[Note: In 2016, I wrote a post The Kindness of Strangers where I shared stories of strangers who had assisted me at various critical moments—not life-or-death scenarios, fortunately—going out of their way to lend a much-appreciated helping hand. This month’s post includes several new stories in that same vein, but it also contains a tale of strangers stepping up on a larger scale. People banding together to help entire communities of other people who are under attack in this, American democracy’s darkest hour.]   

The morning of the March 28 No Kings protest dawned bright in my little corner of the world, but one step outside proved all that glitters is not warm! It’s rare you’ll catch me quoting AI, but they nailed it here: Given the wind speeds and temperatures, the wind chill factor during this period made it feel noticeably colder than the actual air temperature, likely in the teens to low 20s. It. Was. Frigid! But democracy must be saved, so Ed and I layered up and walked down to the main intersection of town where the crowds already stretched east to west and north to south as far as the eye could see, with more arriving every minute.

As the first 1,000 or so folks to make the scene had taken up spots on the sunny side of the street, the organizers now directed us to line its shady opposite. To be sure, ours was a good spot, right at the heart of the action. And our fellow protestors were a pleasure to chat with. We whipped up the passing cars to honk their support, doing the call-and-response chants that are always a morale booster:

Tell me what democracy looks like! THIS is what democracy looks like!

Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to GO!

No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here!

The people united will never be defeated!

BUT, we were on the shady side of the street and after forty-five minutes, I seriously began to worry about my hands which were now numb. Staying the duration, I feared, might mean frostbite with its risk of permanent nerve damage. So, I handed Ed my sign and went into the candy store right behind us to warm up for a bit. I was talking to the man behind the counter about the extreme cold and trying to flex my fingers when another customer approached me. “Here,” she said, “Use this.” It was a hand warmer, one of those little heat packs you can slip inside a glove. In fact, she had been wearing it in her glove.

I’d heard about these wonder-warmers from a neighbor last October but had never tried one. Well, let me tell you, they are a wonder. In under ten minutes, my hands were completely restored to normal. I returned the pack and thanked the woman profusely. She just nodded, smiled and left. I remained another five minutes, then went back to the curb and finished the last half hour of the rally, so grateful to this stranger, this fellow human being for her awesome kindness. Indeed, the people united will never be defeated.    

Flying into the Unknown

I love to travel, but flying has always been a mixed bag for me. Great when it goes well: the plane leaves on time, your luggage arrives when you do, and they throw in a free G&T or two on the flight. But when it doesn’t go so well…

We like to visit Barbados in the winter. Put away the holiday decorations, ring in the New Year, and get out from under the snow for a bit. The only teensy-weensy, tiny catch is that we usually have to rise at 2:30 in the morning to shower, dress, get to the airport and deal with all that entails. I would like to mention here I am NOT an early riser. I mean I do get up at 8:00 a.m. at home, but it has to be an emergency for me to schedule an appointment before 10:00, so the middle-of-the-night rise-and-shine time to make a Barbados flight is a testament to how much I love the place and its people. 

One of those people, Tyrone, is a cab driver. We happened to get him randomly in the airport queue a year or so before the trip I’m recounting here. We had enjoyed talking to him on the ride to our condo, and so called him that same trip to take us to Harrison’s Cave—an amazing limestone cave system formed over thousands of years that reveals the island’s geological origins. More pleasant getting-to-know-you chat and relaxed laughs on the ride to and from. Which led to Ed texting him our arrival time on this trip: 2:00 p.m. Could he pick us up? Great, Tyrone responded. See you then. If only…

Our nine a.m. flight was canceled. As was an 11:00 a.m. and a 2:30 p.m. flight. The first plane had some sort of mechanical problem, discovered after everyone was boarded, so we had to unload all the carry-on luggage and trot back to the terminal, where the next two flights were also cancelled because the Barbados airport could not handle the jumbo planes of the later flights, and the airline didn’t have any other plane type available at those times.

Through all this, Ed kept Tyrone updated. Finally, at 6:30 that evening, a plane that would work was free! We, the exhausted airport refugees, up since the middle of the night, stranded in the vast (and mind-numbingly boring) wasteland of an airport with nothing to do for twelve…long…hours, stumbled onto the plane.

Ed had sent a final text to Tyrone before we left Boston but we hadn’t yet heard back from him and now we were on airplane mode and there was no reason to expect someone who had been working all day, to drive out to the airport to meet us in the middle of the night.

But he did. Meet us. When we exited the Barbados airport nearly an hour past midnight, the taxi queue was empty, but Tyrone was there. In that moment, he became more than a friendly cabbie. He became a friend. A man with a good heart. A person we could trust.   

Communities Under Siege

What I’ve described above are acts of kindness performed by one person in the aid of another, but as anti-democratic forces increasingly engulf our country, the kindness of strangers has mushroomed to include people banding together to protect and aid whole communities under attack, as happened this past December when Trump and his Gestapo-like henchmen, ICE, surged into Minneapolis and began rounding up immigrants mercilessly. Almost 4,000 immigrants were arrested, more than half of them simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Termed “collateral” arrests, these people were not themselves targets of ICE, but happened to be noted by ICE agents while they were pursuing someone else. Noticed for having the “wrong” skin tone, or a name like Jorge or Lucia.   

While the White House bragged that the people ICE arrested in Minnesota were “dangerous criminal illegal aliens…murderers, rapists, gang members, and terrorists,” a quick fact check of the actual statistics paints a very different picture:

Data from early 2026 shows that 70.8% to 74.2% of people detained by ICE had no criminal convictions. Zip. Nada.

Of the 25% to 30% arrested who have a record, most of their offenses amounted to no more than a traffic violation. So you get ripped from your home, your family and community, carted off to a detention center, and possibly booted out of the country for switching lanes without signaling or having a broken taillight.

And the percentage of those arrested who actually have committed a violent crime? Around five percent. That’s it. That’s what all the suffering comes down to. That’s what Renee Good and Alex Pretti had to die for. That’s why children were ripped from their families and parents were deported, leaving their kids orphans. In this merciless, racist witch hunt, being in the wrong place at the wrong time can totally wreck your life.

Kindness Gets Organized

In Minneapolis, the number of “strangers” prepared to extend kindness mushroomed as ICE’s presence in their city stretched on and on, and their innocent neighbors were rounded up, imprisoned, deported. Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a grassroots organization, was born to both protect and aid immigrants—accompanying them to medical and legal appointments, bringing them groceries, helping them make rent. Founded by a group of friends, the organization quickly blossomed. By January, it had over 500 members, with another 2,000 applicants awaiting vetting.  

Across the country, in Hillsboro, Oregon, a city in the state’s most diverse county, ICE was doing what they do best. Instilling terror. Arresting people randomly. Breaking up families. Ripping apart lives. Fear engulfed the city. School attendance dropped. People were terrified to leave their homes. Terrified to stay in their homes. It was an unsustainable situation. An intolerable stress load. In other words, a moment that cried out for the kindness of strangers.

And they stepped up. Some forty people from Hillsboro and its neighboring towns joined together and made it their mission to:

1) Track ICE’s movements and alerting people to their whereabouts each day. Outside the elementary school? At the steps to the courthouse? In a neighborhood on the north side? In the parking lot of a shopping mall?

2) Deliver food and other necessities to people too scared to leave home. Or too broke to buy even the basics. Perhaps the family’s primary breadwinner had been detained or shipped off to god-knows-where.     

In both Minneapolis and Hillsboro, ICE asked, indeed expected “real Americans” to turn in their immigrant neighbors. Those who have no scruples, no heart, imagine everyone else to be the same, but the good people of these cities and many others—Chicago, Denver, New York, among them—have come together to help their neighbors. Alert them to danger. Make sure they are housed, fed, and able to get whatever medical care they need.

But the greatest gift these neighborhood orgs deliver is the assurance: You are not alone. We are with you.

It was the great 20^th century playwright, Tennessee Williams who wrote the famous line “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” for his heroine Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire. His words speak a truth far beyond any one place or time, beyond any one person or group of people. A truth that has never been more critical in my lifetime than it is today. We must recognize our common humanity and stand by one another. We are ALL depending on each other.