Despite dumpster fire in Washington, people are winning across the country
Did you see that viral story last week, the one where sanitation workers in Turkey opened a public library with books they found in the trash?
It got me thinking. There’s so much bad news coming out of Washington that it’s hard to see the good stuff. So I went looking, and here’s what I found.
First, Chris Christie won’t get to see one of his dreams come true. Just before the end of the year, New Jersey announced it would not lease or sell Atlantic City’s water system to a private corporation. Before leaving office, Christie laid the groundwork for privatization by taking control of the city, laying off public workers, and handing out massive tax breaks to casino operators.
But residents packed council meetings and gathered signatures to make it harder for anyone to take their water — and they won.
On Monday, the country’s largest private prison corporation scrapped plans to build a new immigration detention center in Elkhart County, Indiana, not because they wanted to, but because they were facing intense pushback from residents.
CoreCivic was proposing a $100 million, 1,200-bed facility in response to the Trump administration’s ambition to detain and deport more undocumented immigrants. But a coalition of business, church, education, nonprofit, and Latino community leaders organized rallies, teach-ins, and vigils to stop the publicly traded corporation in its tracks.
“I think CoreCivic read the writing on the wall and saw it wasn’t going to be a good fit for Elkhart County,” said one of the county commissioners.
Sometimes stopping the bad stuff helps build the sort of communities we want to live in. In fact, fighting the private prison industry is crucial to stopping Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, as a majority of detention centers are operated by CoreCivic and its main competitor, GEO Group.
Also this week, a number of public schools won the annual “Schools of Opportunity” award from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC).
What stands out is just how remarkable these public schools are, like Denver South High School, which enrolls students, many who are resettled refugees, from 62 countries. Denver South actively recruits students of color to its honors and AP programs with overwhelming success: enrollment of students of color in higher-level courses jumped from 70 to 424 students in just one year.
“We believe we are the epitome of what a public school can and should be,” said Denver South’s principle.
Everyday people are coming together in neighborhoods, towns, and cities across the country, and good things are happening, Let’s keep fighting.
