About this Event
About the Book
Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.
Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.
Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.
This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.
About the Author
Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation and end policing, border enforcement, and war for the past 25 years. He is the author of , and , and the director of , which can be watched free online with English captions or subtitles in several languages. His new book was released in 2025, and the second, newly is out now. You can listen to his new podcast here.
About Kijua Sanders-McMurtry
Dr. Kijua Sanders-McMurtry serves as the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion at Mount Holyoke College. Originally from Pasadena, California, Sanders-McMurtry was inspired to become a full-time diversity educator after the deaths of Sakia Gunn and Matthew Shepard. Both individuals were targeted and killed because of their gender and sexual identities. Since that time, she has become a nationally recognized advocate for diversity and inclusion.
Sanders-McMurtry holds a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies, a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies, as well as Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology from Georgia State University. A high school dropout, she credits her non-traditional academic journey to her mentors at Pasadena City College, where she completed an associate’s degree in social sciences.
Event venue & nearby stays
Odyssey Bookshop, 9 College Street, South Hadley, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.