Middletown Mutual Aid Collective

Mutual aid is people helping people. We have all types of needs: housing, food, medical, emotional, social, and more. We can meet them ourselves.

Middletown Mutual Aid Collective (MMAC) does work throughout the community by meeting each other’s needs as they come. We are a collective, which means we come together as a group and make decisions together to address what needs to be done in our community. Right now, our work is centered around two projects: the Middletown Community Fridge and Direct Cash Assistance.

Read more about our projects and how to get involved at middletownmutualaid.org!

Informative articles on the modern history of mutual aid in low-income, immigrant, and BIPOC communities:

Gifting Circles and the Monetization of Everything

COVID-19, Resource Colonialism, & Indigenous Resistance

And from 2020: Mutual Aid and Sustaining BIPOC Youth Activism

Over the past year, Middletown Mutual Aid has been running a network to help local people work in community with one another and meet their needs in new ways. We started by crowdfunding money (posting online requesting donations) and using the donated money to  deliver cleaning supplies, PPE, groceries, and other supplies to community members who expressed their need. We also started our Facebook group where Middletown residents can post needs, offerings, and opportunities to join the organizing.

In June of 2020, we began our direct cash assistance program. We give cash aid requesters a one-time payment of $200 with no questions asked. We have been able to give cash payments of $200  to over 300 residents. Over the summer, our financial director worked in person at the North End Action Team Office every Saturday to meet with requesters and make sure that we were accessible both online and in person. 

 We have heard many positive stories of the cash assistance payments helping with rent, medical bills, transportation to work, and more.  As of mid-May 2021, we still have around 540 people waiting on our list to receive assistance. We need support to help fill this gap and fulfill our promises to the community.

Mutual aid is based on the idea that communities work best through voluntary reciprocal cooperation, especially when systemic oppression proves debilitating to other forms of community engagement. We also recognize that the system is often designed to fail, and so we prepare to help each other. The Middletown Mutual Aid Collective recognizes and honors the Black and Indigenous traditions of mutual aid, and the distinct ideological practice as separate from traditions of patriarchal government systems.  Beyond the obviously dire circumstances presented by COVID-19, many Middletown residents regularly experience significant economic hardship and have needs not addressed by the government, and we will be organizing during all chaotic events as they come.