Hello friends of The Rhizome House, 

First, we'd like to thank you for your support in our first full year! Y'all really showed up and remind us every day that sustaining movement infrastructure is work worth doing. To express our gratitude and build community, we'd like to invite you all to a paprikash dinner on Thursday, 12/21 at 6:30pm.

We'll reflect on where we've been and where we're hoping to go. We'll also have a winter solstice ritual and social hour afterward. 

We also wanted to give you some updates what The Rhizome House has done in 2023 - thanks for your support! 

    - 45 Sunday open hours & crafternoons

    - 24 Safer Use Society meals and support groups with Thrive 4 Change 

    - 24 anarchist book club sessions

    - 15 labor meetings and trainings

    - 15 film screenings

    - 11 potlucks

    - 8 poetry open mics with Starlight Elsewhere

    - 6 Sex Worker Alliance meetings

    - 6 meals and education discussion with the Autonomous University of Political Education

    - 3 county jail letter writing events and meetings

    - 1 folk punk show

. . . and we only had to cancel 4 events!

We also hosted a wide range of other gatherings, including film screenings on fentanyl and labor history in Youngstown, and a weekend childbirth education retreat. We were grateful to participate in the Ohio Women’s Alliance reproductive justice listening tour, and hosted slime making at the Cedar Lee Candy Crawl (oh the chaos!). 

We've hosted so so many skill shares, like: seed sharing, knot tying, abortion peer support, stop the bleed, and clothing mending. We would like to host more skill shares (and local radical history talks) during our Sunday open hours in the upcoming year. Please reach out if you have a skill or local history you'd like to share! 

We also started a pop up free store during Sunday open hours. We are looking to expand the free store pop up throughout 2024. 

Something else that emerged this year was the need for physical space to move through grief and celebrate the lives of departed friends. We were grateful to be able to offer the space for community vigils and rememberance gatherings this past year, and we continue honor our friends who are no longer with us through an altar in our front window. If you have pictures or items of a loved one you'd like to invite to watch over the space, please feel free to nestle them into the altar so we can remember each other.

Rhizome House members helped to plan and host Let's Make This Wasteland Bloom events in March and October. These teach in and discussion events addressed many important topics for organizers like health & harm reduction, housing justice, food sovereignty, and abolition & transformative justice. These are big issues and the work is ongoing--reach out if you want to help plan the next one in the spring!

We're so grateful to all of our partners in this work. Just to shout out a few-- The Northeast Ohio Industrial Workers of the World, Thrive 4 Change, the Autonomous University of Political Education, the Inter-Religious Task Force, Cleveland Sex Workers Alliance, Thinking of Others NEO, Food Not Bombs AND Food Not Lawns, and of course all of the wonderful, informally organized folks who help make this space possible. We're so appreciative for all your kind and thoughtful stewardship and look forward to continuing to deepen our relationships with y'all in the next year.

Not technically an event, but still an update: we left Twitter! It was/is a cesspool and we decided to focus more on our in-person programming. The best way to keep up with us is on Instagram (@therhizomehouse) or our email list (rhizomehouse.org). Or, keep an eye out for our zine table at events around NEO and find us in person.

As long as money exists we'll still be paying the rent, utilities and all the other expenses that keep the Rhizome going . . . So what have we been using your money on?

In 2023 we had 69 donors! 49 of you made monthly donations, thank you all so much for your generosity and support. We know who you are and we thank you. It really helps the space stay accessible and helps keep as many events free and low cost as possible.

We had a total of $13,681.60 total donations for 2023.

$8,691 of that came from community members, and $4,990 was from RZH collective members. 

And thank you to all of our volunteers who share their time as well! If you came to help clean, staff an event, pull weeds in the garden or even just make the vibes a little brighter, we see your contribution too and deeply appreciate it.

    - Rent: $3,600

    - Utilities: $1,704.15

    - Wifi: $1,175.76

    - Air Purifier: $547.82

    - Insurance Policy: $267

    - Mailchimp email service: $152.28

    - Other expenses (stickers, Home Depot, Halloween Candy Crawl, Open Collective Foundation and Payment fees, etc): $997.76

Total expenses for 2023: $8,444.77 

You can find a full list of all the nitty gritty capitalist money stuff on our Open Collective Page: https://opencollective.com/therhizomehousesolidarityfund

In early 2024, we would like to use some funds to purchase much needed supplies for the space such as: sturdier tables, dishes, new couches, rugs, and better lighting. We are also planning to build a ramp in the spring to make the backyard accessible for all our friends who can't do stairs. We have a cash surplus at the moment because our rent has remained low but anticipate an increase in the future as the roof of our building is replaced. Hence we may still raise some funds for the new supplies. 

Thank you for your support! In this year and the next,

-The Rhizome House Caretakers Collective

-PS you can join our email list and view our event calendar here for more frequent updates: