Via Pass The Mic:
To Black community members: Pass the Mic is currently accepting fund requests! Please visit the “BLACK MUTUAL AID FUND” link within https://linktr.ee/passthemicskid
During this past summer, my social media feeds have exploded with posts concerning activism and allyship in conjunction with the Black Lives Matter movement. Skidmore’s core clubs and organizations have shown their continuous commitment to the movement, and have remained proactive in organizing actions that will address the systemic racism embedded within Skidmore. Pass The Mic, a social justice platform at Skidmore, has been no exception with their Black Mutual Aid Fund.
Pass The Mic functions as a space on campus that aims to amplify the unfiltered experiences of Skidmore students whose voices are underrepresented in other spaces. When I interviewed Darryl Bronner, a Junior at Skidmore and Treasurer for the Mutual Aid Fund, they described Pass The Mic’s position on campus as “an affinity space and platform for students with limited or conditional access to other platforms, particularly but not limited to BIPOC students, students of marginalized genders, disabled students, immigrants, and refugees.”
When scrolling through their website and social media pages, it is obvious that the team behind Pass the Mic is dedicated to their social justice work, acting as a space of power and positionality for many.
In mid-July, Pass the Mic launched their Black Mutual Aid Fund. Immediately, there were numerous Instagram stories on my timeline that featured the original post about the initiative, encouraging white Skidmore students to contribute to the fund. Through my feed, it seemed that Skidmore students showed their support for the fund’s goals.
The fund has gained considerable traction within the Skidmore community, and so far, Pass The Mic has raised $11,000.
In our interview, Darryl emphasized the important notion that mutual aid should not be equated to charitable donations. Rather, they explained that “this mutual aid is intended to express solidarity to Skidmore’s Black community members and the Black Lives Matter movement, acting as one of many means to continue the work of resistance.”
They went on to describe mutual aid as a “tactic and a politic [that] has its roots in resisting hegemonic values of individualism, a mindset that tells the worker that their individual security is worth sacrificing their community and health for a benefit that may never come. Mutual aid addresses this mythos by acknowledging that under racial capitalism, one’s wealth is falsely assumed to be earned; to remedy intracommunal exploitation we owe it to others to financially liberate them.”
Darryl’s words reinforce the idea that mutual aid should be recognized as a community-led effort to alleviate the tremendous need that exists due to systems upheld by systemic racial bias. As we have seen, the current COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant rise in unemployment rates, housing insecurity and widened the gap in wealth inequality. Even more so, COVID-19 has caused more devastating circumstances for BIPOC and Black communities, creating a more pressing need for redistribution of wealth.
Ultimately, the goal of the Mutual Aid Fund is to redistribute reparations to Black individuals who have not had equal financial opportunities. As Darryl stated: “Black people have been historically denied access to livable wages and projects such as reparation and practicing mutual aid allows people to show up beyond mere words.”
According to Darryl, the contributions to the fund thus far have been promising. They shared that “rather than an influx of donations within the first few days and simply ending there, we have some contributors willing to give multiple times as well as sharing online and I believe that sort of intention is very important.”
Of course, the fund’s current net worth does not mark the end of its initiative, and there continues to be necessary action that Skidmore students, faculty, and alumni must uphold to combat racial injustice. The Mutual Aid Fund should act as one step in an inexhaustive list of sustainable efforts to accomplish further action for racial justice within Skidmore’s community.
Pass The Mic intends on continuing their work to uplift the Black community, and plan on broadcasting future initiatives along a similar vein as the Black Mutual Aid Fund. In fact, they have organized a protest for the first day of classes (August 24th) that will demonstrate the continuing activism that exists in the Skidmore student body. You can find more specific information about the protest on their Instagram page (@passthemicskid) where they are most active.