Members of Birmingham DSA's Mutual Aid Working Group want to know if you're interested in organizing around a potential "No Sweeps" campaign or program!

What is it?

Every year in the third week of January, nonprofit workers and volunteers walk the streets of Birmingham to count the city's homeless, houseless, and tenuously housed population. This count, also known as a Point-In-Time (PIT) Count, is done so these nonprofits can continue receiving grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care Program.

In the weeks before this census count, members of the Birmingham Police Department enter the streets to remove of our neighbors' belongings, throwing away and destroying many of their personal affects in the process. This is in an effort to move them, oftentimes against their will, to areas outside of the city limits, Jefferson County, and even Alabama, lowering the amount of homeless, houseless, and tenuously housed in Birmingham that are counted the following week.

This yet-to-be campaign or program might guide and inform how Bham DSA...

• Organizes for protection of our tenuously housed neighbors during these January sweeps, with potential goals for this organizing being to keep our neighbors established in the spots where they are and to permanently eliminate such sweeps in Birmingham,
• Builds power for tenuously housed individuals and the broader working class around metro Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and all of Alabama,
• Organizes around issues important to tenuously housed individuals, and
• Relates to other organizations serving and advocating tenuously housed individuals in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Alabama.

But, first and foremost, it'll include anything you and other organizers would like to bring to the organizing table!

If you're interested in getting involved, please fill out this form!