If Grand Canyon University thought it could discreetly shutter the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park, if it thought that the Periwinkle residents, many of whom had lived there for years, if not decades, would go quietly, then it was proved very wrong this year. To the tentacular, ever-expanding so-called Christian university, this scrap of land on Colter Street in west Phoenix was merely a real estate venture. But to 46 families, the humble park was home. And when GCU gave them all eviction notices, those families organized, banding together not just with each other but with other mobile home park residents across the Valley in similar circumstances. At Periwinkle, a leader emerged: Alondra Ruiz Vazquez, a grandmother who ran a local soccer club and lived in Periwinkle with her husband for years. Ruiz had never organized a protest. But with the support of longtime community organizers in Phoenix, she was soon chanting into bullhorns, speaking at city council meetings, and heading up a movement with her neighbors. Yet despite her efforts, despite the community rallying around her, despite teary pledges from lawmakers to do something about the displacement, GCU got what it wanted. In May, the park was closed, fracturing a community and forcing residents out of their homes. It was, in a sense, inevitable. The Periwinkle residents were up against a Goliath with flashy lawyers and the city in its pocket. Yet the impossibility of their struggle never made them hesitate. They knew their fight was a righteous one. And there's no question that the impacts of the Periwinkle protests — the way these families forced the powerful to witness the human toll of our housing crisis — will reverberate on.