No Lebanese citizen who felt the shock wave of one of the largest non-nuclear blasts in history will ever forget its destructive power – or that it signaled a new low of negligence and corruption for Lebanon’s political elite.

The explosion a year ago of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, poorly stored in Beirut’s port, destroyed swaths of the capital and enveloped the city in a shroud of trauma that left more than 200 dead and 300,000 homeless.

Lebanon marked the grim anniversary Wednesday with a day of mourning, and protests in Beirut demanding justice.

Yet even as Lebanon began last year to grope through one of its darkest moments, volunteers came from every corner of the country to help.

As if by reflex, Lebanon’s civil society swung into action, its skills well practiced after a 15-year civil war, multiple armed conflicts, a collapsed economy, the absorption of 1.5 million Syrian refugees, and the pandemic – all crises created or made worse by chronic political dysfunction.

The outpouring of public support was as unprecedented as the scale of ruin.

The website of the charity Offre Joie (Joy of Giving), for example, which for years had helped Lebanese rebuild from war and violence when government was absent, crashed as more than 6,000 volunteers rushed to sign up.

The result, one year later, is the emergence of a vigorous and competent civil society movement that has seized the reins of rebuilding and convinced donors to bypass corrupt government institutions.

And a unique mechanism called the Reform, Recovery and Reconstruction Framework (3RF) – run jointly under the United Nations, European Union, and World Bank – has made its demands for accountability and reform heard at the highest level and has placed activists carrying out the recovery across the table from government officials.

The demonstration of resilience has brought an expectation for change that could only have been dreamed of before the blast.

“This is the day for any citizen that wants to be part of the new Lebanon,” says Paul Naggear, an activist whose 3-year-old daughter, Alexandra, was killed in the explosion by what he calls a “criminal regime.”

“There is a before and after the 4th, and after the 4th is a movement of solidarity, with one cause, to get our country back,” says Mr. Naggear. “For us it was justice; for others it was rebuilding.”

Filling a vacuum

He and his wife, Tracy, were instrumental after the blast in uniting nongovernmental organizations as they advocated for victims’ families.

“Civil society managed to organize themselves into a pseudo-government. ... It was extraordinary,” says Mr. Naggear. “They say, ‘My role is not to replace the government; it’s too much responsibility.’ But when they saw after an hour, two hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, there was no [government] response, they had to step in.”

Lebanon had already been reeling from more than a year of street protests, the self-declared October revolution that began in late 2019 to end corruption and topple the ruling classes and their sectarian networks, which have been entrenched for decades.

The catastrophic blast was final proof, for many, of shameful malfeasance.

Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

People carry photographs of victims of last year's devastating explosion, in a march in Beirut demanding accountability and justice, Aug. 4, 2021.

In a report released Tuesday, Human Rights Watch found that “multiple Lebanese authorities were, at a minimum, criminally negligent” in mishandling the dangerous chemicals for six years, and “tacitly accepted the risk of the deaths occurring.”

Today half the population has slipped below the poverty line amid a financial crisis and hyperinflation. Frequent blackouts punctuate chronic shortages of food and fuel, which have led to fights in supermarkets and long lines at gas stations.

The research center Lebanon Support found that civil society accounted for 62% of post-blast relief, and individual efforts for another 20%. The government contributed just 0.9% in the aftermath – a measure of invisibility that was all too obvious.

Bypassing failed government

But outrage has changed little at the top. The government resigned after the explosion, and quarreling politicians have yet to agree on a new one. The EU has prepared sanctions targeting Lebanese officials.

“Lebanese leaders seem to bet on a stalling strategy, which I regret and I think is a historic and moral failure,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday as he opened a donor conference that aimed to raise $350 million.

“There will be no blank check for the Lebanese political system. Because it is they who, since the start of the crisis but also before that, are failing,” Mr. Macron said.

France already bypassed the Lebanese government to provide $100 million in direct assistance to the Lebanese people in 2020 – often utilizing civil society initiatives that have proved transparent and effective.

That is just one data point in a trajectory of bottom-up change, activists say.

“For the Western audience, Lebanon is this intricate web of mystery and eclecticism, and it’s not: It’s bad governance that literally exploded,” says Carmen Geha, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut and an activist who co-founded Khaddit Beirut (Beirut’s Shake-Up).

“But there is a lot of talent and a lot of expertise and a lot of perseverance to want to do something differently,” says Ms. Geha. “There is a mobilizing happening.”

She lists a confluence of changes in the past year that add up to a “historic transformation” wrought by citizen initiatives, from rebuilding homes, shops, and restaurants, and making blood donations a national cause, to professional advocacy and human rights groups.

2022 elections

New, independent political parties also have emerged. Ms. Geha’s own Khaddit Beirut includes business owners, academics, and experts pushing for reform. A key test will be parliamentary elections in 2022.

“My agenda for the election next year is not to run or support people, but to put what these NGOs are doing on any [candidate’s] agenda,” says Ms. Geha. “We don’t want an NGO country, but for now we need to champion that model.”

Hassan Ammar/AP/File

Wounded people are evacuated after a massive explosion in the port of Beirut, Aug. 4, 2020. A year later, families of the victims are consumed with winning justice for their loved ones and punishing Lebanon's political elite, blamed for causing the disaster through corruption and neglect.

Despite civil society gains and even optimism, the fact that the ruling classes remain entrenched makes this anniversary bittersweet, says Ms. Geha.

“This is the darkest moment because they are still on TV. ... I can see their faces. I feel like I’m living with” an abuser, she says. “There is a lot of hope in the dark – but it is very dark.”

Starting to change that equation is the 3RF network, which aims to insert technical assistance and harness know-how from 100-plus civil society groups.

“This is the missing link between the street, and what’s happening in the government,” says Jaap van Diggele, coordinating officer at 3RF in Beirut and a former Dutch diplomat.

“It’s the PM of Lebanon and CSOs [civil society organizations] facing each other as equal co-chairs, saying, ‘You need to focus on this. You need to focus on that,’” he says.

“These people have never been in the same room together, so it’s a lot of work to channel that energy into something where we all sit around the table and say, ‘We agree. How do we make this work?’” says Mr. Van Diggele.

Tapping civil society expertise

“The level of professionalism, the deep substantive knowledge about what needs to be done in this country – it’s very impressive, across the board, whether the water or electricity sectors, or governance, or freedom of the press,” says Mr. Van Diggele.

That expertise has often been honed by decades of vital civil society action. At the forefront has been Offre Joie, which harnessed thousands of volunteers to rebuild some 60 buildings in two wrecked neighborhoods closest to Beirut’s port.

“The goal is not [only] to build homes; it’s to unite Lebanese citizens,” says Christopher Rizk, a civil engineer and senior volunteer who has worked with Offre Joie since 2012.

“Peace can be reached by letting volunteers from all over the country work together, which is when they will notice that this is not about religion, or about political affiliation, but ... wanting to build a better country,” says Mr. Rizk.

Those 350 families with rebuilt homes “are extremely grateful ... but they are still deeply traumatized by the explosion, and these wounds take longer to heal,” says Mr. Rizk. Watching volunteers work tirelessly for a year “inspires you and keeps you pushing, and pushing, and pushing for something better.”

That includes stepping in where officials fail to tread, such as rebuilding the fire brigade headquarters. Ten of its firemen died in the explosion.

“We thought initially that the government would do it,” says Mr. Rizk.

“Everyone was talking about the different martyrs of the fire brigade, so we thought the government would care about this,” he says. “But after a few months we noticed they were still sleeping in tents. We couldn’t believe it, so we decided to take it as well.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor running for Michigan's Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2022, speaks to a crowd of local Republicans at an Ottawa County GOP picnic in Georgetown Township, Michigan July 15, 2021.

On a humid summer evening at a public park in western Michigan, hundreds of local Republicans are eating barbecued chicken and listening to GOP candidates for office. Time and again, they drop their plastic cutlery to voice loud antipathy for the state’s Democratic governor.

“Who’s ready to get rid of Gretchen Whitmer?” former Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives Tom Leonard asks the crowd, to roaring applause. “What about a ‘Heil, Whitmer?’” asks state representative candidate Mick Bricker, making a Nazi salute. There is a pause, a few gasps, and then more raucous clapping.  

The ire here is motivated almost entirely by one thing: the pandemic. During the height of COVID-19 in 2020, Governor Whitmer and Michigan became an epicenter of pandemic partisan polarization, as state conservatives and then-President Donald Trump whipped up opposition to Ms. Whitmer’s lockdown measures, which were among the strictest in the nation. Using an Emergency Powers Act created in 1945 in response to a Detroit riot, Ms. Whitmer banned Michiganders from visiting their own second homes, banned the use of motorboats, and prohibited some stores from selling gardening or painting supplies, among other restrictions. 

Many voters across the state backed Ms. Whitmer’s actions, and her approval ratings rose 15 points in the early months of the lockdown. But they also produced a backlash, with anger among opponents spawning armed protests in the State Capitol and recall efforts.

“Can you imagine being told you couldn’t garden?” Tudor Dixon, one of eight Republicans who have already announced gubernatorial candidacies, asks the crowd in Hagar Park. “I said, ‘Not in America.’ Well, it wasn’t in America. It was in one state.”

Republican efforts to recall Ms. Whitmer were unsuccessful. Last month, the GOP-controlled legislature did manage to repeal the state law Ms. Whitmer relied upon as legal authority for many of her actions: the Emergency Powers of the Governor Act.

But now, almost a year and a half into the pandemic, partisan divisions show little sign of lessening. After a fleeting sense in the beginning of the summer that the virus might be receding for good, the delta variant has brought a new surge in cases, leading to renewed debates across the country over mask mandates and stronger pushes for vaccine requirements. Public health has become in many ways a dividing line between blue states and red states. In Michigan, the state itself is sharply divided. 

“When Florida is doing one thing and New York is doing another, they can laugh at one another across thousands of miles,” says Josh Pasek, a political communication expert at the University of Michigan. “But here, you have a lot of the forces that are playing out across the country playing out in a deeper way.” 

Stark divisions

All states have diverse demographics, but Michigan’s are particularly stark. With its pro-union, university-heavy, majority Black cities to the south, and its rural farmland to the north, Michigan in some ways has the entire political spectrum condensed inside one electorally important home. 

Ms. Whitmer, a former state legislator, won the Michigan governorship in 2018 by running as a pragmatic problem-solver who would put ideology aside and just “fix the damn roads.” She flipped nine counties that had gone to President Trump. After four months in office her approval ratings reached 51 percent, following her negotiation of auto insurance reform plans with the Republican-led state legislature. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Rock Lewis, Karen Green, and Ann Clark (from left to right) participate in a "Forced Jab" protest outside of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan July 17, 2021.

Then the pandemic hit. In March of 2020 Ms. Whitmer instituted a wide-ranging stay-at-home order that was initially met with broad public approval: one poll at the time found 69% of Michigan residents supported it, including 61% of self-identified Republicans.

Some conservative protests began after she tightened the restrictions in April. Her poll numbers dropped through the spring of 2021. But they remain well above-water. A survey released early last month showed 50% of Michigan residents approve of her job performance, with 44% disapproving.

Over the past year and a half, Whitmer opponents have organized multiple protests at the State Capitol in Lansing and filed more than a dozen recall petitions. At one rally in April of 2020, armed protesters stormed the Capitol building, a scene not unlike what later unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In October 2020, the FBI arrested more than a dozen members of a local militia group for plotting to kidnap Ms. Whitmer, though the defendants are arguing it was entrapment.   

Whitmer supporters say the governor did what she needed to do during an unprecedented time. The Midwest led the country in cases per capita last fall, with a rate that was at times more than double that of other regions. Michigan currently ranks 12th overall in COVID-19-related deaths per 100,000 residents. 

“If anything, I think she could have been more strict,” says Scott McConkey, a retired chemical engineer from central Michigan, adding that he sympathizes with the difficult tradeoffs political leaders had to weigh.

“Michigan is still not fully recovered from the auto industry leaving, so to inflict damage on the economy of Michigan in order to save lives – that’s a decision that has to be extremely tough for anyone, Republican or Democrat,” says Mr. McConkey. 

In fact, Michigan’s economic health thus far in 2021 looks relatively strong. It has the greatest GDP increase in the Midwest and a 5% unemployment rate, which is below the national average.

“I don’t see how Republicans can look at that and say she did the wrong thing,” says Jody LaMacchia, chair of the Oakland County Democrats. “All signs point to major success.”

Sexism at work?

Sitting in the back row of chairs at the Ottawa County barbecue, Rae Ann Fortin says she would never have gotten involved in a political campaign before this year. Now, she’s volunteering for Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor who is running for Michigan’s Republican nomination for governor.

“It was COVID that did it for me,” says Ms. Fortin, who works at a medical office outside Grand Rapids. Like many Michigan conservatives, she says Ms. Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions made her feel an urgent need to take back state offices.

For many opponents, it wasn’t the initial lockdown that bothered them so much as the failure to begin returning to normal in a timely manner. Even as other states reopened fully, Ms. Whitmer extended many of her restrictions into last fall and even this spring.

“Her policies started good,” says Mr. Soldano, the GOP candidate. “But then she told us to cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas, and canceled schools,” he continues. “And other schools across the country were in person, no mask mandates, and they were doing just fine. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Mr. Soldano became a popular figure among Michigan conservatives earlier this year when he started a Facebook group “Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine.” The group had hundreds of thousands of members before Facebook shut it down, but voters across the state still champion the father from Kalamazoo as a leader of the anti-Whitmer-lockdown movement. He has emerged as an early frontrunner in the crowded field of Republicans in terms of fundraising. But the state of the race will likely change as former Detroit police chief James Craig gets his campaign off the ground, and rumors continue to swirl about a run by Mr. Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy Devos. 

Many Whitmer supporters say the Republican opposition to her has more than a whiff of sexism. At a local event in late March, Michigan Republican chair Ron Weiser said the party was getting the “three witches” in Lansing “ready for the burning at the stake” in 2022, referring to Ms. Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Attorney General Dana Nessel. 

“I just think it has to do with a powerful woman at the helm,” says Ms. LaMacchia. “She was more focused on keeping Michiganders safe than her reelection, and that’s really something to cherish.”

Still, it didn’t help that Ms. Whitmer got caught breaking some of her own orders. 

She left the state to attend President Biden’s inauguration and visit her father, which angered many Michiganders such as Ms. Dixon, who were barred from visiting their own elderly relatives. In late May, Ms. Whitmer was photographed maskless at an indoor restaurant with 12 people at her table, while the state still had a ban against groups larger than six people dining together. Ms. Whitmer later apologized.  

Split over vaccinations

On a hot Saturday afternoon in late July, some three dozen protesters stand outside Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Waving signs that read “You are not free without choice,” and “My Body, my choice includes vaccines too,” they’re opposing a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for employees of Trinity Health, a system of 90 hospitals across 22 states, which is based in Michigan.

“[The vaccination push] is entirely politically driven,” says Jenni Palencik, a nurse at the hospital who says she is refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccination because she thinks the process was rushed. “Our governor is a Democrat, so she’s just going with the party line to get people vaccinated.” 

“[The vaccination push] has already defined my vote in 2022,” says Rock Lewis, a medical supply buyer from the Detroit area.

Surveys show a significant divide in vaccination rates between Republicans and Democrats. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, U.S. counties that voted for President Joe Biden had a vaccination rate of almost 47% as of early July, compared to a rate of 35% for counties that voted for Mr. Trump.

That’s the case in Michigan, where several of the counties with the greatest margins for Mr. Trump in 2020 are also the ones with the lowest vaccination rates. Between the 10 most pro-Trump counties in Michigan, and the bottom 10 counties for vaccination rates, four counties find themselves on both lists. 

Anne Miller has spent the pandemic working as an intensive care nurse in Kalamazoo. When asked how the past year and a half has been, she laughs darkly. 

“Emotionally, physically exhausting. That’s the best way I can describe it,” says Ms. Miller.

Too many of the country’s vaccine opponents think they can rely on other Americans to get the vaccine, she says. “People get sucked into this false information, and it’s costing people their lives.” 

Jamie Cree, another ICU nurse in Kalamazoo, says this past year has been “completely different” from anything she’s experienced in her four decades on the job.

Vaccine opponents say, “‘We have our rights’ – well, I guess if it only affects you and your family, then OK, but that’s not it,” says Ms. Cree. “I have a granddaughter who is 2 1/2, and she can’t get the vaccine.”

She has trouble understanding just how public health got so politicized, she adds. 

“I think [Whitmer] was trying her very best to save the population of her state. I don’t think it was some evil force that she was trying to be against anyone. She was trying to save people’s lives,” says Ms. Cree. “This is science. It’s not political.”

Recently, President Biden announced that the federal government’s workforce of about 4 million people will be required to show proof of vaccination or be subject to additional rules and testing. Many private workplaces are following suit, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week that the city will soon require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for indoor dining, gyms, and entertainment.

Like other states, Michigan has seen a rise in cases in recent weeks. Cases are up 166% over the last two weeks, according to New York Times data. The state is just below the median in terms of vaccinations, with 59.4% of the adult population fully vaccinated.

Vaccination numbers have increased for the past three weeks, after having dropped in the preceding two months. But that hasn’t changed Ms. Palencik’s mind, she says. 

“Public health is infringing on personal freedoms more and more,” she adds. 

“I don’t want to lose everything I’ve worked for. This is my whole life here,” says Ms. Palencik, gesturing to the hospital behind her. The first week of August marks Ms. Palencik’s 23rd year with the Trinity Health System. “I don’t want it to come to this, but I’ll let them fire me.” 

In March 2021, when Aaron “AJ” Johnson was designing the interior of the first full-produce grocery store to open in North Tulsa in years, he made a special request of the local historical society. He wanted to find a photograph of a historic, Black-owned grocery store. 

Now an enlarged picture of a group of Black grocers standing outside the Mann Brothers Grocery Store, taken in 1930, spans a wall of the airy cafe at the new Oasis Fresh Market, which opened in May. The Mann Brothers’ store was in the Greenwood district of North Tulsa that was destroyed during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Their store, which the grocers rebuilt and continued to successfully operate, was located less than a mile from Oasis. 

“Without them, I wouldn’t be here,” says Mr. Johnson, pointing to the mural. “We’re honoring the past and standing on their shoulders.” 

Features like the mural are important to Mr. Johnson, a Tulsa native and the majority owner and operator of Oasis Fresh Market. It points to the unique role he hopes the store will play in the community, long considered a food desert because of its high poverty rates and lack of stores selling fresh produce. 

Oklahoma has some of the country’s highest numbers of food-insecure households, and local organizations saw a steep increase in hunger during the pandemic. But supporters of Oasis Fresh Market see it assisting residents with needs beyond food, as well as providing an outlet for middle and upper income residents to spend their money in their local community.

The market, a $7 million project funded with public and private capital, launched jointly with a nonprofit arm that holds community events designed to link residents with services and information on topics like healthy living and homeownership. The effort shows how community members are taking the lead on finding solutions to long-standing disparities, ranging from access to fresh food to lower life expectancy rates than in neighboring sections of Tulsa. 

Ann Hermes/Staff

Shoppers exit the recently opened Oasis Fresh Market on July 14, 2021, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Our motto is, ‘More than just groceries, equipping you for life,’” says Mr. Johnson. “As a business, you have to stay profitable, but the metrics that matter most to me are, what is the community saying about the store? How many lives are we changing with our nonprofit and grocery?” 

A yearslong focus on fresh food

Tulsa is a “highly segregated city,” according to a 2019 Human Rights Watch report. A large percentage of the city’s Black population lives in North Tulsa, which is separated from other parts of the city by a major highway. The unemployment rate in North Tulsa is more than double the rate of the rest of the city, and life expectancy is six years shorter. 

Vanessa Hall-Harper, chair of the Tulsa City Council and representative for the district where Oasis Fresh Market is located, has worked on getting a grocery store in the area since taking office in 2016. She first approached local grocers and then asked national chains, but no one was interested. 

“After those requests went unheard, I said how can we build a store to address the issue of food deserts, something that could be duplicated?” Ms. Hall-Harper says. 

Albertsons, the last major grocer to serve North Tulsa, ended its operations in the state in 2007. Since then, smaller grocery chains have opened and closed. The last grocer stocking fresh produce closed in 2017, leaving some North Tulsa residents with long bus rides to get to a grocery store. 

Before Oasis Fresh Market opened, Ms. Hall-Harper pushed the city council to pass restrictions on new dollar stores in her district. The proliferation of dollar stores, with inexpensive nonperishables, created competition for full-service grocers and offered residents less healthy options. She also partnered with the Tulsa Economic Development Corporation, owners of the land where Oasis market is located, to secure grants from the city and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and raise funds through private philanthropy and investment. 

On a recent afternoon, cashiers at Oasis greeted customers enthusiastically. Friendly customer service and a clean, welcoming atmosphere are important to Mr. Johnson, the former executive director of the Tulsa Dream Center, a nearby nonprofit that provides food, education, and health programming for families. 

He knows there’s some skepticism about whether a grocery store can survive in the area, but he emphasizes the role he hopes community members will play in supporting the store and keeping it in business. 

“The community understands we’ve got to shop here,” says Mr. Johnson. “I tell people all the time, ‘It’s your store.’ That’s why it says ‘Welcome to your market.’ If you see someone stealing, are you going to say something? If you see trash outside, are you going to pick it up?” 

The store employs 43 people, almost all of whom are residents of North Tulsa. Aqueelah Jihad started working as a cashier in July. She likes the store’s friendly atmosphere and the likelihood of running into people she knows, like her third-grade teacher who recently came in to shop. 

“Hope. Convenience. Gratefulness,” Ms. Jihad rattles off when asked what the store means to community residents. “I’ve heard a lot of comments of ‘we’re blessed,’” she says. 

Ann Hermes/Staff

Saide Kennedy holds an apple given to her by John McCarthy, chief impact officer at Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, ​as a part of the Free Family Farmers' Market outside Rosa Parks Elementary School on July 13, 2021, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“A community-driven process”

The market’s nonprofit arm runs community events on the first Saturday of every month. Partners such as local health services, banks, and mortgage companies come to the store to provide classes and information. Other events include a monthly sweepstake where a family in need is awarded $1,000 and 40 minutes to shop the store by themselves. 

The store serves as many as 600 customers a day, and produce is a hot seller. About 37% of the store’s revenue comes from produce, an anomaly in the grocery business, where most revenue comes from the inner aisles. 

Hunger Free Oklahoma, a Tulsa based organization, is working with Oasis Fresh Market to try to implement their Double Up Oklahoma program, which augments the money spent on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) purchases with DUO Bucks to be used for fresh produce. Hunger Free Oklahoma expects the program to cost $200,000 to $250,000 annually and is lobbying for state funding to sustain the initiative

Chris Bernard, executive director of Hunger Free Oklahoma, says he’s excited by the fact that Oasis Fresh Market is led by North Tulsa residents but has also drawn support from individuals and organizations across the city. 

“What you see with Councilwoman Hall-Harper and other community members is [that] they want to bring the solutions – and then have resources help them implement those solutions. That’s what Oasis is. It was a community-driven process.”

Other organizations that work to prevent hunger in Tulsa are also considering how to listen to community members about their needs and generate ideas for solutions. Jeff Marlow, chief culinary officer at the Tulsa-based Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma says his organization thinks often about how they can provide food “with dignity” by offering options like free farmers’ markets for families in need. 

Ann Hermes/Staff

Aqueelah Jihad helps customers at the recently opened Oasis Fresh Market on July 14, 2021, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ms. Hall-Harper, the city councilor, is working on bringing a second grocery store to North Tulsa and hopes to inspire more Black entrepreneurs. She sees a role in her community for both for-profit stores like Oasis and nonprofits that work to prevent hunger. 

“I think there will always be that need for nonprofits to help people who need food, who may run short at the end of the month,” she says. “At the same time, there are plenty of people in our community who don’t need free food, but need a place to purchase food.”

Irene Beavers is among those who appreciate the convenience. Visiting Oasis for the first time recently, she picked up some meat, bread, and produce. “This store is closer and easier to get to,” she says. “That’s the reason I’m here.”

Gwen Berry entered the Olympic Stadium on Aug. 3 wearing two uniforms. 

One – her bright blue and red compression gear – stood for the United States, the country she would be representing in the night’s hammer throw final. The other – her black lipstick, black eye makeup, and raised fist – stood for the people she hoped to advocate for, those facing social injustice.

“I know a lot of people like me ... are scared to succeed or speak out,” she said after the competition. “As long as I can represent those people I’m fine.”

Placing 11th Tuesday night, Ms. Berry didn’t perform the way she wanted. But she didn’t come to Tokyo just to compete. Her goal, she’s emphasized, was also to call for social and racial justice on the world stage. 

Raised in Ferguson, Missouri, Ms. Berry is one of the most politically active athletes at an especially politically active Olympics. She’s protested on the podium at major competitions before. Had she medaled in Tokyo, she likely would have done so again, like other athletes who have spent the last week pushing the International Olympic Committee’s rules on political expression.

Just weeks before the Games began, the IOC altered its controversial Rule 50, which bars political expression. Some demonstrations are now allowed at the Games, but not during competition or the sacrosanct medal ceremony. Many competitors welcome the changes. But some, like Ms. Berry, object to the limits and are willing to break them.

Since the Black Lives Matter movement took off, athletes increasingly view activism as a responsibility. Yet the IOC has stuck to its core values for 125 years, and among those is a belief that sport can and should be “neutral.” As more athletes demonstrate this week, including on the podium, that negotiation of values and viewpoints is playing out live.

That’s part of the Olympics, says Alan Tomlinson, professor of sport and leisure studies at the University of Brighton. Perhaps more than any other sporting event, the Games reflect society, and just like the rest of the world, they’re trying to reset boundaries for political speech. Events in Tokyo show an Olympic crucible of norms and values, as its members again debate whether political expression should be one of the Games’ core principles.

“Every Games has to remake the Olympic ideals in some sort of way, but not sacrifice them,” says Professor Tomlinson. “It can be almost an editing process, a refining process.”

Sports “neutral”?

In 1968, when sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists during a medal ceremony, the IOC used Rule 50 to punish them. Within days, Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos were expelled from the Games in Mexico City. 

The pair later became an icon of Olympic bravery – so much so that the IOC now exhibits a photo of them at its museum. But the event and the IOC’s initial response crystallized the apolitical demeanor that the IOC expects from its athletes, says Bruce Kidd, professor of sport and public policy at the University of Toronto. 

Tony Avelar/AP/File

A statue in honor of former Olympians Tommie Smith (left) and John Carlos is seen on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, California, Oct. 17, 2018. The pair raised their black-gloved fists while their national anthem played during the 200-meter medals ceremony at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968.

The IOC worries that a worldwide competition without limits on protest would become a cauldron, not a melting pot, says Professor Kidd. The Olympics include every country, and thus every form of government. The potential for ideological conflict is high, as are accusations of bias against its leadership. Like a family that avoids politics at dinner, the IOC prefers to rule out certain topics if it means everyone comes to the table.

“The unifying power of the Games can only unfold if everyone shows respect for and solidarity to one another,” wrote IOC President Thomas Bach in a 2020 op-ed in The Guardian. “Otherwise, the Games will descend into a marketplace of demonstrations of all kinds, dividing and not uniting the world.”

Still, it’s almost impossible to create a fully apolitical space, and the Games have always been a stage for the best and worst of politics. The same event that encouraged South Korea to democratize in 1988 also acted as propaganda for Nazi Germany in 1936. Even today, nationalism remains a powerful Olympic force.

“Sport is a reflection of society, and as such, it reflects a lot of the social ills that we have in society,” says Yannick Kluch, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Sport Leadership.

If nationalism and discrimination mean sport isn’t “neutral,” says Dr. Kluch, then participants who don’t speak out endorse the status quo. Among athletes, that belief has grown more popular over the last five years, especially since former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and then U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe began kneeling during the national anthem to protest social injustice. Following last summer’s worldwide protests, the gesture has become commonplace in American sports.

During those protests, the IOC was months into a comprehensive review of Rule 50, involving input from all national Olympic committees. Professor Kluch advised the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s analysis of the topic – a process that led the USOPC to permit most forms of protest, citing many athletes’ desire to speak out. He rues that the IOC didn’t do the same.

“If you kind of take away the podium as an outlet to express your opinions, your views, to call attention to injustice, you’re not really providing freedom of expression,” he says. 

Real-time debate

Yet at a sporting event where the whole world’s invited, freedom of expression can cause controversy. 

The IOC is investigating whether two Chinese track cyclists violated Rule 50 by wearing pins of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong on the podium Aug. 3. Meanwhile, it was initially weighing whether U.S. athlete Raven Saunders broke the rule by crossing her arms above her head – a gesture of solidarity with oppressed people, she said – while receiving her silver medal for the shot put Aug. 1. The inquiry has since been suspended, following the death of Ms. Saunders’ mother.

Francisco Seco/AP

Raven Saunders, of the United States, poses with her silver medal in women's shot put at the Summer Olympics, Aug. 1, 2021, in Tokyo. During the photo op at her medals ceremony, Ms. Saunders stepped off the podium, lifted her arms above her head, and formed an “X’ with her wrists. Asked what that meant, she explained, ”It’s the intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet.”

With other athletes having protested, and there reportedly being more to come, how the IOC will enforce its rule remains unclear. In the past, it’s deferred to national Olympic committees to discipline their athletes for Rule 50 violations. 

“What stood out to me most about Rule 50 was the fact that no punishment has been made clear,” says Sue Bird, a U.S. flag bearer, veteran on the basketball team, and Ms. Rapinoe’s fiancée. “I think that actually speaks volumes because it comes across a little bit like [an] ‘I dare you. I dare you to do this and find out what happens.’”

In part, the IOC justified its decision to restrict protest on the podium by referencing a survey it conducted of Olympic athletes, finding a majority did not want protests during competition. Observers like Professors Kluch and Kidd question whether the survey’s sample was representative, but the results still suggest diverse athlete thought. 

U.S. basketball player Damian Lillard is one of the most politically active players in the NBA, one of America’s most politically active leagues. But that activism isn’t the reason he’s in Tokyo.

The team “all signed up to come here to win a gold medal, and that’s what our focus has been,” he says. “We haven’t gotten together and said we’re going to make some huge political statement.”

“The work to do that [activism] – it takes action and not just doing something that everybody’s going to see,” says Mr. Lillard. “That work has to be done when we’re home.”

“More than an athlete”

When Ms. Berry goes home to Houston, her work will continue as well. 

Recently, she and her son were offered scholarships to attend Tennessee State University, a historically Black university. She plans to study philanthropy or economics for a master’s degree. She’s not sure whether Paris in 2024 is on her horizon.

The goal is still to advocate for oppressed communities, she says. A degree, like her platform as an athlete, is only a tool in service of that mission.  

“I’m going to help my people; that’s what I’m doing first,” she said after the hammer throw final. “I’m more than an athlete. I’m just a different person now.”

It was as close to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – and to history in the making – as I would ever get, that bright Sunday morning in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965.

“Walk together, children,” Dr. King implored us from the steps of Brown Chapel AME Church at the start of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. “Don’t you get weary, and it will lead us to the Promised Land. And Alabama will be a new Alabama, and America will be a new America.”

It was heady stuff, to be sure, with Dr. King’s voice rising as he said we would be serving a cause greater than ourselves. That, to me at least, was something of a new idea. 

I was born in Chicago – a privileged white kid whose father would later build a house on 5 acres of farmland near the all-white community of Crystal Lake, about 30 miles northwest of the city, where my sister and I were raised.

My high school friends were a good-natured and happy-go-lucky bunch. One of them said he wanted to be a millionaire by the time he was 30, and we thought that was a great idea. We didn’t study much. We played sports, we hung out, and we attended church on Sunday.

After high school, I entered Ripon College, a small liberal arts college located in south-central Wisconsin, where I met the Rev. Herman Jerome “Jerry” Thompson, the college chaplain, who had clearly missed the millionaire train. I would learn that he was interested in other things.

Like many at the school, Mr. Thompson was appalled by the violence in faraway Selma on March 7, 1965. That’s when Alabama state troopers and sheriff’s deputies had viciously beaten back several hundred peaceful Black demonstrators led by John Lewis. They had been attempting to march to Montgomery, the state capital, to press Gov. George Wallace to ensure equal voting rights for all state residents, regardless of race. The next day, Dr. King issued a call to clergy from around the country to come to Selma to continue the march. No American, he said, was “without responsibility” for what had happened there and for the “eruption of the disease of racism, which seeks to destroy America.”

Days later, Mr. Thompson summoned several of us – mostly students in his world religions class – to discuss what we could do, even as other students on campus argued that the problems of the South should be left to Southerners. We in his office agreed that sending money or good wishes would be crass and cowardly. We should show our support in person.

It took us a week to make our way by car and public transportation through the Jim Crow South with our sleeping bags and Northern accents, wondering if we would be attacked by local white racists. I did not tell my parents what I was doing, as I thought they might worry. We arrived in Selma a few days before the march was due to begin. We joined about 2,000 others from around the country, more than half of them white. 

The local white population was not amused, including law enforcement. 

“You are here to cause trouble,” Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark told us. “You don’t live here. You are an [outside] agitator, and that’s the lowest form of humanity.”

After Dr. King’s speech outside Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, March 21, 1965, Mr. Thompson and I and two other Ripon College students, Richard Grimsrud and Noel Carota, joined about 3,000 others to participate in the march to Montgomery along U.S. Highway 80. 

Over the next five days, we endured rain and racist taunts from white people who lined the highway. But we were joined by thousands more sympathizers en route. By the time we reached Montgomery, there were 25,000 of us. 

This time, federal troops were in charge, and they protected us. Governor Wallace refused to see us, but the message had been delivered.

Months later, on Aug. 6, President Lyn­don B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, forbidding discriminatory voter registration policies and practices that had disenfranchised millions of Black Americans. It is widely thought that the president and Congress would not have acted so quickly, if at all, had it not been for Selma.

Mr. Lewis told me before he died last year that, in his opinion, the Selma-to-Montgomery march had a profound impact on America’s psyche, and that white students from the North had played a crucial role in the success of the march.

Throughout his life, Mr. Lewis had urged anyone who would listen to make “good trouble, necessary trouble” – nonviolent trouble – in the fight for justice. 

Now, more than 50 years later, I am at a loss to satisfactorily explain what drew me to Mr. Thompson’s office that day in early March 1965, and from there to Selma. It certainly had something to do with his inspiring passion for justice and for lifting up others. It was also the cause being pursued. It might, too, have been something in the 1960s air – or even the prospect of momentarily escaping the lingering Wisconsin winter. 

When I told my parents what I’d done, they said they were proud of me. In response, I might have said – and would certainly say today – that in Selma I had learned for the first time a real-life lesson in the importance of sometimes making “good trouble, necessary trouble.”

The author was the Monitor’s Brussels-based correspondent from 1975 to 1987. 

AP

Sudan's ousted president Omar al-Bashir sits in a cage during a trial in Khartoum, Sudan, Sept. 15, 2020.

International law often gets a bad rap – which military enforces it? – even though rule of law is a concept quite universally accepted. So when two countries with checkered pasts take steps on behalf of international law, their actions are worth a shoutout.

On Monday, Germany dispatched a warship to the South China Sea to pass through waters claimed by Beijing. Under a 2016 ruling by an international court in The Hague, China is not entitled to islands and islets near the Philippines, more than a thousand miles from its shore. Yet that has not stopped China from building them up as military posts or threatening ships that sail near them.

For nearly two decades, Germany has not sent a naval ship to the South China Sea. It now joins a few other nations with ocean-faring navies that are making sure this major trade route remains open under the rules of the high seas. Claims to territory in the Indo-Pacific, said German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, must not be “applied by the law of might.”

The country’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, went a step further and said the Asian region is where the shape of the international order will be decided. “We want to help shape it and take responsibility for the rules-based international order,” he said.

The other welcome endorsement of international law comes from Sudan, an African nation where a former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, ruled for three decades over mass atrocities in that country’s Darfur region.

Two years after his ouster by pro-democracy protesters, Sudan’s transitional ruling cabinet voted Tuesday to join the International Criminal Court. The move opens a door to sending Mr. Bashir, who is imprisoned in Khartoum, to the ICC for trial on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

“Justice and accountability are a solid foundation of the new, rule of law-based Sudan we’re striving to build,” said Sudan Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

In these actions, Germany and Sudan stand out because international law is failing on many fronts. Atrocities in Syria, Myanmar, China’s Muslim region in Xinjiang, and elsewhere have been largely ignored by the United Nations. Worldwide, rule of law has declined in recent years, according to a 2020 global index.

But that does not mean people don’t want it. “Everyday issues of safety, rights, justice, and governance affect us all; everyone is a stakeholder in the rule of law,” states the World Justice Project, which sponsored the survey of 113 countries. Two rather large stakeholders, Sudan and Germany, are now showing how to revive respect for the rules and norms that can help bind nations in peace.