As a mother, she had to act. When a shooter killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a year ago, Angie Villescaz felt the tears – and determination – well up in her. She had attended that very same elementary school years ago, and she wanted to do everything in her power to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.

So she started organizing to protect children from gun violence. As did Jennifer Hellmer, a mother whose children go to school not far from the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, the site of a mass shooting in March. Activism also gripped Delaney Tarr, who survived the shooting that killed 17 students and staff members at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

School shootings in America have become numbingly familiar and leave many people feeling hopeless. But this crucible of profound shock and grief has also spurred some to become agents of change – people like Ms. Villescaz, Ms. Hellmer, and Ms. Tarr. The Monitor interviewed all three about their journey as activists for more restrictive gun laws, particularly in red states that value gun rights.

“This word, ‘activist,’ it meant nothing – and meant everything,” says Ms. Tarr, now a suburban reporter for a small Atlanta newspaper chain. Her observation captures both the drive and the frustration of those fighting the uphill battle to do something – anything – in a country that stands alone among its wealthy peers in losing children to gun violence.

Polling shows that high-profile shootings usually shift public opinion toward support for greater restrictions on guns, though the effect tends to fade and doesn’t easily translate into legislative action. But what also sprouts in the aftermath of school shootings – and may be more durable in the long run – is grassroots activism.

In Uvalde, families of the victims joined together to demand police accountability and lobbied in Austin to prioritize gun safety. The survivors of the Parkland high school shooting successfully pressed lawmakers to enact a red flag law to remove guns from people deemed a risk to themselves or others. In Nashville, a nonpartisan organization has sprung up to urge action ahead of a special legislative session in August. 

These activists confront an apparent paradox: Large majorities of voters across the political spectrum say they support gun safety measures like universal background checks and red flag laws. A recent poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that 91% of Democrats in Texas think the minimum age to buy a gun should be 21. So do 64% of Republicans. 

But those expressions of support don’t mean that voters will punish politicians who fail to act. Unlike activists, most voters don’t prioritize this issue over others, and those who do are often opponents of gun control, not supporters. That’s why GOP legislators fear a primary challenger if they are seen as restricting gun rights. “It’s a hard vote for Republicans,” says Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project. 

Yet over time, the work of activists can have an impact, even in Texas, which has seen some of the deadliest mass shootings in recent years. “The organizing has changed the visibility of the issue. But we’ve not seen it translate into policy,” says Mr. Henson. 

Few doubt that the road of successful advocacy on such an emotive and hard-fought issue is long and hard. Some people persist; some take a different path. Here are their stories.

The Fierce Madres of Uvalde

Angie Villescaz was involved at the grassroots long before a shooter murdered 21 people at her former elementary school in Uvalde a year ago. Within days of the shooting, Ms. Villescaz had formed Fierce Madres, a group of local Hispanic women advocating for gun safety.

Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor

Angie Villescaz, a former Robb Elementary School student, stands outside the school in Uvalde, Texas, May 17, 2023. She formed the activist group Fierce Madres after the 2022 massacre at the school.

“You’ve got to have moms in there. You’ve got to have madres,” she says of her organization. “If Texas is almost half brown, you can no longer ignore the Hispanic moms in Texas. That’s going to bring the change.”

The group has been part of a spike in political activism here – most notably from relatives of children killed at Robb Elementary School. But it has been a difficult year. Ms. Villescaz has seen more defeats than wins, both in trying to elect reform-minded representatives and in passing gun safety legislation. And unlike her, most activists in Uvalde are new to this.

One year on, grief still permeates – and unites – Uvalde.

Memorials to the victims – 21 white crosses adorned with flowers, messages, toys, and stuffed animals – still stand in the downtown square and in front of the now fenced-off Robb Elementary, which is to be razed. Bright murals of the smiling children look down on roads and intersections. Maroon “Uvalde Strong” signs decorate front yards and business windows.

But the gun-related activism of the past year has divided residents of the rural, politically disengaged town. Hunting is popular here, as are firearms. Everyone knows everyone, and as wounds continue to heal under the wide south Texas sky, politics has complicated the grieving process.

These complications extend to the fate of the school building. Some family members of victims supported the decision to demolish it. Some residents, though, were wary of razing one of Uvalde’s most historically significant buildings, while others argued that losing a social landmark could blight the surrounding community.

Last week, as the first anniversary loomed, the families of the victims were declining interview requests.

Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor

Memorials to the 21 victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting surround a fountain in downtown Uvalde, Texas, May 17, 2023.

Prior to the Robb shooting, Ms. Villescaz had worked on political campaigns in Texas and spent decades advocating for victims of domestic violence. Last year, she ran unsuccessfully in a Democratic state primary. So she had plenty of experience, but as she drove to Uvalde from the Austin area on May 24, 2022, barely able to see through tears, she found a new focus: saving children.

In the first months, she pushed for accountability – specifically for Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the chief of the school police department, who received heavy criticism after law enforcement waited over an hour outside a classroom before confronting the shooter.

Waiting for his termination frustrated family members of victims and community members, but last August the Uvalde School Board fired him. Eloisa R. Medina, a member of Fierce Madres who had never held political office before, won a City Council seat that Mr. Arredondo had vacated in July.

“We had never had a woman on City Council here in 35 years, and never a Hispanic woman,” says Ms. Villescaz.

But November’s midterm elections delivered a reality check to Uvalde’s burgeoning activists. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a stolid opponent of firearm regulation, won 60% of the vote in Uvalde County on his way to reelection. Javier Cazares, whose daughter, Jackie, was killed in the shooting, failed to win a county commissioner’s seat as a write-in candidate.

Since then, several gun safety bills have stalled in the Republican-dominated state Legislature. Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, filed two bills; neither received a committee hearing.

Then, earlier this month, a House committee unexpectedly passed a bill to raise the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles to 21 amid persistent public advocacy by Uvalde families. 

The vote, which sparked tears of joy from family members who were present, came too late in the legislative session to give the bill any chance of becoming law. Still, activists in Uvalde say they are undeterred and will keep pressing for action.

Ms. Villescaz is also hopeful, but she is aiming her campaign higher, beyond Texas. She points to a bipartisan appetite for some gun reform. Some Republicans in Congress, including Texans, supported Democrats last year in passing a modest gun-safety law, the first such federal legislation since the 1990s.

“If I can’t get it done in Texas, then I’ll go higher with my efforts,” she says. “That’s where our only hope is at.”

Converting energy to action in Nashville

Jennifer Hellmer has been “horrified” by every U.S. school shooting over the past decade. She cried after Sandy Hook in 2012 and nervously texted her teacher friend in Fort Lauderdale after Parkland. Then in March came the fatal shooting of three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville, a few miles from where her own two children go to school. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Jennifer Hellmer, a lawyer and gun safety activist, holds a file outside a restaurant in Brentwood, Tennessee, May 23, 2023. She began working on gun safety after the March 2023 shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.

That week, Ms. Hellmer, a lawyer and a registered Republican, became a gun safety activist. The Covenant shooting “woke me up to the point where I was like, I can’t continue doing nothing and lay my head down at night,” she says. “I do feel a certain amount of guilt for not doing more sooner.”

She began texting with other mothers in the days after the shooting, wondering what could be done. As the group grew, one woman invited everyone over to her backyard, where they sat in lawn chairs with laptops in the shade. They showed up at the State Capitol building, unsure at first where to park their cars or how to find committee hearings. They held signs in favor of risk-protection orders – known nationally as red flag laws – while legislators held votes. 

“I had other people who were feeling the same way and experiencing the same types of grief within our community,” she says. “Suddenly all of that energy that I was feeling from an emotional perspective just started getting channeled into action.”

Doing nothing isn’t an option, says Ms. Hellmer, not when the threat of gun violence feels so present in her young family’s life. “I want to be able to look my children in the eyes when they’re older and fully understand the magnitude of this and say, ‘I tried my hardest to protect you.’” 

Her group merged with another to form Voices for a Safer Tennessee, a nonpartisan organization that held a protest in Nashville last month where supporters formed a 3-mile human chain to call for gun safety laws. The group says it supports measures that meet Tennessee, a deep-red state, “where it is.” These measures include stronger gun-storage laws, strengthening background checks, and risk-protection orders. 

Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, has called an August special session when the state legislature will consider public-safety measures that “preserve Second Amendment rights.” 

Ms. Hellmer, herself a gun owner, says she thinks every responsible gun owner, and the state legislature’s Republican supermajority, could get behind “common-sense” gun regulations. 

It won’t be easy, she adds, recalling the “very difficult” conversation at this year’s Easter dinner with her family in rural Tennessee, two weeks after the shooting. Sitting at her grandmother’s table, she discussed gun safety measures with a cousin who hunts and is concerned that even a small concession for gun safety would jeopardize his gun ownership. “I won’t say that I had totally changed his mind, but what I will say is he walked away with education he didn’t have going into it,” she says.

Most of Ms. Hellmer’s career was spent as a criminal defense attorney, so she understands law enforcement. But in the days after Covenant she embarked on a crash course in how state laws are written and passed, she explains as she thumbs through a brown accordion folder with thick stapled packets detailing other states’ legislation and Tennessee’s gun statistics. 

As an organizer for Voices for a Safer Tennessee, she knows they need to reach rural districts well before the August special session if representatives are to hear from their constituents that they support gun safety reforms. 

At times, Ms. Hellmer sounds more like a longtime political organizer than like someone who has spent less than two months planning Voices’ strategy after putting her preschooler and kindergartner to bed every night.

“We recognize that this is an iceberg and we are chipping away at a public safety issue,” she says. “But we’re not naive, and we’re here to do the work – both short-term and long-term.” 

Parkland: from teenage activist to journalist

Just days after she survived the Parkland school massacre, Delaney Tarr stood up at a protest to send a message to Florida’s politicians: Enough of your thoughts and prayers. No more prevarications.

“We are coming after every single one of you and demanding that you take action,” she said.

Courtesy of Delaney Tarr

Delaney Tarr, a Parkland shooting survivor and co-founder of March for Our Lives, a gun safety group, now works for a newspaper in Georgia. She calls herself an advocate, not an activist.

Back then, aged 17, she stood out with her large glasses, brash attitude, and loud voice powered by the passion of what had become a national tragedy. In the weeks and months that followed, Ms. Tarr began to think that she and her fellow teen activists could change the world. Indeed, that year, Florida’s GOP-run Legislature passed a red flag bill and raised the minimum buying age for firearms to 21. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, signed both measures into law. 

But success gave way to doubts about what it would take to reduce gun violence and tackle its underlying causes. Five years on, Ms. Tarr and many of the other Parkland activists have faced their own private traumas, along with a burden of public expectations. Some have soldiered on. Others have opted out of the struggle.

Ms. Tarr, who now works as a newspaper reporter in Georgia, is still parsing the meaning of what came out of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and her role in it.  

Today, she sees she was put in an “unfair position,” a teenager screaming for action on an issue as complex as gun regulation. “Imagine your thoughts on some of the country’s most divisive and important issues being broadcast nationwide while you’re still trying to figure them out,” she says. “You have that brazenness: ‘I know everything.’”

Did she become a useful prop for gun control advocates? she wonders. Is that too cynical? Perhaps.

“But it’s a cynicism I try to balance out with the [fact that] we really changed the landscape for a lot of young people. That’s the impact that I’m happy we had, and that’s the impact that keeps me from feeling too dark,” she says.

On Feb. 14, 2018, Ms. Tarr was in class when the shooting began. She hid in a closet, wondering if she would be next. In all, 17 students and staff members died.

The next day, a teacher suggested Ms. Tarr speak at a courthouse protest, the first of many public appearances in what became March for Our Lives, one of the most high-profile, youth-led gun control movements seen in years. She was one of the group’s co-founders. 

Her exposure to the political process led Ms. Tarr to enroll in a public policy program at American University in Washington. But she never went. Instead, she attended the University of Georgia and went into journalism. She now lives in a state where gun rights are a fact of life: Open carry is the law. As for Florida, lawmakers have tried to lower the buying age for guns to 18, reversing their post-Parkland measure. 

Ms. Tarr still speaks out on gun safety, but has few illusions about finding easy fixes to the gun violence that besets communities across the country, including majority-Black and Latino communities whose experiences differ greatly from those of middle-class suburban high schoolers. She calls herself an advocate, not an activist; to her, an activist is who you are – and that’s not how she thinks of herself.

Last year, reporters called her for reaction to the Uvalde massacre in Texas. Ms. Tarr ignored them. Instead, she cried and grieved again. She also reflected on her own post-shooting journey.

“I’m glad we had the opportunity to fight the power. But at the same time, we shouldn’t have had to be doing all that. ... We shouldn’t be the poster children for gun violence, for the things that can ravage a body so horribly and desperately. And it’s not because adults couldn’t do it. They wouldn’t.”

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy talks with reporters about negotiations in which he is seeking spending cuts as part of a deal to raise the nation's debt limit, on May 24, 2023, on Capitol Hill, in Washington.

In negotiating a last-minute deal before the United States runs out of money to pay all its bills, the White House and Republicans in Congress are playing with fire of uncertain heat.

Every day without a deal takes a toll on financial market confidence, as a possible debt default draws near. The Treasury says that, perhaps as early as June 1, it can no longer assure that all federal bills will be paid, unless Congress raises the nation’s debt limit to allow resumed borrowing.

In one scenario, the politicians reach agreement in time and the damage to America’s reputation remains minimal. In another scenario, talks fail and investors worldwide unload U.S. Treasury bills and notes in a fire sale as the government fails to make all its obligated payments. Stock markets plunge, interest rates surge, and the chaos triggers an international recession.

There is a third scenario, where talks fail but investors don’t panic, at least at first, and market declines goad politicians to reach a deal before causing an economic armageddon.

Uncertainty remains so high because the U.S. has never before gone over the brink in quite this way. But previous episodes when the nation has reneged on its financial commitments suggest that all these scenarios are plausible. If President Joe Biden and Republicans fail to reach a deal before the U.S. Treasury runs out of cash, economic armageddon is not a foregone conclusion.

“I used to think there would be a big disaster right at the moment we missed payments,” says Philip Wallach, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington  “I have to admit that I don’t really think that that is clear anymore.”

That doesn’t mean playing with fire is cost-free in any scenario. In 2011, for example, just going near the debt limit brink cost the government a credit-rating cut (by Standard & Poor’s) that has lasted ever since. 

Previous battles over the debt limit have always ended in a last-minute agreement. In this case, the Biden administration and Congress know they ultimately need to raise the debt ceiling to pay for programs already approved by Congress. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, are threatening to oppose a debt limit increase if Democrats don’t agree to spending cuts. If Treasury can’t issue more debt, it will run out of enough cash to pay its obligations, perhaps as early as June 1. 

That scenario would create deep uncertainty, because no one knows how domestic and foreign investors who hold U.S. debt would react. Other big unknowns include how Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and politicians would respond.

Alex Brandon/AP

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (left) speaks as he meets with President Joe Biden to discuss the debt limit at the White House, May 22, 2023.

Options for the Treasury

The Treasury, for example, could avoid outright default on its debt by prioritizing payments to bondholders. It’s not clear whether this is legal – and such a move would almost certainly set off a blizzard of lawsuits. But at least there is legal precedent for the courts to step in.

In the depths of the Great Depression, after the U.S. decided to redeem federal gold bonds in currency instead of gold coin, the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court upheld the federal government’s right to go back on its longstanding promise to pay bondholders in gold.

The U.S. has repudiated its financial obligations at other times too, says Alex J. Pollock, a senior fellow at the Mises Institute and author of “Finance and Philosophy – Why We’re Always Surprised.” In 1968, it refused to redeem silver certificate paper dollars for actual silver dollars, despite a written guarantee. Three years later, the U.S. went off the gold standard completely, despite its commitment in an international agreement to convert dollars to gold. The agreement, known as the Bretton Woods system, collapsed.

Even if prioritizing payments were deemed legal, the political challenges could prove equally daunting. Opponents of a potential deal on the debt limit could point out that the Treasury, in effect, would be guaranteeing continued payments to wealthy bondholders, including foreign investors in Japan and China, while simultaneously delaying or cutting payments to Americans including perhaps the most vulnerable. If the Treasury prioritized bondholders and Social Security recipients, it would have to cut payments to other large blocs of voters, such as veterans, federal government employees, welfare recipients, taxpayers due refunds, and so on.

By one estimate, payments to those groups would have to be cut by a third.

If politicians do come up with a deal on raising the debt limit before June 1, they probably won’t escape negative consequences, if history is any guide. When the U.S. saw similar political brinkmanship in 2011 and again in 2013, the interest rates that the Treasury had to pay to borrow rose between 0.04 and 0.46 percentage points, according to Wendy Edelberg, an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In the mini-default of 1979, when technical glitches forced Treasury to delay payments to bondholders for a few weeks, interest rates on U.S. debt rose 0.6 percentage points and didn’t go back down once the problem was fixed. That triggered a $12 billion annual increase in federal interest payments, according to one study.

Bondholders are already reacting this time. “We have already seen Treasury’s borrowing costs increase substantially for securities maturing in early June,” Secretary Yellen wrote in a letter Monday to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. 

Self-imposed turmoil – for a reason?

This financial damage is self-inflicted and unnecessary, economists point out. The need for more borrowing is inherent in spending decisions already approved by Congress. “The only effective solution is for Congress to increase the debt ceiling without delay or, better yet, abolish it,” Ms. Edelberg told Congress in testimony last week.

Patrick Semansky/AP/File

The Treasury Building in Washington is in the news as investors weigh what would happen if President Joe Biden and Congress fail to reach a debt limit deal in time to avoid a default on federal obligations.

But the ordinary budget process is so broken that debt limit debates remain one of the few ways that the minority party can call attention to spending and the debt. Republicans hope to use the current talks as leverage to restrain future spending. Both parties have used debt-limit debates to pressure the White House.

“They do serve a purpose,” says Richard Marcus, a finance professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and co-author of the study on the 1979 mini default. “They concentrate the mind that we’re spending more than we’re taking in.”

Several solutions have been proposed for an unresolved impasse. Some scholars have suggested President Biden could invoke the 14th Amendment, which says the validity of the nation’s public debt “shall not be questioned,” to ignore the debt ceiling and instruct the Treasury to meet all its obligations. But that would involve a legal tangle over constitutional law and the president himself has said he doesn’t have the necessary time to use the amendment to solve the immediate crisis.

“Hard choices ... is what we need”

Another idea is that the Treasury mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin, sell it to the Federal Reserve, and use the funds to continue paying its bills – a solution Secretary Yellen has called a gimmick. A third idea is to revalue the nation’s gold supply at something closer to its real value and issue gold certificates.

“Eight thousand tonnes of gold is not a gimmick,” says Mr. Pollock of the Mises Institute. “Eight thousand tonnes of gold is reality.”

The last time Congress valued the federal government’s gold was 1973, when it set the price at $42.22 an ounce. By revaluing it at close to today’s market value – gold was trading above $1,950 an ounce on Wednesday – the Treasury could raise some $500 billion, giving Republicans and the president breathing room to hammer out a new budget. That’s what the Eisenhower administration did in 1953, increasing its gold certificates because the price of gold had risen, to overcome a political impasse over the debt ceiling, which Congress eventually raised in 1954.

Of course, that’s just a temporary fix for the underlying problem – a lack of political will to strike the tough compromises that would create viable and sustainable budgets.

“We just need a lot of seriousness applied to the issue, and we don’t have a lot of it today,” says Mr. Wallach at the American Enterprise Institute. “We have a lot of recriminations, a lot of finger pointing, a lot of bad feelings, but not a lot of serious willingness to buckle down and collectively shoulder some hard choices, which is what we need.”

Inside the 16th-century Orthodox Christian monastery’s cavernous cathedral – where the ornate gilt interior is hung with religious icons, and the air is thickly scented with burning candles and incense – a crisis of faith swirls among black-clad monks and parishioners standing for an hourslong service.

For centuries, Sviatohirsk Monastery and nearly all Orthodox churches in eastern Ukraine have been officially loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate.

Indeed, despite the widespread destruction of Ukraine wrought by Russia’s 15-month-old invasion, this service includes a traditional request to pray for the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, who has unabashedly backed President Vladimir Putin and supported the war as a “metaphysical struggle.”

The historic attachment to Russia has led critics – which include the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – to consider such Orthodox churches and their adherents in Ukraine to be a pro-Russian fifth column that is especially dangerous in wartime.

So it is a surprise to find the slight, bearded Ukrainian soldier among the believers here, standing in prayer with his boots soaked and camouflage trousers dirty from fighting Russian troops in muddy trenches.

Soldier Georgii, in fact, embodies the challenges and questions faced by this community of believers, which has always looked to Moscow for ecumenical leadership but now sees the Russian church backing calls for the annihilation of the Ukrainian nation.

“Of course, people changed their mindset. ... Russia has shown its other face, and people see it now,” says Georgii, who twice has been concussed by Russian bombs and recently lost a friend in fighting in Bakhmut.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A destroyed Russian tank lies near the Cathedral of Saints Vera, Nadeshda, and Liubov, an Orthodox Church loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate, in Sviatohirsk, Ukraine, April 22, 2023. Three months of Russian occupation left the city severely damaged.

“I was coming with the same question to the priest,” he says, about the continued call to pray for Patriarch Kirill in Moscow. He was told that no synod has been held yet to officially change the practice.

“The Bible says if a person has lost the way, and is a sinner, we can still pray for them,” says Georgii, who asked that only his first name be used. He says he was drawn since childhood to what is called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

He rejects charges that the church serves as a fifth column, and notes that Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the Moscow-tied church in Ukraine, immediately condemned the Russian invasion as a “repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother.”

“This church is praying for the Ukrainian Army, for Ukrainian soldiers, for the Ukrainian state, and for peace in Ukraine,” says Georgii. “From the first day, this church has blamed Russia for the invasion.”

As he speaks at the end of the service, church bells peal. Soon after, the thumping sounds of a distant artillery duel punctuate his words.

“I am for this church. I am a believer in this church,” says Georgii. “And I fight [for Ukraine] in this war.”

“Never on the side of aggression”

Above him, the walls of the monastery and its church buildings are damaged by shrapnel.

When the Russians occupied Sviatohirsk from June to September 2022, they could only advance to the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River, across the water from the monastery. Fighting destroyed much of the town; one of the direct strikes on the monastery caused three deaths.

The contradictions for believers of Ukraine’s Moscow-loyalist churches came to a head in early April, when the head of Kyiv’s most prominent monastery was placed under house arrest on charges of justifying Russia’s invasion. Metropolitan Pavlo denied the accusations, telling a judge he was “never on the side of aggression and never will be.”

But the SBU – which has arrested dozens of clergy from the Moscow-linked church across the country for alleged subversion – takes a different view.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

An Easter-related service takes place in the Sviatohirsk Church of All Saints, affiliated with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, April 22, 2023.

“A robe is not always a guarantee of pure intentions,” the SBU said in an April statement. “Today the enemy is trying to use the church environment to promote its propaganda and divide Ukrainian society.”

Questions have risen about the long-term significance of divisions within the Orthodox community, over whether believers in the Moscow-linked church can become fully part of post-war Ukrainian society when they often see the current war as a test of their own faith.

Official concerns are echoed by the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which four years ago was granted “autocephaly” by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodoxy, in a move rejected by Moscow.

Since Russia’s invasion began, the newer Ukraine church has seen a surge of priests and their congregations eager to join it and cut ties with Moscow.

People “had their eyes opened”

Among those receiving converts is Father Vitalii, who wears a black hat and a large worn metal cross around his neck. He dismisses the Moscow Patriarchate as a “KGB church,” revitalized on the orders of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin and the KGB security service in the 1940s, after decades of persecution and systematic destruction by previous Russian and Soviet leaders.

“I don’t perceive them as an enemy; I have no aggression toward the church and the people of this church,” says Father Vitalii, speaking in a small modern church hall in Kramatorsk. “But you have to understand that in a country at war, fighting an aggressor for a long time already, there is no place for the church of this [aggressor] country.”

He knows members of Ukraine’s Orthodox flock who have changed their minds about the Russian-linked church, but still, others who, “when [Russian] rockets land near their house, still say it is the Ukrainians shooting at themselves – they can’t believe they come from Russia,” he says.

“I can’t trust a person who says they are pro-Ukrainian and still goes to the Moscow church. I understand that this person is hiding something in himself,” he adds. “Many more people are joining our church. They have had their eyes opened.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Father Vitalii, a priest in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, an Orthodox branch independent of official ties with Russia, stands in a church building in the eastern Donbas city of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, April 24, 2023. He dismisses the Moscow Patriarchate as a “KGB church.”

The road to such a reckoning can be long, incomplete, and filled with rumor and uncertainty.

Not far from the Sviatohirsk Monastery, for example, in the town of Bohorodychne, the Church of the Holy Mother and convent were both largely destroyed by Russian airstrikes, before Russian troops occupied the area for months last year.

Two large onion dome cupolas with tall gilt crosses have toppled to the ground. The nearest house has also been destroyed, its roof gone; a salvaged stove and kitchenware are in the yard.

The tearful house owner, who gives the name Liubov, nods toward the wrecked church, and says, “When I see that, I just want to die.” She says she doesn’t know which side’s bombardment dismembered her church – though it is widely known to have been Russia – or damaged her house.

“How can we live without a church?” she asks.

Trauma and confusion

The traumatic and confusing impact of the war on the community of believers of the Moscow-linked church is clear at the small Sviatohirsk Church of All Saints, in a district that saw widespread destruction.

Church members consider it a “miracle” that while artillery and rocket strikes burned buildings on the church compound, the church itself was only struck by a few pieces of shrapnel. An unexploded rocket is still embedded in the street, a few strides away.

“When I hear their confessions, people just start crying, because it was so hard,” says Deacon Dmytro, a cleric from western Ukraine who wears a thick black beard and robes to match, speaking before an Easter-related service that included a call to pray for the Moscow patriarch.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A Ukrainian woman who gave the name Liubov reacts to the state of her wrecked house, while looking up to the war-damaged Orthodox Church of the Holy Mother and convent, in Bohorodychne, Ukraine, April 23, 2023.

“I can see that people became more united,” says Deacon Dmytro. “Before they were coming to church and leaving, like a duty. Now they really feel like they are united and they need this. Even if there were some people here who were sympathetic to Russia, they were not talking about that openly, and it’s not influencing the faith.”

Among church volunteers is a woman who also gives the name Liubov, which means “love.” During the service, the pensioner with a powder-blue headscarf helps light and extinguish prayer candles. The next morning she cleans the Moscow-linked church.

Liubov recalls tearfully how a friend, also active in the church, was killed last June when a shell pierced the roof of her kitchen.

“It had a very strong impact on me; she was my sister in faith,” says Liubov. “She was very kind and always wanted to give food to everyone. Growing big bell peppers was her favorite thing. She had this generous Russian soul.”

When asked about any pressure felt by the Moscow-loyalist congregation, Liubov says, “The church doesn’t do politics. ... Let’s not bring it here.”

“I am the person who loves everyone,” she adds. “There are people here who hate everyone. [But] God is love. God will decide who is right and wrong.”  

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

Roman Koksarov/AP

The Monument of Freedom, in Riga, Latvia, is illuminated with the colors of the Ukrainian national flag to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Fifteen months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war there has worsened tensions in Latvia between the ethnic Latvian majority and the Russian-speaking minority.

Around a quarter of Latvia’s population are Russian speakers – a legacy of the Soviet Union. And the signs are that an increasing number of them are turning their backs on their motherland and on the Kremlin.

But not fast enough for many native Latvians, it seems.

“There are definitely more tensions between the two populations than there have been for a long time, perhaps since 1991,” when Latvia regained its independence, says Selma Levrence, a young Latvian social activist who works for the center-left Progressive Party. 

This crisis is sharpening despite an apparent shift in opinion among the country’s Russian speakers. A recent poll found that only a third of them thought that Latvia should orient its foreign policy toward Moscow; 41% believed the country should align itself instead with the West, against the war, up from 34% last year.

“The Russian community was understandably conflicted at the start of the war,” says Juris Rozenvalds, a sociologist at the University of Latvia who is himself half Russian and half Latvian. “At first, most naturally identified with Russia because that is their country of origin.

“On the other hand, most Russians were shocked by what is going on in Ukraine,” Mr. Rozenvalds adds, and “both Russians and Latvians are giving humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The proportion of Russian speakers who support Ukraine is slowly but surely growing.”

Among them is Vera, who did not want to give her surname. She works at a toy store in Daugavpils, the most heavily Russian city in Latvia. “Before the war I thought that Putin was an excellent leader for Russia,” she says. “The war changed all that. I don’t like the war, and I don’t think the Russian people do either.”

Stigmatized and insecure

But extremists in the pro-Russia camp distract attention from people like Vera. Vandals recently desecrated the Bikernieki Memorial to the victims of the Holocaust with graffiti Z’s – the symbol of the Russian invasion – and last month smashed the facade of the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which recalls the country’s history under Nazi and Soviet rule from 1940 to 1991.

Such events point to “a definite downturn in inter-community relations,” says Maris Andzans, a political scientist at Riga Stradins University. 

The result is that Russian speakers feel more stigmatized than ever, says Anna, a Russian who moved to Riga with her family before the war and now works in information technology.

“There is a bookseller in our neighborhood who used to speak Russian to me when I came into his store,” she says. “Now he insists on speaking in Latvian.”

“I recognize that that is his right,” says Anna, who has a temporary work permit that expires next year and also asked that her name not be used. “Still, it’s uncomfortable. Since the war started I have felt more insecure.”

Roman Koksarov/AP

Passersby in Riga, Latvia, which endured 50 years of Soviet occupation, look at a destroyed Russian tank, installed to mark the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Arina, another Russian national who moved to Latvia before the war to take a job in marketing, says she has suffered from a rise in Russophobia among her Latvian friends, which she finds understandable. “I sympathize with my Latvian friends in their anger at the Kremlin,” says Arina, who is of mixed Latvian-Russian parentage. “In this respect I consider myself a victim of the [Russian] regime, even though I have always been against the war.”

At the same time, she worries, “the war has given the green light to some of the more nationalistic Latvians to be more open about their concerns and frustrations about the Russians in their midst, which only adds fuel to the fire.”

Government campaign

“Latvian people now tend to associate everything Russian with the war,” says Ms. Levrence, the social activist, and this is feeding calls for more radical “de-Russification” of Latvian society.

That campaign, led by the government, has sped up since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The war reactivated the dormant negative feelings about the Soviet times,” says Mr. Rozenvalds, the sociologist, prompting the destruction of Russian imperial and Soviet monuments and other efforts to expunge Moscow’s legacy, such as a campaign to eradicate Russian-language education.

Last August, the authorities blew up the 260-foot-high Victory Monument in central Riga, built to commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, which occupied Latvia from 1941 to 1944. But Latvians saw the towering obelisk and adjacent Red Army soldier sculptures as celebrating the Soviet occupation from 1944 until 1991.

The government is also moving to eradicate Russian from Latvian schools, change Russian street names, and remove statues of Russian heroes such as the poet Alexander Pushkin.

“This,” Mr. Rozenvalds says, “has made the split between Russian and Latvian speakers deeper, at least in the short term.”

Roman Koksarov/AP

Latvia's President Egils Levits, is a strong supporter of "de-Russification" measures to expunge the legacy of the Soviet Union, in which Latvia was a republic until 1991.

Latvia’s president, Egils Levits, however, insists that de-Russification is essential to the country’s existence. “We are a national Latvian state,” President Levits says. “The state language, Latvian, is a common language for all people living here.

“The war in Ukraine has made us more aware of this [Soviet] legacy,” he adds in an interview. “Pushkin has nothing to do with Latvia; why do we need a statue for him?”

“Basic human rights”

The government’s hostility to Russian language and culture, and its campaign to eliminate them, have drawn criticism from moderate Latvian quarters: “It has not been done in a coordinated, thought-out manner,” says Ms. Levrence. And it has offended many Russian speakers.

One-third of them feel “confused or angry,” estimates Dr. Andzans, the political scientist. Among them is Vitaly S., who asked that his full name not be made public.

“Before the war at least the Riga government respected our basic human rights,” says Mr. S., a Russian speaker born in Latvia who has refused to become a Latvian citizen. “But since Feb. 24 [2022] the nationalists have operated without restrictions.”

“It’s complicated,” says Mr. Rozenvalds. “And the extremists who are shouting ‘de-Russify Latvia’ are not helping. What does it mean in a society where one-third of the people speak Russian at home?

“Unfortunately,” he adds, “a part of society is of the opinion that the Russians haven’t learned our language in 30 years, so they don’t belong to ‘our tribe.’ But in order to become a truly united society we first have to show that we are reaching out our hand and asking them to join.

“And that,” he says, “is not happening. Just the opposite.”

This article was reported with the assistance of Anna Sicova.

As Jared Aaron progressed through school in Atlanta, graduation served as a North Star – until a family move his junior year disrupted that pathway.

When he eventually registered at Benjamin E. Mays High School, he knew he had a lot of ground to make up, having missed a year of school. 

“My initial graduation thought was to be at least top 20% of my class [and] get all A’s and B’s,” he says. After he fell behind, he realized he was “going to have to work harder” to finish high school.

On Thursday, Jared plans to accept his diploma alongside his senior class peers. He finished on time, a feat he attributes to Phoenix Academy in Atlanta Public Schools. It’s a program that serves students at risk of not graduating by providing extra support through a blended learning environment.

Staggering increases in chronic absenteeism among students, educators say, could torpedo diploma attainment if steps aren’t taken to curb the problem and get teens back on track. And, as some schools are finding out, students are succeeding after building connections with peers or trusted adults and being offered more flexibility.

“I’m definitely worried,” says Chelsea Montgomery, assistant superintendent for student services at Atlanta Public Schools. “I think we’re going to see the impacts for the next several years.”

Students are labeled chronically absent if they miss more than 10% of school days for any reason. In states with 180 school days, for instance, the math translates to students missing at least 3 1/2 weeks of instruction. Some students, like Jared, essentially drop off the radar and forgo attending school for months at a time.

Attendance Works – a nonprofit that works with school districts, community organizations, and states to reduce student absences – estimates that chronic absenteeism roughly doubled since the pandemic, affecting nearly a third of students. During the 2021-2022 school year, chronic absenteeism rose in many corners of the United States, reaching 30% in states such as New Mexico, Ohio, and California. 

Hedy N. Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, doesn’t expect those rates to drop significantly – maybe just by a few percentage points – when data comes out for the current school year.

“School learning is very scaffolded,” she says. “There’s a lot of evidence that shows missing too much of a course can cause you to fall behind, not pass the test, then fail the class and then be off track for graduation.”

Leading up to the pandemic, the national graduation rate had been steadily increasing, moving from 79% in 2011 to 86% by 2019. In 2020, despite the massive shift to remote learning, the graduation rate inched up again to 87%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which has not released more recent data. Some states relaxed standards at the beginning of the pandemic to get students across the finish line during the tumultuous period.

Douglas Harris, a professor and economics department chair at Tulane University who studies graduation rates, suspects a degree of flexibility persists despite school districts largely returning to business-as-usual academic operations. He says that may stem from a desire to make high school more manageable because the alternative – students giving up and dropping out if they feel the challenges are too insurmountable – is worse.

“My sense is that some of that has continued beyond the pandemic and that’s why it’s been easier for students to meet the requirements that they need to graduate,” he says.

“We can make that work”

Georgia never altered its graduation requirements, but when it comes to flexibility, Ms. Montgomery says it’s about meeting students where they are. The Phoenix Academy, in particular, models that sentiment: Some students come in person every day for in-person support from teachers. Others visit a few times a week or work remotely and receive virtual assistance.

It’s an acknowledgement that students’ lives don’t always fit into the neat and tidy contours of a typical school week, especially given changes some experienced during the pandemic.

“If they need to work, that’s OK,” she says. “If you can’t do school on Tuesdays and Thursdays because you have to take care of your grandmother those days, that’s fine. We can make that work. So really, especially with COVID world, having that flexibility to make it work ... has just been critically important.”

Ms. Chang says another antidote to chronic absenteeism and, consequently, a key factor affecting graduation, is relationship-building – both among students and their peers and trusted staff members. 

That’s how Darlene Montano recently found herself writing a letter to the superintendent of Albuquerque Public Schools in New Mexico. She wanted to tell him about the profound effect a high school counselor, Brenna McJimsey, had on her son, Marcos. Without Ms. McJimsey’s constant encouragement and progress monitoring, she says her son likely would not be graduating.

Marcos fell behind and didn’t graduate with his original senior class in 2021. He almost called it quits, in part because his mother sustained severe injuries in a car accident. 

“I still worried a lot, so I just wanted to be there,” he says of taking care of his mother.

But Ms. McJimsey kept nudging him to not give up. Marcos, now 19, earned the final credits he needed to graduate this spring and embark on his next chapter: following in the footsteps of his father to become an electrician. Marcos says his rapport with Ms. McJimsey made all the difference.

“She made me believe in myself for once,” he says.

Ms. McJimsey says she makes it a point to treat each student with humanity and establish trust. When she noticed a string of absences, she would reach out to Marcos with a simple message: “The more you keep doing [school], the closer you’re going to get.”

The approach echoes what Yusuf Muhammad, principal of Phoenix Academy, tries to instill among his staff members. Caring adults combined with frequent progress monitoring, he says, can help even the most vulnerable students finish high school.

Of the program’s 500 students this year, leaders expect about 250 to graduate this spring followed by another 100 receiving their diplomas this summer. Others may need an additional semester or two to reach that milestone.

“If you believe that students can succeed, regardless of circumstances, then we’ll prioritize what’s best for students – not necessarily what’s best for adults – and we can really push students through,” Mr. Muhammad says.

Helping students make connections

Another piece of the puzzle, Ms. Chang says, is relevancy. Students tend to engage more if they see a connection between what they’re learning in school and potential career pathways, or if a school project helps solve a community problem.

“It’s them seeing the relevance of the skill they’re learning to the world in which they live,” she says.

For Jared, it also took a large dose of grit. He knew it was “crunch time” this year. The soon-to-be high school graduate is taking a Google course relating to information technology support while also pondering his next steps. 

The weight of the moment, he says, isn’t lost on him as society looks to his generation as the next leaders. “It’s gonna get real from here,” he says.

Goats, cows, and pedestrians wander by the two unassuming shipping containers along a street in Niger’s riverside capital without a second thought. But inside lie nearly 50 tons of dinosaur bones wrapped in plaster – potentially some of the most significant paleontological finds this landlocked West African country, and even the continent, has ever known.

There are fossils from perhaps as many as 100 different species, some of them from ancient animals never seen before. 

“Small animals, mammals, flying reptiles, turtles” as well as a 40-foot crocodile and “a dozen large dinosaurs that are new, including huge 60-footers,” says American paleontologist Paul Sereno.

Getting them to the capital was years in the making – and their journey isn’t over. The initial discoveries were made in 2018 and 2019, in the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert. It would take time and funding for a proper dig, though, so the paleontologists covered them up and buried them, hoping the winds wouldn’t expose them to curious nomads or dangerous smugglers. 

Then COVID-19 hit, shutting everything down until finally, last fall, Professor Sereno could return to unearth the fossils again.  

“Niger is going to tell Africa’s story during the dinosaur era,” he says. Instead of the fossilized snapshots found in many other places, these discoveries present a continuum of “the Jurassic and Cretaceous history of Africa.”

The bones, soon to be shipped to Dr. Sereno’s lab at the University of Chicago for research, represent paleontology’s latest win against the harsh desert environment of Niger, which is home not only to fossils but also to soaring temperatures, shifting dunes, and various armed groups.

But Chicago won’t be the bones’ final resting place. The fossils are earmarked to be eventually returned to Niger, where the kernels of a formal paleontology sector are being planted in a country that contains some of the richest paleontological finds in Africa but boasts no paleontologists of its own, or even academic programs dedicated to the field. 

“Each time, we see that we find new dinosaurs, new fossils that permit us to say that the soil is rich – unlike other countries, and other continents,” says Boubé Adamou, an archaeologist at the Institute for Research in Human Sciences who, as one of Niger’s foremost experts on excavations, helped lead this most recent expedition. “Niger has an unheard-of heritage.”

Guy Peterson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Boubou Hama National Museum has a replica of a dinosaur skeleton found by American paleontologist Paul Sereno in 1997.

A race in the desert

In a convoy speeding through the desert last fall, the team of about 20 found themselves massively outnumbered by scores of armed men riding in machine gun-mounted trucks. Those were just their guards, determined to keep this modern-day Saharan caravan safe from smugglers or bandits roving the dunes. Dr. Sereno declines to disclose the exact number of the guards, to not give away sensitive security measures.

The team, composed of researchers and students from the United States, Niger, and Europe, went to three dig sites over three months. By the time they finished in December, they had unearthed everything from an Ouranosaurus with a 25-foot-long, bony “sail” across the length of its back to the 6-foot thigh bone of a long-necked sauropod. 

How was it that what is now one of the world’s largest deserts sustained so much life? Millions of years ago, the vast expanses of Niger were anything but dry, as rivers, wetlands, and lakes stretched across what researchers called the Green Sahara, home at one point to dinosaurs, and later, ancient human civilizations with embalming techniques that predate the Egyptians – relics of which were also found on the fall expedition.

But geologic happenstance also created this modern dinosaur jackpot. Most dinosaur fossils in the world are found in the U.S. and Asia because mountain ranges rose over millions of years, slowly pushing up earth over time and burying bones below. Niger’s mountains provided the same process. A second key factor here, as in places like Montana, is the lack of forest or jungle to inhibit the search for bones.

A hundred million years since the dinosaurs’ heyday, it’s easy to see why Niger remains off the beaten path for paleontologists, despite its riches. As one of the poorest nations on Earth, it combines rough infrastructure with harsh desert conditions.

But even if the Green Sahara is a thing of the past, the desert today is anything but desolate. Local nomads who’ve long mastered the difficult terrain have become key to conducting paleontology there, spotting bones and leading expeditions through otherwise unnavigable desert expanses. While the pandemic held Dr. Sereno’s team at bay, nomads kept a watchful eye on the carefully buried treasures, texting him updates.

Guy Peterson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Niger’s Boubou Hama National Museum has replicas of dinosaur skeletons found in the Agadez region, including one found by French paleontologist Philippe Taquet in 1966.

Growing local paleontologists

In Niamey, children and families dart around the Boubou Hama National Museum and adjacent zoo, checking out hippos and hyenas, and walking in the shadows of two massive dinosaur skeletons on display, including a terrifying 36-foot-tall carnivore called a Suchomimus. An equally menacing Afrovenator greets visitors at the airport, along with the skull of a “super croc.” 

But these are just replicas. In addition to lacking paleontologists, Niger doesn’t have the proper facilities to display actual fossils, Mr. Adamou says.

That could be changing. Niger Heritage is a project drawn up by Dr. Sereno, Mr. Adamou, and coterie of international and Nigerien researchers and government officials. It envisions two museums – one in Agadez, in the Sahara Desert, and one in Niamey – with the capacity to not just display the fossils but also, for the first time, conduct homegrown research. The plans go beyond dinosaurs, covering the prehistoric human era, Niger’s modern nomadic heritage, and today’s climate and ecological issues. 

“The health of the [Niger River], the advance of the desert – they’re wrapped up in these projects that take you [on] a walk through time, and then they engage subject matter that is absolutely critical to everyday life,” says Dr. Sereno, who is dedicating time this year to raise funds for the $300 million museum project. 

Already, three small museums have launched as part of a local education initiative. 

The Agadez and Niamey museums, and accompanying funds for local universities, are meant to attract international academic interest and tourism as well as to support local research. Niger’s first paleontologists, it is hoped, might be in undergraduate courses right now. With the right guidance and funding – to do Ph.D. programs outside the country – they could start correcting the lopsided nature of paleontology, where resources and opportunities are concentrated in rich countries.

“The difficulty lies in not being able to use this heritage,” says Mawli Dayak, an adviser to Niger’s president. “For education, for teaching, for culture, or for Niger in general.” But he adds that Niger Heritage has drummed up attention around Niger’s paleontological potential, and “there are a lot of young people who are interested in these questions.”

If Niger can grow its local paleontologists, says Sidi Abdella, logistics manager for Niger Heritage, “Niger will be among the biggest countries” for paleontology. 

Perhaps just as important, though, is developing pride among ordinary Nigeriens in their country’s stewardship.

“We can showcase this patrimony,” says Mr. Abdella. “We can say Niger is taking care of it.” 

Photo by Riley Robinson/Staff

Students read at an elementary school in Middletown, Ohio.

Regardless of their political leanings, many parents would likely agree on the necessity of protecting children from harm and nurturing their faculties of empathy and critical thinking. In the United States, those two responsibilities now sit at the heart of a vigorous debate about dignity and the rights of individuals to make their own choices on reading material in public schools.

The immediate issue involves attempts to restrict or expand books and courses that address themes like violence, teen mental health, race, sexual orientation, and gender. Some parents worry their children are being exposed to graphic and confusing influences. Others are just as concerned about the effects of limiting what their children are allowed to read. Their concerns are reflected in state legislatures and Congress, which collectively are weighing 119 bills affecting education materials.

Parents on both sides share a concern about the welfare of children. In many communities, that commonality is proving more unifying than divisive. In school board meetings and parent town halls from Connecticut to Texas, at the level where neighbors sit with neighbors, the spike in efforts to control the choice of books in schools is resulting in new civic vigor tempered by reason and respect.

When “you go into public education, and you see all these different types of people and their struggles ... that just builds your empathy so much,” Sheila Michaels, a high school librarian in Nixa, Missouri, told The New Yorker last week.

Often a hardened debate at the local level discovers that school systems have made good choices. In Pensacola, Florida, the Escambia County school board recently met with more than 150 members of the community for nearly eight hours to vet challenges to just four books. In the end, the books survived.

In a long meeting with state education officials in Newtown, Connecticut, last month, parents resolved their differences with a proposal to create an app that would allow them to inform school libraries if they wanted to prevent their children from checking out specific books. In Denton, Texas, a harsh debate about books in April led into a discussion about civility.

A nationwide example is a federally funded effort to write a curriculum “road map” for history and civics learnings. Danielle Allen, a political theorist at Harvard University and part of the team that wrote the new curriculum, says team members were able to reconcile their right-left divides. “The only way to reboot civic learning is if we adults can name and shake our addiction: It’s hate, rage and division. Our addiction is one reason why the kids are tuning us out. If we want them to learn, we’ve got to quit fighting so much. We’ve got to create some common ground,” she wrote in The Washington Post. 

As the debate on books in schools is showing, democracy isn’t measured by whether a society has resolved the issues that stir the conscience of its people, but by whether its deliberations are marked by respect and reason.