Leah Millis/Reuters

President Joe Biden tours the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, on May 18, 2021. As the pandemic recedes, the sense of urgency around the Biden agenda also appears to be fading.

One day, he’s Franklin Roosevelt, seizing the reins of government amid raging crises and wielding big initiatives in his first 100 days in office. The next, he’s Jimmy Carter, up against inflation, gas lines, and stubbornly high unemployment.

Or so it may have seemed for Joe Biden in the early days of his presidency. Indeed, it has been a historic time, an abrupt turn from four unorthodox years of Donald Trump and the shock of Jan. 6. 

Under President Biden, the twists and turns have continued – most sharply, perhaps, when a top health official warned of “impending doom” amid COVID-19 spikes, only to suddenly announce weeks later that fully vaccinated people could go maskless in most settings.

Around the country, the lifting of restrictions has almost led to peals of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” But the subsiding of the pandemic, while welcome, may also have dampened the sense of urgency around Mr. Biden’s agenda, especially the now-reduced $1.7 trillion American Jobs Plan – an infrastructure bill loaded with liberal Democratic priorities. Republicans are reportedly set to make a counteroffer worth nearly $1 trillion, a sign of life in negotiations that earlier this week seemed near collapse.

Another headwind comes from the news of budget surpluses in some states, a result of federal pandemic relief, and the decision by 23 GOP-led states to end enhanced federal unemployment benefits, to entice workers to fill jobs. 

But the real grit in the gears is the long-building polarization of Washington politics. And it’s not just the inability of Republicans and Democrats to strike a major deal that’s weighing things down. Intraparty differences – at times seemingly as big as those between the two parties – are also hindering the parties’ ability to meet in the middle. 

Internal “bipartisanship” needed

With Democrats holding the slimmest of majorities in both houses of Congress, the party’s progressive wing is using its leverage to hold firm on its priorities and push for another bite at “reconciliation” – a legislative tool that allows certain measures to pass the Senate by simple majority and avoid a filibuster. 

If that’s the ultimate endgame, which is the consensus view in Washington, then Democrats will need to work out some internal “bipartisanship” and bridge the divide between the left and the party’s moderates, led by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. In the 50-50 Senate, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris as tiebreaker, the party can’t afford to lose even one vote.

“It comes down to whether Manchin ultimately votes to go along,” writes David Barker, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, in an email. “All of the bipartisan negotiations are window-dressing to appease him.” 

On Tuesday, Senator Manchin told reporters he wasn’t ready to give up on bipartisanship, brushing off the unofficial deadline of May 31. “There’s no magic date and there’s no magic time, there’s no magic number,” he said, noting the Senate’s deliberative nature. 

The West Virginian also repeated his rejection of Mr. Biden’s funding for the bill – a corporate tax hike from 21% to 28%, which he says would hurt U.S. competitiveness. It’s worth noting that the Republicans’ lead negotiator is West Virginia’s other senator, Shelley Moore Capito. Their state, one of the poorest in the country, needs infrastructure – a point that grounds the bipartisan duo’s commitment to keep negotiating. 

For now, disagreements over the size of the bill, its funding mechanism, and even the definition of “infrastructure” have kept the two parties at loggerheads. But in the end, Mr. Biden and the Democrats are unlikely to accept a bill that doesn’t include any of the Democrats’ green energy initiatives. Nor are Democrats willing to give up the “pay-for” – the corporate tax hike, which is a deal breaker for the Republicans.

For the Democrats, the use of reconciliation to enact the Biden agenda can only go so far. Under Senate rules, it can be used just three times a year, and only on legislation involving spending or revenue. The increase in the federal minimum wage was disallowed under reconciliation in March, when the Senate passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill – the first piece of Mr. Biden’s $7 trillion Build Back Better Plan. 

The third tranche of Build Back Better – the American Families Plan, which invests heavily in child care and education – is likely to wait until next year. But by then, the midterm elections will be in full swing, likely further hindering any hope of bipartisanship. 

There are exceptions: Over the weekend, a bipartisan group of senators reached agreement on a $300 billion surface transportation funding plan that’s separate from the big infrastructure bill. 

But other Democratic agenda items are stuck. Legislation to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol, which passed the House last week with 35 Republican votes, appears doomed in the Senate. Policing reform is also stalled, as the unofficial deadline for passage – Tuesday’s anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police – has come and gone.

A presidential pattern

Still, even if the Biden agenda appears stalled, there’s another way to look at it, political analysts say. As unusual as the times are, the early Biden presidency is, in key ways, following a trajectory similar to most others.

“This is the moment in almost every presidency when they transition from the honeymoon to reality,” says Jeremy Mayer, a political scientist at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. 

Mr. Biden, in fact, has had a “fairly typical” presidency so far, he says. “His honeymoon was not FDR’s 100 days, but his approval was higher than it probably will be for much of the rest of his term.” 

The Biden administration has gotten high marks for its handling of the pandemic, the recent messaging snafu notwithstanding. And the passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill gave him an early win. The term’s start, in fact, is similar to that of President Barack Obama, under whom Mr. Biden served as vice president and who took office amid economic peril. A big stimulus package passed within weeks. Twelve years later, amid a new crisis, Mr. Biden opted for a much bigger package. Democrats say the “go big” philosophy of today is a result of lessons learned from the Obama years. 

Little room for error

But political polarization has also grown wider since the Obama era, and today’s narrow Democratic control of Congress means there’s little room for error. The November 2022 midterm elections already loom large, and Democrats could well lose one or both houses. They could also lose their Senate majority at any moment, if a Democrat from a red state were to depart the scene or change parties. 

That makes for a “go for broke” attitude at the White House toward racking up legislative successes – now. It also gives Republicans an incentive to deprive Mr. Biden and the Democrats of wins. 

A recent survey of battleground states and congressional districts by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg laid out the challenge in stark terms: Only 57% of Democrats showed the highest levels of political engagement, compared with 68% of Republicans. 

“In this polarized moment, there’s more negative partisanship than partisanship,” Professor Mayer says, referring to anti-Biden fervor. “Very few Democrats have passion for Joe Biden.” 

That helps the party out of power, the Republicans. 

Can Democrats help their chances in 2022 by passing more legislation, and showing they can govern? Professor Barker thinks not. “Their midterm odds are what they are, and have virtually nothing to do with what they actually do,” he writes. 

You wouldn’t know by looking at it, but the yellow building known as the Belarusian House in the heart of the Polish capital is the source of great frustration for Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus.

That’s because it is home to the offices of the Telegram channel Nexta, which since last year has broadcast the protests against Mr. Lukashenko and his subsequent crackdowns against civil society that put hundreds of dissidents and media professionals in jail. Nexta’s coverage has placed its own staff in Mr. Lukashenko’s crosshairs too, as shown by the dramatic arrest Sunday of its former editor-in-chief when fighter jets forced down the flight he was on.

Operating out of Poland keeps Nexta’s staff somewhat safe – though police still keep a protective eye on Belarusian House – but the high stakes of confronting Mr. Lukashenko are constantly on the mind of Stsiapan Putsila, Nexta’s founder. “I am inspired by heroes who are now in prison, who went out into the street despite the repression,” he says. “I am inspired by people who, despite the situation, want to fight for the future, not just for themselves.”

Mr. Putsila and his colleagues at Nexta (pronounced “nyechta”) take that “fight for the future” seriously when it comes to Mr. Lukashenko’s regime. This puts Nexta in a position that flirts with both journalism and propaganda. Their crowd-sourcing methods rely on the trust of those risking it all to tell the truth. The outcome leaves Nexta at the forefront of a new ecosystem of dissident media that uses Telegram to shine a light on what is often called Europe’s last dictatorship.

“We have never declared political neutrality,” says Tadeusz Giczan, the current editor-in-chief. “Our goal has always been to overthrow Lukashenko’s regime. We are waging an information war against him, his system. However, we do not lie in this war.”

More activism than journalism?

Mr. Putsila launched Nexta on YouTube in 2015 as part of a homework assignment while studying film in Katowice, Poland. But he came to authorities’ attention in 2018, when he posted a video called “LukaSherlock,” which challenged Mr. Lukashenko’s claim that he had once helped solve a crime. Mr. Putsila was charged with insulting the president and violating copyright law in a criminal case that he credits with boosting the channel’s profile. “It added to the popularity of my channel,” he says. “I partly owe this to the authorities.”

The defining moment for Nexta came in August 2020 when protests erupted across Belarus after disputed elections gave Mr. Lukashenko a sixth term as president. At the time, Nexta already had a solid following on Telegram, a secure platform chosen precisely for its resistance to censorship and capacity to reach vast numbers of people. With a Warsaw-based team of only four working round-the-clock, Nexta quickly became central to the protests in Belarus, which it both coordinated and covered.

Sergei Grits/AP/File

A man looks at Telegram channel Nexta Live on his smartphone during the protests against President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 19, 2020.

The team drew on photos, videos, and leaked documents to capture the days of street revolt and police violence. Mr. Putsila acknowledges that theirs is no ordinary journalistic project given the absence of reporters on the ground and their protest coordination efforts before the heavy-handed crackdown killed their momentum.

“I can’t say what we do is journalism, although journalism has a lot of different genres,” he says. “We have an editorial office, we publish content, we have journalists who collect information, but the information is not collected on the spot because it is impossible. People send it to us. It’s a new kind of journalism that relies on information provided by people.”

Today Nexta lives on Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook, with its biggest following on Telegram, where it has over a million subscribers.

There are no hard and fast rules on what gets published, but the final say belongs to Mr. Giczan, who considers himself more activist than journalist. “We have people with different political views in the editorial team,” says Mr. Giczan, a dual Polish-Belarusian national. “We have so much work that we don’t even have time to think about some internal code. But that doesn’t mean we don’t follow moral principles.”

Examples of content Nexta decided not to publish are the medical files and portrait of Mr. Lukashenko’s unknown fourth son, who they say was sent away to an orphanage. Nexta also decided against flagging the daughter of a prominent regime supporter who is studying in Warsaw. “The values that guide me in choosing topics are whether they will expose the actions of the authorities, like corruption, and whether it will be interesting and helpful to people,” says Mr. Putsila.

Nexta also fact checks as much as it can, if just to filter out planted false material. “We have to verify the information because we have a lot of fake news that is created by the authorities to show that we are not to be trusted,” says Mr. Putsila.

“A new form of journalism”

Critics say that Nexta’s tone has little to do with professional journalism, crosses the line into political activism, and uses language better fit for propaganda.

Belarusian journalist Diana Ratkevich argues that journalism and political activism should be kept separate. “We must remember that we will be responsible for the quality of journalism in a free Belarus,” says Ms. Ratkevich, who covered the bloody protests in Belarus for Belsat TV, a Polish government-funded satellite TV channel. “We have to maintain standards.”

Kseniya Halubovich, a documentary photographer based in Minsk, credits Nexta with doing crucial work during the first months of the protests when many media were blocked, even if they did not always verify their information. But “I don’t read them now because militsiya [national police] can check your phone and your Telegram account, and if they see that you follow them you can be arrested, because Nexta is considered by the regime as an extremist group in Belarus,” she says.

Joerg Forbrig, senior fellow and director for Central and Eastern Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin, says Nexta has been on a learning curve when it comes to producing content and fact-checking their material. While their way of work doesn’t always square with Western media standards, it is breaking new ground. “They represent a new form of journalism,” he says. “It’s basically a combination of activist journalism, a news coverage that also calls to action, and a crowd-sourced, citizen journalism.”

That Nexta has managed to retain a solid following inside of Belarus despite the persecution of anyone shown to be accessing the channel is no small feat, says Mr. Forbrig. “The labeling as extremists and the increase in the punishments for distributing extremist content is designed to drive away people from Nexta and comparable channels.”

The lengths to which Mr. Lukashenko is willing to silence the media came into sharp focus this month. First came the state seizure of Minsk’s largest independent news site, Tut.by, which caused a few ripples in the West. Then came the dramatic arrest of Raman Pratasevich, Nexta’s co-founder, who along with his girlfriend was dragged off a Ryanair flight after it was forced to land in Minsk over a dubious security threat. Next came laws banning media coverage of protests and empowering prosecutors to shut down the internet.

With the protest movement badly bruised in Belarus, Nexta is soldiering on with a reduced staff of about 10 Belarusians, down from 20 in the aftermath of the protests in August last year. Recent efforts to fundraise brought in less than $500, and advertising revenues have dropped dramatically. “Our channel has been declared a terrorist channel in Belarus, so people and companies who work with us may also be considered extremists,” says Mr. Putsila.

Nexta has responded by internationalizing its work and message, including making policy recommendations on how the West should pressure Belarus over the arrest of Mr. Pratasevich. The Nexta team thinks that his seizure won’t work as Mr. Lukashenko may have planned.

“The regime takes hostages to trade them later with the West,” Mr. Putsila said just days before his ex-colleague became one of 426 political prisoners. “But it won’t work this time. The repressions are on such an unimaginable scale that the West won’t want to get along with Lukashenko anymore.”

Ammar Awad/Reuters

Israeli police stand in position as Palestinians protest at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City on May 21, 2021.

Two states for two peoples. That long-sought vision for Israeli-Palestinian peace has taken on new life this week in the wake of another costly yet inconclusive military showdown over Gaza.

But in reflecting on this latest round of violence – after some 45 years of living with, reporting on, and writing about both sides in the conflict – I’ve found myself wondering whether the ultimate challenge, and eventual path to peace, may not lie elsewhere.

Not two states, but two stories. Finding some way for Israelis and Palestinians to bridge the chasm between the deeply embedded, separate, and parallel narratives they’ve each told themselves about their history and place in the land they both passionately claim as their own.

A two-state agreement would be challenging enough. Serial efforts over the three decades since the Oslo Accord have all ended in failure.

That doesn’t mean another effort isn’t worth making, especially amid signs in recent days of the Biden administration’s support. It surely holds greater promise than the diplomatic vacuum that has stifled Israeli-Palestinian relations in recent years.

But the divide between rival Israeli and Palestinian narratives runs deeper.

Perhaps nowhere is it more stark than the way in which each people views the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, its eventual borders staked out at gunpoint and defended against the invading armies of neighboring Arab states.

For Israelis, it was the War of Independence, sparked by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s declaration of statehood on the basis of a United Nations resolution.

The Palestinians call it simply al nakba: the catastrophe. In their narrative – perpetuated not just by political or religious leaders but within families, from generation to generation – it was a disaster to be rectified. Somehow. Sooner or later.

But that’s only part of the way in which their national stories diverge.

For Israelis, the state is inseparable from Jewish history: the 2,000-year-old temple in Jerusalem, a remnant of which, the Western Wall, survives; the centuries of dispersal and diaspora; and of course the antisemitism in those distant lands, no matter how loyal and valuable Jews were as citizens – a scourge culminating, just a few years before Israeli statehood, in the Nazis’ mass murder of millions.

For Palestinians, the story is of a fundamentally alien new state from which hundreds of thousands, whether out of fear or by force, fled during the war of 1948, abandoning their ancestral homes.

Malmed/AP/File

Jewish Haganah troops, fighting for Israel's independence, are seen behind fortifications in the foreground, facing off against British troops in the background left, on May 8th 1948, after fierce fighting in Jaffa, then in Palestine. Israel declared independence a week later.

So in a sense, both people tell a story – in the Palestinians’ case, as yet unfulfilled – of triumph over suffering in a single, small patch of land on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean.

The greatest obstacle to accommodating both narratives is not that they’re different. It’s that most Israelis and Palestinians don’t accept, or in many cases don’t even know, each other’s national story.

So how does that change?

For years, the mere scale of the challenge has dulled me to the small, if undeniably admirable, initiatives that Israelis and Palestinians have taken over the years to meet one another, cross boundaries, talk, and more importantly, listen.

Still, little by little in recent years, those embers have been spreading. And they actually seem to gain momentum after each new bout of violence, even if the fighting is a reminder of how distant a final political resolution of Israeli-Palestinian differences remains.

This week, I joined a Zoom discussion with dozens of Israeli and Palestinian parents who had lost a child to the conflict. I heard them speak movingly of how life-affirming they had found their engagement with the common loss, pain, and shared humanity of those similarly bereaved “on the other side.”

My Monitor colleague Dina Kraft has told the story of how, after the last Gaza war in 2014, right-wing Jewish vigilantes mounted an arson attack on a school in Jerusalem where Arab and Jewish students were learning together, jointly taught by Arab and Jewish teachers in both Arabic and Hebrew. The attack could have meant the end of the initiative. Instead, the school has flourished, and other similar establishments have sprung up elsewhere in Israel.

One detail from her visit to the Jerusalem school a couple of years ago has stuck with me: the way in which both Independence Day and Nakba Day are marked – first with separate assemblies of the school’s Jewish and Arab children and teachers, then with a coming together in which they all celebrate and discuss that which binds them together.

Replicating that approach more widely is a tall order, especially at a time of increasingly extreme political views. It won’t be easy. It won’t happen quickly.

But perhaps there was one signpost pointing the way forward in a chatroom discussion on the Clubhouse app that brought together Israelis and Palestinians during last week’s Gaza fighting. In the interests of civility, participants were urged to focus on telling their own personal stories of the conflict.

And, in the words of a chatroom moderator, to remember that “trauma isn’t owned by any one narrative.”

When Sonia Faleiro sent out a mass email requesting help to raise money for India’s COVID-19 crisis, little did she expect instant replies from acclaimed authors Salman Rushdie and Ali Smith. 

Using her publishing contacts, Ms. Faleiro, a nonfiction writer, raised £18,000 ($26,000) to buy 31 oxygen concentrators, which are in short supply in India. Her author-led initiative Artists for India is working with Mission Oxygen, an Indian nonprofit. “People just wanted to help and are willing to do whatever they could,” she says.

As India’s health care system struggles to respond to what is currently the world’s largest COVID-19 outbreak, the Indian diaspora is rallying to help its homeland. According to the United Nations, almost 17 million people from India lived outside the country in 2020. In the U.S. some 4.8 million residents were either born in India or identified as having Indian ancestry, including Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was born in India. 

But it is the 1.4 million-strong Indian community in the United Kingdom that has become the global focal point for private pandemic relief to India, which has recorded 27 million cases and is averaging more than 200,000 a day. 

Ms. Faleiro, who was born in India and lives in London says that Indians in the U.K. are digging deep for pandemic relief. “The Indian diaspora has always been very engaged. I know a lot of Indians who are contributing generously, and who are engaging,” she says. And she believes that this diaspora has a role to play beyond fundraising. “It’s also about amplifying voices [of those who need help]. It’s our job. We have to do it.”

Nonstop cycling

The pandemic has hit India hard, especially in its second wave. More than 300,000 have died so far, but health experts say the real death toll is much higher. In the U.K., at least, that has stirred a charitable response across the sometimes deep religious divides that have troubled India over the years.

At the Swaminarayan Hindu temple in the city of Leicester, Bhavik Depala was among the volunteers who joined a recent COVID-19 fundraiser. Participants cycled nonstop on exercise bikes to cover 4,700 miles – the distance from London to Delhi – in 48 hours. More than 800 participants at all three Swaminarayan temples in Leicester, Essex, and London combined to cycle the equivalent of 12,500 miles and raised £700,000.

“It was a real community effort across three parts of the U.K. … and not just regionally, but across religious lines,” uniting Hindus with Sikh and Muslim communities, says Mr. Depala.

Physiotherapy student Jaymin Modi agrees that British Indian unity overcame historic divisions. “The main thing should be everyone working in collaboration – Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus – to overcome this.” And although he was not a regular attendee of his local temple before the pandemic, he says his “connection has bonded” with the community since the cycling fundraiser. 

It’s a silver lining to a dark cloud, he says. “I have lots of family in [the Indian state of] Gujarat and I can’t see them as they’re not very well at the moment.”

He, like many others, have used WhatsApp, Facebook, and other communications platforms to both connect with family abroad and rally their British-based communities. Patchy connections and a scarcity of cellphones in rural Gujarat have only added to Mr. Modi’s anxiety about the welfare of his family and friends.

A “living bridge”

Britain’s deep ties to India and close-knit relationships within the Indian diaspora have spurred both substantial pandemic aid and an even greater connection to their ancestral homeland.

Hitan Mehta, executive director of international development organization British Asian Trust, describes the connection as a “living bridge” that has “come into play. ... All the historical links are part and parcel of the relationship.”

Intergovernmental cooperation between India and Britain has been important too, he says. “We’ve seen the Indian government come to the aid of the U.K. in our own pandemic” by providing supplies, he says. “It’s been nice to see a reciprocal relationship, helping each other out.”

Importantly for Mr. Mehta, the pandemic has also been a chance to try to remedy existing problems in India. He says that the pandemic has exposed a historic lack of public investment in health care and decades of mismanagement by India’s government.

But now organizations like his can help to provide solutions with a “long-term difference,” he says. He has worked closely with what he calls small and nimble organizations in India that reach rural communities that are often overlooked in India’s battle with COVID-19. British Asian Trust has so far raised £4.5 million to buy 4,500 oxygen concentrators.

“Public-private partnerships are amongst the best ways of dealing with problems on a large scale. It’s about how we work together,” he says. “The scale of the issue is too big for one actor to deal with.”

Editor's note: The original version misstated the amount of money raised by Artists for India.

Frank Ruona had already spray-painted mileage numbers on the sidewalks for the 10K race before greeting his runners, most of them alumni from the running club he volunteer-coaches at San Quentin State Prison.

“It’s been a year and a day since the last workout at San Quentin,” he tells his tight fraternity in tank tops and trunks, nearly all of them former “lifers” who were members of the prison’s 1000 Mile Running Club. This morning’s 6.2-mile run is the first that Mr. Ruona, a former Army officer and accomplished marathoner who has a whistle perpetually slung around his neck, has organized since the pandemic began.

For the men gathered here, Mr. Ruona is more than a coach who keeps meticulous records on a clipboard and says “Let’s push it!” or “Looking good!” as they near the finish line. He is the steady ballast with a slightly quavery voice who writes parole support letters, helps them find jobs, corrals a truck from his old construction company to help with a move, and picks men up at the gate upon their release followed by a celebratory run across the Golden Gate Bridge and a pancake breakfast.

Peter DaSilva/Special to the Christian Science Monitor

Frank Ruona prepares for a run with former inmates and running staff along a bike trail on March 14, 2021, in Mill Valley, California.

“He’s a strong father figure – a pops, a coach, and a good friend,” says Markelle “the Gazelle” Taylor, who was the fastest runner at San Quentin and was released in time to run the Boston Marathon in 2019. “A lot of people give lip service to caring but Frank puts it into action. It’s ‘do the best you can for yourself.’ That’s all he asks for.” 

Running on faith

Mr. Ruona stepped into the role of the 1000 Mile Club’s coach serendipitously (the club is named for the goal of running 1,000 miles while in prison). While president of the elite Tamalpa Runners in Marin, he received a call from San Quentin’s community liaison looking for someone to sponsor a track club inside the prison. Mr. Ruona put the word out to his 600 members, but there were no takers. So he stepped up and volunteered himself. “I wasn’t sure what I was getting into,” he says. “But I would say from the first visit I was favorably impressed with the guys” – “favorably impressed” being Mr. Ruona at his most effusive. 

Jiana Lazarus/Courtesy of 26.2 to Life: The San Quentin Prison Marathon

This still image of Frank Ruona entering San Quentin is from the upcoming documentary feature "26.2 to Life: The San Quentin Prison Marathon."

Every other Monday at precisely 1730 hours – he’s still on military time – he makes his way down the razor-wired slope of the prison yard, lugging his trusty digital clock and a shoulder bag crafted by his daughter from the running numbers of his races, often containing certificates of 1000 Milers’ achievements.  

The most anticipated annual event is the San Quentin marathon, which involves 105 stultifying quarter-mile dirt, gravel, and concrete laps around a yard surveilled by armed guards in towers. Races are frequently punctuated by unexpected alarms requiring runners to drop to the ground. 

Jiana Lazarus/Courtesy of 26.2 to Life: The San Quentin Prison Marathon

A still image of the 1000 Mile Club, taken from the upcoming documentary "26.2 to Life: The San Quentin Prison Marathon."

Until sidelined by injuries, Mr. Ruona was a serious competitor himself, completing 78 marathons and 38 ultramarathons. He didn’t start until age 40, which allowed him to compete in an older age group. He and a dozen friends once ran the Napa Valley Marathon tied together as a “centipede” in under three hours. 

Married to his high school sweetheart, he got a degree in civil engineering and attended Airborne and Ranger school at the U.S. Army’s Fort Benning. Mr. Ruona served in Germany, then Vietnam, where he eventually became the company commander of engineering. He is a concrete person both literally and figuratively.

A man of deep faith, he takes the maxim “I am my brother’s keeper” extremely seriously. “I’ve been pretty fortunate in my life – growing up in a white middle-class town with two older brothers who set an example. Most of the guys in prison didn’t have it so fortunate. A lot of them have told me that in their lives, they had never set and achieved goals. We try to get them to realistically figure out what their abilities are so they can run at a pace they can maintain.”

Peter DaSilva/Special to the Christian Science Monitor

Running coach Frank Ruona waits for former inmates and running staff during a 10K run along a bike trail on March 14, 2021, in Mill Valley, California.

He is the moral center of “26.2 to Life: The San Quentin Prison Marathon,” a documentary to be released this fall. “For many guys who become separated from their families, Frank is a guy who shows up,” says director Christine Yoo. “He doesn’t ask questions. He meets them on the track and deals with the person they are today.” 

He has brought together a group of volunteer coaches with considerable expertise, including champions like Diana Fitzpatrick, the first female president of the legendary Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run.

Changing hearts

Coaching at San Quentin can change one’s thinking. Mark Stevens is a retired finance executive, and former “death penalty guy.” “I didn’t think you could rehabilitate someone [who had] committed murder,” he says. Mr. Stevens now writes parole support letters and frequently texts and talks with alumni like Mr. Taylor. “There’s no way I would have met these guys if it hadn’t been for Frank,” he says. “They’ve paid their debt to society and they are doing ... great.” Mr. Ruona himself is a lifelong Republican who now considers the criminal justice system deeply flawed.  

Jim Maloney, another volunteer coach, says that gaining the trust of the men, many of whom are Black and have negative associations with white men, is a process that gradually unfolds. “At first it’s ... do you have a savior complex or is there some penance you’re paying off?” he observes. “Frank shows his emotions by his actions.”

The pandemic has meant that all volunteer programs at the prison have been on hold. Mr. Ruona has maintained a steady correspondence with the 1000 Milers who have been confined to their cells 23 hours a day – with training reduced to burpees and squats in the airless and windowless spaces.

He keeps close tabs on all his runners – and refuses to give up even on those who disappoint him. He was extremely close to Ronnie Goodman, a much-heralded artist and a talented runner. Mr. Goodman became homeless almost as soon as he was paroled in 2010 but continued to train with Mr. Ruona and compete in marathons. But Mr. Goodman stopped running and became belligerent with Mr. Ruona on several occasions. Despite their tribulations, Mr. Ruona calls him “a bighearted person who tried to do the best he could under difficult circumstances.”  

His concern for everyone “inside” speaks to his character, says Jonathan Chiu, one of about fifteen 1000 Milers who have been released due to COVID-19. 

Although running without barbed wire and guard towers on a picture-perfect path is still a novelty, for alumni there is one aspect of their lives that remains mercifully unchanged. As Mr. Chiu puts it: “The same Frank is out here.”

Reuters/File

A man in Sassenheim, Netherlands, works in his kitchen during COVID-19 pandemic.

In coming weeks, many employers around the world will be singing a new tune: How do we get ’em back in the office after so many employees worked from home?

That issue, of course, doesn’t apply to workers who continued with front-line labor during the pandemic. But for those who could work remotely, their eyes are now open to alternative work arrangements.

Many will welcome a return to in-person encounters that cannot quite match the digital kind. They miss the cameraderie of the office. Innovative ideas can spring from casual conversations. And without the distractions of working at home, employees at an office can be more focused and collaborative.

Still employers will be conscious of those employees who were able to find a work-life balance that improved both their personal needs and professional accomplishments. The new work mantra is not “how many hours did you work?” but “how much did you accomplish?” Many employees find they got more done each day by not commuting.

For some, remote work just makes financial sense: Keep the same job, with the same pay, but move to a part of the country with lower living costs, while saving on commuting costs as well.

Companies are making plans to bring employees back to their offices in stages over the summer. Most popular may be early September, when children will mostly be heading back to classrooms, freeing up parents who provided child care to head in to work. Many companies are pledging to take a more flexible approach, hoping to keep the most talented and productive on staff. Google plans to give its employees four weeks of “work from anywhere” time each year. LinkedIn will allow a good portion of its employees to work remotely for up to half of the time.

How badly do workers want to work from home? A recent study by Microsoft showed that more than 70% of workers want to have the option of working remotely with flexible hours. Blind, an anonymous U.S. network for professionals, found that most people it surveyed would choose being able to work from home over receiving a 30% raise.

For many, a return to the office is coming. But the traditional office is going to have to compete harder to win over employees who’ve found a surprising renewal in remote work. Employees will need to be aware of the benefits of in-office work to an organization. The key for employers will be to find win-win solutions that enhance both their ​organization's goals and worker satisfaction.