If you’re reading this, maybe that means you know the work of Aji, who hasn’t been able to post on Daily Kos for a couple of years now because the site’s requirements finally outstripped the ability of her hardware and her little rural ISP to connect her. (Her connection’s improved lately, but her available time has shrunk, so...) Maybe you remember her detailed posts about Native American history and issues, or her tireless fundraising for other people in trouble. Or maybe it’s the gorgeous art of her husband Wings, a Native silversmith and photographer, that you recall.
When the economy tanked, back in the GW Bush administration, the bottom fell out of the tourist business in Taos, New Mexico. Customers visiting nearby Taos Pueblo were scarce, and suddenly everyone was struggling to get by. In this atmosphere, Aji and Wings fought, but ultimately lost everything: their small savings, their vehicles, and their house.
(I’m about to tell you a long story. If you don’t need to know these details, just scroll on down to the HOW TO HELP box at the end, and thank you!)
They lived in a manufactured house, on Wings’ beautiful ancestral land. Funny thing about a manufactured house: the loan you take out to buy it looks like a mortgage, but it is not a mortgage. At least it takes the lender some effort to foreclose on a mortgage, but the loan they had was legally more like a car loan. If you miss a payment or two, the lender can repossess the house. Yes. In trying to work out a payment plan that would allow them to keep their home, Aji asked why they wouldn’t work with her so they could keep getting paid. They laughed and said, because they didn’t have to.
When the house was hauled away, someone they knew allowed them to use a 30-year-old RV as shelter. They’ve been living in this tiny, rickety thing for the last six years, suffering through freezing winters (lows: -40F), broiling summers, and monsoon rains, with leaks and frozen hoses and device failures and, most recently, a dangerous electrical fire. Aji finally decided, enough.
She mapped out a multi-phase plan to site-build a very modest adobe house on the Native land that is Wings’ by birthright and cannot be taken from him. Stage 1 (where you can read the whole story in Aji’s words) was just to fill and grade the building site, and move the small temporary building that houses Wings’ gallery. We’re now up to the actually-build-the-house stage, and it has a lofty enough goal that it really can’t be reached by the same few people digging in their pockets again and again.
Aji and Wings need whatever donation you can afford, yes indeed!!! They need sales of Wings’ work, too. But even more, they need social media shares; they need this to go viral so that many small donors can put together this big amount that no one of us is rich enough to cough up. The goal of the project is $20,000 — a lot, but not much to build an entire house exterior — and as I write, $4,871 has been raised over a number of weeks, which is great as far as it goes.
The trouble is that, when a good crew accepts the job of building the house, you can’t just pay them for a day here and there, or stiff them entirely (unless you are Donald Trump). Now you are employing these people and they depend on your job to feed their own families. We need to get this project moving so that the construction crew can work, their kids can eat, and Wings and Aji don’t need to spend another winter in what is basically a 55-gallon drum on steroids. (I’ve been in it. It’s as nice as they can possibly make it, but it was never intended or built to be a year-round home in a place with extreme weather conditions.)
A link bonanza is below. Please donate if you can, but my big plea (yes, as a person not on social media at all) is, please share this with your networks! Just put it out there. These people are working their butts off and still struggling; pass it on! I know them and they’re good people; you might not be able to help them, but pass this along! Please retweet! Please like! Only $20K to get this structure standing! We can do this!
Give it a shot, please. Can’t hurt. Might help. If a few people who don’t know Aji happen to grab this story and run with it, the project could potentially get funded quickly by many small donors. The trick is, we don’t know who those few people are. Maybe they are someone you know. Maybe they follow a person who will decide to retweet you. We’ve all seen stories suddenly go viral on the internet. The one sure thing about how that happens is, it will never happen if no one finds out about it.
To start us off, an anonymous kind person is putting up a SECOND $500 matching pledge!!!
Remember, we don’t have to find this (additional) $500 only in our own sofa cushions — it’s enough that it be donated. If you’re donating but not through YouCaring, please tell us the amount in the thread, so we know when we’ve reached our match.
HOW TO HELP
- The YouCaring fundraiser allows you to donate specifically to this cause. You can also share the fundraiser via social networks by using the “Grab Our Widget” button (and other social media buttons) on that page.
- Their Amazon wishlist mostly supports the health needs of their rescue animals and themselves, if that’s more your style.
- Purchases from Wings Silverworks will help them make a living the way they’d prefer, by selling Wings’ work as an exceptionally talented NDN silversmith and photographer.
- If you prefer, donate via PayPal at Aji’s blog, or at her Tumblr blog where she posts her own writing and photography.
- Kosmail belinda ridgewood if you absolutely need to donate by mailing a paper check.
- And Tweet, share on FaceBook, tip/rec/republish on Daily Kos, randomly email your friends about it, drop it into casual conversations. This seems minor, but it is not! When you share, please link to this YouCaring page, or embed the widget!
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