There is something deeply familiar about the story of neighbors checking on elders, distributing supplies and improvising support after a major outage. Black communities have long practiced mutual care because institutions have not always arrived quickly—or at all. That history deserves respect, but it should not become an excuse to romanticize being left to fend for ourselves.

A long power outage is not merely inconvenient. Refrigerated medicine spoils. Food is lost. People who use medical equipment face danger. Heat becomes harder to escape. Workers lose income and families spend money they did not plan to spend replacing what a failed system could not protect.

Community resilience is valuable, but resilience is a resource that can be depleted. The goal of public infrastructure should be to reduce how often people have to activate emergency networks just to get through an ordinary storm season.

We can celebrate the people who showed up for one another and still demand more from the systems they pay to maintain. Mutual aid should be a layer of community strength, not the backup plan for chronic institutional weakness.