u dont kno me

mutual aid means no hierarchy between givers and receivers

a new mutual aid org, Bridge of Solidarity, has been established in the gaza strip by 17 year old poet yazan mohammed in response to the exploitative practices conducted by some charities and encouraged by the existing charity-based model of fundraising for gaza. according to BoS: "the western attention economy and pity economy plays a large role in who lives or dies in gaza." essentially, people need to make themselves marketable in order to receive lifesaving aid; people who are not marketable die. yazan himself wrote about the damage this can do to one's self image, which you can read here.

after trying for a year to respect his own privacy, my friend siraj was also pressured into posting images of his son's emaciated body in order to gain sympathy from westerners.

we cannot keep forcing people to do this anymore.

here's a declaration of their values from bridge of solidarity's most recent post:

Our organization is against the Western gaze. We refuse to humiliate people. We refuse to force people to take photos. We refuse to force people to take photos with our flyer or logo. People will receive aid freely without being forced to pose. We will respect people's privacy completely. Our principles include autonomy, dignity, sovereignty, mutual respect, and mutual aid.

this org will prioritize giving aid to people without phones or social media, who do not speak english, and who do not have outside support or living parents. these are the people who are not palatable to westerners but who deserve to live with as much dignity as everyone else

as of five days ago, BoS are working on a water truck delivery

https://cash.app/$ElPonchoGrande

1. The Midwest has the most caring racists. The amount of sleeping bags and hot chocolate was surprising and heartwarming, the amount of racism was alarming.

2. People love to give you stuff in Las Vegas

3. Christians love to record themselves giving you a water bottle or a slice of pizza. This is a trap they are going to talk to you about god, and yes some (all) think you are homeless because you are a sinner

4. Most teenaged panhandlers look older than they are (dirty, stressed). Remember they're kids. Most aren't drug addicts. Most are abused for one thing or another. Most of the time it's for being queer.

5. Dont trust RV people ever

6. Dont sleep anywhere where you won't hear people coming and wake up. Trash, sticks, whatever makes noise when people rustle through it. Car camping is so much better.

7. Cops aren't people, they're some strange demon sent to fool you with riddles and drag you away. Treat them like the Fae

8. No one gives handouts in the Northeast

9. No one calls 911 if a homeless person is ODing in California

Well I don't like how it feels. I don't feel cleaner without body hair. I don't prefer not having body hair. But who will advocate for women like me, but me? For women who do like hair removal, they are advocated for every time they step out of the house and see 99% of the female population also conforming to that standard, or when they watch a movie and see all the shaved actresses, or view an advertisment, or open a magazine, or watch a music video, or scroll through social media, or walk down the streets without receiving insults and glares for having a completely normal bodily feature.

Last post got long

We've been struggling to get our basic needs covered, we have no water, our daughter got her hair mutilated by her grandpa, we had to flee to a hotel 2 times during last month because he's been a danger for us, i lost my healthcare and im still in the paperwork to get it back and a couple days ago our trans daughter started peeing blood, is in pain and has shown signs of infection.

She already got checked by a Dr but he recommended an urologist very urgently. She already underwent surgery last year, there is a chance it was badly done or a new issue.

So, can we get help for her? Her birthday will be soon

We need $125 for the appointment with a trans friendly urologist, then we will have a diagnosis.

We were able to pay rent and fill our water tank, we hope the shortage ends and we don't have to get bottled water daily. We'll keep you posted.

I've been offering spanish conversation classes online, just taking time off until I can make sure my father-in-law won't sabotage those with his shouting.

A friend and mutual is offering commissions to help us if you're interested.

Also check our throne, we have some urgent lists of needs for our chronic pain/illnesses if someone can help us with that too.

$85/$800

Paypal Kofi Wishlist

Finally got the prescriptions scanned, forgot the 3rd one with the labs but this should be better than nothing, we debated a lot on how much information should be censored so i hope you understand we covered all we thought could put our daughter in danger.

We could agree on sharing the uncensored one through dm´s but only to trusted mutuals so they can corroborate its legit, we need to get her the surgery as urgently as possible cause the pain from the balanitis is hindering her ability to go to the bathroom or even just exist.

of course they are in spanish tho, we voted against translating them for accuracy´s sake.

The total cost of surgery through the only trans friendly clinic we could find goes over $52,000 pesos, which is over $3,100 usd, not even taking into account if she needs to stay overnight under their care.

She wouldn't have to go through another surgery if the previous dr had identified the symptoms better, we cant put her through another transphobic clinic, she was miserable and shouldn´t have gone through all that.

If it helps at all it's going to be her birthday on July 14, it would be great if she didn't have to be in pain and going to the bathroom meant a crying session and a constant infection.

We also had hoped the phones would have arrived by now but we got an email saying there was a problem but we hope to get a positive reply by july 11th, we´ll keep you posted.

so yeah, we need so much help not even considering that grandpa is still a danger, we will need food by saturday and i hurt myself handwashing the clothes we needed most urgently.

help please

$230/$3,500

Buffalo musician chrysalisamidst — also known simply as ‘K’ — has been working for five years now on ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights,’ a weighty project that focuses on her journey as a trans black woman, particularly the period during which she left her father and his evangelical household after he refused to accept her transition.

A musical and image-laced piece of art, ‘…Garden’ includes more than 30 songs, some of which are now available on Bandcamp.

“I grew up in a time where albums were longer, there were more songs, there was intention behind it, and I kind of wanted to bring that back,” she said. “When I was conceptualizing ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ it was an idea of there would be the music, but there would be also ‘a book of hours.’”

That book traces back to a sort of personal prayer book for the laity, often with artwork depicting the life of Jesus Christ and other saintly images. She described them as illustrated pamphlets interspersed with scriptures and art — a vessel to show her own poetry and artwork that could be read and viewed while listening to her music.

K grew up performing a cappella in the choir at school and church and listened to R&B and jazz at her grandmother’s house. Later, as a teenager, she started listening to electronic music.

“Once I got into my late teens, I would dive, here and there, into the processes of EDM and how it was made. Some house music, some techno stuff. Then, as I got older — when the dub step craze came up and a lot of that music — that kind of inspired me to infuse that with some other things I had dealt with before: the a cappella music, a lot of acoustic kind of things,” she said. “Over the past decade... I was very much aware that, ‘OK, I’m making the music I want to make, but also it’s not necessarily how I would want it to be, I guess in a commercial context.’ But also, I don’t know if I want it to be that.”

K’s mother died when she was young, and she knew since childhood she was not expressing her true gender identity. When she found the courage and will to come out and transition, she was not supported by her family. Her father, from whom she has had a long estrangement, is highly religious and his church excommunicated her entirely. Yet while his rejection left them estranged, the feelings that surround the relationship remain complicated. One of the items K sent to 1120 Press during the reporting of this story was an article that featured her father written by a Christian publication regarding the May 2022 racially motivated massacre at Tops on Jefferson Avenue. K’s father worked at the supermarket and led people from the store through a backdoor to safety.

“I am very much proud of my dad. I understood that, apart from talking to the smaller Christian newspaper, he doesn’t really see himself (as a heroic person.) I felt it was necessary to acknowledge him as such. I was already chronicling the experience of transitioning with a parent like that. I am not one of the people who had a nice coming out process, so that really colors that,” she said, referring to her father’s actions during the Tops massacre and how they so sharply contrast his refusal to accept his own child’s transition.

Her family’s past, in fact — as well the untaught Black history throughout the City of Buffalo — plays a notable part in K’s music, including her paternal cousin, Kevin Blackford, who was the leader of a Black Panther chapter in 1968 in Buffalo. Previously unbeknownst to her, that piece of family history was only recently revealed during a family funeral, K said. Such moments of revelation, she said, have inspired her to incorporate that history into ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights.’” (Which can also be found HERE on Soundcloud)

A counselor, advocate and outreach worker to those in Buffalo’s LGBTQ+ community, K knows, too, that no Black history would be complete without also acknowledging the marginalized community living within the Black community itself.

“There’s not very much visibility in terms of integrating that idea of Black history with the fact that Black LGBTQ+ people are part of Black history and the Black history in Buffalo,” she said. “In a lot of cases we are sidelined, marginalized, and erased from the conversation completely.”

That, K said, must change. And one way to effect that change, she said, is by taking that history and “infusing it in my music.”