Are you worried about voting rights going into the midterms? We are too. We’re keeping a close eye on what’s happening with mail-in ballots and closed polling places, and we’ll share information and ways to help when we have them.
But that makes it all the more important to remember that good things are also happening. There are always wins to celebrate, especially on the local level. Here are a few that are giving us hope right now.
In Virginia, students successfully sued their school board for renaming their schools after Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
The names were undeniably racist to begin with: the schools were first named in 1959 to resist federal rules requiring integration. As public sentiment turned towards racial justice, the school board changed the names in 2021. But in 2024, in the wake of Trump’s win, the board reinstated the old Confederate names. Apparently, they thought that the anti-DEI sentiment of the Trump administration meant that it was fine to glorify the Confederacy once again.
Black students pleaded with the board, but they didn’t listen. Imagine being a Black student in 2026 forced to attend Stonewall Jackson High School.
Last September, U.S. District Court Judge Michael F. Urbanski sided with the students, writing that the school board violated their First Amendment rights and that Jackson’s name “is expressive as a symbol of racial exclusion in public schools.”
Now, just last week, the judge said the school board also broke civil rights laws, including the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act. He ordered them to immediately remove the Confederate names and replace them with new ones that are “racially nondiscriminatory.”
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton just lost his Senate primary after having abandoned his transgender constituents. In 2024, he told the New York Times, "I have two little girls, I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that." He went on to support bans on transgender youth in sports, laws that often include genital inspections for children.
His opponent, incumbent Senator Ed Markey, did not flinch in his support for the LGBTQ+ community. At Boston’s No Kings rally last October, Markey said, “We’re going to stand for the right thing, and we are going to win. Because here in Massachusetts, we stand for what is right. We stand with trans people because trans rights are human rights.”
And win he did! Markey beat Moulton 65 to 35 this past Tuesday. Since Moulton gave up his House seat to run for the Senate, he will hold no elected office next year. It just goes to show that dividing communities doesn’t pay. We don’t have to turn against each other to fight against extremism.
Finally, a mom in Texas named Laura built an online map that tracks contractors and banks who are profiting from ICE detentions. Countless activists have used her site to organize protests across the country and pressure the companies to stop making money on the suffering of immigrants and refugees.
Their efforts forced Citizens Bank to break its contracts with ICE detention centers this July after concerned customers withdrew more than $350 million from their accounts.
For Laura, it’s not just the right thing to do. It’s personal. Her two sons are part Guatemalan and she’s seen how differently they’re treated than their white peers. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not angry about all this or afraid about what it means for my own kids,” she said. “The egregious, dehumanizing rhetoric the administration relies on… was always going to ripple out and hurt people, including kids.”
Even after the success with Citizens Bank, her work continues to inspire activists across the country. Laura’s website includes a map of ICE’s contracts with other major U.S. companies, including AT&T, Comcast, Dell, Deloitte, FedEx, Motorola, and Palantir. It also includes 450 candidates across the country who have taken campaign contributions from some of the three biggest government contractors working with ICE: GEO, CoreCivic, and Management and Training Corporation.
But activists aren’t the only ones who are paying attention. Laura’s work also caught the attention of the Department of Homeland Security. They flagged her website as a domestic terrorism threat that could be used by “local anarchist extremists”… while acknowledging that her site is a perfectly legal expression of her First Amendment rights.
Laura isn’t letting DHS intimidate her. “At first, my stomach dropped,” she said. “But then I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it.” Her website continues to inform and inspire activists across the country.
It just goes to show what one mom and a laptop can accomplish.