Good news you understandably might have missed

While we were all trying to adjust to being locked down, some good stuff happened out there.

Did you know that Colorado abolished the death penalty last Monday? Governor Jared Polis signed the measure sent him from the Democratic legislature eliminating capital punishment and also converted the sentences of three men awaiting execution to life without the possibility of parole. This makes Colorado the 22nd state without a death penalty. Many states, including California, retain death penalty laws on the books, but seldom or never execute convicted offenders....Early in March, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger ordered removal of Confederate paraphernalia from all of the service's bases. Oh, you thought that the victor in that war had been determined a century and a half ago? So did I. But after members of Congress had held a hearing on white supremacist activity in the ranks, the general felt he should take action.

"We're not being politically correct -- nobody told me to do this. The sergeant major and I are just trying to do what's right for the institution.

"We're trying to make it better."

...

Finally, the Water Is Life movement scored a big win against a dangerous, dirty oil pipeline.

... a federal court issued a major ruling in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The D.C. Court of Appeals found that the Army Corps of Engineers violated federal law in giving the pipeline a permit to cross beneath the Missouri River, at a spot just north of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, whose residents say the pipeline poses an ongoing threat to their drinking water, sacred sites, and way of life.

“This decision vindicates everything we have been saying,” Dallas Goldooth, a grassroots organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, tells Mother Jones. “Indigenous expert knowledge cannot be ignored. The fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground cannot be ignored. This is a huge win, not just for the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes, but for the hundreds of other nations fighting extractive projects on their lands.”

Will this hold up in court? There's a chance. The victory is a reminder of what Native Americans have to know: never say never.