@chielk

Thank you for sharing your experience and thank you for showing up for your friend. Funnily enough, this is the second time I have encountered someone who interprets mutuality into something that resembles a transactional relationship or equal exchange. Mutuality in mutual aid isn’t that. If it were, it could never exist under occupation or anywhere else where the state fails its people, and the doubt would make sense. That same equal-exchange logic is what produces the suspicion, scam accusations, surveillance, and policing of the poor aimed at Palestinian campaigns and any mutual aid requests.
Mutuality is shared fate: recognising the humanity, the dignity of fellow human beings unconditionally, showing up, listening, refusing to let someone starve alone. Mutual aid at its core is anti-capitalist; interpreting it as something resembling a transactional relationship is the capitalist within ourselves, I think 🥹 I remember when I first had a mutual aid request, there was that shame too, ngl. I got over it eventually. Wanting to survive isn’t shameful. And your friend’s shame is a reflection of how occupation and charity logic (or “donor economy”, as I described in the article) impose hierarchy and of what that system does to dignity. Not a verdict on either of you.