We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Krystle Johnson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Krystle , thanks for joining us today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?

I volunteer with We All We Got San Diego Mutual Aid which is a community of people in San Diego. We all volunteer our time to get food to the people who need it. When COVID first hit, we realized we had community members that were starving. They needed food delivered because they couldn’t leave their houses. Many were also being rejected by food banks because they were required to have identification and other forms that needed to be filled out. Many didn’t have that and were turned away and that did not sit right with this community of people. We began collecting food and handing it out. We have been delivering food to homes as far north as La Jolla and as far south as the border for almost 4 years now. We have had many challenges because we constantly have to move locations and we have been targeted by police and the city at times. But we continue to persevere and try to get word out to the San Diego community that food is a human right and that we stand in solidarity with them. It is not charity. Every human deserves dignity and the right to food.

Krystle , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Our work is volunteering and we are committed to community. It’s about justice and building power. It’s about autonomy and agency amongst our people. It’s more than just survival but about community care. It’s about prioritizing the most vulnerable in our communities. Mutual aid is about redistributing to meet the needs of our communities. It’s about finding solutions together because all we got is us. It’s about building the world we want through collective power and action. Mutual aid is the moment where we meet people where they are at as it is an essential tool of base-building and relationship-building by genuinely serving the people. We’re not just trying to survive under a global pandemic – we are out here building power and movement building for our freedom!

While this group is a mutual aid that everyone has access to we center with intention those who experience marginalization and are even more so vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19. This includes (but is certainly not limited to): Black and Indigenous, people of color, undocumented, people with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming, poor/working class, those experiencing homelessness and chronic housing instability, sex workers, and those relegated to informal economies because of racism and racialized capitalism.

We acknowledge that white supremacy, capitalism, heretro-cis-patriarchy, imperialism, colonialism, xenophobia, and other institutionalized forms of oppression exist — we are not here to debate their existence. Crises like COVID-19 further reveal the complex ways these systems have been enacting violence and death. While COVID-19 is devastating to many, we acknowledge the disproportionate impacts the groups we center will experience because of these systems of oppression.

This is a group that values self-determination. We honor that people know what they need to survive and it is not our place to tell people how they will get free or what care looks like for them. We believe that people know what they need best to survive.

We do not work with those who enact state violence. We know that the police, ICE, border patrol uphold multiple systems of oppression and perpetuate violence in BIPOC communities.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

This group began in 2020 with very few members. It has ebbed and flowed over the years. For a while, one person would have to do all the shopping for groceries and do the deliveries and we would hope that we would get reimbursed by someone donating that week to us. Finding funding is so difficult because we don’t want to be a nonprofit. We aren’t willing to give out people’s information or allow for tracking of people who just want to be able to eat. There are so many roadblocks when you aren’t a nonprofit. People feel that you are not legitimate, even if you’re just asking for food to be donated and not wasted. But because we are not a nonprofit, we have the ability to deliver to those in need and we have the ability to go above and beyond for someone in ways that a business or nonprofit might deem a liability. Many people who work in businesses and nonprofits also volunteer with us. They know that we will help people with whatever they need and we stay a mutual aid to meet people where they are at and with what they need. They will not be turned away. We are building a strong movement of relying on each other, and not institutions to get through these hard times. But often, it comes at a cost to the volunteers because when we don’t have funding, we are paying out of our own pocketbooks.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In September 2023, many of our members who also worked with migrants needing support once they crossed the border, alerted us to the fact that astronomical numbers were coming across the border in San Diego. They all needed food, clothing, and a way to get to the airport. We partnered with Detention Resistance to start bringing food to the transit stops where these migrants were being dropped off. We began helping to give rides to the airport.

Other nonprofits stepped in to bring buses to give people rides to the airport and food. But then we realized that those sent to the airport were there days before their flights without any food. They often didn’t have a ticket, or they were confused by the airport and didn’t know where to go or what to do. WAWG took this pivot. We have continued our food distribution twice a month, but we took on the task of every day, asking members of the community to go to the airport, find migrants who are stranded, and feed them. We also give them clothing and help them to get wifi as well as navigate the airport so they don’t miss their flights. This is all volunteer-based and many members spend their own money to save migrants’ lives at the airport. Again, everything is funded by donations from the community so we are stretched thin, but when you give someone a coat and gloves and food that is flying to the East Coast in a few hours, it all feels worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: weallwegosd.com
• Instagram: weallwegotsd
• Facebook: We all We Got San Diego
• Twitter: weallwegotsd
• Other: Venmo and Paypal donations appreciated: https://www.weallwegotsd.com/donate

Image Credits
Charlene and Mary are shown in one picture. They are regular volunteers who donate food and also buy and pick food up for us to give away.