We'll be holding a skillshare to build USB rechargeable heated blankets for our unhoused neighbors January 18th, 2025 at Tru Yoga! Funds raised by this campaign will go toward buying the supplies necessary to build the blankets at the skillshare.
Last year's heated blanket skillshare was a huge success! We're hoping to keep that energy going into this winter, our unhoused neighbors need our support. These blankets can save lives, and we're going to build them together.
If you'd like to help us build the blankets, come on down to Tru Yoga January 18th, 2025 from 5pm-9pm! Hope to see you there, and thanks for helping to keep our unhoused neighbors warm this winter!
If you'd like to see how we'll be making the blankets, check out this video on our YouTube channel!
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Our neighbors are unhoused for one reason: the pursuit of profit. Skyrocketing rents, because landlords have chosen profit over people. Poverty wages, because business owners have chosen profit over people. Mountains of medical debt or untreated illnesses, because insurance and healthcare companies have chosen profit over people.
City of Rochester officials spend most of their time on delay tactics and spectacle, and when they do act, their actions are centered around punitive measures and dehumanizing sweeps. Many of the people on the street are locked out of services because of punitive sanctions that are given out freely by the City and NGOs over the slightest “infraction.”
A sanction is a shutoff of all active or pending public assistance, including shelter– quite literally their lifeline to become stable again. Sanctions are punishment for things as minor as missing a phone call appointment (because they don't own a phone), or being unable to get to an in-person appointment (because they have no transportation). This handcuffs the people in the most need to a revolving door of pain and isolation.
At best, unhoused people are completely ignored by the City. At worst, they are hunted down. Somewhere in between, they are forced into a "continuum of care" housing model, where organization after organization line up to fail them. Their most basic needs are refused unless they give detailed accounts of traumatizing life experiences, and even then they are told they need to get yet another referral, from yet another organization, and start the whole humiliating process all over again.
We can do better as a community! We must do our best to reduce harm where we can, and we can accomplish so much through direct community action. If the City and NGOs are incapable of meeting our neighbors immediate needs, we must do it ourselves!
What we’re offering is not a solution, it is simply harm reduction in action. The City has told us to Keep the Change, to deny the unhoused the most direct aid we can offer them, cash in hand. We need to come together as a community and offer a more compassionate response to our neighbors in need. Join us in this small act of harm reduction and help us keep our unhoused neighbors warm this winter.
This is the first step in a long process of mutual aid to get our neighbors taken care of as best we can. We truly believe we can keep us safe, so let’s get to work.
In Solidarity,
The Rochester Mutual Aid Network