Respective of my last update: I appreciate the contributions I received. They might not be much to you who give, but they mean an incredible amount to me, because they directly materially improve my ability to help people.

I'm not some faceless person writing up a cheery fundraising post about how Everything is great, but we need your help to fight back against... Homelessness or bad politicians or climate change, or inequality or any number of other things. The truth is that it's not a fight. I'm not punching political parties, or "taking aim" at politicians who worsen inequality. It's a struggle, like getting stuck in mud. Punching the mud doesn't help, but it does take away valuable energy.

I'm a person trying to make the world a better place, stuck somewhere that very few people have the means or will to try to understand how to do that. It's exhausting.

Daniel, the person I helped, has disappeared. He said he went to Pullman to try to get some support. Without a phone or any other way to contact him, I have no way of knowing where he is or what kind of help he needs. He left with his dog, and left behind his van which still wasn't running. He said he'd be back after last weekend, but it's been almost a week since then, and I haven't heard from him. We had made plans for him to help contribute to the collective, helping with logistics, and helping improve things within the collective. He seemed like he really sincerely wanted to help. I talked with him several times, and attempted to convey to him that if he wanted a place here, he could have it, but he had to keep trying, keep working at it. 

I don't know where he's at. Another person lost, among a sea of them. Maybe he'll find his way back. Maybe he'll be okay.

As for me, I can't say that I'm okay right now. My partner who lives up north, past Colville, is in severely bad health. So severe that I've decided to stay with them to help them with their kids, and help them get through the winter. I don't think I can overstate this, they really are in severely bad health. 

I've been putting a lot of work to ensure that my collective here in spokane will hold together without me, and helping my co-admin and housemate, Anoyatyllis, take over for my responsibilities while I'm away. 

I've been building connections with amateur radio operators up north near colville, as well as with other people in and near spokane.

My walks that I take at night haven't been very fruitful, at least more recently. Everyone retreats into their houses, shuts the world away, and lashes out. The direct neighbors which I reached out to have resorted to this last, internally associating me in particular with the severe decline of the neighborhood, as if I have anything to do with the squatters next door, or the fact that people are moving out of the neighborhood. 

Essentially, they threatened to call in nuisance complaints against my house, forcing the city to force our landlord to take action to evict us. I'm still mad about that. As though the way to make things better is to make *another* vacant house next door, as though the way to a better world is to threaten to wield the city government like a cudgel to force compliance with their worldview. They ranted a lot about "investments" in this conversation. Their absolute obliviousness to the way they engage with their own neighbors being a symptom of the decay of the neighborhood that they complain about would be fascinating if it wasn't so frustrating to be on the receiving end of. I decided that I'm no longer the best person to have any interactions with them.

They got what they wanted. Daniel is gone. Maybe that will make them happy. I don't expect so, though. I doubt anything would make them happy.

My own personal mutual aid efforts will be shifted up north, where I'm moving to. I'll need help with the costs of moving, and with the costs of setting up infrastructure that I'm going to need, like radio equipment to be able to talk with people reliably. The place I'm moving to is so far up north that cell service isn't reliable, so establishing resilient communications is very important for me.

I'm still planning to be present in my Spokane collective either weekly or monthly, working to help ensure that it holds together. If it doesn't, well... nothing lasts forever. I will mourn, and try to help the members of the collective who want help.

One of my very close and dear friends also wishes to join me to help support my partner, and needs help with raising the funds to transport themselves and their workshop trailer up north to the house to help through the winter. I'll be figuring out how to do that with the money I'm raising if I'm able to raise enough to both get me moved up north, and also help get my friend moved up north.

My research into flashlights is transitioning into conversations where I'm genuinely helping people, which is good. I've got several people who are interested in learning more about flashlights, and I've been invited by a member of the Stevens County search and rescue team, to help teach the Search and Rescue folks about high-power flashlights. I'm looking forward to it.

One part of why I'm moving up north is to help my partner, but there's another part of why I'm moving, which is the incessant and pervasive hopelessness of living in spokane. Living in a place where everything gets worse, with every passing day, where the hopelessness seeps into the houses and into the people in those houses. I feel like hopelessness has fully consumed so much of the world around me, and being able to do anything, or convince anyone else to help with anything, I've got to first overcome hopelessness in order to actually take action to help. I've lost my own hope to be able to do that. I can't share hope unless I have some, myself.

So I'm going up north, to help people who need help, to contribute within a community of people who haven't lost hope yet, to be somewhere that the things I do actually matter, and maybe make things better.

I'll still be committing a majority of my time to mutual aid. This isn't an end to my work, but a change to it. I've determined my mutual aid efforts aren't effective where I'm at, so I will change what I'm doing, and where I'm at, to somewhere that my efforts will be constructive. This isn't a loss, but a growth, of new beginnings. I'm working on things still, and I'm working to keep helping people. I'm working on a plan for a mutual aid network to help connect people together.

Spokane Mutual Aid is becoming Inland Northwest Mutual Aid.