Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wears a "Trump Won" face mask as she arrives to take her oath of office as a newly elected member of the 117th House of Representatives in Washington, Jan. 3, 2021. Ms. Greene is one of a number of Republicans expected to challenge the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6.

In Washington, 2021 is beginning with a wild and likely consequential week that could establish which party controls the Senate – and show whether the GOP is splintering into competing factions as President Donald Trump’s term in office nears its end.

In a larger sense, the historic events of these days of transition may define the influence and limits of what Harvard history professor Alex Keyssar calls the Trump school of politics, which combines hard-nosed realpolitik with a disrespect for norms and a focus on stark self-interest.

These factors were on full display in President Trump’s now-famous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. They may culminate in an extraordinary clash in Congress on Jan. 6, when Trump allies plan to turn the ceremonial counting of Electoral College votes into a last-gasp effort to subvert the November presidential vote.

“Joe Biden is going to become president, so it’s not going to be consequential in the short run,” says Professor Keyssar of the unprecedented vote challenge. “But I think that it is a very destructive and potentially far-reaching effort to try to delegitimize our electoral institutions.”

It’s ironic that 2024 hopefuls such as Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri have signed up as leaders of the effort to challenge President-elect Biden’s Electoral College victory, says Professor Keyssar. In order to attract future votes, they’re undermining the functioning of the democratic system, which is the very thing that underlies those votes. 

“This is an assault on democracy, an ill-considered assault,” he says.

Georgia runoffs

In the short run, it is the outcome of Tuesday’s Georgia runoff elections that is extremely important, as it will determine which party controls the Senate for the first years of Mr. Biden’s term.

If Democrats win both, Senate seats would be split 50-50. But in the event of a tie, Vice President Kamala Harris could then tip the chamber to her party. Though narrow, this margin could have a tremendous influence on how a President Biden thinks about his initial legislative agenda.

GOP candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler began as favorites to hold their seats, according to conventional political wisdom, given Georgia’s traditional red lean. But President-elect Biden’s narrow win in the state, combined with President Trump’s divisive attempt to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory, could boost Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock.

President Trump has harshly criticized Secretary of State Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, both Republicans, for saying that Georgia’s November vote was secure and accurate. (The vote was subject to two recounts, one by hand, that affirmed Mr. Biden’s victory.) The president remains highly popular among Georgia Republicans, and Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler could suffer if his words backfire or depress the GOP vote.

If they lose, President Trump will likely say they did not kiss his ring enough, says Chuck Bullock, chair of political science at the University of Georgia.

“The base lives and dies on what Trump says, and so do these two candidates. He’s the blood in their veins. So they cannot, dare not, separate themselves,” says Professor Bullock.

The Georgia phone call

But sticking with Mr. Trump has its risks for candidates to statewide office. The president’s hourlong call with Mr. Raffensperger, in which he pushed for the Georgia state official to “find” 11,780 votes to defeat Mr. Biden, and vaguely threatened him with legal consequences if he didn’t, was an extraordinary display of false claims and conspiracy theories that directly contradicted what state and federal authorities have said about the election. It may have been illegal, according to some experts.

“Donald Trump committed a crime,” says Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. 

Others say that prosecuting a case for solicitation of vote fraud would be very difficult, given the circumstances and need to prove the president’s state of mind, and thus many prosecutors might give it a pass.

In any case, it was clear that President Trump and the Georgians on the other end of the phone call live in completely different worlds. President Trump described allegations of voter fraud popular in conservative media. These include claims that at least one specific official manipulated votes for Mr. Biden, that Biden ballots were counted multiple times, and that crooked voting machines were snatched up and moved out of state. Mr. Raffensperger and state counsel Ryan Germany patiently explained that those allegations had been found to be untrue.

At one point, President Trump pressed Mr. Germany as to whether Dominion had in fact moved its machinery out of Fulton County, the most populous in the state. Mr. Germany replied it had not, nor had it moved parts of machines. 

“Are you sure, Ryan?” said President Trump.

“I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President,” said Mr. Germany, flatly.

But given the vehemence with which President Trump repeated the allegations during the call, some of them multiple times over, it seemed clear he truly believes them. Theories that hold the president has been simply lying about the vote in order to harm Mr. Biden or develop a following for post-White House endeavors now seem unlikely, says Professor Keyssar.

That is so despite the fact that some of the allegations, particularly those involving Dominion voting machinery, are bizarre to the point of irrationality. In that sense, the phone call with Mr. Raffensperger was analogous to the phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for which President Trump was impeached. In the latter call, the president pressed his Ukrainian counterpart about whether Ukraine had in its possession a hacked Democratic server supposedly smuggled into the country.

“It’s divorced from reality, but it’s lined up with prejudices and acrimonies that are a big part of their reality,” says Professor Keyssar of the Dominion allegations.

Split in the GOP

It is unclear how many of the GOP members of the House and Senate who are lined up to support President Trump on Jan. 6 share this commitment to the truth of the voter fraud allegations. Many rank-and-file Republican voters do, though: A December Quinnipiac poll found that 77% of Republicans believe there was widespread fraud in Mr. Biden’s victory. 

This belief bubbling up from the bottom may help drive a split in the party between Trump followers such as Senators Cruz and Hawley and establishment players such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – or, as President Trump has called them, the “surrender caucus.”

GOP lawmakers caught in the middle of this fight face tough choices, says Professor Bullock. Vote against Mr. Trump, and get a primary challenge from the right. Vote with him, and get accused of extremism by a Democratic opponent.

“It puts the marginal Republican in a very uncomfortable position,” says Professor Bullock.

The promise of legislative fireworks on Jan. 6 is itself evidence of how much of a split has already developed in the party. Majority Leader McConnell asked his caucus to refrain from challenging the election results, to no avail.

“The problem with the Republican Party in the U.S. is there seems to be no boundary on how far right one can go anymore, to the point of simply rejecting democracy,” says Professor Gaddie.

Andrew Young looks at the long line of mostly Black voters that wraps around the C.T. Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center on a dark, cold, and wet morning on the first day of early voting for Georgia’s Senate runoff elections, and his eyes brim with tears.

“People died for this right,” says the former Atlanta mayor, congressman, United Nations ambassador, and civil rights activist. “I knew many of them.”

He recalls the first voter registration drive he worked on ahead of the 1956 elections, when the Ku Klux Klan rallied nearby. A friend to the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Young helped organize the 1960s civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, and he was with Dr. King in Memphis when he was assassinated in 1968. Mr. Young’s life has been dedicated to making a line like this happen. 

“If Lewis were here, he’d be tearing up with me,” Mr. Young tells the Monitor. “They’d be tears of joy.”

Years of work by activists like Mr. Young – and more recently, former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – have arguably brought Georgia to this moment. In November, the state narrowly went for Joe Biden, the first Democratic presidential candidate to win here since 1992. Now, the outcome of Tuesday’s two runoffs – between Republican Sen. David Perdue and documentary filmmaker Jon Ossoff, and between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and the Rev. Raphael Warnock – will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. 

When early voting ended last Friday, a record-breaking 3 million ballots had been cast, with turnout in Democratic-leaning areas surpassing that in rural, conservative districts. That’s not surprising, since Democratic voters are more likely to vote early, but the party can point to another encouraging data point: Black voters made up a larger share of early voters than they did in November’s election. 

Still, many here say that the fight to expand voting access is far from over. Fair Fight, the organization Ms. Abrams founded in the wake of her 2018 loss, has taken aim at what it calls modern forms of voter suppression, such as purging registration lists and unnecessarily long lines at polling stations. Activists also cite gerrymandering, photo ID requirements, and signature match laws as efforts to discourage minority turnout.  

Significantly, according to the secretary of state’s website, Georgia has become the first state in the country to implement the “trifecta” of automatic voter registration, at least 16 days of early voting, and no-excuse absentee. But local Republicans are now trying to roll back some of these measures, with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger calling for the elimination of no-excuse absentee ballots late last month, something that the state Senate Republican Caucus has also called for, along with banning ballot drop boxes, and requiring photo identification for absentee voting. 

On the docket to be considered by the U.S. Senate if Georgia’s two Democratic candidates win is the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act – a piece of legislation aimed at restoring the original Voting Rights Act, which was largely stripped of its teeth in a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. 

“This is a defining moment in American history,” says Mr. Warnock, after voting for himself in Atlanta alongside Mr. Young. “And Georgia is at the center of it.” 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor, congressman, United Nations ambassador, and civil rights activist, sits at the C.T. Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020, the first day of early voting. He voted alongside Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock.

High stakes for the U.S. Senate

If elected, Mr. Warnock, who has served since 2005 as the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King preached, would become the first Black Democratic senator from the South.

Currently, the Senate stands at 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats, with both parties seeing Georgia’s two seats as must wins. The four candidates have raised more than $340 million combined, with the majority of funds coming from outside Georgia. A slew of big names have come to campaign in the state, including both President Donald Trump and President-elect Biden on Monday.

Despite Mr. Biden’s recent victory in Georgia, the incumbent Republican senators are largely considered the front-runners. Republicans have held the governorship and both legislative chambers since 2005, and they’ve long been successful in Senate runoff races. In November, both Republicans earned more votes than their Democratic opponents, with Senator Perdue earning more votes statewide than President Trump. Under Georgia state law, if no candidate breaks 50%, then the top two, regardless of party, advance to a runoff.

But the Democratic candidates have reasons to be hopeful. Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff outraised their Republican opponents in the final two months of the race, with Mr. Ossoff becoming the best-funded Senate candidate in history. 

If Democrats are successful on Tuesday, it may be because of previously disengaged voters like Angela Embry. Ms. Embry had never voted in a midterm or special election, and she didn’t vote in November’s presidential election. But after hearing so much talk about the importance of the Senate runoffs, Ms. Embry lined up in Atlanta on the first day of early voting to cast a ballot for Mr. Ossoff and Mr. Warnock.

“I just didn’t use to think about voting,” she says.

Runoff elections rarely achieve the same level of turnout as presidential races, notes Andrea Young, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia and the daughter of Andrew Young. But like so many things over the past year, she adds, this runoff election could be different. 

“It’s always a challenge to get people back out to vote,” says Ms. Young. “There’s a big gap between the super voters – the people who show up every time there’s an election, who tend to be older, who tend to be whiter – and the younger voters, who tend to be much more diverse.” 

Exit data suggests that Mr. Biden was able to flip Georgia blue because of strong support from suburban voters around the Atlanta area, where he added 188,000 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 totals. This included Black suburbanites, who constitute between 30% and 58% of the population in six suburban counties.

But higher turnout among Black voters doesn’t mean suppression is no longer an issue, says Ms. Young. “It means that people worked really hard to overcome it,” she says.  

Concerns in Georgia date back to 1860s

Race and politics have been intertwined in Georgia since at least the Reconstruction era, when the first 33 Black members of the Georgia General Assembly – and some of the first in the country – were elected in 1868. Later that same year, they were removed from office because of their race, and at least one-quarter of them were killed, beaten, or jailed. Today, a statue honoring the “Original 33” stands outside the state capitol in Atlanta.

For almost a century, until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black voters in several states – and particularly Georgia – were subject to various hurdles intended to depress turnout, such as literacy tests or poll taxes. 

Even Georgia’s runoff rule has racist origins. In the early 1960s, Denmark Groover, a segregationist and state representative from Macon, who had previously blamed an election loss on “Negro bloc voting,” led a campaign in the legislature to enact a runoff rule statewide to hinder the political power of Black and non-segregationist candidates.

Many today echo this same history as their reason for making sure they cast a ballot. 

“Too many people died or got hurt so that I could do this,” says Andra Giles, a retired hairstylist waiting in line to vote in Atlanta. “If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem. And I want to be a part of the solution.”

Pheolian Evans III, a retired paper mill employee born and raised in Augusta, remembers having to read the Constitution at the local polling location when he was 18 in order to vote. He says he’ll vote for Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff on Election Day.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes here in Augusta since then,” says Mr. Evans from the back of his pickup truck. “A lot of changes for the good.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Mary Smith, a retired social service investigator, waits for a drive-up rally with the Rev. Raphael Warnock to begin behind a Baptist church in Augusta, Georgia. Suppression of Black voters still exists, says Ms. Smith, often through indirect means such as incarceration and transportation costs to get to the polls.

A nationwide movement

More than 80% of Black registered voters nationwide identify as Democrats, and over the past two decades, the Black electorate has participated in elections at a rate that surpasses other nonwhite voting blocs. Black voters represent almost one-third of Georgia’s electorate, the fourth highest share among all the states and District of Columbia. 

In 2018, Ms. Abrams, who was previously the Georgia House minority leader and the first Black female gubernatorial nominee to run in any state, lost to Republican Brian Kemp by fewer than 55,000 votes. She accused Mr. Kemp, who oversaw the election as Georgia’s then-secretary of state, of voter suppression – including removing nearly 700,000 voters from voter rolls and placing 53,000 voters, 70% of whom were Black, in registration limbo due to the state’s exact-match policy one month before the election.

While she acknowledged Governor Kemp as the victor in a press conference 10 days after the election, she never officially conceded.

Through her activism, Ms. Abrams has become a central figure in politics, vilified on the right and cheered on the left. Shortly after the 2020 presidential race was called for Mr. Biden, the crowd of cheering voters outside the White House repeatedly chanted “Sta-cey Ab-rams,” rather than the name of the president-elect.

“There’s no question,” Mr. Warnock tells the Monitor after a drive-up rally outside a church in Augusta. “[Voting rights] are being imperiled right now by those politicians who somehow feel that rather than the people picking their politicians, the politicians ought to be able to pick their people. And so they engage in all kinds of tricks, the machinations of voter suppression.”

Mary Smith, a retired social service investigator leaning against the hood of her car at Mr. Warnock’s rally, remembers the fear her mother would have going to the polls on Election Day growing up in rural South Carolina during the civil rights era. 

While she may not worry about physical violence or threats as her mother did, Ms. Smith says Black Americans still face hurdles when it comes to voting. Some of her family and friends can’t afford the transportation costs to get to their polling station on Election Day, she says, and the mass incarceration of Black men takes a sizable chunk of eligible voters permanently out of the electorate.

“To get out of poverty, we’re told to participate in the education system and vote for a ticket to a better life,” says Ms. Smith. “And it feels like people want to take that away.”

It’s no secret that many people worldwide had a strong feeling of “good riddance” when leaving 2020 behind.

The twin forces of an accelerating pandemic and a decelerating economy predominated in a year that also had plenty of troubles on other fronts, from wildfires to attacks in a number of nations on principles of democracy or human rights. 

Yet, as a new year opens, it’s useful to note that some positive trends also took root or expanded in 2020, and if they continue, they may well brighten the future in far-reaching ways. Here are eight of them:

Space as a business. With all the focus on the pandemic and its fallout, it was easy to forget that 2020 marked the return of America launching people into space. How it launched them is even more historic. Ever since the end of the space shuttle, the U.S. had been relying on the Russian government to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. But in May, astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley lifted off from American soil in a spacecraft made not by NASA but by SpaceX – the first time a private spacecraft had carried humans into orbit. 

“It’s definitely a year of significant change,” says Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. SpaceX isn’t the only private-sector player, and low-Earth orbit “is not the frontier anymore.” 

Satellite statistics tell the story: Some 1,200 were launched into orbit this past year, he says, more than double the previous record. Much, but not all of that, is due to Starlink, SpaceX’s program to put thousands of satellites into orbit to create near global access to the internet. Experts compare this growing commercialization to the mid-19th century private railroads that tamed the American West. 

Other nations have also been busy, reflecting the growing internationalization of space. In December alone, Japan’s Hayabusa2 brought home asteroid samples, India launched a communications satellite, and China’s Chang’e 5 orbiter returned to Earth with the first moon rock samples in 44 years. 

Bill Ingalls/NASA/AP

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft is seen in this false color infrared exposure as it is launched on May 30, 2020, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission carried astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station.

The work-from-home movement. This trend was well underway before the pandemic, but lockdowns in the United States and in other countries forced many firms to allow their employees to work from home. Suddenly, the morning commute was replaced with daily Zoom meetings, conventions and conferences went digital, and travel became so rare for a time that Earth became quiet and scientists could hear natural seismic activity for the first time. And urban birds changed the way they sang.

If the pandemic eases this year and office towers do open up again, many experts believe workers will spend more days working from home than before the pandemic. “Our best estimate is that we will see 25-30% of the workforce working at home on a multiple-days-a-week basis by the end of 2021,” forecasts Global Workplace Analytics. Having learned to manage remotely, companies will encourage it, because it can save an average $11,000 per year for every employee who works at home half of the time, the research and consulting firm estimates.

And for workers? While working from home can have challenges, an October Pew Research Center poll found that in the U.S., nearly 9 in 10 jobholders who can work at home would like to do so more than “rarely” or “never” when the pandemic is over. This trend, coupled with the rise of online shopping, could also reduce traffic congestion. 

Decarbonizing the economy. The lockdowns and the work-from-home trend also reduced fossil fuel emissions, and has meant that the world used an estimated 5% less energy in 2020 than in 2019, points out Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. That won’t avert climate change by itself. For example, the plunge in traffic worldwide last spring led to only a 17% decline in global daily emissions, a clear signal of how human activity of almost any kind creates emissions, even if it’s just staying at home browsing the internet. 

But Mr. Birol is optimistic in part because political pressure to address warming is growing. Several European Union nations and the United Kingdom, for example, have included emissions-cutting projects in their stimulus and economic recovery programs. 

And other nations, including the U.S., will join in, because green energy, particularly solar, is becoming cheaper than fossil fuels, he adds. “Solar is the new king of the global electrical markets,” he says. In 2020, for the first time, it accounted for half of all the new electrical capacity that was built in the year. In the next decade, renewable energy will account for more than 90% of the world’s new electrical capacity, he adds. “I believe the energy world is changing in 2021.”

Diversity. The United States elected its first female (as well as Black and South Asian) vice president, Democrat Kamala Harris, and at least 141 women to Congress, a record, mostly achieved because of unprecedented gains in the number of female Republican lawmakers, from 22 to at least 36. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden appointed Rep. Deb Haaland to lead the Interior Department, America’s first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary. Greece elected its first female president. New Zealand’s prime minister appointed that nation’s first Indigenous woman foreign minister. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo happily paid a €90,000 ($110,000) fine for having appointed too many women to management positions in city hall, breaking a French gender equity law.

Confronting racism. The killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of police set off a wave of protests as far away as Britain, Switzerland, and Brazil. In the United States, his death sparked a national conversation about institutional racism, which prompted governments and companies to take a number of symbolic steps: from removing statues of Confederate generals to retiring food brands and names of sports teams linked to racial stereotypes. Whether the stirring will lead to wider substantive change remains an open question.

Artificial intelligence. Researchers used artificial intelligence techniques to speed up the battle against the coronavirus. Within three months of the identification of COVID-19, humans were testing vaccines – an unprecedented speed for vaccine development. In an even bigger potential development, DeepMind, the Google company whose AI program taught itself to beat chess grandmasters within hours, is now reliably predicting how amino-acid sequences of proteins will fold themselves, a huge leap for biology and biomedical research.

Middle East accords. The Trump administration brokered historic agreements in 2020 that led the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in return for a pledge not to annex more of the West Bank, at least for now. The treaties underscore the increasing ties between Israel and conservative Arab states that oppose the rise of Iran. But these agreements came at a diplomatic price to the U.S., and have yet to lend momentum for new negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Anti-recession policy. Typically, governments pass stimulus programs after an economic plunge. But because the pandemic-related lockdowns were self-induced and predictable, several nations passed stimulus programs that amounted to a preemptive strike against recession. In the U.S., lawmakers passed the roughly $2 trillion CARES Act in March just as the pandemic was getting started, and it helped make the recession much less severe than many economists predicted. Will the 2020 experience cause governments to make preemptive moves when the next recession looms? 

“Most recessions are harder to predict than this one because we don’t normally shut down much of the economy at once,” writes Harvard economist Jason Furman in an email. “But in principle, economic support for active, discretionary fiscal policy is growing.” The traditional white knights in downturns – central banks – have limited firepower when interest rates are so low. But low interest rates also make it cheaper for governments to act instead, he adds.

Bezhav Mahmoud/Swedish Armed Forces/TT/AP

Ground forces patrol Gotland, Sweden, Aug. 25, 2020. Sweden is stepping up its defense activities in the Baltic Sea due to “a deteriorating security situation” as Russia and NATO conduct military operations in the area.

Ever since a brief incursion of Russian warships into Sweden’s territorial waters in September, fending off a potential fight with Moscow has been a top priority for the Swedish government.

U.S. Navy SEALs linked up with Swedish special operations forces off the Baltic Sea coast in November to practice, among other things, guerrilla warfare in case of a Russian invasion. And in December, the parliament approved a bill to boost the Swedish military budget by 40% between 2021 and 2025 – which the defense minister called Sweden’s “largest investment since the 1950s.”

Even as hawks applauded the move, however, it left some supporters of the country’s signature feminist foreign policy concerned. The expansion of the nation’s military industrial complex could mark a step backward – reinforcing, in their eyes, an old-fashioned vision of security wedded to amassing arms and marshaling troops.

“Suffice it to say that, as a feminist, it is always worrying when priorities shift from diplomatic to military means,” says Annick Wibben, professor of gender, peace, and security at the Swedish Defense University. “We will be on the lookout for ways this could indicate a further remilitarization of foreign and security policy in Sweden.”

Should this be the case, it is likely to fuel further debate about whether this military buildup – a “no-brainer” for realpolitik aficionados – is compatible with feminist foreign policy. Given that an expanded military absorbs big money that could be spent on other measures of societal progress, is there such a thing, analysts wonder, as a feminist defense policy?

“Talking about security in a different way”

Sweden became the world’s first country to declare a feminist foreign policy in 2014. The goal, creators said, is to promote participation of women in politics in general and in peace processes in particular, while at the same time building them up economically. It is also a pioneer of gender budgeting, which routinely takes into account the impact of economic decisions including, say, tax reform, on gender equality.

Maja Suslin/TT News Agency/Reuters/File

Members of the Swedish Feminist Initiative political party celebrate in Stockholm on May 25, 2014, after the party came in second in Sweden's European Parliamentary elections. That year, Sweden implemented its feminist approach to foreign policy.

The new military spending hike, slated to go into effect later this year, will be the nation’s largest since the dawn of the Cold War. Designed to counter an “imminent threat” from Russia, the money will be used to buy fighter jets, artillery, and a new submarine, as well as to grow Sweden’s forces by 50%, from 60,000 to 90,000 troops.

This military expansion, “for the defense community, was an absolute no-brainer,” says Robert Egnell, vice chancellor of the Swedish Defense University. “It was clearly a turn to a traditional analysis of the security situation in the region, based on a threat assessment of Russia that’s really concerning to Sweden – and I don’t think they even gave feminist priorities a thought in that.”

From the perspective of women’s rights advocates, “this was a failure,” he adds, noting that there was a sense of “‘you promised us a feminist foreign policy, and this doesn’t include using violence for security.’”

What it should entail, says Corinna Horst, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, is “talking about security in a different way. It’s no longer just boots on the ground – military stuff and tanks.” It’s also climate change and radicalization, as well as seemingly domestic issues like the pandemic and migration, she says.

On that last point, for example, when Sweden opened its borders to immigrants in response to the tragedy of the Syrian war, it also potentially affected the status of women in a way the nation had failed to anticipate, says Valerie Hudson, professor of international affairs and director of the Program on Women, Peace, and Security at Texas A&M University.

Stockholm welcomed unaccompanied minors without restriction – widely agreed to be the right thing to do. But 85% of those claiming this amnesty were men, which has shifted the sex ratio among young adults in the country to 123 men per 100 women. “Now they actually have a ratio that’s far worse than China’s,” which stands at 117 men per 100 women, Dr. Hudson notes.

Higher male ratios are historically associated with a more martial spirit on the international front and, domestically, less socioeconomic mobility for women, and more crime against them, she adds. “It morphed into a national security debate in Sweden about, ‘Wait a minute – what have we done to women?’”

A feminist defense policy?

The hope is that by making more women architects of policy and strategy – in other words, leaders – it will keep them from being victims of it. In the Swedish military, this has included an effort to grow female commanders from the ground up.

To show recruits that they’re striving for gender equality, the government has launched some edgy ad campaigns with slogans like “Come as you are” and “We don’t always march straight.” The goal is that by 2025 at least 30% of all new troops will be women, “breaking up the male monopoly,” as one official put it.

In the meantime, the draft, which was abolished a decade ago and brought back in 2017, will now include female conscripts. The question is whether all this will lead to new ways of thinking about defense. “Just adding more women” doesn’t inherently change things, says Dr. Horst. “Women have been socialized in the same context as men, and can propagate the same social values and norms that we’ve had for years.”

While up until now female leaders have had “great impact” within the military in terms of “how inclusive the culture is to diversity,” there hasn’t been any challenge to the “inherent logic of confrontation,” says Dr. Egnell. “I wouldn’t say that it’s had an impact on traditional threat analysis. It doesn’t mean we look at Russia with a different lens, or that we have a feminist perspective in how we approach defense.”

Yet this is precisely the “big prize,” says Dr. Hudson: for increased female participation to drive “a more inclusive understanding” of what constitutes security – and what constitutes a threat.

As the ranks of women grow, there appears to be a tipping point when strategic thinking starts to change. “There’s solid social evidence that when women reach the threshold of 30%, we start to see differences in decision-making,” says Rachel Vogelstein, director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

While men are quicker to take risks with lives, for example, they tend to be more hesitant when it comes to taking risks with the economy. The opposite is true for women, she adds – research born out by the response of woman-led nations like Germany and New Zealand to the coronavirus epidemic, versus male-led nations like the United Kingdom and the United States.

A feminist military posture might put a heavy emphasis on, say, defense procurement, but very little on power projection. “Maybe women feel less entitled,” Dr. Hudson muses. “I’m a mom, and it resonates with me for sure: I don’t want what you have – but just try to come into my house.”

When agitators tried to loot the Nike store and surrounding shops on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles last year, Juan Ramirez and his fellow lowriders stood guard.

The Los Angeles Lowrider Community (LALC) wasn’t about to let the shop owners along the famous boulevard where they cruise bear the rage of people taking advantage of the unrest following George Floyd’s death. “We weren’t having that [looting],” says Mr. Ramirez.

He never questioned that the LALC members would answer his call to protect the neighborhood. Community is a key part of lowrider culture. And Whittier Boulevard is more than a famous boulevard where they cruise. It is the backbone of that community.

“A lot of these businesses were working real hard, trying to recover from the pandemic,” says Mr. Ramirez. In appreciation, the shop owners responded in kind: “The community started feeding us,” he says – seafood, pizza, and tacos to nourish them as they stood watch. This reciprocation illustrates the symbiotic relationship between LA lowriders and their neighborhoods – a relationship that has spanned decades.

Born in Boyle Heights and raised in South Los Angeles, Mr. Ramirez spends his days working as a welder and his nights cruising Whittier Boulevard with his wife and three kids. He drives a long, white, and spotless 1970 Cadillac Coupe deVille named Sugar.

“My kids joke about stealing the car when I’m sleeping,” Mr. Ramirez shares, while laughing, because their taunts indicate they recognize the significance of their dad’s car, the significance of any lowrider’s car.

“You’re driving on artwork, so you want to be delicate,” stresses Johnny Torres, an influential member of LALC who sports a baby blue ’54 Chevy. Mr. Ramirez agrees.

More than tricked-out cars

From the first time, as a little boy, that Mr. Ramirez sat in a lowrider, a family friend’s ’64 Chevy Impala, he quickly learned that “getting into a nice car – you had to be very proper.” It’s a lesson he instills in his kids, ages 5, 8, and 15.

Respect – for property and for others – is a central tenet in the lowrider community. It’s one of the reasons why in October 2019, Mr. Ramirez, president of Just Memories Car Club, joined with Mark Wilson, president of First Class Car Club, and Sergio Perez, president of Thee Illusions Car Club, to start the Los Angeles Lowrider Community – an association of lowrider car clubs in Los Angeles and adjacent cities.

After they learned that some of the men who attended the lowriding events were listed as sex offenders on the Megan’s Law website for California, Messrs. Ramirez, Wilson, and Perez assembled the local car clubs to gauge who was there to help the community and who might be there to harm it. LALC member clubs came to an agreement: “If you’re on that list, you can’t be around us,” Mr. Ramirez says. For LALC members, lowriding isn’t just a commitment to a tricked out car; it’s a commitment to the well-being of the community.

Maxim Elramsisy/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Juan Ramirez stands with his 1970 Cadillac Coupe deVille named Sugar in Downey, California, Nov. 18, 2020. For Mr. Ramirez, lowriding is about la familia and showing "my kids I was doing something good – a small little legacy I can give them.”

Lowriders and Chicano history

“A true lowrider rides from the heart. It’s about family, respect, and community,” says Denise Sandoval, professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at California State University, Northridge. Dr. Sandoval, who curated two exhibitions about lowrider culture for the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, seeks to document riders’ history and commitment to their communities.  

A desire to educate the broader culture about the lowrider community and Chicano culture is partly what prompted LALC member Edward Villa of La Puente, California, to host car shows for his city. Mr. Villa, president of the Veteranos Car Club, has hosted car shows for 15 years. He approached the city a few years ago because he wanted to bring Latino heritage to the city’s car show,  which featured hot rods and other classic cars, but few lowriders.

The shows he helped to curate ballooned from about 40 cars into one that now showcases hundreds of cars. On Halloween, 200 cars arrived for the city of Montebello’s Trunk n’ Treat. LALC served on the planning committee for the event, which was organized by the National Latino Peace Officers Association and the mayor pro tem of Montebello, Kimberly Ann Cobos-Cawthorne. Costumed kids and their families drove through the parking lot at the Shops at Montebello to receive candy and to view lowriders’ cars, which were decorated for the occasion.

Mr. Villa’s and other members’ altruism is motivated by their commitment to la comunidad and a desire to dispel myths about lowriders: “I want the different cities to realize that we’re positive. We’re just trying to bring the love for the cars,” Mr. Villa says. “We just want to show that we have a lot of love for our community.”

A history of social justice

Dr. Sandoval notes that community activism within the lowrider culture dates back to the 1960s. She says that during the civil rights movement, “lowriders were empowered to take pride in their community, fighting for social justice and using their culture not just to represent positivity, but to give back.”

She credits the Dukes – LA’s oldest car club, which started in 1962 – for being the first car club to embrace community activism; members organized car shows that benefited Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement to improve the conditions of agricultural workers.

Dr. Sandoval laments that so much of this history is unknown. She says lowriding emerged from the hot rod culture established in the ’30s and ’40s in Southern California. While “hot-rodders” preferred to ride fast and furiously, lowriders – who emerged shortly after – preferred to drive “low and slow,” so they could be seen sporting nice cars and brown skin. It was important to be seen representing their families and neighborhoods.

The low and slow culture represents cultural pride: I’m proud of my car. I’m proud of my community.

This pride is on display most weekends, as unofficial cultural parades roll through Whittier Boulevard – not to mention the numerous neighborhoods throughout greater Los Angeles. It’s quite the spot: The boulevard provides the venue, the neighborhood provides the crowd, the cars and their drivers are the main attractions, and the shop owners and street vendors cater to them all. Marco Antonio Villalobos, whose East Los Boy Apparel shop is a community staple and popular tourist spot, says that celebrities often come by to check out the scene. “Mario Lopez is always here!” he brags.

LALC’s goal is to continue to host events that highlight and enhance the larger community. “We’re not going to stop,” Johnny Torres says. “We’re going to take this culture into schools, into museums, into the mainstream.”

Mr. Ramirez hopes his children preserve the lowriding lifestyle and tradition when they’re old enough to drive. For him, it’s all about la familia: “[Lowriding] is the only thing I can do to show my kids I was doing something good – a small little legacy I can give them.”

FILE/AP

NASA has renamed its headquarters for Mary W. Jackson, the space agency's first Black female engineer and a crucial member of the team to send humans into space (1980 photo).

Stepping into a new year sends thought spinning forward looking for fresh, better ideas. It’s a time to leave behind thinking that no longer represents who we are.

As calendar pages flipped to 2021 a defense funding bill overwhelmingly passed the U.S. Congress with bipartisan support. Among its many provisions was authorization to remove the names of Confederate Army officers from U.S. military bases. 

In December, a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had been taken away from the U.S. Capitol, where it had represented the state of Virginia along with a statue of George Washington. The hope is to place it in a setting that can explain why it was erected in the first place in the early 20th century, a time when different attitudes about the meaning of the Civil War prevailed in Virginia.

Lee’s statue will be replaced by one of Barbara Johns, an African American woman and early civil rights leader. Her efforts helped to bring about the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education that declared racial segregation unconstitutional.

The change at the Capitol is an “important step forward,” said Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who added his hope that the new statue would serve to empower people today “to create positive change in their communities just like she did.” 

Similarly, NASA renamed its headquarters for Mary W. Jackson, the space agency’s first Black female engineer, whose crucial contribution to America’s early efforts to send humans into space was depicted in the film “Hidden Figures.”

New honors for new heroes.

Putting a name on a public building or erecting a statue carries a meaning far beyond recognizing an outstanding individual achievement. It declares what values society prizes. 

In 2020 outdated, inappropriate names were being discarded right and left, not only by public institutions but also by private concerns. It became clear that Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima were not appropriate symbols on food products and they were dropped. The last legal challenge to changing the name of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis was rejected by Minnesota’s Supreme Court. The city’s largest lake, somewhat bizarrely, had been named after early 19th-century slaveholder John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. It now bears a local Native American name, Bde Maka Ska.

The National Football League’s Washington Redskins, saddled with one of the most offensive sports nicknames, became, for now, simply the Washington Football Team. And Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians announced it was in the process of finding a different name. The team had already abandoned a crude caricature as its team logo.

Changing the names of these widely known teams is having a positive trickle-down effect. Roughly 1,900 U.S. schools still have teams with Native American nicknames or mascots, The New York Times reported. But just since August more than two dozen have dropped them – and that was before the influential Cleveland announcement.

“We are entering a time where all of these [Native American names] will be seen like minstrel shows, like horrible, outdated racist things,” Maulian Dana told the Times, speaking for the Penobscot Tribe in Maine. “And people will be very confused as to why they lasted so long.” 

The year 2021 will have its opportunity to build on the gains of 2020. Out with the old year, in with the new. Out with concepts that no longer represent our highest hopes and ideals. In with names that stand for liberating, uplifting views.