An important subplot of the color revolutions was the involvement of the United States. For the most part, the U.S. role was grounded in a desire for greater freedom and democracy in the region. In Serbia and Ukraine, U.S. support was unambiguous; in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, Washington’s efforts were far more modest. Nonetheless, in all four countries, U.S. organizations—including the federally funded National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute and private nonprofits such as the Open Society Institute (now called the Open Society Foundations)—took an active part in training civil society activists and helping build opposition coalitions. U.S. advisers also sought to help would-be color revolutionists learn from the experiences of other countries. In early 2003, I led members of Georgia’s opposition on a trip to Serbia to meet with political and civil society leaders there; several of them went on to lead the Rose Revolution later that year. In turn, participants in the Georgian protests advised their counterparts in Ukraine in 2004. A year later, I was also among a group of Americans and others who went to Kyrgyzstan to work with some of the leaders of the Tulip Revolution. President George W. Bush speaking to Rose Revolution supporters in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 2005 Jim Bourg / Reuters

Like many successful Golden State entrepreneurs, Sayavong rose from obscurity. After arriving in 2016 from the Laotian capital of Vientiane, Nok, as she is known by family and friends, studied computer science for two years at the University of California–Irvine. But Nok, 36, had also learned to cook for her younger siblings and, later, for her husband, Billie, 39, an American citizen and computer consultant. In California’s fierce ethnic-food economy, differentiation is the key to avoiding what researchers Ivan Light and Steven Gold have identified as “cannibalistic competition.” Chato’s Bar and Grill, a funky bar and eatery, is located in Santa Ana, where more than 75 percent of the city’s roughly 300,000 people are Latino. The city serves as ground zero for Mexican food in Orange County; it’s home to hundreds of Mexican restaurants, ranging from chains to tiny taco joints to elegant dining establishments. Two constants of California’s food culture are the automobile—parking and fast service are key—and a high-performance delivery economy. The state is home to the largest online delivery companies: Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Postmates. This extension of car culture has further established a food culture in suburbia and the exurbs, where people continue to relocate. Between 2010 and 2020, the suburbs and exurbs of the major metropolitan areas gained 2 million net residents, while the urban core counties lost 2.7 million. Since 2015, large metropolitan areas have been losing residents to smaller cities and, by 2022, to more rural areas as well.For businesses on the urban fringe, the pandemic proved an entrepreneurial opportunity. As demographer Wendell Cox notes, offices there have recovered capacity far faster than in the largest urban cores. Rising crime in inner cities has made the situation even more difficult. The Left’s assault on franchises threatens the places where today’s restaurant entrepreneurs learned their trade. Carlos Perez, 32, who opened his Boil and Bake café in a Costa Mesa strip mall in 2022, worked for his father, a native Guatemalan and former manager at Winchell’s Donut House. Saving his money, Perez’s father and a partner bought the Shirley’s Bagels chain. “My father taught me how to do this,” he suggests. “I learned the food culture at Shirley’s”—just as his father had learned it at Winchell’s. Despite this level of engagement, however, the U.S. government seemed to have little awareness how its actions might be viewed—and instrumentalized—by Moscow. Seen on the ground, these upheavals were extraordinary expressions of popular sovereignty by citizens of countries that had never experienced meaningful democracy. Moreover, in those years the Russian government was not yet generally understood as overtly anti-democratic: Putin, still in his first tenure as president, was being advised by liberal economists, Russia was a member of the G-8, and in the early years of the George W. Bush administration, Washington had a working relationship with the Kremlin. As a result, many in the United States understood the color revolutions as more about democratic development in the countries where they occurred than about using U.S. influence to counter Russian authoritarianism: indeed, not all the governments that emerged from these upheavals proved to be pro-Western or even democratic. But the U.S. imprint was hard to miss. In 2005, during a visit to Tbilisi, Bush told the Georgian people, “Because you acted, Georgia is today . . . a beacon of liberty for this region and the world.” It was heady, even inspiring rhetoric, but to the Kremlin, referring to a former Soviet republic as “a beacon of liberty for this region” sounded like a warning. To Courtney, the scene where he portrays the moment that Laurie accepts Jesus and is baptized was the most powerful moment of his time on location.

Around the time of the Arab uprisings, the Putin regime also began to face an increasingly restive opposition at home, which the Kremlin naturally blamed on the color revolutions and the West. Even with the pro-Russian Yanukovych in office in Kyiv, Putin alleged that Ukrainian activists were trying to undermine Russia. “As far as ‘color revolutions’ are concerned,” he said in 2011, “it is a well-tested scheme for destabilizing society.” He added: “Some of our opposition members were in Ukraine and officially worked as advisers to its then president, Yushchenko. They are now transferring this practice to Russian soil.” Putin was overstating the case, but there were people in the early years of the Yushchenko presidency who would have liked to have seen a similar transformation take place in Russia. In early 2012, they almost did. We're proud to announce that our mailing bags are made from recycled polythene and are also recyclable, and our bubble wrap is made from recycled plastic and is completely recyclable. Please note that Royal Mail currently classes perfumes, nail polishes, flammable liquids and aerosols as "hazardous materials" and will only accept a limited number of these per parcel. Similar events unfolded in Georgia in 2003. Following parliamentary elections that autumn, President Eduard Shevardnadze, who had previously been the Soviet foreign minister, claimed his party had won, but exit polls and a parallel vote tabulation showed this was false. In what came to be called the Rose Revolution, after days of peaceful demonstrations, Mikheil Saakashvili, the head of the main opposition party, led protesters into the parliament building. Shevardnadze resigned, and within a few months, Saakashvili was elected president. During these events, the United States played a relatively minor role. U.S.-based organizations were involved, but the Georgian people took part because of their desire for change, and the new government commanded broad support, at least at first.All the labor regulation is a big problem for startups,” notes Sadeghi. A lifelong Democrat, he worries that the legislation is a desperate attempt to return to the industrial era, when the labor force was highly unionized and work conditions were sharply monitored. Successful small businesses today require flexibility and cannot adjust as easily as larger firms to dramatic wage hikes and other government mandates.

Putin’s paranoia about color revolutions does not explain away his extraordinarily brutal actions in Ukraine any more than his apparent fears about NATO expansion or his dream of a new Russian empire. But if the survival of his autocratic regime is his driving aim, the specter of a popular uprising at home goes a long way toward explaining why Moscow felt it was necessary to try to destroy the democratic government in Kyiv rather than undertake a far more limited, easily achievable invasion in the east of the country. As Putin and his regime have portrayed it, for nearly his entire time in power, Russia has faced, domestically and in its region, continual political interference and efforts at regime change from Washington. Nowhere has this been more true than in Ukraine. With the Ukrainian government becoming ever more closely oriented to the West, a spate of popular uprisings in neighboring countries, and economic and public health crises at home, Putin may have judged that he could wait no longer.Restaurants have been a major field of endeavor for immigrants and minorities. Nationally, minorities represent 30 percent of all business owners, but they account for 41 percent of restaurant owners. Asians, for instance, own 19 percent of restaurants, compared with 8 percent of all small businesses. These trends are even more pronounced in California, where minorities own roughly 60 percent of all restaurants, with Asians owning more than one-third and Hispanics nearly a quarter. Amrine and his partners are expanding at a new location in the college community of Isla Vista, near UC–Santa Barbara. “You start these businesses by knowing the market,” he says. “The fact is, people who immigrate are more willing to work hard. I have worked three jobs to get this going. You have to know the business from the inside, and we have done [it] that way.” Russian anti-riot police at a rally for jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Omsk, Russia, April 2021 William of Orange feared a Catholic France and England would join forces against him, and so he wanted to become king. He pretty much gave me an all-access pass to his phone number,” Courtney says of the real-life Laurie behind his character. “He’s like, ‘Any day, any time, call me, text me. I would love to tell you about the ’70s. I’d love to tell you about whatever was going on in my life that would help you do what you need to do.’” Love and Jesus

By this point, there was no longer any question at the Kremlin that a large-scale democratic uprising in Russia was a real and continuing risk, and the color-revolution concept had become a way to turn this threat into a powerful narrative about U.S. and Western interference. The Unfreedom Agenda We were definitely chasing the tail-end of that light, but we got it, and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie. And I hope people really connect with it.”It was golden hour, so we had like 15 minutes to film it,” he says of the late afternoon shoot. “We were talking with Jon Erwin and Greg Laurie and the beach and they were like, ‘Wait, so when you go out there, what are we gonna do? Because once we dunk him, he’s all wet and we can’t reset it.’ As you can see, the ends of my hair where I was blonde is so nice and vibrant and the exact colour I wanted and my roots are also lovely considering they are dark brown the colour is so nice! Covid came, and people were eating at home,” she recalls. “We were afraid but decided to start making sausages for sale.” At first, word of mouth within the Laotian community drove business their way, and she posted her sausage-making services online, taking advantage of new laws allowing such kitchen-based enterprises. Then her business exploded, as she sold at farmers’ markets and local fairs in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego Counties. On October 22, 1875, Dr. James L. Cogswell, met with several Masonic lodge members to plan a march for the upcoming Declaration of Independence centennial celebrations in San Francisco. They chose Sons of the Revolutionary Sires as the name of the organization. The group attracted over 80 men who marched together in the city of San Francisco 4th of July parade of 1876. The group never formally incorporated and its numbers dwindled down to two or three semi-active surviving members when the call came from William McDowell and a group of New Jersey gentlemen to become part of the Sons of the American Revolution. In June 2021, when the pandemic was easing, she opened her first bakery, in Newport Beach. On weekends, customers lined up outside the store, waiting to get in. Lezama relies heavily on social media rather than traditional advertising to get the word out. She recently opened a new bakery in Tustin, just northwest of Irvine, and another will open soon in Laguna Beach. She now employs 26 people, and has become a supplier for several local restaurants.