WE ARE AILEENS, our short film featuring women of Aileen’s discussing our namesake, Aileen Wuornos, and our own experiences of dealing with “bad dates” and supporting each other.
The film has been shown at several film festivals and now you can view it on YouTube for free.
Aileen’s is a peer-led community organizing and hospitality space for women working along the Pac Highway in south King County, Washington State.
We can’t believe that it’s almost December, but 2022 has been an amazing year of expansion and transition here at Aileen’s. Here are some highlights from the last six months or so:
We moved into a new and larger space and made it gorgeous! Everyone loves how warm and cozy our new space is. We are planning to start drop-in hours in January–for the first time since COVID forced us to shut down.
We held an open house at the new location in September and it was a success! Thank you to those of you who attended!
We recruited and started our new Peer Leadership Cohort! With members of our initial cohort that started in 2019 in the paid staff position now, we are expanding to involve more peers in the leadership roles within the organization.
We made our very first film, WE ARE AILEENS. It is a film featuring our people discussing our namesake, Aileen Wuronos, and how we experienced “bad dates” and are supporting each other. Join our screenings in Portland and south King County in December!
We did voter registration during outreach throughout October. We registered more than 50 people who are homeless, drug users, or with criminal records—folks who are often discussed in political campaigns as the problem to be dealt with or eradicated and not usually listened to. On the day of the election, we hosted “Vote for Hope” non-partisan BBQ party across the street from the polling place to encourage people without mailing address to vote in-person.
With our expansion and upcoming changes, here are our needs right now:
Donation of stuff! We especially need warm clothes including coats, gloves, hand/leg warmers, etc. as well as blankets, sleeping bags, and other stuff people need during rainy winter. We also need other cute and clean clothes for women.
Volunteers! As we re-start drop-in hospitality spaces, we’ll need extra help Friday evenings for hospitality space and outreach. We also need help preparing for outreach on Thursdays. If you are available on some other days, do let us know so we can discuss how you can help us do things like organizing fundraisers, doing skillshares, etc.
Also, we always appreciate financial support! Please donate on GoFundMe at and/or make a monthly pledge on Patreon.
Thank you and we hope to see you at our film screening in December!
WE ARE AILEENS is produced by women of Aileen’s with the generous support of the Old Pro Project and features women of Aileen’s discuss their namesake, Aileen Wuronos, and their own experiences of dealing with “bad dates” and supporting each other
We have a great news: we have a new location, which is a lot bigger and nicer than the last two spaces we occupied, thanks to State Sen. Claire Wilson and Rep. Jamila Taylor’s advocacy to help us access more funds.
We are working hard to set up the new space while we continue doing outreach, peer leadership development, and the rest of our regular activities serving women and trans/nonbninary folks working along the Pac Highway.
Here are some photos of our new space as we continue the process of moving in:
We are inviting our friends and family to an OPEN HOUSE on Wednesday, September 21st at 6-9pm. Join us at the new space to come check it out, meet our peer staff, and learn more about what we do + how you can be involved. The location (which is to remain confidential) is provided prior to the event date to people who RSVP, but it is on Pac Highway in south King County.
Thank you + we hope to see you in September!
P.S.
We will be tabling at Seattle Trans Pride on September 2nd. Please come say hi!
It’s been over a year since our beautiful community was dealt a huge blow as COVID-19 pandemic spread, forcing us to temporarily shut down our busy community organizing and hospitality space and improvise food and resource distribution out of parking lots as we all lived through a crisis.
Aileen’s peer leaders have been there all along, gathering several times every week to distribute food, personal protection equipment, supplies, clothing, and other resources to the community in dire need after many open public spaces and charity services disappeared. Out of our first cohort of ten peer leaders, seven of them still remain (our original plan was to add new folks and graduate older ones as we went, but it didn’t go as planned due to the pandemic), and they have come a long way in their personal healing and growth coinciding with the growth of Aileen’s as an organization. We are happy to report that majority of our peer leaders are no longer homeless. Other milestones for individual peer leaders include graduating from substance use treatment, making progress on court-related issues, restoration of driving privileges, progress on goals related to harm reduction and health, and surviving the pandemic.
In June, we are holding a graduation ceremony for our initial cohort of Aileen’s peer leadership team, some of whom will move on to paid staff positions at Aileen’s to mentor and support new groups of women. In fact, a couple of them have already been hired and we plan to add more as we can figure out finances and logistics. As staff, they will receive a yearlong staff training program with the goal of each of them developing their own case management caseloads and becoming Washington State certified peer counselors.
(Here goes the obligatory fundraising pitch): Thank you for your continued support for Aileen’s as we move out of the improvisational crisis response mode and embark on a long-term strategy to draw our peer leaders into more executive positions within the organization. We appreciate your financial support as well as donations of food, clothing, and other resources, and social support connecting us to people and resources you have access to via social media and word of mouth.
As always, one-time or monthly donations can be made on our online platforms, and if you have items to donate, please do not hesitate to email us at info@aileens.org. We are also looking for volunteers who are fully vaccinated who can come help with our outreach, especially if you can drive.
A “bad date” is someone who is violent or dangerous toward those of us working in the sex trade. We share identifying information about dangerous people we encounter, such as what they look like, what car they drive, where they were, and what they did, so that we can help each other make more informed decisions about what we do. We welcome people of any gender to report bad dates.
Tee is a single Black mom with two beautiful girls ages 7 and 9. Tee’s story is one of hardship, homelessness, and systemic racism, as well as incredible resiliency, strength, and a mother’s love. Racism, childhood abuse, and a lack of support led Tee to struggle both emotionally and financially as a young adult. After a devastating break up that left Tee to raise her daughters alone, she fell into using drugs as a coping mechanism.
Tee’s love for her daughters led her to call Child Protective Services for help. That’s right Tee called the state of Washington for help to go to treatment and get stable housing for herself and her daughters and in return the state of Washington literally kidnapped her children.
Even though there has never been any allegation of abuse or neglect toward her daughters the state has used the fact that Tee admitted she had used drugs to remove them from Tee’s care for almost two years. Although the state never helped Tee to get treatment nor housing and have actively worked against her every step of the way, Tee has struggled through homelessness and heartbreak to get herself into treatment, get a part time job, and transitional housing.
Tee came to Aileen’s over a year ago now. She started as a peer who attended our hospitality space and soon joined our Peer Leadership program and became a key peer leader. Tee showed up on the regular and worked hard helping to run Aileen’s including outreach, distributing food to the community, and hosting our space. Most importantly Tee brought herself. Tee has a way of making things fun and the other women look up to her.
Tee loves to sing and dance and joke around but she also has a serious side when advocating for her women of color, LGBT, and recovery communities. As a mother Tee is amazing. She has kept up any and all contact she has been allowed with her daughters including daily phone calls and supervised visits. Tee is open and honest with her daughters and takes the time to really listen to them.
Recently, Tee has been hired as paid staff at Aileen’s. We are so lucky to have her as our case manager and office assistant and she has been branching out into community education, giving presentations, and working one on one with peers on their goals. In addition, Tee joined with some of the other peer leaders to found an independent, collective recovery house where women can stay for up to one year. This is where Tee currently resides and where her kids could stay with her in a safe, supportive environment.
Unbelievably, this still isn’t good enough for the state of Washington! They are still erecting barriers and refusing to return custody to Tee. At this point Tee desperately needs an attorney who can expose what the state has been doing and get her daughters returned to her ASAP. Time is running out as the state could soon permanently terminate Tee’s parental rights with no chance of ever getting them back.
Tee needs money to pay a retainer for a good attorney and to get permanent housing for her and her daughters. Please help in this battle against the racist New Jim Crow drug war policies that are continuing to be used to tear apart Black families.
It has been a difficult year, but Aileen’s continues to support women in south King County in best ways we can.
Since mid-March, we’ve had to close our communal space and switched our services to food and resources giveaway out of a parking lot. Our peer leaders, volunteers, and staff gave away boxes and boxes of food, clothes, hand sanitizers and masks, harm reduction supplies, and other stuff, expanding our services to anyone who needed them to counter immediate impact of the lockdown.
In late summer, we took a week off for what is going to be our annual peer leader retreat. We brought in a trainer to talk about our individual and community priorities and accomplishments, and map out our future. Over the last year, we have stepped up case management for our peer leaders on things like getting driver’s license back, dealing with court and CPS issues, etc. and peer leaders are beginning to take greater power and responsibilities within our organization, with three peer leaders moving on to become paid staff members for Aileen’s.
We also began to slowly re-open our space, allowing 1-2 people inside at the time so that they can use our bathroom and shower. We also set up a canopy outside our space with an outdoor heater so we can meet our peers there. That has become harder under the Governor’s new order limiting outdoor gatherings to five people or less, but we are working to protect everyone’s safety while providing what they need. We prepare hot nutritious food from scratch for 50-75 people every week like split pea soup, chili, chicken and dumplings, and cole slaw. In addition to our outdoor canopy, we currently go to three locations on our outreach van to continue providing food and supplies to everyone in need, especially with the return of the cold, rainy season.
Particularly high on our updated wishlist are: blanket, coats, socks, hand warmers, boots, propane bottles, tents, hand sanitizers. We also need clothes, food, and other personal supplies. And in case you are wondering, we also take cash 🙂
Volunteering for Aileen’s looks different because of the COVID restrictions, but we continue to need volunteers who: 1. cook food before our outreach (outreach is every Tuesday evening, so cooking need to be done on Monday or Tuesday morning); 2. drive our van when we go out on outreach (also Tuesday evening), or help with data entry. Please contact us if you are interested. (And also, if you are an existing volunteer, thank you and we still need you.)
Also: we were recently invited by another social service provider to give a couple of online trainings (one about harm reduction and another about supporting sex workers and people in the sex trade) and it was a great experience. Our new peer leader turned staff Teranie and Devyn joined co-founders Leslie and Emi on these presentations. We want to do more! If your organization needs a staff training on these topics–or have some other idea–please contact us!
Here are places offering free food and other stuff in Federal Way and surrounding areas during the COVID-19 crisis. If you know of any other resources or information is outdated, please let us know so we can fix it. (Last updated: June 12, 2020)
Aileen’s
Tuesdays & Thursdays 8-10pm
Pac Hwy. & 312th St. Federal Way parking lot
Federal Way Black Collective
Fridays 12-4pm
33720 9th Ave. S Federal Way
The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd
Saturdays 1:30-2:30pm
345 S 312th St. Federal Way
Christian Faith Center
Mondays 5:30-6:30pm
33645 20th Ave. S Federal Way
Calvary Lutheran Church
Thursdays 5-6pm
2415 S 320th St. Federal Way
Trinity Community Church
Wednesdays 3-5pm
3807 Reith Rd. Kent
Praisealujah
Sundays 11am-2pm
20842 International Blvd. Seatac
Federal Way Food Bank
Mondays & Wednesdays 9:30am-2pm
55+ only – Thursdays 11am-1pm
4th Thursday 5pm-6pm
1200 S 336th St. Federal Way
For a more comprehensive list of food programs in King County, click here.
It’s June and we are in the midst not just of an ongoing epidemic that continues to threaten the lives of many of our community members but also of a national moment of reflection and action over white supremacy and police violence on Black, indigenous and people of color upon which this country is founded. We are heartbroken by ongoing assaults and murders of Black people at the hands of the agents of the State as well as by the society that is too quick to rely on them, yet encouraged by the outpouring of empathy and outrage in response to the tragedies.
We at Aileen’s stand in solidarity with the family and friends of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Aubrey, Charleena Lyles, and countless other Black men and women who have been brutalized and murdered by our white supremacist institutions, and with the movement for Black lives in calling not just for the arrest and prosecution of individual officers involved, but for systemic changes. If you have not already, please follow and support Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County (facebook, twitter).
For our neighbors in Federal Way (where Aileen’s is located) and nearby areas, follow Federal Way Black Collective, who is holding a Juneteenth screening of the award-winning documentary film “13th,” which traces the genealogy of over-policing of Black communities, mass incarceration, and prison industrial complex to American chattel slavery. They are also looking for volunteers who can help out with their food distribution that they are starting next week Friday.
June is also the LGBTQ Pride month. It is hard to feel like celebrating anything right now, but we are proud of the legacy of queer and trans women of color and others who have risen up against racialized police violence in June 1969 as the police raided Stonewall Inn and ever since, and we commit to carrying on their quest for equality and justice within our organization, our region, and in the larger society.
Here’s the update from Aileen’s for June: we will continue to provide food, clothes, supplies, and other stuff twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) at our location in Federal Way (contact if you need more detail) as we did for the last couple of months. HOWEVER, in the last two months we were donate pre-packaged meals to distribute (150 meals each day we were out there), but that supply of food has ended at the end of May. That means we have to buy food and prepare them so that we can continue to feed people in need at our van location, which will be a lot more expensive and time-consuming that it had been before, but we can’t stop feeding people in the time of crisis.
So as always we appreciate your continued support of Aileen’s—use GoFundMe (one-time) or Patreon (monthly contributions) to donate online, or contact us if you need donation receipts for tax purposes (we need to process tax deductible donations differently). We also need donations of food and supplies—please see our updated wishlist for what we need at our giveaway van location.