There is an elephant in the room at this week’s Republican National Convention, so to speak: the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald Trump may prefer to focus on law and order, standing up to China, and the “socialist” Democrats. But COVID-19 remains by far the most important issue facing the nation in both impact and voter interest. It has reshaped almost everything about daily life in America – including the political conventions themselves.

Many of the speakers at last week’s almost entirely virtual Democratic National Convention touched on the pandemic in one way or another. Former Vice President Joe Biden has promised a more forceful federal coronavirus response, including, if necessary, lockdowns.

“As president, the first step I will take: We will get control of the virus that has ruined so many lives,” said Mr. Biden in his nomination acceptance speech.

President Trump to this point has focused on therapeutics and the possibility that a vaccine will be available soon. That strategy could backfire if the vaccine timeline gets delayed or other problems emerge.

Still, Mr. Trump has some wiggle room to reframe the issue this week, says Republican communications strategist John Feehery. He can criticize the Democratic approach to the virus as heavy-handed, while striking a more optimistic tone and recasting 2020 as an obstacle, not a dead end.

“Obviously, this is not Morning in America. We’re not in as strong a position as Reagan was,” says Mr. Feehery, referring to a 1984 campaign commercial. “But we were before COVID hit, and we can be post-COVID.”

Top issue for voters

Given the pandemic’s effect on everything from schools to shopping, and its rising death toll – some 177,000 in the United States – it’s unsurprising that the coronavirus is the dominant concern of the nation’s voters. In some ways it has overshadowed the presidential campaign itself.

Some 35% of Americans say the coronavirus is the most important problem facing the country today, the top response according to Gallup (the second biggest problem is “poor leadership”). At the same time, Gallup finds that the percentage of Americans mentioning economic issues as the nation’s biggest problem is near a 20-year low, despite a virus-driven recession and historic levels of unemployment.

For Mr. Trump, that’s both bad news and good news. His handling of the pandemic continues to be panned by voters. According to a running average of major polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight, 58.4% of Americans disapprove of his coronavirus response, while only 38.4% approve.  

At the same time, the electoral fate of incumbent presidents is most often tied to the economy – or more specifically, to voters’ perception of it. If Americans continue to be less concerned by the nation’s economic outlook, or see it as improving, that could give Mr. Trump a boost. 

Chris Carlson/AP

The room is set for the first day of the Republican National Convention on Aug. 24, 2020, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

For that reason, the president should absolutely not let the coronavirus stand in the way of promoting his economic policies, says Republican pollster Ed Goeas.

About a quarter of the electorate likes Mr. Trump’s policies but dislikes him personally, says Mr. Goeas, CEO of The Tarrance Group. College-educated suburban women on average disapprove of his behavior, for instance, despite the fact that a majority of them approve of his economic moves.

Over the past five months, as the pandemic has remained front and center, voters have seen more of Mr. Trump’s controversial persona and less of his policies. Racial unrest and protests have contributed to that imbalance.

So even though the economy is not what it once was, returning the focus there could actually help the president, says Mr. Goeas.

“The thing that [voters are] going to hang their hat on, if you will, is the economy,” he says.

Yet the economy and the virus remain, of course, inextricably linked. In that sense, the president’s chances of reelection may depend more on whether voters begin to judge his virus response less harshly.

It’s certainly possible. November is still distant, and the U.S. pandemic situation could look different in a few months. The national number of new cases has lately begun to recede after hitting a peak in late July. Mask-wearing and social distancing may remain prevalent, helping to keep case counts down. And Mr. Trump’s bet on an imminent vaccine may pay off. 

At the same time, many allies have been arguing that Mr. Trump should go on the offensive on coronavirus. He should point out that mistakes were made at state levels and tout his own response as better than Mr. Biden’s would have been.

Biden as a “restoration” candidate

At last week’s virtual DNC, the Biden campaign worked hard to present its candidate as a national healer who would mobilize the power of the federal government against the coronavirus while addressing the nation’s bitter political, economic, and social divisions.

That’s a tall order. The point seemed to be to present a sharp personal contrast with the incumbent and offer the prospect of a return to pre-pandemic (and pre-Trump) normalcy.

“Biden is running a campaign of restoration rather than revolution,” says Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.

In 2016, surveys showed that voters who believed “our country is changing too fast” went for Mr. Trump, according to Dr. Grossmann. They were a crucial factor in Mr. Trump’s surprising strength in Rust Belt and Upper Midwest states. 

Now Mr. Biden is trying to win some of them back. He doesn’t need them all: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were decided by roughly 80,000 votes between them. If they’d gone for Hillary Clinton, she’d be the president running for reelection today.

There’s evidence some of these “restoration” voters may indeed be moving to Mr. Biden. He currently leads the polls in these states.

“He doesn’t turn them off like Clinton did,” says Dr. Grossmann.

Editor’s note: As a public service, all our pandemic coverage is free. No paywall.

Felipe Dana/AP

Anti-government protesters burn a barricade on Aug. 11, 2020, next to a wall installed by security forces to block access to the Parliament building, during a demonstration following the massive explosion that devastated Beirut.

For the veteran Hezbollah fighter, there was one silver lining – but only one – in the massive explosion at Beirut’s port that devastated swathes of the Lebanese capital Aug. 4.

Overnight, the price of an AK-47 assault rifle quadrupled from $200 to $800.

But for the mechanic-turned-gun dealer, that scrap of relatively good news is far outweighed by what the demand for weapons signals about spreading insecurity in Beirut, and the challenge now faced by Hezbollah amid popular demands to reform a corrupt and sectarian ruling system in which the Shiite movement has become deeply entwined.

“We are living in a very, very dangerous time. ... Everybody is buying a gun to protect his family,” says the Hezbollah fighter, a former unit commander in Syria who devoted his life to the Shiite “Party of God.” He survived multiple tours in Syria but has become disillusioned as quality of life for all Lebanese has deteriorated.

Public anger over systemic corruption and incompetence erupted last October in protests nationwide that included traditional Hezbollah strongholds. But even as Beirutis replace windows and doors smashed by the blast – their anger grown even deeper – there appear few easy solutions to decades of entrenched sectarian rule that most recently has been brokered by Hezbollah.

An image of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, was among those hung by a noose by Lebanese protesters furious about the blast and the collapsing state of their nation. Protesters have for months called for the toppling of the entire political elite, chanting “‘All of them’ means all of them,” in a dig that deliberately includes Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s warning

In a speech soon after the blast, Sheikh Nasrallah warned Lebanese not to blame Hezbollah, or it would “start a battle” that the militia would win – and that Lebanese demanding reforms, presumably, would lose.

“We are living in the worst chaos ever witnessed in Lebanon. People are accusing Hezbollah more than ever,” says the veteran fighter, speaking in his cramped workshop in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Many of Iran-backed Hezbollah’s thousands of core fighters no doubt remain devoted to the cause of “resistance” against Israel and against American influence.

But this officer – who is not alone in his disenchantment – refused last fall to return to Syria, where Hezbollah and Iran have helped support President Bashar al-Assad, citing to the Monitor leadership “corruption,” fighting on too many front lines across the Middle East, and a fury that “we drowned with their lies.”

Sharif Karim/Reuters/FIle

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (2nd right), escorted by his bodyguards, greets his supporters at an anti-U.S. protest in Beirut's southern suburbs in Lebanon, Sept. 17, 2012.

Analysts say the Shiite militia had only limited influence at the Beirut port and had no apparent active interest in the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored there that yielded one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, killing nearly 200 people, injuring 6,000, and causing an estimated $15 billion in damage.

But as Lebanon’s key political power-broker, with armed forces more capable than the national army, Hezbollah has been widely blamed for its role in Lebanon’s misery. It was the chief backer of the technocratic caretaker government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, which failed to bring reforms and resigned after the blast.

Dwindling now are memories of decades of Hezbollah support for Lebanon’s once-disenfranchised Shiites, through patronage and social services that often outshone government efforts.

“The people who support Hezbollah are tired of Hezbollah because their lifestyle went downhill, because the money lost value, because we went to Syria and lost all those people,” says the fighter, whose Hezbollah salary was recently cut in half, to $300 per month – a fact that he says has “upset many families.”

“People are very frustrated. There are a lot of crimes on the street, robberies and shootings,” adds the fighter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to Hezbollah restrictions on contact with media. “I can guarantee you there is a lot of corruption inside Hezbollah, and Hezbollah became corrupt like those inside the government.”

Now part of the system

The result is that the force in Lebanese politics that once may have been most capable of pushing for revamping the discredited sectarian structure – and imposing the type of financial reform necessary to attract critical Western financial bail-out funds – has itself become a part of it.

“Hezbollah has been tarnished,” says Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of “Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel.”

“About 25 years ago they were aloof from the political bosses running the country. They were fighting the Israelis in south Lebanon, they were a much smaller organization,” says Mr. Blanford. “Now they are associated with a political mafia. Now they’re up there backing the government, wheeling and dealing with all the others, with their corrupt allies.”

Sworn followers of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Hezbollah has been instrumental in furthering Iran’s regional reach on the front lines of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond.

A United Nations-backed tribunal last week convicted a Hezbollah operative for his role in the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a car bomb, but cleared three other Hezbollah suspects, and the leadership of Hezbollah and Syria, citing lack of evidence.

After the assassination, which led to protests and the departure of Syrian troops after 40 years, Hezbollah “inched themselves deeper and deeper into the morass of Lebanese politics,” says Mr. Blanford.

Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP/File

Hezbollah militants stand at attention during a memorial service for Hezbollah's assassinated top commander Imad Mughniyeh in his home village of Tair Debba, south Lebanon, Feb. 17, 2008.

Just as Hezbollah is often described as a “state within a state” that has its own global network, the militia is beset now by a crisis within Lebanon’s national crisis.

“I don’t think Hezbollah has an issue per se with reforms, so long as it doesn’t affect their ‘resistance priority’ and their core interests,” says Mr. Blanford. But for their domestic allies, the reforms demanded by Western governments and global lenders are “existential” because “the political mafia here would lose their stranglehold on the state’s coffers.”

If Hezbollah pushed for the reforms, it might break apart its system of alliances, he says.

Blaming outsiders

Still, the war in Syria is largely over, so Hezbollah’s need to control the Beirut airport and use the port is likely to be less, and the blast itself has created a new dynamic, says Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“I think there is wiggle room for them to accept a more restricted role, provided that they don’t feel directly threatened,” Mr. Salem told a recent webinar for the Carnegie Middle East Center. “But we have to stand up and say, ‘The country is dying, this kind of injection of a group allied to a foreign power – we get it, we cannot remove it – but its takeover of the state has killed the state, killed the economy. It’s in no one’s interest.’ … There’s got to be a new deal.”

Sheikh Nasrallah has warned that Israel would “pay an equal price” if Hezbollah’s archenemy were found responsible for the Beirut blast. No evidence has been found suggesting an Israeli role, and Hezbollah has instead found itself rejecting rumors – equally unsupported, so far – that it had stored weapons or been responsible for the stockpiled ammonium nitrate at the port.

That doesn’t wash with this Hezbollah fighter, who says he is tired of hearing outsiders blamed for Lebanon’s problems.

“You can’t tell me, ‘Everything that happens, blame Israel, blame Israel,’” says the fighter, who wears jeans and a black T-shirt in his workshop, not the camouflage gear he favored months ago.

He says Sheikh Nasrallah’s speeches these days “make no sense.” The bar is high to make a case for continued resistance, since Hezbollah has not fought a major battle with Israel in 14 years, and Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon almost entirely two decades ago.

“My son is supposed to go to Syria. I prevented him from going,” says the fighter. “We are tired of [Hezbollah]. We felt betrayed by the party. We are fighting for a better country, not to destroy it.”

Which is why support for Hezbollah is dwindling, he says, even among the rank and file, who have seen the Lebanese currency lose two-thirds of its value since last fall and now are grappling with surging insecurity and crime.

“There is no money. ... If people want to buy milk for their kids, they can’t,” says the stocky veteran fighter. “If we stay at the same pace, we are going for starvation. ... Because of all the sanctions, Hezbollah is [also] barely eating right now.”

A translator in Beirut facilitated reporting.

Summer in California has burst into flames yet again. Some 600 wildfires have scorched more than 1 million acres of land over the past two weeks, forcing the evacuation of an estimated 120,000 people and destroying in excess of 1,000 homes and other structures. The cataclysm of infernos – sparked in many areas by dry-lightning strikes – has killed seven people and inflicted an untold toll on livestock and wildlife.

In recent years, the spectacle of burning landscapes and ash-smeared skies has attained a harrowing familiarity for Californians, with fires torching chaparral shrublands in Southern California, coastal redwoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, and mountain forests in the Sierra Nevada. A confluence of factors has wrought a perennial menace, including overgrown forests and grasslands, climate change and drought, aging utility grids, and increased development in wildlands.

To better understand the recurring crisis, the Monitor spoke with a trio of wildfire researchers: Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire area adviser with the University of California system and director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council; Bill Stewart, co-director of Berkeley Forests at the University of California, Berkeley; and Marti Witter, a fire ecologist with the National Park Service based in Southern California.

They discussed the merits and drawbacks of various approaches – prescribed fire, thinning, natural burning – to reduce the dead trees and other fuels that feed wildfires; prevention strategies that federal, state, and private land managers should enact; and potential long-range solutions for limiting wildfire destruction. Interviews have been edited and condensed.

Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP

Firefighters watch the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest on Aug. 12, 2020, north of Santa Clarita, California.

Q: Beyond widely accepted reasons for wildfires growing in size, severity, and frequency, why hasn’t California made more progress in slowing the trend?

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: Our fire management and our land management haven’t kept pace with the scientific understanding we have of fire in California. There’s this fear of active land management – prescribed burning, thinning – that sometimes gets in the way of us making good choices. If we’re not protecting the resources we care about and we’re not taking action, then we will continue to lose them to big fires.

Mr. Stewart: Many of the fires around the greater Bay Area are in areas that didn’t burn 30 years ago because they were cattle ranches. They had cattle on them, and that helped reduce fuels. Now those areas have turned into parks or 5- and 10-acre residential lots. So much development has been about what’s aesthetically pleasing, so we’ve ended up with a landscape that, during hot and dry seasons, there’s a lot more fuel and it becomes a much riskier situation.

Ms. Witter: One thing that’s underappreciated is how much fires are driven – and this is true nationwide – by human ignitions and human activity. Lightning-driven ignitions [that cause widespread destruction] are much more uncommon. There has been very little serious attention paid to prevention of fires caused and sustained by human activity.

Q: The state has upped its efforts to reduce forest overgrowth. Does there need to be even more of that? Can that help with controlling wildfire and restoring forest health?

Ms. Witter: The state thinks that if they do enough fuels projects, it’ll solve the problem. But in those systems that need fire to remain healthy, you’ll never reach the target levels [of fuel reduction] using prescribed fire because the areas are too big. That means you have to let a lot more natural fires burn and monitor them. But that’s always so controversial. The fire agencies say, “Yup, let that one burn,” and then people’s homes or forests get damaged, and the agencies are held liable.

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: We need to be thinking about active forest management with prescribed fire and thinning, and deploying those in strategic ways that allow us to leverage natural wildfires on the bigger landscape level. We know we’re not going to be able to thin or prescribe burn all the area that needs it, so we need to be able to use wildfire to do some of that work for us.

Q: The federal government owns more than half of California’s 33 million acres of forest land and has been less aggressive about fuel reduction. Is that contributing to the state’s problems?

Mr. Stewart: There are national parks in California – Yosemite and Sequoia – that have had stable fire management practices since the ’60s. They still have big wildfires, but they reintroduced prescribed fire over time and brought some resilience back to their forests. They’ve made the landscape more of a mosaic so there isn’t continuous fuel in every direction. The [U.S.] Forest Service and federal wilderness areas have not achieved that. They’re still a problem. They have to reintegrate fuel treatments with forest management, but they say, “We’re not sure we can do that because someone is going to yell at us.” We’re still fighting the timber wars in the West.

Ms. Witter: I don’t often go to fire and fuels management conferences. But when I do, I’m struck by how frustrated everyone is at their inability to get work done [due to bureaucratic hurdles]. Even people who just want to put prescribed fire on brown dirt to manage wildfires are totally inhibited in doing what they need to do.

Shmuel Thaler/The Santa Cruz Sentinel/AP

A rare lightning storm crackles over Mitchell's Cove in Santa Cruz, California, around 3 a.m. Sunday morning Aug. 16, 2020. The severe storm system rolled through the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas early Sunday, packing a combination of dry lightning and high winds that triggered wildfires throughout the region.

Q: Part of California’s challenge is that most of its fire prevention resources go toward putting out fires. Is there more that local communities could be doing to share the burden as far as treating land and fuel reduction?

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: I find that a lot of the state fire management agencies like Cal Fire [California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection] and some of the federal agencies – there’s an attitude that the public is a problem. We need to move beyond that. I work with a lot of community members and private landowners, and there’s a pretty strong desire for more prescribed fire, more thinning, more work on fire. People want to be involved and want to understand what they can do so they’re not sitting around waiting for Cal Fire or the Forest Service to take care of the problem.

Ms. Witter: A lot of the state and federal people are overwhelmed and overworked by fighting fires. With prevention, you have to be on the ground all the time. It has to be people in the community who are there and able to carry through the work that needs to be done.

Q: There isn’t always agreement among federal, state, and private land managers about how to lower fire risks, which often leads to inaction. How can that be changed?

Mr. Stewart: Part of the issue with trying to have more coordination is saying, “We’re going to have one grand plan everywhere.” But the approach that works in one part of the state doesn’t necessarily work in others. So what we need is to try different approaches and see what works. Experimentation on a grand scale is really needed on public lands because if everybody keeps waiting until we agree on one plan, nothing will change.

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: We need more coordination because we lack a shared vision of how we’re going to live with fire. We know it’s not going away. So we need public agencies, communities, Native American tribes, private landowners – everybody has to be involved. We really need to aspire to get to that place where there isn’t this division between experts and the public, where we’re all kind of one fire-adapted culture.

Q: The era of megafires in California has been decades in the making. How can public agencies begin to counter that over the next few years?

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: We need to create a more robust and sustainable fire workforce. Right now, they’re so beat down at the end of fire season – especially as fire season is getting longer in California – that there’s basically no capacity the rest of the year to do any of the proactive stuff we need to be doing. So we need to create more jobs, and those jobs need to be dedicated to fire management and land management.

Mr. Stewart: We’ve been trying to convince the Forest Service to look at what the Forest Stewardship Council does, which is combine fuels management with timber harvesting to produce revenue. Right now, the Forest Service is afraid to generate revenue and reinvest it because they’re not supposed to produce profits off public lands. But that’s their challenge, because at this rate, they’re never going to treat more than a hundred acres a year.

Ms. Witter: There are all kinds of prevention plans. We don’t need more prevention plans. We need prevention action.

When teacher Mona Al-Hayani looks at high school students, she sees possibilities. But after years of social justice work, she’s also keenly aware of unseen dangers to young people.

So when the state of Ohio mandated five years ago that public school staff receive training on human trafficking – without providing any money or much direction – “Ms. Al,” as she’s called, stepped up.

She developed a curriculum for the Toledo district, trained more than 20,000 students and educators in how to identify risk factors, connected the schools to local advocacy groups, and has started offering training for nearby communities. The effort earned her Ohio’s Teacher of the Year award in 2019, and the admiration of advocates for impoverished young people who are most at risk.

As her school prepares to start the year remotely, Ms. Al-Hayani has been helping develop an app called Youth Pages, which offers resources to mitigate factors that lead to human trafficking.  

Sandy Sieben, co-chair of the Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition (LCHTC), has a simple answer for those who ask how Toledo has managed to come this far: “We say, ‘Mona.’ It’s because of Mona’s respect in the community and her ability. Mona’s really talented and skilled in talking to all levels.”

Traffickers prey on victims’ vulnerabilities, and high school students can be easy targets. A 2019 report by the University of Cincinnati School of Criminal Justice said most victims trafficked that year were between 12 and 30 years old, with about 86% identified as minors. Most cases involve teenagers in abusive relationships who are tricked into sex trafficking by their partner.

Anti-trafficking advocates are also fighting a newer phenomenon, the conspiracy theories perpetuated on social media that attempt to link high-profile people to trafficking.

“They’re giving you the caricature of a sensationalized sliver of what might be happening,” says Celia Williamson, director of the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute at the University of Toledo and founder of the LCHTC.

False stories often focus on a specific prominent person or organization that is supposedly trafficking. But that misinformation discounts the factors that contribute to the problem, she adds. Instead, it panics the public and leads to “institutionalized privilege” – with individuals investing money to help communities that are already protected. “What we’re trying to address is the more common manipulation that occurs,” says. Dr. Williamson.

“It’s not really about snatching and grabbing people off the street. That is doing a disservice to the reality of trafficking and it has everybody looking in the wrong places.”

Vulnerabilities preyed on 

Toledo and Lucas County have a large proportion of vulnerable young people. Ohio Department of Education data indicates that Toledo public schools had more homeless students, about 2,700, than any other district in the state during the 2015-2016 year. Almost 20,000 of the district’s 23,000 students are economically disadvantaged. Those challenges could worsen in a recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Lori King/Courtesy of IWMF

Young Women for Change members Esther Goldstein (left) and Ella Hughes listen during a meeting at the Toledo Early College High School on Jan. 24, 2020.

Dr. Williamson considers it a victory of sorts that Ohio placed fifth on a list compiled by the Polaris Project of states with human trafficking problems. The list is based on calls to a hotline, so Ohio’s ranking reflects a high degree of awareness, she says. By focusing on the demographic most at risk, Toledo is able to identify individuals being exploited that other cities do not. 

“It’s about vulnerability ... That’s the common denominator about trafficked youth,” says Ms. Al-Hayani, whose program includes educating students and teachers on how to resist and detect trafficking.

Ms. Al-Hayani says her passion for community education began as she watched her mother lead discussions about Islam during a time when Americans had little concept of it. Her mother, Fatima, taught French and English while completing her doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence.

“My mom always spoke the truth,” Ms. Al-Hayani says. “Even if she knew that it would alienate people. She always was political, in the sense where she used education as a tool to teach people about the right path, and I took all of that from her.”

Dr. Al-Hayani gave a university talk about Islam two days after 9/11, though friends and family worried for her safety and pleaded with her to cancel it. Through her work on a peace and justice committee, she has held anti-human trafficking workshops for social workers, teachers, and detectives, and she worked on state legislation to stop the criminalization of victims of sex trafficking.

“Mona and her mom were advocates for the victims of human trafficking even before it was popular,” their family friend, Cherrefe Kadri explains. “So when that movement was first getting started, they were at the forefront.”

A self-described “Toledo girl,” Mona Al-Hayani studied sociology at the University of Toledo. The first Gulf War was raging when she was a freshman, and she recalls a group of young men who shouted “Go back where you came from” as she was returning to her car after attending a lecture.

“I remember that moment really was a defining point for me,” Ms. Al-Hayani says.

Her father’s country, Iraq, was at war with America. She protested the sanctions against Iraq, because of how children were negatively affected by them.

Watching her father get pulled aside for extra airport screening, or adjusting to FBI monitoring of their house because her father was a supervisor of a municipal water plant, made her reflect on her identity, Ms. Al-Hayani says.

“All of those things shaped me to look at social justice through a different lens,” she says. She got a chance to act on her values when she set foot in Woodward High School in Toledo as a substitute teacher in 1999.

The school had a reputation for a high suspension rate. Her students included seniors who had failed ninth grade reading tests. Many were unsure if they would graduate.

“My goal the first year was to make sure that they graduated, and they did,” Ms. Al-Hayani says. So she remained a high school teacher, moving later to Toledo Early College High School.

Thirteen years ago, she created an international festival for one of the most diverse schools in the state, focused on the food and culture of different countries. The idea came after a student of Mexican heritage approached her about arranging a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in the system,” says Victoria Smith, a Toledo Public Schools Spanish teacher, who’s taught for about 25 years. “It makes my job easier because the kids, they get fired up about the I-Fest. They do look forward to it all year long.”

The event is organized by Young Women for Change, a group at school that Ms. Al-Hayani started. Other students create displays full of historical facts about each country.

I-Fest has changed their perception of the world, says Jada McIntyre, a team captain for the event. “You could be in social studies class all day,” she adds. “You can retain that information, but when you get that visual, when you get to just help in the project, see it come together, you know, taste the food, see the performances, see all the boards and artifacts, it makes it feel more real and it’s easier to connect with it.”

Empowering young women

In addition to being Ohio’s Teacher of the Year in 2019, Ms. Al-Hayani is this year’s teacher fellow for the Ohio Department of Education and the recipient of a YWCA award that honors women in northwest Ohio for their work in empowering other women. Lisa McDuffie, president and CEO of the YWCA, says Ms. Al-Hayani’s contribution was so significant that she could have won in several other categories, as well.

Dr. Williamson says that Ms. Al-Hayani’s role as an educator was a game changer for the anti-trafficking coalition, allowing it to progress from education and awareness to prevention.  By collaborating with the LCHTC and the University of Toledo, Ms. Al-Hayani has reached out to students in cities like Tiffin and Sandusky. Through the LCHTC, representatives of 36 agencies from five counties meet monthly to discuss prevention, intervention, and programming.

During a gathering at the Ohio state capitol last year, Ms. Al-Hayani’s students performed a skit demonstrating how predators use coercion, force, and fraud to lure vulnerable young people.

“If we don’t arm students with knowledge and power – that when they take informed action change can happen, we’re doomed as a society,” Ms. Al-Hayani says. Teachers act as both “warriors and advocates” in their classrooms every day. “People don’t really realize that.”

This story was produced in association with the Round Earth Media program of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Courtesy of Hachette Book Group and Penguin Random House

“The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings” by Neil Price, Basic Books, 573 pp.; and “When These Mountains Burn” by David Joy, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 272 pp.

The 10 best books of August deliver rousing historic fiction, a quirky travelogue, a searing exposé, and the biography of a controversial government figure. 

1. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Irish-born writer Maggie O’Farrell vividly renders the home life of William Shakespeare in a historical novel named for the playwright’s son, whose death at age 11 may have prompted his father to write “Hamlet.” O’Farrell extrapolates a very thin historical record into an imaginative, sensitive story. (Q&A with the author here.) 

2. Olive the Lionheart by Brad Ricca

In 1910, noted British explorer Boyd Alexander promised his fiancée, Olive MacLeod, that he would return home in one year. When she suddenly stops receiving his letters, Olive ventures to Central Africa to learn what became of him. The author draws from real-life journals and letters to tell the fictionalized story of a young woman who discovers her resourcefulness and strength.

3. When These Mountains Burn by David Joy

A father struggles with his son’s drug addiction in a bleak, brutal thriller that nonetheless treats its characters and its Appalachian setting with respect and deep empathy. Unlikely heroes rely on each other in a North Carolina county ravaged by the opioid epidemic, a place where “these mountains used to have their own kind of order.”

4. Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin

Courtesy of Simon & Schuster

“Brontë's Mistress” by Finola Austin, Atria Books, 320 pp.

In 1845, Branwell Brontë – brother to Anne, Charlotte, and Emily – was abruptly dismissed from his position as a tutor at Thorp Green Hall, with rumors flying about an affair with his employer’s wife, Lydia Robinson. This richly atmospheric novel tells the story from Lydia’s viewpoint. (Full review here.)

5. The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne by Elsa Hart

Botanist Cecily Kay brings her powers of observation to bear on the mysterious murder of Sir Barnaby Mayne, London’s most esteemed collector. Convinced that his servant has wrongly confessed, Cecily aims to discover the truth in this delightful whodunit set in the 18th century. 

6. The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

In one of the season’s most unlikely triumphs, travel journalist Sophy Roberts recounts her expeditions to Siberia, where she pursues a succession of the often-legendary pianos that have given music to a place seldom associated with cultural riches. In the process, Roberts turns up insights into the land, its history, and its people. (Full review here.) 

7. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

In her stirring follow-up to “The Warmth of Other Suns,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson persuasively argues that racism alone does not explain America’s social divisions. Rather, the United States ought to be understood as having a race-based caste system, one whose hierarchies, though artificial, are remarkably enduring. (Q&A with author here.) 

8. Fallout by Lesley M.M. Blume

Courtesy of Simon & Schuster

“Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World” by Lesley M.M. Blume, Simon & Schuster, 288 pp.

“Fallout” pulls back the curtain on an extraordinary feat of journalism. In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, John Hersey wrote an on-the-ground account of the horrific injuries of the victims, which the U.S. government had tried to hide. The exposé was published in The New Yorker, which devoted the entire Aug. 29, 1946, issue to Hersey’s story. His account served to strengthen opposition to nuclear warfare. (Full review here.) 

9. Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price

Copious documentation and the latest archaeological findings gird a new history of the Vikings, which broadens the narrative beyond the violent warrior image. Neil Price explores what is known about Viking society and culture, and its impact on the peoples and lands that were conquered.  

10. Henry Kissinger and American Power by Thomas A. Schwartz

The former secretary of state under Richard Nixon has inspired a mountain of biographical studies, some treating him as a hero, others as evil incarnate. In this volume, history professor Thomas A. Schwartz effectively separates the man from the myths.

AP

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, former candidate for the Belarus' presidential elections, listens during a news conference in Lithuania, Aug. 21.

One tool for a country to express soft power in the world these days is through hospitality toward endangered pro-democracy dissidents. The welcoming kindness can change the course of events, not to mention save lives.

The latest example of hospitality as diplomacy comes from Germany. Last week it provided a medical rescue for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after he was poisoned in Siberia. (France also offered to take him in.) He joins other prominent democrats-in-exile in Berlin, such as the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

The United States is now providing a haven for Cai Xia, a former teacher in the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological school. Last week, she was expelled from the party and stripped of her pension after referring to party leader Xi Jinping as a “mafia boss” and for advocating for democracy. “I’ve regained my freedom,” says Ms. Cai, who has also gained a safe base from which to advocate for reform in China.

Spain is providing a home for Venezuela’s would-be president, Leopoldo López, at its embassy in Caracas. Several European nations are offering a base for Syria’s pro-democracy leaders. Taiwan, Britain, and Canada have become popular destinations for Hong Kong’s fleeing democrats. After Beijing imposed a national security law on the territory in July, the U.S. Congress took up a bill that would fast track asylum applications for people from Hong Kong.

Hospitality among freedom-loving countries provides a moral counterpoint to the brutal suppression of dictatorships. “I’ve forgotten what a normal life is like,” said Hong Kong dissident Tyrant Lau after arriving in democratic Taiwan.

In Belarus, the current repression of protests by strongman Alexander Lukashenko after a rigged election has led Lithuania and Poland to open their borders to escaping democratic leaders.

“We appreciate the Polish government, Poland itself for your hospitality, for letting us in and for supporting us in this difficult time,” said Belarusian opposition activist Veronika Tsepkalo, who has joined her husband in exile.

Tiny Lithuania, with a population of 2.8 million, has become a place of refuge for Belarusians in exile. The most famous is schoolteacher Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the presumed winner of the Aug. 9 election. She fled after the election and now uses her base in Lithuania to guide a democratic revolution in Belarus.

This type of open-handed acceptance among democracies befits the original meaning of hospitality in Greek – “taking care of strangers.” Nations have been set free because of it. As a tool for soft power, kindness can have real power.