When Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday, it energized many Democrats for the 13-week Election Day sprint that lies ahead. Many Republicans, however, seemed equally eager to look backward – to two weeks in 2020.

Black Minneapolis area resident George Floyd was killed by a police officer on May 25 of that year. Black Lives Matter protests soon rippled out to thousands of cities and towns across the country. A small share of the protests was accompanied by violence, which caused over a billion dollars in damage and prompted a record number of National Guard deployments.

Perhaps nowhere in America felt the reverberations of the murder as acutely as the epicenter of Minneapolis. 

What really happened during the George Floyd protests? 

Mr. Walz was among Democratic officials facing acute criticism for their responses to the violence, himself calling the early local response “an abject failure.” He faced immediate backlash for waiting three days after Mr. Floyd’s murder to sign an executive order activating the largest domestic deployment of Minnesota National Guard since World War II. 

The full story of Governor Walz’s response to Mr. Floyd’s death is more nuanced. In the years that followed, Mr. Walz signed bipartisan legislation on police reforms and offered state support for other public safety measures. And details around the state’s delayed National Guard deployment are still disputed. State officials say they weren’t given the necessary information from the city, while Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who reportedly asked for assistance from the governor 24 hours prior to when the Guard was activated, says the governor hesitated.  

John Minchillo/AP/File

Gov. Tim Walz called in the National Guard amid rioting in St. Paul and Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd in police custody. A man is surrounded by tear gas as protesters gather on May 28, 2020, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

What appears clear is that his initial response to the rioting will likely be a focal point of election-year debate.

Republicans were quick to resurface this criticism Tuesday, tweeting photos of buildings ablaze and blaming Mr. Walz for the rioting and looting. Minneapolis was “ground zero for the BLM riots of 2020,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on X. “Harris egged it on and Walz sat by and let Minneapolis burn.” Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance similarly referenced Mr. Walz’s role in violence of the summer of 2020 when asked about his Democratic opponent.  

Floyd protests: A winning issue for Republicans?

By choosing Mr. Walz as her running mate, Ms. Harris has opened the door for Republicans to relitigate the issue of “law and order,” one of the most defining themes of the last presidential election – potentially tilting the campaigns’ focus to terrain that favors the GOP.

“In politics you try to inflate everything, and they are going to try to inflate Walz’ role more than he deserves,” says Vin Weber, a Republican strategist and former Minnesota congressman. “But he didn’t do what he could have done.” 

Mr. Weber says Republicans’ messaging on the topic could hurt Democrats. 

“If it was a phony issue, I’d say they should pass it by quickly. But it’s not a phony issue,” he adds. “It’s a legitimate line of attack.” 

Anthony Souffle/Star Tribune/AP/File

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz walks with business owners affected by violence during the George Floyd protests on June 5, 2020, in north Minneapolis.

Despite Republican voters listing violent crime as a more important issue than abortion, guns, or immigration in 2020, and despite former President Donald Trump’s efforts to win back suburban voters by promising to protect their communities, Mr. Trump and the Republicans lost the presidency and Senate seats. But downballot Republican candidates outperformed expectations, specifically in the U.S. House and Republican-leaning suburbs. 

Democrats and defunding the police

For Democrats, more concerning than Republicans’ strength on the safety issue is the potential for a law-and-order conversation to reignite a division within their own party. Some progressive Democrats responded to the 2020 events in Minneapolis with efforts to “defund the police” – which proved to be a losing message in subsequent elections. Look no further than Minneapolis, where voters rejected a 2021 ballot measure to replace the city’s police department with a “public-health oriented” unit. 

The Democratic Party quickly moderated itself, with President Joe Biden making a point of saying the answer to rising crime was to “fund the police” in his 2022 State of the Union address. 

"I do know how the mayor’s office works, and I know that Tim Walz is not supposed to be the first responder in the city,” says former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. “And Tim Walz played a very active role when it was right for the governor to do [that] and then was incredibly important in helping the rebuilding process, you know, to get all these stores and businesses back up and running” with state aid.

“The governor responded effectively and quickly with [the] National Guard and worked with local authorities to do it,” says Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s Democratic attorney general.

Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune/AP/File

Gov. Tim Walz signs into law a sweeping package of police accountability measures in St. Paul, Minnesota. Changes to law enforcement included bans on neck restraints, chokeholds, and fear-based or "warrior-style" training, which critics say promotes excessive force.

It was former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin – not the governor – who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes and who caused the “civil disturbances” that followed in Minneapolis, says Mr. Ellison. As the first Black official elected statewide in Minnesota, Mr. Ellison credits Mr. Walz for handing him the case to prosecute Mr. Chauvin and the other officers. 

“His decision helped quell civil unrest,” Mr. Ellison says.

Walz signed bipartisan public safety laws  

The divided Minnesota legislature passed two police accountability bills in less than two years following Mr. Floyd’s death, both of which were signed into law by Mr. Walz.

The package from July 2020 bans neck restraints and chokeholds and provides more police training.

The following June, following Mr. Chauvin’s conviction, the legislature passed a bill to limit no-knock warrants. Mr. Walz also signed executive orders for community violence prevention grants and to allow families to see police body cam footage after a loved one is killed. In late 2023, Mr. Walz approved a $300 million disbursement to public safety departments across Minnesota.

Reviews have criticized Walz’s response

But just as Democrats can point to these bipartisan achievements if policing and crime rises again to the political forefront, Republicans will likely reference a 2020 report from Minnesota Senate Republicans in which the adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard, now the National Guard director, said that some of the rioting and destruction could have been avoided if Mr. Walz, commander in chief of the Minnesota National Guard, had acted sooner. According to testimony from Senate hearings, the Minnesota National Guard was “waiting for orders” outside Minneapolis as the city’s 3rd Precinct police building was evacuated and set on fire by vandals. 

Republicans may also reference an external review of the state’s response published in 2022, which found “timeliness of Minnesota National Guard deployment” as an area to be improved.

“He sat on his hands for three days while Minneapolis burned,” says Jim Schultz, a Republican who ran against incumbent Mr. Ellison for Minnesota attorney general in 2022 promising to fight post-2020 crime. 

“Downtown Minneapolis is still a ghost town after what happened,” says Mr. Schultz, noting that four years later, the rebuilding of Lake Street is still underway. “The scars of 2020 continue to be felt.”

****

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Majdi Mohammed/AP

A Palestinian man walks through a shopping street in the West Bank city of Nablus, where shops are closed, following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, July 31, 2024.

With soaring Israel-Iran tensions threatening to tip the Middle East into a wider war, the saber-rattling is being met with a mixture of suspense and disinterest by war-wary Palestinians in the West Bank.

Amid the threats of incoming Iranian and Hezbollah rockets and drones – retribution for Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran – shoppers move hesitantly in Ramallah supermarket aisles.

But they’re passing up the canned foods and flour they normally stock up on in national emergencies. Instead, they’re gravitating toward snacks, such as nuts and chips. Instead of stocking up on water, they are stocking up on spirits.

Families are going ahead with weddings across the West Bank this week and weekend, as part of the packed summer wedding season. 

It is partly a laissez-faire attitude, partly a surrender to a grim reality for Palestinians in the West Bank. They are beset by violent Israeli settler attacks and are in the firing line of Iran and Hezbollah’s anticipated response, which has caused increasing resentment and a sense of helplessness. 

Palestinians here are without bomb shelters to run to or an option to flee the region on a flight.

Making matters worse is the complete lack of leadership and guidance from the Palestinian Authority, political factions in the West Bank, or Hamas in Gaza.

Neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas has issued a single statement about the prospect of Iranian or Hezbollah missile strikes in or near the West Bank and Gaza.

With the threat of missiles being launched without a moment’s notice, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are on their own.

“We absolutely feel something not normal is going on, but what can we do about it?” asks architect Ghanem Omar as he shops at a neighborhood supermarket in Ramallah Wednesday. “All we can do is wait and see. And watch.”

“People here can only count on God and their neighbors if anything happens or if a war actually breaks out,” he adds. “It’s not like we can count on the leadership to provide anything.”

Instead, West Bank Palestinians’ emergency fallback plan is to “unite, like in the first and second intifadas and in earlier crises.”

Paying the price

Like many Palestinians in the West Bank, Raghad Abu Amer, a young mother, does not anticipate that a full-blown war will break out between Israel, Iran, and its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“I doubt anything would happen,” she says.

But she does fear that the West Bank will “continue to pay the price,” as deadly Israeli military operations and settler attacks increase – killing 14 West Bank Palestinians on Tuesday alone. These attacks have been pushed out of the world’s headlines amid the focus on the dangers of a regional war. 

Nasser Nasser/AP

A protester carries a poster with the image of Marwan Barghouti, the highest-profile Palestinian prisoner held by Israel, at a rally in solidarity with Gaza and prisoners held by Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Aug. 3, 2024.

“My fear is that no one will pay attention to the destruction and daily killing in the West Bank. Not the Palestinian Authority nor the international community,” she says.

And should missiles fall and a wider war erupt, in a worst-case scenario she is stocked up on “snacks, milk, and diapers for my daughter.”

Bader Abdel Razek, owner of a neighborhood supermarket, says another reason for West Bankers’ lack of preparedness is the fact that the economy has dried up and salaries have been slashed since the war began in Gaza. 

“The West Bank has become like an old T-shirt forgotten on a drying rack since the beginning of the war,” says Mr. Abdel Razek. 

Normally when a Mideast-wide crisis hits the West Bank, Mr. Abdel Razek says he stocks up on basic goods. Not this time.

“We have seen a clear economic impact of the war [in Gaza] on the West Bank since the beginning of the year,” he says. “Since then, we haven’t seen much purchasing power or anything to encourage me to stock,” he adds, with few customers able or willing to stock up on essentials and food “even with a possible war around the corner.”

Gazans tired of war

Meanwhile, besieged, starving, and beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza fear that escalation by Iran or Hezbollah would prolong the war there – and dash any hopes for a cease-fire, healing, or rebuilding anytime soon.

Rafat Naim, a businessman, says Gazans are against Iran opening a new front in response to Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination as that would “take attention away and cover the massacres taking place in Gaza.”

“We prefer that [Iran’s] response is used as political leverage, rather than a military option that would prolong the war,” says Mr. Naim. “We don’t want war to expand. This war needs to stop so we can start dealing with the problems it has created.”

Tala Albanna, a law student at Gaza University and aspiring writer, says she doubts Iran would trigger a regional war – but still fears the fallout. 

“Such a move would distract people from Gaza. We are starving, and we are beginning to see new problems emerge that we need to find solutions for,” she says of the destruction, famine, and health crises gripping Gaza.

“We hope that a war does not break out on a new front because people would forget us. We want it to stop,” says Ms. Albanna.

Distrust of Iran

The prospect of Iranian and Hezbollah rockets fired into Israel has not led to Palestinians publicly cheering on Iran.

Many retain deep-seated suspicions about Iran’s attempts to use the Palestinian cause to further its aims, with some accusing Iran of using Palestinian lives as pawns in its geopolitical struggle and asymmetrical warfare.

Many Palestinians say their enemy’s enemy is not their friend.

In an Arab Barometer survey carried out between September and October 2023, 47% of Palestinian respondents said they viewed growing Iranian influence in the region as a “critical” threat to their national security, and a further 25% saw the threat as “important.” Less than one-third, 28% of Palestinians surveyed, had a favorable view of Iran, and 65% had an unfavorable view.

A majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, 57%, said they viewed Iranian drone and missile strikes against Israel in April as “just a show” and not “support for the Palestinian people,” according to a June poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. 

“Iran talks about the Palestinian cause, but they are not coming here with an army to liberate us; they are not protecting us from settlers,” says Lutfi, a Ramallah landlord, who gave only his first name. 

“They only follow their interests and launch some rockets to boost their popularity at home. Israel and Iran are the perfect partners in destruction, and we are in the middle,” he adds, “forgotten.”

Shoshanna Solomon

People shop at a bread stand at the mall in Ramat Aviv in Tel Aviv, Israel, Aug. 7, 2024. Life seems to be carrying on as normal, despite threats of the most serious multifront conflict in the Middle East in decades.

Coffee shops in the Ramat Aviv mall in the north of Tel Aviv, an upmarket residential neighborhood, were bustling with the usual activity Wednesday morning.

People lined up to order cappuccinos and sandwiches, while others chatted around tables, clasping their warm mugs.

Israelis are doing what they normally do: working, studying, celebrating family events, and going to beaches and museums.

But they are also waiting, bracing for the heavy retaliation promised by Hezbollah and Iran for the killings of top Hezbollah and Hamas officials in Beirut and Tehran last week. It could trigger the most serious multifront conflict in the region in decades.

Meital Elmalem, a resident of Kibbutz Gaash, in the center of the country, was ordering a soy cappuccino at a coffee counter at the mall, accompanied by her 12-year-old daughter.

“We always come here to shop,” she says, describing the mall as feeling normal. “After Oct. 7, our approach is ‘What will be, will be.’”

Her husband’s brother, Matan Elmalem, a DJ at the Nova music festival, was killed by Hamas that day, she says. “What can be worse than that? We must continue living.”

She points out her necklace with a pendant in the shape of headphones that she and her family wear in memory of her deceased brother-in-law.

“After he died, we got a call from a jeweler who said that Matan had ordered this pendant, but never got to wear it,” she says. “So we made copies for everyone.”

She says all leaders in charge in Israel on Oct. 7 will need to resign eventually, but for now, “all our energy must be channeled to deal with those who don’t want us here, including Iran and Hezbollah. We need to attack them ... not sit and wait.”

Resolve and resignation

The mood in Israel – exactly 10 months since the start of the war Oct. 7, when Hamas crossed the border from Gaza killing and kidnapping Israelis – is one of resolve and resignation, as Western nations scramble to prevent the war in Gaza from spreading.  

The latest deadly build-up followed a rocket attack from Lebanon that killed 12 children in a Druze village in the Golan Heights. In response, Israel assassinated Fouad Shukur, a senior Hezbollah chief in Beirut. Hours later, Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

Shoshanna Solomon

Meital Elmalem shows her headphones pendant at a coffee shop in the Ramat Aviv mall in Tel Aviv, Israel, Aug. 7, 2024. She and her family wear the matching pendants to remember her brother-in-law, a DJ who was killed at the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

This threatened escalation has left many Israelis internalizing what John Lennon crooned: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” as an Army Radio commentator said Wednesday. 

Kindergarten assistant Yona Dorani was waiting in a supermarket line at the mall Wednesday. Her cart was brimming with goods, including half a watermelon, wet wipes, vegetables, bread, and crackers.

“I am not shopping because of the war,” she says. “This is my regular cart, as my children and grandchildren come to me every week for Shabbat,” she says, referring to the traditional Friday night dinner. She will be cooking the usual feast of chicken schnitzel and stuffed peppers.

Ms. Dorani says she fears an escalation but has not done much to prepare, except to buy extra water and candles.

“Things are not pleasant,” she says. “But we have been walking around with this feeling since Oct. 7.”

Looking for safety

To the north, in Haifa, which has been generally safe from rockets, tensions are high. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly threatened to attack the port city, along with its army bases and industrial facilities.

Mira Awwad, a management consultant at a firm in Tel Aviv and mother to two young children, moved back to Israel in December after two years with her family working and studying in New York. She and her husband, Maroun, an ophthalmologist, had planned their move back to Israel way before the Oct. 7 attack.

The family has lived in Haifa, Mr. Awwad’s birthplace, for the past half-year.

“The return to Israel from the U.S. has been complicated and challenging,” says Ms. Awwad, who was born in Nazareth. “It is a most terrifying time for me, because Haifa is likely to be a main target,” she says.

As events escalated, she equipped her home with food, water, baby supplies, and other necessities, including an electric generator. On Saturday she decided to move her children to Nazareth, to live with her mother.

“The uncertainty has been very high, because on the one hand I feel Nazareth may be safer than other areas, but on the other hand it may be less protected. My mother’s building is old and has no safe room, and if there is a rocket alarm we will have to seek protection under the stairwell,” Ms. Awwad says.

Shoshanna Solomon

Yona Dorani shops at a supermarket in Tel Aviv, Israel, Aug. 7, 2024. "This is my regular cart," she says, underscoring that she's not shopping because of the war, but for Shabbat dinner with her extended family.

Since Monday, she has also moved in with her mother, from where she will be working remotely, while her husband will continue commuting from Haifa to his work at a hospital in Hadera.

“I hope everyone will try not to escalate things,” she says. “I feel we are waiting for something bad, [but] we don’t know how bad,” she says.

“But I believe that from all this year and from this situation, something good maybe will come out. For all sides, it is not a sustainable situation,” she says. “Somethings should change, I hope for the better.”

Wartime perspective

Lior Komemy, who is studying social work at Haifa University, says she may be complacent or in denial, because she hasn’t prepared her apartment, which she shares with a partner, for an escalation.

“I am very stressed because I don’t have a safe room and there are no shelters nearby, so I don’t really know what I should do,” she says. “I guess I will believe it is happening only once it happens.”

She is critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not advancing a deal for the hostages’ release that could also lead to the end of the war. “The end of the war is not even an aim,” she says.

Ms. Komemy says she plans to stay in Haifa to study for her upcoming exams. “At least the war helps put things in perspective,” she says with a laugh. “I am not that stressed about my exams now.”

Back at the supermarket in the Ramat Aviv mall, Lisa Danino was stocking a large fridge with yogurts.

“People have been buying more water, cans, crackers, dry foods, and soy-based drinks and yogurts that don’t require refrigeration,” she says. “We can be heroes all we like, but when there is uncertainty, of course we are scared. But what can we do?” she asks.

“There is a sort of routine alongside the war,” she says. “We are ready. This country is always ready for war.”

When a crowd of far-right rioters descended on a budget hotel in the British town of Rotherham Sunday, it had one target in mind: the tens of asylum-seekers living inside. First, the rioters blocked the emergency exits. Then, they tried to set fire to the building.

The Rotherham attack was not an isolated incident. On the same day in the town of Middlesbrough, 90 miles north, rioters blocked the roads, only allowing drivers who were “white and English” to pass. Farther south, in the town of Tamworth, a second mob targeted a hotel housing migrants, hurling petrol bombs and wounding a police officer.

As the United Kingdom grapples with the wave of racist, anti-migrant, and Islamophobic violence – which began after far-right groups falsely claimed that a Muslim migrant had been responsible for the fatal stabbing of three children in the town of Southport on July 29 – many are in shock. Mosques and businesses have been repeatedly attacked, and a library in Liverpool torched. Police are preparing for more riots Wednesday night in as many as 30 locales, according to reports.

But for the communities targeted by the far right, as well as the academics who study its movements, the attacks are no surprise. For years, they say, extremists have been able to build support for their rhetoric in online communities and with tacit acceptance of portions of the media and political spheres. The recent outbreak of violence is just the logical conclusion of that process.

“For too long, minority communities have been scapegoated and blamed for our country’s problems,” Zarah Sultana, a Muslim member of Parliament for the Labour Party, said on social media. “It is political choices by consecutive governments that have led us to this point.”

New messaging for the far right

Part of what made this weekend’s violence so disturbing was the openness of its prejudice and hatred. Racist and Islamophobic slurs were scrawled on walls and shouted in the streets.

“For a long time, obvious racism, like chants or the graffiti, has been consigned to the margins [of the far right],” says Aurelien Mondon, a lecturer focusing on racism and mainstreaming of the far right at the University of Bath. “It was a social taboo.”

Owen Humphreys/PA/AP

Firefighters extinguish a burning car on Parliament Road in Middlesbrough, England, during an anti-immigration protest, Aug. 4, 2024.

But this lack of open prejudice doesn’t mean a corresponding lack of far-right ideals circulating across British society. Online platforms in particular have come under repeated scrutiny for allowing far-right ideals to flow more directly into people’s homes. Social media’s decentralized ethos could be seen interwoven as part of the weekend’s violence, which had no set figurehead. With no defined organization on which to clamp down, these informal networks are far more difficult for police to deal with.

“Social media has allowed for networking and far-right influencers,” says Aaron Winter, a senior lecturer at the University of Lancaster. He argues that social media has helped create a “post-organizational” far right. “I don’t think the violence we’ve seen is disconnected from the return of far-right and fascist figures to platforms such as X,” he says, referencing Elon Musk’s decision to unban figures like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a far-right agitator who uses the name Tommy Robinson, after Mr. Musk bought Twitter, now called X.

But both Dr. Winter and Dr. Mondon stress that large underregulated tech platforms are just one small part of a bigger, more uncomfortable truth – that traditional, mainstream media and politicians are also responsible for normalizing far-right rhetoric.

Younger far-right activists have become more media-aware than their older counterparts. Many have made efforts to couch their language in euphemisms, usually portraying themselves as populist rather than as fascist. When Mr. Yaxley-Lennon’s English Defence League held anti-Muslim marches at the height of its influence in the early 2010s – events that often ended with clashes with police or counterprotesters – they sought sympathy with the slogan “Not racist, not violent, just no longer silent.”

These more palatable far-right messages – such as linking migrants to fears of increased crime, or to overwhelmed public services – were eventually echoed in national British news outlets, a slow and steady drip of negative sentiment.

In some cases, journalists and politicians believed that submitting far-right ideas to scrutiny would help to defuse tensions. “The argument has long been that if we don’t talk about these ideas, if we don’t legitimize concerns about immigration, we’re going to have a far-right government or the far right in the streets committing violence,” says Dr. Winter. “Well, now we have the latter.”

Yet while some news outlets platformed or parroted far-right fears, others actively fanned the flames. In 2016, in the run-up to the Brexit campaign, analysis by journalist Liz Gerard showed that the British tabloid Daily Express had run 179 front pages dedicated to anti-migrant stories in the previous five years, while the Daily Mail had published 122.

“There seems to be no accountability for the idea that anti-immigration discourse, moral panics, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and racism are now part of mainstream politics. The mainstream media has been full of these discourses, expressing them as legitimate concerns, or as populist as opposed to far-right or fascist,” says Dr. Winter. “These riots, these confrontations, these attacks, are feeding off of that.”

U.K. politicians playing with fire

Media coverage has in turn impacted public discourse and policy. In April 2022, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled plans to remove asylum-seekers to Rwanda while their applications were being processed. Accommodation for refugees – and its cost – have been mainstay topics in Parliament and in newspaper headlines, leading ministers to start housing prospective asylum-seekers on a windowless barge. Meanwhile, in the U.K.’s recent general election in July 2024, both of the country’s major political parties, the incumbent Conservatives and the then-opposition Labour Party, made promises to be “tough on immigration” as part of their election campaign.

Toby Melville/Reuters

The Bibby Stockholm barge, shown here at the Isle of Portland, England, Aug. 7. 2023, was contracted by the last British government to house asylum-seekers. Its use was highly controversial due to unsafe and allegedly inhumane conditions on the vessel.

The far right had already seized upon these issues. In 2022, anti-migrant activists were reported at accommodation housing migrants and asylum-seekers 253 times, a 102% increase from 2021, according to the campaign group Hope Not Hate. Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party, also filmed a number of videos at hotels housing asylum applicants in 2020, telling the camera, “We’ve no idea whether some of these might be ISIS.”

(In an interview with London’s LBC radio station Tuesday, Mr. Farage denied any responsibility for the riots, telling listeners, “At no point in the last week or in the previous 30 years have I ever encouraged the use of violence.” That claim is open for debate, however.)

The tinderbox only needed a further spark to ignite real violence, eventually provided by the brutal killing of three children. The fact that the perpetrator was a Christian born in the U.K. with no ties to Islam hardly mattered.

“There is always a racist sentiment. But it’s the slow drip of far-right influences being legitimized by the mainstream that makes people feel it’s OK to act in a racist, violent manner,” says Dr. Mondon. “Two years ago, five years ago, people did not feel that they could go out and try to burn a hotel with asylum-seekers inside. But intellectuals and governments have said that these are legitimate grievances. We cannot play with the lives of communities like a political football without consequences.”

With its 58-foot bell tower standing sentinel, Hill Memorial Baptist Church has witnessed Allston-Brighton’s dramatic transformation. Upscale apartments and condos now stand on the site of once-bustling stockyards. Gourmet food shops have replaced affordable grocery stores. Now, the 120-year-old church is set for its own transformation.

The congregation held its final service in this Boston neighborhood in 2023. Today the pews sit empty, awaiting removal. Yet the church is finding a new role in the community: much-needed affordable housing for older people.

Churches and faith communities across the United States are increasingly closing their doors. Five years ago, The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts, noting a dwindling congregation in Allston-Brighton, considered downsizing or repurposing the land. The choice was ultimately left to Hill Memorial’s congregation.

In a final act of generosity, members chose to sell the land to fulfill the church’s “mission of giving back to the Allston community in the form of senior housing,” says the Rev. Catherine Miller, former pastor, over email. With the blessing of its former congregation, the site will become 50 apartments for older adults on a fixed income. Today, the average price to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Allston is $2,786 per month, according to Apartments.com. The average wait time for senior housing in Boston currently stretches more than five years.

“Something good needed to happen here,” says John Woods, executive director of Allston Brighton Community Development Corp., a housing developer. “The church was a real cornerstone of the community. It gave people a sense of home, and we’re trying to continue that.”

Across the country, more faith communities are opening their doors to creative affordable housing solutions: Some are building homes on underutilized land or converting unused residences.

In California, the grassroots “Yes in God’s Backyard” movement led to the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act. This makes it legal for faith-based institutions to build affordable, multifamily homes on lands they own by streamlining the permitting process and overriding local zoning restrictions. A federal version, the Yes in God’s Backyard Act, was introduced this spring by Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. The cities of Atlanta, San Antonio, and Seattle have also forged similar initiatives.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

John Woods, director of Allston Brighton Community Development Corp., poses in Hill Memorial Baptist Church in Boston, July 11, 2024. “The church was a real cornerstone of the community," he says. "It gave people a sense of home, and we’re trying to continue that.”

“It’s sad when a church closes,” says Donna Brown, executive director of the South Boston Neighborhood Development Corp., which is leading the conversion of a former convent. “When they sit empty, it leaves a real void in the neighborhood. But when a building can be converted to housing so that people can stay in that community – it can be a wonderful thing to knit a community back together.”

A growing need for housing

The U.S. is not building housing fast enough to support America’s aging population, according to Housing America’s Older Adults 2023 report, recently released by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. From 2012 to 2022, the number of adults age 65 and up grew 34%, from 43 million to 58 million, according to the report.

By 2030, Americans age 65 and older will make up more than 20% of the population, according to Census Bureau projections. The need for affordable housing for this demographic will only grow. Meanwhile, homelessness is rising among older adults, with studies showing they compose half of the homeless population. By 2030, the number of homeless older adults is expected to triple.

Sometimes, those being priced out of a neighborhood have lived there for decades. Moving means leaving not only friends but also support structures. Take Allston-Brighton, which was once a very affordable neighborhood, says Karen Smith, president of Brighton Allston Elderly Homes Inc. With rising rent costs and the cost of care, it’s tough for older adults on a fixed income to stretch their budgets thousands of dollars more a year.

“It’s particularly difficult even for people who may have lived in Brighton, rented or owned here for many years,” says Ms. Smith. “If they want to stay here in the community, now that they’re older, it can be financially a very daunting proposition.”

Reuse projects are a “win-win-win”

In densely populated cities, the space to build affordable housing is often far from where it is needed most, says the Rev. Patrick Reidy, associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. However, faith communities and former churches are typically located in high-density areas that are accessible to the most people.

“These kinds of adaptive reuse projects for affordable housing are a win-win-win,” says Professor Reidy. “The local governments that are desperately in need of land for affordable housing are given access by faith communities seeking to live out their religious mission, and those who need affordable housing don’t always have to uproot their lives from their neighborhood.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

An architectural drawing shows plans for Hill Memorial Baptist Church in Boston on the right, and the affordable housing for older adults built on church land on the left.

Boston is a prime example of this trend. The transformation of former churches – like Hill Memorial, Blessed Sacrament in Jamaica Plain, and St. Augustine’s Convent in South Boston – illustrates how adaptive reuse can unite communities in finding solutions to the housing crisis. The locations of older church properties in New England are unique for other reasons. Many are quite literally older than zoning laws, which were first passed around the 1920s.

Blessed Sacrament Church sits at the heart of the historic Latin Quarter. It is set to become a sanctuary of affordable living, with 55 income-restricted units, along with a performance and community space.

The building sat empty for years. High restoration costs prompted its owners to contemplate selling it to developers on the open market to become high-end apartments. Former parishioners and residents opposed the sale and advocated for community input. In the end, after meetings attended by hundreds in the area, the selected proposal from developer Pennrose aimed to preserve the historic exterior of the church while renovating the interior to create affordable housing.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

St. Augustine's Convent in South Boston will be turned into affordable housing for older adults by South Boston Senior Development Corp. The apartments will be designated for very low-income seniors: those who have to live on less than $20,000 a year.

“As a kid my whole world was wrapped around Jamaica Pond and our dearly-loved Blessed Sacrament Church,” wrote Dorothy Malcolm, a former parishioner, in a statement from Friends of Blessed Sacrament. “When the church was ‘de-consecrated’ it was a wrench for many of us. ... And yet, it’s a fine blessing that it soon will be – not only preserved and restored – but kept within the realm and needs of the community that truly needs it.”

The South Boston Neighborhood Development Corp. is converting the former St. Augustine’s Convent into 35 affordable apartments for very low-income seniors, who have to live on less than $20,000 a year.

“We’re seeing an increased number of requests from seniors who are being displaced,” says Ms. Brown, the executive director. “Rental prices in South Boston have been high for a long time, but they’ve really escalated in the last few years.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The sanctuary of Hill Memorial Baptist Church in Boston will be turned into a community gathering space for older adults living in affordable housing on church grounds.

Their design will repurpose the existing five-story building, while preserving unique features such as the fifth-floor solarium. The Sisters of Notre Dame lived in the convent for 100 years before the building was sold in 1995. It then housed an after-school program. “The sisters who lived there would be pleased with how it’s being used today, as the building will benefit those most vulnerable and in need,” says Nancy Barthelemy, provincial archivist for the East West Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

Back at Hill Memorial, the developers plan to use the original church edifice as a common space for the new residents. Mr. Woods calls this a way to reconcile the past and the future. “This is our community,” he says, “and we’re still taking care of the folks here.”

Reuters

People shake hands at a mosque during riots in Liverpool, Britain, Aug. 2.

Street violence targeting immigrants and Muslim places of worship has not stopped across the United Kingdom since the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport on July 29. The violence has been stoked by a fiction. Hard-right influencers on social media falsely claimed the suspect in the killings, a British-born teenager of Rwandan descent, is a Muslim migrant. Yet the lie also has had a way of defeating itself in the face of those armed with the truth.

In Liverpool, when protesters showed up outside a mosque threatening violence, residents met them with singing, refusing to see fellow citizens as adversaries. The imam greeted the threatening protesters with food. Conversations ensued. Anger gave way to empathy and hugs

In one community after another, religious leaders have urged the faithful to stand their ground with firm meekness. “Avoid engaging with those who may be trying to provoke or incite violence,” the Hindu Council advised. “Refrain from actions that could escalate the situation,” added the Huddersfield Council of Mosques.

Similar scenes have unfolded elsewhere. “The support and friendship offered by people of other faiths and beliefs ... is what makes Britain so special,” Qari Asim, an imam in Leeds, told The Times of London, “and reminds us that only by coming together, can we defeat hatred and extremism.” Many of Britain’s top religious leaders issued an unequivocal statement: “Every British citizen has a right to be respected and a responsibility to respect others.

Much of Europe has seen an increase in bigotry toward migrants and Muslims, expressed in the rise of far-right political parties. In Britain, with all its diversity and successes in integration, people are showing that one solution resides in displays of civic equality and social harmony. Or, as Mr. Asim noted, “Love will prevail over hatred.” And over lies as well.