So. Much. Division. Let's talk about how to change that. Re-engage as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family. Let's set out to change the world. Strike that. Change A World. One person at a time, make someone's life a little better and then do it again tomorrow and the day after that, through kindness. Kindness is a Super-Power that each of us has within us. It is so powerful it has the potential to change not only your life but those around you, too. Let's talk about kindness.
Someone walks out of a federal detention facility into a Minnesota winter with no phone, no coat, and no clear idea what comes next. Then a small crowd of strangers is waiting with hot chocolate, spare coats, cell phones, and rides. That moment captures the question I can’t shake: what makes ordinary people decide that a stranger shouldn’t have to face the cold alone?
I trace how that same spirit spreads beyond one sidewalk into mutual aid networks across Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Greater Minnesota. Accountants, parents, neighbors, and people with regular jobs start doing what they can: delivering groceries, driving to work and school, sharing information, helping with rent, translating, and connecting families to resources. The point isn’t that anyone has the power to solve immigration policy or overhaul a broken system. The point is that kindness starts when we focus on the person right in front of us and ask, “What can I do to help?”
From there, we move into another crisis with a different shape: SNAP benefits ending and families losing essential food assistance. You’ll hear stories of a farmer donating crates of produce, a grocery owner keeping prices stable even when it carries real risk, and food shelves and volunteers scaling up to meet surging demand. It all comes down to one thread: someone noticed, someone cared, and someone used what they had.
If this episode nudges you to show up for a neighbor, subscribe to this podcast, share it with someone who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find these stories. What do you have that someone else might need right now?
You can support the show in a few different ways—by grabbing something from our merch store, picking up a copy of my book, or joining us on Buy Me a Coffee. Every bit of support helps keep the podcast going and also helps us give back to nonprofits doing good in the world.
Intro music: ‘Human First’ by Mike Baker – YouTube Music: https://youtu.be/wRXqkYVarGA | Podcast: Still Here, Still Trying | Website: www.mikebakerhq.com
This is the Kindness Matters Podcast, a space for stories that inspire, challenge, and bring us a little closer together. If you've been looking for a reminder of the good in people, you're in the right place. Because kindness matters, and so do you. It's kindness we are. Imagine walking out of a federal detention facility in the middle of a Minnesota winter. You don't have a phone. You don't have belongings. Just the clothes you went in with. You don't have a warm coat. You may not even know exactly where you're going next. And then you walk outside. And there are people waiting for you. Not government officials. Not people who know you. Just people. People holding coats. People offering hot chocolate. People with cell phones so you can call your family. People with cars who are willing to drive you home. People who have simply decided that whatever has happened to you up to that point, you shouldn't have to walk into the cold alone. Think about that for a minute. What makes somebody stand outside in sub-zero Minnesota weather waiting for a stranger? What makes that person open their car door to somebody they've never met? What makes that person look at another person's difficult circumstances and say, I've got something you need, let me help. That's what I want to talk about today. Not politics, not parties, not arguments, not anything else. Just people, neighbors. And that's what happens when ordinary people decide that somebody else's suffering matters to them. I'm Mike Rathman, and this is the Kindness Matters Podcast.
And today, we're going to talk about something I think every community needs to understand. What does it mean to be there when your neighbor needs you? Let's go back to that scene outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. During Operation Metro Surge, volunteers organized a rapid response welcome station for those people who are being released from ICE detention. And what they encountered was incredibly basic. People needed basic human necessities, warm clothing, a way to contact their families, transportation, something warm to drink. So that is what people provided. Coats, hot chocolate, phones, rides. There is something about that story that really gets to me. Because it would be easy to look at a situation like this and think about the enormous questions surrounding it, right? Questions about immigration, about government policy, questions about law enforcement, questions about politics. And those questions may be important and they have their place, but standing outside that building, there was a much more immediate question. Is this person going to be okay tonight? And that's a different question. And sometimes kindness begins when we stop trying to solve the entire problem and start paying attention to the person standing right in front of us. That volunteer couldn't solve everything. They couldn't control what happened before that person walked through the door. They couldn't determine what would happen tomorrow. But they could give them a coat, they could give them a phone, they could give them a ride, heck, they could give them a cup of hot chocolate. And perhaps most importantly, they could give them the message you are not alone.
And that kind of response didn't stop at one federal building. Within days, informal mutual aid networks began appearing across Minneapolis and St. Paul. People started helping neighbors who were afraid to leave their homes. They drove people to work. They delivered groceries. They helped with rent. They organized neighborhood watch and information networks. They helped people get to school. They helped people get to medical appointments. People were making phone calls, sharing information, connecting people with resources, doing whatever they could. And here's something I find fascinating. A lot of these people weren't professional aid workers. They weren't necessarily nonprofit executives, and they weren't people who had spent their entire careers planning emergency response. They were accountants, technical writers, parents, neighbors, people with regular jobs and regular lives. And suddenly their regular lives included figuring out how to help somebody else get through an extraordinary situation. That's what happens when a community starts responding. One person says, I can help. And somebody else says, so can I. And eventually you have such something much, much bigger than an individual act. You have a network. There's a lesson here that I think is easy to miss. None of these people had everything they needed to solve the problem, right? But they didn't need to. The person with a car didn't need to know anything about immigration. They just needed a car. The person with a phone didn't need to know how to solve somebody else's problems. They just needed a phone. The person with a spare coat didn't need to be able to provide housing. They just needed a coat. That's important. Because I think one of the reasons people don't help normally is that they look at a huge problem and think, I don't know how to fix that. Well, maybe you don't. Neither do I. Most of us don't. But that's not the question. The question is what can I do? Those are different questions. And that's another reason I wanted to talk about these stories, because this wasn't simply a Minneapolis St. Paul story. People in Greater Minnesota stepped up too. In places like Red Wing, Pelican Rapids, Purim, Wade Park, local residents organized to help immigrant neighbors. People drove them to legal assistance. People delivered groceries for them. They helped with rent. They provided transportation, they helped with documents, they provided rides to school and medical appointments, and they organized ways to watch for ice activity. At one community appreciation event, people were asked how many had helped their neighbors during the surge. And people stood, one after another. People who had delivered groceries, people who had driven somebody somewhere, people who had watched out for their neighbors. I love that image. Because sometimes we hear about a crisis and imagine there are really only two sides. But there's another side that doesn't get nearly enough attention. The people who simply decide to help. And once again, the question became what happens when our neighbors need us? This
time, the immediate need was food. As SNAP benefits were set to end on november first, twenty twenty five, families across Minnesota faced the possibility of losing an essential source of food assistance. And again, people looked around and started asking, what can we do? One of those people was Dan Zimmerley, the owner of Cedar Crate Farm. Dan had something that people needed food, carrots, squash, fresh vegetables. So he started donating crates of produce to families who were about to lose their food assistance. I love the simplicity of that. He didn't have the ability to fix the snap problem or end the government shutdown. He couldn't make every family's problem disappear, but he could grow food. And people needed food. So he shared it. That's kindness in its most basic form. I have something you need. Here. Then there's Tim Juba, co owner of Juba's Supervalue in Blue Earth, Minnesota. And this story is different again. Because Tim wasn't simply giving away something he had plenty of. He was running a business, and SnapRenz represented a significant portion of the store's sales. The shutdown affected him too. Yet he committed to keeping prices stable and working with longtime customers who were struggling. He also coordinated with local food shelves. Think about that. There was a very real financial risk involved for Tim. It would have been understandable for a business owner to say, I have to protect my business. And of course he did have to protect his business. That's what business owners have to do. But he also recognized something else. A grocery store in a small community isn't just a business. It's part of the community. And when your neighbors are hurting, sometimes the health of your business and the health of your community are connected. That's a more complicated kind of kindness. Because sometimes kindness costs us something. Then there were the food shelves, the open door pantry in Egan, the food group in New Hope, and volunteers across hundreds of Minnesota food shelves. As snap benefits were threatened, food shelves saw demand surge, lines got longer, more people needed help. More food had to be moved. More boxes had to be sorted, and more volunteers were needed. The food group coordinated the distribution of four million dollars in emergency state funds across three hundred Minnesota food shelves. And suddenly this wasn't just one farmer, wasn't just one grocery store. It was an organized response. Hundreds of food shelves, thousands of volunteers, people moving food from one place to another, people answering phones, people loading trucks and sorting cans, people handling groceries to families. There's something wonderfully unglamorous about this kind of kindness. Nobody's necessarily taking a photograph. Nobody's going viral. Nobody is standing on a stage. They're just doing the work. And sometimes that's what kindness looks like. Not dramatic, not glamorous or just consistent. And then there's Sarah Biswinger.
Her story brings this entire thing back down to one family. Sarah is a caregiver for her adult son. When his sixty six dollar monthly snap benefit disappeared, that wasn't a statistic. It was a budget line. It was food. It was meals. It was another problem for a family already dealing with plenty of challenges. Sarah turned to the Echo Food Shelf in Mankato, and local volunteers responded. People donated. People delivered groceries. People helped the food shelf expand its efforts. And suddenly a national story about a government shutdown became something very personal. One family, one son, one caregiver, sixty six dollars. That's the thing about numbers. Numbers can tell us how big a problem is, but numbers don't experience the problem. People do. And kindness has a way of taking an enormous problem and making it personal. It asks, what does this mean for the person standing in front of me? So
let's step back for a moment, because we've now talked about a federal detention facility, we've talked about immigrant families, we've talked about rural Minnesota, we've talked about Minneapolis and St. Paul, and we've talked about a farm, a grocery store, food shelves, volunteers, a caregiver and her son. All very different circumstances and very different people. And yet, there's a thread connecting all of them. Someone noticed and someone cared. Someone asked, What can I do? And then they did something. That's the thread. Not everyone did the same thing. They couldn't. They didn't have the same resources. But everybody had something. Dan had vegetables, Tim had a grocery store, someone else had a coat. Someone else had a phone and somebody else had a car. Someone had time. Somebody knew how to organize. How to translate, knew where to find help. And here's the important part. They didn't wait until they had everything, right? They used what they had. I think that's worth remembering. We sometimes make kindness sound like some heroic act. We imagine donating thousands of dollars, starting a nonprofit, building a shelter, organizing a massive food drive. And those things are wonderful if you can do them, right? But kindness doesn't have to start there. Maybe you have twenty dollars, or two hours. Maybe you have an old winter coat or a vehicle. Maybe you're good at paperwork. Maybe you're good at listening. Maybe you're the person who always knows who to call. Maybe you're the person who notices when somebody has disappeared from the neighborhood. Maybe you don't have anything tangible to offer, but you can say, how are you doing? And then actually listen to the answer. That counts. There's another lesson in these stories. Kindness
isn't always convenient. Standing out in the Minnesota cold is definitely not convenient. Driving somebody across town isn't convenient. Delivering groceries isn't convenient. Giving up a part of your Saturday, that's not convenient. Taking a financial risk certainly is not convenient. Running a food shelf during an emergency isn't convenient. And yet people did it. That's important because we sometimes confuse kindness with niceness. Niceness is easy. Kindness can be hard. Niceness might be smiling at somebody. Kindness might be giving up your afternoon to help them move. Niceness might be saying, I hope things get better. Kindness might be asking, what can I do to make things a little better? And sometimes the answer is inconvenient. But that's okay. Because being a part of a community means that sometimes we allow somebody else's needs to interrupt our plans. You don't have to agree with someone about everything to help them. You don't have to share their politics. You don't have to share their background. You don't have to share their religion. And you certainly don't have to share their experiences. You don't even have to understand everything they're going through. You can simply recognize this person is hurting and respond to that. That's one of the things I think kindness can do that arguments can't. Arguments ask, are you on my side? Kindness asks, are you okay? Those are very, very different questions. And I think communities become stronger when we learn to ask the second question more often than the first. Maybe, but I think it's something bigger. A neighbor is somebody whose life intersects with yours. Somebody you have the opportunity to help. Somebody whose difficulty you have the opportunity to notice. And maybe being a good neighbor isn't about fixing people's lives. Maybe it's simply about refusing to let people face difficult moments completely alone. That's what those volunteers outside the federal building realized. That's what the mutual aid networks did. That's what Dan did with those crates of vegetables. That's what Tim did with his grocery store. And that's what the food shelf volunteers did. That's what the people did for Sarah and her son. They didn't fix everything. They helped with something. And sometimes something is exactly what a person needs.
So let me ask you a question. Not a political question, not a philosophical question. A very practical one. What do you have? What do you have that somebody else might need? Do you have a little extra food? Do you have an old coat? Do you have a car? Do you have an hour? Do you have money? Do you have a skill? Do you have the ability to listen? Do you have a neighbor who could use a little help? And here's the important part. Don't ask what can I do to solve this. Ask what can I do to help this person? Because you may never solve the entire problem. You don't have to. You just have to make somebody's next hour a little easier. I keep coming back to that image of a person walking out uh into the Minnesota cold. Maybe scared, probably. Maybe confused, maybe exhausted. Maybe not knowing what comes next. And somebody is standing there with a coat. Or hot chocolate. Somebody has a phone. Somebody has a car. And just for that moment, that person who walked out isn't alone. That's what I think community really means. It's not a collection of people who happen to live in the same place. It's a collection of people who decide what happens to their neighbors that matters. During Operation Metro Surge, people showed up. During the government shutdown, people showed up. And I suspect that if we look closely enough, we'll find that that is happening all around us every single day. A neighbor mowing somebody else's lawn. A teacher buying school supplies for a student. A person dropping groceries at a friend's store because they know they can't get out. Somebody sitting with a grieving family. A stranger paying for somebody's coffee. A volunteer spending Saturday morning sorting food. None of these things solve every single problem. But that's not what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to remind us that we don't have to face every problem alone. So maybe that's the question I want to leave you with this week. Not how can I change the world? That's a pretty big question. Instead, who around me might need a neighbor? And then ask, what do I have that might help? Maybe you have a coat. Maybe you have a car. Maybe you have a few vegetables. Maybe you have an hour. Maybe you have a phone. Maybe you have nothing more than the willingness to knock on a door and say, How are you doing? Whatever it is, use it. Because you don't have to fix everything. You don't have to save everyone. You don't even have to know exactly what to do. Sometimes you just have to show up. Sometimes kindness is a coat. Sometimes it's a crate of carrots. Sometimes it's a ride. Maybe a bag of groceries. A phone call. And sometimes it's simply looking out at another human being and saying, You're not alone. We've got you. I'm Mike Rathbun, and this has been the Kindness Matters Podcast. This
episode is made possible by the generous support of people like Sue Jackson, Dave Lewis, and John Teblin. I appreciate you so much for tuning into this episode of the Kindness Matters podcast. If you found any value in this episode, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with a friend or a family member or a co-worker. Or took a moment to leave a comment. Or a review. A review would be good too. It's one of the best ways to help other people discover the show. If you'd like to support the show like Sue, Don and Dave. We have both tiered and one-time support options available. And on Buy Me a Coffee as well as a Merch Shop. You'll find both links waiting for you in the show notes. And if supporting financially isn't possible right now, that's completely okay. Times are tough. I get that. The most meaningful way that you can support the show is by doing one small act of random timeless each day. And it truly does make a difference. And we will be back again next week as a brand new episode. But until then, remember, timeless matters. And so do you.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
