2022
July
25
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

July 25, 2022
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Stories go viral, to use an old term that’s less appealing by the week, for different reasons. Big events leave people hungry for hot takes. There’s celebrity news. Oddly evocative news

We recently watched a Monitor essay by the wonderful Murr Brewster ring up 780,000 page views in its first week online. That’s a very eye-catching number for us.

Maybe you read Murr’s first-person story about a skilled fence builder she’d coaxed out of retirement with a job he saw as being too hard for anyone else to do right. “A simple piece,” Murr says.

It’s also great storytelling. A chunk of its reach came via Google Discover, which “searches the web for ... engaging and interesting content ... likely to provide a good user experience.” Murr chortles at that during a call from her home in the Pacific Northwest. 

“That’s me,” she crows. “I’m a ‘content provider’!”

Besides the numbers, the biggest for Murr since her story about knitting rippled through a community of hobbyists, her essay brought heartfelt responses. Murr cites an email in which a grateful reader went on for 1,300 words “about how important it was to do a good job at a fair price, and how nobody does that anymore.”

Had she tapped into a universal interest in integrity?

“I didn’t set out to highlight that,” says Murr, “but that is absolutely the theme.”  

Readers asked Murr for fence builder recommendations. For a follow-up on how to build a fence properly. Some already had what they needed. One comment to the Monitor: “It is a pleasure, in this world of self-destruction and evil, to read a nice story about a nice man.”

“Perspective and joy show up in an awful lot of my pieces,” says Murr. “People are engineering distrust, and we’re all suffering for it. A little joy and a little hope is good for them.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Often, imbalances in the economy resolve themselves. Other times, as with the current inflation spike, balance is hard to regain. One silver lining: a Fed that’s equipped with lessons from the 1970s.

SOURCE:

AARP, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, AAA, Amazon, Jewel-Osco, and Edmunds

|
Laurent Belsie and Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Liberty or prosperity? The perceived failure of Tunisia’s democratic system to guarantee both to its citizens helps explain the muted response to the president’s authoritarian power grab.

Mark Saludes
Rhea Padilla (right), national coordinator of Alternative Media Network, gives instructions during the filming of Altermidya's weekly newscast at the Alternative Media Network studio in Quezon City, Philippines, on July 14, 2022. Ms. Padilla says the alternative and community media organizations her organization supports are vulnerable to attacks because they are small.

The Philippine government has a history of targeting adversarial journalists. Until press freedom is fully protected, experts say it’s the public that loses out.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Jess Howell, right, Cheryl-Anne Carr, center, and Beatrice Chartrand drum during Sunday mass at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Aboriginal Catholic Parish, where Indigenous practices are incorporated into their services, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, May 15, 2022.

To many, the pope’s apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the abuse of Canada’s Indigenous peoples was a crucial step toward forgiveness, as it acknowledged historical suffering. 

Difference-maker

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“I don’t want to just focus on the trauma of [Indigenous history], but on the beauty and resilience,” says Christine M’Lot, an Indigenous educator in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Our last story, too, centers on Canada. This one focuses on agency, and on the spirit of Indigenous renewal that’s helping to transform education there, giving voice to silent histories and reviving Indigenous methods of learning.


The Monitor's View

In recent years, Russia has turned increasingly to Africa to compete with China and the United States as a global power broker. But its war in Ukraine has become a setback to its ambitions. Spikes in global commodity prices since the invasion began have compounded a food crisis in Africa, where more than 47 million people were already facing acute malnutrition from drought. Eighteen African countries import more than 50% of their annual wheat from Ukraine and Russia. One in 4 Africans now has too little to eat.

On Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov embarked on a four-nation trip across Africa to offer reassurance. Russia and Ukraine reached a deal last Friday to allow grain ships to pass safely through the Black Sea. African and Middle Eastern countries, Mr. Lavrov promised, would soon receive their full annual grain orders. Prior to his departure, he sent African newspapers an essay blaming food shortages on Western sanctions and reminding Africans that Moscow supported their movements to overthrow colonialism.

That message may not resonate as widely as Mr. Lavrov hopes. Moscow’s main point of resistance? Africa’s youth. Seventy percent of Africans are under the age of 30. They are the most educated generation in African history and have no direct memory of life under foreign or minority rule.

A new survey conducted in 15 nations shows that young Africans welcome foreign investment that advances development and creates economic opportunity. It also found that they are particularly skeptical of outside interference that undermines democracy or exploits the continent’s natural resources.

“African youth see equality of all citizens under the law, freedom of speech, and free and fair elections as the most important pillars of democracy,” states the African Youth Survey 2022, published last month by the South Africa-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation. “The era [of] one man, one vote, once, is long gone on this continent.”

Unlike previous generations raised during the Cold War and final throes of colonial or minority rule, most Africans today grew up in a new era marked by the continent’s gradual embrace of democratic ideals and the rapid growth of Chinese investment.

Russia’s entry of late has had a contrary thrust. Military contractors tied to the Kremlin now operate in more than a dozen countries and have been accused of human rights violations. Moscow seeks a naval base on the Red Sea. It is now the second-biggest arms dealer in Africa (behind the U.S.). Mr. Lavrov’s itinerary reflects Moscow’s cultivation of autocratic or military rulers. That agenda raises alarms on a continent where 74% of young Africans say democracy is always the preferred form of government and 75% express concern about political instability.

While African leaders have sought to stay neutral on Russia’s invasion, many agree that the pandemic and the economic impact of the war underscore Africa’s need for self-sufficiency. Africa needs its own investment strategy, argues Joseph Sany, vice president of the Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace, “to help build a democracy-driven economic power that can mitigate Russian or Chinese coercive influence.”

A new generation of Africans determined to forge their own prosperity agrees. “Seven in 10 youth say that they are concerned about the influence of foreign powers on their country,” notes Chido Cleopatra Mpemba, special envoy of youth for the African Union. “Our generation wants to craft our own future ourselves.” As Mr. Lavrov travels across Africa, that message may be worth heeding.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Glimpsing more of our God-given spiritual nature brings us joy, inspiration, and healing.


A message of love

Stelios Misinas/Reuters
A biker performs tricks at Kavouri beach during a heatwave near Athens, Greece, July 24, 2022.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for starting the week with us. Come back tomorrow. We’re working on a story about what the Russia-Ukraine agreement on Ukrainian grain exports means for the global food supply, and for prices.

More issues

2022
July
25
Monday
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