Beneath the gilded cupolas of his ornate Orthodox Christian church, the Rev. Andriy Kliushev had been seeking for years to convince his small Ukrainian congregation to end its centuries-old loyalty to Moscow.

Little did he know that it would be Russians themselves, in the form of brutal occupying forces who posted a sniper on the roof of his church in the leafy Kyiv suburb of Irpin, and detained and beat church volunteers for days, who would eventually push his flock away from the Moscow-based church.

In mid-May, Father Andriy’s congregation, after witnessing a variety of atrocities, voted to break with the Russian Orthodox Church and its Moscow Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had firmly supported the war in Ukraine as a “metaphysical struggle.”

And last week, in an ecclesiastical earthquake that has rocked the Orthodox world, the leadership of Ukraine’s Moscow-loyalist church followed suit en masse, declaring the war “a violation of God’s commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill” and formally breaking its allegiance to Patriarch Kirill.

The schism is a striking result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has eroded the centurieslong bond between the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church – which counts 100 million believers among its ranks – and its adherents in Ukraine and elsewhere, who have been repulsed by the war.

Shaking off Stockholm syndrome

For the faithful at Father Andriy’s church of St. Mikolay, where a painting of the saint above the church door is disfigured by a bullet hole in the eye, the choice of independence from Moscow was not an easy one to make.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

The Rev. Andriy Kliushev stands for a portrait in his church of St. Mikolay in Irpin, Ukraine, on April 23, 2022, as he prepares to celebrate Easter. He long advocated independence from the Moscow patriarchate.

“Some people have Stockholm syndrome. They get beaten, their houses are destroyed, and they still support Kirill; I am shocked,” says Father Andriy, a tall priest with a welcoming smile, speaking in his church rich with the scent of burning candles and incense.

It took weeks of debate, even after the scale of destruction the Russians had wrought became clear, before church members would take the plunge, turning their back on the Moscow church that had enjoyed jurisdiction over them since 1686.

In doing so, they turned their back on an entire worldview.

When making its case for war, Moscow claims that Ukraine is an integral and brotherly part of a greater Russkii Mir, or “Russian World,” the historical and spiritual center of a neo-imperial project to bring together Russian speaking peoples and reunite former Soviet lands.

For President Putin – who proclaims a personal post-Soviet religious awakening – the loss of Ukrainian believers will be an especially painful casualty of Russia’s war, says the Rev. Anton Fomenko, a historian at the Kyiv National Pedagogical University and a Roman Catholic priest, who wrote his Ph.D. on the Russian Orthodox Church. 

“They greatly want to have communication with Kyiv, because Kyiv is ... the motherland of Russian Orthodoxy,” says Mr. Fomenko. “Here in Kyiv was the baptism of Slavic tribes that became Christians. It’s like when you have a tree; this tree has roots. If you cut the roots, the tree will die.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

An Orthodox church lies destroyed by Russian shelling of nearby Ukrainian positions in Irpin, Ukraine, on April 23, 2022.

Putin recalls Cain

The invasion has been a “catastrophe” for Moscow loyalists, he says. Such believers “felt after the beginning of the war that all their worldview has broken. They don’t know what to do now.”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church was granted semi-autonomy by Moscow, and renamed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate.

Since Russia seized Crimea and supported separatists in the Donbas in 2014, however, there has been a growing movement in Ukraine for a separate ecclesiastical body. In 2019, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formed and granted “autocephaly” by Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodoxy – a move rejected as illegal by Moscow.

The Ukraine invasion reignited a desire for full independence. When the war began, the leader of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphanius, said the “spirit of the antichrist operates in the leader of Russia,” and compared President Putin to Hitler.

Even Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the Moscow-loyalist church in Ukraine, denounced the invasion as a “repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother out of envy.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

The Rev. Petro Pavlenko stands for a portrait beside his Sviato-Pokrovska Russian Orthodox Church, which was damaged by an electrical fire, he says, as Orthodox priests prepare to celebrate Easter in Hostomel, Ukraine, on April 23, 2022.

Blessing both sides

Navigating this minefield have been parish priests, often caught between the weight of Orthodox canonical tradition and the incendiary politics of the war. One man who exemplifies this dilemma is the Rev. Petro Pavlenko, a gray-bearded Orthodox priest always loyal to the Moscow patriarchate, who has big hands and wears a large cross around his neck.

“This war is a big mistake. It should not happen – it’s a sin,” he says, speaking in his icon-plastered church in Hostomel, the suburb north of Kyiv where Russian paratroopers landed at the military airport at the start of the war.

Father Petro says he supported and blessed Ukrainian troops before they were forced to withdraw, and even spray-painted the words “never give up” on a nearby shop, to encourage them.

But he then risked controversy by also blessing advancing Russian tanks and troops, an action that he says aimed to bring peace, so they would “get back to their homes and motherland,” but instead prompted local suspicions.

“I blessed [the Russians] and I asked for the war to end,” says Father Petro. “I told them, ‘You don’t have to kill Ukrainians. We are brothers.’”

Father Petro says he received threats after Russian forces withdrew. He spray-painted anti-war messages on buildings around his Sviato-Pokrovska church, and on a side door wrote the words “We’re peaceful Orthodox people. Don’t touch our church.”

“We are Ukrainian. We love Ukraine. We pray for victory,” says Father Petro, adding that the war is “breaking the laws of God.” Still, he avoided criticizing Patriarch Kirill’s support for the war as a battle against “sin,” and his sympathy for President Putin’s concept of a “Russian World.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A church door reading “Peace unto you.” The Rev. Petro Pavlenko prepares his Sviato-Pokrovska Russian Orthodox Church to celebrate Easter in Hostomel, Ukraine, on April 23, 2022. Father Petro courted controversy by blessing invading Russian troops, which he says he also did for defending Ukrainian forces, in a bid to end the war.

A war for existence

“Russia has an imperial nationalism, and there is no place for Ukrainians as a nation,” says Archpriest Andriy Dudchenko, a doctor of theology at the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy. “In their view, the Ukrainian people and their land is part of Russia.”

Still, the war has backfired on any Kremlin aims to bring Ukrainian believers closer.

“What I see from my fellow priests ... now they understand it is impossible to be under the Moscow patriarchate since the war started,” says Father Andriy. “Now they understand that Russkii Mir is not reality; it is a mental construct to enslave Ukrainians.”

That message was clear at Easter, when Ukrainian Orthodox priests blessed soldiers on the front lines, buried the dead, and accused Russia of breaking divine law.

In Kyiv, scores of Ukrainians lined up outside St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral, waiting to be sprayed with holy water.

“Russia chose not to develop, but to kill its neighbors,” the Rev. Oleksandr Shmurygin of the Ukrainian church told believers, as he doused them. “This suffering that we are going through will be like gold passing through fire. This is caused by the freedom we have chosen to follow.

“This is a war for the existence of each one of us. Don’t forget that.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

Evan Vucci/AP

President Joe Biden looks at the crowd after attending mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Uvalde, Texas, as he and first lady Jill Biden try to offer comfort to residents after a school shooting, May 29, 2022. He pledged action in the shooting's wake. A bipartisan group of senators is looking at possible legislation to expand background checks for gun buyers, and to encourage more states to pass red flag laws to remove firearms from potentially dangerous individuals.

“Do something!” a protester cried out as President Joe Biden left a church service Sunday in Uvalde, Texas.

“We will,” the president responded, pointing to the demonstrators as he climbed into his limousine. 

For the second time this month, President Biden and the first lady visited a grieving community following a gun massacre – first in Buffalo, New York, where a racist assailant killed 10 Black people at a grocery store, and then in Uvalde, where 19 elementary school children and two teachers were killed in the worst school shooting in nearly a decade. 

Yet once again, the seeming disconnect over federal action on gun safety appears poised to play out. Overwhelming majorities of the public have long favored certain measures aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. And as in the aftermath of other mass shootings, expectations are slim to none that Congress will ultimately accomplish anything. 

That protesters showed up for Mr. Biden’s visit to Uvalde is, in a way, a hopeful sign that people haven’t completely given up on government. So, too, is the March for Our Lives gun safety rally in Washington planned for June 11. The House Judiciary Committee will hold an emergency session Thursday on a package of gun measures. And bipartisan Senate leaders on the gun issue are conferring virtually this week, during their recess.

“Progress is possible,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a lead advocate for gun safety, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” 

History shows societal problems that once seemed unsolvable can, through painstaking advocacy – and questioning of long-held assumptions – be addressed. Airline hijackings, common in the 1960s and early ’70s, are now rare. The prevalence of smoking among adults has declined dramatically. Drinking and driving has been stigmatized, and new technologies offer hope for progress. 

Democracy scholar William Howell takes the long view on systemic reform. “This is the work not of this calendar year, but of our generation,” says Professor Howell, director of the Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago. He points to the Progressive era of the early 20th century, when a spate of new challenges sparked fundamental change in U.S. government institutions – including the presidency, the president’s relationship to Congress, and the rise of the modern administrative state. 

“Incredibly transformative work was undertaken during that period,” Professor Howell says. “I wish those forces could be marshaled again.” 

Still, the forces arrayed against even the most incremental steps to address gun violence are profound. Political polarization, lobbyists, Senate rules, and impassioned single-issue voters are all hindering action. Moreover, the roots of today’s seeming stasis lie, in part, in the wishes of the Founding Fathers, who sought to thwart a potential “tyranny of the majority” by constructing checks and balances within and among the branches of government. 

Gun policies with public support

When it comes to gun policy proposals that enjoy strong public support – for example, 88% support for requiring background checks on all gun sales in the latest Politico/Morning Consult poll – the persistent failure of Congress to act speaks to “systemic dysfunction,” Professor Howell says. 

This dynamic – where large majorities of Americans support certain policies on prominent issues, but Congress nevertheless fails to act – pertains not just to gun violence. On abortion rights, immigration reform, and climate change, long-running major polls of U.S. public opinion point to strong popular support for specific, middle-of-the-road solutions, and yet Congress has repeatedly failed to pass legislation. 

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Activists join Senate Democrats outside the U.S. Capitol to demand action on gun control legislation after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, in Washington, May 26, 2022. On a number of big issues including guns, public consensus in favor of specific legislative responses has run up against partisan gridlock in Congress.

The sources of this gridlock are multifold. Increasing political polarization and increasing uniformity of views within parties, exacerbated by gerrymandering of congressional districts, leave less room for compromise. In this polarized environment, members of Congress often fear the wrath of their voters if they take any position that bucks party orthodoxy. This is particularly so in primaries, where a challenger to an incumbent can promote more absolutist positions, and win over the activist base – especially when turnout is low. 

Another factor goes to the original design of the Senate: Each state gets two senators, regardless of population size. Over time, population shifts have meant a shrinking portion of the American population elects a growing number of senators – a trend that gives disproportionate clout to more rural, conservative states.

“We’re getting close now to a point where 70% of Americans will live in 15 states. That means 30% of Americans elect 70 senators,” says Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar of government at the American Enterprise Institute. “It’s certainly part of the growing sense of illegitimacy of the political system.”

Layered on this phenomenon of growing “malapportionment” is the filibuster, the longstanding Senate mechanism that requires a supermajority of 60 votes to pass most legislation. With the Senate’s partisan split at 50-50, that makes all but the most essential legislation well nigh impossible to pass. Talk of filibuster reform has foundered. 

At this point, it’s easy to get discouraged about the state of American democracy. There are things presidents can do on their own via executive action. Last month, Mr. Biden cracked down on untraceable “ghost guns.” President Donald Trump banned “bump stocks,” which allow a weapon to fire in rapid succession, after the 2017 massacre in Las Vegas.

But other ideas on the table require Congress to enact. In addition to expanding background checks for gun buyers, the bipartisan group of senators meeting virtually this week is looking at ways to incentivize more states to pass so-called red flag laws, which allow a court to remove firearms from someone deemed potentially dangerous. 

Some measures that poll well are reportedly off the table for now, including raising the age for the purchase of semiautomatic weapons to 21. The shooters in Buffalo and Uvalde were both 18. 

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms, looms large over efforts to regulate firearms. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court struck down a California law banning the sale of some semiautomatic weapons to people under 21. 

And in the Supreme Court, observers expect the new conservative supermajority to broaden Second Amendment rights soon in a New York handgun case – the high court’s first major ruling on gun rights in more than a decade. Trump-appointed jurists are key to the outcomes in both cases, and represent an important part of the former president’s legacy. 

“The ability of legislatures to make policy depends on those laws being upheld in courts,” says Susan Liebell, political science chair at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. 

“And when you have minority control in the U.S. Senate,” she adds, referring to malapportionment, “that creates a judiciary that does not reflect the views of the majority of Americans.” Professor Liebell notes, too, that Mr. Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 without a majority of the popular vote, adding another “minority” aspect to his judicial nominees. 

Abortion, the judiciary, and Congress

Abortion is another hot-button social issue that is running into Mr. Trump’s legacy. As with gun rights, the three justices appointed by Mr. Trump are expected soon to tip the balance in a major abortion ruling – one overturning the Supreme Court ruling establishing a nationwide right to abortion. 

Polling consistently shows strong public support for abortion rights, with limits. But Congress has failed to act in a way that would codify in law the court’s two key abortion precedents, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 

A recent Senate vote on legislation advertised as codification of Roe and Casey, in fact, was not. It was more expansive, and went down 49-51, failing even to win the votes of two Republican senators who support abortion rights. The vote was seen as largely symbolic, and for some Democrats, aimed at creating fodder for the November midterm elections. 

The practice of ginning up campaign issues, not solutions, is common, and yet another cause for discouragement among democracy scholars. The approaching midterms may well present another roadblock to action on gun violence.

“Republicans don’t really want to solve this problem, because that potentially demobilizes people before the election,” says Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America think tank. “Democrats also don’t really want to solve the problem either – or at least enough of them don’t – because it’s a great campaign issue.”

Still, the horrific nature of recent events gives some veteran Congress-watchers faint hope for at least a modest measure aimed at reducing gun violence. 

“I think there’s a small chance that we’ll get some kind of watered-down gun bill that will get 60 votes,” says Mr. Ornstein, referencing legislation on background checks. “A small chance.”

Chris Seward/AP/File

A sign for at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is shown Jan. 4, 2020. With a mandate from Congress, a base renaming commission has proposed new names for bases currently named after Confederate officers from the Civil War. Fort Bragg is slated to become Fort Liberty.

Nine U.S. military bases named in honor of Confederate soldiers are getting new names under legislation passed in the wake of nationwide anti-racism protests sparked by the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

The congressionally created Naming Commission “sought to find names that would be inspirational to the Soldiers and civilians who serve on our Army posts, and to the communities who support them,” chairman Michelle Howard, a retired admiral, said in a statement last week. 

The eight-member panel – which includes a former commandant of the Marine Corps, a general who chaired the history department at West Point, and Ms. Howard, who is the first Black woman to command a Navy ship and first woman ever to reach the rank of four-star admiral – received more than 34,000 suggestions from the public. 

After narrowing their choices down to fewer than 100 earlier this year, the panel selected the final list unanimously. Slated to be put in place by 2023, pending approval by Congress and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, it will mark the first time U.S. bases will bear the name of women or Black military heroes. 

In a move with bipartisan resonance, the choices also include a former Republican president and the value of liberty. “We were reminded that courage has no boundaries by man-made categories of race, color, gender, religion, or creed,” Ms. Howard said. 

Here are the newly chosen names (along with the current base names) and the story behind them.

Fort Barfoot (Fort Pickett, Virginia)

Under fire in Italy during World War II, Van T. Barfoot crawled alone to a German machine gun nest and destroyed it. He moved to another nest and did the same thing. A third German gun crew surrendered to Technical Sergeant Barfoot after watching him in action. But his day was only half over, the commission notes. As German forces counterattacked, he stopped the lead tank in its tracks with a Bazooka. The other tanks turned around. His Medal of Honor citation praises his “aggressive determination in the face of pointblank fire.” A member of the Choctaw tribe, retired Colonel Barfoot made news at age 90 after installing a 21-foot flagpole in his yard against the aesthetic wishes of his homeowners association, uniting Democrats and Republicans who convinced the association to relent.

Fort Cavazos (Fort Hood, Texas)

Raised on a Texas ranch, Richard Cavazos led a company of Puerto Rican soldiers during the Korean War, earning the Distinguished Service Cross – the nation’s second-highest honor for valor. In Vietnam he was the exceptional commander who fought in the field with his infantry battalion and earned the Distinguished Service Cross again. He was the first Latino American to become a one-star and, later, a four-star general. 

Fort Eisenhower (Fort Gordon, Georgia)

At the outbreak of World War II, Dwight Eisenhower held the rank of lieutenant colonel; by 1943 he was a four-star general leading combined ground, air, and sea forces on D-day “in the greatest amphibious landing in history,” the commission notes. Later, serving two terms as the nation’s chief executive, President Eisenhower “forged a moderate path that oversaw eight years of national prosperity at home and relative peace abroad.” 

Fort Gregg-Adams (Fort Lee, Virginia)

Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg helped to desegregate the Army “from the ground up” when he applied for Officer Candidate School in 1948, later commanding a supply battalion in Vietnam. He also desegregated the Fort Lee Officers’ Club, where he held his retirement ceremony. 

In 1944, 25 year-old Charity Adams was tapped to command the first unit of Black women to serve in war. They were “a lifeline,” delivering some 65,000 letters a day to the 7 million soldiers. “Gender discrimination limited her promotion to lieutenant colonel, the highest rank attainable by any woman during the war,” the commission notes. “But her effectiveness was made clear when it took three units of men to replace her battalion after they disbanded.”

Fort Johnson (Fort Polk, Louisiana)

Wounded by a World War I German raiding party sent to “kill as many sleeping soldiers as possible,” Pvt. William Henry Johnson sounded the alarm before “single-handedly” fighting off some two dozen raiders, including using his bolo knife “at close quarters” to rescue a wounded comrade being carried off. He was dubbed “Black Death,” but upon returning to Jim Crow America, then-Sergeant Johnson was not awarded equal benefits as white troops, the commission notes. “Unable to effectively work as a result of his wounds,” Mr. Johnson died destitute in 1929. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2015. 

Fort Liberty (Fort Bragg, North Carolina)

“Perhaps no value has proved more essential to the United States and the history of its military than Liberty,” the commission notes, adding that it was the overwhelming choice of the local community.

Fort Moore (Fort Benning, Georgia)

The base will be renamed after a married couple, “exemplifying the service of modern military families.” Hal Moore led the first major engagement of the Vietnam War, in which 80 troops were killed in 72 hours, demonstrating “how devastating [war] could become,” the commission notes, “though Moore’s skill as a commander undoubtedly reduced the losses.”

On the home front, Hal’s wife Julia Moore and their five children were moved off-base – then standard Army policy for families once husbands were deployed. News of deaths were “delivered by taxi drivers unprepared to relay such information.” Julia began accompanying cabbies to “give compassionate condolences.” Her complaints to the Pentagon led to the creation of casualty notification teams and survivor support networks.

Fort Novosel (Fort Rucker, Alabama)

After flying bomber planes during World War II and in Korea, Michael Novosel Sr., volunteered to serve in Vietnam, too. Upon learning the Air Force had too many senior officers, he resigned his commission as a lieutenant colonel and flew helicopters as a warrant officer, evacuating combat casualties. He flew 2,542 missions, including rescuing his aviator son, whose own helicopter was shot down. One week later, Michael Novosel, Jr., returned the favor by rescuing his dad, who was ultimately awarded the Medal of Honor for valor.

Fort Walker (Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia)

A skilled surgeon, Mary Edwards Walker volunteered to serve as a military doctor in the Civil War, but was turned away. Refusing offers to work as a nurse, Dr. Walker proved herself treating wounded fighters and was ultimately hired as the Army’s first female surgeon. Crossing enemy lines to treat troops, she was arrested as a Confederate spy then later freed in a prisoner exchange. Nominated for a Medal of Honor by Gen. William Sherman, Walker became the first – and only – woman to be awarded one in 1865. In her retirement years, she was “derided, detained, and arrested” campaigning for equal rights for women.

Year after year, wet season after wetter season, water keeps flowing down New Orleans’ streets – in Tremé and across the Upper Ninth Ward and the Seventh Ward, which Angela Chalk calls home. Just a few inches of rapid rainfall can turn the neighborhoods into a pint-sized Mississippi River, aluminum and plastic trash gushing down the potholed pavement.

Hurricane Katrina changed the city’s fabric in 2005. Since then, as New Orleans resurrects itself, a host of suits and ties and, presumably, good intentions have visited neighborhoods like the Seventh and Ninth Wards. Promises are made but rarely unfold in these historically diverse communities that were among those that took Katrina’s brunt. Meanwhile, rainfall only seems to gather faster every year. 

In Ms. Chalk’s mind, you can only sit and listen to others’ ideas for so long. Rather than wait for local government to gradually intervene, she and a host of neighborhood organizations decided to pick up shovels and get to work themselves. In 2017 Ms. Chalk’s advocacy group, Healthy Community Services, joined forces with the environmental outreach group Water Wise Gulf South, a collective launched in 2013 as part of a broader movement of local citizen engagement.

Engrained in their work and their collective’s message is a gospel of the potential that green infrastructure holds for underserved communities like theirs. The effort is led by Black people and driven by the community through education and outreach. Their approach is to listen to residents in each neighborhood – those who know it best – and then act on their insight. So far, their impact measures an impressive planting of 500 trees, as well as 160 green infrastructure projects, from building rain gardens to installing permeable pavers in driveways. 

“Government is slow. We can’t wait for government,” says Ms. Chalk, a longtime community organizer. “The climate is rapidly changing, and residents are engaged. They want change, and they want change now, and community-driven action is leading that charge.”  

The impact of climate change is bearing down on cities like New Orleans faster than governments are equipped to react. Meanwhile, Americans are growing antsy for a demonstrated response as scientists’ predictions of a warming planet become increasingly dire. In response, community initiatives are gaining ground as they work to fill the existing void, says Jordan Fischbach, the Water Institute of the Gulf’s director of planning and policy research. Communities are viewing “stormwater as a collective problem,” he says. “But, also, something that all residents need to be aware of, and to be part of that solution.” 

Xander Peters

Among Water Wise Gulf South's projects across New Orleans is this rain garden built outside of St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in the Upper Ninth Ward. The assortment of native plants helps drain excess water during flooding events in the neighborhood.

Green versus gray infrastructure 

New Orleans was flooding more frequently than the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood risk maps might suggest, the folks behind Water Wise Gulf South realized as far back as 2014. So they set about conducting surveys and identifying the city’s neighborhoods that were the most low-lying.

Their intention was to reimagine “how we could live with water in a more effective way that creates opportunities,” says Jeff Supak, one of the executive directors at Water Wise Gulf South.  

But as their plan came together, the group realized they lacked resident involvement. So, they took to the community through a white-tent, revival-style outreach effort, touring New Orleans’ neighborhoods with their green infrastructure message. Their takeaway eventually became the basis for Water Wise Gulf South’s three-part champions program: a workshop on green infrastructure (on hold during pandemic times), in which more than 500 locals have participated so far; a tour of local green infrastructure projects, such as bioswales and rain gardens; and a “visioning workshop,” in which residents identify problems and work with WWGS to map out a plan of action.

Ms. Chalk invited Water Wise Gulf South to build a bioswale – a vegetative ditch that collects runoff water – in her backyard as a demonstration for her neighbors. One of the Seventh Ward’s first bioswales, it has sometimes been a stop on the green infrastructure tours. 

In contrast are seawalls, roads, curbs. All made out of concrete, gray infrastructure describes itself. It’s artificial, lifeless by design. It has helped build the world we recognize through architectural marvels like the One World Trade Center. But it has also brought worlds down, like when the levees failed in New Orleans after Katrina and as much as 80% of the city was flooded, with more than $100 billion in damage.   

Whereas gray infrastructure is humankind’s doing, green infrastructure involves nature’s methods. That might include big projects like permeable surfaces and human-made wetlands, but also measures as modest as setting up rain barrels next to your house, or planting trees that, once mature, will gather gallons of excess water by the thousands. It’s arguably the oldest of concepts in existence, but one that’s being seen anew through the lens of local stormwater management. 

In the post-World War II era, cities across the United States built cutting-edge storm and wastewater systems. In some cases, those municipalities’ populations grew; in others, they shrank. But in both cases, continual investment in and improvements to those systems were often neglected, with repair costs increasing the longer cities waited.

The result is a crux most local governments have only begun to grapple with. New Orleans is among the nation’s most prominent examples. The city, much of which was built over a boggy swamp, has a quagmire on its hands. ­With a poverty level hovering around 23%, according to U.S. Census data, its tax base doesn’t produce the funding needed for projects of such scope.

It is unfortunate, but “one of the major ways you get change quickly in big infrastructure being built is a disaster,” Dr. Fischbach says, referring to the federal government’s $14.5 billion investment in New Orleans’ hurricane storm damage and risk reduction system post-Katrina.

“That shouldn’t be the way we invest,” Dr. Fischbach adds. 

On top of that is the threat of a warming planet, experts say. Its impacts are becoming apparent in everyday ways, like waking up to standing water in the backyard.

That’s what sent Katherine Prevost searching for solutions, which led to Ms. Chalk introducing her to the local, do-it-yourself green infrastructure effort. A lifelong Upper Ninth Ward resident and the executive director of Bunny Friend Neighborhood Association – one of the groups partnering with Water Wise Gulf South – Ms. Prevost had had enough of seeing their streets slip beneath the water. 

“These are environmentally unjust neighborhoods” already, Ms. Prevost says of existing hyperlocal risks, like the area’s heat-dome effect, in which an excess of concrete increases the temperature. “If we don’t do it, who’s going to do it? You have to care about where you live at.” 

Courtesy of Katherine Prevost

These permeable pavers, installed in front of Katherine Prevost's house in New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward, allow excess water to drain from the street, which helps prevent flooding.

Ms. Prevost has “greened” 15 of her neighbors’ residences so far. That’s included planting trees and installing permeable pavers in a few driveways, which allow water to soak back into the ground. One driveway can cost up to $5,000 due to an increase in the cost of pavers, paid for through grant funding for which the residents apply. They also make a point of hiring local help for construction work in order to keep the money in the community.

Engage, educate, empower

The work Water Wise Gulf South and its initiatives have accomplished through partnerships with local neighborhood associations is a looking glass into how Americans are coping with crises. On one hand, a resident-driven initiative in a historically marginalized community is empowering. On the other, it reveals local leaders’ inability to aid their citizenry.

But Dr. Fischbach sees the dueling perspectives as complementary. 

Grassroots action “helps to build the political will to actually think about this more systematically,” he says. 

In other words, a public that’s educated about green infrastructure understands the solutions they could ask of local government. Then, local government can prioritize the proposed solutions. Small-scale projects such as those underway through Water Wise Gulf South can also lead to large-scale projects at the city level, which the group’s new policy arm hopes to encourage. 

But their work is primarily focused in neighborhoods right now. “We engage, educate, and empower residents to make decisions that are best for them,” Ms. Chalk says.

“I suffered the same effects that they suffer when we have flooding,” she adds.

But she’s seeing a difference lately. Since Ms. Chalk began developing green infrastructure projects in the Seventh Ward, the impact of flooding from just a few inches of rain has gradually subsided.

“I know in the Seventh Ward, we’re approaching 50,000 gallons of water retention or infiltration,” Ms. Chalk says of the excess water their work has collected from the city’s streets.

Their community-driven method works, she says. “It gives a holistic view of how to mitigate climate change.”

Most Americans believe that Thomas Edison invented the motion picture with his Kinetoscope machine in 1891. The French give credit for this development to Auguste and Louis Lumière, who hosted the first commercial motion picture screening in Paris in December 1895.   

Sometimes history gets it wrong. In “The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies,” filmmaker and author Paul Fischer makes a compelling case that the real inventor was Louis Le Prince. On Oct. 14, 1888, after four years of work, Le Prince assembled three family members and a friend as actors at his house in Leeds, England, and, using a hand-cranked camera, photographed them as they moved in a garden. The result, Fischer declares, was “the first motion picture ever shot in human history.”

But more than the history of the motion picture, it is a mystery about a possible murder.

Le Prince was a polymath who was born in France, worked in England, and became a naturalized American. He had worked as a teacher, painter, industrial draftsman, and potter. He was an amateur – unlike Edison, he had no reputation, no employees, and no outside funding. But he was a very practical man, and he immediately filed and received a British patent for his invention.  

Aided by better-quality film produced by the American George Eastman, Le Prince made plans to reveal his discovery in New York and sent his wife and son ahead to secure an appropriate venue. Meanwhile, he headed to France to take care of some business with his brother, Albert. After meeting his brother in Dijon, he boarded a train to Paris for the return trip. But he never arrived in Paris. Given the absence of a concrete itinerary and the available communications of the time, it took several weeks before Le Prince’s family realized he was missing. An extensive search was mounted, but no trace of the inventor was ever found. Le Prince’s wife, Elizabeth, bereft and living with their children in New York, could only look on from a great distance and wonder what had happened. 

"The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies," by Paul Fischer, Simon & Schuster, 416 pp.

When Edison’s machine was revealed several years later, it bore a striking resemblance to Le Prince’s invention and was different from Edison’s previous efforts. The mourning by Le Prince’s wife was soon surpassed by her anger at Edison, who she believed had stolen her husband’s ideas and probably murdered him. Even worse, because her husband was missing and not declared dead, she could not sue to protect her husband’s patents for seven years.  

Edison, despite his “aw-shucks” common-man demeanor, was a ruthless businessman with very sharp elbows. He frequently resorted to elaborate lawsuits to bankrupt his opponents. But would Edison go so far as to murder a competitor? 

Readers of Graham Moore’s novel “The Last Days of Night,” which fictionalized the late 19th-century fight between Edison and George Westinghouse to spread electricity around the United States, will find echoes of that book – and more evidence of Edison’s hard-nosed
approach to business – in this real-life story of technology, skulduggery, and courtroom battles.

The invention of motion pictures was less of a “eureka” moment than a product of small, incremental improvements. The people involved were unusual and often unsavory characters. Fischer’s adept character sketches bring to life dozens of people who played a role in the creation of motion pictures and help reveal the cutthroat world inhabited by late 19th-century inventors.  

What knits the book together is the mystery that has lasted for more than a century. Why and how did Le Prince disappear? Like any good mystery, it features unreliable witnesses, suspicious motives, and scant evidence. 

Nothing supports Mrs. Le Prince’s belief that Edison was responsible for her husband’s death. A generation ago, a group of documentary filmmakers working on a television program about Le Prince concluded that he had been pulled from the Seine in Paris shortly after going missing and was buried in an unmarked grave. But Fischer convincingly bats away that hypothesis.  

The author thinks that the most likely suspect was the inventor’s brother, Albert. He owed Louis a great deal of money and was the only person to see him board the train to Paris. And, contrary to his assertions that he was leading the search, Albert apparently never reported his brother missing. 

It seems a convincing hypothesis, but as Fischer notes, “The identity of his killer, like the role he might have gone on to have in shaping cinema history, will never be known with certainty.”

AP

A shepherd drives his flock outside Berdzor in the predominantly Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, toward the end of the 2020 war.

No one knows how the war in Ukraine will end, whether Russia loses or gains control of territory – or whether talks lead to a hybrid political compromise. A glimpse of the latter is now playing out across the Black Sea in negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The longtime rivals may be showing what’s at stake in Ukraine.
A year and a half after their 44-day war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, the two neighbors are negotiating something more than borders or ethnic sovereignty. Having lost the war, Armenia has put a novel issue on the table: whether 20,000 to 25,000 Armenians left living under Azerbaijani control should be granted a guarantee of basic rights such as equality and freedom of religion.
In other words, should they be treated as individuals first and not as an “other” with a group identity, but rather as people who fully enjoy the protection of democratic values?
“The Karabakh issue is not a matter of territory but of rights,” declared Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in a remarkable speech in April that dropped demands for ethnic self-determination of Armenians living in that region.
His new framing of the issue was endorsed in May by the European Union, which is mediating between the two countries – a role that Russia once had when it helped end the war in 2020. It is necessary, said President of the European Council Charles Michel, “that the rights and security of the ethnic Armenian population in Karabakh be addressed.”
Azerbaijan holds the upper hand in the talks, which makes it uncertain if it will agree to Mr. Pashinyan’s proposal. Many Armenians oppose the idea and are protesting in the capital. Yet as the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, told the BBC at the end of the war: “Do you know that there are villages in the neighboring Georgia, where Armenians and Azerbaijanis live together in the same village? They live together in Russia, they live together in Ukraine, they live together in Azerbaijan, in many other parts of the world. ... Why can they live there and cannot live here?”
It remains to be seen if he will be magnanimous in victory. Yet as Ukraine battles with Russia over what the Kremlin claims is a fight for restoring the greatness of ethnic Russians, perhaps Azerbaijan and Armenia might show that a civic identity, grounded in universal principles, helps ensure long-term peace.