the bay area has like hella transit agencies: bart, caltrain, ac
transit, muni, amtrak, samtrans, golden gate among the ones that jump to
mind immediately.
i'm a donor to seamless bay area -- www.seamlessbayarea.org -- which
advocates for an overarching transit org with unified fares. if you care
about improving public transit in the bay area, i recommend joining.
there are opportunities during upcoming public hearings to advocate on
behalf of unified fares. if you're interested, sign up for time slots
here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdudGsNpPjUHkO1LiJSzAdeErperhdGIFT…
they have talking points you can refer to:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18H_KlqhN_fnJRkkv0yKZ6t7TytANghHIAqUEjvh…
<3,
--igor
Hi folks,
(some of you may have already seen this :)
I wanted to share this inspiring project from my friends Gideon & Miju.
They're looking for grant recipients and matching donors (which I just
signed up to do) from our extended community.
With love and all my active hope,
Stacey
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gideon Wald <gideon.wald(a)gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 11:08 PM
Subject: ⭐ Extended Community Relief Fund
To: Miju E. Han <mijuhan(a)gmail.com>
Hi extended community,
We feel rage and grief over the health and housing crisis that is unfolding
across our country. Everybody reading this message has immense privilege
compared to the many BIPOC families in every major US city facing
mid-winter eviction at the height of a deadly pandemic due to a racist
system that marginalizes them. As Matthew Desmond writes in Evicted
<https://www.evictedbook.com/>: “In poor black neighborhoods, what
incarceration is to men, eviction is to women. [...] Poor black men are
locked up; poor black women are locked out.”
Nevertheless, this crisis is cutting into our communities as well. Our
cultural stigmas around money and privilege make it extremely hard for us
to openly ask and offer material support to each other, even during this
epochal societal breakdown.
In an effort to take action, we’re going to try something that we know will
be imperfect, but that we hope will be better than not trying something. We
want to give away at least $10,000 to people in our extended community who
are struggling with basic expenses right now. At the same time, we are
pledging to raise at least $10,000 from our personal networks to support
marginalized people facing eviction in the US.
This Extended Community Relief fund is for anybody who is personally
connected to us or connected to someone who knows us. You/they do not have
to live in the Bay Area. Please forward this message to people you know for
whom it might be relevant.
Do you worry about covering basic expenses over the next six months?
-
Then this is an offer for you. We’d like to give you money.
-
Our culture can make it awkward/shameful to ask for money, even though
there should be just as much shame in having money as in needing it. Know
that if you take money from this fund, more money will go to support
marginalized people facing eviction.
-
We will give one grant to each requester. Grants will be at least $1,000.
Do you want to give money to people who need it?
-
Then this is a request for you. Please make a pledge to us in whatever
amount you can.
-
When we give a grant from our Community Relief fund, we will call upon
you to honor your pledge so that a matching grant is made.
-
We request that you donate to one of these organizations: People Serving
People (MN) <https://www.peopleservingpeople.org/about/>, Atlanta Mutual
Aid <https://www.atlantamutualaid.org/about>, or Causa Justa :: Just
Cause (SF/Oak) <https://cjjc.org/about-us/>. Of course, you can always
suggest another org you know and love that fits the values of this project.
Please reply to us if you need a grant, if you’d like to make a matching
pledge, or if you have feedback or suggestions on how we can do this in
ways that are more effective or just.
With love,
Gideon & Miju
Q: How did we choose those organizations?
A: For Gideon, Matthew Desmond's 2016 book *Evicted *was as impactful as
Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Its lessons on housing "law" in the
US are the main reasons he's been thinking about the housing side of the
pandemic.
After writing Evicted, Matthew Desmond founded Just Shelter, a nonprofit
which (among other things) maintains a comprehensive state-by-state list of
community resource organizations
<https://justshelter.org/community-resources/>. We looked through the
sections for California (since we’re here), Minnesota (in honor of the
Minneapolis families in Evicted), and Georgia (because of what Black voters
and organizers just did there); and we picked the org in each section that
we felt had the strongest combination of (1) funneling donations directly
to families in need immediately, and (2) supporting primarily or entirely
BIPOC people.
