We wanted to take another moment to highlight our gratitude for our volunteers and community members who helped us expand our outreach this summer through tabling. We’re endlessly grateful for all the amazing orgs that invited us to table with them and for our volunteers who are often running from distros straight to set up the table at events. As a fully volunteer run group, we rely immensely on community support, and the Boston community has really come through for us as we continue to build solidarity with our unhoused comrades and keep on with our material aid distributions.

Tabling allows us to sell merch (thanks to Speakeasy Printshop!) and collect donations of material aid to support our community members, meet insanely cool people, and distribute harm reduction supplies and info. When we table, we often bring narcan, safer sex supplies, fentanyl test strips, and some incredible zines from Content Brakes and Next Distro. Most importantly, tabling gives us the opportunity to spread the word to our housed comrades about some of the challenges that unhoused community members have shared with us, like the violence from Boston’s camping ban, increased policing, lack of access to affordable housing, difficulties accessing services, overdoses, and more.

Thank you so much to everyone who has invited us to your events!

#WarmUpBoston #MaterialAid #MutualAid #SolidarityNotCharity #ServeThePeople

Yesterday, we distributed warm meals, blankets, waters, harm reduction, snacks, and more to our community members who have repeatedly had their homes destroyed by DCR and BPD acting on the tent ban.

As a Warm Up harm reduction coordinator explained at Northeastern today, the violence students have faced recently is the daily reality of unhoused folks. We commend everyone standing with Palestine and urge you all to continue showing the same solidarity with unhoused community members.

The tent ban is designed to enact violence on those the establishment wishes to keep silent and invisible. Mayor Wu’s tent ban must go!

#DecriminalizeSurvival #MaterialAid #FreePalestine #SolidarityNotCharity #WeKeepUsSafe #ACAB #EncampmentSupport

Does WarmUp know how to cross the street…?
Yes! We do!

We were very happy to be out and about yesterday, bringing our unhoused community members food, water, gloves, beanies, hot hands, and harm reduction supplies. Our favorite part of the mobile distro is getting to talk to everyone and building relationships with folks who we see regularly. People’s needs will start to change as the weather does and we are still in the process of expanding our outreach, so if you are interested in volunteering or contributing to this work, DM us!

(Patch on the last 2 slides by #SamPao !!)
#ServeThePeople #SolidarityNotCharity #MaterialAid #MutualAid #SurvivalProgram #WarmUpBoston

The role of harm reduction is essential to all we do as an organization. After our last few mobile distros, our resident harm reductionist provided intro harm reduction education and orienting to our newer volunteers. This went beyond just talking about practical tools for interfacing with people who use drugs and folks experiencing homelessness.

Though the ultimate harm reduction will come from eventually destroying these systems of oppression, in the meantime we are doing what we can as housed activists to work in solidarity with our unhoused neighbors. We do our best to center the needs, asks, and material realities of the people we serve, over what we, as housed activists, think they need. One of the most important things is that we provide material aid with NO conditions. We believe that people should not have to fulfill some sort of requirement in order to have access to basic necessities such as food, water, clothing, medical services, housing, and the like. On this past weekend’s mobile distro, we handed out hand warmers, beanies, socks, gloves, harm reduction supplies, toiletries, ~ 50 sandwiches (various meats and pb&js), ~250 snacks, and again were able to bring along carafes of hot water for hot chocolate, coffee, soup, and tea.

*SWIPE TO THE LAST PHOTO* to see one of our regulars, Ray “The Bird Man” and his pigeon friends. We find him in the same spot every week hanging with his fellow unhoused veterans and feeding the birds. Chatting with him is one of the highlights of the mobile distros, and though we are sad that he won’t be around as much anymore, we are thrilled that he has been placed into housing. He signed his new lease yesterday! (Photo taken and posted with Ray’s consent).

#ServeThePeople #SolidarityNotCharity #MaterialAid #SurvivalProgram #WarmUpBoston