EMERGENCY: Help Natou stay off the streets & find stability!

I’m Atlas Talos, an illustrator and small business owner from Portland Oregon, and I’m coming to you today to try and raise money to help a dear friend in a mess of trouble facing an emergency.

Our friend Natou (https://bsky.app/profile/tichatnwa.bsky.social) is a wonderful human: kind, supportive, a fierce advocate for social justice, constantly boosting mutual aid campaigns, supporting artists and small business, speaking openly and frankly about mental health concerns – the kind of person we want to be part of our community. They’re known for their brilliant art, and their continuous efforts to elevate marginalized voices with their platform.

Natou has done all this and given so freely of themselves despite being houseless after decades of mental and emotional abuse at the hands of romantic partners, strangers, and law enforcement. A person who goes out of their way to make sure others feel at home has no home of their own, and the place they’ve been staying for the last year will no longer be an option in a few days, putting them at very real risk of sleeping on the streets of Fairbanks Alaska before the week is out.

We need to break the cycle. Time to change the narrative. Time to save a life.

Let’s talk about how Natou got to this point. Back in 2010, Natou was running not one but TWO successful businesses and things were looking up – until their then-spouse got on the radar of the wrong cop. Alaska is known for being a state with serious racial inequities and militant police violence, and the cops did what cops do – namely, spent years on an extended campaign to ruin Natou and their spouse’s lives.

We’re talking years of repeated raids that never once led to arrests but still wound up with cops stealing tons of money and goods (best estimate places it at over $300k stolen over the course of a few years), and it didn’t stop at theft. During one raid a cop handcuffed Natou to a chair for hours while he ranted about how he wished he could buy his wife nice things like they had. He then proceeded to steal Natou’s personal documents – ID, birth certificate, passport. Gone. No police record of the seizure, nobody to file a complaint against.

For the last 10+ years Natou’s been living without government identification. Do you know how impossible it is to do anything in America without an ID? You can’t apply for an apartment. You can’t apply for a job. You can’t apply for SNAP or Medicaid. That’s how you get caught in a cycle of poverty that’s impossible to pull out of on your own.

As their life spiraled, Natou’s spouse became increasingly abusive, using the threat of homelessness to keep them quiet and compliant, even as he slowly got them hooked on narcotics to keep them dependent on him. Finally in 2021, they were able to escape under the cover of night with nothing but the clothes on their back, and they’ve been drifting ever since – and the only jobs they’ve been able to hold are the kind that pay under the table. They’ve been staying with their brother-in-law in a space without running water for the last year or so, but their slumlord just gave him a 7-day eviction notice, which means Natou’s now staring down the barrel at living on the streets of Fairbanks. And while it’s unseasonably warm there right now, we all know that won’t last. Their need is as immediate as immediate gets.

WHAT WE’RE RAISING MONEY FOR:

We’re setting an aggressive fundraising goal to try and help Natou finally get back on their feet – we’re not just trying to put out the immediate fire, we want to put them on the path to getting their life back. And we’re starting from $0 – no furniture, no toiletries, or silverware, plates, pots/pans, nothing – anybody who’s been caught in the cycle of poverty knows how expensive it is to be poor.

Our goal is to get them set up for the next three months – move-in expenses, bills, rent, modest furnishings for their home (there are cabin rentals available in Fairbanks that don’t require ID or credit checks, the tradeoff being running water – it’s not ideal, but it’s shelter). We want to help them get a functioning car so they can get to medical appointments and government offices to get their health and documentation in order. We want to let them finally file for divorce from the abusive ex, who has been destroying their credit since they left him. And we want them to help pay a handful of unpaid traffic tickets, moving violations from not having insurance among other things – again, symptoms of a cycle of poverty we’re trying to break.

No amount of money can replace the years, assets, and hope they’ve lost, but as a community we can come together and help pick up a strong, intelligent, generous, passionate, queer nonbinary Black femme. Even if you’re not in a financial position to donate, please help by sharing and telling your network about this fundraiser. We need a big reach to solve a big problem, and we need your help to do it.

Because we don’t leave people behind.