Help BJ Regain Their Mental Health

[Thursday, February 6, 2025]

Again, thank you so much to everyone who has contributed. This gofundme has really, really, helped me survive and hold together.

My father is dying. When I started working at SAIC, he was homeless. While I was working at SAIC, I went back and forth to Washington state and got him out and into an adult family home outside of Seattle, where he has been cared for a year and a half. He has dementia, and several other severe health conditions.

My dad is dying now. He is on hospice and the nurse thinks he has a week to a month to live. I visited him once already with my niece, who is a young teacher, and she has paid for us to fly out again this weekend.

I need help paying for the hotel, food, and transportation, for this trip, and also for another trip to be with him when he is in his final moments. Right now, he still recognizes me and can talk to me and my niece. We don't know how long that will last. Likely not long.

Again, I appreciate any and all help. I really do. I am still fighting the school, but it is on hold while I attend to my dad. Please help me spend time with him right now. Thank you.

[Friday December. 13, 2024]

First thank you so goddamn much to everybody who has helped me. Truly. It is keeping me alive and I feel very lucky to know people who care about me.

I don’t think my mother can kick me out. The situation at home is still very tense. I do want her to go to an assisted living facility If that’s what she wants . But I need to stay here for a couple of years at least or I will die. I have endured too much trauma for too long and I need stability. I have some ideas about how this might be able to work. I have applied to the Center for Conflict Resolution here in Chicago for them to mediate our housing issues.

Meanwhile, I have SNAP and Medicaid now. The big deal will be applying for Social Security disability, which I have started with the help of a nonprofit.

Meanwhile, I just had my first hearing with the School of the Art Institute and our union. My union rep is an amazing human being. The school now has two weeks to review everything I asked for, which was a chunk of money (very reasonable amount actually, enough to recover for two years) and lot of specific changes in terms of equity at the school. Like making the Free Radio booth wheelchair accessible. Making sure meetings with HR have note takers. Developing a policy for mental health emergencies that does not involve calling the police. And providing training to all faculty and staff on how to work with their transgender colleagues. And so so much more. That place is a desert. I did not realize how much it would affect me.

The union is only a year old at the institution. We really don’t know how they will react. So far, the institution has been absolutely terrible and gaslighting.

The horror stories from the School of the Art Institute are legendary. The pay is terrible. The culture is unbearably privileged and clueless. I have heard so many stories since I confronted management. I want to start a support group on social media if I can stand being on social media… maybe somewhere else.

After President Tenney tried to intimidate me when I went to for her for help, I was a disaster case and soon took a medical leave. I went to a really good program that taught me a lot about how to preserve my physical and mental health. I found dialectical behavior therapy to be mind blowing and awesome.

So I exercise like crazy and I eat really well and I reach out to everybody I can. I need my community so much right now.

And I am incredibly grateful for my friendships and relationships that have sustained my life.

This is all developing into art. Right now it’s social media performance art mostly… I am playing the piano a lot too and it is so wonderful. I even wrote a song!!! I hadn’t done that in at least a decade. And I’ve started a notebook with project ideas. I want to get a website up soon again. I do want to do a documentary about my life… it’s been interesting. I will probably start by putting more content on my website.

I want to kick into high gear and make more complex work soon with my extensive abilities as an artist with a goddamn beautiful Master of Fine Arts degree that I value so dearly. Think sculptures. Performance art in bodies of water. Piano duets. Expository writing. And lots of video and imagery. Installations, combining all of the above. The sky is the limit. And I have President Tenney to thank for igniting a rage in me that will never die. When the executive of the institution you work for personally, callously, and casually threatens you… I felt like I had a target on my back afterwards. The retaliation levied by those she supervised was intense and ugly.

So yes, please, if you have some extra money this season please consider donating. January is going to be particularly hard for me and I am worried.

But I have enough to eat in a place over my head.

If you read this far, thank you so much. I hope the world treats you right, too. And if you need it, and I can, I will fight for you. That’s what I do.

[mid-November]

Hello. I have a sad update. My Mother has decided that this is the time she wants to end our housing partnership and move into assisted-living.

My life has become totally unstable. This is how my family acts. I shouldn’t be surprised.

I have much less confidence now that I will be able to be healthy and survive. I have a couple of good Friends, but I do not know if that will be enough.

I think I’m about to become another casualty of society. Like my sister like so many others.

I just want to make sure someone takes care of my cat. I’m going to go beg for more money now.

[TRIGGER WARNINGS: DISCRIMINATION - SEXUAL VIOLENCE - POVERTY]

Hello. I am BJ. I am doing this gofundme for myself.

This is a desperate time for me.

I was fired from my job on September 5, 2024, from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I loved my job there as staff advisor to Free Radio SAIC, and ExTV, and also as manager of Media Center Equipment Trainers. It was the pinnacle of so much of my experience in higher ed, and as an artist.

I was fired for protesting them putting me on a mandatory leave with no pay after I told them their treatment of me was making me suicidal.

Since February 8, 2024, I had been locked in an ugly dance with HR after my supervisor blew up at me in front of student. She had had a history of abuse with me, including almost never using my they/them pronouns, and forcing me to beg, in tears, for time off to take care of my elderly parents who are both in their 80s. My father, who has dementia, became homeless while I was working at SAIC, and I needed time to take care of him, and my mother, who shares a house with me. My supervisor also invited all of us to go to a nude, gendered bath house. Her behavior toward me was generally degrading. No one noticed. She often said disgusting things to me in 1:1 meetings, like that I was “too collegial” with the students. Guess what that means when you say that to a transgender person? She actually told me not to be friends with my students.

Unfortunately, she fit the profile of many in academia - underqualified and there likely only because of nepotism and enough privilege in her life to accept the low pay. This describes the culture of SAIC very well, where incompetence and nepotism are standard (outside of the art stars and most faculty). This is well known in the larger art/college community in Chicago. The staff is poorly paid, including a lot of underqualified alumni who put up with it. I found the atmosphere there to be like a social club.

SAIC, however, is a world class institution with incredible resources, and its artists produce some of the finest and most thought-provoking art the world sees. SAIC is attached to the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, the second largest museum in the country after the Met in New York. It has, in addition to its art and real estate (which consists of 13 buildings in downtown Chicago), a $1.5 billion endowment. They could easily, easily, solve many of its diversity and staffing issues. If they tried.

However, David Vitale (current Chair of Board of Governors - and the architect of Chicago's 2013 racist school closure program) & former President Elissa Tenney (she retired in disgrace in July) weren’t too interested in diversity - SAIC never has been. It’s like they woke up to the world around them when George Floyd was murdered.

SAIC does not, and did not, have a single resource for queer people. Not one. Nothing. I know because I looked desperately for resolution with my supervisor. I followed every policy. I went to the Ombudsman - an Elissa Tenney appointee. Partick Spence, SAIC’s Ombudsman, is an obvious SAIC insider, and does not know anything about mediation, and apparently nothing about working with people from marginalized groups. He is worthless in this position.

Eventually, after my therapist warned me to get into treatment so I could still work, I started begging for a part-time leave that was paid. In the process, I told then President Elissa Tenney I was vulnerable because my family has a history of suicide (my sister), and because I am trangender. She responded in an email by threatening to call the “Chicago Police Force” to my house. This was on a Friday when I had actually taken the afternoon off, so I didn’t get her message until that evening. I spent the rest of the night frantically emailing the president of SAIC to not call the cops to my house. She did not answer until 6am Saturday morning.

I was up all night worried the cops would come to my door - and that my mother, who lives below me, would have answered the door to armed policemen asking about a wellness check on her only living child.

We did have fallout regardless. When I told my mom what happened, she insisted I check in with her every day for several weeks. She would get upset if she didn’t here me moving around in my apartment above her.

So. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. I can do pretty well for bits of time. I can make videos on social media, which I’ve been doing for the past week or so. However, being completely broke from losing my job brought up some ugly truths about my family.

God. I am so tired even just writing about SAIC.

The long story short is my family has hidden sexual violence and intense emotional abuse for several generations. In my extended family, the females are marginalized. There is suicide, incest, rape, severe mental illness, disability… yeah. It’s so wild. I am the first person to confront it systemically. They are not happy with me. They’ve given me $200. That was before I raged for about four days in texts calling out the abuse. Such as:

******

When my dad was falling into homelessness because of his dementia, several family members of his generation - who knew him well - said that I should just be prepared to let him die.

My dad. Alone. Confused. Vulnerable. Dying.

They were ok with that.

These are christians. People who still go to church every weekend.

******

So. Fortunately my mom is being pretty supportive. I may be able to continue living with her. However, like many of us, she is both a victim and an abuser. She is also not that rich compared to her family members. My dad’s side of the family are farmers, laborers, and teachers. They are much cooler. But they don’t have much monEy.

WHAT I WILL USE THE $8600 FOR

Generally, three months of recovery from losing my beloved job. I want to work again. I like working. But I can’t work in places like that anymore, where I get treated like garbage. Unfortunately, a lot of education is like that, and non-profits too. So. I will have to refocus.

I need to pay for medical care - for both physical and mental health - and food, gas, etc. I would like to get surgery during this time to support my gender transition. I am nonbinary. My body isn't working for me very well.

I am about to go on a trip to WA and CA to see my dad - who now lives in an adult family home outside of Seattle - and some dear friends in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived for 20 years. I have no money. I really need help soon. I maxed out all my accounts getting the plane ticket and paying for a crappy hotel in WA. I will be staying with friends in CA.

I need time to rest. I need deep rest. I have not had a vacation in years. I have not been able to rest in so long.

Please consider donating. I don’t want anyone giving who is poor. I know a lot of poor artists. Maybe $5 or something. I always tried to help people when they asked. I will rarely, if ever, ask for this kind of help. I probably should have asked before.