Lorena Gonzalez remembers well the political earthquake that struck her home state of California 25 years ago. She felt it clear across the country, in Washington, D.C., where she was studying government as a graduate student at Georgetown University.

On Nov. 8, 1994, Californians overwhelmingly backed Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that sought to screen out unauthorized immigrants and deny them state services, such as public schools and most health care. Voters in the Golden State, on the heels of a recession, had had enough of footing the bill for such migrants. Pete Wilson, then Republican governor, embraced the controversial initiative and leaned into the issue in his reelection campaign that year. 

The passing of Proposition 187, and subsequent measures backed by Governor Wilson to end affirmative action and effectively ban bilingual education, roused Latinos in California to an activism that, in the years since, has realigned the politics of the nation’s most populous state. Some see the potential for a similar backlash reshaping the politics of America in the face of anti-immigrant fervor today. 

Ms. Gonzalez recalls being “shocked to the full,” angry and disbelieving at the wide margin for the measure – 59% to 41%. It felt like a direct attack on her community and her family, including her father who had worked hard in California’s strawberry fields and packinghouses, then built his own furniture sales business.

“He doesn’t, in the eyes of Californians, belong here?” she asked her mother back home in San Diego. “I remember Mom telling me, ‘You can complain, or you can go do something about it.’”

She listened to her mother.

Reed Saxon/AP/File

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (left) chairs the Latino caucus in California’s Legislature.

What followed was a law degree; a job as senior adviser to the state’s first Latino lieutenant governor in more than a century, Cruz Bustamante; election as an influential labor leader in San Diego; and then, as a single mother campaigning in 2013, a seat in the state Assembly, where she chairs the powerful Latino caucus. It’s at record strength – 29 members, all Democrats, a fourth of the Legislature. Her latest landmark legislation: a state law that redefines contractors in the flexible gig economy as employees with benefits. 

Assemblywoman Gonzalez’s path personifies the unstoppable drive of Latino leaders who helped turn California from a state that elected mostly Republicans as governors and produced GOP Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, to a state that runs a deep, Pacific blue.

“We really saw a whole generation of Latinos become leaders. They entered the political field – civic and political – and they were really mobilized by [Proposition] 187,” says Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project, which is based in Sacramento and affiliated with the University of Southern California.

In the decade following Proposition 187, these leaders helped register more than a million new Latino voters. Over the years, they have pushed and passed trend-setting legislation, such as in-state tuition and driver’s licenses for unauthorized immigrants – policies that many Americans across the country would decry as undermining the rule of law. They have trained activists nationwide to fight for the “Dreamers” – children of unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as youths.

Now these Latino politicians are at the forefront of the Democratic “resistance” in California. 

“Road map for the rest of the nation”

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a first-generation Mexican American, oversees census and voter participation efforts. Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose Mexican parents also immigrated to the U.S., recently filed California’s 60th lawsuit against the Trump administration; many of the suits, which other states have also joined, relate to immigration policy. 

In her district office in San Diego, where almost every inch of available display space is covered with plaques, posters, photos, and thank-you notes, Ms. Gonzalez says that California’s Latinos “provide a road map for the rest of the nation.” They can show Latinos in other states how to get past feeling mad about the rhetoric of the Trump administration, register to vote – and use that vote to “permanently realign the politics of this country.”

What does that road map look like in California? And where might it lead the country?

For Angelica Salas, the road to empowerment began with the mass mobilizing of Latino voters.

Like the assemblywoman from San Diego, Ms. Salas was also back East – in Princeton, New Jersey – when Californians approved Proposition 187. She joined a vigil protest the next day. But she wanted to do more, and returned early in the spring of 1995 to the Los Angeles area, where she grew up.

Laura Cluthé/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Angelica Salas, head of Chirla, sits in her office adorned with posters and photos.

For a year, she volunteered at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or Chirla, manning the hotline. She heard from Latinos, some third- and fourth-generation, about “horrible” cases of discrimination after 187 was approved.

The measure was immediately challenged in federal court and found to be unconstitutional. The state appealed the ruling, only to drop it five years later under Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. The ban on bilingual education was repealed in 2016.

For Ms. Salas, one year turned into 24 at the influential rights organization that she now leads. Civic resistance to 187 changed her life, she says, and that of countless others.

Protests leading up to the vote weren’t enough to stop approval. “There was a real, fundamental understanding that the reason we lost Prop. 187, the fight against 187 in the ballot box, was because we didn’t have enough political power,” she says at her office, similarly decorated with posters and photos of milestones. “It became an obsession to build political power.” 

In 1994, Latinos made up about 30% of California’s population, but only 12% of its voters.  

Chirla and other organizations – including labor unions, a bedrock of Latino activism – combined forces to make sure that Latino migrants who were already legal, permanent residents became citizens and then registered to vote. These were people like her mother and Ms. Salas’ aunts and uncles.

As a 15-year-old going to school in Pasadena, and the only family member who knew how to type, she had filled in their amnesty forms. Now it was time for the next step. Chirla advertised workshops on citizenry on the radio, urged family and friends to become citizens, and set up voter registration tables outside swearing-in ceremonies for new citizens.

The group also worked with the county registrar to enable voter registration inside these ceremonies, which sometimes served more than 2,000 new citizens at a sitting. It was no coincidence that these newly minted citizens and subsequent Latino voters vastly favored Democrats over Republicans. Before Governor Wilson backed Proposition 187, Latino voter registration only slightly favored Democrats, says Dr. Romero, an expert on Latino voting patterns. 

Today, close to 60% of registered Latino voters in California are Democrats, she says, and most unaffiliated Latinos vote the same way. Latino registration with Republicans is in the low teens. At 40% of the population, Latinos are California’s largest, and fastest growing, ethnic group. 

Damian Dovarganes/AP/File

Richard Avina (center) assists Judith Ceja with finding her voting place in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Legislators, too, systematically built their caucus. It began in 1973 with five members. They were too small to influence legislation, but they built important political bridges, including one to Democratic Speaker Willie Brown. In 1981, he named one of their members to chair a redistricting committee, which then drew new districts favorable to Latinos.

These early efforts helped pave the way for much greater Latino representation in the 1990s. But it did not happen organically. Richard Polanco, former state legislator and Senate majority leader from East Los Angeles, is widely credited as the architect of today’s powerful Latino caucus. 

Mr. Polanco says that Proposition 187, redistricting, and term limits – which opened up seats – were all important factors in building the caucus. But it also required a strategic approach and caucus discipline.

He and others identified recruits, and assisted them with financial resources and campaign management. In exchange, the recruits were asked to help raise funds and walk and talk with voters. “Nothing else mattered,” Mr. Polanco recalls.

He also broke an unspoken rule of not putting up candidates against a Democratic incumbent or someone backed by the party.

“We communicated to the speaker, ‘With all due respect, we’ll do what we can to support the Democratic caucus, but we’re going to engage.’ And we did.”

Between 1991 and 2002, the caucus grew from seven members to 22, a surge that vastly increased Latino leverage in the Legislature. A series of Latino speakers, wielding power over the agenda, ensued. Latinos took on key committee chairmanships and pushed groundbreaking legislation.

Rich Pedroncelli/AP/File

“Latinos changed the political structure.” – Richard Polanco, former California Senate majority leader

Says Mr. Polanco, “Latinos changed the political structure.” 

Of her many bills, one that Ms. Gonzalez is proudest of is mandatory sick days for part- and full-time workers in the private sector. Back in 2014, more than 6 million Californians could not get a paid day off for ill health. After the law took effect a year later, people would come up to her and show off their pay stubs, pointing out that they had earned sick days.

“I remember a worker from McDonald’s showing me, and he was so proud and just so excited,” she says. 

It’s an example of the broader laws pushed by Latino legislators that intersect with the interests of their community, but don’t focus on them exclusively. It’s also an example of the national ripple effect that such laws can have and how they shape the Democratic agenda. 

At least eight other states have adopted paid sick leave since California became an early adopter. A similar number have also opted to ban single-use plastic bags, while restaurants across the nation now list calorie counts on their menus. Both were California firsts – and both were authored by Secretary of State Padilla when he was in the Senate.

Ms. Gonzalez, a high-energy lawmaker with a laser focus on working-class issues, has become a state lawmaker to watch.  

She has authored or co-authored some of the state’s trend-setting – and controversial – laws: “motor voter” that provides automatic voter registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles; mandatory vaccination for children that removes the personal belief exemption; and most recently, the law that redefines work in the gig economy, turning independent contractors for flexible-work companies like Uber into employees with benefits.

That labor law, signed in September by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, could become a national model, though not without a rearguard fight from app-based companies like Lyft, Uber, and DoorDash, which are planning a ballot initiative counteroffensive in California next year. The law is due to take effect on Jan. 1. 

On this and other sharp-edged legislation, Ms. Gonzalez is unapologetic – something she learned from working for Lieutenant Governor Bustamante. He once told her, “I want you to be so aggressive that I have to apologize for you.” She tells her staff the same thing today.

Yet for all their political mobilizing and organizing, Latinos in the Golden State still lag behind on most social and economic indicators. 

Laura Cluthé/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (Chirla) is an influential Latino group.

A 2017 report for California’s state Senate found that Latinos are less well off, with 23% of them in poverty in 2010-14, compared with 12% of non-Latinos. Median household income in the same period was $47,200, far short of the $69,606 median income for non-Latinos. They also receive public assistance at a higher rate.

One encouraging sign: The number of Latinos entering a California college or university more than doubled in the decade ending with 2013. But they suffer a “substantial” achievement gap in K-12, are more likely to be obese and food insecure, and to live in heavily polluted communities. 

Add to this sobering picture increases in the gasoline tax and an affordable housing crisis, and some Republicans see an opening to win over disenchanted voters from the Democratic Party. The California GOP has shrunk dramatically: Less than a quarter of registered voters are Republicans. In this majority-minority state, they need to make inroads with nonwhites. Indeed, their recently elected leader, Jessica Patterson, is a millennial Latina. 

But it’s too late, says Mike Madrid, a Latino GOP consultant and expert on Latino voting in the state. Given the rhetoric and actions of the Trump administration, particularly its border policies, “this generation will never come to the Republican Party.”

Latinos who grow disappointed with Democrats, he says, are presented with what Mr. Madrid calls an “unfortunate” choice: “You can vote for a party that doesn’t have your interests at heart, or you can vote for a party that hates you.”

Growing respect for immigrants

Susan Rubio, a first-term Democratic senator in Sacramento, was 6 years old and living in Texas when her family was deported in the 1970s. Her father had overstayed a temporary worker program, and one day the family was picked up while it was at a carnival and sent back to Juárez, the Mexican border city where she was born.

The family eventually settled in the Los Angeles area and became legal residents, but for Senator Rubio deportation was always at the back of her mind. “I clearly remember the rhetoric of the time. I would compare it a little to what’s happening nationally today,” she says. 

She was a young adult in 1994 when Governor Wilson released a campaign ad in which a narrator intones, “They keep coming,” as grainy black-and-white footage shows migrants running between the cars at the U.S.-Mexico border. Two months before the election, Democratic President Bill Clinton launched Operation Gatekeeper to fortify the border at San Diego. It also had the effect of pushing unauthorized immigrants into more remote areas. 

Ms. Rubio decided it was time to become a citizen, as did her family.

What followed was 17 years as a public school teacher and a life in public service – winning elections for city clerk and city council in Baldwin Park, in eastern Los Angeles County. What also followed, she notes, was a noticeable ratcheting down in California of the rhetoric and a change in attitude about immigrants.

“There’s so much more respect for immigrants in general,” Ms. Rubio says in a phone interview from Mexico, where she was traveling in a delegation with California’s lieutenant governor, Eleni Kounalakis. “And there is so much more respect” for elected Latino officials, she adds. 

Indeed, Latino politicians have become ubiquitous in the state capital and in cities like Los Angeles, which has had back-to-back Latino mayors. 

As a little girl, in high school, and even as a young adult, “we didn’t see a lot of people who looked like us,” says Ms. Rubio. So when Latinos such as herself began to run for local office, it made a difference. During the 2010 census, people felt safe coming to ask her for help, and as a councilwoman she could explain why filling out the census was beneficial. Latinos in office “gave our community a sense of safety. Someone was looking out for their interests.”

Surveys bear out a change in attitude. In 1998, only 46% of adults believed that “immigrants are a benefit to California,” according to the Public Policy Institute of California. In 2018, 72% did. A recent Gallup poll finds a similar shift nationwide since 2001.

Politicians, particularly on the left, have altered their views. It took multiple tries over more than a decade before a driver’s license bill for unauthorized immigrants was signed into law. Now the state’s new governor, Mr. Newsom, wants health care for all. In his first year, he expanded Medicaid to unauthorized youths up to age 26.

“We’ve gotten to the point where now on immigration stuff we’ll have a couple of Republicans vote with us,” says Ms. Gonzalez. Part of it is hearts moved by the stories of Dreamers, she says, but a lot of it is about political power. “They know the power of the Latino population and the Latino vote.”

The big question for the nation is whether what happened with the Latino vote in California could be repeated at the presidential level. “California represents what happens when Latinos as swing voters become permanent Democratic supporters,” Dr. Romero wrote in a 2014 report. “Latinos swung the state from being solidly Republican to being safely and consistently Democratic today.”

Turnout trends

Nationwide, the Latino population is projected to more than double between 2015 and 2040. By that time, nearly 30% of the U.S. population will be Latinos, the majority of them the children and grandchildren of immigrants. But here’s the thing. While this population is growing nationally, the growth isn’t uniform.

Most Latinos do not live in swing states – Florida is a big exception – which limits their potential impact on the next presidential election. At the same time, Latino turnout has long been a challenge; turnout levels spiked in California after Proposition 187, then settled back down again.

Latino turnout fell short in the 2016 presidential election, including in Florida where it declined by more than 7 percentage points compared with 2012, according to Dr. Romero. Had turnout not slumped in Florida and other states, Latinos could have tipped the balance enough to put Hillary Clinton in the White House. 

Nor are Latinos monolithic in their party leanings. A new study by the University of Houston points out that in some states – like Texas and Florida – larger percentages of Hispanics back Republicans than in other states, such as California and New York, though a majority still votes Democratic. 

Carlo Allegri/Reuters/File

A person holds a sign reading “Latinos for Trump” at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 20, 2016. Most Latinos vote Democratic. Some Republicans fear that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric will deepen that attachment.

Another potentially mitigating factor: Latinos have pushed the Democratic Party to the left, at least on immigration. That could cost a presidential nominee in swing states. 

At the Democratic presidential debate in June, all of the candidates favored health care for unauthorized immigrants, yet polls show that a majority of voters think this is a bad idea. Some candidates also support decriminalizing illegal border crossings. Jeh Johnson, who served as Homeland Security secretary under President Barack Obama, told The Washington Post this was “tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders.” 

Yet Latino leaders are convinced that the president’s vituperative rhetoric about immigrants and his handling of the border will galvanize Latino voters and drive them to the polls. “Donald Trump is a more exaggerated and social media version of what Pete Wilson did to us,” says Ms. Gonzalez. “Donald Trump again has us motivated.”

That seemed to be the case in the 2018 midterm elections. Turnout overall reached a historic high for an off-year election, but it was particularly pronounced for Hispanics and Asians. 

According to the Pew Research Center, the number of Latino voters nearly doubled from the previous midterm – from 6.8 million to 11.7 million voters. 

That said, Dr. Romero is cautious about the “Trump effect,” arguing that Latinos care about specifics that affect their lives. 

Towering over all these caveats about turnout, party preferences, and swing states is population growth: More Latinos are joining the voter-age population every year. In California, Latino population growth and party preference – more than turnout rates – have proved decisive. In last year’s midterms, population growth and higher turnout among Latino voters helped oust Republicans in seven California congressional districts. 

It’s not clear if and when Latino votes might reshape the presidential electoral map. Key red states to watch are Texas and Arizona, says Angie Gutierrez, a Ph.D. candidate studying the issue at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

In Texas “we saw a lot of Latinos go to the polls in the midterm election. I think this is an indication that Texas might not be staying with the Republican Party as long as some might think,” she says. But Latinos can’t flip these states by themselves; white voters also have to swing to the Democratic side. 

Could Texas and Arizona flip in the next election? 

Perhaps not by 2020, she says, “but I definitely think by 2024.”

Chelsea Sheasley

Crossing guard Sandra Sibrian (right) and Gladis Magaña at Carl G. Lauro Elementary School in Providence, Rhode Island, both have children in Providence Public Schools. Ms. Sibrian wonders what will happen once the state takes control over the district on Nov. 1.

Sandra Sibrian smiles brightly as she ushers energetic students across the street, greeting them in both English and Spanish. Despite her outward cheer, the elementary school crossing guard and mother of five harbors a host of questions about Providence Public Schools.

“For now, I haven’t seen any changes,” she says, noting that her son hasn’t had a math teacher for two months and new principals keep starting over. “But what changes will come? How soon?” 

Ms. Sibrian’s anxiety stems from the state takeover of Providence Public Schools, which officially begins Nov. 1. For at least the next five years, Rhode Island’s unelected education commissioner, Angélica Infante-Green, will hold authority over the budget, programs, and personnel for all 41 schools in the state’s capital and oversee a major restructuring of the district. 

The release in June of a searing report by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy prompted the takeover from the school board and local government, after the study documented academic underperformance, crumbling and sometimes unsafe school infrastructure, and low morale among teachers and students. 

As the legal mechanism for state control rolls forward, community members are grappling with how to have their voices heard. Interviews with parents, students, and community groups in Providence paint a portrait of a community dealing with raw anger and distrust, but also hope that this marks a historic chance to change systemic problems. 

“Nobody has said we don’t want changes, if they transparently involve everyone,” says Lesley Bunnell, member of a new parent group. 

Unlike other cities with histories of tumultuous school takeovers, like Baltimore, Detroit, or Newark, New Jersey, there are signs that Providence could offer a different intervention model. Neither the school board, city council, nor mayor objected to the takeover, and community groups have offered support with the condition that their voices are included. 

Ms. Infante-Green is the first Latina and first woman of color to serve as Rhode Island education commissioner; she started the job in April and will oversee a school district of 24,000 where about 60% meet the criteria for free or reduced lunch and 65% of students are Hispanic. She says she is “very committed” to including community members in the turnaround process, with plans to put parents on the transition team, to hold monthly public meetings, and to work with districtwide parent councils.

“At the end of the day, my main goal is obviously to change the school system, but to also ensure that parents are part of the system in a way that makes sense,” she says, in a phone interview. “We’re trying to work in a different way that’s more accommodating to the community.”

Some are watching to see what happens next. “If the commissioner is going to be promoting a policy that looks like other takeovers, I imagine there will be tension,” says Domingo Morel, a political science professor at Rutgers University and author of “Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy. “Essentially, not learning from other places, but teaching other places” to create a new model could make a difference, he says.

Failing schools amid cultural riches

In the heart of downtown Providence, local restaurants border performing art centers and independent bookstores. An iconic art-deco skyscraper towers over the city, but has lain vacant for six years. The city is home to prestigious universities and a lively arts and culinary scene, but struggles with a sputtering economy and racial divides.

The Johns Hopkins report said the physical structures of some school buildings are so poor they “reduced seasoned members of the review team to tears,” including: a leaking raw sewer pipe in a gym ceiling for over a year, rodents in the schools and students with mouse traps stuck to their shoes, lead paint falling from the ceiling, and brown water coming out of a tap.

Ninety percent of students in grades 3 to 8 have not been performing at or above grade level in math, and 86% of students in those same grades are not at or above grade level in English language arts. The report was jointly requested by the Rhode Island Department of Education, Governor Gina Raimondo, and Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza and was funded by The Partnership for Rhode Island, a group of state business leaders.  

Parents prep for change

Once news broke of the Johns Hopkins report and commissioner’s takeover plan, many parents and community groups in Providence sprang into action to argue their right to a role. 

“We’re entering into a new structure where money, contracts, and curriculum are controlled by a single party,” says Zack Mezera, executive director of the Providence Student Union, one group pressing for more inclusion in decision-making. “It’s important at the front end that students can ensure a meaningful say in what’s going on.”

Chelsea Sheasley

Maggie Mian (left) and Lesley Bunnell are parents who joined the Providence Public School Advocates, organizing on behalf of students during the state takeover of public schools that begins Nov. 1.

The commissioner has work to do to prove community engagement isn’t a “dog and pony show,” says Maggie Mian, a mother of four. She’d like the district to be more welcoming of different races, cultures, and religions. 

Ms. Mian attended multiple public meetings run by the Rhode Island Department of Education this summer and was disappointed not to hear more details from the state about their intentions. 

“You sat in a room, you talked with people, and they wrote some things down,” she says. “You don’t know if what’s being written is just going to be hidden away in a drawer so you can say that there was community engagement, or if there was some type of plan to actually use them.” 

Ms. Mian joined about 40 other parents to form the Providence Public School Advocates. The group meets weekly and started an online newsletter, social media, and flyer brigades to inform parents. 

A major priority for community groups is recruiting more teachers of color. Overall, 91% of students enrolled in the district are students of color, but 77% of its teacher workforce is white. Many front office staff don’t speak Spanish.

“The real issue is that the systems that our young people live in, breathe in, in our schools is extremely inequitable,” says Chanda Womack, founding executive director of the Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education. 

Ms. Womack and other activists are especially upset that they flagged problems in the district for years, but feel nothing changed until the business community paid for the Johns Hopkins report. Now they suspect efforts to improve schools will vanish as soon as powerful figures lose interest. For her part, Ms. Infante-Green promises to create a system for school change that withstands political winds, with elections for governor and mayor occurring in three years. 

Takeovers in other places

Professor Morel of Rutgers graduated from Central High School in Providence. He says that the early signs of unity between the commissioner and the community could be quick to fade. 

“On the one hand, I think there are some promising signs that [the commissioner is] genuinely looking to work with the community,” he says. “However, based on research, these things usually don’t last. ... The state will come in at some point and make tough decisions that the community rejects.”

Beth Schueler, a professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia, studies the impact of state takeovers on student academic achievement. The results so far are drawn from case studies and are mixed, she says.  

In a case study she co-authored on the 2012 state takeover of schools in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Professor Schueler found dramatic increases early on in student math achievement as well as gains in English language arts. Officials in Lawrence smoothed community relations by holding a prolonged listening tour, keeping most of the teaching staff, and introducing an intramural sports league as one of the first changes. “That resonated with parents, feeling that these people care about kids as whole people and the community more broadly, not just about test scores,” Ms. Schueler says. 

In a recent study, Ms. Schueler and a colleague found that 70% of the American public supports state takeovers of a school district due to academic failures, and 77% support a takeover in the case of financial mismanagement. But support for an academic takeover fell to 53% among those living in the poorest performing districts in their state.

And students wait

An early morning stream of high school students flows in and out of the White Electric Coffee shop in Providence’s West End. Isabela Ribeiro, a senior at Classical High School, a high-performing public magnet school, grips her cup as she heads across the street. She says she hears about the takeover from the news and her mom, who is a special education teacher at another city high school. She knows teachers are worried about jobs, but doesn’t hear about the takeover at Classical High. 

“The school hasn’t told us much about it and I wish they would,” she says. “I think it’s going to have a big impact on how the system works and I wish we had the information to know how to deal with it and be prepared.”

Editors note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the new parent group.

Debbie Hadden is not one to take the Lord’s name in vain, especially not in November, when she’s got more than 1,600 mouths to feed on Thanksgiving Day. Not that there aren’t plenty of excuses for slipping up, given the immensity of the task and its attendant glitches – the outdated lists, the telephone tag, the last-minute head-count changes. And not to mention her own bad knees and bum shoulder.

When Ms. Hadden calls on the Lord, especially this month, it’s legit. She tells Him what she needs – about the fact that she’s way short on turkey, for instance – and then she watches to see what happens. She knows she’s been heard when a stranger pulls up in a pickup truck asking if she could possibly use a load of turkeys that the local food bank turned away. “If someone doesn’t believe in God, all they have to do is become involved in Thanksgiving,” says the unassuming Ms. Hadden in her comfy Upper Darby living room, the seedbed for her many works of charity.

Ms. Hadden spoke recently about the Third Commandment, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain (Exodus 20:7). The conversation was part of the Monitor’s series examining the ways traditional religious codes like the Ten Commandments continue to matter in the lives of ordinary people.

Ms. Hadden has been married for 36 years, the affable mother of two grown children. She’s also a longtime leader at First Presbyterian Church of Glenolden, where she has worshipped since age 12 and which serves as the staging ground for the Thanksgiving dinner project that Ms. Hadden and her family began 26 years ago.

The former nurse had an incident nearly 20 years ago with a detoxing hospital patient that left her disabled. Nevertheless, her default mode remains one of helping, whether it’s cutting out paper butterflies for local children’s programs or persuading a reluctant widower to join in Thanksgiving dinner. All the while, she wants her words not only to reflect the respect and reverence she has for God, but also to encourage others in the normal bumps and stumbles inherent in a spiritual journey. Her marching orders come from Matthew 25, she says, paraphrasing, “Whatever you’re doing for someone else, you’re doing for God.”

The dinner’s beginnings

Ms. Hadden’s most visible good work would have to be her Thanksgiving. It began a quarter century ago when, within two short years, her brother-in-law, Bob Teta, lost his mother, father, and young sister. Shortly thereafter, moved in his grief by the face of a homeless man he passed on the street, Mr. Teta asked his family, “Do you think there’s something we can do for Thanksgiving?”

There was. A mail carrier, he as well as his fellow workers began to ask shut-ins along their delivery routes if they’d like to receive a free Thanksgiving dinner. That year, they delivered 50 meals and fed 50 more people at a sit-down meal at their Glenolden church. After that, word-of-mouth took over, and others came forward – some for food, some to help. By last year, what had begun as a small family gesture fed more than 1,600 needy people in their homes and another 170 at a sit-down meal at the church – with Ms. Hadden working from lists provided by hospitals, senior centers, hospices, social workers, food pantries, and friends.

Sabina Louise Pierce/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Debbie Hadden stands near the entrance to her home in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 31, 2019. She and her family started a tradition of serving Thanksgiving dinner to others 26 years ago.

Though the project has become a well-oiled machine over the years, its success is in God’s hands, Ms. Hadden says, and each year’s unfolding affirms her faith in a God who is intimately involved in the details. “I just leave it up to Him. He always sends me what I need,” she says.

Over the years, the siblings, children, and friends they corralled to help have become a volunteer force in the hundreds. “The Girl Scout troops come, the Boy Scout troops. ... A bunch of guys from a group home once carried all the boxes to the cars,” Ms. Hadden recalls. “The Holy Spirit has touched people from all over Delaware County and put that in their hearts, put that in their heads, maybe even tormented them a little bit, and the next thing you know, I’m getting calls from people I never heard of before who want to help.”

“When we use the Lord’s name, it should just be used for goodness,” says Edith Cain, who in her 90s is the oldest member of First Presbyterian. She was also its first woman elder and Ms. Hadden’s Sunday school teacher many years ago. Of the fact that she may have played a role in the family’s charitable nature, Ms. Cain says, “I’m thankful for that.” Like her former student, she believes kindness is contagious: “It’s amazing what sharing just a little bit of love to somebody else can do. Even if we just give each other a ‘hello, and how are you?’ Sometimes all a person needs is encouragement.”

Not always smooth sailing

Though somehow the canned goods appear, the pies get cut, and the yams parceled out, Thanksgiving is not always smooth sailing. “Every year the devil tries to get you. Every year the printer goes or Bob gets a flat tire or the computer goes down,” Ms. Hadden recalls. “The evil one puts these things in our path to stop us. The closer you are to doing God’s will, the devil’s going to try to get you.”

In a world where the Lord’s name is taken lightly time and again – even in Ms. Hadden’s own house on certain Sundays when the Eagles are playing – she doesn’t judge, but she may chide. “It’s wrong. The Bible tells us not to do that,” she says. She admits she slips up from time to time herself, and will apologize. “I’m human. I say, ‘I’m sorry, God.’” To those within earshot, she’ll say, “Excuse my French,” and move on. She’s willing to be an example not just of inspiration but of imperfection. She believes those who witness her wrongdoing might benefit, in a way, by knowing that the woman they may see as holier-than-thou is, in fact, as human as they are.

Though the Third Commandment says those who use God’s name in vain will not be held guiltless, Ms. Hadden doesn’t wallow when she misses this – or any other – mark, and she doesn’t want others to wallow, either. “Your thoughts are reflected in your life. You don’t want to walk around carrying guilt. You move on, do positive things,” she says. She gives the hundreds who pitch in at First Presbyterian on Thanksgiving morning a chance to do just that, with them leaving every bit as nourished as those who are fed.

“They’re so glad they did this thing,” Ms. Hadden says. “They feel so good about themselves, that they were able to help people. They go home and talk to their neighbors, their friends, their families. There’s a ripple effect.”

Part 1: The Commandments as a moral source code in modern life

Part 2: How does the First Commandment fit in today?

Part 3: ‘I have to have humility’: How Second Commandment helped man find freedom

Part 4: One woman embraces Third Commandment in feeding 1,600 at Thanksgiving

Part 5: ‘Remember the sabbath’: How one family lives the Fourth Commandment

Part 6: ‘Growing up is hard’: How Fifth Commandment guided a child during divorce

Part 7: Is saying ‘I’d kill for those shoes’ OK? One woman and Sixth Commandment.

Part 8: Is chastity old-fashioned? An NFL veteran’s take on Seventh Commandment.

Part 9: ‘Thou shalt not steal’: Even someone else’s joy, says one educator

Part 10: ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’: Ninth Commandment goes to Princeton

Part 11: Jealousy at Ivy League level: How a law professor views Tenth Commandment

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Pepper feels the love of her owner, Patricia Rendon (right), who boards the gray mare on the property of Pam Sakaida (left) of Topanga, California. As wildfire threatened, they evacuated Pepper to safety Oct. 29, 2019, at Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California.

When weather forecasters in Southern California sent out an “extreme” fire warning starting Tuesday night, Patricia Rendon did not wait for the flames to arrive. 

She called her longtime friend Pam Sakaida in Topanga, California, on whose property she is boarding her horse, Pepper. Given the forecast of hurricane-force gusts, and that the evacuation zone from the Getty fire in Los Angeles was moving toward Topanga, they decided to evacuate her gray mare. Same for Santana, Ms. Sakaida’s older horse, whom Pepper keeps company. 

“If you wait till it’s too late, you risk not only your life but theirs, and driving a trailer with shavings or flammables on it is like driving a bomb down the road if you’re going through flames,” says Ms. Rendon. “You want to do it when you’re calm, so you can quietly load them on the trailer and quietly unload them.” 

By dinnertime on Tuesday, well before fierce winds whipped up a new fire near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday morning, the friends’ horses were settling in to the large and clean stalls here at the equestrian center at Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills. For years, the community college has opened its facilities to large and other farm animals during emergencies. Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control manages and funds the shelter during emergencies.

The mountains around Los Angeles are horse country, and like people, large animals need to be prepared for possible evacuation. But unlike their biped caregivers, they can’t be accommodated in school gymnasiums or church fellowship halls. And they are much harder to move in an emergency.

“You can’t get these guys out in a hurry,” says Ms. Rendon. “If you’re panicking, they panic. They will feed off all that’s going through your hands, through your body, your voice, everything.”

With fires burning up and down California, owners are taking their animals to special evacuation centers at county fairgrounds or facilities such as this one northwest of downtown LA. Pierce College has a 225-acre farm that can take up to 150 large animals, says Doreen Clay, the college’s public relations manager. The shelter filled up this week, but on Thursday, owners were contacted to pick up their animals. Evacuation orders had been lifted.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Pepper is in safe hands with Yumi Sakaida (left), whose family cares for the horse in Topanga, California, and Megan Silveira (right), a longtime large-animal evacuation volunteer with the Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control office, Oct. 29, 2019.

During emergencies, the college has taken in horses, cows, llamas, alpacas, giant tortoises, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens. Cats and dogs go to the local animal shelter. 

It can be a peaceful place – until a mandatory evacuation. “Then you see a ton of activity,” says Ms. Clay. “Then the county and the sheriffs will go out with big trailers. They’ll round up horses.”

An equestrian subculture also leaps into action. Volunteers with trailers near and far drive to afflicted areas, offering to help. They coordinate via social media, for instance, on the Southern California Equine Emergency Evacuation site on Facebook. With embers flying in smoky conditions at the scene, they also coordinate the old-fashioned way, through hand-held radios.

Stacey Goldstein, who brought her miniature mule and red dun quarter horse to Pierce, recalls a friend in last year’s destructive Woolsey fire.

Caught by surprise, the friend tied her horse to a rope, having it follow alongside as she drove her SUV away from the flames. They eventually encountered a trailer full of horses that could squeeze in one more. Ms. Goldstein was not taking any such chances, bringing in her animal family early, but she fretted because she was not able to coax her donkey, Sophie, to come.

Inside Barn No. 1 at Pierce, Santana is pacing his stall, whinnying – or calling. He’s anxious, says Yumi Sakaida, Pam’s daughter. This makes the Sakaidas doubly grateful for the professional care provided by volunteers at the barn, which they call their safe place. “It’s great to have people here who know how to relax the animals,” says Yumi – and put at ease the owners who bring them in. 

Those are people like Megan Silveira, a longtime volunteer who stays at the site 24/7 during emergencies, and Eric Cohen, who attended the college and now lives in the area. Mr. Cohen happily feeds, waters, hauls hay bales, and mucks stalls. But he says they can use more volunteers, who must be trained and certified by Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control.

As Ms. Goldstein heads home to check on her donkey, she asks Mr. Cohen the schedule for the evening. 

“We’re doing the turndown service at about 9 o’clock,” he grins. 

No chocolates on the pillows, though.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Stacey Goldstein’s donkey. It is Sophie.

Dita Alangkara/AP/File

Girls sit on a motorcycle in a flooded neighborhood of Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2017.

The Dutch are the acknowledged masters at living under the sea. About a third of the Netherlands lies below sea level. An elaborate set of dikes and pumps keeps the North Sea from rushing in.

But they’re not alone. A more accurate measurement of sea levels worldwide now shows some 110 million people live in areas below where normal high tides reach. The new study published this week in Nature Communications  estimates that number could grow to between 190 million and 340 million by the end of the century, depending on how successfully carbon emissions can be curtailed.  

The threat of sea-level rise will have ramifications around the world. Coastal farmers whose land disappears under the waves will have to migrate somewhere, probably to cities, to seek work. 

Many urban areas already have begun bracing themselves for higher waters. But adaptation strategies such as building sea walls or gates often come with staggering costs. National governments may be reluctant or simply unable to finance these giant, long-term public works projects.

One financial strategy showing promise involves private investment. In some affluent areas, pushing back the sea using barriers could yield new land so valuable that it could be sold to pay for the project. In Copenhagen, Denmark, for example, a planned island reclaimed from the sea will include beaches and parks and, on its higher ground, some 35,000 homes as well as business areas. The government claims the cost will be entirely covered by charging to accept waste soil used in the project and by selling the new land.

In Singapore the prime minister has talked of similar land-creation plans that would be paid for, at least in part, by the value of the new property.

New York City is still recovering from being inundated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Earlier this year Mayor Bill de Blasio promoted the idea of extending the shoreline of lower Manhattan by as much as 500 feet into the East River – not only protecting Wall Street and other high-priced real estate but creating more of it. 

If federal funding to help pay for the estimated $10 billion plan isn’t forthcoming, the mayor said he’s willing to seek out private developers. 

Other less-costly and less-dramatic steps to mitigate rising seas are underway too. In some regions replanting mangrove forests can create an effective barrier against storm surges, along with providing other benefits.

As with other megacities, much of New York’s 580 miles of shoreline borders poorer neighborhoods where creating and selling land isn’t likely to make fiscal sense. 

Create-and-sell schemes ought to be considered in places where they might work. But urban areas are still going to have to be creative and resourceful in finding other solutions to protect them against rising waters.