I’m all for mutual aid, but not if it means forgetting that nearly any group of people can pool resources and accomplish at least some small step toward improving their lives. After a disaster hit my community ten years ago, it became instantly clear whose instinct was to step up and whose to bemoan the failure of outside saviors to show up immediately and fix everything.
Not that an astounding number of outsiders didn’t show up; they did. They just weren’t the federal government, for the most part. After several years, some federal money did start trickling in by means of FEMA block-grants to Texas officials, though the effort was mired in red tape at every step. The most obvious and immediate help, however, came from the local power company and its multi-state network of outside power workers, who streamed in as an incredible convoy that had to be housed all over the small general-aviation county airport. The guy in charge of our multi-county region for the power company was aghast when his bosses assumed it would take months to get out power back on. He rallied the troops and got it back on in under three weeks, despite having to replace nearly every power pole and piece of substation equipment in the county. He’s now the commissioner of my precinct, having retired from the power company in the meantime.
The next wave of help was crowds of individuals or couples with Skid-Steers and chainsaws, many of whom used their annual vacation breaks to show up unannounced and volunteer to clear brush for anything from a weekend to a couple of weeks. My county government being helpless to respond to them at the time, they got access to the pastor network and called around until they learned of a community with enough un-evacuated residents and enough self-organization to wave them in, show them where to go (with most street signs down), and provide them with evidence that absent homeowners gave them permission to get to work. We got a lot done in the month or two it took the county to get nervous and start passing some (largely ignored) ordinances obstructing the hiring of any contractors not on an official central list.
The third wave was half a dozen or more well-organized charitable organizations, largely church-affiliated, who started rebuilding homes. Chief among them were the Amish, who came down in rotating busloads every few weeks and did fantastic work. By this time the county had enough sense to leave them alone and let them work. Next up in impact probably was Good Samaritans, who won my complete loyalty and admiration by building many homes for people with no other options. Eventually the Texas General Land Office did some good work rebuilding several dozen homes with grants.
I was reminded of all this today by an article about the experience of a D.C. bureaucrat who moved out to a small rural community and watched his neighbors pass the hat to save a local annual fair after town officials stripped the local budget by fraud, mismanagement, or both.
My ambition for my home communities has always been to function so well that no outside entity is tempted to show up and “help,” even when they already have legal authority to do interfere, which they probably shouldn’t have been granted in the first place. Luckily, they can often be held at bay if local residents can say, “Thanks, we’re good.” At the very least, my neighbors will be in a strong enough position to decline the help with the most obnoxious strings attached.
