Hi! I'm Andrew, and I live with my spouse, Shelby, with our two beautiful 15-year-old tuxedo kitties, Mantou and Chili. We are both trans nonbinary, and Shelby has several disabilities that mean they can only work from home.

We have been struggling to get by for the last year since Shelby got laid off from their breadwinning job due to the DOGE-directed federal funding cuts. She has applied to hundreds of jobs since then, but despite getting a few interviews, unfortunately none of the prospects have panned out yet. Recently, she founded a sustainable communications consultancy and got accepted to a fellowship with Climatebase, and a lot of good leads and connections have come out of it, but no stable income sources yet.

I am a tai chi teacher, language tutor, and professional game master, but it's been very difficult to make ends meet on my income alone. With inflation, I'm lucky to make enough to cover groceries. My income has also been reduced and variable lately as my students also have their own financial constraints to navigate.

We live in Minneapolis, and things have been especially rough since the invasion of federal agents a few months ago. The community has come together in a huge way to support one another, but ICE is still prowling our neighborhood every day. Many of our neighbors are also struggling to make rent and cover basic needs, so we also hope this GoFundMe can enable us to pay support forward as we're able.

We deeply appreciate any support you are able to give us. We are working as hard as we can to achieve stability, and we need to stay housed and fed in order to do that. We stretched our savings as long as we could, but now are approaching the max on our credit card and are running low on alternative options. Thank you so much for donating and sharing!