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Name: Kelli Peterson

What She Did: Caught flak after forming high school club for gays

Claim To Fame: Sparked a national debate over student rights

Kelli Peterson hardly had revolution on her mind when she started a group for gay students at Salt Lake City’s East High School. A struggling student who occasionally got beaten up, the 18-year-old Peterson says she was simply looking for a peer group. “I hated high school. I didn’t feel like I had anything there.”

After attending a speech by Candace Gingrich, the openly gay half-sister of House Speaker Newt, Peterson became inspired, and she and 25 other students formed the East High Gay/Straight Alliance in November. But in February, the school board banned all noncurricular clubs rather than allow a gay group to meet. In April, Utah’s state legislature voted to let school boards ban student clubs that “involve human sexuality.” The ACLU is considering a lawsuit. Peterson shied away from the media spotlight, but detractors sought her out. She received a death threat, hate mail, and scorn from relatives. Still, she has no regrets.

She finished high school on a high note–“I really felt like I had friends who understood me,” she says, and her grades improved. “People should not always take the middle ground, because you definitely need to take sides on issues,” she says.

Though the school didn’t recognize the alliance — it won’t appear in the East High yearbook, for example — members still met informally every Friday, and teacher Scott Nelson, who co-sponsored the group, says it’s likely to continue. “Kelli’s definitely a pioneer spirit,” he says. “I think she’s paved the way now for others to follow.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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