only got to listen to the first 45 minutes of https://firestorm.coop/events/3337-rattling-the-cages-looking-back-at-the-george-jackson-brigade.html before i passed out, but one gem was Mark Cook describing a consistent practice of fundraising for political prisoners so they would be able to get a healthy lump sum upon their release, as a reminder that folks had been thinking about them and wanted to support them. sometimes it was as big as $15k, as in the case of Marilyn Buck, but he also made a point of noting having gotten $1k together for someone who'd essentially "been broken" and "flipped on himself" while inside.
i found the same practice in a book i'm reading about Nestor Makhno, in the chapter on the end of his life. after a few years in different prisons (Brașov, Strzałków, and Warsaw), then a year of being under police surveillance, during which he landed in a hospital because of his tuberculosis and had to subsequently be broken out, he eventually settled down in Paris, where "French, Spanish, and American anarchists collected money to provide Makhno with a modest income for his life."
all of this is a nice reminder of the long history of #MutualAid practices, particularly in the context of prisoner solidarity. when we request support and post/boost it, we're tapping into a long legacy of this kind of work, and it's something i'd like to make sure i foreground more in this space, at the very least for myself, but hopefully also for others. 