Posts – 11/2/2014
#LGBT community – OK here comes the huge big ask, an asylum seeker is coming into San Francisco/ Bay Area/ North Bay/ East Bay – in a few days time. We plan to raise money to help with his support. However for the a month or 2 we are going to need all the help we can get from a real giver/s!
Someone/ a couple/ a mom/ a dad whose kid has gone off to college – who has an extra room and want to be part of this great #mitzvah. Someone who is willing to open their home to an inspirational and extraordinary gay man – when you meet him and when you hear about him and who he is and what he is done – then I truly believe you will feel as honored to be a part of this quest as much as he will be grateful to have your help.
Please help me community by reaching out to PFLAG parents/groups/ friends etc./ We cannot pay rent yet and it can be for as short as a month while we try and get situated.
Money donations will also help either toward a room renta/ if we cant find this help/ and toward food.
Let me explain. He is an asylum seeker – who has done extraordinary work for the LGBT community in Africa. There is NO ORGANIZATION that provides rental money or humanitarian assistance for a person in this situation. If there is please show me the way!
Asylum seekers are financially different to refugees. Refugees get small stipends from Government agencies – but not asylum seekers. This is a HUGE gap in the funding and in how we, as a community, have(failed ) to prepare for our LGBT family who need this urgent help.. We as a community need to rally for LGBT people who are being persecuted. I am calling on gay men especially – and asking you to recall how many lesbians rallied during the aids crisis. The influx of asylees and refugees from Africa is starting – . I am calling on LGBT people to take in other LGBT people the way Jews took in Jews during the years of persecution.
#RALLY4ASYLEE
Contact [email protected] or inbox me. We can chat on phone. Anyone from a local organization who would like to reach out to their mail lists please let me know.
=========================
11/01/2014
VIA – Brilliant status update from Melanie Nathan. Naming names begins soon. Expect fireworks.
We need change, and we need LGBTI Westerners as well as the more privileged Africans to step up to the plate to help the most marginalized in our global LGBTI community.
If you are going to try and slander me (or any one giving a helping hand) by calling me (us) a “white savior/s” in derogatory terms then you are the #RACIST, not me (us), denying our mutual obligation as members of a global LGBTI minority community – where we should be viewed as belonging to the very same minority, The LGBTI global minority.
In the quest for decriminalization – or the quest for equality – no matter where you live – we are one.
As an LGBTI community we are one.
If you deny that basic fact and that critical commonality, then you are denying our mutual connection – all LGBTI from ALL around the world – we are ONE – and anyone who calls an LGBTI Westerner lending a hand to a fellow member of our global community, a “white savior” is denying that common connection.
#SHAME on you for being a #racist .
If you believe that a gay WHITE person trying to help another gay LGBTQI person anywhere in the world ought to be labelled “white savior” simply because he is from another country -then you are the BIGOT – Neo colonialism is our mutual enemy – it is us who share the commonality of being a persecuted unequal minority, no matter one’s country, Some may have it better than others but we are all an oppressed minority – certainly until we are all viewed as 100 % equals everywhere.
I am going to name names – soon. So standby.
And you will see that those who deny us our commonality are those who either benefit from such denial financially, and/or are stuck in draconian colonial fear, and/or are ignorant, and/or are comfortably privileged, and/ or seek attention on the backs of the genuinely oppressed!
==================================
#CNN – #FOX #MSNBC – Seeing as our USA news makes a point of keeping us under informed..and macro focused on micro issues (in the big scheme of things).. if you are at all truly interested in the world around you…here is an excellent report by Ann Ann Garrison. http://sfbayview.com/2014/11/people-of-burkina-faso-drive-blaise-campoare-from-power/
=====================================
#FANTASTIC NEWS – No names or information yet as we are still laying low. The Gay man from Africa who was on his way here just made it through immigration in Dallas Texas. He has arrived with $70 in his pocket and the shirt on his back. An amazing grassroots activist, with very limited resources rushed down to the airport when I asked, to pick him has picked him up and is getting him a meal as we speak. We are going to put him in a hotel. If anyone can offer urgent accommodations in Dallas – we would save the money we have available for food.
NOT A SINGLE LGBT ORGANIZATION has been there to help me despite a great deal of reaching out. I plan to write a report soon. I am hoping that if you are reading this and belong to an organization that i did not have time to reach out to and if you have resources please email urgently. [email protected]
A few kind individuals have come forward. One gay man has offered 2 nights in a hotel, another sent $150. We need a lot more. I am willing to talk to talk to you on the phone. The country where is from will be announced later. He has escaped horrible persecution.
================================
@HRC I am trying to muster up people in Dallas Texas to help a prospective gay asylee who arrives tomorrow. Last minute. He is legal. He has a visa. He has NOTHING and NO ONE. Shirt on his back – thats it! A kind friend with limited resources is going out her way to meet him. Thank G-d for her and her grassroots heart. BUT we need much more. We need accommodation or $60 per night for a few days and food. I have called the following agencies for contacts in the area and help: HRC, IMMIGRATION EQUALITY, CATHOLIC CHARITIES., DALLAS RESOURCE CENTER, sent a note to a few people who I know in Texas. Their astounding responses – or lack thereof- will be the subject of an article I will write next week. It will be shocking. In the meantime….grassroots or any other organizations who I have not had time to contact in this short notice period please contact me [email protected] I am struggling here on my own without resources.
===========================
contact and donations via paypal at [email protected]
===============================
@HRC I am trying to muster up people in Dallas Texas to help a prospective gay asylee who arrives tomorrow. Last minute. He is legal. He has a visa. He has NOTHING and NO ONE. Shirt on his back – thats it! A kind friend with limited resources is going out her way to meet him. Thank G-d for her and her grassroots heart. BUT we need much more. We need accommodation or $60 per night for a few days and food. I have called the following agencies for contacts in the area and help: HRC, IMMIGRATION EQUALITY, CATHOLIC CHARITIES., DALLAS RESOURCE CENTER, sent a note to a few people who I know in Texas. Their astounding responses – or lack thereof- will be the subject of an article I will write next week. It will be shocking. In the meantime….grassroots or any other organizations who I have not had time to contact in this short notice period please contact me [email protected] I am struggling here on my own without resources.
=============================================
Please support courage and support those who fight oppression my friends. I am asking you to “like” this page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nabilah-Naggayi-Sempala/157261227618578?ref=notif¬if_t=fbpage_fan_invite
#Vultures #corrupt #makes me sick – Yesterday I said to Kristina and I even said it here on FB somewhere – WAIT lets see that barrage of emails asking us to donate money to LGBT organizations just because Tim Cook came out. Mark my words they will all be there with their hands out. That they would start with the damn MEMES – all with their own logos on it to have you the poor people out there donate YOUR money because very wealthy Apple CEO Tim Cook came out. I was right. I thought HRC would be the first – but START OUT was the first to make it into my email box – it took them a few hours. And in a fast second place with their hand out begging for your ‘grassroots” money on the back of Tim Cook’s awesome “coming out” is the most UNTRANSPARENT of all LGBTI organizations in my experience, “ALL OUT” YUP take a look – ALL OUT has their LOGO on Tim Cook’s face. This is what HRC did to Edie Windsor even though they had nothing at all to do with her hard work or the hard work of Robbie Kaplan .
All the while I am struggling to find $559 to bring a prospective asylee who has a VISA but no airplane money – because RICH organizations are sucking you all dry on the backs of the work of others. That same asylee has been turned down for help by those RICH organizations with verbiage such as “sorry we dont do that” “sorry our money is not earmarked” for that blah blah…..
Reblogged this on JerBear's Queer World News, Views & More From The City Different – Santa Fe, NM and commented:
I applaud Melanie’s work to raise funds for and advocate on behalf of LGBTIQ asylum seekers. I was proud to contribute the one time of the year I have any money – tax return time. If a guy on disability can help, so can you!
MEL when you get a chance. Please, a more chronological update… when was ‘yesterday’ the day before you posted this or day before 3rd update???!!
good question. I posted this yesterday but it refers to the dates between Oct 30 to Nov2.