Section 1 · Our Foundation
Welcome to the Door County Mutual Aid Collective! This is your essential guide to our collective work.
Its purpose is to provide clear guidelines for all our activities, ensuring consistency, safety, legal compliance, and most importantly, alignment with our mission, philosophy, and values. By following these procedures, we ensure we operate effectively, respectfully, and sustainably for the benefit of all in the Door Peninsula.
This guidebook is a living document. Please use it as your primary reference and reach out to our coordinators or relevant working groups if you have questions. We regularly review and revise it, so your feedback is always welcome to help us improve.
At Door County Mutual Aid, we bridge community needs and resources by creating inclusive networks of support that challenge systemic inequities and educating and empowering impassioned individuals to take direct action toward lasting change.
The deeper "how" and "why" behind our work — dynamic principles that inform every interaction and effort within the collective.
We operate from a vision centered on community well-being, built around mutual support, shared resources, decentralized power, and individual empowerment. We believe collective well-being is a shared responsibility, not a service to be delivered, fostering a culture of solidarity over charity.
We honor that each person is the exclusive controller of their body, energy, and life. Participation is on one's own terms, and we structure our efforts to limit any coercion or control that could interfere with self-direction and empowerment.
We strive for an equitable distribution of influence, ensuring that people work together on equal footing, and no one holds disproportionate power over another. Decisions are made collaboratively, accessing the collective experience and wisdom of the group.
We prioritize creating change and addressing needs directly within the community, without relying solely on external institutions or indirect methods. We focus on projects that foster community support, education, give people a sense of their own power, and shift influence from hierarchies to people and communities — as well as building toward a long-term vision of a healthy, just, and flourishing community.
Our work is fueled by a deep love and care for ourselves, our neighbors, and the earth/planet. We are committed to solidarity, especially with those politically targeted and suffering under systems of oppression. We actively seek to dismantle all interlocking systems of oppression.
As a collective, we mobilize using strategic nonviolence in our actions. Simultaneously, we respect the inherent right of individuals and communities to determine how to protect/direct themselves.
We welcome anyone interested in the mission and principles of DCMA. We actively strive to maintain accessibility in our collective spaces and proactively take accountability to improve in areas where we may fall short.
We value continuous input and dialogue with the community, seeking to respond directly to needs and concerns. We accept responsibility for our actions and maintain flexible, adaptable structures to plan for changing conditions and ensure swift, easy engagement.
In spite of the struggles we face, we strive to find joy in each other and bring playfulness to our projects. We encourage bringing our whole selves to this group, respecting the often emotional nature of social justice work, collective process, and setting aside egos to appreciate everyone for who they are.
We are dedicated to continuous collective learning and open communication. We foster environments where knowledge is shared freely, diverse perspectives are welcomed, and critical thinking is encouraged to deepen our understanding and strengthen our collective action. We consistently seek opportunities to educate and improve ourselves, learning from successes and failures to strengthen future initiatives.
We believe in the power of constant questioning — of our methods, our assumptions, and the systems around us. We encourage a spirit of curiosity and critical analysis, recognizing that a willingness to challenge established norms and learn from every experience is essential for true growth and liberation.
A quick summary of agreed-upon norms.
The actionable traits we embody — how we show up and what we prioritize in our daily work.
Security culture is a set of practices and attitudes designed to increase the safety of political communities. These guidelines are created based on recent and historic state repression, and help to reduce paranoia and increase effectiveness. The central principle of security culture is that people should never be privy to any sensitive information they do not need to know.
DCMA is a public and above-ground group. We welcome people with different comfort levels and experience with activism and direct action. We don't want to expose people to danger that they haven't signed up for.