- The Unemployed States of America takes readers deep inside the decimated American workforce.
- Miles Gordon Jamison is a 22-year-old security guard based in Minneapolis,
Minnesota . - She lost her job as a security guard at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and found her work as a
performer and musician paused. - She said her community, which is primarily queer and trans Black people, has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic.
- This is her story, as told to Leah Feiger.
I worked as a security guard at the Minneapolis Institute of Art until April 28. I'm a performer too, a musician. Since the pandemic, I haven't really been able to do that either.
I live in South Minneapolis with my partner. People in my neighborhood have been pretty much all wearing masks. It's an East African neighborhood, and I feel like people know each other for the most part, and they're trying to keep each other safe.
When I found out the museum was closing, I was honestly just scrambling. I was thinking: "How am I going to get to survive?"
When I realized that I qualified for the stimulus and
I'm also a member of Black Visions Collective, and they did a fund for members. I started applying for that, but then got nervous I wouldn't qualify for unemployment if I received funds, so I stopped.
My immediate community, which is mainly queer and trans Black people, has been really impacted by unemployment during the pandemic. Some people are living with their parents, and some just don't know what to do or how they're going to pay rent. If someone hit me up, I knew I just had to share.
During Pride Month, I also tried to do some crowdfunding through Twitter. We made a thread of Black trans women and shared links to Cash Apps. It got some attention, and I know I want to do more of that.
I'm frustrated with the world right now, but I also am taking advantage of everything slowing down to figure out what I'm doing with my life. When I have energy, I work on my art. I've been spending a lot of time outside reading, and I just finished "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler.
Though he's really nervous about the virus, I've gotten to see my dad, and we watched some of "The Twilight Zone" together. I've also been trying to collaborate with other people more now, and I've been doing music production. But even collaborating is hard because we're all trying to be safe during the pandemic. With everything, though, we're trying to take this as a moment to celebrate ourselves and our work.
Over the last few months, I've been trying to stay in touch with the art happening around the city. I played guitar at a socially distanced art installation a few months ago, and my partner played bass clarinet alongside me. I've been trying to get involved in more of that and help organize.
I'm also really hoping to see my local scene of queer trans Black artists find ways to sustain ourselves independently. We've been trying to figure out who's willing to fund our work. There's so much art funding, but it's a matter of applying to these lengthy grants and getting it and making sure all of us as artists keep our autonomy.
The climate right now, with how violent people are toward Black trans women … I have fears about leaving the house because I've been harassed so much. And I definitely haven't received the blunt end of that because I'm light skinned, but I fear for the Black trans women in my life, and it feels scary right now.
I'm also trying to figure out how to sustain myself moving forward. I'm looking for work, but I'm always getting misgendered, and I've been harassed at work before, so I'm really just trying to find a job where I don't have to deal with that. Sometimes it seems like I'm asking for too much, but I'm not. I know I'm not.