Nearly three weeks ago, a 15-year-old girl named Genesis Lemus was hurt in a confrontation with police officers as she sold plantain chips and atole de elote on a Columbia Heights sidewalk with her younger brother nearby. The incident was caught on video, which showed the teenager on the ground, surrounded by officers and yelling that her knee was hurt.

Since then, a group of activists in the District have been escalating calls for the city to enact new protections for street vendors. Genesis and her mother Ana Lemus have become an integral part of that activism in D.C. and—as of recently—beyond.

Last Thursday, the mother and daughter traveled to New York to meet up with a woman whose own video confrontation with police went viral on Twitter. In early November, Elsa, a churro vendor in New York City, was selling her wares inside the Broadway Junction station in Brooklyn when she was confronted by several police officers. They eventually led her out of the station, clearly emotionally distraught and in handcuffs.

The incident spurred a firestorm of outrage on social media and the story was picked up nationally. Elsa—who has not given media outlets her last name—has told reporters that the officers laughed at her, and begged police to stop taking her cart. She said she has been selling churros in that neighborhood for the last three years, per several outlets. Police and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio have said that Elsa was told several times to leave the station and did not comply.

Elsa and the Lemus family met up last week, along with several other New York street vendors, to discuss collaboration between the street vendor movements in both cities. The organizations in New York are larger than D.C.’s, where the movement is still in its nascent stages.

“We wanted to go to know more about them and everything they’re doing over there,” the elder Lemus tells DCist in Spanish. Neither she nor her daughter were involved in activism before the police confrontation, but now she says they both feel called to do something.

“We are going to get more involved, because this has to change. It’s not fair what happens to the street vendors,” she says. “It’s possible that we [in different cities] will all get together to do something, because my daughter wants to support every street vendor.”

In fact, activists in both cities are planning a collaborative action that will tentatively take place at the end of December, says Carina Kaufman Gutierrez, the deputy director of New York’s Street Vendor Project, an activist organization. Organizers are still in the planning stages, she says.

Kaufman Gutierrez reached out to the Lemus family via their GoFundMe page last week, which the family opened up to help pay bills after three weeks of not vending. When Kaufman Gutierrez got in touch, Ana Lemus says, her daughter Genesis immediately expressed interest in traveling to New York to meet other street vendors, and the two decided to make a day-long trip on Thursday.

“Everyone had a chance to meet and talk about their different experiences selling in their respective cities, how their businesses are being affected by not having an avenue to work legally, and what are the different ways we can amplify one another’s work and be in solidarity,” says Kaufman Gutierrez.

On Monday, Ana Lemus began vending again in Columbia Heights for the first time since her daughter’s confrontation with police. As of Monday afternoon, she said no one had yet bothered her while she was selling, and expressed gratitude that the GoFundMe contributions had allowed her to go to New York.

The only thing wrong now, she says, is that Genesis is still unable to sleep.

“We are going to therapy to see if her life can normalize a little bit after what happened,” Lemus says. “She is very strong.”