SURJ Boston

Take Action Together

☎️ 📋 ✊ ACTION HOURS

Every Wednesday 12 to 1 PM
Register here for action hours and invite friends to action hours on Facebook.

• The link is recurring, you can choose one or more sessions, and you can register again if you don’t know your schedule yet.
• Captions available: please try to indicate need for captions by 11:30 AM the Monday before your session.

SURJ Boston active members lead these weekly sessions to build collective power—we do a feature on a particular effort or issue, make phone calls, send emails, and sign petitions. Facilitators are on hand to answer questions!

Indigenous Solidarity

☎️ CALL YOUR REPS: CHANGE THE STATE FLAG AND SEAL!

This past week, the State Senate unanimously passed a bill calling for a review of the racist Massachusetts state flag and seal. However, the House of Representatives has not yet voted on this important legislation. Call and email your reps TODAY during this extended legislative session and urge them to vote to change the flag and seal, and to ban Native mascots! Follow the link for contact info and a prompt.

Housing Justice

☎️ CALL YOUR LEGISLATORS NOW FOR HOUSING STABILITY!

The legislative session has been extended and key housing justice bills have not been voted on—keep up the pressure!

• Call your legislators with this automatic calling tool today to prevent tens of thousands of evictions come October. If they've co-sponsored the Guarantee Housing Stability Act (H.4878/S.2831), ask them to request that Speaker of the House Robert Deleo and Senate President Karen Spilka schedule an immediate vote.
• Use this page to send a follow up email

🍎 August Rent Control Teach-In

Join us for a teach-in from noon to 2 PM on Sunday, August 30th, to learn more about the fight to pass the Tenant Protection Act, H.3924, which would lift the statewide ban on rent control that has been in place since 1994. Register for the rent-control teach-in here!

📋 Sign and Share the Housing Guarantee

Massachusetts residents may soon face eviction, foreclosure, and huge amounts of housing debt when the state of emergency officially ends. It's going to take thousands of people to join the housing justice movement. We are 90% of the way to the 5,000 signature goal! Read up and sign it now!

Eviction Help

Are you, or someone you know, worried about getting evicted? Call City Life/ Vida Urbana's hotline.

• English: 617-934-5006
• Español: 617-397-3773

Prison Abolition

✊ ☎️ SURJ National Abolition Action Zaps

August 12th, 2:00 PM
August 19th, 2:00 PM
August 26th, 2:00 PM

Join us for a weekly Action Zap through August where we will take action together on pressing campaigns to get feds out of cities, #FreeThemAll, #DefundThePolice, and demand justice as part of Black and people of color led campaigns for collective liberation. Join with a cell phone and computer for this one-hour Action Zap to make phone calls and send emails to campaign targets around the country. Register here and see the Facebook event for more details.

💵 DONATE TO HELP KIMYA'S HOUSE

Kimya's House is a re-entry home run by and for formerly incarcerated Black women -- open on time in spite of setbacks from the pandemic.

☎️ 📋 Week of Action: Building Up People Not PRison

• Your calls and emails are having an impact! The legislative session was extended so we can continue to push for racial justice for our communities!
• Push the Senate and House to pass No Cost Calls ASAP!
• Black and Brown communities are being hit hardest due to structural racism. As families are struggling to figure out how to pay for housing and food, many members of our communities are also faced with owing months of deferred fines and fees that are due on August 14. If they don’t pay, warrants could be issued for their arrest. We are also organizing to demand that all of these fines and fees be waived and remitted. Please join us in this fight by emailing the Court leadership.

Sign these petitions to protect our people from police and prisons!

• Demand Gov. Baker use his clemency power to bring our people home!
• Release Arthur to home confinement! Arthur Williams remains in remission after a battle with leukemia, making him particularly vulnerable COVID19.
• Free David Yarde, wrongfully convicted of murder in 2012
• Support Raeshawn *Children need healing not punishment by incarceration*

Movement for Black Lives

💵 Invest in k, Community, and Black Radical Organizing

One of SURJ Boston's active members, Lisa, is working on a reparations project for a friend and comrade, karen marshall, a Black organizer. She and Lisa first met in Boston over 10 years ago and they have stayed connected and work on several projects together, one included hosting trainings led by Rethink youth in Boston. karen is a national leader and much of her work is connected to the Movement for Black Lives which is also very much connected to SURJ National. Please consider donating to this GoFundMe (and read more about her there).

Immigration Justice

🍎 Southeast Asian Organizations Denounce Deportation of 30 Vietnamese Americans

Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW), in conjunction with 14 other organizations, has released a statement denouncing ICE’s deportation of 30 Vietnamese community members on August 4th. Read the statement here and follow AARW to stay updated.

📋 💵 Invest in our recovery campaign

Massachusetts Jobs with Justice is a member of the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition which has launched the Invest in Our Recovery Campaign. Let all elected officials know that MA can and should raise significant new revenue from profitable corporations and their shareholders this year to invest in public services. Stay tuned, find out more information about the campaign here, and sign their petition to Massachusettts lawmakers here.

Worker Solidarity

📋 OUR ESSENTIAL WORKERS DESERVE BETTER!

Demand that Stop and Shop executives extend hazard pay for essential workers past the original July 4th cut-off and until the pandemic is over. Sign this petition to show Stop and Shop it needs to stop putting profits before its workers.

✊ 💵 Support Whole Foods workers in Cambridge

Workers have been sent home without pay and punished for wearing BLM masks. They are connecting organizing efforts at other stores, but are going up against a behemoth of white supremacist capitalism. They are demanding:

1. A company-wide commitment to hiring more BIPoC for leadership positions
2. Black Lives Matter apparel normalized within the company
3. Backpay for all protesting employees, and related disciplinary points revoked

How you can help:

1. Donate to a GoFundMe! to compensate workers for lost wages
2. Follow updates from the workers on Twitter and from community supporters

Mutual Aid and Supplies Collection

✊ 💵 Critical Supplies

With Congress’s decision to deny the continuance of the additional $600 of unemployment and COVID-19 still wreaking havoc mutual aid will be more needed than ever. This week, due to all of the donations, we filled up a Toyota Corolla on Saturday alone and we were able to distribute essential supplies to all three of our partners. Let’s keep this up! Together, we can take care of each other and our most vulnerable neighbors.

This week, in addition to the essential supplies, the Cape Verdean Association of Boston has asked for us to collect clean and secure travel size squeeze bottles to help them distribute hand sanitizer. In particular, they are looking for small keychain bottles to give their members easy access to hand sanitizer.

This week we’re asking folks to focus on the following items for 12th Baptist and CVAB:

• Hand sanitizer
• Canned goods
• Diapers
• Toilet paper
• Paper towels

For VietAID they are accepting the following donations:

• Oatmeal (boxes of individual packets)
• Mac n' cheese
• Tuna

To get connected to more ways to help out, please fill out our community offers survey (if you haven’t yet).

🚗 DRIVING

Click here to join the driving group: Auto-mobilize! our announcements (and clarifying questions) only WhatsApp thread. We will announce

• Regular driving opportunities with their sign up form/contact information
• Last minute asks for drivers with contact information
• Car caravan actions seeking more folks to come make some noise in a physically distant way as we advocate for racial justice

Joining this thread is a commitment to actively engage and fulfill driving asks. The announcements on this list may not be for general knowledge, do not share anything outside of it without permission.

Public Education

☎️ Call Mayor Walsh

Call Mayor Marty Walsh at 3-1-1 (617-635-4500). Tell him we reject the “hopscotch” plan for reopening schools that was put forth for Boston Public Schools, and that we want to return to our school buildings when it is safe for our students, families, and educators—we need to hear that plan first! Ask him to support a phased-in plan which includes expectations that every school is provided with sufficient PPE, cleaning supplies, working sinks, windows, and other building repairs, plus time for relevant and adequate professional development before students return. This is critical for a safe and smooth reopening.

📋 BEJA Petition

Our partner the Boston Education Justice Alliance (BEJA) is asking for folks to sign this petition to ask the BPS School Committee to act swiftly in adopting the recommendation of the BPS Opportunity Gap Task Force and suspend the exam based admissions policy for Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Sciences, and we further call on the School Committee to direct the BPS to design an alternative selection process that does not use an exam for SY 20-21.

The entrance exams are frequently a barrier for black and brown students and with the disruption to the school year due to COVID-19, they are even more problematic. This petition still needs more signatures and shares as they only have 3,850 of the 5,000 signature goal!

💵 SUPPORT Unafraid Educators

Unafraid Educators has set up a COVID-19 Relief Fund for students and families in Boston Public Schools who need financial support during this time. Please share the form with those who might need it, and donate to the fund if you are able.

Confronting White Supremacists

✊ join our announcement list

Join our Confronting White Supremacists Announcement List to hear from us about opportunities to learn more and take action against non-state white supremacists and fascists in New England.