Before the pandemic, before San Francisco closed its public schools for a year or more, Beth Kelly was on a political “cusp” between identifying herself as a progressive Democrat and a moderate one. Not anymore. This environmental lawyer and mother of two young children says she’s now “solidly in the moderate camp.”

That move may not sound like much of a change to people outside the Golden State. But it’s a significant shift in this famously liberal city where voters are pushing back against progressive policies that they see as ineffective.

On Tuesday, Ms. Kelly and other angry voters overwhelmingly recalled three members of the San Francisco school board. During a historical pandemic shutdown, the board made national headlines for its focus on renaming 44 schools, including those named after Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, while elementary schools were closed for 12 months and high schools for 17. In June, the city faces another test in a special election to boot District Attorney Chesa Boudin, one of a new cadre of progressive prosecutors across America. In December, the city’s mayor, London Breed, declared a state of emergency in the downtown Tenderloin district, vowing to end “the reign of criminals who are destroying our city.”

Could it be that San Francisco, where Republicans are only 6.7% of registered voters, has found the limits of liberal idealism? 

From her home in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset District, Ms. Kelly describes “a shift rightward,” or at least “still left, but maybe less left” than before the pandemic. “People are getting fed up with ineffective policies, and homelessness and drugs.”

Others put it slightly differently. “This is a revolution for governance,” says Siva Raj, one of the parent organizers of the school board recall. It’s not right vs. left, he explains, but a grassroots demand “for elected leaders to actually govern.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Beth Kelly, an environmental lawyer, plays a math game with her two children before they head off to school on Jan. 27, 2022, in San Francisco. She supported the recall of all three school board commissioners in the Feb. 15 special election, and has become known through Twitter as the parent expert on the school budget – #BethBreaksItDown.

Left or right, up or down, many San Franciscans are dismayed at the state of their beloved city, which like other urban centers in the country has seen a pandemic spike in homelessness, drug use, and homicides, not to mention student learning loss – with subsequent political reaction. In New York, concern over public safety propelled a former police officer – Democrat Eric Adams – to the mayor’s office. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, cleared a ballooning homeless encampment with a combination of social workers and bulldozers. Meanwhile, Glenn Youngkin last year recaptured the Virginia governorship for Republicans, running on a message of more parental control over education. In Congress, Senate Republicans are again swinging at their favorite liberal punching bag, messaging on the San Francisco mayor’s “reign of criminals” comment from December. If even San Francisco Democrats are unhappy, well then. 

“Republicans are going to cash in on popular revulsion on what appears to be an increasing criminality, certainly murders, as well as homelessness,” says Jerry Roberts, former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and biographer of former San Francisco mayor and now Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was the last person to face a recall on the city ballot. That was in 1983.

The latest surge in socioeconomic crises brings liberalism to yet another threshold. Does this represent a pivot point for the city – or even Democrats nationwide, who might be ready to temper some of their most progressive instincts on COVID-19, crime, and education just as a crucial midterm election looms? Or, as Mr. Raj suggests, is it a call for politicians to refrain from “symbols over substance” and do the hard work when it comes to budgets, crime, and schools?

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Ed Ho, an engineer and father of two children in San Francisco public schools, relaxes at his home in the Sunset neighborhood on Jan. 27, 2022, in San Francisco. He supported the recall of all three school board commissioners.

As Ed Ho, a public school parent who voted for the recall, puts it: “We actually support criminal justice reform. We actually support Black Lives Matter. We want a better society. We want to close the achievement gaps in education. But the way that it’s being pursued now in this city is just off the rails.”

Out with the school board

On a recent Thursday at 7:15 a.m., Ms. Kelly opened the door to her world – a “work-from-home hustle” of juggling clients and children. Inside, it’s hardly the “chaos morning” she described when setting up this appointment. Her husband, a civil engineer, is asleep upstairs, having worked the night shift. He left word not to use his name or the names of the kids. 

Things quickly and quietly settle down, with mother and 5-year-old daughter on the sofa, reading aloud. Her 7-year-old son free-ranges with toys and books in the remodeled kitchen-dining room where a wall of large windows opens to a terraced garden. Eventually mom and kids migrate onto the living room rug, where they play a favorite math game with cards. Both kids are really good at this. Grandma arrives to pick them up, with the boy heading to second grade at a public school, and the girl to preschool.  

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Beth Kelly, an environmental lawyer, reads with her daughter before the child heads off to preschool on Jan. 27, 2022, in San Francisco. Ms. Kelly supported the Feb. 15 recall of three school board commissioners.

Parents of school-age children know how tough these last couple of years have been. As this attorney mom explains, her son has a “glitter sprinkle” of learning needs, and suffered educational setbacks without his individualized support from in-person school. Now that school is open, things are so much better. But last summer, Ms. Kelly was hospitalized for a month because “it was just too much – the pressure on families, working families.” 

Added strain came from her devotion to Zooming in on hourslong school board meetings that ran late into the night. One issue that caused an uproar was a rushed process to eliminate the entrance exam at prestigious Lowell High School in order to fight racism at the school and provide more opportunities for Black and Latino students. Parents of Asian students, who made up slightly more than half of the student body, were particularly upset. A judge ruled the board’s decision-making process violated the law, and declared its decision null and void.

Ms. Kelly’s interests, however, were focused on budget challenges. “I started looking at some of the board meetings. No one was paying attention to the structural deficit.” An admitted numbers geek, she began tweeting out reports from every meeting, missing family dinners, missing swim lessons. Under the hashtag #BethBreaksItDown, she became a tweeting sensation. The outgoing board inherited the nine-figure deficit, but she says the board’s inaction meant that more than $100 million in federal funds intended to catch kids up from learning loss instead went to fill the budget hole.

“I found the whole process extremely disturbing. ... It’s a crisis. It’s nuts and bolts. You have to balance your budget.” Also disturbing – the nasty social media backlash from progressives who derided this white mom for sending her kid to a “white” school that is just 35% white. Another target for derision: the success of her school’s PTA in fundraising.

“This year has made me feel very unwelcome in both the public-schools sphere and certainly in the more progressive wing of things,” Ms. Kelly states. “There is a real liberal discomfort with affluence and whiteness.” That’s a lot of internal conflict for a city where two-thirds of the population is registered Democrat, half the population is ethnically white, and the median household income is nearly twice the national average. 

Nearly 30% of San Francisco’s K-12 students go to private schools. If progressives keep shunning these families, she explains, enrollment in public schools will continue to decline, and so will funds, which are based on enrollment. That means closing schools. “We need to bring those families back in,” she says. “We need education for everybody.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

First grade teacher Jeremiah Jeffries sets up a literature drop for the No School Board Recall organization in the Sunset District of San Francisco on Jan. 29, 2022. "The Board of Education kept us safe during the pandemic," Mr. Jeffries says.

Clash in the city of tolerance

San Franciscans pride themselves on being tolerant and compassionate, a city of second chances. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, likes to invoke the prayer of her city’s patron saint, St. Francis: “Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.” 

This tolerance and activism, for instance, brought a sea change in the nation’s LGBTQ culture and laws. In his history of California, the late Kevin Starr writes that as a port city, with a “live-and-let-live” attitude, San Francisco attracted gays and lesbians from the 19th century onward.

Easton Agnew-Brackett, also a Democrat and resident of the Sunset District who voted for the school board recall, loves San Francisco for its weather, architecture, and stunning beauty – all of which make this the most expensive place to buy a house in the United States (median sales price: over $1.3 million). This college counselor grimaces over the “very, very expensive” cost of living, but embraces the city’s values. “As a gay parent, I am treated just like any other parent. And I can walk down the street with my kids and my husband and people don’t give me weird looks.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A mural is seen in San Francisco's Tenderloin district on Jan. 28, 2022. The neighborhood is testing progressive policies, seen by some as inadequate to combat a pandemic spike in homicides, homelessness, and drug use.

But that tolerance seems to elude city politics: “Like a knife fight in a phone booth,” the saying here goes – with consequences that can be fatal. In 1978, a former San Francisco supervisor assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to political office in the nation.

Ms. Kelly says equity, compassion, and social justice are her “core beliefs,” and she and others are deeply troubled by the demonization of those who disagree with progressives on the school board issue. Anti-Asian tweets by one school board member, the Lowell High School changes, plus a surge in hate crimes against Asian people have galvanized that community.

A school board supporter, Julie Roberts-Phung, who co-chaired the no-recall effort, cites doxxing and harassment of people opposed to the recall. Pictures of two board members were painted with swastikas and burned, she says. This school board is the most credentialed, diverse board she’s seen – one that responded to parents’ concerns about pandemic safety.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Charles Pitts, who has been homeless for four years, chats outside the Linkage Center, which provides health and social welfare services at U.N. Plaza in the Tenderloin on Jan. 27, 2022, in San Francisco. Mr. Pitts sleeps in the Mission District, where it's safer; gets a small government check; and buys from Costco outside the city and then sells his wares at twice the amount inside the city.

“We have deep-seated issues around racism in San Francisco,” she says. “There’s a lot of people who describe themselves as liberals but are taking positions that are opposite of Black and brown families in San Francisco.”

The city is a hotbed of local politics, says Mr. Roberts, the former managing editor. “It’s kind of like Beirut. There’s so many factions. It’s bare-knuckled and in your face.” The issues being vigorously argued over today – education, public safety, homelessness, race – go back decades, he says. 

In a way, today’s backlash could be described as a fight over how to be the most effectively compassionate. 

“San Francisco is plagued with idealism. We really do want to care for everybody that can’t care for themselves,” former Mayor Willie Brown told The New York Times in January, when asked about the city suffering from a crisis on the streets. But that idealism has created its own set of problems, as anyone walking the streets of the Tenderloin can see.

Safe passage in the Tenderloin

It’s a bit like parting the Red Sea. For two hours every weekday morning and afternoon, JaLil Turner and his team of 15 to 30 volunteers make sure the sidewalk along Jones and Turk streets in the Tenderloin is clear of drug dealers, drug users, tents, and any other potential dangers, so volunteers can escort young children safely to and from Tenderloin Community Elementary School.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Maria Cortes with the Safe Passage program, run by the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, helps schoolchildren cross the street on Jan. 28, 2022, in San Francisco. Ms. Cortes has two children at the local elementary school and lives in the Tenderloin neighborhood. Volunteers work two shifts, 8-10 a.m. and 2-4 p.m., protecting every corner the children pass through to get to their school and after-school programs.

“Kids are coming through,” announce the escorts, as they roll out in teal-and-orange safety vests. If they see someone openly using or dealing drugs, the escorts ask that person to move to the other side of the street. There’s no belittling or talking down, says Mr. Turner, and if someone refuses, there’s backup – a police officer who walks the route and more safety “ambassadors” contracted by the city. 

“Our group is essentially all things to help the Tenderloin,” says Mr. Turner. He manages the Safe Passage program for the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, a nonprofit that is deeply committed to this neighborhood of 50 blocks sandwiched between the luxury stores of Union Square to the east and the imposing beaux-arts City Hall, opera house, and symphony to the west.

This is the area that shocks Mr. Turner’s friends who visit from Kansas, where he went to college. The visible concentration of people struggling with substance use disorder, mental illness, and homelessness does not comport with their paradisal image of San Francisco. Also living here: the city’s largest concentration of children, 3,500 of them, as well as older adults, many of them Asian. “It’s a melting pot,” says Mr. Turner, with many young immigrant families from the Mideast and Latin America.

The Safe Passage patrols reflect that. Tatiana Alabsi, from Yemen, wears her safety vest over an abaya and hijab, and speaks Arabic. Her son goes to the school. Spanish speaker Maria Cortes, a volunteer from Mexico, has two boys in the school. The patrols start off from a sparkling YMCA in Boeddeker Park, with two “captains” peeling off at street corners along the route. Mr. Turner understands it can be uncomfortable for people to work in this area, but for him, it’s the opposite. His grandmother was a drug user who frequented the Tenderloin, and as a child, he and his mother would sometimes come here looking for her. He does this work “from the heart” to help others in a similar walk. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

JaLil Turner, manager of the Safe Passage program run by the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, chats before heading out for the afternoon session, on Jan. 28, 2022, in San Francisco. The program, with the help of volunteers, provides safe passage for children to and from school in the Tenderloin, and also for older adults.

Mr. Turner walks the entire route, checking in by radio every 15 minutes with his crew. Along the way, he points out fresh murals in the neighborhood, a small Yemeni eatery where he sometimes gets lunch, a street sanitation crew, and a gated corner park in pristine condition. The cleaned-up park is another improvement since the state of emergency, maintained by his nonprofit’s staff. He also passes a man behaving erratically, a sidewalk party, and at an opposite corner close to the school, drug dealing. About a dozen young people are milling about there. Which one is the drug dealer? “They all are.” 

In his three years doing this work, he has observed the stark contrast between policing and conditions in the Tenderloin and everywhere else in the city. Residents here vigorously protest the way that homelessness and drug use have been “contained” in their neighborhood. Behaviors are “allowed to happen here” that are not tolerated elsewhere, says Mr. Turner.

“If you’re selling drugs in the Presidio and you’re caught, you’re usually arrested and prosecuted. You’re not out in a day or so. You do it in the Tenderloin, and that same person you saw dealing, who was arrested in front of your eyes yesterday, will probably be out tomorrow.” It’s not unusual for him to see Tenderloin dealers commute from Oakland with him on Bart. “If you’re a drug dealer and you can go to a place where you won’t be prosecuted, you’ll probably go there every day.”

On this day, walking along Turk Street, he was pleased to point out two police officers on motorcycles – another novelty since the state of emergency, he says. Meanwhile, the nearby shopping district of Union Square is bristling with seven marked police vehicles, plus a trailer-sized emergency operations center, on the block where the Louis Vuitton store is located. In November it was hit with a sensational “smash and grab” robbery. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The upscale Louis Vuitton store in San Francisco's Union Square, seen on Jan. 28, 2022, was the site of a recent smash and grab robbery. There is now a lot of police presence in the area.

At 2:40 p.m., the Tenderloin school begins the coordinated end-of-school routine. Six groups of kids are released at intervals over the next half hour. They make their way down the Turk Street sidewalk, masked and toting backpacks, a Safe Passage worker leading the way and another one bringing up the rear. 

Now in its 13th year of operation, the entire Safe Passage effort is finely tuned. That’s a point of pride for Mr. Turner. But he also comments that the best thing for a nonprofit is to no longer be needed. “I feel like I will never not need to be here.”

Time for “tough love?”

In November, the Tenderloin Community Benefit District wrote to Mayor Breed pleading for help. Families met with her, describing daily dangers that they and their children encounter on filthy streets.

The intensity of challenges seemed to reach a boiling point in December when the mayor, citing persistent, worsening public safety and an opioid crisis with an average of two overdose deaths a day, declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin. It allowed for more enforcement and disruption of illegal activities, and cut through red tape to stand up the Tenderloin Linkage Center – a one-stop resource for people who need health, housing, or social welfare services.

“I know that San Francisco is a compassionate city. We are a city that prides ourselves on second chances and rehabilitation, but we’re not a city where anything goes,” she said.

The mayor, whose sister died of an overdose, said she was raised by her grandmother to believe in “tough love.” Described as a moderate, she is often at loggerheads with the progressive board of supervisors. She supported the recall of all three school board members and recently said that she is “not on the same page” with District Attorney Boudin.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Unhoused people chat outside the Linkage Center at U.N. Plaza in the Tenderloin on Jan. 27, 2022, in San Francisco. The center provides one-stop services, including food, vaccinations, showers, laundry, and help with housing.

“I think we’re sort of suffering the effects of what people have called progressive policies that have been in place for many years but in fact don’t really serve the very people they are purporting to serve,” says Maggie Muir, a Democratic consultant in San Francisco.

The tussle over policies comes into sharp focus at the new Linkage Center. On one hand, it’s being praised for bringing siloed agencies together under one roof and making them easy to access. It’s located at U.N. Plaza, across the street from a “safe sleeping” homeless encampment in front of City Hall. A man emerges from the center and happily says people there were able to connect him with temporary housing. He’s been homeless and fighting substance use disorder since he was let go by the National Park Service two years ago. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A homeless man who used to work for the park service chats outside the Linkage Center after getting signed up for housing, on Jan. 27, 2022. The Linkage Center provides one-stop services, including food, vaccinations, showers, laundry, and help with housing.

But the center has come under sharp criticism for a fenced-in, outdoor area that allows “safe use” of drugs, denounced by some as enabling users. Outside the center, a few men lean against the building, one of them holding a makeshift pipe to his face – the kind often used to smoke fentanyl, crack, or crystal meth. A young man walks up to people loitering outside the center’s entrance, announcing, “I got meth. I got crack.”

Open dealing and use without consequences “create an environment where people get caught in an endless cycle of addiction without actually getting the help they need,” says Ms. Muir.

At the state level, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he wants to make conservatorship easier for homeless people “who truly can’t help themselves.” That’s something that would have to go through the state Legislature and is sure to face stiff opposition from civil rights advocates.

On criminal justice reform, Ms. Muir points out that San Franciscans have consistently elected progressive, reformist prosecutors – the question is, what does reform look like? Mr. Boudin narrowly won in 2019 on a campaign of ending mass incarceration and holding police accountable. But Ms. Muir faults him for releasing people from jail without a real assessment of whether that person has a support network to prevent him from reoffending. Criminal justice reform and public safety “should be able to work together.”

And on housing, many cite a resistance to new projects. Progressives object to market-based housing, while residents on the west side oppose higher-density dwellings.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Del Seymour, founder of Code Tenderloin, which helps people overcome barriers to long-term employment, pauses in the Tenderloin on Jan. 28, 2022, in San Francisco. He is a community leader who lived in this neighborhood for more than 30 years, and also co-chairs San Francisco's Local Homeless Coordinating Board.

Del Seymour lived in the Tenderloin for more than 30 years and is deeply involved in neighborhood issues through his nonprofit, Code Tenderloin. He guffaws over the premise that San Francisco is a liberal city. “That is the biggest San Francisco myth of anything,” he exclaims. “These people are so holier-than-thou,” he says of the NIMBY crowd. “It went from Summer of Love to not in my backyard.”

He would welcome a city that is much more liberal – with mental health services in place of the Tenderloin’s 40-plus liquor stores, for instance. And he doesn’t want to see a greater police presence. “We don’t need no more stinkin’ badges down here,” he says, citing heavy-handed law enforcement. “We manage ourselves pretty well.”

He’s unhappy that the mayor declared a state of emergency, calling it a matter of “dignity.” The crisis in the Tenderloin is decades old, he said. “The only thing that’s changed is the model of the cars.”

And yet, he’s pleased with the new one-stop Linkage Center. He’s also pleased that the city is buying buildings, such as a hotel, to shelter homeless people. Earlier in the pandemic, about 400 tents blocked sidewalks in this compact district. Now, it’s down to about 40 – not counting the encampment, according to the district supervisor’s office. “Things are looking up,” says Mr. Seymour. “I can see light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not a train.”

If there’s anything good about the pandemic, he says, it’s that “finally the homeless are coming into focus.”

Indeed, the pandemic has stirred things up in this city. Unlike in Congress, no Republican threat will force the hand of leaders here. It’s Democrats themselves who are left to work their way through these complex challenges, toward the sweet spot where compassion meets effective governance.

Photo illustration/Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Key Ukrainian websites were disabled on Tuesday, including those of the Defense Ministry, military, and two major banks. The potential for a more serious cyberattack on Ukrainian or even U.S. critical infrastructure is casting an added degree of uncertainty over the current Ukraine-Russia standoff.

As U.S. and Ukrainian officials try to pin down Russia’s troop movements amid growing skepticism of President Vladimir Putin’s claims of a partial withdrawal, an even trickier front to monitor may be cyberspace.

Key Ukrainian websites, including those of the Defense Ministry, military, and two major banks, were disabled by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Tuesday. Some ATMs shut down briefly, and customers experienced difficulty logging in or checking their balances.

The Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security said that the relatively unsophisticated attacks, which can sometimes be used as a smokescreen for more destructive activities, were three times greater in magnitude than any previous DDoS attacks on the country and cost millions of dollars.

“The key goal of the attack is to show the strength of foreign intelligence services and the weakness of the Ukrainian government and to sow panic and chaos in society," the Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security posted on its Telegram account. Illya Vityuk, head of the Security Service of the Ukraine Cyber Security Department, said there was evidence that foreign special services were involved and added that the country currently interested in such blows to Ukraine’s image is Russia.

In Washington, members of Congress expressed concern about possible Russian cyberattacks not only on Ukraine but also on America’s critical infrastructure. On Monday, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security held a call with state officials, urging them to be on high alert, Yahoo News reported. Senators warned that such an attack would result in grave consequences for Moscow.

“If they were to hit our infrastructure, they know that we would view that as being a very, very serious act of aggression,” Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, the top Republican on the Armed Services subcommittee on cybersecurity, told the Monitor. “If they get into certain parts of our infrastructure, it could be considered an act of war, which would bring holy hell down on Russia.”

In addition to meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, by exploiting partisan divides to pit citizens against each other and undermine faith in American democracy, Russia has also targeted U.S. infrastructure, including energy, nuclear, water, and aviation sectors. It compromised U.S. energy networks, enabling it to conduct reconnaissance for a possible future attack. But an actual attack that shut down such sectors would put both Russia and the United States in new territory.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Feb. 15, 2022. Congress had been working on a sanctions package to deter any Russian military action, but that effort stalled Tuesday.

One challenge is that the rules of engagement in the cyber realm are unclear, senators acknowledged. And there is a greater risk of unintentional escalation, given the speed of attacks and the difficulty in immediately determining the attacker’s identity and intent. While Russian hackers have wreaked havoc in Ukraine for years, they have yet to deploy their full range of capabilities, casting an added degree of uncertainty over the current standoff. 

“We’ve seen cyberattacks that have been one or two bugs,” says Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. “But we’ve never seen a first-tier nation-state with capabilities like Russia launching a full-on cyberattack.”

Ukraine: “We are on the front line”

Over the past 15 years, Russia has been refining a 2.0 version of Soviet-era disruption techniques, enhanced by 21st-century technology. In each of its forays into former Soviet states, it has combined cyberattacks with on-the-ground interference – first in Estonia, then in Georgia, and most markedly in Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea from it in 2014. 

Russian military intelligence agents launched back-to-back attacks on Ukraine’s power grid over the next two years, according to a U.S. Department of Justice indictment. The U.S. also blamed the Russian military for the 2017 “NotPetya” malware attack, the world’s largest cyberattack to date, which targeted companies doing business with Ukraine and caused more than $10 billion in damages. 

“We are on the front line,” says Serhiy Prokopenko, head of the Ukrainian National Cyber Security Coordination Center (NCSCC). “Lots of tactics and malware families that were tested here were then used in Western countries.”

In a wooden-and-glass complex not far from Kyiv’s center, players from the private sector meet with state cybersecurity experts in NCSCC offices to compare notes on how to rebuff attacks by hackers with presumed Kremlin ties.

Mr. Prokopenko says there has been an increase in Russian-suspected activity since October, with attacks becoming larger, more targeted, and more complex. January’s “Operation Bleeding Bear” left dozens of government websites offline or defaced. These cyber operations are an integral part of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine, designed to undermine confidence in the government.

“They want to make services unavailable for citizens – energy, transport, financial services, and public services – in order for people to change their mind about the government in Ukraine,” he says. 

What most worries Kyiv – and Western companies active in Ukraine – is a repeat of NotPetya, which took the radiation-monitoring system at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant offline. It also hit Ukraine’s banking and metro systems. 

While Ukraine is not a member of NATO, the shared goal of thwarting Russian cyberattacks has led to cooperation, including joint exercises planned in the next couple of months. 

“We are trying to be more integrated in the NATO way of countering cyberthreats,” adds Mr. Prokopenko. 

U.S. bracing for a possible retaliatory attack

Congress had been working on a sanctions package to deter any Russian military action, including a cyberattack. But that effort stalled Tuesday, with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez blaming top Republican Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho for introducing a new GOP draft after weeks of bipartisan talks. The delay allows Moscow to continue to benefit from a rise in oil prices, which have seen a 50% increase over the past year. Instead, a bipartisan group of senators issued a statement.

“Make no mistake: the United States Senate stands with the people of Ukraine and our NATO allies and partners most threatened by Russian aggression,” they said. “We are prepared to respond decisively to Russian efforts to undermine the security of the United States at home and abroad.”  

But some are concerned that the U.S. has demonstrated more bark than bite when it comes to Russian cyberattacks. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who sits on the Armed Services cybersecurity subcommittee, points to a 2020 attack on SolarWinds software used by more than half a dozen U.S. government departments, which officials say was likely perpetrated by Russians. “Right now, they’re attacking with impunity,” the Democrat from Connecticut says. “Have we responded?”

Sen. Angus King of Maine, who co-chaired a cyber commission to develop a more unified U.S. cybersecurity strategy, says a lot has been done in the past year to bolster the nation’s defenses – including creating a new position of national cyber director. But a key recommendation from the commission has yet to be implemented: improving coordination between the government and private sector, which controls more than 80% of U.S. critical infrastructure. 

Senator King, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, says there’s “significant” concern that Russia could retaliate against U.S. support for Ukraine with a cyberattack. “Obviously no one wants to escalate this conflict. But if Russia chose to escalate it some way in response to whatever we did, then cyber would be one of the things they would choose.”

“It’s kind of like poison,” says Senator Risch, noting that Russia started with a cyberattack before interfering in Estonia, Georgia, and Crimea. “It’s [a weapon] in their quiver that they reach for and grab very easily.”

Once Yvonne Schaad got sober, she avoided New Orleans’ French Quarter. It felt as if the Quarter and its raucous Bourbon Street were a person, someone she could no longer look in the eye. Before, she had panhandled there to help make ends meet while living on the Crescent City’s streets.

Ms. Schaad’s bout with alcoholism ended seven years ago. For six years now, she’s been housed.

The catalyst was someone placing a camera in her hands.

The camera came to Ms. Schaad through the nonprofit ReFocus and its MyNew Orleans Photo Project, co-founded by Heather Milton. The aim is simple: pass out disposable cameras to locals previously or currently affected by homelessness, who are tasked to venture out into the city to capture it through their eyes. The questions at hand: What do you love about New Orleans, and what is it like to be you on a day-to-day basis?

Ms. Milton has sat down with each photographer to scroll through the images together. The results, she says, are emotionally striking.
For many of the participants, the experience is life-changing, too.  

“When I first started with the photo project, it kind of boosted my self-esteem and helped me be around more people,” Ms. Schaad says. “Now, I have a job. I’ve got my driver’s license.”

It was the spark that reignited her life, she adds.   

Yvonne Schaad/Courtesy of MyNew Orleans Photo Project Retrospective

“There are many angels in New Orleans that watch over people every day, just as caring people placed an angel bike where tragedy occurred on Elysian Fields Avenue,” said Yvonne Schaad, who took part in the MyNew Orleans "photovoice" project in 2016 and considers it instrumental in improving her life.

New Orleans is a photogenic city. Its old, iconic buildings are idyllic, and its gastronomical traditions and history divine. But in between the city’s beauty and folklore is an underbelly of poverty and neglect, with the unhoused population living in limbo between them.

That is, in part, why participatory photography was a concept that piqued Ms. Milton’s interest. Not long before she and project co-founder Elizabeth Perez launched it in 2017, Ms. Milton had gone back to graduate school in Tulane University’s disaster resilience program. Around that time, a “photovoice” project – a type of community-based, visual research methodology gaining popularity worldwide – caught Ms. Milton’s eye when it went viral from London that year. She reached out for guidance, and Ms. Milton says New Orleans soon became the first communitywide photovoice initiative in the United States.

Locally, the project has been a success.

The main public library in New Orleans recently finished showing an exhibit of its work. And in its first few years, a local panel picked the top photos for an annual calendar that was sold at art markets, or on the streets by the participants themselves to help them personally profit, too.

The work was building on the fact that “their thoughts, their images, their lives are important,” Ms. Milton says. “My job was to amplify their voices and thoughts through the stories and the pictures.”

Telli Deane/Courtesy of MyNew Orleans Photo Project Retrospective

“When I took the photo I had just started playing and I didn’t have any money yet, so I threw a bunch of pennies in the case. Sometimes it works and people start putting bills in my bag.” said Telli Deane, a MyNew Orleans participant in 2019.

Some of those stories stuck with her. 

There was Thomas’ photo of the old Jackson Brewing Co. – a former beer production facility that’s been repurposed into a multiuse development. Set within a shaded corner underneath the building’s wide arches is a small tent, where an unhoused person lives.

“That’s where he [Thomas] slept every night,” Ms. Milton says.

The photo that one unhoused participant took of a family in City Park – as the family stood together, dressed in their Sunday best – captures the distance the photographer felt.

“It’s something that’s not accessible for him,” Ms. Milton says.  

Another image is of a water spigot sticking out from a wall. In Ms. Milton’s interview with the participant, she remembers him talking about the importance of water in his everyday life. He owned a thermos bottle. Each morning he’d wake up thirsty and hot, but he knew where to find water – at one bar where employees would allow him to fill up every night – so he at least had cold water in the morning. When the pandemic forced the city to shut down some of its public water fountains, his life as an unhoused person was further complicated.   

“He talked – I don’t know – for half an hour about Lowcountry crab boils,” Ms. Milton remembers, noting how the man formerly worked in a kitchen. “Part of it was just him thinking through memories that were really good. For him, it was an abundance of food and water.”

For Ms. Schaad, the project forced her to live in a way that was more than just survival. “Sometimes you’re living in it,” she says of the city. “But you don’t look at it.”

Listening to unhoused individuals “without judging them is immeasurable,” Ms. Milton says. “This is a group that’s used to being treated as though they’re invisible. When you give them your full attention, and you really hold your gaze, everything is on them – it does something for them.”  

Juston Winfield had been unhoused for about four years before he joined the photo project. He had only limited experience in photography, but he was among the most excited to partake.  

“It shook the world for me,” Mr. Winfield says. “Six years ago, when I was homeless, that’s how I got my break. It went from me taking pictures to me painting.”

In recent months, Mr. Winfield has begun working on consignment with the New Orleans Museum of Art, where he hopes to have his artwork eventually featured.

The experience helped break him out of, as he calls it, “a cycle that most homeless people do.” You wake up. You find a place to shower, if possible. Then you continuously eat all day, because you never know when your next meal will come. “If you don’t got no task, you’re going to burn the majority of your day walking around and eating,” he says. “The project was a task for me to get up in the morning and try to go catch something with certain sunlight, certain shade.”

Sybil Carter/Courtesy of MyNew Orleans Photo Project Retrospective

”He loves what he’s doing. Happy go lucky. You meet him and you think you been knowing him all your life,” said Sybil Carter, a MyNew Orleans "photovoice" participant in 2017.

The pandemic has forced Ms. Milton to put the project on hold. She’s relocated to her native Kansas to help take care of her parents. But given the project’s contributions to New Orleans’ unhoused community, she’s currently trying to see if a local shelter would be interested in taking it over.

Ms. Schaad hopes to see it continue. “Being homeless, it’s tough luck,” she says. “Then someone gives you a camera, and you look at the pictures and you’re like, ‘Wow, I can really do something.’”

She graduated from Delgado Community College’s culinary management program last year. She’s waiting until Mardi Gras concludes in two weeks to apply for vendor permits – it’s a long line this time of year – but she hopes to set up a fresh hot pretzel stand on the sidewalk of music-friendly Frenchmen Street.  

Ms. Schaad volunteers with the local unhoused community when she can. “It’s nice to be able to give back,” she adds.  

As Ms. Milton considers the experiences of Ms. Schaad and Mr. Winfield, among the many others who participated in the photo project, her takeaway is simple.

“People are more resilient than we give them credit for,” she says.

Staff

February’s books tackle wide-ranging themes, from escaping authoritarian regimes and racial preconceptions to discovering a sunken piece of slavery’s past and a history of the humble index.   

1. Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen

Gish Jen’s short story collection begins with a Chinese saying: “A long journey begins with a step.” Readers could add, gratefully: “And ends with a story.” There are 11 here – starting with President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in the 1970s and progressing to the pandemic-shaped present. With humor and pathos, the stories feature mainland, immigrant, and Hong Kong characters confronting cultural and political changes. (Find the full review here.)

2. The Next Ship Home by Heather Webb

Heather Webb’s novel tells the story of two young women brought together in 1902 at Ellis Island. The briskly moving tale, interspersed with newspaper articles of the period, illuminates corruption at the immigration facility while underscoring the grit and resolve of New York City’s newcomers.

3. Our American Friend by Anna Pitoniak

“When you become a stranger to your past self, what do you call that?” wonders Moscow-born Lara Caine. As the first lady of the United States, the mysterious former model narrates her story to biographer Sofie Morse. Anna Pitoniak’s page-turner considers the costs and consequences of truth-telling during the Cold War and in the fraught political present.

4. I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

“Trust no one,” whispers Cristian Florescu’s beloved grandfather; they’re words to survive by in the fear-fueled Romania of 1989. In her deft portrayal of a teenager turned reluctant informer, Ruta Sepetys makes the case that trust, coupled with selfless courage, is the key to cracking autocratic rule. A well-researched nail-biter, the novel transcends its young adult genre.

5. Recitatif by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s only short story, “Recitatif,” written in 1980, is a brilliant, provocative experiment that tests readers’ deep-seated racial preconceptions. It’s about two poor girls who room together in a state shelter when they’re eight, and then run into each other years later. One girl is white, the other Black, but Morrison deliberately, masterfully obfuscates which is which. (Find the full review here.) 

6. The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, a young Afghan translator who worked with U.S. forces flees the country as a refugee. Rather than let him travel alone, his close friend, a Western journalist, hides his own passport and sets out with the translator on the perilous journey. It’s a gripping true story of courage, fear, danger, and compassion.

7. White Lies by A.J. Baime

A.J. Baime writes a groundbreaking biography of American civil rights leader Walter White, who literally led a double life: as a Black man giving shape to both the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP, and as a white man writing searing journalistic pieces about the evils of lynching and the plight of Black men in the South. 

8. Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan

Dennis Duncan leads an erudite and entertaining tour of a topic you’ve probably given little thought to, tracing the index from its roots in the ancient world to medieval Europe and up to the computer age. The book is brimming with fun facts but also makes deeper points about how humans create meaning.

9. The Last Slave Ship by Ben Raines

Ben Raines made headlines in 2019 when he discovered the remains of the Clotilda, the last ship to bring enslaved people to America. His gripping, affecting book chronicles his search for the vessel in the swamps of Alabama and tells the stories of its captives and their descendants.

10. Salmon P. Chase by Walter Stahr

In this revelatory reassessment of Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury, Walter Stahr presents readers with a far more textured and complicated Salmon P. Chase than in previous biographies, showing him as a shrewd figure who fought a long battle for a variety of progressive causes, including defending those who escaped slavery in court.

AP

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers a speech at the European Parliament, Feb. 16, in Strasbourg, France.

At a moment when Russia threatens to use force to prevent Ukraine from – among other things – joining the European Union, the top court in the EU has given another reason for countries to be in the bloc of 27 nations.

On Feb. 16, the European Court of Justice said the union’s executive arm “must be able to defend” values such as democratic rule of law – even if that requires withholding money from any member state. The ruling provides the first legal backing for the EU to use the stick of financial sanctions against errant member states.

The ruling was targeted at Poland and Hungary for their democratic backsliding in recent years. In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party has undercut the independence of courts, while Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party has clamped down on news media, judges, and civil society.

Their drift toward authoritarian rule raises concerns that EU funds might be diverted to the cronies of each party. Since they joined the bloc in 2004, Hungary has received funds worth 5% of its gross domestic product while Poland has received 3%. In both countries, the EU maintains high popularity despite the actions of their leaders.

The high court decided that “sound financial management” of the EU budget could be compromised by an erosion of rule of law in a country. As former German Chancellor Angela Merkel often pointed out, rule of law is the defining component of the EU’s cohesion. It’s also an attractive quality for nonmember states along Russia’s borders to join the union.