Emergency Funds for Black Queer Foodora Worker

This is a fundraiser for a 30-year-old black queer man in Toronto, an ally and protector to several trans women in his Toronto community. For family reasons, along with many other reasons, he has decided to stay anonymous. He is a food courier who fell unemployed after Foodora’s bankruptcy. This led to his relapse with alcohol, then an altercation at his previous household, followed by an arrest and eviction from home, leaving him both job and homeless.

Just recently, he started a new job and is attempting to repair a used car for food delivery work. He is also actively searching and saving for long-term affordable housing as well as for mental health services like psychiatric diagnosis and psychotherapy for past to present trauma support.

Since his eviction, he has been sleeping in his car and can barely keep up with costs like having a phone. He deserves the chance to get back on his feet now and that’s why we need community support to ensure his health/safety for Fall/Winter and beyond, especially when his car also needs repairs to be safe and efficient on the road. It is almost 15 years old and the exhaust is leaking fumes into the car cabin. He has to drive with the windows as he gets dizzy after awhile and won’t be able to have heat during the Winter without serious health risks and danger to the lungs.

He has limited support from lack of family and trying to break away from toxic social circles. Growing up through the foster care system, he found normalcy through the violence and isolation of life on the hustle. The city has neglected/failed the mental health of so many of Toronto’s BIPOC community who are stuck in systems of housing and government support. Like many, he was never given proper diagnosis and therapy growing up because of his class in life.

When arrested, no officers/administrators checked for his sobriety, his substance-use history, nor his mental health state of consent and clarity. Anti-black racism, classist attitudes, and stigma against records of criminality within our (in)justice systems have been heavy barriers for him in regards to housing access, job security, and any form of social care/support.

Since childhood, he has never stayed at the same household or nor with the same people for more than 2/3 years. He grew up with a deep rooted fear of everything/everyone around him leaving, changing, or dying, and it has been difficult for him to navigate through a wide range of negative emotions. Even simple things like a family spending time together are situations that are triggering for him. Although Children’s Aid Society had services to assist him in the past, his trauma responses were simply wrote off as “going through a phase”. When he aged out of the foster care system, he found himself at 18 years old living in a Salvation Army shelter. For him, looking back and considering his childhood, he says that for CAS and group home staffs to put him in there on his 18th birthday instead of educating him on housing hunting/security and money management, etc. that they gave up on him and encouraged the “street life”, alcohol abuse & violence until his caseworker was simply “fed up” and wanted him to “go learn about life”.

Now older, he fights against suicidal ideation on a daily basis and often pictures himself being killed or left on the streets; he describes of feeling as if he’s spinning into nothingness. These events still bother him till this day and his memories of his parents/family are bleak. He says he still gets triggered if he tries to remember his mother’s face.

Moving forward with next steps: he has maintained sobriety since his arrest and has been actively planning/saving up for a psychiatric assessment and treatment, trauma support, and new housing. Since most free resources and not-for-profit services in the city are for youths as well as the shortage of care during the pandemic, we ask the community for support in solidarity for a second chance, to dare imagine and work towards transformative justice. No one gets left behind and all are worthy.

All proceeds will be accepted into the account of a trustee of his choice who will forward them to him, in the interest of concealing his identity.