Why we’re risking a trip to the US right now

We (Sara and Taylor) are coming to the US—possibly to a city near you, if you happen to live there.

Because logistics are always at the top of our minds, here are the places and dates:

• May 20-24 - Los Angeles

• May 26-27- San Francisco

• May 29 - Portland

• May 30-June 1 - Seattle

• June 3-6 - New York

• June 10-15 - Chicago

(If you’d like to meet up, drop us a line at [email protected]!) 

We’re looking forward to the trip, despite all the recent horror stories about people being detained at US borders. Both of us have friends and family there who we’ve missed. We’re also excited to meet face-to-face with Distribute Aid’s partners and supporters across the country. It’s always invigorating to be in physical proximity with people who share your values and goals, as shown in the photo above from the Pittsburgh stop on our 2024 tour. 

But this year feels different. It’s hard to spout peppy “a better world is just around the corner”-isms when Donald Trump is back in the White House and people are getting snatched off the streets by paramilitaries and masked state agents. 

So much of the progress we’ve made now feels fragile; so many of the battles for human dignity we’d won now have to be fought again. At a moment like this, it seems appropriate to have a lot of mixed emotions and competing thoughts—and we wanted to share a few of ours with you, with the hope that you find some comfort (and maybe even courage) in knowing you’re not alone.

Why bother to try fighting the rising tide of fascism?

The US government is deporting students for opposing genocide, while the UK government is taking the official position that trans women aren’t women. Military spending is skyrocketing at the expense of aid budgets, AI tech is getting even more dystopian, and climate goals are being abandoned at the behest of a handful of fossil fuel companies.

We’d like to make a counter-intuitive suggestion about these awful developments: what if they indicate fragility, rather than strength? 

Political and economic systems that rely on overwhelming violence, massive corruption, and suppression of all dissent… these are unstable systems. They’re vulnerable to a collapse that seems to come out of the blue. 

But in reality, even the most exploitative systems don’t just spontaneously combust because of their own wickedness. Instead, they’re undermined by networks of people who connect with others to push for justice in powerful ways that are invisible until they become obvious, like tree roots bursting through the pavement.

This is why we find the mutual aid model to be so inspiring, and so well-suited for the present moment. Which brings us to our next point:

People are stepping up, even as institutions falter

Like many of you, we’ve been horrified by governments’ systematic defunding of humanitarian aid and social programs. We see where this is leading, and we recognize the importance of sprinting in the opposite direction.

Fortunately, so do a lot of other people. And while we tend to roll our eyes when officials talk about “doing more with less,” we’re here to tell you that such notions aren’t always bullshit.

Mutual aid has exploded in recent years. There are more organizations in more locations, and more people are joining them. People are organizing around an incredible variety of causes: local disaster relief, economic support, immigration aid, LGBTQ rights, and the list goes on.

We’ve seen partners in our own network shift their models and become more capable in the process. Instead of depending on a government grant to support their operations, they’re organizing their own fundraisers and distribution drives. People are leaning on each other; they’re supporting each other.

Remember that trust exercise from school, where you stood on a table with your eyes covered and fell backwards into the arms of your classmates? 

It’s a little terrifying if you’ve never tried it before. But when you realize that they actually did catch you, and you actually can count on them, what a rush! What an incredibly liberating sensation! 

That’s what mutual aid feels like.

Let’s do this, together

We chose this moment to come to the US because we see a powerful opportunity in the midst of all this fear and chaos. We’ve heard some variation of the following from hundreds of people we know:

“I want to do something, but I don’t know what that might be. And I don’t know what would actually make a difference.”

Mutual aid is a good place to start when you just need to feel capable again. And mutual aid at scale—which is Distribute Aid’s specialty—can have the widespread impact that helps you recover your belief in a decent future.

We saw this firsthand in Distribute Aid’s response to the Los Angeles wildfires. 

A week after the fires started, city administrators begged our partners at Mask Bloc LA for extra N95s. Two weeks later Distribute Aid delivered 203,520 masks to mutual aid groups in the city and surrounding farmland. When the smoke cleared, there were still a few extra pallets. We knew that these masks make the biggest difference on Day 1, so we helped spread them out to other Mask Blocs across the west coast. 

Now wherever the next fire hits, people will be ready.

This is what makes Distribute Aid so special to us. It’s local and global, intimate and expansive, joyful and laser-focused on getting the job done: a big ball of contradictions that somehow fit together to create a beautiful whole. Just like a person, and just like a society.

We’re proud to do this work and grateful for the opportunity to do it. We’re also grateful for everyone whose support keeps our mission going—and we hope to see you soon!

Quick hits

Here are a few more things you might find interesting:

• Doctors Without Borders have released a report on the impact of the US’ foreign aid cuts, which they describe as triggering “a global health and humanitarian emergency.”

• These eight stories from Sudan show people’s capacity to create lifesaving mutual aid networks in the face of unspeakable horrors.

• Border crossings into the European Union fell by 31% in early 2025, not because of any improvement in conditions but rather an increasingly brutal crackdown on migrants.

• Emissions from the building sector stopped rising last year, a vital break in the trend since the sector contributes 34% of all global CO2 emissions.

• Here’s how grassroots financing is helping indigenous communities save the Amazon.