I love my landlord. I’m not attracted to him, but he’s attractive. So I moved to a dirt lot with three old cabins in Los Angeles County, and over the course of six years I went from pleasantries in the driveway to saying, “I love you, Jeri, goodbye!” By phone.
When I moved into one of the rickety buildings on his unkempt property in Topanga Canyon, one of the last hippie enclaves just north of the Pacific Palisades, I was in a very long I was at the end of the queue of tenants. It was an idyllic land, and it had to be. Because without the view, you know the three huts are about to fall off the cliff in just one gust of wind.
Jeri purchased the property in 1977 for $57,000; None of the houses had keys, and they shared the keys equally with the coyotes who burrowed under the houses, the raccoons who lived there, and the rats who lived there. Everything was held together with an equal number of nails and staples. There was a piece of loose plywood that prevented it from falling into the septic tank. It was wonderful.
Geri, a jazz musician by trade, has never held an office job. He only buys salmon from the Ralph’s sale box and uses the same “Happy Birthday!” He hangs banners for every celebration (including Christmas and weddings) and sleeps in old blankets piled perplexingly high so that his bed is high enough for his 6-foot-5 frame. He once took us out to dinner and paid for it with a $2 bill. “Who doesn’t like a $2 bill!” he exclaimed as he donned a headband of ladybug antennae and flapped them in the air. It was Halloween week, and he didn’t want people to think he was “some kind of mean person.”
And he wasn’t. Jeri’s landline was always ringing with calls from distant friends, but when he needed someone to pick up medication from the pharmacy or fix something on the property, he asked us.
Jeri is a man of history, dignity and character. As you can imagine, he is not a social media person.
I moved to Colorado four years ago. I was sad to say goodbye to Jeri, but I was his last tenant and he was ready to move on. Three months ago, he finally sold the property. His heart was breaking to leave Topanga, but his heart was breaking even without the medication. He needed to be closer to medical care, so he sold his personal paradise and moved into a mobile home on Pacific Coast Highway.
He moved all the pictures of him playing drums with the greats and of him with Aretha Franklin and James Brown. He transferred all of his daughter’s childhood drawings. He moved his collection of worn T-shirts from the concerts of long-deceased musicians.
He moved it all into a mobile home, which then burned down on Wednesday, January 8th.
I took a break from Instagram in January, but came back to it after seeing coverage of the Palisades fire. I wanted to see updates from my friends in Santa Monica, Altadena, and Topanga.
When the smoke cleared, all that was left on Instagram was a link to GoFundMe. I have known five people whose houses burned down. Their internet donations are shared with everyone I know. Because not only are they loved, they’re also loved on Instagram. This is almost a prerequisite for GoFundMe to receive funding.
GoFundMe is now the backbone of America’s comeback story. Please raise $10,000 to buy my father a new wheelchair. Our insurance does not cover the $60,000 NICU cost. Our dog’s heart surgery will cost $3,000. We’ve become accustomed to bailing each other out when the system doesn’t work. Heck, they even start a GoFundMe campaign before the paperwork is even finished.
That’s the American way – because we’ve found it’s the only way it works. But not everyone is equal when it comes to generosity, or at least when it comes to algorithms. There’s no greater safety net than the one you build around yourself: good photos, good stories, and a good platform to post them. Please share.
For Geri to have a GoFundMe, she needs people like me to run it, people who can create and share their own stories. Most of Jeri’s friends aren’t millennials who have been online for decades. His friends are also offline just like him.
All GoFundMe campaigns are a matter of luck. How many times it is shared and by whom plays a vital role in achieving your goals. If your sister-in-law shares it with her 300 followers on Instagram, she might be able to raise $1,000. But if your sister-in-law is Mandy Moore and she shares it with her Instagram followers, you’ll be funded. And in fact, she joined her brother and sister-in-law’s campaign, which raised more than $200,000 of its $175,000 goal.
I can help Jeri with this role, but Jeri doesn’t want any help. His philanthropy is an old-fashioned idea: if others have less, we need more.
Philanthropy is generally thought of as people who have more helping those who have less. What happens when that system is turned upside down? What happens when we end up with a system where people with more followers get more help? Economic inequality in the US is so extreme that we help people in any way we can. Things can feel confusing and unfair.
According to GoFundMe’s annual report, the number of campaigns launched to cover necessities like rent and food quadrupled from 2023 to 2024. After multiple LA fires, many people found themselves without family members, hundreds of miles away, with children and pets. . Many people who put everything into their business end up losing their homes and having their income stolen. Many house cleaners, gardeners and janitors will find their jobs gone. Many people who have led quiet, private lives may wonder how they can be loud enough to be heard.
But how do you construct the story of someone whose entire story is in the past? What if their story was private? What about someone who is still working on their own redemption arc? In America, how do you get someone to buy when you have nothing to sell?
Is it fair to share a GoFundMe for one of the hundreds of people experiencing the same loss, even though you have fans? Do any fans have a concrete way to express themselves? Communities are coming together around the injustices that are inevitable in a city with great economic disparity. We currently have a Google Sheet with GoFundMe campaigns organized by campaigns that still need support. But the story is always the same. Those with better connections are lifted first.
I don’t think all support should be left to local communities. We also believe that people with a large number of followers on Instagram should not receive any support. Yes, I think GoFundMe is good, but that goodness comes entirely from a bad system.
Regarding our ongoing climate disaster, there is a much-quoted, but now deleted post by X user @PerthshireMags. “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters that you can see through your mobile phone, and the images will appear closer and closer to where you live until they finally reach you on Earth.” 1 person is photographing it. ”
My landlord and I may have had a very transactional relationship, but when you’re in the Land of Fire, you learn to check on each other. However, right now everything is in the land of fire.
