Marina Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar, Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid During the Covid-19 Crisis

London: Pluto Press, 2020; 304pp; ISBN9780745343167

Pandemic Solidarity is a collection of essays, primarily nationally based, discussing how various forms of grassroots, mutual-aid inspired, forms of solidarity have manifested themselves globally. The book takes the form of a series of narratives which grew organically from conversations, and existing networks, of Sitrin's, and her colleagues and friends, through a class that she taught on ethnography. This organic approach (described as a prefigurative collective, Colectiva Sembrar, in which it is sometimes not possible, or desirable, to ascribe authorship) means that the topics covered are eclectic. As well as themes that one might expect in such a collection, including food production and distribution, self-organised health (mask and protection making), and self-organisation and solidarity there are also discussions of prisoner solidarity, resistance to settler colonialism, education and teaching, and animal rights. This approach may initially sound disorganised but there are obvious connections between topics in terms of hori-zontalism and mutuality. Indeed, in her introduction to the book, Rebecca Solnit makes the point that mutual aid, solidarity and resistance are not generated by events, such as pandemics or crisis, but are eternal, inevitable, aspects of human societies.

Sitrin introduces the collection by reflecting on the structural inequalities that have defined the consequences and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with the familiar metaphor that although we are in the same storm, we are not in the same boat. The assumption is that grassroots support and...