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This event is free, but we invite you to support these organizations:

Trans Asylum Seeker Support Network

The Trans Asylum Seeker Support Network (TASSN) helps trans and genderqueer asylum seekers cross the Mexico/U.S. border, provides support while in detention, works to get them released, and supports them once settled in Western MA. We offer emotional, material, and financial support for asylum seekers to lead thriving lives. As a volunteer based group, we advocate and fundraise for the release of currently detained trans people, and work to address the root causes of asylum seeker criminalization through community education and organizing. We formed in response to the fear based media attention and political motives against the March 2019 caravan, despite caravans coming to the U.S. for decades. We began as a small group of organizers who saw a real need for support to local trans asylum seekers. Initially we organized volunteers in providing needs like rides and company for the asylum seekers. After a few months, we realized that by creating a larger Network with committees focused on specific aspects of our work, we would be able to provide more consistent support to more people, while also rooting our work in larger struggles to abolish capitalism and white supremacy, and create solidarity across borders.  As a collective, we are engaged in community building through our mutual aid efforts, which we see as a vital part of creating a cultural shift toward embracing the interdependence of life and the fights to defend it in all its forms.

Whose Corner Is It Anyway

Whose Corner Is It Anyway is a Western MA mutual aid, harm reduction, political education, and organizing group led by stimulant and opioid using low-income, survival, or street-based sex workers.  All members are current or former low income sex workers. All members either use/have used stimulants and/or opioids, are/have been homeless, or work/ have worked outside. We low-income sex workers have created a regular community and organizing meeting for ourselves--a haven. 

Queer Detainee Empowerment Project

The Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP) assists folks coming out of immigration detention in securing structural, health/wellness, educational, legal, and emotional support and services. We work to organize around the structural barriers and state violence that LGBTQIA TS & GNC detainee/undocumented folks face related to their immigration status, race, sexuality, and gender expression/ identity.

 

We are committed to assisting folks in building lives outside of detention, to breaking down the barriers that prevent folks from building fulfilling and productive lives, and to keeping queer families intact by demanding an end to deportations/ detention/ policing. We believe in creating a narrative of thriving, not just surviving.

Massachusetts Bail Fund

The Massachusetts Bail Fund pays up to $5000 bail so that low-income people can stay free while they work towards resolving their case, allowing individuals, families, and communities to stay productive, together, and stable.

 

The Massachusetts Bail Fund is committed to the harm reduction of freeing individuals serving pre-trial sentences, and to abolishing pre-trial detention and supervision in the long-term.  

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