This week in our material aid and survival distributions, we supplied the encampment with hot meals, cases of water, requested items, and good vibes. The state continues to relentlessly hound the residents with threats to sweep their tents again and again with the excuse of providing resources on local shelters. Shelters are not a substitute for housing. They separate couples, pet owners from their pets, they ban storage of personal belongings, some require sobriety, and none of them ever feels like a place a person can grow from. They're used to blame people for surviving with a little more dignity.

Mayor Wu's war on drugs continues to rip through our downtown, tearing apart lives and communities while helping no one. The only people that benefit from this social cleansing are the rich, freeloading business owners who want to sell us the lie of American prosperity. The sight of homeless people and the sight of drug use harm no one.

We are doubling our efforts to train and develop our membership to make our distros more sustainable and accessible. Thank you to all of our new volunteers who have stepped up to be in community with the residents of this city who the housing market constantly chews out. It is because of your efforts we are able to dedicate more and more of our time and resources to changing the material conditions that cause a person to live outside or in shelters.
#MutualAid #SurvivalProgram

Every summer we get a big dip in the amount of donations that come in. In order to keep up with the assortment of supplies we offer our unhoused neighbors for their survival (ESPECIALLY through this brutal heat wave), our friends at #SpeakeasyPrintshop have yet again come through for us to offer this print-to-order fundraiser which we will use the funds from to make sure folks are hydrated, kept cool, and have protection from the elements for the summer months. We also want to give a HUGE thank you to all our new donors in the last few days, because of your generosity we will be able to buy 4 new tents for the encampment residents and were able to increase our ice budget.

These t-shirts were made with union labor and the design was created in-house by one of our incredible volunteers. This colorway will be a ONE TIME PRINT and this presale will only be up for the next TWO WEEKS.

Sweeps are violence! During the latest sweep at the encampment earlier this week, residents were given no notice, forced to move in the extreme heat, and lost a lot of what they use for shelter. If a volunteer had not just happened to be driving by at the right time, we would not have even been able to assist and witness.

Get your “Sweeps are Violence” t-shirt now to show your solidarity with the unhoused community in the Boston area. Link to purchase on our Linktree in our bio.

https://www.speakeasyprintshop.com/warm-up-boston/sweepsareviolence

#WarmUpBoston #ServeThePeople #MutualAid #SurvivalProgram #Fundraiser #SweepsAreViolence

Cruelty is the point: while the rest of Boston hunkers down in air conditioning, residents of the encampment are settling back in after another sweep early this week.

Residents were told by DCR that a sweep was impending on Tuesday, and we were prepared to assist with helping them Tuesday morning. However, on Monday morning, a volunteer spotted the sweep already in action a full day before the residents were told to expect and prepare for it.

We quickly mobilized and had a team of volunteers on site within an hour to help with the logistics and labor of moving. However, many belongings were still destroyed by DCR, and many residents have been awake for days on end, making them even more susceptible to this week’s heat emergency.

We’ve followed up each day since—some of the hottest this year—with aftercare for the residents, including ice, extra harm reduction supplies, extra water, breakfast sandwiches, PBJs, electrolyte tablets, liquid IV, and a birthday surprise for a resident.

Our focus is, as always, keeping our unhoused neighbors as safe and healthy as possible in a system designed to abuse them.

What’s the point of the sweeps, if not cruel punishment for the crime of being unhoused? As one resident put it: “They just don’t want us getting comfortable.”

With these punitive practices and inhumane treatment, DCR and the City of Boston make it clear that they do not see the unhoused as human beings, deserving of respect and compassion, rather they see them as an inconvenience to be swept aside at a moments notice.

#SweepsAreViolence #FuckTheTentBan #WarmUpBoston #SurvivalProgram #StopTheSweeps #ServeThePeople

Every summer we get a big dip in the amount of donations that come in. In order to keep up with the assortment of supplies we offer our unhoused neighbors for their survival (ESPECIALLY through this brutal heat wave), our friends at @speakeasy_printshop have yet again come through for us to offer this print-to-order fundraiser which we will use the funds from to make sure folks are hydrated, kept cool, and have protection from the elements for the summer months. We also want to give a HUGE thank you to all our new donors in the last few days, because of your generosity we will be able to buy 4 new tents for the encampment residents and were able to increase our ice budget.

These t-shirts were made with union labor and the design was created in-house by one of our incredible volunteers. This colorway will be a ONE TIME PRINT and this presale will only be up for the next TWO WEEKS.

Sweeps are violence! During the latest sweep at the encampment earlier this week, residents were given no notice, forced to move in the extreme heat, and lost a lot of what they use for shelter. If a volunteer had not just happened to be driving by at the right time, we would not have even been able to assist and witness.

Get your “Sweeps are Violence” t-shirt now to show your solidarity with the unhoused community in the Boston area. Link to purchase on our Linktree in our bio.

#WarmUpBoston #SpeakeasyPrintshop #ServeThePeople #MutualAid #SurvivalProgram #Fundraiser #SweepsAreViolence

Our comrades this week returned to the encampment to distribute necessary supplies for survival. This included a hot meal, 7 cases of water, snacks, fruit, croissants, as well as requested items such as clothing, cleaning supplies, and harm reduction supplies.

We do this work not as an act of charity, but as an act of solidarity with our neighbors that our healthcare system and housing market fails. The cities, state, non-profits, and other agencies all agree on a housing first model. Yet they actively under fund and under serve as they over promise. They consistently side with the landlords, insurance companies, land owners, and bosses when they allow thousands to suffer a daily crisis. Through this work we aim to create an alliance between housed and unhoused folks to build a strong community ready to fight for the basic protections we owe to each other on a human level. That's why we say strong communities begin with warm meals!

Thank you to all our online donors, you are driving this organization to accompmish so much! We have multiple ways for you to donate in our bio in our linktree. We also thank all of our comrades on the ground, we need both to make this happen. If you are looking to take part in distributions and gain experience organizing, please dm us on here and we'll get you started! #WarmUpBoston #ServeThePeople #SurvivalProgram #EncampmentSupport #SolidarityNotCharity #MutualAid

This past Sunday we conducted our weekly mobile distro. Despite the busy streets and crowds of green hindering our ability to get to some of the places we typically serve, we still found folks in the hiding places they told us about. We are thankful that the community trusts us with their hideaways; we can do our job better that way.

Since this distro happened on a day when many people were celebrating their Irish heritage, we wanted to highlight the struggles the Irish people went through and explain how the famine and mass displacement suffered by the people of Ireland, and the famine and mass displacement currently happening in Gaza are connected. They are connected because of a root cause: colonialism.

British colonialists and landlords in 19th century Ireland displayed genocidal intent as they exported millions of pounds of food to other countries while the Irish people were starving to death, and landlords destroyed their properties and evicted tenants just to get out of paying “famine relief” taxes. The genocidal intent of the IOF has never been more clearly articulated than today, in bombing and starving millions of Palestinians; but the roots of this famine and displacement go much deeper, starting with stripping the native populations of their food sovereignty through settler colonialism.

Our struggles here with food insecurity might not be at the same proportion as the examples above, but they too are connected. When food and housing are not viewed as necessary to life, but rather a means to produce profit for the ruling class, the system by design creates great inequality and suffering. The ruling class and the billionaires who control them have all the money and the power to end war, to end genocide, to end famine, to end homelessness, but they don’t. They will always prioritize profits over people. From Boston to Ireland to Palestine, the struggles of the oppressed are one struggle. #WarmUpBoston #ServeThePeople #SurvivalProgram #MutualAid #HarmReduction #MobileOutreach #EncampmentSupport #StPatricksDay #StPatricksDayBoston #Ireland #Palestine

At this week’s encampment distro, we delivered hot meals, cookies, canned food, snacks, fruit, 5 cases of water bottles, means to keep warm, batteries, superglue, blankets/sleeping bags, and assorted clothing, including some that had been requested, to the residents. We’re grateful to consistently be seeing high numbers of volunteers at each of our distros, to the point where we’ve had to cap attendance some weeks. As we’ve noted, we are turning our eye towards expansion and adding new volunteer opportunities to channel the rising energy we’re seeing in our dedicated volunteer base.

The residents we serve have been consistently shunted from place to place over the last few months. This week, we learned they’ve once again been told to move, though they’ve been given inconsistent timeframes and instructions that seem intentionally vague and difficult to follow. As though it’s not enough to be unsheltered with the weather still getting so cold, they’re given increasingly opaque directions that seem to have an end goal of them disappearing into thin air. We are keeping an open line of communication and preparing to assist in whatever comes next for them. If you’d like to be a part of that effort, please reach out. #WarmUpBoston #ServeThePeople #SurvivalProgram #EncampmentSupport #MutualAid

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