More Uplifting Stories from 2021 (the Political Version)
As a former human rights and corporate accountability lawyer and long-time nonpartisan advocate, I found myself gravitating toward the policy realm in creating my round-up of good news stories from 2021. So for those of you who share my interest in governmental and corporate policies that need to change and are looking for good news right about now, here’s a list from 2021 of policies that did change, those showing signs of progress toward a more just and equitable world, and some positive impacts of past policy changes:
IKEA is more than furniture mazes and meatballs. The company kicked off the year with the purchase of an 11,000-acre forest in southeast Georgia (as in the U.S. state) to protect the local ecosystem. Conserving these trees is just one way the company seeks to be “climate positive” by 2030. Bonus: the public has a right to hike on the land, even though it is a working forest.
In January, we saw history being made when the Senate confirmed retired four-star Army Gen. Lloyd Austin as the first Black secretary of defense by a vote of 93–2.
Over in the UK, lawmakers recognized that sanitary items are “essential” and, while the taxes imposed on them were originally intended to support “excluded women and girls,” the impact made supplies inaccessible for some of the very people the tax…
