A Really Good Guy Needs a Hand Right Now

Universal hazmat symbols; attribution unknown.

Too many of us live on the edge, all the time. It's one thing when you can control your income, keep it flowing in on a regular basis.

It's something else entirely when your income source is forced to close temporarily. And when you work in the service sector, closure means no hours, and no hours means no income. 

That's what happened to our good friend Drew. He messaged me the other night to let me know what was going on. Here's what he had to say: 

It is a temp one time thing, the place I work at is closed for a hazmat clean up and has left me short for rent and deposit on my new place. If you have time throw a good word in for me with whoever  you may still be in contact with. 

So things aren't as dire as I thought but I am still gonna be short. I have until Monday. Can get 100 for plasma by then and 150 for my TV plus whatever temp work comes this weekend. With my 8 hours or so flex time I should only be 500 short. Not sure when the insurance check will come, may not be until the following Monday but will be enough to live on until the full ones start coming.

Unless that changes again.

Of course, Murphy's Law dictates that such an even will befall your employer the moment you make a $$-dependent move in your personal life — in Drew's case, getting new housing. He has a roommate, and neither of them can afford the loss of his tenancy in the place.

Now, can I just take a moment to note how purely shameful it is that this is a culture in which a person is forced to say, "Hey! I'm in danger of losing the roof over my head, but it's not as bad as I thought, because I might be able to get 100 bucks for selling the plasma out of my own body!"

Seriously. Reduced to selling off one's very self just to survive, and he's only one of millions doing so. 

Most of y'all know him as Drewid, from the Great Orange Satan, and he's a hell of a nice guy and a great ally to folks from marginalized populations. He's that rare person who recognizes his own privilege, even at times (like now) when life isn't privileging him very much at all, and is willing to wade in and do the hard work of pushback against bigotry and discrimination and other form of abuse by the dominant culture against people of color, members of LGBTQIA communities, and women. 

That is rare. It's actually pretty easy to talk the talk, and lots of folks do it without anteing up anything else. But Drew walks the walk, and he's taken a lot of flak for it.
Now, I want you to understand the kind of person Drew is: He's pretty sure he can get by on $500, and he doesn't want to ask for "more than his share," as I think he phrased it to me, and so he's keeping his request as minimal as possible. But now I want you to go back up to his message for a moment and re-read it. Notice all those dependencies, all those "ifs?" 

Getting what he's guessing for a product of his body. Getting another $150 for his TV. Getting temp work. Getting "flex time." Getting the insurance check (by his employers).

Not a damn one of those is guaranteed in any way. So what I'd like to do is shoot for double what he's asking, just to make sure he's got a safety net. He's uncomfortable with that, I'll tell you straight up, but that's the case with honest folks who don't want to take something they haven't earned, and don't want more than their fair share. but in this culture, "fair share" has been so diluted as to be without meaning, and so I asked his permission to let me pester y'all about raising more purely as a request from me.

The last I knew, Drew was out of Internet range (although his cell IM was still working, hence his ability to get the info to me), and so the link I'm about to post is still outdated. He was hoping to raise funds to buy a food truck — the guy's fabulous cook, a genius and an artist with food — and become wholly self-sufficient. That's a long-term dream, though, and for now, bills need to be paid and he's found work with a pair of wonderful co-owners of a restaurant and tea room, good people of the kind we all say we want to support. I went to their Facebook page this morning, and saw the photos of the interior, floor ripped out as part of the abatement process. I don't know the details, but I do know it's a terrible blow to their business.

So for now, his GoFundMe page reflects his long-term dream, not immediate survival. He's planning to update it today when he gets back into wifi range. But if you have a spare five, ten, twenty, a hundred bucks? Consider kicking in to help keep a roof over the head of one of the good guys. Five dollars, by a hundred people, covers his minimum estimate. That's the cost of a coffee at Starbucks. Or a beer. Cheaper than a pack of smokes. It's lunch at McDonald's.

Here's that link again: GoFundMe. And even if you can't give, please share: Facebook, Twitter, anywhere else you participate, with your networks IRL.

Thanks.



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