Cover of A Matter of Survival: Organizing to Meet Unmet Needs and Build Power in Times of Crisis by Shailly Gupta Barnes & Jarvis – PDF Publication March 5, 2025
Photo Credit: Kairos Center

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, survival organizing has continued en masse, in response to ongoing effects of the pandemic, as well as climate crisis, hunger, housing insecurity, the denial of health care, police violence, deportation defense, increasing militarism and other systemic failures of our society. As Vilchis from Union de Vecinos remarked, “Health crisis, housing crisis, all of these crises are still there. The material conditions have not changed, we just have less money and are more disorganized. The risk of losing your life to COVID is less, but your job doesn’t pay enough to cover rent or other costs of living. For many of us, life has gotten worse, but we’re not coughing as loud.”

This is particularly true for poor, low-income and marginalized communities. Cosecha will be “depending on projects of survival even more,” said Adorno, especially as it anticipates more intense attacks on undocumented people. Sycamore Collaborative is expecting hunger to continue to grow in its community. “We will hit the ‘million meal’ mark soon,” said Rev. Tañón-Santos, “and there has to be a way that we can foresee this happening and figure out how to prepare.” In Kansas City, the Bethel Neighborhood Center does not want to be “surprised…we need to be more prepared than ever,” said Sonna. Under a second Trump administration, these and other communities are also facing dramatic cuts to social welfare programs, precipitous climate breakdown, greater repression from militarized police and law enforcement and a regressive, anti-democratic political movement.

In this context, a vast network of projects of survival can play an increasingly essential role in keeping our communities safe, while politicizing and preparing grassroots communities to take coordinated action together as part of a broader social movement. Whether through mutual aid, ministry or community organizing, meeting material needs is an act of resistance in a society that punishes the poor for their poverty and misery — and prioritizes billionaires over the rest of us. If and when these efforts can be connected, scaled up and strategically organized, projects of survival can anchor the call for a society where all of our needs are met, today, tomorrow and for generations to come.

Excerpt from the Conclusion of A Matter of Survival: Organizing to Meet Unmet Needs and Build Power in Times of Crisis by Shailly Gupta Barnes & Jarvis Benson, PDF publication by The Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, New York, USA, March 5, 2025, p. 73.