SURJ Boston

Confronting White Supremacists

💵 Support a Black Lives Matter Activist!

On 10/18, while demonstrating against Super Happy Fun America, a white supremacist organization, a Black activist was violently arrested by Boston Police Department. He was defending his fellow protesters from police harassment, and has since lost his job due to the ensuing court case. Please help him stay afloat while he fights his case and for liberation.

✊ 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.

️✊ SHARE: CONFRONTING WHITE SUPREMACY IN NEW ENGLAND WEBSITE
Local activists have released NewEnglandWhiteSupremacists.com to contribute to the goal of exposing, opposing, and defeating local white supremacist movements. This is a great resource to share from your personal or organization’s social media pages. Feel free to reshare this one from Solidarity Against Hate Boston!

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) continue to remind us that critical supplies like food and sanitary products are in high demand. PLEASE DONATE EACH WEEK YOU ARE ABLE to help our neighbors stay afloat in a crisis that disproportionately affects those already most targetted by racism and white supremacy. Recently, our donations have been slowing down, let’s put in an effort to ramp them back up! This winter will be extremely difficult for the clients our partners serve, food and essential supplies will be more needed than ever.

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

• Nonperishable foods, particularly ethnically appropriate food (Vietnamese, Chinese, Caribbean, Cape Verdean)
• In particular, rice, beans (red kidney, lima, and black beans), as well as corn and tuna *HIGHEST NEED
• Toilet paper, disinfectants, diapers, and masks (reusable and disposable) are also in demand

For VietAID they are accepting the following donations:

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

SURJ Boston has drop off sites in Allston, Arlington, Belmont, Cambridge, Jamacia Plain, Roslindale, Roxbury, Somerville, and West Roxbury.

Please email surjbmutualaid@gmail.com for more information.

⭐💵Can’t donate goods?

Make amonetary donations to our partners instead so that they can continue their life saving work. The links to donate are hyperlinked below.

Please shoot us an email at surjbmutualaid@gmail.com if you donate!

• Cape Verdean Association of Boston

• 12th Baptist Church of Roxbury

• VietAID

Public Education

⭐🍎Boston Education Justice Alliance (BEJA) Week of Action

Boston Education Justice Alliance (BEJA)'s week of action to push for safe in-person services for students in the Boston Public Schools (BPS). We are also gearing up to ensure that our students get a budget that represents true equity this year.

⭐🍎Budget Training

TWO PARTS -Tuesday, 12/8 and Thursday, 12/10, 5:30-7pm

Register here for both sessions if you want to know about the school budget process.

⭐✊PILOT (PAYMENT IN LIEU OF TAXES) CAR & BIKE CARAVAN

Saturday, 12/12, 12-2pm
starting at: Northeastern University

Pressure our large universities to pay their fair share in taxes! Find more information here

⭐✊SILENT RALLY FOR IN-PERSON SERVICES FOR STUDENT WITH HIGH NEEDS IN SAFE SPACES

Saturday, 12/12 2:30-4 pm
Dudley Sq Park, across from the Dudley Sq Police Station

We will be socially distancing by 6 feet; you can also join us by car and drive around and make noise to support special ed student needs.

Use the hashtag #IAMHEREFOR on social media with a Picture, Poster, or Testimony of your student who is in need of in-person services in safe spaces.

✊Free Meals For BPS Families

If you know families in the Boston Public Schools that could benefit from free meals, please spread the word about the Boston Public Schools (BPS) School Meals and Super Sites available across the city. Additionally, anyone can pick up these meals and drop them off for a BPS family, they just need to know how many children are in the family!

💵 Unafraid Educators COVID-19 Relief Fund

Please consider donating to the Unafraid Educators COVID-19 Relief Fund for students and families in Boston Public Schools who need financial support during this time. Also, please share the form with those who might need it.

Take Action Together

☎️ 📋 ✊ Action Hours

Every Wednesday 12 to 1 PM

Want to host your own? Trainings the last Wed of the month 1-1:30 PM (just stay logged in)!

Register here for action hours and invite friends to action hours on Facebook. We will be holding these throughout December!

Overwhelmed by the number of actions you see each week? SURJB Active Members guide participants through calls, emails, petitions, fundraisers and more as we build the movement for racial justice! We provide more context on the calls to action and insight on how our actions help to advance the struggles we are working on.

Indigenous Solidarity

⭐️✊Support & Learn About Indigenous Resistance (via SURJ National)

Indigenous people are rising up to protect land and water and end to violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit peoples. Here are a few examples to learn about and support:

• Support NDN Collective’s #LANDBACK campaign to return the Black Hills and public lands into Native hands.
• Kumeyaay Nation’s efforts to stop Trump’s border wall
• Pueblo Action Alliance’s #WaterBack to reclaim all unsettled Indigenous water claims in the U.S. SouthWest
• 1492 Landback Lane Haudenosaunee Land Defenders resisting private development on Six Nations Reserve
• Warriors of the Sunrise's encampment in the Hamptons, Long Island, NY by a group of Indigenous women from the Shinnecock Nation.

We appreciate and acknowledge that we live and are guests on Indigenous land. We want to be mindful and respectful of this, treating the land (and our environment in general) like any place we would be as a guest. To get informed about the land you live on: native-land.ca and usdac.us/nativeland. Learn more about land acknowledgments here.

Housing Justice

⭐️☎️ 📋WEEK OF ACTION: BUILDING A TRULY AFFORDABLE BOSTON

Boston is in desperate need of more affordable housing - while luxury units continue to be built just to sit empty, 2,300 of our community members are houseless and “only 9% of new housing is being built for low and moderate income residents who make up almost half of the city” (Coalition for a Truly Affordable Boston). Join us to hold Mayor Walsh and the city of Boston accountable to their promise to increase the requirements for affordable units in new developments by changing the Inclusionary Development Policy (IDP). Take action:

• Tuesday, Dec 8 or this week: Join an action hour, 12-1pm, hosted by CTABOR call on your own time.
• Sign & share the petition to the mayor, BPDA, DND, and city councilors

💵 FUNDRAISER TO SUPPORT OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS AFTER A FIRE

Eight of our community members lost their home in Dorchester to a house fire last week. You can listen to a short interview with one of the residents and fellow housing organizer, Lori, here. Please donate if you can or share this fundraiser with others to support them in their immediate & long-term needs. Our goal is to get to $100,000 as a community.

⭐️🍎 ALERT: NATION-WIDE EVICTION MORATORIUM ENDS DEC 31

Evictions and COVID-19 cases are spiking across MA since Governor Baker let the MA eviction and foreclosure moratorium expire on October 17. Now the CDC's nationwide eviction moratorium, which continued to protect some people from eviction, is set to expire on December 31. This is not only a housing crisis but a dire public health crisis. Keep calling and emailing your state legislators to let them know you support the Guaranteed Housing Stability Bill (H.5018). Find your legislators here.

🍎 ✊ JOIN THE FIGHT & GET CONNECTED TO EVICTION DEFENSE RESOURCES

City Life/Vida Urbana is an organization fighting to keep people in their homes. You can keep up to date on the fight for housing justice by joining their weekly virtual meetings: every Tuesday at 6:30pm in English and every Wednesday at 6:30pm in Spanish.

☎️ Eviction hotline

Did you or someone you know receive a notice to quit? Call or share Ci ty Life/ Vida Urbana's eviction hotline at 617-934-5006 for English and 617-397-3773 for Spanish.

Election Defense

With all eyes on the GA Senate runoff race, the SURJ Boston Election Defense Team is joining with national efforts to get out the vote in GA. See details of actions and fundraisers below!

☎️ 📋 ✊ Get Involved with Phone Banking, Letter Writing, Canvassing

Join phone banking and post card efforts to get voters to the polls for the GA Senate runoff through the following:

• Join the SURJ Georgia Senate Runoff Team
• Phone Bank with People's Action to Flip the Senate
• GA Canvassing with SURJ and Southern Crossroads
• Postcards with Swing Left

💵 Donate to SURJ-PAC and New Georgia Project Action Fund

Donate here today to help SURJ mobilize white voters across Georgia to turn out to vote for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, while building lasting infrastructure and laying the groundwork for racial and economic justice victories for years to come.

☎️ Local! Call Law Firms who are Contesting Votes

Law firms (one in Boston!) in key battleground states like Arizona and Pennsylvania are doing post-election litigation to challenge legitimate votes and counting processes. Over the past couple of days, their offices have been flooded with calls and emails from people like you, demanding that they discontinue their efforts to threaten a free and fair election. Click here to call local and national law firms today!

Prison Abolition

⭐️ ☎️ 🍎 Week of Action: Building Up People Not Prisons

• Thanks to pressure from community members (including many of you!), the final state budget bill contains language that requires the DOC to use "all possible measures" to decarcerate & create an independent ombudsman office to create some accountability to the legislatur! While its extent is insufficient, it is a good step forward. Stay tuned for actions to ensure it is implemented in ways that advance abolition!
• Decarceration is the best way to stop the spread of Covid. Make three simple calls to advocate for the health and safety of incarcerated people in MA!
• Check the Week of Action documents on Wednesday 12/9 for updated actions to support Families for Justice as Healing!
• We will also update when there’s more info on FJAH’s upcoming toy drive for children of incarcerated parents.

📋 Sign These Petitions to Protect Our People From Police and Prisons!

• Live in Middlesex County? Please sign this petition about No Cost Calls to send to Sheriff Koutoujian.
• Live in Cambridge? Sign this petition to push for the release on bail of our community member Dante Starks! He has been incarcerated for over two years waiting for his trial.
• Support the Families for Justice as Healing demands for the new Boston Police Department contract with the city by signing this petition!

Immigration Justice

💵 Support Student Immigrant Movement

Donate and become a Dream Sustainer to support immigrant youth to protect their community!

✊ 💵 Massachusetts Jobs with Justice

Get your Copy of Stir the Pot! "Stir the Pot: a cookbook to feed the social uprising" is a collection of recipes from organizers, activists, and friends of the movement from across the state. We are offering the cookbook in as a PDF download and as a physical copy. The physical copy will be “perfect-bound” and all recipes will be printed in English and Spanish. The cover will be designed by a local art activist and printed at a Western MA union print shop. They will email out the download within the first week of December, and hope to mail the physical copies that week too. They suggest a donation of $5-$20 for a digital copy and $15-50 for a physical copy.

And follow Jobs with Justice on Facebook to learn more about their ongoing work and campaigns. You can donate or become a monthly sustainer!

📋 Asian American Resource Workshop

Bring Hieu Home: Hieu Huynh, a 49 year old refugee from Vietnam, has been detained at Essex County Correctional Facility since May. Hieu has been separated from his family and ill, elderly father for a conviction from over thirty years ago that he’s already served time for. The on-going detention of Hieu and the 400 immigrants and refugees detained at Essex County poses a massive threat to their health and safety, as Covid-19 infection rates peak and continue to rise.

Sign and share the #BringHieuHome petition to demand that Hieu and the 400 immigrants and refugees at Essex County be freed so they can be #HomeForTheHolidays with their families and loved ones. Find a further toolkit here.

⭐️📋PROTECT WORK PERMITS FOR IMMIGRANTS & REFUGEES

On November 19th, the Trump administration proposed a new rule to ban work permits for people on Orders of Supervision (OSUP): those who have been ordered deported but are temporarily released from custody. This includes tens of thousands of Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees who have resettled to the US and rebuilt their lives after being displaced by the war in Southeast Asia.

Use this link to join us in protecting our friends, families; and community members by submitting a public comment opposing the proposed work ban on work permits by Monday, December 21st.

✊ 💵 Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network

Join BIJAN and Movimiento Cosecha in fundraising to provide emergency response & mutual aid to those impacted by Hurricane Eta.

Abolish ICE and Free Them All: There are continuing efforts against the human rights abuses at the Bristol County HOC in Massachusetts. Email members of the Department of Public Health. Find sample email scripts and additional information here.

💵 SUPPORT THE BLACK IMMIGRANTS BAIL FUND

Policing, incarceration, and deportation are rooted in white supremacy and anti-blackness. Black immigrants make up about 7% of the total non-citizen population in the U.S., but they represent over 20% of immigrants facing deportation because of the criminal punishment system. Donate to the Black Immigrants Bail Fund (a fund co-run by the Haitian Bridge Alliance and African Bureau for Immigration and Social Affairs) to join them in the call to #abolishICE.