Disaster Anarchy Mutual Aid and Radical Action

• Main Author: Firth, Rhiannon (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Pluto Press 2022
• Subjects: Social impact of disasters; Social welfare & social services; Political activism; Natural disasters; grenfell tower disaster, grenfell tower fire, hurricane katrina, mutual aid programs, anarchism and disasters, disaster risk reduction, DiY politics, Dystopia, Occupy London, Anarchism and women, security studies, securitization, open source, Occupy Movement, hacktivism, disasters, disaster capitalism, degrowth, Covid-19, cybernetics, disaster studies, Climate disasters, Hurricanes, Kropotkin, Occupy Wall Street, Social movements, Surveillance capitalism, Utopianism, Occupy Sandy, Anti-capitalism, Climate change, Climate crisis, communisation, cooperative movement, cooperatives, counterinsurgency, Anarchism in the 21st century, Modern anarchism, Feminist anarchism, Grenfell tower, Hurricane sandy, Anarchism and community, How to be an anarchist, Practical anarchism, Mutual aid, Anarchism in everyday life, Mutual aid vs charity, female anarchist authors, anarcho-feminism, anarchist utopia, militant solidarity, community organizing, what is disaster capitalism?, what is antifa?, what is mutual aid?, How to build a co-op, Intentional communities, Anarchist response to crisis, What is mutual aid, Community Building, Preppers, direct action
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Anarchists have been central in helping communities ravaged by disasters, stepping in when governments wash their hands of the victims. Looking at Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and the social movements that mobilised relief in their wake, Disaster Anarchy is an inspiring and alarming book about collective solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world. As climate change and neoliberalism converge, mutual aid networks, grassroots direct action, occupations and brigades have sprung up in response to this crisis with considerable success. Occupy Sandy was widely acknowledged to have organised relief more effectively than federal agencies or NGOs, and following Covid-19 the term 'mutual aid' entered common parlance. However, anarchist-inspired relief has not gone unnoticed by government agencies. Their responses include surveillance, co-option, extending at times to violent repression involving police brutality. Arguing that disaster anarchy is one of the most important political phenomena to emerge in the twenty-first century, Rhiannon Firth shows through her research on and within these movements that anarchist theory and practice is needed to protect ourselves from the disasters of our unequal and destructive economic system.