Feeding homeless people is also a form of praxis. Even if you aren’t arming for the revolution, you are still contributing to fighting against capitalism.
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Remember, any revolutionary organization that does good for their community is inherently contributing towards the class consciousness of their community. It helps shatter the myth that the capitalist gives bread and provides a direct path for said organization to also provide other services such as a theory reading group.
To add onto this:
Most cities often have a group that renders mutual aid directly to those most in need, and they would love your help. Food Not Bombs is the most well known, and they have an index you can search to find one local to your area.
If you don’t have one in your area, you and some friends could start your own Food Not Bombs chapter instead! Alternatively, a local church who is already assisting the homeless can be a good place to find an established group, even if you’re not religious.
For people in need while on your way to work or the grocery store, assembling Care Packages can allow you to immediately render useful aid. The contents of a care package will be determined by your area and the needs of the people you’re looking to give them to. Chatting with a person in need and asking them what would be most helpful to them is one of the best ways to narrow down the essentials, and avoid things that won’t actually be of much use.
But there are generally a few universal things that will always be appreciated.
🔻 General Care Package Contents 🔻
- Socks! - This is often the most requested aid, as they prevent blisters, and wear quickly due to constant use and frequent walking. Used socks are fine as long as they’re washed and clean. For colder or wet climates, wool socks are vastly preferred, as they have anti-bacterial properties, and still provides warmth even when wet.
- Hygiene supplies - Things like a bar of soap (with sealable bag to store it when wet), deodorant, babywipes, a washcloth, toothbrush and paste, rinseless body wipes, comb.
- Menstrual hygiene supplies.
- Over-the-counter Medical supplies - Painkillers, bandages, antibiotic ointment, rubbing alcohol.
- Calorie-dense non-perishable food - This often takes the form of canned foods (ensure they have a pull tab!), protein bars, or dehydrated fruits. Try to avoid hard or crunchy food, as it’s possible the person you’re trying to help may have active dental issues that may not allow them to chew those types of foods. Softer foods are preferred.
- Electrolyte drinks or drink packets - Especially needed in hotter climates where electrolyes will be constantly lost through sweat, and can be life threatening if not replaced. Ones with sugar tend to have more calories, but may not be usable by those with diabetes, so it may be a good idea to have some with alternative sweeteners as well.
- Money - Cash can drastically increase the quality of life of someone without access to an income, and allow them to obtain the things they need most when they need it. Any amount you can afford is useful.
- Backpacks - If they don’t already have one, a backpack is generally much appreciated to help carry around the supplies in your care package. You can often find them used at thrift stores.
- Petfood - Catfood is preferable to dogfood, as catfood can be eaten by either dogs or cats, while the same can sometimes not be true for dogfood. People with a pet companion will be quite grateful.
- Resealable Waterproof bag - Something like a large ziplock so that they have a waterproof place to protect their supplies.
Lastly, if you have access to a printer, try to include a page of resources such as a list of local mutual aid groups where they can obtain more help in the future, along with their address and times that they operate. On the opposite side, a map of your area and any local public transit routes and timetables would also likely be useful.
The single most useful thing you can contribute is your self, your time and energy. There’s a powerful, universal need to know and be known, and in the process of meeting it you’ll get a direct sense of what material needs you can best help meet yourself. I helped with paperwork/minor repairs to get three different crews set up in abandoned beaters I saw walking around last year. You don’t have to be homeless to walk into the warming shelter and just start participating. Cannot recommend it enough, especially if you’re feeling isolated or getting too much screen time. You are wanted, you are needed, and you can be someone’s hero.
Not to be pedantic, but assuming you are purchasing that food isn’t it still contributing to capitalism? Therefore, also grow your own food and share with those in need
Edit: I’m not saying this in a defeatist manner, but simply that if the point is to reduce contributing to capitalism, buying someone a McDonald’s meal still contributes.
Help feed your local unhoused folks either way.
assuming you are purchasing that food
So far in my city there has been enough food waste from groceries and supermarkets that the primary limitation is labor. That is to say, you get way more food per hour of labor (skip, maintaining a kitchen, food prep, and distribution) by working outside of capitalism than working within capitalism.
I imagine the same holds for most places in the western world, if there were enough people to sustainably work the entire chain. Though maybe skipping is more dangerous in other jurisdictions.
Redistributing wealth is redistributing wealth. Just because you’re doing it within the systems your born into doesn’t make that any less true.
That being said if you can prepare fresh meals from home grown veggies, fucking go for it!
I feel like that falls under “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.
We could take this further. Where are you getting the seeds? Was a purchase from a capitalist source anywhere in the chain of the history of the plant’s ancestors? Are these distant offspring of monsanto seeds? Does that make it worse, or better if you didn’t pay for yor your own seeds but sourced them a different way?
Very fair, and to be clear I’m not arguing that perfect be the enemy of good enough here.
Interesting considerations in your hypotheticals, I’m sure it depends on your perspective
The difference is that capitalism is more than just an economic system, it is a form of class domination. Its a whole set of social relations that reinforce dominance. Voting with your dollars is not a viable strategy for opposing capitalism, there is no individual consumer decision that can make a dent.
A good example is Boycott/Divest/Sanction. That’s like voting with your dollars right? And it is objectively an effective tactic against apartheid regimes, themselves driven by capitalist incentives, the same way that slavery was in the US. But BDS isnt an action taken by an individual, or rather, it isnt only that. It is a movement of people organizing with each other to take collective action to resist injustice. Capitalists and their political proxies fucking love Israel, who cares who is exploited or murdered in the name of economic development? Same in South Africa. And these campaigns infuriate the capitalist and political classes, they literally imprison people for showing support for Palestine. If it was one guy, or a few people scattered who decided they just weren’t gonna buy goods from Israeli companies, nobody would care. But they’re organized against the capitalists as a class, they educate people, convince them, and are effective.
Capitalism organizes people too, it organizes us to sell our labor to someone who uses it to make themselves rich. When we organize on the basis of our own enrichment or self defense, against the interests of the wealthy, that’s where the cops show up and the president starts calling the most harmless and caring people “domestic terrorists.”
When capitalism seems like just some economic system, then it doesn’t feel as repressive. We can go whole days without spending money. But capitalism is more than markets. Its practically impossible to avoid enriching capitalism as an individual. But spending a little money to organize and help people is resistance to the system as a social system rather than an economic one.
Mutual aid can draw criticism on this basis too, like there are plenty of left criticisms of mutual aid. But by my reckoning, wherever people are helping each other rather than competing for a slightly higher wage, there is a pocket of anti capitalism. The capitalists have total control over the all production and markets. In order to free ourselves from it on a mass scale, we have to be principled and practical, and we have to do what it takes to get enough people to unite and take action. If that means giving someone money or doing mutual aid as a tactic, then that can be part of an anticapitalist strategy.
I appreciate this perspective, thank you for detailing your thoughts. I will have to do some thinking on this one.
Exactly capitalism is more than just an economic system its a scapegoat for every single problem in my life.
Good one!
Here’s a list of the 10 richest people in 2019: Jeff Bezos ($131B), Bill Gates ($96.5B), Warren Buffett ($82.5B), Bernard Arnault ($76B), Carlos Slim Helú ($64B), Amancio Ortega ($62.7B), Larry Ellison ($62.5B), Mark Zuckerberg ($62.3B), Michael Bloomberg ($55.5B), Larry Page ($50.8B)
Here’s a list of the 10 richest people today: Elon Musk ($480B), Larry Page ($270B), Jeff Bezos ($255B), Sergey Brin ($250B), Larry Ellison ($245B), Mark Zuckerberg ($230B), Bernard Arnault ($190B), Jensen Huang ($120B), Warren Buffett ($115B), Steve Ballmer ($110B)
So, during covid the rich made so much fuckin money, and they made it so fast that they can’t go back. Line must go up, and at a greater rate of profit than before. Yet after covid, the fed raised interest rates to suppress wages. They said the cause was inflation, they always say that increased wages increase demand, which lowers supply, which causes prices to increase. But even in the midst of the war in Ukraine, which was used to explain away inflation, independent economists confirmed that at the time, around to 50% of price increases were arbitrary and not connected to higher costs. https://www.epi.org/blog/profits-and-price-inflation-are-indeed-linked/
So if the government and the banks can then decide to raise interest rates in order to suppress our wages, as they did after covid, while the richest people have multiplied their own wealth astronomically, all during a period where the working class is under attack in order to increase the unemployed reserve surplus population, thereby suppressing wages, then how exactly, in your opinion or analysis is capitalism something other than a system that takes your wages and gives them to the wealthiest people on the planet?
Recall a guy named Jeffrey Epstein who was close personal friends with the people above, and what they got up to. That is who you are defending, pedophiles, rapists, and psychopaths. Do you think it will help you quadruple your income in the next 5 years? If so, I would love to talk to you about some beachfront property I think you’ll be interested in.
I’m not calling you a pedo defender, just making a point that capitalism is a system that fucks us and rewards them for fucking us. So which side are you on?
I’m not calling you a pedo defender
Ok, I dont know why you would i probably hate him more than you.
The world isnt America and capitalism isnt only rich people. Those billionaires fuck us and run wild because of weak governance. Under another economic system with equally weak governance we’d likely see equal amounts of oppression from those with power.
Capitalism needs to be regulated and in most countries it is. We’ve had like 50 years of completely unregulated business from the US. They need to put the beatdown on their businesses to bring them inline and establish fair practice and prosecute those who are criminal.
Oh I see so youre a based supporter of the People’s Republic of China, the model for strong government control over capitalism.
There is such a thing as class. There are ruling classes and servile classes, and have been for thousands of years. We live in a class society, capitalism is the system that creates class antagonisms, government is a way to manage them. But as long as there are capitalists, and they own everything, then the government will belong to them. I would rather the government belongs to us.
No governor can save us. The amount of organization and political will that it would take to turn a psycho oppressive society like ours into a rational social democracy with nice capitalist rulers (like the Europeans have with DAVOS, lol) would be enough to run society for our selves, and get rid of the profit motive. Capitalism, as class society, can not be rational, because it is not rational for some people to rule others.
Your proposed ideal governance is just Karen-ism, like the best we can hope for is being able to speak to a manager to solve our problems. If they won’t do anything, then we just need better managers.
No. We dont need managers, the managers are a sign of the actual problem: bosses whose incentives are completely different than the rest of us. We need to take power rather than give it away. A better world is possible, not by giving away power but by seizing it and organizing for the benefit of all, rather than a special few.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
There’s also more than just growing your own and sharing it. We’ve got a community garden, underground farmer’s market, and crop-share programs in my area, and those are also great options.
Tell me more about this underground farmer’s market? I haven’t heard of this concept. I’m working on reviving the community garden in my area, and unfortunately crop-sharing farms have all fallen apart near me.
Haha, it’s just an ad hoc thing that gets set up in the park every summer. No licenses, no permits, no advertising, just garden fresh veg in ziplock baggies in exchange for cash.
The real farmer’s market is a half hour drive away, and this is just a nice little cottage industry for people who don’t sell enough to justify booth fees and paperwork at the real one, but want to make some money back on their home garden.
Very cool, thank you for the lesson
Food not bombs prioritizes food that wouldn’t be sold like day old baked goods and produce that’s still fine to eat, but is no longer fresh enough that people will buy it.
You suck dude, and have very clearly never grown your own food or provided for yourself. Get out more, that kind of ideological “purity” doesn’t hold up to sunlight well
I see how this comes across as me arguing “if you can’t beat capitalism, it’s not worth trying.” But I’m really just saying do both. Help your unhoused, and also try to do so in a way that does not contribute to capitalism.
You should really relax though, this personal attack is not very solarpunk of you.
keep it lighthearted
feeding the hungry is a joy
and/or within our server’s ideals
For when you need a laugh
Currently 49 upvotes, 3 downvotes. An admin of the server has contributed, and as per my quote it fits the rules. I think the community has decided…
Maybe don’t browse a politically active server if you don’t wish to see anything politics adjacent.
I don’t mind seeing political articles, but political “memes” are all awful. So yeah I left the community.
