Rogers Park Food Not Bombs & Mutual Aid Fund

Why do we need funding?

We are raising funds for supplies for Rogers Park Food Not Bombs and the Rogers Park and West Ridge Mutual Aid Network to help support our communities during the COVID-19 crisis. Funds raised will be used to support the following, listed in order of priority:

1) Supplies for Rogers Park Food Not Bombs  to continue to safely collect donations and distribute them. FNB is taking maximum safety precautions, which means they need supplies such as masks, gloves, sanitizer,disinfectant, and paper towels as well as labels and bags to individually package groceries and gas to deliver them where they are needed.

2) Supplies and sanitation care packages for houseless encampments across the North Side .

3) Emergency supplies for those in immediate need.

4) General fund for assistance for houseless and/or undocumented persons across Chicago.

If you would like to join our mutual aid network, you can sign up here or email [email redacted] to join us and begin practicing mutual aid  and building bonds with your neighbors.

Who are we and what are we doing?
We (and that includes you!) are working with a city-wide effort generated from the mutual aid volunteer sign up sheet linked above. We've divided the volunteer energy from this into distinct, but interconnected, mutual aid networks in each neighborhood and area of the city.  

Each neighborhood is helping folks develop hyper-localized pods to care for one another. We will also be developing working groups around issues such as: designing flyers to better reach those who need help; housing and tenants unions; support for those who are elderly, immune-compromised, disabled, and/or houseless; and so on.

If you're unfamiliar with mutual aid, we suggest starting here with Big Door Brigade's What is mutual aid?  The idea behind our efforts is to organize an inter-connected web of autonomous mutual aid networks across the city that are in communication with each other.

The "autonomous" part indicates 3 shared commitments/tactics: 1) a focus on decentralized, local efforts forming a web of lasting community bonds without need of mediation; 2) a resistance to hierarchical structures and organizing; and 3) a commitment to the idea that we build joy and power in forming bonds of solidarity with one another and organizing our lives in common.

We are hopeful that these efforts will not only better prepare us to make it through these difficult times, but help us work toward building the worlds we want to create and share in the future.

[Image description of banner at top of page: Bold red block lettering on white background from a screen print made at P.O. Box Collective. Lettering reads, "The only way to survive is to take care of each other," Grace Lee Boggs. Above the lettering, a red silhouette of arms reaching up with fists formed in solidarity.]


[Image description: Three from Food Not Bombs are arranged in a block; the photos on the left are small; the photo on the right is large. Top left photo shows several full green plastic grocery bags full of food and three spray bottles of disinfectant. Bottom left photo shows flyers on a white table. Flyers are black print on white paper that read, "Produce must be washed with soap and water, then rinsed. WASH HANDS." On top of the flyers are two small green bottles of hand sanitizer. The large photo on the right shows three Food Not Bombs volunteers standing outside a building behind long white plastic tables used for food distribution. The windows of the building are covered in flyers. There is a large banner hung on a railing next to the volunteers with green, black, orange, red, and grey letters that say, "Feed each other, free each other. Food Not Bombs." ]