About Syracuse DSA’s Mutual Aid Committee
One of our longest running and most popular mutual aid projects is our free store (lovingly named in honor of founding member and former co-chair, Sonny Fantacone.) At its core, a free store demonstrates the basics of what we as Democratic Socialists believe people and communities can do to provide for one another. If we are more willing to give of ourselves and our excess to our fellow humans instead of to landfills, then our society as a whole will prosper. To that end, we accept donations of food, clothing, and other goods and, when we have enough and the opportunity presents itself, we set up a "Free Store"!
Our first Free Store in tandem with the Southside’s FAHNN Winter Market
Another long term project we have in the mutual aid committee is our commitment to providing marshaling services to not just other DSA committees, but also other community groups that may reach out to us to ask for help. Here at Syracuse DSA’s Mutual Aid Committee, we firmly believe in the “We Keep Us Safe” model, and will do our best to send our trained marshals where they are needed, when they are needed, so long as the event we’re being asked to marshal aligns with the things that we as a group support.
We try to address abolition from a point of praxis. Learning about the Prison Industrial complex, how it affects every part of our society and how we can directly work against it is important, but at Syracuse DSA we believe in teaching and learning about other ways to fight back. Our most popular resource is our 911 Alternatives sheet, which provides exactly what it says: all sorts of alternatives to calling 911 in various situations. To that same end, through our Care, Not Cops and Community Defense Project, we call on experts to teach us how to not only be more self-reliant, but also how to be more community reliant. In the past we’ve offered things like Stop The Bleed trainings, Narcan trainings, Marshaling trainings, “Basics of Occupational Therapy”, “What is Harm Reduction”, How to do Water-Bath Canning at Home, and other such skill-building events that all work towards building a stronger community. Taking the power away from the authorities and giving it back to the people. We aim to continue the skill-building events as a coalitional project with other community groups moving forward.