The former U.S. Army combat medic watched the war unfold from the safety of his Maryland home, his admiration growing for Ukrainians’ courage in the face of an overwhelming Russian invasion force.

For him, previous foreign conflicts had been no more than news headlines: Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, for example, or Moscow’s role propping up the Assad regime in Syria by hammering rebel strongholds to rubble.

But this Ukraine war “burned in me” from the start, says Jason, who asked that his surname not be used. It prompted him to drop his life at home and become one of hundreds – if not thousands – of former American service members and other military volunteers from around the world to answer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for help.

“What made me know I was coming here immediately was just the sheer determination and motivation of Ukrainians,” says the veteran, who wears a hat and a hoodie with a medical green cross shoulder patch.

“I’ve seen shopkeepers, 17-year-old girls who are students, and farmers – people who have never held rifles in their lives. ... It’s inspiring,” Jason says in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where he has joined the nonprofit Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) to help train Ukrainians for the battlefield. “They’re doing it with nothing; they’re giving it their all.”

Also inspiring to Jason, as Russia launched its invasion in February, was President Zelenskyy’s now famous reply to a U.S. offer to help evacuate him to safety: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

“For that man to stay here, it just motivated me to the point where I went to the Ukrainian Embassy,” says Jason. “I thought my wife would be upset, but she said, ‘I knew you were going from the moment this happened.’ We emptied out our savings account ... but she was all right with that.”

“A very clear conflict”

The war in Ukraine has attracted U.S. military veterans and Western legionnaires like no foreign battlefield in recent memory. But what motivates midcareer professionals – often now married, with children, and with their former military lives receding into memory – to drop everything and step into the trenches of another nation’s fight?

Some are impressed by Ukrainian pluck and resolve, by surviving 11 weeks of the Russian onslaught, when analysts predicted they would be routed in three days. Others see a historic battle between good and evil, with a high-stakes clarity between right and wrong not seen for decades.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Matthew VanDyke, head of the nonprofit Sons of Liberty International, at his hotel room headquarters in Lviv, Ukraine, May 1, 2022. Mr. VanDyke says of his current crop of American military veterans training Ukrainians for the battlefield: “I look for thinkers, not trigger pullers, so I really lucked out.”

“In the past, we didn’t get involved in Ukraine because, when it was just involving Donbas, there was no way to have an effect on the outcome of the conflict. Now there is,” says Matthew VanDyke, who founded SOLI in 2014. The former documentary filmmaker was motivated at the time by his own experiences being held captive for five months in Libya while fighting with Libyan revolutionary forces in 2011.

“It’s also just a very clear conflict, with a democracy being invaded by essentially an authoritarian state, and a land grab,” says Mr. VanDyke, who wears a beard, hair combed back, and tactical military clothes. “It’s a no-brainer as far as right and wrong in this.”

Foreign fighters have played key roles on both sides of the conflict. Russia has deployed a shadowy force of guns for hire called the Wagner Group, which has close Kremlin ties and has been active from Syria to Mali and now in Ukraine. Russia has also sought recruitment of pro-Russian Syrians to fight in Ukraine.

Likewise, Mr. Zelenskyy announced in early March the formation of an International Legion to fight on behalf of Ukraine, and said 20,000 volunteers had already shown an interest. Yet so far those efforts appear ad hoc, at best.

Training the trainers

The SOLI military trainers, who aim to make a “tangible difference” on the Ukrainian battlefield, have completed one two-week session for trainers from Ukraine’s territorial defense service and are now working with the National Guard in Kyiv. Their pedigree, from the Philippines to Burma to parts of Africa, includes training – and fighting alongside – Christian forces in northern Iraq as they battled against the Islamic State.

In Ukraine, SOLI will use the model of training Ukrainian trainers as a force multiplier, especially for volunteer units that have little previous experience. A team of 10 to 12 will be here “until the war is over,” says Mr. VanDyke. “There are thousands that need training, and they are not going to get it if we don’t provide it,” he says.

Already providing key parts of the curriculum, albeit remotely, is former U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Cameron Albin, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, including the battle of Fallujah in November 2004.

Since leaving active service, Mr. Albin has nearly completed his Ph.D. in military history and started a nonprofit called the American Odysseus Sailing Foundation, which works to benefit veterans’ mental health through sailing. On their tick list is the around-the-world Ocean Globe Race with a crew of veterans, starting next year.

Married and with a 3-year-old, Mr. Albin has little spare time. But his years in the Marine Corps infantry school, his experience training Iraqis, and the historical parallels he sees with Ukraine today prompted him to find some.

“I have a lot of commitment where I am – I can’t just run off and join a hunter-killer team and start hunting Russian T-72 tanks, although that did look like a really cool prospect to a younger version of me,” says Mr. Albin, speaking from Fort Worth, Texas.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor/File

Capt. Cameron Albin (left) and fellow U.S. Marines call in air support to help deal with a nearby firefight in Fallujah, Iraq, Nov. 13, 2004. Mr. Albin, who has nearly completed his Ph.D. in military history and is helping train Ukrainians remotely from Texas, says he is motivated to help in part by his read of history. “This is imperial aggression, 1914-to-1938-style,” he says.

He is now tailoring the curriculum he once used to train Iraqis to the Ukraine fight.

“These are butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers, so they’re going from zero to hero in a very short amount of time,” says Mr. Albin. “At least it’s the one small thing that I can do, and still be a good husband and a good dad. ... It’s not sitting back and saying, ‘Well, that’s [bad],’ and being a voyeur on CNN or YouTube.”

“Ukrainians have not given up”

Mr. Albin’s motivation stems in part from his reading of the past, and the risks of inaction.

“This is imperial aggression, 1914-to-1938-style,” says Mr. Albin. “The excuses that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is using – ‘Ethnic minorities are being mistreated, so I have to go in and annex this territory’ – all we have to do is take ‘Crimea’ and replace that with ‘Sudetenland’, and we are back in 1938.”

Clarity over Ukraine is also what prompted Erik Inbody, a veteran infantryman who spent five years in the Marine Corps, to leave his job as a welder and metal fabricator in Texas – and his 4-year-old daughter – and join SOLI in Ukraine.

“I try to live my life by a moral compass, to do the right thing. ... There was no question in my mind if I needed to be here or not,” says Mr. Inbody, who wears a Ukrainian flag patch on his baseball cap in Lviv.

Last summer, when the United States pulled out of Afghanistan, he had planned to link up with a group going there.

“But when I looked at the Afghan people, they weren’t fighting back,” says Mr. Inbody. “Anyone willing to stand up and fight for their own freedom, I will stand with you. ... And the Ukrainians have not given up. They continue to fight; that inspired me.”

Leaving his daughter has not been easy, he says. “But I cannot teach her how to do the right thing, if I am not willing to do it myself.

“I had a good job; I left it. I had a small savings account that’s now empty,” he says. “But I believe in what we are doing here. I believe in the fight. And these are normal people – normal, everyday people. They’ve asked for help with minimal expectation.”

More help has now started to come, and quickly. The U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote on Tuesday, approved a new $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, on top of the $13.6 billion already authorized. The Senate is expected to follow suit.

But that broad political support for Ukraine – and the strong motivations voiced by U.S. veterans aiding the country – has ironically not translated into sizable donations for American trainer groups like SOLI, which relies on individual donors.

“I look for thinkers, not trigger pullers, so I really lucked out” with the current Ukraine team, says Mr. VanDyke.

“There’s a misconception that it takes $100 million budgets to affect wars,” he says. “Small things can have a big difference, and that goes for training, supplying, and advising these types of conflicts.

“People who are donating can see that there are tangible impacts,” he adds. “We don’t do anything just for show; it’s either having a tangible impact, or it’s not worth my time.”

Anton Novoderezhkin/Sputnik/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin (center) attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow after a military parade marking the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II, May 9, 2022.

All eyes this week were on Moscow, where Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a Victory Day parade on Monday with no Ukraine victory to celebrate.

But if America and its Western allies are eventually going to find a way to end the war in Ukraine – in effect talking Mr. Putin down from a ledge of his own making – their attention will be focused not so much on Moscow, or even Kyiv. Rather, they will be mindful of two other points on the map of Europe where events left a fateful imprint.

One of them made its mark more than a century ago, in June 1919. It’s the grand château of Versailles, just outside Paris, where the treaty ending World War I was signed. That document declared Germany’s war guilt, disarmed the country, and prescribed heavy financial reparations. Adolf Hitler portrayed it as a national humiliation, a refrain for the Nazis’ rise to power in the 1930s.

The other is the Black Sea resort of Yalta. In February 1945, the town hosted a summit that brought together U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, Britain’s Winston Churchill, and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to chart the shape of Europe after World War II.

It paved the way for the Soviets’ postwar dominance of Eastern Europe – a dominance that, to Mr. Putin’s burning frustration, ended with the collapse of the USSR.

The West’s dauntingly delicate challenge, whenever the Ukraine war offers the chance for a negotiated peace, may well be to trace a middle path between Versailles and Yalta.

The attraction of a “Versailles II” is likely to grow as the war goes on, with each new Russian artillery strike on the civilian population, and each new allegation of war crimes. At a minimum, Ukraine and its allies seem sure to insist that any settlement places the blame for the war squarely on the Russian invaders, that Moscow be made to help foot the bill for reconstruction, and that war crimes be investigated and prosecuted.

But Washington and its NATO partners also know they’ll have to find some postwar modus vivendi with Russia, and are likely to see a cautionary tale in Versailles: the prospect of a settlement so punitive that Mr. Putin would either reject it out of hand, or use the refrain of “humiliation” as fuel for rearmament, further repression, and future aggression.

AP/File

Allied leaders chat while gathering for negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I, in 1919. They are (left to right) David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson, U.S. president.

Yalta, however, offers a cautionary tale of its own.

There’s no prospect of its providing a direct model for Ukraine. When the summiteers met there three-quarters of a century ago, Stalin had huge leverage. At the cost of millions of lives, the Soviets had beaten back Hitler’s invasion force. His army controlled much of Eastern Europe and was closing in on Berlin.

Mr. Putin, by contrast, if not losing the war in Ukraine, certainly shows no sign yet of winning it.

Still, for the Russian leader, Yalta holds great importance, and not only because memories of the summit feed his nostalgia for the old Soviet Union’s weight on the world stage.

As his Victory Day speech made clear earlier this week, Mr. Putin’s ultimate purpose in invading Ukraine was to recoup some of what Moscow lost with the demise of the Soviet Union, to secure a new European security settlement with the Americans and NATO that would give Russia the kind of superpower sway it enjoyed until 1991. In 1945, for example. 

But the Western allies are not going to be inclined to treat Mr. Putin like Stalin: that would be to validate, if not reward, the invasion of Ukraine.

Steering a course between Versailles and Yalta is likely to prove no easy task.

The exact shape of negotiating terms will depend on the course of the war: how long, and how brutally, the Russian forces keep fighting, whether they make major advances or are pushed back by the highly motivated and increasingly well-armed Ukrainians.

AP/File

Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin meet at the Livadia Palace gardens in Yalta, Feb. 12, 1945, during talks to decide the shape of postwar Europe. Moscow won control of Eastern Europe, enjoying a level of influence that makes today's Russian President Vladimir Putin nostalgic.

As things now stand, opinion in Washington seems to lean toward Versailles. Senior officials have made clear their view that Mr. Putin must pay a price for the invasion, not just in economic terms, but through limitations on Moscow’s capacity to launch further attacks on its neighbors.

Still, President Joe Biden has also said he’s determined to avoid American and NATO forces getting directly involved, warning that such a step would raise the peril of “World War III.” More broadly, U.S. officials are concerned a “cornered” Mr. Putin might lash out and escalate, even perhaps eventually by using a tactical nuclear weapon.

The implication is that a full-on Versailles strategy would be best avoided. And the corollary: Even if nothing resembling Yalta in 1945 is in the cards, some form of diplomatically respectful nod to Russia’s national self-image and security concerns could be in order.

Yet, as things now look, such an approach would carry a heavy, and tragic, dose of irony. The central “concession” to Moscow would likely be that NATO would rule out formal membership for Ukraine.

And as any honest Western diplomat will tell you, such membership was never more than a very remote prospect anyway.

Olivier Matthys/AP/File

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, center, speaks to the press with Finland's Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, left, and Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde, right, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Jan. 24, 2022.

When Russia seized and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the move sparked only a modest uptick in support for joining NATO in historically neutral Finland. That was not a surprise to experts at the time.

“If one were to bet,” political scientist Tuomas Forsberg observed then, “it might be better to bet on continuity. The security environment has changed, but [the] psychology remains more entrenched.”

Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has been a very different matter.

Just as the invasion has created a seismic shift in Europe’s security environment, as well has it shaken the psychology of its individual peoples. In Finland, that has meant the public’s rapid abandonment of its longtime preference for officially staying outside NATO. Now, according to a recent poll, over 75% of Finns support applying for full membership – something that, by all reports, Finland is now on the threshold of doing.

Moreover, says Dr. Forsberg, who is director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at Helsinki University, the shift in the public’s mood is something of a surprise. “Most experts,” he says, “including me, predicted that the change would occur first in [nonaligned] Sweden, then with the Finnish leadership, and then public opinion.” Instead, the public led the charge.

A rapid realignment

At present, Finland is only a member of NATO’s Partnership of Peace program, which enables cooperation between NATO members and nonmembers. Though Finland, like neighboring Sweden, works closely with NATO and participates in its operations, it officially remains nonaligned.

But the government appears ready to change that.

Until recently Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, who prided himself on his equable relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been noncommittal on the question of joining NATO, while touting the handiness of having the “NATO option,” i.e., the option of joining the alliance if the circumstances warranted. Then came Feb. 24 and, as the shaken president said that day, “the mask came off” his Russian counterpart’s face “and all one sees is the cold front of war.”

Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AP/File

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Finnish President Sauli Niinistö talk in the Kremlin in Moscow, Oct. 29, 2021. Mr. Niinistö, the Western leader who appeared to have the best rapport with Mr. Putin before the Ukraine war, is expected to announce on May 12, 2022, that he supports Finland joining NATO.

Mr. Niinistö has said that on May 12, following the publication of a white paper prepared by the Foreign Ministry for parliament about the changes in the European security environment and the options open to Finland, including full NATO membership, he will state his own position on the matter. By all reports, the Finnish president will come out in favor of joining the treaty alliance.

At the same time, the Social Democrats, the primary party in the five-party governing coalition, who have traditionally been opposed to joining, are also scheduled to debate the NATO question. Most experts expect they will come out in support of joining, as the other four coalition parties already have.

Once the Social Democrats and President Niinistö have declared their position, Finland is expected to formally apply – likely in tandem with the government of Sweden, which has been equally alarmed and outraged by the Russian invasion.

“We can’t make a decision for the Swedes and the Swedes can’t make a decision for us,” says Mr. Haavisto. “These are separate processes. But yes they are taking place around the same time.”

It will take some months for all 30 NATO members to accept Finland or Sweden as full-fledged members. How Russia, which has threatened to take unspecified action once that takes place, including possibly introducing nuclear weapons to the Baltic region, will respond remains an open question.

The Finnish people opened the door for the government to change, says Pekka Haavisto, the Finnish foreign minister. For years, joining NATO has been a minority position among the Finns. In winter 2014, the year of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Finnish support for joining NATO hovered around 18%, according to polling by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum – EVA. Even as recently as late 2021, only 22% of the populace favored giving up the country’s nonaligned status and signing up.

“In March we already saw the first opinion poll with a majority of Finns supporting membership,” says Mr. Haavisto, referring to the first major poll taken a week after the invasion, which indicated that 53% of Finns favored full membership.

“The change in the [Finnish] mindset took place very rapidly after Feb. 24,” Mr. Haavisto says. “It is natural that when war comes close to us ... and we see Russia behaving in an aggressive way in our neighborhood against another country that there would be a strong psychological reaction.”

Dr. Forsberg speculates that the reason the invasion of Ukraine has been so seismic for Finns is that “perhaps it came so close to the Finnish collective memory of the Winter War” between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939-40. That war, like the Ukraine war, also entailed a broad front surprise attack by forces under Moscow’s orders. In March 1940, Helsinki had to capitulate after putting up a valiant three-month fight, an outcome which the staunchly democratic Finns ardently hope the Ukrainians will avoid repeating.

“Now obviously everything has changed”

In any case, anecdotal evidence points to the effect that the most recent Russian invasion has had on the Finnish psyche.

For those like Ilpo Jäppinen, a veteran book editor who has always supported joining NATO, Ukraine only confirmed his original support for joining. “I’ve been for NATO membership my adult life because I have always been interested in history, and when I have studied the history of our two countries, I have come to the conclusion that Finland alone has never been able to defend its territory and independence against Russia.”

“Finland may have a strong military,” adds Mr. Jäppinen, “however in the end it’s no match against the Russian armed forces.”

Emmi Korhonen/Lehtikuva/AP

People wave Ukrainian flags as they take part in an ecumenical prayer for Ukraine and world peace by Helsinki Cathedral in Helsinki, on Easter Monday, April 18, 2022.

Mikael Mikkelson, a Helsinki high school student, agrees. “What happened in Ukraine on Feb. 24 just strengthened my opinion that the time to join NATO is now or never,” says Mr. Mikkelson. “What is happening in Ukraine could also happen here, too. Then we will be as alone as Ukraine is now. There is no so-called ‘NATO option’ in that scenario anymore.”

“Of course there are risks and different scenarios about how Russia could respond to our decision to join,” he adds, “but if I had to choose from the two ‘bad’ alternatives, it seems to me that joining NATO is definitely the less bad.”

More common were those Finns like Jere Rauhansalo, a front desk clerk at a Helsinki hotel, who before the Ukraine war was skeptical of the arguments for joining NATO. “We have successfully balanced between East and West,” says Mr. Rauhansalo, who like most Finnish young men served a year in the Finnish army. “Before the Russian invasion I didn’t see any concrete reason to change that dynamic.”

“Now obviously everything has changed and I have decided that we must join.”

Ilkka Ranta-aho, a freelance writer and musician, agrees. “The idea of bolstering the nation’s security has been an on and off topic for a long time,” he says. “For me there were always more important things to consider. Finland’s position in the world seemed to be very stable, so no change was needed.”

“Then February 2022 made it clear that our ‘trust’ in Russia had always been misplaced. All of a sudden the potential peril became clear. Alone we would not stand a chance,” he says. “Joining NATO seems the best way to continue the peaceful life we have become accustomed to.”

John Bazemore/AP/File

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp walks past a Rivian electric truck in Atlanta on Dec. 16, 2021, after announcing that the truckmaker will build a $5 billion battery and assembly plant east of Atlanta that is projected to employ 7,500 workers. The state announced an agreement on May 2 to offer Rivian $1.5 billion in incentives.

The hummingbird-specked lifestyle and sometimes-brutal history of Morgan County, Georgia, are all wrapped up in a document drily called the “2017-2036 Issue Based Comprehensive Plan.” 

Focus groups used words like “boring,” “safe,” and “progressive” to describe a rural county dotted with hayfields, the stray housing development, and reservoirs thick with catfish. When they thought about the desired future of the region just a few miles east of Atlanta’s urban fall line, one word loomed above the others: “better.”

But what does that word mean? And where does automakers’ march toward electrification fit in? 

Plans by the California-based Rivian electric vehicle truckmaker to build a massive plant and battery assembly on a rolling, old farm here face unexpected pushback from a key bloc of rural Republicans concerned about environmental and social impacts – and the right balance between stewardship and progress.

As a result, the state’s biggest-ever economic development deal is testing the ability of rural communities to guide their own growth, especially when local values are pitted against national, even global, interests.

“The problem with how we address ... climate change issues is that they affect the entire world, but the costs of addressing them have to be paid at the local level,” says Emily Diamond, an environmental policy expert at the University of Rhode Island, in Kingston. The clash over the Rivian plant “is a perfect example of that tradeoff.”

“In our research, we heard a lot of rural communities prioritizing clean water and clean air ... but it’s really driven by this value of stewardship that rural communities tend to really prioritize – place-based stewardship,” says Ms. Diamond, a former Georgia resident who co-wrote a study on rural environmentalism in 2020.

At the same time, she says, communities that have maintained their land for generations tend to resent the “urban elite,” especially environmentalists, telling them what to do. “That contributes to this sense where rural communities don’t have a say … in these large climate change negotiations and policies that are being developed without their input and then done to them as opposed to with them,” she adds. 

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Traffic is nearly nonexistent on April 17, 2022, in tiny Rutledge, Georgia, a 3.3-square-mile town east of Atlanta. Some residents there are concerned a new electric vehicle plant will irrevocably change the area's "small town character."

Jobs versus country living

Gov. Brian Kemp in December announced the $5 billion Rivian deal. A $1.5 billion state investment helped coax what he said would become 7,500 jobs, millions of dollars in new taxes that would reduce residents’ property taxes, and provide fresh economic opportunity for one of the poorer parts of the state. 

Especially in an election year when Governor Kemp is facing a Trump-backed primary challenger, the announcement fit a long pattern of Southern states courting industry to help build economic and racial equality. The NAACP is firmly behind the plant, given its potential to boost wealth for rural Black communities.

“Ever since that [Nissan] plant went into Nashville [in 1983], the sweepstakes for Southern states is, Can we attract some kind of vehicle manufacturing plant?” says Charles Bullock III, an expert on Southern politics at the University of Georgia, in Athens. “If you [as the governor] can, you’ve won the Oscar, you’ve won the Tony.” 

Edwin Snell, for one, isn’t clapping.

The central Georgia businessman sees the plan as a backhanded way to pretend to “save the world” from climate change while turning his beloved Georgia backcountry into an “armpit.”

And many residents, he says, are deeply suspicious of the backroom politics, particularly permitting for what was supposed to be a residential reservoir that now appears to have been reserved for a company like Rivian – “a shell game in other words,” says Mr. Snell.

An environmental group has ranked the reservoir plan as one of Georgia’s top environmental disasters, given the amount of water it would quaff from one of the last virgin rivers in the region, the Apalachee River. The Northeast Georgia Regional Commission, an advisory body, has panned the plan as well, saying it poses a substantial risk to already scarce groundwater. 

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor/File

A fishing boat sits at a dock on Lake Oconee on Nov. 18, 2018. Many residents, an environmental group, and a planning commission are worried about the impacts of pollution from a proposed electric vehicle manufacturing plant.

Rivian did not respond to interview requests, but the region’s Joint Development Authority, which lured the plant from other suitors, including Texas, issued a statement saying, “All state and federal permitting requests will be met, and impacts to streams and wetlands will be mitigated as required by the Army Corps of Engineers.”

And Rivian itself, when pressed by investors before its public offering last year, stated its commitment to “responsible environmental, social, and governance practices.”

Not everyone in Rutledge is convinced. “If the Rivian plant goes through, basically what they are telling us is that all the long-range plans ... [are a] joke,” says Mr. Snell, whose family founded nearby Snellville soon after the Civil War. An outpost 18 miles from downtown Atlanta, the town still has some rural character, but probably not for long. A fast-growing suburb, it’s one of the few places in the state that continued to see upscale home construction through the Recession.

Mr. Snell doesn’t want that for Rutledge. “They want to do it here because we don’t have unions, they can get cheap labor, and they won’t have trouble with permitting, including to build slab houses and Section 8 [subsidized] houses for workers,” he says.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Two views of the rural South

In some ways, the political script has been flipped, revealing a crossroads in the climate debate, where environmentalists support industrial growth and conservatives cry conservation.

Downtown Rutledge is so small that instead of a stoplight, it has a traffic barrel festooned with stop signs. On a recent day, the traffic was so light that no one really noticed when a car accidentally backed into the barrel, setting one of the signs askew.

“The situation in Georgia is more of a NIMBY-situation,” says Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando, referring to the term meaning “not in my backyard.” Describing residents’ thoughts, he says, “‘We’re a nice rural area. We want to keep it rural. We want the clean environment. And we don’t want these big changes.’” 

Indeed, Ms. Diamond at the University of Rhode Island found that rural voters are more likely than urban ones to identify with their surroundings, leading to “strong values of place-based identity, community, and stewardship of their land and resources,” which in turn can shape their views on zoning and environmental policy.

But for some, there are familiar rhythms to the opposition. 

When Phyllis Reed looks at who is wearing “We the People are pissed off” T-shirts, she sees “mostly older white men.” For her as a Black professional – she is a logistics expert at a big Atlanta firm – the racial and class aspects are unmistakable. A lot of the resistance, she says, is a function of white property ownership, much of which goes back to before the Civil War.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Morgan County resident Phyllis Reed stands in downtown Rutledge on April 17, 2022. Ms. Reed bought a house in the county because it was affordable and she likes country living. She supports a controversial new EV truck plant, saying it will increase wealth and improve economic and even racial justice.

She bought a house in nearby Madison because she couldn’t afford one in Atlanta. Plus, she loves country living, save the nearly two-hour rush-hour commute to north Atlanta. A plant, she says, would both create new opportunities and cement the region’s relevance. 

“If you don’t grow, you will go away,” says Ms. Reed. “We can’t evolve that way.”

What’s best for the future?

If Ms. Reed represents African Americans who have struggled to stake fair claim and Mr. Snell represents those who can claim generational investments in this rolling land, Bruce Altznauer is a newcomer with a different view. 

A transplant from suburban Atlanta, he says he found his true home in Rutledge. Several years ago, he was elected mayor.

He sat on the commission that created the county master plan, which cites the area’s “small town character” as its most valuable commodity, framing it as an alternative “to the typical suburban lifestyle.” When addressing growth, the result of 18 community meetings demanded that the county “take into account impacts on transportation, natural resources, and our towns when considering economic development projects.”

He has reservations about the plant’s environmental impacts, but he says, “I trust Governor Kemp – he hasn’t steered us wrong yet. And I trust the experts. I think they will have people to give us an honest opinion of the impacts.” 

In his view, the plant and its promises could help keep a younger generation from abandoning their hometowns, thus ensuring that generational interests – and stewardship – continue.

“I’m not an ostrich,” he adds. “I’m not trying to put my head in the sand. My job is not just to protect the citizens who are celebrating the town’s 150th anniversary this year. I’ve got to make sure there’s a 300th birthday. I’ve got to protect the future as well.”

Five years into working at Farmington Correctional Center, chaplain Kalen McAllister – “Chap” for short – began to notice a pattern. A few weeks before they were released, men would walk through the chapel to her white-walled office, take a seat in a cushioned chair, and confide in her. 

The familiar refrain? “I don’t even want to get out because I won’t be able to get a job.”

Ms. McAllister would offer support but soon realized counseling from inside the prison walls was only a partial solution. Change was needed outside, too. When she retired, she saw her opening: “On my way out the door, I said, ‘I’m going to do something to solve this.’”

In 2015, Ms. McAllister opened Laughing Bear Bakery in St. Louis, a nonprofit business where a criminal record is required to land the job. 

For many returning citizens, the stigma of a criminal record means the consequences of a crime are paid long after time served. With the click of a mouse, employers can run a background check, and it’s perfectly legal to factor a criminal record into a hiring decision. A criminal record can last a lifetime, making job reentry – and beyond – an uphill journey. At Laughing Bear Bakery, release from prison is a fresh start. Where other employers look at former prisoners and see only a risk of re-offending, Ms. McAllister sees multifaceted individuals on the road to a new and productive future.

She doesn’t even ask new hires what crime they committed: “I don’t care. Because for me, it’s this day forward.”

Leaven that makes the whole bakery rise

Much like the trial and error it took to perfect its signature recipes – from Granny Bear Cake, to Big O’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, to Study Buddy Banana Nut Muffins – the bakery took time to fully develop. 

Tara Adhikari/The Christian Science Monitor

Employees at Laughing Bear Bakery must have a criminal record to be hired. Founder Kalen McAllister (second from left) smiles alongside volunteers and employees in St. Louis.

When it launched in 2015, Ms. McAllister had no customers, no equipment, and no supplies. But with $2,000 raised by writing a letter to friends, a permit from the health department, and two employees, she got to baking out of a rented incubator kitchen.

Within a few weeks, after she made payroll and rent, the money ran dry. “I’m sitting there going, ‘This is going to be the shortest business in history,’” Ms. McAllister says, a knowing twinkle in her eye.

Then, out of nowhere, a business CEO ordered 80 Thanksgiving pies, one for each of his employees. And so they stayed open a while longer, kept alive by an unexpected grant here, a big order there.

Now, Ms. McAllister sits at the front of Laughing Bear Bakery’s storefront, which opened in October 2021, scooping Bear Candy – corn puffs coated in brown sugar – into clear plastic bags. Sunlight streams through the windows, a stark contrast with the rented kitchen in a dark church basement they worked out of before.

Financial challenges still come up – the price of flour just doubled, raising operating costs. But the bakery is now open to the public two days per week, and it can pay employees a starting wage of $12 an hour for two to four days of work a week depending on the number of wholesale orders that come in.

Ms. McAllister is the leaven in the bakery’s growth: “Kalen just kind of inspires everybody to do their best,” says Vickie Delmas, who has volunteered at the bakery for four years. “She does without to make sure this place works.” 

While Ms. McAllister takes no pay, her reward comes from seeing her employees figure out the recipe for their lives.

The stigma of a criminal record 

It all starts with a hiring model that considers a crime to be just one part of a person’s past, instead of the whole of who someone is and has the potential to be. 

Typically, a criminal record “is a stigma that overwhelms, that trumps, all other aspects of a person’s identity, especially when it comes to job search and employment,” explains Naomi Sugie, an associate professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine. 

Tara Adhikari/The Christian Science Monitor

Cookies made by Laughing Bear Bakery, a St. Louis nonprofit that offers a fresh start for people just released from prison. Where other employers look at former prisoners and see only a risk of re-offending, the bakery sees multifaceted individuals on the road to a new and productive future.

Across the United States, 37 states and more than 150 cities, including St. Louis, have implemented “ban the box” policies that delay background checks until after preliminary hiring steps. These policies aim to let other credentials and aspects of a person’s identity shine through first. But in the end, the criminal record is still considered. There are only a handful of companies – like The Body Shop, a global chain, and Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York – that do not run background checks at all in the hiring process, and even fewer that reserve jobs for those with a record. 

Ms. McAllister’s hiring practices may not make sense for all employers as they consider the risks of negligent hiring and occupational requirements. But Laughing Bear Bakery spotlights the transformative power of a clean slate.

After 15 years in prison, Eric Satterfield had two options for work experience on his résumé: jobs before prison or jobs in prison. Working at the bakery for a year helped him diversify and transition into a full-time job at a manufacturing center, which he balances with freelance graphic design work. 

“When you come out of prison, you think everybody is thinking about why I went to prison. And that’s not really true,” says Mr. Satterfield, who recently joined the bakery’s board of directors. “I think there’s a lot of people who are willing to give second chances, and the bakery helped me see that.”  

Being able “to imagine a new self” is a key ingredient to successful reentry, explains Dr. Sugie. But it requires spaces like the bakery where returning citizens “are not always having to explain themselves in terms of their past mistakes,” she says.

In hiring, Ms. McAllister has her own key ingredient: “I’m looking for the people who are ready to change, who’ve said, ‘This isn’t working. I need to do something different.’”

Most of the time she gets it right. Of the 37 employees the bakery has hired since 2015, Ms. McAllister only recalls asking three or four to leave, usually for drug use. She agonized for weeks before making the decision: It’s hard, she says, to let go of “that hope for that person.” 

The journey doesn’t end once new hires earn their hairnet. Often, those coming out of prison haven’t had much work experience, and adjusting to professional standards isn’t easy. For Ms. McAllister, it requires patience and dexterity. One worker may think they already know it all and have a hard time listening to instructions; another may be afraid to ask questions. 

Earning trust is another hurdle, she explains: “They warm up to their peers real fast, and I’m kind of an unknown.”

She navigates it all with gentle corrections about which measuring cup is for dry ingredients and which is for liquids. Occasionally, there’s some sleuthing involved, like the time she caught an employee hiding out in the closet using their phone, which she doesn’t allow in the kitchen. 

But in the end there’s “no magic,” she says, “just respecting them as human.” 

Room to grow

As LaWanda Jackson cracks eggs into a mixing bowl the day before her first work anniversary, she remembers when she started: “They should have had a show, ‘America’s Worst Baker,’” she declares adamantly. “It would have been me.”

She had her fair share of baking woes. Like the time she forgot the baking powder for a Mother’s Day cake. And the other time the pie filling spilled over the entire oven.

But when she “didn’t get the boot,” she realized her employment contract with Ms. McAllister went deeper: “She will do anything to take care of us.” 

It’s the type of care that can change a life trajectory. “When people truly care about you, you blossom,” says Ms. Jackson. “Your best self comes out. That is the truth. That is the absolute truth.” 

AP

Retired Gen. Paulino Coronado, the commander of soldiers who committed extrajudicial executions, hugs Blanca Nubia Monroy, the mother of victim Julian Oviedo Monroy, during a reconciliation event in Soacha, Colombia, May 10, 2022.

If Gustavo Petro becomes president of Colombia in an election later this month or in a June runoff, as opinion polls suggest, observers may note a trend in Latin America: In recent years voters from Mexico to Chile have tossed out entrenched right-wing governments. Yet that would not mean the region is turning left. Most Latinos describe themselves as centrist. They seek change to reduce economic disparities and create more inclusive societies.

For sure, Mr. Petro would be Colombia’s first leftist president. His running mate, Francia Márquez, would be the first woman and person of African heritage elected vice president. But his rise would be relevant far beyond his politics or within the region’s geographic boundaries. His biography holds a lesson for societies on how to disarm insurgencies and terrorist movements through reconciliation and political accommodation.

In his youth Mr. Petro was active in Colombia’s 19th of April Movement, or M-19, a faction that sought democratic change through guerrilla tactics in the 1970s and 1980s. The group morphed into a political party following a 1990 peace accord with the government. Several of its members went on to impactful political careers. Mr. Petro, a trained economist, served two terms as mayor of the capital, Bogotá.

Colombia replicated its model in a 2016 agreement that ended a 52-year war with another guerrilla faction known by its Spanish acronym, FARC. The deal guaranteed political inclusion for disarmament.

In one form or another, similar peacemaking dialogues are underway in communities along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and in countries battling Islamist groups in Africa’s Sahel region. “The best thing we can do for peace is to reintegrate those who, in the moment of despair, became terrorists but now want to become citizens and to contribute to the well-being of their brothers and sisters,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres during a visit last week to camps for demobilizing jihadis in Maiduguri, Nigeria.

Persuading guerrillas to seek change by ballots rather than by bullets takes patience. As several African countries have discovered, former anti-colonial liberation movements often struggled when they moved from bush camps to the halls of power. But there is a growing consensus, among academics if not diplomats, that the international community’s standard post-conflict formula of organizing elections and promoting civil society has been ineffective.

Uruguay illustrates the ultimate dividend of bringing former rebels and their support networks into democracy. In the mid-1980s, a newly elected government offered amnesty to imprisoned members of a leftist group called the Tupamaros following the collapse of an authoritarian regime. The group formed a new political coalition and, within 20 years, won the presidency. Similar successful transitions have happened in Brazil and Bolivia.

“The ex-guerrillas tend to be the most consistently pragmatic and pro-democratic forces on the left,” Oxford Professor Timothy Power noted in the Miami Herald at the time. “Those who have been arrested, exiled, or tortured tend to value democracy and civil liberties more than other leftists who have not yet stuck their hand into the fire of repression.”

If Mr. Petro brings similar sentiments to Colombia’s presidency, it would represent quite a path from guerrilla to democratic politician. It is a path that offers hope to other societies working their way out of violent conflict.