https://www.gofundme.com/f/hate-crime-victimhelp-move-me-to-a-safe-place

She is in America, in a sundown town, but her experiences were highlighted by The Guardian a few days ago. I am so fucking angry for her.

She is still relatively young, thankfully.

Me, I have set up similar crowdfunding campaigns for myself a few times, but I never got beyond £350, which was not enough to enable me to leave and the worst of the nightmare started happening after 2013 when I briefly had the funds that would have enabled me to escape. But no animals had been attacked yet and I didn’t know yet that my locks were already getting picked for years. I’ve tried four times since in spite of that.

I actually more or less started wrapping up my life a while ago and started making (small) donations all over the place because if my life was over anyway, if I couldn’t get away anyway, then I would do whatever the hell I still could to help others or just generally help make the world a slightly better place. My health has declined horribly after I moved to Portsmouth; things are only getting worse (and I have no access to medical care).

Below is what I would like to say to Angel Pittman.

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Angel, I am so fucking angry for you. Below I explain why.

I am pleased to see that you’ve already surpassed your goal. That gives me hope, too. It shows that there are plenty of good people.

Here in the UK, there is a lot of this too. A family in Bristol, with their own hostel, suffered a double arson attack, for example. Racism. They are of Asian heritage.

I’m from the Netherlands. I’ve lived in the States (Florida) and am now in England. My dad was his own boss, my sisters are their own bosses and I have been my own boss for a long time, but my life turned into a nightmare when I relocated within England. The hate for me was not racist as I am white, but rather misogynistic, instead, it seems. Slogan on wall, bucket of liquid emptied over me, locks picked, at two addresses, vandalism in my apartment, animal cruelty, lots of hacking etc etc. I don’t want to bore you with more of my story because it is bizarrely similar to yours and you know what that is like. You don’t need me to tell you that. In the previous town here in England, I had actually been attacked, physically. The police here don’t care either, just like in Rowan County. I’ve tried to escape four times already and one day I will succeed.

Stay strong. Keep fighting. Don’t give up. I found your story just now. Me, this morning, I sent a plea for help to various relatively powerful people around the world, folks who know me, because due to England’s bizarre archaic class system, I have zero power here. I’m a migrant, I’m a female, I am not married, am a feminist, am over 45 (in my 60s now) and have been stuck in poverty for so long. That’s SIX reasons for anonymous folks to hate me.

The fear is the hardest to deal with, isn’t it? The fear and the erosion of trust in people. Just like you, I never expected anything like this. I didn’t know how to explain it to folks in my home country either. It was too fucking bizarre for words.

You did something right. You will succeed. I can tell. You have something that I seem to lack or maybe it’s also because I am simply in the wrong country.

You will succeed, I am telling you.

Best,

Angelina

PS For anyone who does not understand where the fear comes from… this level of hate, and to be personally targeted by it, is really scary. Certainly if it’s persistent. It hollows you out, eats away at you, corrodes you inside because you’re surrounded by it all the time. There is almost no getting away from it.

Me, I found a local Starbucks last year to which I secretly escaped from time to time. A little oasis. Then one day, a blond young woman, who I had not met before, greeted me from behind the counter with sheer hate, the Pompey flavor hate, and that place then soon turned into hell too. I often genuinely feel that Portsmouth does not deserve to exist and should be bombed off the map; it is that evil. It’s really scary, the level and extent of the local hate. It’s really really really scary, the Pompey-flavor hate. It makes you wish you were dead because there is no getting away from it and it’s so ut-ter-ly vile.