Nate Billings/The Oklahoman/AP

Teachers and supporters of increased education funding pack the first and second floors of the state Capitol during the second day of a walkout by Oklahoma teachers, April 3, in Oklahoma City.

A wave of teacher walkouts in Republican-run states, from West Virginia to Kentucky and Oklahoma, has cast a national spotlight on their tax-and-spend priorities amid growing public disquiet over funding for education and other public services.

Teachers have forcefully pressed their case for more money, at times going further than union leaders by refusing to settle for less from state lawmakers. In West Virginia, a nine-day walkout by 35,000 school employees led to a March 6 deal that raised salaries by 5 percent for all state workers and put a freeze on rising health-insurance premiums.

In Oklahoma, teachers brought their protest into the Capitol building Tuesday, closing schools across the state for a second day. The mass walkout was the catalyst for lawmakers to pass a major revenue bill – the first in 28 years – to raise teacher salaries that were among the nation’s lowest. Now teachers say they want an additional $75 million for education before they go back to work.

Arizona is watching closely: Thousands of teachers rallied last week in Phoenix to demand a pay increase and threaten similar actions. In Kentucky, schools were shut last Friday and again on Monday after a walkout prompted by last-minute changes to pensions for new teachers.

Nine years into an economic expansion in which the gains have been unevenly distributed, teachers are demanding a larger share of the pie. Their activism in red states is challenging the tenets of Republican governance in which austerity for public employees is bracketed with tax breaks for private business. 

For Republicans who took statehouses during the Great Recession, the drive to balance the books doubled as a political assault on public-sector unions. Gov. Scott Walker, who swept away collective-bargaining rights in Wisconsin, said in 2011 that, “we can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots.”

At the time, many private-sector workers were feeling the pinch, says Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis who studies wage setting and economic inequality. “The message was that the public sector had too many perks. That was a message that found a receptive audience for some time, but seems to be less effective now,” he says, noting that economically-secure voters are more likely to sympathize with lowly-paid teachers.

45 kids in a class; one set of books

When Matt Deen moved back to Oklahoma from Oregon in 2013 to teach science at an elementary school in Norman, he and his wife, also a teacher, took a collective $15,000 pay cut. That was bad enough, he says. But the lack of basic materials and the crowded classrooms – his 5th-grade history and social studies class has 45 students – have driven home the challenge of teaching in Oklahoma.

“I have never lived in a state where I had to buy paper and pens for my class because the funding wasn't there,” he says.

Mr. Deen and his wife rallied at Oklahoma’s statehouse on Monday and Tuesday, joining thousands of others. He’s not satisfied with last week’s pay hike and wants to see more money for schools after a decade of cutbacks. “I think they expected us to show up yesterday and pat them on the back and say thanks for the raise. I think a lot of the legislature still doesn’t get it,” he says.

Until last week, teachers in Oklahoma hadn’t seen a raise in a decade. Over that period, enrollment had grown by more than 50,000, while inflation-adjusted general funding fell 28 percent, the sharpest fall of any state’s K-12 budget, according to the Oklahoma Policy Institute.

SOURCE:

Economic Policy Institute study from 2016; National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

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Karen Norris and Jake Turcotte/Staff

“Most of us are in it for the kids, so we try to do the best we can with what were given. But you can only be pushed so far. We are going to stay here until they do something,” says Robin Davis, a high-school math teacher in Claremore who joined this week’s rallies at the capital.

She says her math class has only one set of textbooks. Students use their phones to take pictures. The school has held fund drives to buy copy paper; students who bring in copy paper are rewarded with an extra five minutes at lunch. “It is crazy that they don't put more value on a kid's education than this,” she says, referring to lawmakers.

For teachers in Kentucky, where the state’s entire school system was closed Monday due to walkouts, the battle is over pensions. Last Thursday, lawmakers passed a bill that would force new hires into a 401(k)-style program, though it didn’t raise the retirement age for teachers as some lawmakers had proposed.

“It’s a major philosophical and policy shift that will make it difficult to attract quality new teachers to Kentucky,” says Rep. Jim Wayne, a Democrat from Louisville. “This is a state that is undereducated, and we need strong public schools.”

It’s unclear how far teachers in Kentucky will go with their protests. One teacher in Frankfort on Monday held a handmade sign that read, “Don’t make us go all West Virginia on you.”

Kentucky’s public pension systems have more than $43 billion in unfunded liabilities. The bill passed last week – as yet unsigned by Gov. Matt Bevin – gives state and local governments six additional years to pay off the shortfall. That would rack up additional expenses of $5 billion over the next 35 years, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

A better solution would be to pass tax reform and allow the pension contributions approved in the 2017-18 state budget – which put a total addition of $1.16 billion over the two years into the state’s pension plans – to continue, according to the KCEP.

“We need tax reform that raises new revenue by cleaning up special interest tax breaks for the wealthy. Kentucky spends more on tax breaks than we collect in revenue…. The problem is funding and the solution is funding,” Anna Baumann, the center’s communications director, wrote in an email.

Marching from Tulsa

West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky are all right-to-work states that ban collective bargaining. So when teachers walk out it becomes tricky for opponents to say that sweetheart union contracts are draining state coffers, says Joseph Slater, a law professor at the University of Toledo. “With these workers, it’s hard to use that kind of rhetoric. They aren’t highly paid and don’t have collective bargaining rights,” he says.

Professor Slater says the political pendulum may be swinging away from the anti-union politicking that Wisconsin Governor Walker and other Republican leaders pushed hard in statehouses after the 2010 election. But, he adds, “strikes are a risky strategy. For every West Virginian strike that succeeds, there are examples of illegal strikes by public sector workers that are crushed.”

For teachers in Oklahoma, that threat hangs in the air. Their first day of protests on Monday received a positive reception from lawmakers who used the occasion to express their support for public education. But they are leery of committing to spending more after last week’s tax bill, says David Blatt, executive director of Oklahoma Policy Institute, a think tank that has advocated revenue increases to fund public services.

Instead, the Republican leadership is waiting to see how long teachers can last and whether the public starts to sour on their stoppage. “I think there are a lot of legislators who are counting on the effort to fizzle after a few days,” he says.

As superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools, Deborah Gist is determined not to let this opportunity pass to wring more money for her district, the state’s second-largest. She joined Monday’s protest and visited lawmakers to thank them for their vote and to press for more resources.

Ms. Gist, who moved to Tulsa in 2015 to run the school district, says the walkout was a last resort after other efforts – letters to lawmakers, a one-day rally last month – failed to get results. And if lawmakers don’t yield Tuesday, she will join a planned caravan of teachers from Tulsa walking more than 100 miles to Oklahoma City to keep the pressure on.

“We all want to serve our kids. The teachers don’t want to be out of school. This was the only option that was available,” she says. “Our state has continued to cut into education.”

Like many districts, Tulsa struggles to retain or attract teachers on salaries that are lower than in neighboring states like Texas. Instead, it has issued dozens of emergency certifications to hire teachers who lack qualifications. Across the state, the teacher shortage has led to 1,800 emergency certificates in the current school year.

'Younger teachers don't have a reason to stay'

That infuriates Melissa Carrell, an English teacher at McLain High School. She says the lowering of standards is failing her students and is an affront to her, as a holder of two education degrees who has $90,000 in student debt, 15 years after she began teaching.

She recently found out that an 11th grader in her special-education class couldn’t read. “This is what you get,” she says. “Students showing up in high school who are not ready for a high school diploma.”

Ms. Carrell stayed home Tuesday to look after her daughter while her ex-husband, a teacher, joined the protests. She plans to attend Wednesday and Thursday, arguing that last week’s pay rise that averaged $6,000 a year doesn’t go far enough. “We waited too long until we were in such a hole. It’s going to take a long time to get out of it.”

The last time that teachers in Oklahoma went on strike was in 1990. That year, the nation saw 44 stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers, compared with hundreds during the 1950s and 1960s. Last year, there were only seven, according to the US Bureau for Labor Statistics. 

In 1990, Oklahoma passed a $560 million education reform to raise salaries and cut class sizes, funded by higher taxes. That led to a state ballot initiative to bind the hands of lawmakers. Any revenue bill now requires three-fourths support from legislators, a threshold that has proven hard to reach in tackling perennial budget shortfalls.

Oklahoma’s 1990 strike also came on the heels of similar walkouts in West Virginia, in a foreshadowing of this year’s events. Then, as now, both states rely heavily on fossil-fuel extraction for jobs and revenues. But unlike in Oklahoma, where lawmakers defied industry lobbyists last week to raise taxes on oil and gas wells, the budget deal struck in Charleston didn’t involve new taxes. Instead, lawmakers cut back on proposed new spending to afford pay raises for state employees.

“I think it’s a compromise,” says Carrena Rouse, a high-school teacher in Madison, W.Va., and president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. She points out that the average teacher in West Virginia will see an extra $2,000 a year, still below what other states like Ohio and Pennsylvania pay, making it harder to retain the next generation of teachers.

“We can’t get parity [with contiguous states] by settling for just enough. The younger teachers don’t have a reason to stay,” she says.

At Ms. Rouse’s high school, students watch TED Talks when there isn’t a certified science teacher available. Of the school’s five math teachers, only two are certified. “It makes you want to butt your head against the wall,” she says. 

Its refusal to raise taxes makes West Virginia a model for other states to follow, says Jason Huffman, who runs the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a free-market campaign group founded by the Koch brothers. He praises lawmakers for standing firm against new revenue measures in the budget. “What lawmakers in West Virginia have done is create fiscally responsible blueprint” for an increase in teacher pay, he says.

He concedes that salaries are low in West Virginia, but says that spending on education as a share of residents’ incomes is higher than average. “Let’s not take an approach that is simply going to spend and not take into account what we already spend” on education, he says.

Sean O’Leary, a senior analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, a left-leaning think tank, says lawmakers had headroom in this year’s budget due to rising natural-gas prices. But they still have to find solutions for the state’s health insurance agency after years of rising premiums that teachers say make it unaffordable to cover their families. Should gas prices dip, the extra money found for teachers could become a scapegoat in a future budget crisis.

Still, he says the public knows well how tough it can be to make ends meet on a teacher’s salary in West Virginia. “It’s hard to stoke resentment when those people are as low paid as everyone else,” he says.

Staff writer Henry Gass contributed reporting to this story from San Antonio, Texas.

Ann Hermes/Staff

At left, Stachia Morrison holds her daughter, Eva, while praying with Andrew Webber during Sunday worship service at Shaw Temple A.M.E. Zion Church on Jan. 28 in Smyrna, Ga.

Here at Stoney’s Barbershop on Atlanta's historic Edgewood Ave., Zeus Daniel, a soldier turned master barber, is carefully trimming neck lines as a Jay-Z tune spins low on the speakers and fellow barbers use strop-sharpened razors to pattern crisp beards.

Customers wait in an area designed to feel just like owner Jimmie Stone’s basement – low, slow, and welcoming. It has been nearly 50 years to the day since the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Atlanta’s most famous native son, was gunned down in Memphis, leading to a summer of racial riot and unrest across the United States.

The hope of good jobs as salvation is today as promising – and as elusive – as in 1968, when the post-assassination Kerner Report found institutional disparities at work in keeping African-Americans poor, underemployed, and disillusioned.

Before his assassination on April 4, 1968, King was in the process of launching the Poor People’s Campaign – a fight for economic equality that he planned to take to the White House.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Zeus Daniel works as a master barber at Stoney's Barbershop on Jan. 27 in Atlanta. The entrepreneur says he doesn't like the president's remarks on race, but admires him as a businessman. 'If you are only looking into the negative you are going to stay still and that is where you are going to be at,' Mr. Daniel says.

“We fought here and all over from Selma right through the black belt of Alabama to get the right to vote. Now we are going to get the right to have three square meals a day. Now we are going to get the right to have a decent house to live in,” he said in a March 20 speech in Eutaw, Ala. “Now we are fighting for the right to get proper medical care. Now we are fighting for the right to have enough money to have our physical-medical examination every year. Now we are fighting for the right to be able to see our dentist every year. Now we are fighting for the right to get the basic necessities of life.”

An update of the report published in March found almost no significant gains in wealth or opportunity for black Americans compared with whites, save for educational attainment.

And a sweeping study of 20 million Americans now in their 30s, led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard University and the Census Bureau, found that black boys, even those raised in wealthy households, still go on to earn less money than white boys do, and are more likely to become poor as adult men. The Equality of Opportunity Project’s authors say the study, which shows that African-American boys do worse in 99 percent of America’s neighborhoods, shows the effect of racism, not class, in driving inequality in America.

Fifty years after King’s death, interviews with African-Americans in his hometown reveal that President Trump's unexpected 2016 victory on a wave of economic and racial discontent has left many feeling deflated and demoralized, stressed and scared – worried that equality is a promise forever over the next hill.

“There is an extreme amount of fear for lots of people of color, as well as heightened questions of worth and humanity,” says the Rev. Dominique Robinson, shortly after a fiery and joyous sermon at Shaw Temple, a historic black church in Smyrna, Ga.

At the same time, black Americans also exhibit a determination that traces all the way back to the Sea Islands, where the first African slaves were brought, which to this day embody the art of black survival and a communal resolve that has already survived centuries of white supremacist ideology.

For Trump, “it hasn't been a [racial] whistle but a howl,” says Carol Anderson, author of “White Rage.” In her view, the president has nationalized Nixon’s “Southern strategy” of exploiting ethnic or racial divisions by using code words and “cast the narrative that racism was over,” while implying “that there was something culturally pathological about black people.”

“This trolling of blackness, this is a whistle to his constituency that he is about putting black folks in their place – that's what this is,” she says.

That’s why across the diaspora, black reaction to Trump “comes out of these incredible familial and friendship networks [in the black community] that help you understand America and help you understand how you succeed in a place that enslaved your ancestors,” says Professor Anderson, who studies the intersection of race and policy at Emory University in Atlanta. “You cannot emerge from that without resolve. And we will come out of this with resolve.”

A minority of black Americans, like Mr. Daniel, say they are looking beyond the president’s radical statements on race and are focused on taking care of business.

Having just moved here from California, Daniel knows that Atlanta remains a bright spot for black America, where deep economic inequalities have also made way for a blossoming black middle class and a powerful black political class that leads a global powerhouse city. As it always has, the black barbershop holds a unique place in the social fabric of the city.

For his part, Trump described Atlanta as “horrible” and “crime-infested” in a spat with Rep. John Lewis (D) of Georgia, a Freedom Rider who led the march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights – and suffered a fractured skull during a police attack. The war of words with the civil rights icon was one of numerous clashes between the president and notable black Americans, from war widows to lawmakers.

But such Trumpian outbursts, Daniel says, are just a play for a racial stalemate that benefits only the political parties.

What really matters, he argues, is Trump’s focus on the economy, including tax cuts and rolling back regulations that help both large and small businesspeople. Such moves can uniquely help minority entrepreneurs. The Kauffman Foundation found in 2015 that 40 percent of entrepreneurial enterprises were minority-owned, compared with only 23 percent two decades earlier.

Daniel has also started a small company, PEACE, aimed at selling inspiring merchandise to Millennials.

“From [Trump's] radical speeches, that's just his opinion,” he says. “But business-wise he is a great man, and he allows you to be better for your own self. If you are only looking into the negative you are going to stay still and that is where you are going to be at. But [Trump] gave me motivation to do for myself. He lets you know you can change your aspect around.”

By screwing up their eyes at his cheerleading, Daniel’s barbershop friends suggest the young entrepreneur may be too willing to let Trump off the hook for presidential behavior that the Kerner follow-up report labels “racist” – a view held by 57 percent of Americans, according to an Associated Press poll.

But when it comes to the role of economics over politics in building racial equality in the US, Daniel may have a point. The last sustained era of economic progress for black Americans was the late-1990s economic boom, when unemployment hit rock bottom. “The most important policy [to reduce racial inequality] is to maintain a very tight economy,” writes Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winning economist at Columbia University, who wrote the Kerner Report update. “The benefits of this and the growth that it brings about far outweigh any deficits that might be experienced to support it or any inflation that might be engendered.”

The report cites a government shift from fighting a war on poverty in the 1960s to the war on drugs in the 1980s as inflaming racial rancor and braking progress.

In that vein, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has re-focused attention on mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and other policies, such as civil forfeiture for people even suspected of crimes, that many critics say is a throwback to policies that fell hardest on black males, and which have in the past reverberated hardest through the black community.

Stephon Clark was just buried last week in Sacramento, Calif., and US police continue to kill black men at higher rates than whites. But the number of unarmed black men killed has dropped in the wake of increasingly ubiquitous body cams and justice reforms initiated by the Obama Department of Justice. Those gains are now in flux, some policing experts say, as the Trump administration reels back oversight of police departments.

“What the election has brought to bear is how the attorney general has all these ... reaches and influences that can then shape the conversation,” says Robert Patterson, chair of Georgetown University’s Department of African American Studies, in Washington. “It is important to make visible and clear how these things that people take for granted as being detached from government are very much tied to the government. And it is invisibility that makes this power even stronger.”

There is “an argument that people who voted for Trump divorced his economic message from his xenophobia,” says Patterson. “They actually did not divorce it from that. They made a couple of different choices that are subtle, but that in essence reflect how racism and economics are constituted by each other.”

But for some economists, that frustration with government prescriptions may itself be shortsighted. After all, they argue, the free market offers black Americans the potential for the greatest gains – particularly as it forces employers to take a fresh look at marginalized workers and, in the process, confront and perhaps overcome stereotypes.

Shaw Temple straddles two worlds.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Rev. Eldren Morrison of Shaw Temple A.M.E. Zion Church makes announcements during Sunday worship service on Jan. 28 in Smyrna, Ga. After the service, Mr. Morrison says the Trump era has sparked emotions ranging from despair to determination in his flock. At the same time, he notes, he has never seen his congregation so galvanized. 'I don’t see outrage [in the black community], I see unrest,' says Morrison.

A beacon of faith and revival in suburban Smyrna, the church began in Atlanta’s historic black downtown. Today, half of the congregation is drawn from poorer parts of urban Atlanta, the other part from wealthier suburbs of Cobb County.

On a rainy Sunday morning, Shaw’s congregation is swaying as the youth chorus sings a beat-driven hymn. In the midst of it, the Rev. Eldren Morrison rises and claps. The service ends with a guest preacher exhorting financial advice to the flock, including: “Thou shalt not touch your IRA!”

After the service, Mr. Morrison says the Trump era has sparked emotions ranging from despair to determination in his flock.

For some, it is a moment of frustration: an uptick in both coded and not-so-coded words, a sense of racism unleashed and Jim Crow attitudes reborn. Over the past year, African-Americans say they have endured an uncommon barrage on their citizenship – not only an outright rejection of the first black president, but torch-bearing for ideas that in some ways reject black identity, history, and citizenship.

“I don’t see outrage [in the black community], I see unrest,” says Morrison. “We hear what you are saying, but we hear what you are saying. We see you. The people know the truth.”

At the same time, he notes, he has never seen his congregation so galvanized. His aide-de-camp, Andrew Weber, is pondering a run for state office after running campaigns in New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.

He has watched as Atlanta and New Orleans rise, and as black women, especially, have taken on a leadership mantle, now running 17 US cities.

Only a single-digit percentage of black voters supported Trump, but they nevertheless failed to come out for Hillary Clinton in 2016 as they did for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In that way, black voters may have proven as instrumental in the 107,000 vote swing that put Trump in the White House as white Obama voters who flipped to Trump in the Midwest.

Since then, black voters – especially black women – have made the difference in swinging hotly contested elections in Virginia and Alabama, including forming the decisive voting bloc that elected Doug Jones over Roy Moore for the Senate.

“It is almost like a scale where you weigh your priorities: You have economics here and you have morals and values there,” says the Rev. Kristen Berry. “And some African-Americans, honestly, are probably leaning more toward the economic. Myself, I look more so at the overall message of the leader. Yes, we pray that our paychecks will increase and that taxes will be good to us when we file. But most of us look at the overall character of the leader: Does this person really have America’s best interests at heart?”

A King quote is posted on a wall, over her shoulder: “Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.”

In bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving Boston on Thursday evening, full-time Lyft driver Fabio says he timed the drive perfectly.

“Traffic is awesome,” says Fabio, who preferred to not give his last name, motioning to the gridlock around him in the Ted Williams Tunnel. “Rush hour is great.”

That sentiment stands in sharp contrast to promises made by founders of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. Studies suggest these companies may actually be putting more vehicles on the road by shifting riders away from less energy-intensive forms of transportation – even enticing them to make trips they otherwise wouldn’t have made at all.

To truly become part of the solution, observers say, these companies need to revamp their business models to function within a broader transportation system. Currently, Fabio and his fellow drivers get paid by the minute and the mile, meaning they have a financial incentive to be on the road as much as possible.

Ride-hailing travel “is not a sustainable way to grow the city,” says Bruce Schaller, a former senior official in the New York City Department of Transportation who has authored several reports on the impact of app-based ride hailing. “But there are ways [companies like Lyft and Uber] can add to mobility and not have so many negative effects.”

For their part, Lyft and Uber envision ride-hailing apps as a catalyst for a future with fewer cars on the road. Both companies say one-person car trips dominated US travel before ride-hailing. By working with cities to integrate ride-hailing with public transportation networks and encouraging carpooling, they aim to ultimately reduce vehicle miles traveled.

“The goal should be to maximize movement of people while minimizing movement of cars,” says Adam Gromis, Uber’s global lead on sustainability and environmental impact. “That's what the whole conversation should be about for everybody.”

David Goldman/AP

A sign directs Lyft and Uber riders to a designated pickup location at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2018. Ride-hailing companies are increasingly looking to partner with existing transit options to create a more integrated transportation system.

The myth and the reality

If a taxi is only one smartphone click away, argue Uber and Lyft, then travelers will be less inclined to own a car, and therefore spend less time driving. Less driving means less traffic and less greenhouse gases like CO2 in the atmosphere. 

But there is “little difference” in vehicle ownership between ride-hailing users and the rest of the United States, says Regina Clewlow, a former research scientist at the University of California-Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, in an October report.

And in a more important tell for traffic and pollution, at least 50 percent of the trips Dr. Clewlow analyzed either would not have been taken without ride-hailing or would have been made by walking, biking, or taking public transit.

“People are traveling [in cars] more – there is induced demand,” says Clewlow. “If you make things cheaper and easier, there's more of it.”

Densely populated cities such as Boston, New York, and Los Angeles should be investing in other forms of vehicle management, say transportation planners like Clewlow and Mr. Schaller. It will take innovative concepts such as congestion pricing, high-occupancy carpools, and improved public transportation that can work in concert with ride-hailing apps.

Should cities add their own surge pricing?

In New York, since 2013, ride-hailing apps have added 976 million miles of new vehicle travel, according to Schaller’s most recent analysis. That’s the equivalent of 317,000 cars driving from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles. And more than one third of those additional miles were driven in 2016 and 2017. 

To alleviate congestion in Manhattan, Schaller, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and others including Uber, favor a congestion pricing system that would charge vehicles to drive through congested areas during peak travel times, similar to schemes used in some European cities.

“There is a lot to learn from London and Stockholm, ranging from gaining public acceptance to the technology,” says Schaller. “They continue to be good examples to draw from.”

Stockholm has seen a 20 percent decrease in traffic through its city center and a 5 to 15 percent reduction in the city’s air pollution since levying a congestion tax in 2007. In London, road traffic decreased by 10 percent between 2000 and 2015 and by 21 percent in Central London specifically, despite the fact that its population continues to grow.

In New York, Governor Cuomo has pushed for a $11.52 surcharge for drivers using ride-hailing apps in a high-traffic zone in Midtown. He was unable to garner enough support in the legislature for inclusion of that measure in the state budget, which passed on Friday. But the new budget does include a $2.75 surcharge for every app-facilitated ride south of 96th Street, which Cuomo and his colleagues hailed as a step in the right direction.

What about pooling options?

America’s first carpooling system can be traced back to the early 1900s, when jitneys – private drivers looking to make extra money – started popping up in Los Angeles.

L.A. has since become the most congested city in the world, and Los Angelinos are once again seeking out carpools for hire, facilitated by UberPool and Lyft Line, newer features offered by the popular apps.

In its first eight months in Los Angeles, UberPool prevented 1.4 thousand metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, according to Uber’s Mr. Kalanick. That’s equivalent to taking nearly 450 cars off the road.

But critics say that app-directed carpools send drivers in unnecessary circles and entice riders to forgo mass transit in favor of inexpensive door-to-door service.

“[T]heir drivers roam all the time, much like taxis, and this adds to the road traffic,” says Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

To truly see benefits from UberPool and Lyft Line, the companies would need to go a step further with larger-scale pooling, Professor Rus and her colleagues suggest. One study found that 3,000 four-passenger cars could fill 98 percent of demand currently being filled by 13,000 New York City taxis. 

Such a system would require optimizing the size and quantity of cars moving through the city at various points of the day, says Rus. “It requires a different approach to fleet management.”

Los Angeles is already thinking along these lines. In October, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority asked the private sector to submit partnership proposals for a “MicroTransit Pilot Project”: a high-density carpool and public transportation hybrid.

Better public transit?

Like in L.A., traffic is a part of Boston’s history: street congestion in the late 1800s prompted Boston to build the country’s first subway system.

But 21st century commuters say traffic is only getting worse. Many of Boston’s traffic woes are fueled by a mixture of population growth, frustration with an aging public transit system, and the introduction of inexpensive cars for hire. A February study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council found that 15 percent of ride-hailing trips add cars to Boston’s roadways during morning and afternoon rush hours.

As part of an ongoing effort to alleviate some of the traffic pressures on the city and to improve public transit options, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh on Tuesday allocated an additional $5 million to support capital investments included in the city's nascent Go Boston 2030 plan to reenvision Boston’s public transportation system. Over the next decade, the city hopes to reduce commute times by 10 percent and transportation’s greenhouse gas emissions by half of 2005 levels.

Reducing travel in single-occupancy vehicles is a core component of this plan, through initiatives such as pop-up carpools from Boston suburbs, dedicated bus lanes, and ride-hailing optimization for the “last mile connections” between homes, jobs, and public transportation.

For now, drivers like Fabio are reaping the benefits of an aging and often unreliable public transit system. Before his phone signals the end of the current trip, another one queues up.

“Boston is a good city to do this in,” he says. “It’s nonstop.”

An icy rain whips through Benoît Gille’s wild gray hair as he rounds up his herd of 400 sheep with his wife, Ghislaine. Mud clinging to their boots, the couple pour hay into several troughs in fields tucked among the rolling green hills of the Vosges region in eastern France.

It’s a picturesque, peaceful country scene – for now. But the threat of a wolf attack is always looming. Despite protective fencing and seven guard dogs, the Gilles have lost more than 60 sheep to wolf attacks in the last year, causing intense emotional and financial strain that has almost broken them.

“When it was really bad a few months ago, there was constant stress that we’d go to the herd and find wounded or dead animals,” says Mr. Gille. The sheep weren’t eating and the pregnant females were losing their lambs due to the stress of seeing other sheep attacked. One day, he says, he went home for lunch and when he came back to the herd, there had been another wolf attack. So the couple started sleeping with the sheep at night in the middle of winter.

“It was even worse when we were further afield because if we brought the herd home, there would be no food for them, but if we stayed, we risked more attacks,” says Ms. Gille. “We were completely overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do.”

The restoration and growth of France’s wolf population, in large part due to the 1979 Convention of Bern which protects them, has been a conservation success story. But as the number of wolves increase in France, so too have attacks on livestock – primarily sheep – leaving farmers little recourse when faced with immediate attacks. The government responded in late February with a strategic plan to handle the return of the wolves, but their attempt at a solution has inevitably pitted animal rights groups against France’s farming community.

While those fighting for animal protections say the government’s plan doesn’t allow for a peaceful coexistence between farmers and wolves, farmers say the law doesn’t have their interests at heart. They see the government as ultimately choosing the wolves over their livelihood – a livelihood that threatens to disappear if a solution cannot be found.

“The wolf situation reflects the overall anger of the rural population,” says Jean-Christophe Bureau, a professor of economic and agricultural policy at AgroParis Tech. “For the last ten years, farmers feel that the government is putting the interests of the wolves before theirs.”

Wolves are back

The gray wolf has long held a prominent role in the French imagination and remains a recurring figure in French children’s fables. Despite how few attacks were committed against humans, France began a systematic extermination of the gray wolf starting in the Middle Ages, and a law in 1882 called for their total obliteration. By 1940, wolves had completely disappeared from French territory. Just a small population in Spain and Italy prevented their total disappearance from Europe.

Wolves gradually made their return to France in 1992 when they passed naturally through the Italian Alps. In the last five years, the number of wolves in France has exploded, with 360 wolf sightings reported in France in 2017 and nearly 300 the previous year. While the area surrounding the Alps has seen the highest numbers, wolves have been spotted in all corners of the country and increasingly found in more densely populated zones.

“There was a wolf attack in a town near us, 50 meters from the local church,” says Marc Baudrey, a sheep farmer from the town of Fresse-sur-Moselle – two hours from the Gilles’ – who nearly lost his own farm in 2015 after a series of wolf attacks. “A majority of the attacks are when sheep are protected by humans, day or night. Wolves are not afraid of humans, they’re not afraid of anything.”

In addition to tending to his 200 sheep with his wife, Ludivyne, Mr. Baudrey heads up a special division on livestock attacks with the national farmer’s union Confédération Paysanne, crossing the nation to speak to other farmers and lawmakers about how to deal with the wolves. He’s stopped by Dombrot-le-Sec to speak to the Gilles about their situation and provide support, before heading to Paris to speak out about a government plan that he says doesn’t adequately protect farmers.

Colette Davidson

Marc and Ludivyne Baudrey tend to their flock of sheep on their farm in Fresse-sur-Moselle, France, as Ludivyne holds a days-old lamb.

The current dossier allows a maximum of 40 wolves to be killed per year. The controlled kills can only take place between September and December, and farmers must notify the local government before doing so. If they can prove the attacks were indeed committed by a wolf and that they had protective measures in place beforehand – human protection, guard dogs, or electric fencing – then they can qualify for financial compensation for their loss.

But farmers say that local government agents often don’t believe it when they say an attack was committed by a wolf, and when they do, the reimbursements don’t go far enough. Plus, they say, allowing just 40 kills is unrealistic when more than 10,000 sheep were killed by wolves in 2016.

“Each of our sheep cost about 400 euros [$490],” says Benoît, who with Ghislaine raises a type of sheep from Shropshire, England, that offers a refined, lean meat. “The state reimbursed us between 26 and 110 euros [between $32 and $135] for each sheep that was killed by a wolf. So we probably lost about 24,000 euros [$25,000] last year for a total reimbursement of about 1,850 euros [$2,300].”

The sheep farming industry is heavily subsidized in France. For small farms in the Alps, subsidies can rise to 50,000 euros ($61,000) compared to an income of just 20,000 euros ($25,000). Despite the small amount of revenue it brings to the economy and its heavy reliance on government aid, France is still willing to fight for its conservation.

“There are lots of positive externalities to the presence of sheep in France,” says Professor Bureau. “The sheep maintain the countryside by eating the grass, they prevent avalanches and promote tourism to areas that might not get it otherwise.”

The wolf-farmer balance

But some say sheep farmers' priorities have shifted as wolf attacks have increased, throwing into question how much aid they should get.

“Obviously we need to support these farmers financially, whether it’s helping them build fencing or buy guard dogs. But from many we just hear that they want to kill, kill, kill,” says Jean-David Abel, vice president of environmental protection agency France Nature Environnement (FNE). “So some are asking, why should we give them the right to kill wolves if all they want is money?”

Meanwhile, much of the local government is leaning in favor of conservationists, with 75 percent of deputies from President Emmanuel Macron’s party in mountainous zones voting in favor of wolf protection while just 25 percent side with farmers.

France’s farmers have turned to the situation in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park as a reference, which has pitted wolf hunters, conservationists, and farmers against each other. Since the gray wolf was reintroduced in 1995, the number of wolves there has increased to 108 in 2016. But unlike in France, wolves were taken off Wyoming’s endangered species list in April 2017, allowing for hunters to have free rein in certain zones.

The wolf issue also comes against the backdrop of a list of grievances from France’s agricultural industry. Ahead of February’s Salon d’Agriculture, an annual fair to show off France’s farming culture, farmers across the country blockaded roads in protest of a bill that would reduce the number of those who qualify to receive European subsidies. In addition, a transatlantic treaty between France and Latin America could increase import prices of meat and, as farmers see it, threaten the country’s meat industry.

“This is more than just about wolves. The sector is anxious about the future,” says Bureau. “In addition, you have public services going down in many rural areas with a lack of schools, doctor’s offices, post offices. There’s a growing anger among the population.”

'We want to live with the wolves'

Out of the crushing cold, Benoît and Ghislaine head back to their farmhouse, where a wood stove warms the mud on their boots to a hardened crust as their dungarees hang to dry after another unforgiving day in the elements. According to government protocol, they’ve trained enough guard dogs and installed electric fencing around their land in hopes it will keep wolves at bay. But at what cost?

“All this talk about fencing is well and good but we have to think about what kind of image we are creating for our farms,” says Ghislaine. “Do we want to continue having free, open spaces or everyone with their own cage, roped in by wire?”

Baudrey, who assures the couple that he’ll bring up their case at the next union meeting, says there are grave consequences if the wolf situation isn’t figured out soon.

“The result is that farmers are simply going to leave this region,” says Baudrey. “The heritage of this area will diminish and future generations will suffer if no one is here to maintain the land.”

The Gilles insist they just want to find some peace and tranquility in their daily lives and have no intention of killing wolves. They don’t even own a gun.

“We are not hunters,” says Benoît. “We don’t want to kill the wolves, we want to live with them. But the current situation is untenable. Where do we go from here?”

Adam Rose/ABC/AP

Roseanne Barr and John Goodman appear in a scene from the reboot of "Roseanne." The Nielsen company said viewership for the show's premiere shot up to 25 million people when you count people who watched the three days after last Tuesday's premiere. Never before has a show gained that many viewers via time shifting within three days.

For Thorin Engeseth, the hit comedy series “Roseanne” always comes with a rush of memories.

The show takes him back to the family home in Grand Rapids, Mich., where his mother – “an outspoken and opinionated woman” – had kept a happy household despite working two jobs to clothe and feed him and his two sisters. “Money was tight at home, but … we had presents under the tree every Christmas,” Mr. Engeseth writes in an email from Germany, where he now lives with his wife. “When I watched ‘Roseanne,’ I saw that.”

On March 27, ABC revived the series, which catches up 21 years later with the blue-collar Conner family in fictional Lanford, Ill. Engeseth asked a friend in the US to set up a computer facing the television so he could see the first episode via Skype. He loved what he saw: a show that spoke to a new age, but reintroduced beloved characters who still captured the wit and cheer of the middle America he treasures.

“Sitcoms these days focus on wealthy families on the coasts,” he writes. “[The new] ‘Roseanne’ is a little reminder that the Midwest still has its own stories.”  

There are, it turns out, plenty of Thorin Engeseth’s, at least here in the US. More than 18 million people tuned in to the revival premiere, with another 6.6 million catching the telecast over the next three days. By Monday – just two episodes in – ABC had renewed the show for a second (or 11th) season.

Nostalgia played no small part in the numbers, pundits say. Like Engeseth, fans of the original “Roseanne” were drawn to the new show because they loved the old one. They were eager to stir up the memories it evoked and curious to see how the Conners had fared.

But what’s kept viewers and critics talking about the show more than a week after it aired is its bid to represent both modern politics and blue-collar America in a way no sitcom has done in years, much less post-2016. The first episode saw the Conners taking on health care, unemployment, gender fluidity, and surrogacy through characters whose politics and opinions often clashed. The titular Roseanne – played by real-life Donald Trump supporter Roseanne Barr – knocks heads with her Hillary Clinton-loving, pink hat-wearing sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), in a series of exchanges familiar to any American who’s lived through the past two years.

The plethora of headlines that followed suggests that, like it or not – and many do not – there may be a real audience for a program that portrays white, working-class Trump supporters as other than objects of fear, hatred, or ridicule.

“There are very few TV shows anymore that deal with blue-collar families. In a sense we haven’t had that since ‘Roseanne’ went off the air,” says Steven Ross, a history professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in Hollywood depictions of labor and politics. Less high-profile shows have staked out some ground for the heartland. There's "The Middle," about a middle-class family in Indiana, that's now in its ninth and final season. “The Drew Carey Show,” set in Cleveland, ran from 1995 to 2004. But the "Roseanne" revival, Professor Ross says, taps into affection for cherished shows to punctuate the return to the screen of the working-class American household – millions of whom, in 2018, live in Trump country and voted for the president. “I think that’s a big deal, period,” he says.

Cultural bellwether

“ ‘Roseanne’ is ringing cultural bells,” not least for viewers who’ve kept their conservative opinions in the closet, writes pollster and former Clinton adviser Mark Penn in an op-ed for The Hill. And it reminds citified, liberal Hollywood of audiences who live between the coasts and appreciate programming that speaks their truths. “The message is: We’re conscious enough of our differences to shut you down when you set yourselves against us (the Oscars) but we are ready to provide enthusiastic support for your efforts if you treat us with respect,” notes John Podhoretz in the New York Post.

But the revival touched a nerve for more than just conservative viewers and Trump supporters.

Engeseth, for instance, disagrees with Ms. Barr’s politics and disapproves of her tweeting conspiracy theories that put President Trump in a good light. Yet he hesitates to begrudge the actor her right to voice her opinions, both on and off the show. “I think that, though I oppose every move made by President Trump, there is a place for conservative politics alongside my own liberal ideals,” Engeseth writes. “There is value in showing two sides of a very important political divide that many viewers face.”

Stacy Carroll, who lives with her husband in Sandwich, Ill., is vehemently anti-Trump and says she will stop watching “Roseanne” should it ever become a mouthpiece for the president. She has also spent the past six years unemployed. Once a medical technologist, she developed post-traumatic stress disorder, disqualifying her from working in most industries. “No one will hire a 50+ year old with a college degree and no manual labor experience to do manual labor,” she writes in an email. Her husband was recently hired as a maintenance worker for a pool company and sometimes does construction. Money was so tight the couple had to move in with her mother, who died in January.

In the original “Roseanne,” Ms. Carroll saw a funny show set in a familiar locale, and a loving, if sometimes crude, family she wished was her own. In the revival, she sees her frustrations and anger beamed back at her, but in a way that still makes her laugh.

“The Conners do reflect my reality,” Carroll writes. “Darlene has gotten higher education, failed miserably, has not done as well as her parents and had to move back in with them (just like me). They live paycheck to paycheck like us. It's really nice to see on TV, but done with humor.”

“It’s not that everybody wants to see every aspect of their lives on TV,” says Patricia Phalen, associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. “But ‘Roseanne’ in particular taps into the working-class person who laughs at those jokes because it’s something they would say.”

Reserving judgment

Among the critiques, op-eds, and essays that have materialized about the revival are those that contend that it normalizes or sanitizes Mr. Trump’s divisive brand of politics (though some on the right have also grumbled that the show falsely recasts Trump voters as “social leftists”). They argue that the show misses crucial points about race and poverty, and supports the myth that blue-collar Americans are always white. That Trump himself called Barr to congratulate her on the success of the premiere was yet another turn-off.

Plenty of viewers say they are actively avoiding the program for all those reasons. Some who have tuned in – like retired high school English teacher Rhonda Powell – say they have mixed feelings, but will hold off deciding until more episodes have aired.

“It’s hard to see ‘Roseanne’ knowing what she’s said and done,” says Ms. Powell, who lives in Atlanta. “But I never discuss anything I haven’t read or watched. That comes from being an English teacher: Don’t condemn a book if you haven’t read it.”

For other viewers, a good show is a good show. “It’s the characters, and the comedy aspect of it,” says Andrea Smith, a registered nurse and native Midwesterner who lives in northwest Indiana with her partner and stepson. “I’ve always loved ‘Roseanne.’ And I like that it shows that you can disagree and all of that, but we’re family, and we can sit down and have a meal.”

“Every show has the potential to present a message and to give yet one more community a voice,” Engeseth points out. “ ‘Roseanne’ happened to give a voice to my own part of the country, and I appreciated that.

“And honestly, I’ll watch anything that has John Goodman.”

REUTERS

Costa Rica's president-elect Carlos Alvarado Quesada poses for a selfie with a local resident outside his house in San Jose, Costa Rica, April 2.

In a region long known for populism and polarization, 2018 will be a critical year for Latin America. By the end of the year, 2 out of 3 citizens will have voted for a president. Its people, who spend more internet time on social media than those in any other region, feel more empowered than ever. And a regionwide corruption scandal has created strong demands for transparency and accountability.

The year’s first election, held in Costa Rica last Sunday, shows what is possible. Latin America’s oldest and most stable democracy held a clean vote with the kind of campaigning that, while hard fought, revealed a wide tolerance for differing views. Carlos Alvarado Quesada, a former government minister and a novelist who promises inclusive government, won handily against a one-issue social conservative, evangelical preacher Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz.

The dark side of social media – false reports and slander – were more evident than ever during the campaign, but Costa Ricans preferred to vote based on qualities of leadership and big issues such as government debt and inequality. The winner’s running mate, Epsy Campbell Barr, will be the first black female vice president in the Americas.

“We must not forget that differences in opinion are part of a plural society,” wrote La Nacion newspaper columnist Juan Carlos Hidalgo after the vote. “Instead of demonizing divergence, one must know how to tolerate it.”

Democracy may be under siege worldwide but recent elections in Latin America, which came out of a period of military dictatorship only three decades ago, show there may be no turning back. On April 13, leaders of the Western Hemisphere will gather for a summit in Peru under the theme “Democratic Governance against Corruption.” In a show of democratic solidarity, Venezuela’s president has been disinvited from the summit because of his country’s authoritarianism.

Through the region’s decades of political upheavals, Costa Rica has reminded other Latin Americans of what democracy is all about. When the people rule, rather than demagogues and military generals, a country can enjoy freedom and prosperity.