This Giving Tuesday, we invite you to materially support the survival needs of people who are intimately affected by community and state violence by contributing to Stick Talk’s mutual aid fund.
100% of contributions will be distributed to young Black and Brown people (ages 15 to 27) who are gun violence survivors and their loved ones.
Stick Talk’s Firearm Harm Reduction hubs are located in communities with high rates of gun violence and gun arrests. Together, our neighborhood-level hubs form a mycelial network: an infrastructure of redistribution that facilitates the movement of resources from places of abundance to places of scarcity.
By contributing to Stick Talk’s mutual aid fund, you are investing directly in community safety solutions that:
✨ are co-created with gun violence survivors
✨ are grounded in localized tactics, leadership, and imagination
✨ do not rely on prisons, police, or punishment
Stick Talk works hard to keep our operation lean. We avoid layers of middle management and bureaucracy so that we can focus our resources on young people who are on both sides of the gun. We have set up financial and administrative mechanisms that honor young people’s autonomy and build their power to determine how and in what form material support should be distributed.
Mutual aid is a longstanding practice of collective care. Stick Talk’s mutual aid fund is modeled on the resource-sharing strategies* practiced by enslaved and freed Black southerners after the Civil War and Reconstruction, as they mobilized to create self-sustaining communities in which to exercise authority over their own lives.
The number of young people seeking out our Firearm Harm Reduction hubs is rapidly growing. From just 2022 to 2023, we increased the number of gun violence survivors in our network by 43% (270 to 388) and increased the mutual aid funds we distributed by 183% ($20,810 to $58,925).
For Giving Tuesday, we are hoping to raise $7,495, our average mutual aid (re)distributions to young people across our network each month for the past six months. Whether you contribute one time or monthly, $5 or $500, we are so excited to welcome you into our circle of support.
If we transform the ways we use and share it, money can be a medicine for collective wellness.
* benevolent societies, fraternal lodges, neighborhood protective associations, etc.
Here’s what your contribution makes possible:
- $25 supports 1 young person to attend a Firearm Harm Reduction workshop.
- $35 covers the costs of a survivors’ ceremony, a component of our grief work.
- $75 buys a young person a coat and scarf for the winter.
- $100 provides food for 8 young people incarcerated for gun possession offenses.
- $350 subsidizes an emergency gunshot wound response training for 15 participants.
- $1,890 sponsors one of our Firearm Harm Reduction hubs for a month.
- $5,000 covers funeral expenses for a young person who has been murdered.
Stick Talk advances Firearm Harm Reduction, a community safety strategy co-created by young Black and Brown people who are on both sides of the gun.