In April, 2020, the Michigan Mutual Aid Coalition (MIMAC) embarked on its mission to provide free weekly grocery deliveries to those at the greatest risk of COVID-19 infection in Detroit, a mission that continues to this day. In over four years of service to Detroit’s working class, MIMAC also provides material support to striking workers, and community members fighting the predation of capital on their homes and neighborhoods. Formally ratified by the full membership in 2023, MIMAC’s political values provide guidance in where to direct the organization’s support; and criteria to avoid counter-productive alliances, along with identifying veiled political enemies.
“The Seven Material Rights of All People: At humanity’s current level of technology, it is materially possible to provide the following to all people: water, food, shelter, healthcare, education, communication (i.e. internet) and public transportation. Because of this possibility, we believe the purpose of any governing entity is to provide those things to all people, equitably.”
While the first point may change due to climate collapse created by the unchecked pillaging and destruction of Western capital, the workers of the world still produce food for 2 billion more people than currently exist on Earth. China can build fully functioning hospitals in less than two weeks and working people the world over know the excellence of Cuban doctors. The resources and technology are all there, getting it to those in need is a matter of redistribution. MIMAC only support governments that prioritize this redistribution, by providing housing for all at the expense of landlords’ coffers or a guarantee of food at the expense of a corporate agricultural conglomerate, to the point that the hoarding entity (the landlord and corporation) are dissolved. For the sake of the global ecosystem, infrastructure for public transportation must take precedence over individual automotive ownership, a selfish and destructive tendency powered by the oil barons intentionally steering everyone towards climate collapse.
Similarly, water must be a utility in the public interest as privatizing it leads to denials of service based on race, ability, gender and economic class, perennially proven by policies like the poisoning of Flint and Detroit’s water shut-offs. Education in the US is currently held hostage by private interest, with public funds routinely pillaged for intentionally ineffective charter schools, and increasing police presence and surveillance which punishes the students experiencing the greatest degree of oppression and enables
greater efficacy of mass shooters based on police handling of Parkland, Uvalde and Oxford.
When the above services are returned to the public interest, it becomes a matter of having enough skilled laborers to ensure rural communities receive adequate electricity and telecommunication lines to enjoy the same electronic interconnection as urban residents. While MIMAC focuses on food, the struggles to deliver water, shelter, electricity, healthcare, public transit and internet infrastructure are just as important.
“Universal Solidarity with Oppressed Peoples: We will combat discrimination and champion the causes of people oppressed due to their race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, nationality, and religion (excludes imperial cults like Evangelism, Falun Gong, Zionism, Scientology etc). Further, we will not engage in attacks against one oppressed group for the benefit of another.”
In summation, MIMAC opposes attacking people for attributes which they cannot control. It’s proven a sound rule in both political and interpersonal arenas. On the matter of religion, the proximity to colonial powers and principles is the guiding aspect for whether a religious institution is respected or not. This does create some contradictions in the West, where individual Catholics and Protestants can find themselves on the front lines fighting what the highest echelons of their churches enthusiastically support and draw benefit. In such cases, MIMAC embraces the individual but will still decry the institution. MIMAC also considers Judaism and Zionism to be completely separate, the latter being a white supremacist colonial scheme from its inception. This separation also occurs when evaluating Islamist movements, offering critical support to freedom fighters such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansarallah, but condemning entities like ISIS and ETIM, which use many of the same mass atrocity tactics as Western militaries and mercenaries.
The last line in the value is a safeguard against situations where one could be advocating for LGBTQ rights, and then a speaker would then try to justify Western intervention against a nation with alleged discriminatory policy against LGBTQ people. The bombs the US drop tend to kill and maim everyone in the area, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The converse is also true, in that MIMAC members are expected to support national liberation struggles against colonization, but would reject any bigotry against LGBTQ people, while understanding the history of Western think tanks stoking those very hates in the nations in question. No one’s rights as a person are for sale.
“The National Question: We support Land Back movements and identify the Western empire’s [US > Five Eyes > NATO] global colonization as the primary source of injustice and inequity. MIMAC members will be expected to regard these colonial powers as the primary enemy of people fighting for liberation, without equivalence. We offer critical support to national liberation movements fighting colonization.”
MIMAC appreciates the development of Decolonial Marxist theory espoused by revolutionary intellectuals such as Walter Rodney and regards settler-colonialism as the primary contradiction of the United States, and the Western Empire by extension. This is a break from European Marxism and the writings of Marx and Engels which position capitalism itself as the primary contradiction. That would certainly appear true from the perspective of a worker in Germany at the time, but even workers in colonial European and North American societies still benefit from the resources extracted from colonized countries, and workers in the imperial core are historically the last to feel the fascist crackdowns that begin in the empire’s periphery.
This theory also regards the country of the United States as a “prison house of nations”, the actual nations being those of Indigenous people and descendants of African people kidnapped and forcibly bred into slavery.
While Capitalism is not the primary contradiction, it is still significant as every atrocity committed by the United States has been driven by those with a profit motive. Because of the colonial extraction in play, the greater spoils available for workers in the imperial core (meaning North America and Western Europe) versus the periphery (countries like Javier Milei’s Argentina, as an example), explains the greater degree of complacency despite rapidly worsening conditions.
Five Eyes is a reference to the intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand having a formal agreement to share information between each other for mutual benefit. This alliance has created a pervasive global surveillance network during the War on Terror and is a critical component of colonization in the 21st century. While less formal and publicly known, there are similar agreements between the Five Eyes countries and France, Germany, Israel, Singapore, South Korea,
Japan, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Italy, Sweden and Spain. Countries participating in these programs, along with NATO membership, are the criteria by which MIMAC considers a country to be part and partner of the Western Empire.
Should one research the history of Post-WWII Nazi collaboration and promotion they will find that Five Eyes agencies and NATO have long been the chief backers.
An ideal solution to these struggles would be a full return of the land to Indigenous populations, including the full control and ownership of any means of production (i.e. factories, mines, farms) built there. It would also feature a mass extradition of colonial plunderers to the nations they harmed, to face justice on the terms of those nations.
“All labor is valid, and only labor is valid: We embrace workers in all fields, including sex work. Any person who must sell the value of their labor to an owner in exchange for a wage (or salary/per diem contract) is our ally economically. Anyone who obtains their wealth through inheritance or investment is not, as that wealth is dependent on the labor of wage workers. Workers may not always side with us, but we will always treat them better than bosses and owners.”
Most of this principle is self-explanatory, but the last line requires elaboration. MIMAC acknowledges that not all workers support the working class, but all workers do merit an attempt at education on the broader struggle of liberation and where people fit in that struggle.
Owners of private property have too much of vested class interest to be worth such an attempt universally, although there are situations when a few will betray their class individually. Genuine class traitors go out of their way to prove their case with actions that diminish the unjust power they received by virtue of ownership, to the benefit of those they wield that power over. It is the consistency and volume of those actions that MIMAC will use to judge whether a private property owner can be a genuine ally.
“ACAB Policy: The acronym “All Cops Are Bad” stands for our rejection of those engaged in the frontline positions of imperial violence. This includes police (also the alphabet boys), soldiers, state prosecutors and judges. It may also conditionally include healthcare, education and social work employees that abuse and/or deliberately snitch on their patients. Anyone presently engaged in these occupations will not be allowed in MIMAC spaces, and it will be considered betrayal to knowingly reveal any information regarding MIMAC to people that fall under this policy.”
For the sake of clarity, “alphabet boys” is a euphemism for federal intelligence and enforcement agencies like the CIA, FBI, NSA, ATF and their equivalents in other Five Eyes and NATO countries. However, it’s important not to stop at the base institutions of law enforcement. The soft power aspects of policing are pervasive in every aspect of jobs under the “Health and Human Services” umbrella, and those who choose to enable that policing are similarly suspect.
“Non-sectarian space: Communism, Pan-Africanism, Indigenous lifeways, Anarchy and anti-imperial Social Democracy are welcome political tendencies, but MIMAC is not the place to discuss their respective viability. We focus on the material.”
For MIMAC’s internal analysis, people claiming to be anarchists, communists or social democrats who repeat US State Department talking points on international conflicts, or decry successful revolutionary governments that oppose the West, are considered “liberals” and are not a welcome tendency. If all states are bad, then the empire killing and enslaving the most people (provably the Western empire by millions) is qualitatively and quantitatively worse and must be regarded as such, with a greater degree of understanding shown to what nations opposed to that empire do to fight against it.
“Patriotic Socialism” or “MAGA Communism” are largely just “communist” rebrands of the same liberal tendencies listed above, and are rejected with the same vehemence. “Progressives” can vary a great deal, but it always hinges on fealty to empire.
Beyond that, MIMAC is here to put food on the table first and foremost, internal discussion is centered around community aid or helping outfit a dual power initiative. Other groups focus more heavily on ideological evaluation and are a better place to direct the deeper questions on one of the accepted political philosophies.
The main purpose of this policy is to prevent any sectarian attacks from poisoning group communications, and focusing on the logistical concerns has consistently led to calm, friendly organizing spaces.
If these political values seem like a fit for you, and you live in SE Michigan, you can join MIMAC by sending an email [email protected] and including your availability on the usual workdays of Thursday, Friday and Saturday! Financial support is also appreciated, via our Venmo (@MI-MAC) or CashApp ($MichiganMutualAidCo). Keep up with MIMAC on social media via Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Thanks for reading!
