Government workers launch 1,000 GoFundMe pages as shutdown drags on

Government workers launch 1,000 GoFundMe pages as shutdown drags on
Campaigns seeking to cover daily necessities have raised about $100,000 in total: ‘It’s the last resort’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/10/government-shutdown-gofundme-employee-assistance-trump


People affected by the government shutdown have established approximately 1,000 fundraisers on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe to help cover their expenses, a spokeswoman for the company said on Wednesday.

The campaigns, often seeking a few hundred to thousands of dollars to cover necessities such as rent, groceries and utilities, have raised about $100,000 altogether – or an average of just $100 each.


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GoFundMe has become an ad hoc social safety net for millions of Americans seeking assistance with essentials, from housing to healthcare. If Instagram is where Americans construct a fantasy version of their lives, GoFundMe is where reality reasserts itself. For many of the 800,000 federal employees who have either been furloughed or forced to work without pay since 22 December, their reality is increasingly one of desperation. Those workers have missed out on $1.4bn in wages each week of the shutdown, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, pushing those who live paycheck to paycheck to the brink of disaster.

“It’s the last resort,” said Brandon Taijeron, a corrections officer who has been working without pay for the Bureau of Prisons since the shutdown began. “I don’t usually go to the public, but that’s how bad the government shutdown is affecting federal workers.”

Taijeron said that he set up his GoFundMe page in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He has already missed a payment on his car, and is worried about keeping food in the refrigerator and gas in the tank. “You can’t really sleep, just wondering if it’s going to get better,” the 23-year-old said by phone. He posted a photo of his wife and five-month-old son on the page, and set a goal of raising $1,500.

GoFundMe page for Brandon Taijeron, a government worker affected by the shutdown.

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https://www.gofundme.com/r52q4-federal-employee-government-shutdown since the article he has raised $3300