In our second episode, An Asshole Aquarius, you heard us talk about Gary Ridgeway a.k.a. The Green River Killer (Trash!!!). We dug into how white privilege, misogyny, and violence against women and girls in the sex trade allowed the Green River Killer to get away with murdering sex workers and homeless girls for over 20 years up and down the Pacific North West. Most of those murders, took place in the south end of Seattle. So for this winter (December 2020 - March 2021) we wanted the Ghosty Giver beneficiary to support the safety, livlihoods and healing for sex workers in the area Gary was most active. The POC Sex Workers Outreach Project is a BIPOC-led chapter of the national Sex Workers Outreach Project who emerged as a reponse to the lack of support for (specifically Black) and other sex workers of color in the Seattle area. Right now, their main focus is direct outreach to street-based sex workers via Green Light Project. A long term goal is to empower BIPOC in the sex trade by diffusing power from central leadership and putting it back in the hands of the community.

Over the course of this podcast, you've heard us talk about the erasure of anti-Asian violence, the dehumanization of sex workers and how fetishization of Asian women continues to result in violence against them. In March, we were devastated to hear about the shootings in Atlanta targeting Asian massage parlor workers killing 8 people. As mentioned in episode 10, the second batch of Ghosty Giver donations would be directed to the surviving families of this atrocity. Thanks to you, we were about to raise $140 for the Atlanta's Shooting Victims Family Fund organized by the Asian American Resource Center (Atlanta, GA) -- thanks so much.

We honor the lives lost to this white supremacist and misogynistic violence directed toward Asian women trying to make a living wage for themselves and their families.

Throughout the series, you've heard us talk about the pitfalls of the prison-industrial-complex and inquiries about what interventions could have happened to prevent escalating violence. The Slenderman episode, in particular, really got us thinking about how we consistently fail children who are thrust into our carceral systems. This is especially true for BIPOC, LGBTQ+ youth and those who experience mental health challenges. ⁠

Thanks to our Ghosty Giver patrons, we were able to raise $140 for Creative Justice, a Seattle-based organization that offers an alternative to incarceration for system-involved young people. ⁠

⁠"Creative Justice builds community with youth most impacted by the school-to-prison-(to-deportation) pipeline. Participants and mentor artists work together to examine the root causes of incarceration, like systemic racism and other forms of oppression, creating art that articulates the power and potential of our communities." Learn more at https://www.creativejusticenw.org/⁠ ⁠https://www.creativejusticenw.org/⁠ ⁠

On Thursday, October 21st at 6:00pm PST we did a live recording with the University of Washington School of Social Work, our recent Alma Mater heyooo. Here, we unpack the Fremont Troll in Seattle, WA - its ghost stories, history, and role in gentrification.⁠ Much gratitude to the folks at the SSW for making this happen & for the generous donation of $500 to the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance in honor of this episode.

Through the episodes, we've named how mainstream coverage of "famous crime stories" often include undercurrents of domestic violence. Frequently, the gory details of the 'crime(s)' eclipse the personhood and stories of survivors/victims. In September, we teamed up with Jill from WOMAN, Inc. to explore a case that highlights just that. Lorena, Our Queen, unpacks the conditions that led up to the widely covered night where Lorena Gallo (then Bobbitt) severed her husband's penis. We took it as an opportunity to center Lorena, and to share about dynamics of domestic violence that often gets erased in sensationalized media headlines. In doing so, we also discussed how misogyny, racism and xenophobia shaped her survivorship and how she was portrayed publicly. ⁠

Thanks to our Ghosty Givers, we were able to raise $105 for WOMAN, Inc., a San Francisco-based nonprofit supporting domestic violence survivors and their loved ones. Programs include a 24 hr hotline, support group, peer counseling, a Latinx program for monolingual Spanish speaking survivors, outreach/education and therapy.

"There’s a city buried under Lake Lanier (Georgia’s biggest lake), and submerged with it is a secret: An American horror story filled with terror, death, genocide, and ghosts." - Bilal Morris

In December, we took you to Lake Lanier, a haunting vacation destination with a racist and gruesome past. The waters of Lake Lanier submerge a small, rural town called Oscarville, a place that was once home to 1,100 Black families. We talked about how the town saw years of white terror and genocide before it was flooded and turned into a man-made lake. Originally named after a confederate soldier, Lake Lanier was designed to support water supply and hydroelectric power for neighboring (white) communities...which, if you ask us, is a hideous metaphor for white supremacy and the erasure of American violence.

We recognize these ugly truths and uplift the legacy of community care and Black-led organizing power in Georgia and beyond. Thanks to support from our Ghosty Giver patrons, we were able to donate $145 to Project South, a Georgia-based racial justice organization rooted in the legacy of the Southern Freedom Movement:

Project South was founded as the Institute to Eliminate Poverty & Genocide in 1986. Our work is rooted in the legacy of the Southern Freedom Movement, and our mission of cultivating strong social movements in the South powerful enough to contend with some of the most

Georgia-based reproductive justice organization, SisterSong, defines Reproductive Justice as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. As our episodes routinely cover stories that highlight the violation of marginalized bodies and explorations on community safety, reproductive justice is a guiding principle of ours. Given the real-time onslaught of gun violence, hate violence, and draconian moves to restrict reproductive care, our next Ghosty Giver funds will be directed toward SisterSong's efforts "to build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities."

Throughout our podcast, we’ve seen how the lack of mental health care infrastructure exacerbates the conditions for violence. In the Slenderman episode (A Blood Soaked Limited Too T-shirt), we talk about how forensic hospitals essentially operate as prisons and how children are thrust into these systems with no chance for rehabilitation, and dismal outcomes. In the Elisa Lam episode (A Lethal Location Pt. 1), we see how a lack of mental health support during a crisis led to the death of a young woman. During our live show about the Fremont Troll, we talked about Seattle’s high suicide rate and how the root causes of suffering go routinely unaddressed. More recently, our MK Ultra series (Psychedelic Nightmare) puts a spotlight on the corrupt history of abuse in psychiatric hospitals and beyond. Consistently, QT/BIPOC, the overwhelming recipients of these harms, have the least access to affirming, affordable care.

The Fireweed Collective seeks to disrupt “the harm of systems of abuse and oppression, often reproduced by the mental health system”. They do this by offering mental health education and mutual aid through the lens of Healing Justice (HJ), a framework that is “rooted in racial justice, disability justice and economic justice”. The Fireweed collective views ‘severe mental illness’ through the lens of community and relationships rather than one of pathology, thus divesting from the prison-industrial complex & psych wards while centering QT/BIPOC in their internal leadership, programs and resources. ⁠

This winter, our Ghosty Giver beneficiary is to the GoFundMe that is in Loving Memory of Keenan Anderson, 31 year old high school teacher who was killed after seeking help from LAPD & being tased by them instead on January 3rd.

The why: “​​Keenan was a deeply committed educator and father of a six-year-old son. He had over eight years of experience as a teacher and leader,” wrote Mashea Ashton, the principal at the school that Keenan worked at. Throughout our podcast, we’ve seen how anti-Blackness, and violence tied to anti-Black racism permeates through the history of this country. In Don’t Go to Lake Lanier, we talked about how the town of Oscarville that lays beneath the waters of Lake Lanier, saw years of white terror and genocide before it was flooded and turned into a man-made lake. In Jim Jones Invented the Gay Agenda, we explore how Jim Jones lured a group of majority Black folks in with promises of utopia, and violently led them to their deaths, and through the Psychedelic Nightmare series we highlight the ways in which white supremacy and anti-Black racism fueled the horrifying acts of violence through MKUltra experiments as well as Charles Manson’s doomsday cult.

In light of the tragic death of Keenan Anderson, a beloved community member, our winter Ghosty Giver Beneficiary will be the GoFundMe created in his memory that will go towards supporting the current and future education costs for his only son. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors (who is Keenan Anderson’s cousin), stated that his death could have been avoided: “It was a traffic accident. Instead of treating him like a potential criminal, police should have called the ambulance.”

This Spring, our Ghosty Giver beneficiary is a new organization – A Place for Marsha.⁠

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The Why: In 2023, 549 anti-trans bills have been proposed across 49 states, 76 have been passed, and 69 have been signed into law. These include felony charges for providing gender-affirming care to youth under the age of 26. States across the US are attacking transgender individuals and their families. ⁠

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Throughout our podcast we have seen ways in which gender-based violence permeates through the fabric of our society. We currently live in a time where there is a concerted legislative effort to erase transgender people from the public. In light of this frightening wave of draconian bills, our Spring Ghosty Giver is A Place for Marsha, a newly founded project that aims to help fund and facilitate safe housing for trans folks escaping transphobic states. This organization works by connecting 18+ trans youth from states with heavy anti-trans legislation with volunteers in safer states who are willing to support them by providing housing. All donations go towards getting this organization off the ground and supporting moving costs. ⁠

Our two-part series on the Jeffery Dahmer murders explores the intersections of police negligence/brutality, racism and homophobia. With this in mind, we've chosen to donate to Liberate MKE, a Milwaukee-based, Black-led organization that fights for the redistribution of funds from policing to direct investment in neighborhoods that have been systemically minoritized. In partnership with other organizing bodies and social support organizations, their campaigns have led to the successful reallocation of millions of city dollars from policing back into community. Programs include but are not limited to youth empowerment, violence prevention, affordable housing and education access. You can learn more about their campaign wins here: https://www.liberatemke.com/campaign-results

We chose Liberate MKE/African American Roundtable because of their robust partnerships and fiscal support of important work, which include but are not limited to the orgs listed below. Other contenders we considered and want to uplift are:

Black Pride Milwaukee

Throughout our episodes, you've heard us routinely discuss the impacts of intergenerational and historical trauma on individuals, families and communities. We know that these impacts are exacerbated by the racialized, gendered, classist and homophobic violence that are often at the core of the cases we discuss. We also know these conditions fuel systemic injustice for survivors/victims of that violence. To honor these realities, this month, we've chosen to support Deconstructing the Mental Health System (DMHS), a Black and women-led organization that seeks to expand access to equitable, life-affirming mental health & wellness services for Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color (BIPoC). They've got a network of 40+ BIPOC, trauma-focused therapists and wellness providers who offer no-cost mental health care to BIPOC folks in community. Not only do they offer pathways to free, culturally relevant mental health services for community members, they also actively work to reduce the barriers BIPoC providers face when building and sustaining their work in mental health field(s).