WEST SEATTLE MUTUAL AID PARTY🎉 UPDATES!
West Seattle Mutual Aid Party🎉, a partner of NW Hospitality, reserves their more detailed, regular updates for their volunteers and supporters. However, here are snippets from their weekly updates from the last few weeks.
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8/8/2023 - On a less positive note, two of our main sites that we visit with weekly have once again either already been or will be within the next day or two forcibly displaced by the city. As always, this will simply move people further into the periphery and onto less suitable streets and locations while disrupting what little stability they have. During one of the sweeps, lug nuts were stolen from a pull behind and the wheels came off right in the middle of a busy intersection. There was some damage done and it was a stressful situation, but luckily they had replacement nuts and didn't need anything else. It could have caused a serious accident and just another example of some of the violence our friends face from complete strangers. Our friends are resilient though, as is our program, and we anticipate that while it may take a week or two for things to settle down and for us to reconnect with folks, we will quickly get back into the swing of things.
8/16/2023 - This week at distro, we served 33 individuals across the neighborhood. We're continuing to see the results of the forcible displacements that we mentioned last week, with neighbors moving to less suitable streets and already crowded areas. Many of our friends know when and where to normally expect us, so we always do our best to be on time and distribute resources efficiently at each of our stops, while still taking the time to check in and catch up. These displacements not only unnecessarily disrupt the daily lives of our neighbors, but can make it difficult for us to connect with folks who we can't contact otherwise. We hope our friends we missed this week are staying safe and cool!
8/20/2023 - That interaction is one of the ways we try to differentiate mutual aid from charity. We're really looking to build relationships with folks, connect with them and their struggles and offer support as needed. All these opportunities to provide basic necessities to folks is important, but also important is the trust that each opportunity generates. Sometimes what people need the most is a friend.
8/29/2023 - In addition to the weather, this week's distro was also complicated by our unhoused neighbors continuing to be forced to move around the neighborhood in the wake of sweeps and other impacts. We saw a few more folks on the north route this week than we did last week, but the number of people we served on the south route increased again as well. And similar to last week, the south team ran out of some supplies but they were able to make a run for more. After wrapping up the north route, the north team was also able to link up with the south team to take a supply drop off their hands. This required a fair amount of quick and clear communication between the teams while we were all on the move, but we made it work! Ultimately, we served 39 people total across the neighborhood.
9/2/2023 - We were able to coordinate pretty well among the teams, at one South spot, a resident let us know that there were people by the College again so the North team was able to swing by there and meet up with 6 additional people. One of the South teams also met up at that spot to offer additional supplies, since the North team took a smaller amount. This allowed the folks there to have a wider variety of food to choose from, which was great. The housed neighbors by College have been particularly hostile and violent towards the unhoused in that area, and when I brought that up to a resident there, they mentioned that just last night, a big truck pulled up behind their RV and was flashing their lights at them, trying to intimidate and scare them.
You can follow West Seattle Mutual Aid Party🎉 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MutualAidParty
And you can support them through NWH here or through their Patreon here.