Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/File

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry listens as climate adviser Gina McCarthy speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, on Jan. 27, 2021. Ms. McCarthy is touting the jobs payoff of decarbonizing economy.

Gina McCarthy has a message. In press briefings and interviews over the past month, the blunt-talking White House national climate adviser – dubbed by some the “Anthony Fauci of the environment” – has repeated the same refrain, again and again.

It isn’t about polar bears, or melting ice caps, or even protecting the Earth for our children and grandchildren.

Instead, Ms. McCarthy’s message is about employment. 

“When he hears the word ‘climate,’” she said of President Joe Biden at a press briefing earlier this month, in a line that has become familiar, “he thinks jobs.”

She went on to discuss the possibilities of new innovation, of “grabbing back the supply chain we have lost offshore,” and about “growing millions of good-paying union jobs.”

“We need to show people that America matters, that we are going to be leaders again,” she said. 

She is far from alone in this rhetoric, which runs more campaign-trail-meets-unions than traditional environmentalism. Ever since President Biden unveiled his sweeping $2 trillion American Jobs Plan on March 31, there has been a decided narrative shift among administration officials advocating for climate action. Largely absent are the doomsday predictions and dire timetables for warming temperatures. In their place are breathless visions of an American-dominated electric vehicle industry, predictions of entrepreneurial innovation, and promises of clean energy independence.

All of this, those who follow climate policy say, is intentional. In part, the goal is to win vital labor support for the administration’s huge environmental investment proposal – an effort that shows some early signs of success. More broadly, the aim is to merge the long-siloed policy areas of jobs and environmental protection. 

“It’s no longer the green economy, the clean economy – it’s just the economy,” says Ryan Fitzpatrick, director of the climate and energy program at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “So right now it’s not a conversation about whether we are going to, say, shift to electric vehicles. It’s about how fast, and how much can we get out ahead of that shift – for workers, industries, and consumers.”

This, Mr. Fitzpatrick says, has been part of President Biden’s approach to climate conversations ever since the campaign trail. 

Indeed, when President Biden introduced his American Jobs Plan at the Carpenters Pittsburgh Training Center, he mentioned the word “climate” only once. Instead, the focus was on jobs (a word he said 28 times), economic development, and infrastructure. The climate action in the proposal is largely intertwined with these other goals – $174 billion to electrify the nation’s transportation system, for instance, which would include a nationwide network of electric vehicle chargers; or $213 billion to produce, preserve, and retrofit affordable housing, which would include energy efficiency measures.

Woody Marshall/News & Record/AP

Vice President Kamala Harris talks about the American Jobs Plan at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, North Carolina, April 19, 2021. The $2 trillion plan devotes big dollars toward a clean energy transition. Experts say many of the resulting jobs would not require a four-year degree.

“Climate is integrated into everything,” says Joel Jaeger, a climate research associate at the World Resources Institute. “From making sure that buildings are resilient to climate impacts to retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient.”

According to Mr. Jaeger’s analysis, nearly $1 trillion of the plan would go to sectors that fall broadly under the umbrella of climate change, clean energy, and environmental justice. But as Ms. McCarthy said earlier this month, all of that is part of “very good economic policy.” 

Money invested in retrofitting old buildings, restoring public transportation infrastructure, and developing an electric vehicle charging network, for instance, would reduce emissions but also spark more innovation and allow for future growth, supporters say – all while providing millions of new jobs, the bulk of which do not require a college degree. 

Many unions have gotten on board with support, including some that opposed the Green New Deal resolution. That 2019 plan, generally seen as a politically left-wing proposal, attempted to merge environmental action with social justice goals, including employment.

Lonnie R. Stephenson, for instance, international president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which opposed the Green New Deal, said the American Jobs Plan would be “creating millions of good-paying union jobs building a 21st century modern infrastructure and a clean-energy future for our nation.

“It will also spur a renaissance in made-in-America manufacturing, bringing new jobs back to American communities,” he said in a statement.

​Concerns remain, however. On the right, many still connect climate action​ to “liberal, environmentalist job killing,” as Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, put it in a statement opposing Mr. Biden’s proposal.​ ​On the left, some advocates believe that truly addressing climate change will require significant ​rollback of energy-hog ​lifestyle​s and patterns of global capitalism, while others worry about how to ensure that green jobs offer living standards equal to the fossil fuel jobs they are replacing.

Kay Nietfeld/Reuters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a virtual Climate Summit with world leaders in Berlin, Germany, April 22, 2021. American President Joe Biden (on screen) announced the goal of cutting U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030.

In a February interview with Axios, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised President Biden for hiring labor-attuned advisers, but lamented the administration’s move to cancel the Keystone XL oil pipeline without a clear jobs plan for affected Plains-state workers.

Still, some researchers say investment in green infrastructure can create many more jobs than those lost in fossil fuels. Congress will be debating the details of the Biden plan, but one independent forecast, by Moody’s Analytics, projects the U.S. economy will have 2.5 million more jobs in 2030 under the Biden infrastructure plan than without it.

​Amid the long-standing debate over the economics of ​combating climate change​, some experts say the Biden team’s effort to unite climate policy and jobs comes as a relief. ​

“I’ve been pushing in this direction for a long time,” says Steven Cohen, a professor at Columbia University who is the former executive director of the school’s Earth Institute. “Personally, I think part of the problem with people who study climate change is … they want to make people do without in order to address the climate issues. And that, politically, isn’t going to go anywhere.”

Far from being at odds, climate action and jobs have a positive relationship, Dr. Cohen and other researchers have long argued. Studies from groups ranging from the Sierra Club to the business and environment group E2 show that climate-related investment leads to job growth. And many advocacy organizations have been working behind the scenes for years, promoting both this approach to climate action and the collaboration between labor and environmentalists.

“We’ve had a very consistent message … to both labor and the environmental movement that we have to come up out of our silos that have kept us apart and learn how to work together,” says Joe Uehlein, president of the Labor Network for Sustainability. “The environmental movement is now speaking out on jobs and worker protection policies in a way that is somewhat new, and certainly reinvigorated, in a big way. On the other side, there are a number of big unions that are moving on the climate issue.”

Increasingly, too, corporations have come to see unchecked global warming as a major threat to their future prospects. ​And a​ growing network of conservative-leaning clean energy organizations is promoting renewable power as an economic opportunity. 

To some extent, scholars say, all of this might be moving the climate debate away from the identity marker it has been to a more classic policy debate, in which belief about climate change matters less than one’s position on government investment and priorities. 

As Mr. Fitzpatrick says, “You don’t have to care about climate change to want to secure the supply chain for electric vehicles.”

Taiwan Presidential Office/AP

Former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd speaks near Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen during a meeting in Taipei. He and other former senior U.S. officials sent by President Joe Biden reaffirmed "rock solid" U.S.-Taiwan ties, amid heightened tensions with China.

There’s an old adage about London buses: You can wait forever and, all of a sudden, three show up at once. Yet for President Joe Biden and America’s allies, the sudden concern isn’t buses. It’s a trio of military flashpoints – in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East – involving three increasingly assertive U.S. rivals: Russia, China, and Iran.

Each daunting enough on its own, the simultaneous challenges amount to the stiffest overseas test yet for the new administration in Washington.

They’re also a reminder of a key, often-overlooked measure of successful diplomacy: not how leaders respond to a crisis when it erupts, but whether they can navigate geopolitical rivalries to prevent the crisis. In other words, can they keep political showdowns from becoming military ones?

That is often hard and doesn’t always work. But it’s what the U.S. administration is hoping and planning for as it responds to this trio of seismic rumblings.

Russia has moved tens of thousands of well-armed troops to its border with Ukraine, the largest buildup since it intervened in the largely Russian-speaking east of the country and seized Crimea seven years ago.

China is ramping up pressure on the island democracy of Taiwan, which it considers Chinese territory and has vowed eventually to annex, by force if necessary. Last week, two dozen Chinese military jets flew into Taiwan’s air defense zone, the largest such incursion in a year.

In the Middle East, the focus is on Iran’s drive toward nuclear weapons capability. There, the danger of full-scale military confrontation seems less immediate, but Washington may have less ability to influence events. Its ally Israel recently mounted a cyberattack on a nuclear facility in central Iran. The Iranians vowed “revenge” and later announced that they had enriched a small quantity of uranium to 60% purity, an important step toward weapons-grade fuel.

In dealing with both Russia and China, Washington has embarked on a strategy best described as “clear but calibrated,” tinged with a suspicion that Moscow and Beijing may be coordinating their actions in order to stretch the United States.

The clarity is in the message: that Washington is deeply concerned by, and firmly opposed to, the military activity both on Ukraine’s frontier and in the Taiwan Strait off eastern China.

Press Service General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Reuters

Ukrainian tanks on exercise near the border of Russia-annexed Crimea. Russia has massed troops in Crimea and on its border with Ukraine, sparking fears the Kremlin may be planning an invasion.

In a phone call last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr. Biden stressed Washington’s “unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced China’s “increasingly aggressive actions” toward Taiwan and added, “It would be a serious mistake for anyone to try to change the status quo.”

But there’s also been calibration: Washington has been reluctant to threaten retaliation, at least publicly, out of concern that could trigger a mutual escalation and lead to just the armed confrontation the U.S. hopes to prevent.

That strategy hinges on a critically important assumption: that Russia and China, too, want to avoid military conflict. And despite the rising tension, there are reasons to suggest the Biden administration could be right about that.

Russia’s 2014 intervention in Ukraine was cloaked in stealth. This time, Moscow has been open, even obvious, in its buildup, a possible indication the aim is less military than political. It’s almost as if Mr. Putin is trying to tell the Americans, “Hey, look at me,” in response to their growing focus on a more powerful rival: China.

China has no such concerns. But the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s oppression of Muslim Uyghurs, have weakened its international standing and favored Washington’s efforts to repair alliances frayed during the Trump years. Regardless of Beijing’s rising economic strength, a full-scale attack on Taiwan would provoke, at the very least, international isolation on a level that the Chinese have not faced since the Tiananmen Square crackdown three decades ago.

It was partly to signal his hope for a gradual de-escalation that the U.S. president also used his phone call with Mr. Putin to suggest a face-to-face summit. And he sent his climate envoy, John Kerry, to China to try to chart a joint path forward ahead of this week’s White House virtual summit on that issue.

Mr. Putin’s response to the proposed bilateral meeting was cool: His spokesman said he’d think it over. But both Mr. Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have accepted Mr. Biden’s invitation to the climate summit, indicating they are still open to cooperation on some issues. Iran has shown no sign of moderating its positions, but has so far not walked away from talks in Vienna aimed at bringing Tehran and the U.S. into compliance with their 2015 nuclear deal.

It could be that all parties are abiding by another bit of common British lore, a pithy aphorism attributed to former Prime Minister Winston Churchill that is often repeated by contemporary politicians.

“Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.”

Flags across Indiana and the country were lowered to half-mast following the mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis last week that left the shooter and eight people dead. But the Sikh flag mounted outside the temple, or gurdwara, in this Indianapolis suburb stayed flying high, almost defiantly. 

Four of the people who died in the FedEx shooting were Sikhs, members of what is at once a religious minority and also the world’s fifth largest religion. And no act of hate could bring the flag down, says Narinder Singh, a member of Greenwood’s Gurdwara Shri Guru HarGobind Sahib Ji.

“It’s not the first time it’s happened,” says Mr. Singh. “In 1984, in India, we got genocide, so we’ve come to know very well how we feel,” he says of the Anti-Sikh Riots in which thousands of Sikhs were killed. But since the founding of the religion in the 1500s, he says, Sikhs have been able to look at the high-flying flags outside their temples with a sense of resilience and pride, even in the face of tragedies.

The first Sikhs immigrated to the United States in the 1800s. After 9/11, hate crimes against Sikhs spiked here as they were targeted for wearing turbans. In 2012, a white supremacist opened fire on a temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing seven. Police didn’t initially suspect that the FedEx shooting was a hate crime, but on Tuesday new information surfaced showing that the shooter had browsed white supremacist websites.

In the aftermath of the Indianapolis attack – amid America’s tide of mass shootings – members of the Sikh community are turning to one another as they search for solace after the devastation. In the past week, vigils have been held, and prayer services and funeral preparations are underway. For the victims’ families, offers of legal and financial assistance have poured in from Sikhs across the U.S.

“Everybody’s just reaching out, and people that we don’t even know are reaching out,” says Gurinder Johal, stepping out of a temple in the nearby neighborhood of Acton after a prayer service for his mother, Amarjeet, who was killed in the shooting.

“It’s not going to be easy, but least they’re there trying to give their support to make it as easy as possible, and share the pain,” he adds. “Because the families that lost a loved one, obviously, they’re in pain. But the family that didn’t lose a loved one – they’re also in pain.”

Nick Roll/The Christian Science Monitor

Narinder Singh (center left) and other members of the Gurdwara Shri Guru HarGobind Sahib Ji in Greenwood, Indiana, pose for a photo inside the Sikh house of worship, April 19, 2021.

Chirjeev Kaur, also a member of the Acton temple, Gurdwara Sikh Satsang of Indianapolis, says that since the shooting, local Sikhs have been gathering in committees to direct support to each victim’s family, as well as the families of those who were injured. They’re also working to get in contact with victims’ extended family members who still live in India.

“We over here are a small number, and a very close-knit community,” says Ms. Kaur, who spent her Sunday at a prayer service. “And now, the community itself is kind of in a state of shock right now. But like in the past, we have been resilient. We will come through it all.”

“Everyone is leaning on each other,” she says.

For Simran Jeet Singh, a senior fellow with the Sikh Coalition, a national advocacy organization based in New York, the community resilience he’s seen in Indianapolis isn’t surprising. “It’s hard to imagine feeling this [shooting] as something other than targeting, because we’ve been in this position over and over and over again in this country,” he says.

But at the same time, he adds, “We don’t have people saying, ‘We’re stepping away from this because it’s too dangerous.’ They’re doing the opposite. They’re leaning right back in and saying, ‘We’re going to be here with each other and for each other.’”

Indiana is home to about 10,000 Sikhs, the Sikh Coalition estimates, and the total number of Sikhs in the U.S. is pegged at about 500,000. In Indianapolis, the Sikh community is largely made of immigrants who have come to the U.S. for economic opportunities, like the jobs at FedEx. But coming to America also comes with the quintessentially American risk of gun violence.

“The main reason why people migrate here is because of the picture that’s painted everywhere else about America. There’s opportunities here,” says Mr. Johal. The tragedy at the FedEx facility, he says, presents a chance not only to examine gun violence, but also reinforce education about ethnic and religious minorities.

“When you come to a different country, there’s going to be other factors that come along with it,” he says. “But those factors all can be cleared off [with] just a little bit of education.”

While Indianapolis-area Sikhs have found their community to be a backbone after last week’s shooting – especially amid failures in existing red flag gun laws, and the possibility that the attack was specifically motivated against members of their faith – they also have continued to advocate for all the the victims of the tragedy. “Those [other] four families, they are also in our prayers,” says Maninder Singh Walia, an Indianapolis Sikh who, along with Ms. Kaur, has come to serve as a de facto community spokesman.

Back in Greenwood, Mr. Singh looks out the window of the temple at the flag, billowing on a windy spring day, and points out the lesson it offers as the community tries to move forward from its most recent tragedy: 

“Never give up.”

Ted Shaffrey/AP

People embrace in George Floyd Square in Minneapolis on April 20, 2021, as the jury deliberates in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.

I traveled here for the start of Derek Chauvin’s trial last month and found that my hometown resembled an occupied state. Concrete barricades, armored military vehicles, and uniformed troops ringed the downtown courthouse, where jurors would hear the case against the former police officer accused of killing George Floyd. A pair of signs hanging side by side on a security fence offered mixed messages – “You Are Welcome Here” and “Restricted Area Do Not Enter” – befitting a city at war with itself.

Shadows cast by high-rises in the late-afternoon light slanted across almost barren sidewalks and streets. The stillness called to mind the uneasy quiet that greeted U.S. soldiers entering villages in Afghanistan when I reported from there a decade ago. Wooden boards covered first-floor windows of buildings near the courthouse, and reading the graffiti scrawled across the panels, I heard the silent chants of an invisible crowd: “Black Lives Matter,” “Hold Police Accountable,” “No Justice, No Peace.”

I began to feel a low-grade dread. The city had erupted last May over a video that showed Mr. Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck until the life drained out of him. Those 9 minutes and 29 seconds captured a terrible and enduring American narrative – white officer kills Black man – and redefined Minneapolis to the world.

Days later, in a determined haze, I drove from my home in Northern California to cover the upheaval, and during the next few weeks, I met dozens of residents united in their fury and anguish. They demanded swift justice and lasting change. 

The status quo instead proved sluggish and obstinate, and as local officials debated replacing the police department and businesses struggled to rebuild, the city inhabited a kind of purgatory. Any progress toward recovery and any sense of collective healing appeared fragile against the backdrop of the looming trial. The verdict would alter the fate of Minneapolis, and in the event of a hung jury or acquittal, most people I interviewed predicted a replay of last year’s unrest – only worse.

The first days of witness testimony gave voice to the city’s shared trauma. The bystanders who watched Mr. Chauvin take Mr. Floyd’s life – including the teenager who shot the video – wept on the stand recalling their despair that day. The accounts echoed the sorrow of residents I encountered as the trial unfolded.

“Our Black community has been hurting a long time,” Irma Burns told me. In 2015, police killed her son, Jamar Clark, and authorities declined to bring charges against the two white officers involved. “What happened to George was just the latest tragedy.”

The trial and the tension climaxed Tuesday afternoon. An anxious hour passed after jurors finished deliberations and before Judge Peter Cahill read the verdict. People started to gather outside the courthouse as National Guard troops peered down from a balcony and wan sunshine filtered through the clouds.

Finally, at 4:07 p.m. local time, a catharsis arrived. The jury had convicted Mr. Chauvin of second- and third-degree murder and manslaughter. The streets, once moribund, bloomed with displays of euphoria and relief. People hugged and cried, laughed and danced, and for a few hours, at least, Minneapolis could exhale. 

“This is some momentum”

I called State Rep. John Thompson about a half-hour after the verdict. He provided his reaction before I could speak. “Guilty, guilty, guilty!” he said. “That’s my slogan for the remainder of the week.”

Octavio Jones/Reuters

Valerie Castile, mother of Philando Castile, is comforted while Rep. John Thompson speaks in Minneapolis on April 16, 2021, during the Minnesota Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations news conference for families who were affected by fatal police shootings, as protests continue days after former police officer Kim Potter killed Daunte Wright in a nearby suburb.

Mr. Thompson, a Democrat whose district includes part of St. Paul, entered politics in reaction to the fatal police shooting of his friend, Philando Castile, in a nearby suburb in 2016. A jury acquitted the officer, and for Mr. Thompson, the Chauvin trial stirred memories of his last conversation with Mr. Castile.

“We saw each other earlier in the day he was killed, and I remember us talking about what happened to Jamar Clark just a few months ago and nothing happening to the cops,” Mr. Thompson said. He hailed Mr. Chauvin’s conviction as a break with the country’s history of acquittals for officers accused of violent conduct and suggested the outcome could propel future prosecutions.

“This is some momentum. We got four more of these to go,” he said. When I mentioned that only three other officers face charges in Mr. Floyd’s death, he replied, “I count Kim Potter.”

Ms. Potter, a white police officer, shot and killed a Black man, Daunte Wright, during a traffic stop earlier this month in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb. The shooting, captured on video, ignited days of clashes between protesters and law enforcement and further amplified the outrage of communities of color over police violence in the Twin Cities.

Mr. Thompson has written a bill that would remove protections from criminal and civil liability for officers charged with violent crimes. He described the measure as an attempt to impose accountability before rather than after officers use deadly force.

“When we say we have a problem with policing, cops say they want to change. But their actions don’t show that,” he said. “They keep killing us.” 

The U.S. Justice Department announced an investigation of the Minneapolis police force less than 24 hours after the Chauvin verdict. Federal officials will search for patterns of officers using excessive force and engaging in discriminatory conduct.

In the pre-internet era, three decades before Mr. Chauvin killed Mr. Floyd, the call for greater scrutiny of Minneapolis police reached a crescendo in 1990. The outcry occurred after a white patrolman, Dan May, fatally shot a Black teenager, Tycel Nelson, and retained his badge without facing criminal charges.

At the time, as a journalism student at the University of Minnesota, I knew of the fraught relations between Minneapolis cops and communities of color. In later years, I watched from afar as the department resisted reforms and failed to shed its reputation for brutality against Black residents, exposing fissures in the city’s progressive facade. The video of Mr. Floyd’s death laid bare those troubles before the entire country.

The intersection where he took his final breath evolved into a memorial site that attracted throngs of people in the following weeks. Walking through the space last year, I happened to meet Lorraine Gurley, Mr. Nelson’s older sister. She wondered if Mr. Floyd would be alive if the city had reined in the police after her brother’s shooting.

Nicholas Pfosi/Reuters

Ananda Bates sings his song "We the People for Terrence Floyd" to the crowd gathered at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis after the announcement of a guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial on April 20, 2021. Terrence is George's brother.

“There has been so much frustration, so much sorrow, so much loss and death in the Black community,” she told me. “We have to change the system.”

I thought of Ms. Gurley as I wrapped up my call with Mr. Thompson. He was moving through the raucous crowd outside the courthouse, and before we disconnected, I heard him boom out a greeting to someone.

“Guilty, guilty, guilty!”

“Black lives do matter”

Concrete barriers impede vehicles from entering the four-block area now known as George Floyd Square, and activists occupy checkpoints to keep out police. I visited the site on a cold, rainy afternoon in early April, and the absence of people and the presence of barricades evoked another desolate locale – the downtown courthouse three miles away.

I ducked inside Smoke in the Pit, a barbecue shack down the block from Cup Foods, where Mr. Floyd tried to buy cigarettes with a fake $20 bill last Memorial Day. A painting on the pavement outside the convenience store marks the spot of his death. The image shows a human figure with angel’s wings hovering above the words “I Can’t Breathe.”

Dwight Alexander, who co-owns the restaurant, told me that business has plummeted in recent months as violence in the neighborhood has increased. He blamed police for the city’s plight.

“None of this would’ve happened if the cops hadn’t killed George,” said Mr. Alexander, an Arkansas native old enough to remember Jim Crow laws. “He used to come in here and we’d talk a little. Nice guy, friendly guy. The cops didn’t need to kill him over $20.”

Mr. Chauvin’s conviction brought hundreds of people back to the square Tuesday, and their relieved elation matched the reaction of the crowd near the courthouse. The funereal mood over Minneapolis had lifted, 330 days after Mr. Floyd’s death.

I called Trahern Crews, the lead organizer of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, who planned to stop by the memorial site that evening. “I want to pay homage to a sacred space,” he said. Mr. Crews had remarked to me at the start of the trial that the Black community “needs a win,” and the verdict had electrified him.

“I’m feeling super excited,” he said. “It feels like a lot of hard work in the community has paid off. This sends a message to the world that Black lives do matter.”

But he savored the moment without losing sight of the larger cause. He recognized that the trial’s outcome represented only a brief reprieve from the realities of policing that jeopardize people of color in Minneapolis and across the country. Like Mr. Thompson, he invoked the name of Ms. Potter, the former Brooklyn Center officer charged with manslaughter in the death of Mr. Wright.

“We see police harming us every day,” he said. “We can’t stop until that stops happening.”

In the end, Mr. Chauvin’s conviction neither offers justice for those killed at the hands of officers nor solves the city’s crisis of policing. It is only a degree of accountability for one former cop, and one measure of the distance my hometown must travel in pursuit of racial justice. Officials and residents alike need to commit to making more progress than Minneapolis has shown since 1990, when an officer shot Tycel Nelson in the back, ending his life at age 17.

He was four years younger than me at the time. He should be here.

Even in a fraught year for moviegoing, terrific actors came blazing through to remind us how enlivening movies can be. Most of us watched our films at home, so it’s particularly fortunate that a good performance – as opposed to, say, cinematography or production design – can best survive the downsizing from big screen to small.

It may even be that the smaller screen made these performances seem more intimate for us. Instead of gazing up at actors 30 feet tall, we connected to them in a more relatable way, as a refreshment of our homebound lives.

Almost none of the year’s movies were intended to be seen in this way; they were completed before the pandemic. But the result, at least for me, was the same: I felt connected to the best work of the best actors more personally than I anticipated. This feeling of intimacy was compounded by the fact that so many of the anticipated Hollywood blockbusters didn’t open. This cleared the field for a preponderance of more human-scaled dramas – an unintended consequence of the pandemic but one that perhaps bodes well for the future of movies, on whatever screen we end up watching them on. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the performances – some Oscar-nominated, some not – that I particularly admired.

Best actor

My top pick would be Chadwick Boseman for his furiously powerful performance as Levee, the trumpeter with brash ambitions, in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” There are so many emotional levels to Levee, from playful to painful, that if you turn away for even a moment, you’ll miss something revelatory. Because this was Boseman’s last film, an unavoidable sadness shrouds his work here, but that feeling is dissipated by the realization that we are watching a marvelous actor giving full measure to a great role. A posthumous Oscar is almost certainly in the offing.

In “The Father,” the Oscar-nominated Anthony Hopkins, in one of the highlights of his extraordinary career, plays an aging patriarch in the throes of dementia. It’s the sort of role that could easily have lent itself to scenery-chewing, but what is so special about his work here is how carefully modulated it is. It’s an exquisitely subtle rendition, and a reminder of how Hopkins, even in the most garish of roles – think Hannibal Lecter – always works from deep inside.

Adarsh Gourav is the propulsive center of “The White Tiger,” playing a tea-stall waiter in India who breaks out of his caste and connives his way to riches by any means necessary. Gourav is a quicksilver performer who so perfectly embodies the young man’s blinding ambition that, at times, I didn’t think I was watching a performance at all. This, of course, is the most difficult kind of acting to pull off.

Best supporting actor

Lots of terrific work in this category. As the ensemble of blues musicians in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, and especially Glynn Turman, in the performance of his career, ensure that Boseman’s acting is met at the highest level.

In “Nomadland,” David Strathairn is one of very few trained actors (along with lead Frances McDormand) in the film, and yet he manages to fit into the almost documentary-like landscape without sticking out in the least. It takes immense talent to be this artfully understated in such surroundings.

The best acting in “Sound of Metal” is also its least showy. As a Vietnam vet who oversees a commune for fellow deaf people, Paul Raci delivers a performance so unprepossessingly wise and compassionate that I could have watched an entire movie centered on just him.

LaKeith Stanfield is William O’Neal, the Judas in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” who infiltrated the Black Panthers for the FBI when Fred Hampton, played by Daniel Kaluuya, was its chairman. Stanfield has the less flashy part (both men are Oscar-nominated) but he makes you feel in your bones both the covert thrill and the self-loathing that come from being an informant.

Sacha Baron Cohen can do a lot more than play Borat. In his Oscar-nominated turn as radical political activist Abbie Hoffman in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” he brings out the passion and the soulfulness that lay just beneath Hoffman’s prankster persona. This is no cartoon caricature.

Nico Tavernise/Netflix/AP

Sacha Baron Cohen (right) shows his range as radical political activist Abbie Hoffman in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” based on an actual event.

Best actress

One of the least-awarded major performances of the year belongs to Nicole Beharie in “Miss Juneteenth.” As the struggling Fort Worth, Texas, single mother and former beauty queen who wishes a better life for her 15-year-old daughter, Beharie, even in her slightest gestures, projects the full weight of this woman’s lifelong persistence and rue.

Another no-show among this year’s Oscar contenders is Kate Winslet, who gives perhaps her finest performance in “Ammonite” (sexually explicit) opposite the always wonderful Saoirse Ronan. Winslet plays the real-life 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning, whose significant scientific achievements were co-opted by her profession’s male hierarchy. Most actresses would be content playing Anning as hard-bitten. With Winslet, that outer shell is the merest camouflage for an entire galaxy of suppressed feelings.

Viola Davis is the likely favorite to win the Oscar for her stunning work as the swaggering, take-no-prisoners Ma Rainey in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” It’s one of the most ferocious performances I’ve ever seen, but like Winslet’s very different work in “Ammonite,” it’s far from one-note. Davis shows us the pain and pride fueling the ferocity.

Best supporting actress

Youn Yuh-jung as Soonja, the grandmother in “Minari,” is, for me, much the best part of that celebrated film. Youn is a revered actress in South Korea and her Oscar-nominated work here should greatly expand the reach of that reverence. Soonja, who travels from her homeland to live with her son’s family in Arkansas, is not your typical movie grandma: She doesn’t bake cookies, swears a lot, and loves watching pro wrestling on TV. She’s a hoot but – and here’s the key to Youn’s artistry – she’s also a fully drawn, richly conceived character.

A24/AP

The acting by Youn Yuh-jung, from South Korea, is one of the best things about “Minari,” says the Monitor’s film critic. Youn's antics entertain in her role as a grandmother, but her character is also richly conceived.

Ellen Burstyn is one of those performers who can convey more with a look than most actors can with an entire monologue. In “Pieces of a Woman,” where she actually gets to deliver a stunning monologue, Burstyn plays the unyielding, Holocaust survivor mother of an errant daughter (Vanessa Kirby) who is grieving the loss of her child in a home birth. It’s great to see an actress whose career spans more than six decades still at the height of her powers.

Here are a few more unnominated performances to savor: Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder in “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Fiona Shaw in “Ammonite,” Anya Taylor-Joy in “Emma,” and Dominique Fishback in “Judas and the Black Messiah.”

Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. 

AP

Supporters of a new, democratic government in Myanmar, known as the "national unity government," or NUG, celebrate with balloons in Yangon, April 17.

The dictator of Myanmar, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, is set to meet with other leaders of Southeast Asia on Saturday in Indonesia. The gathering may be the only place where the man who led a Feb. 1 coup against an elected government might feel some legitimacy. Most of the region is run by autocrats.

His trip to faraway Jakarta is revealing in how quickly the people of Myanmar have rushed to set up a parallel government, one rooted not in the power of guns but in an unprecedented unity in guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens, including ethnic minorities.

The country’s long history of protests against military rule have largely failed. Now, instead of relying solely on resistance to the regime, democracy leaders have decided to set up “free zones” in border areas to provide both basic services and civic liberties.

Their reasoning: Living out universal ideals based on individual sovereignty might work better than opposing those who deny those ideals.

Or, as a spokesman for the alternative government told The Irrawaddy news outlet: “It is the people themselves who will decide history.”

The basis for this new government is 15 legislative members of the National League for Democracy, the party that won a vast majority of seats in a November election – a victory that irked the military’s long-held belief that it alone is the country’s most popular institution and guardian of unity. Many NLD leaders, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, have been arrested.

Joining with other pro-democracy forces, the group has acted as a legitimate legislature – although largely in hiding. In March, it wrote a new constitution. Then, on April 16, it set up an executive body known as the National Unity Government, with a prime minister overseeing various ministries. It has been described as “the most diverse and inclusive political body the country has seen.”

The small but growing government plans to set up TV broadcasts, create a banking system, and form a defense force out of hundreds of defectors from the regime’s ranks.

It is supporting hundreds of health workers who have boycotted military-run hospitals to work in “charity clinics.” It could also serve as a conduit for foreign assistance to the quarter million people who have been displaced by the military’s violence against its own people.

At the meeting in Indonesia, Malaysia plans to ask General Min to allow a humanitarian corridor to deliver aid. That would be a big step in foreign recognition of this parallel government. China has already put its approval on the group with a phone call to NLD leaders in early April.

Unarmed civilian rulers in these free zones may be no match against one of Southeast Asia’s largest armies. But an invisible force of attraction – the appeal of rights, freedom of conscience, and self-rule – has often tripped up dictators. This democratic group in Myanmar isn’t a shadow government. It is a light that may slowly lead a country of 54 million away from dark repression.