' lives.

While I am usually hesitant to accept a narrative of personal responsibility for large problems that were created by industrial capitalism (like climate change), this is a situation where the interventions of a few individuals can actually make a huge difference for your neighbors. Erie has seen several amazing examples of mutual aid in the past year that have filled in gaps left by the pause in SNAP benefits, the rising costs of healthcare, and the rapidly worsening housing crisis in our city. Mutual aid, defined very broadly, is the voluntary, peer-to-peer exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. It can take on many forms, from food drives to the free sharing of skills with others. It is the embodiment of Mr. Fred Rogers' ethos (or God's, if you're religious): help your neighbor. One important takeaway is that this aid takes place outside of the traditional networks of aid like government assistance or nonprofit charity. Mutual aid operates on solidarity and horizontal relationships, whereas charity often creates a hierarchy between giver and receiver. Mutual aid assumes your neighbor also has something to give you in return, building long-term, resilient communities instead of immediate, temporary relief. Many charities could learn a lot from a model built on solidarity and reciprocity in their quests to create programming that maintains the dignity of the populations they serve. Because of this, the group in Erie spearheading a lot of this work, See You Next Tuesday, doesn't have a leadership structure. A group of concerned citizens including Rie Witherow, Jessica Shultz, Caleb Rechten, Starla Cochenour, and several more have shepherded a growing group of volunteers toward several community service projects including the Little Free Pantry at Ember+Forge and a water distribution table in Perry Square during this summer's heat wave. Volunteers have also helped out at several initiatives like the Pay-What-You-Can markets and this Fall's Community Dinner. See You Next Tuesday is also committed to in-person monthly meetings where members of the community can visit and share projects that require volunteer support. If you're interested in joining See You Next Tuesday and participating in mutual aid projects in Erie, please email seeyounexttuesday.erie@gmail.com.

The in-person service projects also fight back at the various distractions lobbed our way through social media echo chambers, where we tend to spend much of our time these days. It is much harder to see a neighbor as your enemy on the manufactured culture war battlefield if you spent Saturday morning delivering aid to free pantries with them. Coming together in person and working toward a shared goal is great for building strong social bonds across our community as well as helping boost your mood and self-esteem. In an environment this bleak, every little action helps. Your anger and frustration are best spent making good things happen in real life, not typing with your thumbs. This holiday season, if you're wondering how to give back, consider getting involved in mutual aid projects. The work being done is not only saving peoples' lives, it is doing so with dignity and respect for our shared experience on this Earth.

David Tamulonis is a musician and educator who works at Erie Downtown Partnership managing community events and activities in Downtown Erie. He can be reached at davidtamulonis@gmail.com.