“Solidarity, not charity,” Kay Whetstone, one of the founding members of MoCo Mutual Aid, told the Lunch with the League attendees on April 10. MoCo Mutual Aid is a grassroots, neighbor‑to‑neighbor network that helps county residents meet immediate needs by sharing time, skills and resources directly with one another, rather than routing everything through a traditional nonprofit or government program.
A few months ago, a woman caring for her mother, who has dementia, received notice from the city that she had to clear the trash bags off her mother’s lawn within two weeks. The woman was cleaning her mother’s house and fixing it up. She couldn’t afford a $300 trash bin, nor could she set out all the trash that week. The city places a limit on the total number of bags it will pick up at any one home.
She put out an appeal for help, and members of MoCo Mutual Aid organized help. They picked up bags, bought trash stickers and put the bags out with their own trash.
MoCo Mutual Aid formed about a year ago as a community‑run Facebook group where people can post needs—food, rides, help with a bill—and other residents step in directly to help. It is not a non-profit. There’s no office, treasurer, bank account or paid staff. Money and goods move person‑to‑person instead of through the organization. Every donation, whether it’s water for the coolers around town, food, help repairing a broken item, or cash to cover a motel room for someone who is homeless, has either been donated or loaned by community members. In its first year, the group has distributed at least 1,002 bottles of water between August and November alone through “water box” stations, not counting summer months or newer sites like Linden.
MoCo Mutual Aid has emerged in a county historically proud of its rugged individualism. But the need in Montgomery County is real and has been growing. The average rent increased by about 12 percent from 2020 to 2023. In 2023, just under 10 percent of residents of all incomes lacked health[SG1] insurance. In 2024, about 10 percent of the residents lived below the poverty rate, but the rate for children was 13 percent. A little over 2,800 residents rely on SNAP for nutrition.
Administered by a small board of local volunteers—currently Aaron Casper, Jazerik Garman, Aaron Morrison and Kay Whetstone— MoCo Mutual Aid is seeking a fifth board member.
The board members moderate the Facebook space, upholding the community rules — such as “avoid judgment,” “be clear about your requests,” “either help, or don’t comment on posts,” and “don’t be a bigot.” Sometimes they submit anonymous requests on behalf of people who cannot or do not want to post themselves. The group has grown to roughly 380 members in its first year, with only one person banned for violating the basic respect rules.
The local group is founded on an idea that goes back centuries. In the 18th and 19th centuries, mutual aid looked like the Free African Society[SG2] , which provided education, banking, and health care to free Black Americans in Philadelphia because they were shut out of services. In the 1960’s, it was the Black Panther Party providing food and support for urban communities.
Mutual aid has been reinvigorated in times of crisis. Organizer and author Dean Spade defines mutual aid as “a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions by building new social relations that are more survivable.” Mutual aid is not a charity project funded by wealthy donors. It’s a way for ordinary people to meet each other’s needs and challenge the systems that produce poverty and exclusion.
Charity and mutual aid differ in key ways. Charity is top‑down, with wealthy people or institutions providing funds, serving as deciders of who is “deserving” and attaching conditions to help. In contrast, mutual aid is horizontal and rooted in solidarity. Charity often treats poverty as an individual failing and reinforces existing hierarchies; mutual aid assumes the system is the problem and says everyone deserves what they need. Charity tends to funnel support through organizations and professional helpers, while mutual aid prioritizes person‑to‑person relationships and long‑term community ties. Mutual aid—neighbors helping neighbors—seeks to cover the nooks and crannies of unmet need that non-profits and social safety nets cannot.
Locally, mutual aid shows up in the increasing number of little free food pantries, along with water coolers. Outside MoCo, mutual aid looks like “sharing sheds” where neighbors loan and borrow tools, mowers, and other items. In many ways, it’s common sense. Not every household needs every tool at the same time—why not share one well‑maintained lawn mower instead of many?
It’s not just food, shelter, and repairs that MoCo Mutual Aid members have provided. They coordinate rides for medical appointments, filling gaps in chronically limited transportation. When an apartment complex accidentally sprayed herbicide on a young couple’s garden, neighbors donated soil and plants so they could rebuild; the couple later shared extra produce with FISH. The group has also distributed more than 1,000 “red cards” explaining legal rights in encounters with police or immigration officers, in multiple languages.
All of this is coordinated largely through the Facebook interface, where users can tag MoCo Mutual Aid when they see someone being ridiculed or ignored in local “chatter” groups. The goal is to change the culture, to build a stronger community and keep people from falling into the gaps.
Notably, MoCo Mutual Aid is committed to including people who are often excluded from formal volunteerism and leadership. The idea is to keep participation simple and with low barriers. In her presentation, Whetstone shared the story of Robert, a neighbor who cooks omelets at St. John’s, provides sound for local protests, teaches people to drive, and stays civically engaged, yet whose history with the criminal legal system would bar him from many traditional volunteer roles.
Whetstone reminded Lunch with the League attendees that the goal is as simple and old-fashioned as “helping your neighbor with a cup of sugar,” regardless of their history, ethnicity or identity. In fact, it binds together people in a county where the cost of living is rising and formal systems will never catch every falling person. MoCo Mutual Aid offers a simple invitation: show up as you are, give what you can, ask when you need help, and help build the kind of Montgomery County where no one has to navigate crisis alone.