Dispatch 2 What is mutual aid? A COVID-19 primer John Gulick, Jasmine Araujo, Cora Roelofs, Tanya Kerssen, Meleiza Figueroa, Etant Dupain, Serena Stein, Deborah Wallace, Ryan Petteway, John Choe, Luca de Crescenzo, Audrey Snyder, Colin Kloecker, and Rob Wallace PReP Neighborhoods PReP Neighborhoods, our working group dedicated to the research needs of neighborhoods the world over during the present pandemic, met for the first time in late April. Before jumping into specific practices and protocols that neighborhood groups might consider implementing, the group decided it would be best to start out by exploring what mutual aid means in our present context. It may not be what you think. he COVID-19 pandemic has strained and even overwhelmed the public health, medical care, and disaster response systems where governments and state agencies were ill- prepared to contain and suppress infectious outbreaks. 1 In countries where emergency lockdown measures have been adopted without accompanying policies to guarantee income security and housing tenure, there is the additional problem of economic hardship. 2 Already existing and newly formed non-governmental organizations and associations have mobilized to fill the gap. 3 These formal and informal groups assist people forced into the margins by government neglect with free meals, grocery and medicine deliveries, safe housing, and even cash. They are going beyond traditional voluntary charity disaster relief to provide personal protective equipment (notably face masks), COVID-19 symptoms monitoring, accurate information about locally available COVID-19 and antibody testing facilities, emotional counseling, and more. 4 In some cases, these organizations partner with public agencies, including in situations where state institutions are both omnipresent and capable and voluntary associations are essentially licensed subcontractors of the state (as appears to be the case in the People’s Republic of China). 5 In other contexts—particularly where robust social safety nets are lacking or where austerity has undermined any expectation of government assistance — people have done what they have always done in a crisis: attempted to stem the tide of misery with the resources they have. 6 Some of these organizations or associations of individuals are describing their efforts to help those in trouble as “mutual aid organizations.” 7 These groups reflect the social or political T