2022
June
02
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 02, 2022
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

Lucy Harper wants Americans to think about their country differently. She has taught classes and led workshops from Florida to Illinois, all to instill the conviction that America is not a political prize to be fought over, but an idea to be fought for.

Recently, it has felt like an uphill battle. So this week, she and her colleagues are going to try something different. They’re going to make their case through a play.

Ms. Harper is a Monitor reader, and I occasionally like to highlight the things Monitor readers are doing to support and heal their communities, so I talked with her recently. Her goal is to help Americans look at their country through the lens of values – freedom and equality, common wealth and private wealth, unity and diversity, to name a few. How citizens find the balance between these essential but conflicting values determines the nation’s character and direction.

But recently, hyperpolarization has disturbed this balance. That’s the inspiration for the play – to find a new way to break through entrenched ideological lines. In the play, renowned thinkers in American history – from Thomas Jefferson to Elizabeth Cady Stanton – come together and debate what makes America special. The play opens at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, this weekend, with plans for it to move to the University of California, Berkeley in the fall.

“It’s about seeing this as a country of good people,” Ms. Harper says. “There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary, but we jolly well better see [the good in] people ..., giving people the room to grow – including ourselves.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Republicans are fielding a small but increasing number of diverse candidates. The strategy is showing signs of success. The question is how far it will go and how much it might change the party.

At root, money or currency is built around trust. Will it be worth its promised value? Cryptocurrency may seem to have failed that test, yet people are turning to it for reasons that go beyond stable value relative to traditional dollars.

Andrew Harnik/AP/File
Air Force cadets arrive at the 2019 graduation ceremony at Falcon Stadium at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on May 30, 2019. A 2019 analysis shows the percentage of female students nominated by members of Congress for admission to U.S. service academies has been rising. The Pentagon is concerned that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it could affect the country’s military readiness.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this month, it will cascade through society in countless ways. U.S. servicewomen and the Pentagon warn that it could affect military readiness.

Q&A

Courtesy of Robyn Bishop
Author and professor Sheryll Cashin notes that "a society based on separation, fear, and violence is not sustainable." But her latest book, “White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality,” shows cities making changes based on an "ethic of love" – and seeing good results.

How do you interrupt the social and historical patterns leading to segregated neighborhoods and “opportunity hoarding”? One answer is an “ethic of love.”

A deeper look

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The Hudson’s Bay Co.'s flagship store, down the street from the Manitoba Legislative Building, now sits empty, but has been turned over to First Nations communities in a step toward Reconciliation.

The Hudson’s Bay Co. was a key colonial power – and disrupter of Indigenous lives – in Canada. Now, First Nations plan to turn its flagship Winnipeg store into a force for renewal.


The Monitor's View

For what has been one of the world’s longest civil wars, peace now means far more than the absence of conflict. Over the past two months, a truce in the Arabian country of Yemen has brought tangible benefits, such as fuel supplies, commercial flights, and aid shipments to a population on the verge of mass famine. On Thursday, with the warring sides perhaps seeing victory in a new light, the truce was extended for another two months.

“The truce represents a significant shift in the trajectory of the war,” said U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg, who helped negotiate the temporary cease-fire. Fear among civilians has been greatly reduced since the truce began April 2. As U.S. President Joe Biden noted Thursday, “Thousands of lives have been saved as fighting receded.”

It is still uncertain if the truce will hold and renew the promise of democratic unity that began in Yemen during the 2011 Arab Spring. Talks to end the war have been a bellwether for how much the two main rivals in the Middle East – Iran and Saudi Arabia – want to get along and end a proxy competition in Yemen. With each country facing internal challenges, support of external wars has been an expensive indulgence. Restless youth in both Iran and Saudi Arabia have tired of their leaders battling over which country better represents Islam.

Each side in Yemen has made concessions to help maintain the truce. They have shown “responsible and courageous decision making,” Mr. Grundberg stated. One of the most significant concessions was the removal of the Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the formation of a broad-based Presidential Council in April. Even though the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have not joined the council, the extension of the truce could now lead to talks on a political compromise.

Yemen is the Arab world’s most impoverished nation and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The war, which began in 2014, has killed over 150,000 people. Yet now, the renewal of a truce has created a canvas for Yemeni factions to paint the details of a permanent peace. With a revival of normal civilian life, it may be the Yemeni people who are showing that peace is a palpable possibility.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

When a difficulty arises, turning to God in prayer is an empowering first step. And as a man discovered after becoming ill, heartfelt receptivity to the divine inspiration we seek has tangible healing effects.


A message of love

Zsolt Czegledi/MTI/AP
A yellow bus puts a vibrant accent on the amethyst color of a field of lacy phacelia, or Phacelia tanacetifolia, near Debrecen, Hungary, on June 2, 2022.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. Please come back tomorrow, when Howard LaFranchi reports from Chile on how China is rising to economic dominance and deepening its political influence in Latin America.

More issues

2022
June
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