Ever pushed down on the brake pedal, heard that grinding noise and felt the pit of the stomach dread? Your car needs a brake job, but it’ll cost you a couple of hundred dollars, and you don’t have the money. You know the parts are less than fifty bucks, but you lack the skills and tools to do the job. For a lot of community residents, a two-hundred-dollar car repair cascades into a late rent payment, missing work, or skipping meals.
That’s where MoCo Mutual Aid can step in. More than a support group, mutual aid is a living testament to the power of community-driven solidarity. In just over a year, our local grassroots collective, coordinated by Aaron Casper, Jazerik Garman, Jo Reabe, Kay Whetstone, and Aaron Morrison, has grown into a vibrant network where neighbors rally to care for one another.
Whetstone and Morrison explained that mutual aid is an idea as ancient as humanity. It centers on the belief that people thrive through cooperation rather than competition. MoCo Mutual Aid stands firmly on this principle, offering a counter-narrative to the prevailing social and economic systems that often leave society’s most vulnerable behind. In the words of Morrison, “If anything, our hope is to remind people that we don’t have to be competing against each other, that we can work together more so than as individuals to try to get people’s needs met.”
Unlike charity models, the group’s admin team sees its role not as benefactors but as facilitators. The community itself identifies and responds to needs in real time, primarily through its strong Facebook presence and other in-person outlets.
“It’s based on what the community responds to. We have leaders within the group, but it’s based on what the community responds to on our Facebook posts. People post about need and the community itself meets those needs,” said Whetstone.
The group has organized the water cooler project, providing bottles of water during recent heat spikes, and cooperative gardening, with more ideas on the horizon. Additionally, the admins monitor individual requests posted on the page. In the spirit of solidarity, requests are often posted on behalf of other community members. One such post appealed for labor on that brake job; in response, someone purchased parts, and another person installed them.
MoCo Mutual Aid is not a non-profit organization. It is an association of people whose “primary focus (at this time) is on being a ‘clearinghouse’ of support for local mutual aid projects and to empower people to start/participate in their own mutual aid projects.” Decision-making is consensus-driven and requires a foundation of trust.
The admins juggle full-time careers while stewarding the association’s growth—a feat requiring strategic foresight and grassroots engagement. Whetstone’s focus is on community development, infrastructure and strategic planning, seeking out emergent needs and spinning up projects that, once mature, become self-sustaining. Morrison, meanwhile, concentrates on long-term sustainability—building a generative group culture where leadership and responsibilities are continually passed down and shared, preventing burnout and centering a diversity of voices.
Recently, MoCo Mutual Aid ratified a new code of conduct and an organizing handbook, demonstrating their commitment to inclusive, accountable leadership. “I want this to exist long after we were involved,” said Morrison. He envisions a sustainable organization where new leaders are developed, and it’s not reliant on the same group of people.
Their impact surfaces in tangible successes across Montgomery County: the highly visible “bright pink cooler” water project blossomed outside the local library. These visible projects foster low-risk trust, empowering residents to turn to their neighbors—as Whetstone said “When times are tough, they can turn to their neighbor, they can turn to people within their community and know that they’ll be safe”.
Yet, the realities are sometimes heartbreaking—a sentiment that comes alive in Whetstone’s account from their family’s gaming store. Whetstone recounted, “It’s heartbreaking when you have a parent come in with their card binder to sell cards, and their young child is with them. Parent is picking out cards, and young child throws their binder up on the counter and says, ‘I can help too.’ That’s a special type of heartbreaking when you have someone so young taking accountability for a broken system.” The severity of such trends, Whetstone noted, echoes the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic, signaling a deepening crisis.
MoCo Mutual Aid creates space for community members who might otherwise be sidelined from traditional volunteer avenues. Whetstone, a social worker by profession, values how this space empowers those with varied backgrounds, allowing even those with criminal justice histories opportunities to show up for others—subverting the gatekeeping that is often present in nonprofits. Neighbors who receive help often quickly turn around to help others, fostering a cycle of redemption and dignity.
Facebook activity is telling: where other local online groups might stigmatize those asking for support, MoCo Mutual Aid upholds strong moderation and empathy, ensuring requests are met with affirmation rather than judgment.
MoCo Mutual Aid’s organizers are frank about the limits of mutual aid in addressing entrenched systemic injustices. Challenges with affordable housing, laws that favor landlords over tenants and rising rents are reminders of problems that only policy change can truly resolve. Whetstone dreams of empowering tenants to organize unions, particularly as local apartment complexes face new ownership and higher costs, but acknowledges that such efforts can only go so far without broader reform.
MoCo Mutual Aid is open to all, with the caveat that everyone remains respectful and honors the core values: solidarity, not charity; accountability; transparency; and growth.
Volunteers and beneficiaries range across the political spectrum—Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, leftists—united in their desire to help neighbors. As Morrison echoes Frederick Douglass: “We’ll work with anybody who wants to do right”.
Looking ahead, both Whetstone and Morrison believe that MoCo Mutual Aid’s strength lies in the diversity and engagement of its members. “The strength of the community is really in how many people buy into it and the relationships we build with each other along the way,” said Whetstone. For them, the goal is a robust mutual aid infrastructure that’s here to stay, owned and sustained not by a few leaders, but by the entire community.
As MoCo Mutual Aid continues its evolution, its members aim for a movement built not just for crisis, but for the everyday dignity of all Montgomery County neighbors.