Outside the charred walls of a shrine complex here is ample evidence of the ferocity of a dayslong battle mounted by Iraqi protesters, convinced they were targeting a symbol of Iranian power in Iraq.

Molotov cocktails that failed to explode – their blackened fuses stuffed into bottles of gasoline or spirits – lie scattered amid a carpet of stones, bricks, and broken glass.

They were thrown by men who first stormed and torched the nearby Iranian consulate Nov. 27, chanting “Iran out of Iraq” – the first of three attacks on that building in a week.

Then they moved to the shrine, their anger fueled by rumors of an Iranian intelligence presence at this vast mausoleum, built to deify Ayatollah Mohammad Bakr al-Hakkim, leader of an Iraqi opposition group created by Iran in the 1980s.

“Iran takes all our resources, our funding, our freedom,” charges one protester, explaining why he and others fought at the complex. Beside him, a student, Zain, holds three pieces of metal shot extracted from his bandaged forehead.

“For sure, the protests will help lower this negative Iranian influence,” says Hamed, another young participant.

The protests that have shaken Iraq are first about removing a corrupt, entrenched sectarian system of rule that has failed to provide jobs, services, or hope since the U.S. military removed Saddam Hussein in 2003.

But Iran’s outsize influence has also been a growing target of Iraqis resentful toward what they regard as Iranian arrogance. Tehran’s overt meddling in Iraqi politics is seen as enabling a weak government as well as the rise of dozens of Shiite militias and their parties, which analysts say are corruptly engaged in every aspect of Iraq’s economy.

As a result goodwill toward Iran has been falling from its high of 2014, when Iran’s immediate military assistance and advisers – orchestrated by Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Qods Force – were instrumental in stopping the advance by Islamic State (ISIS) militants.

Reuters

An Iraqi demonstrator gestures in front of the Iranian consulate, as people gather during anti-government protests in Najaf, Iraq, Nov. 27, 2019.

Portraits of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been defaced and torched. Across southern Iraq, offices of Shiite militias most closely associated with Iran have also been attacked.

Analysts say Iranian overreach has undermined Tehran’s influence, ambitions, and the popularity of its proxy forces in Iraq. The erosion coincides with another taking place in Lebanon, where veteran fighters of the Shiite organization Hezbollah are questioning their role fighting Iran’s wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

“If I were in Ayatollah Khamenei’s position, I would put Soleimani in jail,” says Hisham al-Hashemi, a Baghdad-based security analyst with the European Institute of Peace who advises the Iraqi government.

“He failed in the mission. Iraq should be the last front line [of defense] for the Iranians,” says Mr. Hashemi. Iran’s influence in elections last year and General Soleimani brokering the government that resigned in late November under pressure, he says, means that “Iran achieved lots of things in 2018. But all that it won it has lost in 2019.”

The conversion of the Shiite militias, collectively known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, from fighting ISIS to waging political war as parties last year, meant the PMF “didn’t realize it had become part of the corruption.” But ordinary Iraqis saw it.

“They became like the gods of the temple, and see themselves as sacred people,” Mr. Hashemi says of the PMF. “Without Iran, they wouldn’t be so much in control. The problem is not with Iran, but with the proxies. People are attacking Iran because their proxies mistreated them.”

The Trump administration a week ago issued sanctions on three senior Iraqi militia chiefs, saying they acted under Iranian orders when cracking down violently on Iraqi protests.

Iran’s declining numbers

Even by 2018, Iraqis’ attitudes toward Iran were shifting, with polls indicating that those holding favorable views had declined from nearly 90% in 2015 to fewer than 50%. Those who view Iran as a threat to Iraqi sovereignty shot up from 25% in 2016 to 58% in 2018.

Those views have been magnified by the publishing last month of 700 Iranian intelligence reports by The Intercept and The New York Times, detailing Iran’s systematic and successful efforts to co-opt Iraqi leaders, cultivate former CIA informants, and infiltrate every aspect of Iraqi life.

Part of the backlash has played itself out in the attacks on Iranian consulates of Najaf and Karbala – cities with close ties to the Islamic Republic that welcome millions of Shiite pilgrims each year, many from Iran, to visit the shrines of Shiite Islam’s two most important seventh-century saints.

“For sure Iran had a positive stance against ISIS, but it came at a cost,” says Ali Hussein Aboud al-Dhuwayhir, a local activist and head of the Al-Rafidaein Society for Human Rights in Najaf.

He cites Iranian officials speaking as if Iraq were an asset of Iran. Among them, in a speech last April, Hassan Abbasi, a strategist and former Revolutionary Guard officer, said that for every dollar Iran had spent in Iraq and Syria fighting ISIS, “it is now returning $1,000” in contracts.

“In the current government we see the influence of Iran, and Soleimani comes and gives orders like we have no sovereignty,” says Mr. Dhuwayhir.

“Let me ask this question: Can we put any picture of Iraqi politicians or religious figures in Iran, or hold the flag of Iraq in Imam Reza’s shrine [in Mashhad, Iran]? No,” he says, referring to the ubiquitous Iranian flags and portraits of Iranian clerics across Shiite areas of Iraq.

“We can see and are sure that Iraq is about to become a suburb of Iran,” says Mr. Dhuwayhir. “All these things have created hatred against Iran and anyone affiliated with them. ... Because of the bloodshed, there is no way back.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Masked men guard the gilt cage around the coffin of Ayatollah Mohammad Bakr al-Hakkim in the aftermath of days of anti-Iranian attacks in late November against the shrine complex in Najaf, Iraq, Dec. 9, 2019.

Video of one nighttime battle at the shrine and prayer complex dedicated to Ayatollah Hakkim, head of the Iran-backed Badr Brigade militia, shows the shrine’s defenders firing heavily amid flames, as the protester recording the scene shouts: “They [the gunmen] are coming from the grave of al-Hakkim, the Iranian!”

Another online video shows one man shouting during the battle: “These people killed our sons! We want revenge.”

“Talking and gossip”

Fueling the bloodshed in Najaf were rumors about Iranian use of the sprawling Hakkim complex, which includes the vaulted shrine chamber itself, a mammoth marble mosque, and extensive seminary grounds still under construction.

One rumor was that the complex hosted a secret center for Iranian intelligence. Another was that Mr. Soleimani himself was inside. Or, at the very least, protesters say, captured demonstrators had been imprisoned in the basement.

Hassan al-Hakkim, vice president of the Shahid Al-Mihrab Foundation, which runs the complex, dismissed the rumors as “talking and gossip.”

On a tour of the complex a week after the fight, only one assault rifle is evident, the smell of burning still hanging in the air.

Like many political families in Iraq, the Hakkims maintain their own militia. Dozens of young Iraqi men wearing black balaclavas, to mask their identity during a rare visit by a foreigner, sit anxiously on mattresses laid all around the gilt, ornate cage that encloses the ayatollah’s coffin.

There were no Iranians inside during the battles, they say, adding that they were waiting for a new attack by those bent on turning the legitimate grievances of Iraqi protests into an anti-Iran wave.

Mr. Hakkim, speaking by phone from northern Iraq, says the rumors were meant to tarnish the reputation of the center, which is “just a school” that does charity work and feeds 20,000 “people in need.” But local anger has been developing over the project’s scale saying it appears to portray the late ayatollah as on par with the 12 recognized Shiite imams.

“They managed to create this constant irritation for locals, even locals who are close to them,” says one Najaf native in Baghdad whose grandfather’s house is 100 yards from the Najaf complex. “It was an irritation that was created by the Hakkims out of arrogance.”

Noticing corruption

He also notes a shift among Iraqis away from sectarianism, such that by 2014 Iraqi Shiites were asking why Shiite-dominated governments had done so little for them.

After ISIS’s defeat, people found corruption and lack of services, and the emergence of a “new class of nouveau riche” that was “heavily associated” with the PMF, says the Najaf man.

“So people are beginning to realize how much corruption is around,” he adds. “This is where the anti-Iranian sentiment mainly comes from.”

Is that a blow to Iran?

“At the politician level, if you drank the Iranian Kool-Aid, then it really doesn’t matter,” says one Iraqi official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named. “But if you’ve got Iraqi nationalism in your blood, and you’re looking to better this country, then, yeah, you would see this as Iranian overreach.”

Matt McClain/AP

House members, media, and others are seen during a House Judiciary Committee markup of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in Washington, Dec. 12, 2019.

With Bing Crosby crooning and sleigh bells jingling over a sound system, Becky Haslett attended last week’s holiday open house for Rep. Gil Cisneros with a broad smile. He is one of seven Democrats who flipped House seats from red to blue in California last year.

When Ms. Haslett got her face-to-face opportunity with her congressman, she enthusiastically thanked him for backing impeachment. “He said, ‘Thank you, and I will do my duty. Politics aside, whatever happens, it’s the right thing to do.’ So I said, ‘Yaaaaaaay!’” she recounted, with a sparkle that matched the vintage rhinestones pinned to her powder-blue sweater.

For freshman Democrats in flipped districts, this encounter is telling – and perhaps reassuring. It illustrates how impeachment is largely a reinforcing issue for voters. If you are against President Donald Trump, which the Hasletts most definitely are, a vote for impeachment confirms views already held. If you are for President Trump, which many voters in this historically GOP district are, such a stand underscores your intention to vote that member out of office. 

Here’s another take-away from Ms. Haslett. Before thanking Mr. Cisneros for impeachment, she brought up her concerns about an immigration case and a local dam. 

Most constituents want to talk about “issues that affect their daily lives,” such as taxes, health care, gun violence, and homelessness, says Mr. Cisneros in an interview. A former Navy officer, the congressman joined six other Democrats with national security backgrounds in penning an Op-Ed urging Congress to investigate allegations of presidential pressure on Ukraine’s government in exchange for personal, political gain. The Washington Post piece, published in September, played a critical role in persuading wavering Democrats to back a formal inquiry.

But at his most recent town hall in Yorba Linda – the birthplace of former Republican President Richard Nixon – impeachment did not even come up, which surprised his staff.

“Even though impeachment has captured the media’s attention, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a top priority for voters,” says Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Inside Elections. Various national opinion polls show voters are most concerned about issues such as health care, immigration, the border, jobs and the economy, and good governance.

In his latest quarterly review of House races published in December, Mr. Gonzales shifted a dozen races closer to Democrats, and only moved one closer to Republicans. At the moment, Democrats are most likely to maintain their majority in Congress, he concluded. In an interview he said that he has seen nothing over the last two years to indicate that the suburbs – where the swing battles are fought – are getting any better for the president.

And yet, when it comes to impeachment, “it’s too early to know what the political consequences will be, because we don’t know what the story is and how the voters are going to react to it,” he says. “It hasn’t resolved itself yet.”

What polls say

National polls on the subject have been largely static since the Ukraine story picked up steam. Indeed, calls to Mr. Cisneros’s office have been pretty evenly divided, though so far this week, more calls have favored impeachment than not.

“I think it’s going to be a wash,” says Fred Smoller, a political scientist at nearby Chapman University in Orange, California. Professor Smoller keeps a close eye on Orange County, where he conducts an annual opinion survey. Demographic changes, the power of incumbency, and an extremely unpopular president in California all support the idea that the four Democrats who last year flipped GOP seats in the county will keep them, he explains. “They’ve already got the anti-Trump vote. Impeachment is baked into that.”

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP

Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., walks down the House steps following the last votes of the week in the Capitol on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019.

On Thursday, the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee was expected to pass two articles of impeachment along party lines. The first one cites “abuse of power” for pressuring a foreign government to interfere in U.S. elections by withholding taxpayer aid and a head-of-state meeting at the White House. The second article is for “obstruction of Congress,” by directing the executive branch not to comply with congressional subpoenas in its investigation.

The full House is expected to vote on them next week, and after passage – presumably along party lines – they will be sent to the Senate for a trial – expected in January – and a vote. Republicans, who control the Senate, will presumably not allow a conviction and removal from office. 

The GOP narrative

Republicans are already hard at work to shape the political narrative in swing districts. They are vastly outspending Democrats with impeachment-related ads, targeting vulnerable Democrats in districts that Trump won in 2016. The ads excoriate the incumbent as a do-nothing lawmaker, focusing on the impeachment “charade” instead of working to solve problems such as the border, health care, and trade.

Some of these Democrats are anxious, and have complained to their leaders about the lack of a vigorous response.

Here in rapidly changing Orange County, once a conservative bastion, none of the four districts that Democrats flipped last year voted for Donald Trump. Neither are they on the list of 37 districts that are being peppered by ads from The American Action Network, a nonprofit tied to the GOP leadership in the House.

But that does not mean Republicans aren’t messaging on impeachment – through social media, email, and in October a rally outside Democratic Rep. Katie Porter’s office in Irvine to protest her pro-impeachment stance.

“There will be a lot more coming,” promises Randall Avila, executive director of the Republican Party of Orange County. Based on incoming calls, impeachment is “firing up” Republicans and internal polling shows independents don’t like it, he says. Impeachment can “make a difference” with independents.

“These Democrats went to Congress promising to get things done on health care, prescription drugs – California has a very big homelessness problem, an affordability problem, traffic. We are up to our ears in issues, real issues that they could be focusing on,” he says.

Some Democrats vulnerable

That message could be undercut, though, now that congressional Democrats have reached a trade deal with President Trump to replace NAFTA. And House Democrats passed a major drug pricing bill on Thursday.

Terry Madonna, a political scientist and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania – a state where two Democrats are being targeted by the American Action Network – says that some vulnerable Democrats will “bail out” on the impeachment vote. Two broke from the party and voted against an impeachment inquiry in October and about 10 moderates have been floating – unsuccessfully – the idea of censure instead of impeachment.

“My general sense is that a few of them are in danger, but probably the majority are not,” says Mr. Madonna, who believes Democrats are likely to retain control of the chamber.

Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Members of the WADA executive committee attend a news conference after banning Russian athletes from all major sporting events in the next four years, in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Dec. 9, 2019. The ban was imposed over Russia's failure to clear up issues related to an alleged massive state-sponsored doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

When the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia this week from officially participating in major global sporting events for four years, Russian leadership was quick to return to its standard official line: that the ban is all part of an orchestrated Western campaign to demonize the country.

But that argument is getting much less public traction than it did before.

In a remarkable change, now the ire of leading Russian athletes is being directed mainly at their own sports authorities who promised and signally failed to reform the system, make things right with WADA, and restore Russia to its former place as a leading global sports power. Many Russian sports figures, who have endured at least three Olympic cycles of bans and stigmatization, are demanding public explanations and accountability from their authorities, and their voices are being sympathetically covered even in Kremlin-backed media.

“I am with WADA on this one,” says Alexander Tikhonov, a legendary Soviet biathlete who won four Olympic gold medals in brighter times. “Leading Russian sports officials have not made sufficient efforts to resolve this doping problem. A fish rots from the head down. No one has been punished: no athletes, no coaches, no sports officials. And I have no doubt that this scandal will keep rolling on, because the same people who were involved in doping are still in place.

“Sports is the face of a country, yet we are losing the reputation of a country that can compete with the U.S. and other giants of sport. It’s in everyone’s interests that this be cleaned up, and our credibility restored.”

Mark Humphrey/AP/File

The Russian delegation marches during the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Such displays are barred under the WADA ban, as any Russian athletes cleared to compete would have to do so as "neutrals," without national identifiers.

“No other way but to accept the conditions”

The new ban was imposed over the failure of Russia’s anti-doping agency, RUSADA, to clear up unresolved issues relating to an alleged massive state-sponsored doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It means that Russian teams will be barred from participating in next year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics, and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. They will also be barred from the next IAAF World Athletic Championships in Doha, Qatar, in 2021 and, depending on what the international soccer federation FIFA decides, from the 2022 World Cup, also in Qatar.

Russian athletes who test clean and have no record of doping will be allowed to take part as individuals, but with no right to display national symbols or have the Russian anthem played when they win. Many seem resigned to doing things that way for the foreseeable future.

“There is no other way for us but to accept the conditions, go out there, and win,” says Andrei Rodionenko, head coach of the Russian national gymnastics team. “We have already been living with this for some time. Before the 2016 Rio Olympics, we actually boarded the plane without knowing if we would be permitted to compete or not, even though all our athletes were certifiably clean. On that occasion, we were allowed. Now, barely six months before the Tokyo Games, that whole situation repeats itself. What can we do about this? Carry on, keep training, stay prepared. And that’s what we are going to do.”

That attitude prevailed at last year’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, where some Russian athletes participating as “neutrals” performed surprisingly well. In one case, a victorious Russian hockey team defied the rules by locking arms and singing the Russian national anthem. Even though Russians came in 13th in the overall medal count, a public opinion poll found that a whopping 89% of Russians expressed “pride” in the performance of their athletes.

But Tatiana Tarasova, a famous Russian figure skating coach, warns that spirit may not be sustainable.

“Without being able to compete as Russians, there will be no interest in holding sports competitions,” she says. “It’s possible this decision will cause some promising Russian athletes to emigrate. People will stop sending their children into sports in large numbers, as they do now. We’ll lose it eventually, even if it isn’t felt immediately. It’s a terrible pity. Right now we have impressive young women who are winning at figure skating competitions, and this decision will spoil their lives.”

Why doping is different

President Vladimir Putin slammed the WADA decision, saying that Russia will appeal it within three weeks. And he repeated the argument that banning an entire country from taking part in global sporting events is “collective punishment,” tarring the innocent along with the guilty. “The key thing, and everyone is in agreement here, any punishment has to be individual, has to be targeted based on what a particular individual has done,” he said.

Mr. Putin has spoken cautiously since the doping issue first erupted almost four years ago, admitting that problems do exist and insisting that Russia will move to clean up its act. That’s a sharp contrast, experts say, to his indifference about other recent humiliations, such as Russia being kicked out of the Group of Eight industrial countries a few years ago over the annexation of Crimea.

“Russia’s position as a sports superpower is a core part of the national identity. The Russian public feels very strongly about it, and the Russian state has traditionally seen it as a key means of projecting soft power,” says Sergei Strokan, an international affairs columnist with the Moscow daily Kommersant. “Most Russians unambiguously support Putin on issues like Crimea. But doping, now, that’s a very different kind of thing, one that’s much harder for the average person to rationalize. People don’t want to lose Russia’s accustomed place in global sports, and certainly not over something like accusations of doping.”

Valery Gazzaev, a former soccer star who is now a deputy of the State Duma, insists that the Russian sports establishment has made major efforts to fix its problems. He says RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency, has been reformed, but WADA is still punishing it for transgressions made several years ago.

“It’s not fair that they are punishing us over an audit of results from the Moscow anti-doping laboratory from 2012 to 2015,” Mr. Gazzaev says. “It’s a huge injustice. WADA’s selective and negative attitude to Russia can only be viewed as political.”

In fact, WADA argues that the four-year ban is being imposed because the supposedly reformed RUSADA tampered with evidence, creating “an extremely serious case of noncompliance with the requirement to provide an authentic copy of the Moscow data, with several aggravating features.”

“Some commonsense voices being heard”

What does seem new is the large number of leading Russian athletes who are now speaking out to demand accountability from sports officials whom they blame for ruining their careers. That includes leading Russian high jump athlete Maria Lasitskene, whose scathing open letter has been widely cited in the Russian media.

Some find that hopeful, others not so much.

“What I really like is the reaction here at home to this decision,” says Ivan Isaev, editor of Ski Sport, an online news service. “We still have that hysterical ‘patriotic chorus’ blaming it all on hostile, conniving foreigners, but now there are some commonsense voices being heard.

“Leading athletes are asking out loud why they have to suffer these blows while the people who are guilty hide in the shadows,” he says. “The number of these voices is growing, and that is really great.”

Last Thursday, the same morning that Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the U.S. House of Representatives would draft articles of impeachment, a federal judge began considering another matter with deep implications for the democracy: whether students have a constitutional right to an adequate public education to prepare them for civic life.

As lawyers argued over moving forward to trial, dozens of teenagers crammed the gallery of the U.S. District Court here, with lead plaintiff Aleita Cook, a recent graduate of a Providence high school, observing from one of the armchairs normally reserved for a jury.

Fourteen named plaintiffs – students and parents – filed the class-action lawsuit, Cook (A.C.) v. Raimondo, against Gov. Gina Raimondo and other state officials last year. It argues that Rhode Island violates students’ constitutional rights by leaving many of them without key skills and knowledge to exercise such basic civic responsibilities as voting or jury duty.

If they win, the case could go down in history as the Brown v. Board of Education for their generation.

It goes to the heart of the relationship between education and the success of the American experiment. Like other fights over educational fairness, the plaintiffs root it in the struggle for civil rights and the nation’s long reach toward ideals of equal opportunity and participatory democracy.

Riley Robinson/The Christian Science Monitor

Aleita Cook, a graduate of Providence public schools and the lead plaintiff in Cook (A.C.) v. Raimondo, spoke at a press conference following a hearing in federal court on Dec. 5, 2019, in Providence, Rhode Island.

“What I’ve learned as far as civics is, I guess kind of the presidents,” Ms. Cook says after the hearing. “I didn’t learn my voting rights through school,” she says. Nor was she taught about the balancing roles of the three branches of government.

On her own time, she says found her way to a youth activist group that has helped fill in some holes in her civics education. Now that she’s 18, she’s excited to be able to vote. But if students want to learn about civics in school, “it’s more in an AP [Advanced Placement] course rather than a required class,” she says.

Real life as civics lesson

Among the inadequacies noted in the legal complaint are that many immigrant students here are not taught English well enough to qualify to serve on juries once they become adults, and that low-income schools lack not only civics education, but also activities such as debate and student newspaper, the types of training grounds that wealthier districts typically offer. In Providence, schools were recently taken over by the state. 

Whether the lawsuit succeeds or fails, for the youths involved, working with lawyers to build a case has already been the civics lesson of a lifetime.

“You’re really the national test case,” Michael Rebell, lead counsel and an education equity advocate at Teachers College, Columbia University, tells the students. “If we can win this, then all kids throughout the United States will have a federal constitutional right.”

Many states have redistributed education dollars in response to state-level court battles seeking justice for students in poor districts. Traditionally, education is a matter of state and local control, so it’s a big hurdle to persuade a federal judge to move forward.

The 6^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering similar questions in a lawsuit by Detroit students against Michigan officials for what they argue is a constitutional right to literacy.

The current case could boil down to how Judge William Smith interprets the 1973 Supreme Court opinion in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. The 5-4 decision left the funding equity matter in the state’s hands and noted that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention education specifically.

Mr. Rebell told the judge Thursday that Rodriguez left an opening for future cases to show a link between an inadequate education and the ability to exercise constitutional rights.

Anthony Cottone, representing Rhode Island education officials, countered that Rodriguez closed the door on federal involvement. There is “no fundamental right to education under the Constitution,” he said.

Rather, Mr. Cottone argued, it is up to local school districts and the state legislature to determine educational standards and funding.

Judge Smith peppered both lawyers with questions. He brought up that only 14% of students in the U.S. were found to be top performers in reading in a recent comparison, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The remaining 86% couldn’t distinguish between fact and opinion in complex texts, he said, asking Mr. Cottone whether that might raise reasonable concerns about the future of the democracy.

Such concerns are valid, Mr. Cottone said, but federal litigation isn’t the solution.  

(Neither of them mentioned that U.S. students outperformed the average of 9.9% of students globally who had mastered those complex reading skills. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development administers the PISA in 79 countries.)

One reason Rhode Island community groups have helped bring the federal lawsuit is that two lawsuits in state court to establish a state constitutional right to education have failed.

Riley Robinson/The Christian Science Monitor

June, a third grader and plaintiff in Cook (A.C.) v. Raimondo, attended the Dec. 5, 2019, hearing in federal court with her mother, Moira Hinderer.

Plaintiff June, a third-grader with blond hair in a loose ponytail, sat in the jury box to observe with her mother, Moira Hinderer, and Ms. Cook. But the legal volleys couldn’t compete with her penchant for drawing, and she frequently ducked down to pluck colored pencils out of a purple box in her backpack.

“I have the privilege to have a job where I can take a half day off to take her to court and have a discussion about what a court is,” Ms. Hinderer says. “For a lot of families that’s just not reality. So the school needs to be providing an equitable experience where kids get what they need ... to know how you participate in a democracy.”

For many of the urban teens attending the hearing in the statue-flanked limestone Federal Building downtown, it was their first visit to a courthouse.

“The experience was really amazing,” says Jayson Rodriguez, a junior at the Met High School. It “pushed forward my desire to pursue the path of being a lawyer and to eventually understand the vernacular that these people are using,” he says during a pizza lunch with other youth organizers at the office of the Rhode Island Center for Justice, whose executive director, Jennifer Wood, is co-counsel for the plaintiffs.

Symone Burrell found her first court hearing exciting but frustrating. “It was really concerning to hear [the state’s lawyers] just keep stating the point that education was not a right. They just kept repeating it and repeating it,” says the community college student who is active with ARISE, a group that helps Southeast Asian youths. “It’s kind of scary that the people who are running our education think that way.”

It could take several years for potential appeals to play out, if Judge Smith allows a trial to go forward.

Varied state requirements

When it comes to civic preparation, “there are great philosophical disagreements,” with some civics advocates arguing schools should be more responsible and others “that it’s the job of home and community to develop the aptitude and values of citizens,” Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, told education journalists at a conference earlier this year. 

She also sees a need for “a long-term remedy that could address one of the fundamental issues in civic education, which is unequal funding,” she explains in an email.

The majority of states now require a civics course in order to graduate from high school, while Rhode Island and others address it only in broader social studies standards. 

Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokeswoman Meg Geoghegan writes in an email that the department “has established regulatory frameworks and supporting guidance to help ensure that social studies and civics are part of the curricula, but the responsibility for implementing these tools rests at the local level.”

Niamiah Jefferson, a youth activist from Cranston, says she’s been able to get decent civics education in regular and AP history classes, but only by attending a regional career-pathways high school in Scituate, where she is one of just a handful of African American students. “My parents sacrificed traveling 45 minutes each day for the past three years for me to go to that school,” she says. She hopes this case will help future students find such resources in their own communities.

Of the several hundred films I saw in 2019, at least two dozen were eminently worth seeing. Before I get to my top 10 – drumroll, please – a few quick thoughts about the year just past. 

I had thought the biggest movie controversy would be about “Jojo Rabbit,” a rollicky black comedy about a boy in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is none other than Adolf Hitler, goofily portrayed by writer-director Taika Waititi. But the film wasn’t taken seriously enough to provoke much rancor.

And then there was “Joker,” which I deemed too pitch dark to be a mass audience hit. It has so far grossed more than
$1 billion worldwide. So much for my powers of prognostication. (I was certainly not alone in missing the mark.)

“Joker” was controversial all right, but the controversy mostly centered on what the movie was actually saying. Was it about the chasm between the haves and the have-nots in Donald Trump’s America? The failures of the mental health system? The rage of single white males? Or was it just the imprimatur of a famous comic book villain that sold it? I’m afraid it’s still somewhat of a mystery to me and to many others. With Joker’s usual nemesis Batman not even making an appearance, it makes one wonder how hungry audiences are for dark depravity.

The biggest controversy turned out to be Martin Scorsese’s remarks calling out comic book-inspired movies for being “amusement parks” and “not cinema.” He told Empire magazine, “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.” Aside from the fact that it’s kind of silly to so narrowly define what cinema is, or that Marvel movies do indeed have their moments of emotional power – the depth of feeling Robert Downey Jr. gave to the death of Iron Man, for example – I can still certainly sympathize with what Scorsese is bemoaning here. And my top 10 choices reflect those sympathies. You’ll also notice that half of them are documentaries, and I think this speaks to a desire on my part to learn more about the way people really live, especially in regions, mental and geographical, far from my own. Compared with these films, the typical Hollywood movie seems counterfeit. I could go on, but, without further ado, let’s bring on the bounty. In roughly top-down order, here are my year’s 10 best, followed by a brief list of some other films that I found, in whole or in part, deserving of mention.

1. Varda by Agnès – The final documentary by Agnès Varda, who died in March, is framed as a series of lectures but is marvelously playful and discursive and chock-full of clips. It’s a glorious, homespun valedictory to her 60-year career as director, still photographer, installation artist, and wife and mother. Varda was at the forefront of the French New Wave that produced filmmakers François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and many others. Her films over the years – high points include the masterpieces “Vagabond” (1985) and the documentary “The Gleaners and I” (2000) – are reflective of her filmmaking philosophy, which is really a philosophy of life: “Nothing is trite if you film it with love and empathy.” (Not rated)

COURTESY OF MK2 FILMS

The documentary “Varda by Agnès” is the last movie by the late Agnès Varda, whose philosophy was “Nothing is trite if you film it with love and empathy.”

2. Transit – The time is an indeterminate present where fascists are about to close off Paris. A German refugee (Franz Rogowski) flees to Marseille, hoping to ship out to Mexico. This haunting drama by writer-director Christian Petzold, updated from a 1942 novel by the German-Jewish novelist Anna Seghers, is like “Casablanca” reimagined by Kafka. Although it seems set as much in the past as in the present, it touches on the modern, existential anxieties of asylum-seekers. The past, this movie is saying, is always with us. (Not rated)

3. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – Despite the ideal casting of Tom Hanks, a biopic about TV icon Fred Rogers didn’t sound promising. But hold on – it’s not a biopic; it’s about a cynical journalist (Matthew Rhys) who sets out to write a dirt-digging magazine piece on Rogers and instead falls under his spell. As directed by Marielle Heller and written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, this is one of the few movies that portrays goodness in ways that ring absolutely true, no small achievement. It has a lingering enchantment. (PG) 

4. Honeyland – A documentary about a Macedonian beekeeper sounds like a Monty Python sketch, but “Honeyland,” directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, is an extraordinary testimonial to an extraordinary life. Shot over three years in an isolated mountain region deep within the Balkans, it’s about Hatidze Muratova, who harvests raw honey and cares for her ailing mother. The incursion of a family of knockabout neighbors disrupts both her traditional lifestyle and the beekeeping biodiversity she seeks to maintain. It’s a movie brimming with universal truths about the human condition. (Not rated)

5. Ash Is Purest White – Taking place from 2001 through 2018, this movie by Chinese director Jia Zhangke essentially tells two stories simultaneously. It’s a crime story involving the girlfriend of an ungrateful gangster who sacrifices herself for him before finally achieving retribution. It’s also a meditation on the difficult passage from traditionalism to modernity in contemporary China. As the girlfriend, Zhao Tao, Jia’s wife and frequent collaborator, gives one of the year’s finest performances. (Not rated)  

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Starring Liao Fan (left) and Zhao Tao, the drama “Ash Is Purest White” is both a crime story and a meditation on the passage from traditionalism to modernity in contemporary China.

6. The Cave – Physician Amani Ballour risks her life saving others in a subterranean hospital in war-ravaged Syria in Feras Fayyad’s powerfully immediate documentary, shot under extreme conditions. There are lots of cooked-up comic book heroes in the movies. Ballour is the real deal. (PG-13)

7. One Child Nation – Now living in the United States, Nanfu Wang, who co-directed this documentary with Jialing Zhang, grew up in China during the 36-year government-mandated one-child policy that ended in 2015. A first-time mother, she returned to film the effect that policy had on her neighbors, her family, and, ultimately, herself. The film is about her rediscovery of both her country and her own past. (R) 

8. 63 Up – This is the ninth film in the celebrated documentary series that began in 1964 when Britain’s Granada TV first filmed a group of 7-year-old children from widely varying economic backgrounds. The movie was meant to illustrate the Jesuit saying, “Give me the child until he is 7 and I will give you the man.” Since then, every seven years director Michael Apted has revisited many of the original subjects. The inexorable passage of people’s lives has rarely been so movingly recorded. (Not rated)

9. Parasite – Although it goes off the rails by the end, this black comedy by South Korean director Bong Joon-ho about a poor family that infiltrates a wealthy one is a sly, subversive take on class distinctions – a kind of deranged “Upstairs, Downstairs.” (R)

10. Booksmart – Actresses Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are snobby graduating high school seniors who try to cram into a single night all the partying they missed while studying for four years. It’s a female “Superbad,” but even sharper and funnier, and a terrific directorial debut for Olivia Wilde. (R)

Some runners-up: “Apollo 11,” “Toy Story 4,” “Knives Out,” “Ford v Ferrari,” “A Hidden Life,” “Photograph,” “Marriage Story,” “Diane,” “Les Misérables,” “The Mustang,” “For Sama,” “The Eyes of Orson Welles.” 

Reuters

Poland's Belchatow Power Station is Europe's largest coal-fired power plant.

European Union leaders took up a difficult debate Thursday on a bold new climate plan dubbed the Green Deal. While the details are impressive – such as a potential legal obligation to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050 – just as important is a call for equitable sacrifice among EU member states.

In the spirit of the Three Musketeers, the new president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the plan “must work for all or it will not work at all.”

Around the world, many climate proposals have failed in recent years because of a perception by voters and others that cuts in carbon use would not be balanced by economic justice. Last year, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron had to retreat from a proposed hike in fuel taxes in the face of a “Yellow Vest” protest movement among rural commuters. In announcing the Green Deal this week, Ms. von der Leyen tried to head off any perception of unfairness by promising to “protect those who risk being hit harder by such change.”

For the EU, protecting certain nations from tougher emission targets could be expensive, costing perhaps as much as $130 billion. Much of that money would go to member states now heavily dependent on coal – notably Poland – to move them toward lower emissions and to retrain coal workers for other jobs. The name of this climate help, the Just Transition Fund, reflects the concerns about how to distribute the burden of cutting greenhouse gases.

An even trickier fairness concern is how the EU would protect its industries if their costs rise as a result of moving toward a zero-carbon economy. Companies could face stiff competition in imports from countries without tough carbon targets. Some might even move their factories overseas, also known as “carbon leakage.” Ms. von der Leyen’s solution would be to impose a “carbon tax” at the border. Such a levy would be based on a complex estimation of the pollution involved in the manufacture and transport of an import.

Any portion of the Green Deal could falter if EU leaders do not adequately address the fairness questions. In addition, the EU must prepare for other countries, such as the United States and China, reacting badly to a carbon border tax.

The EU’s leadership on curbing climate change has been admirable. Between 1990 and 2018, the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 23% while its economy grew by 61%. Now the world’s biggest single market can also be a leader in defining climate fairness. If Europe achieves “one for all and all for one” in burden-sharing, the rest of humanity may follow.