Uncompromising journalism for a just planet.
Critical dispatches and systemic analysis from the frontlines of political, social, and ecological change.
In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of mutual aid groups tracked in the United States rose from 50 in March 2020 to more than 800 across…
Harrison Lockwood·14 min read
Roughly three times as likely. That is the finding reported in some surveys of young people who engage with political causes online: compared with less-engaged…
Harrison Lockwood·16 min read
Charity can keep people alive inside an unjust system. Mutual aid asks why that system gets to decide who eats, who stays housed, and who deserves help in the…
Harrison Lockwood·15 min read
In Los Angeles, tenants facing rent increases of up to 80 percent did not solve the housing crisis by filing one more comment letter or waiting for a…
Harrison Lockwood·15 min read
Fifteen hundred institutions. Forty trillion dollars in pledged assets. That is the scale of the fossil fuel divestment movement as it currently stands — a…
Harrison Lockwood·18 min read
In 2013, researchers compiled data on hundreds of digital activism campaigns spanning dozens of countries. Their finding punctured a decade of nonprofit…
Harrison Lockwood·10 min read
Mutual aid networks often begin with a spreadsheet, a messaging group, and a simple promise: if someone needs food, medicine, transport, rent support, or a…
Harrison Lockwood·20 min read
A consumer boycott sounds powerful because it gives ordinary people an immediate action: stop buying, spread the message, pressure the brand. But the…
Harrison Lockwood·14 min read
Encrypted messaging apps for activist organizing solve a real problem: states, police departments, employers, hostile companies, and political opponents can…
Harrison Lockwood·13 min read
A horizontal structure in grassroots organizing can bring people into the room without asking them to surrender power to a permanent leadership class. That is…
Harrison Lockwood·16 min read
Mutual aid groups do not become nonprofits because the state suddenly recognizes their political intelligence. They become nonprofits because money, liability…
Harrison Lockwood·18 min read
The most persistent misunderstanding about boycotts is that they succeed by emptying a company’s tills. The theory is simple: enough people stop buying…
Harrison Lockwood·19 min read
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's 2024 analysis laid it bare: a single act of deplatforming can erase an activist group's account, its communications…
Harrison Lockwood·17 min read
At least 21 community fridges in Los Angeles closed after volunteers burned out, faced city citations, or ran out of resources and donations. That is not a…
Harrison Lockwood·16 min read
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers did not win better conditions for farmworkers by asking growers to become more ethical. It won by identifying where the…
Harrison Lockwood·17 min read
In the summer of 2020, roughly $90 million cascaded into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation within weeks of George Floyd’s murder — a windfall…
Harrison Lockwood·22 min read
More than 4,000 local solidarity networks described themselves as mutual aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. That explosion did not happen because governments…
Harrison Lockwood·13 min read
Thirteen out of fifteen. That's how many U.S. mutual aid organizers, in a 2024-published qualitative study of networks founded between March 2020 and March…
Harrison Lockwood·12 min read
A July 2026 analysis across Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ukraine found local NGOs to be 10–19% more efficient and 13–21% more cost-efficient than UN agencies…
Harrison Lockwood·13 min read
A petition with 100,000 names can vanish into a parliamentary inbox. A rally of 10,000 can dissolve by dinner. A strike vote with 90% participation can force…
Harrison Lockwood·15 min read
A study of 14 U.S. protest waves between 2017 and 2022 found something the professional cynics were delighted to repeat: protests generated substantial…
Harrison Lockwood·13 min read
Within weeks of the March 2020 lockdowns, federal unemployment systems across the United States crashed under historic claim volumes. State hotlines jammed.
Harrison Lockwood·11 min read
More than $40 trillion in assets have been targeted by fossil fuel divestment campaigns. That figure matters because it shows what happens when social activism…
Harrison Lockwood·18 min read
Meta does not need to read your messages to map your movement. In most organizing contexts, the dangerous material is not the slogan in the group chat; it is…
Harrison Lockwood·17 min read
A zoning variance can move faster than a neighborhood meeting. In many municipalities, the public notice window runs only 15 to 30 days. That is the whole…
Harrison Lockwood·17 min read
In 2023, municipal governments across the United States allocated a combined $137 billion to policing, while funding for social safety nets, public housing…
Harrison Lockwood·11 min read
In 1969, the Black Panther Party was feeding more children before school than the United States federal government. Their Free Breakfast for Children Program…
Harrison Lockwood·13 min read
Portland baristas filed more union petitions in the last four years than in the previous two decades combined. The owners' response—captive audience meetings…
Harrison Lockwood·9 min read