The 2025 5-4 Giving Guide: Don’t Let the Fascists Keep You Down

https://immigrationequality.org/ bit.ly/donatepym2025 http://bit.ly/donatepym2025 https://www.palestinianyouthmovement.com/ https://brigidalliance.org/donate-in-2025/ https://trees.org/ https://chuffed.org/project/158294-for-those-who-have-no-one-to-campaign-for-them https://1804books.com/products/witness-to-the-hellfire-of-genocide https://www.iwrising.org/donate https://give.foodbanknyc.org/ tinyurl.com/freeleqaafund http://tinyurl.com/freeleqaafund https://wandaalstonfoundation.org/ If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To get exclusive Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support. 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Andrew Parsons. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com http://fivefourpod.com Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On Twitter, find Peter @The_Law_Boy and Rhiannon @AywaRhiannon. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There's some charity people here to see you, sir.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  No, send them away. There's a lot of people more deserving than me.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Ah, but these people want you to give.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this week's episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are back with their annual tradition, the Five Four Giving Guide. If you're feeling hopeless about this past year and nervous about what's to come, the hosts are here to tell you about some organizations that are trying to make things better. And if you can't do either, at the very least, keep listening to this show and telling your friends about it. This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

• 0:51Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have blockaded our civil rights, like Trump blockading Venezuelan waters. I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael.

• 1:01Michael Liroff?

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:02Peter Shamshiri?

  And Rhiannon.

• 1:03Speaker 04

  Hello. Happy holidays.

• 1:05Peter Shamshiri?

  Every week, a new metaphor for the escalating war in Venezuela.

• 1:10Michael Liroff?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11Peter Shamshiri?

  The gift that keeps on giving when it comes to metaphors.

• 1:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14Michael Liroff?

  Right. Venezuela is like a big country. It's got 30 million people. I don't think we can accomplish regime change there without, like, a full-scale war, you know?

• 1:27Speaker 04

  Well, Trump administration saying, "Hold my beer," you know?

• 1:30Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 1:31Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. My actual guess as to what Trump and his folks are thinking about is that they're just going to send the message into Venezuela, "We're going to drone-strike you unless you leave." That, I think, is what is actually going to happen. They're going to start with assassination as their bargaining chip.

• 1:47Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 1:48Peter Shamshiri?

  Like, if you just remove all norms and international laws from the table, isn't that what Trump would do?

• 1:54Speaker 04

  This is not even that weird. And it's not just Trump mindset. It predates Trump in terms of US policy, so.

• 2:02Peter Shamshiri?

  It does, but we used to not do the assassination until the end. You do an intervention first, and then you murder the leader in something that looks like a little more democratic, right? Either you do, like, a sort of weird Saddam-like trial, where you're like, "Is this a trial? What is this?" Or the people rise up, like Gaddafi, right?

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, many flavors and kinds of interventions.

• 2:26Michael Liroff?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Anyways, hard pivot to the purpose of this episode, giving holiday season.

• 2:33Peter Shamshiri?

  Charity.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  Supporting charities and fundraisers.

• 2:36Peter Shamshiri?

  Usually, we would each provide three charities that you can give your money to. This year, we briefly thought about consolidating into one, the Luigi Mangione Defense Fund.

• 2:52Peter Shamshiri?

  We've been told that he's doing fine, that things are actually going well for him from a representation perspective. And so we pivoted back into our usual format.

• 3:01Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, who wants to go first here, folks?

• 3:03Michael Liroff?

  I can go first.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, Michael, you want to start?

• 3:06Michael Liroff?

  Sure. So my first charity is about immigration. It's called Immigration Equality. It's been around for a long time, but it's not just an immigrant focused charity. It's specifically a charity directed towards LGBTQ and HIV positive immigrants and asylum seekers. And they connect those people with pro bono attorneys. They advocate for changes in laws and regulations. They do impact litigation. They've been around for a while, and this is, I think, an important cause right now. Obviously, we've seen already

• 3:50Michael Liroff?

  court cases and administration moves to limit the access of LGBTQ people to American immigration. And obviously, these are two intersecting areas of draconian crackdown right now. And this is a great organization. They have a stellar, long history of very good work, of doing a lot with their money, have a big independent board, all the hallmarks of a great charity. It's called Immigration Equality. Check them out. We'll have a link to their site in the show notes, as we will with the rest of the charities.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  I can go next. The first organization that I want to talk about is one that listeners of Five4 have heard me talk about before. This is the PYM, the Palestinian Youth Movement. I am helping fundraise for the PYM this month and over the holiday season. So if y'all don't know, the PYM is a grassroots, independent movement of young Palestinian people in the far diaspora, organizing in our communities to end genocide, for liberation, organizing against ICE, et cetera, et cetera. If you have marched and mobilized along with hundreds of thousands of other people over the past two years in North America, if you

• 5:10Speaker 04

  have attended a teach-in or a community discussion about Palestine, if you've learned anything from the PYM's Instagram, which has almost a million followers, then you know the importance of Palestinian organizing and you can support Palestinian organizing continuing in the United States. In 2026, we are organizing for a People's Arms embargo against Israel and the end of the Israel lobby's influence in our politics. So you can check out the PYM. You can donate. There's a Bitly link. That's bit.ly/donatepym2025. And we'll also have that link in the show notes. That's Palestinian Youth Movement. And you can also

• 5:54Speaker 04

  follow on Instagram, of course, at Palestinian Youth Movement.

• 5:59Peter Shamshiri?

  All right. My first charity, the Bridget Alliance. The Bridget Alliance provides practical support for abortion care. So not just funds for abortion, but travel, lodging, food, childcare, especially for people who live in states where abortion is illegal. These things are essential, right? There are a lot of people across the country in red states, especially who lack not only funds for abortion, but who need assistance with logistics. And the Bridget Alliance aims to sort of provide that kind of holistic support. So bridgetalliance.org/donate. Bridget is B-R-I-G-I-D. Bridgetalliance.org/donate. We'll have that in the show notes, of course.

• 6:43Michael Liroff?

  Cool. So back to me. Longtime listeners who pay attention to our giving episode will know that I do like to put in something that is about animals or the environment in here. So this year I want to highlight a charity called Trees for the Future. It's pretty cool. It's an organization that works with farmers to revitalize land, help with sustainable land practices, planting trees, rehabilitating soil, and helping with food production. It's a pretty cool thing. They have planted over

• 7:23Michael Liroff?

  100 million trees around the world and claim to be on track to plant 1 billion trees by 2030.

• 7:32Peter Shamshiri?

  Now, how many trees are there in the world, Michael?

• 7:35Michael Liroff?

  I don't know.

• 7:36Peter Shamshiri?

  Me neither.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Whatever that total is, plus 1 billion, okay?

• 7:41Peter Shamshiri?

  There's about to be more, bitch.

• 7:42Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, thanks to this org. Treating our planet well is good on its own, but doing it in ways that make growing food easier and more sustainable is great. Again, Trees for the Future, trees.org. Check it out.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Nice website there. Okay, my second fundraiser that I want to point people to, more in the vein of mutual aid. So there's a man, a PhD student in Gaza right now. His name is Wassim Said. Wassim Said has been displaced multiple times over the course of the genocide and really sort of harrowingly and importantly, wrote about his experiences over the course of the genocide, was basically keeping a journal over the course of his displacements and what he was witnessing and experiencing. Those journal entries have been turned into a book that has just recently been published in English. That book is called Witness to the Hellfire of Genocide. It was just published by 1804 Books. So you can

• 8:42Speaker 04

  check that out, can check out Wassim Said's book. But a fundraiser, a mutual aid collection that Wassim has started is called

• 8:52Speaker 04

  For those who have no one to campaign for them. So I'm sure our listeners have seen families in Gaza or individuals in Gaza who start GoFundMes or other fundraisers so that they can get support, which is awesome. But there are many, many, many people in Gaza who haven't had internet or language access to be able to create a GoFundMe for themselves that reaches Western audiences, right? So Wasim Said, having just published this book, is using his platform to raise money for those in his community in Gaza who don't have that kind of access. He's raising collective mutual aid funds for them. This is a Chuffed campaign, if people know about the charity website Chuffed.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  The link is a little bit long. Again, we'll put it in the show notes, but if you do go to chuffed.org, you can search Wasim Said, W A S I M S A I D, and the campaign is called For Those Who Have No One to Campaign for Them.

• 9:52Michael Liroff?

  When you said this is a Chuffed campaign, that sounds like some Gen Z slang, like chookey or something to me. This is such a Chuffed campaign.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like a GoFundMe or whatever. A lot of people putting fundraisers on there. Chuffed.

• 10:07Michael Liroff?

  Chuffed.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is kind of weird. Chuffed.

• 10:09Michael Liroff?

  Chuffed.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Check out my chuffed.

• 10:10Michael Liroff?

  That shit's chuffed.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:12Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, I'm chuffed up and ready to go.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  She's looking chuffed, man.

• 10:35Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, my next couple I actually got from folks in our Slack who had some good recommendations. Indigenous Women Rising provides reproductive health education and resources to Indigenous women. That includes abortion funding. It also includes resources for survivors of sexual assault, which Indigenous women experience at extremely high rates, some of the highest in the country. And the organization posts things like fuck Columbus on social media.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  And we're here for that and want to support that.

• 11:07Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Just at minimum.

• 11:08Peter Shamshiri?

  As soon as I saw that, I was like, yeah, I'll be promoting them.

• 11:13Peter Shamshiri?

  IWRising.org/donate for Indigenous Women Rising.

• 11:17Michael Liroff?

  All right. So my last organization is, I recently moved back to New York City and is a New York-based organization called Food Bank for NYC. And their website's foodbanknyc.org. Very cool charity. They do all sorts of food-related things, distribution, food rescue that would otherwise be in the trash, education, advocacy. But what I really like about it is that it's also a volunteer platform. They work with a lot of groups in New York. And so you can go to their website. Obviously, you can donate. And if you have the free cash, you should,

• 11:59Michael Liroff?

  because there are a lot of hungry people in New York. But if you're here, you can register on their website. And once you register, you can put in your zip and go to their little volunteer calendar and see, you know, like five opportunities to volunteer a day, every day in your zip or near your zip code, senior centers, civic communities, whatever. Click on it, you know, some will be grayed out because it'll tell you how many slots there are, what the thing looks like. And you just sign up, you click sign up, and then you can go volunteer. It makes it super easy. It's really cool, a really cool thing. And

• 12:40Michael Liroff?

  You know, if you want to volunteer, it lowers the barriers to that so much. It makes it so easy to find, find opportunities and sign up for them. So check it out. Again, the website is foodbanknyc.org.

• 12:57Peter Shamshiri?

  That's a good one. I give a little to Food Bank every year.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  That's awesome. That's so cool that they do that. Okay, last one for me, folks. Everybody listening to this knows about Leqaa Cordia, a Palestinian woman who is currently in ICE detention. A few weeks ago, at this point, we had an episode about Leqaa, an interview with her attorneys. She is in ICE detention in a Texas immigration detention center 1,500 miles away from her house in New Jersey. Her only offense, the only thing that she has done, right, is raising her voice after losing many extended family members in Gaza, is attending a protest in New York City.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  That made her the target of ICE, the Trump administration, and she is still in detention. We're now closing in on, I think, over 10 months. Instead of being with her family right now during what has been, you know, just an unbelievable, indescribable past two years, Leqaa is in ICE detention. She's sleeping on concrete floors. She's denied many of her religious rights and she is being punished, straight up, again, for being Palestinian. So you can support Leqaa Cordia by supporting her legal fund. You heard from some of the amazing attorneys that represent her. These are legal organizations, nonprofits, that are doing incredible work in the fight

• 14:27Speaker 04

  against ICE and the fight against the Trump administration right now. You can support Leqaa Cordia's legal fund, tinyurl.com/freeleqafund. Leqaa is spelled L-E-Q-A-A. Free Leqaa Fund. And so, check that out if you can to support Leqaa Cordia and the legal fight right now against ICE and these criminal deportations.

• 14:55Michael Liroff?

  Very important right now.

• 14:57Peter Shamshiri?

  All right. My last charity, another recommendation from our Slack, the Wanda Alston Foundation in Washington DC. They provide support services to at-risk homeless LGBT youth in DC. They have a housing program that includes assistance in creating pathways out of homelessness. They provide counseling and mental health services. Just a sort of well-rounded, boots-on-the-ground organization. WandaAlstonFoundation.org, W A N D A A L S T O N.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  I want to say something because I'm so like inspired. You know, we don't talk about like which charities each one of us is like choosing before we just bring them to this recording session. But I'm so inspired and feel like everything we said is so worthy of people's support. Absolutely. I hope that people hear this and like I'm still thinking, Michael, about like Food Bank NYC or whatever. And, and how going to their website, you have all these opportunities to volunteer, you know? Like, a lot of these organizations are called charities. I know that we say the word charity a lot, you know, in this episode, right? And that's fine. It's not inaccurate. But, you know, when you're supporting with your money, these really worthy, worthy causes,

• 16:15Speaker 04

  I want listeners to like really think about it as participation in something, not just that you're throwing money at a problem, right? But we've all chosen fundraisers, organizations, charities that are doing like really, really meaningful, necessary work that affects people's material realities, right? So if you're able to give some money, right? Think about that as your participation and maybe one step in a broad spectrum of things that you do that supports social justice, that supports the fight against authoritarianism, oppression, colonization, environmental destruction, what have you. And so look for opportunities to also be participatory in other ways.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  But of course, of course, your money is important. And if what you're able to do is give money, that's amazing.

• 17:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. And every year. We hear from some of these organizations after the fact saying you guys mentioning us on the show changed our fiscal year, you know, or like boosted our numbers during the holiday season. So you guys have made a significant difference for a lot of these organizations, you know, this isn't drop in the bucket stuff or anything. We're getting messages like couldn't believe the amount of support we got.

• 17:31Michael Liroff?

  Which is incredible.

• 17:32Peter Shamshiri?

  It makes me feel bad about all the shit I talk about our fans, you know?

• 17:36Speaker 04

  You guys really come through and not to get too woo woo about it, right? But like a big theme of this year, a big theme of Trump coming back into office, right? Is like, we need strong communities. We need to build strong communities, right? And so whether you're supporting an organization that is doing community organizing or mutual aid or, you know, thinking about our neighbors, thinking about environmental repair and protection, this is community defense. This is strengthening our communities.

• 18:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, I always get irritated that the term resist and resistance got like co-opted during Trump one because like, you know, there is a degree to which this sort of community participation operates as like friction for reactionary.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 18:24Michael Liroff?

  Absolutely.

• 18:24Peter Shamshiri?

  Right? And like, what is that if not resistance, right? And it's such a bummer that it got turned into such a hollow slogan because it is a useful way to think about stuff like this at a time when the government is almost expressly fascist.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, we're taking it back.

• 18:40Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Peter Shamshiri?

  We're becoming a resist podcast.

• 18:43Michael Liroff?

  We're imbuing it with life again. I think those are great notes to end on. I did want to mention, I looked it up, there are three trillion trees in the world, which means if this organization does hit the one billion number, that means one out of every 3,000 trees will have been planted in the world by then.

• 19:00Peter Shamshiri?

  Pretty fucking serious.

• 19:01Michael Liroff?

  That is fucking substantial.

• 19:03Peter Shamshiri?

  If you take a little drive, you're seeing 3,000 trees easy. You know what I mean?

• 19:08Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, exactly. That is an amazing accomplishment. So.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Let's fucking go!

• 19:13Michael Liroff?

  So be a part of it. Be a fucking part of it.

• 19:21Peter Shamshiri?

  As always, we wish a pleasant holiday season to all of our listeners. And we'll be back in the new year with a couple of episodes about the Voting Rights Act, which will be the last you'll ever hear about it.

• 19:31Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, our eulogy for the Voting Rights Act, our pre-Obit, our pre-written Obit for the Voting Rights Act.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  Rip voting rights in America.

• 19:39Peter Shamshiri?

  Remember when we did the rise and fall of Roe v. Wade, six months before Roe v. Wade was overturned? Let's just say we have a gift, all right?

• 19:51Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, folks. See you in a few weeks.

• 19:54Michael Liroff?

  Bye.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Happy holidays, everybody. Happy New Year. Bye.

• 20:03Michael Liroff?

  Five to Four is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Andrew Parsons. Leon Nafok provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. If you're not a Patreon member, you're not hearing every episode. To get exclusive Patreon-only episodes, ad-free episodes, discounts on merch, access to our Slack community, and more, join at patreon.com/54pod.

• 20:41Peter Shamshiri?

  People on the right, there's something about the way that their brains work that makes like proper, not just skincare, but like fashion, and like it's outside of the realm of their brains. You know what I mean?

• 20:56Speaker 04

  It's terrible.

• 20:57Peter Shamshiri?

  So few of them can dress. And the ones that like put thought into dressing, it ends up being preposterous. Like you end up doing a Jordan Peterson or something. It's like, what the fuck is going on? Why are you doing that? Why can't their brains comprehend looking nice? I don't understand.