Support a safe new beginning for the Wang-Dougall Family.

To know Jen & Siobhán is to understand that selfless acts of kindness are possible. This family has poured their hearts into our community—always showing up with compassion, empathy, and unwavering support. This GoFundMe has been created as a way to stand beside them and offer help when it is needed most.

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Hi, all,

A lot's been going on over here lately. A couple days ago, Siobhán and I made the difficult decision to relocate our family. Siobhan and the kids left on an early morning flight to Vancouver, Canada on Tuesday. I stayed back to get our things organized and plan to meet them in a couple of weeks. While we don’t know for sure if we'll be able to stay there long term, it will be a safe place to get our bearings while we figure out what comes next for us.

Last Thursday, a report came out that the FBI is hoping to class trans people as “violent extremists”. For a long time, we've wondered if we should leave the country, and if we might have to, when we would know if it was "time". For us, that report was time.

On Monday, a report came out that the administration had asked the Supreme Court on Friday to potentially ban changing your gender on passports, and to potentially retroactively invalidate existing passports where a gender marker had been changed. The ruling is on the “shadow docket” and our understanding is that a ruling could come quickly. We felt we had to send Siobhán and the kids out of the country while we know that her passport and theirs are still valid. (Some of our kids have “X” as their marker on their passports, and we’re concerned they may be affected as well.) While the retroactive ban might not work, even just procedural confusion about it could make it harder to leave, and we don’t want to risk that.

I’ll stay a couple weeks longer on my own to wrap up the things we need to wrap up. But (and I can't stress this enough) I hate this. We moved to LA with the intention of staying here for the rest of our lives. Our families are here. We grew up here (Siobhán completely, me partly). We met here, in high school. Places here have decades of memories for us, and we love the people and places in our lives so very much.

If it were only me, I would stay. Because this deserves fighting. All of this. With just Siobhán, I would want to go to keep her safe. And now with the kids, who I don't believe can meaningfully consent to staying, it's hard. We have a responsibility to them. Parenthood has changed the way I calculate risk.

Many of you are doing so much to help us already, and we are so grateful. And we know that, in our communities, so many people have been impacted by the Eaton Fire and this summer’s ICE raids, and I *promise* you that we will feel loved even if contributing to something like this isn’t in your power right now. But I have to admit, some extra resources while we figure out what happens next would be a huge help to us, and give us more flexibility to meet whatever comes up.

Thank you so much.

Love,

Jen