In her research on grassroots organizing, Hahrie Han learned about a standout case in Cincinnati. There, an evangelical megachurch, one of the nation’s largest, played a significant role in advocating for the passage of a progressive public education policy in one of the nation’s most racially divided cities.
The 2016 ballot initiative, called Issue 44, aimed to make pre-K available and affordable for every child in Cincinnati. Funding it would require a significant tax increase for property owners, but in the end that didn’t deter voters from overwhelmingly supporting the measure. The initiative won approval by 24 percentage points, the largest margin of any new education tax in Cincinnati’s history.
