Nestled in a fairy-light-strewn park along the riverbank, near a street vendor proffering a chipped-nose statuette of native son Josef Stalin, a pub has posted a notice.

Russia is an “occupier,” and its President Vladimir Putin is “evil.” “If you do not agree,” it warns, “please do not come in.” 

It’s a serious statement in a country that prides itself on its smothering hospitality. 

Proprietor Data Lapauri is speaking in part to potential patrons fleeing Moscow in the wake of the war in Ukraine to avoid conscription and prosecution for dissent, or on the lookout for a better life. 

These Russians are, on the whole, richer, if more politically oppressed, than their Georgian neighbors, and have been driving up the cost of living here in the capital. Rents have more than doubled since 2022, and lattes are approaching London prices. 

With a penchant for silent meditation retreats and potted fern-forward decor, Mr. Lapauri doesn’t seem prone to martial pronouncements. Nonetheless, he detects existential threat in these developments: “Every Russian is a soldier. Some come with guns, others come with money – and they’re expanding the Russian empire.” 

Kang-Chun Cheng/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A sign in the Dedaena pub, run by Data Lapauri, reads, “Stop Russian aggression,” Aug. 16, 2023.

Across town, at a new Russian-owned cafe with views overlooking the stylish cobblestoned old city, a 20-something couple from St. Petersburg marvel at the balmy breezes. They are digital nomads who no longer want to live in the authoritarian state Mr. Putin has created. They also understand the frustration of Georgians like Mr. Lapauri who question why Russians like them don’t depose their leader. 

But the state “is so strong, so corrupt, [with] so many weapons,” says Katya, who has compatriots in prison for engaging in political protests and prefers not to share her last name. “The police and soldiers, they are so ...” Katya struggles for the right word, “impossible.”

Her boyfriend abridges, putting his hand on her shoulder: “It’s pain.” 

The dynamic between these young Russians and the Georgian cafe owner is playing out throughout the former Soviet satellites of the Caucasus and Central Asia, where many of nearly 1 million Russians have self-exiled. Here, across the Black Sea from Ukraine, where Mr. Putin is prosecuting war, these people are reminders of the dangers of Russian imperial designs on states desiring democracy over dictatorship. 

Perhaps nowhere is this more critically clear than in Georgia, which faces a key inflection point later this year: The European Union will decide whether to grant the Caucasian nation’s long-coveted candidacy status in the Western partnership. 

“This is, without exaggeration, a very important historic moment for Georgia,” says Ana Natsvlishvili, an opposition party member of Georgia’s Parliament. “We are at a crossroads.”

Anna Mulrine Grobe/The Christian Science Monitor

Two Russian 20-somethings sitting in a Russian-owned bar enjoy the view of the old town of Tbilisi in May 2023.

Just 45 minutes north of this capital city, EU monitors with high-powered binoculars peer over bucolic rolling meadows and point out armored Russian vehicles parked near a shooting range and camouflaged tower.  

They watch a Russian military supply truck wind its way down to a village where residents, who once made a living with cattle or fruit orchards, woke up one day to find that Russian forces had laid down barbed wire and dug ditches, separating them from their property and livelihoods.

Russia occupies 20% of the country – a stake in Georgian ground that has acted as a tacit threat for 15 years, since a short but deadly war launched by Mr. Putin in the summer of 2008. Russian troops routed the country in a conflict that lasted five days, killing hundreds and displacing tens of thousands. 

It was a battle Moscow ostensibly waged to support separatists in the Abkhazian and South Ossetian regions of northern Georgia. Viewing the situation through the lens of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, many now believe Mr. Putin pounced on long-held plans to weaken Russia’s former republic after NATO officials in the spring of 2008 pledged to one day make Georgia a member.

The founder of the ruling Georgian Dream political party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, accused Georgia’s leaders at the time of waving this NATO membership push in Russia’s face like “a red cloth in front of a bull.” 

Yet even as the war in Ukraine has raised the specter of Mr. Putin’s ability – and proclivity – to assert power, many Georgians are preparing to fight what they see as a critical battle for freedom.

Anna Mulrine Grobe/The Christian Science Monitor

European Union Monitoring Mission vehicles carry EU monitors to patrol the boundary line between Russian-occupied South Ossetia and Georgia.

Polls show that 85% of citizens want a West-facing future – and membership in the European Union. But since the Georgian Dream party won democratic elections in 2012, there has been backsliding in anti-corruption, press freedom, and justice.

For those 15% of Georgians who don’t support EU membership, the reasons vary, from nostalgia, to genuine disdain for what they see as the decadence of the West, to disappointment with the economic hardships and challenges wrought by market reform. 

Whether the party is edging closer to Moscow and authoritarianism, as critics say, or playing the delicate chess of not upsetting its superpower neighbor and sparking war, as it claims, many Georgians fear the government is sabotaging their decadeslong dream of EU membership. 

This quest was dealt a blow last year when Moldova and Ukraine were granted EU candidacy status, but Georgia was not – a devastating development in a country that had long considered itself ahead of this pack on the path to democracy.

“Georgia has been – I wouldn’t say a beacon of democracy, but still really kind of a standout case of a democratic state in transition,” says Irakli Porchkhidze, the country’s former first deputy state minister for reintegration. “Nowadays we really haven’t been fitting the bill for that.”

The question is whether the EU will grant the country candidate status anyway – if only to prevent disillusioned Georgians from looking eastward for consolation.

Indeed, EU candidacy would sustain pro-European Georgian advocates fighting for their country’s freedom, says Nona Kurdovanidze, chair of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. “We’re not Russians – we’re not leaving. We will fight to the end.”  

EU candidacy status is not membership but the first of several progressive moves toward it – including adopting EU laws and standards – that can take more than a decade to complete. To qualify for that initial entry step, which the full 27-member union votes on, Georgia was given a to-do list of 12 democratic priorities. They involve promoting open society development, rooting out corruption, protecting freedom of the press, and implementing judicial reform. But that list instead has “become an instructional manual for how to destroy Georgia’s European path,” says Giorgi Vashadze, chair of the Strategy Builder opposition party.   

Kang-Chun Cheng/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian graffiti is prevalent in Tbilisi and other urban areas in Georgia, Aug. 16, 2023.

As a case in point, critics point to a bill put forward last year requiring media and nongovernmental groups that get more than 20% of their funding from the West to declare themselves “foreign agents.”

The proposal appeared to be ripped straight from Mr. Putin’s power-consolidating playbook; the term itself echoed “the Stalin era, when people called this were shot,” says Eter Turadze, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Gazeti Batumelebi.

And as in Soviet days of old, it brought back memories of betrayals and efforts to break free of not only Russian mastery, but also the Russian mindset. 

As a child in the 1990s, George Melashvili grew up in this capital city, which was ideologically free but in economic crisis, with Mafia-like clans battling for power and even a civil war early in the decade. His home didn’t have reliable running water or electricity. But it was filled with classic novels his beloved grandmother managed to procure, and by candlelight they worked their way through the Western canon: Charles Dickens, “Robin Hood,” “The Three Musketeers.”

These stories sparked in him a sense of “the way institutions are supposed to serve society and restrain people with great power – and that, in the face of injustice, one person can make a change,” says Mr. Melashvili, now a German Marshall Fund fellow and founder of the Europe-Georgia Institute.

And so it was with some hope that he and his fellow university alumni approached their old professor, Nikoloz Samkharadze. He had become chair of the Parliament Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the ruling Georgian Dream party. 

Mr. Samkharadze was known for his egalitarian teaching style. “He was very close with his students,” emphasizes Mr. Melashvili, a courtly 20-something alternately teased and revered by friends for his unassuming command of his country’s history.

A Europe specialist who studied in Germany, Mr. Samkharadze “knew perfectly well what this law was supposed to do,” Mr. Melashvili says. And he had the power to quash the foreign agents bill in committee. 

Courtesy of George Melashvili

George Melashvili (left) protests against the “foreign agent law” in a crowd of students marching from Tbilisi State University to the heart of the protests on Rustaveli Avenue in March 2023.

In an open letter, more than 100 of his former students urged Mr. Samkharadze to do just that.

When their former professor ultimately rejected their pleas, “a lot of people who considered him a mentor – and adored him – were devastated,” Mr. Melashvili adds.

Privately, many speculated that Georgian Dream officials had chosen to send their bill through the committee chaired by the pro-European Mr. Samkharadze as a party loyalty test.

The students, along with thousands of others, took to the streets in March in a massive uprising that ultimately pressured the government into withdrawing the law.

“It was very inspiring for us,” says Tamar Oniani, human rights program director at the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. “It was a rebirth of Georgian civil society.” 

Mr. Samkharadze, in a recent interview with a group of Western reporters, described the outcry as a misunderstanding about what the law was designed to do. He says it was to promote transparency – and certainly not a Russian-backed effort to block Western funding to organizations critical of the government. 

Still, he argues, it’s generally important that the country take a “very pragmatic approach” to Moscow: “We are under enormous pressure, and under a big, big risk of being attacked.”

Give Russia an hour, after all, and they could have tanks in Tbilisi. “Then it’s a dilemma: If you shoot, it’s a war – and if you don’t shoot, you are not a state,” Mr. Samkharadze adds.

When the Russian forces descended on the town of Akhalgori in 2008, a neighbor burst through Nana Chkareuli’s door. “They’re coming!” she yelled. They took off running toward the woods to hide. 

Ms. Chkareuli now lives in Tserovani, a Georgian settlement for thousands of people who fled during the war. 

After 15 years of development, Tserovani is dotted with modest homes, some inhabited by avid gardeners tending grapevines, and even a handful of Airbnb properties. 

Still, the 2008 war looms large in the collective consciousness. On clear days, Ms. Chkareuli can see the hills of what was her hometown – since renamed Leningor – in the distance. She longs for a day she can return, and she is not alone. During a visit to a high school just up the road from Ms. Chkareuli’s nongovernmental organization offices supporting people who have been displaced, one student recounts stories grown-ups have told her about her old village and sighs: “I know it was something like heaven.”

Anna Mulrine Grobe/The Christian Science Monitor

EU monitor Bjorn Messerschmidt is on duty in Georgia in May 2023.

These towns remain occupied and considered, by Mr. Putin at least, to be Russian soil. And in the meantime, those who cross the boundary line of the Russian-occupied zone – whether to visit a loved one or to shoo back a cow that has strayed – are routinely held by Russian authorities for what EU monitors here call “ransoms.”

The EU decision not to punish Moscow for its Georgian incursion emboldened Mr. Putin, Georgian officials often argue – and their Western counterparts tend to agree. Even after Russian forces invaded Georgia in 2008, France sold Moscow an amphibious assault ship, for example (prompting a Russian general to remark that having that in the military’s arsenal at the time of the war with Georgia would have made defeating the country even easier). And the following year, in 2009, the Obama administration launched its reset with Russia.  

An EU statement criticizing the invasion “was predictably tepid,” former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates writes in his 2014 memoir: “So as much as most of us wanted strong action against Russia, we suppressed our feelings.” 

When the Georgian Dream party came to power in 2012, it introduced “a new approach – we call it strategic patience,” Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili explained at the Bratislava Global Security Forum in May. Through it, “we managed to achieve peace and stability.”

It is, to be fair, a considerable feat, deftly walking a line between a looming Russian threat and a West demanding reform. It is also, analysts note, an adroitness for which Georgians are known: The Mother of Kartli monument overlooking Tbilisi holds a wine glass for guests in one hand and a sword for enemies in the other. 

Perhaps because of and not despite this, Georgians have served as influential Soviet leaders, from the brutal premier Mr. Stalin to the elegant perestroika supporter and door-opener-to-the-West Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

Yet a historical talent for savvy maneuvering doesn’t explain the extent to which the government appears to be instrumentalizing fear, says Dr. Porchkhidze, now vice president of the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies. 

Critics charge that Mr. Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his money in banking and metals in Russia in the 1990s and became prime minister in 2012, is an oligarch beholden to Moscow.

But Moscow can’t render Georgians anti-Western overnight, given their overwhelming support for EU membership, says Tinatin Bokuchava, who chairs the United National Movement opposition party. So Mr. Putin’s strategic goal must be, she says, “to systematically erode democratic institutions” to guarantee Georgia can’t become an EU member.

Others say Georgian Dream may indeed be reasonably pro-Western but uses anti-democratic moves simply to hold on to power. Eyeing elections in 2024, the party must project a pro-European stance to win. But reforms demanded by the EU jeopardize its chances by stripping it of tools like media control and judicial coercion – so it is resisting them, says Sergi Kapanadze, a former member of Parliament and spokesperson for the European Georgia party.

Kang-Chun Cheng/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A woman sketches in Tbilisi’s botanic gardens, near the base of the Mother of Georgia statue, Aug. 16, 2023.

Georgian Dream is also using nationalism and xenophobia to fire up its base, he argues: “They say, ‘I’m pro-Europe, but Europe wants to get us into war in Ukraine because they have different values. We’re protecting identity, statehood, sovereignty, peace in this country.’ 

“This is a very pragmatic thing to do,” he continues. “Now enemies are defined as anyone who wants to ‘drag’ Georgia into war with Russia.” 

Aiding their campaign is a “humongous propaganda machine,” including several state-owned television stations, Dr. Kapanadze adds. “So they can take even the most outrageous idea and spin it.”

As deputy director of Formula TV, Georgia’s largest independent broadcast station, Giorgi Targamadze sees alarming and familiar attempts to restrict freedom of the press.

His first ID card growing up was as a Soviet citizen: “I remember it well. We were isolated from the civilized world,” he says. 

When reporters from Russia began streaming into Georgian exile after the invasion of Ukraine, the Formula TV network headquarters here provided them studio space, equipment, and other technical support.

But the resolve of Mr. Targamadze and his colleagues to document their leaders’ crimes and shortcomings is proving increasingly harrowing.

Reporters here cite July 5, 2021, as a turning point in their coverage of the news. It was the day of a gay pride demonstration that the government used, they say, as an excuse to beat up more than 50 journalists. One camera operator was killed.

The courts convicted 14 far-right perpetrators, but critics counter that they were actually recruited by officials who wanted the press targeted. The government says the attacks were random.

They certainly fit a pattern of growing harassment and violence against journalists “due to increased political polarization and uncertainty” in the country, notes a 2022 Freedom House report.

A particularly infamous case was the conviction last year of Nika Gvaramia, general director of an opposition broadcast company, for misusing a company car – a spurious charge, concluded Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption nongovernmental organization.

He was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison and served one before the country’s French-born President Salome Zourabichvili, who is not a Georgian Dream party member, pardoned him in June. 

The point of this intimidation has been to cow independent media, journalists here say, and it has not been without effect.

“The main idea is to have this kind of self-censorship,” says one Formula TV reporter. “You start thinking about your own safety and the safety of your family members – and then I guess at some point you say, ‘Maybe it’s not the right time to be in this profession.’”  

At the offices of Gazeti Batumelebi, one of the country’s largest independent newspapers – based in the palm tree-lined Black Sea resort of Batumi – a leak of thousands of secret state security service files in 2021 confirmed the fears of journalists: Their increasingly skittish sources were being scared or blackmailed into not talking – and they were being surveilled, too.

The trove included recordings of confessions heard by Catholic clergy, an elected figure privately wrestling with whether to seek an abortion after an extramarital affair, and newsroom discussions of sources coming forward with proof of votes being traded for prison sentence commutations. 

Reporters feel equal parts exhausted and galvanized, says their editor Ms. Turadze, whose traffic-cone-orange hair seems custom-designed to capture the newsroom’s cautionary mood. The government’s recent initiatives have “forced us to become activists – this is so not comfortable for us. ... But this is about survival.” 

Kang-Chun Cheng/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

The Kartlis Deda, the Mother of Georgia statue in Tbilisi, erected in 1958, holds a cup of wine to welcome guests and a sword to deter enemies, seen Aug. 16, 2023.

The real damage – and the point of disinformation efforts, critics say – is that the truth can come to seem unknowable. 

Such powerlessness is precisely the feeling authoritarian leaders like to cultivate in their citizens, says Lika Mkhatvari, a child psychologist and proud native of the ancient city of Kutaisi that is now known for its style and a direct flight to Paris.

At an hourslong dinner with groaning boards of khachapuri – gooey, cheese-filled bread – eggplant with walnuts, pomegranate-marinated pork, and clay pots of stewed beans, Ms. Mkhatvari sits beside her friend Nino Tvaltvadze, former deputy mayor of Kutaisi. 

Ms. Tvaltvadze’s husband fought Russia in 2008 when her eldest daughter was 3 months old. She understands intimately the pressures on the Georgian government to avoid war: “I was thinking, what would I do if I were a decision-maker, if you believe you could cause war – if you really believe that?” 

But, she adds, despite the risk, the public will to join the EU is “so strong, because we also see the solution in that, the protection in that.”

It’s a stance that has garnered some sympathy among EU officials. A June EU report on Georgia’s progress in meeting the dozen candidacy criteria concluded that three of the 12 are completely addressed, seven saw “some progress,” and one in the category of “de-oligarchization” saw “limited progress.” On the final indicator of “media pluralism,” “no progress” was achieved.    

The decision on Georgia’s candidacy status is expected later this year. Many democracy advocates are hopeful that EU officials will conclude that whether or not the government deserves EU membership, the people of Georgia certainly do. 

There is precedence for granting EU candidacy under these conditions, they say, pointing to a decision made in Bosnia-
Herzegovina’s favor in 2003. 

If it doesn’t happen, Georgia is likely to be pulled back into Russia’s orbit, Ms. Tvaltvadze says. “And we know how Russia wants its neighborhood to look: without any ambition, without any future.”

With this, the two women lead the table in a Georgian toast. It roughly translates as, “I hope you win” – a nod, they say, to a storied history of what amounts to bare-knuckled brawls for survival. It is not for nothing, analysts note, that almost all of Georgia’s Olympic medals have been for fighting sports like boxing, judo, and wrestling – or for the brawn of weightlifting.

It is also no coincidence that Georgians have sent droves of soldiers to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion.  

At today’s feast among friends in Kutaisi, it is a toast to Georgia’s quest for EU membership. The guests raise their glasses, responding with the traditional, “I hope you win, too.”

“We need hope,” Ms. Tvaltvadze says. “We need this.” 

On-scene reporting was facilitated through a study trip sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a trans-
Atlantic think tank.  

Chris Pizzello/AP/File

Picketers carry signs outside Amazon Studios in Culver City, California, July 17, 2023. After nearly five months on strike, the Writers Guild of America and the major studios struck a tentative deal on Sept. 24. The 160,000 actors remain on strike.

The story of the writers strike had a dramatic first act, an overly long and stressful middle, and a triumphant ending for the union. No one is clamoring for a sequel.

Rob LaZebnik, a veteran writer on “The Simpsons,” heard the news Sunday night. His ebullient mood is akin to the show’s opening sequence, when the animated clouds part to reveal a blue sky.

“It’s just made everybody feel like, ‘Wow, this time it really worked,’” says Mr. LaZebnik, who has participated in several writers strikes during his decadeslong career. “Everyone felt doubly passionate about the issues. It was so obvious to us that there were all these inequities, that it really pulled everybody together.”

After 146 days – the second-longest strike in its history – the Writers Guild of America won concessions on every major issue, including mandatory staffing levels on series, increased residual payments for streaming, and protections against artificial intelligence. While precise details have yet to emerge, if the tentative agreement the studios and the WGA agreed to late Sunday holds, it would be yet another win for organized labor in 2023.

In a statement to guild members, the negotiating committee touted the deal as “exceptional.” 

But after a hard-fought battle that cost California alone an estimated $5 billion, Hollywood remains an industry in flux. The proposed contract would install protections that writers say are vital for maintaining a middle-class life, rather than being reduced to gig workers who get paid for a month or two at a time. Will those protections remain beyond the length of a new three-year contract? Or will Hollywood’s TV and film writers ultimately be facing a freelance future?

“Whether creative people in Hollywood ultimately have more stable and rewarding careers is really going to depend on whether entertainment companies can make their streaming services more profitable,” says Ben Fritz, author of “The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies,” via email.

One deal down, one to go

The studios and streaming services, which are represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, issued a press release consisting of a single sentence: “The WGA and AMPTP have reached a tentative agreement.” Some observers believe that the reason the studios aren’t celebrating, at least not outwardly, is because the strike has come at a great cost. Plus, the AMPTP still has to reach an agreement with the 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). Most Hollywood productions won’t be back in business until the actors resume work. But viewers can expect to see late-night and daytime talk shows back on air soon.

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

Rob LaZebnik, co-executive producer of “The Simpsons,” has been through several writers’ strikes during his career. The veteran writer, shown on May 8, 2023, outside Fox Studios in Culver City, California, called the tentative deal reached Sept. 24, 2023, an existential moment for his profession.

“The studios and streamers, along with the writers, were starting to fear if they didn’t get a deal done soon, it could drag out until the end of the year and destroy all of this year’s television season, as well as next year’s movie slate,” says Mr. Fritz. “So they were very motivated to get a deal done.”

First, though, WGA members will need to vote on the deal. It’s widely expected to pass. The negotiating committee told writers that it’s made “meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership.” Its statement also praised the picketers for standing shoulder to shoulder, picket sign to picket sign, during the nearly five-month work outage.

“An underreported thing is that there were some amazing speeches, talks, more like fireside chats, especially from Chris Keyser ... one of the co-lead negotiators,” says Mr. LaZebnik. “That kind of reverberated throughout the whole strike.”

The WGA received significant support from SAG-AFTRA, as well as unions such as the Teamsters and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, who refused to cross picket lines. Many companies and individuals donated food and money to the strikers.

“It’s a huge moment for the labor movement in America,” says Zayd Dorhn, Chicago captain of the WGA and director of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for the Screen and Stage at Northwestern University. “The corporate CEOs and Wall Street investors have to take seriously now the fact that workers are united and having a moment where they’re not interested in small deals or in watching more record Wall Street profits. They’re demanding their fair share.”

The writers enjoyed a high level of approval among Americans, a survey from Gallup found last month. Some 72% of respondents supported the WGA, compared with 67% overall who support organized labor. That’s up from a low of 48% in 2009, although down from last year’s 71%. (The studios, meanwhile, garnered 19% support from the public.)

What next for the actors?

It’s hard to predict what the end of the writers’ strike portends for the SAG-AFTRA negotiations. The actors may feel pressure to resolve negotiations so that production can resume. Or they may feel emboldened to stick it out, as the writers did, in the hopes of a better-than-expected deal. One issue that the writers and actors shared in common was a call to place guardrails on the use of artificial intelligence in productions. While details are not yet known, the agreement between the WGA and AMPTP on artificial intelligence may smooth the way for a pact between actors and the AMPTP.

The entertainment companies made concessions to writers on issues that they’d seemingly been unwilling to budge on. Writers had asked for increases in royalty payments – known as residuals – for popular movies and series on streaming platforms. But that would require the studios and digital platforms to be transparent about how TV shows and films perform. It’s not yet clear how the new arrangement will work when it comes to sharing data. The WGA had also pushed back on the common practice of hiring a small number of writers to initially develop a show. It had demanded hiring a minimum number of scribes for series.

If ratified, the deal between the WGA and the AMPTP will be good for three years. In 2026, the two sides will sit down once again to evaluate contract terms. During the interim, Hollywood studios and streaming platforms will remain under pressure to fix their business models. Among the issues: Viewership for broadcast television is dwindling. Customers are cutting the cord on cable. Many expensive blockbusters, such as the latest “Indiana Jones” and “Mission: Impossible” movies, haven’t performed well at the box office. Even before the strikes, Hollywood had begun a period of contraction with thousands of layoffs. The studios were able to use the strike to cancel some deals and productions under force majeure rules.

With the exception of Netflix, the streaming platforms have yet to turn a profit. For now, digital platforms have been able to sustain losses because parent corporations such as Amazon, Apple, and The Walt Disney Co. have other sources of revenue outside of TV and film. But unless streaming services get out of the red, there will be a smaller pie to share with writers.

“We have knitted these life vests together over the course of this strike,” says script consultant Tom Nunan, a former TV executive and producer of the Oscar-winning film “Crash.” “But we’re still on the verge of going over the falls. You know, we will probably survive it with these life vests, but the future is very uncertain.”

Mr. LaZebnik, the co-executive producer on the “The Simpsons,” is concerned that studios could potentially pull back on the number of shows that they order. But he believes that the success or failure of the strike was nothing less than an existential moment for the WGA and his profession.

During the long months, he maintained a text thread with “Simpsons” scribes in which they shared silly jokes. “It was sort of an outlet for some pent-up comedy,” says the writer. “Obviously, we would never have wished this on anyone to strike. But at the same time, you can’t help but just come back from almost five months off feeling like we are a little rejuvenated.”

More than a year and a half after Boulder County’s Dec. 30, 2021, Marshall Fire destroyed 1,084 homes and damaged hundreds more, Jody Bill still has no clue if she will get the help she needs to replace her mobile home. The 115 mph gusts that spread the fire peeled the roof off the 1960s-era mobile home Ms. Bill had purchased just four months earlier as her retirement home.

She was attracted to the unobstructed views of a gorgeous stretch of the Rocky Mountains known as the Flatirons. And she’d like to stay in her community, where neighbors shoveled the snow out of her home when storms hit right after the disaster. But now Ms. Bill lives in fear of the heavy winds that periodically rush down the mountains and rattle her patched-together house.

“It makes me nervous,” she says. “It doesn’t feel safe.”

Even though Ms. Bill’s home didn’t burn, she’s eligible to seek disaster relief. Still, she has been turned down three times for federal Small Business Administration disaster relief loans, which are available to homeowners as well as businesses. And she has already spent nearly half of her insurance payout for temporary housing and makeshift repairs. She dreams of replacing her house with a safer structure. But to her, it seems that single-family homeowners have been prioritized.

“Mobile homes, I think, are on the bottom. They don’t care,” Ms. Bill says. “A house is worth more – they did lose more – but I just feel like the people with mobile homes aren’t given much assistance.”

Courtesy of Jody Bill

Jody Bill, a resident of Boulder County, Colorado, lives in a mobile home that was damaged by the same high winds that fueled the Marshall Fire.

A short drive away, one can see why Ms. Bill might think that. In the hilly, upscale neighborhoods of Louisville and Superior, where hundreds of houses were devoured by the fire, rebuilding is in full swing. New homes in all stages of construction – from foundations to finished – fill many lots. Local officials predict that the speed of reconstruction will far outpace many other post-disaster recoveries. 

But the pace is uneven. Recovery is slower for many middle- and low-income homeowners. And those in mobile homes, like Ms. Bill, or in multifamily buildings have not received assistance as quickly as single-family homeowners in wealthy areas. Even funds targeted for lower-wealth individuals become available only after a long wait. That disparity in pacing could alter the economic diversity of the area, which was already low on affordable housing. 

“If you’re only able to successfully navigate this rebuilding process if you’ve got resources, then that’s really going to further jeopardize our ability to be a community for all,” says Katie Dickinson, a resident of Louisville, one of the towns hardest hit by the fire, though her house was spared.

Many experts, including Dr. Dickinson, warn that as fires, flooding, hurricanes, and other disasters become more damaging due to climate change, lower-income people will be least able to rebuild and remain in their communities. Leading up to the Marshall Fire, Colorado had experienced record-dry summer, fall, and early winter, which left the soils and vegetation extremely dry and prone to burn. 

“It was the latest first snow on record for most of the area,” said Russ Schumacher, a Colorado state climatologist. “Having a snowstorm or two in the fall, [as] would happen in most years, may have compressed the grasses down so they weren’t so prone to rapid fire spread, but that didn’t happen in 2021.”  

Elizabeth Shogren

Jody Bill patched together her mobile home, shown here at the Sans Souci Mobile Home Park in Boulder County, Colorado, after the Marshall Fire. High winds peeled off the roof, exposing her home and art collection to post-fire snows.

Good intentions

Before the Marshall Fire, Boulder County was committed to finding out how its lower-income residents might be extra vulnerable to the risks that many communities face due to climate change. Paul Chinowsky, professor emeritus in civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, was gathering data and crunching numbers to map the low-income areas that are most vulnerable to climate disasters when the Marshall Fire sprinted across more than 6,000 acres. 

In the early aftermath of the fire, the county used his mapping tool to identify streets, clusters of homes, and subdivisions where residents might lack the means to recover quickly, Dr. Chinowsky says. “If we want them to be able to rebuild, we need to aggressively outreach to those areas,” he adds.

Yet despite these early efforts, many lower-income residents have yet to even begin to recover their modest lifestyles. In a high-cost community with very little affordable housing, the knowledge of which people likely would face the biggest hurdles hasn’t prevented inequity in the rebuilding. For Dr. Chinowsky, this underscores a truth that many communities try to ignore: Lower-income, less-resourced residents are less likely to recover after disasters. “That’s a piece of the climate change impact that is generally lost,” says Dr. Chinowsky, who founded and directs Resilient Analytics, which helps communities understand their climate change risks. 

After a disaster, even relief funds reserved for low- and moderate-income people are hard to come by, experts say, since they are typically intended as a last resort after insurance and all other supports have been used. But it takes time to prove that these funds are the only option left, and the paperwork required to access them is considerable. That slows down both the completion and processing of applications. For some, the wait is longer than they can afford. More burned-out properties were sold in lower-income areas than in wealthy ones, Dr. Chinowsky says. 

A comparison across income levels

Having lived in Louisville with her husband and three children since 2010, Dr. Dickinson, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, saw her personal and professional lives align following the fire. As a researcher focused on how climate change disproportionately burdens lower-income people, she decided to track equity in the rebuilding effort in her hometown.  

Elizabeth Shogren

Katie Dickinson researches the disproportionate effects of climate change. The Marshall Fire destroyed about 30 units at the Wildflower condo complex (in background), some of the most affordable housing in her community of Louisville, Colorado.

Dr. Dickinson twice surveyed people whose homes were lost or smoke-damaged. She found that after a year, only 12% of households with annual incomes lower than $75,000 had permits to rebuild – versus nearly half of households with incomes between $150,000 and $200,000. Lower-income households were also more likely to be severely underinsured. While nearly half of households with incomes above $150,000 expected insurance to cover at least 75% of their rebuilding costs, only a quarter of households with annual incomes of less than $75,000 thought their insurance would cover that much. 

“It’s a tragedy for everyone who lost a home, and it’s a grueling process. But as someone who is part of this community, what I’m trying to look at is, what’s our community going to look like after this event ... if we disproportionately are losing ... folks with lower incomes,” Dr. Dickinson says. In particular, she worries that teachers, firefighters, retired people, and young families will be priced out.

Some local officials stress that it’s too early to know definitively how the fire will affect the demographics of the area. But early signs indicate an increase in property values. And although few rebuilt homes have gone on the market, Cynthia Braddock, Boulder County’s assessor, mentioned one that before the fire, was in one of the most affordable areas. After the fire, it listed for $1.2 million, about twice the pre-fire asking price of homes in that neighborhood.

Delays for residents in multifamily dwellings

One option for people in lower or middle-income tiers is to rent or purchase units in multifamily buildings. While that typically provides more affordable housing than single-family homes, it significantly delays disaster relief. 

Wildflower Condominiums, the only multifamily complex that burned, lost 30 of its 93 units.

And the earliest residents can hope to move back in is the summer of 2024, 2 1/2 years after the fire, says Mark Appelfeller, the president of the Wildflower Condos Homeowners Association and one of those who lost their home. Rebuilding multifamily dwellings takes longer than free-standing houses, and it took six to eight weeks longer to clear the ashes and debris from the burned buildings. “It was ugly, and it was smelly, and it was dangerous,” Mr. Appelfeller says. 

The complex also experienced the growing problem of insurance companies’ refusal to renew policies. In Wildflower’s case, not only was their policy not renewed, but also no other regular insurance company would cover the complex. A package from several different insurers was put together, but it costs $4,700 a year per unit, seven times more than the former policy, Mr. Appelfeller says.

“This insurance thing is outrageous,” Mr. Appelfeller says.

“This is a growing problem in the state,” writes Vincent Plymell, assistant commissioner for communications for the Colorado Division of Insurance, in an email. The uptick in nonrenewals following the fire was so severe that the state Legislature directed the insurance division to study the problem. Completed in April, its report “confirms what we suspected – that the homeowners’ insurance companies are re-evaluating their risk tolerance,” Mr. Plymell writes. 

A 2023 state law mandates the creation of an insurer of last resort but not until late 2024 at the earliest, leaving those at Wildflower with significantly higher insurance costs, even people who can’t live in their homes because of the fire.

Kathy Krajewski, an older adult who runs a preschool, was in her unit in Wildflower the afternoon of the fire when a neighbor alerted her that she needed to evacuate. She figured the worst they’d get was smoke, so she grabbed her electronics but didn’t think to take keepsakes. “My wedding ring. My engagement ring. My mother’s engagement ring. A lot of mementos ... I left behind,” she laments.

Elizabeth Shogren

Kathy Krajewski (left) and Wendy Bohling are two homeowners at the Wildflower condo complex in Louisville, Colorado. Ms. Bohling is a small-scale landlord who lost one of two units she owns to the Marshall Fire in late 2021.

Later, however, while sifting through ash, a volunteer found her wedding ring.

“It was amazing!” Ms. Krajewski says.

Since then, she and her husband have been living in an apartment. Her insurance covers the rent but only for two years. She’s concerned about finances after that, but she adds that it helps to know she and her husband both have jobs.

“When all is said and done, we will have been in temporary housing for 2 1/2 years, probably. That doesn’t sound temporary,” Ms. Krajewski says bitterly.

Can economic diversity survive the fire?

Federal and state programs do provide extra money for lower-income residents. People who earn less than 150% of the median income in the area could qualify for grants of up to $100,000, depending on their income. Also, low-interest loans of up to $50,000 are available for those who qualify. But not until mid-July was the state in the final stage of distributing these public funds to the first dozen households, according to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs. An additional 71 applicants had been conditionally approved.

“Some of the government programs are just really slow to roll out,” says Phyllis Kane, who runs Navigating Disaster for Boulder County, which provides one-on-one guidance for people who lost homes. “It’s a slog to go through that application process, and it takes quite a while.”

Katie Arrington, Boulder County’s assistant recovery manager, concurs. “Some of the biggest free money available for residents is the slowest money to come in,” she says.

It disturbs Ms. Arrington that low-income residents, older people on fixed incomes, and immigrants disproportionately suffer as a result. “This is really hard stuff ... to figure out,” she says. “The structural systems of inequity and racism that this country was built on play out in disasters. ... We move the needle a little every time. But it’s a little bit.”

It’s unclear whether the needle will move enough this time to allow Ms. Bill to replace her mobile home. She has her heart set on a converted shipping container made of steel. “If I had the container,” she says, “the walls won’t shake.” She’d be able to stay put and no longer panic when winds whip through her neighborhood Sans Souci, which means “carefree” in French.

Enabling Ms. Bill to stay in San Souci isn’t important only to her. 

Dr. Dickinson hopes the fire won’t eliminate the diversity of her community. “It’s really important to the fabric of society that we have folks at different income levels,” she says.

Tunisian beekeeper Hela Boubaker keeps a firm smile as she inspects an empty hive box, the 20th hive she has lost due to heat or wildfires this year.

Hives are carefully placed in the shade on this farm 40 miles north of the capital, Tunis. At 10 a.m. on a late-August Tuesday, it is already 95 degrees.

Thirsty bees dive-bomb a bucket of water, drowning for a drink before she can place a sponge as a landing pad.

“It’s not easy,” she says as she slides an empty honeycomb frame back into its box, “but at the same time, we are not easy. We won’t give up.”

In this North African country, where nearly 40% of citizens and entire communities rely on farming for their livelihoods, bees are a big business.

And to protect their beehives against extreme weather, the nation’s apiarists are turning to innovative solutions – from phone apps to herb gardens to genetics – to keep the buzz alive in Tunisia.

Record-setting heat

In recent years, more young Tunisians and many female entrepreneurs are turning to beekeeping as a climate-friendly, sustainable form of self-employment in a country where jobs are few and far between.

Some 13,000 Tunisians work as full-time beekeepers, according to local farming unions, in addition to thousands more who rely on apiary work as another source of income, producing a combined 280,000 metric tons of honey per year.

Yet for those new to beekeeping in Tunisia, the past two years have been no honeymoon.

Tunisia has seen record-setting scorching temperatures, including dayslong 115-plus-degree heat waves and record 120-degree temperatures in its tree-lined temperate north – the nation’s beekeeping hub – that sparked devastating wildfires in 2022 and again this July. This year the country has also struggled with a record drought, leaving regions without water for weeks at a time.

According to researchers and apiarists, the extreme weather has nearly halved honey production, from an average of 8 kilos (17 pounds) of honey per hive to 4 to 5 kilos per hive in 2023.

Ms. Boubaker, an entrepreneur in her late 20s, is finding ways to keep her bees alive.

She has developed a patented device and nonlethal method to extract bee venom from her honeybees, drawing exactly 0.01 grams of apitoxin per bee to be used in medical treatments and beauty products.

“These are precious insects whose lives we depend on for our ecosystem and food,” she says. “We need to save every bee life we can.”

To adapt to a changing climate, Ms. Boubaker is working with other apiarists to better cultivate the rented or borrowed plots of farmers’ land where they place their hives. Increasingly, they rely on drought-resistant and hearty plants such as lemon trees, thyme, and marjoram to ensure year-round nectar and food sources for hives, as more delicate flowers and plants wilt in increasingly hot temperatures.

Taylor Luck

Apiarist and entrepreneur Hela Boubaker stands next to one of her collections of beehives on a farm in Bizerte, Tunisia, Aug. 22, 2023.

Like many apiarists, she rotates her beehives through geographic locations with varying topographies – the mountainous pine-treed north, the more arid south, and the rich fertile farmland around Bizerte.

Ms. Boubaker’s commute to check on her dispersed 82 colonies is a six-hour, 200-mile round trip that she takes every two days.

Yet the geographic dispersal of apiarists’ beehives has led to another, emerging threat to Tunisia’s honey-makers: crime. Specifically, theft.

Devastated by the sudden loss of entire colonies to heat and fire, and desperate to start over again quickly, some less scrupulous beekeepers have begun stealing the unattended hive boxes of other apiarists.

It is a phenomenon reported on by beekeepers across Tunisia, who have gone to fields to discover that their hive boxes have disappeared.

“Only a beekeeper would have the knowledge and equipment to be able to pick up hives and transport them,” says Ms. Boubaker, who rents fields in gated farms to minimize theft.

“Unfortunately, people are desperate. When you lose the source of your livelihood, you are desperate to rebuild it. Some may be tempted to steal money. Others steal bees.”

SmartBee app takes flight

To help Tunisian beekeepers confront 21st-century challenges, innovators are putting constantly updated apiary data in an app.

“Beekeepers can feel the impact of climate change, but they don’t know how to adapt,” says Khaled Bouchoucha, a Tunisian engineer who has grappled with solving Tunisia’s plummeting bee numbers. “All the knowledge beekeepers have accumulated for decades and generations is no longer applicable” in a rapidly changing climate.

In 2021, Mr. Bouchoucha developed and launched SmartBee, a device and app that provides beekeepers with real-time data on hive temperature, humidity, weight, and mortality rates.

“We give beekeepers real-time information in order to act,” he adds.

With the data, advance warnings, and advice sent to beekeepers’ phones, apiarists are informed when to move overheated hives to cooler areas and when isolated hives have become too cold, or they’re alerted to provide sugar solutions to boost weak bees – a critical service when hives are often dozens of miles away.

SmartBee is also an anti-theft device. Its GPS locator and warning system sense if boxes are moved. This summer several beekeepers have been able to locate and reclaim stolen hives.  

But in the face of global warming, early warning is not enough, beekeepers say.  

Mr. Bouchoucha’s Beekeeper Tech company is using data sets from customers to single out the most productive bee queens in the past few years of higher temperatures and lower food sources, helping beekeepers select the most climate-resilient and adaptable bees for breeding in their specific region.

“Genetics and adaptation are the future of beekeeping,” says Mr. Bouchoucha, whose SmartBee is now being exported to Middle East and North African countries including Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

“With North Africa on the front lines of climate change,” he says, “we need to be on the front lines of solutions.”

Some people say there’s no manual that teaches parents how to raise their children – that such a great responsibility requires on-the-job training. 

I wonder if Matthew Cherry, the author of “Hair Love,” which later became an Oscar-winning short film, knew he had created a legacy piece in the first few words of his initial father-daughter tale:

My name is Zuri, and I have hair that has a mind of its own.
It kinks, coils, and curls every which way.

Cherry’s depiction of a Black father styling his daughter’s hair has turned into a much deeper journey. “Young Love,” an animated series that debuted Sept. 21 on Max, maintains its focus on the immediate familial relationship between mother Angela Young, father Stephen Love, and precocious Zuri Young Love, while engaging generational and community dynamics. 

Self Love, Just Love, Work Love, and Charity Love aren’t just the names of the first four episodes. They are also opportunities to watch Angela, a cancer survivor, get back in her personal and professional groove. Stephen, a struggling musician, endures the weight of fatherhood and finances under duress from his father-in-law – and landlord. Zuri is at the center of it all, whether it’s a battle of the sexes between her grandparents or as the ringleader of in-school mischief.

The show is cute – and sometimes cursory, rough around the edges. So are we, unintentionally. We are doing the best we can, true?

As someone who works in the arts, I can’t help but empathize with the Black father who balances the gnashing of capitalism with pursuits far more intrinsic. His sense of parenting – a more modern approach – seems abstract and yet makes him remarkably relatable to young people. We describe people who approach life in this matter as “dancing to the beat of their own drum,” which fits Stephen, a music producer, to a T.

Courtesy of Max

Stephen Love, Zuri Young Love, Gigi Young, Angela Young, and Russell Young of “Young Love” on Max.

I hear the word “product,” and I don’t just think about a finished song or the work of one’s hands. I also think about the work that it takes to style my own children’s hair – and how much spritzing is required to manage their looks. Through my personal experience and this show, it becomes clear that “heir” and “hair” are more than near-homonyms. They are strands of a bigger fabric, helixes that make up the biology of our being.

Sometimes, detangling is required.

I know how that process goes at my house. When washing my oldest child’s hair, I am sure to not get soap or water in his eyes. There’s the scrubbing of the scalp and the meticulousness of getting all of the soap out of the hair. This follows with a gentle pulling apart of still-wet hair, getting to the roots of the matter. Finally, there’s the addition of detangler to heir – oh wait, hair – that has a mind of its own.

“Kinks, coils, and curls every which way” is a great way to describe the Black experience. “Young Love” offers a glimpse into that experience, and not in only superficial and commercial ways. The beauty shop dialogues are important, as is the unspoken struggle characterized in the two-toned, midsize, “old-school” car that Stephen and Angela share.

Where “Young Love” has the potential to be great is in the detangling of tradition. When Zuri’s grandparents switch roles as landlord and homemaker, we see empathy and appreciation. In a time where angst between men and women is a selling point, humanity prevails in the name of “Love.”

The show does its due diligence to push back on tradition, and we should do the same. Black folk are a deeply religious people, and that reminds me of how love can and should outweigh “law.” 

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law,” offers Romans 13:8. This idea covers a multitude of mishaps in families and communities.

Hair – and heirs – is a perfect way to describe how we should use love to manage traditions and expectations. The beautiful thing about styling a mass of hair is the near-infinite amount of options for a desirable presentation, and in my short time as a parent, I am learning to appreciate the fact that there’s no manual that teaches parents how to raise their children. 

In the award-winning short film, Zuri thought back to a time when her mother styled her hair exactly how she wanted it. The secret to success? “Just took a little bit of work, and a whole lot of love.” 

Reuters

Employees work on an assembly line at startup Rivian Automotive's electric vehicle factory in Normal, Il.

The drivetrain for a typical car with an internal combustion engine has about 2,000 moving parts. In electric vehicles, there are fewer than 20. That discrepancy illustrates one of the main concerns driving American autoworkers to picket lines. Ford and Volkswagen estimate that electric cars require 30% less labor.

Already disrupted by the pandemic, labor markets – and the nature of work itself – are undergoing profound transformations shaped by the acceleration of green technologies and artificial intelligence. These shifts have stoked fears for job security. But they may also be compelling companies and the people they employ toward a greater mutual appreciation based on the capacity of individuals for growth.

One sign of this is the deal struck last night to end the summerlong writers strike in Hollywood. The agreement, which has yet to be ratified by the Writers Guild of America leadership, reportedly runs hundreds of pages. But one of the key sticking points and the last to be resolved – related to the use of AI – required just a few paragraphs.

The long strike gave society time to reflect on the irreplicable nature of human creativity. That discussion isn’t just about whether machines can replace people, but also about how production can benefit when innovation reflects the qualities that ennoble intelligence. “We need to make sure that they’re [machines and technology] representing the best of who we are and can become as a species,” Paul McDonagh-Smith, an information technology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has noted.

Amid the greening economy and the rapid development of AI, multiple studies this year have shown that companies that both embrace technological change and invest in retooling workers to adapt fare better. So do the workers themselves.

A report by the Center for Economic Policy Research in Paris, based on a study of 16,000 firms in Germany, found that “workers holding routine jobs prior to implementing technological and organisational change do not suffer employment losses or reduced earnings growth on average, but instead move up to more skilled jobs.”

Companies such as Ford and Amazon have announced significant investments in employee retooling as they adapt to AI and green technologies. In a notable gesture of inclusivity, a Senate hearing on AI earlier this month brought unions and civil rights organizations together with tech giants. Vice President Kamala Harris in July called on companies and workers to reject the “false choice” of advancing innovation and protecting Americans.

“If the only option that the labor movement places on the table is ‘No, we don’t want the technology that will hurt workers,’ that will not be enough,” Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist, told The New York Times. Technology can be used “to the great benefit of the workers as well as the businesses.” That recognition marks the promise of a new era of growth for workers and employers.