By: Derek Ludovici

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It was a particularly muggy late spring afternoon in 2022 in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan. A rally, followed by a march starting in the park was called for that day in protest of the violent sweeps of homeless encampments initiated by Mayor Eric Adams earlier that year. The location of the park was symbolic. The 1988 Tompkins Square Park Riot was a homeless sweep that turned into clashes with the police. More than thirty years later, these commons had once again become the target of anti-homeless policies. For weeks, the police had been clearing out the homeless and activists attempting to protect the encampments. Sanitation vehicles aided in these raids, trashing the tents, blankets and whatever else homeless individuals could not salvage. Between March 18th and August 31st of that year, the city cleared 2,331 camps. Yet, despite city workers reaching out to 1,442 people at the encampments, only 97 people accepted shelter.

That day, our mutual aid group’s collectively owned truck, decorated in graffiti by local artists, pulled into an illegal spot across from the gathering of activists and homeless who had made the park their residence. Activists on the scene helped grab the tables, coolers of water, and other items we intended to distribute that day as we unloaded the truck and hoisted them over a chest-high fence dividing the park from the sidewalk. Throughout the afternoon, we handed out sleeping bags, tents, backpacks, hygiene kits, and black adjustable caps, among other items regularly confiscated or destroyed during these sweeps. Water and snacks were on display for anyone to take. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), mainly masks and sanitizer but also Advil, was available. Aerosol bottles of sunscreen were readily used as the sun was particularly harsh, cutting through the hazy sky. All these items, which had been purchased through donated funds or collected through in-kind donations, were free for whoever needed them: protesters and passersby alike. No questions asked. By the time the march stepped off from the park, most of the supplies we brought had been distributed and we returned to Queens to drop off empty bins and park the truck.

“I especially engage with mutual aid groups coming out of the Covid-19 crisis and the values that shape their work. These values lie in the acts of solidarity of supporting protests through the distribution of supplies. They also manifest through non-hierarchical acts of distribution, that is, the refusal of means testing, policing needs or paperwork. ”

In this vignette, I am centering the gaze of our group, whose labor and ethics of distribution encapsulated the definition of mutual aid as the “collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually from the awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them” (Spade 2020, 7). I especially engage with mutual aid groups coming out of the Covid-19 crisis and the values that shape their work. These values lie in the acts of solidarity of supporting protests through the distribution of supplies. They also manifest through non-hierarchical acts of distribution, that is, the refusal of means testing, policing needs or paperwork. Finally, there is a politicization of abundance, mobilized by mutual aid organizations as a response to municipal policies of austerity in the wake of the pandemic.

Here, I focus on two interrelated parts of Eric Adams’s political agenda, for which he and his administration invoked a language of crisis: increased homelessness and the resettlement of asylum seekers. This rhetoric legitimized budget cuts and increased policing as solutions to the city’s problems, while also construing the very populations in need of help as lacking agency and autonomy. Mutual aid organizations countered these strategies by supporting the autonomous political organizing of those most affected by the mayor’s agenda. They also acted prefiguratively, directly providing aid that they called on the city to provide. My analysis draws on my dual role as both an organizer of various mutual aid groups and an ethnographer completing my dissertation research on the same topic. I turn now to the so-called “migrant crisis.”

Invoking the Crisis

Starting in June 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbot began bussing asylum-seeking migrants from Texas border towns to so-called “sanctuary cities,” cities that ostensibly made a promise not to cooperate with federal attempts to deport migrants. Many of the migrants who found themselves on these buses claimed that they were misinformed about the destination and the resources that would be available there. At the time of writing, more than 51,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City, with at least 31,000 in the city’s care.

As Janet Roitman writes, “crisis is an observation that produces meaning. […] When crisis is posited as the very condition of contemporary situations, certain questions become possible while others are foreclosed” (2013, 41). The Adams administration framed the influx of migrants as a “crisis,” using it as a discursive shock, laying out the necessity for austerity before implementing it. During a press conference in February 2023, for instance, a reporter asked if there would be enough money in the city’s budget to expand curbside compost pickup from a pilot program to a city-wide initiative. The mayor immediately reminded the press-corps that “we are in a migrant crisis:”

 

When it comes down to budget, I can’t promise anything. The asylum seekers this year, $1.4 billion. Next fiscal year, $2.8 billion. I cannot promise anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen at the border. I said it before and I’m going to continue to say it, and I’m hoping — I’m happy to see a lot of my colleagues are now joining me. We need the federal government to get involved. This is going to impact every service New Yorkers receive. Every service. My goal is not to hurt those services that we could use to benefit our city, but everything we must look at. I have to continue to manage this real budget crisis we are having and it’s being aggravated by the asylum crisis. (Adams 2/1/2023)

For Adams, the arrival of asylum-seeking migrants provided a justification for drastic budget cuts. His administration had already unilaterally slashed the budget mid-fiscal year a month prior, putting some of the largest cuts on educational services such as schools, colleges and libraries. There was one exemption for uniformed positions like police officers, citing a crime surge: “one thing we cannot ever compromise on and that’s safety.” Despite the calls for belt tightening in other agencies, on April 6th, 2023, the administration settled a contract awarding police officers from the Patrolmen Benevolent Association a base salary of $130