A boy smiles as a Thai Navy SEAL medic helps injured children inside a cave in northern Thailand, where a group of boys and their soccer coach were trapped.Royal Thai Navy Facebook Page/AP

The kids wrote about their favorite meals, their school obligations, and helping their parents at the store. The families told them they loved them, and managed to parent from afar: “Cover yourself with a blanket—the air is cold.”

The messages delivered between a soccer team trapped inside a flooded cave in Thailand and their relatives gave intimate insight into an 18-day ordeal that captured the world’s attention—and ended Tuesday when the last of a group of 12 boys and their coach were saved. The letters, posted by the Thai Navy SEALs and annotated by the BBC, showed both parents and children sharing messages of love and reassurance.

“Dad and mom are still waiting to arrange your birthday party,” said a letter addressed to Night, one of the boys. “Mom knows that you can do it. Mom and dad and everyone is giving you support.”

“Don’t worry, we’re all strong,” said one letter from the boys. “Once we’re out, we want to go home immediately. Teacher, don’t give us lots of homework!”

In another, a mother told her son not to worry: She’d be right in front of the cave when the boys got out.

With all members of the team now safe, the letters show the kids’ and their families’ resounding resilience, hope, and lightheartedness—even in the grimmest of circumstances.

Looking for a break from the political sniping? This week I’m focusing on big ideas that could help the world—and a few people who turned adversity into opportunity. There’s also good news about an amazing coral reef system. 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. 

• After #BBQBecky called the cops on him, he decided to run for office. He was grilling in a public park when he became famous—because a white woman, infamously known as #BBQBecky, called the cops on him. Now Kenzie Smith, co-founder of a local music and culture magazine, is running for Oakland City Council to help renters, the homeless, and job-hungry youth. He also has been nominated for the city’s park and recreation advisory committee. Though he faces an uphill battle, Smith is taking his city council run in stride. “Win, lose, or draw, it doesn’t really matter. That’s not what it’s about,” says Smith. “What it’s about is trying to get these young voters to vote, to actually have their voice heard, and also to continue to inspire the younger generation to say, ‘If he can do it, then I can do it, too.’” (Mother Jones)
• A newspaper to help Ohio inmates rebuild their lives. Tracy Brumfield wanted to help inmates succeed after being released from prison. So she started a newspaper, called RISE, that shares resources on jobs, places to live, and how to adapt to the outside. The paper also tells inmates’ personal stories of struggle and hope. “People who are in jail, especially those for the first time, are scared and ashamed. They don’t know how to ask for help or where to get it,” Brumfield, 51, told CNN. She would know—Brumfield struggled with addiction and served time for violating parole. After beginning in August 2017, RISE is now on its ninth issue, and is distributed to correctional facilities, food banks, health clinics, and shelters. (CNN)
• The Big Idea: Give employees time off on Election Day. A 2014 study showed that 35 percent of eligible voters said being unable to get time off from work or school prevented them from casting ballots. Patagonia’s CEO, Rose Marcario, came up with a solution: Let’s give folks the day off to vote. Patagonia gave its employees the day off for the presidential election in November 2016 and will do so again this year for the midterms. It’s also calling on other businesses to join in. “All of us benefit from living in a free society,” Marcario wrote. “That’s what allowed us to build businesses in the first place, and it’s what guarantees us the right to defend our air, water, and soil. So this year my message to everyone at Patagonia and all my fellow business leaders is: Let our people go vote.” On Thursday, Gale Anne Hurd, producer of The Walking Dead, The Terminator, and Aliens, said she would follow suit. She urged fellow entertainment chiefs to do the same. (Fast Company)
• Another Big Idea: How to save lives from opioid abuse right now. It’s a seemingly simple change, and medical officials argue it could help stem an epidemic that kills 115 Americans a day: Make methadone available through primary care, just like the US already does for two other anti-opioid medications. The drug, a synthetic opioid that helps reduce cravings and other withdrawal symptoms, has been available by prescription in primary care clinics for decades in the UK, Australia, and Canada. But in the US, methadone can only be distributed in special clinics, which are often located in places underserved by public transportation. How many lives could be saved? A 2017 study of opioid deaths found that patients treated with methadone were one-third less likely to die than those who did not receive the medication. (STAT)
• A coral reef that got better. About 200,000 people depend on the Belize Barrier Reef, a 190-mile-long reef system home to 1,400 species, including manatees and hawksbill turtles. After decades spent on UNESCO’s list of imperiled World Heritage Sites, the reef is now no longer in danger, says the UN agency. Following public pressure, the Belize government ordered an indefinite halt on all oil drilling and exploration in the nation’s waters—and helped protect the reef’s future. (HuffPost)

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. 

The lemonade stand in Atlanta, Georgia. Courtesy of Shannon Cofrin Gaggero

Hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets last weekend to demand the Trump administration reunite kids and parents who were separated at the border.

A 6-year-old boy in Atlanta also had an idea: Make money by selling lemonade, and give it to someone who would help the families.

By last week, he and his family had raised more than $13,000—some through lemonade and bake sales, but the vast majority from a fundraiser on Facebook, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The money is going to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, a Texas-based legal services nonprofit helping immigrants, refugees, and children.

Had it with the political fireworks? This Fourth of July week I’m focusing on people in America who dream big. Oh, and we’ll have pandas, too. Happy holiday! Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• Mowin’ in the USA. Rodney Smith Jr. cuts lawns for free for anyone who needs help, including veterans, single moms, people with disabilities, and the elderly. Smith, originally from Bermuda, says he’s going to all 50 states this year, using social media to solicit suggestions for which yards to cut. In addition, Smith has gotten 130 kids aged 7 to 17 to pledge they would help neighbors in need. They each promised to cut 50 lawns this year. “A lot of people take pride in their yard, and it feels good to see that I made a difference,” Smith says. (Washington Post)
• A frontier, a dream. Brilliant and audacious, Constance Adams grew up drawing skyscrapers. A visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center changed her life and stirred dreams for America that stretched to Mars. The space architect, who died on June 23 of colorectal cancer, designed an ingenious module to house astronauts. A scaled-down version of it has been licensed from NASA by a private space company. Architecture enthralled her, she said in 2017. Why? “I knew that if I did that,” she said, “I would never be bored.” (New York Times)
• Making it smaller. A research scientist was reading an article and got irked. Why do drug companies make eye droppers so big that you waste at least half of the dose? “My reaction to the story was, ‘How do I stick it to the drug companies that are trying to screw over the patients?'” So Allisa Song, a neuroscience researcher at the University of Washington, got a team of pharmacology, bioengineering, and MBA students together. They designed an award-winning affordable, universal adapter for eye drop bottles. The invention, called the Nanodropper, cuts down the droplet size. “We have been contacted by so many patients and ophthalmologists since the story was published,” Song, whose team is seeking funding to manufacture the Nanodropper, told me early Tuesday. “The stories shared with us reminded our team of why we started this project.” (ProPublica)
• Good news for pandas. As promised, we couldn’t end this week’s Recharge without some news about these cute black-and-white animals from China. Fewer than 2,000 pandas are left in the wild. A study led by a group of Chinese researchers says conserving land for pandas—considered an “umbrella species”—also helps other animals, such as golden monkeys and snow leopards. Conserving panda habitat also leads to more protected land, as well as opportunities for recreation and tourism.  “The take-home message [of this study] is, it is worth it,” Ronald Swaisgood, one of the study authors, says. “It’s worth saving these endangered species because we benefit and nature benefits.” (Mother Jones)

Thanks, pandas—and inventive, optimistic people (I’m talking to you) for giving us a bit of hope. Have a good week. 

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. 

They came by the hundreds, rushing to the airport where little kids were being flown in from Texas.

Supporters in New York headed to LaGuardia Airport on Wednesday night to tell these kids that even though they were separated from their parents by other Americans, they were not alone—and they were loved.

Mother Jones’ Mark Helenowski reported at the scene:

“My heart was broken tonight when I was following one of the kids who landed about 8:45 p.m.,” explained Cristina Jiménez, executive director of United We Dream, a national immigrant advocacy group. “He seemed disoriented, and he was really scared. I spoke to him in Spanish, and I told him, ‘I love you. We’re with you. We are here to fight for you.'”

Watch Helenowski’s dispatch from the protest here. Interested in finding out how you can help? I wrote about how to do that here.

Hi, David Beard here, and this week in Recharge I’m profiling people who are working to help others. Justice occasionally prevails, no matter what the headlines say. Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• Gina Rodriguez does a very Jane the Virgin thing with Emmy promo money. Rather than splashy “For Your Consideration” ads for the Emmys, Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez had another idea. Why not use that money to send an undocumented woman to college? Her studio went for it. And with the help of a Los Angeles nonprofit, Rodriguez offered a scholarship to a Latinx student who plans to attend Princeton University. (Entertainment Weekly)
• Comeback story: From the sea, stars (again). After a mysterious disease decimated more than 80 percent of its population, the purple and orange starfish off Northern California have made an amazing recovery—and adapted to ward off a deadly pathogen. Scientists believe some sort of environmental stress—perhaps warmer water or more acid in the ocean—caused sea stars to become more susceptible to a waterborne pathogen, which spread like the common cold, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Fimrite reports. But since 2013, researchers have found a 74-fold increase in the population of ochre sea stars, giving hope to scientists for other fish and marine animals. The scientists attribute this increase to a preexisting gene passed down among the surviving sea stars. Michael Dawson of the University of California-Merced cautioned that while the sea star’s recovery was “reassuring,” other species may not adapt this fast to the effects of climate change. He put it this way: “The ochre sea star’s resilience is perhaps a small, distant bright light on a pretty stormy sea.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
• They’re 11. They’re composers. And they wowed the New York Philharmonic. Camryn Cowan and Jordan Millar, amid tens of thousands of people in Central Park, heard the classical music they wrote performed by a world-class orchestra. They saw the standing ovation from the stage and learned about the rave review in the New York Times. “I think I have more things ahead of me,” says Cowan, a violinist and pianist who prefers Bob Marley, Beyoncé, and Cardi B to classical music. Cowan and Millar are part of the Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers initiative, a partnership with 15 schools. “Women are sometimes put down in orchestras, or they’re not noticed enough for their great talent,” Cowan says, “so I think that me being onstage is a good change. Other people, other kids or adults—maybe they don’t have this same opportunity. I think we can be inspiring for them.” (New York Times)
• During power failure, seven-year-old designs a winner for Google. If school hadn’t been closed, if the electricity hadn’t been off at home, and if her mom hadn’t stumbled upon a contest due that very day to keep her daughter occupied—well, Sarah Lane-Gomez might not have won a $30,000 college scholarship. Her Falls Church, Virginia, school also received $50,000 in tech funds when she won a Googe 4 Doodle contest for her dinosaur-themed sketch drawn during the “Monster nor’easter” snowstorm in March, DesignTaxi.com reports. Lane-Gomez worked throughout that day on her sketch—and the family took her to Applebee’s for dinner that evening. When power went out there, they went to a nearby burger place to finish the sketch. See the winning image below. (Design Taxi)

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. 

Protestors in Philadelphia, PA. Michael Candelori/Pacific Press/ZUMA Wire

It’s one of the biggest fundraisers in Facebook history. In 11 days, more than 525,000 Americans have given over $20 million to help asylum-seekers and migrants at the border. And after President Donald Trump criticized the comedian as “whimpering,” Jimmy Fallon told his 51.2 million Twitter followers he was making a donation in the president’s name. 

The donations will go to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, an immigration legal services nonprofit helping immigrants, refugees, and children in Texas. The money, nearly triple the organization’s previous annual budget, will enable the center to hire more personnel to handle the thousands of immigrant families being separated at the border by the Trump administration. The nonprofit will also hire trainers to organize the many citizens who want to volunteer.  

Still, those donations may not be enough, Money reports.

“We’re actually up against the federal government,” Jenny Hixon, RAICES’s development director told the magazine. “They obviously have well more than $20 million to both detain and prosecute these folks. We really want to make sure that we’re able to represent everybody who needs representation.”

RAICES is just one of many organizations that are working to help immigrants at the border. If you’re looking to get more involved, here are several organizations that could use your support. 

From the Texas Tribune (full list here):

• Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project works to prevent the deportation of asylum-seeking families fleeing violence. The group accepts donations and asks people to sign up for volunteer opportunities here.
• Diocesan Migrant & Refugee Services is the largest provider of free and low cost immigration services in West Texas and says it’s the only organization in El Paso serving unaccompanied children.
• Circle of Health International has staffed a clinic caring for refugees and asylum seekers immediately upon their their release. Their McAllen, Texas, clinic is currently seeing up to 100 patients a day.
• The El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center provides legal representation to immigrants who might not be able to afford it otherwise. It’s accepting volunteers and donations.

From Slate, (see full list):

• ProBAR (The South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project), based in Harlingen, Texas, provides free legal services to detained asylum-seekers. It recruits, trains, and coordinates the activities of volunteer lawyers, law students, and legal assistants. (It is a joint project of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Texas, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and is supported by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation.)
• The Texas Civil Rights Project is seeking “volunteers who speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’ and have paralegal or legal assistant experience.”
• CARA—a consortium of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association—provides legal services at family detention centers.
• The Florence Project is an Arizona project offering free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.

We also want to hear from you: How are you taking action to help? Let us know by filling out the form below. Mother Jones may feature your experiences in a future story or newsletter. 

CNN

Antar Davidson quit a government-contracted shelter for immigrant kids when superiors ordered him to tell young siblings that they were not allowed to hug.

“When I received this order, I realized, because of the way that things were going, there would be more situations that would arise in which I was asked to do things I thought were immoral,” Davidson told BuzzFeed News.

He had worked for Southwest Key, which operates 27 facilities housing immigrant children. After a new Trump administration policy to separate families was implemented at the border, things got worse—and the facility’s unaccompanied minors were joined by young, terrified kids ripped from their parents. The new arrivals had no understanding of what was happening.

“Kids are scared of the dark, so imagine what it would feel like for a kid when they’re separated from their parents in a facility,” he said. “An overworked and underpaid staff had to deal with the trauma of these kids.”

Davidson voted with his conscience not to be a part of a policy that violates international human rights norms and has been opposed by 49 senators and former first ladies Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Rosalynn Carter, and Michelle Obama. He spoke further with Mother Jones about his experiences in the shelter. Read more here.

Hi, David Beard here, and this week in Recharge, I’m profiling people who stood up for their rights—and for those of future generations. Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• Their stadium, too. They did something they could not do in their own country. They went to a soccer match and rooted for their homeland. In Iran, it is illegal for women to attend men’s soccer matches. But at the World Cup in Russia, Iranian women have been everywhere. “I took my father for his 60th birthday to the World Cup. It was great to be with him and to see other Iranian women in the stadium,” Avda, 28, who is from Cologne, Germany, told the website Where Is Football in Saint Petersburg. On Saturday, she got another treat: The Iranian team defeated Morocco 1-0 in its first match. (Where Is Football)
• Cleaning up while cleaning up the sea. What if fisherman scoured the sea of plastic, hauled it in, and got paid? What if that plastic was used to build roads? In the southern Indian state of Kerala, it’s happening. Since last August, nearly 5,000 fishermen and boat owners have hauled in 71 tons of plastic, National Geographic reports. “It’s our responsibility, and necessary for our survival as fishermen to keep the sea clean,” says Peter Mathias, who leads a union of fishing boat owners and operators. A cleaner sea, the fishermen hope, will lead to bigger yields of fish. The women in these communities have also come together to help. An all-female crew of about 30 women were hired and are paid full-time to wash and sort the plastic the fishermen bring to shore. The fishermen hope their initiative spreads worldwide. (National Geographic)
• The cartoonist has the last laugh. His newspaper bosses thought his editorial cartoons weren’t funny. They wouldn’t print his work. They thought he criticized President Trump too much. Rob Rogers thought he was doing some of the best work of his career. And no, he wasn’t going to start praising Trump. Last Thursday, Rogers was fired from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which had riled free speech advocates by refusing to run a series of his cartoons criticizing Trump. On Friday, he wrote a column and drew a cartoon for the New York Times. It was one of the Times’s most popular articles over the weekend (I checked, and it held top spots on nytimes.com all weekend), and praise has come in nationwide for Rogers, from Democrats and Republicans. Twitter commentators called Rogers’ work “brilliant,” “hilarious,” and “fair.” “It’s as simple as this: Rogers was fired for refusing to do cartoons extolling Trump. Let that sink in,” the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists said in a statement. To Rogers, the support is vindication. “The paper may have taken an eraser to my cartoons,” he wrote. “But I plan to be at my drawing table every day of this presidency.” (New York Times)
• Another generation, another playground insult. Esmeralda Bermudez spoke Spanish to her daughter at the playground. A woman admonished her and told her to “speak English,” so as not to confuse her child. For Bermudez, the incident brought back childhood memories of being insulted—she was called a “beaner” and a “wetback.”This time, though, she held her ground. Bermudez, now a Los Angeles Times reporter, told the woman her daughter speaks three languages and is learning a fourth. Her admonisher, who only spoke one, asked how her daughter was doing it. Bermudez responded, “You would be surprised.” Bermudez’s tweet about the incident went viral—and she started receiving 20 to 30 notes a day expressing support for her family’s decision to raise their daughter this way. In case you were wondering, her daughter’s third language is Armenian—her father’s native tongue. And the 5-year-old’s fourth language? Oh, she just wanted to learn French. (Los Angeles Times)

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. 

Lulabel Seitz after her microphone was shut off.Erik Castro/The Press Democrat/AP

No, Lulabel Seitz would not shut up. The first in her family to graduate high school, the Petaluma, Calif., senior wouldn’t let school administrators stop her from publicly talking about sexual assault at school.

“Let her speak!” her classmates shouted when her mic was cut, four minutes into her speech.

The high school principal defended the muzzling, telling the Press Democrat, “We were trying to make sure our graduation ceremony was appropriate and beautiful.” But school officials declined to comment on the assault allegations, citing student privacy issues.

Seitz quickly turned to YouTube to get her message out. “Learning on a campus in which some people defend perpetrators of sexual assault and silence their victims—we didn’t let that drag us down,” Seitz, who is headed to Stanford, said in her uncensored speech, which has now racked up hundreds of thousands of views. “We may be a new generation, but we are not too young to speak up, to dream, and to create change.” (Press Democrat)

Hi, David Beard here, and this week in Recharge, I’m profiling people who stood up for truth, love—and even for strangers. Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• Tiana Smalls saw something. And she said something. A passenger on a Nevada-bound Greyhound bus said she thwarted a US Border Patrol search by shouting that the search was illegal and alerting other passengers. In a Facebook post last Thursday that has exploded online, Tiana Smalls said the bus was nearing the California-Nevada state line when the driver announced they would be boarded by Border Patrol agents who would ask for “documentation.” Smalls said she realized this was illegal and amounted to racial profiling—Border Patrol agents aren’t allowed to conduct searches unless they’re within 100 miles of an international border. She wrote that when the agents boarded, she stood up and said loudly: “I’m not driving this bus, so you have NO RIGHT to ask me for anything! And the rest of you guys don’t have to show them anything, either!” She used Google Translate to convey the message to Spanish-speaking passengers. Smalls said the agents looked “exasperated”—but departed the bus without doing the checks. Selma and A Wrinkle In Time director Ava DuVernay praised Smalls’ effort. “Sometimes the right thing to do is to ‘act a whole donkey,’” DuVernay tweeted, echoing the phrase Smalls used. “Brava.” (NewsOne)
• Abused as a teen at her church, Emily Joy launched the #ChurchToo movement. It started with a text. Last November, Emily Joy, 27, asked her close friends if she should out the church leader who she says abused her. “Probably, huh?” she concluded. Her story has sparked a #MeToo moment within the evangelical community. Hundreds of people have since shared their stories, bringing attention to abuse that has often been swept under the rug. The hashtag helped others know they weren’t alone, writes Becca Andrews for Mother Jones, and has even prompted several pastors to step down. “A reckoning,” writes Andrews, “has been a long time coming.” (Mother Jones)
• This couple’s house burned down. They moved on. Now they have the last laugh. “The Jackie Robinson of Marriage.” Janice and Charles Tyler hear that about them from a neighbor. It’s kind of a joke, and a tribute, too. Fifty years ago, the Tylers bucked convention. Janice, a white woman, and Charles, a black man, got married during a tumultuous time in American history—in the weeks between the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, when interracial marriages were still uncommon. Try as they might, it wasn’t easy for the Tylers to live at peace with their neighbors back then. And one likely burned their house down. They were young. They moved on. Through the years, the two have cycled through meaningful careers and watched their four kids turn out to be a social worker, a teacher, a public defender, and a nurse. And nowadays, their walks through their Southern California neighborhood are pretty uneventful. “They’ve been through a lot in 50 years, but have overcome it all with positivity, humor, and a deep mutual respect for each other,” reporter Colleen Shalby tells me. Shalby wrote about the Tylers for the Los Angeles Times. “I walked away feeling uplifted,” she says. (Los Angeles Times)
• One more thing: How we #LiveThroughThis. The unexpected deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain last week prompted an outpouring of stories from people who were helped by friends—and often strangers—as they were riven with loss. One person shared a story about being too depressed to get to work one day, and after telling his boss, he was invited to a Shabbat dinner. A woman grieving a recent death wrote about how her friends took her to the airport and the flight attendants took turns sitting with her in the back row. In each case, when a person needed it most, someone took the time to help. (Mother Jones)

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

The Boise football players with the couple they rescued.Screenshot via the Idaho Daily Statesman

The 13- and 14-year-olds of an Idaho football team were jubilant on their way home through Oregon after winning a tournament in California.

Then they saw the overturned car and a couple stuck inside—and they got to work.

Alan Hardman said he was passed out from the crash when he thought he heard “young voices.” The teens got Hardman out, but his wife, Margaret, remained trapped. Six offensive linemen couldn’t push the car back over. But then 12 players from another van joined in to free her.

“I don’t know how we would have done it without them,” Alan Hardman tells the Idaho Statesman. “They didn’t even hesitate.”

Last Thursday, two days after the rescue, the Boise team visited the Hardmans, who were staying at a relative’s home in Idaho. They brought a signed football, flowers, cookies, and cards—and got hugs back in return.

Hi, David Beard here, and this week in Recharge, I’m highlighting some of the relentless and resilient young people who are striving for a better world. Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. You can sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• The odds were against them. They didn’t stop. It took some of these teenagers two years, but they finally got Utah’s solidly GOP legislature to talk about climate change—and to pass a resolution signed by the Republican governor acknowledging its effects. At first the Senate’s Natural Resources Committee wouldn’t even grant them a hearing. So the students organized an unofficial one—filling one of the biggest conference rooms in the state Capitol—and persuaded GOP state legislator Becky Edwards to sponsor a resolution in 2017. It failed, but dozens of teens came back this year with a bipartisan resolution focusing on factors that affect Utah residents every day, such as rising temperatures, varying snowfall, and worsening air quality. “I’m hoping that other conservative states, people, and students especially see that it is possible to work towards a healthy future and not lose hope,” says Mishka Banuri, a high school junior. (CNN)
• This photographer captured a man’s scariest moment. Also, his best. Last August, Marcus Martin risked his life to save a woman from a speeding car driven by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photographer Ryan M. Kelly’s image of Martin being struck by the car soon became iconic and would go on to win this year’s Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. Nearly a year later, Martin and Kelly reunited, but under happier times—Martin was marrying the woman he saved, Marissa Blair. And Kelly was happy—even honored, he told me last week—to serve as their wedding photographer. (Slate)
• After this state banned pesticides, tourism and wildlife flourished. The tiny Indian state of Sikkim, high in the Himalayas, decided 15 years ago to ban all pesticides from its farms. It eventually outlawed pesticides and chemical fertilizers altogether, and phased out plastic utensils and dishes. Now Sikkim’s 600,000-some residents are setting a model for the world’s most populous democracy. The number of foreign tourists has increased significantly over the years, and in 2014, Sikkim was named the world’s top destination by Lonely Planet. The state’s production of large cardamom (think Earl Grey tea)—has increased by nearly 23 percent since 2014, and officials credit the resurgent bees that cross-pollinate the crop. Not all of the government’s efforts have been a complete success, however. The price of cabbage tripled, and some farmers say they need more access to organic manure, training, and markets where they can sell their food. But other countries are still paying attention: Sikkim’s Himalayan neighbor, the kingdom of Bhutan, is planning to go all-organic by 2020. (Washington Post)
• Away from Rwanda, and back—as a pacesetter. There are four neurosurgeons, all male, in Claire Karekezi’s once-riven homeland of Rwanda. Next month, Karekezi will join them as the first and only female neurosurgeon in the country. “I need to carry the dream to the end,” says Karekezi. As a 10-year-old who had to flee the genocide in 1994, Karekezi’s dream was to become a doctor. Though she endured the 100-day massacre—and lost relatives during it—it didn’t deter her. “I always tell people that that’s what sort of made us who we are today as Rwandese people,” she tells the Toronto Star. “Because we grew up knowing that we cannot count on anyone but ourselves. So this kind of spirit kept me going, to do whatever it takes to get where I want to go.” (Toronto Star)

That’s it for this edition! We hope these stories help you in the week ahead. Have a tip or a link? Email us at recharge@motherjones.com.

A lion in Malawi.Adriane Ohanesian/For the Washington Post

The rhinos were gone from Chad. The elephants were poached from part of Malawi. The lions, too.

But now, these animals are starting to return—thanks to a group of philanthropists and environmentalists working to repopulate Africa’s parks and wildlands. African Parks transports animals to some of the world’s most remote areas in order to restore their populations. In a modern Noah’s Ark kind of mission, the nonprofit hopes to help conserve endangered species while managing parks throughout the continent using fences and beefed-up security. The effort isn’t perfect—the animals aren’t completely safe from poachers, and some conservationists say the ideal solution would allow species to freely migrate—but it has helped replenish animal populations in certain areas.

“We have two options,” Peter Fearnhead, the CEO of African Parks, told the Washington Post. “One is we allow these places to disappear. The other is we make our own plan.”

Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. This week we highlight trailblazers and movements to honor peace and justice. You can sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of the story. 

• At last, their stories will be told. Karin Berry’s great-great-grandfather was a hard-working carpenter. In 1879, he was taken from a cellar and hanged by a white mob in southwestern Mississippi. “For years,” Berry writes, “ugly newspaper reports and half-remembered family stories were the only evidence of my ancestor’s murder.” Until now. Berry’s great-great-grandfather’s name and death date is being recognized at the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which commemorates more than 4,400 lynching victims from 1878 to 1950. Late last month, Berry took her mom and her sister with her to see his name. The memorial, she writes, is “a chance at long last to see our loss publicly recognized, to tell the stories of the victims and prove that, despite everything, we have endured.” (The Undefeated)
• Take note, parents: Majoring in ethnic studies paid off for comic Ali Wong. In her latest Netflix special, Wong argues that she’s been able to succeed despite having a degree in ethnic studies. But, as Jamilah King writes, it’s in part because of her major that Wong has become one of the most recognizable Asian American comedians in Hollywood.” While comedians making fun of their identity is pretty common, Wong is doing something that few Asian American women have ever had the platform or access to do,” King writes. “That understanding of her heritage is so crucial to her comedy, from the way she inverts myths about Asian-American sexuality to how she talks about the trauma of war.” (Mother Jones)
•  He saw promise…in a deserted Kmart. It was once the anchor of a suburban shopping center. Now it’s a school. That’s Preston Kendall’s doing. Kendall, the school’s president, guided nearly 400 low-income, mostly minority students into this space in Waukegan, Illinois in February. When Kendall hired a Chicago firm to design the school, he told them he wanted a cross between a college and corporate headquarters. His students would be working one day a week for companies or nonprofits, which help pay for their tuition. This work-study program, combined with fundraising, keeps costs low for students and their families. Welcome to the new, green and blue, natural-light filled Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep. Or as Aura Ulloa, a senior, calls it: “Cristo Rey St. Kmartin.” (CityLab)
• “A one-woman Legal Aid society.” It was a hopeless case. Raymond Crump Jr. was a poor black man who had been accused of murdering a well-connected white socialite. The death sentence was a foregone conclusion. Attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree took that case—for $1. She won it, too, and the case was acquitted despite staggering odds. Though born to a family of slender means, Roundtree, who died last Monday at age 104, blazed three trails in mid-century America: in the military, the law, and the ministry. As Michelle Obama said in 2009, Roundtree proved “that the vision and perseverance of a single individual can help to turn the tides of history.” (New York Times)

That’s it for this edition! We hope these stories help you in the week ahead. Sign up to get the newsletter below. 

Paulette Jordan campaign

Triumphant as the Democratic nominee in Idaho’s gubernatorial primary last week, Paulette Jordan now has an uphill ride in the general election: Her state hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1990.

But Jordan, 38, has bucked tough challenges before. If she wins, she’ll be the first woman to run Idaho and the first Native American governor in US history. Jordan, an enrolled member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe, is popular in the deeply red state and has drawn support from unions, liberal groups, and even, according to HuffPost, one of her mom’s favorite singers: Cher.

Jordan hopes to raise the minimum wage, expand Medicaid, and increase education funding. She draws inspiration from her ancestors, many of whom were tribal chiefs: “They taught me the way,” she said.

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• A glimmer of hope for an endangered species. In March, the last male northern white rhino was euthanized due to old age. Only two female rhinos of the subspecies remain, but they are not able to bear calves. It may not be the end, however: scientists at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park were able to successfully impregnate a southern white rhino through artificial insemination. Researchers hope she can one day become a surrogate mother to the related northern white rhino. The pregnancy is a “critical step in our effort to save the northern white rhino,” said Barbara Durrant, director of reproductive sciences at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. (Associated Press)
• How could she save her dying husband? The answer was centuries old. Steffanie Strathdee was running out of options to save her husband. Tom Patterson was in a coma after catching a superbug that was resistant to every antibiotic doctors tried. Strathdee, an infectious-disease epidemiologist, wondered: What about that ancient Eastern European treatment? Phage therapy uses viruses to attack and kill specific bacteria. It’s almost never used in the United States—and not licensed by the FDA. Strathdee convinced doctors to use the therapy. Patterson came out of his coma, and emerged from the hospital in August 2016—the first person in the United States to have been successfully treated intravenously with phages. It prompts the question: Can phages be used to save some of the 23,000 people who die from resistant infections in the United States each year? (Mother Jones)
• Not to be deterred: She survived the Cambodian genocide, now she’s a University of California-Berkeley grad. For two days, the Khmer Rouge left her in a field, tied to a bush, without food or water. If Chansitha Ouk could make it through Cambodia’s killing fields as a 9-year-old, she could, at age 50, get her undergraduate degree in media studies from UC-Berkeley. “The childhood that I lost—Berkeley healed me,” Ouk, who hopes to become an education advocate, said before her graduation on May 16. “I feel that education healed me and gave me strength and hope.” Ouk’s childhood vanished at age 7 when the murderous Khmer Rouge separated her from her family and put her in a children’s work camp. She made it to a refugee camp in Thailand, learned some English and arrived in San Francisco in 1984. In her application for Berkeley more than three decades later, she wrote: “I am not a smart student, but I am a hard-working student. My English still broken. But my dream isn’t.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Unlikely allies: Two dads, brought together by a shared tragedy. Ryan Petty is a self-described libertarian who doesn’t think guns were the root cause of the school massacre on February 14. Fred Guttenberg wants more restrictions on gun ownership to be the legacy of his child’s death. Petty is laid back; Guttenberg is hard-charging. While they’re working on different approaches to school safety after the massacre, they’re also showing a polarized America that two people with very different views can find common ground. Together, they’ve backed several bills on both school safety and gun reform—including a package of reforms passed by Florida lawmakers that banned bump stocks and increased the minimum age for buying rifles and shotguns to 21. They’ve also begun to appreciate each other. “Seriously, I love the guy,” Petty said of Guttenberg. (Mother Jones)

That’s it for this edition! We hope these stories help you in the week ahead. Have a tip or a link? Email us at recharge@motherjones.com. 

Daisy Arvizu with her family members and her fiancé, Martin Giovanni Portillo.Courtesy Alfredo Corchado/Dallas Morning News

They had four minutes. On Saturday, Martin Giovanni Portillo proposed to his girlfriend, Daisy Arvizu, in front of family.

But there was no time to spare. Standing in a dry riverbed of the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border, Portillo, a US citizen, had to do it quickly. Every year, a nonprofit in El Paso, Texas, organizes a “Hugs Not Walls” event that allows families to temporarily reunite while US Border Patrol agents keep watch. Flanked by her family from Mexico, Arvizu, a DACA student, said yes—and as the Dallas Morning News reports, showed her ring to a proud dad and family.

Then their four minutes was up. Border Patrol authorities separated the US-based couple from her father and other relatives from Ciudad Juárez. Another family could reunite now—but only for four minutes.

Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. This week, we feature people who improve the lives of others, seek justice, and work around obstacles to create a better world. Sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• The man who saved millions of babies. Blood transfusions saved James Harrison’s life when he was 14. So at 18, he began donating blood. Doctors found—perhaps because of the earlier transfusions—that the Australian man’s blood had unique, disease-fighting antibodies. His blood helped build an injection called Anti-D that fights rhesus disease, which attacks unborn babies. Known as the “man with the golden arm,” Harrison donated blood nearly every week for 60 years—and officially ‘retired’ at the age of 81, according to CNN. “Every batch of Anti-D that has ever been made in Australia has come from James’ blood,” said Jemma Falkenmire of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. “And more than 17 percent of women in Australia are at risk, so James has helped save a lot of lives.” Among the 3 million women given the injection: Harrison’s daughter, who gave birth to a healthy son. (CNN)
• The lawyer fighting for women “to have rights like men.” In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, Mehnaz represents moms abandoned by their husbands and brides beaten by their spouses. She is one of only 12 women lawyers—along with 500 male colleagues—in an area with 700,000 people. And she had to fight like hell for that law degree. When Mehnaz (who goes by one name) was in high school, the Taliban took over her village and burned down the girls’ schools. But she continued her education despite the fear the insurgents stoked—even as her family endured threats for allowing Mehnaz to study. “They were terrible years,” she said. “It was risky. But I didn’t lose courage.” (NPR)
• The new American who showed other Americans how to be. “This is not about I the person, but about we the people,” Chef José Andrés said upon winning the James Beard Foundation’s humanitarian of the year award in February. “I didn’t feed anybody; WE fed many…People were hungry.” Andrés, a Spanish native who became a US citizen in 2013, received the award for his work feeding the hungry after natural disasters in Houston and Puerto Rico. And as Fast Company touts, business is booming for the impulsive chef and impassioned activist. (Fast Company)
• The community that responds with peace and an epic cookout. Two weeks after a white woman called the police on a black family for lakeside grilling in Oakland, California, the community staged a huge cookout at the park last Thursday. The peaceful celebration involved food, of course, and music that got folks up and grooving to the electric slide. Oakland City Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney saw the event as an antidote to the blatant racism of the earlier call. “Police are not private security for any white person that’s offended by the presence of black folks in our public spaces.” (HuffPost)
• The evangelical revival that preaches tolerance and diversity. Meet the Red Letter Christians, a group that describes themselves as “taking the words of Jesus seriously,” while combating racism, gun violence, and the death penalty. The organization wants to provide evangelical Christians “an alternative to the old, white, predominantly male, and politically conservative evangelicalism that they believe has led the movement to lose its way.” One Red Letter founder, Shane Claiborne, says white churches “are hemorrhaging and struggling. But the church is flourishing in ethnic communities and immigrant communities.” (Mother Jones)

That’s it for this edition! We hope Recharge helps you in the week ahead—and brings out the hellraiser in you. Have a tip or a link? Email us at recharge@motherjones.com. And make sure you sign up for this newsletter below. 

A resident tries to connect electrical lines downed by Hurricane Maria in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico.Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo

Oscar Carrion didn’t make the headlines—but thousands of people are grateful for the work he’s been doing.

When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and cut power on the island, Carrion and his four kids went night after night in darkness. He had to do something. “We were tired of hearing, ‘It can’t be done, it can’t be done,’” he told PBS’s Frontline. “We made the decision to try to continue forward.”

So he and his friends came together and raised $2,500 to buy a used bucket truck. They taught themselves about electrical wiring. And then Carrion led a DIY effort to restore power to several of Puerto Rico’s neighborhoods—repairing, replacing, and reconnecting electric lines in those areas. This video of his efforts, a part of Frontline’s look at Puerto Rico’s slow restoration after the hurricane last September, is worth your time.

Recharge is a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. For our first edition, we’re featuring people who have helped others, sought to make a better world, and found that justice does prevail. Sign up at the bottom of the story. 

• She had one shot with President Trump. She didn’t waste it. Mandy Manning, America’s current Teacher of the Year, met Trump last week when she was being honored at the White House. She used the opportunity to slip him letters from refugee and immigrant kids in Spokane, Washington. “I just had a very, very brief moment so I made it clear that the students that I teach…are dedicated and focused,” Manning said. “They make the United States the beautiful place that it is.” In the letters, the children write about their experiences coming to America—Manning hopes Trump will read them. (Newsweek)
• Here’s some good news about an endangered species. Researchers have measured a bump in humpback whale babies over the past few years in the waters off Antarctica, partially because there is more krill to feed off and more ice-free days. A moratorium on commercial whaling that took effect in the early 1980s is another reason they’re thriving. It’s likely a large portion of the animals alive today were born after then. (New York Times)
• Why not let kids “pay off” overdue fines by reading? Libraries around the country want to avoid penalizing young readers who return books late. This story, from the Los Angeles Times a few months ago, shows what a little forgiveness—and accountability—can do. By being able to “read away” library fines, Leilany Medina ended up reading much longer than required to work off her $4 in overdue charges. (Los Angeles Times)
• They were arrested a half-century ago. Now they’re being honored. At 88, Margarita Melville returned to the scene of a Maryland protest 50 years ago for which she was arrested, handcuffed, and served nine months in a federal prison. She, her husband, and seven friends had stolen and burned 378 draft records in a protest at the height of the Vietnam War. “I personally put a match on them,” the Baltimore Sun quoted her as saying. The group, dubbed the Catonsville Nine, inspired similar protests across the country. Under increasing pressure throughout the unpopular war, Congress ended the draft in 1973. On Saturday, Melville came to be honored, as a state marker was unveiled near the site of the protest. “Don’t cause too much trouble,” someone called out at the ceremony, according to the Sun. Melville smiled. (Baltimore Sun)

That’s it for this edition! We hope Recharge helps you in the week ahead—and brings out the hellraiser in you. Have a tip or a link? Email us at talk@motherjones.com. And make sure you sign up for this weekly newsletter below. 

Mother Jones illustration

Dear Reader,

Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Or Trump, either.

Lots of people are trying to make the world a better place, but we don’t always hear about them. Their stories may be buried by tales of greed, deceit or exploitation. And while it’s important to investigate those darker stories, as our newsroom does every day, we also need stories that remind us that hope exists and justice does win. 

That’s why we’re introducing Recharge, a weekly newsletter that offers a jolt of inspiring news—the hell-raising kind, not the fluff—and motivation to your week. Wondering what stories fit the bill? Check out the tweet thread below. 

Look for the helpers. Every week they may not make the headlines, but people help others and work for a better world. This thread 👇🏽has their stories. Image: a “fire rainbow” that appeared at @PinnacleNPS in California, by M. Jimenez #Recharge /1 pic.twitter.com/004lIHToAd

— David Beard (@dabeard) April 28, 2018

Our very first edition launches next Wednesday, May 9. Be sure to sign up so you don’t miss a single one.

Image credits: Elise Amendola/AP; Sheila Burke/AP; Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press/AP; Aaron Poole/AMPAS/ZUMA; Mike Stocker/TNS/ZUMA