How one friend's Fundraiser will keep our Romani tribe warm this winter
How one friend's Fundraiser will keep our Romani tribe warm this winter
Dear friends,
We have been publishing a lot about the injustices and institutional racism against our Romani tribe. We have told you about…
how private interests and law enforcement encourage the Romani to steal
how institutions refuse to acknowledge tangible reality when reported by a Romani
how the casino is the only way to make real money for a Romani
the backstory of the Roma quarter and how it was demolished and the families displaced
On our Instagram page, we have shared many videos from our tribe - not only the ones showing traditions and celebrations but also…
Men from our tribe up at 3:00 am to shovel snow… without extra pay
A wedding taking place in front of the crisis center, right next to the police station
Rain pouring from the roof of the crisis center.
News video snippets from the demolition of the Roma houses
Snippets from Pepi’s short movie showing the Roma Quarter, how it felt when it was demolished, how it was born, and how it used to be the heart of the neighborhood.
We have been doing all this, in parallel to telling you about the culture, traditions, and psychology of the Romani, so we can put real faces and stories to the suffering that is caused by racism. We believe people are desensitized to this kind of violence and willfully prefer to see the Romani as not-human in order to justify what is happening. We have been working to counter that perception.
An unexpected side effect to all these stories was the response of the global Romani tribe: Romani from the US and all over the world who have been watching.
One of our US readers, Anya Redgewell, together with a friend, Mindy Balderas, organized a fundraiser for our tribe. The write-up in its description is very accurate and eloquent and we encourage you to read it if you are interested in the full picture.
In this post, we will share with you exactly how we would spend the funds that are raised.
Winter gear for the street cleaning workers
The street cleaners have no adequate work equipment. Their “uniforms” are second-hand, with rips, and without the proper winter underlining - essentially, they are for summer work. In the winter, the workers resort to covering themselves in plastic bags as protection against rain and snow. They return home shaking from the cold and need hours to recover from a single shift. We will use part of the money raised to buy the following for every single worker employed in the neighborhood of our tribe.
Winter jacket
Waterproof winter overalls
Work Boots
Work Gloves
Waterproof winter hats
Special waterproof shoes for the men responsible for the lifting of “heavy objects” as they need to be more mobile
Essentials for the displaced families
After the houses were demolished, 30 families were placed in locations with abhorrent conditions. A few of the families are in social housing buildings that have holes in the walls, barely any running water, nowhere to take a shower, frequent power cuts. The rest of the families were placed in a crisis center - an office building with only a couple of bathrooms per floor. After 2 years of living there, they were moved to the second crisis center in the city, where every room has its own bathroom - the single improvement from the first center. Both centers have the same conditions. Doors that don’t lock, holes in the roof, bug infestations, broken plumbing, electric cables sticking out, broken windows, no heating. The families are doing repairs with their own hands but this is like fighting the ocean. With the minimum wage from the street cleaning job, they can barely cover basic necessities, let alone do repairs in a building which the municipality itself should be taking care of.
With the money from the fundraiser, we will:
Buy winter clothes for all children
Buy school supplies for all school-age children
Buy stoves, refrigerators, and washing machines for all families
Buy mattresses, blankets, and pillows where needed
Buy supplies to do repairs where needed (replace plumbing, replace windows, fill up holes in the walls)
Buy small heaters for each family
How you can help
If you want to support the fundraiser so generously organized by Anya, we would be grateful for any donation. But if you’re not able to afford one, we would be also extremely grateful if you could share the fundraiser so other people could support us.
We are very hopeful that we’ll be able to provide some essentials to all families, so they can stop worrying about basic survival and be able to feel stable on their feet.
Thank you, dear friends, for reading and for your support!
Pepi and Martina