2025
January
13
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

January 13, 2025
Error loading media: File could not be played
 
00:0000:0000:00
00:00

TODAY’S INTRO

Where kindness meets crisis

In the film “Love Actually,” the narrator looks at the scene in an airport arrivals gate – the hugs and the tears and the laughter – and feels hope for humanity. “General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that,” the narrator says. “It seems to me that love is everywhere.”

I think of that as I read Ali Martin’s story today about Californians’ response to the Los Angeles fires. News must meet hatred and greed head-on. But there are other stories to tell, depending on where we look – and not just during crises. Today, you can read about Megan Walsh and others determined to help, and feel a bit more conviction that love is indeed everywhere.

You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.

A deeper look

This police unit put away its riot gear. Now it walks and talks with protesters.

American police often use force to manage unruly crowds. Reforms from Europe emphasize talking to protesters. Some U.S. police departments are giving it a try.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Dialogue unit officers talk with people gathered at a rally in support of the Palestinian cause, in Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 24, 2024.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 15 Min. )

At a pro-Palestinian street protest in Columbus, Ohio, last fall, demonstrators march to the rhythm of liberation chants, punctuated by occasional horns from passing cars. “Free, free Palestine,” they cry, waving flags and banners.

But mingling among the demonstrators are four uniformed police officers wearing powder-blue police vests emblazoned with “Columbus Police Dialogue.” One of them is Sgt. Steve Dyer, the team leader of a special unit that talks with protesters rather than confronting them with riot gear.

“Their goal is to have their voices heard,” Sergeant Dyer says. “We will walk and work with those who are there to peacefully protest.” By walking with and talking to protesters, police hope to build legitimacy – a bridge of communication that could deescalate potential conflicts.

This kind of policing stems from a more nuanced understanding of crowd dynamics, researchers say. It seeks to measure how officers’ words and deeds can steer participants toward peaceful self-expression.

It appears the approach is working. Since October 2023, there have been more than 50 pro-Palestinian demonstrations with a total of about 13,000 protesters in Columbus. During this time, police made only three arrests, despite “significant public order challenges.”

“There’s a groundswell of reform bubbling up from within the profession,” says Edward Maguire, a criminologist at Arizona State University. “That reform looks very promising.”

This police unit put away its riot gear. Now it walks and talks with protesters.

Collapse

Under a fading late-fall sun, protesters in support of the Palestinian cause are starting to gather in front of Ohio’s white-columned Statehouse.

They arrive alone, or in twos and threes, wearing kaffiyehs, sneakers, and puffer jackets. Most are carrying Palestinian flags and handmade signs protesting Israel’s aggression.

They’ve come to downtown Columbus on a Sunday afternoon, leaving the campus of Ohio State University to meet near the Statehouse’s frontispiece, a statue of President William McKinley, an Ohio son assassinated in 1901. The protest today follows a week of campus events on the conflict in Gaza, organized by the group Students for Justice in Palestine.

Around the corner, past the Holocaust Memorial monument, three police cruisers are waiting. From the McKinley statue, they remain out of sight.

But mingling among the demonstrators are four uniformed officers wearing powder-blue police vests emblazoned with “Columbus Police Dialogue.”

Jineen Musa, a student leader wearing round, tortoiseshell glasses and a black hoodie, is holding a bullhorn to her lips. “Don’t talk to any cops, even the dialogue cops!” she says, going on to announce the protest is about to start.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Protesters leave the Ohio Statehouse grounds to march during a pro-Palestinian rally.

Some have already talked with officers who have radioed the information to Sgt. Steve Dyer, the dialogue unit’s team leader at the steps of the Statehouse.

He learns they plan to march north behind a black pickup truck as they protest on one of the city’s main roads. Now Sergeant Dyer can alert the nine-officer bicycle patrol that will help direct traffic during the demonstration. The cruisers will follow the protesters. At the same time, the dialogue team will continue to mingle among the crowd.

There are only a few units in the United States specially trained for this type of policing. Columbus police try to ensure that marchers are able to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly. At the same time, they use engagement and dialogue with an aim to maintain peace and order.

“Their goal is to have their voices heard,” Sergeant Dyer says. “We will walk and work with those who are there to peacefully protest.”

His department’s dialogue unit has made Columbus a testing ground for a new approach to managing public demonstrations and other mass events.

“It’s been more of a one-way conversation in the past,” says Robert Sagle, a deputy chief of police in Columbus who oversees the dialogue team. Officers would warn protest leaders not to break the law. “Then, once that conversation was over, we returned to our command posts.”

Police officers are now trying to do more than issue warnings. Staying on the ground and walking with and talking to protesters, police hope to build legitimacy – a bridge of communication that could de-escalate potential conflicts.

This kind of policing stems from a more nuanced understanding of crowd dynamics, researchers say. It seeks to measure how officers’ words and deeds can steer participants toward peaceful self-expression.

As word has spread of what Columbus is doing, the department has begun to train police officers from other cities in crowd management. Last July, its dialogue officers worked outside the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to help facilitate order and defuse tensions during protests.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Sgt. Steve Dyer conducts a briefing at police headquarters Nov. 24, 2024.

Other law enforcement agencies have also been piloting new police approaches to protests and other public events, says Edward Maguire, a criminologist at Arizona State University who has studied how protesters perceive police.

In a country with about 18,000 police agencies, reform is diffuse and uneven; what works in Columbus may not work in a small town. Other departments still rely on a militarized type of policing, especially during racial justice protests, he says.

But Dr. Maguire sees signs that more departments are starting to rethink how to manage crowds. “There’s a groundswell of reform bubbling up from within the profession, and that reform looks very promising.”

Columbus is a case study into these kinds of reforms. Still, the violent responses of its police department during the racial justice protests of 2020 still hover over it.

The legacy of George Floyd protests as unrest over Gaza grows

The route of today’s protest in support of Gaza will pass the same corner where demonstrations, some of them violent, took place in May 2020, after a white police officer in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd.

Those events tapped a wellspring of racial tension in Columbus, say local activists. The demonstrations were animated by the pent-up frustration of people who didn’t trust Columbus’ mostly white police force.

As in many U.S. cities, the Columbus police were unprepared for the intensity and duration of the protests that followed. It was a destabilizing experience to try to maintain peace and order, many say, in a crowd directing its anger precisely at them.

Kyle Robertson/The Columbus Dispatch/AP/File
Columbus police use pepper spray on demonstrators during racial justice protests in 2020. The city paid $5.75 million to those injured.

It also exposed a failure of civil leadership during a time of crisis, says Robert Meader, a police commander at the time. “These riots hit overnight, and we were all caught by surprise.”

Many police officers working 12-hour shifts showed restraint in the face of insults and volleys of bricks and bottles. Black officers were often singled out for abuse.

“The intensity of what happened in 2020 was nothing like anything I experienced as a police officer before,” says Sgt. Kolin Straub, a Black officer who worked the front lines.

Still, police responded aggressively, using rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, and other violent tactics against protesters. Dozens were injured, including those protesting peacefully. Police made 147 arrests and fired 1,370 rounds of munitions, according to a city-commissioned report.

In July 2020, over 30 people filed a federal lawsuit against Columbus police, seeking damages for unnecessary brutality and violations of their constitutional rights.

In December 2021, Columbus settled the lawsuit, paying out $5.75 million in damages. As part of the settlement, a federal judge barred Columbus police from “using nonlethal force, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, wooden pellets, and more on nonviolent protesters.”

“This case is the sad tale of police officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok,” wrote U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley. His injunction against these tactics applied to police responses to acts of civil disobedience, including occupying sidewalks or streets, or “passively resisting police orders.”

The ruling rocked a department that was already in turmoil. Columbus Police Chief Thomas Quinlan was forced out in January 2021, and 100 of 1,900 city police officers accepted buyout offers, joining those who quit by the end of 2020.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
A protester with a bullhorn speaks as a dialogue officer stands in the crowd.

In June 2021, Mayor Andrew Ginther, a Democrat who had clashed publicly with police leadership over the need for reform, appointed Elaine Bryant, a Black deputy chief from Detroit, to head the department.

She was tasked with maintaining peace and order during future demonstrations. After the fallout from 2020, nobody wanted to play riot cop again, especially since the court injunction made it legally perilous. Officers knew they needed a new playbook but weren’t sure where to look.

Duane Mabry, now a department commander and trainer, had an idea. He knew the Seattle Police Department was also conducting a top-to-bottom review of its response to the 2020 George Floyd protests. Commander Mabry had been in contact with Lt. Jim Dyment, a veteran officer in Seattle who ran the mountain bike unit.

Commander Mabry, then a sergeant, called Lieutenant Dyment to ask what Seattle was learning about crowd control. We’re going to see how they do it in Europe, he told him. Maybe you can join us.

He also gave his Columbus counterpart the name of a social psychologist from England who had some interesting new ideas they were considering. “Google him,” he said.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Andrew Ginther, mayor of Columbus, Ohio, answers questions during a Monitor interview at City Hall Nov. 25, 2024. “You’ve got to show continued commitment to change and reform; otherwise, elements of the old culture will creep back in,” he says.

How Europe has been successfully managing unruly crowds

Clifford Stott has the blunt features, cropped hair, and furrowed brow of an English policeman, though he’s never served.

He grew up in a village outside London, dropped out of school at age 16, and joined protests against racism and far-right extremism. “I was antiauthoritarian, didn’t like the police,” he told a BBC radio show in 2020.

After enrolling at a community college, he began to learn about crowd psychology. He went on to earn a Ph.D. studying how crowds and police behaved during the poll tax riots in London in 1990. Now a professor of social psychology at Keele University in England, Dr. Stott has become an international expert on how to manage crowds, advising police forces around the world.

He fights against what he sees as old, flawed ideas about how crowds act. Many of these began to percolate in late-19th-century France, when authorities lived in fear of “irrational mobs.”

Conservative theorists argued that individuals lost all sense of reason within a crowd. They believed emotions were contagious, so riots grew out of angry individuals spreading anger to the point of mass violence.

By joining “an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization,” wrote Gustave Le Bon in “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” in 1895. “Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian – that is, a creature acting by instinct.”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Clifford Stott, professor of social psychology at Keele University in England and visiting professor at Ohio State, observes the Nov. 24 protest in Columbus. “Policing of crowds in America is about 20 years behind what it is in Europe,” he says.

Balderdash, says Dr. Stott. Decades of research into how individuals and crowds actually behave – as well as what drives them into disorder and violence – have debunked these claims. For police to treat a crowd as a violent mob, he says, is to goad it to act as one.

In 2004, Dr. Stott put his ideas into practice at the European Championship held in Portugal, where there were worries of hooliganism, a perennial problem in international soccer. He advised police to embed officers within crowds and have them speak to fans to encourage good behavior.

When they do it right, he says, fans will “self-regulate,” and police will have little need for force. “Where policing is seen as legitimate, disorder decreases,” Dr. Stott says.

His advice paid dividends in Portugal. Even hooligans were amenable to police dialogue. Now his methods are standard practice at most European soccer tournaments.

They are not common in the U.S., however. “Policing of crowds in America is about 20 years behind what it is in Europe,” Dr. Stott says.

A critical test case: Proud Boys protest in Columbus

In early 2022, Lieutenant Dyment and then-Sergeant Mabry traveled to Europe to learn from Dr. Stott and his network of police contacts. Seattle wanted to create its own dialogue unit. Commander Mabry brought two other officers from Columbus, including Mr. Dyer, who would later become a sergeant, to observe.

The trip yielded significant results. When both teams returned, they helped form dialogue units in both departments.

Four months after the trip, Sergeant Dyer was part of the first Columbus Police Dialogue team. Its officers were deployed during the city’s annual Pride march, and for the first time they wore the now-familiar powder-blue vests.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Police Sergeant Dyer and other dialogue officers escort protesters during a pro-Palestinian rally on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 24, 2024.

“I thought my job was to talk to people, so I did,” says Sergeant Dyer. “I talked to everyone I could talk to about dialogue. ... We took the ‘just do it’ approach,” he adds. “If you don’t start it, you’re not going to be successful.”

When images of Sergeant Dyer at the Pride parade spread on social media, feedback was mostly positive. Some of his fellow officers poked fun at him and his blue vest. But leadership welcomed the favorable publicity and was more open to Commander Mabry and his team’s innovations.

A bigger test came that December when two far-right groups descended on Columbus to protest a progressive church holding a holiday event featuring drag queens.

Sergeant Dyer and other officers went to talk to the protesters, some of whom were armed. They wanted to keep these groups a safe distance from counterprotesters near the church – which had canceled its event.

Sergeant Dyer’s job was to avoid escalation, not to settle a culture war. So when a group of Proud Boys made its way up the church’s driveway, he already knew it just wanted to take photos outside the church.

It looked like a clash was imminent – one that would require police units on standby to scramble. There were more than 130 officers, including a SWAT team and armored vehicles, ready to intervene.

But it was just a photo opportunity, and the Proud Boys snapped a few pics and then marched back to the road afterward without incident. None of the protesters from either side was aware of the massive police force standing by.

“That was the first tell. Wow,” says Cmdr. Justin Coleman, who was out of sight directing police operations during this encounter. “This is really a different approach, and this is something that could really work.”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Justin Coleman, commander with the Columbus police, stands in the lobby at department headquarters Nov. 25, 2024. “Wow. This is really a different approach, and this is something that could really work,” he says after the dialogue unit helped defuse a confrontation involving the Proud Boys.

Managing the pro-Palestinian protest on busy streets

At the pro-Palestinian protest, the march has begun in earnest to the rhythm of liberation chants, punctuated by occasional horns from passing cars. “Free, free Palestine,” they cry, waving flags and banners.

Ahead, the police bicycle patrol is stopping cars on side streets. The marchers are flanked by four dialogue officers who are relaying updates to their commanders. They are also watching for any clashes, with either a counterprotester or frustrated driver.

There is also an interested observer on the scene. Keeping pace with the marchers and wearing a black leather jacket is Dr. Stott from Keele University. Since the summer of 2023 he’s been a visiting professor at Ohio State University and a consultant to the Columbus Division of Police.

It appears his approach is working. Since October 2023, there have been more than 50 pro-Palestinian demonstrations held off campus with a total of about 13,000 protesters attending. During this time, police made only three arrests, despite “significant public order challenges,” says Dr. Stott. Police also recorded only two minor uses of force.

So far, Sergeant Dyer has never had to call for backup. “We work from the inside out,” he says. “So if tensions in the crowd are starting to change, we’re going to be the first to know.”

Protesters are about to reach a turnaround point. The pickup truck leading them parks diagonally and obstructs oncoming vehicles. What had been an inconvenience in one direction is now a blockage for both, a potential flash point.

But Sergeant Dyer has already radioed the command center to explain that this will only be a five-minute stop to make a few speeches. Then the marchers will head west. Hold back traffic till then, he says. Soon enough, the march heads down a side street.

A week earlier, the neighborhood also witnessed a march by a small group of masked neo-Nazis waving swastika flags and chanting racist slurs. When Sergeant Dyer stops to chat with a Black restaurant manager during the pro-Palestinian march, the manager is still upset by the neo-Nazi march. Sergeant Dyer tells him that police did investigate and that no laws were broken. “We can’t stop them coming,” he says.

“They’re calling me the N-word; that’s what they’re saying,” the manager says.

“That word is not hate speech,” Sergeant Dyer replies. Hate speech has a high legal bar, and neo-Nazis have free speech rights, too. He wishes the manager well and heads back toward the march.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Protesters wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs and carrying signs against U.S. support for Israel march on a Columbus street.

As dialogue policing faces setbacks, an uncertain future

If the Proud Boys rally in 2022 provided a proof of concept for the Columbus police and city leaders, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July 2024 provided a chance to put dialogue policing on a national stage.

Emotions were running high the week of the convention. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had survived an assassination attempt just days earlier. City officials were braced for street protests.

Police departments from more than 20 states supplied thousands of officers to help Milwaukee’s with security. But only Columbus supplied a dialogue team.

On Day 1, Sergeant Dyer and other dialogue officers embedded within demonstrations, talking with protesters, standing between rival groups, de-escalating tensions.

Commander Coleman was part of Milwaukee’s command center, relaying information from his team. After his unit worked a protest march that took place without any serious incidents, he saw the impression it made on other police.

“The next day, over the air, we kept hearing officers from other agencies throughout the country calling, asking for dialogue officers” to assist them, he says.

But the dialogue team’s time in Milwaukee was cut short after its initial success. The next day, officers from Columbus’ bike patrol shot and killed Samuel Sharpe Jr., a homeless Black man who was attacking another man. The man ignored calls to drop the two knives in his hands. Afterward, Columbus officials recalled all of its officers.

A month later, protesters gathered outside police headquarters in Columbus, chanting Mr. Sharpe’s name and carrying signs, one of which read, “Indict Killer Cops.”

That protest was led by Aramis Sundiata, executive director of People’s Justice Project in Columbus. He has deep reservations about this new method of dialogue policing. His experiences with Columbus police have always been confrontational – and confrontation was often the point.

In order to raise “global consciousness” and force political change, Mr. Sundiata says, peaceful demonstrators may find it advantageous when riot police attack them – and then make the evening news. “You need to think about, How are you going to really push the envelope?”

Talking to cops is a bad idea, he says. Telling them about your plans and who’s in charge is out of the question. When dialogue officers make nice, that “can be confusing for folks.”

The incoming Trump administration, too, seems likely to have reservations about dialogue-based crowd management for a different set of reasons. Given his first administration and his views of street protests, he may push American policing in the direction of more, not less, coercive crowd control.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Police officers listen to a briefing at police headquarters before departing on assignment in Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 24, 2024.

In May 2020, then-President Trump urged state governors to be more aggressive in cracking down on racial justice protests that turned violent. He sent federal agents to Portland, Oregon, to defend a federal courthouse. He has since talked about deploying the military to counter future unrest in American cities.

Dr. Maguire, the criminologist, says this creates uncertainty over the direction of travel. The bottom-up reforms in policing in cities like Columbus will run into “an external sentiment from the Trump administration to kind of move things backwards. I don’t know how that will all shake out, but that’s the dynamic we’ll see unfold in the next two years,” he says.

Columbus Mayor Ginther, however, says dialogue policing is part of a broader reform effort to create a “21st-century community policing organization” in Ohio’s capital city.

“You don’t get to a point and then rest and think that everything’s going to work out OK,” says Mayor Ginther. “You’ve got to show continued commitment to change and reform; otherwise, elements of the old culture will creep back in,” he says.

Last month Dr. Stott packed his bags and left Columbus after his visiting professorship came to an end. His next advisory role is likely to be in Seattle – one of the host cities for the 2026 soccer World Cup.

His departure comes at a moment of uncertainty for the Columbus dialogue team. Despite its promising start, it remains an all-volunteer unit without a permanent leader.

There have been efforts to make it a special bureau. But for now Sergeant Dyer and other officers head the team on 60-day rotations, relying on volunteers to walk among and talk to people in protests.

Lieutenant Dyment, the Seattle officer who helped inspire Columbus’ innovations, retired in 2023. He now trains other law enforcement agencies in how to use bicycle patrols for crowd management.

Amid all the uncertainty in the U.S., Dr. Stott believes the data is clear. The coercive crowd policing of the past doesn’t work, and often makes tense situations worse.

The vast majority of people who attend mass protests do not see police as an enemy, he says. Most soccer fans aren’t looking for a fight. Most people at a demonstration want to protest peacefully. Each kind of crowd will respond positively to policing that upholds its right to assemble or express grievances.

Then, when force is used, he says, people will see police arresting troublemakers as a defense of those rights, not as an obstacle. Over time, nonviolent movements will begin to “self-police” their ranks, his research shows.

This doesn’t mean tensions between police and activists will end. “It’s not a panacea,” Dr. Stott says. “You’re not getting rid of social conflict. This is a way of managing social conflict to minimize the possibility of major confrontations.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on the same day it was published to correct a typo in Deputy Chief Robert Sagle’s last name.

News Briefs

Today’s news briefs

• Ukraine prisoner swap: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine is ready to hand over captured North Korean soldiers in exchange for Ukrainians held captive in Russia.
• Tulsa Race Massacre report: The first-ever U.S. Justice Department review of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre concludes that there is no longer an avenue to bring a criminal case. 
• Anti-crime measures: A tough-on-crime approach is back in political favor in the United States as Republicans and Democrats alike promote anti-crime initiatives.
• Cooperation to counter China: Japan, the Philippines, and the United States vow to further deepen cooperation in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters.

Read these news briefs.

As Palisades Fire burns, resilience begins to take hold

Natural disasters can destroy places but reveal the strength of people who live there. At a shelter near the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, resilience begins to bloom even as the flames burn on.

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor
Coco the goat rests on her bed in the parking lot at El Camino Real Charter High School where her owners sought refuge from the Palisades Fire, Jan. 8, 2025. Maji Anir and his family lost their Malibu home in the fire, and had trouble finding a place that would take them in with their pet goat.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 7 Min. )

Members of the Anir family fled their Malibu home as the Palisades wildfire raced toward it, giving them too little time to gather everything that mattered.

But they were not leaving Coco, their house goat, behind.

Some shelters wouldn’t take Coco. But El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills did, and the family finally found refuge.

They were joined by others forced from their homes and by volunteers. Their lives intersected amid devastation and fear. But resilience and hope bloomed, too.

Eddie Včelíková, grieving her destroyed hometown, showed up to help.

Kate Delos Reyes’ mental health residential program in Malibu was canceled. Instead of heading home, she drove to El Camino to volunteer.

Leslie Walsh and her daughter Megan arrived from San Diego – where wildfires threatened their home more than 20 years ago – with pet supplies to donate.

Just then, another fire nearby forced the shelter itself to evacuate. The Walshes couldn’t drop anything off, but they took a lonely young woman to the next shelter.

Jason Camp, an administrator at the school, marveled at the human spirit. It’s refreshing, he said, that “Not everything’s in total chaos.

“The heart is still there. And I think that that was kind of a blessing.”

As Palisades Fire burns, resilience begins to take hold

Collapse

Coco the goat is nestled in a soft bed between two cars in the parking lot of El Camino Real Charter High School on the western edge of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Other wildfire evacuation shelters wouldn’t allow the 10-year-old house goat to stay with her family – the animal shelters board pets on their own, in kennels – but breaking up wasn’t an option for her owner, Maji Anir.

“She’s been with us for so long that she’s not really used to being alone and she’s too cold,” he says. “So we decided this is better to be next to us.”

Small pets like cats and dogs are easily accommodated at the shelter, but Coco is in a gray area. She is quietly out of the way, is no bother, and offers a drop of levity in a sea of stress – most people who take notice stop to pet her, spirits lifted. Workers are letting her stay.

Mr. Anir and his family had just two hours to evacuate as the fire approached their home in Malibu – not enough time to get everything they needed.

Alan Devall/Reuters
A drone view shows volunteers with people affected by the wildfires, at a donation center at the Santa Anita Park racetrack in Arcadia, California, Jan. 12, 2025.

They pulled away Tuesday evening as the sun was setting. By morning the house was gone, along with all of their neighbors’.

Since then, a half dozen wildfires have eaten away at densely packed neighborhoods across a county of 10 million people. Search teams have found 24 people dead, and expect to find more as recovery efforts continue. Thousands have lost their homes. At least 150,000 are displaced – many, like the Anir family, fled to one of the county’s seven evacuation shelters for people. Some schools are still closed, and work is on hold. Ashen rubble and scorched, teetering walls are all that remain of once-vibrant residential streets. It is a scale of ruin once unimaginable in a place built on imagination.

Yet even in this besieged region, ruin is bending toward resilience. And from the staff to random visitors and those sheltering, a common theme is kindness – helpful acts that can counter the pervasive sense of loss and disruption.

El Camino is a well-appointed charter school. Its large rectangular beige-and-gray buildings are edged with neatly kept green lawn and lush trees blending into a surround of single-family homes sprawling up into the West Hills that overlook it. Inside, small groups of students are rehearsing for their school plays or practicing other extracurricular activities. Otherwise, campus is quiet – except for the first responders gathering here to rest.

Classes for the school’s 3,500 students were scheduled to start back up in mid-January. Now, with the Palisades Fire burning out of control on the other side of a mountain ridge, the campus is a gathering place for those needing refuge – and the people volunteering to help.

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor
Smoke from the Kenneth Fire billows near El Camino Real Charter High School in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills neighborhood, Jan. 9, 2025. The campus hosted a Red Cross emergency shelter until the fire forced evacuations at the shelter.

Kate Delos Reyes was supposed to be in a residential program for mental health treatment. The program in Santa Monica was canceled as fires swept through the nearby Pacific Palisades.

She’s seen fires before, when she worked at a rehab center in another Southern California mountain range. Remembering that stress, she drove to the evacuation center at El Camino to lend whatever help they might need.

“I have the time,” she says. “I like to say, ‘Kindness is free, you know.’”

Even as they try to help others, many at the shelter are processing what feels like devastating losses not just of personal property but also of community foundations.

Eddie Včelíková is fielding a stream of texts from her friends while she scrolls through social media. She is taking in photos of her childhood home in Altadena; St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which she attended every Sunday; her schools – all of it destroyed.

Altadena, an unincorporated town in northern LA County, welcomed Black homebuyers in the mid-1900s, when redlining kept them out of other neighborhoods. As the area developed along the southwestern base of the San Gabriel Mountains, so did the diversity of its middle-class bedrock. Last week, the Eaton fire, which is still burning, swept through much of the small community and leveled entire blocks.

When she saw video of the burned-out park where she played every weekend as a child, Ms. Včelíková says she broke. She found her way to the shelter. “I’m just out here volunteering to stay busy because it’s the only thing I think that’ll keep me from going insane.”

The loss is “incomprehensible,” she says. “It’s surreal to see that, like, my entire childhood is just gone.”

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor
Elianna Friedman (left) and Anna Steioff (right) delivered water donations from the nonprofit Thrive's Clean Water Lab to a fire evacuation shelter in Los Angeles, Jan. 8, 2025. Eddie Včelíková (center) felt compelled to volunteer when she saw that her childhood home in Altadena had been destroyed by the fire. “It’s incomprehensible loss,” she says.

The unemployed film worker now lives with her parents in Canoga Park, just a few miles from the shelter at El Camino. She’s tried to get back into her old neighborhood, but National Guard troops are blocking every route – protecting vacant homes from looting. On Sunday, she attended a virtual church service hosted by St. Mark’s. The church may be gone, but its spirit is not.

“I used to say I’m from Altadena, and nobody knew where that was. Now I say I’m from Altadena, and they give me their sympathies,” she says.

At midday Thursday, a small parking lot where the Red Cross set up camp holds about a dozen people looking for direction. The Anir family is here with Coco. Others are following evacuation orders in their threatened neighborhoods. The evening rush has yet to begin, when another fire erupts within view.

Not even the shelter itself is safe.

The Kenneth Fire has broken out in late afternoon on a ridge overlooking this edge of the San Fernando Valley. Cellphones honk obnoxiously with the now-familiar alerts – the evacuation warning has been issued for Woodland Hills and adjacent neighborhoods, which includes the shelter. This refuge is shutting down. Most of the evacuees are heading 20 miles east to another shelter at the Westwood Recreation Center.

Leslie and Megan Walsh are making space in their packed trunk for a small suitcase. They’ve just met a young woman who needs a ride to Westwood, and they’ve offered to take her.

Courtesy of Leslie Walsh
Megan Walsh (right) meets volunteers at a grassroots distribution center in Los Angeles, Jan. 12, 2025, with donations she and her parents brought from San Diego, where she grew up. She lives in Los Angeles now, and collected the items from her childhood neighbors.

They’re from San Diego; they know what LA is going through. In 2003, fires swept through parts of their city, and they had to flee. Their neighborhood lost 300 homes. Now, with Megan living in LA, the family wanted to help however they could.

Leslie and her daughter drove to LA with a car full of animal supplies – pet food and beds, mostly – to donate. But their first stop, a shelter in Agoura Hills, was evacuated, so they came here. Now this one’s evacuating.

“It’s so new and so scary, and the fires just keep growing,” says Leslie. “There’s always a new fire.”

The Walshes headed back to San Diego with their supplies. Over the next couple of days, Megan ran a donation drive among their San Diego neighbors. She and her parents returned to LA Sunday with a U-Haul truck and two more cars filled with clothing, toiletries, pet food, sleeping bags, air mattresses, and more. This time, she coordinated with a friend in LA who organized a grassroots distribution center with a group of young professionals working in the entertainment industry.

“She’s just a good soul,” says Leslie about her daughter.

Megan, who is taking online classes through Arizona State University, dropped this quarter so she can focus on the relief efforts.

And the young woman they took to the shelter in Westwood? When they arrived, the evacuee told them she was too scared to stay there alone, so the Walshes set her up in a hotel room. For one night, at least, she was secure.

Back at El Camino high school on Thursday, in the hours before the Kenneth Fire erupted, first responders had pulled into a corner parking lot to take a break and grab a meal. The shelter was overflowing with food donations, so school administrators redirected the potluck to feed firefighters and police officers.

Administrative Director Jason Camp says the support for first responders was driven by an outpouring in the community.

He’s watched as a steady stream of Angelenos stop by to drop off supplies and volunteers show up to find out how they can help. He notes the number of people – emergency responders, volunteers, local officials – who are managing their own fears and losses from the widespread devastation. Nobody is untouched.

Some people who are displaced or lost their homes want to be part of the solution and “to help somebody through the pain and maybe together they can get through it,” he says. “It’s refreshing to see that not everything’s in total chaos. The heart is still there.”

The Explainer

Sanctuary city: A primer on the immigration showdown

The incoming Trump White House and “sanctuary” jurisdictions have staked out opposing ground on immigration. A core underlying question is how best to keep communities safe.

  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 5 Min. )

In the white-hot immigration debate, disagreement abounds around who it is that “sanctuary” cities, counties, and states actually protect. Are U.S. communities made safer by shielding immigrants unlawfully present there? Or does everyone face more safety threats as a result?

There is no legal definition of a sanctuary policy. But the term often implies limited cooperation with federal law enforcement concerning immigration. Examples include banning new immigrant detention contracts set up to hold detained noncitizens, or prohibiting police from asking about immigration status.

President-elect Donald Trump has blamed these policies for the sheltering of unauthorized immigrants, whom he wants to deport. Trump allies are warning there could be legal consequences for states and localities that stand in the way of federal immigration authorities. Immigrant advocates and liberal leaders have pushed back, as they did during the first Trump term.

Both the incoming Republican administration and Democratic leaders agree that immigrants who commit serious crimes should be removed. Defining the scope of who else to include in Mr. Trump’s promised “mass deportations” – and the role sanctuary cities will play – is where consensus starts to fray.  

Sanctuary city: A primer on the immigration showdown

Collapse
Damian Dovarganes/AP
Members of immigration advocacy groups react as Los Angeles City Council votes to enact an ordinance prohibiting city resources from being used for immigration enforcement, Los Angeles City Hall, Nov. 19, 2024.

In the white-hot immigration debate, disagreement abounds around who it is that “sanctuary” cities, counties, and states actually protect. Are U.S. communities made safer by shielding immigrants unlawfully present there? Or does everyone face more safety threats as a result?

There is no legal definition of a sanctuary policy. But the term often implies limited cooperation with federal law enforcement concerning immigration. President-elect Donald Trump has blamed these policies for sheltering unauthorized immigrants, whom he wants to deport. Trump allies are warning there could be legal consequences for states and localities that stand in the way of federal immigration authorities. Immigrant advocates and liberal leaders have pushed back, as they did during the first Trump term. 

Amid the contention and distrust, though, there’s a sliver of common ground.

Both the incoming Republican administration and Democratic leaders agree that immigrants who commit serious crimes should be removed. Defining the scope of who else to include in Mr. Trump’s promised “mass deportations” – and the role sanctuary cities will play – is where consensus starts to fray. 

What does it mean to be a sanctuary jurisdiction?

There’s no one definition and the term is politically charged. It can mean policies that limit collaboration between local and federal law enforcement, as well as access to benefits like driver’s licenses and other IDs for unauthorized immigrants. 

The sanctuary movement began with faith groups in the 1980s. They sought to help Guatemalans and Salvadorans fleeing civil unrest, offering them food, shelter, and legal aid. Religious leaders mobilized as the Reagan administration limited access to asylum for these immigrants, whose countries’ military regimes the United States had backed.

Today, sanctuary jurisdictions are often led by Democratic politicians, including in California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York. Examples of sanctuary policies include: 

  • Disregarding detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These requests ask agencies for notice before a deportable immigrant is released and for an additional hold of up to 48 hours so that ICE can take custody. 
  • Banning new immigrant detention contracts set up to hold detained noncitizens.
  • Prohibiting police or city workers from asking about immigration status.

Immigrant advocates claim that local cooperation with ICE has led to racial profiling by sheriffs and other civil rights violations. Proponents also say sanctuary policies support immigrants who might otherwise withhold reporting crimes, fearing deportation.

Critics push back against those concerns. They say ICE targets criminal immigrants and isn’t seeking to round up victims of crimes, who may be eligible for legal protection. Defenders of ICE also point to how sanctuary policies have let criminals return to the streets and harm U.S. citizens and immigrants alike. 

Some Democratic politicians are striking a nuanced tone on sanctuary policies, including the governor of Colorado. 

“We appreciate any federal assistance in apprehending and deporting people who have committed crimes and are a danger to Colorado,” Gov. Jared Polis told public radio. But removing otherwise law-abiding, longtime residents who work in construction, agriculture, or hospitality would “devastate our economy and our society,” he said.

Meanwhile, 26 Republican governors signed a statement last month supporting Mr. Trump’s commitment to deport “illegal immigrants who pose a threat to our communities and national security.” The GOP leaders added that they will do “everything in our power to assist in removing them from our communities.” In the U.S. House, among the immigration legislation reintroduced by Republicans this month, one bill seeks to make “sanctuary” jurisdictions ineligible for federal funds that would benefit unauthorized immigrants.

Some conservative-leaning cities and counties – within blue states – have passed measures declaring their opposition to sanctuary status. Yet those actions are symbolic, as local leaders can’t override state law, says Deep Gulasekaram, professor of immigration law at the University of Colorado Law School.

“Can a county or local official just decide to ignore state law because their personal feelings about immigration enforcement are not the same as state law?” he says. “The answer is no.”

Still, the legality of sanctuary policies under federal law is under debate. Mr. Trump tried to stop those policies last time. He says he will again.

What’s the Trump administration’s position?

During his first term, Mr. Trump sought to withhold certain federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions. Legal fights ensued. Ultimately, most courts agreed that the federal government wasn’t authorized to condition law enforcement grants on immigration cooperation.

His allies appear to be gearing up again. America First Legal, led by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, says it has sent letters to over 250 officials “demanding their compliance with federal immigration law.” The group is warning jurisdictions that it’s a federal crime for anyone to “conceal, harbor, or shield from detection” unauthorized immigrants.

But other legal experts contend that it is unconstitutional for the government to compel state and local authorities to enforce federal law, and that the Supreme Court has ruled so. Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union, in a memo published before the election, says it will urge state governments to “deny the federal government access to their law enforcement agencies and other state-held resources for purposes of immigrant detention and deportation.” 

Like his boss, incoming “border czar” Tom Homan is also opposed to sanctuary policies. 

Mr. Homan argues that without access to local jails, ICE pursues criminal immigrants in the communities where they work and live. That takes more time and resources, and can introduce ICE to other unauthorized immigrants previously not on the agency’s radar. And those people can turn into “collateral arrests.”

Most collateral arrests are made in sanctuary jurisdictions, wrote Mr. Homan in his 2020 book, “Defend the Border and Save Lives,” “because we are forced into the neighborhoods rather than operating within a jail.”

He calls for expanding cooperative agreements between local and state law enforcement agencies and ICE. That includes a program called 287(g). 

What’s the role of cooperative agreements, like in the 287(g) program?

The federal government creates and enforces immigration law. But the 287(g) program, created by Congress under the Clinton administration, lets ICE deputize state and local law enforcement for certain immigration actions. The partnership involves training and oversight; critics have questioned the program’s efficacy in terms of public safety goals. 

The 287(g) program includes agreements with 133 law enforcement agencies across 21 states, ICE reports as of December. Overall, participants make up a smidgen of the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. 

The Biden administration placed the program under review in fiscal year 2021, which paused the onboarding of new partners. In contrast, the incoming Trump team may seek to expand the program, reports The Wall Street Journal. That includes the revival of a “task force model,” dormant since 2012, that allowed designated officers to question and arrest people they encountered on the job who they suspected had violated immigration laws.

Since the election, Jonathan Thompson, executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, says he’s become aware of several sheriffs who have “made themselves noticed” to the Department of Homeland Security about participating in 287(g). 

“Sheriffs are in the business of lowering risk of violence, criminal behavior, and incidents where people are harmed,” says Mr. Thompson. “Improved access to federal resources – that's what motivates them.”

Graphic

America’s changing pews: Who shows up at church on Sunday?

Why would young men be more likely to attend services than women, when the reverse has been true since at least the 1950s? The answer may lie in a more masculine version of Christianity.

Gerald Herbert/AP
A young man carries a candle during an interfaith prayer service after the New Year's Day attack that killed 14 and injured more than 30 others, at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Jan. 6, 2025.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 2 Min. )

For the first time in modern U.S. history, men are just as likely to be religious as women. And the change is being driven by young men.

This represents a substantive shift among the faithful: For decades, women were always more devout, both in Christian churches in the U.S. and around the world. And they were the ones who traditionally have been the lifeblood of congregations, in terms of both attendance and volunteering and organizing.

The shift has been ongoing for the past five years or so, to the point that both Generation Z and millennial men and women are now equally religious, says Ryan Burge, a political scientist and former Baptist pastor.

“It’s not like the gender gap has been reversed,” he says. “It’s been eliminated.”

America’s changing pews: Who shows up at church on Sunday?

Collapse

For the first time in modern U.S. history, men are just as likely to be religious as women. And the change is being driven by young men.

This represents a substantive shift among the faithful: For decades, women were always more devout, both in U.S. churches and around the world. And they were the ones who traditionally have been the lifeblood of congregations, in terms of both attendance and volunteering and organizing.

The shift has been ongoing for the past five years or so, to the point that both Generation Z and millennial men and women are now equally religious, says Ryan Burge, a political scientist and former Baptist pastor.

“It’s not like the gender gap has been reversed,” he says. “It’s been eliminated.”

Church attendance across all age groups is down, and the least likely to attend are 18-to-29-year-olds. But the young people who do show up in houses of worship are more likely to be men. Even as Gen Z women continue to leave churches, their male counterparts are joining congregations in higher numbers.

One important caveat: The only religious group in America that’s seeing significant growth is the “nones,” a category including atheists, agnostics, and those who describe themselves as unaffiliated. That increase is also driven mostly by Gen Z and millennials. Older women are still more likely to attend church than older men, but that gender gap shrinks among younger generations.

SOURCE:

Survey Center on American Life, Gallup, Public Religion Research Institute

|
Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Zooming in on religious affiliation, the map becomes more complicated. Youngish women are more likely to be evangelical than youngish men, says Mr. Burge. Youngish men are more likely to be Catholic. Mainline Protestants run about even.

In part, the changes now might be the delayed effects of a more masculine Christianity that popped up over a decade ago, driven by leaders like Mark Driscoll, a West Coast pastor known for preaching a dominant, traditional masculinity. While that message brought young men in, “it was a little more repellent to young women,” says Mr. Burge.

“There’s been a culture of masculinity, especially within white evangelicalism,” agrees Katie Gaddini, a sociologist who wrote a book about why single evangelical women leave the church. Among young women who do attend on Sundays, she says she’s interviewed those who say they like President-elect Donald Trump because he reminds them of their father or pastor.

On the other hand, scholars including Alan Cooperman, director of religion research at Pew Research Center, caution that the changes to America’s religious landscape are still too new to be called a trend. The nones category is still made up of more men than women, though that could change over time if women continue to leave organized religion behind.

SOURCE:

Survey Center on American Life, Gallup, Public Religion Research Institute

|
Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Points of Progress

What's going right

Why preschool matters in Mexico and bees thrive in Slovenia

Whether laws or culture comes first, both shape the societies in our progress roundup. In Mexico, mandatory preschool is giving children a strong start. And in Slovenia, a national affinity for bees has prompted a high number of beekeepers and conservation measures.

Why preschool matters in Mexico and bees thrive in Slovenia

Collapse
Staff

A preschool mandate set up children for success

Mexico began requiring three years of preschool education in 2004. Children born right after the cutoff date, who went to preschool under the mandate, performed better on math and Spanish tests in fifth and sixth grades than those born right before the cutoff date, a recent study found.   

They were also more likely to pay attention in class, take part in extracurricular activities, and do their homework, and less likely to skip classes. Students affected by the mandate were 9% more likely to finish high school and 11% more likely to attend some college.

Studies in high-income countries have shown mixed results on the outcomes for children receiving early childhood education. But the researchers in Mexico suggest that preschool policies implemented at scale in lower- and middle-income countries could have lasting effects.

Agencia El Universal/GDA/AP/File
Children play at a preschool in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2019.

Source: VoxDev

Homicides have plunged in a drug trafficking hot spot

Considered the least safe city in Argentina, Rosario has struggled to address violence. That has changed in the past year.

Homicides have fallen 65%, a success attributed to increased police presence, more coordination among different levels of government, and a change in local law that is allowing the prosecution of gang members operating from prison.

Waiting times for police to arrive when called dropped from an average of 20 minutes to six to eight minutes. Firearm injuries were down 57% in the first half of 2024 compared with the same period of 2023. And cocaine seizures increased by 500%.

Petty crime has increased, possibly a result of a spike in poverty attributed to President Javier Milei’s fiscal austerity. But in September, the city went a month without any homicides for the first time since 2013.
Sources: Bloomberg, Infobae

A national culture of beekeeping is protecting pollinators in Slovenia

These insects are crucial for the health of crops and wild plants, but their populations are declining worldwide. Around 40% of invertebrate pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are at risk of extinction.  

Slovenia is home to 11,000 professional beekeepers, more per capita than any other country in Europe, and caring for these pollinators starts early. Beekeeping clubs are active at close to a third of Slovenia’s primary schools. In 2011, it became the first nation to ban neonicotinoids, a type of pesticide that is toxic to bees.

Srdjan Živulović/Reuters/File
Beekeeper Franc Petrovčič checks on a hive in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2017.

Because conserving wildflower meadows safeguards pollinator habitats, 12 hectares (about 30 acres) of meadows in the capital of Ljubljana are not mowed until late June, an initiative that has won support among residents. The national beekeepers association also distributes pollinator-friendly tree saplings and hosts a planting day each March. World Bee Day was first inaugurated in Slovenia on May 20, 2018, and is now celebrated around the world.
Sources: Reasons to Be Cheerful, CABI Reviews

Robot boats are clearing trash out of waterways across Asia

Most of the plastic trash that reaches the ocean starts in rivers and coastlines. Researchers and developers are designing tools to help remove waste and gather data.

One boat, Clearbot, collects over 400 pounds of garbage per hour, methodically sucking up trash in a way the founder compares to the robot vacuum Roomba. The project began at the University of Hong Kong. It now operates in locations ranging from the Ganges River in India to the Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong, where it uses artificial intelligence to detect and remove the eggs of invasive snails. In Bangkok, the boats move algae off lakes using conveyor belts. They can also map waterway floors, test water quality, and help clean oil spills.
Source: CNN

Clean energy requires less mining than fossil fuels

All sources of power need metals and minerals to deliver electricity, from the steel used in wind turbines to the lithium in batteries. Mining those materials can be harmful for the environment and people.

Brian Snyder/Reuters/File
Solar panels take in the sun in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2022.

 
Yet studies show that sticking with the status quo would be far more material-intensive than transitioning to cleaner sources of power. Coal requires 1.2 million kilograms of mined waste rock per gigawatt-hour of electricity it generates. That’s 20 times more material than what’s needed by onshore wind, which uses more metals, minerals, and rock than other low-carbon electricity sources.

Technological improvements are also making solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines more efficient, further reducing the need for mining and materials.
Source: Our World in Data

Staff

Other headline stories we’re watching

(Get live updates throughout the day.)

The Monitor's View

Freeing Syria from a painful past

  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 2 Min. )

In recent decades, most countries emerging from conflict or oppressive government have sought to put peace and stability on a foundation of justice. That often requires citizens to accept a balance between accountability and mercy.

Syrians are now wrestling with that trade-off. In recent weeks, the rebel group that toppled the Assad regime has offered a provisional amnesty agreement to those who served the former brutal security state. Those who surrender their weapons and “reconcile” with the new government may – for now at least – return to their lives.

“We want to get the benefits from these kinds of people in running the new Syria,” Abu Sariyeh al-Shami, a former fighter with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group now in control, told The Guardian Monday.

Civil society groups had already amassed more than 1 million documents showing the extent of Bashar al-Assad’s security infrastructure. Now they are scurrying to secure and digitize more records found in the regime’s network of prisons and intelligence centers.

Syria is a long way from having the institutional capacity to pursue accountability for crimes committed during the Assad regime. But by preserving the regime’s records, its citizens are laying the basis for future shaped by individual dignity unburdened by a traumatic past.

Freeing Syria from a painful past

Collapse
AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy
Abdelkarim, the owner of a home which was damaged during the war between rebel groups and Bashar Assad regime, stands next to new tiles for rebuilding, in Saraqib, Syria, on Jan. 13, 2025.

In recent decades, most countries emerging from conflict or oppressive government have sought to put peace and stability on a foundation of justice. That often requires citizens to accept a balance between accountability and mercy.

Syrians are now wrestling with that trade-off. In recent weeks, the rebel group that toppled the Assad regime has offered a provisional amnesty agreement to those who served the former brutal security state. Those who surrender their weapons and “reconcile” with the new government may – for now at least – return to their lives.

“We want to get the benefits from these kinds of people in running the new Syria,” Abu Sariyeh al-Shami, a former fighter with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group now in control, told The Guardian Monday.

Many Syrians, scarred by decades of violent abuses under the previous regime, want justice before considering forgiveness. Yet Syria’s approach to transitional justice has the potential to be uniquely citizen-led. That’s because in the regime’s sudden collapse, it left behind a trove of documents and video evidence.

Civil society groups had already amassed more than 1 million documents showing the extent of Bashar al-Assad’s security infrastructure. Now they are scurrying to secure and digitize more records found in the regime’s network of prisons and intelligence centers. The archive had already helped international prosecutions of Syrians linked to the regime in European courts.

The idea of reconciling societies by exchanging forgiving for truth-telling gained its current form 30 years ago in South Africa. The country promised the perpetrators of violent crimes committed during the apartheid era amnesty from prosecution if they fully disclosed their actions and showed remorse.

The impact of such models of reconciliation, wrote Mai Al-Nakib, a Kuwaiti academic, rests in accounting for the past in order to move beyond it. “The Greek word for truth, aletheia, literally means ‘not forgetfulness,’” she noted in an essay in The Markaz Review last year. “The Classical Greek root of the word amnesty is amnestis, that is, ‘not remembrance.’”

“Survival demands vision, something in the shape of a half-remembered, half-forgotten dream,” she observed. “Half-remembered so as not to repeat the horrors of the past. Half-forgotten in order to make space for untested ways of caring, connecting, and being human in the present, toward the preservation of our future.”

Syria is a long way from having the institutional capacity to pursue accountability for crimes committed during the Assad regime. But by preserving the regime’s records, its citizens are laying the basis for future shaped by individual dignity unburdened by a traumatic past.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

The ever-breaking news of salvation

  • Quick Read
  • Read or Listen ( 4 Min. )

The good news of our unity with God is always relevant, and brings greater harmony to our lives and beyond, when embraced.

The ever-breaking news of salvation

Collapse
Today's Christian Science Perspective audio edition

When contrasted with taking in the drama reported in the news, reading the Bible Lessons laid out in the “Christian Science Quarterly” might seem like a rather sedate exercise. But each week’s compilation of citations from the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” conveys the transformative power of Christ, Truth, in fresh ways.

That is the acme of up-to-date information: God voicing to human consciousness the knowledge we need of divine goodness, awakening us to what it is timely to understand about God, Spirit, and His spiritual creation. What could be more compelling than the present possibility of Christian healing?

For those of us tethered to breaking news alerts, this daily spiritual news can prompt us to question what we are prioritizing. Is our primary attention given to what seems to be going wrong or to what’s eternally right – namely, God’s all-embracing love, ever-presence, and all-powerful truth?

Making the latter our main source of news enables us to shine some healing light on the very events that might otherwise stir us to visceral reactions such as despair or even rage. It enables us to look beneath the clamor of these events to see a “current running heavenward” (Science and Health, p. 106) – an underlying tendency of thought toward the harmony that God forever exudes and that we, as God’s expression, truly include. Noting the presence of this heavenly harmony where human discord seems to prevail nurtures a comforting calm as well as confidence in present and future progress.

The heavenward-running current is ever ongoing because it is the outflow of Christ, divine Truth, causing materialistic thinking to give way to the recognition of what’s spiritually real. Christ is ever active in human consciousness, steering us individually and universally in the path of salvation, our ultimate freedom from all discordant consciousness and conditions. Every time we are receptive to that Christly steer, the spiritual truth of how harmonious we are as God’s creation is brought to light.

This reality of spiritual harmony is described in various ways throughout Mrs. Eddy’s writings, including this bold statement that would certainly strike humanity as “breaking news” today: “Man as God’s idea is already saved with an everlasting salvation” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 261). That is, we are not suffering – or even just “getting by” – in an imperfect, material world but spiritual beings in a universe operating in perfect harmony.

While this might feel counterintuitive, it is well worth pondering as the spiritual counterfact to all that the material senses report. It means that we’re not waiting to be saved but are awakening to the established truth that we are God’s spiritual expression. Every reversal through Christ of what appears to be the opposite evidence of evil is part of the “current” moving humanity toward universal proof of “everlasting salvation.”

A Bible account (see Luke 24) describes a significant shift in this direction when Jesus’ crucifixion was itself the day’s headline, leaving his followers dispersed and despondent. Two of them, heading out of Jerusalem to a nearby village called Emmaus, couldn’t help themselves: All they could talk about was the breaking news, including astonishing rumors that Jesus was still alive. This focus of their conversation continued when they were joined by a stranger, who was actually the risen Jesus, whom they didn’t recognize.

Just think about it. Right there, where the headlining news was so utterly attention-grabbing and gut-wrenching, history’s most pivotal point – the cornerstone of humanity’s salvation – was unfolding before their eyes. They were on the road to Emmaus, while Jesus was on the pathway to ascension, his ultimate proof that humanity is only mistakenly bound in, to, or by a limited, mortal existence. He was not only pointing out the path to salvation but proving that its conclusion is life lived fully above and independent of matter, in pure Spirit, God.

When the two disciples grasped what was really going on, they headed straight back to Jerusalem to share the new, true breaking news, the actual news – the ever-relevant good news that Jesus had risen.

We bless ourselves and better serve humanity as we daily prioritize familiarity with the gospel news of our everlasting salvation as God’s creation. By turning to God to dissolve the fear, sorrow, or anger with which we might be tempted to react to whatever’s happening in the world, we will see more of God’s heavenly harmony emerge, both right where we are and beyond our own lives, including in the daily news that gets reported.

Adapted from an editorial published in the Jan. 13, 2025, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.

Viewfinder

Stepping stylishly into adulthood

Eugene Hoshiko/AP
Young people celebrate Seijin no Hi, or Coming-of-Age Day, in Yokohama, Japan, Jan. 13, 2025. The centuries-old tradition and national holiday (since 1946) honors those who have turned 18 in the past year. (Prior to 2022, the official age was 20.) Young women often wear long-sleeved, vibrantly colored kimonos called “furisode.” Young men may wear a wide, trouser-like “hakama,” but often opt for Western-style clothing. The newly minted adults celebrate in a variety of ways from trips to Tokyo Disneyland, to a gathering in Yokohama Arena of 11,000 people, to “Climbing the Stairs to Adulthood,” an event in which participants walk up 60 floors to a building’s observation deck in Osaka.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. Please come back tomorrow for Patrik Jonsson’s portrait of Darien, Georgia, which elected Donald Trump and its first Black sheriff, a Democrat. Residents there say the second Trump administration represents for them, in different ways, a necessary wrestling with the core question, What does it really mean to be American?

More issues

2025
January
13
Monday
CSM logo

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Explore values journalism About us