I need to be able to pay my bills for 6 months in order to write this book, start a podcast, and continue organizing Ndn Bayou Food Forest & MTN.

Just like Beck, "I'm a loser, baby!"

At nearly 50-years-old, I am divorced twice. Almost a year ago, the bank took my house back. I am a single mother of six beautiful children (I wanted to have 10, but in that case I am also a quitter). I have no assets to speak of, just a car payment and a dog... In fairness, she is is a really cool dog.

I started out my adult career working as a graphic designer, eventually becoming a small town features writer for the local paper. Then back in 2010, the BP Oil Disaster happened. This grave offense, and the resulting turmoil of the "clean-up," changed the course of my life. Long story short, I have devoted the last decade or so of my life to taking on issues of environmental and social injustice. I have done this sometimes paid, but mostly not.

Over the years I have contributed in a variety of campaigns focused on righting the wrongs of irresponsible corporations and the greedy elite, yet I have never won a single one. Seriously, I am a failure. Here's an incomplete list of campaigns I have lost:

Stopping the BP Disaster
Stopping the use of chemical dispersants
Blocking the Southern Leg of the Keystone Pipeline
No New Leases in the Gulf of Mexico
Justice for Black Lives - Alton Sterling
A Frontline Christmas
Stopping The Bayou Bridge Pipeline

Don't get me wrong, I have had a few successes along the way - just not in relation to the number of the campaigns that were lost. I do know that my efforts have influenced the outcomes of situations, but when it comes to awarding someone the title of "Consistent Failure" - I am your winner!

My last big fail was in stopping the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, ETP's tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline. After public meetings, petitions, court proceedings, community events, landowner support, and over a hundred direct actions, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline went through and is functioning today.

I'm not saying that I am a failure to solicit your sympathy, although obviously I do need support right now. I'm saying it because in this messed up world, what we are able to produce is often all that matters. Wins and losses end up coming down to a matter of simple numbers. By that metric, people begin to believe that if they are pretty sure that they can't win, it means they will automatically lose. That leaves people in an unmotivated place.

No, I want to be honest. I want people to understand that there is no winner and there is no loser, there's only you and your conscience. Giving back, whether it be in time or resource, is not about anything other than your personal decision to being the kind of person you want to see show up in the world. And you will never know your true legacy by taking action, because as long as you came in a good way, your thoughts and deeds will carry-on without you. Failure is a term people use when they can only see success in terms of commodity and achievement as product.

That is basically what the book I am writing is about. My failures as an "activist," what I have learned from them, what we gained from them, and why you should do everything you can to fail too.

All that to say, I am a loser asking you for a chance to lose again.

Here's what I need:
I need six months of financial respite in order to write this book, start a podcast, and continue organizing Ndn Bayou Food Forest & MTN.

I have applied for a grant that would provide a good portion that financial support, but I won't know about it until March. And, if you've read this far, you know it's a 50/50 chance I will fail at getting it anyway. Still, I desperately need help to make it until I get the answer.

To be clear, I have tried to get a job, or as they say - "a real job," but honestly the NGO world has mostly become a sinkhole of good intention. It's like a bad relationship. You keep hoping it'll change, but it doesn't. It doesn't matter how much you give to it, it only wants more. When you have nothing left to give, and it is finished parading you around like a trophy wife, you are unceremoniously discarded. I feel that I have fallen out with many in that world, in favor of the more compliant ones, the ones who will stay within the talking points, better fit the box, the ones who will follow the path that the NGOs have laid out for them, the ones whose only focus is to win even while following decades-long losing tactics.

It's true, maybe I could go back to writing for a local paper, doesn't pay well enough but it is an option - or it would be if I kept my opinions to myself. Maybe I could be a dog-walker, a Walmart greeter, a brain surgeon, or an astronaut. All just as likely, because after decades of storing trauma in my body, I have developed rheumatoid arthritis (among other chronic ailments), and tbh I never really know how I am going to feel from day to day. Pain is, at this point, a bit of a constant companion. This is a limiting factor in my employment opportunities.

Luckily, after years and years of failing, I know that a win for me is that I am still here fighting the good fight. In my final moments on this earth, I hope that I will know that I will have given it all I had. That the fear of failure did not limit the affect of my time. Then I will be able to rest In peace, knowing that my ancestors will welcome me. Not because I was some "winning activists," but because I did my tiny and insignificant part in the human-history-long struggle for dignity and justness.

If you can help me, if you can help hold my family up for a few months until I can make it on my own, I wholeheartedly promise that I will continue to fail. In doing so, I hope to make you proud.

Much love,

Cherri Foytlin
Your Friendly Local Failed Activist

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I am a loser who is humbly asking you for a chance to lose again.

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