SURJ Boston

Prison Abolition

⭐💵FRONT MONEY FOR MUTUAL AID BEHIND THE WALL

Due to restrictive prison rules, Black and Pink MA needs help depositing money into people’s canteens. Please fill out this form if you are willing to help send money directly inside. Black and Pink MA will send you instructions, names, and contact info. Once you deposit, you’ll send them the receipt and they will reimburse you in whatever way works best for you.

If you have heard of Black & Pink MA but aren’t sure what they do, check out this super informative post on instagram!

⭐️☎️ 🍎 DORCHESTER AND ROXBURY: SUPPORT KIMYA’s HOUSE!

• New Beginnings Re-Entry Services, a re-entry service run by and for Black formerly incarcerated women is working hard to open Kimya’s House, their first re-entry home. It will provide a dignified living situation for women leaving incarceration, so they can heal and rebuild their lives.
• Let's show that Roxbury/Dorchester residents and organizations support the new residential program at Kimya's House! If you have a 02119 and 02121 zip code (individuals or organizations), please contact City Council President Kim Janey to say you support Kimya’s house!
• For more support and guidance in composing your letter or organizational statement, contact Ruckus at enviropacifibinarchafeminist@gmail.com.

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

The House and Senate both voted to overturn Governor Baker’s veto of the public health and oversight language in the DOC line item! Thank you all SO MUCH for calling, emailing, and pressuring the legislature to make this happen. This language will only matter if:

• The AG appoints directly affected people recommended by the community to run the independent oversight office
• DOC is actually held accountable for releasing people!
• Read more about the language here!
• Sadly, No Cost Calls is not happening this legislative session. FJAH is developing messaging that balances the deep harm of this policy failure and encourages the legislature to act next session.

Public Education

✊ 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.

Housing Justice

⭐️ ☎️ Call the Statehouse to Pass Affordable Housing Home Rule Petition

Call the statehouse today & urge them to pass H.4155 this session! This important bill would empower individual cities in MA to make their own decisions on affordable housing guidelines and fees that reflect the needs of their communities. There are just 3 days left - call today!

📋 Petition: Change the IDP to 33% Truly Affordable Housing

Boston is in a housing crisis. There is not nearly enough affordable housing and more and more people are being pushed out to make way for luxury developments that sit empty. The Coalition for a Truly Affordable Boston is calling on the city to finally fulfill on its promise to address this issue- by increasing the percentage of affordable units in new developments from 13% to 33% and re-defining how affordability is measured. Read more and sign now!

💵 Fundraiser to Support Our Community Members After a Fire

Thank you so much to all who have donated! Please continue to support our community members who lost their home to a house fire. Please share these powerful words from one of the residents and fellow organizers, Lori, and keep sharing and donating to the fundraiser if you can.

⭐️💵FUNDRAISER: DONATE TO HELP FAMILIES FIGHT EVICTIO

Donate now to support daily, on-the-ground work to help families facing evictions fight to stay in their homes during this pandemic winter. City Life/Vida Urbana is a community organization doing everything in their power to organize tenants, connect people to rights and resources, provide legal support, and build a movement for housing justice.

Take Action Together

☎️ 📋 ✊ ACTION HOURS

Every Wednesday 12 to 1 PM

Action hours are a weekly opportunity to take action together, digitally! Facilitators guide participants through calls, emails, petitions and more while offering context and support. We're going in strong to 2021!

Register here for action hours.

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

Indigenous Solidarity

⭐️ 🍎 Read about Native Resistance and #Landback: The Battle for the Black Hills

In this article, Lakota scholar and activist Nick Estes describes the legal fight of NDN Collective founder Nick Tillsen and 20 other activists following their protest of President Trump’s July 4, 2020 speech at Mt. Rushmore, more appropriately known as He Sapa, the most sacred site for Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples. Estes situates this legal battle in the long history of settler colonialism in the Great Plains and the struggle for the return of land to Indigenous stewardship.

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

Confronting White Supremacists

⭐☎️✊Drop Shimmy's Charges!

• Swampscott police arrested Shimmy after he was assaulted by a Trump supporter, read more here.
• Call - Assistant DA Danielle Doherty at 978-745-6610 ext 5078
• Write - a letter to Assistant DA Danielle Doherty, 10 Federal St, Salem, MA 01970
• demand the charges on Ernst Jean Jacques be dropped
• Demonstrate: every Sunday, 12-2, outside Swampscott Police Dept (531 Humphrey St)

⭐💵 Support a Black Activists targeted By Police

• 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 subsequently lost his job, support him here.
• On 12/12, prominent and beloved Boston activist and co-founder of Freedom Fighters Coalition of 2020 Ernst Jean-Jacques (Shimmy) was wrongfully arrested while peacefully protesting in Swampscott, MA immediately after having been assaulted himself by a Trump supporter. He was suspended without pay from his job, support him here.

✊ 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.

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!

Immigration Justice

💵 Support those affected by Hurricane Eta

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

Read BIJAN’s response to the Attorney General's Office's report regarding attacks made on community members detained in Bristol County this spring. Find sample email scripts and a Call To Action 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).

Support the Staff of the BPL

📋 Please sign and share this email petition to support the library staff at Boston Public Library branches who want to be able to provide the materials desired by their patrons. This is a matter of racial equity and justice, since the communities most impacted by the limits of the BPL plan are communities of color.

Mutual Aid and Supplies Collection

⭐️ 💵 Pledge Your Stimulus Check

In the spring, SURJ Boston helped facilitate the redistribution of $75,000 in stimulus money to individuals and partner organizations! The team is in conversation with partners and will keep pledgers updated as plans solidify.

Sign up to pledge your stimulus check!

⭐️ ✊ ALERT: FOOD AND CRITICAL SUPPLIES NEEDED

It’s 2021, but we’re still in a crippling pandemic. Please help us continue to support our partners (Cape Verdean Association of Boston, 12th Baptist Church of Roxbury, and VietAID) by donating essential supplies (see below).

Last week donations were relatively light due to the holidays, help us pick it up this week!

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: patmeal (boxes of individual packets), mac n’ cheese, tuna

SURJ Boston has drop off sites in Allston, Arlington, Belmont, Cambridge (new location till January), Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, Roxbury, Somerville, and West Roxbury.

💵 Can’t donate goods?

Make a monetary 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