This June, after nearly two decades of organizing, local activist groups in eastern Kentucky stopped construction of a federal prison in Letcher County. In a powerful rebuke to Kentucky Congressman Hal “Prince of Pork” Rogers, the project to build the prison on a reclaimed mountaintop looks dead for good: Trump’s proposed 2020 budget rescinded $510 million previously approved for construction.

The news is a major victory — not just for the anti-prison activists who have fought for decades against the new facility, but also for the environmentalists who became their allies.

In fights against prison expansion, activists across the country are forging alliances on unexpected common ground: the struggle against ecological devastation. These campaigns’ lesson — that the fight against mass incarceration and for environmental justice are tightly interwoven, and require the same political coalitions — should inform the policies and principles of the Green New Deal movement.