SAVE THE DISTROMOBILE! & our drivers from financial ruin

GET OUR DISTROMOBILE BACK ON THE ROAD! Two extremely dedicated, extremely sexy volunteers have been inundated by the city with ¡$1000's! in hidden fines accrued while doing mutual aid work. Please share thanks for Mina and Robert, without whom distro wouldn't exist!

Ferrying dozens of folding tables, bins of distro supplies, hundreds of gallons of soup cooked up in Flatbush, and crates of rescued groceries from Queens into the East Village for our weekly Saturday distro is a feat only made possible thanks to a couple of very dedicated driver-volunteers, who put their cars on the line to make it all happen. Save for the occasional parking ticket, flat tire, and soup-bucket blowout, we've been lucky enough that everything has gone smoothly. UNTIL NOW!

Our main volunteer car AKA the distromobile, responsible for bringing the bulk of our soup & supplies in and out of Brooklyn and to distro nearly every Saturday morning for the past year, is driven by volunteer Robert (partner of volunteer Mina). Last week, Robert was pulled over exiting the Hugh L Carey tunnel, where he was shocked to find out he owed $14,000 in toll violations from several months of unpaid bridge and tunnel tolls. Apparently, thanks to a faulty out-of-state toll transponder, all those distro-related crossings in and out of Manhattan over the last year weren't being paid automatically as other tolls were, and bills sent by the city tolling authority through the mail went to his elderly mother's address. While the tolls themselves are only around ~$300, compounding late fees of $50+ per unpaid toll added up to an insane sum, and has caused the car to be barred from bridges and tunnels, have its registration suspended, and has earned Robert a ticket in traffic court.

After several hours on the phone with three different city and state agencies, we were able to get the toll authority & DMV to reduce the violations by half, and lift the suspension, but only if we pay off the initial $300 in tolls and can put up a large initial payment of $1800 towards the violations in the next 30 days before going on a payment plan for the remaining ~$5000. Robert can pay the tolls and is willing to sign up for the payment plan, but lives paycheck-to-paycheck and is in no financial position to cover the $1800 up-front payment, and will be forced to sell the distromobile to cover this bill if we can't find another solution.

HERE'S OUR ASK: we need $1800 to make the initial payment and save the distromobile, getting it unsuspended & back on the road immediately! Any extra we can raise will go to helping pay the rest of the violations & Roberts' fees & fines in traffic court, which amount to many thousands.

This has been a bureaucratic twilight zone nightmare for Robert & for distro at large. Without access to the distromobile, we are scrambling to get our normal supplies transported and have had to resort to expensive emergency Ubers. It feels ridiculous to throw thousands of dollars at the city when we could be spending it on food and goods, but having reliable access to a car has made so much of distro possible, and losing the distromobile would radically impact our ability to feed hundreds of people every week.

We have always been able to depend on our community in hard times to make sure we can get the work done-- thank you for always supporting us & the work we do at Tompkins Distro. We don't want Robert to suffer for being our dedicated volunteer driver since day one. If you can spare a dollar to get us out of this mess, we deeply appreciate it.