What is GMAC?

Our principles and commitments.

Members of the Gaza Mutual Aid Collective adhere to all of the following principles. 

• Our commitment to mutual aid.

  • We are committed to monetarily helping the people of the steadfast Gaza, whose quality of life has been progressively deteriorating for almost two decades by the colonial air, land, and sea blockade and siege by the Zionist occupation. By materially and directly aiding the people of Gaza, the liberation of Palestine becomes closer as revolutionary potential is uplifted by increasing means for support, infrastructure, and building community via self-sufficient projects, medical aid, and rebuilding.

• Our definition of mutual aid.

  • "Whenever we rely on a capitalist, imperialist system to provide vital necessities... the provisions will be fragile and inadequate, and designed to transfer far more wealth toward the populations those systems were designed to support... Often, the concessions are never delivered at all, only promised in an effort to quell resistance."

  • "Getting support through a mutual aid project that has a political analysis of the conditions that produced your crisis also helps to break stigma, shame, and isolation. Under capitalism, social problems resulting from exploitation and the maldistribution of resources are understood as individual moral failings, not systemic problems... This work is based on a belief that those on the front lines of a crisis have the best wisdom to solve the problems, and that collective action is the way forward."

  • "Mutual aid projects expose the reality that people do not have what they need and propose that we can address this injustice together. The most famous example in the United States is the Black Panther Party’s survival programs... including a free breakfast program, free ambulance program, free medical clinics, a service offering rides to elderly people doing errands, and a school aimed at providing a rigorous liberation curriculum to children... welcomed people into the liberation struggle by creating spaces where they could meet basic needs and build a shared analysis about the conditions they were facing..." 

  • "Solidarity is what builds and connects large-scale movements. In the context of professionalized nonprofit organizations, groups are urged to be single-issue oriented, framing their message around “deserving” people within the population they serve, and using tactics palatable to elites."

  • "Solidarity and an ever-expanding commitment to justice emerge from contact with the complex realities of injustice. This is exactly how movements are built, as people become connected to each other and as one urgent issue unspools into a broader vision of social transformation."

  • "Charity, aid, relief, and social services are terms that usually refer to rich people or the government making decisions about the provision of some kind of support to poor people—that is, rich people or the government deciding who gets the help, what the limits are to that help, and what strings are attached... [this puts] a tiny, inadequate Band-Aid on the massive social wound that their greed creates...  [Charity's] methods of deciding who is deserving, and even the rules they enforce, usually promote racist and sexist tropes... Charity makes rich people and corporations look generous while upholding and legitimizing the systems that concentrate wealth."
    

• Our tradition of mutual aid. 

  • We believe that mutual aid in this manifestation is a continuation of a decades-long tradition of diaspora materially supporting the needs of the people in their homeland.

  • Diaspora has massively expanded since the Nakba and Naksa of 1948 and 1967. We believe in the revolutionary role of Palestinians in the diaspora, and we believe that the diaspora plays an integral role in the liberation of Palestine now more than ever. Contributing to and engaging in mutual aid work is an extension of this revolutionary role. 
    

• Our steadfast struggle for liberation. 

  • We support the liberation of the Palestinian people from colonialism, imperialism, and military occupation from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the southernmost border of the Naqab Desert to the northernmost border shared with Lebanon.

  • We affirm our right to self-determination and the reclamation of land and resources. 

  • We support the right of Palestinians to resist colonization, occupation, and genocide by any means necessary.

  • We insist that solidarity with Palestinians on the ground and in exile in our struggle for liberation is never conditional. We reject attempts to limit the means by which Palestinians choose to liberate ourselves.

• Our return to Palestine.

  • We uphold the right of return for all generations of Palestinian exiles and refugees to Palestine.
    

• Our refusal to normalize. 

  • We do not recognize the Zionist entity ("Israel"). 

  • We refuse any form of normalization of Zionism, whether through diplomatic state relations or on an individual basis.

  • We support boycott, divestment, and sanction efforts against the Zionist regime as one of the tactics for liberation, and we join the call for the end of all monetary, military, and resource aid to the "Israeli" settler-colonial regime.

     

• Our commitment to joint struggle.

  • We stand in solidarity with all Indigenous peoples in their struggles for sovereignty and liberation of land and resources. We oppose all states founded on settler-colonialism. 

  • We recognize that Palestine is the nexus for many struggles for justice. Thus, we oppose Zionism, racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and any prejudice rooted in or based on religion.

  • We reject attempts by imperial powers to leverage concerns about "human rights" as justification for imperialist intervention and sanctions.

  • We uphold the struggles of non-Palestinians against Zionism and the racism of the Zionist entity or its imperial arms. We recognize the material connections between the US and the Zionist entity in bringing destruction, racism, and death to the oppressed of the world via state surveillance, repression, and so-called "border security."

• Our internationalist solidarity with prisoners. 

  • ​​​​​We call for the freedom of all Palestinian prisoners who have been abducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the colonial prisons of the Zionist occupation. 

  • ​​​​​​​​​​​Along with the abolition of the Zionist regime's colonial prisons, ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​we call for the complete dismantlement and abolition of the prison-industrial complex.

  • We recognize that prisons are a white supremacist tool to control Indigenous, racialized, and poor peoples' right to movement, self-determination, and organizing against systems of oppression. 

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Our right to political expression.

  • We support freedom of expression and oppose nefarious attempts by governments or well-funded corporations, such as the ADL, AIPAC, Canary Mission, and Stop Antisemitism, to employ smear campaigns against those allied in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

• Our commitment to protecting recipients. 

  • We do not disclose the identities of recipients of aid online or offline. We maintain that the recipients of donations deserve to receive help without compromising their anonymity or dignity.

• Our burden to prove and verify the credibility of recipients and their needs, to a reasonable extent. 

  • We maintain a burden of proof for verifying funds. We verify and cross-reference documentation provided by recipients, including governmental and state-issued IDs, medical reports, photos, and videos.

• Our refusal to accept payment. 

  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​We are not employees. Our labour is voluntary and unpaid. 

  • GMAC is a grassroots collective. It is not a registered non-profit or non-governmental organization, a charity, or a corporate entity with employees.