J. Scott Applewhite/AP

People gather at the Supreme Court awaiting a decision in an Illinois union dues case, Janus vs. AFSCME, in Washington on June 25, 2018. The outcome of that case and several others were not announced Monday as the court's term comes to a close.

A US Supreme Court ruling Wednesday has dealt a sharp blow to public-sector labor unions at a time when organized labor is struggling to reverse decades of decline in membership. 

The decision, which affirmed broad free-speech rights for workers, appears certain to undercut the clout of unions representing government employees that have emerged as a bastion of labor activism. It also could inspire follow-on actions by supporters and foes of organized labor in both the public and private sector.

The plaintiff, Mark Janus, who works for Illinois's state government, argued that being called on to pay unions' fees violated his free-speech rights. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court’s conservative majority agreed that the activities of a public-sector union – even collective bargaining over pay and benefits – are inherently a form of political speech.

This upends a long-standing norm of “fair-share” fees: Workers should help cover the costs of union bargaining that determines their compensation, even if they chose not to join the union. Without such a system, argue labor activists, some “free riders” reap the benefits of unionization without sharing the costs. Now, in the public sector, that system of fee collection has been overturned.

The court ruling comes at a time when workplace disruption caused by automation and globalization has amplified calls for a better deal for workers in the spirit of the 1930s New Deal. Some policy experts point to a decline in labor-union power as an explanation, in part, for stagnant or slow-growing wages in contrast to an ever higher share of the nation's income going to capital. 

“That's an enormous problem,” says Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist who studies inequality at the University of California, San Diego. “I very much would like to see unions get stronger and have more influence particularly when it comes to wages.”

But he says the recent trends don’t make him optimistic about any such rebound. 

The court's ruling had been widely expected, given its ideological makeup. And that may yet be grounds for hope in labor-union circles. “Don’t mourn, organize,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said on Twitter.

“Two years ago, I would have said a big blow, because I don't think the labor movement was ready for it,” says Joseph McCartin, a labor expert and professor of history at Georgetown University.

A changed landscape

The labor movement has been broadening its work beyond its own ranks, joining efforts such as the “Fight for $15” to lobby for changes to state and local minimum wages. The AFL-CIO recently began rolling out an advertising campaign, “Freedom to Join,” to promote the advantages of union membership. 

To some degree, questions over the fair treatment of workers have shifted to become a matter of legislation rather than union bargaining. The push for higher minimum wages and parental-leave laws in many states are examples of this.

But for most workers, such measures don’t substitute for the kind of leverage that unions provide as a counterweight to the wage-setting power of employers, Mr. Kenworthy says.

“There's no reason to think unions can't adjust” to the changed landscape, says Terry Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative legal-rights group in Washington that supported the Janus petition and others like it. “I would not take it as a foregone conclusion that all [public] unions are going to suffer a precipitous drop in revenue. Unions are going to have to sell themselves to their members.”

Polling suggests that the popularity of labor unions as an institution is on an upswing: Sixty-one percent of Americans said they approve of labor unions in a Gallup poll last year, up from a low of 48 percent in 2009 and on par with polling in the post-New Deal era. 

Mr. Pell says public-sector unions currently enjoy bargaining power that their private-sector counterparts do not. “Public-sector unions lobby the taxpayers in ways that are not available to private-sector unions,” he says.

Nationwide, roughly a third of public-sector workers are unionized vs. 6.5 percent of workers in the private sector, making them close to half of the nearly 15 million workers who are unionized.

The Janus ruling is likely to whittle away at those numbers, as teachers, police officers, and administrators opt not to pay into union coffers.

Over a three- to five-year period, public-sector unions could lose 4 to 8 percent of their members, estimates Robert Bruno, director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Nationally, that could add up to 730,000 fewer members. “Clearly, there would be a pretty significant financial hit,” he says.

Take Illinois, a Democratic-run state with strong unions where Mr. Janus works. A drop in membership of that size would shrink revenues by $20 million to $25 million, less money for bargaining, organizing, and political activity.

Moreover, a growing number of Republican-run states have passed “right to work” laws, which similarly allow private-sector workers to avoid union fees if they don’t join a union. Now only 22 states, mostly in the Northeast and Pacific region, aren’t in the “right to work” camp.

Defining the 'common good'

Union leaders have been recasting their message to retain loyalty and try to grow their ranks. One intriguing development is a shift towards “bargaining for the common good.”

Rather than pushing strictly for more money during contract talks, some union locals are working with community groups to bring up public issues at the bargaining table. A 2012 Chicago teachers' strike, which blunted the mayor’s school reform plan, has inspired a series of contracts in other cities that awarded better pay and benefits to teachers along with negotiated improvements in learning conditions.

In 2014, teacher unions in Portland, Ore., and St. Paul, Minn., got contracts that mandated expansions of preschool programs and smaller classes. A year later, Seattle teachers won changes in recess, discipline procedures, and mental-health initiatives that parents and students had asked for. This year, St. Paul teachers again teamed up with community groups and parents to successfully bargain for reduced class sizes, better services for special ed and English learners, and student discipline reforms.

Teacher unions are at the vanguard because their ties to the community are long term and close-knit, says Mr. Bruno of the University of Illinois.

Even in right-to-work red states, where unions have less representation, teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky have walked out over low pay and poor conditions. 

“Maybe 10 percent of them were in a union,” Bruno says. “But they sure acted as though they were in a union.”

In a corner of Germany celebrated for its bucolic charm, this Bavarian town’s lack of rolling, pastoral fields, and half-timbered houses doesn’t exactly make it a tourist destination – that is unless you ask party officials of the ruling Christian Social Union (CSU).

The governor repeatedly uses the phrase “asylum tourism” for the migrants who trekked through the province during the refugee crisis in 2015 . They continue to do so, even if at a fraction of their earlier pace. And now his party colleague, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, has floated a plan to close the border altogether.

Such harder-line proposals have divided Germany’s government, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) calling it counter to the open borders that are the essence of Europe. But here in Waldkraiburg, which hosts nearly 500 asylum seekers, CSU party members remain firm. “I think what Seehofer is doing is perfectly fine,” says Anton Sterr, a district council member. “It would be good for Waldkraiburg if refugee numbers would go down.”

This is the front line of the battle facing the West today: between those espousing a more “open” society and those advocating that Europe must be “closed.” It could undermine not only the chancellor but the cohesion of Europe. In some ways both have never looked weaker.

But political pressure from Bavaria could also help Ms. Merkel find a solution nearly three years after Europe was rocked by the arrival of 1 million migrants. As European leaders head into a summit Thursday and Friday to try to strike a deal on migration, they are keenly aware of Merkel’s vulnerability, and could come to her side. The flare-up is also an uncomfortable reminder for mainstream parties of how fragile the political situation remains, even as the actual flow of migrants has ebbed. Above all it’s helped shape a new realpolitik around migration: that a middle ground that emphasizes both compassion and control is the winning narrative around Europe today.

‘A kind of a 2015 trauma’

One of the proposals floated ahead of the Brussels meeting, for example, is to build more refugee screening centers outside of Europe, dissuading illegal passage, which was once a fringe idea, says Leopold Traugott, a policy analyst with the Open Europe think tank. “Politicians are increasingly accepting that the approach of Europe has to be restrictive, or otherwise it won’t work,” he says. “People want to have the sense of control.”

“We have had, over the past two or three years, this constant debate about populism, the idea of the open and closed society,” says Angelos Chryssogelos, an expert on European politics at Chatham House, a think tank in London. “But I think the understanding among mainstream parties is that ultimately if the debate is framed in that way … that allows populists to polarize against a social liberal establishment.”

Ann Hermes/Staff

Nasser (l.) and Muhannad, asylum seekers from Syria, walk past a local farmer on their way to the grocery store on June 6, 2015, in Freyung, Germany. After passing through Eastern Europe, Muhannad and Nasser were caught by police on the German border where they were taken to an asylum center with fellow refugees and migrants.

The fight between the German ruling partners, whipped up by local Bavarian elections scheduled for the fall and exacerbated by the formation of a new anti-migrant government in Italy, is not the only one underway. Italy and France have spat again over closed borders, after Italy decided to reject rescue ships this month, while Austria has threatened to close its own frontier to the so-called “Balkan route” of migration. This has come to a head even as the pace of migration has slowed: UN figures show 44,370 have arrived via the Mediterranean so far this year.

“There’s still kind of a 2015 trauma within this society and a deep mistrust that politicians will be able to prevent [a repeat] in the future,” says Jana Puglierin, Europe expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. She blames irresponsibility on the part of the CSU for seeking electoral gain against the far right in Bavaria. “They create an atmosphere as if nothing has changed” since 2015, she says. “The CSU portrays Germany as a kind of failed state ... This is so far from the truth.”

This puts pressure on Merkel to compromise on the humanitarian spirit she showed at the peak of crisis in 2015, and it raises concerns that mainstream parties are chasing the anti-migrant vote. The idea to process refugees abroad finds widespread backing because it is a policy aimed at reducing flows, but it raises concerns about human rights and proper processes.

A rallying call

Yet the threat that the German coalition could fail, just over three months after taking office, has awakened allies to the urgency of a solution after three years of stalling and bickering. Bavaria's intransigence on the migration issue has, in fact, bolstered Merkel's negotiating position with some EU countries, says Josef Janning, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations Berlin office. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed to host a mini-summit over the weekend. French President Emmanuel Macron has supported her, too.

The timing is right while mainstream politicians are more united. Anti-migrant politicians might agree on keeping migrants out, but once they are in Europe they are “miles away,” says Ms. Puglierin. For example, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is adamantly opposed to quotas to redistribute refugees; the new government in Italy is a leading advocate of sharing the burden around the bloc.

If a unanimous European solution proves elusive this week, Merkel has already suggested she will strike a deal with a small number of EU states – as France and Germany did at the outset of the Schengen agreement, which created open borders between EU members.

A recent Eurobarometer poll shows that immigration is the No. 1 concern about the 500-million citizen bloc, with 38 percent naming it as the most important challenge facing the EU.

Mr. Seehofer’s hard line on Bavaria, though controversial, is part of a longer-term shift in the debate. French President Macron has advocated a system that more quickly deports economic migrants to give space to those who meet refugee status. Merkel has been pursuing a similar course, even before the Bavarian ultimatum. “She has understood that a common policy of Europeans can only be a restrictive policy because nobody, not even the Germans, are ready to pursue an open door policy on migration,” Mr. Janning says.

While Waldkraiburg’s Sterr says he’d like to see refugee numbers go down, he is also calling for order. It would be “good,” too, he says, “if orderly procedures would be followed, if people whose asylum claims are rejected would be deported as quickly as possible, and if space could be made for those people who are actually being persecuted and actually need help.”

That rhetoric plays far better to voters than the sometimes empty talk on “European values” that frames the migration debate, says Mr. Chryssogelos.

“The migration issue is not just about migration but about the relationship between elites and people, institutions and voters,” he says. “And they know if they cannot really deliver some sense of control to the electorate, it is going to reinforce the sense of disconnect between elites and the people. That is actually what populists are tapping.”

On Tuesday night, as the World Cup soccer match between Denmark and France was about to kick off, Zhou Xintao settled into his usual spot in an alleyway bar near the Lama Temple in central Beijing. 

Mr. Zhou was in town for business and he has become a regular customer at the bar, which has erected a projection screen on its courtyard patio for the small crowd of die-hard fans who follow every game. Tonight he planned to stay up past 2 a.m. to watch his second favorite team, Argentina, play Nigeria. 

“I’ve watched every World Cup since 1990, when Argentina was really good,” Zhou said by way of explanation. As for his favorite team? They’ve been disappointing him for years.

“Chinese soccer breaks my heart,” he said when asked about the national team’s failure to qualify for this year’s World Cup tournament in Russia. “China has more than one billion people,” he continued. “It’s impossible that we cannot find 11 people to play soccer.”

While Zhou has long been frustrated by the Chinese team, he still dreams of seeing it win the World Cup someday. In fact, he’s now more hopeful than ever thanks to China’s No. 1 soccer fan, President Xi Jinping, who has made it his mission to transform the country into a soccer powerhouse. 

Getting from zeros to heros

President Xi has made no secret of his intention to restore China to what he considers its rightful place as a global power in the broadest sense of the term. He has already enjoyed remarkable success expanding Chinese political and economic influence across the world. It seems only natural that soccer, the world’s most popular sport, would be part of Xi’s plan for national rejuvenation.

Chinese fans have long been keen on soccer; several prime-time matches on Chinese state television last week drew nearly 100 million viewers. But their local and national men’s teams have never been much good at playing the game, (though the Chinese women’s team came second to the United States in the 1999 women’s World Cup) and the government used to not pay much attention to soccer.

All that has changed with Xi, who declared in 2015 that his “biggest hope for Chinese soccer is that [China] becomes among the world’s best teams.”

His goals for Chinese soccer are nothing if not ambitious, including hosting and winning the World Cup. Never mind that the Chinese national team has qualified for the tournament only once, in 2002, and failed to score a single goal in any of the three games it played then before being knocked out. China is currently ranked 75^th  in the world, two spots behind Syria. 

Despite China’s lackluster history with soccer, Xi appears determined to do whatever it takes to turn things around. In true Chinese fashion, the government has drawn up a long term official plan for the top-down creation of a proper soccer industry. Issued in 2016, the 50 point plan aims to “improve the physical condition of the Chinese people, enrich cultural life, promote the spirit of patriotism and collectivism, cultivate sports culture, and develop the sports industry.” 

“This has a great significance for the realization of the dream of becoming a powerful sports nation,” the plan proclaims, calling for 50 million Chinese to be playing soccer regularly by 2020.

Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

China fans outside the Spartak Stadium before the Argentina vs. Iceland match in Moscow on June 16, 2018.

Fewer books, more balls

This is a far cry from the ad hoc, informal way that kids in most developing countries learn the game, playing in the street. But Beijing understands that a vibrant professional league – essential for global preeminence – cannot be conjured from thin air; it needs the foundation of a thriving amateur game.

With this in mind, the plan encourages “institutions, people’s organizations, military and business to join together or individually to set up football teams,” and calls especially on “trade unions, the Communist Youth League, women’s organizations and other mass organizations.”

Whether this will be sufficient to overcome the country’s lack of a soccer – or even a sports – culture is uncertain. That shortcoming is the key hurdle to success, says Yan Qiang, a veteran sportswriter in Beijing. In a country where academic education often takes top priority, Chinese parents have long discouraged their children from committing time to sports. “China has been a very unsporty nation for centuries,” says Mr. Yan, who is also the founder and CEO of Scoresport, a popular mobile app for Chinese sports fans. “That’s starting to change, but it won’t change overnight.”

Maybe, one day...

Easing the path is money – lots of it.

Soccer's rise in China reflects the country’s push towards a consumer-driven economy, led by an emerging middle class that has money to spend. In 2014, this link was made explicit when the Chinese government published document No. 46, which made sports part of its economic plan. With government backing, China’s domestic sports market could be worth $740 billion by 2025 according to official figures.

Chinese corporations are eager to tap into this fast-growing market — and to use soccer to extend their global reach. Seven of the 19 corporate sponsors at the World Cup this year are Chinese, including the property conglomerate Wanda, smartphone manufacturer Vivo, and dairy company Mengniu.

Many of the Chinese companies stepped in after other sponsors recoiled from the tournament because of a sprawling global soccer corruption case that erupted in 2015. The international research company Zenith estimates that Chinese firms will contribute one third, or $835 million, of the total advertising spent during this year’s World Cup.

The growing interest from Chinese fans and companies surely bodes well for the future of soccer in China. Hosting a World Cup may be a distant dream – the next two tournaments have already been allotted – but the first step is to build a team good enough to qualify for the World Cup.

President Xi may have stars in his eyes, but most Chinese fans are more realistic. Says Yue Minghao, a soccer fan in Beijing, “I think it will take several generations for us to really have a chance of winning the World Cup.”

Xie Yujuan contributed to this report. 

Charles Dharapak/AP

With the Capitol in the background, Army veteran David Dickerson of Oklahoma City, Okla., (r.), and Air Force veteran Linda Stanley, from San Diego, Calif., now with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), join others to place 1,892 flags representing veteran and service members who have died by suicide to date in 2014, on the National Mall in Washington on March 27, 2014.

The occasion of Chris Carter’s 23rd birthday in 2015 brought together his parents, friends, and fellow soldiers in sorrow rather than celebration. An Army Ranger who served four combat tours in Afghanistan, he had died by suicide two weeks earlier, his mind trapped within a distant war that trailed him home. The mourners gathered for his funeral at a church outside St. Louis, less than a mile from the high school where he had graduated five years earlier, when his future seemed incandescent and infinite.

During Mr. Carter’s first tour in 2011, he lost a close friend in a bomb explosion and glimpsed the broken bodies of another soldier and an Afghan interpreter killed in the blast. He had little time to grieve. The Army deployed the Rangers – elite special operations units – for four-month tours during which the furious mission tempo seldom ebbed. Carter’s platoon endured an unrelenting cycle of raids and firefights, adrenaline and carnage.

His first suicide attempt followed his final deployment in 2014. After learning the news, his mother, Beth Zimmer Carter, traveled to Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., where he was stationed. There she saw what war had taken from her only child.

His natural charisma and openness had fallen prey to anxiety and self-isolation. His brain remained clenched by the extreme level of alertness required in combat, a condition called hypervigilance that ruptured his thought patterns and deprived him of sleep. He appeared adrift within himself.

Carter had sought counseling from military mental health providers before his fourth tour, his mother recalls, yet worried that revealing too much to them could jeopardize his Army career. Dr. Zimmer Carter, a private physician who had retired at the rank of lieutenant colonel after 23 years in the Army Reserve Medical Corps, tried to find treatment alternatives after arriving in Washington. But she felt stymied by the military mental health system and knew almost nothing about private sector options. As her concern intensified, time ran out. Her son’s second suicide attempt was his last.

“I wasn’t aware of what resources were available or how to navigate the problem,” says Zimmer Carter, who now serves as an advocate with the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a national nonprofit that aids families of deceased service members. “Even with my military experience, and even with my medical knowledge inside and outside the military, it was hard to locate the right resources and support.”

Two federal agencies have launched a public health campaign with the intent to reduce that kind of confusion and lower the rate of 20 suicides a day among service members and veterans. The joint initiative by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) encourages cities to forge alliances between public agencies and private organizations to expand suicide prevention strategies.

The collaborative effort can unify a city’s mental health and social services programs to catch more service members and veterans in crisis, explains Cicely Burrows-McElwain, the military and veterans affairs liaison for SAMHSA.

“When you look at the problem of suicide in the military and with veterans, it’s not that there aren’t enough services. It’s that there isn’t enough coordination of those services,” she says. “We want to open up communication so that there’s a better understanding throughout the community for how to help service members and veterans.”

Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP

A memorial paying tribute to a central Ohio-based Marine reserve company that lost 22 Marines and a Navy Corpsman in Iraq in 2005, including a newly unveiled bronze statute, 'Silent Battle,' drawing attention to suicides among veterans, is displayed at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio on May 21, 2018.

Cultural competency

The VA and SAMHSA selected eight cities across the country for the campaign’s initial phase and will add another 20 later this year. The agencies chose metro areas with large veteran populations and high veteran suicide rates, including Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, along with Albuquerque, N.M.; Richmond, Va.; and the Montana cities of Billings and Helena.

A VA report on suicide released earlier this month showed that former service members made up 8.3 percent of the US population in 2015 and accounted for 6,300 of the country’s 44,000 suicides, or 14.3 percent. The agency found that 14 of the 20 veterans who died by suicide every day either lacked access to or chose to forgo VA services.

The suicide prevention campaign provides cities with guidelines created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for improving the breadth and depth of supportive services for people with mental health conditions. The initiative seeks to attune those likeliest to encounter veterans in crisis – first responders, medical practitioners, employers, educators, jail and courthouse personnel – to their presence in the community.

“It’s an attempt to raise cultural competency about the military and veterans,” Ms. Burrows-McElwain says. “We want folks to understand that you don’t have to be an expert on the military or veterans to ask a person if they’re OK or if they served. The sooner we can identify someone is a veteran, the sooner they can get help, whether that’s through the VA or another provider.”

The veterans population exceeds 275,000 in the greater Phoenix metro area. The city’s plan to cultivate awareness about military and veterans culture will build upon a statewide program called Be Connected that works to reduce suicides among current and former service members.

The program has trained 3,700 “navigators” across Arizona who steer veterans in crisis toward mental health treatment and other services, and has offered cultural competency training to public agencies and private employers statewide. Wanda Wright, director of the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services, regards the VA-SAMHSA campaign as another plank in a bridge linking the military to the civilian world.

“We’re trying to get into every corner of every community,” says Ms. Wright, a retired Air Force colonel. “We want to educate people so if they’re dealing with a veteran who’s in need, they’ll have ideas for what they can do to help.”

A recent CDC study showed that nearly 45,000 people died by their own hand in 2016, and suicide ranks as the country’s 10th leading cause of death. More than 500 members of the military’s active-duty, Reserve, and National Guard forces took their own lives last year. Zimmer Carter, who lives part of the year near Phoenix in the city of Mesa, believes the VA-SAMHSA initiative could benefit service members searching for treatment outside the military.

The Defense Department has devoted greater resources to behavioral health care over the past decade. The agency established a suicide prevention office in 2011, and senior leaders promote a message urging troops to ask for help. But many service members stay quiet for fear that a mental health diagnosis could stall or end their career.

Chris Carter realized he needed counseling after his third tour in Afghanistan and talked with a military clinician. At the same time, as one of his platoon’s team leaders, he felt an obligation to the soldiers under him. He steeled himself and deployed again in 2014.

After returning to Washington, he relied on marijuana to soften the symptoms of combat trauma, and when his commanders found out, they demoted him from corporal to private. Zimmer Carter recalls the mix of frustration and desperation she felt when, with her son spiraling after his first suicide attempt, Army commanders rebuffed her inquiries about his condition.

“Here I was with lieutenant colonel credentials and I was running into resistance,” she says. “But at the time, I didn’t have an idea of where else to turn except the military medical corps.”

The first minute

The VA’s suicide report revealed that former service members age 55 and older accounted for 58 percent of the veterans who died by suicide three years ago. But the rate of suicide ran highest among veterans age 18 to 34, the generation that has borne the heaviest burden in the country’s post-9/11 wars. In that demographic, suicide claimed 39 veterans per 100,000 people, compared with 25 veterans in the age group 55 to 74.

Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Seroka served as a commander during the Afghanistan War in the twilight of a 30-year Air Force career. The retired colonel, who belongs to the city’s team working on the VA-SAMHSA project, describes the sense of dislocation that can afflict service members when they leave the military.

“There’s no tribe,” he says. “There’s not the same feeling of common purpose when they return to civilian life, and there’s not the same support group that they had in the service. It’s easy to feel like an outsider, even in their own families, and that’s when they can start to lose themselves.”

Mr. Seroka endorses an approach to suicide prevention that begins long before a veteran exhibits symptoms of a mental health condition. He advocates tracking veterans as soon as they shed their uniforms, and he plans to nurture collaboration among employers, educators, and veteran services groups to expand post-military career opportunities.

“There needs to be a change in thinking,” Seroka says. “We can’t keep waiting until the last minute to save people. We need to start helping them from the first minute when they get out of the service. Some vets might push that help away, but at least we’ll be making them aware of what’s available.”

Montana has the highest suicide rate among veterans in the country, at 68 per 100,000 people. A severe shortage of mental health providers contributes to the problem, and advocates involved with the VA-SAMHSA initiative in Billings consider online support services crucial to assisting more veterans in a largely rural state.

One national nonprofit, PsychArmor Institute, has joined with the VA to offer online suicide prevention training. The site also provides a range of free courses designed to smooth a veteran’s re-entry to civilian life, tips for employers hiring former service members, and lessons about post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, and other unseen wounds of war.

“The point is not to focus on suicide but to establish an understanding of the world of a service member or veteran,” says Claire Oakley, a program director with RiverStone Health, a public health services provider in Billings. “We want everyone to be able to identify veterans and connect them to whatever kind of services can help them.”

The Army restored Chris Carter’s rank to corporal after his death. What his mother lost cannot be reclaimed. His suicide informs Zimmer Carter’s advocacy, and she views the VA-SAMHSA campaign as a step forward in a ceaseless struggle to spare another military parent from an anguish unlike any other. The urgency remains as apparent to her as the day her son died, an uncounted casualty of war.

“We need a big community effort so that everyone is looking out for everyone else,” she says. “We all need to come together.”

Danita Delimont Photography/Newscom

A lioness lounges in a tree in Uganda’s Ishasha sector in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Ishasha is the home of one of just two populations of tree-climbing lions in the world.

Ugandans have mixed feelings about lions.

The predatory cats are a boon for tourism, which accounts for 9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. But for many, the lions and other large predators are a source of near-constant anxiety.

That tension came to a head in April when 11 lions were found dead in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park. Wildlife officials suspect that the lions were poisoned by pastoralists who have lost livestock to the cats. Since then, wildlife officials have redoubled efforts to help residents find ways to live in harmony with these carnivores.

Central to the conflict is a sense that local residents shoulder all the burdens of hosting these carnivores without reaping any of the economic benefits that their presence brings the country. The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is trying to rebalance that equation with a series of initiatives including revenue-sharing programs, compensation packages for lost livestock, and employment opportunities.

The African lion, Panthera leo, plays a crucial role in the savanna ecosystem. As apex predators, the giant cats keep herbivore populations from ballooning to numbers that cannot be supported by the land. Their tendency to prey upon the weakest of the herd is thought to keep parasites and disease in check. At the turn of the 20th century, an estimated 200,000 lions roamed throughout much of Africa. Today, those numbers have dwindled to just 20,000, and the cats have been declared extinct in 26 countries.

Uganda is home to some 400 lions, about 130 of which live in Queen Elizabeth National Park. The park’s Ishasha sector hosts one of just two known populations of tree-climbing lions in the world. The park is a haven for some of Africa’s most iconic safari species, including elephants, buffalo, and leopards. In 2017, nearly half a million foreign visitors traveled to the park in hopes of glimpsing this rich biodiversity.

But animals frequently wander outside the park and can cause problems for surrounding communities. Leopards and lions kill livestock. Elephants trample gardens. And primates have even been known to attack children. (In early June a chimpanzee reportedly kidnapped a 5-month-old infant, though villagers were able to recover the child. ) Frustrated, locals have set out snares for elephants and poison for carnivores.

SOURCE:

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

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Karen Norris/Staff

Cris Mongly Kaseke, a conservationist and resident of the Kasenyi Fishing Village within the park, says that people lash out at the animals because they don’t see any benefit to living alongside such dangerous creatures. He recently sold all five of his goats after another was eaten by a leopard. He received compensation for the lost goat through an experimental program funded by tourist dollars, but he was worried that keeping the remaining goats would attract more predators.

The goats had been loan collateral and a potential source of income in the event of illness. “They were my insurance,” he says.

Mounting tensions

Additional conflicts arise when pastoralists lead their livestock into the park in search of pasture during dry spells. The park is off limits to domesticated animals, and the presence of trespassing pastoralists and their livestock can lead to tense run-ins with heavily armed UWA officers.

Chief park warden Edward Asalu is hopeful that UWA’s efforts will help alleviate these tensions with the local communities. In addition to offering compensation to individuals like Mr. Kaseke who have lost livestock, the UWA is developing a revenue-sharing fund that distributes 20 percent of visitors’ fees back to the community.

Park officials have been experimenting with a beekeeping program to both discourage animals from wandering outside the park and to provide an economic lift to local communities. The park provides beekeeping training to locals, who then establish hives near the perimeter of the park. Hives full of stinging bees deter animals from leaving the park and provide beekeepers with honey to sell.

Additionally, Mr. Asalu is hoping that local residents will start to view the UWA as a source of employment rather than as an adversary.

“We are giving first priority to locals with the right qualifications in the recruitment for game rangers,” he says.

Kaseke, who has a certificate in wildlife and allied natural resource management from the Uganda Wildlife Training Institute based in Kasese District, is skeptical of that promise, as he has seen little effort to recruit locally. He has, however, worked with the UWA to secure a beekeeping permit for his local beekeepers association.

He has additional concerns about the way the revenue-sharing program has been administered. He would rather see those funds distributed directly to the local community than at the district level.

“[The fund] has been misused,” he says. “It is given to the wrong people.”

Asalu acknowledges that there have been delays and diversions by district officials, but he says that the current laws prohibit the UWA from distributing the funds directly to the communities.

Light at the end of the tunnel

A bill recently introduced in Parliament, the Uganda Wildlife Bill 2017, would both codify efforts to compensate pastoralists who lose livestock outside the park and strengthen the penalties for people who commit crimes against wildlife.

Kaseke worries that the bureaucratic process for compensation outlined in the bill is too cumbersome.

“It will not help because there are a lot of procedures, including getting letters from local officials who demand small bribes,” he explains. “The claimants will lose interest.”

Doreen Katusiime, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities, is optimistic that Parliament will be able to shape the bill in a way that will help protect communities and their wild neighbors.

Kristin Murphy/The Deseret News via AP

Seniors stretch before walking around Liberty Park in Salt Lake City.

Americans of a “certain age” abound at the upper levels of American governance. President Trump is the most obvious example. Just over half of US senators will be 65 or older by the end of this year. On the Supreme Court, five of nine justices are over 65. These “senior citizens” make crucial decisions for the majority of Americans younger than them.

Just eight decades ago, when the Social Security system began, 65 was codified as the start of “old age.” Now many people of that vintage may feel in the prime of life.

Measured by years alone, Americans are on average getting older. According to the Harvard Business Review, for the first time more Americans are now over 50 than under 18.

A popular notion is that a war is brewing between generations – young working Americans resenting that they must pay more into Social Security and Medicare to support an expanding cohort of older Americans. There’s truth in that sentiment. In 1980, there were 19 people over 65 for every 100 people between 18 and 64. Last year, there were 25 people over 65 for every 100 people between 18 and 64. And the worker-to-retiree ratio is projected to be even worse by 2030.

But the idea that older people will be a large financial burden is being challenged. To begin with, programs like Social Security and Medicare can be adjusted, as they have in the past, while certain trends, such as Americans delaying full retirement, could alter the projections.

A pair of new government reports show that funding for Medicare will run out in 2026, three years earlier than previously forecast. The Social Security trust fund, which includes both old age and disability payments, will be able to pay only 75 percent of benefits by 2035.

Despite these warnings, modest fixes are available, including making small changes in the age of eligibility that recognize lengthening life spans. Even that step may not be needed. By one estimate, increasing the Social Security payroll tax by 2.88 percentage points could eliminate the expected revenue shortfall for another three-quarters of a century.

But actuarial tables, however useful for government planning, shouldn’t impose artificial limits on what older Americans do. Aging isn’t what it used to be. Today, 75-year-olds on average will live just as many additional years as the average 65-year-old did in 1952. And many of today’s “elderly” are active as caregivers of grandchildren while parents work.

Categorizing by age can be just as harmful as by gender or race. Labeling people by an age category (“greatest generation,” “baby boomer”) is a recent phenomenon. Birthdays weren’t even widely celebrated until the 20th century, notes historian Howard Chudacoff in his book “How Old Are You?” The idea of being “middle aged” wasn’t popularized until after World War I.

Marketing continues to stratify Americans by calendar years, walling off the beneficial effects of older and younger people rubbing shoulders. More and more older Americans are sequestered in communities intended only for those over 55.

Companies are beginning to consider age diversity to be as important as racial and gender diversity. (Some observers suggest businesses try the “shoe test”: Look under desks. If everyone’s wearing the same kind of footwear – whether wingtips or flip-flops – the business would benefit from more diversity.)

Today, suggests one expert, Americans have an opportunity to make a “fresh map of life itself,” throwing off outworn ideas about aging. Policies that encourage older Americans to expand the possibilities of their “senior years” will help change limited perceptions and benefit all of society.