Success shouldn't be determined by the size of one’s bank account but by the content of one’s efforts and achievements. That mantra has been taken to heart by a young Los Angeles activist and writer whose t-shirt selling campaign has helped pay the shipping and publishing costs of Turning the Tide: Journal of Intercommunal Solidarity, a newspaper that stands as a beacon of America’s forgotten progressive past and one of the few grassroots newspapers to have survived in the age of digital news.

How it happened: Vanessa Carlisle, a former member of Occupy LA, designed a t-shirt and put it on sale in late March and early April via teespring.com. Her goal was to raise money for the quarterly publication, which is distributed for free to some 2,000 prisoners. As Carlisle said in her online campaign, “For many incarcerated folks, the paper is a means of communication with their communities.”

Carlisle reached her goal and then some. She sought funding to match a grant the newspaper had also received, and said the campaign ultimately raised enough to meet the goal of financial independence for the publication.

Turning the Tide – initially dubbed the “L.A. Anti-Racism Newsletter” when it was a news-sheet produced by People Against Racist Terror (PART) – has been publishing since the fall of 1988. In the more than quarter century since, it has delivered quality analysis and writing about grassroots organizing in support of people incarcerated in America's jails.

Carlisle began working with the publication's editor, Michael Novick, in 2012 around the time when police attacked and destroyed the Occupy encampment taking place in downtown L.A. She was already contributing to the newspaper on a regular basis, but at that point she saw that she needed to do more.

“After the Occupy LA encampment had been destroyed by the cops, after I’d been held in a bus in handcuffs for five hours with dozens of other protesters... I decided for myself that in order to realize the dream of a free society, I’d have to confront the actual fascist groups and tendencies here in the U.S.,” she told Occupy.com. So she became involved specifically in the issue of prisoners’ rights.

For Carlisle, Turning the Tide is part of a growing educational effort to inform Americans of the legal wrongs inflicted daily on U.S. citizens – and a platform where social justice, racism and colonialism can be discussed openly and without the filters that have come to represent mainstream media conversations.

“I’ve learned about freedom struggles all over the world, read analyses of complex situations in Mexico, Hawaii, Guatemala and more,” she continued. “It is also one of only a few nationally distributed newsletters that consistently publishes the writing and artwork of incarcerated activists and maintains lines of communication between prisoners and their organizing communities on the outside.”

Turning the Tide is entirely run by donation, making Carlisle's leadership all the more important. Her campaign helped put money where her sentiments were – and aided in the rescue of an important legacy in American progressive journalism.

“Every time I read a new TTT, I learn about how strong and dedicated people are addressing local and globalized forms of oppression,” she said.

With some 2.3 million people in prison as of 2013, America boasts the world's highest incarceration rate. To confront that reality, Turning the Tide stands as a beacon of support – and an effort to reform – one of the great injustices of the country.