Build Debt-Free Futures with Baldwin House this Giving Tuesday
Hear from Dani - a Solidarity Organizer working to support radically accessible housing
For the past three years, Baldwin House Community Collective organized to buy an apartment building in one of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in DC to turn it into an affordable housing cooperative and mutual aid hub. After successfully buying the building, we are now launching a Debt-Free Futures fundraising campaign to build a sustainable future for the Baldwin House Cooperative, free from banks and traditional wealth-building, which relies on perpetually increasing property values. With your support this Giving Tuesday, we can build a long-standing mutual aid hub that will give back to the community while creating a liberated future with Black and Brown working-class Washingtonians at the center of our organizing.
This Giving Tuesday, we’re spotlighting Dani McCormick’s thoughts on their experience as a Baldwin House Community Collective Solidarity Organizer, and the urgent and vital importance of affordable housing in Washington, DC.
The day the closing paperwork for Baldwin House was signed and notarized, the other solidarity organizers and I cried our way to our impromptu celebration potluck at Wangari Park.
Over cold pizza and thickly-frosted cake, we rehashed the challenges and triumphs that got us there. It was a lot of juggling weekly zoom meetings, hurried phone calls, book-length texts, and emails — and it was also checking in on friends, taking breaks, making a home-cooked meal, and sharing our visions of a future of what long-term affordable housing could look like in DC.
For the past two years, I’ve been a solidarity organizer, meaning I don’t plan to live in Baldwin House but I organize with the BH collective to support radically accessible housing and community mutual aid. I’ve had friends and neighbors get pushed out of their homes by wealthy developers and rising costs, so I know the literal foundation for families and communities to thrive in DC with a real sense of security and belonging means a roof over their heads.
Every day, I see the transformative power of mutual aid and collective action at Baldwin House. That’s why I know your support is not just a financial contribution; it is an act of solidarity, a commitment to dismantling oppressive systems, and a pledge to show up for each other.
I’m not a Baldwin House tenant-steward but you can’t tell me that once you step onto the community space that it doesn’t feel like home.
Our goal is ambitious yet essential. We aim to raise $2 million dollars through the Givebutter campaign to provide the resources necessary to live a Debt-Free future. Your support means leaving the immense burdens that loan interest payments and housing market forecasts in the past. It means we can focus on building something long-standing that will resource the community. By investing in Baldwin House's Givebutter campaign, you are investing in a future where stable housing is a reality in Washington DC, not a privilege.
Your generous contribution will directly impact the lives of tenant-stewards, ensuring they have a place to call home, a sanctuary to nurture their dreams, and a platform for communities to share visions of what our neighborhood and world can be.
In Solidarity,
Dani McCormick, Solidarity Organizer