2022
August
09
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 09, 2022
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Sara Miller Llana
Americas Bureau Chief

Watching luggage pile up in airports and delayed passengers pack terminals for months, Australia’s largest airline, Qantas, has come up with a solution to the travel disruptions. It has asked executives to leave office suites to help haul luggage. 

According to a memo written by CEO Colin Hughes, the airline needs 100 volunteers to work shifts of up to three months at the main airports in Sydney and Melbourne, to address a labor shortage that contributed to 8.1% of domestic flights being canceled in June. 

Going from “pushing paper” to pushing suitcases, which could weigh up to 70 pounds each, will hopefully ease the airline’s temporary logistical woes. But the unintended consequence might be more long-lasting: putting management in the shoes of workers.

I have worked at the Monitor for 20 years, mostly as an international correspondent in Mexico City, Paris, and now Toronto. The relationship with “Boston,” as we writers here call the editors, is mostly harmonious. But frustrations sometimes mount. It can sound something like this: “Editor, I stayed up all night to finish this article that you said you needed right away, and two days later no one has even read it!”

Over the holidays this past year, I was asked to fill in on the international editing desk to manage some of our own staffing shortages. On my first day, I didn’t have time for lunch. I was quickly humbled by how many moving parts there are and how much goes into the production of our paper beyond my individual labor. I suddenly understood why, when I file a story, it’s not always read right away or has to wait to be published. Marveling at it still as I take on more editing duties, I have mentioned a “job swap” to our managing editor, as an exercise in understanding others and our collective daily efforts.

My experience at the Monitor applies to the most polarized issues of our day. Support for immigration is always highest among those who have immigrants as neighbors. Even the hardest views against abortion can be malleable when a family member or close friend finds herself in need. 

In this case, Qantas surely has its eye on the company’s bottom line. But the airline may just be providing staff the ultimate training in empathy. 


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

The FBI took an unprecedented step of searching a former president’s residence. To Trump supporters, it smacked of political retribution. To opponents, the search – which a judge signed off on – shows that no one is above the law.

Many gun owners feel safer while carrying guns. But the Music Midtown festival canceled instead of letting in firearms. It speaks to shifting views of safety after this summer’s Supreme Court decision.

ZINARA RATHNAYAKE
Dial Muktieh prepares lunch at her Mei-Ramew Cafe, which opened in 2019, in the village of Khweng, India, on July 25, 2022. The spread includes native rice, smoked fish, pork, chicken, foraged crabs, and condiments prepared with wild greens and herbs.

In northeast India, “Mother Earth” cafes are helping revive Meghalaya’s Indigenous cuisine. They’re part of a statewide movement aiming to not only safeguard Indigenous knowledge and native plant life, but also boost food security and nutrition in the region.

Book review

Universal Photo/SIPA/Newscom/File
Josephine Baker, in an undated photo, models a costume created for her show by French designer Balmain.

Beneath her glamorous stage persona, Josephine Baker hid a stalwart heart and iron nerves as a spy for the Allies in Paris during World War II. In her determination to defeat the Nazis, she also hid fighters for the French Resistance and smuggled documents out of North Africa.

Difference-maker

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor
Chef Brandon Chrostowski (center) teaches trainees inside the kitchen for Edwins Too, one of his two French fine dining restaurants on the East Side of Cleveland.

What is the best way to help formerly incarcerated people get back on their feet? Inspired by his own experience, a chef in Cleveland offers an instructional approach in which skills and dignity are both key ingredients.


The Monitor's View

A series of killings of Muslim men in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has sharpened the fears of Muslims across the United States. Already last year, Muslims reported a 28% rise in incidents of hate and bias, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

They are not alone. About 1 in 3 Black adults and 1 in 7 Hispanic adults worry daily that “they might be threatened or attacked due to their race or ethnicity,” according to a May survey by Pew. Those concerns have prompted some minorities to change their daily routines to reduce their vulnerability.

At different times in American history, minorities have felt motivated by hate or fear to seek political or social change. That motivation has been particularly pronounced for Asian Americans during the pandemic. Violence against Asian Americans spiked as the origin of COVID-19 in China was politicized. That aggression, however, has led to a range of alternative responses.

In Oakland, California, for example, Asian Americans formed an unarmed neighborhood watch patrol and reduced incidents of hate by strengthening their practice of community. In June, thousands of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders held a weekend “unity” rally in Washington, D.C., to counter stigmas against them.

In addition, Asian American educators have written new public school curricula on history and culture that have already been adopted or are being considered in a growing number of states. The only way to reverse hate against Asian Americans is “by teaching people who we are, what our history has been, and what our experience has led us to,” said New York state Sen. John Liu in support of a bill expanding Asian American history education.

These corrective initiatives, wrote Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, in a recent essay for The Christian Century, share a recognition that “we can’t address racism by vilifying individual racist perpetrators.” Addressing hatred, he argued, requires humility. “Instead of reacting with a fight-flight response of our own, which just perpetuates the cycle, we can try to see our enemy with empathy – since we all hold implicit bias.”

In Albuquerque, meanwhile, where police announced Tuesday that they have a suspect in custody, one prominent Islamic leader offered this advice on how the city’s Muslims could respond to the killings. “We should never let evil dictate our life,” Mahmoud Eldenawi, imam of the Islamic Center of New Mexico, told The Guardian newspaper. His courage reflects a lesson many Asian Americans have already embraced: that hate and fear cannot flourish in the face of meekness and affection.


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.

Letting the light of God, divine Love, illumine how we see and interact with others is a powerful force for good, as a woman experienced while working at an organization that provided temporary housing for teens in crisis.


A message of love

Chris Symes/Photosport/AP/File
Serena Williams holds her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., and the ASB trophy after winning her singles finals match against Jessica Pegula at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand, Jan. 12, 2020. On Aug. 9, 2022, Ms. Williams announced that, following the U.S. Open, which begins Aug. 29, she will be stepping away from tennis and turning her focus to having another child and to her business interests. “I’m turning 41 this month, and something’s got to give,” Ms. Williams wrote in an essay released Aug. 9 by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Ms. Williams has won 23 Grand Slam titles.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte and Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow when our Scott Peterson reports on whether the progress made in the Iran nuclear talks is enough to overcome deep distrust and save the deal.

More issues

2022
August
09
Tuesday

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