President Joe Biden has often said that the struggle of our age is democracy versus authoritarianism. If that is the case, in Russia’s cruel war against Ukraine it is the autocrats who so far have been diminished and discredited.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s gross underestimation of Ukraine’s ability to fight, NATO’s will to resist, and his own army’s unreadiness are the obvious examples of this. But China also seemed unprepared for the geopolitical turmoil that followed Russia’s invasion. Far-right populist politicians in the West with Russian ties, such as France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, are rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Putin and his Ukraine adventure.

This dynamic could change. The war in Ukraine is only three weeks old. But in that brief time the sense that in this historical era authoritarians are on the march – that they have more energy, vision, and vitality than democratic counterparts – may have been defeated, says Larry Diamond, a democracy scholar and professor at Stanford University.

“If that’s the case, this will not only be Putin’s Waterloo, it may prove to be the Waterloo for global authoritarianism to some extent as well,” says Professor Diamond.

A debacle visible to the world

One of the reasons why the Ukraine war seems to undermine the autocratic style of leadership is that it so obviously has gone nothing like Mr. Putin and other Russian leaders expected. Troops didn’t have food, gas, or munitions for weeks of ferocious fighting. Russia has yet to establish full air dominance over Ukraine, according to Pentagon officials. Casualties have been high. Russian units are stalemated outside Kyiv and a few other cities, battering them from afar with missiles and shells, devastating civilians.

So far there is little reason to think that these failures are loosening Mr. Putin’s grip on power. State-sponsored media ensure that most Russians don’t know the real story about Ukraine. After some two decades at the pinnacle of the state, Putin has a vast repressive apparatus at his disposal, says Brian Taylor, professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

“I don’t think we should see this as the regime coming unglued immediately,” says Professor Taylor.

But outside the Russian information bubble, the rest of the world can see in Mr. Putin’s situation why decision-making in personalist autocracies is often highly problematic. Actions can be taken quickly and decisively – but they can also be rash and poorly thought out. Debate and exposure to other points of view are limited. 

The White House/Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden holds virtual talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping from the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, March 18, 2022. Amid concerns that China will profess neutrality in public while helping Russia behind the scenes, Mr. Biden warned Mr. Xi against agreeing to Russian requests for military aid.

“With authoritarian regimes, the risk is that power becomes so centralized in one person or a small group and they end up just only hearing the information that they want to hear,” says Michael Beckley, a professor of political science at Tufts University and co-author of a Foreign Affairs analysis on how Ukraine is fortifying democracies.

War and other armed belligerence can expose these autocratic flaws in a catastrophic manner. It pushes things outside boundaries autocrats know well and raises the stakes. Foreign adversaries push back.

“Dictators, just because they’re so used to being able to exercise power by fiat at home, suddenly have a rude awakening when they try to push abroad,” says Professor Beckley.

Democracies showing agility

Meanwhile, the democracies of the United States and Europe and the Pacific Rim – stereotyped as gridlocked, unresponsive, self-referential, and plain slow – have come together in a united response to Ukraine with stunning swiftness.

Economic sanctions already in place against Russia are likely the most stringent ever enacted against an economy of Russia’s size. The coalition behind them stretches from South Korea to Switzerland and includes most of the world’s prosperous democracies. Hundreds of Western firms are ending or pausing their Russian operations.

Part of that may be due to the efforts of President Biden and NATO allies to rally what in Cold War days was called “the free world.” But much of it is likely the result of the sheer shock of Russia’s actions and the moral clarity of the situation.

“This has been a wake-up call to those democracies and like-minded countries and nations that yes, there is a real challenge here to everything that we stand for,” says Paula Dobriansky, senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and former undersecretary of state for global affairs.

In recent years authoritarianism sometimes seemed the rising form of national governments. China built a huge economy, lifting millions out of poverty, with a circumscribed autocratic leadership. Russia recovered from the chaos and poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union as Mr. Putin amassed power, becoming something close to an autocrat, if not a dictator.

But for now, democratic governance seems revived. Open debate about options by many voices hasn’t weakened the coherence of the response to Russian aggression. If anything, it’s strengthened it.

“The unified response of the West somewhat undermines the arguments that one used to hear not too long ago that the West was too internally divided both within countries and across countries to stand up to the rise of authoritarian states like Russia and China,” says Professor Taylor.

“A very high human price”

It’s far too early to say an apparent era of autocratic rise has ended. Stymied in the opening phase of its invasion, Russia seems certain to redouble its military efforts. More Ukrainian civilians will suffer. How much of Ukraine remains after the war, and who wins it, will have an enormous impact on the challenges of reconstruction and resettling of refugees that lie ahead.

“If it is going to turn out to be historically the case that a birth of freedom happened at this moment, it’s happening at a very high human price,” says Professor Diamond of Stanford University.

Meanwhile, the world’s largest autocracy, China, may see the current struggle between Russia and the West as an opportunity for itself to gain relative strength by remaining aloof from the fight. 

Chinese leaders appeared surprised by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wrote Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, shortly after it occurred. Since then Beijing has struggled to strike a rhetorical balance between supporting an autocracy with which it has friendly relations, and maintaining deep economic ties with the West while expressing sympathy for Ukrainian civilians.

American officials believe China’s strategy may be to profess neutrality in public while helping Russia behind the scenes. Beijing and Moscow share a major strategic interest: weakening the U.S. and the Western alliance.

That is why President Biden, in a two-hour video call on Friday, warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping against agreeing to any Russian requests for military aid.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week said China has a responsibility to use its influence with Russia to defend the international rules “it professes to support.”

“Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter,” Secretary Blinken said.

Czarek Sokolowski/AP

The mayor of Przemysl, Wojciech Bakun (left), holds up a T-shirt with the likeness of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the words "The Russian Army" as Italy's League Party leader, Matteo Salvini (right), speaks with journalists outside the train station in Przemysl, Poland, on March 8, 2022. Mayor Bakun confronted Mr. Salvini, who once wore a T-shirt featuring Mr. Putin’s face in the European Parliament, at the train station where many Ukrainian refugees have been arriving.

Challenges for far-right populists

Far-right populists in the West have had a more difficult time dealing with their Putin problems.

For years they have praised Mr. Putin and his policies of closed borders, ethno-nationalist rhetoric, and belligerence toward Western alliances. Now Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, France’s Marine Le Pen, and others are trying to backpedal without completely reversing previous positions.

Mr. Salvini, Italy’s leading right-wing politician, once wore a T-shirt featuring Mr. Putin’s face in the European Parliament. Now he’s walking the fine line of condemning the violence in Ukraine while avoiding criticism of Mr. Putin personally. 

Mr. Orbán, whose critics say he has rolled back democracy in a NATO country, has had a close relationship with Putin. Now, though he appears poised to win elections in April, he’s supported sanctions on Russia and welcomed Ukrainian refugees.

Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party has borrowed money from a Russian bank. In the past she has declared Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea to be legal. But now, running for president and badly trailing incumbent Emmanuel Macron in the polls, she has denounced Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine as “completely reprehensible.”  

“It changes, in part, the opinion I have had of him,” she has said.

The war could also damage former President Donald Trump’s chances in 2024, although how much remains to be seen. Mr. Trump has spoken admiringly of Mr. Putin in the past. In February, just days before the invasion, the former president labeled Mr. Putin’s pre-invasion declaration of portions of Ukraine as independent states to be “savvy” and “genius.”

A galvanizing moment for the West?

No longer will Mr. Putin’s global image be one of clever ruthlessness, akin to a movie villain, say these democracy experts. Instead, for the Western world he seems to have morphed into a reckless authoritarian who rants at rallies about ethno-nationalist themes and talks openly about the possibility of resorting to use of nuclear weapons.

The West’s comfortable assumptions that its “soft power” of prosperity and freedom was more important than the hard power of armies, and that autocracies like Russia were bluffing when they threatened military action, have been exposed as too optimistic, says Professor Beckley of Tufts.

Democracies tend to do the wrong things until they are sort of snapped to attention by events, he says. Now they are putting together a response based on sanctions and unity that could serve as a framework for action against future authoritarian aggression.

“A lot just lies in the hands of top leaders among the leading democracies right now,” says Professor Beckley. “They could ... build this out into effectively a new democratic order.”

When Ukraine banned the export of wheat this month and started scattering land mines in fields of winter cereals and sunflowers to slow invading Russian troops, it was bad news for Egyptian families struggling to put food on the table.

Egypt, which counts on Ukraine and Russia for half its food imports, was already facing food supply disruptions and high prices as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate-related production losses.

But now Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent prices of grains and cooking oils even higher in Cairo markets – a trend that if sustained could put new strains on Egypt’s social fabric.

“Global food inventories before the war were already very low, even lower than in 2007-2008, when we had the last big food-price crisis,” says David Laborde, a senior research fellow in markets, trade, and institutions at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

“Now we have this war in what is the breadbasket for North Africa and the Middle East,” he adds. “And while we’re not going to have famine in Egypt, we could see unpredictable and destabilizing consequences across the region.”

Egypt provides just one example of what it could mean for the world – and especially countries that are already food insecure – to find Ukraine’s vaunted breadbasket suddenly empty. Ukraine provides about 12% of the world’s wheat – 15% of global maize exports – with the Middle East and Africa receiving about 40% of Ukraine’s wheat and corn exports.

Global food powerhouse

Over the past two decades Ukraine and Russia have together made the Black Sea region a global food powerhouse, accounting for nearly 30% of global wheat exports. Some 26 countries now depend on the two countries for more than 50% of their grains and oils, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Indeed, in the sweep of modern history, Ukraine’s transition from the “Holodomor” – the forced mass starvation at the hands of Soviet Russia in the 1930s that killed an estimated 3.5 million Ukrainians – to a major purveyor of global food security is an astounding example of human progress.

Now Ukraine’s sudden, war-induced withdrawal from global food supply chains, as well as stalled grain exports from Russia, have experts warning of a new round of food insecurity and debilitating price hikes reminiscent of the food-price crisis that accompanied the global financial meltdown of 2007-08.

Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters/File

A combine harvests wheat in a field near the village of Hrebeni in Kyiv region, Ukraine, on July 17, 2020. Over the past two decades, Ukraine and Russia have together made the Black Sea region a global food powerhouse, accounting for nearly 30% of global wheat exports.

They note that the two countries are also major exporters of agricultural fertilizers. Ukraine’s disrupted fertilizer production, along with war-related sanctions on Russian farm products, will raise farmers’ costs globally and eventually contribute to food-price rises.

What those experts are hoping to see is other major food-producing countries pitching in by maintaining or even increasing their export stocks, and avoiding protectionist measures. And so far global trade analysts say they are encouraged by an absence of any significant imposition of food export controls that countries may employ to tamp down their own food prices.

Risk of political instability

Still, the comparison to the last food-price crisis has government agencies including the Pentagon on the lookout for a rise in food-related conflicts and social instability – particularly in places where the United States has significant national security interests, such as in Egypt.

“I certainly see the risk of heightened political instability if we start to see protests over rising prices of staple foods,” says Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

“That’s what we saw in Egypt in 2010, when the price of bread was a contributing factor to the uprising that led to the overthrow of [President Hosni] Mubarak,” adds Ms. Welsh, who directed the National Security Council’s global economic engagement in the Obama White House.

Yet, while no one anticipates food-price protests sweeping across developing countries in the short term – many countries including Egypt have at least modest food subsidies to cushion rising prices – a more immediate concern is the impact that skyrocketing food prices will have on humanitarian aid efforts to countries already experiencing heightened food insecurity, such as Yemen, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.

“Disruptions in food supplies and these significant price hikes will really affect food in countries where people were already struggling, and will push more people in the world’s hunger hotspots into hunger,” says Julie Marshall, senior spokesperson for the U.N.’s World Food Program.

For example in Yemen, which in recent years has relied on Ukraine for nearly a quarter of its wheat imports, the recent volatility in food markets has added to the conflict-torn country’s already precarious living conditions. The number of Yemenis requiring food assistance has recently jumped to 17.4 million from 16 million last year – with WFP forecasting that nearly 2 million more Yemenis will become dependent on food assistance in the second half of the year.

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Sacks of wheat flour are stacked outside a wholesale food shop in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 28, 2022. In recent years Yemen has relied on Ukraine for nearly a quarter of its wheat imports. Recent volatility in food markets has added to the conflict-torn country’s already precarious living conditions.

In the meantime, WFP has, over recent weeks, added Ukraine to its list of countries requiring emergency food assistance. The organization has quickly ramped up to provide bread to 60,000 people a day in Kharkiv and high-energy bars to 30,000 people in Kyiv. Noting WFP recently supplied 450 tons of wheat flour to operating bakeries to produce bread, Ms. Marshall says, “Before they were the breadbasket of Europe, but now we are there handing out bread.”

A need for new funding

Already WFP, which forecasted requiring $19 billion in 2022 to feed 145 million people, is facing a 50% funding gap. “Some of our major donors” like the U.S., Germany, and Canada “are stepping up, but others are tapped out,” she adds.

That has WFP turning to new funding sources, like the world’s billionaires and the global public – notably by putting the organization’s affable executive director, former South Carolina Gov. David Beasley, on social media platforms.

One big question mark hovering over global food markets concerns how long the Ukraine war lasts and how damaged the country’s agriculture-export infrastructure – grain silos, fertilizer plants, port facilities – ends up once fighting ceases.

Ukrainian farmers who haven’t left their fields to go fight or haven’t had their farms destroyed “are putting Ukrainian flags on their tractors even in areas occupied by the Russians” as a gesture of defiance and are getting out to their fields, Taras Dzoba, Ukraine’s deputy minister of agrarian policy and food, told a Washington conference organized by CSIS last week.

“But for sure there will be much less spring planting,” he added, noting that “even if the war ended tomorrow” Ukrainian farmers might be able to plant 8 or 9 million hectares, whereas last year they planted more than 50 million.

And Ukraine’s food-export infrastructure is suffering heavy damage, with reports of Russian bombs hitting the country’s grain silos.

Mr. Dzoba, speaking from Kyiv, said Ukraine’s booming meat-export sector has been devastated. “We have lost chickens, we lost pigs, we lost beef – and this will spill over to other countries and affect their economies.”

Challenge to producing countries

Ukraine’s MHP, the world’s sixth-largest poultry exporter before the war, has shifted to meeting needs at home – giving away hundreds of tons a day of chicken meat as security conditions permit.

Food security experts say that as important as stepped-up funding for rising humanitarian needs will be in the coming months, perhaps even more critical will be keeping the world’s food and fertilizer markets free of protectionist, my-country-first reactions.

“Globally the most important thing will be avoiding the temptation for producing countries to slap additional export restrictions on food and fertilizer,” says Mr. Laborde, the researcher. Beyond that, he’d like to see international initiatives to assist farmers in countries – in sub-Saharan Africa, for example – that simply can’t afford the shock of steep fertilizer price hikes.

Deputy Minister Dzoba says that even as the world acts to help his country, he hopes the international community extends the same sense of solidarity to other “fragile” countries as it addresses global food insecurity.

What the world must avoid now, he says, is allowing the example of “a more powerful state’s ... invasion of its neighbor” to “encourage countries to change their plans [and] to work more inside, instead of with everyone outside.”

Colette Davidson

Around 1,000 people showed up for a cleanup effort, organized by nonprofit 1 Déchet Par Jour, at the Notre Dame de la Garde Catholic basilica in Marseille, France, on Feb. 13, 2022.

As garbage bags dangle from their gloved hands, Maïa and Nour scour the bushes on the steep, rocky slopes below Notre Dame de la Garde, a glittering hilltop church in France’s second largest city. They pick up the usual – beer bottles, face masks – as well as some unexpected finds, like a gray, mouse-shaped cat bed.

The high schoolers volunteered to collect trash after Marseille’s garbage collectors went on strike in January, a stoppage that lasted more than two weeks and left over 3,000 tons of trash on sidewalks and streets; some ended up littering its Mediterranean beaches.

“I was very worried,” says Nour. “It was so dirty and when it rained, it was horrible.” 

“I know the unions were striking for a good reason, but there are huge environmental consequences,” says Maïa, who wears large-framed glasses and an oversize puffer jacket. “Everything ends up in the sea.” 

The garbage collectors eventually reached an agreement with the municipality on Feb. 2 over working hours. But Marseille’s garbage problems are far from over. Trash collection has long been a bargaining chip for unions – cleaners at the city’s train station recently stopped emptying trash cans in a work dispute – and many think Marseille deserves its unofficial title of “France’s dirtiest city.”

At the same time, general frustration and exasperation over littering is building. There is a sense that environmental issues have become too pressing to ignore, and that if the city can’t clean up its act, citizens must step in. From collective efforts to individual actions, residents like Nour and Maïa are working to beautify their city, one piece of garbage at a time. This surge in volunteerism has the potential to chip away at Marseille’s reputation for grime and amplify a sense of pride among residents.

“The people of Marseille love our city, but sometimes we don’t treat it very well,” says Eric Akopian, co-founder of Clean My Calanques, an environmental nonprofit. “We’re trying to use that pride to help people see that they can make a difference. It’s not about yelling at them or giving a moral lesson, but showing them they have the power to make change.” 

A rough-and-tumble image 

Founded by Phoenicians around 600 B.C., Marseille has long been a hub for trade and immigration, and a multicultural melting pot. Its rough-and-tumble image inspired the 1971 crime drama “The French Connection” and has fed a folkloric view of a mafia-run city, though it also inspires a strong sense of identity and attachment among the roughly 1.6 million residents in its metropolitan area.  

Colette Davidson

While the general strike by Marseille's garbage collectors ended on Feb. 2, trash remains a problem. Cleanup crews at the city's main train station led a separate strike in mid-February, leaving garbage cans like this one overflowing.

“We live well with less here. We enjoy the simple pleasures in life,” says Marilou Mathieu, a retired socio-anthropologist who lived in Africa for many years before moving back home. She was visiting the city’s famous fish market on the Vieux Port on a recent Sunday. “We can hear all different languages, see people from everywhere, and feel free. I love my city.” 

Part of Marseille’s grittiness comes from its problem with littering and trash collection: Garbage collectors have used strikes to air grievances for decades, including in 1986 when they spectacularly dumped tens of tons of debris on the front steps of city hall. Since 2014 they have staged near-annual walkouts.

Locals have grown less sympathetic to their cause, however, as concerns over the environmental impact of strikes grow.   

“They have their reasons for striking, but maybe they need to do things another way, instead of creating an additional health and sanitation crisis,” says Natacha Grimaldi, spokesperson for 1 Déchet Par Jour, the nonprofit that organized the cleanup at Notre Dame de la Garde. “Because of it, we have an explosion of rats, bed bugs, and roaches. It’s a very tense situation.”

But it is la bonne mer – the Mediterranean – that residents are keenest to protect. When the mistral kicks up – generating winds of more than 60 mph – garbage is scattered along beaches and hillside walking trails, and into the water. Previous strikes have led to uncollected debris sinking to the seabed, according to surveillance flight data from local authorities.

“We have to focus on the litter problem in the sea, of course, but it’s just as important to clean up on land,” says Marie Dalbouse, regional field manager of another environmental nonprofit, Wings of the Ocean. “By the time plastic and other garbage ends up in the sea, it’s already too late.” 

Young people step up 

Local groups say they are encouraged by the participation of French youth in climate and environmental advocacy, since Swedish activist Greta Thunberg began leading the Europe-based youth movement, Fridays for Future.  

Clean My Calanques is one of several groups that goes into schools to teach young people about recycling and the effects of plastic pollution. Last year, it released a rap video featuring local hip-hop artists to reach students who may not necessarily be interested in environmental issues.  

“When we come into class, the kids already know who we are. They’ll say they saw us on YouTube with their idols,” says Mr Akopian. “The bond between us comes much more easily after that. ... Teachers will tell me later that the kids are asking them to clean up the playground during recess.” 

Daniel Cole/AP/File

A pedestrian walks past a pile of burnt trash after an eight-day garbage collectors' strike in Marseille, France, Oct. 6, 2021.

Environmental aid groups in the region point to an explosion in volunteers joining cleanup efforts – around 1,000 took part in two events held in February. As last month’s strike wound down, nonprofits partnered with city hall to set up distribution points in the city to hand out gloves and garbage bags to volunteers who helped remove trash from the streets.

The city’s tourist office is also stepping up: In 2020 it launched a sustainable development program that labels eco-friendly hotels and promotes green event management. “We’ve even changed our consumption habits within [our office] when it comes to electricity or water,” says Estelle Le Bris, head of tourism monitoring and sustainability at the Marseille tourist office. “We want to set a good example.” 

Despite Marseille’s anecdotal award wins as the country’s dirtiest city, it has also received several official prizes, such as the European Commission’s European Capital of Culture in 2013. This past September, it became the first French city to host the IUCN’s World Conservation Congress, thanks to its rich natural resources.

The Marseillais love to complain about the maddening quality of their city, but retailers run a brisk business selling T-shirts and hats branded “Proud to be Marseille” – a common refrain here – to residents and visitors alike.

“Marseille is rebellious, a city of excess, and garbage is unfortunately one of our distinguishing features,” says resident Rolland Viti, who participated in the February cleanup. “We have those who are not civic-minded, but luckily we also have those who care about the public good. And they are trying to correct bad behavior.”

Gene Herrick/AP/File

The Rev. Ralph Abernathy (left) shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, March 22, 1956, as a crowd of supporters cheer for King who had just been found guilty of leading the Montgomery bus boycott. King's wife, Coretta Scott King, stands next to him.

Despite living on this Earth less than 40 years, Martin Luther King Jr. became a man for all times. He did this through constant evolution and improvisation. 

Over the years, King expanded his focus from issues primarily affecting Black people to the more encompassing problem of poverty. The 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, zeroed in on desegregation. Then, two years after the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which King led, his emphasis expanded to voting rights in Atlanta. A decade later, when he arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, to stand with sanitation workers, King had crafted an ideology complete with both anti-racist and anti-capitalist tenets. That broadening of his focus was a hallmark of his success because it made his efforts relevant beyond the Black community.

But King was adaptable not only in message but in methodology. Both points hold important lessons for those fighting for social justice today. He organized and mobilized in the spirit of community – addressing the needs of everyday people – and he came to understand when it is best to allow the people to speak for themselves.

Pushed to share the spotlight

This was not easy for King. He was not only molded by the parochial, church-based leadership model, but also magnified by it. The Montgomery bus boycott, and the organization that spearheaded it, the Montgomery Improvement Association, was made up of pastors and well-to-do Black folk, as described in King’s “Stride Toward Freedom.” That model created familiar and singular leaders such as King, who was the face of the movement until his assassination. 

King’s inclination was to continue in that vein and have others operate on the sidelines – a mindset that was challenged by women such as Ella Baker and Septima Clark, both of whom were considered “mothers of the movement.” 

Ultimately, King was persuaded to incorporate women and students into the struggle – and even to acknowledge their leadership roles – largely because of the influence of Baker, who advocated for moving “toward group-centered leadership, rather than toward a leader-centered group pattern of organization.” 

As Baker explained,“The fact that many schools and communities, especially in the South, have not provided adequate experience for young Negroes to assume initiative and think and act independently accentuated the need for guarding the student movement against well-meaning, but nevertheless unhealthy, over-protectiveness. 

“Here is an opportunity for adult and youth to work together and provide genuine leadership – the development of the individual to his highest potential for the benefit of the group.”

King would have preferred to keep students operating as a wing of his SCLC, but instead, under Baker’s guidance, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formed in 1960. King’s willingness to adapt by acknowledging young people’s independent leadership within the movement galvanized later efforts. Student sit-ins and marches were chief methods for the 1963 campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, which proved to be one of the most difficult. 

One of the key civil rights actions in Birmingham that year was the Children’s Crusade in May, inspired by James Bevel, an SCLC leader who suggested that teenagers and school-age children join nonviolent protests. King and others were skeptical at first, but eventually the campaign took place, organized by the SCLC and Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.

The sacrifices of the youth, who were attacked and jailed during the course of the campaign, cannot be understated. Images of police brutality and violence from onlookers spread across the country and eventually inspired action from then-President John F. Kennedy. The horrific series of events in Birmingham – including the bombing in September 1963 of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which killed four young, Black girls – led to the Civil Rights Act becoming law the following year.

Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia meets with Angeline Sutton of Mississippi on Capitol Hill in Washington, Aug. 3, 2021. Ms. Sutton came to Capitol Hill with Fair Fight, the voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams.

Needed: “A worldwide brotherhood”

Though sometimes pyrrhic, the victories in Birmingham shaped King. He came to eschew the “triple evils” of racism, militarism, and poverty because of the way each degraded people. His empathy sharpened his policy, and when he arrived in Memphis to stand with striking sanitation workers in 1968, he petitioned for their worth from both a labor-based perspective and simply as individuals.

That working-class message resonated regardless of age, race, or gender. King recognized the importance of meeting people where they were. His protests were practical: the right to sit anywhere on a bus, to eat at a lunch counter, to have decent working conditions and a living wage.  

The practicality of his message and its ultimate expansion beyond the Black community offer useful lessons for today’s social justice movements. Could Fair Fight, the voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams, address poverty and unemployment as well? As important as free and fair elections are, they are likely not top of mind to those struggling to pay rent or buy food. Instead of recruiting volunteers, could Fair Fight train unemployed peopled to do outreach and organizing, and in that way meet the people’s practical needs while also still focusing on election access and integrity? 

And what about Black Lives Matter? Known best for mobilizing much-needed protests against police violence, it could also identify day-to-day needs among the Black community and work to address them just as King tied his efforts to practical needs. 

Perhaps such versatility requires partnerships with various groups, another hallmark of King’s organizing model. While many of the key players from the Montgomery Improvement Association eventually founded the SCLC, the NAACP and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee operated outside King’s scope. Further, he received advice from the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, during the bus boycott, a partnership that lasted into the mid-1960s. While these partnerships, and the one in Birmingham with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, didn’t always go smoothly, they were generally fruitful. 

An excerpt from King’s final book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?,” is a stark reminder of how we were robbed of a 40-year-old King, a 50-year-old King, or an even older King, yet he gave us lessons for a lifetime. The key adaptation we must all make is to learn how to live peaceably among each other.

“The large house in which we live demands that we transform this worldwide neighborhood into a worldwide brotherhood,” he wrote. “Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.”

Growing up on the Colombian plains, I developed an early admiration for el trabajo de llano, literally the labor of the plains. The term refers to a work ritual that’s been practiced here for centuries. It instilled in me a close relationship with the territory and the region’s customs.

Twice a year in May-June and November-December, ranchers hire llaneros, local cowboys who employ traditional cattle-driving practices. Livestock is the economic core of this region. But large industries producing crude oil, rice, and oil palm have displaced many ranches, disrupting the heritage of local llaneros, or people of the plains.

These cowboys travel on wild and hardy horses descended from those brought by the Spaniards in the 16th century. The horses became companions of the llaneros, traveling long distances across the vast plains of the Orinoco River basin, in the eastern region of Casanare, Colombia, in search of wild cattle. They herd the cattle through song, form a rodeo, and guide them through branding and vaccination.

My grandfather was a traditional llanero, both a cattleman and horse tamer. He taught me to ride horses around when I learned to walk. I remember watching the cowboys gathering at 3 a.m. and sipping black coffee, preparing to start the strenuous work in the field. 

Nathalia Angarita

Several cowboys chase a calf toward a corral at La Colonia ranch in Casanare. Once in corrals, the animals can be vaccinated and branded.

Nathalia Angarita

Oscar Acosta gazes out at the plains. He strives to keep his traditional customs alive through "el trabajo de llano."

Their day began below a starry sky with the butchering of a cow for their twice-daily meals. The work lasts 15 hours daily, and
el trabajo de llano can stretch from four to 45 days of strenuous work under the hot sun, depending on the number of cattle. Women, meanwhile, prepare the food and traditionally work in the house.

“Llano work is a way of life for me and I’m proud of my cowboy skills, but times have changed a lot,” says Oscar Acosta, adding that many traditional llaneros are aging and “the descendants no longer preserve the traditions of their parents.” Mr. Acosta started training as a llanero when he was a young boy. Now in his 40s, he works to carry on the tradition.

Nathalia Angarita

A cowboy tames a wild horse during field work. Horses are "llaneros’" constant companions.

Nathalia Angarita

Magnolia and Yeraldine prepare beef and pork, plantains, yucca, and rice wraps for the men working in the fields.

Nathalia Angarita

A group of cowboys forms a rodeo as it moves a herd across the vast plains. "Llaneros" use cultural songs to gather cattle together.

Nathalia Angarita

An iron is heated for branding. The practice is controversial in many parts of the world, but is considered integral to herding among traditional "llaneros."

Nathalia Angarita

A llanero ladles oatmeal into a cow horn. Horns have many functions in the field. They can be used as an instrument to call the cattle from across the plains, and they can be fashioned into tools.

Reuters

A statue of Nelson Mandela is lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag at the Cape Town city hall in South Africa.

In the three decades since the Cold War, much of Africa has sought to engage the rest of the world with a certain neutrality. Its people have welcomed massive investment from China and lately from Russia, for example, while still maintaining ties with the West. That openness was aimed at accelerating economic growth and strengthening democracy.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Although China is engaged in infrastructure projects in more than 35 countries and trade with Russia is up 84% in just the past four years, the more harmful consequences were in plain view: a new scramble for Africa’s vast resources, more corruption, and an erosion of democracy.

Now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is prompting African countries to confront not just these vulnerabilities, but also a mindset enabling them. Many African leaders harbor historical resentments. While Europe colonized Africa, China and the then-Soviet Union in the late 20th century trained African liberation forces. In the United Nations debate last month over a Security Council resolution condemning Russia, Martin Kimani, Kenya’s ambassador to the U.N., warned that peace and prosperity must be built on higher principles than those of the last century.

“Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of empire,” he said. “We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.”

Africa’s “colonial mindset” still runs deep decades after independence. It has left generations of people feeling inferior and dependent. The crisis in Ukraine has exacerbated that sense of vulnerability, especially in terms of food. Ukrainian exports to Africa have been about $4 billion annually, 75% of which were agricultural products.

Concern over the war’s impact on food security as well as fuel supply was evident in how African countries voted on the resolution condemning Russia’s invasion. Twenty-eight of 54 countries backed the measure. Most of these were democracies. Another 17 abstained. These were countries with mainly authoritarian-leaning regimes, some with close military or ideological ties to Russia.

Kenya and Ghana, which strongly endorsed the resolution, import most of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia. Their willingness to put human rights and sovereignty above their material interests reflects the yearning for democracy and innovation broadly demanded by younger Africans born a generation or more after the end of colonialism.

That generation’s aspirations are reflected in initiatives like the Civic Tech Fund Africa, launched last November by a group of African and European nations to promote democracy through innovation projects started by young Africans in 11 initial countries. They are also reflected in themes explored by emerging African artists and writers who are turning a critical lens on their own societies. One example is Nigerian novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, who grappled with the weight of her great-grandfather’s role as a slave trader in a recent essay for The New Yorker.

“I was born almost 20 years after Britain officially handed over my country, Nigeria, to its people,” she told the BBC. “The one enduring effect that I find most bothersome is the way our former colonial rulers still loom large in our peoples’ minds, shaping the greater part of our self-image. What ‘the white people’ think and speak of us continues to mean more to many Africans than what we believe about ourselves. ... I am one of a new generation of Africans who believe more in the power of dreams than in the power of memories.”

Insights like hers echo the strong stand that many African democracies are taking against Russia’s war in Ukraine and for a freer way of thinking. Both Russia and China may be taking note.