Help a Queer Brown Femme Survive Medical Crisis

Dear friends and community of Danielle,

Because we believe healing should not be reserved for the wealthy…

Because we believe in collective care…

Because no one survives or thrives without support…

Because we know we have to have each other’s backs where the system fails us…

We are reaching out for emergency help for the amazing Danielle Jackson, a queer brown femme survivor born and raised in the SF/Bay Area.

Danielle has recently been hospitalized for a severe spinal nerve injury and is now recovering in a residential health facility. She has been in the hospital/health facility since early August and will need to remain there without income indefinitely while healing enough to return home.

A devoted dog walker, Danielle worked through injury and pain for months prior to becoming hospitalized. She is currently not able to work, dealing with a serious disability.

With no current income, Danielle is in danger of losing her apartment. Until now, she has managed to hang on in a city that has become increasingly hostile to black, brown, queer and working class folk.

Please help if you can – and spread the word.

How You Can Help

While Danielle and her loved ones are trying to figure out sustainable solutions for her health & recovery, she is currently in danger of losing her apartment. She expects to be in the rehab care facility for at least a month and has no idea when she will be able to work again.

Danielle must cover her September rent to ensure housing stability. We hope to raise funds to cover her basic housing & some medical expenses for the next three months. We don’t want Danielle to lose her home in the midst of this health crisis, or be forced to put her belongings in storage. She needs time to heal.

Here’s a Cost Breakdown of her most basic expenses for 2 to 3 months:

1st visit to ER bill due soon: $1,500

Rent for 3 months: $4,500

Medical equipment & treatments including mobility aids & at home PT: $4,000

Fees for gofundme transactions: $300

Total: $10,300

Please share with your networks!

Reaching out to 5-10 specific people with a personalized ask is SUPER helpful in addition to general sharing. Email, text, social media, or in person. Any donation amount will help.

About Danielle

Danielle is a brilliant, tough & tender, working class, fat queer femme of color with african diaspora, boricua, michoacán, indigenous, cameroon, bantu & ivory coast roots who benefits from light skin privilege. She is passionate about creative expression, community building, QTIPOC/BIPOC fam, transformative healing, ancestral healing and ritual.

She is the proud primary human to a 4lb teacup chihuahua wonder named Tiny Dancer (aka “Tiny”).

tiny at crissy field 2023

tiny and danielle December 2022

Danielle has been on her own and hustling since she was 15 years old. As a community/party organizer and DJ in the SF Bay Area for over a decade, she strived to create space for queer, trans, black & brown folks to connect in The Bay. She has been a hair stylist, jewelry designer, and a former worker/owner at Rainbow Grocery Collective. She currently is a full-time independent dog walker who specializes in pack walks to help nervous and reactive dogs.

To learn more about Danielle's dog walking business, pint size pack walks, check out: https://www.instagram.com/pintsizepackwalks/

If you know Danielle, you know she is a deeply intelligent, sensitive, creative and compassionate person, an animal lover, and an all-around force. She has inspired countless queers, weirdos and femmes to survive, thrive and build community here in The Bay.

More About Danielle’s Medical Crisis

Danielle deals with chronic pain due to previous workplace injuries and in recent years was diagnosed with a severe migraine disability. Danielle’s work as a dog walker is very physical and active, and in the past several months she began to experience new and severe pain.

Without health insurance, she continued to work until eventually receiving a sciatica diagnosis during an ER visit. Danielle was given pain meds and continued to work, but went back to the ER several times with increasing pain before being admitted to the acute care center of the hospital for 6 days after an emergency call. The doctors discovered Danielle has ruptured several disks in her lumbar spine which have impinged the sciatic nerve, not only causing new levels of pain never experienced, but also causing numbness in her left foot, calf and right thigh. She has now been transferred to a rehabilitation care facility for the foreseeable future and is undergoing Occupational & Physical Therapy to get her walking again and to ease the numbness and pain from the nerve damage. Meanwhile, Danielle is scheduled to meet with a neurologist in late September to determine if she needs surgery. She deeply misses Tiny, who cannot be with her in the rehab facility.

Please help her know that with community care and support, her home and family with Tiny will be waiting for her on the other end of this first stage of healing.