2021
October
01
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

October 01, 2021
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When I was a student learning the profession of journalism over two decades ago, I had to report and write stories on deadline that illustrated such topicless themes as “altered states” or “remembrance of things past” or “overcoming obstacles.” These exercises emphasized the necessary sinews that hold stories together as recognizable human experiences.

They also emphasize the lenses reporters must choose when organizing the facts they find.

In the Monitor’s Finding Resilience series, I decided to seek out the ways some people responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a very personal topic, since my neighborhood in Queens was among those experiencing the highest rates of infection in the world at the time, accompanied by fear and a surreal sense of uncertainty.

A year and a half later, however, I didn’t really “find” examples of resilience. Instead, I found a group of students in the Bronx who had already done the work, interviewing people who, unlike me, could not work from home.

They documented on Zoom the stories of Bronx residents who often lived in multigenerational homes, worked in essential jobs in little-protected conditions, and experienced a crisis in a borough with a long-observed dearth of health care facilities.

As each of them told me, they expected these oral histories to be tales of hardship and woe. To their surprise, they said, they found instead resilience, a word their sources used again and again. 

And as they struggled, too, learning the skills of interviewing and storytelling on the fly in the midst of the disruptions in their own lives, they found a measure of resilience in themselves as well. 

Join me and some of these students next week as the Monitor hosts a free, online conversation on Tuesday, Oct. 5, titled “Overcoming adversity: How the pandemic revealed resilience.” To participate, register for the noon show or the 6 p.m. show.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a last working dinner in Paris before she steps down as chancellor. The French president is vying to fill her shoes as Europe's natural leader.

For more than a decade, Europeans have looked to Germany’s Angela Merkel to lead with unshakeable ethics. Now, as she prepares to leave office, can France’s Emmanuel Macron take up her mantle?

The Explainer

Germany’s first post-Merkel election promises to reshape the country’s governing priorities. They can begin to be seen as the parties thrash out a new, likely three-party coalition.

Difference-maker

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor
Craig Watson (left), Keela Hailes (center), and Shannon Battle – seen here at the office of Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop in Washington on June 21, 2021 – form a network of support for formerly incarcerated individuals.

Society often treats formerly incarcerated people as broken. At the Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, they help each other – and themselves – find healing.

Courtesy of Ebru Yildiz
Singer-songwriter Dar Williams' 10th album, "I'll Meet You Here," released Oct. 1, suggests that social connections can empower individuals to tackle global issues.

What’s the best way to stay buoyant in the face of challenges like climate change or declining towns? For musician and author Dar Williams, the key is a social contract she calls “positive proximity.” 


The Monitor's View

Reuters
A female employee of Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission delivers voter cards in Basra, Iraq, for an Oct. 10 election.

It says something about progress in the Middle East that top Islamist leaders in Iraq and Tunisia are crying out for democracy in their Muslim countries. Their public faith in individual liberties and rights is a timely counterpoint to the hardening of Islamist rule in Iran and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a highly influential religious authority, has called on voters to shed their apathy and participate “consciously and responsibly” in crucial parliamentary elections Oct. 10. “Make a good choice, otherwise the failures of the previous parliaments and the governments emanating from them will be repeated,” he said Sept. 29, referring to political leaders elected after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that planted democracy in Iraq.

The election, he added, is the best path for Iraq to “reach a hopefully better future than the past, and through which the risk of falling into the abyss of chaos and political stalemate will be avoided.”

While Mr. Sistani does not support parties or candidates, he advised voters to select a candidate in their districts who is the “most honest, who is interested in the sovereignty, security, and prosperity of Iraq.” His reference to “sovereignty” may be a call to rid Iraq of foreign influence, especially that of Iran and the United States.

In Tunisia, where a democracy sprang up during the 2011 Arab Spring, the leading Islamist party, Ennahda, has led calls to reverse a power grab by President Kais Saied. In July, the former law professor suspended parliament and seized near-total power, claiming the government was in political gridlock. Although he promised his actions were temporary, he has since cracked down on opposition and added to his powers. Ennahda’s leader, Rached Ghannouchi, who is Tunisia’s leading Islamist politician and the speaker of parliament, said the president had effectively “canceled the constitution.”

On Sept. 29, Ennahda called on all political and civil society groups to “defend representative democracy” through “all forms of peaceful struggle.” On Oct. 1, police blocked dozens of members of parliament from entering the legislature.

Many people in the Mideast who live under an authoritarian or strict Islamic ruler are probably aware of these hopeful calls for democracy by Islamist leaders in Iraq and Tunisia. Reconciling democracy and sharia (Islamic law) is not always easy. But at least two countries are showing signs of hope that bear watching.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

When forgiveness seems an impossible task, we can let God’s love dispel hurt, redeem wrongs, and impel peace, grace, and even “sweet reuniting,” as this poem conveys.


A message of love

Hatem Moussa/AP
A Palestinian man plays with a horse at the beach of the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 1, 2021. The beach is one of the few open public spaces.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for ending your week with us. Come back on Monday when we’ll be looking at the start of the Supreme Court’s term, including a case that could define the court’s legacy.

More issues

2021
October
01
Friday

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