Community Vigil for Jessica Witzel

Jessica Witzel ¡presente! Last week our friend Jessica passed away on the streets during an extreme heat event. Jessica had a loving family who for a year moved heaven and earth to help her, but the reality is there are effectively ZERO resources in this city/county/state for unhoused folks with serious mental illness or other intensive medical needs. What resources exist require that folks have capacity to voluntarily seek/accept help, which is not the reality for many on the streets. The reality too is that it’s getting hotter, the hottest parts of the city are those that have also been most racially and economically segregated, and we have no actionable climate plan in place.

Justice for Jessica! Justice for all those whose names we’ll never know. Justice for our feverish planet itself.

On Saturday, August 31 at 12pm noon, friends, family and community supporters will gather to lay a wreath and altar on the sidewalk where she passed. The location is on Fredericksburg Rd just north of the Five Points intersection, between the Five Points gas station (126 Fredericksburg) and the Living Waters Church (118 Fredericksburg).

In lieu of flowers, Jessica’s family also asks you to please donate to groups doing the deepest, fiercest work to meet the needs of unhoused friends and neighbors:

Yanawana Herbolarios (Cash App: $Yerbolarios)

Mootual Aid (Cash App: $mootualaid)

San Antonio Collective Care (Cash App: $sanantonioDSA, label it “mutual aid”)

Eastside Heat Team (call/text 210-463-5194)

Monster Moms (https://givebutter.com/MonsterMoms)

Catholic Worker House (https://www.sa-catholicworker.org/donate)