SURJ Boston

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.

In the wake of white supremacist violence, both from police, vigilantes, and militias, we encourage white folks to study up on the growing militia movement:

Armed white men patrolling Kenosha protests organized on Facebook by Adam Mahoney, Lois Beckett, Julia Carrie Wong, and Victoria Bekiempas

The Thin Blue Line between Violent, Pro-Trump Militias and Police by Ryan Devereaux

Armed Vigilantes Antagonizing Protesters Have Received a Warm Reception From Police by Mara Hvistendahl and Alleen Brown

The Brennan Center for Justice - Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement by Michael German
(Note: this article advocates for certain reforms to police departments and federal agencies, however we know from our work as white anti-racists that the only solutions are to defund, disarm, disband, and completely abolish police and prisons in all forms.Check out Critical Resistance's definitions of reformist vs abolitionist reforms in policing.)

SURJ National

☎️ Swing Georgia Left: Voter Outreach Work

September 19th, 1:00 - 4:30 PM and every other following Saturday

SURJ National is organizing us to repeatedly call a set of 100,000 white voters in Georgia between now and the November election. These are voters who are not receiving calls from the Democrats or others, and we will be engaging them in deep conversation, with the goal to help them realize their common stake with people of color in making transformative change in our country.

You can sign up for any of the upcoming phone banks on SURJ National's website. You can also sign up to make calls to recruit phone bankers, or support these efforts by making a donation to both SURJ National and the New Georgia Project.

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

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

The House of Representatives has not yet voted for a review of the racist Massachusetts state flag and seal. Call and email you 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 an easy way to send messages to your elected officials.

Housing Justice

⭐️ 📋 ☎️ Update: CDC Order Nationwide Moratorium on Evictions through December 31st

CNN reported last week that an estimated 40 million Americans are facing eviction due to the pandemic - in an economy and system where 20 million people were already paying unaffordable rent pre-pandemic. Read the report on the renter crisis that led us to this moment. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ordered a nationwide halt on evictions, allowing qualified tenants to stay in their homes through the end of the year, though it does not include any sort of rent forgiveness, or financial assistance for tenants or property owners.

This buys time for us to fight to protect MA residents from impending rent debt and wave of evictions:

• Read how the housing crisis is affecting Massachusetts renters and homeowners and what housing advocates like our partner City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU) are saying is necessary to combat it.
• Call & email your legislators and ask them to support the Housing Stability Act H.4878/S.2831. If they’re a co-sponsor, ask them to request that Speaker of the House Robert Deleo and Senate President Karen Spilka schedule an immediate vote. According to CLVU, "This bill will prevent a massive surge of unjust evictions and foreclosures due to COVID-related debt, prevent rent hikes and no-fault evictions as we recover from COVID-19, and help establish a Housing Stability & Recovery Fund to relieve small owners."
• Keep up to date on the fight for housing justice by joining CLVU’s weekly Tuesday night meetings on Facebook live and share CLVU’s eviction hotline if you are someone you know is being threatened with eviction.
• Stay tuned for our September teach in on rent control and call your legislators today and ask them to advance the local options for tenant protections bill (H.3924) before the legislative session ends. Rent control is a longer term solution long overdue to address the housing crisis in Boston since before the pandemic. The option to instate rent control, and the many flexible tenant and homeowner protections that come with it, has been revoked at the state level in Massachusetts since 1994. We are closer than ever on lifting the ban - join us to learn how you can join the fight

📋 ALERT: SIGN TO PROTECT ESSENTIAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROJECT!

One of the largest affordable and supportive housing projects in Boston is under threat. Despite broad community support for this project, which will provide affordable housing and supportive services for people who have experienced homelessness, a large landowner and landlord Monty Gold filed a lawsuit against them, using racist and classist language citing that the project would be "dangerous" to the community. Demand that Monty Gold Drop the lawsuit: read up, sign, and share the petition. We have 650 signatures already; help us get to 1000 by Monday!

☎️ 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. Please also ask your legislators to advance the Local Options for Tenant Protections bill, H.3824, which would lift the ban on rent control in Massachusetts.
• Use this page to send a follow up email

Prison Abolition

⭐️ ✊ Letter Writing Party on Wednesday

September 9, 6:00 PM

Write a letter to the editor (LTE) of your local news outlet about the No Cost Calls bill that Families for Justice as Healing is trying to push through this legislative session! Register for SURJ Boston’s LTE writing party this Wednesday or use our LTE writing guide to craft your own letter.

⭐️ 📋 Week of Action: Building Up People Not Prisons

• SURJ Boston joined around 100 other organizations and individuals in supporting No Cost Calls for incarcerated people in MA. Read the text of the open letter to the MA Senate here!
• Continue to support No Cost Calls by helping Families for Justice as Healing collect information on how state representatives and senators plan to support the bill. Check tinyurl.com/MAweekofaction later this week for details.
• Families for Justice as Healing has released demands for the new Boston Police Department contract with the city! Read more here, and add your support by offering testimony, either spoken or written, supporting those demands at the Boston City Council hearing on Tuesday September 8 at 3:00 pm.

✊ ☎️ SURJ National Abolition Action Zaps

September 9, 2:00 PM
September 16, 2:00 PM
September 23, 2:00 PM

Join us for a weekly September Action Zap 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.

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

• ⭐️ Support the Families for Justice as Healing demands for the new Boston Police Department contract with the city by signing this petition!
• 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*

Support Our Organizers And Our Communities!

💵 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

⭐️ ✊ Info Session and Testimony Writing Party

Did you hear about the BPD overtime scandal? The city is renegotiating the contract with the Boston Police Department Right Now. Families for Justice as Healing is organizing to shift money and power away from the police and towards our communities. There's a City Council hearing on Tuesday September 8 at 3:00pm. Let's come together to get ready for the hearing and talk about how we can keep fighting to #DefundPolice and get power and resources into Black and Brown communities! The Info Session and Testimony Writing Party is this Monday, September 8th at 7:00 PM. Sign up here.

⭐️ 💵 Support Student Immigrant Movement

On November 6, Student Immigrant Movement will be virtually celebrating their Quinceañera of Rebellion. Join them to honor the stories of resistance and persistence of undocumented youth. Every week leading up to the gala they will be highlighting a SIMmer! Get your tickets here.

In honor of their 15th anniversary, a donor has stepped forward to match all donations made in September, up to $4,000. Help them reach this donation goal by becoming a Dream Sustainer here.

💵 SUPPORT MASSACHUSETTS JOBS WITH JUSTICE

Massachusetts Jobs with Justice is continuing to celebrate their month of movement-building and movement-giving. Follow them on Facebook to learn more about their ongoing work and campaigns. You can donate or become a monthly sustainer here!

⭐️ ✊ Worker's Rally for a Just Recovery

This Labor Day MA JWJ is holding a Workers’ Rally for a Just Recovery! Led by the Massachusetts Labor Movement in partnership with @RaiseUpMA, working people will come together with organizations across the Commonwealth for a day of action, inspiration, and reflection. Our government must rise to the needs of our communities and working people's demands in the face of COVID-19 and the economic recession it has triggered. Learn more about the event and register to attend here.

⭐️ ✊ Let our Families Drive: March & Rally

Saturday, September 26th, 2:00 PM at 136 Blackstone St, Boston (the Boston RMV, near the Haymarket T station)

After months of organizing district meetings, actions, and demanding for the passage of the Work & Family Mobility Act - thousands of Black and Brown immigrant families continue to live in fear of ICE detention for being stopped for a traffic violation and many are being deported - even during a pandemic. Join MA JWJ and their partners in demanding that all families deserve the right to move freely in our state and live in dignity. Together, we will imagine and fight for another world where all people are safe and protected.

✊ DIGNITY FOR DAUDA

Dauda Handan needs to get the dignity he deserves. On May 22, 2019, Dauda was shot by police while experiencing a mental health crisis and now faces unjust charges. Please take action by signing this petition asking the Hampton County’s DA office to drop charges, and share out the Dignity for Dauda Facebook event with your networks.

Worker Solidarity

⭐️ 🍎 Milk with Dignity Webinar

Wednesday, September 16th, 7:30-9 PM
Register for the webinar here

Throughout the pandemic and attacks on undocumented families, grant farmworkers continue to work day in and day out to produce the milk and dairy products that stock our supermarkets. Join Justicia Migrante/Migrant Justice, SURJ Boston & MA Coalition of Domestic Workers (MCDW) to learn more about farmworkers’ groundbreaking Milk with Dignity program and continued struggle for justice. We'll also hear a little from worker-leaders with MCDW about their struggles for living wages in MA.

Closed captioning (English) provided, webinar will be simultaneously interpreted from Spanish to English. Register here to receive the zoom information.

📋 SOLIDARITY WITH EAST COAST SEX EDUCATORS (SECSE)

Support striking sex educators at Good Vibrations in Brookline! SECSE demands higher COVID-19 safety standards, better communication from our corporate office, a stronger human resources department, scheduled raises, and more local decision making power. For a more detailed list of demands, visit SECSE.net. Sign this petition to support!

📋 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.

Mutual Aid and Supplies Collection

✊ 💵 Alert: Food and Critical Supplies Needed

Our mutual aid partners (Cape Verdean Association of Boston, 12th Baptist Church, and VietAID) have informed us that critical supplies like food and sanitary products are needed now more than ever. Families in our community are facing increasing financial stress as life in the pandemic passes six months and debt piles. Please donate whatever you can this week and on to help our neighbors stay afloat in a crisis that disproportionately affects those already most targetted by racism and white supremacy.

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

• Clean travel size squeeze bottles (for distributing hand sanitizer)
• Canned goods
• Other nonperishable foods (especially Vietnamese, Chinese, Caribbean, Cape Verdean foods)
• Diapers
• Toilet paper

For VietAID they are accepting the following donations:

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

To donate you can drop off goods at the Cape Verdean Association of Boston (242A Bowdoin St) 10-6 PM, Sat 10-2 PM. To donate to VietAID, please drop off the requested goods in the marked boxes by the side door in the parking lot during the following times: Wed 4-6 PM, Thurs 1-3 PM, and Sat 11-2 PM.

If dropping off directly is not an option for you, we have porches in eight different communities where you can drop off goods, this is also the best way to donate to 12th Street Church in Roxbury. Please email surjbmutualaid@gmail.com for more information.

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

⭐️ ✊ BEJA Rally

Our partner, the Boston Education Justice Alliance (BEJA), is holding a socially distant rally to demand that students with the highest need receive safe in-person services in the Boston Public Schools (BPS). These students are some of our most vulnerable and often remote services are just not sufficient. Additionally, BPS currently does NOT have safe spaces for all of these services to take place in-person.

Please join us on Thursday, September 10th at 5:30 PM at 2300 Washington Street, Roxbury MA (the Bolling Building) for this socially distant rally to amplify the voices of those most affected. You may join us in person or by car! See the flyer for more details. If you are able to join us and/or support some rally preparations please fill out this Google Form.

📋 BEJA Petition

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 only needs 730 more signatures, can you help us get there? This is more important than ever, with the school year around the corner.

💵 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.