Tools, stories, and impact from another year fighting for justice
Letter from the ICAAD Team
Dear friends,
There is no denying that 2025 has been difficult. We’ve watched structures that we have long relied on become unreliable. We’ve seen power consolidate in ways that feel frightening. We have watched inflammation and breakdown in our social systems reach heights few of us have experienced in our lifetimes. And yet, through our work, we have been honored to watch humanity do what we always do when systems fail: we learn, we collect, and we commit ourselves to designing new tools to support ourselves and our communities’ survival.
At the same time, we are living through an age of extraordinary technological acceleration. New forms of knowledge-sharing, community infrastructure, and creative practice are emerging at a pace few could have imagined even a decade ago. Much of this innovation is being driven not by institutions, but by people—communities experimenting, organizing, and building systems that reflect their values. It’s a reminder that even in moments of instability, our future is still shaped by human intention and ingenuity. We are not passengers in this moment. We still have agency in steering toward a world that is more just, more resilient, and more humane.
At ICAAD, our working definition of power is a simple equation:
Power = Influence – Risk
It’s about the capacity to act, ability to effect change, and the undeniable risks we face in that process.
Our mission is to redistribute power and re-write unjust systems by equipping those most harmed by systemic inequity with the tools to drive systemic change – building their capacity to forge their own solutions and looking at creative ways for us to mitigate, spread, and carry the risk. This report demonstrates what that has looked like in practice.
Needless to say, the work ahead is uncertain. But if there’s one thing that we know from human history, it’s that communities facing upheaval have always found ways to share what sustains them, and to pass tools hand-to-hand across impossible conditions. Seeds. Stories. Rights. Frameworks. Songs.
We’re honored to be part of that lineage.
With gratitude,
The ICAAD Team
Hansdeep Singh, Jaspreet K. Singh, Jyoti Diwan, Erin Thomas & Adam Rohe