For more than a year now, I have been collecting stories of queer and trans mutual aid in Minnesota under the project title We Help Us. It has been my attempt to help document how queer and trans Minnesotans have shown up for one another in the face of indifference and exclusion. These stories of community care are easily lost or forgotten — so often, historical accounts miss the everyday acts of support and mutuality that keep our communities going — but they are essential to understanding how queer and trans communities liberate, survive, and pass on culture. They are also, I think, hugely instructive for anyone (LGBTQIA or otherwise) trying to figure out how to get by in this age of fracture, consumerist individualism, and fear. If we are to have a future on this planet — especially one in which all of us can thrive — it will be built on lessons gleaned from the stories of how marginalized groups and allies have shown up for themselves and one another when no one else would. As was clear at the start of this year, communities in Minnesota have a specific perspective to offer in this regard.
For the first part of this project, histories were largely collected via a story hotline inspired by the rich tradition of LGBTQIA help lines, which anyone could call to record an audio message. This hotline was launched in June 2025, and I quickly set about circulating flyers for it across the state. A few places even allowed us to wheat paste these beautiful flyers, designed by Jared Maire, on their buildings. For example, the Aliveness Project, an organization that supports Minnesotans living with or at risk of HIV and AIDS, helped us put up a giant installation on one of their external walls (see above). I also spent many hours trekking across the city and state with flyers in hand, trying to post them far and wide; when City Cast Twin Cities had me on the show to discuss the project earlier this year, host Sean McPherson remarked, “I’ve probably not been to a coffee shop where I haven’t seen one.” Mission accomplished!
In January, We Help Us expanded to include stories of broader mutual aid during Operation Metro Surge. Though the project initially launched with a queer and trans focus, the infrastructure for story documentation was already in place, and it felt important to do what we could to help capture the stories and lessons of such a critical time. Then, this summer, We Help Us expanded again with a series of in-person events, which I’ll say more about in a moment, as well as an option to submit written stories online to be read by local voice actors for inclusion in our archives. In addition to collecting stories in all of these ways, I’ve also been recording a number of extended oral histories via one-on-one interviews. Our collection of mutual aid stories will eventually be housed at the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection, the largest archival repository of LGBTQIA history in the Midwest, in order to preserve them for future generations. Additionally, some of them will be incorporated into my second narrative podcast series, which I am making through my independent podcast studio Good Judy Productions. This series will eventually be released in partnership with iHeartMedia, which released my previous series Unread.
While we’ve gotten some amazing calls through the story hotline, it became clear to me that some folks prefer sharing theirs face-to-face. I wanted to make that an option, so we began hosting that series of in-person story collection events. These events, which were organized in collaboration with Quatrefoil Library, the Aliveness Project, Minneapolis People’s Pride, and Family Tree Clinic and the Minnesota Sexual Health Hotline, have been celebrations of LGBTQIA mutual aid and opportunities for people to document their experiences with it. We’ve collected some incredible stories at these events, and I’m thrilled to say that we have over 100 stories of queer and trans mutual aid in Minnesota so far. This is considerably more than what I imagined we’d get when this project started, and I’m so grateful to everyone who has contributed.
Two more events remain, after which we will begin officially winding down We Help Us. The first event will take place on October 7 in Winona, Minnesota, and will be hosted in partnership with Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Winona State University. This event will feature local organizers sharing stories of mutual aid and include opportunities for attendees to record their own. The second event, happening on October 17, will take place at Queermunity, a community center for queer and trans folks in Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood. This one is being organized with the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (ISGH) and National Center for Gender Health (NCGH), and is part of ISGH’s 2SLGBTQIA+ Intergenerational Mingle event series. The event will feature an intergenerational panel of storytellers and include opportunities for participants to document their own stories and participate in a harm reduction mutual aid project with the Aliveness Project. Both events are free and open to the public. You can find details about them at the end of this piece.
If you’re in Minnesota, I hope you will consider joining us for one of these final events. If you can’t join us in person, I hope you will consider sharing a story by calling into the hotline at 1-844-WE-HLP-US or submitting a written version through the form at wehelpusmn.com. And if you’re not in Minnesota, I hope you will stay tuned for the series I’ve been working on. I’ve collected some really special audio since I began working on this project and I cannot wait to share it with you.
A huge thanks to the Minnesota Humanities Center for a Cultural Heritage Grant, without which these in-person events would not be possible. We Help Us has also received essential funding support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council; all three of these funding sources are thanks to a legislative appropriation from Minnesota’s arts and cultural heritage fund. Additionally, we have an amazing group of individual backers helping us with this project. I am truly grateful for their funding support, without which we wouldn’t be able to do any of this. If you’d like to become a backer, please visit the support section of the Good Judy Productions website. We’d be so very glad to have you on board.
Here are details for the two remaining We Help Us events, both happening in October:
Saturday, October 17, 4 p.m.–6 p.m.
Queermunity
3036 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis, MN
RSVP at https://z.umn.edu/IntergenStories
Wednesday, October 7, 4 p.m.–6 p.m.
Winona State University
Winona, MN
For location details, please contact Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Director, Dr. Mary Jo Klinker: mklinker@winona.edu
This piece first appeared in Chris Stedman’s newsletter on September 21, 2026, and is republished here with his permission, lightly edited.
