MAD Manifesto

Mutual Aid Diabetes business cards on a fluffy green carpet. Three cards: one in foreground has a smaller logo and reads "Mutual Aid Diabetes. Need help with diabetes costs? MutualAidDiabetes.com Call or text 646-780-9571 Twitter: @MutualAidBetes Instagram: @MutualAidDiabetes" cards in background feature red orange teal dark blue heart logos on a white background.

1. We want free and easily accessible insulin, medication, supplies, technology, healthcare (including abortion and gender affirming care,) food, and housing for all. No one is free as long as they are forced to pay to live. 

2. We believe white supremacy, ableism, and patriarchy are intricately bound together: designed to oppress, exploit, and kill the vast majority of humans to the benefit of the few ultra rich and powerful capitalists.

3. We believe The State commits an act of violence every time a diabetic of any type is forced to ration their insulin, medication, supplies, or healthcare due to cost. We attempt to mitigate that violence by practicing mutual aid to care for our community. 

4. We will never take money from pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or health insurance companies. We will never take money with “strings attached” from anyone.

5. We oppose Type 1 supremacy and reject the idea that Type 2 diabetes can be “caused” by an individual: a myth rooted in anti-black, anti-fat, classist propaganda. We also acknowledge that there are so many types of diabetes frequently left out of the conversation entirely, including but not limited to: LADA, Type 3c, MODY, CFRD, and gestational diabetes.

6. We are overwhelmingly queer, non-binary, and trans: we reject the idea and constant media framing that women are the only ones harmed by the patriarchal medical industrial complex.

7. We are based in occupied First Nations/Indigenous land known in settler-colonial terms as The United States of America. We support Landback efforts to return land to Indigenous people who have lived under genocidal occupation since the inception of this country.

8. We want to eliminate hierarchical systems. Hierarchy (ranking some people “above” others based on status or authority) ensures those most marginalized continue to be oppressed by those historically in power.

9. We are police and prison abolitionists. We believe a “criminal justice” system which routinely brutalizes and murders disabled people (disproportionately Black disabled people) that was born out of the U.S. enslavement of Black people (which continues to this day) cannot possibly be “reformed.”

10. We are anti-fascist. “Antifa” is not a group: it’s a political ideology centered on opposing fascism (far-right nationalism and the forceful suppression of any opposition, overseen by an authoritarian government.) We believe oppressed peoples everywhere have the right to resist occupation and fight against violence perpetrated by The State.

11. We are anti-work and reject the idea that labor output makes a person worthy of life, ease, and happiness. But, we wholeheartedly support unionization, labor strikes, and alternative means of surviving capitalism like sex work.

If at any point anyone in MAD wishes to change or make additions to this manifesto, changes will be made via consensus among the group and published widely.