A medical team tests for sleeping sickness in a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2000.Patrick Robert/Sygma/Getty Images

How do you stop sleeping sickness in a place where modern hospitals are hours, even days, away? The disease, carried by the river-borne tsetse fly, can cause its victims to experience headaches, madness, and, if left untreated, a fatal coma.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, doctors have been making significant progress. The country has some of the highest rates of the disease, representing 85 percent of the world’s cases. But numbers have dropped drastically: At the turn of the century, there were 30,000 cases of sleeping sickness. In the first six months of 2018, that number fell to 350, raising hopes that the disease could be stamped out.

Some of this progress can be attributed to Victor Kande, a 68-year-old doctor who has spent four decades helping the country fight the epidemic. He and other medical officials have organized drives for a drug with fewer side effects, as well as efforts to install 15 million tsetse fly traps. The nation has also screened villages in the forests and on riverbanks for early signs of the disease to prevent its spread.  

Though the efforts do not get much attention, even inside the DRC, the upsides are apparent. “If DRC eliminates sleeping sickness,” the revered, passionate Kande told the Guardian, “the world eliminates sleeping sickness.”

Welcome to this week’s edition of Recharge, which features people winning battles to help others, along with a special focus on California’s wildfires. 

• A sacred work-around. By law, Dutch police cannot enter a house of worship during services. After an Armenian family sought sanctuary at one church in The Hague, 300 volunteer pastors conducted round-the-clock services to prevent police from entering. Hundreds more attendees showed up to support the Tamrazyan family, who say they are refugees fleeing death threats in their homeland. A petition to grant the family asylum has received more than 250,000 signatures. “It’s impossible to express how special it feels when so many people help you,” says Hayarpi Tamrazyan, one of the family’s three children. (Quartz)

• Working together. These five women were all bridesmaids at each other’s weddings. Now they’re state senators in Colorado. The five, who met working on public education issues, shared similar views on paid family leave, equal pay, the environment, and battling the opioid crisis. During their campaigns, they helped each other during difficult moments, especially when one was barraged by hate mail and negative ads. “We’re all in this together,” says Jessie Danielson, who campaigned with her toddler before her victory earlier this month. (People)

• Found. During their honeymoon in 2004, Ryan and Kimberly made a coin to commemorate their love. After their home was destroyed during the Camp Fire in northern California this month, they went searching for the coin—and miraculously found it in the ashes. (Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

• In defiance. The bride lost her family home. Their caterer’s kitchen went up in smoke. Fire destroyed the DJ’s equipment. But Morgan Shingler and Brian Gobba didn’t call off their wedding. “We weren’t going to let the fire take anything more from us,” Gobba said. They had it in a hall in Chico, California, with several guests—also burned out of their homes—wearing rented clothing. (Los Angeles Times)
• A close call. She raised five kids by herself. After helping hospital patients as the wildfire drew closer, Tamara Ferguson called her children—and made one last request. “I love you. Take care of Brayden and Allyson and Brooklyn,” she told them. “Make sure they know how much I loved them.” Thankfully, Ferguson made it through. (Los Angeles Times)
• Footnote. After 153 years, Texas public school students will finally be taught that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. Before, schools taught that states’ rights were a primary factor, enabling revisionists to claim the North was the aggressor. (Smithsonian)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Gabrielle Lurie/Courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle

David was his name. He worked at the hospital and had a white sedan. A nurse and three other staffers rushed Rachelle Sanders and her 6-pound, 5-ounce newborn boy into this stranger’s car.

They put her IV over the rearview mirror. Then Sanders, her baby, and this stranger roared off, trying to outrun the flames that would destroy Paradise, their northern California town.

As they tried to escape California’s deadliest wildfire, Sanders made David promise that if flames were about to overtake them, he would scoop up her son, Lincoln, and run, so at least the two of them could survive.

Thankfully, Sanders was able to reach safety. But she never learned David’s last name. Read more about Sanders and other survivors’ stories at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Welcome to Recharge, a collection of stories in which people help others, justice prevails, and problems are solved. Sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of the story. 

• Fighting back. Ruth Buffalo ousted an incumbent Republican who tried to exclude many Native Americans from the November vote. In doing so, she became the first Democratic Native American woman elected to the North Dakota Legislature. How did she win? “Meeting people where they’re at,” Buffalo said. “Literally on their doorsteps. They were pretty receptive and open to having a conversation with me on what matters most.” (New York Times)

• If Betsy DeVos could be a public servant… Kathy Hoffman thought she could be, too. Hoffman, a 31-year-old public school speech therapist, figured that, unlike DeVos, she actually knew her way around a school and understood the issues facing kids and teachers. So she ran to become Arizona’s superintendent for public instruction. In an outcome few expected, Hoffman got 1.1 million votes and beat her challenger by 4 percentage points. (Washington Post)

• From rejection to victory. As a 17-year-old Girl Scout, Cassandra Levesque wanted to raise the state’s minimum age for marriage from 13 to 18. But the New Hampshire legislator she was lobbying brushed her off. Now, two years later, Levesque has won a seat in the statehouse—and will be able to introduce that legislation herself. The new politician, now 19, promised her constituents: “I will always stick to my gut and what I feel is right.” (New York Times)

• A stuffed monkey that led to so much more. For decades, Gert Berliner hid away his “good luck piece,” a tiny stuffed animal he kept while fleeing the Holocaust. Berliner escaped alone, one of many children saved by a rescue effort called the Kindertransport. His parents and much of his family were killed. Late in life, Berliner donated the monkey to a museum. A visitor recognized Berliner’s name, and soon realized they were, in fact, long-lost relatives. “It’s a gift,” Berliner, 94, said. “In my old age, I have discovered I have a family.” (NPR)

• Your stories. As Recharge celebrates its first Thanksgiving, we want to thank the many readers who shared their own experiences with Little Free Libraries after our story on the death of its founder, Todd Bol. From Motoko Inoue of Holyoke, Massachusetts: The Little Free Library “allows people to approach ‘library’ in their own terms and demystify the system. Hopefully it is an introduction to the ‘formal’ library in their community.”

  Ed Rosenberg, from the Cleveland area, wrote: “I go to yard sales and always ask for books for donation. We feed an LFL at the Marion-Sterling Elementary School in Cleveland with children’s books…The little house is empty every week when we go to refill it.”

  And, from a reader named Freya: “Whenever I go on a trip, I try to find Little Free Libraries that are along the way or near where I am staying. I have visited LFLs in several states and left books at a lot of them. I visit yard sales and thrift shops in search of books to put in LFLs. Little Free Libraries are a wonderful idea, and I encourage everybody who loves books to support them.”

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Holden Harrah, left, hugs Matt Wennerstom, right, after the mass shooting at Borderline bar in Thousand Oaks, California.Al Seib/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Matt Wennerstrom was at a bar with his friends when a gunman started firing. First, the 20-year-old ushered people behind a pool table. Then, as the gunman reloaded, Wennerstrom threw a barstool through a window, creating a path of escape.

Thanks to Wennerstrom, dozens of people escaped from the gunman who killed 12 inside the country music bar in Thousand Oaks, California, the Washington Post reports. 

“We just stood there basically forcing as many people out as fast as we could until we cleared everyone out, and then we jumped out ourselves,” he told ABC News.

Even when he got outside, he herded the others away rather than simply sprinting to safety. Why?

He had known many of the other patrons for years—they were like family to him. “It’s not something where you just get out of there and fend for yourself,” Wennerstrom told CBS This Morning. “It’s ‘what can I do to protect as many of my friends as possible?'”

Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. Sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• A life-saving roundup. Volunteer cowboys in California have been working with first responders to save horses and other animals left behind by panicked owners after devastating wildfires. Jerry Kirk, who first started rescuing animals during the Carr Fire in August, has been handling requests to save horses, goats, and even llamas. On Saturday, he led a group with four horse trailers through Paradise, one of the towns ravaged by the fire. They found eight horses outside a ruined homestead. Kirk helped guide them into the trailers and out of danger. “You’re OK now,” he said to one brown foal, stroking it as it nuzzled him. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Justice, finally. Louisiana’s 1898 law allowed non-unanimous juries to convict people of felonies and even sentence them to life in prison. After a series of articles showing exactly how this Jim Crow-era law was used to disproportionately imprison black people, voters rose up and defeated it by a nearly 2-1 margin. Starting January 1, Louisiana will join 48 other states where only unanimous juries can convict people charged with a crime. (Poynter)
• Spurned but victorious. Their member of Congress denigrated them. He wouldn’t even meet with them to hear their fears about Trump’s Muslim ban. So a group of Arab American women in Brooklyn decided they weren’t going to stand it any longer. They organized their community—and watched him get fired by his constituents on Election Night. (Mother Jones)
• Notorious, indeed. A day after breaking three ribs, 85-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg was back at home—and working, according to a Supreme Court spokeswoman. The justice, nicknamed the Notorious RBG, confided that in 2012 she’d broken two ribs but took no time off, citing the high court’s heavy workload. (Washington Post)
• She did it. As a girl in Afghanistan, she fled the Taliban. After becoming a US citizen, she decided to run for office at the age of 27. She knocked on doors while pregnant and campaigned on expanding Medicaid and educational opportunities. Last week, Safiya Wazir won the general election to serve in the New Hampshire legislature. (Boston Globe)
• Quote of the week. “Hopelessness is the enemy of justice.” From Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor and the incarcerated.

Keep pushing, readers, and raising hell. See you next week! Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Election worker Robin Wright guides voters on election day in Las Vegas, Nevada. David Becker/Getty Images

Abhi Agrawal knew he wanted to do more than vote in the midterms on Tuesday. The elections were so important to him that he did everything he could to encourage others to vote as well, from talking to friends to convincing his Uber drivers. “I know I’m just one person,” Agrawal told Mother Jones. “But I also know that there are thousands of people like me who are newly motivated.”

Win or lose, Agrawal did his best to push along a central tenet of America’s democracy: the right to vote. In that spirit, here are four more inspiring stories of people participating in one of our most important political processes.

In Alabama, Perman Hardy has driven voters to the polls for the past 25 years. “I come packing with everything I need, and I tell anybody who rides with me, ‘Push the junk over and just get in…I’ll get you to the polling place and get you back,'” Hardy said in this video from MoveOn.org. “I do this to make things just a little bit better.”

In West Virginia, J.D. Belcher’s viral video boosted Richard Ojeda’s campaign for Congress, bringing national awareness to the Democratic candidate in an area that had been seen as solidly Republican. Belcher, a former coal miner, did it for other Democrats, too, Topic reported.

In New York, writer Roger Angell said that at 98, he didn’t have the energy to make phone calls or knock on doors. But he would vote. Angell recalled casting his first ballot in 1944 while stationed in the Central Pacific. “What I said I would die for I now want to live for,” he wrote in The New Yorker.

And in Montgomery County, Maryland, NPR reporter Pam Fessler joined an army of nearly 1 million poll workers. Fessler, who is currently on book leave, has covered voting for 18 years. She wrote that the job has gotten complicated but remains more important than ever. “[Poll workers need] to ensure that votes are properly counted, voters aren’t intimidated, no one cheats, and polls are accessible to all who want to cast a ballot,” Fessler wrote. “The ultimate goal is to give people more confidence in the results.”

Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. Sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• A master stroke. Agnes “Aggie” Gund loved “Masterpiece,” the Roy Lichtenstein painting that hung in her living room. But after Gund saw 13th, Ava DuVernay’s film on the disproportionate imprisonment and disenfranchisement of African Americans, she sold the painting for $165 million and used the money to fund prison arts programs and criminal justice reform organizations. Gund, the daughter of a Cleveland banking giant and a lifelong philanthropist, may be running out of money, but she’s done a lot of good with it. (New York Times)
• More than just a restaurant. A falafel house in Knoxville, Tennessee, was officially crowned the “nicest place in America” by Reader’s Digest. The owner, Yassin Terou, first came to Knoxville as a refugee in 2011 and is known for welcoming people of all stripes—even those who are prejudiced against him. “I always invite anyone who hates us to the store,” said Terou. “When you break bread, you break hate.” (Reader’s Digest)

• Lending a hand. For 30 years, John and Shella Chhan worked side-by-side at their popular Pacific Coast Highway doughnut shop in Orange County. When Sheila suffered an aneurysm, John didn’t want charity; he just wanted more time with her in rehab. So regular customers found a way to help John get home early—by buying as many doughnuts as they could, and encouraging others to do so as well. Now, he’s sold out by 10 a.m. on some days and can leave work to see Sheila. “Something like this, bringing the community together is just something we really need right now,” said one customer, Erika Sanchez.

  Thanks, Recharge reader Neil Parekh, for the suggestion. (CBS Los Angeles)

Listen to our journalists explain all the twists and turns of Election Day, and what comes next for America, on this special episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Members and supporters of the Jewish community come together for a candlelight vigil in Washington, DC.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty

After he heard the sirens, Tim Hindes thought about what he could do to help his city after the mass shooting that killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday.

He decided to create a “Stronger Than Hate” banner, replacing one of three shapes on the old US Steel logo—now popularized by the Pittsburgh Steelers—with a Star of David. He shared the image on Facebook, commenting: “I see every posting of this image as a WIN for love and a strike against hate.”

Soon, the image spread across the internet: Stars like Michael Keaton and Joe Manganiello shared the message, and it also showed up on banners during Sunday’s Steelers vs. Cleveland Browns football game.

“In all honesty, it’s not that complex of a symbol,” Hindes told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “but it’s that simplicity that sort of resonated.”

The banner was just one part of an outpouring of love for the community: The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh set up a fund to help the victims and families, and United Way promised to match donations up to $100,000. Two American Muslim groups, in a separate drive, raised more than $195,000 for the Jewish victims and families.

“Putting our religious differences or even your political differences aside, the core of all of us is that we have a shared humanity,” Tarek El-Messidi, an activist who created the Muslim fundraising campaign, told the New York Times.

Bigots have targeted both faiths, he added. “The shared discrimination has brought both communities closer.”

Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. Sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• She may have stopped another mass shooting. Police said they thwarted a Kentucky man who posed a “credible and imminent threat” to two school districts.

  The way authorities tracked him down? Through Koeberle Bull, a mother of three in New Jersey who contacted police after receiving a chilling Facebook message from the man, Dylan Jarrell. The 20-year-old had called her a “wanna be” black woman and told her that he hoped her biracial children “gets hung for you being so stupid.”

  “I just hope more people speak out,” Bull told the Washington Post. “We’ve got to give our kids a fighting shot, or our kids are going to die, and our future will die with them.” (Washington Post)

• How one veteran got by—with a lot of help from friends. With nowhere to go, and the temperatures outside in the forties, Norman Franks thought a Veterans Affairs hospital in Massachusetts would have to take him in.

  Nope. Clad in shorts and a T-shirt, the Navy vet spent several nights shivering on the ground outside, wrapped in a tarp he found in a VA dump truck. He lived the next four months in a tent on a nearby Air Force base, helped by members of a local American Legion and a Catholic parish.

  Then a congressman’s staff took interest and made calls on Frank’s behalf. The VA also pitched in and provided him with a tenant voucher, as well as other aid. Franks, who did prison time for armed robbery and struggled with an addiction to crack cocaine, is now in a sparsely furnished apartment, studying for a heavy equipment driver’s license, and eager to help other vets who may find themselves homeless.

  “If I can help just one other vet from being in this position, then this has been worth it,” Franks said. (Boston Globe)

• A monumental recovery. During Labor Day weekend of 2016, Damari Hendrix’s 6-foot 5-inch frame crumpled after he was shot in the head in Chicago. Brain surgery followed, and the doctors warned his mother: This may or may not save his life.

  But within a year, Hendrix was walking. Even running. Even playing basketball. Last winter, he improved each week—and finished the season as his high school basketball team’s second-highest rebounder and third-highest scorer.

  At 18, and with his senior year ahead of him, Hendrix is still playing better and better, even as he suffers several physical setbacks, including seizures and lapses in concentration. He said he’d be happy to play basketball at any college. Mostly, he is grateful. He thought he’d be in a wheelchair the rest of his life.

  Thanks to Recharge reader Willie Weinbaum for the suggestion. (The Undefeated)

• Acts of love. And since it’s been a trying week, here are more stories of people coming together: Mexicans gave food and clothing to northbound Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence. One of America’s most hallowed cathedrals provided a final resting place for Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was slain two decades ago in a hate crime. Migrant children in Greece enjoyed brief escapes from their crowded refugee camp at a new playground that offers free evening movies. And American PBS viewers chose a classic about standing up to racial injustice and helping others as their most popular novel.

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Todd BolDavid Joles/Minneapolis Star Tribune/ZUMA Wire

Todd Bol built the first Little Free Library, a front-yard bookshelf with a small door, using the wood from his old garage door. He hoped that the whimsical structure would build conversation and community by encouraging neighbors to share books that were dear to them.

Soon, the idea spread, and in the past nine years, volunteers have built more than 75,000 dollhouse-sized libraries in 88 countries. The Little Free Library idea has led to neighborhood-wide book groups and even spawned an Action Book Club, in which members both read and do service projects together.

“Kids reading and people reading to them, you know, it changes everything,” Bol told the Star Tribune, days before his death last Thursday of cancer. “It changes the whole attitude of what is valued in a community.”

“It shows that if we work together, we can fix things and we can make this happen,” he said.

Bol, summing up his life, said this work made him feel like the most successful person in the world. “I wouldn’t switch my existence for Jeff Bezos or any of it,” he told reporter Jenna Ross.

The Little Free Library will go on strong after Bol, says Melissa Eystad, a former development director of the nonprofit, “but there’s no replacing Todd, that’s for sure.”

Readers, have you ever used a Little Free Library? Do you have a story to share, or a favorite book you contributed to (or found in) a Little Free Library? Let us know in the form below, or at recharge@motherjones.com. We may feature your responses in a future column. 

Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. Sign up at the bottom of the story.

• A dream come true. Her entire life—6,567 days—had been spent in foster care. Just days before she would “age out” of the foster care system at 18, C’Nai Lange was adopted into a loving family.

  “It’s just the best,” said the Wayne State student, who has has lived with her two moms, Lisa and Kathy Lange, since June 2017. She says she got support, therapy, a steady schedule, and guidance. “Without them, I really don’t know where I’d be today.”

  Friends and family gathered at the courthouse for the formal adoption ceremony, some carrying signs. One partially read: “DNA does not make a family—love does.” Another: “We did not give you the gift of life—life gave us the gift of you.”

  Thanks to Recharge reader Karen Weintraub for suggesting this story. (Detroit Free Press)

• ‘I’ll never be silent.’ Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh wanted to bring awareness to toxic waste dumps and people who died in police custody. In 2016, she was sentenced to 10 years in jail for “anti-state propaganda.”

  Last week, she was freed early, and she requested to leave the country with her family. At least 55 people in Vietnam have been imprisoned this year for their reporting, protests, or comments on social media.

  Arriving in Houston, she told well-wishers that she would never stay silent about human rights in her home country. “I will continue to raise my voice until there is human rights in Vietnam, real human rights,” she said. (The Guardian)

• Look at their faces. Mark Loughney sketched and painted long before he ended up in prison. Now, he uses his skills to draw portraits of his fellow inmates.

  He’s drawn 500 portraits—something that he notes is “is not even a drop in the bucket” of America’s 2.4 million imprisoned people—that have been shown at two galleries this year.

  Loughney, who was sent to prison for setting a building on fire, says the drawings were a way to return to an old passion—while also trying to help. He sends some of his art proceeds to victim advocacy organizations, and he also asks others to donate. “This is a way that I am able to put my feelings of remorse into a tangible form,” he wrote. (The Marshall Project)

• A surprise at the finish line. Oregon runner Justin Gallegos noticed a film crew when he and other competitors completed a cross-country race. Gallegos, who has cerebral palsy, had no idea the crew was there for him—or that, when he finished the race, Nike would offer him a contract as a professional runner.

  This video is extraordinary. Thanks to readers Karen Wickre and Neil Parekh for recommending it. (Sports Illustrated)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Tarrick Walker with his parents, Darlene and Marcel. Courtesy of John Walker/Fresno Bee

Tarrick Walker was playing basketball with a group of friends at his California school when the 12-year-old heard a group of seventh-graders say something.

He stopped playing basketball and walked over. “What’s happening?” he asked the group.

The response, as Walker recounted it to the Fresno Bee: “Get out, you dumb N-word.”

He and his friends were shocked. But Walker and his parents turned it around, and his friends took part, too. Within days, the Walker family printed and gave away 100 blue “stop bullying” T-shirts at Walker’s school. Two hundred more were ordered, and wristbands were made with the same message.

The back of each T-shirt reads: “Racism, Gossiping, Threats, Cyber bullying, Lies, Insults, Rumors, Shaming. MUST END”

“What really made me feel good was that my friends and other kids on the basketball courts stood up for me and told him to stop saying what he did,” Walker said in a Facebook video. “That made me think about how lucky I was to have such great friends and classmates.”

Walker’s father, Marcel, added, “If we as adults can teach our kids that bullying is not useful today or ever…we can literally eradicate the hate and the pushing around of adults in the future.”

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• It started with a few pounds. Thirty-five years ago, Jeannie Rice started running. She wanted to shed the weight she’d gained visiting family in South Korea.

  Within a year, she had run her first marathon. Then, at the Chicago Marathon this month, Rice broke the world record for female marathoners age 70 or over.

  She didn’t just break the record—she destroyed it. At 3:27:50, Rice, 70, completed the race more than 7 and a half minutes faster than ever recorded for a woman in her age group. Even in the younger, age 60 to 69 women’s group, only one runner beat her—one-time American gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson, who is 61.

  What’s Rice’s secret? Running at 5:30 a.m. back home and training with stronger, younger runners, many of them men.

  Her teenage granddaughters brag about her, she says. “They tell all their friends, ‘Oh, my grandma, for her 5Ks are nothing. She runs marathons.'” (Runner’s World)

• “We all have to stick together.” He’d been in Ireland since age 2, after his dad died and he fled with his mom and older brother from Nigeria.

  In June, Irish authorities said he and his family would be deported, but Nonso Muojeke’s schoolmates wouldn’t have it.

  They organized rallies and got 22,000 people to sign petitions urging Ireland to let 14-year-old Muojeke and his family stay. The Irish government agreed earlier this month.

  “You guys were with me through everything, you didn’t turn your backs on me…and I’m really thankful,” Muojeke told classmates.

  They responded that the mission went beyond their friendship. “I feel like it doesn’t matter who it is,” said Sofia Sheils. “We all have to stick together. We all have to fight for our rights.” (RTÉ News)

• The veteran reporter, at 12. Hilde Lysiak has been breaking stories for years. The Washington Post profiled her at age 9.

  Not yet a teen, Lysiak was the first to report a murder story in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, and she has written about drugs in her local high school. She’s also writing a series of children’s books with her father for Scholastic, modeled on her stories. Apple is making a television show based on her life.

  When she was younger, her father, then a journalist at the New York Daily News, would take her with him on reporting trips, including to Florida to cover Trayvon Martin’s slaying and to South Carolina to cover the Charleston church mass shooting.

  Her advice for aspiring young reporters? Have parents who respect you and give you independence.

  “Kids are a lot smarter than adults think. I have friends who are way smarter than I am but because they are stuck inside their house or school all day no one knows,” Lysiak said. “The best thing about my parents is that they get out of the way.”

  Thanks to Carolyn Ryan for this suggestion. (Bright Lite)

• Saying yes to second chances. An unlikely coalition is behind a move to give back the vote to as many as 1.4 million Floridians who have served their time.

  The ballot measure, called Amendment 4, would automatically restore voting rights to ex-felons in Florida (with the exception of those convicted of murder or a sexual offense). Florida is one of only four states that indefinitely bar ex-felons from voting, along with Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia. The measure has backing from groups across the political spectrum, and an early poll puts support for the measure at 74 percent, including 61 percent support from Republicans.

  Catch reporter Ari Berman talk about Florida’s initiative on the Mother Jones Podcast. (Mother Jones)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Protesters demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC to oppose the Senate confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.Chris Kleponis/AFP/Getty

Senator Heidi Heitkamp knew her “no” vote might sink her reelection campaign in North Dakota this November. But there was no way she was going to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, not after what she heard—and not after what her mother, who died at 88 in April, lived through.

Heitkamp’s mother had been sexually assaulted as a teenager, she told the New York Times, and “it did not make my mom less strong that she was a victim.” Her comments came after her challenger, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), suggested that the #MeToo movement made victims seem weak. In an emotional rebuttal, Heitkamp strongly insisted otherwise: “She got stronger and she made us strong. And to suggest that this movement doesn’t make women strong and stronger is really unfortunate.”

Many survivors, distressed at the Kavanaugh confirmation and the attacks against one of his accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, showed their own courage and came forward to share their stories after the bruising hearings. A 73-year-old retired copy editor from the Los Angeles Times said she was drugged and raped in the early 1980s by a longtime editor, who has since died. The paper’s current editor said he was deeply troubled by the account, which also spurred other female employees to share their stories.

Mother Jones readers also recounted their own sexual assaults after witnessing the hearings, including the sense of hopelessness they felt and the weight of a secret many kept for years. Despite the reopening of emotional scars, several said they were stronger and motivated to move forward.

“Dr. Blasey’s courage has lit a fire for victims and we are empowered,” one reader, Jennifer Schoon, wrote to us. “Our trauma only makes us stronger. Stand up, speak out, support each other and work toward a better world, together.”

You can hear more voices discussing how survivors are moving forward on today’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

And if you or someone you know is a survivor of sexual violence, know that there are resources to help. You can also call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE.

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• A real-life Good Will Hunting story. Caitriona Lally rises at 4:45 a.m. for her job cleaning Trinity College Dublin, the university where Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, and Jonathan Swift once studied.

  Lally, 39, had been working at the college for more than three years when she got the call telling her she had won one of Ireland’s most prestigious literary honors for her 2015 novel, Eggshells, as well as $11,500. The jury had found her novel “a work of impressive imaginative reach, witty, subtle and occasionally endearingly unpredictable.”

  A Trinity grad herself, Lally says she finds peace cleaning the university’s large rooms, empty in the early morning hours.

  “It’s very hard to write if you’re emotionally drained after work, or have a job that you dread,” Lally said. “I know that cleaning is some people’s vision of hell, but it works for me.’” (Washington Post)

• Get up, stand up. Kamira Trent stood up for the rights of two women who were being scolded for speaking Spanish in a Rifle, Colorado, grocery store.

  “You do not harass Hispanic women!” Trent told Linda Dwire in a scene captured in a viral video. Dwire wouldn’t stop and continued to argue back. Police later arrested and charged Dwire, who said she found the Spanish language offensive, with bias-motivated harassment.

  One of the women attacked by Dwire, Fabiola Velasquez, praised Trent for intervening. “It felt good to see someone who was born here defend us that way,” Velasquez said.

  Trent urged others encountering bullies and bigots to stand up: “Letting that happen is really what’s wrong with our country.” (BuzzFeed News)

• Acceptance. A pod of beluga whales has adopted a young narwhal hundreds of miles south of its usual icy Arctic home.The lone narwhal “behaves like it was one of the boys,” said Robert Michaud, president of the Quebec-based Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals, a nonprofit dedicated to whale conservation.

  Young whales are prone to wandering, and some wayward narwhals, on their own, have tried to make friends with humans or boats. Researchers were surprised this narwhal, spotted with the belugas in Canada’s St. Lawrence River for the past three years, was so far south.

  Martin Nweeia, a Harvard University researcher, says narwhals occasionally swim with belugas who have wandered into Canada’s Arctic Bay.

  “I think it shows…the compassion and the openness of other species to welcome another member that may not look or act the same,” Nweela said. “And maybe that’s a good lesson for everyone.”

  Thanks to reader—and writer—Diane Ackerman for the tip. (CBC News)

• A small step. Johns Hopkins University is naming a new research building after Henrietta Lacks, the Baltimore woman whose cell line transformed medicine and science. Lacks was relatively unknown until her life was chronicled in Rebecca Skloot’s best-seller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

  The university’s decision gives long-overdue respect to Lacks, who died in 1951 at Hopkins despite radiation treatment for her cancer. Her cells, taken without her permission, were used for numerous scientific advances, including the creation of the polio vaccine.

  “It’s a proud day for the Lacks family,” said Jeri Lacks, Henrietta’s granddaughter. “They are all meaningful, but this is the ultimate honor, one befitting of her role in advancing modern medicine.” (CBS Baltimore)

• A special request. Right before his surgery, eight-year-old Jackson McKie asked his neurosurgeon: After you’re done with me, could you fix my teddy bear?

  “How could I say no?” tweeted Dr. Daniel McFeeley. A medical resident took pictures of McFeeley sewing the bear back up on an operating table at a Halifax, Nova Scotia, hospital. McFeeley used stitches left over from the boy’s operation to sew up the pet, called Baby Bear.

  The doctor reunited the recovering boy with his toy later, and marked his first-ever teddy bear surgery with his first-ever tweet. Of course, it went viral. (Canadian Press)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

An old photo of Wright's Dairy-Rite, screenshot courtesy of the Staunton News Leader.Mike Tripp/Staunton News Leader

Since its beginnings in 1952, Wright’s Dairy-Rite served all people, of any color. That may have been unusual in Staunton, Virginia, at the time, but the custard shop’s owner, Alka Greer Wright, believed in serving everybody.

“She felt that everybody needed to be treated the same,” her son, Forester Wright Jr., told the Staunton News Leader. While it was common back then for restaurants to have separate entrances for people of color, Wright’s Dairy-Rite just had the one door. “Everybody came to the front. They’d get in line, we’d ask them what they want, and they ate their ice cream with everybody else.”

A dozen years later, in 1964, after the ice cream stand had been turned into a “Happy Days”-style fast-food restaurant, Wright Jr. met a very determined 16-year-old woman named Barbara Lee. She asked to be the first African-American to serve customers curbside.

Wright hesitated, worried that she would be subject to harassment from customers. But Lee insisted—and got the job. Wright would often listen in on the call box to make sure Lee was safe outside. One night, six white boys pulled up and threw a tray at her, and Lee, scared, left immediately. Though she got home safely, she quit because of the incident.

More than a half-century later, the two met again at the Dairy-Rite, where the Staunton News Leader filmed an interview with them. Sharing a booth, Wright said he’d always respected Lee for what she did. “There was an angel looking out for me, and I did not know it,” Lee said, looking at Wright. “And he was my angel.”

Lee also says she’s let go of the racism she experienced. “I’ve never carried a burden of hate towards anybody,” she said. “We said, we will overcome this because life goes on.”

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• Giving a leg up—with Legos. When a severely injured box turtle was found in a Baltimore park, Maryland Zoo officials built a mini-wheelchair for it from Lego pieces and plumber’s putty. The contraption allows the turtle to move around while the fractures heal underneath its shell.

  “This guy was an interesting case,” said Garrett Fraess, a veterinary student on rotation at the zoo. Fraess consulted a “Lego enthusiast” friend in Denmark for ideas, who came up with design ideas and specific Lego pieces that she sent his way.

  And the turtle seems to be on the path to recovery, Fraess says. “He never even hesitated. He took off and has been doing great.” (Washington Post)

• “Modern-day Bachs.” Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma wants to use the music of Johann Sebastian Bach to help make the world a better place.

  Over the next two years, Ma will play concerts for his new album while partnering with leaders, activists, and change makers in cities around the world to bring a spotlight to important local issues. He calls these people modern-day Bachs—”people who are using their creativity and innovative ability to actually make things better.” Ma will pair each of his concerts with a “day of action” that, depending on the location, could include panels, conversations, or block parties.

  Ma’s tour will take him to 36 cities across six continents. Last weekend, he stopped by Oakland, California, where he highlighted education reform, and, you guessed it—Bach. (San Francisco Chronicle)

• The perfect shot. For five years, wildlife photographer Bob Western sought to capture the image of the Milky Way Galaxy setting over a panoramic bridge in Big Sur, California.

  It wasn’t easy: The Milky Way sets over the bridge only a few times a year, and there are often weather issues. Still, Western had a good reason: His wife, Sharyn, had grown increasingly ill and he used his photographs to help her experience the beauty of nature.

  The Milky Way photo proved so elusive that Western had given up for more than a year. But on the night of Sept. 10, everything fell into place.

  “There was a barn owl singing to me while I was out there, and I’d hear stones falling from a rock face behind me,” Western said. That’s when he took the dazzling photo—which he dedicated to his wife, who had died a month earlier in August.

  “It seems like the right image to represent her memory,” he said. “I just wish she could’ve seen it.” (San Luis Obispo Tribune)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com.

Valentino Dixon poses with his golf art. David Duprey/AP

Inside his 6-by-10 cell, Valentino Dixon drew stunning landscapes of a sport he’d never played.

The art, depicting colorful, detailed “golf-scapes,” gave him peace as he served time for a murder he didn’t commit, the inmate wrote in a letter to Golf Digest. The letter prompted the publication to look into Dixon’s case—and notice that something seemed off about his conviction.

Golf Digest’s 2012 story about Dixon’s case gained national attention and led to an investigation by the Georgetown University Prison Reform Project. The effort provided new evidence—including a confession by another inmate to the 1991 crime—that was presented to the new district attorney in Buffalo, New York.

After 27 years of imprisonment, Dixon finally had his conviction thrown out last week, and he walked out free, surrounded by family, friends, and the Golf Digest journalist who took up his cause: Max Adler. After Dixon’s release, Adler, now Golf Digest’s editorial director, told me they celebrated Dixon’s first meal at a Red Lobster.

According to Adler, Dixon is going to work to help exonerate other inmates who have been wrongfully convicted. And that’s not the only thing he has to look forward to: The two have plans to get on a golf course and hit a few balls around.

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• Poach no more. DNA testing has entered the world of wildlife poaching. A wildlife investigator has used new evidence to deal a blow to the crime networks behind elephant poaching.

  DNA forensic information can track where the elephants are from and, as a result, be used to determine the smuggling cartel involved. The biologists behind this effort note that authorities have to do the final job of convicting, imprisoning, and breaking up the cartels. That enforcement work is particularly important as poachers target younger and younger elephants. (Wired)

• Pursuing a dream—with just one hand. Shaquem Griffin didn’t let his misfortune stop him. With only one hand, Griffin became a star college football linebacker, making interceptions and recovering fumbles.

  Now he’s playing with the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL, on the same team with his twin brother, Shaquill, a cornerback. And he’s also one of six new “changemakers” starring in Nike’s latest “Just Do It” campaign.

  “It’s not some sob story or anything like that. It’s not even a sad story—at least not to me. It’s just…my story,” Griffin wrote in an essay in the Player’s Tribune, referring to his own backstory. “I feel like all the boys and girls out there with birth defects—we have our own little nation, and we’ve got to support each other.” (New York Times)

• Beyond books: looks. New York Public Library cardholders can now borrow handbags, briefcases, and even ties, giving people of limited means access to clothes and accessories for events like job interviews or graduations.

  The pilot program is taking place at Manhattan’s Riverside branch. It began after one librarian, Michelle Lee, taught a free class for high school students and realized that many of them didn’t have access to professional clothes.

  “You look good, you feel good,” says Kimberly Spring, the network manager for some of the public library’s branches.The “Grow Up Work Fashion Library” is open to all card-holders who have less than $15 in fines. (NPR)

• Oh say, did you see? At 7, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja did not have an easy road to singing the national anthem before the Los Angeles Galaxy match against the Seattle Sounders. She had to defeat the other entrants in the soccer team’s #GalaxySocial Day Instagram Anthem contest.

  And then she sang as if she belonged before a stadium, in a performance that the team—and the audience—gushed over. Among her supporters: Galaxy (and international) soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimović. “MVP of the game!” he tweeted.

  A game in which, it should be noted, the Galaxy won 3-0. (Time)

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Catalina Cruz in Jackson Heights, New York. AP

One candidate fled the violence of Colombia with her mom at age nine. Another fled the Taliban at age six. A third says his parents were almost deported from the United States.

Catalina Cruz and Safiya Wazir won their primary elections in New York and New Hampshire respectively last week, while William Tong is campaigning to become Connecticut’s first Asian American attorney general. They’re representative of a surge of minority candidates in this year’s midterm elections, in which more women and people of color are not only running for office—but also winning votes and unseating entrenched politicians.

Cruz, a former housing lawyer and one of the first Dreamers to run for office in New York, says the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant stance prompted her to enter the race for State Assembly in Queens. “I have this privilege,” Cruz told Mother Jones. “I’m formerly undocumented, I’m a lawyer, I have these connections…Why am I not using it for something more than managing a state agency?”

Wazir, a former Afghan refugee running to become a state representative in Concord, New Hampshire, campaigned door to door while pregnant with her third child. The 27-year-old trounced a longtime Democratic incumbent who ran an anti-immigrant campaign and questioned how a wife and young mother could be an effective legislator.

“It gives me so much energy to be backed from the people themselves,” a jubilant Wazir told the Concord Monitor as the election results came in, showing she had won by more than a 2-1 margin. “It’s driven me to be positive.” If she wins her election in November, Wazir could become the first former refugee to serve in public office in New Hampshire.

For Tong, who won his primary to become the Democratic nominee in August, the attorney general race represents an opportunity to bring more diverse experiences into the political conversation. His parents, for instance, only ended up staying in the US after his father, a Chinese immigrant, wrote an impassioned six-page letter to Richard Nixon, who then allowed them to remain in the country.

“I wanted to give voice to people who are invisible and feel invisible like my family,” Tong told Mother Jones.

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• From bigot to friend. A South Carolina mayor posted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant memes on Facebook—and even defended them amid backlash. Then Hardy King met members of the Muslim community in his town of Irmo and drastically changed his tune.

  It started with a call from one Irmo native who was raised Muslim and wanted to politely raise his concerns. Soon, King began meeting more Muslims in his community.

  Struck by their measured response, King did more than apologize: At the invitation of Chaudhry Sadiq, a local community leader, King visited a nearby mosque. He also helped Sadiq organize a town meeting on “Demystifying Islam” that drew more than 100 people.

  King noted that his own fear and unfamiliarity likely framed his prior beliefs. He says Christians have a lot to learn from his new acquaintances.

  “If half the Christians in this country prayed five times a day, we’d have a lot of stuff solved,” the mayor said.

  Thanks to reader Zach Peterson for the tip. (Post and Courier)

• “I’m not going anywhere.” They went surfing on their first real date. Their first kiss was during CPR.

  That’s right. Andi Traynor and Max Montgomery were walking along a California beach when Montgomery had a heart attack.

  Traynor, a doctor, performed CPR but thought she had lost him. Montgomery eventually regained consciousness in the ambulance and went through a triple bypass a day later.

  At his bedside afterward, he told her: “Who wants to be with a guy who had a heart attack? I won’t blame you if you run for the hills.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Traynor responded. The experience helped cement their relationship—and inspired them to start a foundation that helps teach CPR. (Washington Post)

• Invaluable. Growing up with two deaf parents, Monica McGee developed a skill that proved vital for hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents as Hurricane Florence plowed through.

  McGee has been using American Sign Language to help provide emergency information during news conferences and other hurricane updates, appearing alongside Governor Roy Cooper and other emergency officials. A sign language interpreter for state employees, McGee wears dark clothing to contrast with her hand gestures and uses her facial expressions and entire upper body to help convey emotion.

  “It’s hard on my hands and my arms and my shoulders and mentally—mentally, especially,” McGee said about her experiences signing during Hurricane Florence. Lee Williamson, who sits in the audience and feeds her information via ASL if she falls behind, said McGee is trusted for her work.

  “She’s kind of been the person everyone’s expecting to see,” Williamson said. (News & Observer)

• Noah’s Ark on wheels? Not quite. But trucker Tony Alsup did save 53 dogs and 11 cats from shelters in the path of Hurricane Florence, delivering them to a safe haven in Alabama in an old yellow school bus.

  He calls the pets he saved “the leftovers”—not the adorable cuddlies that fly out of an animal shelter, but the bigger, not-so-cute ones that have a harder time finding an owner.

  Florence wasn’t Alsup’s first rodeo. The trucker has hauled pets from hurricane zones in Puerto Rico and from Texas and Florida. There’s inevitably loud barking involved, but he says he doesn’t mind the noise.

  “They know I’m the Alpha dog,” he said, “and I’m not here to hurt them.” (Greenville News)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. 

Luis Miguel Santiago Rivera makes donuts at Sowy's Bakery in Lowell, Massachusetts.Courtesy of Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun

The palmeras and cheesecake are light and airy, the guava-filled pasteles flaky, glazed, delightful.

The pastries are the creation of Luis Miguel Santiago Rivera, one of the newest bakers at Sowy’s Bakery in Lowell, Massachusetts. Santiago Rivera moved to the town after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and reduced his hours as a baker in the city of Ponce.

Now, Santiago Rivera has brought a taste of home with him further north and revitalized the sweets stand at Sowy’s. He’s been a blessing for a clientele that includes many migrants, says owner Sol. E. Ofarrill, 67.

However, it’s not been all roses for the 23-year-old Santiago Rivera: Much of his family remains in Puerto Rico, including his 4-year-old daughter, Lisuannete, and her mother. But he’s helping out his family and has hopes to open his own bakery one day, Lowell Sun reporter Amaris Castillo tells me.

Pregnancy cravings drove Castillo to the bakery, where she met Santiago Rivera and wrote about him for the Sun. In the hot kitchen, with the smells of birthday cake and roasted pork in the air and Spanish coming from the TV, Santiago Rivera smiled. “I feel like I’m back in Puerto Rico,” he told her.

Munching on a palmera, one customer, Angelica Morales, told Castillo that the pastries reminded her of Puerto Rico: “It’s great that they make all this, so we can keep a tiny piece of the island here.”

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• The janitor of plenty. Carolyn Collins does much more than sweep, clean, polish, and remove trash at Tucker High School outside Atlanta, Georgia. She helps many of the school’s students by providing them with items they might need, from food, clothing and shampoo to school supplies. She stocks these items in a “giving closet,” spending hundreds of dollars a month.

  When one student, Kennedy Carroll, found himself homeless and sleeping in his mom’s car, the school custodian asked him if he needed anything.

  “I basically told her, ‘everything,'” said Carroll, now a college sophomore. “I didn’t have clothes or good shoes or food, or even a toothbrush. She gave me all of that and more.”

  Carroll is one of 150 students that Collins has helped over the past four years. Her generosity has inspired other students and teachers at the high school to donate items as well.

  “I’m going to do whatever I can to help these kids,” said Carroll, whose son was slain in a robbery six years ago. “High school is hard enough without being homeless.” (Washington Post)

• Paying it forward. She discovered radio pulsars and was the first to analyze them, but it was her male collaborators who won the Nobel Prize.

  Now Jocelyn Bell Burnell has won a $3 million award for her discovery—and is using it to fund graduate scholarships for women, refugees, and underrepresented minorities who want to study physics.

  “I don’t want or need the money myself and it seemed to me that this was perhaps the best use I could put to it,” said the astrophysicist.

  As a woman in a male-dominated field, Burnell says that being a minority helped her find fresh ideas. “I found pulsars because I was a minority person and feeling a bit overawed at Cambridge,” she said.

  “So I have this hunch that minority folk bring a fresh angle on things and that is often a very productive thing. In general, a lot of breakthroughs come from left field.” (BBC News)

• Finally, a ban overturned. With one decision, the world’s most populous democracy granted more protections to gay, lesbian, and transgender members of society. India’s Supreme Court overturned a decades-old ban on consensual gay sex last Thursday, saying the decision was long overdue.

  “History owes an apology to members of the community for the delay in ensuring their rights,” Justice Indu Malhotra said.

  It’s a first, powerful step for India, says Menaka Guruswamy, one of the lead lawyers representing gay petitioners.

  The decision, she says, tells gay Indians: ‘You are not alone. The court stands with you. The Constitution stands with you. And therefore your country stands with you.'” (New York Times)

• Giving a break to panhandlers. Put away your signs, one city has told those asking for handouts on city streets and parks. Come work for us instead.

  Portland, Maine, has hired panhandlers to weed public gardens, remove trash and syringes from parks, and place flags alongside the graves of veterans. It’s work two days a week at the city’s minimum wage of $10.90 an hour. The city hopes that the program, currently in its second year, can put panhandlers on a path to employment with a day-labor agency. The program also hopes to connect them with services that provide food stamps and housing vouchers. Seventeen people in the program have found jobs so far.

  Amid weeding and raking, Frank Mello, whose wife died of a heroin overdose three months ago, says the work has helped him give weekly allowances to his two teenage daughters.

  “It makes you feel good about yourself, makes you feel that you’ve still got it,” Mello says. (The Boston Globe)

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Jadav PayengSiddhartha Kumar/picture-alliance/dpa/AP

For 40 years, a man planted a tree every day on a barren island in India’s Brahmaputra River.

First, bamboo trees. Then cotton trees.

“It’s not as if I did it alone,” Jadav Payeng says. “You plant one or two trees, and they have to seed. And once they seed, the wind knows how to plant them, the birds here know how to sow them, cows know, elephants know, even the Brahmaputra River knows. The entire ecosystem knows.”

He’s being humble. Payeng first began planting trees on the sandy island, known as Majuli, at the age of 16. As the forest grew, the island attracted reptiles, deer, wild boars, and even elephants, rhinos, and tigers. Thanks to his work, Majuli is now home to a 1,360-acre woodland called the Molai Forest.

Once considered crazy by the island’s local inhabitants, Payeng is now widely celebrated as a conservationist and known as the “Forest Man of India,” NPR reports. “As long as it survives,” he says of the forest, “I survive.”

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• Who rules the statehouse? There’s never been a female-majority statehouse. Can it happen in Nevada this year?

  Nevada’s legislature is currently third in the nation for gender parity, behind Arizona and Vermont, according to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. A little over 38 percent of Nevada’s lawmakers are women, while about 62 percent are men.

  But that was before a nationwide flood of first-time women candidates this year, such as Democrat Julie Pazina, who is running against a Republican incumbent in a competitive district.

  Pazina said her disappointment with Trump’s victory in the 2016 election prompted her to run. “It was when I decided,” she said, “I needed to be the change I wanted to see.” (Mother Jones)

• Keeping an eye out. Some school districts are training all personnel to notice when a student is anguished or acting out of character.

  In one Texas district, a bus driver texted the district when he saw a student lash out. A counselor met the student and found out that he was taking a breakup hard, and his mother said he had threatened to harm himself. The student went to a local mental health facility for treatment.

  Before this new program, transportation staff wouldn’t have had a protocol to help. The idea: Students have a better chance to flourish if the entire community understands and responds to a student’s problems, including their traumas.

  In one Massachusetts district, local police, fire departments and family service agencies notify schools if a child has been exposed to an traumatic event the night before—which in turn helps schools identify whether the child might need help. Suspensions and juvenile delinquency have declined dramatically as a result.

  Other school districts are considering similar programs, says John Hernandez, director of student services at Texas’ East Central Independent School District, which includes parts of San Antonio and China Grove.

  “Could every school in the country duplicate this, you know?” Hernandez said. “That would be my ultimate vision.” (San Antonio Express-News)

• A message against hate. Lisa Licata and Sherry Lau just wanted to live their lives in peace. But their neighbor couldn’t stop with the hateful homophobic slurs.

  So Licata and Lau painted their wooden fence the colors of the rainbow. When things didn’t improve, the two went one step further: They painted rainbow colors on the side of their home in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, facing the troublesome neighbor.

  “When he protested against the fence being rainbow, that’s when we decided, let’s do the house,” Licata told WTAE Pittsburgh.

  And it sounds like the neighborhood’s reception to the redecoration has been warm. “We live here,” Lau told WTAE. “We’re not moving. My family accepts us. Our friends accept us. If you don’t like it, just live your life, leave us alone and everything’s cool.” (Mashable)

• The power of swimming. They lost their legs while battling ISIS. Now, with artificial legs, a group of Iraqis has begun swimming, even racing, as part of their rehabilitation from war.

  “I’ve swum since I was a child and today I can start again,” said Abdel Zahra Kazem, a soldier who was wounded in Baghdad, by the poolside at a hotel in northern Iraq.

  Another swimmer, Rabie Abdellatif, lost his leg in a battle with the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Mosul. His artificial leg, he says, helped him recover “80 percent of my capabilities from life before.”

  “I can drive my car. I can work,” he said. (AFP)

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Students from the Arizona March for our Lives group at a rally in March. Courtesy of Jordan Harb

High schoolers across the country are leading voter registration efforts—even though some are too young to head to the polls themselves. Some of these new organizers, like 17-year-old Jordan Harb of Arizona, were energized to call for tighter gun laws after the Parkland school shooting in February, reports the Guardian. Harb and other students at March for Our Lives Arizona have led walkouts and, four months ago, staged a die-in at their state Capitol.

The teens are supported in part by outside organizations such as Everytown for Gun Safety. Before this year, Guardian reporter Lois Beckett says, it would have been unlikely that organizers would fund high-schoolers to register voters, but the activism of the Parkland school shooting survivors has inspired teens to help.

So far, Harb tells me, his Arizona group has registration events planned at 25 high schools in Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff. Although registering voters shouldn’t be controversial, Harb says the group has been getting pushback from some schools. But that’s not stopping the teens.

“We are finding ways around it,” Harb says, “by either registering students under the table (without the administration knowing), or setting up a drive across the street.”

This week’s Recharge highlights high schoolers, a patrol officer’s impromptu act of kindness, and how one community fought for money to rebuild. Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. Sign up at the bottom of the story.

• Heartfelt gesture leads to promotion. Patrol officer Celeste Ayala, who achieved unintentional fame when she breastfed a neglected, screaming baby while on duty, became Sergeant Ayala last week.

  The Argentine officer’s gesture was captured by a colleague and went viral. It prompted a visit from the provincial minister of security, who promoted her personally.

  “This is the police force we are proud of, the police force we want,” said the minister, Cristian Ritondo.

  In an interview with an Argentine news station, Ayala, who is breastfeeding her own 16-month-old daughter, said her actions came naturally: “I didn’t doubt it for a second.” (New York Times)

• Compostable peanuts, and more. Boulder, Colorado, has achieved a milestone—it has kept more than half of its waste from going into landfills. The success comes a year after the city passed a Universal Zero Waste Ordinance that required businesses to compost and recycle their trash.

  Spurred by the ordinance, businesses are finding different methods for reducing their waste. One store began recycling the plastic wrap used in packaging, inspiring other retailers to do the same. Another store researched ways its vendors could use biodegradable packing peanuts.

  A city spokesperson, Alexis Bullen, says people in single-family homes are recycling and composting with vigor—and the city is working toward meeting its goal of diverting 85 percent of trash from landfills by 2025. But it still has a ways to go with apartment residents, whose recycling rates are far lower, and contamination remains a problem.

  Bullen’s handy way to remember how to separate items: “If it was alive in your lifetime, it can go in compost.” (Colorado Daily)

• Fighting for investment. Mary Curry has spent decades advocating for her community, and at 87, she hasn’t stopped. When Fresno, California, got $70 million from the state to clean up pollution, Curry and members of her southwest Fresno neighborhood worked to make sure the money wasn’t only spent downtown.

  The area has heightened rates of asthma and some of California’s worst air quality, with pollution from millions of cars and five oil refineries wafting into Fresno—and sometimes staying there for days. The pollution, combined with the city’s poverty, led the state to make the award.

  Initial plans for how the money would be spent quickly went awry—but Curry and other civic leaders worked with residents to define worthwhile ways to help their community: bike trails, pedestrian walkways, and the first satellite campus of a college for the neighborhood. Their plans prevailed. (Next City)

• Bringing attention to prison reform. “We have 1972 problems and 1872 jails…People have got to care in order for prison reform to come about,” Johnny Cash, the country music star and prison rehabilitation advocate, once told Congress.

  Now artist Shepard Fairey is hoping a 15-foot mural of Cash in Sacramento, California, will help spur efforts to fix the prison system in the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Fairey, best known for his iconic portrait of Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, says he will donate a portion of the proceeds he earns from selling prints to #cut50, a prison reform advocacy organization.

  Thanks to reader Dale Kasler for suggesting this article. (Sacramento Bee)

• John McCain’s inspiring last message. “We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil,” the late senator wrote in his final message, read aloud by a tearful aide on Monday.

  “We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe,” the letter continued.

  The senator urged readers to move past differences and to find strength in unity, offering hope despite challenging times. “We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.” (Mother Jones)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. 

Jahana Hayes after winning her primary on August 14. John Woike/Hartford Courant/AP

On the day of the Sandy Hook shootings, Jahana Hayes stood in front of her stunned students in Waterbury, Connecticut, “trying to keep them calm, to not ignite any hysteria.” She watched year after year as Washington failed to pass laws on gun control. Frustrated, the longtime history and government teacher—and the nation’s 2016 Teacher of the Year—decided to run for US Congress in May.

Hayes entered the race, in her words, “with no money, no network, no people.” But the first-time candidate won her primary on August 14, taking her one step closer to becoming the first black Democrat to represent the state in Congress, Kara Voght reports for Mother Jones. Her victory has been one of many for diverse candidates this year: It came the same night Democrats chose a transgender woman, Christine Hallquist, as their nominee for governor in Vermont. And Minnesota Democrats chose a Muslim woman, state lawmaker Ilhan Omar, as their nominee for US Congress.

“People told me I had no chance and I had no business trying to do this,” said Hayes, 45, who mobilized 100 former students for her campaign. “We proved them wrong.”

Some public servants see their job as serving the public—even before and after they collect a paycheck. I focus on a few of them in this week’s edition. Read on! Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. Sign up at the bottom of the story.

• Living simply, humbly—and helping. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were finishing up dinner at a friend’s home on a recent Saturday night—salmon and broccoli casserole on paper plates, ice water in red Solo cups, and glasses of bargain chardonnay. The 39th president and his wife then prepared for a half-mile walk home to their modest 57-year-old ranch house in Plains, Georgia.Instead of serving on corporate boards or giving six-figure speeches, Carter, 93, has spent his time writing, teaching Sunday school, helping build homes for the poor, and teaching at Emory University. Like former president Harry Truman, whom he admires, he says he didn’t want to “capitalize financially on being in the White House.”

  He also said his strict father and the threat of being kicked out of the US Naval Academy kept him from lying. “I always told the truth,” he says. In contrast, he adds, “I think there’s been an attitude of ignorance toward the truth by President Trump.” (Washington Post)

• Still lending a hand.  He may be a footnote to history, but Michael Dukakis hasn’t stopped public service.Thirty years ago, the onetime Massachusetts Democratic governor was leading in the polls to succeed Ronald Reagan as president. It didn’t happen, of course, but that hasn’t slackened Dukakis’s desire to serve.

  These days, the 84-year-old Dukakis carries a plastic bag with him on his walk to work, filling it with litter as he goes. Boston Globe reporter David Abel, who spotted Dukakis on the street, told me he’s been doing it at least 15 years. Dukakis told Abel back in 2003 that picking up trash is one way to serve the public—but people can do many things, big or small. (Boston Globe)

• Unburdened by debt. New York University has eliminated tuition fees for all of its medical students in hopes of reducing student debt, the school announced last week. It will be the first private school in the nation to take this step.”We thought it was a moral imperative,” said Dr. Robert Grossman, dean of the NYU School of Medicine. Medical school tuition is currently $55,000 a year at NYU, and a study shows graduates of private medical schools carry an average of $202,000 in debt.

  Some critics say the move is just a first step and argue the school should also fund room and board, which runs $27,000 a year, as well as give incentives to students who choose primary care or community health work—instead of specialties that may pay doctors millions more.

  One study says America will be short anywhere from 42,600 to 121,300 doctors by 2030—in part due to high tuition costs that discourage students from entering the field. (ABC News)

• After horror, love. Four years ago, ISIS forces swept through Nadia Murad Basee Taha’s town in northern Iraq, killing and kidnapping Yazidis, an ethnic and religious minority. Murad was among those kidnapped and raped by the fighters, but later escaped and told her story of ISIS’s systematic targeting of Yazidis, which many have condemned as genocide.Now a UN Goodwill ambassador, Murad, 25, shared some good news this weekend—her engagement to another Yazidi human rights activist. “The struggle of our people brought us together & we will continue this path together,” she wrote on Twitter, with a photo of herself and her fiancé.

  Hundreds of people worldwide wished them well. “No one deserves happiness more,” responded Rukmini Callimachi, a New York Timesreporter who has documented ISIS operations and abuses. Murad, Callimachi said, “was among the first Yazidi women to bravely show her face and fight for the dignity of her people.”

  Thanks to Recharge reader Rose Horowitz for suggesting this story! (BBC)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. 

Members of Benjamin Franklin High School's Class of 2006 with their honorary degrees. John Parauka

The winds and flood of Hurricane Katrina bore down on Clint Smith III’s high school in August 2005, three days into his senior year. He and 76 other seniors at Benjamin Franklin High in New Orleans were among the 1.5 million people evacuated after Katrina. Those 77 high school seniors never returned. After the flooded school’s reopening that January, just over 100 members of the Class of 2006 stayed behind to complete their studies and receive their diplomas.

But the hearts of those driven away by Katrina remained at the high school, and this June, the school presented about two dozen of those former students with an honorary diploma and a 2005-06 yearbook, according to Christy Read, the school’s development head. Last week, Read mailed diplomas to another 20 former students, including Smith, an author and poet. She tells me she’s still searching for addresses for the rest.

The idea, discussed for years, took flight last fall at a reading Smith gave at the New Orleans Public Library. Pat Widhalm, Franklin’s current head of school, told me that he met one of Smith’s classmates there who backed the honorary diploma plan. The two discussed “the need to recognize and ‘make whole’” those Class of 2006 members whom Katrina drove away from home, he wrote in an email.  

Last week, when Smith got his diploma in the mail, he posted a photo of it on Twitter. “This,” he wrote, “means the world.”

Fed up with the news? Read on! Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. Sign up at the bottom of the story.

• Libraries helping libraries. Hurricane Maria heavily damaged the vibrant library and de facto community center in the Puerto Rican seaside municipality of Loiza last September. Nearly 1,700 miles to the north in Lincoln, Massachusetts, another library is getting involved to help.

  The Lincoln Public Library is raffling off tickets to Hamilton and hopes to raise $50,000 to help rebuild the damaged library and fix its roof. The Hispanic Federation, a foundation led by Luis A. Miranda Jr., the father of Hamilton’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, has committed to match up to $20,000.

  “The library, particularly in small towns like Loiza, are not only a place where people can go and get info online or get books,” Luis Miranda said. “They’re also community centers. They’re part of the fabric of the day-to-day life of the town.” (The Boston Globe)

• Saving teen girls. They’re called “human interceptors.” Posted at 20 border stops in Nepal, these women stop human traffickers from taking girls to India for forced prostitution.Working in partnership with the US-based nonprofit Love Justice International, the women look for signs that the girls may have been tricked out of their country by false promises of employment abroad.

  “The first thing we say is: ‘Where are you from, where are you going?’” says Maya Gurung, one of the monitors. “We ask if their family know that they are traveling to India and when they say they do, we call them to check.” The monitors work with police to stop the girls from crossing and to reunite them with families, despite threats of violence from the traffickers.

  The women average 90 interceptions a month. (The Guardian)

• Court says no to poison. Former Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt wanted to keep chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic pesticide, on American soil through at least 2022. Last Thursday, a federal court ordered the EPA to ban the chemical by October, citing decades of health reports documenting chlorpyrifos’ harm to children and brain development.

  Chlorpyrifos has been used on a range of crops, including corn and tomatoes. The EPA had originally proposed banning the pesticide, but Pruitt changed course on the chemical last year. More than 50 farmers got sick from the toxin soon after.

  Hawaii has already banned the chemical, and California may follow suit even before October. (Mother Jones)

• Speaking for himself. David James Savarese is a poet. He’s also the writer, producer, and subject of Deej, a Peabody-winning and Emmy-nominated documentary.

  Savarese, who also goes by Deej or DJ, has a mission: He wants to foster more inclusion for people with autism—including himself. “Inclusion should not be a lottery,” he says, where a winner is a person with parents or mentors who have the understanding, drive, and wherewithal to establish proper support.

  Non-speaking and abandoned by his mother at age three, Savarese was nurtured by adoptive parents who learned to understand his body language and his words—spoken through assistive technology that transforms typing into speech.

  What should all people, autistic and neurotypical, do to advocate full inclusion? “Make sure all members of the community feel needed,” Savarese says. “We all need to feel loved and included.”

  Thanks to reader Lauren Arant Menachekanian, an advocate for stories on autism that don’t just focus on the kindness of others, for this story suggestion. (Psychology Today)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out the form below or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. Have a great week ahead and make sure to sign up for the newsletter below.

MaryLinda Moss and Lynne Westafer hug at a memorial outside the Trader Joe's in Silver Lake, where they were held hostage during a standoff in July.Allen J. Schaben/Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

“There’s always hope.” That’s what MaryLinda Moss told the gunman who had taken her and a dozen others hostage at a Trader Joe’s in Los Angeles, California. Moss then put her hand on his heart. She told him he was a good person.

The 55-year-old Moss, an artist who exudes calm from years of trauma therapy and healing work, ended up helping negotiate an end to the crisis.

She remained calm even as her husband texted her, worried.

“It’s complicated,” she texted back. She reassured him she was okay, and wrote, “I can’t text anymore. We are negotiating.”

“Her goal was to get everyone out safely without further bloodshed,” columnist Robin Abcarian, who wrote about Moss for the Los Angeles Times, told me via email.

Moss had gained the gunman’s trust by bandaging his wounded arm. She helped mediate calls with police in order to calm the gunman, who wanted to get out alive. And, calmly—without a weapon—Moss did manage to get them out alive.

Looking for stories of justice prevailing, or of people who think of others? Read on! Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story.

• A moment of connection. Few people understand 17-year-old Jack Ryan Edwards, says his dad. But supermarket clerk Jordan Taylor did.

  Taylor let the autistic teen, who was fascinated with orange juice, help him stock the juice cooler one bottle at a time, even though it took longer that way. The effort was captured in a video that went viral—and led to a part-time job offer for Edwards and a crowd-sourced scholarship fund for Taylor.

  “What I’ve learned is our world doesn’t accept autistic kids. It’s impossible for those kids to enter our world,” said Edwards’ father, Sid. “We spend so much time working on that, but this man figured it out in eight seconds: He went into Jack Ryan’s world.”

  The store clerk, interviewed by the local TV station, fought back tears as he tried to explain why he helped. “I never pictured all this would happen. I was just me being me,” he said. “I just wanted to help somebody else out.”

  Reader Rick Taylor suggested this story—thanks, Rick! (Washington Post)

• A full ride at just the right time. Seth Owen thought he’d lost his college dreams. He had been accepted to Georgetown University but learned that his financial aid package had been based on his family contributing $20,000 to annual expenses. His parents, however, had driven him out of their home after finding out he was gay.

  After Georgetown initially refused to adjust his financial aid award, Owen’s teacher and friends raised $130,000 to help pay for his schooling. But last week, the university changed its offer to a full scholarship, allowing Owen to attend the university at almost no cost.

  Owen is now considering donating a portion of the money towards creating a scholarship fund for LBGTQ students who find themselves in a similar situation. (NBC)

• Others may lose hope, but…Glady Cañas Aguilar tells migrants waiting at the border between Texas and Mexico, “If you’ve made it this far, it’s worth staying until you can ask for asylum.”

  Cañas Aguilar and volunteers bring food, water, ice, and medicine to those waiting to enter the US—some of whom are fleeing death threats from gangs or abusive spouses back home. They also talk to the migrants and provide moral support. Sometimes words, or a comforting ear or shoulder, can be the most important medicine against indifference or insults.

  “By listening and chatting, they feel as if they’re in their homes,” she says.

  Cañas Aguilar shows, as writer Noah Lanard puts it, that “compassion can be a form of resistance.” (Mother Jones)

• Investing in public schools. The best basketball player of his generation wants to provide quality schools and higher education to kids in his hometown.

  LeBron James’s “I Promise” school opened last week in Akron, Ohio, with 240 students in third and fourth grade. The school will expand to include grades one through eight by 2022. Students receive free breakfast and lunch as well as paid tuition to the University of Akron.

  James, who missed 83 days during his fourth grade year, called the opening “one of the greatest moments (if not the greatest) of my life.” He has gotten support for his school from the Obamas, from Michael Jordan, and from Melania Trump—despite President Trump’s recent spat with the basketball star. (CNN)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out this form or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. Have a great week ahead and make sure to sign up for the newsletter below.

Is this a flash mob? A comedy troupe? Some strange protest along a busy intersection in Mexico City?

Not quite. These seven ballet dancers from the Ardentía dance company are performing selections from “The Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake” and even grooving to Michael Jackson in a downtown crosswalk in the Mexican capital.

Granted, the performances only last 58 seconds—the time it takes for a traffic light to change from red to green—but they’re making a big impact. Over the past couple of weeks, the Ardentía company has performed these mini-shows to brighten the lives of weary commuters, part of an initiative called “the theatricality of public space,” reports the Associated Press. The performances have drawn large crowds and captivated photographers across the city.

“We never thought this was going have to this kind of impact,” says one dancer, Manuela Ospina Castro. “Not only are people accepting it, but they need it.”

Looking for stories of people who speak truth to power, who help others? Read on! Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story.

• Showing another side. In comes the spaghetti. Then the beans and rice.

At the Lutheran Social Services office in Phoenix, Arizona, volunteers have formed an informal welcoming committee for newly reunited migrant kids and their families. Some bring in three meals a day, while others help families book flights so they can arrive in time for their check-ins with authorities.

One volunteer even prepared an impromptu birthday party, with candles on Hostess cupcakes, for a 7-year-old boy just brought back together with his mom. As the Trump administration rushes to reunite thousands of migrant families, the support has helped these families navigate a new and unfamiliar country.

“The American public is going to step in where the government has failed,” says Alida Garcia, the coalitions and policy director for FWD.us, an advocacy group which supports comprehensive immigration reform. “It’s going to provide comfort and love and care to these families.” (Vox)

• Connecting the homeless. He was homeless, missing some teeth, and asking for food in an Arizona desert town.

Patience Matthieu thought he looked a bit like her cousin. She got him canned goods and offered to give him some money. What was his story?

After a while, he told her his name. She looked him up online—and found that his mom had been searching for him for years. “Christopher, my heart is broken without you,” a page with his name from a Facebook community called Missing & Homeless said at the top. “Please call me & let me know you are alive. Love, mom.”

Matthieu called the number on the page, and told the woman on the other end: “I have found your son.”

Christian Moreland is just one of about 45 missing people tracked down through the “Missing & Homeless” Facebook group, which has grown to 43,000 members in the past three years. (Washington Post)

• She stood up. Elin Ersson wouldn’t let the packed plane to Istanbul take off. There was a deportee aboard who likely faced death if he was returned to his native land.

  On Ersson’s 14-minute live feed, which went viral, the world saw the 21-year-old Swedish student refuse to sit down until a man being deported to Afghanistan was allowed to leave.

  To one complaining passenger, she responded: “I am doing what I can to save a person’s life…All I want to do is stop the deportation, and then I will comply with the rules here. This is all perfectly legal, and I have not committed a crime.”

  The jetliner didn’t take off until both the planned deportee and Ersson were off the flight. Though it’s likely that the man will be deported at a later date, Ersson’s effort helped bring attention to Sweden’s practice of forcibly returning Afghans who have been denied asylum. Human rights groups have urged an end to the practice. (New York Times)

• Mystery revealed. For 22 years, she quietly gave out a total of $5.5 million to underrecognized women artists over 40. The artists never knew the benefactor of the $25,000 grants, which they considered lifesavers.

  Now Susan Unterberg, 77, has stepped forward as the anonymous donor behind the gifts. Unterberg says she wanted her story to inspire other philanthropists, as well as take advantage of what she calls “a great time for women to speak up.”

  “I feel I can be a better advocate having my own voice,” Unterberg says.

  Other women in the art world are speaking out, too, about repairing a massive gender imbalance in museum collections. The curator Helen Molesworth has suggested borrowing an idea from a Hollywood women’s advocacy group and starting a Time’s Up for Museums, committed to gender equality.

  For years, artists have been struck by the altruism and lack of ego in Unterberg’s grant. “The time I got the check I actually was at a point where I couldn’t pay my rent,” says Amy Sherald, who would go on to paint the highly acclaimed portrait of Michelle Obama in the National Portrait Gallery. “I had $1,500 left and that’s exactly what my rent was.” (New York Times)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out this form or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. Have a great week ahead and make sure to sign up for the newsletter below.

Jaequan Faulkner at his hot dog stand in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune/Zuma Wire

At first, it seemed like trouble: Someone called the Minneapolis Health Department to complain about 13-year-old Jaequan Faulkner and his summer hot dog stand.

But here’s what happened next: The city actually helped the teenager pass his health inspection test and get a permit for his business. The police came by—and posed for a photo with the young entrepreneur.

“I like having my own business,” Faulkner told the Star Tribune. “I like letting people know just because I’m young doesn’t mean I can’t do anything.”

Faulkner serves about 20 customers for four hours each weekday. And next year, he hopes to donate a small portion of his sales to raising awareness about depression and youth suicide. “It’s not about the money,” Faulkner says about his hot dog stand. “It’s just something I enjoy doing.”

Looking for a break from pomposity and conflict? Read on for stories of people who worked to help others. Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story.

• Finding the right notes, thanks to commenters. Her father loved the song. Jenna Glanzer didn’t know all the notes, but she wanted him to hear it after he got dementia. So she went on Reddit last year with a video clip of herself playing as much as she could remember—and readers filled in the missing notes.

  Thanks to their comments, Glanzer was able to identify the song and record herself playing a complete version for her dad. Unfortunately, he turned away quickly, distracted. But she took solace in the the support she received from readers.

  “I don’t get emotional hardly ever, but when I see strangers helping strangers, that’s when I tear up a bit,” Glanzer said.

  Learning the full version of “Little Spring Song” has also cheered her immensely, she said. “Being able to play that song myself…made me feel so much closer to him.” (Washington Post)

• Just because a person is homeless…doesn’t mean he or she shouldn’t get a decent haircut. That’s why a Philadelphia barber wants to raise money for a “mobile barbershop”—an RV in which he’d go to the people and cut their hair.

  Josh Santiago has been giving free haircuts to the city’s homeless since 2017, and he now wants to take his initiative even further with his RV. He takes photos of his clients and shares their stories on Instagram, in hopes that his work will help bring attention to their struggles.”Is there any way possible I could bless you with a haircut today?” Santiago asked one recent day.

  Robert Pullins, who was homeless but planned to start a truck-driving job the following week, said yes—and Santiago got to work, his trimmer humming.

  Pullins laughed when he rose from the barber’s chair. “I feel rejuvenated. I feel fresh…I feel good-looking now. And I feel a boost of my spirit.” (Al Día)

• How one city saved itself from a water crisis. It was an ancient idea: Do a better job of trapping the rainwater.

  For the southern Indian city of Chennai, which has more than doubled its population in the past 25 years to nearly 8 million, the decision and the massive operation that followed over the next 15 years were lifesavers.

  The problem, in short: Paved roads and modern buildings broke up how water got to Chennai’s aquifers. So physicist Sekhar Raghavan proposed a network of pipes and filters to capture the rain from rooftops, driveways, sidewalks, and other areas. The water would then be stored in collection tanks or used to replenish the aquifers. In 2002, the state government began mandating such water collectors on every building in the city.

  It made a world of difference.

  “What people don’t understand,” says Raghavan, “is that all the freshwater in the world ultimately comes from rain.” (Ensia)

• “Stop and listen! Our girls are missing!” She’s 13. She wanted to bring attention to the cases of missing and murdered black women in Chicago. So she organized a march that brought out dozens of people and shut down traffic.

  “I want black girls to get together to protect ourselves and each other,” says Aziya Roberts, who led the march last month. “All we have is each other and this is the time to start being there for one another.”

  She and her mother, Tricey Robinson, as well as other marchers, say media and police have a bias in how they report and investigate the cases of missing black women compared to white women.

   “That’s what the whole march was about,” Robinson said. “No one is helping us.” (Block Club Chicago)

• But that’s not all…here are a few more good news stories for your week.
  • Police saw him walking a 20-mile route to work after his car broke down. His plight prompted his company’s CEO to give him a car. (BoingBoing)
  • When a fire damaged the offices of a 165-year-old weekly newspaper in Vermont, the town’s residents helped save computers and get out the next edition. (Boston Globe)
  • In several battleground states, under-30 residents are registering to vote at significantly higher rates, suggesting youth turnout could be far higher than in previous midterm elections. (Mother Jones)
  • A New Zealand company’s experiment with a four-day workweek is a resounding success. Should more companies do it? (The Guardian)

Have a Recharge story of your own or an idea to make this column better? Fill out this form or send me a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. Have a great week ahead and make sure to sign up for the newsletter below.

Serena Williams during her final match at Wimbledon. Corinne Dubreuil/Abaca/Sipa USA/AP

Her feet were a bit slow and her tennis serve less zippy after a torn pectoral muscle. Then there was the cesarian section and the blood clots—just 10 months ago—and the baby weight that hasn’t dropped off.

“To all the moms out there,” Serena Williams said at the end of the Wimbledon final on Saturday, where she lost two consecutive sets, “I was playing for you today. And I tried.”

"I was really happy to get this far. For all the moms out there, I was playing for you today"

Grace, poise and emotion. A runner-up's interview given by a true champion.@SerenaWilliams 👏 #Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/jjtw3cWyEq

— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 14, 2018

Although Williams didn’t win this time, she triumphed in other ways—in her return to the court after a complicated pregnancy, and in her growing voice as an advocate for women’s issues, writes Sally Jenkins in a column for the Washington Post. “At every turn, Serena Williams has refused to let her new motherhood be a story about a stud-heroic athletic feat but instead has continually made a vital pivot to other women.”

“With her health restored, she has plenty of chances ahead to become the greatest champion ever,” writes Jenkins. “But more interestingly, she already has become an important, transformational one.”

Looking for a break from the insults and political attacks? This week I’m focusing on people who worked to help others. Read on! Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• At Goodwill, she found a vintage projector—and another family’s memories. Who is that glamorous woman in the strapless evening gown with the Veuve Cliquot? Who is the family atop the 1950s car? Or in Japan? Or, apparently, in the middle of the Pacific on an airstrip on Wake Island? When Kristie Baeumert spotted the Argus 300 Model III slide projector at a Goodwill in Tyrone, Georgia, she thought it would be perfect for her grandmother’s slides. Only later did she discover the images from the original owner. That was the start of Baeumert’s quest to find the family depicted in the photos. “If this was my family,” she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I would want these.” After the story went viral, drawing attention from readers all over the world and various TV stations, Baeumert finally connected with one of the family’s relatives. She’ll be returning the photos, and she hopes that the story “inspires people to dust off some boxes in their basements and bring those old memories to life again.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• A smart shopping cart for the homeless. It has a brake. It also has compartments that lock. A group from western Canada has come up with a new kind of cart to help homeless people store their possessions safely. The folks behind the initiative took suggestions from homeless people, who said they wanted something lightweight, waterproof, and able to handle gravel, curves, snow, and mushy terrain. “A lot of our people spend most of their days worrying about, or trying to take care of, or tracking down their stuff,” says Devon Siebenga, who is part of a church that is working with students and engineering staff at the University of British Columbia. Siebenga cautions that this is only part of the solution. “It’s not going to replace housing or keep people off the streets,” he says. But the cart could give people peace of mind over the security of their belongings, and allow them to focus on their own recovery or safety needs. “This provides a dignified alternative while they seek to get their lives back on track.” One shopping cart prototype has been made and four more are on the way. (The Guardian)
• Chance brought them together. Social media celebrated their moment. The flight attendants couldn’t communicate with Tim Cook, 64, who was deaf and blind. They made an announcement asking for help on the Boston-to-Portland flight, and Clara Daly, 15, stepped up and pressed the call button. Daly had taken a year of American Sign Language. She knelt in front of him and began spelling out words in his hand. A neighboring passenger, Lynette Scribner, caught the exchange and took a photo, which was shared nearly 600,000 times on Facebook. “I don’t know when I’ve ever seen so many people rally to take care of another human being,” Scribner wrote in her post. “How are you?” Daly asked him. “Are you O.K.?” They talked intermittently throughout the flight, and Cook, headed home, said he was “very moved” that Daly took the time to talk to him. “Maybe it was meant to be, who knows?” the Oregon man told the television station KGW. (New York Times)
• Pounce on this. A man and his daughter exited a subway train, leaving behind a very cute bunny—and realizing it only when the doors closed. Here’s how a rider, who found it, got it back to them. This whole Twitter thread—full of others weighing in about their own lost bunnies and bears—is pretty delightful. (Mark A. Izatt)

Have a Recharge story of your own or a suggestion on how to make this column better? Fill out this form or send a note to me at recharge@motherjones.com. Have a great week ahead and make sure to sign up for the newsletter below.