Everything Isn’t Total Shit: A Few Good Things Happened Recently

The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) is extending the Voices of Connection program, which launched in December of last year and provides incarcerated people with 775 minutes of free phone calls per month.

A representative for IDOC confirmed to the Chicago Reader that the department decided to extend the program after seeing “a significant increase in minute usage as individuals gained greater access to phones.”

A landmark study on the impact of free prison communication conducted by nonprofit Worth Rises confirmed that free prison calls lead to increased connections with loved ones, lower recidivism rates, and a slate of other positive outcomes.

Seattle’s City Council approved $3.6 million in funding for free breakfast and lunch for all public school students in the city beginning in September.

The plan was spearheaded by Seattle’s Democratic Socialist mayor, Katie Wilson, to expand the city’s targeted school lunch program to cover all students in the city.

In addition to providing free breakfast and lunch to Seattle’s roughly 49,000 public school students beginning next month, the new program will also provide more support to low-income students during weekends and school vacations.

Cities across Latin America have reached a new milestone in sustainable transportation, with 10,000 electric buses now in operation, according to data recently released by C40 Cities and the International Council on Clean Transportation.

The electric buses are now operating across 80 cities in 13 Latin American countries, with Santiago, São Paulo and Bogotá accounting for more than 7,000 electric buses between them. The fleets are estimated to avoid more than 10 million tons of CO2 emissions every year.

Columbus, Ohio is now the first city in the United States to provide free period products at all of its major sports venues.

Huntington Park, home of the Columbus Clippers, joined Ohio Stadium, ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, Nationwide Arena, Historic Crew Stadium, and the Schottenstein Center in providing free period products to guests. Across the venues, there are now 165 free-vend period product dispensers.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced this week that the City will make childcare completely free for all families receiving childcare assistance through vouchers and contracts across the city.

The policy will benefit approximately 22,000 low-income families who currently receive subsidized child care through the Child Care Assistance Program and pay a sliding-scale fee.

Beginning in September, the Mamdani Administration will cover the $5.2 million in annual out-of-pocket costs those families currently pay for care.

Spokeswoman Éva Magyar announced that the Hungarian government has enacted a decree banning the acquisition, breeding, keeping, training, display, and use of 25 groups of wild animals in circus performances effective January 1, 2027.

The move makes Hungary the final European Union member state to restrict wild animals in the circus ring.

The Cherokee Nation–one of the largest Indigenous tribes in the U.S.–issued a ban on hyperscale data center development on its tribal lands.

The tribe shared the Principal Chief’s Data Center Task Force Report, which spent months examining the impacts of hyperscale data centers on the economy, environment and communities within the Cherokee Nation Reservation. The report noted significant concerns regarding energy and water consumption, air quality, infrastructure, and cultural resources.

Based on the task force’s findings, Chief Hoskin–the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation–implemented a ban on hyperscale data center development on tribally owned and trust lands.

Nearly half of Utah’s students in kindergarten through third grade are not reading at grade level. In an effort to help improve reading levels, nonprofit Operation Literacy is teaming up with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to provide free books to children across the state.

Under the partnership, Imagination Library and Operation Literacy will launch the Raising Utah Readers initiative, which calls on Utah lawmakers to provide funding for free books and literary resources for children.

“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.” – Howard Zinn