Heng Sinith/AP/File

Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe (front) walks out after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers' meeting in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Nov. 22, 2022. He didn't pick up when Secretary Austin called last month after the U.S. shot down the Chinese balloon.

Shortly after the U.S. Air Force shot down a Chinese balloon that had traversed the continental United States for several days last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin placed a call to his counterpart in Beijing.

At his disposal: a special hotline intended to help the two increasingly competitive global powers to prevent sudden tensions from deteriorating into full-blown crises.

The call went unanswered.

The Pentagon later lamented the lost opportunity for the two sides to talk out the balloon flare-up before it devolved, as it soon did, into a diplomatic imbroglio.

For its part, China’s Defense Ministry confirmed that its chief, Wei Fenghe, had declined to take the call because the U.S. by its action had “failed to create a proper atmosphere” for a bilateral dialogue.

The episode was instructive, say national security experts. China’s cold shoulder to a hotline call from Washington underscores glaring misunderstandings in the U.S.-China relationship and key differences in how the two sides view crisis management.

Moreover, they add, it very likely portends a future where tense moments in an increasingly fraught big-power confrontation end up bigger crises because of a lack of reliable and mutually trusted communications channels.

Alex Brandon/AP

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks during a meeting with Albanian Defense Minister Niko Peleshi at the Pentagon in Washington, Jan. 26, 2023. A week later, his efforts to ease tensions with his Chinese counterpart fell flat.

“It is worrying when, as we saw in the Chinese response to the balloon incident, there’s this rejection of the channels of communication that could help prevent something dangerous from spinning out of control,” says Victor Cha, the Korea chair and senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

The U.S. grew accustomed to working with what some simply call “hotline diplomacy” after decades of at least figuratively turning to the famous red telephone to defuse tensions with its chief Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union. Diplomats say partial credit for the world’s two major nuclear-armed powers managing to avoid a nuclear confrontation must go to the crisis communications channels the two established.

Evidence that those channels are still operative with post-Cold War Russia surfaced last month when the White House revealed that it had informed the Kremlin of President Joe Biden’s unannounced trip to Kyiv hours before his departure from Washington. The notification was given “for deconfliction purposes,” according to national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who offered no further details “because of the sensitive nature of those communications.”

The difference from the China case is that both Washington and Moscow value the lines of communication and trust their interlocutors at least enough to share sensitive and even difficult information with them, experts say.

Evan Vucci/AP

President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his surprise visit to Kyiv, Feb. 20, 2023. The White House advised the Kremlin of his trip hours before he left Washington “for deconfliction purposes,” the U.S. said.

Increasingly for Washington, they add, the challenge is going to be: How do you establish potentially disaster-preventing communications channels with an adversary when the other party doesn’t want them – and is suspicious of your motivations for wanting them?

“The problem for Washington is that the PLA has never been interested in these channels,” says Michael Green, a National Security Council Asia adviser in both the Bush and Obama administrations, referring to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military. It “views transparency and confidence-building communications as disadvantageous for them.”

The Chinese, he says, are wary of any steps that might encourage or normalize what they see as provocative behavior.

“They don’t want to make it easy for us to do what we are already doing, like flying patrols over the South China Sea,” says Dr. Green, now chief executive officer at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

“They want us to be anxious and nervous,” he adds, “so confidence-building and trust are not exactly priorities.”

In line with that, news reports have quoted various unnamed official and unofficial Chinese sources considered “close to the government” as saying in the wake of the balloon crisis that Beijing sees the U.S. obsession with “hotlines” and crisis management as a way to normalize increasingly brazen behavior.

For Dr. Cha at CSIS, China’s reluctance to use communications as a tool of crisis management points up profound differences in the natures of the two powers’ military systems.

“In our system, our main goal is to avoid escalation and to resolve the situation,” he says. “In the Chinese system, the impulse is to not be blamed for a mistake and to not be the bearer of bad or difficult news. It’s not just that the PLA doesn’t want to talk to our military,” he adds. “It’s that no one wants to be the one to take bad news up to the top.”

Dr. Green recounts nearly three decades of experience in the U.S. government when he worked on initiatives aimed at smoothing communications with China.

The two sides reached a Maritime Security Cooperation Agreement in the later 1990s designed to allow the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command to “get through quickly and directly” to his Chinese equivalent when some movement of ships or confrontation threatened to boil over. “It didn’t work,” he says.

By 2001, when bilateral relations were shaken by a midair collision over the South China Sea between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane, Dr. Green was serving on President George W. Bush’s national security Asia team.

Xinhua/AP/File

The U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane, damaged in a collision with a Chinese military jet over the South China Sea, is parked at Lingshui base on China's Hainan Island in this April 3, 2001, photo released by China's official Xinhua news agency. President George W. Bush tried and failed to reach Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the time.

“President Bush made 12 attempts to get through to his counterpart,” Jiang Zemin, “but he couldn’t do it,” he says. That was very concerning in the White House at the time, he adds, “but everything suggests we are no better off 20 or 25 years later.”

Indeed, many former officials and U.S.-China experts say the lack of useful communications channels is, if anything, more worrisome today. That’s because the relationship has turned more confrontational and tense as China has built up its military might – including its nuclear arsenal – while asserting itself more forcefully in its neighborhood, including over Taiwan. At the same time, the U.S. is rebuilding and extending its military presence across the Indo-Pacific region.

Dr. Cha says in his view the Chinese aren’t being “tactical” with their lack of transparency. “I don’t think they want to be unpredictable as a way to deter you.”

But he says that, as the balloon incident demonstrates, “they don’t want to communicate, so they go immediately to disinformation.” He also notes that instead of dialogue the Chinese have increased provocative actions near Taiwan and stepped up their “harassing” of U.S. reconnaissance planes.

“China is supposed to be a great power, but this is not how great powers act,” he says.

And no one seems to think China’s approach to big-power communications and crisis management will change any time soon, since it is so deeply rooted in their system.

Dr. Green looks back at the evolution of U.S.-Soviet crisis management and hotline diplomacy and notes that it was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and a sense that the world had teetered on the nuclear precipice that convinced both sides of the necessity for open channels of communication.

“The cynical view today would be that we just need to get to the brink of destroying the world for the Chinese to come around on this,” he says. Indeed, he adds, it’s not just cynics who “worry that it might take a Cuban missile crisis to set up these kinds of crisis management lines” that both sides answer.

For members of German-Austrian climate activist group Last Generation, the stakes could not be higher.

“It’s the climate crisis that is hurting people, that’s endangering lives,” says member and university student Zoe Rüge. She’s shocked by society’s blasé attitude toward climate change, and says leaders have two to three years before certain tipping points make it impossible to meet the 1.5-degree Celsius global warming limit set by the Paris agreement. 

To draw society’s attention to the issue, the group has staged disruptive protests, usually by gluing themselves to roads and tarmacs. In October, members halted traffic on a major Berlin highway, which ended up blocking a rescue vehicle whose patient later died. In November, they paralyzed operations at Berlin’s airport, diverting more than a dozen flights and affecting nearly 4,000 passengers.

Politicians and citizens alike have called out Last Generation for being irritating, reckless, or even criminal. In one survey, 86% of German respondents said the group’s actions are hurting the climate cause.

But are they really ineffective? Their tactics may not be earning public plaudits, but Last Generation is drawing on a tradition that has been used for moral crusades past – including ones remembered favorably today, like the campaign to earn women the right to vote in Britain, which was waged, often violently, by the suffragettes. And climate activists like Lost Generation are willing to use a similar strategy today.

“[Suffragettes] were also treated very harshly, and they also heard arguments that it isn’t democratic what they’re doing – that no one ‘voted’ for the right to vote,” says Ms. Rüge. “But they started the change. I can vote in a few weeks in Germany.”

“History shows that civil disobedience can work, although it’s unpopular. Whether this [climate activism] will work, no one knows,” says Reinhard Steurer, a professor of climate politics at Vienna’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. “We don’t have the mass protests anymore, because society is fed up with the climate crisis and wants to be left alone. So you can either put your head into the sand, or try other things, and that’s what these small groups are doing. They’re trying to wake up society.”

Lenora Chu

A Last Generation protestor is surrounded by police in a busy Berlin intersection where he's glued his hand to the pavement, Feb. 10, 2023.

Deeds, not words

It’s been about a century since women earned the right to vote in the United Kingdom.

In pursuit of that right, the suffragettes, mostly middle-class women, went on hunger strikes, broke windows, and chained themselves to public property. They used pipe, fire, and letter bombs to attack train stations and churches, and even attempted an assassination of a magistrate. One suffragette famously slashed Velasquez’s Rokeby Venus painting as it hung in London’s National Gallery, and another died after running onto a derby racetrack and colliding with a horse.

The suffragettes largely committed to harming property, not people, though their tactics grew more violent as time wore on, leading to fractures over approach. Some women preferred peaceful methods, while others such as suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst grew increasingly militant with their famous “deeds, not words” approach, says Maria DiCenzo, a professor of feminist media at Wilfrid Laurier University.

“There was an escalation with the increasing frustration when it became clear parliamentary bills were set up with no intention of passing them,” says Dr. DiCenzo. “In spirit [the climate movement] has been very similar. You know, we’re tired of talking, tired of lobbying. We have to be much more disruptive in order to get attention. ‘Better broken windows than broken promises.’”

Today’s climate activists insist on nonviolence, though they are coming into increasing conflict with state authorities. Ultimately their success will depend on their public resonance, says Dr. DiCenzo.

“Whatever tactics a social movement engages in, they do have to communicate in order to be effective,” she says. “Alienating and angering people who might, in fact, be sympathetic in other ways, is counterproductive. That certainly was the case historically.”

Lenora Chu

Police attempt to remove the protestor's hand from the pavement in Berlin, Feb. 10, 2023.

Analysts note that some climate activists’ actions seem to have little to do with their goals, which can confuse the public. When Last Generation wanted a law to minimize food waste, they blocked roads. “If you’re a driver going to work, it’s not clear what this has to do with the wasting of food,” says Dieter Rucht, a social movements scholar at the Social Science Research Center in Berlin.

The Last Generation’s proposals are also relatively naive, says Dr. Rucht. One asks the government to execute environmental action plans of a council of citizens chosen by lottery, essentially requiring politicians to commit to such plans before they even know what they are. “In my view, this is not compatible with the conventional understanding of democracy based on formal voting and broad participation.”

Does disruption effect change?

Historians today debate the suffragettes’ contribution to getting women the vote. Did their violent disruptions lead to voting rights, or did they delay something that was inevitable? After all, women earned full voting rights in 1928 in the U.K., around the same time as women in other countries including Holland, Germany, and Austria.

“Was the vote granted as a reward for the women’s [World War I] effort?” says Dr. DiCenzo, referring to the suffragettes’ shift in tactics during the war from disobedience to supporting the war effort. For her part, Dr. DiCenzo thinks suffragettes did help bring about the granting of partial voting rights in 1918. “Historians deal with this question all the time. It’s impossible to ever resolve that question because the factors were so complex.”

The climate activists’ effect on society is no less difficult to determine, especially because the various groups continue to evolve. The U.K.-based Extinction Rebellion is trying to reach broader swaths of society, and in January declared they’d stop their radical acts of disobedience, which at one point included camps of mass protest at a number of major London intersections, ultimately costing the metropolitan police tens of millions of pounds.

Letzte Generation Oesterreich/Reuters

Gustav Klimt's painting "Tod und Leben" is seen after activists of Last Generation Austria threw oil at it in the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Nov. 15, 2022.

Meanwhile, other groups promised to move from civil disobedience into more militant “civil resistance.” The U.K.-based Just Stop Oil, known for throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery, promised to ramp up their actions. They’ve disrupted operations at oil terminals in the name of stopping fossil fuel production, and proudly claimed its supporters have been arrested roughly 2,000 times.

And some could radicalize further, Dr. Rucht warns, as the public becomes increasingly turned off by their tactics. He has already noticed small violations of the “golden rules” of civil disobedience. “One of those rules is you present your identity,” he says. “You don’t hide: ‘This is my name, this is my face, and this is why I’m here.’ But some cover their faces and put glue on fingertips to hide identities.”

“One trend is a radicalization of certain groups,” he says. “It’s a very heterogeneous movement. You cannot rule out what people – including crazy people – might do one or two years from now.”

But for those who support the activists’ desire to publicize the threat of climate change, a certain amount of disruption is to be expected.

“Of course people get mad at them, of course they disrupt, they anger,” says Helga Kromp-Kolb, a meteorology professor at Vienna’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. “But that’s how you start a movement in society. We scientists have been trying to do this for 30 years, telling people that we must do something about climate change. It hasn’t had any real effect.”

Altaf Hussain/Reuters

Members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police stand guard outside a building housing BBC offices in New Delhi, where income tax officials were conducting a second day of searches on Feb. 15, 2023. The ordeal follows a broader pattern of the Modi administration using the legal system to silence critics.

India’s waning press freedoms struck an international chord last month, when dozens of tax officials descended on the BBC’s Mumbai and Delhi offices and spent three days questioning staff, searching documents and emails, and cloning employees’ phones and laptops.

The raid – or “survey” as authorities called it – came weeks after the BBC released a documentary examining Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in a spate of deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2002, when he was chief minister of Gujarat state. The government immediately invoked emergency laws to block its distribution in India. 

The ordeal follows a broader pattern of the Modi administration using the legal system to silence critics, and illustrates the growing challenges Indian journalists face.

It is hard not to trace dwindling freedoms to the 2014 election of Mr. Modi and his Hindu-nationalist brand of populism, according to Daniel Bastard, head of the Asia-Pacific desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Still, there are other factors at play as well, including market consolidation, self-censorship, and weak legal protections for journalists. 

The result is India has fallen to the 150th rank out of 180 countries on RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index and is described as “one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media” in the accompanying report. 

“Through the BBC case, the world is discovering how the government in India can censor some programs,” says Mr. Bastard. “But for an average Indian journalist, this is nothing new.” 

A government adviser claimed there was “no connection” between the BBC documentary and the tax search, but in a press conference held during the raids, a different spokesperson accused the broadcaster of being anti-national and “unleashing the most venomous attacks against our country.” In the last few years, such statements have become routine. 

In 2021, tax officials raided offices of the Dainik Bhaskar group which publishes one of India’s most widely read Hindi dailies, whose articles had been critical of the government’s handling of COVID-19.

“While authorities have the right to conduct searches, it’s being misused as a tool of harassment today,” says Om Gaur, national editor at Dainik Bhaskar. “That’s not democratic.”

An industry constricting

India does not have a spotless history of free speech. In 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a 21-month emergency during which constitutional rights were suspended, the press was censored, and journalists were jailed. Journalists reporting from small towns and rural areas have long been vulnerable to violent attacks. But experts say the journalism industry has never before faced such serious pressures on so many different fronts.

Despite India’s reputation for a vast and vibrant news industry, most of the major outlets today are owned by large family-controlled conglomerates which also invest in other large industries, and some of which are politically affiliated, an RSF study found. This level of concentration and “cross ownership” means journalists often feel the need to censor themselves and avoid reporting on “forbidden subjects,” Mr. Bastard says.

Altaf Qadri/AP

Media personnel report on the Income Tax department's raid in New Delhi on Feb. 14, 2023. Experts say the journalism industry has never before faced such serious pressures on so many different fronts, including market consolidation and weak legal protections for journalists.

In December, billionaire and close Modi ally Gautam Adani, acquired New Delhi Television or NDTV, long considered one of the last and most prominent independent voices in mainstream Indian television. A number of high-profile journalists quit soon after. 

“This is the end of a kind of pluralism in mainstream media,” Mr. Bastard says. 

While a number of independent news organizations persist, they are generally small and publish mostly in English, leaving many average Indians consuming news of dubious objectivity appearing on social media or in pro-government media. 

As in many other countries, there’s been a pattern in India whereby fake news peddled on social media often seeps into prime time debate. Days before the BBC raids, for instance, TV news channels circulated a claim that the BBC was funded by China, India’s historic rival.

New and escalating threats

In such an environment, journalists have faced increased online abuse, and fear of persecution. Free Speech Collective, an Indian advocacy group, reports that 154 journalists were “arrested, detained, interrogated or served show cause notices for their professional work” between 2010 and 2020. More than 60 of those cases were recorded in 2020. 

“Those who boldly stand their ground are targeted and tamed,” says Vinod K. Jose, who until recently was the executive editor at The Caravan, a Delhi-based magazine. Many legacy outlets “have chosen to limit critical coverage to their opinion pages, but finding a lead and investigating it are more important for an Indian newsroom when the government is trying to control the narratives,” he argues. 

Meanwhile, several regions have become “information black holes,” Mr. Bastard adds, “and that is not worthy of a democracy.”

Arguably the deepest black hole is Jammu and Kashmir, a contentious region in northern India where journalists have been arrested for their work (including Monitor contributor and Kashmir Walla editor Fahad Shah, who is still in detention) and prevented from flying abroad, while independent media outlets have been throttled by restrictions or shuttered. The Kashmir Times, one of the valley’s oldest publications, has stopped producing all but its English language edition out of Jammu, and even that has been cut from 16 to eight pages, according to executive editor Anuradha Bhasin.

The local authorities there have introduced a draconian media policy which allows the government to determine what is fake news and take legal action. Apparently in preparation for the introduction of such an approach throughout India, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has proposed an amendment to India’s IT rules that require internet service providers and social media companies to take down news reports that government agencies deem false.

“I think their experiment in Kashmir … is being used as a template in the rest of India,” Ms. Bhasin says. “The only thing I am hopeful about is that this kind of authoritarian control is unnatural. It cannot sustain for long.”

Populism and lack of international criticism

Behind the weakening of India’s press lies Mr. Modi’s authoritarian, populist style of leadership, says Javed Iqbal Wani, assistant professor at the School of law, governance, and citizenship at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. 

The Prime Minister prefers to address the masses directly – often on his flagship radio program, Mann ki Baat – rather than through the media: he  has not participated in a single press conference since 2014.

At the same time, his government has sought to remove nuance from public discourse, Mr. Wani says. 

“The government has very clearly outlined this binary, which is that either you’re with us or against us,” he explains. “They have made themselves synonymous with the interests of the nation. However, a nation like India is diverse; interests and identities are diverse.”

Curbs on press freedom have met with little condemnation from other democracies. It was not until Feb. 22 – a week after the days-long BBC raid occurred – that the British government defended the UK broadcaster and spoke out against attacks on the free press. 

Some observers worry that such attacks may cause irreparable damage to India’s media landscape. 

“The question is: can the world’s largest democracy function properly without informed citizens?” wonders Mr. Bastard.

A giant brown table in the center of a room that smells faintly of paint and worn pine is strewn with colorful yarn. Students ranging from recent college graduates to retired professionals are perched on stools around it, needles poised, eyes fastened on their instructor dressed in bright red. 

“Can you do that again?” one asks. 

Jessamy Kilcollins teaches darning at the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. She holds up a snip of denim and a needle threaded with yarn to demonstrate her stitch. Mending, a way of repairing clothing and other textiles that was once the realm of seamstresses and Depression-era grandmas, is back in vogue. The students on this recent evening have brought items they want to not only breathe new life into but also keep out of landfills – sweaters with holes in the elbows, a thrifted pillow, a favorite pair of leggings worn from too many hours on the pickleball court. 

“Where have you been all my life?” asks overall-clad Jen Zehler, laughing as she threads her needle, ready to fortify a hole in her leggings. 

The evening classroom provides a glimpse into a “slow fashion” trend that is catching on across the United States. Fixing your favorite clothes isn’t just practical and sustainable, its adherents say. It’s also enjoyable and an antidote to tech-laden and sped-up lives. And in Massachusetts, it’s become a necessity. In the fall of 2021, the Bay State released its final 2030 Solid Waste Master Plan with a goal of reducing waste statewide by 30%. On Nov. 1, 2022, Massachusetts issued a ban on throwing textiles in the trash, in what officials have said is the first time a state has implemented such a measure.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

In the “Mending by Hand: Visible Stitching” class in Boston, attendees use colorful thread to repair their garments.

Toni Columbo, a professional weaver in Boston, has witnessed an influx of customers wanting their clothes mended in the past few years especially as environmental awareness grows. Ms. Columbo, who has been mending for over four decades, started Invisible Reweaving in 1981 with her mother and sisters.

“Fast fashion is made out of plastics. It’s easy and cheap to manufacture. But when it comes time to dispose of those materials, it’s difficult. It doesn’t degenerate into the soil. It’s like a trash bag,” says Ms. Columbo, who mainly works on repairing natural fibers such as wool. She had not heard of the Massachusetts ban until the Monitor asked her about it. “Natural fibers are better for the environment, but they are more expensive,” she adds. But the investment is worth it, she says.

“With slow fashion, these are pieces that people can have their whole lives. Unlike fast fashion where you wear it and throw it away, slow fashion are timeless pieces,” says Ms. Columbo. She says she “would hope” the ban makes a difference.

“Satisfaction” from repair 

In the U.S., only 15% of textiles are recycled. A number of states and cities have launched initiatives to change that figure. In New York, Re-Clothe NY and Green Tree Textiles work to inform consumers about the locations of textile recycle bins and what can be recycled there. California recently enacted a law piloting a new system for industrial textile recycling, which includes educating the community about the impacts of fast fashion and establishing accessible recycling sites. Companies like Patagonia and Madewell encourage customers to send in their worn clothes to receive store credit or cash when they are resold. 

“The speed of the fashion cycle is very closely aligned to the really key question in fashion and sustainability, which is around volume,” says Kate Fletcher, a professor at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen who coined the term “slow fashion” in 2007. “At the moment we’re engaging in a cycle of gross overconsumption and gross overproduction. If you can slow the speed down, you can begin to reduce the overall volume and this sense of churn.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

An attendee mends a moth hole in a sweater during the “Mending by Hand: Visible Stitching” class.

Every year, around 100 billion pieces of clothing are produced, and an estimated 92 million tons end up in landfills (11.3 million tons in the U.S. alone as of 2018). The World Economic Forum in 2021 identified fashion as the world’s third-largest polluter, with global research suggesting the industry’s annual greenhouse gas emissions range from 2% to 10% and are growing.

At first, “thrifting,” shopping for secondhand clothes, became a trendy answer to fast fashion, especially among environmentally aware Generation Z and millennial shoppers who had an eye for unique and well-made clothing of previous decades. But as the popularity of thrifting has grown, so have its prices. Enter mending. Instead of throwing textiles away, slow-fashionistas aim to extend the life of clothing and transform perceptions around textiles in the process.

“Studies have shown that people get the same sense of satisfaction or engagement from shopping for new things, as you do when you’re maintaining and repairing the things you already have,” says Dr. Fletcher.

In Grosse Pointe, Michigan, Angie Hoffman, a project manager for Ford Motor Company, says it was her experience working in retail – observing the constant consumer desire for more new clothes – that turned her away from shopping toward the creative pursuits of knitting, sewing, and mending. 

When her sister first taught her to knit, Ms. Hoffman thought it was ridiculous to buy yarn to make socks when you could easily purchase a dozen tube socks for $6. But now she finds a lot of satisfaction in knitting while watching TV, or mending a hole in a sock or sewing patches on her favorite sweaters on an evening in. 

“I’ve made 23 pairs of socks by hand. It truly is the joy of making something beautiful and having that come from your two hands,” says Ms. Hoffman. “That joy of conquering something new is really satisfying to me.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Embroidery thread and needles are ready for use in the class in Boston.

A practice tech “can’t replace”

Ms. Kilcollins, who started teaching at the Eliot School in 2022, first became aware of the environmental impact of textiles while attending school to earn her certificate in fashion design. She took a sustainable fashion course, which inspired her to start mending and making her own clothes. She co-owns a vintage shop with her husband in Somerville, Massachusetts. 

“Especially right now, there is a lot of eco-anxiety and a lot of people [are] becoming more aware of the impacts that our choices have on the environment,” says the textile artist. “People are interested in learning skills to help counteract that.”

Others are interested in “acquiring these skills that they saw their mothers and grandmothers have but that they didn’t pass on to them,” she adds.

Mending student Ms. Zehler says she is enjoying learning an old practice in addition to having an opportunity to bring her together with other people in her community, a nice balance after several years of Zoom meetings and remote work.

“There’s something I’m really enjoying about revitalizing clothes and a practice that ... my ancestors did,” says Ms. Zehler. “There’s also something about sitting together in a circle and learning together. I feel like it’s a sacred ritual, something to be a part of that feels very ancient and old that modern technology can’t replace.”

Reuters

People in Beijing, China, hold white sheets of paper in protest of COVID-19 restrictions Nov. 27.

This year’s celebration of International Women’s Day, held every March 8, could be a bit different. Over the past year, women in three of the world’s most oppressive countries – China, Iran, and Russia – have either led mass protests or become the face of anti-regime resistance. Many say their participation shattered a mental glass ceiling, allowing them to express individual sovereignty and a social equality often denied under the three autocracies. 

A good example is Cao Zhixin, an editor at Peking University Press who helped lead a group of women in a peaceful protest last November against the harsh impact of China’s rigid lockdowns against COVID-19.

“She was scared but excited,” one of Ms. Cao’s friends told The Guardian. “She had never seen a public assembly before and that was her first time. After they let out their long-repressed emotions, they felt liberated.”

These initial protests then exploded into anti-regime demonstrations across 31 cities, lasting for days with women on the front lines. It was China’s biggest uprising since the 1989 Tiananmen movement and forced the ruling Communist Party to quickly abandon its COVID-19 restrictions. Chinese leader Xi Jinping “had to bow to female protesters,” wrote China expert Katsuji Nakazawa in Nikkei Asia.

Ms. Cao became famous when a video she recorded in anticipation of being arrested went viral in January after she was formally charged. “Don’t let us disappear quietly from this world!” she said in the video. Her voice is now silenced as she remains in jail along with dozens of other protesters, including many of her friends.

In Russia, protests against the war in Ukraine were quickly suppressed after the Feb. 24 invasion. Yet the most famous protest came on television in mid-March. Marina Ovsyannikova, a female editor at Channel One Russia, held up an anti-war banner during a live broadcast. It said, “don’t believe the propaganda, here you are being lied to.”

She has since fled to France, but an online resistance to the war has since grown, relying on dozens of women activist groups working in an anti-hierarchical and collaborative style. As Ella Rossman, a Russian activist and historian in Britain, told The Moscow Times, the mobilization of woman activists has resulted in a “new understanding of female agency.”

In Iran, women-led protests began in September after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested for violating the female dress code and later died during police custody. The uprising that followed included many parts of society, leading to a violent crackdown but forcing the regime to pull its “morality police” from the streets.

The protests in Iran have been quelled, but many women and girls continue to shed their hijabs and uncover their hair in public. Perhaps most remarkable was that so many “men are willing to die for women’s freedom” in Iran, as actress Golshifteh Farahani told Le Monde. “Iranian women have already won.” That may be just the right message for this year’s International Women’s Day.