Kindred Roots
Kindred Roots celebrates culturally rooted care for our diverse Queens communities. Here, mental wellness is understood as a shared responsibility, not cordoned off into clinical systems that many can’t access or have reasons to not trust.who believe that healing needs hope, and it can be woven into experiences of learning, listening, and creating
Kindred Roots emerged out of Queens Mutual Aid as activities by peers, practitioners, artists, and organizers during Street Works Earth 2025. Today, we’re exploring what comes next.
Mental Wellness Resource Library
Click to learn more about Queens Mutual Aid’s library of community groups focused on mental wellness.
2025 Street Works Earth Activities
Click here to see how all activities weaved together. If you have experience in New York City leading on the topic or know somebody that does, we'd love to hear from you. Please use the contact form below.
Why
We didn’t start this because we had answers. We started because some of us are hurting. We’ve lived the stress and sadness that can come from trying to survive the weight of bills, discrimination, political dehumanization, and/or displacement. And we feel the weight of what is coming: the effects of climate change that will haunt us for centuries.
For some of us, the cultural stigma of looking for help is too hard to overcome. For others, the systems that offer care don’t speak our culture or language, aren’t affordable, or ask us to find time we don’t have.
Many of us have gained wisdom from experiences, inside and outside of systems. Some of us found a way to make the system or resources work for us. Others find our way back to ourselves through art, as makers, fans, or both. We come to this as neighbors trying to imagine mental wellness as something we can do together, make together, and weave into our everyday life and spaces.