“There’s Another Way”: Rent Relief, Love Letters, and 1,000 Pee Funnels
"There’s nothing like getting to give someone their rent money," says mutual aid organizer Ashley Fairbanks.
When federal immigration enforcement escalated in Minneapolis this winter, under what officials described as Operation Metro Surge, communities across Minnesota were forced to respond quickly. As businesses in immigrant corridors shuttered, families sheltered in place, and ICE activity intensified, organizers, faith groups, mutual aid networks, and everyday residents began building new forms of support in real time.
Out of that moment, a simple resource list grew into Stand With Minnesota, a volunteer-run online hub that connects people to direct support efforts across the state. What began as a Google Doc sharing links has evolved into a coordinating infrastructure for rent relief, travel support, and logistical aid, channeling generosity where it’s needed most.
Ashley Fairbanks started Stand With Minnesota in the early days of the escalation and has helped steward its growth alongside a widening circle of volunteers and partner organizations. An Anishinaabe writer, artist, and communications strategist with deep organizing roots in Minnesota, Ashley has worked across electoral politics, narrative strategy, and grassroots campaigns for years. When the surge began, she used her communications background and relationships on the ground to create a centralized place where people could act—especially those who were not physically present but wanted to materially support affected communities.
In the conversation that follows, Ashley reflects on what it actually takes to run a volunteer-driven mutual aid hub and why meeting immediate survival needs is inseparable from resistance work.
Kelly Hayes: You've referenced problems in 2020 when donations clustered within a few organizations and redistribution took years to implement. What went wrong then, and what did you learn from that experience? When this latest escalation began, what made you think Minnesota needed a new kind of infrastructure rather than relying on existing nonprofits or foundations?
Ashley Fairbanks: Yeah, I think in 2020, as news stories hit, everyone directed people to give to two major places, and neither of those organizations had the capacity at the time to respond with the kind of infrastructure it takes to dispatch tens of millions of dollars in funding. So they had to develop processes and figure out re-granting structures and all of these different things.
That was a major fear of mine this time. So much stuff emerged very organically out of Operation Metro Surge. At first, I was just keeping a very messy list of links to share with people, listing all of my friends who were doing mutual aid work, and the organizations I knew were responding the fastest. When that got too unwieldy, I thought, I’m a comms person. We need a place that’s easy for people to go to, easy to say on TV or in a social post. So I grabbed the domain and put the website up the same day, hoping to distribute funds across a wider base.
Stand With Minnesota began as a simple Google Doc and has scaled into a major mutual aid hub. At what point did you realize this wasn’t just a short-term document, but a long-term organizing tool?
It became very real at the end of January, beginning of February, when moving rent became such a major focus. So many families were sheltered in place because of what was happening that we had to pay a lot of rent. The community responded widely by setting up rent funds wherever we could—at schools, out of churches, wherever. That shift made it more than just a single-moment thing to me, because the needs we were meeting were more than community defense or direct actions in the moment. We were providing long-term supportive infrastructure.
The project has coordinated flights, covered rent, and raised significant funds for direct support. What does the day-to-day labor look like for you and other volunteers?
At first, it was just me and one other volunteer who’s remained anonymous. We were working on everything by ourselves—like 20 hours a day. A lot of it was responding to emails, honestly, because we became the entry point for people who had no connections to what was happening in Minnesota. We’d get emails from companies or donors asking, “Where should I give? Who should I help?” Or, “I have a thousand pee funnels—how do I get them to Minnesota?” So we’d build relationships on the ground. Since I’ve been an organizer here for so long, I already had those relationships, so it was easier for me to do that work myself at first.
When I finally got to go home to Minnesota, things changed pretty wildly. I realized I couldn’t do it alone anymore, so I built a team of volunteers. Since then, we’ve expanded more because we’re running a rent-paying campaign. We have an admin team. We have a team that manages the Sky Miles program, which has flown people home to their home countries, if that’s what they wanted, or brought people back from detention. It’s reunited a lot of families. With our Adopt-a-Rent program, we have another team managing that.
I spend a lot of time fundraising. We’ve helped almost 300 families pay their rent through peer-to-peer giving. We’re not pooling money; we’re connecting donors directly with families. The work is different every day. And honestly, a lot of spreadsheets. My life is spreadsheets right now—resource hubs, where to give, where people can get help, which rent funds to apply to.
Did you say 1,000 pee funnels?
Yes.
Can you say more about that?
A company called pStyle reached out. They make funnels so you can stand to pee if you don’t have the equipment for that. We connected them with Smitten Kitten, which has been an amazing mutual aid–hub sex store. It was funny, but they’re actually really useful—especially for transmasc folks using bathrooms safely, or people doing ICE watch who need access to bathrooms. So, pee funnels. Who knew?
One thing I really appreciate about this project is that it offers a way to materially intervene without being physically present as an ICE observer or rapid responder. As someone who hasn’t always been able to be physically present in your hometown during this crisis, what has it meant to you to contribute this way, and what do you think it’s meant to others?
I tell people I started this because I needed somewhere to put my anxious energy. My friends are elected officials and organizers in the streets. Everyone I knew was doing ICE watch or mutual aid, and I was constantly worried about them. My dad works at an auto parts store on one of the busiest streets in Minneapolis, and ICE was staging in his parking lot almost every day. He’s a darker-skinned Native guy and kind of a smart-ass, and I was so worried he was going to say something to ICE officers.
That’s why I made the site. I couldn’t leave San Antonio, but I wanted to contribute something. It’s been meaningful to help direct people’s generosity in the right direction. It’s also gotten me into rooms with big funders, where I can talk about how to actually get money to people on the ground and help them pay rent.
People thank me all the time for giving them a way to contribute that feels meaningful. I feel honored that people see me as a trusted source—someone with an in to Minnesota—so they’re not just giving to some random organization without real connection.
Rent relief now seems central to this work. Why has housing become the defining pressure point?
The economic impact has been real and intentional. Entire immigrant corridors have been shut down. People are afraid to operate their small businesses. Restaurants have closed because of ICE activity or because customers stopped coming. And even before the surge, the targeting of the Somali community had already made things very hard.
So while the surge has been going on for about 80 days—almost three months—things have been bad since December. We’re working with families who haven’t paid rent for months, who are on the verge of eviction.
There are a million things we could do, but keeping people housed in the middle of winter in Minnesota feels essential. I experienced eviction and housing insecurity as a kid. I went to 10 different schools because we had to move so often. I know what eviction does to your life. It’s much easier to pay someone’s rent than to try to help them recover from houselessness. Once there’s an eviction on your record, everything becomes harder and more expensive.
And there’s all the trauma of it—especially for kids.
What explains the reluctance of foundations and wealthy donors to fund rent relief? You’ve described being terrified by the nonchalance of people who control the purse strings. What does that look like?
It’s hard to sit at tables with people and say, “We have thousands of families on the verge of eviction,” and hear, “We can’t focus on rent. Rent is too complicated,” or, “That’s a government-scale problem.” That’s not the political reality at the state, local, or federal level right now.
People don’t understand how bad things are in the shelter system. There aren’t family shelter beds available in Minnesota right now for the most part. And sometimes I don’t even feel an emotional reaction from people at these tables.
There’s anxiety about fraud because of all the “waste, fraud, and abuse” rhetoric. There’s a belief that funding rent has to involve long applications, income verification, copies of leases, wiring checks to landlords—when mutual aid groups are simply giving people money to pay their rent.
We’re trying to model that there’s another way. The risks of doing this are smaller than the impact of not paying the rent. We’re willing to put ourselves on the line a bit to keep our neighbors housed.
I really appreciate this point. I’ve heard a lot of specificity from the philanthropic world in recent months about what they want to fund, and I’ve been irked, at times by how narrowly those priorities have been defined. We need people who distribute funds to think dynamically. Resistance work is an ecosystem. We have frontline organizing. We have the care work that sustains that organizing and sustains our communities. We have movement media that tells the stories mainstream outlets are going to botch or ignore. We need funders and funding structures to recognize the importance of that whole ecosystem.
And obviously, it would be ideal if there were a rent moratorium—if there were some kind of governmental intervention. I think everyone should be advocating for rent moratoriums and rent relief for people in besieged cities like Minneapolis. That is a real and necessary demand. It’s upsetting that those efforts have stalled in Minnesota’s state government, and pressure should be brought to bear.
But to simply say, “Well, that just needs to happen,” and then dismiss the idea of working to keep people in their homes right now, that’s unacceptable. If we support frontline organizers, we have to address conditions that make their work increasingly impossible. Fighting to keep people safe, and then just watching them get pushed into the streets, where they’re doubly vulnerable to ICE and to all the dangers that come with being unhoused—that’s an impossible situation. It’s devastating and demoralizing, and it shouldn’t be written off as inevitable.
So, I really appreciate the work that you and your co-strugglers are doing to keep as many people housed as possible.
Now, if someone in another city wanted to create a centralized mutual aid hub like Stand With Minnesota, what are the essential components, and what mistakes should they avoid?
First, I’ve offered to duplicate the website for anyone who wants to run something similar. I built it on Squarespace. It’s simple and relatively inexpensive.
Don’t overthink it. You don’t need 10 grant proposals. Not everyone has a platform like I do, and I’m grateful my Bluesky followers helped fund the creation and upkeep. But you can start with a Google Doc of places to give.
The most essential component has been volunteers. We’re a big team now, but we managed for a while with four people. It was a lot of work. In a short-term crisis, a small team can work. For sustainability, spreading things out helps.
I’ve just kept adding things to the site to meet needs. We put up love letters, and the next day there were 1,000. People told us they’d come in from ICE watch, read them, and felt their spirit come back. It’s been important not to be too rigid about what the site is supposed to be.
You recently put out a call for remote volunteers. Is that still ongoing?
I haven’t even checked the forms yet. I’m guessing a lot came in. But bringing volunteers into the work is actually hard. Training people is its own specialty. When you’re overwhelmed, it’s hard to even figure out how to ask for help.
We definitely need volunteers—and so do the rent funds we work with. Most of these people have been doing unpaid work for months and have other jobs.
And I have to shout out the retired women working with me. One volunteer running our Sky Miles program was a legal secretary for 30 years and brought a level of organization I could never have dreamed of. We need people willing to do the admin drudgery.
Despite exhaustion and limited institutional support, you’ve said you weren’t willing to turn people away. What makes this model worth sustaining?
I carry my own trauma into this work. There are downsides to that. It makes it harder, and I’ve needed a lot of somatic and body work to keep doing it. But every family facing eviction, I see myself and my mom. It’s hard to look away.
There’s nothing like getting to give someone their rent money. It’s a magical moment — knowing you’ve lightened someone’s load like that. Last week, we helped a family with a big rent need, and it was their child’s birthday. Knowing they could celebrate with less anxiety was enough to keep going the next day.
And the model is worth sustaining because the other structures aren’t working. Foundations and nonprofits can’t meet this moment of authoritarianism without serious guidance from people on the ground. If we’d waited on them, nothing in Minnesota would have happened.
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