Ways to Get Involved

• Register for an Orientation to SURJ Boston

  Join us for a 90-minute orientation about SURJ Boston and how we work! This orientation will:

  • Introduce you to SURJ as a national organization and to SURJ Boston as our local chapter

  • Provide opportunities to engage with other participants about your own interests and motivations for engaging with anti-racism work

  • Explain the steps for getting involved with SURJ Boston going forward from this orientation
    

• Sign up to receive our weekly "Actions & Updates" newsletter + other action alerts
  

• Register to join our SURJB Action Hours and take action together!

  • Action Hours happen over Zoom the first Wednesday of each month from 6:30-7:30PM
    

• Follow SURJ Boston on Facebook
  

• Educate yourself about anti-racism and sign up for trainings

Our Working Groups

Action Partnerships

Prison Abolition

The Prison Abolition Action Partnership is a working group of SURJ Boston working in solidarity with people directly impacted by incarceration, the prison industrial complex, and policing to fight for an end to prisons and build a new vision for justice and liberation.

Public Education

We recognize that racism and white supremacy culture are embedded in public education and harmfully impacting students, teachers, and parents/guardians. We are accountable for taking action to support people of color-led groups working to create a more equitable and just education system for all students in Boston (and the surrounding area). Our goals are to increase civic engagement of white people for racial justice in our school system, activate teachers to be racial justice advocates in their schools, and support/provide resources for existing PoC organizations and parents in our schools.

Indigenous Solidarity

We support the cultural, psychological, and economic freedom of Indigenous people with the goal of achieving Indigenous sovereignty. We follow the lead of local Indigenous tribes and other Indigenous-led organizations and work to develop relationships with them. We advocate actions they have endorsed. A key part of our work is ongoing political education for ourselves and others related to Indigenous sovereignty and decolonization. We center making reparations by evaluating our work/projects based on the United Nations’ conditions for reparations.

We grow more conscious and personally aware of the history (and current states) of colonization in order to be able to raise awareness among those around us and to ultimately move us, as a culture and a system of intersecting laws and institutions, towards reparations and, when possible, reconciliation.

Confronting White Supremacists

The Confronting White Supremacists Action Partnership mobilizes in direct response to local violent white supremacist, misogynist, and fascist groups, proactively and strategically; and offers resources and political education (both within SURJB and for our wider community) on local alt-right organizing, how the institutional structure and history of white supremacy fosters this organizing, and how the state itself perpetrates fascist violence.

Internal Working Groups

Operations

Composed of the Logistics, Communications, and Finances teams, our Operations group organizes our chapter information, communicates on email and social media, compiles our weekly actions and updates newsletter, ensures SURJB is an open and accessible space to people with disabilities, handles our fundraising and finances on the technical side, and coordinates the logistics around chapter events.

Community Development

Community Development is the beating heart of SURJB. It is responsible for supporting our base groups and bringing in new SURJB members. Community Development also puts on monthly brunches and aspires to build up our skills (such as in transformative justice, conflict resolution, and more) and internal political education work.

Action Support Network

Action Support Network activates SURJB to support larger scale actions in a cycle of action and reflection where we grow our skills and practice. We maintain teams related to various parts of successful street actions, coordinate training, and work to support outreach and mobilization.

Spokescouncil

Our chapter attempts to be both horizontal and centralized to facilitate both accountability and transparency. Spokescouncil is our governing body; it primarily handles the big picture of SURJB and works to develop consensus within each working group about chapter-wide decisions.

Steering Committee

SURJB is a large organization and Boston has a rich social movement ecology. Steering Committee takes care that the day-to-day work of SURJB stays on track with our values, strategy, and goals; takes responsibility for the big picture of SURJB; and collaborates with Action Support Network to make strategic decisions.