Kamal Ali waves a plastic bag of grape tomatoes in the air as he stops in a corner cafe after shopping at the nearby weekly market. “I just paid four euros for five tomatoes! They cost even more in the grocery store,” he complains.

“All day long we hear about how immigration is ruining France,” says the public service worker, as merchants bustle outside, hollering prices on fruit, vegetables, and clothing. “But what about how expensive daily life is? Either France is going to change, or it’s going to explode.”

Mr. Ali is part of the 63% of La Courneuve residents who voted for far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round of the French presidential elections, held on April 10. This Paris suburb, one of the poorest in the Ile-de-France region, has become an unexpected stronghold of support for Mr. Mélenchon, who scored 22% nationally – just about a percentage point short of the second round.  

Just as he did in cities like Strasbourg and Marseille, Mr. Mélenchon overwhelmingly took the popular vote here by focusing on the concerns of ordinary French people: reduced purchasing power, rising fuel prices, and a diminishing social safety net. 

Incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right politician Marine Le Pen will have to woo the more than 7 million Mélenchon voters ahead of the second round of the presidential election this weekend. How they vote will be a deciding factor in who wins. 

The election is seeing new political alignments. Just as the traditional left-wing Socialist party has withered, Mr. Macron has swung to the right. Meanwhile, Ms. Le Pen has softened her party’s image and brought it slightly more toward the center. The identity crisis within the French left has created an electorate more fractured than ever and put left-leaning voters in a bind as to how they will vote on Sunday. 

“Left-wing parties have become out of touch with their electorate,” says Vincent Tournier, a political scientist at Sciences Po Grenoble. “The left has had trouble integrating certain issues like security and laïcité [secularism]. They’ve abandoned their economic model, which is what used to set them apart. ... Mélenchon was able to collect those traditional left-wing voters who don’t see themselves anywhere anymore.” 

A very different playing field

The Socialists have been in decline since 2017 and the end of François Hollande’s unpopular presidency. At the same time, former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right Les Républicains party (formerly Union for a Popular Movement) has been racked with controversy since he and 2017 presidential candidate François Fillon were embroiled in corruption scandals. 

The decline of the two traditional parties has blurred the lines for voters of where they fit within France’s new political landscape. Now Ms. Le Pen’s and Mr. Mélenchon’s parties – once seen as fringe – have become realistic options for mainstream voters.  

“The traditional parties have failed to understand the evolutions of society,” says Erwan Lestrohan, a political scientist at the Odoxa polling institute. “Radical parties on both the right and the left have been able to better define what they have to offer, which traditional parties are not doing enough. Either we’re in a transitional phase politically, or a moment of total reconstruction.”

It remains unclear whether Mr. Mélenchon’s success at the polls is indicative of a significant shift to the far left or a temporary trend – 50% of those who voted for him in the first round did so tactically, according to the German Marshall Fund, as a way to keep Ms. Le Pen out of the second round. Meanwhile, a separate poll found that 32% of voters overall say they put in a tactical vote this year.

That has meant that the typical predictors that indicate how the French will vote no longer apply. It’s especially true in France’s big cities, where Mr. Mélenchon jumped by 10 points compared to 2017 and won out over Mr. Macron.

“Every other day I go between voting null and voting for Macron, I really don’t know what I’m going to do,” says Clara Seiller from the east of Paris, a Mélenchon bastion. “I’ll probably end up voting Macron to stop Le Pen from winning, but with some of the things Macron has done lately, sometimes I’m not sure if he’s any better than her.” 

National polls show that 41% of Mélenchon supporters intend to vote for Mr. Macron in the second round, compared to 21% for Ms. Le Pen. But with 33% saying they remain undecided, there is a significant margin of error. A separate poll by Mr. Mélenchon’s campaign indicated that over half of his supporters planned to vote null – leaving their ballot blank intentionally – or abstain altogether, though the poll omitted an option to vote for Ms. Le Pen.

To encourage turnout, nonprofits are working overtime to encourage people to head to the polls, particularly young people – 30% of those under 35 stayed home in the first round. That was evidenced by the hundreds of students who occupied the Sorbonne University last week protesting the “fake choice” between Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen. Protesters say neither candidate can offer social protections and solutions to the environment. 

“Young people are more than ever getting involved in causes that they feel passionate about. But they haven’t seen politicians integrate those causes into their campaigns, so they lose faith in the system,” says Flore Blondel-Goupil, co-president of the voting advocacy nonprofit A Voté. “We’re trying to show them that by voting, they’re showing their commitment.”

Lionel Pedraza/Hans Lucas/Reuters

Young voters cheer for Marine Le Pen in Perpignan on April 7 in her last party event before the first round of the 2022 French presidential elections. While Ms. Le Pen managed to eke out a second-place finish, she will have to appeal to leftist voters to overtake incumbent Emmanuel Macron in the runoff.

Common ground between far-left and far-right?

The winning candidate will have an uphill climb to convince voters to have faith in politics. The public feels increasingly left behind by its leaders – Ipsos research from this year shows that 62% of French people think their politicians are corrupt and 69% believe the political system functions poorly.

That may help Ms. Le Pen, who despite taking over from her father, National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has always cast herself as a political outsider. Some left-wing voters may view Ms. Le Pen as an antidote to what they see as crushing reforms and conservative laws that Mr. Macron has passed in office.  

Even though Mr. Mélenchon said after losing the first round that “not one vote should go to the far-right,” there are points where he and Ms. Le Pen converge. Both have campaigned on increasing purchasing power and French protectionism; both disagree with raising the retirement age, which Mr. Macron is proposing.  

Ms. Le Pen has also tried to change her party’s image, breaking with her father and renaming it National Rally in 2018. Though once in favor of “Frexit,” she’s since performed a volte-face on France leaving the EU and has made climate issues part of her program to appeal to liberal voters.  

Still, there remains a strong anti-fascist tradition in France. On April 16, 22,000 people protested across the country against the far right.  

Polls favor a win for Mr. Macron on Sunday. If he does, he’ll have to defend reforms that led to months of social unrest and answer to left-wing critics who say he is out of touch with their concerns.  

Beyond wooing liberal voters, whoever nabs the presidency must find a way to appeal to them post-election in order to govern effectively.  

“There isn’t one candidate who can represent the left. We had three political blocks who scored almost equally after the first round, but they don’t have the same priorities, values, or core beliefs,” says Thomas Guénolé, a political scientist of left-wing politics. “Those who stay home on voting day feel like [choosing between] Macron and Le Pen is like choosing between the plague or cholera. Some of those people will vote Le Pen just to blow up the system.”

Editor's note: The original version misstated the findings of a poll about tactical voting among the French public.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Mayor Arno Hill in his office in Lordstown, Ohio, March 10, 2022. “A lot of people think that all we need to be [in the U.S.] is a service industry and I don’t agree with that,” he says. General Motors, long a major Lordstown employer, closed an auto assembly plant here in 2019.

Fat snowflakes fall on a field of broken yellow corn stalks less than 25 miles northeast of Columbus. Trash litters the side of the two-lane road; grain silos rise in the distance.

“It won’t look like much,” President Joe Biden confessed in his State of the Union address in March, “but if you stop and look closely, you’ll see a ‘field of dreams,’ the ground on which America’s future will be built.” 

Later this year, Intel, one of the world’s largest tech companies, plans to break ground on two new semiconductor fabrication plants on this 1,000-acre plot of land in New Albany, Ohio – a $20 billion investment that could create 3,000 jobs. Most notably, this New Albany plant could help ease America’s unmet demand for semiconductors: small computer chips that are needed in everything from cellphones to dishwashers to cars to military equipment. 

A shortage of these chips has become a leading symbol of supply-chain troubles deepened by the pandemic and by rising geopolitical tensions with Russia and China. In turn, political and business leaders are beginning to rethink the 21st century’s increasingly globalized supply chain, particularly for such integral pieces of technology. 

Many here in Ohio see investment in this industry as about more than global competitiveness. They say the New Albany plants reaffirm the Buckeye State’s identity as a place where things get made. GOP Gov. Mike DeWine calls manufacturing and innovation “part of Ohio’s DNA,” one of the many reasons why Intel chose Ohio out of 40 competing states. And his viewpoint reflects wider aspirations for a region with a heritage of innovation that runs from plowmaker John Deere to the Wright brothers and Henry Ford.

“The Intel plant is an object lesson in the kind of high-quality economic development we could see in the Midwest, where it builds on the region’s manufacturing history but is very much a forward-looking, high-tech concern,” says Mark Muro, a policy director at Brookings Metro who studies the geography of the digital economy. “And it’s better for the overall sense of opportunity in the country. If 45 states are not participating in core tech development, that means they are disenfranchised and marginalized.” 

Why Ohio stands out

Although the United States’ current chip plants are largely concentrated in the Southwest, Ohio’s access to water (a necessary resource for semiconductor production) and the region’s concentration of top-rated engineering schools, could make Ohio the center of what Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger envisions as a future “Silicon Heartland.” That’s a far more hopeful label than the long​-​standing – and many say unfair​ly backward looking​ – ​nickname of “Rust Belt” for the ​industrial ​Midwest.

As a leader in the region’s manufacturing, Ohio accounted for more than 20% of factory employment among 12 Midwest states in 1990. But in the region’s decline since then, Ohio felt the biggest hit, losing roughly 360,000 manufacturing jobs. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Steve Cummins, a third-generation manufacturer from Mansfield, Ohio, is one of the co-founders of the North Central Ohio Industrial Museum, a one-room museum located in the back of the historic Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, March 9, 2022.

Intel’s new plants will hardly make a dent in replacing those losses, but they’re an important step toward rebuilding Ohio’s manufacturing sector, say experts and local workers. 

“People at first might not first identify Ohio as a place where a company like Intel would want to come,” says Steve Cummins, a third-generation manufacturer from Mansfield, Ohio. “But we still know how to make things here.” 

And Congress might help. Both the House and Senate have passed bills to improve manufacturing efforts at home: the America COMPETES Act passed the House with bipartisan support in February, and the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act passed the Senate 68-28 late last month. Reconciliation between the two bills is expected to begin shortly after Congress returns from recess the week of April 25, with staffers hoping to send a final version of the bill to Mr. Biden’s desk by early summer. Included in both bills, and popular among Republicans and Democrats alike, is the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act, which would allocate $52 billion for semiconductor manufacturing and research.

Intel plans to break ground in New Albany even if the CHIPS Act isn’t passed. It’s already the largest investment in Ohio’s history – it just won’t grow as quickly without that boost to the project's current government subsidies and incentives. Mr. Gelsinger has said the company could eventually invest as much as $100 billion to make it the largest semiconductor manufacturing location on the planet. 

An Intel representative confirmed to the Monitor that they expect to hire 3,000 full-time employees in New Albany, ranging from equipment techs to engineers. To fill the engineering jobs, Intel has partnered with Ohio State University – a move, say OSU leaders, that could help reverse the Midwest’s longstanding “brain drain” of highly-educated young adults moving to the coasts. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Intel's semiconductor plant in New Albany, which could someday be one of the largest plants of its kind in the world, will be built on current farmland here in New Albany, Ohio, a short drive northeast of Columbus.

Rising focus on industrial strategy

Tech jobs at giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have become “intensely concentrated in coastal superstar cities” like Seattle and the Bay area, which doesn’t best serve American workers or the tech itself, says Mr. Muro at Brookings.

Recent geopolitical developments have only reaffirmed the need for such a project, say some officials and policy experts. They point to how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hints at the potentially deep economic fallout if China were to launch a military effort to take control of Taiwan. Although the U.S. is a leader in chip design, currently 75% of the world’s chips are made in East Asia, with almost all of the most advanced chips coming from Taiwan. 

At a recent Monitor Breakfast, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said that 10 to 11 months ago, he “went out and explained” that President Biden’s economic program would include an industrial strategy. 

And at the time, “the question was ‘Why? Does that bring up echoes of failed industrial policy of the past?’” recalls Mr. Deese. “And over the course of the last 10, 11 months, that question has gone decidedly from ‘Why?’ to ‘How?’” 

On the Republican side of the spectrum, author J.D. Vance, who is running for Senate in Ohio, echoes the call for a revived focus on manufacturing. “There is this weird neoliberal consensus that manufacturing was declining in this country and it was inevitable. That it was written into some law of nature. No. It was a policy choice,” he told the Monitor at a recent campaign stop in Canton. “We made a policy choice to allow countries to manufacture overseas. We can make different choices, and I’m glad that at least in this one case we are.”

“Don’t ... take your eye off the ball”

Just 150 miles northeast of the barren New Albany fields, grass breaks through concrete parking lots in front of empty warehouses the size of football fields. Once one of the largest car producing plants in the world, the General Motors’ Lordstown plant is now eerily empty after closing its doors in 2019.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

The former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, on March 10, 2022. The plant closed its doors in 2019. Intel's plan for a major chip-making plant arriving in the state is a welcome boost, even if it will barely begin to reverse a long decline in Ohio's number of manufacturing jobs.

As positive as the Intel project appears to be for Ohio, the parties need to enter this project with “eyes open” to avoid a fate like GM in Lordstown, says Bill Shkurti, former Ohio budget director and current adjunct professor at Ohio State.

“For 20 years Lordstown was an enormously successful plant, but then when competition increased, the production declined,” says Mr. Shkurti. “Even though state officials are going to have to be very busy making sure Intel is successful, they need to keep supporting new businesses. ... Don’t get so caught up in congratulating yourself that you take your eye off the ball.” 

Midday on a Thursday, roughly two dozen workers in various brightly colored work vests filter in and out of Ross’ Eatery and Pub in Lordstown on their lunch break. A poster honoring the “Last Car Produced” at GM’s Lordstown Chevrolet plant on March 6, 2019, hangs on the wall, along with a posterboard littered with stickers from local unions and one that reads, “Be American, Buy American.” 

But there is also a chalkboard that says, “Welcome to our Community,” with the logos of companies like HomeGoods that have added operations in Lordstown since GM shuttered its doors.

“All of these companies come to this area because they know this place is down and dirty when it comes to working,” says Joe Darby, sitting on a barstool at Ross’. “And it’s coming back. I bet we’re at 30% of what we will be in a few years.” 

Because what the last two years have proved, says Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill, echoing locals in Ross’, is that America needs to get back to making stuff again. Which means they need workers like the ones here in the Mahoning Valley. 

“A lot of people think that all we need to be [in the U.S.] is a service industry and I don’t agree with that,” says Mayor Hill from his office in Lordstown, where a blanket hangs on the wall that pictures every model of car that was made at GM’s Lordstown plant over its 53 years. “When COVID first came out, we learned that China controls so much of our drugs and our manufacturing. ... We have to get back to being manufacturing independent.” 

It’s a concept Mr. Cummins is thinking about, both at his company (which has evolved from metal-finishing roots to a focus on producing hinges) and in his sideline work helping to create the one-room North Central Ohio Industrial Museum in Mansfield.

Mr. Cummins takes his time walking through the exhibits, pointing out household favorites that had their start in this part of the state. Appliances from the Tappan Stove Company in Mansfield, which manufactured the first microwave oven for home use in 1955. Advertisements for Klondike bars, the frozen dessert created by William Isaly’s Mansfield Pure Milk Company in 1922. And a lifesize replica of AMF’s automatic pinsetter, developed in nearby Shelby in the early 1950s, which replaced pinsetter boys at bowling alleys across the country. 

Tappan was eventually bought by Frigidaire, Isaly’s company closed, and AMF was sold for parts. 

Now Mr. Cummins points to an empty corner of the museum – an area that looks particularly barren after passing the crowded displays of ovens, tires, and fridges.

“We’re going to show what modern manufacturing can be,” he says.

There’s a plan for pumps and a robotic arm. And maybe even an Intel computer chip.

When Phyllis Myung’s daughter was in kindergarten, she came home from school and asked, “Aren’t I American?” after a classmate disputed her nationality based on her Asian features.

Ever since then, Ms. Myung and her daughter, now a seventh grader, have spoken regularly about race and identity.

“We had that conversation a lot earlier than I was expecting,” says Ms. Myung, from Bolton, Massachusetts.

Their discussions lately often have been about the rise in violence against Asian Americans. “If something does happen to us while on the street out and about, I want her to feel prepared,” says Ms. Myung. “I want her to feel that she has power to be able to handle these things.” 

With schools enmeshed in culture wars over race, and with a national focus on a surge in hate crimes, more conversations like these have been happening between parents and children from a range of racial and religious backgrounds, anecdotal evidence suggests.

Today’s parents are often approaching such conversations differently than in the past. They draw on multicultural books and podcasts as resources, sing their children’s praises on social media, and are opening up about their experiences during challenging times like the aftermath of 9/11, for example. Recent attacks on synagogues, and the murder of George Floyd, are also influencing the tone and quantity of discussions. 

“Has the conversation changed? Yes, because the number of incidents has gone up so much,” says Valerie Cohen, a rabbi in Worcester, Massachusetts, and mother of two, who says Jewish parents have talks with their children now with higher frequency and intensity than when she was young. 

Ms. Cohen, speaking in her office at Temple Emanuel Sinai, says high school students at her synagogue are “craving” conversations about how to handle antisemitism. “They are scared” about increasingly violent events, like the nearly 11-hour hostage standoff at a synagogue in Texas in January. 

Courtesy of Phyllis Myung

Phyllis Myung talks often with her seventh grade daughter about race, identity, and handling anti-Asian hatred.

Start with preparation

At dinner tables around the United States, parents are discussing current events, role-playing scenarios, and offering ideas about what to say when confronted with situations, both small and large, that leave young people with questions and hurt.

“If you have a little bit of prep and a little bit of reality around the state of affairs of our country and our world, then it’s not such a shock to the system when it happens,” says Broderick Leaks, a clinical associate professor at the University of Southern California and director of counseling and mental health services at USC Student Health.

Besides being more necessary, having conversations is also what research shows is the best approach. Studies show babies notice race as early as three months, and by the time children are in preschool they start picking up on subtle social and nonverbal cues about race, says Christia Spears Brown, author of the recent book “Unraveling Bias: How Prejudice Has Shaped Children for Generations and Why It’s Time To Break the Cycle.”

“Know that kids notice race, and that if we aren’t the ones talking about it, they will have to try and figure it out on their own and we probably don’t want that,” because children will fill in gaps in their knowledge with stereotypes, says Dr. Brown, who is white. 

Dr. Brown suggests talking with young children about book and TV characters and highlighting in a positive way physical attributes. Conversations with elementary-age kids might include stereotypes they spot in movies and better ways to represent people. Along the way, parents can role-model empathy, kindness, and fairness, she says. She recommends the website Embrace Race, a compilation of research-backed resources.

Ms. Myung – who works as a church youth pastor and occasionally blogs about race, diversity, and parenting – supplies her daughter with books like the graphic novel “New Kid” by Jerry Craft, which they read and talk about together. She focuses on helping her daughter know how to handle it when issues arise such as a classmate reading a poem in an Asian accent. Ms. Myung teaches her daughter to name and express her feelings and to quickly talk about it with peers or teachers.

Ms. Cohen takes a similar approach. “I say to my kids, ‘People will say things that are offensive; always come to it, especially if it’s someone you have a relationship with, from the assumption that it’s from a place of not knowing and try and educate,’” she says.

Courtesy of Valerie Cohen

Rabbi Valerie Cohen (right) stands with her daughter at her bat mitzvah in 2018. Ms. Cohen says teenagers at her synagogue in Massachusetts are “craving” talks about how to handle antisemitism.

“Promote pride”

Experts and parents say the aim is often to promote confidence and self-esteem in children and young people when they are faced with unexpected vitriol from the world. “When families talk with their kids and really promote pride in who you are as individual, also ethnic pride, that buffers you against some of the messages that you’re either getting at the time, or going to get later in terms of how society is structured,” says Dr. Leaks, who is Black. He describes his own efforts to support his 13-year-old son, bringing him to his speaking engagements to role-model career possibilities and reading books about Black culture and heritage together. 

Danielle Officer, a college administrator from New Rochelle, New York, says discussions with her now 22-year-old son when he was young about being Black in America made it easier for him to process hurtful comments when he came out as gay in middle school. She intentionally goes out of her way to publicly talk about how much she loves and supports her son. 

“I post on social media pictures of him, telling him how proud we are of him. When he was home for spring break, I said, ‘I’m proud of you and everything you do,’ those kinds of reinforcements,” she says. 

For some parents, these conversations are opening the door to sharing similar struggles they had when younger. 

Shifa Saltagi Safadi, a Muslim mother of four in northern Indiana, did just that recently when she needed to help her daughter after a neighbor near her school, housed in a mosque, yelled at children playing outside that he didn’t want any Muslims in his yard.

“My daughter came home that day and she was upset and was asking me, ‘Why does the neighbor not like Muslims?’ She was very confused,” says Ms. Safadi, who started MuslimMommyBlog in 2019. 

Ms. Safadi shared with her daughter that a few weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was when she had first chosen to wear a headscarf, and how she had racial slurs yelled at her in public. Ms. Safadi found an ally in her town’s mayor at the time, who convened an interfaith event where she recited a poem she wrote about how 9/11 made her feel and that the perpetrators didn’t represent Islam.

“I told my daughter my story. I told her [hate] comes from fear and some people are scared of what they don’t know,” says Ms. Safadi, who now writes children’s books with Muslim characters. “I told her this is something we are going to experience, but there are so many more positive people. I told her the best thing to do would be not to let it weigh her down.”

A different path

Parents say they often assess how they were spoken to by family members when they were young, and then consider what to incorporate and change.

Uzma Jafri, co-founder of the “Mommying While Muslim” podcast, says her parents, immigrants from Pakistan and India, relayed that there were certain activities or places, like their local country club in Texas, that were off-limits to her because she was “not a white, real American,” as she puts it.  

Photo courtesy of Uzma Jafri and Zaiba Hasan

Uzma Jafri (right) and Zaiba Hasan started the "Mommying While Muslim" podcast in 2019 after seeing a need for parenting resources geared toward Muslim parents.

“I raise my kids differently,” says Ms. Jafri, now a family medicine doctor in Phoenix, raising four children. She tells her children, “You are 1,000% American, you belong here, you are responsible for fixing things here and for getting rid of any ills.” 

Ms. Myung recalls only one conversation about race with her parents, who emigrated from Korea, after children in her neighborhood outside Seattle threw rocks and yelled when she and friends were walking home. Her parents spoke to her about Japanese American incarceration camps occurring in the U.S. not so long ago and how you can “never take off what you look like, so you have to be really careful and you have to work extra hard because they are never going to 100% accept you in this country as an American.” 

“Really, that was the only conversation that I had with them growing up, and I think for me that was really hard because I was wrestling with, ‘Where do I belong? Where do I fit in?’” says Ms. Myung. “I always felt I was one foot in one place and one in the other, and I didn’t want that for my child. I wanted to make sure that we talked about those things. And I also wanted her to be really proud of who she was and her heritage.”

Deborah Koenigsberger was taking her little boys to the playground one fall morning in 1994 when she stopped short, seeing a mother and her toddler sleeping in a cardboard box. A longtime New Yorker with a comfortable lifestyle, husband, connections, and a business, Ms. Koenigsberger knew she could help women like this – but didn’t know how. 

So, after speaking to a friend who volunteered with homeless single moms, Ms. Koenigsberger began advising these women on how to dress and carry themselves. That December, she shifted money from Christmas presents her sons didn’t need to provide Christmas for 135 shelter kids. She hired a Santa, catered food, and gave each child a big red bag packed with toys and a stuffed animal. Eventually, she added gifts for moms. For two years, Ms. Koenigsberger pretty much funded everything herself.  

The more involved the Manhattan mother and fashion stylist became, the more she realized how dismal life could be for homeless single moms. Many are fleeing domestic violence, slipping away from home with their children and what they could carry. Once assigned a shelter, they may find little more than four walls, beds, patchy privacy, and sometimes shared bathrooms. Worries include vermin, theft, filth, and stigmatizing conditions. Poorly paid, overwhelmed, or inexperienced case managers face burnout. Well-intended rules can complicate finding permanent housing. 

Within a few years, friends were donating to Ms. Koenigsberger’s Hearts of Gold, a charity that works in shelters with single moms and children. The objective: to empower women to control their futures through education and employment.

“My goal is to help homeless moms get their shot. Lots of the families end up in shelters because they never had access to two of the most powerful game changers: opportunity and education,” Ms. Koenigsberger says.

The little-known nonprofit has a $1.2 million annual budget and sponsors 15 shelters. It has raised more than $20 million since launch and has helped more than 36,000 shelter residents via a holistic approach that includes job training, early childhood and after-school education, babysitting, tutoring, field trips, and summer camps. The group has donated thousands of stocked school backpacks, presents, winter coats, and care packages for pregnant moms and families moving into shelters or long-term rentals.

Lizette Kodama/Courtesy of Hearts of Gold

Deborah Koenigsberger (second from left) celebrates with Hearts of Gold moms honored for their achievements recently.

“Anything is possible”

Jacqueline Brown met Ms. Koenigsberger in 1999 when she and her daughter lived in a shelter. Ms. Koenigsberger shepherded her through her GED tests and helped prepare her for a job working with homeless people. Last year, with Hearts of Gold funding, Ms. Koenigsberger took the Brooklyn mother and her son on a college tour and later outfitted his Drake University dorm room in Iowa. 

“She instilled in me that anything is possible,” says Ms. Brown, recalling the difficulty of raising her kids on her own. “She empowered me to know that if I can do it, I can be a good example for my children.”

Broadcaster Soledad O’Brien is the group’s goodwill ambassador. She says that Ms. Koenigsberger’s model works because clients receive emotional, financial, professional, and life mentoring – not just money. 

In 2010, Ms. Koenigsberger opened the Thrifty HoG (short for Hearts of Gold) in Manhattan’s then up-and-coming Flatiron/NoMad areas. A posh resale clothing boutique, it provides another source of funding as well as job training for shelter residents who may never have held a job. 

Almost 40 mothers have gotten experience with everything from customer service and quality control to working a cash register and keeping the books. Thrifty HoG is next door to Ms. Koenigsberger’s own French-inspired boutique Noir et Blanc, which had been her day job as proprietor before shifting almost entirely to Hearts of Gold, where she draws a salary.

While Thrifty HoG hourly pay cannot support a family in America’s most expensive city, the consistent paycheck helps make the moms eligible for subsidized housing – which can help a family survive. It’s also a launchpad to better-paid positions. Thrifty HoG veterans attend college; work in home health care, social services, and corporate America; prepare taxes; and are administrative assistants and entrepreneurs. 

Around 10,000 families with children live in city homeless shelters, with 69% of families headed by women. Most are women of color. 

Lack of city funding limits shelter services, says Jennifer March, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. 

Linette Holmes works at such a shelter. For more than five years, Hearts of Gold has provided Christmas presents, food, basic hygiene products, MetroCards – anything families need.

“She’s never told us no,” Ms. Holmes says.

As of last year, families averaged 520 days in shelters. Conditions are rough by design.

“The city’s philosophy is that ‘this is temporary. We don’t want people to get too comfortable,’” says Deborah Padgett, an expert on homelessness at New York University. Family homelessness started to become chronic in the 1980s when the federal government slashed funding for affordable housing, Ms. Padgett says. 

New York state has been considering giving $250 million in permanent housing vouchers, which would help reduce the city’s homeless population, Ms. March says.

The make-or-break small things 

Among things moms may lack when entering a shelter: shower curtains, food, linens, drinking glasses. 

Performer Rhonda Ross, singer Diana Ross’ daughter, is on Hearts of Gold’s advisory council. She remembers a shelter mother who was buying chicken legs and wings rather than the whole bird, which is more economical, because she didn’t have a knife to cut the chicken. 

“At the lowest point in a woman’s life, [Deb] can offer things that seem small to us but ... can make or break someone else,” Ms. Ross says.

Laura Diaz met Ms. Koenigsberger in 2006 when she lived in a shelter. She had a toddler and an ailing older son, and was pregnant with her third child. After Ms. Diaz moved into permanent housing, Ms. Koenigsberger brought furniture, food, and money to cover bills. She also helped Ms. Diaz earn her GED diploma, become a nurse, and even deliver that third child.

“Everything about who I am and who I’ve become ... is because of her,” says Ms. Diaz, who now lives in Florida, works for a pharmaceutical company, and owns a business doing taxes and notary work and teaching first aid. “I wasn’t raised ... to feel special. In my family, nobody ever amounted to anything, and I never thought I would either.   

“I’m so grateful to her for showing me who I can be.” 

Reuters

French investigators listen to Ukraine's top prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova, in the town of Bucha where Russia forces allegedly committed mass atrocities.

The war in Ukraine may be the first time in history that a common weapon of war – systemic rape, mainly of women – has been so well documented during the conflict itself. Conducted by multiple organizations, the capturing of the accounts of rape survivors is aimed mainly at possible prosecution of Russian forces for acts of mass sexual violence.

Yet the investigations could be having a more immediate and even healing effect. They may be lifting survivors by affirming their inherent dignity as individuals worthy of justice, with the added effect of de-stigmatizing wartime rape.

“Prosecution is also a form of prevention and can help to convert the centuries-old culture of impunity for these crimes into a culture of deterrence,” Pramila Patten, the United Nations special representative for sexual violence during conflict, told the U.N. Security Council on April 13.

“Survivors,” she added, “must be seen by their societies as the holders of rights that will be respected and enforced.”

The groups collecting evidence of rape in Ukraine range from the International Criminal Court to the office of the country’s top prosecutor. A France-based group called We Are Not Weapons of War plans to offer a digital tool that will allow survivors to report atrocities themselves. In mid-April, Britain and Canada launched a new global standard on humane ways to gather information from survivors of conflict-related gender violence in order to lessen the risk of trauma. 

On April 3, Human Rights Watch was the first group to report that Russia is using rape as a weapon of war against Ukraine. Only 14 years ago, the U.N. Security Council declared that rape and other forms of sexual violence during a conflict constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The U.N. is supporting Ukrainian survivors in other ways. It has opened dozens of shelters, crisis rooms, and care centers for displaced women and survivors of violence. Lithuania has donated contraceptives to Ukrainian women.

Over the past three decades, various global campaigns against wartime rape have shifted attitudes to make it easier for survivors to report this crime. While prosecutions of such acts remain rare, survivors are being treated differently, turning feelings of loss and disgrace into empowerment and grace.

Wartime rape is being seen less and less as collateral damage of a conflict and more as a necessary focus in trying to end a war. And that focus starts with respect for the dignity of survivors.