Santiago Family Fund

Hi there, my name is Dakota. I'm a chronically ill, autistic, nb/genderfluid, multimedia ai collage artist, restorative and transformative justice student and activist, permaculture knower, learner and sharer, and boricua, born in Kansas hoping to raise funds for myself and my family. We have been stuck my whole life in cycles of poverty that continue to traumatize and retraumatize my family and me deeply. I hope to raise enough money to work and travel to and communicate during work more safely while having and making funds to share with projects and people in my immediate care circle. I currently make approximately $300 to $150 every Monday. One hundred dollars goes directly to supporting loved ones in my family who also desperately need direct monetary support. As I get better with my art and work, I expect to be able to support myself better; however, there are several things I need help with in the process of getting there. Being able to afford to visit my family in other Kansas towns and maintain my car is a priority concern for me. Helping my mom access free/sliding scale holistic and therapeutic non-carceral healthcare and mental healthcare is another priority for me. My parents are currently living together again. It is a constant priority to me to figure out a way for my mother to /not/ live with my father while they are both trapped in poverty. I love both of them very deeply, and, with the amount of harm that has happened between them and the lack of social support and monetary assistance that a social circle often provides or facilitates, their living together is not sustainable. I have seen the cycle play out in the worst possible ways. I have shared horror dreams with both of my parents about the feeling of inescapable horror and anger and deep grief this oppression has created in our lives. I know their living together will make them feel guilty for failing to bootstrap each other out of the various horrors, griefs, maddenings, and soul-eroding aspects of poverty again (because I have seen it happen over and over and over and over again). I desperately want my mom to stop being bounced between homeless shelters, the streets, halfway houses, shitty republican faith based care centers, and jails and prisons because of the failures of our local, state, and federal governments to see the poor and homeless and mad as people deserving of care and safety and healing. Even as an adult, I cannot be separated from the history of homelessness and poverty I grew up in. I don't have the privilege of being able to separate myself from my parents. It's incredibly discouraging to have people my whole life tell me this trauma """isn't my responsibility""" instead of just recognizing and accepting that while maybe it shouldn't be mine; it is what I have and see and CHOOSE as an obligation because I love my family and am trying my best to do everything in my power to help us find and access reliable and consistent healing and safety.