The result of the recent US elections provides further confirmation that what we are witnessing in much of the world is the consolidation of a 21st century form of fascist authoritarianism grounded in the rising power of Big Tech as well as resurgent forms of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. But it is also an elite project of meeting present and future climate crisis, with all of its horrifying ripple effects, through mass violence (including genocide) and mass manipulation.

What does such a moment mean for those of us who work in grassroots and independent media? What does it demand of us?

Grassroots journalists from Tele K (a Madrid, Spain-based independent broadcasting platform) provide coverage of the trial of photojournalist Raúl Capín, who was charged under Spain’s 2015 gag law (known locally as *La Ley Mordaza*) after photographing police activity at a major demonstration in February 2013. Weave News provided coverage of Capín’s case and its broader implications. (Photo: John Collins/Weave News)

One way of answering those questions is to immerse ourselves in the concept of mutual aid, a tried-and-true framework for creating community resilience and meeting people’s needs through networks of collective support. In recent weeks, we have seen many urgent calls to strengthen and expand mutual aid networks as a way to prepare for the second Trump administration and the wide range of threats it represents.

Dean Spade, radical activist and author of the 2020 book Mutual Aid: Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), wrote about mutual aid shortly after the US elections in a powerful piece for Truthout. A week later, also at Truthout, Maya Schenwar and Lara Witt published a ringing call to media action, emphasizing that “sharing truthful information and ideas among our networks, including through media outlets like those we work with, is a key facet of any effective resistance movement.”

Here at Weave News, we are invested in what we and others call grassroots journalism, a form of independent media work that provides spaces for people, the vast majority of whom are not professional journalists, to engage in rigorous, justice-oriented reporting. Based on our experience, we believe that grassroots journalism can be one valuable and empowering answer to the question of what mutual aid looks like in the media realm.

With the help of Spade’s formative work, let’s explore this idea in more detail.

Dismantling information pollution

In his book, Spade identifies three key elements of mutual aid. The first concerns the very issue of survival: “Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.”

It may seem strange to think of information as a “survival need,” but recent history has shown us that there is a direct relationship between the pollution of the information environment and the success of political projects that are directly threatening our survival. John Trudell, who served as chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM), memorably used the metaphor of pollution to explain how extractive, colonial capitalism shapes our consciousness in ways that parallel the plundering of the earth:

John Trudell. (Photo: Scott J. Ferrell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

It’s like there’s this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds upon…the essence of the human being, the spirit. Now this predator energy can take fossil fuel and other resources out of the earth, turn it into fuel to run a machine-system. But in order for there to be a need for that system, and in order for that system to work, they have to mine our minds to get at the essence of our spirit. In the same way the external mining takes place - it pollutes, we see now, people understand how it poisons the environment, the water, the air, pollution - the mining of the essence, the mining of our spirit, mining our minds, the pollution from that is all of the neurotic, distorted, insecure behavior patterns that we develop. That’s the pollution. Because in order for this predator system, this disease, to work, we must not be able to use our minds in a clear, coherent manner. Because if we use our minds in a clear, coherent manner, we will not accept the unacceptable.

In an era of climate emergency that is fueling the fascist machine, Trudell’s perspective reminds us that the crises we are facing are longstanding, transnational, and interlocking. Information pollution has always been a central part of this picture, but in recent years, we have witnessed the efforts of far-right groups to “break” the information environment as a way to create the conditions for fascist rule. As Kali Akuno puts it, they are “perfecting the art of fragmenting society.” Their mission is to sow division through fear and confusion, making it difficult for us to build and maintain bridges of solidarity.

To return to Spade’s perspective, we can say that this information pollution plays a fundamental role in preventing us from having what we need: things like health care, livable communities, a nurturing relationship with all living things, and real security that derives from mutual support rather than from violence and repression. In short, getting what we need requires that we stop the pollution.

Grassroots media can help address this challenge through redoubled efforts to promote critical media literacy (Schenwar and Witt’s article is packed with useful links on this), demand better information from legacy outlets, and break the hold of tech overlords and their manipulative platforms and algorithms.

Mobilizing and expanding solidarity

Spade’s second element of mutual aid follows clearly from the first: “Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.” In a media context, this means work that links the struggle against information pollution with struggles to think, act, and live beyond the structures that oppress us.

The struggle against information pollution has the potential to help us understand not only what is happening to us and why, but also how our own struggles are linked with the struggles of others, both near and far. In other words, it can help us overcome the division that the fascists are constantly trying to create.

Weave News author Ifat Gazia interviewing some local women in a village, north of Kashmir, during a reporting assignment in 2014. (Photo credit: Ifat Gazia)

Grassroots journalism is well positioned to respond to this pollution by promoting the sharing of information in the interest of building networks of resilience and resistance. Our mission at Weave News, for example, “prioritizes diverse voices within and across national borders in order to help people — including the journalists themselves — understand how the things that are happening in faraway places are inherently connected to things happening close to home.”

The current moment, however, demands something even more urgent: building durable and broad-based movements against the techno-fascism and climate fascism referenced above. Here we are inspired by projects such as the Movement Media Alliance and the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism. With our own distinctive mission to guide us, we will be working to plug into these and other efforts as we seek to join others in a larger, collective struggle.

Building participatory - and liberating - media spaces

One of the strengths of grassroots media lies in the basic idea of participation. At its best, grassroots media work represents an exercise in radical democracy, connecting with Spade’s third element: “Mutual aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.”

Here at Weave News, we seek to live this idea by providing “space for people to report from where they are, from the ground,” contributing to a tapestry of “people’s news” that is woven from direct experience. The promise of such work is also our greatest challenge: finding ways to “weave” these stories together so that the threads linking them become visible. Ideally, these threads are also the threads of the better world we seek to build.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that the impulse to “become the media” can easily be (and has been) hijacked by reactionary forces. We see this in the form of networked disinformation and spaces such as the “manosphere” (the loosely connected set of online spaces promoting misogynistic and anti-feminist content) associated with social media influencers such as Andrew Tate and Nick Adams.

Such developments remind us of the importance of distinguishing what we do as grassroots journalists from other forms of media that offer only oppressive and manipulative forms of participation. This includes central aspects of virtually all social media, where “participation” is often a disguise for data mining, consumerism, and ideological manipulation.

Spade’s point about the danger of relying on “saviors” also has profound implications in the broader media realm, where the essential work of establishment media is sadly matched (or exceeded) by their failures in the face of rising authoritarianism. Indeed, as Victor Pickard notes, the limitations of a corporate-dominated media system have never been clearer. Such outlets still have an important role to play - and we must continue holding them accountable - but they alone won’t save us.

An ongoing commitment

As we work to expand and strengthen grassroots media spaces, then, we should be wary of the misleading dichotomy between the “false” world of mis- and disinformation and the “true” world of supposedly “trustworthy” elite media. We embrace the longstanding independent media impulse to offer a third way that builds trust through a commitment to honest and fair reporting, rigorous critique of oppressive ideologies, and unswerving independence from state and corporate power.

Beyond this, as grassroots journalists, we center the element of transnational, democratic participation - the stories of the people, woven together in struggle - as a way to contribute to the larger project of fighting fascism here, there, and everywhere.