The longest night of the year takes place on December 21st, the Winter Solstice. It is a time of extended darkness, but also the day before the nights begin to get shorter. For United Workers and the National Union of the Homeless it has become known as Annual National Homeless  Memorial Day. It is a day for not only somber reflection, but active remembrance and communal solidarity. 

On this day, we honor the lives lost to the brutal realities of homelessness and the systemic injustices that continue to make poverty deadly. This National Homeless Memorial Day is a central moment within the Winter Offensive – a season of synchronized actions and protests that take place from Thanksgiving through Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday in order to highlight the time of year when the poor and homeless experience the most deadly conditions and the highest rates of suicide and death.

Join United Workers, The National Union of the Homeless, Freedom Church of the Poor, The Nonviolent Medicaid Army and others from across the country this Sunday, December 21st at 6pm for The Longest Night, a Freedom Church of the Poor service. Together, we will lift up in honor our fallen comrade Ron Casanova, a beloved leader of the National Union of the Homeless & co-founder of the Poverty Initiative who lived his life as a minister of struggle, truth, and love. He helped organize the first nationally coordinated occupation of vacant federal housing in 1990, exposing the violence of homelessness and insisting that housing is a human right: "I'm dying in the streets. I think that should be against the law."

Watch via Facebook Live - https://www.facebook.com/events/1506244797340546 

Or Youtube Live - Longest Night/ Commissioning of Ron Casanova