The Caravan of Hope, a traveling, legal aid initiative, offered free, LGBTQ+-centered legal services throughout the day at Public Space One on March 23, marking the first of a week of events leading up to Iowa City’s Trans Day of Visibility on March 31.
The van was parked in front of the Public Space One building, with the Caravan of Hope’s team operating both out of the van and the building. Volunteers provided one-on-one legal counsel from the van, while the building was used as a waiting room for clients, with additional resources offered inside.
Iowa City was the 12th of 17 stops on the van’s tour throughout the U.S., beginning with Charlottesville, Virginia, on March 2 and ending in its home of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 31.
The tour marks the first time the Caravan of Hope has stopped in Iowa. A TikTok video that Angela Giampolo, the founder and legal counsel for the van, posted went viral following Trump’s second election to the presidency, and she said that one of the most common states mentioned in the comments was Iowa.
Giampolo founded the Caravan of Hope in 2016, immediately following President Donald Trump’s election, and serves as the consultant for all the legal services it provides. Giampolo has worked as an attorney in Philadelphia for 18 years and specializes in LGBTQ+ counsel.
She said she woke up to emails, phone calls, and messages on the morning after the 2016 presidential election, from people afraid about the future of policies and legal protections for queer people in the U.S., and decided to take action.
“The Caravan of Hope was born then, just this idea of, I’m going to take what I do to rural, underserved, doesn’t even have to be rural, but just more underserved areas, where there’s not queer, competent, LGBTQ+ legal counsel for folks, and bring these services to people who otherwise can’t afford it,” Giampolo said.
In those 10 years since its founding, the Caravan of Hope has traveled across the U.S. to provide pro bono legal services and advice for members of the LGBTQ+ community, always unique to the state they are in.
Services include changes to names and gender marker —documents indicating someone’s legally recognized sex — , estate planning, simple wills, powers of attorney, divorces, and any other legal questions they may have.
The tour and its services come from Giampolo and her team’s own financial contributions, as well as donations.
Giampolo said she saw a high number of Iowans come across the border to her event in Omaha, Nebraska, the day before her stop in Iowa City. She said she chose a “blue-dot” like Iowa City purposefully because she knew people would feel safer to publicly use the resources they provide.
“Folks in those small rural towns are used to coming to Johnson County or Iowa City for resources, because this is where the resources are,” Giampolo said. “So why reinvent the wheel and go somewhere very, very small, and then have folks travel there, when that town of 500 people in that town is already used to going to Iowa City to hang out at a gay bar with friends or to go to a center or to see a show.”
Giampolo’s team also includes a married couple: Jodi Mitnick and Tara Helmick. Mitnick and Helmick were former clients of Giampolo’s as they finished their “pride plans.” These plans are a series of nine documents that Giampolo helps administer through her law firm, Giampolo Law Group. She helps queer couples plan their estate by guiding them through the process of wills, trusts, power of attorney, and health care directives.
Since then, the two have assisted Giampolo with the Caravan of Hope’s services, with Mitnick managing social media, outreach, and event coordination, while Helmick helps with driving the van, set-up, and registration.
“We’ve heard every story imaginable, I cry at least once every stop, hearing everyone’s stories and what they’ve been through,” Mitnick said. “But the most important thing is just seeing the relief in their eyes when they leave and feeling hopeful in a world right now that’s scary for us.”
Helmick said the Caravan of Hope not only provides important legal resources but also emotional support.
“A lot of people are definitely finding relief, I think, in the hope which the Caravan of Hope is here to provide,” Helmick said. “Unfortunately, not everybody has a great family that is accepting and loving. I was very blessed to have the mother that I have, but not everybody, unfortunately, has that. So it’s good for them to have a place to tell their story.”
As the Caravan of Hope continues to travel the U.S. and support local communities, particularly throughout the rest of the Trump administration, the team hopes to expand the services they provide.
Giampolo said she hopes to expand the availability of the truck throughout the day, changing its operations from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. to noon through 8 p.m., making it more accessible throughout the day. She also wants to continue focusing on Iowa as a place to provide these services because of the overwhelming response she has seen, with people traveling all throughout the state to the day’s event.
Giampolo also said the impact, both legally and emotionally, that the Caravan of Hope provides is needed now more than ever in the current political climate.
“Some of the most impactful hope that I’ve given people are people that I couldn’t even help legally,” Giampolo said. “That it was just holding hands, hugging and making eye contact with them, and hearing their story, that they left standing taller, feeling better and lighter in the world, and hugging, and that’s the hope that we provided.”