Mask Bloc NYC 2024 Fundraiser

As an autonomous collective of disabled, queer, and trans folks, we have taken a break from distro as we take some time to restock and reassess our values and practices that will sustain our work in 2024. As we build toward long-term sustainability, we are also asking for your help.

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Survival is a collective effort—in the 5th year of an ongoing global pandemic, New York City has failed us, and we have been left to defend ourselves. Hundreds of USians continue to die of COVID every week, and countless more face complications as a result of Long COVID. The primary victims of this are poor and medically vulnerable communities—people of the global majority—who are already disproportionately disabled due to medical apartheid.We are resisting genocides on multiple fronts, and being in solidarity with marginalized oppressed people looks like acknowledging the harm of unmitigated diseases as a tool of colonization, from New York City to DRC, Sudan, Palestine, Senegal, West Papua, and Haiti.

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Since launching last year, we have distributed 34,387 masks and 38,171 rapid tests to New York City residents, filling a massive gap that the NYC Department of Health has completely abandoned.  We are grateful to have built relationships with grassroots and affinity groups such as tenants’ unions, NYCHA residents, nail techs with masking policies, Long COVID Justice, Masked Walks NYC, Red Canary Song, Urban Indigenous Collective, and many others.

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To continue this work, we need financial support. Our goal is to raise $15,000 for rapid tests, KN95s, N95s, and mutual aid for our disabled community members. We are budgeting this as follows:

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• $4,000 for N95s (we were able to secure 28,000 3M Auras through an auction and need to reimburse the organizers who collectively fronted the costs)

• $3,000 for high-quality KN95s

• $2,000 for rapid COVID tests

• $6,000 for additional expenses such as gas, shipping, storage, printing, packaging, and rapid response (a lot of this has been coming out of our organizers' pockets!)

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There is an extensive amount of labor that goes into meeting the requests of hundreds of people/community groups per day. If you have resources, we are asking you to leverage them. We are not a nonprofit, and never will be. We have some large visions for 2024, and would love for you to help us.

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Thank you!