Source notes

Widening Circles Collaborative is steeped in lineage and ancienteternal lifeways that predate capitalism. Please find our evolving set of citations below.

Kula ring

Sourced from Charles Eisensteins’s text Sacred Economics:

“…the kula system of the Trobriand Islanders, in which precious necklaces circulate in one direction from island to island, and bracelets in the other direction. Kula, which literally means “circle,” is the lynchpin of a vast system of gifts and other economic exchanges. Marcel Mauss describes it as follows:

The system of gift-through-exchange permeates all the economic, tribal, and moral life of the Trobriand people. It is “impregnated” with it, as Malinowski very neatly expressed it. It is a constant “give and take.” The process is marked by a continuous flow in all directions of presents given, accepted, and reciprocated.”

While the pinnacle of the kula system is the highly ritualized exchange of ceremonial bracelets and necklaces by chiefs, the gift network surrounding it extends to all kinds of utilitarian items, food, boats, labor, and so forth. In any event, “Generally, even what has been received and comes into one’s possession in this way—in whatever manner—is not kept for oneself, unless one cannot do without it.” In other words, gifts flow continuously, only stopping in their circulation when they meet a real, present need. Here is Lewis Hyde’s poetic description of this principle of the gift:

The gift moves toward the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum.

Bantu Cosmologies

Sourced from Cherise Morris's instagram post:

Abolitionist and anti-capitalist ideas were integral to Bantu understandings of community as described in Kimwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau’s “African Cosmology of the Bantu Kongo.” …Bantu cosmologies also regarded excessive wealth, “[a] level of accumulation [that] cannot come without exploitation,”as the most serious crime. It was the community’s responsibility to support the economic, social, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing of all community members. By doing this, cycles of harm could be avoided. Co-creating, maintaining, and refining a society where individuals had the support to not replicate harm and trauma was a collective spiritual responsibility and spiritual imperative. In our present context, there’s an immensity of trauma and harm to heal from in this process of eradicating these violences from our society.”

image of pre-colonial Banza Kongo: Capital of the Kingdom of Kongo

Mutual Aid

Art by N.O. Bonzo

Mutual aid has deep roots. As Keno Evol (essay linked in our library below) reminds us, mutual aid is a core component of abolition – not only as a means of survival but a reclamation of joy. He links looting and mutual aid as parallel streams of resistance to state violence:

“We even see the role of looting in Closer to Freedom (Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South by Stephanie Camp)—that is, looting for the dance party:

“Theft was the main way of obtaining the goods they needed. ‘They took without saying, “By your leave, sir,” the food and drink they wanted. Steward wrote, ‘Reasoning among themselves as slaves often do that it cannot be stealing, because, ‘It belongs to massa, and so do we, and we only use one part of his property to benefit another.’”

This is where we see mutual aid within joyful fugitivity. These are the logics of a joyful revolt. Which isn’t to concede to be owned. On the contrary, it is the deepening of mutual aid by disrespecting authority completely unbothered.”

~

Mutual aid played an important role during community organizing efforts in the 60’s and 70’s. The Black Panther Party’s famous mutual aid network created over 60 Survival Programs, including a free breakfast program, shoe distribution, transportation for elders to the grocery store, sickle cell testing, ambulance program, and culturally-relevant schooling, child development center, and much more. mutual aid, communities take on the responsibility for caring for one another, rather than forcing individuals to fend for themselves.

Mutual aid is not charity: rather than creating a centralized organization, mutual aid creates symbiotic relationships where all people offer material goods or assistance to one another, transparent and driven by community members.