Martin Kuz/The Christian Science Monitor

Capt. Mark Wilson, seen here on Jan. 13, 2020, in the Rural Fire Service brigade station house in Wingello, Australia, says the government should provide tax breaks, reimbursement for supplies, or other incentives for volunteer firefighters.

The station house of the Beaumont Rural Fire Brigade nestles within the quiet lushness of a mountain forest. Time and again since November, Capt. Dave Macquart and his crew have left behind their verdant refuge to support firefighting efforts along the southeastern coast as Australia burns. They clamber onto the unit’s lone firetruck and descend out of Eden, risking their lives for a daily wage of $0.

Mr. Macquart and his 20-member brigade belong to the Rural Fire Service (RFS), a force of some 70,000 volunteer firefighters scattered across New South Wales. Similar corps of “firies” exist in neighboring Victoria and other states, manning the front lines against hundreds of infernos in a bushfire season already considered the most severe in Australia’s history with half the summer remaining.

The ferocity and scale of the fires have strained the service’s capacity to respond and stirred public debate about the country’s reliance on a volunteer firefighting model that dates to the late 1800s. Prime Minister Scott Morrison faced sharp criticism last month when he resisted calls to compensate the volunteers and told reporters, “These crews, yes, they’re tired, but they also want to be out there defending their communities.”

Three weeks later, following an uproar from RFS members and their supporters, he outlined a federal plan to pay firies who work for small- and mid-sized employers up to $6,000 (Australian; U.S.$4,100) to cover lost income. The move occurred days after he announced that volunteer firefighters with federal government jobs would receive four weeks of paid leave.

The decisions allayed a short-term concern without resolving the simmering question of whether Australia should continue to depend on a volunteer force as climate change extends and intensifies the fire season, imposing heavier physical and financial burdens on firefighters.

Straining volunteers’ goodwill

Fewer than 150 people live in Beaumont, an affluent enclave 100 miles southwest of Sydney, where Mr. Macquart joined the brigade in 2002. A retired civil engineer, he ascribed his rise to the captain’s position to attrition in the ranks rather than his own ambition. He views the volunteer model as outdated and the prime minister as out of touch.

“When I hear ‘they want to be out there,’ my hackles come up. I don’t love doing it; I do it because it has to be done,” he says. His brigade has aided units as far as 80 miles away as bushfires have burned more than 26 million acres and 3,000 homes across Australia. “There’s an overreliance by the government on the goodwill of volunteers.”

The firies occupy a venerated place in Australian culture – handmade signs thanking them dot the fire-scarred coast and donations have poured into brigades – and their collective pride runs deep. Despite the outcry over Mr. Morrison’s comments, many members of the 2,000 RFS brigades regard the idea of regular payment as an affront to their ethos of service.

At the same time, the unpaid army fighting the infernos has absorbed mounting casualties, with five firefighters among the 28 people killed since September. (Three U.S. firefighters died Wednesday when their aerial water tanker crashed in New South Wales.) Mark Wilson, captain of the RFS brigade in Wingello, west of Beaumont, asserts that the government should provide tax breaks, reimbursement for supplies, or other incentives given the rising perils imposed by climate change.

“We’re seeing bigger fires, more fires, a longer season,” says Mr. Wilson, whose unit tried in vain to contain a blaze that tore through Wingello earlier this month, incinerating a dozen homes. “That means more supplies, more time away from work and our families, and more risk.”

Martin Kuz/The Christian Science Monitor

A wildfire in southeastern Australia on New Year's Eve ripped through Mogo State Forest, shown here on Jan. 19, 2020. Bushfires have scorched more than 26 million acres across the continent.

A graying force

Carlyle Seers looked as if he might fall asleep on his feet outside Wingello’s fire station. The brigade’s senior deputy captain has logged weeks of 12- to 18-hour shifts as the two-truck unit ranges across the South Highlands between Sydney and Canberra. Adrenaline and a sense of devotion to Wingello’s 600 residents has sustained him.

“This work restores your faith in humanity,” says Mr. Seers, who has taken leave from his job as a prison corrections officer to battle the bushfires. “You feel an emotional bond to the community. You’re serving people and trying to protect them and their homes. That’s why we joined.”

But the principle of altruism that defines the RFS shrouds a disparity: An estimated one-third to half of the volunteer force lacks the desire or ability to handle the duties and dangers of riding into fire zones. An array of factors – age, declining physical fitness, insufficient paid leave, family obligations – can deter firies from answering a captain’s call.

The Wingello brigade comprises 40 members. Mr. Wilson describes half of them as its core – the men and women who fill the three- to five-person rotations on trucks as the unit defends its territory and assists other brigades in the region.

“It’s been a tough load,” Mr. Seers says, pausing to pinch his eyes, his voice a soft rasp. The fire that struck Wingello nearly claimed his home after forcing the brigade to retreat. “We’ll keep going because we have to keep going,” he adds. “There’s no other choice.”

The median age of RFS members exceeds 50, and volunteers under 25 make up less than 15% of the corps. The unrelenting pace of the bushfire season has tested the resilience of a graying force that mirrors the country’s aging rural population. Hundreds of firefighters have struggled with dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heatstroke, and dozens have reported broken bones and other injuries.

Most of the Beaumont brigade’s 20 members are age 50 or older. Mr. Macquart, who has worked 30 truck rotations since November, can count on about half of them to roll out to fires.

“It takes guys in their 60s two days to recover from a 12-hour shift,” he says. “That’s just the way it is.”

“Like a big family”

The RFS provides fire and emergency services across 95% of New South Wales. The state’s Fire and Rescue agency, with 7,000 paid firefighters, covers urban centers. By comparison, volunteers represent two-thirds of the total firefighting force in the United States, serving mostly in rural areas.

Over its vast domain, the RFS nurtures an egalitarian cohesion, treating rank almost as an afterthought. “It’s a bit like a big family,” Mark Dodd says. A retired journalist and commercial diver, he belongs to the Darkwood brigade north of Sydney. “It’s not a rigid model. Authority is determined on the basis of competence, not if you wear the captain’s red hat.”

Yet this fire season has exposed the limits of the RFS meritocracy. As a volunteer, a firefighter can decline to suit up, and a brigade captain has little recourse, creating a potential shortage of manpower as flames devour the landscape.

Capt. Ian Aitken leads a 45-member brigade in Batemans Bay along the charred southeastern coast. He leaned on 15 volunteers to shoulder most of the unit’s calls from late November until early January, when the threat subsided.

“My guys gave everything, and we still have a lot of summer to go,” says Mr. Aitken, an RFS volunteer for more than 20 years. The return of hot weather and high winds stoked fires Wednesday south of Batemans Bay, portending more grueling weeks ahead. “If we’re looking at this kind of fire season year after year, we’re in a spot.”

Mr. Dodd’s unit has responded to blazes in a rainforest outside Darkwood and more than 500 miles away in a national park near Canberra. Most of the rotations fall to six or seven volunteers in the 19-member brigade.

He suggests that Mr. Morrison’s compensation plan, if extended to future seasons when conditions warrant, could entice more firies to pull truck shifts while preserving the volunteer tradition.

“Paying people for being on the ground in these kinds of fires – it would be a good step toward encouraging greater professionalism,” he says. “And that might encourage the people who can’t hack the work to get out.”

Martin Kuz/The Christian Science Monitor

A sign of support for the Rural Fire Service brigade in Beaumont, Australia, appears on the road to the station house on Jan. 14, 2020. The country is in the midst of a bushfire season already considered the most severe in history.

“Loud and clear”

Ben Grosskreutz moved to Wingello from Sydney in 2015 to escape the rush and racket of the city. The flight attendant with Virgin Australian Airlines joined the RFS brigade, seeking to forge a bond with his new town.

He appreciates that his bosses granted him four weeks of paid leave to work on the fire crew this summer. But he worries that turning all or a portion of RFS volunteers into paid professionals would fracture the service’s sense of unity.

“Ninety-nine percent of us do not want money,” he says. “That’s not why we’re firefighters. If you started paying us, there would be resentment over who’s getting paid or how much they’re getting paid.”

The head of the RFS has said volunteers have told him “loud and clear” that they prefer to forgo payment. The sentiment appears to prevail even as Australia, after marking its hottest and driest year on record in 2019, endures a bushfire season that veteran brigade chiefs rank as the worst in memory.

A fire three weeks ago in Kangaroo Valley, a tourist town of 900 residents, torched a half-dozen homes and an adjacent national park. The blaze occurred near the end of an eight-week stretch that forced Capt. David Smart to run his crews day and night.

“We’ve had bad years before, but it’s the size and number of fires that’s different this time,” says Mr. Smart, a 38-year volunteer. The nonstop shift rotations drained the financial reserves of some firies whose employers denied them paid leave. “You don’t get rich doing this, put it that way.”

Mr. Morrison’s one-time payment plan will ease the hardship of volunteers who meet the eligibility requirements. Others will need to rely on the generosity of family, friends, and strangers.

Tess Duffy, deputy captain of Wingello’s brigade, started a GoFundMe campaign for her younger sister, Lucy Brearly, a member of the unit. Ms. Brearly, who stepped away from her job at McDonald’s when the fire season exploded, fails to qualify for the federal subsidy because she’s a part-time employee.

Ms. Duffy favors the RFS staying a volunteer organization. “But this season has been an extraordinary situation,” she says. “Firies have been under pressure, and to also have to worry about money – that’s the last thing you want.”

The RFS has reported a spike in enlistment inquiries as public support for firies approaches the level of deification. Residents applaud volunteers when they enter stores, buy them drinks at restaurants, and drop off home-cooked meals at stations.

Mr. Seers and other firefighters consider those gestures ample payment. Rather than salaries, they urge the government to spend more on firefighting equipment.

“The fact is,” Mr. Seers says, “there’s not a pot of gold large enough to pay this force. It’s just too big.” He blew out his breath. “But giving us more of what we need to fight these fires – that would be nice.”

David Goldman/AP/File

A mural celebrating diversity decorates a hallway in Lewiston High School in Lewiston, Maine, March 15, 2017. Fifteen years ago, the school district had an enrollment of 4,500 students and falling - a sign of a city on its knees, says Lewiston School Superintendent Bill Webster. Today, there are 5,400 students, more than one-quarter of them immigrants, and the number is going up.

Jonette and Ken Christian have become a bit uneasy with the emphasis people place on the idea of diversity.

It’s a fraught subject to criticize, they say. As liberal Democrats living in Holden, Maine, they’ve sometimes been frustrated that even raising concerns about the scope of immigration policy, say, is often met with charges of xenophobia or, even worse, racism. 

“It seems that we’ve been so pummeled with the ‘inclusivity’ narrative, we can’t set any limits on diversity, or defend our own values,” says Ms. Christian, who last month retired after decades as a child and family therapist. “Of course we have the values of America as an open, generous, inclusive, and diverse nation. But anyone questioning how diverse, or how open, or how generous, is looked at with suspicion — or as a heretic.”

It’s exasperating, she feels, especially since their family has a decidedly international flavor. She chatters in Spanish with her sisters-in-law, one from Honduras and the other from Mexico. Her brother-in-law is from Poland, and her niece is Japanese. 

“But diversity in isolation, without universally agreed upon and unifying values such as individual rights, freedom of speech, religion, and the press, risks deteriorating into tribalism and factions,” says her husband, a retired emergency room physician who works part time at an opiate addiction treatment clinic.

Even aside from legitimate policy disputes and the rough and tumble political process, the fundamental idea of diversity, they say, has become nearly impossible to critique in this era of toxic polarization, in which they feel only those on the furthest political extremes have a say. 

“Not all diversity deserves celebration,” continues Dr. Christian, who notes he’s voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election from George McGovern to Hillary Clinton. “We obviously should not celebrate the presence of neo-Nazis, those who practice female genital mutilation, homophobes, terrorists, etc. And while diversity can enrich our culture, there can be too much of a good thing. Sheer numbers can inspire fear and misunderstanding.”

Still, there has long been a general bipartisan consensus in the United States that openness to different kinds of people and different kinds of cultures is “essential to who we are as a nation,” according to Pew Research Center. In its 2018 survey, nearly 6 in 10 Americans expressed a positive view of the country’s fast-growing racial and ethnic diversity, saying it makes the country a better place to live. Only 9% said it made it a worse place to live. 

But last year, a growing number of people in both the U.S. and Europe began to express reservations, according to Pew. Most of the spike in the U.S. last year has come from Republican-leaning voters, the survey found, as well as older generations, but some Democrats and liberals have similar worries.

It’s been even more pronounced in countries such as Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Spain, where only about a third of their populations describe their growing diversity in positive terms. In countries such as Greece and Italy, solid majorities now describe such growth as making their countries a worse place to live.

“Diversity really can be a challenge, and people actually find it very difficult,” says Sally Scholz, professor and chair of the philosophy department at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

“But I think part of what the call for diversity and the valuing of pluralism in our culture is, is a call for recognition,” continues Dr. Scholz, who studies political solidarity and coalitions of those with diverse cultural and ideological perspectives. “And recognition is really fundamental to other liberal values, like freedom, like equality. If we can’t be equal, if we’re not recognized as equal, we can’t be recognized as rights holders.”

Many who want to tap the brakes on diversity in the U.S. point to the nation’s seeming growing unrest, including acts of violence in places of worship, or the attacks on Hasidic Jews in New York over the holidays. 

And with the U.S. in what seems to be a perfect storm of political polarization – including the challenges of algorithm-driven news feeds that foster myopic echo chambers – more people say they are starting to see the idea of diversity as one of the possible causes of the country’s dysfunction.

“E pluribus unum”

Donald Mazzella thinks something has been lost in America’s motto, “e pluribus unum,” or “out of many, one.” A longtime media professional, he recalls his years as a publisher at Essence magazine, when the New Jersey native got a lot of smiles when he called everyone “paisan.”     

“To just say diversity, pluralism will make us stronger is to say separating the strands of a rope will add to its strength,” says Mr. Mazzella, now the chief operating officer and editorial director of Information Strategies, a business consultancy in New Jersey. 

“No, we need to seek to find common ground and celebrate our unity,” he says. “When I was growing up, we disagreed about everything, but in the end you were an American first and everything else second,” he says, noting that even a statement like that could bring a charge of bigotry.

Which is of course a thing, Mr. Mazzella says. And of course there are out-and-out racists, as well as white nationalists. But emphasizing the “pluribus” while ignoring the “unum,” he says, is a sure way to tear at the country’s social fabric.

Dual impulses: altruism versus othering

On one level, human beings may have certain built-in aversions to group differences, many anthropologists say. The human species, with its unusually long gestation and child-rearing periods, develops especially close interpersonal bonds. These begin at the family level and then extend to other closely-clustered groups, fostering an instinctive group altruism and willingness to sacrifice for others within groups. 

Even at six months, however, infants have an instinct to fear those they do not recognize, observers note, and there is a tendency to be wary of outsiders. In his book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains how humans are not necessarily predisposed to valuing diversity and pluralism, since they make instinctive decisions about social life in a tenth of a second.

“Which is long before our reasoning portion of our brain – which may want to put our prejudgments aside and ‘listen to alternate sides’  – can become engaged,” says the Rev. Gregory Love, professor of Christian theology at the University of Redlands in California. 

Nevertheless, humans do have the intellectual and even spiritual capacity to universalize the group instincts for altruism and direct them to all of humanity, scholars say. 

“In their histories, the world’s religions have shown quite a mixed effect on this issue,” says Dr. Love. “We are to love all humanity, and consider all persons human, as we are.”

“All the world religions, however, also display that deep human sentiment of rejecting difference, and privileging one’s group over others,” continues Dr. Love. “Frequently, religion has deepened the problem.”

Question of foundational principles

Similarly, the secular universalism at the heart of liberal democratic theory has also had mixed effects, some scholars say.

“I do believe that there is a thing called a culture, and certainly a culture within a political sphere,” says Charlie Copeland, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which promotes conservative values on college campuses. “If the populace writ large does not share a certain set of components, it’s just hard to govern.”

Mr. Copeland and others express concern that the “identity politics” of the left often dismisses the idea of foundational principles, focusing instead on their failures and hypocrisies, which he doesn’t deny are real.

“But sometimes you also need to hold up the examples of other countries across the globe and go, you know what? Compared to how those citizens are allowed to live, we’ve done more right than wrong, and certainly more right when it comes to human flourishing than any other country in the world or in the history of the world,” he says. 

People like Dr. and Ms. Christian feel that the emphasis on identity politics and a focus on the nation’s obvious flaws misses the bigger picture. 

“Expressing pride in America today is often met with endless reminders of our historic failures and hypocrisies,” says Ms. Christian, seeing a series of “shamings and scoldings” or accusations of “privileging Western civilization.” “Yes, we did make some grievous mistakes, but we have also been more willing than almost any other country to tell the truth about our mistakes and make amends.”

In many ways, with such a wide bipartisan consensus on the value of diversity, some of the debate is more a matter of emphasis and the scope of diversity.

“Political solidarity actually allows for, and really centralizes, diversity and pluralism,” says Dr. Scholz. “Because each of us is coming to our commitment in our own individual way, we’re able to see different facets of a problem, and we’re trying to address it together.” 

It’s similar to old-fashioned coalition-building, in which diverse identities unite in solidarity to petition the government for a redress of grievances. But diverse perspectives can bring personal benefits, too. 

“We often have our own way of looking at the world, and we encounter other people, and they show us a different way of looking at the world,” Professor Scholz says. “And there’s value in that. You come to see yourself as others see you. ... I think often we could even say that one of the strengths of having diversity in our solidarity is that different people show us, or open up for us, a new understanding of our own existence, or of our own world.”

In the past week, David Flores says, he’s lost all hope for Mexico’s future.

Last Saturday, his dear friend Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre was shot riding her bike home in the northern city of Juárez. The murder of Ms. Cabanillas de la Torre, a promising artist and young mother, comes on the heels of the deadliest year in Mexico’s recent history: On average 95 people were killed per day in 2019, just over 34,500 in total.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly referred to by his initials, AMLO, was elected on the promise to end crime and corruption, and a new approach to fighting violence.

“I don’t want to say the situation was better before, but AMLO hasn’t presented any kind of hope or promise,” says Mr. Flores, a social activist and artist who met Ms. Cabanillas de la Torre through his artist collective and bakery, Rezizte. Her death “is proof that violence continues, even with AMLO in power.”

On the campaign trail, AMLO spoke passionately about the need for respect for Mexican citizens, whose human rights have been trampled over the past nearly two decades as the military and organized criminals have clashed, with civilians often caught in the conflict. “Hugs, not bullets,” he vowed, saying the root causes of cartel violence could be better combated with anti-poverty programs, drug detox efforts, and reintegrating criminals into society, not militarized confrontation.

But one year into office, and it isn’t just victims’ friends and families who say the situation hasn’t improved – some observers argue it’s getting worse, and that space for criticism is shrinking.

Strategies to fight crime appear unchanged – with the rollout of a National Guard last June that’s meant to eventually replace the military’s presence on Mexican streets, but is still made up of members trained in the armed forces. The new head of the National Human Rights Commission, which is meant to be an autonomous body that investigates rights violations, has been the focus of controversy in her few months at the helm. In November, she questioned whether journalists have been killed during AMLO’s administration. There have been an estimated 11 such killings since he took office. And a recently proposed judicial reform designed to combat soaring crime has been accused of putting citizens’ rights at risk in the name of security and collaborating with the United States.

“There is no serious accountability,” says José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, who was in Mexico City last week to launch the organization’s 2020 world report. “The approach to law enforcement and the war on drugs is pretty much the same prescription as the previous administration. And the risk is sending a message of impunity to security forces and organized criminals that will be taken as carte blanche for further abuses.”

Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks during a news conference in Juárez, Mexico, on Jan. 10, 2020. Critics say that the president's vows of a new approach against violence have fallen short during his first year in office.

Watching for change

AMLO inherited a country suffering some of the worst homicide rates in the world and a dire human rights record. The government estimates that roughly 60,000 people have disappeared since 2006.

His administration has been lauded for working to identify the missing, announcing last spring there was “no financial ceiling” for the government’s search efforts. At least 26,000 bodies are in government custody, waiting to be identified.

And the president has continued to affirm a commitment to human rights. “The state doesn’t violate human rights in these times; it’s no longer the main violator of human rights,” Mr. López Obrador said in his daily press conference last Monday. “It’s forbidden to violate human rights, and public servants must guarantee human rights and protect the lives of all people.”

Despite important steps to identify Mexico’s long list of missing people, critics see few efforts to create concrete policies that might prevent future disappearances. They say his campaign promise of approaching violence with “hugs, not bullets” has not been fleshed out beyond the catchy name: “abrazos, no balazos” in Spanish.

“He had the opportunity to start from zero to deal with the record of human rights atrocities” committed over the past two administrations, Mr. Vivanco says. “After a year it looks like we are dealing with an administration that is not only unwilling, but uninterested.”

President López Obrador has pinned much of the blame for Mexico’s violence on previous governments. And despite last year’s record death toll, he remains popular. In a November tally by pollster Buendía y Laredo, AMLO maintained roughly 67% support. But human rights organizations fear that a failure to take responsibility for today’s problems – even if they weren’t created by AMLO – presents further risks.

Local human rights organizations and advocates that saw AMLO as an ally before his election are now being pushed aside and ignored, says Carlos Bravo Regidor, a professor of history and politics at Mexico’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching.

“Once he came to power he operated under a very important distinction between ‘the people’ and civil society,” says Mr. Bravo. “‘The people’ are real Mexicans who he claims to represent and to understand. But civil society organizations,” pressuring for action on human rights or corruption, “are suddenly organizations that lobby for special interests or are influenced by foreign governments or money. They have no democratic legitimacy to him.” It’s meant fewer opportunities for human rights advocates to discuss their agendas with this administration, he says, with the exception of a few key, high-profile cases, like the disappearance of 43 students under AMLO’s predecessor.

Mr. Flores, in Juárez, says his collective has been in the forefront of social action for over a decade, fighting for awareness around migrant rights and citizen abuses in Juárez. For the first time, he says he feels vulnerable. If Ms. Cabanillas de la Torre, a relative newcomer to the collective who was involved in other groups as well, was possibly murdered for her activism, as some fear, where does that leave even more visible activists like himself?

“We don’t have hope for justice, because in Mexico nothing is resolved,” he says. “Even with an investigation there’s no justice. And even with justice our Isabel won’t come back.”

When Johanna Kruse arrived in the United States from Germany as an au pair, she anticipated bonding with a U.S. family, traveling, and caring for a 6-year-old boy.

Ten days later, her plans were thrust into disarray when a federal court ruled that au pairs in Massachusetts are covered by state labor laws and included in the state’s Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, immediately entitling them to higher wages and overtime pay. 

Instead of celebrating, Ms. Kruse worried for weeks that she might need to find a new host family in another state or return home to Germany, since her host debated quitting the program due to the sudden and sharp increase in child care costs. 

“I made the decision to be an au pair because I wanted to be a family member, to have someone around to show me your culture, to show me everything,” Ms. Kruse said at a lobbying event about the changes in early January. “Now, with the law, it destroys the relationship,” and the potential to be a family member. 

The Dec. 2 ruling by the 1st U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals joins other legal action in the past year aimed at protecting the rights of au pairs. Now, families and the au pairs themselves are raising questions about the future of the program and debating whether it is truly an important cultural exchange initiative, as the State Department says, or a guest worker program masquerading as internationalism. 

“The question is, what do [supporters] think the cultural component is for the au pairs?,” says Janie Chuang, a law professor at American University in Washington and author of the report, “The U.S. Au Pair Program: Labor Exploitation and the Myth of Cultural Exchange.”

Riley Robinson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Henry (left) and Charlie Sterling, play with their au pair, Albane Richon (center), and their mother, Maggie Sterling, Jan. 19, 2020.

Cultural Care Au Pair, an agency placing au pairs in the U.S. and a plaintiff in the 1st Circuit case, said in a statement to the Monitor that it plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. “We will continue to pursue a reversal of the ruling and are hopeful that the comprehensive federal regulations that govern the program will be recognized as controlling and exclusive,” the statement says in part.

In an amicus brief, the State Department called the au pair program, which started in 1986, “a valuable tool of U.S. foreign policy.”

In 2018, just over 20,000 au pairs, mostly women, came to the U.S. from countries across the world, according to State Department figures. The states hosting the highest number of au pairs, who visit the U.S. on J-1 cultural exchange visas, are California, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts. 

Mariana Baptista from Brazil recently completed a year as an au pair in the Bay State. She writes in an email that she has an “American family now” and praises her experience.

Yet it was hard work to care for three children for nine hours a day. Some of her au pair friends had “big problems,” including working more hours than the program allows without extra pay and being left alone with kids for a weekend while parents traveled. 

“There are a lot of people who have wonderful experiences ... but then there are au pairs with horrible experiences,” says Professor Chuang. The program “allows far too much discretion in terms of what the families can do and allows far too much financial incentive to the agencies to not enforce regulations.” 

Riley Robinson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Thaty Oliveira moved to the U.S. from Brazil in 2003, when she became an au pair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Besides starting her own business, she has worked with Matahari Women Workers' Center in Boston, which advocates for increased pay for au pairs.

Unrest over the au pair program dovetails with a burgeoning domestic workers’ movement in the U.S. Nine states have passed domestic worker bills of rights to protect workers such as house cleaners, nannies, and in-home health aides who are not covered by many U.S. labor laws and are among the lowest paid workers in the country. 

Among the states that have passed domestic protection laws some, like New York, specifically exclude au pairs. Others, including California, are silent on au pair status. Massachusetts is the first state with legal confirmation that au pairs are domestic workers. 

The 1st Circuit’s ruling, which also governs Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Puerto Rico, follows a June 2019 $65.5 million settlement in a Denver court of a class action lawsuit brought by former au pairs claiming they are underpaid and overworked.  

Julia Beebe, lead organizer at Boston-based Matahari Women Workers’ Center, praises the 1st Circuit’s decision, which upheld an earlier ruling. 

“Anyone who is taking care of kids knows it’s very hard and very important, and if you’re doing it for 45 hours, and frankly even if you’re doing it for 40 or 35, that’s very much a job,” she says. The program “has taken the form of a work program and been advertised by the au pair agencies as cheap child care.” 

Ms. Beebe says Matahari hears from “many” current au pairs each month with grievances including working too many hours, not being given a proper room, and sexual assault.    

Financial drain on families

In Massachusetts, where child care is costly and difficult to come by, host families are seeing program costs rise dramatically. On top of that there are new requirements to log hours, create contracts, and add extra insurance protections. Families say the changes are jeopardizing the unique cultural parts of the program.  

Sonja Raslavicus, who lives in Newburyport, is hosting Ms. Kruse. The single mom studied abroad and hosted exchange students growing up. She wanted her son to learn another language, and also liked the idea of mentoring an au pair. 

Ms. Raslavicus works non-traditional hours at a medical clinic. She agonized over whether she should end her contract or cobble together a way to make it work by finding a new job or moving to New Hampshire. She has decided to stay in the program, but won’t participate again next year. 

“I feel like no one really understood the program,” Ms. Raslavicus said in an interview in the Hall of Flags in the Massachusetts State House, where she met legislators at the lobbying event in early January. “I’m all for people getting minimum wage – people who work for a living and have to go home and feed their children and pay their rent. But she’s living with us, we’re taking care of her.” 

Previously, Massachusetts families followed State Department regulations about au pair hours and pay. Those include working up to 45 hours per week at federal minimum wage of $7.25, with a maximum of 10 hours per day, for a minimum stipend of $195.75 per week, after a 40% deduction for room and board. Now, Massachusetts au pairs earn the state minimum wage of $12.75 per hour, plus time-and-half for overtime work. Deduction for room and board is $77 per week, which a number of families say is too low. There’s also uncertainty whether families can legally take it. 

Many host families cover additional costs such as cellphone fees, and pay upwards of $10,000 in agency fees to participate in the program. 

A different approach?

Ms. Chuang, the law professor, suggests reforming the au pair program by moving it from State Department oversight to the Department of Labor, where other international guest worker programs are already housed. 

“Right now au pairs can work up to 45 hours per week. That is overtime under U.S. law. To claim that’s not a work program, when they can work overtime ... is ridiculous,” she says. 

Nancy Riley, a technology executive from Medford, Massachusetts, is a single parent, hosting a male au pair from Brazil. She wants the program to prosper for the sake of her son and future families. 

“I think in general for families that’s a big piece of it, to welcome another culture into your home,” she says. “It opens up your kids’ minds, but it also opens up your minds as parents and really enriches your life experience.”   

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify where Sonja Raslavicus lives, and to correct the spelling of her last name in one instance. References to district court have also been changed to “1st Circuit.” 

The music was like nothing Aino Moongo had ever heard before. A whistle floated above a skittering guitar melody, and then a voice broke in, low and mournful. 

When her friend, the German filmmaker Thorsten Schütte, shared the recording of Namibian singer Ben Molatzi with her in 2010, Ms. Moongo, who had worked in the entertainment industry for years, was stunned.

Why had she never heard of this musician, she wondered? What was his story?

Together, the pair, along with Namibian musician Baby Doeseb, began to investigate, touching off a project that would eventually sprawl across the past decade and two continents: to collect and revive the vast catalogue of Namibian pop music censored and suppressed under apartheid South African rule.

Imagine you were used to “the blaring church and propaganda songs that were sold to you as your country’s musical legacy,” Ms. Moongo wrote ahead of an exhibition in London last year based on the project, which is called “Stolen Moments.” “Until all at once, a magnitude of unknown sounds, melodies and songs appear. This sound, that roots your culture to the musical influences of jazz, blues and pop from around the world, is unique, yet familiar. It revives memories of bygone days, recites the history of your homeland and enables you for the first time to experience the emotions, joys and pains of your ancestors.”

Until its independence in 1990, Namibia was a colony of South Africa, subject to its humiliating system of segregation. Apartheid dictated where black South Africans and Namibians could live and who they could love, the kinds of work they could do and the kind of education they could receive.

Dieter Hinrichs/Courtesy of Stolen Moments

Jazzband at the Old Location, a segregated area in Namibia's capital, Windhoek,1959.

In this system, the very act of pop music itself was a rebellion, says Ms. Moongo, because it was a reminder that black people still lived audaciously, stretching beyond apartheid’s ambitions. As the lyrics of the 9,000 songs in the “Stolen Moments” catalogue attest, they loved and dreamed and searched for identity, they celebrated life’s milestones and pined for the pretty girl down the road. And most of all, they snatched joy from the jaws of a system enforced by brutality.

“What’s remarkable to me about this music is that it takes Western pop music and mixes it with African musical traditions and experiences, so in a sense it’s taking something that was imposed on you and transforming it to be your own,” says Henning Melber, a Namibian-German political scientist and author of the recent Op-Ed, “Pop culture: restoring Namibia’s forgotten resistance music.”

“To me that’s an extremely subversive act of resistance.”

The apartheid government seemed to agree. For decades before Namibian independence, pop musicians and their fans were hassled, arrested, and prevented from releasing records. What little music was recorded, meanwhile, was played on radio stations segregated by language, ensuring that even the most popular bands couldn’t profit widely.

“When we started searching for these musicians and doing interviews, we often hit a wall. So many people didn’t want to go back into their memories of this painful era,” Ms. Moongo says.

That’s true, she says, not just for musicians but for the country as a whole. Ms. Moongo, who grew up as a refugee in Sweden, says she eventually stopped asking her parents about their early lives in Namibia because she could see the immense pain those memories churned up. “Many young Namibians are in the same situation as me, and it’s hard to build a country like that, that doesn’t remember its own past,” she says.

But slowly, she says, the “Stolen Moments” archive is helping to unfurl those memories, and remind Namibians of their own rich musical heritage.

“That shouldn’t be just something that’s stored gathering dust in the belly of the state broadcaster,” she says. “It needs to be heard.”

Reuters

An Israeli flag flies near the Dome of the Rock, located in Jerusalem's Old City on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, Jan. 24.

By Tuesday, President Donald Trump hopes to reveal details of a plan – three years in the making – for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Like U.S. presidents before him he has relied largely on official diplomacy. This effort was led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. And also like previous presidents, he is discovering that negotiating an end to such a difficult conflict needs private and neutral back-channels – the kind in which each side feels safe enough to acknowledge the interests of the other without fear of public backlash.

For now, the Trump plan, which he calls the “deal of the century,” appears to have only lopsided support. It will be discussed at a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and possibly his main political rival, Benny Gantz of the Blue and White alliance. Since taking office in 2017, Mr. Trump has given Mr. Netanyahu much of what he wanted: U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as well as an official nod in support of Israel’s settlements on West Bank land. Those actions, along with Mr. Kushner’s high-profile diplomacy, led Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the plan even before knowing what’s in it.

As a result, the U.S. had been forced in recent days to go through private channels to try to persuade the Palestinians to at least discuss the plan. Perhaps such peacemakers, who range from think tanks to Nordic countries, would have been more useful at the start of this process. Of the many Mideast peace talks since 1990, the most successful outcome – the so-called Oslo accords of 1993 – began with “track two” diplomacy, or secret and informal discussions led by outside and impartial parties.

Track two talks help reduce the mutual acrimony and mutual fear that can hinder negotiating in the spotlight of the media. Private facilitators help build trust and can probe for the kind of flexibility that leads to compromise. For Israelis and Palestinians, informal discussions would allow them to acknowledge their shared concerns about security and the different ways to achieve their respective religious and national aspirations.

The Trump way of negotiating might still work. At the least, his plan, once revealed, might offer fresh ideas for a stalemated conflict. But those ideas will need a calm and respectful exchange, the kind that private diplomacy can offer.