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Americans are experiencing numerous interacting perils today, including climate change and rising inequality.

As problems arise, neighbors and strangers have been supporting each other and setting up mutual aid networks.

Forming community-led resilience networks nationwide could help us address the overlapping crises we face.

Recently, I met with a group near Asheville, North Carolina, and asked them how residents dealt with the prolific damage caused by Hurricane Helene that hammered their area in 2024. They all said neighbors—and strangers—helped one another.

Neighbors helping people they know and don't know is always key to surviving calamities and activating positive solutions. With compounding adversities now happening everywhere, building robust social support networks and mutual aid groups in every neighborhood and community should be a top priority. This requires forming local resilience networks nationwide.

The Biggest Challenges Facing Americans Today

Americans today are being impacted by multiple accumulating perils. There are too many to list here, so I am going to focus on just three of the most pressing.

1. Violence by the Federal Government

One hazard that many people are experiencing, at least in certain communities, is aggression and violence by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, which has traumatized immigrants and countless others where it occurs. Yet when ICE appears, what has often kept people safe is neighbors helping........

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