In one way, the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in the Russia investigation could greatly hamper parallel investigations in Congress.

Witnesses may well resist appearing before congressional committees for fear of incriminating themselves, knowing that Mr. Mueller, the former FBI director appointed by the Department of Justice, is on the hunt for criminal wrongdoing. His entry on the scene – looking at Russian interference in last year’s US election and at possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia – may taint the witness pool, so to speak.

But the investigations by the two branches of government can actually complement each other, say members of Congress and outside experts. That’s because they serve different purposes. Mueller’s focus is on the legal side: Has a crime been committed? Congress’s job is oversight: What happened – and if corrective steps are needed, what are they?

While Mueller’s investigation will take place largely behind closed doors, ending with a prosecution or not, Congress can be much more open in its work, points out Rep. Adam Schiff (D) of California, the lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“I really view the public portion of our investigation as extremely important,” said Congressman Schiff, at a Monitor breakfast with reporters on May 24.

“If we conduct all of our hearings in closed session, do our work in closed session, and our interviews, and then we throw open the doors when we’re finished, and say, ‘here’s our report, you should just believe it, take our word for it,’ it’s unlikely to be accepted by the country.”

Brennan's testimony

That’s the prism through which he viewed his committee’s May 23 public hearing with former CIA Director John Brennan. At that hearing, Mr. Brennan said for that first time in public that he was concerned last year that Russia was trying to influence “US persons” connected with the Trump campaign to act – knowingly or unknowingly – in the interests of Moscow.

Brennan said, however, that he did not know whether there was collusion or not. President Trump maintains there was no collusion, and reportedly asked two top intelligence officials in March to publicly back that up, though they declined. Mr. Trump says he had "this Russia thing with Trump and Russia" in mind when he decided to fire Comey, calling it a "made-up story."

What needs to happen now is for Mueller and members of Congress to get together and coordinate – kind of like air traffic control, “make sure we don’t get in his lane,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina, speaking with reporters.

As it stands now, "I can’t think of a major witness that we would want to hear from, or the public would want to hear from, that Mueller wouldn’t also want to hear from," the senator said.

An obvious case is that of Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. He was fired in February after giving misleading information to the vice president about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador, according to the administration.

He has pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination in refusing to hand over documents subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee – unless he gets immunity, which the committee has not granted. Instead, it has subpoenaed Mr. Flynn’s businesses for the documents. The House Intelligence Committee, too, plans to subpoena Flynn, Schiff said. He said Mueller will have to be consulted over the matter.

Two models for Congress

Don Ritchie, former Senate historian, points to two investigations as effective – and ineffective – models for Congress to consider when a special counsel is also at work.

In the Iran-contra affair under President Reagan, a joint House-Senate investigative committee granted key witnesses limited immunity as they testified about the sale of US arms to Iran to fund contra rebels in Nicaragua. A special prosecutor later won their convictions, but these were thrown out because of the immunity.

In the 1970s, the special bipartisan Senate committee that was set up to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building uncovered the existence of White House tapes – and that eventually prompted the special prosecutor to subpoena the tapes.

“There’s a lot of competition back and forth” between a special counsel and Congress, says Mr. Ritchie. “In Watergate, you could say they benefited each other. In Iran-contra, they got in each other’s way.”

The Watergate investigation “was the model,” says Ritchie. Both parties participated. Despite some very hostile witnesses, they were treated with respect. An enormous amount of research was done. In the end, Congress passed campaign finance reform legislation and the special prosecutor pushed for convictions that sent members of the Nixon administration to jail. On the verge of impeachment, the president resigned.

Lawmakers say that in this case, Congress, depending on its findings, could come up with some kind of an early warning system when elections are being tampered with, might change balloting itself – requiring a paper trail, or might apply additional sanctions to Russia. Mueller, as a special counsel, could take none of these steps.

At the Monitor breakfast, Schiff said that impeachment “is not anything to rush toward.” He pointed with caution to the magnitude and disorder of President Clinton’s impeachment. To impeach Trump, the standard would need to be met ("treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors"), Republicans would have to be on board, and so would the public.

Right now, it’s only “allegations,” he said. “We are still very early in the investigation.”

Emerlinda sits in the Caracas home where she’s lived for nearly five years, reflecting on how things have changed since 2013: the year Hugo Chávez died and his hand-picked successor Nicolás Maduro was elected. Like many of Venezuela’s poor, the domestic worker adored Mr. Chávez, the country’s self-professed messiah. After she left Colombia, her native country, he made it possible for her to gain Venezuelan citizenship, and his social policies gave her a roof over her head and access to health care and education. It was only logical, she says, to put her faith in President Maduro.

“I did vote for him, but I’m very disappointed,” she says, sitting in her gray concrete home, which looks as though it’s still under construction. Emerlinda, who asked that her last name not be used, spends her time outside of work searching for food for her four young children. “I feel abandoned by the government,” she says.

She’s not alone. As of last September, an estimated 15 percent of the country identified as former Chavistas who do not support Mr. Maduro, according to a Delphos poll. When Chávez died he had roughly 57 percent of the population’s approval; Maduro, as of last November, had just 19.5 percent.

Today, Venezuela is struggling with triple-digit inflation amid dual economic and political crises. More than 74 percent of the population lost an average of 19 pounds in 2015, according to the latest Venezuela Living Conditions Survey. As food and medical shortages grow more acute, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets over the past two months, calling for elections. Nearly 50 people have been killed in the demonstrations. 

But amid the chaos, there are signs that something deeper than pro- or anti-Maduro sentiments is shifting in Venezuela. For years, Venezuelans on opposite sides of the political and social spectra have debated not just opinions, but the facts. As the atmosphere becomes more tense, and as Maduro calls for a constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution, there are signals that this deeply ingrained polarization is slowly eroding.

Many former Chávez supporters are joining the opposition’s protests – a concept almost impossible to imagine just five years ago. There are reports of people in the upper and middle classes, long used as political punching bags by Chavista leaders, sharing what supplies they can access with those in need. And left-leaning international academics, who for almost two decades defended Chávez’s vision for 21st century socialism, are now speaking out against a leader who appears more interested in holding on to power than pushing forward a social revolution.

This doesn’t mean there is political cohesion, or that the divisions between rich and poor have been healed. But it’s a key sign of change and potential transformation ahead, experts say.

“We are seeing a lot more voices bridging” the country’s two political poles, says Dmitris Pantoulas, a political analyst specializing in Venezuela. “It’s a new reality. But for this to become concrete via a new political project [or] new leadership, it will take time.”

'The tables have turned'

Inflation has been on the rise for years in Venezuela, but it really hit home for Jesús Conteras López this month. The English and music teacher based in the Andean city of Mérida realized that buying two pounds of cheese today would cost as much as his 5-night honeymoon to Venezuela's Isla de Margarita in 2014.

Soaring prices are common: In a country of 31 million, around 9.6 million Venezuelans are now eating two meals or fewer per day. Yet for every report about children dying from malnutrition or parents rummaging through garbage to feed their families, there are comments and essays painting another picture: of fear-mongers spreading lies to tarnish the government’s reputation and undemocratically push Maduro from power.

“The situation in Venezuela isn't like what the news says it is, but we are living a difficult moment,” says Antonia, who did not wish to give her last name. She lives in Caracas, while her son lives with his grandmother in another state because she thinks he’s safer outside of the capital. “The opposition doesn't want to have a dialogue and try to improve the economy in this country, they just want President Maduro to leave [office],” she says.

Both sides’ skepticism goes back years, to at least 2002. That was the year then-President Chávez passed a series of 49 laws by decree, the last straw for many Venezuelans wary of his political project. An attempted coup forced him from office, as TV stations played ads urging people to “take to the streets” in support of change.

Many, however, demanded his return to office – a fact most national news outlets and those pushing for his ousting ignored. And when Chávez did return just 48 hours later, the decision to overlook his supporters helped lay the groundwork for the political and social polarization that came to define his administration – and the country.

Today that mistrust of the opposition and its perceived influence over the international narrative about Venezuela is still common.

It’s true that not everyone in Venezuela is starving. But the country’s institutional and economic deterioration are increasingly affecting people from all walks of life. Citizens are increasingly suffering preventable health problems, as confirmed by the release this month of the first public health data since 2015. The Ministry of Health reported that cases of infant mortality have gone up 30 percent; maternal mortality, 65 percent. Malaria, diphtheria, and Zika also saw sharp jumps as hospitals struggle to provide the most basic care.

“I have hope for Venezuela. I want to have hope. But I don’t know,” says María Elena Rojas Loynaz, whose family relies on her husband’s international travel for work to supply them with food provisions from abroad. “It’s so complicated right now.”

Still, she thinks about leaving, Ms. Rojas says. She wants to provide her teenage daughter with a more stable environment. But, in the meantime, “I try to help people around me,” she says. She and other parents at her daughter’s school have been working together to prepare bags of food to give to people on the street, or seek out medicine from their connections abroad and donate it to first aid groups at protests.

“We are very privileged,” Rojas acknowledges. But even with food on the table, she has trouble falling asleep at night, wondering what challenges or dangers the next day might bring.

It’s not just the wealthy who talk about leaving. “We don’t have much here anyway,” says Emerlinda about her likely return to Colombia, now that the promises of Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution have fallen short.

“The previous governments, historically, were made up of elites,” says Mr. Contreras. That style of governing is part of what helped Chávez rise to power: A large sector of the population felt ignored by their disconnected leaders. For the first time in decades, a politician singled out the poor and promised to prioritize their needs.

“But today, the people with the most [wealth] are once again the people inside the government,” Mr. Contreras says. It’s one reason, he thinks, that this administration is losing popularity.

Contreras is solidly middle-class, but even so, life in Mérida has gotten increasingly more difficult over the past few years, and this month has been the worst yet, he says. Not only do people need to dedicate an entire day to get groceries, since no one store has everything one needs, but the environment has gotten very tense. Protests have swept the mountainous city, at times closing the only two entrances.

“There was a point where you couldn’t say anything bad about the government in public, because you felt like you were being observed,” he says. “Now, if you say something bad about the government it’s hard for almost anyone to refute. The tables have turned,” he says.

He’s not just referring to the shortages of food and medicine. Over the past several months, the government has taken some alarming steps: The Supreme Court temporarily took over the opposition-led National Assembly, the government pledged to remove itself from the Organization of American States after being criticized for its response to public protests, and Maduro has called for a rewrite of the Constitution, the bedrock of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution.

Space for change

That last move, announced earlier this month, has created fissures in even the long-calcified extremes of Venezuela-watchers.

Take the leftist website Aporrea, or “the beat.” For years it’s been a resource with decidedly pro-Chavista essays and commentary. But in recent months, particularly following Maduro’s call for a new Constitution, the content has started to split.

“That’s changed. There’s really debate within it now,” says Daniel Hellinger, professor of international relations at Webster University in St. Louis. He says after Maduro’s calls for the constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution, the content on this popular site became split almost 50-50, with some saying Maduro’s move advanced the revolution and others saying it was his attempt to simply keep grasping at power.

“The people will never forgive you!” one of the essays on the homepage reads, telling Maduro to resign so citizens can “try to reconstruct the Venezuela that once existed.”

“Now, it’s not just the usual voices that are being critical of Maduro,” Mr. Hellinger says.

Despite the shifts in Venezuela’s long-polarized political and socioeconomic landscape, concrete change could take years – maybe even decades. The 1989 “caracazo” protests over rising fuel prices “created the fertile ground for Chávez to appear” in politics, Mr. Pantoulas says, but it was another decade before he won elections.

What’s happening now is “creating the space for … new political forces in Venezuela to emerge, but it could take three, four, 10 years,” Pantoulas says. Regardless, he says, “we are seeing an important moment of social transformation.”

Not everyone, however, will be willing to wait that long.

Contreras and his wife have thought about joining the more than 1 million Venezuelans who have emigrated since 2000, soon after Chavez was elected. He feels left behind by his many peers who have moved to other countries in search of new opportunities and more stable lives.

“But my family is here,” Contreras says. “And above all, in a situation as difficult as this, there’s a real need for family.”

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/AP

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seen here May 10, 2017 attending the graduation ceremony of a group of Revolutionary Guard cadets in Tehran, is still at the top of Iran's leadership chain. Notably, he did not mention President Hassan Rouhani by name when he praised the Iranian people and their 73 percent turnout as the “winner” of the May 19 election.

Dancing in the streets to the powerful beats from car sound systems – on virtually the one day every four years that such spontaneous public parties are tolerated – Iranians joyously celebrated the reelection of their hero, President Hassan Rouhani.

Mr. Rouhani has promised greater freedoms and vowed to reconnect Iran to the world, and as voters celebrated, they chanted for the release of opposition leaders.

But the jubilation had another cause, too: the rejection, by a wide margin, of hard-line challenger Ebrahim Raisi, who had the backing of key regime power centers in Iran, including the top brass of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Yet, wide as Mr. Rouhani’s victory has been – 57 percent of the vote to Mr. Raisi’s 38 percent in the May 19 election – significant questions remain.

Can Rouhani convert his renewed popular mandate, and the clear direction toward openness demanded by voters, into changes in Iran’s revolutionary “deep state”?

And will the failure of Iran’s hard-line camp to expand its own popular appeal, despite key advantages like full control of state media, help change the fundamental balance of power that has thwarted reform-minded presidents for two decades?

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is still at the top of the leadership chain, and notably did not mention Rouhani by name when he praised the Iranian people and their 73 percent turnout as the “winner” of the vote.

According to one Iranian official in Tehran, Mr. Khamenei also declined a request to meet Rouhani, whose campaign rhetoric broke taboos as he attacked regime elements like the IRGC, judiciary, and intelligence organs that have undermined him for four years.

For now that is unlikely to change, the official says.

“Rouhani’s second term will not be better than his first,” says the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The only hope is the support of the people, but if the situation gets worse, do you think they will still chant in favor of him and dance? I hope I am wrong.”

A key to maintaining that support will be for the Islamic regime to “give some minor freedom” to the public, he says. “A small amount of freedom can suffice,” says the official. But the traditional limits are likely to apply, and the president will have to navigate carefully.

The high turnout of nearly 40 million Iranian voters represents an evolution from the catastrophic disputed vote in 2009, when accusations of rigging and fraud in the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were met by months of street protests of millions of angry Iranians.

Many vowed to never vote again, to punish the nezam [governing system] for stealing their vote. Yet enough were convinced in 2013 to give Rouhani a hair-breadth first-round victory – partly based on Rouhani’s promise to get the release of the still-popular leaders of that Green Movement, under house arrest since 2011, and aware that boycotting the vote would hand hard-liners easy victory.

Challenge to represent all Iranians

In Iran’s deeply polarized and politicized society, where the candidates each portrayed their opponents as the kiss of death to the ideals of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the challenge for the moderate Rouhani will be representing all Iranians, as he has promised to do, including the conservatives.

Their support would be crucial if Rouhani has any hope of translating the result of the vote into changes in Iran’s “deep state” power institutions, sometimes called in Persian the dolat-e penhan, or “hidden government.”

“Even in the most hard-line corners of the nezam, the republican nature of the Islamic Republic is appreciated and they know they cannot neutralize public demands, and will have to allow the president to deliver,” says Adnan Tabatabai, an Iran analyst and head of the Bonn-based Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO).

“Rouhani’s task will be to engage them, and make them actually participate in this election victory,” says Mr. Tabatabai, who was in Iran during the election period.

“He should let them capitalize on what he and his camp have achieved. The famous win-win approach he has defined for foreign policy,” he says, “he will have to do the same on domestic issues.”

The president’s decades-long history as a regime insider and years as head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council have improved his chances. But he has been targeted constantly by his opponents, and even called a “traitor.”

“Rouhani is exactly the right person to know the right approach to do this. He was quite bold, and very open and explicit in criticizing the judiciary and security apparatus,” says Tabatabai.

No embrace of unity

So far, there are no signs that hard-liners are ready to embrace unity, after such a bitterly contested race. Conservative media are still working to discredit Rouhani’s victory, just as they have long disparaged his policies and lionized Raisi’s candidacy.

In one example this week, the editor of the hard-line Kayhan newspaper, Hossein Shariatmadari – whose business card notes that he is an official representative of the supreme leader – argued that the election result would have been different if Raisi, who won nearly 16 million votes after just 40 days of campaigning, had four years to prepare, like Rouhani did.

The loss still stings for some hard-liners, who have viewed Raisi as a possible successor to Khamenei, ever since the supreme leader elevated the 56-year-old to head the most significant religious conglomerate and endowment in Iran, the shrine to the 8th Shiite Imam Reza in Mashhad, in northeast Iran.

Soon after his appointment, top IRGC commanders including Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani met with Raisi. During the election campaign, IRGC-funded media boosted Raisi while they denigrated Rouhani.

And a few weeks before the vote, the Tehran Friday prayer leader raised eyebrows when he gave Raisi an indirect plug: “Let’s pray to God that the candidate liked by Imam Reza comes out of the ballot box,” he said.

Like the hard-liners, Rouhani, too, has been less than conciliatory, accusing his rival again on Wednesday of using popular devotion to Imam Reza to gain votes.

Raisi's chances likely damaged

Meanwhile, any chance of Raisi now becoming supreme leader may have been damaged by his defeat. Some argue that letting that happen was a deliberate strategy by Khamenei, and note that power centers in Iran that oppose Rouhani are far from monolithic.

“I am sure the leader knew that [fundamentalist] candidates are no match for Rouhani,” says the Iranian official in Tehran.

“I believe the leader wanted to prove that Raisi is not a good person to fill his position. He is not happy with Rouhani either, but Rouhani is not a direct threat to him,” says the official.

One key result of the election is a widening gap between the leader and the IRGC, says the official.

“There are certain groups of Guard commanders who are opposing [Khamenei] on domestic and international issues,” says the official. “They were the ones the leader wanted to prove that Raisi is not a good choice, neither for the presidency nor [supreme] leadership.… The question is if Rouhani can use this opportunity or not.”

The commanders, including IRGC chief Mohammad Ali Jafari, “have power, money, media, and foot soldiers” and a core mission of saving the nezam. They “want to prove the Rouhani team is not functioning well” in handling President Trump and Iran’s regional power struggle for influence, the official adds. 

Rouhani will want to demonstrate the opposite, buoyed by his new mandate.

Even in these bastions of power are supporters of Rouhani and “people who have brothers, sisters, cousins who are supportive of the moderate and reformist camp,” says Tabatabai of CARPO.

“I think this may prevent a very hard pushback, but this obviously does not mean that Rouhani will now have an easy job,” he adds. “The people, the voters, forced themselves onto the structure of the ‘deep state,’ of the security apparatus. By turning out in these huge numbers, they made it impossible to be ignored.”

Roger Cohn

Toody Maher is the executive director of Pogo Park, which has reimagined parkland.

From their windows in the Iron Triangle section of Richmond, Calif. – a place synonymous with violence and urban blight – Rita Cerda and several other longtime residents watched as a crazy-seeming woman in pigtails poked around the then-deserted playground in their midst. Day after day in this heavily Latino and African-American neighborhood, she’d come to this sorry spot ridden with hypodermic needles and gin bottles, its swings shredded by pit bulls trained to improve their jaw strength by hanging from the seats.

“I’d be thinking, ‘What’s that white lady think she’s going to do in this neighborhood?” Ms. Cerda, who is Native American, recalls. “Everybody says they’re going to fix the park and nobody goes through with it.”

But as Cerda and her neighbors soon discovered, Toody Maher – the indefatigable force who helped them collectively transform that forlorn place into Pogo Park, one of the most innovative and jubilant public spaces in the United States – is definitely not everybody.

Ms. Maher, whose rubber gardening boots complement the yellow rubber bands fastened around the pigtails she still wears in her mid-50s, is an urban visionary – a playground-whisperer who stubbornly believes that the most beautiful and enlightened public spaces, especially playgrounds, not only belong in the most disadvantaged communities but also can be designed, built, managed, and programmed by the people who live there.

Her unusual first name – a childhood mispronunciation of “Susie” by her brother – seems fitting for a 6-foot-tall former businesswoman-turned-urban renegade who likens the process of creating a richly detailed park to cooking a slow and delectable soup. Pogo Park has been years in the making – it’s still simmering – and each tiny flourish, from hand-carved redwood benches to the cascading water that flows over rocks to mimic a mountain stream, profoundly reflects the spirit and place of its makers.

“You can’t microwave a park,” Maher observes of the time it takes to get it right. “Children’s play is a canary in a coal mine. If you want to see how a community is doing, look at its playgrounds.”

Courtesy of Pogo Park

A child enjoys a swing at Pogo Park in Richmond, Calif.

Citizen participation in playground design isn’t new. But the reimagining of Elm Playlot and a new sister park by a “team” of residents – with Maher as coach and provocateur in chief – has considerably upped the ante. Together, after seven years of meetings and learning how to weld, bend rebar, pour cement, and cajole local politicians, they have forged a dazzling oasis of calm and possibility in a neighborhood in which youngsters are frequently awakened by gunshots and more than a third of them live in poverty. The team’s motto? “Think it; do it.”

Named for three sets of historical railroad tracks that form its border, the Iron Triangle has struggled since the end of World War II, when Richmond’s mighty Kaiser Shipyards – home to thousands of “Rosie the Riveters” – closed down, leaving nearly half the population out of work, particularly African-Americans who had moved west to join the war effort.

Today, a cornucopia of industrial pollutants buffets the neighborhood, creating unusually high asthma rates. And exposure to violence or the fear of it pervades the lives of children, plunging many into a constant state of stress.

Jason Corburn, a professor of planning and public health at the University of California, Berkeley, is beginning a study for the state of California to measure the effect of Pogo Park on the surrounding neighborhood. “Toody is not just about parks – she is a community builder,” Dr. Corburn observes. “Pogo Park is a heart that pumps life into the hardest-hit area of Richmond.”

The park has benefited from city policies that put health front and center in government decisionmaking, especially in land-use planning. It’s a recognition that there are steps a city can take to positively influence health, whether it’s planting more trees or installing streetlights to make neighborhoods safer.

Courtesy of Pogo Park

Two boys play chess at Pogo Park in Richmond, Calif.

Maher moved about a mile from the park with her partner in 2007. She was astonished to learn that although most kids in the Iron Triangle were stuck indoors, nearly a quarter of city-owned land was parks. “That’s a tremendous asset,” she observes. “But if you look at it from a business point of view, it was underperforming.”

She visited all 56 parks. But her evolution from an entrepreneur heralded by Forbes and Inc. to a crusader bringing a Jardin du Luxembourg sensibility to the Iron Triangle wasn’t exactly a foregone conclusion. Yet her approach remains the same. “My blessing and my curse is that I can’t stand when things aren’t done right,” she says.

Her out-of-the-box mind-set was nurtured early on: Her British parents, whose green thumb she inherited, did not believe in television, preferring storytelling followed by a nightcap of charades. Her father’s job at a Brazilian airline allowed the family to travel the world. “Everyone else was watching ‘Adam-12’ and ‘The Waltons,’ but our parents gave everything to our experiences,” she says.

Raised in Montreal near the magnificent park on Mount Royal, and then outside Los Angeles, young Toody was teased relentlessly for a terrible stutter, sparking a deep sense of empathy for others in similar situations. But she was also a natural athlete with a persistent (some might say willful) streak; at age 12, she pushed to become the first girl on the boys’ Little League team. “My sister is the kind of person who works through three root canals,” observes her older brother, Adrian Maher.

In the 1980s they became brother-sister entrepreneurs, securing the Western distribution rights for Swatch watches before launching a company that produced a clear telephone with lights.

Ms. Maher’s plan was to accrue enough wealth to pursue her Frederick Law Olmsted-ish fantasy of building a great park. Her partner, Julie Roemer, a writer and teacher, finally asked: “What are you waiting for?” Maher was itching to upend the mass-produced, creativity-zapping play equipment that she calls “the tyranny of unrelenting sameness.” 

Earning the community’s trust took years. “She was looking for some yokel-locals to help with the project,” recalls Carmen Lee, a revered neighborhood figure who was the first to come on board. “You know your community best,” Maher told them. “I’m a bridge with the Man,” as she calls the business establishment. “Let’s partner up.”

It was a modest start: a pop-up park consisting of a Home Depot fence, a cheap slide from Amazon, and a free shipping container. Maher savvily wired the park with free internet, bridging the digital divide and knitting wary neighbors together.

A core team of about a dozen residents went door to door soliciting ideas for the park, especially from children. No. 1 on the wish list was a zip line (done!). “The only thing we couldn’t deliver was a chocolate fountain,” says Tonie Lee, an original team member. Residents make full-scale mock-ups of their ideas, experimenting until it feels right.

Fortuitously, a company down the street, Scientific Art Studio, is a professional fabrication wizard that created the 26-foot-tall baseball glove at the San Francisco Giants ballpark. The studio has taken the team under its artful wing, helping craft igloo-shaped hide-outs and other never-before-seen play elements.

Courtesy of Pogo Park

This area in Richmond, Calif., was once ridden with hypodermic needles and gin bottles. Now Pogo Park is an oasis of calm and possibility.

Maher may be happiest when pruning or going to the arborist to pick up mulch, but her business acumen has served Pogo Park well, including a recent $6.2 million grant from the state. She sets the bar high, bringing in innovative thinkers like Dan Burden, a widely respected street designer who is helping residents transform a bleak and dangerous thoroughfare into a lush, pedestrian-friendly “yellow brick road” linking schools and parks.

Maher has an eye for perfection – for perfect trees planted with perfect acorns – that members of the core team have inherited. They receive a salary to watch over the park, keep it spiffy, and organize daily activities, from hula hoop play to rock-balancing. The park also serves meals and snacks free of charge to children as an official distribution point for the school district (most kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunches). “Some are really hungry, sorry to say,” Carmen Lee says. 

Flower memorials to youngsters killed in gun violence – two worked at the park – are reminders of the considerable challenges that remain in the Iron Triangle.

But on a warm afternoon in the dappled light under sycamores, the park’s role in the lives of neighborhood children was set off in bas-relief. Teens ate snacks on disc swings while a young girl waded barefoot in the pebbled stream. Perhaps the biggest gift Pogo Park offers children is the ability to put the world on hold for a time, to get lost in a daydream while skipping a stone in a brook.

“I’m glad we built this park,” Ms. Lee observes. “It wasn’t Toody opening a book. It came from the community – for the people, by the people, however you want to put it. It’s one place kids can come where it’s safe and they feel loved.”

• For more, visit pogopark.org.

How to take action

UniversalGiving helps people give to and volunteer for top-performing charitable organizations around the world. All the projects are vetted by UniversalGiving; 100 percent of each donation goes directly to the listed cause. Below are links to three groups aiding children or women:

OneSky creates and implements early learning programs aimed at unlocking the potential of vulnerable young children. Take action: Send developmental toys to a Chinese orphanage.

Childhelp Sierra Leone uses advocacy, development, and relief to address the needs of youths in distressed communities. Take action: Volunteer with this organization, focusing on justice for girls.

Uganda Village Project facilitates community health and well-being in rural Uganda through improved education, among other measures. Take action: Teach safe pregnancy and family planning to 25 women.

Reuters

Fighters from Libyan forces allied with the U.N.-backed government gather as they advance into an area controlled by Islamic State, in Sirte, Libya, Oct. 14, 2016.

One connection between Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber in Manchester, England, and most of his victims was their youthful fragility. He was a child of Muslim immigrants, and at 22 years old, not much older than the teens at the May 22 pop concert. By early accounts, he was vulnerable to the siren call of jihadi violence. And where did he go for his training? According to British authorities, he was recently in Libya, home to a branch of Islamic State (ISIS).

Much of the world’s struggle against terrorism involves either protecting or preventing fragility – and not only in people. Libya itself has become a model of a fragile state. In a global ranking of countries for their “fragility” – or vulnerability from weak governance and social pressures – Libya has worsened the most over the past decade, according to the Fund for Peace.

Since the killing of strongman Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, the North African country has had at least two well-armed groups claiming to be the government. The vacuum of political authority has allowed warring factions and militant groups like ISIS to flourish. No wonder the American ambassador to Libya prefers to live in nearby Tunisia and only visits Libya for a few hours.

In many of the world’s most fragile states, ISIS and similar groups have gained a foothold. This trend has created a small industry in the study of fragile states and how to assist them. Much of the effort is focused on building up inclusive governance, strong institutions, and a stable economy. In short, resilience.

Yet a sure formula for bucking up a fragile state remains elusive. By one estimate, the United States has spent nearly $5 trillion trying to create stable societies in Afghanistan and Iraq – and still has a long way to go. In a recent study of 107 countries from 1991 to 2008, RAND Corp. found that US security aid to the most fragile states, such as Yemen, had accomplished little. Such countries lack the institutional capacity to absorb material or financial aid.

Yet the study did point to some success in nonmaterial aid, such as assistance in education, law enforcement, and counternarcotics. If the US and others want to help such countries, RAND finds “investment in human capital has large payoffs.”

Each terrorist attack points to a lesson not yet learned. One common theme of the Manchester bombing was fragility – of the bomber as a lost young man, of the concertgoers, and perhaps the country where he received training or guidance. The opposite of fragility is strength – strength in resisting a call for violence against the innocent and the strength of a society like Britain to recover from an attack. Fragile places like Libya also need strength in rebuilding themselves. If they can’t do it themselves, others must find the strength to assist them.