Planned Parenthood: reproductive and sexual health, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

Forge: supporting trans people and their families, https://forge-forward.org/

The Trevor Project: suicide and crisis prevention for LGBTQ+ youth, http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

Assata’s Daughters: empowering young Black women, based out of the Chicago area http://www.assatasdaughters.org/

Tell Mama: fighting anti-Muslim sentiment and hate (they’re UK based, still searching for a US-based alternative) http://www.tellmamauk.org

the American Civil Liberties Union: actually defending the constitution and ensuring a safe legal process, https://www.aclu.org/

Southern Poverty Law Center: actively documenting and fighting hate groups in the US, https://www.splcenter.org/

NARAL Pro-Choice America: defending abortion rights, http://prochoiceamerica.org/

the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee: working to defend Arab-Americans in the US, http://www.adc.org

ALL PRICES IN USD

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I have been asked many times before about taking commissions, and up until now have accepted them on a case-by-case basis because of the uncertainty of my schedule. Now, I finally found the time and courage to open them up on my actual knitting blog!

RULES:

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No adult-sized garments

No blankets

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me:

Yes, Riley is involved. So are a lot of other volunteers who saw the hashtag or a call to help and just wanted to try to put together a good resource. It’s a shame to see that resource buried under misinformation, so here’s some facts.

What is TransLawHelp? It began as a hashtag started by Riley calling for trans-positive and pro-bono legal resources for trans people in the US. Many people saw the hashtag and participated. From there, someone (I assume Riley) decided to try to make it more useful by turning it into a website that people could browse by state, translawhelp.org. The idea was that the website would be curated information, and thus more reliable and permanent than the hashtag.

How do I use it? What kind of organization is it? It’s just a website/hashtag. You look through it to try to find resources relevant for you. The website is more curated than the hashtag and content has been checked out by volunteers who are loosely organized and mostly not legal professionals. They are just studiously googling to establish legitimacy. TransLawHelp does not ask for money or information, it is an open list of resources. They are not an intermediary. No one volunteering will involve themselves in any legal discussion you have with a lawyer you found on the site. They won’t even know about it unless you for some reason tell them.

What are those Patreon/YouCaring/PayPal links? The YouCaring fund is for trans people who cannot afford even a discounted lawyer. It’s owned by a New York trans-positive lawyer named Carl Charles who volunteered to help out with TransLawHelp, and who I think is the main legal person involved. The Patreon and Paypal are for website costs, which are about $30/mo right now and were paid out of pocket by the person who set it up. The money would go back to reimbursing her, not Riley. I don’t know what would hypothetically happen in the event of overflow donations.

Who is involved? Riley organized the effort and beyond that it’s just volunteers who help with the website. I got involved because a friend and someone I’d worked with put out a call for web developers (and I can’t do much else, being Canadian). Basically everyone got involved because they heard about it and put their hand up to pitch in. You can check out the contributor guidelines if you’re interested, but Riley said they’ve been getting rape and death threats since people saw they were involved, so they’re probably wary about too many new people in close proximity.

What are the volunteers doing? Basically, they set up a Google Form where people can submit resources (lawyers, notaries, information, youth centers, etc) by state. Right now only things submitted through the form and not the hashtag are allowed on the site, in case someone didn’t really want to be put on a website without their permission (this is also why the site is a bit sparse right now). Volunteers look at submitted resources to make sure they check out. Sometimes they contact lawyers to ask THEM for more information to establish legitimacy, but only if there’s contact info. They don’t ask them up-front about what they would charge. Nobody contacts users at all. If the info seems legit, it goes on the website. You should still do your own research on what you find there and the website itself says as much.

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

carecen la // center for community change // immigration center for women and children  // american civil liberties union // esperanza immigrant rights project // national immigration law center // kids in need of defense