The Common Humanity Collective Summer Update
subscribe to our newsletter
Hey amazing folks! We hope you are surviving and thriving this hot, hot summer. Common Humanity Collective has been up to a lot and we hope you are too. Watching empire fall and taking care of each other is hard work! Read on to get updates and see how you can join. If you have any questions or have a project or collaboration opportunity that is interesting, reach out to CommonHumanityCollective@RiseUp.net. And if you want to deepen that connection, tell us something you are joyous (or grieving) about!
Early this year we heard from Mask Oakland that they needed to move away from physical operations to focus on educational resources on wildfire smoke safety and organizing. We've shared our storage space with them since January 2024, but our relationship goes back to supporting each other during the 2021 wildfire season! Over the years our larger joint headquarters has been crucial for bulk supply orders and our rapid response to the LA fires in early 2025. Not everything has to last forever, and even though we'll miss sharing physical space with Mask Oakland, we know our partnership will evolve with this new chapter! We're grateful to them for the wildfire crisis response work they've been doing since 2017 and hope to see their knowledge preserved and spread. In July when wildfire smoke in Canada hit the Midwest and Northeast, we collaborated on a post developed by Mask Oakland to help share some of their community wisdom.
Since last summer, we've been distributing 30,000 N95s sourced by Mask Oakland, and we kicked our mask outreach into high gear when we learned in March that we were going to need to downsize. This was a months-long process that took a lot of effort across those in CHC who managed outreach and bulk mask distributions, and those CHCers who physically moved all our inventory into a smaller, cheaper storage space. Even after moving, we're still in the process of downsizing, and have masks that are looking for new homes! We have 3M 8210s (cup style N95s in both regular and small sizes) and vented KN95s. If you or someone you know is interested in these masks, send us an email. Please feel free to share this offer with others, including local collectives and mutual aid groups! If you'll be traveling from the Bay to an area dealing with wildfires (like the Pacific Northwest), we can send you on your way with masks for those communities.
Outside of our storage move, some CHCers are also making moves in their personal lives. We're short on capacity, and would love some new friends and neighbors to organize with us! We especially need support with physical distribution of masks, planning our events, and migrating our website off of Squarespace, though we wholeheartedly welcome anything you're interested in contributing. In the past, CHCers have started working on zines, made graphics, done outreach to mutual aid groups, tabled, experimented with carbon filters for our DIY air purifiers, and more! We hope to hear from some of you soon <3
If you didn’t read our update from the winter of 2025, you can find it here.
In April, we hosted a build with a few different San Francisco-based groups, including West Side Tenants Association (WSTA), Tenants and Neighborhood Councils (TANC), and Safer Together! This collaboration began at the end of 2025, when we heard from local organizers that a grouping of homes in San Francisco were facing severe mold. These tenant organizers have been working to form bonds and connections between residents to build power and pressure the landlords to deal with the mold. Together we decided to host a DIY air purifier build to materially support residents with one form of mold mitigation (though purifiers only help with some of the symptom relief, rather than working to stop the mold in the first place). Along with Safer Together, we sourced fans and filters, and during the build we used a modified DIY air purifier design that blended strengths from both of our groups. We helped WSTA develop resources on how to take care of the DIY air purifiers in moldy conditions, and WSTA sourced materials for mold clean-up kits. During the build, members of TANC provided food and spoke with residents about how to get involved in tenant organizing with their neighbors. This practice of mutual aid within tenant mobilization was a true collective effort, and we're looking forward to similar collaborations in the future!
Back in 2023 we led a DIY air purifier workshop with El Tímpano, a local organization that informs, engages, and amplifies the voices of Latino and Mayan immigrants of Oakland and the wider Bay Area. In June we were able to support another build they put on by getting them fan, filter, and shroud supplies. This workshop was part of El Tímpano's long-term investigation into the health effects of indoor air quality in Latino immigrant communities. In other DIY air purifier news, we've been planning a build with some rad student organizers at Mask Bloc San José State University for our first ever South Bay event! This workshop has been in talks for almost a year, and it finally happened at the end of August. We're thrilled to have been able to share knowledge with our South Bay neighbors, especially as we're getting increased interest in DIY air purifiers from people who live in the area, and we'll share more about how the workshop went in our winter newsletter.
Since we've had limited money and capacity to plan our own events this year, one of the goals we talked about at a CHC retreat was tabling more at community events! In February we tabled at the QUARTZ Queer Arts Market at Filthy Studios in Oakland, in April we tabled at a "medical supply edition" mutual aid swap in a Berkeley backyard, and in July we tabled at the Center for Independent Living (CIL) Disability Pride event. With QUARTZ and CIL, we shared free masks and zines with attendees and let people know about our free mask, test, DIY drink valve, and DIY air purifier distribution. At the mutual aid swap, we spent the day distributing DIY drink valve kits. Many had never heard of drink valves, so we demonstrated how to use them and helped people install the valves into masks.
If you're interested in putting on your own mutual aid swap, one of the Berkeley organizers wrote a how-to-guide comic about their first swap experience that you can read here. As they say, "it's time to stop waiting around for those in power to save us. We, the people, can get everyone's basic needs met. It just takes a little relationship building and a lot of love." Coming up this fall, we've been invited to table at a mask-required rave at Sucka Free Collective in San Francisco and the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair in Oakland, both happening in October. These events are longer than we're used to, so we can use your support! If you're interested in tabling with us at either one, please email us. If you're ever involved with organizing a community event where mutual aid groups can table with information or supplies, reach out to see if we're available!
Late in 2025, we had noticed that we were getting an influx of requests for DIY air purifiers in the South Bay. Given lack of CHC capacity to deliver them ourselves as well as inability to ship them (they're too fragile to ship), we partnered with Mask Bloc San José! We're supplying MBSJ with some DIY air purifiers to have on hand, and they help us deliver those purifiers when we get requests from folks in San José. They've already been able to distribute a few, and we're glad that purifiers are more accessible throughout a wider swath of the Bay Area. We've also started to experiment with local pick-up hubs hosted by individuals, and we're interested in expanding! Do you want to maintain supplies at access points like free fridges, or do you have a spot where you could stock and distribute the materials we have (masks, DIY purifiers, DIY drink valves)? Feel free to hit us up!
So far this year, on top of weekly distros to Bay Area neighbors, we've supported some incredible local groups and organizing projects, like Share Our Skills (SOS), West Oakland Free Cafe, SF Bay Area Bench Collective, Senior and Disability Action, Community Liberation Program's Youth Street Medics program, Trans Joy Community, Poor Magazine, East Oakland Collective, Food Not Bombs in SF and Redwood City, Think of Others Revolutionary Poetry Circle for Queer Poets of Color, Trans Bay Area, and Oakland Revealed, among many more! There have also been a wide variety of events that have gotten CHC supplies, like ASATA's Bay Area Solidarity Summer, the Health Autonomy Convergence, Bay Area Ace Meet-up, Nowruz market, Queering Dance Festival, and Queer Women of Color Film Festival.
As part of our effort to downsize starting earlier this year, we did a lot of outreach to distribute masks we no longer have space for. We connected with groups located farther than our usual Bay Area radius, helping us weave more connections with community members we normally don't get to talk to! This included collectives within driving distance like Nevada County Mutual Aid, Heater Bloc Reno, Golden Peach Resistance, and Mask Bloc Humboldt, as well as groups distributing masks overseas like the Sinlaku Mutual Aid Disaster Relief group in Manislan Mariånas (aka the Mariana Islands) as well as Liyan NorCal in the Philippines.
Other highlights from the first half of 2026:
After spending down the $5,000 we raised between 2024-2025, we re-upped the cap on our existing fundraiser to aim for another $5K. We've previously heard that not every CHC supporter can use platforms like GoFundMe and Chuffed, so we also created our first Venmo account (@CommonHCollective). With your support and comrades who doubled donations for a few months, we've since hit our goal for 2026! Please donate to help us stay sustainable and start strong in 2027. Your contributions help us pay for storage (so we can save money by sourcing what we need in bulk), masks, supplies to make DIY air purifiers and drink valves, and shipping costs for mailing out requests. Thank you all, our mutual aid project wouldn't be possible without your solidarity!
In April, we hosted a mini build with a handful of CHCers at our storage unit! We were extremely low on our stock of assembled DIY air purifiers, and we wanted to make sure we had a few on hand so that people doing weekly distributions could easily grab one to deliver. Aside from getting a few of our usual purifiers made, we also assembled CR boxes for Sucka Free Collective, and folded more of our DIY drink valve guides.
Back in 2024, we responded to a call from The Elements of Mutual Aid, an independently produced docuseries. The team wanted photo and video submissions of communities they weren't able to film to help showcase the diversity and abundance of mutual aid efforts. The series was released in May, and there's a brief CHC appearance in the first two chapters (fire and earth). We hope you check it out!
Following police violence at this year's Trans March, we joined other individuals and community groups in signing the Trans March Call for Real Solutions for Community Safety.
We've joined calls and shared resources for the Summer of Resilience, a campaign led by Survival Bloc and Collective Resilience to strengthen local disaster and crisis responses in BIPOC and frontline communities.
We try to hold retreats at least once per year, where we get together in person to hang out, eat delicious snacks, and talk about topics in depth that we typically don't have the time to delve into during our weekly meetings. At our summer retreat we had the chance to share CHC history, talk about onboarding and decision making, and soak up some sunshine.