Matthias Schrader/AP

People pass a sign reading “Face masks mandatory from here” in Berchtesgaden, Germany, Oct. 26, 2020. Authorities have placed the Berchtesgaden region under a lockdown since Oct. 20, 2020 due to a rising number of COVID-19 cases.

Wedding photographer Emma Case remembers a sense of duty evoked by the United Kingdom’s spring lockdown.

The blanket ban on leaving homes felt draconian, says Ms. Case, a Liverpool resident whose income suddenly evaporated. But the country rallied in solidarity around touch points such as Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s getting sick and a 99-year-old war veteran walking his garden for charity.

It feels different this time, as coronavirus caseloads surge past spring highs across Europe. Hospitals are filling up again. “[We] are becoming tired. We’re in murky water,” says Ms. Case. “Perhaps that’s the natural psychological course, but the mountain to overcome mental fatigue is bigger than I first thought.”

The numbers are rising rapidly. Britain has logged more than 150,000 new cases in the last week, while France recently topped a daily record of 52,000 new infections. Governments are weighing reintroducing new restrictions in response, in hopes of replicating successes from the spring.

But the U.K., Spain, France, Italy, and Germany are battling a new enemy alongside the virus: “coronafatigue.” Their publics are confused, apathetic, and angry. Across Europe, support for containment policies dropped from nearly 70% in spring to about 50% of respondents during summer, according to a June survey across seven European countries. That will make the months ahead, when many forecast an increase in cases, more difficult to manage.

“People calling hotlines are much more aggressive, and people are less accepting of measures such as why they can’t visit grandma in a nursing home,” says German press officer Tobias Frohnert, of efforts by his district of Herzogtum Lauenburg to test and trace a newly unwilling public. “People are angry.”

In Italy, “back to square one”

Italy's early, devastating experience with COVID-19 had the Western world taking notes. But new restrictions have been met with weariness – and even civil unrest.

Following protests in Naples and Rome over the weekend, the Italian government announced a new decree Sunday shuttering all cinemas, theaters, gyms, and pools, and requiring bars and restaurants to close by 6 p.m. Curfews in some regions require people to be home by 11 p.m.

There was further unrest in Italy late on Monday. In Turin, protesters set garbage bins on fire and looted luxury outlets. And in Milan, Italy's financial hub, police fired tear gas as demonstrators gathered outside the offices of the regional government of Lombardy.

Amid predictions that gross domestic product would shrink by 10%, Italians are despondent. “It feels like all the sacrifices we made during the spring were for nothing,” says Claudia, who runs a hair salon in central Rome. “We’re back to square one.”

Fabio Sasso/LaPresse/AP

People protest the government restriction measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Naples, Italy, Oct. 26, 2020. For at least the next month, people outdoors except for small children must now wear masks, gyms and movie theaters will be closed, and cafes and restaurants must shut down in early evenings.

Among the most compliant in Europe, Italians had been donning masks in public even during summertime. Still, the country’s prime minister felt he needed to recruit Italy’s most famous social influencer for a public service announcement.

Fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni and her rapper husband, Fedez, who together have 32 million followers on social media, said the call was “very unexpected.” But they were happy to help. “We can avoid [another lockdown] with a simple gesture – guys, wear a mask,” posted Fedez on Instagram.

So far, Italy’s new rules haven’t approached spring’s uniform, nationwide lockdown. Most schools remain open, though senior schools are doing most classes via distance learning. Regions and municipalities also have far greater autonomy this time around.

For example, the national government has told mayors they can close off piazzas and streets if overcrowding becomes an issue. And, instead of orders, there are pleas: “The situation is extremely serious,” Health Minister Roberto Speranza told television channel La7. “I ask people to avoid needless movements, avoiding going out when it is not necessary.”

For a country that brought infections down to 200 a day during the summertime, recent case numbers are especially painful: between 15,000 and 21,000 a day.

Uncertainty, infighting in Spain and France

In Spain, residents are frustrated by a whiplash-like approach to pandemic restrictions, and political infighting that’s confusing residents about who’s in charge.

“You wake up on Monday to start the week and the measures are A, B, C, and then on Tuesday there are new measures in place,” says Alfredo Ramos, a Madrid resident. “I see all of this with a lot of uncertainty.”

Much of the back-and-forth is triggered by a tug of war between national and regional governments. Spain’s spring wave saw a top-down national approach, but as cases began rising again in the fall, regional governments began fighting for control, especially as health systems are overseen regionally.

In early October, the center-right government of Madrid – a coronavirus epicenter with roughly a third of Spain’s case counts and deaths – challenged the national left-wing coalition in court over tightening controls. It has also sparred over the use of a national “state of emergency.”

This week, Spain’s national government announced a six-month state of emergency, which gives regional leaders the ability to impose measures to tackle the pandemic. Curfews have also been imposed in all regions save the Canary Islands, through at least early November.

Still, like Italy, Spain still hasn’t gone into a full lockdown, even while showing high virus numbers. “Strong polarization is affecting the decision-making,” says Josep Lobera, a professor of political sociology at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Just northeast in France, where cases are increasing significantly, Parisian Brendan Jannic is frustrated by a government that he says infantilizes its people and whose rules are unclear. They are angry not because of restrictions, but because of “how the government talks to us,” says Mr. Jannic. “I just need them to tell me the rules.”

For example, authorities mandated mask-wearing only on certain streets in Paris in August, before declaring them mandatory in all public spaces. The government has also talked down to its people by scolding them for being irresponsible, for misbehavior, or for not being “disciplined enough,” says Raul Magni-Berton, a political scientist at Sciences Po Grenoble.

“The government has said it doesn’t want to be paternalistic. But a government that isn’t paternalistic doesn’t need to say so,” says Mr. Magni-Berton.

Buy-in from society is critical to managing a pandemic, yet trust in government has been low under Emmanuel Macron. “If society reacts in a coordinated way, it’s definitely the best thing for a pandemic,” says Mr. Magni-Berton.

The battle between Manchester and London

In England, a British doctor working for the National Health Service plans to flout a travel ban to visit her family. “I’m 100% considering going to Wales and breaking [a travel ban between coronavirus hotspots], especially if restrictions stay over Christmas,” says the doctor, who asked not to be named for fear of losing her job. “I’ve already been without my family from January to August.”

Fatigue is heightened in the northwest of England, especially Manchester and Liverpool, where severe restrictions remained even through summer.

Two key moments have worn away public trust. The first was a road trip by a Boris Johnson aide at the height of the first wave, undermining the government’s narrative about following rules. Mr. Johnson’s by-the-regions approach is the second turning point, as it has pitted regions and localities against each other as they lobby for financial assistance on a deal-by-deal basis. Even mayors are seemingly fighting others for access to central government purse strings.

Phil Noble/Reuters

Cars drive past a sign about COVID-19 measures in Manchester, England, on Oct. 23, 2020. Manchester officials and the British government have been fighting over the decision to impose the strictest pandemic restrictions on the city.

Manchester, the heart of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, feels particularly aggrieved. Mayor Andy Burnham, who told the national government he wouldn’t lock down the city without financial assistance for the struggling hospitality sector, became a figurehead of resistance.

“This is the most serious fallout since the 1980s,” says Andrew Russell, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, of the battle between local and national governments. “In the early days of lockdown, there was a rallying around the national government. … [Now] the battle between Manchester and London has plugged into a long-standing skepticism that government is done by London and imposed on the rest of us.”

Overall, Britons are still mostly abiding by restrictions. In England’s strictest tier, households are refrained from mixing, pubs can remain open if they serve food, and residents are advised against – but not prohibited from – traveling in and out of their area. Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have imposed new, stricter rules and enforcement.

Though, there might be no one to reinforce the rules, says event planner Kate Tynan. “People in Manchester will ignore rules anyway and they’ll find ways around the new ban,” says Ms. Tynan. “The checks … how pubs are sticking to guidelines for example, are very varied. No one is checking. There’s room for error everywhere in the U.K.”

For Germany, “the motivation is waning”

In Germany, health authorities once lauded for their rigorous test-and-contact-tracing efforts are pulling back. The virus is surging, and they’re simply short on trained tracers, not to mention buildings to house the army of people needed.

“We have been doing this for about seven months already, and the motivation is waning,” says Mr. Frohnert, the press officer in northern Germany. “Many of our hotline workers are also asking to quit or to transfer to other departments.”

It’s fatigue, explains Mr. Frohnert. Ahead of a long winter, many districts are now asking infected people to trace their own contacts.  Still, aside from a few tens of thousands of conspiracy theorists who have rallied at anti-restrictions protests, most Germans seem to accept the rules.

Annette Brinkman, a Dortmund travel agent who believes the beloved German tradition of Christmas markets should go on – “think of the market vendors!” – has shrugged off spring fears that kept her away from her beloved mother.

“Now I go three times a week, but I always wear my mask and I don’t touch her,” she says. “My mom says, ‘Child, please let me squeeze you, I don’t care if I die of corona.’ But I always tell her ‘No. We have to follow the rules.’”

• Nick Squires contributed reporting from Rome.

Four years ago, Donald Trump’s path to the White House ran through Rust Belt states with higher-than-average numbers of white voters without college degrees. 

That strategy paid off, seeding a narrative of a working-class revolt from the right led by a billionaire Republican, who is seeking to turn out those voters again on Nov. 3.  

But what also happened in 2016 now looks arguably more significant: College-educated voters, who once leaned Republican, swung hard to the Democrats, including voters in suburban districts who then helped flip the House of Representatives in 2018.

The polarization among white voters by educational levels has since grown wider, putting more pressure on Republicans to turn out non-college-educated white voters, a demographic that is shrinking within an increasingly diverse and educated electorate. To gain a second term, President Trump likely needs to get even more of these voters to the polls, as well as win back some disaffected college grads.  

The “diploma divide” in U.S. politics predates Mr. Trump. But like many partisan fault lines, from gender to religion, it has gaped wider under his presidency – sending into hyperdrive a decadeslong realignment of the Democratic and Republican parties. These shifting partisan coalitions, in turn, are scrambling everything from long-standing party policy positions to traditional advantages and disadvantages when it comes to campaign cash and the electoral map. 

SOURCE:

Pew Research Center

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

“One of the great political divides in this country is the existence of a college degree. [If] you have a college degree, you’ve been drifting Democrat. If you don’t, you’ve been drifting Republican,” says Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist. “What was true in 2016 is true today. It’s been exacerbated.” 

This divide has also reshaped political coalitions in European democracies. Populist right-wing politicians have won over working-class communities that used to vote reliably for center-left parties, which are now more oriented toward more affluent and educated voters. In multiparty systems like the Netherlands, college graduates make up the base of Green parties. 

In 2016, the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum slashed across party lines as less educated voters chose to leave the European Union, against the wishes of college graduates. Last year’s election saw Boris Johnson, leader of the pro-Brexit Conservatives, flip dozens of seats in England’s equivalent of the Rust Belt, while center-left Labour held onto university towns.  

In the United States, education is a proxy for class in a society that aspires to be classless. In fact, some non-college-educated white voters – who made up 42% of the electorate in 2016 – are relatively affluent, which is why researchers control for income when studying their voting patterns. 

By that measure, Mr. Trump’s popularity among the white working class is less impressive than the myth: They made up 31% of votes he received, a similar share to Mitt Romney, a more traditional Republican, in 2012. 

Where Mr. Trump did better, however, was in attracting votes from non-college-educated white people with higher incomes, a factor that many pollsters missed in tracking the 2016 race. 

These increasing margins reflect how cultural issues like same-sex marriage and race relations, as much as pocketbook concerns, shape voting behavior, says Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University who studies polarization. “Education is a stronger predictor [than income] because it correlates with your underlying values,” he says. 

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks during a drive-in campaign event at Dallas High School in Dallas, Pennsylvania, Oct. 24, 2020. The education gap is growing among voters, with those with college degrees tending to vote for Democrats, while those without favor the GOP.

“They’ve definitely lost me”

Growing up in a conservative white household outside Atlanta, Brendon Pace absorbed the values of his family and its well-off community. “The idea of supporting the Democrats or anyone liberal was ridiculed,” he says. 

In 2016, Mr. Pace, by then a college undergraduate in Virginia, cast his first ballot. “I thought of myself as a Republican and I voted for Trump in 2016,” he says, ruefully. 

Since then, he’s shifted left, to the dismay of his family, and recently cast an absentee ballot for Joe Biden. Mr. Pace, who is now in his first year at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, says he’s unhappy with Mr. Trump’s presidency and how Republican lawmakers fell in line behind him. And while he says he may consider voting again for the party in the future, for now “they’ve definitely lost me.” 

For this election cycle, polls show Republicans holding college educated white people in Georgia, while losing this demographic to Democrats in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Among white voters without college degrees, Mr. Trump runs up large margins in states like Texas and North Carolina. (Nonwhite voters overwhelmingly tilt Democratic.) 

While Mr. Trump’s crossover appeal has been exaggerated – white working-class voters also helped put George W. Bush into office – he did flip some Democratic strongholds in 2016, including Johnston, Rhode Island, where Democrats dominate local and state politics. 

Stephanie Muravchik, a social historian at Claremont McKenna College, studied Johnston and two other Trump-voting districts in Iowa and Kentucky that otherwise rarely or never voted for Republicans, for her co-written book, “Trump’s Democrats.” In all three places, most voters are white, without college degrees. 

In Johnston, self-identified Republicans were so thin on the ground, says Ms. Muravchik, that when a Trump surrogate was proposed for an election debate in 2016, Democratic Mayor Joe Polisena didn’t recognize the name. “And he knows everyone in town. I mean, everyone,” she says. 

Yet in many ways, Democratic officials like Mr. Polisena share some stylistic similarities with Mr. Trump’s brash, nationalist candidacy, says Ms. Muravchik, who calls it “boss politics.” That type of politics holds a certain appeal to non-college-educated voters, particularly men, who respect toughness over formality. 

Local bosses “promise to take care of their supporters and help them out, and expect loyalty in return. So Trump seemed familiar to people in these areas,” she says.   

Since 2016, Republicans have built an electoral base in Johnston, even as voters remain loyal to local Democrats like Mr. Polisena, a former state senator. “Now they’re watching Fox News,” says Ms. Muravchik. 

Still, these GOP conversions are swimming against the general demographic tide, in which non-college-educated white voters are a declining portion of the electorate. Analysts calculate that the president needs to increase their overall turnout by 5 percentage points from 2016 simply to offset this decline – as well as win a larger share of their votes. 

“If you’re writing off white college graduates and nonwhites, you’re appealing to a shrinking share of the electorate,” says Mr. Abramowitz, referring to the Republican base. 

Brian Hern, a tax attorney who lives in an affluent town outside Boston, is a fiscal and judicial conservative who voted twice against former President Barack Obama. “I don’t like big government. I don’t think the government does anything well,” he says. 

In 2012, he voted enthusiastically for Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. But he didn’t support Mr. Trump and has been appalled by his chaotic leadership and how it’s warped the Republican Party. “It’s like a cult following,” he says. “I think he’s destroyed the party’s image.”  

Mr. Hern says he won’t vote for Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, though he hopes Mr. Trump will lose and “the fever will break,” encouraging Republicans to steer back to a politics that plays down cultural divisions. “Our politics keep getting ramped up to extreme levels,” he says. 

A new high

A generation ago, college graduates like Mr. Hern split fairly evenly in voting behavior. In 1996, Republican voters were more likely than Democrats to have a four-year degree, according to a Pew study of party identification. Today college graduates make up 41% of Democrats, compared with 30% of Republicans. 

In 2016, the diploma divide among white voters hit a new high, with Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, winning a higher margin of college-educated white voters than Mr. Obama in 2012. The divide was even higher among more affluent voters, a trend that has since accelerated. This narrows the path to victory not only for Mr. Trump but also for vulnerable down-ballot Republicans.

It also has had a significant effect on campaign fundraising. According to a recent analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Biden out-raised Mr. Trump $478 million to $104 million in ZIP codes where two-thirds or more of the population were college graduates, primarily on the coasts. In the rest of the country, meanwhile, Mr. Trump outpaced Mr. Biden by $630 million to $591 million. 

But the divide also risks defining the party as a vehicle of metropolitan elites and nonwhites that has lost touch with less-educated white voters. Over the past four years, the party has moved further left on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights, making it harder to bridge the gap with traditional Democrats in places like Johnston. (Liberal donors also tend to push these priorities.) 

“If they want to be the party of the working class, they have to include the white working class – who are still a majority of the working class,” says Ms. Muravchik. 

Still, Democrats see themselves as carrying the New Deal torch and governing for the less advantaged, notes Thomas Patterson, a professor of government at Harvard. “Even if their coalition doesn’t look like it, their philosophy tips it,” he says. That gives the party a chance at retaining or even growing some of their working-class support.

He’s more skeptical that the Republicans can close their education gap by wooing back disenchanted “managerial and business-oriented” Republicans. “The base is more symbolically and culturally oriented,” he says. “That’s going to make it hard for the two sides to get together, because they care about different things.” 

UNICEF

Islam Abu Saud and her twin sister, Salam, display bumper crops at their rooftop hydroponic farm earlier this year at their refugee camp in Jerash, Jordan.

Islam Abu Saud checks the series of white plastic tubes running and twisting across the expanse of green canvas in what looks like a life-sized school science project.

She scans digital pH readers and engine pumps. Finally, the 22-year-old university graduate gazes with satisfaction at the end result of the past four weeks of labor: bright green heads of lettuce.

Even better? This is not a farm or research center – this is her rooftop.

“After waiting for opportunities to arrive,” Ms. Abu Saud says, “I am making opportunities grow at home.”

In Jordan’s Jerash refugee camp, an experiment in hydroponic rooftop gardening is offering more than a badly needed source of income. It’s offering a reconnection to the land for a people who have been uprooted for half a century.

In Jordan, a country whose population has one of the highest percentages of refugees in the world, residents in the “Gaza Camp” – Gazans who arrived here at the Jerash camp in 1968 and their descendants – have it perhaps the hardest.

As the Gaza Strip was not under Jordanian administration at the time of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Jordan did not grant citizenship to Gaza refugees like it did for Palestinians arriving from the West Bank.

This has left few options for the 31,000 residents in Jerash camp, a hill of cinder block houses and narrow broken roads 30 miles northwest of Amman.

Without national IDs, the vast majority of job sectors are closed to Gazans. Unemployment in the camp stood at 40%, and 52% of residents were below the poverty line before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many secured income as day laborers on farms and construction sites or as street vendors, all sectors that have been decimated by the pandemic and government lockdowns.

Rooftops as “untapped resource”

But Mohammed Siyam, a camp resident and community organizer, was determined to break the cycle.

He was alerted by another camp resident, an agricultural engineer, that hydroponic farming – growing crops in water containers without the need for land, large amounts of soil, or constant irrigation – could offer a solution.

“The only breathing space people have here is their rooftops,” Mr. Siyam says, gesturing to a seemingly endless wave of concrete rooftops behind him. “It was an untapped resource we could maximize.”

The average home in the “Gaza Camp” has some 535 to 800 square feet of rooftop area to use as garden space, enough room for a hydroponic system that can raise from 800 to 1,200 shoots of crops.

Alerted to the idea, UNICEF supported Mr. Siyam by launching a pilot project this past February.

Taylor Luck

Agricultural engineer Ahmed Abu Elewah takes a PH reading at his specially-designed hydroponic garden in Jerash camp, northern Jordan, Oct. 21, 2020.

Mr. Siyam and his team planned gardens that would impose the lowest possible costs on residents.

The farms are built to grow multiple cycles of crops with the same water, which is cycled through a closed system of pipes. A timed system pumps water at intervals, keeping electricity bills to the bare minimum. 

Today, 24 families are harvesting crops of lettuce, basil, cucumber, and zucchini.

Families also sell to local markets, seizing on vegetable shortages caused by government-imposed COVID-19 lockdowns.

“This innovative technology provides youth and women in the camp with long-term income generation and increases the community’s food-security,” says Tanya Chapuisat, UNICEF representative in Jordan.

With the average harvest of a 40-day cycle yielding some 240 JOD ($340) in profit, slightly more than the minimum wage in Jordan, the gardens have been life-changing for many.

“With unemployment, we have poverty and negative social phenomena such as early marriage and school dropouts,” says Ms. Abu Saud, who tends her rooftop farm with her twin sister.

“With people growing produce in their own home and selling directly, they have a steady stream of income they never had before. We can stop these negative practices and improve the well-being of the entire camp.”

A history of farming

For some, the gardens are also fulfilling something unquantifiable: a longing for land.

The concrete camp is located in the heart of water-starved Jordan’s greenest area. From any rooftop, rolling hills covered with vineyards and olive, fig, and pomegranate orchards – where many camp residents work as farmhands during harvest season – can be seen in the near distance.

This sense of longing is increased by the fact that before being driven into Jordan by war, and their camp growing into an urban maze, many Gaza families were small-farm owners or sharecroppers, attached and attuned to the natural cycle of land and seasons.

“In the early years of the camp, houses were spread apart, there was room to grow small gardens of tomatoes and cucumbers, and those on the outskirts of the camp had small farms. I grew up with greenery around us,” says Khaled Abu Saud, Islam’s 48-year-old father. “The camp grew, and it was all covered by concrete.”

Abdulhakim al-Ayan, who was among the first to be born in the camp in 1968 and whose daughter and son now grow basil and lettuce from their rooftop, recounts how his parents cultivated wheat, figs, and apples on farms in the West Bank and Gaza before arriving in Jordan.

“Tending to the land is in our blood, is part of our collective culture,” Mr. Ayan says.

Taylor Luck

The Jerash refugee camp, where more than half its 31,000 residents live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers at 40%, in northern Jordan, Oct. 21, 2020.

The gardens have also added a sense of purpose, and even vindication, for young Gazans who have been turned away by employers, such as Ahmed Abu Elewah, the experimental project’s technical director, who developed the hydroponic system.

As a youth, Mr. Abu Elewah, who was born and raised in the Jerash camp, worked on farms in northern Jordan. Frustrated at being denied a fair wage and the opportunity to advance despite his growing expertise, Mr. Abu Elewah vowed to become more successful than the farm owners who overlooked him.

Creativity and self-reliance

He won a university scholarship to study as an agricultural engineer, yet like most Gazans in Jordan, and despite sterling qualifications, he was unable to land a job in his field.

“We have so much expertise and talents to give, but we are denied the opportunity to give them,” he says as he proudly demonstrates the timed water-pumping cycle. “Growing crops allows an outlet for our creativity and self-reliance.”

Mr. Siyam agrees. “Perhaps the more important impact is psychological,” he says. “Camp residents are going from relying on others to becoming self-reliant. After years of feeling helpless or depressed, this is a very empowering notion.”

With a grant from the Netherlands government, UNICEF will expand the project to 140 hydroponic farms benefitting 280 families. Future developments are planned that would allow families to grow out-of-season crops such as strawberries and tomatoes to yield larger profit margins.

Residents say they are already harvesting benefits.

“Even though we are born in Jordan, we are treated as if we are temporary, that we don’t belong to the land we grew up on,” says Mr. Abu Saud.

“When my daughters grow crops, they are putting down roots here.”

Melissa Morgan, is section commander for the Community and Youth Outreach Division for the Newport News Police Department in Virginia. As a Black woman wearing a badge, she often finds herself forced to navigate dual identities. 

This is her story, as told to Chandra Thomas Whitfield.

I’ll never forget this day; I’d just wrapped up a speaking engagement at a Boys & Girls Club in Newport News, Virginia. Afterward, a young African American girl approached me. She stood there sizing me up until, finally, she blurted out: “I didn’t know there were Black female police officers, like you.”  

She said it real matter-of-factly and it was heartbreaking to learn that this Black girl had lived 12 years on this planet and had never seen anyone who looks like herself in law enforcement. She literally didn’t know someone like me exists. Moments like that inspire me daily and confirm for me that what I do for a living matters. 

It’s a tough job. As a Black cop, especially a Black woman cop, you’re caught between two worlds that seem at odds, particularly lately as Black Lives Matter protests have erupted in the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor cases. The first time I viewed the Floyd video, I burst into tears seeing that officer kneeling into his neck. It pierced my soul, as a mother, to hear a grown man scream out for his mama. Heartbreaking. That could have been my baby brother, my dad or, heck, me. The badge comes off. My Black skin, not so much. As a cop, it hurt to see that there was so much time for those officers to make a different decision. It’s shameful none of them did. 

As for Taylor’s case, my sorrow was also met with confusion. I have served warrants, and there are very specific guidelines. I wondered how these officers got a supervisor to sign off. It seemed so reckless, and as a result a young woman lost her life. The fact that there’s no bodycam footage of the raid seems inexcusable. My department has been using bodycam for more than 10 years. Situations like this give cops a bad name and destroy the positive efforts and hard work legions of law enforcement officers put in every day.

Someone's Black daughter, sister, mom

My career with the Newport News Police Department has been challenging, exciting and rewarding. But some friends and family members have disowned me because they’re angry and frustrated with law enforcement. They can’t fathom why I’d want to do this. To that I say: Who I am is exactly why I need to do what I do for a living. It hurts because, as a woman and person of color, you often have to fight your battles within the force, too; you’re not always immediately accepted as “one of the guys.” 

Courtesy of Newport News Police Department

Newport News Police Lt. Melissa Morgan, here with her son, Liam says there are certain assets that help shape her worldview and policing philosophy: "I’m someone’s Black daughter, someone’s sister, and I’m also mom to an 8-year-old little Black boy in America."

I’ve worked as a street cop, a detective, and in property crimes. I’ve also been a sergeant, leading others. Now, I’m a lieutenant overseeing community outreach. It’s a huge honor I’ve worked hard to earn. But, at the end of the day, I’m reminded that I’m someone’s Black daughter, someone’s sister, and I’m also mom to an 8-year-old little Black boy in America. Those distinctions help shape how I view the world and policing, and they are an asset on the job. 

So, when some say “Black Lives Matter” and I hear, “well, blue lives matter, too,” my response is that, for people like me in law enforcement, it’s not necessarily that simple. I’ve been a police officer for 14 years, but I’ve been Black for 37. When I’m off duty and out and about, the world sees a Black woman. When you walk into my house, you can't tell what I do. When you pull me over, you can't tell what I do unless I'm in uniform. Unfortunately I understand, firsthand, why many Black people feel that Black lives don’t matter to cops, but that is not a belief held by everyone in the industry. 

Having more diversity would help. Ensuring the nation’s police forces better reflect the makeup of the communities they serve should be a top priority. Having a diverse team, especially those in leadership, sitting together at the table having those “courageous conversations,” would be impactful and help bring about much-needed change.  

To the Black community and others concerned about police brutality, I say press on, because that should never be tolerated. However, I also ask that you consider the tough job we face. On any given day, I can walk out of the office with my gun on my hip and be forced to make split-second, life-or-death decisions. I would hope that my 14 years of training and experience would kick in. But one thing rookies learn quickly in the 21-week training academy is that there are so many variables to account for in real-life situations.  

I’m not saying cops should be absolved of consequences when we get it wrong. After all, we all take an oath to protect and to serve; that should be extended to all citizens. Hindsight is often 20/20. Still, I cringe when I hear people say things like, “Why didn’t they shoot him in the leg?” like Joe Biden suggested at ABC News Town Hall this month. My answer: It’s not a movie, and that’s not what we are trained to do. 

Know what you expect from police

So, if better training is the issue, speak up and demand those changes be made in your community. Remember, we work for you; you are our bosses. Whether it be policy changes, relationships with different parts of the community, race relations, gender differences or how one community is policed versus another, raise your voice and be clear about what you expect. Focusing on anger and resentment and things beyond anyone’s control is not the answer.

To my brothers and sisters in law enforcement, it’s time to listen and seek more understanding about some of the very valid frustrations and concerns that many in the Black community have about how policing does – and has – disproportionately impacted communities of color and those living in poverty. That will help build trust, so that we may move forward together.  

Also, instead of a knee-jerk reaction, consider that the so-called defund the police movement is not necessarily a negative thing. It’s a titillating term that, unfortunately, has not been thoroughly explained. For many, “reallocation of funds,” is a more accurate term. It’s about communities redistributing resources to social service agencies that already handle mental health, substance abuse, homelessness and assisting people with autism and other challenges. You know, the stuff we first responders are left to manage, often times without proper training, I should add, when those calls come after 5 p.m. when many support agencies are closed. 

Imagine if those calls were handed off to trained professionals, so we police officers could focus on our primary function; handling criminal matters. For example when a call comes in to dispatch regarding a noncombative person experiencing, say, a mental health episode, a mental health provider would be dispatched and police officers would serve as second responders, hanging back on the scene just in case the situation turns dangerous. The Seattle Police Department is currently considering a “community-led” force and a similar model has been in place for 31 years in Eugene, Oregon. We should study it and learn more.

The good news is that change is happening and in the Newport News Police Department it’s thanks to a very progressive-minded leader. Chief Steve Drew has implemented several major mandates, including requiring that all officers make a point to have at least one positive interaction with a member of the public, especially youth, during every shift. He also recently added two more weeks of de-escalation training to our police academy, including training on how to better interact with people on the autism spectrum and with related challenges. 

Additionally, before the Floyd case our officers had a “duty to report” misconduct in the field – and I watched our chief literally sit in a corner and type this up after the Floyd case – now our officers also have a “duty to intervene.” I am also assisting our public information officer with a campaign to recruit more women and minorities to our department. 

Maybe it’s because of my current role, but I have hope – I have to – that we can work this out. It’ll require more listening, an open mind and making a sincere commitment to positive change, but I believe it can be done. When we take the time to embrace the value of all life – Black, brown, white, blue, and that of woman, men, LGBTQ, straight, and everything in between – society is better for it and policing is too. 

Chandra Thomas Whitfield is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is a 2019-20 Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting fellow and host and producer of the podcast In The Gap. 

Just a week before the new school year started, Paula Ortelli finally learned she’d be allowed to teach hands-on, in-person music classes, but with some important caveats. Anxious to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, school board and health officials had banned wind instruments such as flute, clarinet, trombone, and trumpet from school property. Singing was allowed, but only outdoors and only if students stood at least nine feet apart.

“I understood why, because of COVID, but it’s almost impossible to be that far away from each other,” says Ms. Ortelli, a veteran music teacher at Stratford District Secondary School, a high school in Stratford, Ontario, a two-hour drive west of Toronto.

Ever the optimist, she vowed to find a way to make things work. In her classroom, physically distanced students learn folk, art, and modern songs by humming and chanting while wearing face masks. After school, they record themselves singing at home and later play the recording in class for feedback.

Ms. Ortelli admits it’s not ideal. Her mouth is also hidden behind a mask, so she can’t demonstrate proper vocal technique. Without singing in class, students will find it harder to develop their voices. And since students can’t hear each other, four-part harmonies are off the agenda.

Even with all the constraints, Ms. Ortelli says hands-on learning is so valuable that even a little is better than nothing at all.

“We could do this online, but being in the classroom is extremely beneficial to our students,” she says. “It brings them humanity, a human interaction with their teacher and their peers, and they realize that other teenagers go through the same problems they do.” 

Although hands-on music classes have long been part of the public high school curriculum in most jurisdictions in Canada, those programs were placed in jeopardy shortly after the pandemic started in the spring. Experts linked singing in a choir with several coronavirus outbreaks in Europe and the United States. A study from the University of Colorado found that playing wind instruments could be a risk. 

Armed with those studies, Canadian health officials banned singing and playing wind instruments in schools, effectively ending many music programs. Music teachers, however, spent the summer devising ways to convince education ministers to put the classes back on the curriculum.

The Coalition for Music Education in Canada leads the campaign. Its chair, Eric Favaro, says he wrote to every education and health minister in the country, arguing that music classes were vital to students’ mental health. He cited examples from around the world of people using song as an antidote to the stress and anxiety caused by the pandemic, and argued it would be especially helpful for children.

“We felt very strongly against students coming back to school and just doing reading and math, science and social studies,” he says. “We said we know their health and well-being has been affected by the fact they haven’t been in school, and one of the best ways to bring them back from those challenges would be to include creative subjects like music and art.” 

Mr. Favaro made a convincing argument. Most jurisdictions agreed to maintain their music programs when school returned.

Even before the pandemic, access to music and arts education in public schools in Canada was often tied to demographics and social status. In the province of Ontario, according to the group People for Education, urban elementary and secondary schools are more likely to have a specialist music teacher than schools in rural areas. The group’s 2018 report also found that access largely depends on parents’ ability to raise funds to purchase resources such as instruments and computer software. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods or with a higher number of university-educated parents generally raise more money and have more robust music programs.

Tony Leong, who teaches string ensembles at Dr. Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute in an ethnically diverse suburb of Toronto, says he considers himself fortunate to teach at a school with ample resources.

His school provides each student with his or her own instrument throughout the semester. But pandemic restrictions mean students can’t take their instruments home. Hands-on classes could only go ahead if each student had two instruments – one for school and one to practice on at home. Mr. Leong borrowed the instruments from an elementary school down the road that had canceled its music classes this year. 

Now, he says his big challenge is learning new technology that will help students take their music to a higher level even when they’re learning online, where part of his class takes place. “It feels like it’s my first year teaching,” says Mr. Leong, a 20-year veteran. 

In Orillia, Ontario, Laura Lee Matthie, who teaches ninth graders, says that with pandemic restrictions in place, it would be easy to focus on theory and written work. But, she says “that’s not what music is.” She’s determined her students will get the hands-on learning they crave. To make sure that happens, she has completely revamped most of the materials she has relied on for years.

“It’s a total shift for your program, so it’s quite a big deal,” says Ms. Matthie, who teaches instrumental band class in Orillia, a small city a 90-mile drive north of Toronto. “You really have to think about how you’re going to plan your day.”

She’s replaced wind instruments with ukuleles and percussion, such as xylophones, glockenspiels, chimes, and boom whackers, colored tubes used to play scales. To accommodate the new instruments, she spends extra time writing her own arrangements adapted for percussion and ukulele. Students take their lessons home to practice. To keep groups separate, students spend an entire week in one classroom studying the same subject, so another challenge has been figuring out how to keep them engaged, which Ms. Matthie does with pop culture quizzes, guessing games, bingo, and frequent walks around the schoolyard.

She says the downside for students is that they aren’t learning the intricate mechanics and finger work required to play most wind instruments. The upside, she says, is that all that drumming is teaching them great rhythm. 

“You build the community with the students as they’re working together as a team to build a piece, to share their music,” she says. “The more layers you add to a song, the more interesting it becomes. And it’s just neat to see that unfold with the students, where you can’t do that on paper.”

Jarika Archer, who’s 16 and studying choral music with Ms. Ortelli, says online learning when the pandemic started was stressful for her and her friends, and she’s grateful to be back in class.

“When I’m singing alone in my room it calms my nerves, and I like the one-on-one time with the teachers.” she says. “So when I come here, I feel joy, I feel happiness. It makes me feel better as a person.”

Editor’s note: As a public service, we have removed our paywall for all pandemic-related stories.

AP

Philadelphia police stand in position during a march by protesters Oct. 27.

In the five months since the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, 10 U.S. states have held special legislative sessions to adopt police reforms. More than 100 cities have at least debated new police procedures and department budgets. Many are revising their city charters to enable broader changes.

Now, after a summer of protests over racial injustice, Americans are adding their voices at the polls. Scores of elected offices may change hands. In eight states, voters will decide 20 ballot initiatives covering reforms ranging from bans on police use of chokeholds to reallocating police funding toward social services.

For what is perhaps the most essential of public services – the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States – policing remains something of an oddity in the American system of government. The need for it and the restraints on it arise from the country’s founding and the evolution of the U.S. Constitution. But it is also constantly being reshaped by social history.

The earliest forms of law enforcement included units in Boston to monitor the predominantly immigrant labor unions and in the mandatory patrols in the South to enforce slave laws. The slogan “to protect and to serve” was minted only in 1955. In recent years the conspicuous use of military hardware by police has prompted critics to echo the framers’ warnings against keeping a standing army for domestic purposes. Such a local force, Alexander Hamilton argued with foresight, could diminish civil and political rights.

The summer’s deep anguish over police violence against Black people and other minorities flared anew Monday in Philadelphia. Two police officers fired multiple close-range shots at a Black man allegedly wielding a knife. Jarring incidents like this have again prompted calls to defund the police. But polls show reforms cannot be that simplistic.

In August, a Gallup Poll found public confidence in the police had fallen below 50% for the first time since it began tracking it in 1993. Among Black people, only 19% trust police. Despite these low numbers, police remain one of the most popular public institutions among all races.

A July Pew poll found that large majorities favor reforms instead of defunding or disbanding the police. Some 73% said police budgets should remain the same or be increased, while 92% said officers should be trained in nonviolent alternatives to deadly force. Citizens also want more accountability. Two-thirds said police officers should be able to be sued for misconduct or excessive force, something not usually possible under current immunity laws.

The reforms being debated across the country show a society striving to address the causes of violence. This reflects a desire for greater compassion toward “the violence of poverty” – mental illness, homelessness, and addiction. “We can ban choke-holds. We can ban no-knock warrants. We can ban the use of grand juries in a police shooting,” Isaac Bryan, founding executive director of the UCLA Black Policy Project, told Bloomberg. “But that won’t ultimately change the material conditions of life for communities that have historically had a lethal relationship with some of our civic institutions – not in the same way that changing our budget priorities to center on care, healing, opportunity, and justice will.”

Through a season of marches and now ballots, Americans continue the long project of uniting a multiethnic society on the ideal of equality under the law. Shifting the culture and practice of policing will take time, requiring more than institutional change. The latest reforms come from Americans reassessing their relationship to each other and toward law enforcement. Both exercises rest on recognizing each individual’s dignity and worth.