Andrew LichtensteinGetty Images “Mutual aid has existed as long as people have been around,” says Mariame Kaba, an educator and organizer in New York City who, in March 2020, collaborated with U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a mutual-aid workshop and the release of a COVID-19 mutual-aid digital tool kit. But there’s a reason you’ve been seeing pictures of people filling a community refrigerator and videos of folks handing out clothing on the street accompanied by #mutualaid all over your social feeds lately. “We’re dealing with a disaster of massive proportions, [COVID-19], that most people have never lived through in their lifetime,” Kaba says. “When you are in this kind of a situation, you figure out ways to relate to other people that allow you to actually survive. That’s why people are paying attention to it; they have no choice.”