In the weeks since fighting erupted in Sudan, ever larger groups of women and children have been fleeing across the border into Chad, seeking food and safety.

Chadians and international relief organizations already on-site to address Chad’s own food shortfalls have been doing what they can to feed and shelter the refugees – even if that means only a watery bowl of porridge and a bedsheet tied to tree branches.

And as the war rages on, the scene in Chad is being repeated in many of Sudan’s other neighbors, as refugees pour into Horn of Africa nations already facing rising hunger as a result of conflict, drought, and economic turmoil.

The lengthening lines of refugees illustrate how Sudan’s war – a surprise to most of the world when the armed forces and a powerful paramilitary organization began fighting in the capital Khartoum a month ago – is adding to the rising numbers of acutely hungry people around the world.

“What we are facing is really a wildfire of spreading food insecurity,” says Martin Frick, director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) Berlin office.

Wars and protracted conflicts – from Yemen and Syria to Afghanistan – were already contributing heavily to the world’s food security crisis. Now this war, in a global hunger hot spot, is exacerbating a crisis that even before this year had wiped out previous steady progress in reducing acute hunger.

For one thing, the Sudan war has erupted at a time when global food prices are particularly high, sent skyward by the war in Ukraine – one of the world’s critical breadbaskets – and by lingering pandemic supply chain disruptions.

Hunger’s four C’s

That has added a new “C” – cost – to what food experts previously called the “3 C’s” of the food insecurity crisis: conflict, COVID-19, and climate change.

With 345 million people facing acute food insecurity, according to the WFP – more than double the 135 million in the same straits in 2019 – the international community is battling to cope with new conflicts, multiplying weather disasters, and signs that major donors will not be contributing as much as usual.

The U.N. organization says the 345 million are now in 79 countries – “many, many more [countries] than in 2019,” Mr. Frick adds.

AP/File

A worker walks next to a pile of sacks of food earmarked for the Tigray and Afar regions in a warehouse of the World Food Program in the regional capital for the Afar region, in Semera, Ethiopia, Feb. 21, 2022.

Increasingly intense and destructive weather is one factor, he says – last year’s epochal flooding in Pakistan and extended drought in Africa are just two examples.

But with armed conflict considered the biggest single driver of food insecurity, Mr. Frick notes that the number of “live wars” is double what it was a decade ago.

“The number of protracted wars ... is not going down, and then we have the new wars in Ukraine and now Sudan that add to the already high numbers” of people facing food insecurity, he says.

Shaky grain deal

Russia’s war in Ukraine has been particularly damaging, Mr. Frick adds, since before the invasion more than 400 million people – many in countries with vulnerable populations – depended on Ukraine’s grain.

Last year the U.N. and Turkey brokered a deal with Ukraine and Russia to provide safe passage for shipments of Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports. The deal has been a success, U.N. and other experts say, allowing Ukraine to safely export about 30 million metric tons of grains and other foods.

Indeed, the WFP has been one of the major beneficiaries of the deal, with the organization procuring about 600,000 metric tons of grains for its operations in a number of countries, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

But now the agreement appears to be on shaky ground; Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday that the deal had been extended for two months, but its future remains uncertain: Russia is threatening to pull out if it doesn’t reap more benefits for its own food and fertilizer producers.

“Russia must stop holding global food security hostage to its cynical power plays and profit-taking,” Robert Wood, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said before a Security Council session that discussed the grain deal on Monday.

Bernat Armangue/AP

Two farmers remove mud from a tractor as they try to harvest a field in Potomkyne, Ukraine, April 25, 2023. Bankruptcy is looming for many Ukrainian farmers across the war-torn country who are struggling to seed crops amid widespread mine contamination in areas once occupied by Russian forces and rising costs associated with exports.

Russia counters that the grain deal as implemented is helping wealthy Western countries bring down food prices more than it is benefitting the world’s hungry.

Domestic pressures

Signs that “donor fatigue” could be setting in among some traditional food aid providers are also spurring concerns. Falling or internally redirected humanitarian budgets in some countries suggest that domestic pressures to focus on post-pandemic recovery at home may be undermining enthusiasm about addressing the global crisis.

When a series of food price shocks struck developing countries in 2007-08, “we saw an impressive number of countries in the international community come together to address that,” says Catherine Maldonado, senior director for food security with Mercy Corps.

“But now food prices are up around the globe,” she adds, “and that has made it hard for some to join in a global response when some of these same issues they would be addressing with humanitarian funding are being felt at home.”

Against that backdrop, the G-7 group of developed nations is set to take up the food security issue when leaders meet in Hiroshima, Japan, this weekend.

Mr. Frick of the WFP says Western countries have responded the most generously to the burgeoning food assistance needs, with the United States, Germany, and the European Union leading the way. The result? A record $14 billion in the agency’s food assistance coffers.

Still, he echoes Ms. Maldonado in noting that “domestic problems” in a number of hitherto reliable donor countries are raising concerns that the world simply can’t continue to boost humanitarian giving as needs rise.

“Countries have been generous, but we also recognize these issues that lead to fears we won’t be able to sustain the same levels of funding this year,” he says.

Reaction vs. prevention

Yet what worries some experts at least as much as humanitarian funding is how global attention tends to focus on the crisis of the moment, such as Sudan. That can distract attention from areas already in difficulty that need more help to avert widespread extreme hunger or even famine.

“Our focus on these big crises means we aren’t talking enough about what we could be doing now to prevent the places that are already in a tight spot from reaching the tipping point,” worries Ms. Maldonado, who is based in Guatemala.

Indeed, the U.N. and other organizations estimate that the number of people facing some level of hunger or unreliable food supplies – though not yet suffering from acute food insecurity – is nearing 830 million, up from some 660 million in 2019.

Fareed Khan/AP

Victims of the unprecedented flooding from monsoon rains receive relief food organized by the Alkhidmat Foundation, in Jaffarabad, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, Sept. 5, 2022. The U.N. refugee agency rushed in more desperately needed aid Monday to flood-stricken Pakistan as the nation's prime minister traveled to the south where rising waters of Lake Manchar pose a new threat.

The “big crises” have not deterred the WFP from pursuing its development mandate, which includes projects aimed at boosting sustainable small-scale food production in some of the world’s food-insecure hot spots.

Mr. Frick points to one project to develop “resilience villages” in parts of Niger where food production had practically ceased. But with the introduction of water reclamation measures, lands could once again support crops and livestock.

Then when Niger’s worst food security crisis in decades hit in 2022, 80% of the “resilience villages” were able to weather the crisis without humanitarian assistance.

“These projects give people hope to pursue their future where before it seemed there might not be one,” Mr. Frick says, “but they also demonstrate how there are solutions to the global food security crisis.”

Ms. Maldonado of Mercy Corps cites solar-driven irrigation projects she visited in drought-stricken Ethiopia and Somalia in February as the kinds of initiatives that will pay long-term dividends in the battle against food insecurity.

“These projects are helping people stay in place, hold on to the assets like livestock they still have, and are allowing women farmers the stability they need” to form income-producing cooperatives, she says.

“We can’t afford to lose sight of these efforts that are helping communities on the brink,” Ms. Maldonado says. “More of this is what is needed now,” she adds, “so that we don’t see in the coming years the kind of increase in people crossing that tipping point to acute hunger that we’ve seen this year.”

In 2013, after National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked highly classified data to the press, the intelligence community started plugging its computer ports.

Mr. Snowden had copied the data onto a thumb drive. So the intelligence agencies took enormous effort to cork their computers’ USB slots.

“They fixed that problem,” says Glenn Gerstell, National Security Agency general counsel from 2015 to 2020, of the USB drives. “But ... we were fighting the last war.”

Ten years later, National Guard Airman Jack Teixeira – an information technology worker at a base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts – is accused of leaking hundreds of documents onto a server on Discord, a gaming site. No thumb drives this time – he allegedly just printed the pages and walked them home.

The case shows how many cracks remain in America’s classification system, a decade after the Snowden security debacle. In interviews with the Monitor, politicians and former officials describe a process of clearing staffers, classifying information, and then later declassifying it, which remains broken.

Major leaks are still rare, despite the fact that some 4 million Americans have security clearances. But many experts say the system is failing at its core goals: vetting who is trustworthy, limiting access to sensitive information, and deciding what should be classified.

Last week a bipartisan group of senators, including the chair of the Intelligence Committee, introduced two bills that they say will help fix the problem. Among other measures, the bills would task the director of national intelligence with leading a “whole-of-government reform of the classification system.”

Margaret Small/AP

An artist sketch depicts Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira appearing in U.S. District Court in Boston, April 14, 2023. He has been accused of leaking classified data on the gaming platform Discord.

“Given the explosion in digital records, the status quo is no longer tenable,” said Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We’ve got too many people with access to a system that is devoid of accountability and has grown increasingly byzantine, bureaucratic, and outmoded.”

Yet even if the bills pass – and that’s a big if – it’s not clear whether they would be the roots-up reform that some officials argue the system needs. The U.S. intelligence community spans 18 agencies and two branches of government. Reforming that could require an entirely new government approach to secrecy.

Many efforts

Speaking at a press conference last week, the four senators who introduced the two bills – the Classification Reform Act and Sensible Classification Act of 2023 – seemed both excited and fully aware their effort is one more in a long line of attempts to solve a very big problem. 

In 1997, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy issued a report arguing that Washington is near-addicted to secrecy.

The 2005 Presidential Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction described the enormous cost of leaks, which it called a “seemingly intractable problem.”

In 2013, after leaks by Mr. Snowden and Chelsea Manning, a former soldier and intelligence analyst, the Pentagon began a working group on unauthorized disclosures and commissioned a study on the topic from the Rand Corp., a think tank.

“Sometimes around here you have to fight over a long period of time before you finally wear down the opposition,” says Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, who introduced the two bills with Sens. Warner; Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas; and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.

Pilar Olivares/Reuters

Chelsea Manning, a former soldier and intelligence analyst, speaks during a technology conference in Rio de Janeiro, May 2, 2023.

The latest legislation has multiple targets.

First, it would try to cull the amount of classified information. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence would gain authority to review and simplify procedures for classification/declassification. The Public Interest Declassification Board would get more funding.

Second, it would mandate a security review of presidential and vice presidential records before they leave the White House – helping avoid the accidental removal of classified documents.

Third, it would seek to manage leaks. The director of national intelligence would have added power to improve government IT systems. There would be minimum standards across the executive branch to prevent insider threats.

“This has been one of those problems, again, that we’ve all known about,” said Senator Warner at the press conference. “But you’ve got these kind of bookends of the recent disclosure by this airman and the presidential documents that I think [have] forced action.”

Many needs

Look at it another way, though, and the bills’ breadth suggests a system with too many needs for reform.

The problems of overclassification and leaks are related, but obliquely so – not to mention the mishandling of presidential records. Add to that the balance of power between Congress and the White House, which Senator Warner concedes will never want “Congress weighing in on this issue.”

It’s a dam that would be hard to plug with two bills, much less one – the number that Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, says he’ll accept.

Patrick Semansky/AP/File

A sign stands outside the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Maryland, in 2013.

“They’ll both have to be synthesized,” says Senator Rubio. “We’re only going to pass one bill.”

Meanwhile, some former intelligence-community officials such as Mr. Gerstell support a mix of additional physical and technological security.

Guards at sensitive information sites should perform more spot checks, top-secret printers should have ATM-style cameras, and sensitive documents could also automatically have thin radio-frequency identity (RFID) tags attached – similar to those that trip alarms on retail merchandise. Artificial intelligence, too, could monitor the patterns of every employee with a clearance and identify unusual behavior - such as Airman Teixeira allegedly accessing top-secret slides that he did not need for his work.

“Some progress has been made, but there’s a lot more work to do,” says Kari Bingen, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence from 2017 to 2020.

When Ms. Bingen was in office, the Pentagon shifted away from its former system of investigating officials with a security clearance – a touch-and-go background check every five years. It adopted a process of “continuous evaluation,” which monitors cleared officials on publicly available databases, such as crime records, for untrustworthy behavior.

It also helped speed the crawling pace of security clearances, which reduced a backlog of around 725,000 in 2018 to 200,000 today. It’s a reminder of the incremental victories that have so far been won to improve the classification system – and also of the battles left to fight.

“I think the wars continue,” says Senator Moran, smiling in the Senate basement. “There is no last war.”

Sushmita Pathak

Supporters stream into the New Delhi protest site on May 12, 2023, where top wrestlers have been camped out for more than three weeks. They're demanding the arrest of India's Wrestling Federation president, who is accused of sexually harassing female athletes.

For weeks, some of India’s top wrestlers – including two Olympic medalists and an Asia Games champion – have been living out of a yellow tarp tent on a sidewalk in Delhi. Their goal? To topple the most powerful man in their sport: Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. 

The president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) has been accused of sexual harassment by seven women wrestlers, and protestors say the government has failed to take action against him.

Out on the street, the wrestlers have company. One hot morning last week, dozens of farmers joined the protest, squeezing past security forces in blue fatigues and police barricades. Wrestlers’ families and friends are there, too, and politicians from opposing parties have spoken out in support of the athletes.

It marks India’s largest demonstration for women’s safety in over a decade, and the largest ever in the world of Indian sports. Organizers have promised to scale up the protests if Mr. Singh is not arrested by May 21. But no matter how the weekend plays out, the sit-in has already succeeded in raising awareness about the challenges India’s female athletes face.

The demonstration has “caught the attention of the nation,” says Indu Agnihotri, former director of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi. “It’s sort of forcing people to sit up and acknowledge that [sexual harassment] happens.”

In complaints recently filed to police, wrestlers cite several instances of abuse dating from 2012 to 2022. Mr. Singh, who is also a member of parliament from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. 

“All allegations are fake,” Vinod Tomar, former assistant secretary of the WFI, told the Monitor in a text message. The Monitor reached out to the Sports Authority of India and the WFI for comment but has not received a response.

Returning to the street

The wrestlers first staged a sit-in in January but called it off days later after sports minister Anurag Thakur promised a fair and thorough investigation. The government did form an oversight committee to look into the allegations and asked Mr. Singh to temporarily step aside. But the committee’s report, submitted in early April, has not been made public, and critics say Mr. Singh has not faced any repercussions. 

So three months later, the wrestlers returned.

“It is unfortunate that we are having to protest for the dignity of our sisters and daughters,” says Bajrang Punia, an Olympic wrestler and one of the main protesters, noting that police did not register a formal complaint against Mr. Singh until late last month, when the wrestlers petitioned the Supreme Court of India to intervene. “This shows how powerful he is.”

Last week, the Indian Olympic Association announced that it would be taking over WFI operations, and Mr. Thakur urged the wrestlers to end their protest, saying that “they must have faith in our law and order.”

The wrestlers aren’t taking his word this time, vowing to stay until Mr. Singh is behind bars. They’ve made the protest site their home, sleeping on thin mattresses under mosquito nets and doing their morning calisthenics on the street. A noisy air cooler provides some respite from the Delhi summer as kids – relatives of one of the wrestlers – take selfies inside the tent. 

Sushmita Pathak

Nigam (right), a college student who says she's appalled by how the wrestlers have been treated by authorities, holds up a poster calling for Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh's arrest in New Delhi, April 28, 2023.

A landmark moment

India’s last public reckoning on women’s safety was in 2018, when scores of women came out with accounts of sexual harassment by high-profile men, including a government minister. But the wrestlers’ protest is more significant, says Professor Agnihotri. 

“The #MeToo movement put the issue of sexual harassment in a very visible manner on the public agenda, but #MeToo did not spill out on the streets,” she says, noting how the outrage was mostly limited to social media and to a relatively urban, elite section of Indian society. The protesting wrestlers come from Haryana, a rural state in northern India “which has not been known for being very gender sensitive in its public assertions,” says Professor Agnihotri.

She views the protests as a “marked shift to the positive” in terms of how Indians view sex crimes. Families generally discourage women from talking about rape and sexual harassment because of the social stigma, but the wrestlers’ families have been remarkably supportive. On the day the Monitor visited, the mother-in-law of Sakshi Malik, one of the original protesters and also India’s first female wrestler to win a medal at the Olympics, was standing by the athlete’s side.

The protest has also received support from khap panchayats – village councils often seen as conservative – and farmers unions.

Among supporters, there is anger at the government, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has yet to comment on the protest.

“I want to ask the prime minister, why are you silent?” says Sudesh Goyat, a veterans’ rights activist. “When these wrestlers win medals overseas, you call them India’s pride, you pose for selfies with them. So why are you silent now?” 

Nigam, a college student who goes by one name, says the way police and sports authorities have treated the wrestlers should be a red flag for all Indian women.

“These people sitting here are not ordinary individuals; they are well-known figures,” says Nigam. “If their voices aren’t being heard, can you imagine what will happen if a common woman raises her voice? Nobody will take a stand for her.”

Sushmita Pathak

Jagmati Sangwan, former volleyball player and vice president of the All India Democratic Women's Association, raises a fist at the wrestlers' protest on May 12, 2023. She believes the outcome of the protests will have an immense impact on women’s participation in sports, which has only recently started to improve.

Setback for women in sports?

The protest presents especially high stakes for India’s burgeoning wave of female athletes. 

Wrestlers and allies are hopeful that these unified demonstrations will lead to justice and help change a system that leaves young female athletes particularly vulnerable to abuse. They’ve seen it happen before in the United States, with the Larry Nassar case.

But some athletes worry that if the protests fail or become too politicized, this could have a chilling effect on women’s participation in sports, which has only recently started to improve. 

Jagmati Sangwan, vice president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association and a former international-level volleyball player, says that the allegations and the authorities’ lackluster response could “crush” budding athletes’ motivation.

She recalls how in the 1980s and ’90s, families wouldn’t enroll girls in sport out of concern for their physical safety. Girls were also discouraged out of fear of social stigma that becoming an athlete would make it harder to find a husband or bear children. Even when 27-year-old sprinter Dutee Chand was starting out, sportswomen still faced immense challenges. 

“There was no infrastructure, no coaches, no supplements for female athletes,” she says, adding that things have improved since. “The Sports Authority of India has training centers all over the country, and the government has come up with several schemes to encourage female athletes.” 

At the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, all of India’s medals were won by women, which inspired a lot of girls to enter sports. But just because girls are more accepted on playing fields, doesn’t mean they’re always safe there. Indeed, experts say that these wrestlers’ accounts are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. “What lies behind them, all that will be just absolutely silenced if these women fail,” says Professor Agnihotri.

While Ms. Chand says only the courts can determine Mr. Singh’s guilt, she admires the wrestlers’ grit. “A lot of people don’t raise their voice out of fear,” she says. “These wrestlers have shown great courage in coming forward.”

When Shadi Pourkashef takes the stage at elementary school auditoriums, students know she’s there to talk about being kind, stopping bullying, and understanding others. So it might be surprising to them that she begins by asking what they think she does outside of her presentations.

The kids guess all kinds of things: “You’re a lawyer.” “You’re a teacher.” “You make drinks at Starbucks.”

Then Ms. Pourkashef shows a photo of herself leading an orchestra and explains that she is a composer for movies and commercials, a piano teacher, and a conductor.

The kids are amazed. “You couldn’t tell all that just by looking at me, could you?” she asks them.

And that’s the heart of the message that she brings from her Ability Awareness Project (AAP): You don’t know everything that someone is capable of just from a single observation or interaction.

At her sunny studio here, her musical work is obvious. Two keyboards and a piano occupy three walls. She works via video chat with a student on piano finger placement. But her “other work” – combating bullying with kindness – happens beyond the studio walls throughout the community.

To help create a safe environment for everyone at school, Ms. Pourkashef begins her presentations by specifically talking about distinct, but sometimes unrecognized talents.  

“You want to make sure that the kids understand ... people who have different abilities,” she says, adding that she shows video clips of Paralympic athletes. “And a lot of the bullying happens to those people, to kids that have some kind of a diagnosis.”

This emphasis is part of what inspires the name Ability Awareness Project. The other part is that learning about people’s abilities – about people themselves – is the path to kindness that makes a difference, Ms. Pourkashef says.

AAP presentations teach how bullying takes different forms, how kids can work to understand people who are different, and how everyone can play a role in creating a more respectful, inclusive environment at school.

“What’s the kinder option, and why is the kinder option better?” Ms. Pourkashef asks. “You want to create a culture of kindness, and you want to create a culture where everybody is respectful and understanding of one another. ... The whole school needs to be on it.”

Ms. Pourkashef started AAP in 2012, impelled to take action when her elementary school-aged son with autism was bullied and she realized the larger extent of the problem.

Stopbullying.gov reports that about 20% of students ages 12-18 experienced bullying nationwide in 2019, and about 46% of them notified an adult. Ms. Pourkashef says that even if school administrators know bullying is taking place, they don’t often fully address the problem.

Ms. Pourkashef’s experiences with her son confirmed that the whole community, especially schools, needed a response to bullying. With help from others, she created 10 presentations for parents, teachers, and students. Tailored to three age groups – lower elementary, upper elementary, and middle school – the presentations provide ways for students to prevent or stop bullying, whether they are bullying, being bullied, or acting as a bystander.

Ms. Pourkashef, a single mom, had to put her music on hold to carve out time to create the programs. But she did it for the sake of her son: “You just do it. You have to. Because it’s their happiness. I can’t see my child ... being picked on. ... Do I just sit and wait for the school to come?”

While her son is doing well now, the sense of urgency Ms. Pourkashef had about the larger problem has allowed AAP to reach over 10,000 children.  

JJ Wahlberg/The Christian Science Monitor

After her son, who has autism, was bullied in elementary school, Shadi Pourkashef took time off her music career to develop a kindness education program. Since 2012, her Ability Awareness Project has reached 10,000 school children.

Kindness is cool

Fifth graders Flora McCullough and Walker Zolna say they’ve noticed less bullying, especially toward kids with disabilities, after three AAP presentations at their K-8 Vista Del Mar school in San Clemente.  

Students are kinder to each other, says Walker, particularly to one of his fellow student council members, who uses a wheelchair: “Everyone’s trying to become friends with him. That’s pretty cool.”

The other side of the equation – the bullies – is also part of the AAP focus, says Flora’s sister Ruby, a seventh grader at Vista Del Mar middle school.

Ruby relates a moment of clarity a friend confided to her after that presentation: “She felt really bad because she had been bullying ... for like a long time. And she realized that she needed to stop because it could result in their life – losing their life.”

And there’s a palpable difference that Flora and Ruby’s mom, Cambi McCullough, feels too:

“There’s a lot of verbiage that I think ... they didn’t know how to use before that they now are using. They’re calling bullying ‘bullying.’ ... They’re saying you need to be kind.”

Whitney Zolna, special education representative for the Vista Del Mar PTA and Walker’s mom, orchestrated the elementary school assemblies after recognizing the need to respond more consistently to bullying. A single talk with students doesn’t change everything, she acknowledges. But she adds that every conversation makes a difference.

“If we reached one student with that
assembly – one student to stop bullying – the ripple effects are going to be there,” Ms. Zolna confidently asserts.

Rooted in love 

The Vista Del Mar community felt AAP ripple effects in its response to a suicide at a nearby high school by a student with autism after ongoing troubles fitting in with his peers, says Ms. McCullough. The news hit hard, but she saw the impact the school community could have in its response. 

She and Ms. Zolna put on a Friendship Fair for students, she says, to “have a conversation,” “give each other ideas,” and “focus on kindness and how we can be better.” Over 200 attended.

Ms. Pourkashef uses the same approach: “If I was talking to any school and say, ‘We provide bullying prevention and education,’ they go, ‘Bullying? No, we have no bullying here.’” But, she adds, if you “say, ‘We have kindness programs, they go, ‘Oh, yeah!’ Because they need kindness.”

AAP presentations are specifically geared to the elementary and middle school levels, but the program provided an opportunity for Maya Simpson to bring its message of kindness to her Newport Beach high school, the private Sage Hill School. 

Ms. Simpson, now a sophomore at Purdue University, started the Kind and Safe Schools club, which gathered weekly to do a kindness-oriented project. One day, Ms. Simpson gave club members packs of sticky notes and had them write empowering messages, compliments, or drawings to leave  around hallways and bathrooms.

“It just made my school feel a lot more like home, just knowing that there was this group of people on campus that were encouraging others to love themselves, to love each other,” she says.

College also presents similar opportunities, says Ms. Simpson. She’s part of a service club that helps students as they find themselves away from their families, friends, and support systems back home.

“I gained a lot of empathy from [AAP] ... because at the root of it is just love,” she says.

Spreading that love – and kindness – is Ms. Pourkashef’s top priority in preventing bullying everywhere. She notes that, recently, “We got a call from King’s College in Thailand. And I’m like, ‘Is there anybody [else] in the world that is doing this?!’”

But she stands ready to spread the word, herself, anywhere: “You’re not standing up just for yourself, you’re standing up for the whole kingdom.”  

Fievel Mousekewitz’s immigration story begins like so many others – a menacing, outside threat. The packing of bags. A tumultuous voyage at sea.

But, as the name suggests, Fievel isn’t a person, he’s a mouse. And the threat is a band of cats.

Fievel’s tale – “An American Tail” – is a story of loss, hope, rebuilding, and family. It is a story shared by many Americans, some recently, some in generations past.

Now, the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis is revisiting the 1986 film classic in dramatic form, in a world premiere from Tony-winning playwright Itamar Moses and Obie-winning director Taibi Magar. The tale of Fievel and his Jewish family’s traumatic uprooting from 19th-century Russia – in what is now Ukraine – to the boroughs of New York City is one that members of Generation X will remember from the animated film and a new generation can learn from.

In the opening act, the family of mice sing, “There are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese!” The puns are abundant, but the lessons are universal.

“America is a patchwork of arrivals, but how do we welcome each new wave?” says Mr. Moses in an interview. “There are threats. But if we can work together, a better version of ourselves is always somewhere out there.”

Ultimately, “An American Tail” harks back to an era when immigration was romanticized, not politicized, in films like “West Side Story” (1961) or “Coming to America” (1988). This February, a Gallup Poll showed that Americans’ satisfaction with the country’s level of immigration had dropped to 28%, its lowest in a decade.

“This is reaching back to a happier time, a vision of immigration when it was seen simply as a part of the way this country worked,” says David Itzkowitz, a St. Paul-based historian. “Now, antisemitism is back in the media. ... Immigration has become a race issue.”

Glen Stubbe Photography/Courtesy of Children's Theatre Company

Children's Theatre Company production of "An American Tail The Musical," in Minneapolis.

“We mostly all have immigrant stories”

The play begins inside a suitcase, with the Mousekewitz family of Ukrainian Jews singing around a menorah on Hanukkah. It’s here that Papa Mousekewitz (played by Luverne Seifert) offers the famous floppy hat many will remember from the film version to Fievel (Matthew Woody), which will follow his son throughout his early days in America.

It doesn’t take long before giant fluorescent cat eyes – the metaphoric Russian Cossacks – overpower the stage, filling with dry ice, and the Mousekewitzes’ decision is made: They’re escaping to America.

Fievel gets lost at sea and finds himself in a new world all alone, with nothing but that floppy hat. When he runs into Warren T. Rat (Luverne Seifert in a double role), Fievel is tricked into working in a clothing factory with other child mice. He soon meets Tony, an Italian immigrant (Ryan London Levin), and union leader Bridget (Kiko Laureano), who convince Fievel to stand up for his rights while also helping him reunite with his family.

While young people in the audience may not pick up on references like “Frederick Doormouse,” “The Great Compromouse,” or Bridget’s speeches atop a wooden block that literally says “soapbox,” the underlying themes come through.

“Whether [young spectators] will know about child forced separation at the border or not is questionable ... but theater has an inherent pedagogical function,” says Beth Cleary, a retired theater and dance professor at Macalester College in St Paul. “For kids, their major concerns are belonging, lostness, difference. Who am I, do I fit in, am I different? We see someone we identify with in the characters, and make our own stories along with the stories on stage.”

Both Mr. Moses and Ms. Magar drew from personal experience to craft the production, which the Children’s Theatre Company approached Mr. Moses about after acquiring the stage rights. His parents were Jewish immigrants, and Ms. Magar’s Egyptian father sneaked onto a ship in Alexandria before jumping into the water and swimming to Lebanon’s shores.

“Other than Native and enslaved people, we mostly all have immigrant stories,” says Ms. Magar. For this reason, the duo included more immigrant communities of color in the production, such as from African countries and China (Monica Xiong, who plays Qiujin, speaks Chinese throughout the play). “The film version had a narrower lens at the time, but we really wanted kids and parents to see themselves represented.”

It was an equally powerful experience, for both Mr. Moses and several cast members, to showcase a story that puts a Jewish family in a protagonist role. Michael and Liz Hochman say that their daughter Lillian, who plays Fievel’s sister Tanya, often came home after rehearsals and asked about her Jewish heritage. Both parents’ families immigrated to America from Eastern Europe.

“When she sings in Hebrew at the beginning of the play, it’s emotional for me,” says Mr. Hochman after opening night. “I usually have my crying towel with me for shows. Today I had three.”

Glen Stubbe Photography/Courtesy of Children's Theatre Company

Lillian Hochman (Tanya) and Matthew Woody (Fievel) in the World Premiere of "An American Tail the Musical" at Children's Theatre Company, in Minneapolis.

Never lose hope

In the second act, as Fievel struggles to get away from Warren T. Rat – who turns out to be not a rat at all but something far worse – the Mousekewitz family never loses hope of finding their son. But their dream of a better life is dwindling and, as they soon discover, the streets here are not paved with cheese.

“I can’t believe I brought you to this terrible place where you lose your children!” says Papa to his wife and daughter.

Soon, the streets are in chaos, with unionized and nonunionized mice fighting against one another.

“Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” asks a menacing Warren T. Rat.

But Tony asks the mice who have now banded together, “What if we all told our stories?” Bridget backs him up: “United, there’s nothing we can’t do!”

These are the lessons, say parents in the audience, that their children can grasp – if they haven’t internalized them already.

“My daughter sees it every day, that not everyone in America looks like the [Cleavers],” says Brian Mojica, who immigrated to America at age 14 from the Philippines and whose daughter Ines is part of the ensemble cast. “There’s lots of diversity here, so this is old hat for her. She’s probably thinking, ‘It’s you older people who need to learn.’”

As Fievel is reunited with his family, he realizes that there are, in fact, cats in America and perhaps the streets aren’t paved with gold or cheese. But it still holds the promise of a better tomorrow for the Mousekewitzes.

“America,” says Papa Mousekewitz, hugging his family, “what a place!”

AP

Afghan girls attend a class in an underground school, in Kabul, last year.

For women in many Muslim countries, change for the better is now the norm. In Turkey, an election last Sunday saw a record number of women (20%) elected to parliament. Women in Iran are in permanent protest by flouting rules on female head covering. In Saudi Arabia, women can now drive and travel more freely. Such trends may help explain why the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation is on a mission. As the collective voice of the Muslim world, the OIC wants to persuade the Taliban, who returned to power in Afghanistan 17 months ago, to ease off harsh rules on girls and women.

In March, the OIC decided to send a team of Islamic scholars to the country to discuss women’s rights to work and to an education beyond the sixth grade – both banned last year. Then in May, the prime minister of Qatar went to Kabul. The tiny Gulf kingdom is a longtime mediator for the Taliban in dealing with the international community. In addition, Islamic scholars at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University have called for the Taliban to reconsider their policies.

This religious outreach may have a better chance of success than recent diplomatic efforts by the United Nations. The U.N.’s insistence on the Taliban honoring the human rights of women is up against a faith that sees rights as divinely given, not humanly given. The Taliban’s Sunni school of theology is particularly strict on women’s behavior, even resulting in flogging for violations.

The OIC and other foreign Muslim groups have yet to reach the Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is called “commander of the faithful.” Instead, they have appealed to moderates and young people within the Taliban, hoping they will challenge the rulings on women.

Within Afghanistan, a few Islamic scholars feel free enough to speak out. “Islam has allowed both men and women to learn,” Toryali Himat, a member of the Taliban, told The Associated Press. “Corrective criticism should be given and the Islamic emirate should think about this.” A survey this year of more than 2,000 Afghans found nearly 44% believe the Taliban will change because “the world is much more interconnected than before.” Close to a third have “absolutely no trust” in the Taliban.

Education Minister Sayed Habibullah Agha says the restrictions on girls’ education is only temporary. “At present, the condition is not suitable. When the ground is prepared, schools will open with the nation’s support and in line with decisions made by religious scholars,” he said. That leaves room for outside Islamic scholars to make their case. They need only point to the new freedoms now being enjoyed by millions of women in many Muslim countries.