Housing Support for our Comrade Charlese!

A beloved member of our community needs our financial support at this time. Our friend and comrade, Charlese, is a Black trans woman, formerly incarcerated, and navigating challenges after losing her job in public service in a well-known Boston-based LGBTQIA+ organization. Charlese was terminated by her employer with no process, notice, or exit support, including severance pay. As the only Black trans employee, Charlese experienced racism, transmisogyny, discrimination, and retaliation for advocating to have transparency and diversity within this organization.

Charlese shared her heart while doing her dedicated work as a Mutual Aid and Re-Entry Coordinator. This job involved welcoming home trans and queer people and people living with HIV returning from incarceration, providing them with resources to find housing and support, building community with them while showing them lots of love (which is often denied while you are incarcerated).

Our initial goal is to raise $6,000 to keep our dear friend and fierce community advocate housed for at least the next 3 months as she seeks to secure new employment and recover from the sudden termination of the job that she really loved and enjoyed doing. Charlese wants to continue her organizing and community care involvement within the mutual aid and reentry community, after successfully completing her recovery coach certification recently.

Now is the time for us to continue the reciprocal spirit of mutual aid with Charlese. Housing is hard to find in general; AND it is extremely difficult to find housing for trans women as they face so much discrimination and societal hurdles…so we want Charlese to feel she doesn’t have to worry about housing while she deals with the devastation of losing her job.

Thank you for redistributing your income here (this and every time you can contribute). We believe we're all responsible for mitigating the harm of inequitable housing, and are so grateful for any amount given.

In loving commUNITY,

Erica, Rachel, Diana, Anthony, Charlese

Other options for how to support/directly send funds to Charlese:

CashApp: $ShalomElroi

Venmo: @Shalom-Psalm