Background Statement
As with most innovative ideas for mutual aid, TCP started on Tinder. We consistently encountered people, usually trans people, who had just arrived in town and immediately gotten on dating sites to try to make connections. We began to adhoc trade contacts depending on what the person was looking for.
However, it became clear what we weren’t doing enough. We didn’t have the reach outside of our community and lacked the time to expand our efforts. More pressingly, we constantly heard from new arrivals the terrifying ordeal that was trying to move. Due to hostile legislation and deteriorating culture, these peers had to get out of Texas, Florida, Utah etc in a hurry. This hasty migration led to people buying one-way tickets to DIA with no plan past that, driving to Colorado and sleeping in their car and raising money through go fund me, mutual aid requests on Instagram, and sex work. These traumatic experiences, as well as the rapidly worsening climate of the country for queer people, has prompted the transition of TCP from a grassroots, DIY effort to a legitimized nonprofit entity while maintaining the network of mutual aid.
This structure allows us to maintain the flexibility and community building that multimillion dollar Nonprofits are not capable nor often willing to do. Our human centric (vs corporation centric) approach allows us to better address the complexities of a cross-country move with limited bureaucracy.