Carolyn Kaster/AP/File

People march at a rally in support of then-President Donald Trump in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. A mob attacked the Capitol later that day in an effort to stop the counting of certified votes for Joe Biden. Hundreds have been arrested and five people died.

After the extraordinary events of the past five months, American democracy may be under stress like never before in the modern era.

The great machine of governance established by the Constitution in 1788 has long been beset by underlying problems such as partisanship, gridlock, and disinformation. Then in November 2020 an incumbent president threw a match on this tinder: a false claim that the election was stolen, and that despite certified counts electing his opponent, in fact he had won.

This lie has since rooted itself in part of the nation’s body politic, drawing support from hundreds of elected Republican officials. A mob smashed into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the purported “steal.” Former President Donald Trump’s evidence-free assertion about the election was a dangerous seed that can no longer be unplanted – a little over a third of U.S. voters, and three-quarters of Republicans, say they don’t think President Joe Biden won legitimately, according to one recent poll.

That false belief endures despite more than 60 court cases heard by more than 90 judges, including Trump appointees, and despite Trump administration officials, including the attorney general and the top cybersecurity official, saying the elections were secure and there was no credible evidence of widespread fraud. One of the most vocal boosters of the lie, lawyer Sidney Powell, is defending herself against billion-dollar libel lawsuits, saying “no reasonable person” would believe her “wild accusations” and “outlandish claims.”

Meanwhile, in the election’s aftermath, the parties are embracing very different ideas about which direction democracy should take. Republicans are all-in on enacting new voting restrictions, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas recently told a group of GOP state lawmakers. If Democrats succeed in pushing through far-reaching election legislation currently before the Senate, Republicans won’t win elections for a generation, Senator Cruz said.   

Democrats increasingly believe that the nation’s governance structure is tilted against them and that they do not win seats commensurate with their numbers, due to the Electoral College and other factors. They’re pushing for new states and other major changes to flip what they perceive as a structural imbalance.

America is now enmeshed in “an uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” President Biden said in his inaugural address.

Most voters agree with that assessment, according to polls. Only 16% believe democracy is thriving in the United States, according to a survey from The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Some 45% think U.S. democracy isn’t functioning properly.

Where do we go from here? One piece of good news is that democracy’s troubles have sparked a sharp increase in thinking and writing about how Americans might bolster their 233-year democratic experiment.

Many experts think that patching cracks is only part of the solution. Another part might be building democracy in the first place – addressing the inequalities of representation and participation that have blighted the nation since its founding. Also needed: getting elected officials to face and try to fix the nation’s real social and economic problems.

“The work of rejuvenating and restoring our democracy is going to have to focus on all levels of government. This is an all-hands-on-deck affair,” says William Howell, a professor in American politics at the University of Chicago.

American coup d’état

White supremacists powered the mob. They were angry about the demise of the world as they had known it, including a loss of political power they felt rightfully theirs.

Their leaders called on them to take it back. So they planned something that could only be called a coup d’état and attacked a citadel of their opponents.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/File

Sidney Powell, an attorney later disavowed by the Trump campaign, at a news conference with President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani (not pictured), at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, Nov. 19, 2020.

The year was 1898, not 2021, and the place was Wilmington, North Carolina. But the similarities between the 19th-century insurrection, in which a mob of white men overthrew an elected biracial government in Wilmington, and the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes, are inescapable, says Suzanne Mettler, professor of American institutions at Cornell University.

That’s what she kept thinking while watching scenes of the Capitol riot.

“There are so many parallels,” Professor Mettler says.

The most obvious similarity is the refusal to accept an election. President Trump’s unwillingness to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 presidential vote, and his monthslong effort to overturn the results, were “among the most abnormal and important events of the Trump presidency,” according to Bright Line Watch, a group of experts that monitors U.S. democratic practices.

This denial was clearly anti-democratic. “Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections,” according to a pithy definition from New York University political scientist Adam Przeworski.

Another similarity between the events of 1898 and 2021 is the extensive planning involved in operations. While some organization took place at the grassroots, it was political leaders in both cases who rallied and aimed the crowds at their destination. At least a dozen Capitol rioters facing federal charges have said they stormed the building because their president told them to.

Race was also a driving factor in both events. It was more central to Wilmington, but white supremacist symbols, signs, and supporters were present in Washington as well.

Democracy survived past sieges

The Wilmington riot figures largely in “Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy,” a book published last year by Professor Mettler and co-author Robert Lieberman of Johns Hopkins University. It was a major example of the backsliding from racial progress that occurred throughout the post-Civil War South.

The prewar white aristocracy of Wilmington, largely Southern Democrats, had seethed while Black Republicans and white populists rose to elected power in the decades after 1865. In 1898 they acted, enlisting white militia groups to help retake the city. On Nov. 10 armed white people rampaged through Black neighborhoods, killing hundreds. The building of the Black-owned Daily Record newspaper was burned to the ground, and the police chief and other officials were driven out of town at gunpoint.

President William McKinley declined to intervene in the coup. In coming months, the insurrectionists changed state voting laws, making access to the ballot subject to new restrictions such as literacy tests and poll taxes.

“That means the Democrats became the dominant party with very little competition,” Professor Mettler says.

Democracy was under siege, as it has been at crucial times throughout American history. In “Four Threats,” Professor Mettler and her co-author look at five crises: the 1790s and its ferocious conflict between the Federalists of President John Adams and the Republicans of Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, the 1850s and the run-up to the Civil War, the 1890s and the end of Reconstruction, the 1930s and the rise of an imperial presidency amid economic crisis, and the 1970s and the maturation of weaponized presidential power amid Watergate.

After analyzing the events of these periods, four distinct types of disruption emerge, says Professor Mettler. These are the book’s four threats, which separately or in concert are inimical to the building of democracy. 

The first is political polarization – in Adams’ time, Federalists and Republicans so disliked one another that they often lived in different neighborhoods and attended different churches. Second is the question of who is a full member of society, which touches directly on the racism and nativism that have stained American history. Third is economic inequality, which has weakened belief in democracy from the Gilded Age to today. Fourth is growing executive power, which strains the Constitution itself.

Sometimes it takes only one of these factors to threaten American democracy, according to Professors Mettler and Lieberman. Sometimes a number of them combine to deepen a crisis, as they did in the 1850s and 1890s. 

But now they’re all present in the country to one degree or another, says Professor Mettler.

“We’ve never had all four threats together at the same time. It says to me democracy is really endangered now,” she says.

Closely divided electorate

The U.S. is currently in the midst of one of the most competitive eras in the nation’s political history. The 2020 presidential election was the ninth in a row in which the popular vote margin was less than 10 percentage points – a record.

Neither party received a vote of confidence from the American people in last November’s vote. Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency, but Democrats did worse than expected in House races. The Senate is split 50-50, with control determined by Vice President Kamala Harris’ vote. 

This outcome is unsurprising given that neither the Republican nor Democratic Party has surpassed a 50% approval rating in the U.S. since 2009.

“Whatever the shortcomings of our representational institutions, they accurately reflect a country that remains divided down the middle between the two parties,” wrote Frances Lee, professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, in an after-election analysis.

In this context politics itself on the national level has become hypercompetitive, as both sides have every incentive to fight for every ballot. Both sides see the basic rules of democracy as their key to future victory, tweeted New America senior fellow Lee Drutman earlier this month.

But the two parties are taking very different approaches to the current focus of their struggle over rules: voting rights. Democrats are pushing a mammoth catch-all bill at the national level that would mandate automatic registration, expand early and mail-in voting, establish a public financing option for congressional campaigns, and establish ethics rules for Supreme Court justices, among other things.

Republicans are generally working at the state level in legislatures where they have the power to enact voting restrictions. In Georgia the GOP has already passed a bill that tightens voter ID requirements for absentee ballots, limits drop boxes, and most importantly, shifts some electoral oversight powers to the state legislature.

GOP lawmakers are pushing similarly restrictive bills in at least 43 states. As justification, many state Republicans cite uncertainties about the 2020 election, driven by the false accusations about fraud made by Mr. Trump and his allies.

Both sides in this struggle may be trying to gain an advantage over the other, but one side has been far more aggressive and even anti-democratic in its tactics: Republicans. Much of this is rooted in Mr. Trump’s continued grip on the party and his few-holds-barred effort to flip the election results.

Brynn Anderson/AP/File

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, shown during a news conference in Atlanta, Nov. 20, 2020, defended the state’s election as safe and secure against intense pressure from his party and former President Donald Trump. Mr. Trump has vowed to back a primary opponent against him.

For instance, Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who refused to accede to Mr. Trump’s attempt to alter the state’s vote count, is the target of Trump-led revenge efforts to block his reelection. The Georgia voting bill has already stripped his position of some of its powers.

But Republican hardball tactics are more than an expression of Mr. Trump’s singular personality. They’re also a result of the party’s transition into an outlet for America’s rising populist emotions, says Professor Howell of the University of Chicago.

The GOP is increasingly the party of those who feel Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, a perceived “cancel culture,” and other sweeping social and cultural changes are turning America into a country they don’t recognize. 

Issues, policy proposals, budgets, and other mundane aspects of government aren’t what populism is about. 

“Populism is a posture of opposition, and it expresses itself by sowing divisions, fomenting anger, and destroying democratic norms and procedures,” says Professor Howell, co-author of “Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy” with Terry Moe of Stanford University.

Populism’s global rise

Populism is a political identity whose adherents believe they represent the real people of a nation. This identity is often channeled through a charismatic strongman, powering their political fortunes.

Populism in America long predates Mr. Trump. It’s prevalent now in many European countries. It thrives amid government failures – the inability to address unauthorized immigration, globalization, automation, and other problems of the modern age.

But former President Trump is a classic populist leader, according to Professor Howell. His basic message is that everything is broken, illegitimate, or rigged. In that context, supporters see his pushback on election results as a kind of valor, a good fight against a system that is otherwise stacked against them.

“When that sensibility takes hold in a public, it is not coincidental that the attractiveness of democracy dwindles,” says Professor Howell.

How to counter this trend? It’s simple, write Professors Howell and Moe in their book – or at least, simply defined. Make government work again. Address the process and procedure problems that have made Washington hardened.

“A big part of the reason populism has taken hold in North American politics is our government has failed to solve problems our public wants to see solved,” says Professor Howell.

Admittedly, that’s a steep mountain. Congress seems incapable of working on more than one thing at a time. Partisanship blocks almost all solutions. Those that pass are ungainly beasts, loaded with carve-outs and compromises and extraneous provisions that dilute their ability to address their original purpose.

Professors Howell and Moe’s solution to this seems counterintuitive: Dial up presidential power.

Presidential administrations generally are energetic, unified, and more action-oriented than the legislature. The trick is keeping them in check.

“Our argument is: How do we think about leveraging the problem of presidential leadership while keeping in mind the effect that demagogues can pose to American democracy? That’s the goal,” says Professor Howell.

Specifically, presidents should be given universal fast-track authority, he argues. That means the nation’s chief executive should be able to introduce bills on any subject, and Congress would be required to vote them up or down, without any modifications, within a set time, and without filibusters. (This general approach already applies with trade agreements.)

On the restraint side of the ledger, the Department of Justice and intelligence agencies should be insulated from direct presidential control, Professors Howell and Moe write – perhaps through the use of bipartisan appointed boards, such as the Federal Reserve Board, which oversees monetary policy. President Trump’s attempts to meddle with prosecutorial and intelligence decisions at the DOJ showed the danger of leaving these powerful agencies under one man’s control. 

The writers would also restrict the numbers of presidential appointees in departments and agencies. This could protect against overall politicization of the executive branch.

Matt Rourke/AP/File

David Reinert holds a Q sign as he waits in line with others to enter a campaign rally with President Donald Trump, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Aug. 2, 2018.

“Deep state” versus the Oval Office

But perhaps the problem shadowing American democracy is not the unworkability of government per se, but a clash within the executive branch, one at the center of so many Trump presidency uproars: the “deep state” versus the Oval Office.

On one side was a bureaucracy and permanent government deep in expertise and personnel, pursuing its own interests and derided by Mr. Trump as a secretive cabal working to undermine him. On the other was a chief executive who embraced the all-powerful image of the “unitary executive” theory held by former Attorney General William Barr and other conservatives.

“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total,” said President Trump at a press conference last year.

During Mr. Trump’s term in office, the U.S. discovered that much of the insulation protecting this deep state was based on norms, not laws or some more formal protections of deference. In addition to the DOJ seeking to act as the president’s personal attorney in a case where alleged sexual assault occurred before he was in office, other examples of that norm-busting included firing bureaucrats for testifying before Congress and berating health officials during a pandemic.

Combined with his attacks on congressional powers and prerogatives, this exposed gaping holes in American governance. 

“That really is where Trump upended the apple cart,” says Stephen Skowronek, a political scientist at Yale University and co-author of “Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive,” with John Dearborn of Yale and Desmond King of the University of Oxford.

To fix the problems exposed in the last four years, Congress should find creative ways to induce the executive branch to join it in cooperative methods of day-to-day governance, according to Professor Skowronek. 

This could take the form of bolstering the independence of inspectors general, creating new executive branch offices, establishing independent boards and commissions, and so forth.

“Congress could do a lot of different things,” he says.

Democracy is a muscle

The day after delegates officially signed the Constitution and adjourned in 1787, an inquisitive woman asked Benjamin Franklin whether the new nation would be a monarchy or a republic.

“A republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin famously replied.

This answer gets at one of the essential points about the nature of U.S. governance – democracy is a muscle. It needs exercise to remain strong, and cooperation among citizens and civic institutions to back it up when threatened.

The good news in America is that as democracy has been stressed in recent years, the courts, the media, and brave individuals have proved resilient enough to stand up and protect it. Democratic culture in the country runs deep – perhaps deeper than in other places where it has begun to wobble in recent years.

But the hard truth is that U.S. democracy has long been a work in progress, slowly accepting excluded groups such as women and Black people, sometimes rolling back gains already made, producing authoritarian areas little influenced by democratic ideals.

The passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 put the U.S. on the path to becoming a full democracy. But there is still progress to be made. Protecting democracy may involve building it in the first place, as well.

“The most important thing is to try to strengthen the pillars of democracy,” says Professor Mettler. “The rule of law, strong election administration, protected voting rights. Those things are most crucial.”

This small Alabama city may not seem like the place for a labor revolution. 

The South, after all, has traditionally been more anti-union than other parts of the country. And a struggling economy could make residents of Bessemer eager for just about any kind of job they can get.

Recently ranked Alabama’s “worst city to live in” (and the sixth worst nationally), Bessemer is one of the country’s poorest cities. Less than 15 miles south of Birmingham, Bessemer’s downtown is a sea of cracked concrete, with derelict hotels and empty storefronts interspersed with used car and tire stores advertising “No Credit Needed.”

Yet after Amazon opened a warehouse here one year ago, with the promise of almost 6,000 jobs starting at $15.30 an hour, more than double Alabama’s minimum wage, what seemed like an answered prayer also soon became the venue of a nationally watched fight over unionization. 

Why here? Amazon has more than 100 other warehouses, most of them larger, both in square footage and employee size, and almost all of them have been in place longer than Bessemer’s BHM1 site. 

The answer, say locals, lies in the moment. The struggle to work and live amid the coronavirus pandemic, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise $48 billion, has only fueled inequality frustrations. Workers at BHM1, an estimated 85% of whom are Black, also say the simultaneous focus on the Black Lives Matter movement encouraged them to fight for workplace justice.

But the answer also lies in this area’s history: a history that has already given much to the intersection of labor rights and civil rights.

“Birmingham has always been a city of struggle,” says Vincent Davis, a custodian at BHM1. “We’ve always struggled to make our mark on the world, and this is just another example of that.” 

Tech giants – Facebook, Apple, and of course, Amazon – have successfully thwarted union efforts thus far. Amazon in particular has come under criticism for its reportedly harsh working conditions while squashing workers’ unionization efforts at other warehouses. 

If BHM1’s almost 5,800 workers vote to unionize, it could reinvigorate a long-declining labor movement in the United States and potentially begin a domino effect across Amazon’s other facilities – redefining what it means to work for the country’s second largest employer.

Which is why a nondescript, tree-lined intersection along Powder Plant Road here has become the epicenter of a tumultuous contest over the power of workers. Leading up to March 29, the final voting day on unionization, several Democratic congressmen and women have made pilgrimages here, along with other celebrities. 

President Joe Biden has reiterated his support for unions and workers in Alabama, without mentioning the Bessemer warehouse directly. Amazon has been waging its own all-out effort to persuade workers that unionizing isn’t in their interest.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Bessemer, Alabama, once a boomtown for steel, is now one of the country's poorest cities. More than one-quarter of Bessemer's 27,000 residents live below the poverty line. For now this city has become ground zero in workers' battle for empowerment in digitized blue-collar jobs.

“The reason that Amazon is putting so much energy to try and defeat you, is they know that if you succeed here, it will spread all over this country,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said during a visit to Bessemer on Friday.

When asked if a union at the Bessemer warehouse would be a windfall for unionization efforts at other Amazon locations, Randy Hadley, a union organizer here, rolls his eyes and makes a faint whistle sound.

“We’re already getting calls from people asking about how they would start something like this at their location,” says Mr. Hadley. “What we’re doing here in Bessemer, Alabama, it’s opening people’s eyes to ‘Hey, we can organize if we do it together.’” 

“Granddaddy would say, ‘You need a union’”

It’s just after 6 a.m., and Mr. Hadley has already been standing on the roughly 12-foot-long median outside the warehouse for hours, trying to catch employees on the shift change. It’s the traffic light seen across the country, where Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union organizers, or RWDSU as it is referred to around town, wave signs and try to hand flyers to workers leaving the facility during the 15-second red light. Mr. Hadley is president of the union’s mid-South council, which will represent BHM1 workers if they unionize.

Some drivers have yellow “Vote NO” signs hanging from their rearview mirror, and they pointedly stare away to avoid conversation. 

Many cars and baby blue “Prime” trucks lay on their horns in support as they pass.

“I don’t think Amazon is telling the truth on a lot of things, so I’m for the union,” says one woman, before quickly driving away as the light turns green. 

“Bessemer has a long tradition of labor unions,” says Mr. Hadley, who has been organizing on the ground in Bessemer with his colleagues since Amazon employees reached out to them last year. 

“They’d go home and they would say, ‘Granddaddy, I’m being mistreated at Amazon,’ and the Granddaddy would say, ‘You need a union,’” says Mr. Hadley. “They just kept talking around the table like that, and at the churches, and I think that’s why they reached out to us.” 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union organizers Curtis Gray, Randy Hadley, and Steve Jackson start canvassing outside Amazon's Bessemer plant before 4 a.m. to catch workers during their shift change, on March 24, 2021. "Unions aren't a stranger to people here," says Mr. Gray, vice president of RWDSU's mid-South council.

Steel boomtown

At the Bessemer Hall of History, a former railroad depot that periodically shakes with the passing of a train, relics of “The Marvel City” are displayed in foggy glass cabinets.

In the late 1800s, the city became a boomtown when the combination of iron ore, limestone, and coal – the three ingredients needed to make steel – were all found beneath Bessemer’s feet. The United States Steel Corp. soon took over operations, a company that notoriously took advantage of Black workers and southern discrimination laws. By the 20th century, many of the local plants had unionized.

But then in the early 1980s, U.S. Steel closed its nearby plant, the South’s largest integrated steel mill, because the company couldn’t come to an agreement with the United Steelworkers union. More than 3,500 employees were laid off.

“Do you know how easy it would be for Amazon to pick up and get out of here?” says Martha, a receptionist at a hotel chain not one mile from the plant, echoing a fear of many anti-union locals. Her father worked at U.S. Steel and was laid off due to the union disagreement. He eventually got a new job but it paid $400 less each month, says Martha, who declined to give her last name because she was on the job.  

Alabama, like all other states in the Deep South, is a right-to-work state. This means that workers can’t be compelled to join a union or to pay dues for union representation – legislation that weakens the bargaining power of unions and is largely favored by corporations. 

Carvana and Dollar General recently opened up distribution centers in Bessemer, although they only brought roughly 1,000 jobs, combined. 

“Without all of this new industry, we would have turned out like Detroit or Allentown. Cities never come back from the dead, but Bessemer did,” says Martha. “Don’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

To Vincent Davis, a custodian at BHM1 who was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, it's no surprise that the Bessemer warehouse is leading the unionization charge for Amazon workers. "We are a city of drastic change," says Mr. Davis. "We make others change even if we don’t change ourselves.”

If Bessemer’s Amazon employees unionize, it could have a ripple effect throughout the community. Mr. Davis, for example, the custodian at BHM1, is a contracted employee so he doesn’t have a union vote. But if the warehouse unionizes, Mr. Davis says he will be fired or have to be hired directly by Amazon. 

What Amazon provides

A lot has been left out of the media coverage surrounding unionization at BHM1, says Heather Knox, director of communications for Amazon operations. Along with a starting salary that’s double the federal minimum wage, employees receive full benefits (“It’s the same health care benefits that I get,” she says), along with a 50% 401(k) match. 

“I don’t know what the union is promising people,” says Ms. Knox.

Union organizers don’t say much about what direct benefits BHM1 employees will get with them. “Oh there is a specific demand on the table: respect,” says Mr. Hadley, when I asked him. “The rest will come later.”

Ms. Knox points out other Amazon programs, such as a 95% tuition reimbursement for continuing education after one year of employment. That is a benefit that many Bessemer employees will be eligible for on March 29. 

“We’re really creating an opportunity that has a ripple effect in the community that didn’t exist before,” says Ms. Knox, on a phone call from the West Coast. “The truth is that the majority of people who come to work there every day love their job.” 

Workers who have partnered with RWDSU say that’s not true. They describe work inside the warehouse as inhumane, fearing to take bathroom breaks for fear of missing seemingly impossible per hour quotas. And while an hourly wage of almost $16 is impressive in contrast to the local and federal minimum wages, they say it’s not enough to live on.

Pro-union employees and organizers say Amazon came to Bessemer for a reason: Amazon thought it would find poor, minority workers willing to take these jobs and not speak up. That view is shared by others who are standing in solidarity with them – including local representatives of the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement.

“BLM is involved [in the unionization effort] because the killing of Black people can happen on so many levels. If you can’t put food on your table, you can’t survive,” says Eric Hall, co-founder of the BLM Birmingham chapter, which has organized rallies in support of the union. 

“In order for this labor movement to win, we have to marry these movements together,” says Mr. Hall. “It’s a fusion movement.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Eric Jones, who works as a "picker" inside Amazon's Bessemer warehouse, voted against forming a union. "The union should be telling me what I'd get from them," says Mr. Jones.

“We are a city of drastic change”

Roughly 200 yards from the traffic light on Powder Plant Road, Eric Jones waits at the bus stop to take him home to Birmingham after his shift. The trip takes an hour and a half on the bus, but if Mr. Jones had a car, it would be less than 30 minutes. 

Still, he likes his job. He works as a “picker,” which means he finds and picks certain items to be shipped, and he says he’s gotten really good at it. At first Mr. Jones could only pick 700 items an hour. Now, he’s gotten up to 1,000 an hour, and managers ask him to move to their floor if their quota is running behind. Also, the pay is $3 more an hour than what he was making before as a cook, and he doesn’t have to work on the weekends.

“Amazon gave me all the info about why not a union, but the union hasn’t told me what I’d get from them,” says Mr. Jones, who voted no. “Also, the union don’t tell me what I’d be getting but they still is aggressive. ... It’s like, I can speak for myself.” 

Mr. Jones says he was recently interviewed by another reporter, and that reporter published the anecdote about his 90-minute commute. The next day, his Amazon manager came up to him and said she’d help him look into a program that would get him a car. 

After 30 minutes of waiting, the bus finally arrives and Mr. Jones heads home to get some rest before doing it all again tomorrow. Mr. Davis, the custodian, stays on the bench, waiting for another bus. He’s quiet for a beat, and then sighs.

“I was born in ’64, right in the heat of civil rights. Older people would say, ‘We won here in Birmingham,’ and I’d say, ‘Won what?’” says Mr. Davis. “But we are a city of drastic change. We make others change even if we don’t change ourselves.” 

Sunday Alamba/AP

Nigerian special forces board a vessel during a 2019 navy exercise in the Gulf of Guinea. The Nigerian government is spending $195 million on drones, fast patrol boats, and other equipment to combat piracy in its waters.

The dense mangroves of Nigeria’s Niger Delta region are known for their rich flora and fauna, as well as vast crude oil reserves.

In recent years, though, the region has earned a more shadowy reputation, highlighted by the Suez canal blockage that has forced more cargo vessels to sail along the West African coast. Gun-toting gangs have made the complex network of creeks their home, waiting to pounce on ships sailing through West African waters.

Some 2,500 vessels pass through the Gulf of Guinea every day, ferrying petroleum products or other cargo. The area is a major route for global trade.

It’s also the most dangerous.

Whereas sea piracy is declining globally, attacks are soaring in the gulf, whose waters wash the shores of more than a dozen countries from Senegal to Angola. Of 195 attacks that occurred on the world’s high seas last year, 82 were recorded here, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), including almost all crew kidnappings. Last month, 15 Turkish sailors were freed, after being captured in January. One engineer died.

Between 2015 and 2017, West African economies lost $2.3 billion to high seas crime, according to the United Nations. Beyond the value of stolen goods, piracy costs countries security personnel, equipment, and insurance.

Combating problems at sea is so challenging, analysts say, partly because of the region’s terrestrial problems.

In some countries, like Nigeria, counter-piracy efforts are overshadowed by conflicts at home, as well as the poverty that helps drive piracy in the first place.

“Many Gulf of Guinea countries suffer vulnerabilities [because] of their [limited] capabilities,” says Kamal-Deen Ali, director of the Center for Maritime Law and Security Africa. “It’s even more difficult policing waters than land – once criminals get on water, they have the opportunity to go in any direction.”

International coordination is key – but fraught in a region where Western interventions are often perceived as overreaching.

High seas, high crime

To sea watchers, the methods are familiar. A ship sails too close to the coast, and heavily armed men in speedboats corner it. The crew may make it to the ship’s citadel – a fortified room – but once the pirates are in control of the vessel, they can expect the ship owner to pay a ransom for the ship and its crew.

Attackers come mostly from Nigeria’s restive Niger Delta, the hottest spot in the gulf, where many feel exploited by government and oil companies alike. Today’s pirates emerged in the aftermath of a militant uprising in the mid-2000s, when youth picked up arms against outsiders they accused of plundering resources and degrading the environment while leaving the delta poverty-stricken.

Second Capt. Boris Oyebanji got a good look at some in May 2019. Pirates attacked his tugboat off the waters of Equatorial Guinea and captured him. Equatorial Guinean and Spanish forces responded to his distress call, and the pirates fled. But Mr. Oyebanji’s ordeal didn’t end there. Equatorial Guinea’s navy locked him up for two weeks until it was convinced he wasn’t a pirate himself.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The whole episode was so terrifying that he considered quitting seafaring.

“I haven’t returned [to the area] since then,” says Mr. Oyebanji, who now works in the Persian Gulf. “Sailing on its own is risky, and fearing for my life every day I’m offshore is not something I want to do.”

His vessel had been escorted by the Nigerian navy to Equatorial Guinea’s waters – one of several routine precautions ship owners take. Others include human dummies mounted on vessels like scarecrows and wires of spiked steel wrapped tightly around decks. Some vessels stay hundreds of miles off the coast of Nigeria, where they can’t easily be reached by the lurking speedboats, but more attacks are being recorded farther out at sea.

Coastal communities say they too, suffer. Villagers are sometimes caught in the middle when pirates and security forces face off, according to Princewill Solebo, a businessman in the bustling city of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Fishermen have stopped venturing deep offshore to avoid run-ins, and villagers who travel on canoes are wary.

Mr. Solebo is holding town hall meetings to encourage villagers to expose gang leaders. But it’s a lonely mission. Members of the gangs – groups with forbidding names like Vikings or Icelanders – are often well known in the villages they hail from, he says, but most villagers are too scared to speak up or have been bribed to look away.

“I realized the reason [the pirates] have been consistent is that communities have not come together to confront this issue,” Mr. Solebo says. “Some people know these actors but they won’t talk, and you can’t do anything alone.”

Teaming up

For several years, governments in the region have cooperated on joint missions to make the gulf safer – but with mixed results.

One crucial agreement, the Yaoundé Code of Conduct, was signed in 2013, establishing faster information-sharing and response between member countries. Foreign navies protecting their countries’ interests also patrol the international waters outside each country’s territorial zone. And in 2019 Nigeria, the region’s biggest power, was the first to introduce legislation specifically criminalizing piracy. (Previously, pirates were tried under armed robbery laws.)

But deeper social and economic dynamics hinder progress, experts say. The Niger Delta, for instance, is chronically lawless, and militants-turned-pirates are striking farther out at sea. Nigeria’s security forces are stretched thin, battling an insurgency in the country’s north, and ethnic conflicts in the Middle Belt.

Nigeria “will continue to struggle with maritime policing because it’s fighting ‘wars’ on all fronts,” says Dr. Ali. Meanwhile, he adds, smaller countries can hardly tackle pirates alone.

“Fighting piracy and armed robbery at sea is a particular problem in the Bight of Benin,” around Togo, Benin, and Ghana, says Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at the think tank Chatham House, in London. “Over the last year, the Nigerian effort is having an impact in territorial waters [but] pirate activity has been pushed out deeper into non-Nigerian jurisdictions.”

Merchant ship owners associations are pressing for more international patrols and better law enforcement. Stepped-up international patrols helped in the world’s previous piracy hot spot, the Gulf of Aden, where piracy rose after Somalia’s civil war in the 1990s crumbled government control. Thirty-three countries in 2009 formed the Combined Task Force 151, which saw attacks decline to zero in 2020.

In Somalia, a U.N. Security Council resolution gave the international task force special powers because of the war. “It didn’t matter whether pirates were in international waters or territorial sea; the resolutions provided the opportunity to fully deploy and counter,” says Dr. Ali.

But that approach may not work in the Gulf of Guinea, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution, because most of the attacks in the Gulf of Aden took place in international waters while those in the Gulf of Guinea have usually occurred in territorial waters not open to foreign navies – although now, she adds, “there appears to be evolution.”

Attacks in the gulf's international waters are ramping up. Data obtained from the IMB shows that more attacks took place in international waters (48) than in territorial waters (33) last year.

Still, IMB Director Michael Howlett says that new solutions will be needed for West Africa. “It has to be acknowledged that in the long term, Gulf of Guinea piracy is a regional issue requiring a regional response,” he says.  

Already, Dr. Ali points out, the region is smarting from a European Union move that some say undermines local agency. In January, the EU launched the Coordinated Maritime Presences, seeking permanence in the gulf, and in March, Denmark agreed to deploy a patrol vessel in international waters there. It’s unclear if African countries were consulted; Nigeria’s maritime agency did not respond to a request for comment.

But Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project (DBP), launched this year, is cautiously inspiring hope. The ambitious $195 million project aims to purchase assets like fast-intervention vessels, build interagency command centers for the country’s naval and port authorities, and train security forces.

Together with the Yaoundé agreement, the project signals progress in the gulf, experts say. “We will see what comes out of the DBP,” says Dr. Ali, adding that the Yaoundé program represents the ideal: regional cooperation.

A bright sun beats down in Mullipallam, a village some 250 miles from the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. Half a dozen teachers have gathered in a government-run primary school at the heart of the village, past winding dirt roads, a dried riverbed, grazing goats, and vast scrubland.

“It’s been a tough year,” admits principal KS Kanthamani. The blackboard behind her still is full of vivid drawings, but the room is bare and silent. During India’s lockdown last spring, students were “utterly isolated,” she says, since few have internet access here. Driven by poverty, some parents encouraged their children to take on odd jobs in packaging industries that dot the neighborhood.

Just when dropouts seemed inevitable, something rekindled children’s interest.

Last October, the school decided to revamp its run-down playground. It engaged Anthill Creations, a nonprofit based in Bengaluru, to build a new one, assisted by donations from a local bank. The revamped play space is mostly built from brightly painted discarded tires, making it affordable. With two tire swings and a model motorcycle, it’s small – but welcome.

Second grader Srilekha Murlikrishnan says the blue tire swing is her favorite, much better than a regular swing. “I’m more flexible and can twist my body through the hole,” she giggles. “I come to school now just to play here every day, and I’m really looking forward to it reopening again.”

Anthill Creations is the brainchild of Pooja Rai, who’s motivated by how many parts of India lack public space for children. “We live in a world where play, such an essential part of growing up, is now viewed as a luxury and even thought of as unnecessary,” she says. But to Ms. Rai, now CEO, it’s a child’s right.

Team effort

Ms. Rai was a young architecture student in 2014 when she accompanied a friend to donate food to a local orphanage. She was taken aback by what she saw.

“Kids were playing with anything they could get their hands on,” she says. One group was rolling around a broken metallic pipe and brandishing it like a sword. Two boys were attempting to play badminton, using the soles of their flip-flops as rackets. Despite the unbridled joy around her, Ms. Rai found the scene disturbing. “Play shouldn’t just be part of a rich, privileged kid’s lifestyle. All kids have a right to enjoy their childhoods,” she says.

Over the next few weeks, she talked with friends about raising funds for a low-cost playground. And that’s when she thought of old tires. Around 100 million tires are discarded in India every year. Could they “upcycle” them into playground materials – and help the environment, too?

Courtesy of Anthill Creations

Children play on a structure made of recycled materials built by Anthill Creations in Janakpur, Nepal.

That vision became a reality in 2015, using dozens of discarded tires – all locally sourced, cleaned, carefully inspected for anything that could cause injury, and painted in bright colors. The following year, she founded Anthill, which has built 275 playscapes with 800 volunteers across India – celebrating the power of play in public spaces, refugee camps, and schools.

“Our work always begins with a series of conversations with kids about what they want from this space,” says Ms. Rai. Sometimes it can take a few hours, or a few visits, until children are ready to open up. She also draws on her experience as an architect. “I wasn’t interested in buildings and walls,” she says, “but I found that spaces are powerful” in shaping people’s behavior. For instance, more interactive elements like a seesaw or a jungle gym can draw out shy children.

Then comes budgeting. A small playground like the one in Mullipallam costs 60,000 rupees ($830), and larger ones almost four times that. But most of Anthill’s creations are sponsored by donors. India was the first country in the world to require that big businesses donate a portion of their profits to charity, and Anthill helps match communities with corporate fundraising partners.

Many sites have common elements: tires suspended to make swings, or stacked into “caterpillar” tunnels; jungle gyms; steppers; and cube climbers. “Animal designs are popular in smaller villages – they prefer tire octopuses, elephants, and horses,” Ms. Rai notes. “In a coastal village, the team fashioned an entire ship from tires. Children living closer to cities tend to go for cars, bridges, and tunnels.”

In one girls school in Bengaluru, the children wanted their playscape to be fashioned into a boxing ring, with tires doubling up as punching bags. “Their teacher was unsure about it,” Ms. Rai remembers. “She was worried that being girls, they would get hurt.”

But the girls were clear about what they wanted. “They said they didn’t want people to perceive them as fragile and weak. They wanted to practice self-defense, to grow stronger, and have a space where they could get physical and work off stress.” In December 2019, this punching bag-themed playground became a reality.

The same year, Anthill built a playground for blind children, with textured pathways of grass, stones, and marble.

Play spaces, play boxes

The playground at Mullipallam is small compared with other sites across the country. But its cheery pop of color is the first thing visitors see when they approach the school, weaving their way past a slew of thatched tea shops and provision stores. Two enormous tires painted blue and green sway softly, fastened to a frame by a thick metallic chain. A fiery red bike topped with canary yellow handlebars tilts to one side, and a multicolor hopscotch court has been painted onto the ground some distance away.

“A great deal of thought and attention to detail goes behind the design. That’s why these playscapes have such an impact on children,” says Ms. Kanthamani, the principal. She points to a tiny hole drilled into the tires. “We live in a very dengue-endemic area,” she says. “These holes ensure that rainwater doesn’t collect or stagnate within the tires.”

The playground has helped teachers keep in touch with many of their students during this rather trying year, and a few stay behind for private tutoring. Meanwhile, Anthill has helped address another problem.

When the pandemic set in, many families struggled to keep children engaged indoors. Anthill’s team surveyed 200 parents, and designed six basic memory and drawing games, popped in a box. Crowdfunding dropped significantly during the pandemic, Ms. Rai says, so Anthill spent its own money printing out the first hundred play boxes. “Children were so excited,” she says. “And parents loved it, too.” Buoyed by the positive feedback, they crowdfunded online and printed a thousand more.

Corporate sponsors and IT companies stepped in to bear the costs, and now 3,000 boxes have been shipped across India. That effort won recognition from the International Play Association this year, as it honored “The right to play in time of crisis.”

“We often forget how vulnerable these growing years can be,” says Ms. Rai. “The right to play should be considered critical to a child’s cognitive growth, physical and emotional well-being – we believe that it is indeed a basic human right.” 

To learn more about Anthill Creations, visit www.anthillcreations.org.

Reuters

Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar, hold posters last month reading "Amend the 2008 constitution" in support of constitutional reform.

To show that it alone holds sovereign power in Myanmar, the military has killed nearly 500 protesters since a coup two months ago. Many of the elected civilian politicians, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, are either in jail or in hiding. While the rain of bullets by soldiers has brought global condemnation, it also suggests the military brass knows its claim of authority is hollow. One reason: The legitimacy to rule in Myanmar could be rising elsewhere.

In recent days, members of the pro-democracy opposition have teamed up with some of Myanmar’s minority ethnic groups to write a new draft constitution, far from the eyes of military spies. This grassroots movement wants to replace the military-drafted 2008 constitution. While that document allowed some civilian rule since 2011, it kept much of the power in the army’s hands – including the ability to amend the document. When the military’s own party lost an election in November to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, it decided that even that limited charter had to go.

The Feb. 1 coup exposed the military’s false logic. To most people in Myanmar, power derives from the consent of the governed. That means the constitution itself must arise from individuals who want to protect their unalienable rights. Those rights already exist and can be neither created nor lost. The military believes it can simply kill away that idea.

Democracy advocates in Myanmar have learned from other countries that constitutions must be a bottom-up collective enterprise. In Belarus, for example, months of protests following a bogus election last August have led to a popular movement to rewrite the constitution as one way to oust the dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. In Chile, years of protests over economic inequality led to a referendum last year to initiate a civilian-led process of writing a new political framework and social compact. In Haiti, thousands of people took to the streets Sunday to defend their country’s constitution and reject an attempt by President Jovenel Moïse to amend it for his own purposes.

Many countries are trying to define sovereign power. They rely on unchanging, guiding principles such as the equality of all persons. The 17th-century philosopher John Locke said humanity must live by a “law of nature” based on each person’s ability to reason. That law, he added, originated by “one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker.”

The real news in Myanmar is not the rising death toll but the rise of individuals reaffirming their ability to self-govern by writing a new social compact. Constitutions that liberate and endure are not just words. They are the result of people discovering the source of true sovereignty.