Samuel Olivares

Mutual Aid Worker and Community Organizer

In this interview, Samuel Nemir Olivares, District Leader for NY Assembly District 53 and co-founder of Bushwick Ayuda Mutua (BAM), talks about his work in mutual aid supporting his neighbors and fellow community members in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He reflects on his organizing work at the intersection of housing, food access, and education, before the Covid-19 pandemic, and he shares how the current health emergency magnifies the existing eviction crisis that residents have been fighting for decades. Samuel tells us about the logistical and operational details of the huge collective that BAM has become, emerging very quickly at the beginning of Covid-19. According to him though, mutual aid practices have “been at the DNA of the community” for decades, as neighbors in Bushwick have cared for one another during times of government disinvestment and neglect. In his work as District Leader, as a member of BAM, as a housing rights activist, Samuel calls on NYC elected officials to prioritize housing as a human right that is absolutely essential for all residents in order to survive the Covid-19 pandemic. This interview is part of the Nos Cuidamos oral history project, which is a collaboration between Cities For People, Not For Profit and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP).