[Note: Blog posts are an ongoing series in which EEMA members explore their personal views and experiences relating to issues of development and community organizing. While the general spirit of the postings may reflect the opinions and work of EEMA the views expressed have not been reviewed or agreed to by the group as a whole.]
This winter, East End Mutual Aid initiated a project in which we offered to shovel the sidewalks and porches of people in our neighborhoods. This is especially useful in parts of Bloomfield which have a high population of elderly folks. People from other places have asked us how we went about doing this, so I thought I would share how I experienced the process of making this project a reality.
Over the warmer seasons, we had organized a series of events we called Share Faires, in which we asked people to bring items that they didn’t need anymore and give them away. Each of these were very successful, bringing upwards of 200-300 people each time, sharing probably thousands of items, from clothes, to books, to lamps, to food, to whatever random bric-a-brac people wanted to get rid of (or take).
When the weather started getting colder, it became clear that the outdoor Share Faires weren’t really an option when it was 20 degrees out with several inches of snow in Friendship Park. So we decided to shift our efforts to shoveling snow for people who weren’t able or had trouble doing it themselves. Hours of conversations ensued, about making a snazzy flier that would attract people to the project, about how to divvy up responsibilities within the group for getting different things done, about liability issues and where the money would come from for shovels and salt. Once all this was worked out, or at least worked out to the point that the project could function, we started wondering how we could get people signed up.
We were wary at first, not sure exactly how to get started, how to make connections to the people for whom this project would be beneficial. For a project like this, where people would be trusting us to come onto their property and give them some peace of mind when they stepped out the door that they wouldn’t slip and fall, simply handing out fliers is not necessarily enough. People generally prefer to hear about this kind of thing from a source whom they already trust to a certain degree. When first getting started, when no one knows us, the question is, of course, what can that trusted source be?
Luckily, when we first sent out notifications about the project over the internet, they found their way to someone at the Bloomfield Development Corporation (BDC), who put up an announcement about it on their website. We soon got a phone call from someone who frequents the BDC website wanting to sign up. This gave us a good place to start.
Figuring it would be easiest to concentrate as many of the houses to shovel in a given area, we started going door-to-door to hand out fliers in a three or four block radius around this first house that was signed up. A few days after the first time we went door-to-door, we got a couple calls from more people wanting to sign up.
After this we started getting calls on a somewhat regular basis, especially during weeks in which snow was part of the weather forecast. We didn’t go door-to-door with fliers more than a couple of times, after which things just spread through word of mouth. People who benefited from what we were doing told friends and neighbors of theirs whom they thought might benefit as well. A bit more than half of the houses that signed up ended up being within a five or six block area, which was helpful for us, and also says something about neighborhood demographics and needs that aren’t being met.
The response we have gotten from people who have signed up has been overwhelmingly positive. Even though we haven’t always been able to get to someone’s house to shovel in the most timely manner, everyone who we’ve interacted with has been extremely grateful, offering us coffee or hot chocolate, thanking us profusely, and occasionally trying to give us some money.
The fact that we do this without the expectation of any sort of compensation caught many people off-guard. While out shoveling, I’ve had to turn down people trying to hand me a little bit of cash on numerous occasions. But I think this is an important type of thing to try to regularize: doing something for someone else without expecting anything in return. This is a gift economy in practice.
There are of course kinks to work out, things we could have done better. One ongoing conversation within EEMA has been how to integrate other volunteers, who are not members of the collective or our immediate friends. This is something that we have not done all that great a job at, and something we will certainly need to improve if the project grows next winter, as the more houses we have to shovel, the more people we’ll need to get it done.
I have personally not been focusing all that much on trying to get other volunteers involved. One of the main reasons for this is fairly simple: What we’re doing is not all that extraordinary. This is completely within the power of anyone else who would like to do this. What’s extraordinary about it to me is the fact that other people find it to be extraordinary. On a very basic level, it’s a fairly simple process of getting a shovel, and knocking on a neighbor’s door, and offering to take care of their snow in the event of a storm. Originally, there were some concerns expressed that people may take advantage of this project, that people who didn’t feel like shoveling their own sidewalk would sign up with us just so that they didn’t have to. However, this has ended up not being an issue at all. During the experience of going door-to-door for this project, anyone who answered the door who had no trouble with taking care of their own snow said so, and sometimes would point out specific houses to us that they thought the residents of would be interested. I imagine that anyone who tried doing this for, say, the three houses on either side of where they live would experience the same thing.
However, for some reason, or for a variety of reasons, in many areas and for many activities this type of thing is not the norm. People are often suspicious of someone trying to do something for them, wondering what this person is expecting in return, or their pride is hurt when someone suggests that they can’t do something for themselves. Or individualist values, the assumption that only thinking of oneself leads to the greatest comfort, are so ingrained in us that doing something like this doesn’t ever occur to us. Whatever the reasons, this isn’t happening. There are people all over the area who are stranded when there is a heavy snowfall, who dread walking down their steps for fear of slipping, whose backs or legs don’t allow them to pick up a shovel, let alone use one. Therefore, projects like this, which formalize something that perhaps should just happen automatically, are necessary, at the very least to show people what is possible, and to hopefully help dissolve whatever cultural or economic incentives exist to stop mutual aid from being the normal way of life.
