Pod Insights 5-4 The 2025 5-4 Giving Guide: Don’t Let the Fascists Keep You Down About this episode 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/
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 There's some charity people here to see you, sir.
0:02 Speaker 01 No, send them away. There's a lot of people more deserving than me.
0:08 Speaker 00 Ah, but these people want you to give.
0:11 Speaker 01 Oh.
0:17 Speaker 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.
0:51 Peter 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.
1:01 Michael Liroff? Hey, everybody.
1:02 Peter Shamshiri? And Rhiannon.
1:03 Speaker 04 Hello. Happy holidays.
1:05 Peter Shamshiri? Every week, a new metaphor for the escalating war in Venezuela.
1:10 Michael Liroff? Mm-hmm.
1:11 Peter Shamshiri? The gift that keeps on giving when it comes to metaphors.
1:13 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:14 Michael 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?
1:27 Speaker 04 Well, Trump administration saying, "Hold my beer," you know?
1:30 Michael Liroff? Yeah.
1:31 Peter 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.
1:47 Michael Liroff? Yeah.
1:48 Peter Shamshiri? Like, if you just remove all norms and international laws from the table, isn't that what Trump would do?
1:54 Speaker 04 This is not even that weird. And it's not just Trump mindset. It predates Trump in terms of US policy, so.
2:02 Peter 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?
2:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, many flavors and kinds of interventions.
2:26 Michael Liroff? Mm-hmm.
2:28 Speaker 04 Anyways, hard pivot to the purpose of this episode, giving holiday season.
2:33 Peter Shamshiri? Charity.
2:34 Speaker 04 Supporting charities and fundraisers.
2:36 Peter 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.
2:52 Peter 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.
3:01 Peter Shamshiri? All right, who wants to go first here, folks?
3:03 Michael Liroff? I can go first.
3:05 Speaker 04 Yeah, Michael, you want to start?
3:06 Michael 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
3:50 Michael 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.
4:31 Speaker 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
5:10 Speaker 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
5:54 Speaker 04 follow on Instagram, of course, at Palestinian Youth Movement.
5:59 Peter 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.
6:43 Michael 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
7:23 Michael Liroff? 100 million trees around the world and claim to be on track to plant 1 billion trees by 2030.
7:32 Peter Shamshiri? Now, how many trees are there in the world, Michael?
7:35 Michael Liroff? I don't know.
7:36 Peter Shamshiri? Me neither.
7:38 Speaker 04 Whatever that total is, plus 1 billion, okay?
7:41 Peter Shamshiri? There's about to be more, bitch.
7:42 Michael 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.
7:58 Speaker 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
8:42 Speaker 04 check that out, can check out Wassim Said's book. But a fundraiser, a mutual aid collection that Wassim has started is called
8:52 Speaker 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.
9:37 Speaker 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.
9:52 Michael 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.
10:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's like a GoFundMe or whatever. A lot of people putting fundraisers on there. Chuffed.
10:07 Michael Liroff? Chuffed.
10:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, it is kind of weird. Chuffed.
10:09 Michael Liroff? Chuffed.
10:09 Speaker 04 Check out my chuffed.
10:10 Michael Liroff? That shit's chuffed.
10:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
10:12 Peter Shamshiri? Yeah, I'm chuffed up and ready to go.
10:16 Speaker 04 She's looking chuffed, man.
10:35 Peter 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.
11:05 Speaker 04 And we're here for that and want to support that.
11:07 Peter Shamshiri? Yeah.
11:07 Speaker 04 Just at minimum.
11:08 Peter Shamshiri? As soon as I saw that, I was like, yeah, I'll be promoting them.
11:13 Peter Shamshiri? IWRising.org/donate for Indigenous Women Rising.
11:17 Michael 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,
11:59 Michael 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
12:40 Michael 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.
12:57 Peter Shamshiri? That's a good one. I give a little to Food Bank every year.
13:00 Speaker 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.
13:43 Speaker 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
14:27 Speaker 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.
14:55 Michael Liroff? Very important right now.
14:57 Peter 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.
15:35 Speaker 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,
16:15 Speaker 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.
17:00 Speaker 04 But of course, of course, your money is important. And if what you're able to do is give money, that's amazing.
17:06 Peter 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.
17:31 Michael Liroff? Which is incredible.
17:32 Peter Shamshiri? It makes me feel bad about all the shit I talk about our fans, you know?
17:36 Speaker 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.
18:06 Peter 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.
18:23 Speaker 04 Yes.
18:24 Michael Liroff? Absolutely.
18:24 Peter 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.
18:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, we're taking it back.
18:40 Michael Liroff? Yeah.
18:40 Peter Shamshiri? We're becoming a resist podcast.
18:43 Michael 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.
19:00 Peter Shamshiri? Pretty fucking serious.
19:01 Michael Liroff? That is fucking substantial.
19:03 Peter Shamshiri? If you take a little drive, you're seeing 3,000 trees easy. You know what I mean?
19:08 Michael Liroff? Yeah, exactly. That is an amazing accomplishment. So.
19:11 Speaker 04 Let's fucking go!
19:13 Michael Liroff? So be a part of it. Be a fucking part of it.
19:21 Peter 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.
19:31 Michael Liroff? Yeah, our eulogy for the Voting Rights Act, our pre-Obit, our pre-written Obit for the Voting Rights Act.
19:37 Speaker 04 Rip voting rights in America.
19:39 Peter 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?
19:51 Peter Shamshiri? All right, folks. See you in a few weeks.
19:54 Michael Liroff? Bye.
19:55 Speaker 04 Happy holidays, everybody. Happy New Year. Bye.
20:03 Michael 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.
20:41 Peter 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?
20:56 Speaker 04 It's terrible.
20:57 Peter 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.
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