RFC: maintenance dinners

alex baldwin

writing can be a struggle for me, so this is a loose patchwork of notes and class journal entries and excerpts of my project.

class journal

2025-02-16 i don’t know if i want to work within the constraints of my current mutual aid group that i do all the tech stuff for. i feel like it might limit my imagination
2025-03-11 actually changing my mind and thinking about the meta-infrastructure of the mutual aid infrastructure. like it can’t just be for Bed-Stuy Strong, we have many hyperlocal groups that all sort of know each other, and afaik we are all doing infrastructure differently. in 2020 there was more infosharing and inspiration going on as we developed new-ish infrastructures for phone intake and request tracking, but AFAIK most of that infrastructure has shut down as needs have changed and the work has shifted
2025-03-19 anyway i’m dreaming about dinner parties and hack houses and maintenance sessions as teach-ins and repair cafes ⭐️

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the project

i used mmm.page as both a brainstorming tool and page builder for my project. it has very satisfying sound effects. you can see the page in action here:

RFC: maintenance dinners →

(RFC stands for Request for Comments, and is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the RFCs that describe the technical and organizational foundations of the internet)

let's walk through some visual-heavy mind-mapping...

screenshot of a few mind maps/collages, described below

the top-left star cluster starts with the Maintenance and Care article from Places Journal. i started thinking about how doing maintenance together as a group is also a way of sharing knowledge- in this case often specific technical knowledge, which i personally find easier to understand with hands-on experience. also always on my mind, thanks to the incredible presentation Meghna gave about "dealing with shit", is the question of who deals with shit (who does the maintenance). i came across research by Mannat Kaur on gendered labor and care work in sysadmin jobs that feels relevant, and the tech industry's embrace of offshore outsourcing also comes to mind.

on the right is a photo taken at one of Bed-Stuy Strong's organizer potlucks, i think one of the earlier ones. we get together, feed each other, and do some dreaming and reflecting. they're a welcome break from Zoom meetings with agendas, something that's nourishing socially and physically. it's fitting for us, having spent so much time focused on food distribution. clustered around the photo are related concepts: potlucks, family meals (in the restaurant context), dinner clubs, food distros, "to nourish is to maintain", and "table as gathering place". there's a gif of hot pot (one of the most iconic communal meals, imo) and of the food not bombs logo.

in the bottom left, a translucent sticky note holds a list of other kinds of infrastructures that have been on my mind: infoshops, zine shares, mailing lists, repair cafes, hackerspaces, and meeting spaces (both physical and virtual).

screenshot showing a pulsing green circle labelled 'hyperlocal mutual aid (2025)' with text around it

loose cluster of some of the infrastructure/maintenance-related issues hyperlocal mutual aid groups are dealing with in 2025 (from personal experience):

  • transition from crisis response to sustainable mutual** organzing
    • i don't 100% remember why i put asterisks after "mutual". maybe to emphasize or add a footnote about how non-mutual the crisis response "mutual aid" ended up being, in practice?
  • disrepair, abandonment, lack of maintenance (infrastructural and interpersonal)
  • weak intergroup relationships and fragmented community memory
  • burdened by infrastructures that are no longer needed and/or politically unaligned

screenshot of an abstract sort of venn diagram full of emojis

attempting to map out material infrastructures (i.e. physical resources, logistics of production) and relational infrastructures (i.e. communication, the family). the spinny thing represents how in reality they are far more intertwined.

now, on to the synthesized product of these thoughts...

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💌

maintenance dinners

for mutual aid infrastructure

 3d cartoon shape people sitting on a picnic blanket with food

shared meals form the basis of communal maintenance. we’re maintaining our bodies and our relationships.

we can work towards our own technical infrastructures by first forming the social infrastructure and practicing maintenance in all its forms.

maintenance dinners can be a time and place where we learn, share, hack, debug, code, connect, salvage, repair...

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cartoon laptop showing 4 cartoon animals video chatting

irl is always special, but sometimes meeting online is more accessible.

there are ways to hang out and collaborate in cyberspace beyond a zoom meeting!

virtual worlds, text-based games, doing puzzles together, spatial audio, infinite drawing canvases, to name a few

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things we might talk about over dinner ✨

  • who are we? what skills and knowledge do we bring? what perspectives? what do we want to learn?
    • what resources do we have access to?
    • what is our capacity?
  • what are our shared principles? how will those guide how we select technologies?
  • how will we make decisions? deal with conflict?
    • what kind of power dynamics are at play?
  • who should access our infrastructure? who is it for? how do they participate?
  • what infrastructures are we already using? which do we rely on?
    • do alternatives exist that align with our principles?
    • what’s good and bad about them?
  • what is practical for us? what is aspirational?
    • how available do we need a server to be?
  • do we have enough trust to share servers?
    • what is our threat model?
  • where will our physical infrastructure live?

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etc...

maintenance dinner version 0, hopfully coming soon?

if this speaks to you, please go ahead and put together your own! i would love to hear about it.

i can be found through my personal web page cubegho.st, or on most social media as @cubeghost.

class materials that particularly stuck with me, plus other inspirations

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