At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parkdale resident Bernadette Nunez found herself up against a series of unprecedented challenges. She had unexpectedly lost her job, and as schools went into lockdown, she struggled to support her two children living with disabilities through online learning.
“I was on the verge of getting evicted because [people] were complaining about noises that my children were making,” Nunez said.
To top things off, she didn’t have a cell phone or internet connection, leaving her disconnected from the outside world. Fortunately, Nunez was able to get in touch with some members of her local community who had recently started a mutual aid network.
“Mutual aid really helped me,” Nunez said, recalling her surprise and relief when a stranger from Scarborough delivered a cell phone all the way to her Parkdale apartment. “There are good people out there that will really come to your aid.”
Nunez’s experience made her realize that many of her neighbours might be navigating similar situations on their own and wanted to help. Soon after, she joined Mutual Aid Parkdale — working to help ensure that no one in her community was left to cope with the pandemic alone.
“There are lots of people [who are] ashamed to ask for help. If I didn’t get in touch with my community, I don’t know who I would have turned to,” Nunez said.
Neighbours helping neighbours
Mutual Aid Parkdale (MAP) held its first meeting in March 2020, just after the start of Toronto’s COVID-19 lockdowns. Its founding members had been organizing in Parkdale for years and knew that many people, especially those living with disabilities, elderly folks, single parents and precarious workers, would struggle to meet their basic needs during the pandemic.
The founders of MAP drew on their personal connections to organize mutual aid in their neighbourhoods and built communities from existing networks. From there, MAP members broke off into smaller “neighbourhood pods” or groups of geographically connected people, often living in the same building or housing complex.
Pod leader Ana Teresa Portillo, a community benefits organizer who also works with the Parkdale People’s Economy (PPE) and other advocacy groups, described neighbourhood pods as a “collection of neighbours who reach out to each other to provide material and social support for one another.”
MAP pod members communicated through WhatsApp, where they could ask for help when needed and offer support when able. Being part of a pod meant that you had other people looking out for your well-being, which was critical for those facing food or housing insecurity.
“Some group members helped deliver groceries to seniors who were struggling during the pandemic,” Nadia Rajaram, another MAP pod leader, said.
Nunez added that for many people facing housing insecurity or eviction, “instead of spending money to purchase food, they saved it to pay rent.” She found herself knocking on neighbours’ doors, trying “to see who needed help, extra food.”
These issues are not unique to Parkdale, however, and recur across other low-income Toronto neighbourhoods.
“In Davenport, a lot of folks were facing food insecurity, and so people used their pods to support neighbours struggling to access food,” Nahum Mann, a Davenport-based organizer who helped start the Davenport Mutual Aid Network, said. “It was about creating spaces for people to … share their resources and create new resources as those conversations were happening.”
Over the next few years, some members began transitioning this energy away from their pods and toward the broader Davenport community, according to Mann. “The people that wanted to cook meals, for instance, started to cook and deliver meals for the encampment that was in Dufferin Grove Park,” he said.
“We’re reaching out to support each other but we’re also asking critical questions: Why is it that people don’t have the basic necessities that they need in a country with so much wealth?”
MAP pod leader Ana Teresa Portillo, a community benefits organizer who also works with other advocacy groups.
We keep each other safe
While resource-sharing and economic support are often the most urgent work of mutual aid, another critical piece is around community safety. This work is invaluable, but it brings up the question of why mutual aid is needed in the first place.
For many marginalized people, especially Black and Indigenous folks and those living with mental health issues, a police presence in their neighbourhood could be harmful and even dangerous. For this reason, it can be empowering for these communities to self-determine what safety looks like for them.
“One of the big principles of mutual aid is this idea that we keep each other safe.”
Nahum Mann, an organizer who helped start the Davenport Mutual Aid Network.
In summer 2020, when many people were first learning about concepts like defunding the police and prison abolition, some Toronto pods began exploring how police-free community safety might work in practice. “They took a big look at ‘what does that actually look like on our street?’” Mann said. “They started to have some conversations and develop some educational resources around community safety.”
Mann stressed that this kind of work takes commitment and honesty. “It’s about talking face to face with folks. It’s about listening,” he said. “It takes a certain kind of work to face those conversations with people who are pro-police.”
Mann added that “the reality of living in a police-free world” is that people need to be prepared to respond to abuse and violence within their communities. He recalled a time when a local business, whose owners were vocal advocates for the Free Palestine movement, was targeted by a Pro-Israel organization. At one point a brick was thrown through the store’s window, but the owners didn’t want to press charges. Instead, the community group mobilized a rapid-response defence, as opposed to getting the police involved, according to Mann.
Similarly, when several women were attacked around Roncesvalles in July 2020, MAP rushed to organize a series of meetings and workshops on women’s safety. Rajaram, who helped lead this work, said that MAP focused on determining how to keep women safe without getting the police involved.
Mutual aid in the age of COVID-19
While many of Toronto’s mutual aid networks were formed as a response to the pandemic, it is important to note that mutual aid has a long and robust history in the city.
“Mutual aid has become a very popular term through the pandemic, but actually, it has been happening in Toronto communities for decades and decades.”
Nahum Mann, an organizer who helped start the Davenport Mutual Aid Network.
In particular, mutual aid has been practiced in BIPOC communities, low-income communities, disabled communities, and other communities facing social and economic oppression.
“All of these communities deeply understand that they are not here by coincidence, that they are the target of a system that uses poverty and displacement, and that profits off of the backs of their work,” Mann said.
Unsurprisingly, members of these communities generally faced the highest infection rates and the biggest risks during the pandemic. “For those communities, the work of taking care of each other … has not really changed through the pandemic. It’s just been noticed,” he added.
Over the past year or so, however, Mann noticed that participation and interest in neighbourhood pods had waned. For those who no longer feel threatened by COVID-19, it may feel like the work of mutual aid has become less urgent.
“When the crisis seems less acute, people can go back to their comforts,” Mann said. “This is a big challenge for organizers: how to continue to engage with communities that benefit from the status quo.”
While life has gone back to normal for some people in Toronto, others continue to face daily struggles. For these folks, mutual aid didn’t stop with the lifting of lockdown measures.
Getting involved
Those who want to participate in neighbourhood pods can check out maps of local pods or start one in their area. A useful resource is Neighbourhood Pods Toronto, a city-wide pod-mapping project founded by Mann.
Currently, Mutual Aid Parkdale is recruiting new members, as many MAP pod leaders are on the verge of burnout, according to Nunez. Plus, there are plenty of other neighbourhood pod networks across Toronto, including North of Bloor Mutual Aid and Kensington–Windsor Terrace Mutual Aid, as well as other mutual aid organizations, including the Parkdale Encampment Support Network, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and the All Lawyers Are Bad resource clinic.
Mutual aid doesn’t have to be so formal, however, and can be as simple as “friendly check-ins” with the people around you, according to Nunez. “Some people don’t realize that just saying hi to your neighbours, just making sure that they are okay, is also an act of mutual aid,” she said.
“It’s not just delivering groceries to your neighbour — it’s the idea that … you have a responsibility and a role in your community. It’s mutual, so it’s a back and forth in terms of how it grows,” Mann said. Rajaram echoed that mutual aid is a give-and-take: “It’s about solidarity, not charity,” she said.
According to the organizers, it’s essential that people interested in mutual aid cultivate genuine connections with members of their community. While this can be difficult work, Mann stressed that it has to be done.
“Almost every pod in Toronto started with putting little slips of paper in people’s mailboxes or under their doors and just inviting them to reach out if they needed things,” Mann said. “At the end of the day, it really comes down to actually going outside and talking to people you don’t know.”
