Starting May 29th, 2020, three days after the police murder of George Floyd, the Twin Cities Mutual Aid Project (TCMAP) was formed as a decentralized volunteer-led collective that provided up-to-date data on local mutual aid and community care networks around the Twin Cities. The project shifted in many ways, from existing as a spreadsheet on Google Sheets to an interactive web app.
In early 2023, the map broke. Our volunteer force, although reaching over 200 volunteers at the height of the uprising, was very small by this time. We no longer have active volunteers with the web development skills required to fix the map.
For the past year, our remaining team of volunteers continued updating the AirTable for those who still found utility in the data. Despite the ongoing need for tools that connect those needing and distributing resources to mutual aid hubs collecting and distributing aid, a broken map, declining site views, and our minimal labor capacity have led to the sunset of this project.
May future support networks and tools grounded in sustainability and community needs come to life to support a liberated and resourced future for us all.
In solidarity,
TCMAP
To make final changes to a mutual aid site's listing in the public AirTable or for any other questions, please email sites@tcmap.org by June 2nd, 2024. All TCMAP-affiliated emails and social media will not be monitored after June 15th, 2024.
TCMAP’s data as it exists now, including mutual aid sites’ names and addresses, will remain an open-access community resource, but will no longer be updated nor maintained. We have every wish to keep the data public and hope the information is helpful for years to come!
To download the data, click the three dots in the tools bar then select "Download CSV".
We plan to make available a more user-friendly cleaned spreadsheet in the future.
TCMAP as it exists now is an archived project. While anyone can access the data, we are not seeking to revive the map, recruit new volunteers, or transfer the project to an interested group. Many of our tools are now defunct or have changed dramatically in the past four years. Our processes are complex and challenging to convey due to their unique history. We’ve made this decision thoughtfully and we ask that TCMAP not be solicited with offers to ‘save’ the project. Anyone wishing to revive the map are welcome to use the data to recreate a new map under a different name.
If you’re curious about how the project came to be, check out these resources:
- Webinar presentation by TCMAP volunteers at UMN's Thinking Spatially Symposium (35:47) (September 2021)
- This presentation provides a detailed history of TCMAP and an overview of mutual aid efforts in the Twin Cities following the uprising. To read the script see,
THINKINGSPATIALLY.md.
- This presentation provides a detailed history of TCMAP and an overview of mutual aid efforts in the Twin Cities following the uprising. To read the script see,
- Presentation by TCMAP volunteers at Minnedemo34 (January 2021)
- "This is How You Keep Your Mutual Aid Group Sustainable" by Samantha Grasso of AJ+ (September 2020)
- “On the Ground With Mutual Aid.” Minnesota Women’s Press, vol. Collective Action Issue, no. 36–9, p. 12 (September 2020)
To view TCMAP's old website including the list of resources, checkout Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.