While we will initially address our communities’ immediate needs, our collective vision includes building a sustainable system to work and support each other beyond this moment.
Centering the most vulnerable.
The Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund was created by community members from metro-Atlanta who have witnessed the needs of their neighbors at this time of crisis. While COVID-19 is a health pandemic, it has crippled economies and interrupted markets, causing wide-spread unemployment. Our concern is not with fixing the economy but instead with meeting the needs of people left with uncertainty and disruption.
As social distancing becomes the new normal, community aid is more important than ever for the most vulnerable. These funds are only intended for members of the most vulnerable, displaced and marginalized target-groups who are residing in the prioritized counties of Fulton, Dekalb, Clayton, Douglas, Cobb, Gwinnett, Henry, and Rockdale. Funds are targeted towards Black, Indigenous, and peoples of color. We will give special consideration within these communities to women/femmes, non-binary and queer folks, the poor and working class, people living with disabilities, and undocumented and refugee members.
Our Framework
Mutual Aid
A reciprocal system where those that benefit are also feeding back in and supporting others with either services, money, or other value adding measures. These systems can inform how we relate to each other in community and support self determination.
Wealth redistribution
A framework where those with generational privilege and access to resources are encouraged to feed into communities and individuals historically disenfranchised to build long-term equity in those communities.
Building Alternative Systems
While we’re focusing on raising and distributing money in the short-term, we’re also actively building the infrastructure for a post-capitalist system by creating a time-banking and skill-sharing mechanism to participate.
Our Values
This fund is grounded in principles of mutual aid and collective responsibility, not charity.
The vision, work, and distribution of funds is driven by the needs of the community, not by donors.
We are utilizing a wealth redistribution framework, which means moving funds from those with accumulated wealth to those who historically have been left out of process.
We are grounded in a pro-Black, anti-white supremacist, anticapitalist, black feminist politic and utilize an intersectional analysis of oppression. One of the ways this shows up is that we are only distributing funds to BIPOC communities, with special attention paid to gender/sexuality/class/immigration status.
We trust our people. We will not ask them to take extensive measures to prove their trauma or need. We are using this moment to meet our people’s needs rapidly, with our long-term goal being building solidarity economies and strengthening community structures.
We believe that funders should be encouraged to continue to fund in this manner outside of this critical moment to redistribute wealth and build sustainable economies.
We aim to combat urban centricity by ensuring that funds reach communities outside of the city of Atlanta proper and its major suburbs.
We recommend that employers utilize their wealth to offer their workers PTO/sick leave, hazard pay, workers’ comp, health benefits, etc. prior to giving donation to this fund.
Our Organizing Collective
Leila Abadir (she/her, they/them)
Leila is an organizer and nursing student committed to building self-determination for Black and Brown communities through cooperatives and mutual aid. She's a Philly native but has adopted Dekalb as home. Leila is a member of the Organization for Human Rights and Democracy (OHRD) and a founding member of Cooperative Atlanta where she dedicates her time to building a hub for those interested in alternative institutions.
Angel Torres (he/him)
Angel O. Torres is a Co-Director at OHRD and has spent the last 9 years as an Environmental Justice and Civil Rights researcher, Geographical Information System (GIS) consultant. He leads OHRD’s Environmental and Climate Justice, Transportation Equity, Community Planning, and social research initiatives. He is from Puerto Rico and a resident of Atlanta for over 30 years. Formerly, he was a GIS Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University and Adjunct Professor of Sociology.
Sanae Lahgazi Alaoui they/she
Sanae L. Alaoui is a creative and organizer who dreams of alternative worlds. Born and raised in Morocco, Sanae came to Atlanta in 2013 for college and has stayed in Atlanta since. They have participated in building alternatives to capitalism with their work in housing with the Housing Justice League, and as an education facilitator at the Anna Julia Cooper Learning and Liberation Center, and now as a program administrator for the Mama Fund. They are a learning community organizer and learning poet/artist who is acquiring more and more knowledge about the ways in which we organize, cooperative economics, and the non-profit industrial complex,
Dannielle Thomas (she/her)
Dannielle, a Black Woman raised in Atlanta with a deep tradition of activism and womanism, and with a deep pride in community and her ancestors, believes that liberation requires collective action and healing. She has lived in various communities around the world to learn, grow, support, and advocate for community needs and issues surrounding women and girls. She currently resides in the West End and is motivated by the resiliency and action of her community to meet the needs of the most-marginalized during this unprecedented time.
Kerrissa Vaughn (she/her)
Kerrissa Vaughn is a homeschooling mama and freelance writer/editor committed to closing access gaps, storytelling, story-listening, and working toward the freedom of black people. She spent her teen and early adult years interning and reporting from the newsroom of a Black-owned newspaper under the guidance of black editors and writers. She is a married mother of five. Her family describes her as a resourceful, truth-seeking, artsy, nature-loving lifelong learner.
Nia Mosby (she/her)
Nia is a nonprofit administrator with over a decade of experience in trying to work to make a conscious and meaningful difference in the world. Their formal education in western art gave her the fire needed to make sure people who look like her are properly represented in history, and is a firm believer in empathy for others. Outside of her work with MAMA Fund Nia freelances as an art consultant and is the mother to a one year old.
Jill Cartwright (she/her)
Jill Cartwright is a Black rural-raised queer Aries currently world-building in her Southwest Atlanta neighborhood of Florida Heights. There, she is building community and political consciousness from Earthseed, the cooperative home she founded. Her local work includes strategizing to close the Atlanta City Detention Center and transform it into a center for equity and achieve bail reform in Fulton County. She serves as the Statewide Organizer for Georgia for Southerners On New Ground, and as Co-Chair of the Mecca Chapter of Black Youth Project 100.
Dr. Yolande Tomlinson (she/they)
Dr. Yolande Tomlinson is a radical queer Black feminist mama, educator-organizer, writer, avid gardener, and lover of people and plants. As co-director of OHRD, she works with communities of color to build the world they want to live in now. Her organizing is grounded in her experience in the Jamaican countryside, where she was raised by her Grandmother Rose who taught her to farm, build community, and practice love that’s expansive and liberatory. Yolande holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from Emory University.
Britney Whaley (she/her)
Britney Whaley is an electoral strategist, organizer and trainer with 15 years of experience in government and politics. She currently serves as Senior Political Strategist for women of color programming at the Working Families Party. Under her leadership, WFP recently launched Bet on Us, a political and maroon space for Black women and non-binary people to build power, grow consciousness, organize their communities and run for elected office.
Former Members
Tamika Middleton (she/her)
Tamika is an organizer, doula, midwifery apprentice, writer, and unschooling mama who is passionate about and active in struggles that affect Black women’s lives. Tamika has organized for abolition, reproductive justice, and for domestic workers’ rights. She serves as a Community Advisory Board member of Critical Resistance, a Leadership Team member of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective and as treasurer of OHRD. Tamika is a member of Echoing Ida, a community of Black women and nonbinary writers and has had her work featured in multiple publications.
Nikishka Iyengar (she/her)
Nikishka is an entrepreneur, strategist, organizer, and mother working towards a post-capitalist economy rooted in social and environmental justice. She is the founder of The Guild, an organization building community wealth and resilience through real estate, entrepreneurship programs, and access to capital for marginalized communities. She is also the owner of Whole Systems Collective, an impact consulting and media firm focused on building a regenerative economy. Nikishka identifies as an immigrant and third-culture kid, and calls Mumbai, Singapore and Atlanta home.
Abiodun Henderson (she/her)
Abiodun is a community organizer and Executive Director of The Come Up Project which features Gangstas to Growers, an agribusiness training program for formerly incarcerated young adults. Under her leadership, the Westview Community Garden is now community-owned. Abiodun is also a board member of the Georgia Cooperative Development Center. Abiodun is a native Brooklynite who represents for the Kru Liberians. She enjoys when her five year old son yells, "Free Black People" every morning when they pass the Atlanta City jail.